Archive of Our Own

In moments it feels tolerable. Like something Satomi can survive if he just keeps his head down and maintains strategic numbness, trudging along in broken, detached passivity. Like love is a fistful of hard earned yen coins one can tossed into the river, glinting briefly in a streetlight before they tumble out of sight, gone forever.

Other times he can't eat. Can't sleep. The way Kyouji refused to hug him in favor of that spineless pat on the back haunts him, replays in his mind thousands of times on a stuttering, endless loop. He was such a fool, asking for what he wanted. He is such a fool, for wanting it at all.

After weeks of alternating between hazy, barely living disconnect and acute agony, he decides something has to give. He can't just wait for his feelings to change—that's as pointless as waiting for Kyouji's boss to die. He has to take action. He has to try and get over it. Move on.

So, he downloads a dating app.

It's so stupid—he doesn't even know what he really wants, outside of Kyouji. He's never liked anyone else. He doesn't know if he's gay, or if he could date girls with any degree of success. He doesn't even know what people do on dates. Eat food? Sing Karaoke? His understanding of the world is violently, pervasively colored by his fourteenth summer. No corner of his brain untouched. Everything he finds attractive has been shaped since pubescence by Kyouji, whether by bug or design, and forcing himself to separate desire from that influence is impossible. But he can't just keep living like this, a chained dog begging for scarps—it's not living at all.

He starts by casting a broad net. Swipes right on anyone his age who looks respectable and doesn't seem like a serial killer. He goes on a few dates—gets food, sings karaoke. They're fine, but don't feel like anything. He thinks of Kyouji the whole time, zones out and misses what his dates are saying, mixes up their names, trips over himself, forgets to smile. The girls make him less nervous, he forgets it's a date and begins to think of it as hanging out with a new potential friend. He's pretty sure this means he's gay. He wishes this was a revelation he could do something with, but it pales in comparison to other revelations. That is always the way it is with Kyouji—he is so large. A supernova, so uniquely all-consuming he forces every surrounding thought or feeling to insignificance. Why does it matter Satomi is probably gay when he is also in love with a yakuza twenty years his senior who used to touch him back when he was fourteen and too stupid to know how it made him feel, but doesn't anymore? The moon and stars don't stop glowing by daylight—they're just drowned out by the unrelenting burn of the sun.

Satomi does not have people close enough he can discuss revelations—small or otherwise— with. There's only so many times he can bring up his "friend" who hugged a man and later realized he loves him. There is only so many times he can talk about this without really talking about it. He keeps going on bad dates he doesn't call back. He keeps trying to scrub his stain from the cherub painting at work from beneath the sharpie cat, still obsesses over his name inked into Kyouji's skin, wondering if it's still there, or if he followed through on his promise to remove it. Satomi thinks maybe he can go back in time, he he tries hard enough. Unmark the painting, unmark Kyouji, and thus, he, himself, become unmarked. Starting over would be so much easier, if he first had a clean slate.

He realizes he has to work for that, though. If he cannot erase, he must make himself anew. Changing what he has the power to change.

He gets a haircut. He decides he likes smoothies even though he has never liked smoothies before. He decides on a new coffee order. He starts to wake up early when it's still dark, and jog around the city before class. He's bad at it—doesn't know how to breathe, control his stride. His sneakers aren't made for running and slap the pavement too hard, giving him shin splints. He doesn't know how many miles he averages, he just goes until he can't anymore, stops when he stitches cut into his sides, forcing him to double over and clutch his gut, sweat stinging in his eyes. It hurts, but it's good to be hurt by something else, for a change.

Breath steaming on the air he walks back to his apartment, body thrumming with new aches. How is your boss's health? he types, before deleting it. Is your tattoo still there? Will you send me a picture when it's gone? he types before deleting it. Would you miss me if I killed myself he types before deleting it. Then: when are you coming back into town? he finally sends.

Next weekend. Greasy Italian? Kyouji sends back alongside a sticker of a pizza with glittery cat shaped pepperonis on it. Satomi imagines throwing his phone into the river, where it can rot with his money. He bends over, he dry heaves. Then, he types saturday night i'm busy. sunday brunch maybe? But then instead of sending that, he messages the guy he was going to get dinner with on Saturday, and tells him he got unexpectedly called into work. Then, he texts Kyouji: ok.

—-

Seeing him makes it one hundred times worse, any progress he'd clawed away in shifting his attention completely obliterated. He almost asks for another hug, begs for it, gets on his knees there at the train station and makes fists in Kyouji's perfectly pressed slacks, presses his face into the fabric, asks him, why did you touch me so much when I was fourteen, but won't touch me now? Am I remembering it wrong? Did I make it up?

"I like your haircut, makes you look grown up. Very Civil Servant. That's what you're going for, right? " Kyouji observes, folding a piece of pizza in half like a taco and taking a generous bite. Then he pushes a plate of Alfredo towards Satomi. "Eat, stop moping like that. What, did you get a bad grade or something?"

The rage a palpable thing, a stone he could spit up, vomit out. He shakes his head. "I've been going on a lot of dates," he grits out without looking up. "With girls, but mostly guys. Do you care?"

There's nothing but the sound of chewing for a few seconds. Satomi risks flicking his gaze up, and Kyouji is horribly and predictably unruffled, expression totally unchanged. He swallows, bhis throat bobs, and Satomi watches it go up and down, chest flaying open along an invisible blade "I think that's probably for the best," Kyouji says eventually, plastering on his usual grin. "Good for Satomi-kun, putting himself out there. Playing the field."

"Do you want to know if I like any of them?" Satomi asks, hating how desperate he sounds. How badly he wants Kyouji to be jealous, to claim him, to express concern or ask him to stop or produce even a modicum of giving a shit. But of course, he gets nothing. He hasn't gotten anything from Kyoki since he was fourteen years old. Only way too much food and a fucking watch he never wanted.

"Do you like any of them?" Kyouji parrots, taking another bite of his pizza.

Satomi sits up, chair scraping nosily on the tile floor, almost toppling over with his force. The restaurant is mostly empty, so no one looks their way. His fists clench and unclench at his sides, hair quaking as his body trembles. "You fucking know I don't," he says, hands flying to his face, scrubbing over it under his glasses, trying to push the sting of tears back in his eyes. "You know."

Kyouji slurps what's left of his soda, the remnants rattling as they climb up his straw. "Their loss, really," he says. Then, as if nothing has happened, "sit down, Satomi, and finish your pasta so we can order dessert already. I've been craving cannoli all week. "

After they part ways at the subway station (with a wave this time, not even a pat, let alone the embrace he still needs), Satomi jogs home. Runs until he's crippled with thefamiliar sear of shin splits, the familiar stitch in his side. Runs until it hurts, that new pain swelling to eclipse the old pain, like the sun rising to blot out the moon, the stars.

—

The first man is a customer. Satomi isn't planning on it or anything—in fact he's still going on his idiotic dates with boring university students he doesn't call back just to say he's trying—but as he brings the man his food, he catches a faint whiff of Kyouji's cigarette brand wafting from the man's jacket. It stops him in his tracks, makes his stomach plummet. He blushes, sets down the plate, stutters through the script of asking if the customer wants anything else.

The man looks him over, takes his time. "I'll let you know," he says with an Osaka accent, and that does something to Satomi's gut, too. He turns on his heel, and hides behind the counter. The man is not much younger than Kyouki—late thirties, forty at most. He doesn't look like him, but he smells like him. Satomi read something once about how smell is the sense most connected to triggering memory. He doesn't doubt it.

The man takes his time eating his meal, shooting occasional, loaded glances in Satomi's direction. It's enough to bolster his courage, to make him crazy, take the risk: when he brings the man his receipt, he writes his number on it, and the time he's off before scampering away to the broom closet to hyperventilate. When he finally ventures back out the man is gone, but he has a text from him: i'll meet you outside the restaurant x.

Satomi sweats and shakes through the remainder of his shift, oscillating rapidly between wanting to call the whole thing off and bone tingling pride at what a massive stride this is for him. Sure, the man is not his age, and it wasn't as he he was drawn to him for any reason other than his cigarettes—but still. He is not Kyouji. That has to count for something.

Before he can talk himself out of it he clocks out and leaves purposefully, standing on the corner looking. He smells him before he sees him—crossing the street to meet Satomi, smoking. Satomi sucks it in, teeth chattering. "Hello," the man says, stopping just short of him, sizing him up. He turns his head to exhale, but the breeze blows the billow right back towards Satomi. "How old are you?" he asks. "You're not underage, are you?"

"Eighteen," he says.

The man skeptically once overs him again. "You look young."

"I'm in college," he promises, taking out his wallet and showing the man his student ID. "You saw—I have a job."

Seemingly satisfied he nods, then puts out the butt of his cigarette under the toe of his boot. "I'm parked in an alley," he says. "We'll go there. I can't bring you home."

Throat too tight to speak, Satomi just nods, shoulders bunched up by his ears as he follows the man. What am I doing, what am I doing, he thinks with each new step, but he keeps doing it. He takes his phone out, opens his text thread with Kyouji, who has not spoken to him since their last meeting. He types I'm about to go into an alleyway by my work with a strange older man, telling himself he's only telling Kyouji so if he disappears, someone will know what happened, where he was. Not at all because he wants him to come rescue him, call his bluff, storm in, save him. Reach out and catch blood before it touches his face, like he did that summer they met.

But he never hits send. Eventually the man turns to him and unceremoniously pushes him up against a cinderblock wall between a dumpster and some scaffolding. Satomi's heart stops, his body freezes. They don't kiss. The man puts his mouth on his neck, exhaling there hotly as he touches his body. Aimless squeezing up his torso, his arms, his thighs. He sees a wedding ring glinting there under the street light like a yen coin hurtling into the river. He closes his eyes, he buries his face into the man's jacket. He inhales, he gets hard. It's that easy, to pretend.

The clink of a belt buckle, the man hot in his hand. He curls his fingers around it, velvet and steel. Thicker than he is, but otherwise similar. No different than jacking off at home, shamefully in his bed when he can't sleep, thinking about the way Kyouji used to box him in at the karaoke booth, encapsulate him, look at his mouth, carelessly comparing to woman he'd fucked. One arm behind him, the other elbow propped on the table for his chin. Staring in this hungry, amused way. Making him squirm. Back then, it had made Satomi feel something so scary and strong he didn't have words for it. But now, he touches himself to the memory.Now, now, he touches this man to the memory.

So clumsy, unpracticed, but it doesn't seem to matter. In minutes the man grunts, and comes in his fist. Pulls back, looks at him. "Do you want money?" he says, reaching into his pocket.

"No, I…what?" Satomi asks, too dazed to make sense of this. He's still hard in his work pants, he could have gotten off grinding and smelling and pretending, but there wasn't enough time.

"No, no, I'll feel bad—just take it, kid," the man says, pulling out a few crumpled bills and offering them to Satomi. When he doesn't take them, he tucks them into his pocket with two fingers. Then, he takes out a cigarette, lights up, and leaves.

Hard and humiliated, Satomi makes himself jog until his erection wilts and his fury comes out with his sweat. I'll put the money in Kyouji's tattoo removal fund, he thinks, like that makes it better, somehow, he got tossed bills like he was a cheap whore. Then, he remembers there is no Kyouji's Tattoo Removal Fund anymore.

—

It's a terrible habit, but maybe it's better than loving a Yakuza who treats him like a child now that he's adult, but treated him like an adult back when he was still a child. At least this makes sense. It's a choice. Successful self destruction, instead of failed self improvement. That feels more productive than the pathetic dates, somehow.

The customer comes back a few times, and they meet up in the same alleyway after Satomi's shift. It's always the same—no kissing, just grinding, groping, messy hand jobs. He doesn't always come, but the man does. It makes him feel both used, and useful. Sometimes the man gives him money, sometimes the man doesn't. He always smokes before, though, which is the part Satomi needs in order to make worthwhile, make it work.

"Want one?" the man asks one time, offering him a cigarette.

I don't smoke, Satomi thinks, but he accepts the offer anyway, pockets it "for later."

What that means is back home in his horrible, too cold apartment, he lies on the floor and lights the cigarette like incense. Takes his cock out, touches himself slow, the room clouded in thick white that drags up a cough, makes him cry. His eyes stream into his hair, which is growing out again. He comes with the saddest whine, rolls over onto his side, and wonders if getting over something always feels like a terrible backslide. One step forward, countless shin-splinting jogs back.

—

The next man doesn't stumble into Satomi's life—Satomi goes looking for him. Finds him on the dating app, now that he's changed the formerly strict age preference bracket. He's forty eight, a Japanese American tourist looking for what he calls a a quick good time with slender schoolboy type. can host. Satomi messages him because his profile picture shows a thick, muscular body positively covered in tattoos. Finger waves, tigers, cherry blossoms from throat to thigh. It makes his throat close up just to see it, squint at it until it goes bleary. He sends an awkward picture of his own shirtless torso, gets a heart eye and fire emogi back. The guy texts like Kyouji, too. Must be a generational thing. After a little flirting he gives Satomi the address of his hotel and his room number.

Satomi jogs there, arrives on the block sweaty and breathless, then walks around for a few minutes to cool off. Heart pounding as he ducks into a convenience store on the corner, and uses his tips to buy a pack of Kyouji's cigarettes.

Elevator up, standing awkwardly in the hall. Be discreet, I'm here on business and I have coworkers staying in the same hotel, the guy had told him, but Satomi doesn't know what being discreet about something like this actually looks like. The whole thing feels insane, overt, crazy. At least three times he imagines heading back, but his fight or flight reflex has always leaned more towards freeze.

When the guy opens the door, his pupils are blown wide and there's a crust of white powder under his nose. He's shirtless, tattoos glistening in a fine sheen of sweat. "Wow," he says, wiping his upper lip with the back of his hand as Satomi awkwardly shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on a hook by the door. "You're even cuter in person."

Satomi squirms, unsure of what to say. Once the door is bolted the man offers him drugs, which he declines. Undeterred, the man wastes no time backing him up to the bed, laying him out, pushing his shirt up. But instead of reaching for his dick, he just—looks at him. Feels him. Drinks him in with hands, eyes.

More tender and less rushed than his alleyway trysts with cigarette guy, it gives Satomi too much time to think, heart racing under the man's tongue as he stares at the ceiling, too scared to get hard or even reach up and smooth his palms over those tattooed shoulders, squint through his tears and imagine he is with someone else like he planned to do. The man smells of cologne, too-strong, cloying, American. "Um—wait," Satomi suddenly blurts, freezing up and squirming out from under the hungry, grinding bulk. "I'm—really sorry, I'm not backing out I just. You should know, um. I haven't ever really done this."

The man looks at him, uncomprehending and slackjawed for a moment before his eyes flash wolfishly. He grins then, and it as slick and smooth as Kyouji's, but crooked. "A dirty little schoolboy virgin, then?" he says. "Even better. I'll show you the ropes."

"I—ok," Satomi says, on the verge of panic but biting it back. Move on. Remove the tattoo. Blot out the stain from under the cat. Then, because he can't stop himself he says:"I—sorry this is weird, but. Do you smoke?"

"Sometimes," the man says. "Why? You got a kink or something?"

"Yes," Satomi says, since it's easier than the truth. "There's, um. A pack I bought for you. It's in my jacket pocket.

The man retrieves it, taps one out onto his palm. "You got a lighter?"

Fuck—no, Satomi forgot about that part. They rifle around the room, manage to find a matchbook emblazoned with the hotel's logo on it, in a drawer with some stationary. As soon as the man blows smoke from his nose into the room, Satomi relaxes a little. Peels off his shirt, kicks off his shoes, lays on the bed expectantly. The man stares down at him, rubs his free hand up and down his thighs, then between them, cupping his hardening cock through his pants. "You want me to keep smoking, while I touch you?"

Satomi nods, embarrassed but grateful. The man grins that crooked grin at him and exhales right into his face, making him cough. "Did you have a school teacher who smoked? Did you like to stand and watch him on his breaks in your little uniform, pretend you were sucking his cock?"

Satomi ruts into his palm,wishes he would stop talking. But the haze of smoke makes his tattoos less distinct, so it's easier to imagine it's Kyouji, which makes it easier to do any of this. Maybe this is how Kyouji would talk to him. Tease him. Touch him, giving him a hard time about how much he wants it, how desperate he is. "Something like that," he mumbles. And then, because he can tell the man will like it and because it's true, "I was fourteen."

The man groans, making quick work of Satomi's belt and trousers. "Dirty boy," he breathes. "Fourteen years old, dreaming of sucking on an older man." He gets his own cock out, fists it. Thick, red, terrifying. Satomi's mouth floods. He's thought so many times about sucking off Kyouji—thought about kneeling, just putting his face there between his lazily spread thighs, mouthing him through his trousers, inhaling the scent of him, taking his time, falling asleep there, nursing. Telling him just use my mouth, you don't have to even look at me if you don't want to, you can pretend I'm a girl,or someone else, or that I'm fourteen again. I don't care.

The man is patient through his coughs, his tears, his gags, his teeth. When his jaw gets sore he pulls him off, jacks off onto his face instead. It lands with a hot splatter across his glasses, startles him. Mortifyingly he sobs afterward, curls up in the hotel bed, unable to stop shaking. "Hey, kid, did I do something wrong? Are you ok?" the man asks, alarmed, looking shifty eyed over his shoulder like someone might be filming, ready to haul him off for soliciting sex with an underage boy, even though they had no plans to exchange money and Satomi is perfectly of age.

"I'm fine," he chokes out. "It's not you. it was really good. You made me feel really good, I just—I just—" and then the whole horrible truth comes spilling out, riddled in holes for the absurd sake of Kyouj's safety, rather than his own dignity. I'm in love with a man. A smoker, yes, and because of his job, and because I'm not even sure he wants me that way, we can't—we'll never—but he acts like it's me who's the problem, like I—and he has my name tattooed on him! My fucking name! He keeps seeing me, like he wants to see me. But he won't—he won't even hug me.

The man listens as patiently as someone who only recently snorted something can listen, nodding along, tattooed arms crossed over his bare chest, soft cock shrunken into his foreskin between this thighs. Satomi could almost laugh at how simultaneously sordid, mundane,and pathetic this night has become. An attempt to run from Kyouji ending in Satomi sobbing about him to his hook up. All his runs ending in shin splints. "He has your name tattooed on him? Why? How did you even meet? Is he really your teacher?" the man asks, trying to keep up.

"No, he's not my teacher," he wails miserably, wiping his snotty nose on the hotel pillowcase, which makes the man wince. Fucking someone younger is probably better when they're not talking or acting like a child. This guy probably only likes the idea of schoolboys, not the messy, stupid unglamorous reality of youth. "He's…it's complicated. He's like a friend. But older than me. I have known him since I was fourteen."

"You've never slept together?"

"No," Satomi admits. "But he knows how I feel about him."

"And he won't fuck you? His loss," the man says, same thing Kyouji so flippantly said about Satomi's dates. Like he was such a catch, so desirable. A fucking joke, everything is a joke with him. The memory makes Satomi snort, heart clutching. "I can't imagine any guy like us in his right mind wouldn't want to sleep with you. You're fucking hot. Like, unless he was scared, or something. Repercussions, that sort of thing. Especially if he's known you that long, and you were a kid when you met."

"Maybe," Satomi mumbles, stomach in knots. He feels awful now that his arousal is gone, left him bereft. Sick to his stomach, empty, filthy, pitiful, embarrassing. "I don't know. But it's killing me. I can't—no matter than I do, I can't stop loving him."

"Then you don't," the man says, shrugging, getting out of bed to light another cigarette. "Love isn't something you can just fall out of if you try hard enough. Plus, you're young. Everything feels huge right now, life or death. Give it a few years. I bet you'll forget him. Move onto better things." He grins, smoke escaping through a gap between his front teeth that Satomi is only just now noticing. He feels bitterness coil up in his guts like a snake—why is it always the men who call him cute, who touch him, who want him then eventually choose to condescend to him when it's convenient? When they're no longer getting their dicks wet?

He gets up without another word, dresses, shrugs on his jacket. "You can keep the cigarettes," he mumbles. Then he leaves, walking because he is too exhausted and broken down to jog.

—

Once he's home, he texts Kyouji without drafting it ten times, without thinking about it or trying to curate how he comes across. He doesn't care anymore. He might in the morning but he doesn't right now, he wants to spill his guts, he wants to slit his stomach, it's what his apartment floor is made for.

I lost my virginity to a stranger in a hotel room tonight. he was older than you. He had tattoos. I thought you might want to know, or maybe I'm wrong and you don't care. But I'm telling you anyway. I don't know why. Because I want you to know. Not that it matters to you what I want.

He hits send and lies down on the floor, certain it's late enough Kyouji won't respond until morning. But his phone buzzes almost immediately. Are you ok? Kyouji asks, devoid of sticker or emogis or any of his usual old-person hallmarks.

No, he sends back, wiping his eyes.

omw, will bring food Kyouji replies. Satomi reads it and reads it again, stomach plummeting, sweat springing to his temples. He doesn't know where Kyouji is right now—in the city? Back in Osaka? On my way from where? How long does he have to prepare, to plan what he will say, to whip the mess of his feelings into something presentable? If Kyouji is here in Tokyo, why didn't he tell him? Warn him? Try to meet up? Save him from things he didn't actually want to do?

He takes a shower, mechanically rinsing the other man's cologne and the remnants of cigarette smoke from his hair, his pubes. He keeps trying to replay what they did, exactly, and not being able to remember. He's left with long, prickling swaths of vacancy punctuated only by scent and tattoo ink.

When he's finished toweling dry and dressing, Kyouji texts downstairs. Satomi groans,then buzzes him up, wanting to die.

"Doughnuts," Kyouji says brightly upon entering the apartment, setting down the pink, grease stained box on the table nonchalantly. "Are you hungry? Midnight snack? "

Satomi stares at him, thrumming in anger. "Why did you come?" he spits out. "I didn't ask you to come. Just because I feel like shit doesn't mean I wanted you here— It's not your job to take care of me. You've made it clear. You're not my boyfriend. You're not anything."

Kyouji's face remains unreadable as he sits down. "Did this man hurt you?"

Satomi collapses across the table from Kyouji, too tired to keep up fighting. He rubs his face with his hands and mumbles, "No, he didn't hurt me."

"Why did he have tattoos? Was he a yakuza?"

"No—he was American. Just some guy here on business with a thing for school boys."

Kyouji is quiet for a long time. "That's good," he says after a long while. "Not the schoolboy thing, I mean. The other stuff. I'm glad to hear it." His voice is not mocking, but Satomi feels mocked all the same.

"Why are you here, Kyouji?" Satomi asks miserably, spreading out across the table, face hidden in his arms. "You don't get to choose when you care about me," he mumbles.

"I always care about Satomi-kun," Kyouji tuts, opening the box and taking out a glazed doughnut, taking a bite before he offers it to Satomi. "Eugh, too sweet. You finish."

Satomi half-heartedly slaps it away, glaring. "I'll throw up if I eat."

Seemingly undeterred, Kyouji sets the doughnut down right beside Satomi's elbow, perhaps for him to reconsider later. "I came here to be with you," he says then.

Satomi's heart trips in his chest, cheeks heating up. "Be with me how?"

That depends on you, kiddo," Kyouji says, selecting a lemon filled powdered sugar doughnut this time and taking a tentative bite. Don't call me kiddo, fuck wad, Satomi wants to scream, but he is too struck dumb with a stupid flicker of hope to make his voice work.

Kyouji clears his throat. "The thing is—I've been trying to give you space to grow up, explore yourself. Figure out what it is you really want, because it's not me, even if you think it is," he explains, gesturing loosely with the doughnut, which sheds powdered sugar irritatingly all over the table. "Besides being an old man, I belong to another world and it's a dangerous one. I thought, if I stay strong around him, act like a proper adult for once, I can protect him from that danger. I owe that to him after what I did in Osaka. But then you—cheeky Satomi-kun—went and pulled the rug out from under me. Put yourself in danger all on your own! Worse danger than I put you in, you're very lucky nothing happened to you. But not as lucky as your tattooed American. I would have killed him, you know. Slowly."

"He's not mine," Satomi said stupidly, looking up and blinking.

Kyouji ignores him, continues on. Explaining his logic without explaining his feelings, not an ounce of vulnerability coloring his voice, because of course. He'll offer two million yen watches but never anything of himself. "But now I'm thinking—what's the point of protecting you by staying away when it makes you put yourself in harm's way? Act recklessly? What am I even doing?" He finishes the doughnut, licking powdered sugar from his long, slender fingers like a fucking sadist. "Ok, that one was good. There's another in there, I'll save it for you."

"Why wouldn't you even hug me?" Satomi blurts, heart still speared on that pike of pain, the feeling of utter rejection ripe in his chest and impossible to ignore. "I wouldn't have tried anything. I wouldn't have kissed you, or—I just wanted—"

"Satomi-kun—isn't it obvious?" Kyouji interrupts. "I couldn't. I can't be trusted to put my hands on you, especially not in public—I never woulda stopped. I would've taken you, right there. At the station. Gotten us both in the sorta trouble you don't get out of."

Satomi sputters, cheeks suddenly so hot. Taken you. Surely he doesn't mean—he can't mean—

Kyouji snaps his fingers. "There. Right there, on your face," he says. "That's the look. You're shocked. Scandalized! I've shocked you because even though you think you know what you want, it's not the same for us, you know? It can't be. You can love me as much you possibly can but it will always be the way a teenage boy loves the charming, good looking guy who inappropriately flirted with him when he was a literal kid. And I can—and do!—love you as much as I possibly can. But in the way a sick, criminal, perverted old geezer loves the boy he fell for when he was still in middle school. Those loves are incompatible, Satomi. If I were to have let myself hug you, I would've been unleashing an unstoppable flood of things you have probably never even heard of. It wouldn't be fair."

Satomi's heart is pounding so hard he can hardly hear Kyouji over the roar of blood in his skull. I can—and do!—love you, he'd said. I love you. I love you. Sandwiched between self-preservative, condescending nonsense. Satomi feels shaky all over, wrung out, floaty and unreal like he's dreaming. "You're not that good looking," is what he finally mumbles out. "Charming, sure, but your looks are pretty average."

Kyouji is caught off guard if only for a moment, eyes wide before he recovers, throwing his head back to laugh. The ripple of his throat like snow capped mountains, not something to imagine kissing while another man's hands are on him but right here, flesh and blood, in front of Satomi to reach out and bite, were he brave enough. "See?" Kyouji says. "You don't really want everything I would do to you. You're young, you'll fall in love again, because you have time! I won't, because I don't. And because you're it. This is the end of the line for me, Satomi-kun. I won't recover from this. But I'm not noble, you know? So I should walk away, let you be. But I know deep down I just can't say goodbye, so. I'll take what I can get from you, as long as you stay safe."

"What…what are you proposing?" Satomi asks, unable to keep up. Without even thinking about it he grabs the discarded glazed doughnut and takes a bite, compulsively slotting his mouth into the half-moon Kyouji left with his teeth, the pantomime of a kiss. He's always doing this—eating even when he is not hungry. Chewing and swallowing the food Kyouji buys him since he's not offering anything else. I'll take what I can get from you.

"I'm proposing you stay away from other men. Date ones your age, that I can handle. But if you're engaging in risky behavior, it makes me feel like I'm doing this all for nothing. It makes me wonder why I hold back, if it's not even working to preserve your innocence."

Satomi shakes his head, skin prickling, ears ringing. "I'm not innocent," he insists, "There was another guy, before this one. A customer. I gave him my number because he smoked the same brand of cigarettes as you."

"I don't smoke around you," Kyouji says.

"So?! You think you're protecting me from your vices because you don't do them around me? You think I don't know what brand it is? That I can't smell it on you? That I don't know you've killed peolple?" he pleads, making fists at his side, clenching and un clenching like the gills of a decked fish. "This man and I meet in an alleyway. I can…um, get off, just from smelling his clothes," he admits. "And the guy tonight—I bought a pack of your cigarettes and made him smoke them. I wanted to ask him to put one out on my skin. Use my tongue as an ashtray—I—" overwhelmed, he sobs raggedly, shoulders shaking, the tears sudden and unexpected. "Don't you see!? You're not preserving anything! I'll keep looking for you in other men, if you don't touch me. It's not about them. It's about you."

Kyouji sits there quietly, face impassive as Satomi tells him all this, out of breath, dripping, ripped open. His eyes only briefly darken here or there, but otherwise he is placid. It drives Satomi insane, makes him want to reach out, hit him, leave a red hand print across his cheek, anything. "What are you thinking?" he begs.

"Hm," Kyouji hums, not looking directly at Satomi but instead at some target over his shoulder, noncommittal, infuriating. "A lot of things. But mostly that it seems no matter how hard I try to be a good man, do right by you, something always stops me. Dunno if it's fate, god, fortune, the universe—but I'm always derailed."

Satomi sniffs, folds his arms and sets his chin on them. He's so tired it feels like a hole in his chest, gushing alongside the perpetual heartache, slowing him down as he loses blood in spurts. "I don't care if you're a good man," he admits. "I even know you're not. I just. I want you anyway, Kyouji-san. I've tried to quit so many times and it just. I end up right back here. "

After a moment of contemplative stillness Kyouji nods then sits back, reclining slightly away from the table, leaning against a hamper of dirty laundry and stretching one formerly crossed leg out in front of himself. Satomi searches for the sag of defeat in his shoulders, something to indicate that he knows he ends up right back here, too, that he isn't laboring under some delusion that Satomi is in this alone. Or maybe he is in this alone. Maybe Kyouji is only humoring him, and everything that happened that summer, how much Kyouji needed him, sought him out, pleaded with him—was all in Satomi's head.

When he finally speaks, it is not to say that's two of us, kid. "Did you let your tattooed American come in you?" he says bluntly instead, the words ripping like a saw through Satomi's body.

"No!" he yelps before hiding his flushed face in his hands. "We didn't even—I only—" he sputters until Kyouji waves a hand through the air, cutting him off.

"I don't need to know what you did," he says calmly. Then he takes a deep breath, smooths a hand through his hair. "Oh, Satomi-kun…what are we going to do?"

You're the adult, you figure it out, Satomi imagines saying, biting it back because he knows it will only confirm everything he fears Kyouji sees him as: a child. A victim. Helpless and foolish and too immature to know what he's stepping in."I told you what I wanted," he reminds him. "So I guess it's up to you."

Kyouji sighs, then reaches into his suit pocket and retrieves his cigarettes. "Mind if I light up in here? Is there some alarm that's gonna go off?"

Satomi shakes his head, thinks about his pathetic incense ritual. "No," he says. "Thought you didn't do it around me, though."

Kyouji grins, cigarette hanging lazy from the corner of his smile. "Well maybe there are things I've tried to protect you from that just blew up in my face. Maybe I'm reconsidering." he says. Then: "Speaking of stuff I don't do—how about that hug I owe you? You still want it?"

Satomi doesn't even nod, refuses to acknowledge the question. The rejection still hurts too badly, a fresh wound in a stinging collection still bleeding. His gaze flashes reflexively up to catch Kyouji eying him carefully, calculatedly, like he is a morality puzzle and not a person. You don't owe me fucking anything, he thinks, bitterness swelling in his chest. Instead he says, "only if you really can't control yourself."

Kyouji laughs, and the sound always makes Satomi wish he were dead. "It only proves how young you are," he says, taking a long puff before setting his cigarette inside the ring of the uneaten glazed doughnut, using it as an ashtray. "That you think I'm capable of touching you without losing what's left of my fucking mind."

Condescending. A cop out. You're irresistible, kid, but all I do is resist you.

At that, the tapestry of feeling inside him that Kyouji has been steadily fraying for the last four years loses its last, clinging thread. Satomi unravels, comes apart. Rolls up up onto his hands and knees, shaking, and crawls across the divide between their bodies. He waits for Kyouji to stop him— foot to the shoulder, a warning note of his name. But it doesn't happen. He's granted passage, allowed to arrive in electric silence between Kyouji's spread legs. Thrumming in the heat of his body, he presses his forehead to his chest, breathing hard. Aftershave and soap and laundry detergent and the familiar spice of his sweat. Satomi can hear Kyouji's heart beating, the thud of it frantic like he is being chased. Maybe he is. Or maybe he has finally stopped running. "Go on," Satomi grits out, skull digging into Kyouji's collar bone. "Do it. Hug me."

Kyouji still doesn't, not really. His hands flit out, one smooths too lightly down Satomi's spine, awkward like a blind moth bumping up against a lamp in the darkness, ready to be electrocuted. It makes Satomi furious. He doesn't mean to, but his teeth come out. He buries his face into that speeding heartbeat, gets a mouthful of shirt between his jaws before biting the skin beneath. Hard.

Kyouji makes a sound, something between a hiss and a moan. Then he is cursing, and grabbing. Manhandling Satomi onto his back on the floor, between the hamper and the table with its light dusting of powdered sugar.

Satomi sees his ceiling, a blur before their mouths crash together. Then he sees stars. Embarrassing, like something from a movie. Static explosion, a blizzard of glittering white. Kyouji's lips on his and then his tongue in his mouth and his hands all over him, making him feel small, crushable. The scrape of stubble, the bittersweet ghost of tobacco. Satomi surges up into it, drools and trembles, trying to be everywhere at once. It's like being set on fire. It's like finally, finally getting everything you have ever wanted even though he knows in the real world, no one ever gets everything they want.

It's not like kissing the other men. He doesn't even remember kissing the other men, though he is sure it happened. He forgot the details somehow, projected his body elsewhere so he was unable to telegraph sensory details and commit them to memory. But with Kyouji everything is in high def, in technicolor. They lap at each other's mouths, tongues, breath, teeth, his glasses fogged up and off center and cutting into the bridge of his nose as Kyouji licks the roof of his mouth, feeds him his own name, sucks his tongue in hungry, desperate pulses with his hands pushing under his clothes.

Satomi cannot get enough. He's ravenous, terrified that if he pauses even for a fraction of a second Kyouji will think too hard, talk himself out of it.

He does not realize he's crying until Kyouji tells him so. Pulls back just enough to look at him, their brows flush as he thumbs under his eyes, smearing wetness down his cheeks. "You're all wet, Satomi-kun," he murmurs, in a voice Satomi has never heard before. Soft, broken. Then, his tongue comes out to swipe through the salt."Do you want me to stop?" he growls into Satomi's cheekbone.

"If you stop I will fucking kill you," Satomi grits out, making such demanding fists in Kyouji's shirt he hears a button pop.

"Were you this rude with the others?" Kyouji asks, pushing a thigh between Satomi's own, parting him, cracking him open.

"No," he says. "I was too busy pretending they were you."

"Ha, ha," he chokes out, not a real laugh but the phonetic pantomime of one, though none of this is funny. "Well. Now you don't have to pretend," he says, mouthing down his throat, licking the cords as they strain and tense. "But you do have to stop me if I go too far. If it's too much for you. I don't—don't trust myself not to—"

A frantic little laugh huffs out of Satomi's lips before he cants up, slamming them into Kyouji's to silence him, because suddenly, it is funny. The implication he doesn't want this, hasn't been throwing himself prostrate like a kicked dog, over and over again, begging.

Shut up shut up shut up he thinks. He wants to go too far, he needs it to be too much, he wants to be filled up and turned inside out and laid waste to and destroyed and even then, he thinks that might not be enough to blot out the agony of the stops and starts, the waiting, the loneliness, the unrelenting choke of uncertainty Kyouji has marched him through over the last year, and all the years before it. "What I want, is to suck your cock," he grits out, cheeks coloring, fingers sneaking in between Kyouji's buttons to touch fever hot skin. "Do not try to tell me I don't actually want it. I used to wake up sticky from dreams about it that whole summer. I was so embarrassed, I'm still embarrassed, but I don't care. I want it. I want you."

Kyouji looks at him, cups his skull in one big hand and gently cards his fingers though his hair, the motion so utterly and shockingly tender it makes another unexpected sob wrack up through Satomi's body. "You're gonna make it hard for me, aren't you?" Kyouji breathes, eyes flint back, pupils indistinguishable from the blown out ring of iris. "You're going to make me take pleasure from you instead of give it. You know I prefer giving things."

"Too bad," Satomi huffs. "This is giving me something."

"If you insist," Kyouji murmurs, levering up onto all fours and reaching to unbuckle his belt, one handed and clumsily. Satomi can see him trembling, bears witness to the fact Kyouji is compromised by his own want, and the subsequent rush of confirming he is not alone is so massive it's dizzying. Kyouji gets his cock out and Satomi watches with his heart in his throat as he strokes it, knee-walks up his body, hand working over the hot flesh. He's red and thick and as the foreskin snicks over the head he sees it's wet, shining with precum. He made Kyouji hard, just from kissing him. Just from lying there on his floor being touched. "Have you—have you ever thought about this?" he dares to ask. "My mouth? Coming in it?"

A laugh that's all breath, his thumb coming to swipe fluid away from his cockslit, making Satomi's mouth flood. "Satomi-kun—I watched you eat three meals and suck a straw and tell me how bad at singing I am two days a week for an entire summer. I wonder if there's anything I've ever thought about as much as your mouth. Dying, maybe. Going to hell. I've thought about that a lot, too. " Then he takes the same thumb he was touching himself with and gently rubs it over Satomi's lower lip, giving him the salt, the musk, the spice. Satomi licks it clean, hooded eyes locked on Kyouji's. Then he sucks the whole of the digit into his mouth, slides as low as he can, deep throating it. Showing Kyouji exactly what he wants, heart twisting at the way it makes Kyouji's eyes darken, flash.

"Please," he says, but it comes out unintelligible, ripped open by the thumb in his mouth.

Kyouji presses his nail into the pad of his tongue, tugs downward to shake Satomi's jaw wide. "Open," he says. "Show me all that pink."

Satomi does as he's told. Spit pooling, teeth exposed, cock so hard and untouched in his pants that it hurts. Kyouji keeps stroking, then tilts his hips forward to give Satomi the broad crown. When they touch it's the completion of an electrical circuit—Satomi moans, sucks, froths spit and Kyouji lets his head fall back, mouth open around a moan. It's not a real blowjob, not yet. The tattooed American taught Satomi how to cover his teeth with his lips, how to suck deep and suppress his gag reflex, use his hand on the length he could not fit. But it all goes out the window with Kyouji in his mouth, he forgets every careful lesson. He's mindless and desperate, here for the taste, the feeling. He laves his tongue over everything he can reach, slurps the precum, tongues the slit, fucks the air with loose, messy bucks. "God you are so beautiful," Kyouji hisses, thumbing the corner of Satomi's mouth, pulling it open, dipping inside. "You don't even know, do you? You have no fucking idea."

Satomi is not listening. He's drunk on the flavor, on the bliss of this single searing inch Kyouji has allowed him. He fucks his own lips open on it so they keep bumping against Kyouji's knuckles, drools and devours as he palms up Kyouji's thighs, two planes of taut, flickering muscle obscured in fabric. He is taking all he can and still, it is not enough. He pulls off, skull thunking the floor. "Give me more," he slurs. "Fuck my mouth."

Kyouji gasps. "Dirty words," he tuts. "I should wash it out with soap."

"No," he hisses, digging nails into Kyouji's leg through his pants. "You should fuck it."

He thinks it will be a continued fight, an ongoing series of jabs where they squabble over the fingerprint littered fragments of Satomi's shattered innocence like a broken mirror that can be pasted back together, or else rent into dust. Seven years bad luck reversed, or multiplied infinitely.

But instead, he watches Kyouji fall apart through the condensation on his glasses. His normally slicked back hair is coming undone in chunks, falling into his flushed face. The lines beside his eyes more pronounced, his breath shuddering in and out of him as he strokes his cock, slaps it onto Satomi's swollen lower lip. Forearm flexing, glistening in sweat. Body in tremor. Close— close. Just from this. Satomi makes fists in his pants, fingers creeping through his belt loops. Dragging him closer, deeper. Cramming that cock into his waiting mouth until at long last, Kyouji's hand falls away in defeat.

With a satisfied groan Satomi slides up the length, lapping, mumbling. Opens himself up andpushes his hands under Kyouji's shirt to feel the shift of tattooed skin over muscle, loose in places because he's lost elasticity because he's old. And this is what love is—lying on your honorable suicide floor, jaw open, drool on your chin while the man you have loved since you were too young to love a man jack-hammers your face. Knocks your glasses on. Makes your throat ache, gag, thick pre-heave saliva coming up in bubbles.

Satomi feels the moment Kyouji stops holding back, and lets himself go. When his desire eclipses his guilt and he really starts to give it to him, animal huffing, preternatural shivering. Sweating. Fucking. Satomi can't breathe and his eyes are streaming and he hopes he fucking dies here. He hopes there is no after, no moment when he has to watch Kyouji leave his apartment and walk away, train back to Osaka, make him wait and wonder and want all over again.

Kyouji sits back on his heels, pulls out, flexing in his own hand. "I'm going to—"

"Do it in me, don't fucking—come here," Satomi growls an an unrecognizably hoarse voice, yanking Kyouji back by his clothes.

Kyouji goes, slack like all the fight has been sucked from his body and swallowed, like all it takes to ruin a criminal is one teenage boy on his back. Their eyes lock when it happens—Satomi's slicked and overflowing with tears, Kyouji's all black, all broken. Satomi swallows and keeps sucking. Kyouji collapses, too heavy in his rumpled clothes, with his messy hair. It's a collapse of surrender, and Satomi didn't know he could feel pride, didn't know that was something his body did, especially not here, in Kyouji's arms, where shame lives, dies, and comes back to life over and over again.

Crinkling hotwet flesh, sliding from the seal of his lips. It leaves a mess of drool and seed down his chin, and his tongue swipes out to collect it. Kyouji is saltier, stronger than the tattooed American. The saltiest, strongest thing in the world, maybe. Saltier and stronger than the ocean, than high tide, than tears. Satomi closes his eyes, lets it drip down his throat, burn in his sinuses, roil in his gut.

Out of breath, Kyouji eventually pulls back and looks at him. "I hurt you," he says, knuckles brushing Satomi's fucked-plush mouth. "I knew I would."

Satomi slaps his hand away. "Shut up," he rasps. Then he thinks better of it, finding Kyouji's wrists instead to fold his last two fingers towards his palm into a finger-gun, and sucking that barrel down. He fucks his own mouth with it, index and middle, touching the back of his wrecked throat as he groans. Kyouji doesn't say anything, he only stares at the way fascinated bystanders stare at a smoking car accident, heaps of twisted metal, rubble, blood.

Satomi finally lets him go in a froth of drool. "If you won't get me off, at least let me up so I can touch myself," he says, hips rocking into absence.

Kyouji squares his body, pins Satomi under his weight and reaches behind himself. Then his warm, spit-wet palm cups Satomi's cock, fondling it lazily, stopping his breath. The picture is obscene—Kyouji's trousers and belt rucked open, cock spilling out, semi-soft and shining with Satomi's saliva. It makes Satomi's mouth flood just to see, erection twitching under the heat of Kyouji's palm, giving him away. Not that he has ever known how to hide this.

Kyouji's touch is too light—not teasing, but reverent, adoring. Like he can't believe he gets to touch something so good. Satomi didn't blush through getting his face fucked, but he blushes now at this idle stroking, under that heated gaze. "You're crazy," Kyouji says, squeezing. "To think I'd deprive myself of the pleasure of touching you."

"I don't know," Satomi says, rolling his hips, fucking into Kyouj's palm, eyes watering in the room now thick with cigarette smoke. "You're pretty good at depriving yourself. It's sort of your thing."

"Not anymore," Kyouji says, wincing as he climbs off, back clearly stiff from all they just did. "I'm a changed man. Not like I had a choice, really." Then he slaps Satomi's thigh. "Go get in your bed," he demands. "And undress."

It's surreal to pull his shirt off, shuck his pants and underwear, and lie on the very sheets he's spent so many nights crying over Kyouji. Jacking himself off to the memory of his body, solid and frozen in his arms at the train station.

In nothing but his socks and glasses he lies there, achingly hard and shivery as he watches Kyouji move around his apartment—collect his mostly burnt down cigarette from the doughnut ashtray, tuck himself back into his trousers and button them with the belt still hanging open like a gagging tongue. He returns to loom over Satomi, smoking, studying.

"What are you thinking?" Satomi asks, fighting the urge to cover himself.

Kyouji blows an exhalation easily through his nose, shakes his head. "That I really thought I was out of the woods with you," he mumbles, wisps of white escaping the corners of his mouth as he speaks. "That I'd dodged a bullet. Ha. But you're not a bullet, Satomi-kun, you're a fucking boomerang! You came back for me." He cards a hand through his hair, trying unsuccessfully to domesticate it back into decorum. It falls back to his forehead, and he sinks painstakingly to his knees on top of Satomi. "And I am so in love with you, I couldn't do anything but catch it, even though I know—well. Never mind, doesn't matter what I know. I'm here, and you're under me. Beautiful. Fucking piece of work," he murmurs, palming up Satomi's pale thigh, moving the fine hair against the grain. Satomi hisses, cock flexing not at the touch as much as those words—so in love with you.

"Are you mad about it?" he asks, reaching up to grab Kyouji's tie and twist it around his wrist a few times, trying to tug him down, yank him like a dog on a leash. He resists, pulling the fabric taut, but only for a few seconds. Then he goes, sinks into Satomi and kisses him deep, pushing smoke into his mouth. The cigarette butt falls along with it' ash into the sheets, burning holes there, forgotten as their tongues play in filthy tandem.

"Crazy about it," he murmurs between drags of their mouths. "But not mad." Then his hand creeps between them, strokes Satomi, pulls back his foreskin to toy with the wet, nervy tip. "I want to taste this. Ok?"

"Ok," Satomi says weakly, writhing on the bed as he fucks Kyouji's big hand. Same hand that made him, shaped him, took him when he was bruised and weak at fourteen and left irreparable thumbprints in all his soft spaces. Being touched like this is new, but it doesn't feel new, exactly. It feels like coming home. "Please," he adds then, clawing at Kyouji's broad shoulders. "Kyouji-San, please, I need—"

Kyouji kisses him quiet. "Sh," he says. "Don't say it. I know what you need. I've always known, lemme show you."

And at that he's mouthing his way down Satomi's body gently, methodically. Kissing his neck, his shoulder, his chest, his heaving ribs one by one, mouth open and breath hot and tongue hungry. All of Satomi feels so pallid and underdeveloped in comparison to the breadth of Kyouji's flesh. Young and weak and half-baked, but Kyouji is touching him like he's so special, so coveted. Hands spread wide, covering his chest, his narrow back, his thighs. Swallowing him down is so easy—Satomi had to fight to get his mouth around just Kyouji's cockhead, but the whole of his own length disappears inside Kyouji in a single pointed bob of the head. His nose and lips pressed into his pubic hair, tongue swirling, a deep moan ripped from the depths of his throat as he relentlessly sucks.

The pleasure is a live thing—it takes Satomi in his jaws, chews him up, thrashes him against the wall to break all his bones. He gasps, shakes. Toes curling in the burnt sheets, Kyouji's body crushed between his squeezing knees. He's trying to hold on, but he can't. It's too good, Kyouji's mouth too hot, too wet. He moans the whole time like Satomi tastes so good, each vibration rippling down through the bowl of his hips, overwhelming him, pushing him towards a precipice until just like that, he falls. Throws his head back, cries out, spilling into the infernal, unrelenting heat.

Kyouji drinks until there's nothing left to drink. Then he laughs as he lets Satomi go, spent cock sliding from his mouth. Satomi usually hates when Kyouji laughs at him, but not this time. It's warm, now, the product of them having drawn closer rather than a reminder of the things that keep them apart. "That was easy," he says, hands spread wide on Satomi's heaving gut, framing his cock as it twitches and shrinks back into the foreskin. "I didn't get to spend half as long as I wanted to down there. Raincheck for later tonight? You're young, I bet you can go again."

"I can definitely go again," Satomi admits, covering his face. He's not embarrassed by how quickly he came, but he is embarrassed by how much he's smiling, how much he can't stop. Something formerly furled tight now split open inside of him, leaking hope, light. He manages to school it enough to let his hands fall, blinking down his bed at Kyouji, who is staring at him from between his own parted knees, expression inscrutable. "Does a raincheck mean you can stay?" he asks.

Kyouji nods, smoothing his hands up Satomi's legs tenderly. "I don't have anywhere to be until tomorrow night."

"I didn't even know you were in town," Satomi admits in a mumble. "You didn't tell me."

Kyouji shrugs. "I didn't know if you wanted to see me," he says, unbuttoning a cuff and rolling his sleeve up, Satomi's name coming into stark, aching focus as Kyouji thumbs over it, into it. Satomi's gut clenches—oh, right. That. " You gave me pretty clear instructions, and I haven't done a thing about it."

"Why not?" Satomi asks thickly, unable to identify everything inside of him, emotions both dulled and amplified in the post orgasm haze.

"To be honest? Biggest reason is that the boss would probably kill me if I removed his work. He'd certainly kick me out of the family. I can't do it, even if I wanted to. Which is the other, less big reason—I like having you under my skin, Satomi-kun. And I was resigned to thinking it was the only way I'd have you, so. M'partial to it. Even though it's a shitty tattoo."

Moved, sick with confusion, Satomi doesn't know what to say. He rubs his face again, tries to shove his sudden tears back up into his eyes, so fucking tired of crying over this. "Will you take off your shirt?" is what he finally says, voice muffled by his on palms. "And lie down with me?"

Kyouji says nothing, and Satomi won't let himself look. He just lies there, naked and stricken until he feels Kyouji's big, decidedly shirtless body settle beside him, arm tucked around his shoulders. He melts into the embrace, rubbing his face into Kyouji's chest, touching his shoulders and back with experimental abandon—ink that is not his own name, loaded ink but not that loaded. "Thank you," he says, so quietly and so muffled by skin he hopes Kyouji doesn't hear it.

They just lie there for awhile, skin to skin, touching. Somehow this feels even more like something he's stolen than the sex—more intimate, more forbidden. Not just Kyouji's cock in his mouth but his heartbeat under his lips, their breath moving in opposition, each inhalation matched with an exhalation, a lulling feeling, like being out to sea on a drifting boat. Over and over again, Satomi's eyes prickle with tears, and over and over again, he grits his teeth and thinks about the mundanity of work until they stop threatening to fall. Kyouji is patient—he doesn't mention the almost-sobs or his teeth chattering silence, he only lies there petting Satomi, burying his face in his hair and sniffing it and rubbing his lips all over his ear, deafening him.

Finally Satomi rolls back to look at him, and when their eyes meet, it's like a spear through his chest. Kyouji is looking at him the way he has always looked at him. Satomi has so many corrosive, August-bright memories of it: Kyouji looking at him like that across the karaoke booth. Across the divider between the driver's and passenger's seat. Across the street, waiting for him, holding an umbrella, shoulders damp from the rain. It's indescribable—the way stray dogs look at roadkill or the way a parched man might gaze upon a oasis mirage in fruitless longing. Hunger, mythologized hope. Astounded and disbelieving joy, like this must be a gift from god, too perfect to devour, to dirty with my tongue.

It is not the way a man should look at a boy, or even the way a man should look at another man in polite society. Satomi has always known, even before he knew why. It scared him, back then. Now it just makes him want to scream. Claw. Keep. Preserve time, crawl inside Kyouji's body where there are no clocks. You did this to me, he wants to say. You don't get to look at me like that and then walk away when I fucking look back. Instead he murmurrs, "Can I ask you something?"

Kyouji kisses behind his ear, the soft mound there he knows is called the mastoid process, from when he was six and having nightmares and his mother sent him to an acupuncturist who put a needle there to stop them. Kyouji's tongue, like that needle, tracing thoughtfully over the old pinprick before murmuring, "I guess so."

He takes a deep breath. "What changed over those three years we didn't talk? You still looked at me the same way when you came back, but you wouldn't touch me after the airport. I thought you didn't want me. I thought I made it all up, maybe. That I was crazy."

Big hand over his scapula, cradling the shape of it. "That would be getting locked up,"
Kyouji says. "Scared me straight. Three long years in the slammer to think about how close I came to actually doing something to you. Crossing that line, ruining your life more than I already did."

"Locked up—?" Satomi asks, unable to comprehend, face scrunching up against Kyouji's stubble rough throat.

Fingers through his hair, nails on his scalp. "Yeah, right after the boss's karaoke competition. Aggravated assault, the guy who laid his hands on you and made me total my car. Not that I ever gave a shit about the car."

Satomi's blood ices over. Heart stops dead in his chest as he sits up, stares down at this man in his fucking bed, this fucking liar. "You were arrested?! Why—why didn't you tell me?!"

"You didn't ask," Kyouji says.

A gunshot goes off somewhere in Satomi's brain, and his ears ring so loud he can't even hear himself shout, "Yes I fucking did! At the airport. I asked you why you didn't text me once and you made up some bullshit about not wanting to mess with my childhood, which you already did, by the way, by disappearing when I —when I was—"

"That was true," Kyouji insists, face unchanged and god, does he believe himself? Does he actually think—" I was off the rails, well on my way to doing much worse to you. Breaks cut, I couldn't control myself. But it was like that same thing that always kicks me off tracks—God, fortune, fate, whatever—intervened to save you. It was for the better I for locked up, yanno? I went to jail for beating that junkie half to death but it felt like I want to jail for what I gonna do to you, Satomi-Kun."

Satomi sinks back into his pillows, face in his hands, heart in his throat. "And what was that?"

"Some version of what I just did," he says, trying to grin his usual grin but failing.

The shape of it falters, lashed back into a flat line with shame? Guilt? Regret? Satomi wants to lick the shape of it into something else, force him to commit, to be honest. Instead he sucks in a deep, shuddering breath and asks, "why did you lie to me about being in jail?"

Kyouji shrugs. "To protect you. You don't have to believe me but everything I've ever done since that summer was to protect you."

"But I thought—you let me think that you just didn't want to talk to me. That hurt way worse than if—"

"It wouldn't have hurt worse," Kyouji interrupts, reaching out to gently cup Satomi's jaw. It stops him, arrests his anger, his heart so indelibly tied to the inconsistent, sometimes denied commodity of Kyouji's touch that his brain just shuts off the second it happens. "You weren't ready. Hell, you're still not ready, but you wore me down, kiddo. You're so persistent and I'm only so strong."

It takes every ounce of strength in his fucked out body to shake Kyouji's hand off and ask, "why now? Why are you finally admitting all these things you worked so hard to keep from me?"

"Because I can't protect you anymore, I guess," Kyouji says with a defeated shrug. "I tried, it didn't work! After I got out I thought, I'll be his uncle, I won't push it, I'll buy him food, I won't lay a finger on him. Thought I learned my lesson, you know, had three long years to think about it. Three years of penance—but only for me. It didn't change this for you, see? Those years didn't undo what I did. Because that—it can't be undone. So here I am, being honest. Taking responsibility."

Satomi thinks about the money he lost, the tattoo that can't be removed. The ink, the permanence, the damage. He reaches out and smooths his hand over his own name—it's more raised than Kyouji's other tattoos, more scarred, deeper. The texture makes him ache. Love is not a yen coin to toss into the river, it's not a tattoo that can be removed. It occurs to him now that despite their difference in age, in worlds—they are coming up against the same realization, over and over again. That what's done is done, and cannot be erased.

"Sun's coming up," Kyouji says, interrupting his train of thought. "See, already I'm a bad influence. Keeping you up all night when you have class tommorow. I should go back to jail."

Satomi shakes his head and climbs on top of Kyouji, straddles him before laying his head on his chest. For a split second Kyouji tenses up and he thinks he might throw him off, say ok you had your fun I indulged you once but this ends here, but it passes in favor of a sudden softness: Kyouji slackening underneath him, curling his arms around his back and holding him there, face in his hair. "Will you stay tomorrow?" Satomi asks. " I mean, do you want to stay tomorrow? If you do I'll skip," he murmurs. "It's just a stupid lecture. She puts the power points online, it doesn't matter if I'm there or not."

Kyouji is quiet so Satomi bites him again over the same bruise he left an hour ago, finding the shape of his own teeth from memory. Kyouji makes a fist in his hair, tilts him back, kisses him rough, all tongue and teeth. "Of course I want to. All I want is to spend a whole day fucking you in every way I know how. Only leaving this bed to tip the delivery guy."

"But?" Satomi asks, because he can feel one coming. They live in Kyouji's body, he can taste them in his spit and he thinks eventually, with enough years, enough practice, he can figure out how to blot them out. Swallow them hole. Like how the river swallows yen coins, how skin swallows ink.

"Nah…never mind. No Buts. You feel so good I forgot what I was saying," Kyouji admits as Satomi bends down and sucks at the bitemark over his heart, elicits a keening, helpless yelp.

Outside, the sun cracks through the fog and birds begin to sing. It's a new morning and it is not a goodbye, and miraculously, Satomi is not alone in his apartment. There's ash on his sheets, blood on his teeth, and Kyouji is not running, and neither is he. He knows when he does, he will get shin splints. It will hurt, because in the real world, no one ever gets everything they want. But in the meantime, he forgets the real world in favor of this: scarred skin, so much smoke, things than are not perfect, but cannot be erased.