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Kyouji had long ago made peace with the fact he was missing something. Something essential, something other people had.
It was fine. He was good at faking it. Watching the way his peers moved, talked, made jokes. he learned to blend in.
As a child, he rarely cried unless he was physically hurt or desperately hungry. For him, crying was a means of communicating a concrete wish, a way to make adults understand he needed something. But his siblings and cousins cried for other reasons, emotional reasons. They were like kettles boiling over, a flame of feeling heating their insides until they got so hot the liquid rose and bubbled and just came out. He was fascinated by other children's tantrums. What were they feeling? Did they even know? What was it like, to have so much confusion and tumult inside of you it had to go somewhere? In wet tracks down one's cheeks, sticky as they wailed, screamed, fell apart.
He would fake cry, sometimes. Poke his own eyes, pinch himself, make the sound even if no tears would come out. It wasn't the same, he suspected, but maybe it was close. Maybe he could trick himself, if he went through the motions.
The thing he was missing wasn't feeling—he felt things. Sure he did. He felt envy that he could not cry easily. He felt sadness that when he felt sadness, it didn't come out of him that way. In torrents of mysterious relief, the hot gush of tears like ejaculate, like blood letting. Release. He wanted that. Craved it.
Other kids made it look easy. Cried at the simplest provocation, name calling or stolen sweets. They broke down and turned pink and always seemed so tired afterwards. Sniffly hiccuppy shaky blobs. Kyouji had never managed to achieve depletion like that in his whole life. It was another thing he was missing: Sleepiness. He laid in bed at night staring at the static on the inside of his eyelids, willing himself elsewhere. His mind didn't shut off. He had to force himself, trick his brain, lull it into a dark corner before choking it into brutalized silence and finally, airlessly, drifted of.
As he got older, Kyouji learned with more clarity the ways in which he was holy. Not divine—never divine—just full of holes. Run through like a paper at the shooting range, Swiss cheese, lace. Riddled in vacancies: emotion powerful enough to warrant tears. Exhaustion powerful enough to warrant sleep. And, perhaps most importantly, disgust powerful enough to warrant revulsion.
He never had to look away from blood or wounds or infection. One summer a cat got crushed in the road outside his house, torn in half save for two ropes of intestines holding it together in meager shreds. Ravens landed to pick at it, then flies who laid their eggs in the rotting meat which turned into maggots that jumped and writhed, animated rice. The corpse stank with the sweet choke of carrion, which didn't bother him. Every day he went outside to track the progress of its decomposition with mild curiosity and milder grief. He poked at it with sticks, peeled its flattened paw from the hot asphalt to count the withered toes. His grandfather would stick his head outside and shout at him to leave it alone, it would make him sick, he'd gag and then he'd throw up and he wouldn't eat dinner.
But he never gagged or threw up and he always ate his dinner. Death just didn't make him feel that way. Few things did— Kyouji rarely fell victim to nausea, unless he was sick with the stomach flu.
At twelve he lost his virginity. Not with any of his pretty school crushes, but with an old woman whose name he never learned. She was batty and strange, walked around his neighborhood pushing a cart that smelled like piss while wearing a hairnet, lipstick on her teeth. But she had money—she must have because she wore nice shoes, carried designer handbags. He waved to her when he saw her, always polite. One weekend she approached him in the park, shuffled over and told him he was a handsome boy. Then she pulled out a rubber-banded roll of bills from her pocket. Said she'd give it to him if he followed her into the bathroom and did something for her.
It was more money than he had ever seen in his life. And he was young but he wasn't stupid—he knew she was offering him money for sex. He had never had sex before but he thought about it all the time, staring at his classmates' legs under their desks, jutting from beneath the hems of their skirts as they passed notes and giggled. He'd gotten his hands on a few skin mags and sometimes jacked off so much it left his dick raw.
He eyed the woman—she was old and she was crazy, but she was okay looking, so he nodded. Followed her into the public restroom, which was flooded from recent rain. She stood with her Gucci slides in the puddle and lifted her skirt, there were long hairs in the crack of her ass and he couldn't see what he was pushing into but he pushed in all the same. A hot, wet, squelching place. The smell of cumin and her sour perfume as he kissed the middle of her back, which was what he could reach. He finished fast, she kissed his cheek and gave him the money. Later, he made the mistake of telling his friends.
They gagged, like she was roadkill. Teased him, called him old pussy poker for years to come. He realized that he was supposed to be disgusted by her, but he just wasn't. That time in the public restroom wasn't the last, he met her there sporadically until he graduated. He met other women too, all older wealthy neighbors who would buy him food or clothes in exchange for things that weren't even chores for him.
At fourteen he got a girlfriend—she was hot, in her twenties, with long hair all the way down to her ass in a thick black sheet. It didn't seem strange to him that she was dating a teenager. He was good at sex, after all, in part because nothing about it disgusted him. He did not require women to be airbrushed or young or taut or perfectly clean in order to get hard for them. Not that there was anything imperfect about her—she looked like a model. She told him she liked younger boys because they didn't get tired, and weren't dangerous. Boys are like puppies, she said, baring her teeth at him. When puppies bite, it's cute. They're only playing. But when dogs bite, they need to be put down.
His favorite thing was oral. He loved getting on his knees, parting the mysterious folds and putting his tongue in there, learning the different whorls and bumps of different women's bodies. Innies, outies, roast beef, cala lilies. Fat women had fat pussies, the clit buried in thicker outer lips, harder to find , and he enjoyed the challenge. Enjoyed the way piss would collect in their pubic hair for him to suck out, a golden flavor like a sip of Sapporo before the metallic oyster brine of the deeper crevasses. He liked stretch marks and sweat, the pink red lines in their bodies from too-tight underwear, he liked middle-aged mother's stomach paunches and his girlfriend's firm, muscular ass. He had no hentai standard, so nothing paled in comparison to an ideal since there was no ideal. A woman was a woman, a body was a body, roadkill was roadkill, and none of it put him off.
Once, drunk at the karaoke bar where he worked, he told a buddy about this side hustle, and the buddy was horrified. How do you not puke eating old woman cunt? Isn't it all saggy down there? Do they have silver pubes? Then he made a choking sound, clutched at his throat before busting into hysterical laughter.
Kyouji only shrugged, smiled. Sometimes it's saggy, sometimes it's not. Old woman pubes are softer, or more wiry, it depends. Every pussy is different. Variety is the spice of life!
But your lady is hot, I don't understand why you'd—does she know? That you fuck old broads for money?
Kyouji shrugged and smiled at that, too—he hadn't ever told her. There were lots of things they hadn't told each other. That was the nature of their relationship even though he lived with her, moved in after school ended since he had nowhere else to go. She made sure he had food and clothes and a place to sleep, but he disappeared for weeks at a time and so did she, returning with smoke and cologne in her hair. They only broke up when she got a younger boyfriend that steadily replaced him— he was seventeen, still pimply around the hairline, had a big dick Kyouji saw swinging in his sweat pants one morning over breakfast. She didn't need to say anything when it was time for him to leave and pass the reins over to this usurper. He understood. Understood that was no longer a puppy but a dog. Understood that she was holy too, she was also missing things, maybe the same things he was missing. Tears, sleep, a disgust threshold. The mechanism in her brain that told her she probably shouldn't fuck teenagers.
Kyouji lacked the same mechanism. It was irrelevant to him for a long time. Teenagers didn't have anything he needed and he tended to fuck to meet his needs, or, later, the needs of his boss. Like crying, fucking was a means to an end. A way to appease, achieve, acquire. Transactional, but more fun than the ATM.
Then he met Satomi.
There was not a single moment it wasn't fucked: Kyouji picked him from all the other choirboys because he thought he was cute. Yes he was also a skilled singer and the leader of the best if not winning choir, but that was the excuse reason, not the real reason Kyouji singled him out and hunted him down and leaned close enough to smell his fear sweat. In retrospect, that should have been an indication of how dangerous this game was. But Kyouji is full of holes. He had a blind spot, layered right over the moment he could have stopped this. Changed it. Prevented himself from future, agonized shackling. The hole gave him tunnel vision. Amid blackness he saw Satomi, and he wanted him. Simple as that.
Never once has Kyouji had to stop himself from taking something he wanted. Never once has it conflicted with his morals. This is why he is good at killing people, why he is good at snapping bones and eating cunt. That very first day, in the karaoke booth, he feels it. That he wants to touch Satomi. That he's scaring him and it feels good to scare him because he recognizes when you're fourteen it's beneficial to be scared. To be changed, and forced to grow up. So he lays his arm behind his body and leans too close and pokes his narrow little boy chest through his school shirt. Feels a nipple harden, guts clenching at the spicy smell of puberty. Fuck. Rubber eraser, chalkboard dust. He remembers what that was like, to be that young and horny. He fucked a crazy woman in a bathroom back then. Surely, this was part of growing up. Coming of age. Someone sweeping in, and showing you the ropes, and altering you forever.
Kyouji was not surprised to want a boy. While his old school friends and co-workers and later brothers in the Yakuza mocked homosexuals, he kept quiet. Like sex with old women and watching maggots dance in the heat of August, the thought of sex with a man did not disgust him in the least. He was curious about it, open to it, but an opportunity had never presented itself to him, and the further down his path he crawled, the less likely it seemed. It was fine. Being interested in something was so different than wanting it, and he was interested in sex with men, but never wanted one.
Then there was Satomi. So serious, practical. Scared but brave. Sucking lemonade down, eating more than should have been able to fit in his growing body. Long slender boy-neck disappearing into a starched collar. No deodorant, soft silky black hair Kyouji combs his fingers through more than once. Satomi flinching away, eying him like he knows he's crossing a line, knows Kyouji should know better.
But Kyouji doesn't know better. He doesn't know a lot of things. He is missing things, he is full of holes.
On their fifth date (he is already thinking of them as dates) he puts his hand on Satomi's narrow thigh under the formica table in Karaoke Heaven, drunk on the novelty of want. Thumbs an inseam, so casual, so hard in his own trousers. He's testing the waters to see what he can get away with. This is the offer: like the woman in the park with her roll of cash. Satomi is smart, too, he should know that Kyouji is coming onto him, showing him what he wants. Asking without asking.
He freezes up, the ropey kid muscle of his quad jumping, hardening beneath Kyouji's palm. He dwarfs Satomi's leg, it feels so small in his grip. Like his cigarettes, which he doesn't smoke around Satomi because he wants him just like this: young, pure, sweet, untouched until he touches him. Frozen, rabbit in the crosshairs.
Then, a little fight, for a little boy. "Stop," Satomi grits out, reaching down and plucking Kyouji's hand from him and dropping it onto the few inches of vinyl he frees up from scooting away deliberately. "Touching me."
Kyouji cocks his brows, impressed. "Sorry kid, I didn't realize I was touching you," he breezes, a lie because it is always easy for him to lie. "You're just so touchable. Tiny, like one of those fluffy purse dogs. Lap dogs. The kind they breed for the Queen of England or to keep monks company in the monasteries— built for petting. I can't help it.
A terrible spill of blush across his grimacing face. His skin would be hot under Kyouji's mouth were he to bite his cheek. "Well I'm not a dog," he grits out. "And it makes me uncomfortable when you do it."
"Why?" Kyouji asks, propping one elbow on the table, face against that elbow. Feigned nonchalance while his other hand gets away with murder…fingers walking pointedly across the squeaky booth towards Satomi's thigh again. When he reaches it, he touches. Light, careful, a stroke from knee to the inner plane. Satomi sputters and makes fists on the table, breath coming short. "Does it make you uncomfortable because you have a big fat crush on me? That's normal, Satomi-kun. I had a crush on everyone at your age."
Satomi turns a shade redder, which Kyouji would have thought impossible. It makes him want to lick him so bad. Take him into a park bathroom, bend over for him, give him his hole, give him money, give him whatever he wanted. Satomi won't even look at him though, young face pinched up like he's in pain, gathered like a drawstring inside him has been pulled tight. "I do not have a crush on you," he lies, though lying is not easy for him. Kyouji witnesses the entire battle play out on his face, he is too young to hide anything.
With the calculation of a hunter moving in on big game, Kyouji moves closer, looks down to Satomi's lap where he's tenting his slacks. "Right, that's why you've got a hard on," he murmurs, taking a measured risk and pressing his face to Satomi's neck and inhaling. God. He smells like summer. Sweat and pavement and dirt and sunshine, gasoline and ozone and shameful masturbation sessions under dirty sheets. "I could touch it, if you want," he whispers, sucking in another deep breath. "I could put it in my mouth."
Satomi shivers, alternating between flickering towards him and away from him, warring with himself. "I—don't. I really don't want you to do that," he says, tilting his head back, staring up at the particle board ceiling. There are tears in his eyes, because he is feeling so much it has to come out somewhere. A boy full to the brim, poised to overflow. Flood like that park bathroom.
Kyouji stares, finds his own reflection in the crystalline pool welling in the tail of Satomi's eyes, making him feel crazy. His kettle, boiling over, fogging the lenses of his perfectly clean glasses. Kyouji reaches up and puts his finger in it, smushes his own face to drag the hot salty wet down Satomi's smooth jawline. He doesn't even have to shave yet and that makes Kyouji feel crazy, too.
"What do you want me to do? If you say leave you alone, I won't believe you. If you really wanted me to stop, you'd hit me. Call me a dirty old man."
"You are a dirty old man," he grits out.
Kyouji moves his hand higher, razes his nails so close to Satomi's erection. "Mmhm. And your cock likes it. It told me, it's telling me right now. It wants me to suck on it with my dirty old man mouth." Satomi collapses onto the table into his folded arms. His bony shoulders shake and Kyouji rubs his lips over them, feels out the sharp angles of his scapulae. "Are you scared? I won't hurt you. It will feel good, I'm the gentle type."
Satomi snorts and lifts his head, a shining string of snot connecting his newly red nose to his arm. Kyouji tuts, reaches out and wipes it away, collects it in his hand before sucking it off. Salt, snail slime, the good stuff. "I'm not scared. Or, not only, I'm—I'm pissed off at you! Because you don't really—you're teasing—and I'm embarrassed," he wails. Then, absurdly, "I haven't even kissed anyone yet."
"I see," Kyouji says gently. "I'm moving too fast. And that's fair, I do that, I'm always getting speeding tickets, did you know? Gotten away with murder but not driving my car fast. There are some things I just can't resist." He takes his hand from the hot, infernal place between Satomi's thigh and reaches for his glasses instead, plucking them from the bridge to his nose. His eyes look larger now without the lenses obscuring them, wide and wet and overflowing. Like pussies, wet, begging for Kyouji's tongue. He cups that smooth, tear sticky face, gaze flitting down to Satomi's mouth. Unkissed, all his. He doesn't ask—he just takes it. Drags him in and finds his lips and licks them, parts them, eats his choppy sobs to find his tongue the way he's found fat women's clits hidden, tucked away, yearning towards him. He tastes like lemonade. Like piss in pubes.
Satomi kisses back without hesitation. No moment of shame or fear, he's too hard for that, too upset, too young. He just pitches in, hangs onto Kyouji's tie and licks and licks and licks like a parched animal. Kyouji is so happy to be his water. He gives him his tongue and drools for him, floods his mouth, makes him swallow. Rubs his tears into his skin, then reaches for his skinny boy body, holds his little waist like the crushable barrel of a gun between his palms. " Sit on me," he says, making a fist in his shirt, untucking it as he drags him, hoists. "Straddle me like you're riding a pony."
"I've never ridden a pony," Satomi says. So serious, so practical. Kyouji sits back and admires him, disheveled without his glasses, miserable and broken and soaked in tears. His hands rove all over his body, down to his ass, sneak under his shirt.
"Never?! Not at a fair or anything? No friends with a farm? I thought you picked strawberries Sylvanian Family style! I'm shocked you've never gone on a pony ride."
"I didn't pick strawberries. You didn't let me," Satomi accuses. He doesn't realize it, but he is grinding on Kyouji's lap, rutting his teenage erection into his stomach. Kyouji basks in it—he's thought about this so many times. Imagined sitting in the backseat while Satomi dry humps him, makes all sorts of little sounds. He never imagined him crying while he did it, but the tears make it so much better. His shining face, his tea-kettle eyes, spilling, spilling, wet, wet.
"You need more kisses," Kyouji observes, making fist in that satin-soft hair and tugging him down. "Little lap dog bred for giving kisses," he huffs out against his mouth before biting it. Satomi whimpers, rocks against him, fights how bad he wants it for about three point five seconds before giving in. It's sweet, how into it he is. Hands all over Kyouji's chest, curiously feeling his pecs, his shoulders. Diamond hard dick rocking into his gut. Kyouji pauses feeling him up for as long as it takes to unbutton his own shirt, revealing the black line of his happy trail smattered across pale skin. Satomi needs skin right now, he can tell, he needs it so bad.
Thumbs in his belt loops, then over the zipper of his fly. Just rubbing up and down, tracing the teeth of it, testing if Satomi will tell him to stop. He doesn't. He just kisses with aimless inexperience, humping and jerking and shuddering. Riding a pony, though supposedly he's never done that before.
Unceremoniously Kyouji undoes his belt and reaches into the trappings of his pants. Little kid underwear, no slit at the front to take his cock out. He has to shove past the elastic, let it cut into his wrist and catch on his watch. But then, he has it. Hot and thrumming in his palm, sticky wet like a heart plucked straight from the chest. He groans, strokes it. He hasn't felt a body this needy since he touched himself at fourteen. Bent over the skin-mags, panting, desperate, out of his mind with want. "Oh, Satomi-kun," he prays into his mouth, nipping at swollen, gasping lips. "You want me to fuck you so badly."
It makes him cry again. Big shaky sobs, salty droplets squeezed out of his eyes and onto Kyouji's face like rain, like baptism. He curses, yanks Satomi's pants down off of his ass, enough to really get his cock out and look at it, how hard and how pathetic and how sweet and how candy pink, small in his own big hand. For a split second it occurs to him he's jacking off a fourteen year old boy in a karaoke booth. But they're not facing the door, and it's dead on a Wednesday in the middle of summer, anyway. Just like that the thought is gone, replaced only with sensation, static. Another hole, another vacancy. He pulls down Satomi's foreskin, rubs the piss slit with the tip of his index finger to feel the way it moves pleasure-pain like electricity though Satomi's body, forcing him to buck and jerk in his lap. He drags him forward, urges him to thrust against his own bare stomach.
Satomi crumples, forehead pressed and grinding to Kyouji's shoulder. He puts his mouth against his tear-sticky ear: "Have you thought about it? Me fucking you? Coming in your ass? I've thought about. I've thought about everything with you."
Satomi's cock flexes in Kyouji's grip at that, weeps and drips just like the rest of him. "You're crying everywhere," Kyouji says, lifting his hips, rocking his own hard-on into Satomi's scant, shifting weight. "That's so nice. I could make you all wet here, too," he says, letting go of Satomi's erection in favor of gripping his ass, squeezing the meat of it, dipping his fingers into the sweaty little crack. Nothing but peach fuzz, no proper hair at all. The hole winces away from his finger, but only for a second. All he needs it to kiss him more, suck his tongue and let him hump his lap in order for it to open, suck at his finger tip in needy pulses. So easy, built for it. A lap dog bred for a queen, for a monk, to fuck, to fuck. Kyouji sinks in to the second knuckle, and has never felt anything hotter.
"I'm—God, I'm sorry, I'm going to. I can't hold on," Satomi whines into his shoulder. His hips are jackhammering, he's like a pinball volleying between two levers, seeking pleasure from both ends. His bare cock rutting helplessly against Kyouji's bare stomach, his sweet little ass sucking on his finger. In seconds he's locking up and coming the way only a fourteen year old can come. Seismic, massive. A sticky spill between their bodies, a pulsing vice-grip that almost hurts. Kyouji holds him tight as he comes down in trembles, licking his face like a mother cat from chin to temple, finding every last trace of salt he can.
He waits for the crash. For Satomi to spiral into self hatred and shame and embarrassment because he's not a delinquent, he's not missing anything essential. He's a sweet boy, a good boy, and he's just done something really dirty. That's part of why Kyouji loves him so much.
With some effort Kyouji withdraws his finger from the hot, still throbbing pulse of his ass. With that filthy hand, he pats his back. "Congratulations, you're a man now," he says. "How does it feel?"
Satomi peels back to glare at him. Narrowed eyes, muddy pools backlit in karaoke-florescence. The black of his mussed hair reflects spots of neon magenta and glitter from the disco ball hanging from the ceiling, his eyes swollen with tears. "Fuck you," he spits out bitterly.
"Whoa. Big words for a little lap doggy," Kyouji says, lying there with his shirt unbuttoned, painted in jizz.
Satomi does not deign to answer. Instead he puts his glasses back on and resolutely tucks himself back into his trousers. Kyouji expects him to climb off, but instead he slides down, sinks to the floor. Moving from sitting atop Kyouji's knees to arranging himself between them, a determined line through his brow. "Fuck you," he says again. This time not to Kyouji's face, but to his thigh. Face dig in there, hot even though the fabric of his pants.
Curious, Kyouji parts his thighs, gives him more room. "Want something?" he asks. "Then, because he can't stand it, "you look really cute down there."
Satomi bites him. He hates being called cute. His teeth are sharp and his glasses are sharper, but his hands is so fucking sweet and warm, creeping up to tentatively cup Kyouji's cock. He just sits there for a second, chewing, shaking, squeezing. Eyes shut like he's wishing he was somewhere else. But Kyouji knows this is the only place he could be. Where both of their lives have led them, tugged them, deposited them. He reaches down, pops his own button, takes down his own zipper. "Go ahead," he says.
Satomi's gaze flashes up to him, tear wet, achey. "I don't want you to say go ahead. I want you to beg me to," he grits out. "Quit pretending like this is something only I want."
But it is something you want, Kyouji thinks. But he knows better than to say it aloud, he knows Satomi needs to be humored right now, coddled. He's done good tricks, he needs a little treat. A milkbone. So he takes his chin in hand, thumbs over Satomi's pretty, well-kissed mouth. "Fine. I'm begging Satomi-Kun to blow me," he says evenly.
Satomi bites his thumb, too. It really hurts, but Kyouji keeps his face impassive. "I hate you" he hisses.
"Funny, I love you," Kyouji croons, thinking how much easier it is to say big, true things when your dick is hard and your sanity is eroded. "I love you on your knees being so mean to me. They're supposed to breed biting out of those little dogs, you know. Maybe something got messed up, I guess. With your DNA. But—"
He forgets what he was gonna say, because Satomi is mouthing over him. Kissing his erection, rubbing his parted lips all over it, whining and lapping and fuck, that's not enough. It's gonna make Kyouji go crazy and he is already so crazy, there's not much left to give. So he curses, lifts his hips for a microsecond, knocking Satomi's glasses askew as he finally frees his cock from the trappings of his pants. It looks huge, there, huge and wanting next to this kid's baby-smooth face. But then it's gone, because it's in Satomi's mouth. He takes it too deep, gags and coughs around it. "Don't hurt yourself," Kyouji says, grabbing a fistful of hair and pulling him up.
He stares, eyes all fire, expression scathing and unmistakable. I want it to hurt, it says. Because you have already hurt me. Kyouji doesn't need a translator—he was fourteen once, too. So, he relents, grip slackening.
Satomi is temporarily contented with the crown, drooling on it, moaning around it, sucking. Maybe he hadn't fantasized about Kyouji fucking his ass but he's clearly fantasized about this. He needs it like he needed kisses, like he needed water. Kyouji gives it to him, feeds it to him inch by inch, turned on even by the careless scrape of his teeth because it's born from desperation, from hunger. He's gotten a lot of blow jobs in his life, but he's sucked more pussies than he's been sucked, he thinks. It's easier to be on your knees. This is overwhelming, actually. The surrender of being swallowed, giving up, giving in.
It's too much. Satomi all over him, all around him. Losing his virginity in a karaoke booth like Kyouji lost his own virginity in a flooded park bathroom. The pleasure is maddening, corrosive. It eats his skin away and almost hurts it is so intense. He feels like a kettle boiling over. He feels exhausted. It's almost frightening when he comes, because he is not in control of it. Satomi's needy little mouth sucks the orgasm right out of him, drives his tongue through the come , swallows it down in nervy, zinging slurps. Kyouji explodes, his vision eclipsed in disco-ball static. He's never felt like falling on a cliff, but he made a profession of pushing women off cliffs with his tongue all those years ago. Now, he tumbles. Looks up as the world whooshes past him.
When he opens his eyes, they're wet with tears. Bleary, distorting the booth. Heart pounding, blood flzzling, gasps rattling from his chest as he tries to chase down his stolen breath. He catches sight of himself in the karaoke TV set—he's moved, he's ruined. But, most miraculously of all, he's crying.
He came in the mouth of a teenage boy who told him, very clearly, more than once—stop.
Stop touching me.
As he locks dripping eyes with himself and the adrenaline drains from his body and into that still-sucking mouth, Kyouji feels it for the very first time. That holy thing he's always been missing, the blind spot shuddering into technicolor, refracted relief: disgust. It is so new, it almost feels good. He blinks, and tears fall down his cheeks to catch in the corners of his reflexive skull's smile.