[ Vulnerability was a dangerous word, like the warmth of a gun in Ryo’s hand or the slow grind of the blade of a boxcutter. It ran parallel to all Ryo believed in, all Ryo could let himself believe in. But, Akira had been open to the aches that life brought upon him. He’d been open to the aches Ryo had brought upon him. He’d been open to the breadth of his ignorance of bodily desire, of flesh that was not his own to be molded and pressed against. Ryo learned in the lack of passion, in an anhedonic haze beneath the physiological responses he visited with faces and names he doesn’t bother to recall in the dark of their shared room or at all. For all the brightness Ryo brought to Akira, there had been nothing in Ryo before Akira came to him. There had been no interest in the humanity that rooted in him, each growth toward understanding a thorn in the soft of his lungs. There had been need to touch, to protect, to shield. But, Akira’s words had sought at times to comfort him, as though a verbalization of how Ryo’s small fingers often dabbed beneath Akira’s eyes, dragging away the damp he’d shed in face of him. Don’t cry, he’d heard once and endlessly. Don’t cry. But, how could he, when sorrow held no residence in Ryo’s conscious thoughts? How could he when he felt no sorrow at all, because it never existed to start? How could he, now, in this place that unmoored itself from all he’d ever known? All they’d ever known, an uncharted patch of existence just as literal as it was metaphorical?
It’s what he reminds himself of, when Akira’s follows the instructions he lays bare. Akira, all clipped movement and heavy hands, cradles and curves him as though he were sea glass, a fragile and irreplaceable thing. He kisses along the nape of Ryo’s neck, kisses him with a tenderness and affection that he’s seen, but never felt from anyone, but him. It brings up in him something that stings and seethes, that pushes the air from his lungs in a rush as Akira couples it all with the cupping of his palms at his hips. As Akira pushes and directs the jumpsuit away from his skin, Ryo shudders at the first glance of cool air against all he typically keeps hidden. Everywhere that Akira touches, he leaves behind a wake of gooseflesh and Ryo can only just think to lift his hips when Akira shimmies the material of his jumpsuit past them. He shivers, sensuous and sudden, as Akira’s fingers span the tops of his thighs, and it’s an odd process from there, attempting to maneuver even further down what little material is left. It takes a clever kind of movement, the push of his own leg against the other as they inevitably part for fractions of a moment, the lack almost painful in the seconds that trail after it. This in itself is not an art, but he teaches Akira what he knows. He shows him how.
But, in the end, it is Ryo that follows him. In the foggy atmosphere that has settled between them, he moves with him, tacitly and explicitly, in perfect mirror the position Akira takes. It’s the way it always has been. It’s the way it’s always continued to be, from the time Ryo had followed him home from the shore, his bare feet brushing through the tall grass and clothes torn. No matter where Akira roamed, Ryo followed as much as Akira followed him. It was a loop, a closed and careful circle of something even Ryo could not comprehend. It was always something that kept him coming back, that kept him seeking Akira out. At the end of the world as he felt it could be, with the knowledge of war in his palms, he’d almost found himself wishing it had been a better circumstance. But, wishes meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Wishes would not save them from that. Wishes would not keep humanity alive, as much as wishes would not keep them alive themselves. But, it seems peripheral here. For a moment, it mutes itself beneath the heat of Akira’s palm, the path it paints across the lines of his body. It’s so much more than he would have granted himself, so much more reverent. His skin prickles and pines under the rough of fingers – the inherent strength in them tamed in the full of what they can touch. There’s nothing predatory in the way Akira tastes what he can with his senses, skirts into the shadows of his ribs and across his collarbone. Ryo presses into it, without even being fully cognizant of it. He his blood hums, tidal and restless beneath each pass.
But, the sounds that Akira makes only seem to build upon it. The subtle and notable movements of his body, the way his breath catches. Ryo’s mouth curls into something silent and satisfied as he ghosts the motion of holding him in the loose coil of his fingers through the last scrap of clothing that keeps them divided, eyes lidding at the prospect of his cock, pressed against the smooth skin of his palm. After all, Ryo’s approaches had always been considered before they were committed. Even here, in the thick of the air between them, Ryo keeps his head only just above it to know what can be done — what he can accomplish, with what knowledge he keeps within him, latent in its application until now. Until Akira, who laid himself beside him with only rudimentary hesitance, the uncertainty of what to do with one’s self in situations new and compelling, the full of him exposed to Ryo’s scrutiny. But, Ryo had never looked at Akira as he had looked at others. He had never looked at Akira as though he were less, as if he cared little for the stories he kept within the cage of his chest. He’d never looked at Akira with the weight of his disinterest, his straightforwardness and curiosity in the face of all that Ryo was and is a marvel by itself. Akira had been someone instead he’d opened his arms to time and again, called upon after the passage of years. Akira had instead been someone who Ryo spoke to across the small ocean of sheets, the names of constellations off his tongue both considering and careful, because —
The answer flees from him. It goes, as Akira goes and cuts across the midline of his body as easily as he cuts through his thoughts. They splinter in the sudden realization of what Akira intends, what he does and the gasp that claws its way up from his lungs is nothing at all like what Ryo knows. It’s a wounded and fragmented thing, a thing that ripples through the entirety of his frame as though caught by the edge of white teeth. His body responds automatically, like a match brushed against the dry of kindling, his fingers curling reflexively as his lips part. There’s something formless there behind it, something he can’t quite grasp in the languid stretch of tension between them both, the impression of Akira’s laugh catching at the rawness of his heart like an arrowhead. It hurts, but it hurts in such a way that Ryo finds himself drowned beneath. He’d never been this way before. He’d never allowed himself the presence of his voice before, but Akira pulls for it in ways he cannot understand and ways he cannot stifle before it bubbles up, exists.
Ryo had never lost himself in the boundaries of his body, but he loses himself for a moment now as the hand that touches Akira with such dedication drifts. It’s a half-completed thought, as it moves up the plain of Akira’s body, drags with it the liquid shadow that falls between the definition of muscle, across the pulse of Akira’s heart. It’s gone only momentarily, but Ryo finds himself again midway through the action, the flat of his palm turned to himself.
He catches on.
He parts his lips, runs the flat of his pink tongue from the heel of his palm to the tips of his fingers, curls them into the warmth of his own mouth to the first bend of his knuckles. The sounds he makes break against his own skin, breath coming short and sharp through his nose as his hips twitch up into the loose heat of Akira’s fist. It’s gentle, so gentle that Ryo feels the bloom of pleasure muffle the shape of his rationality. It dulls his thoughts, brings with it only sensation to answer the hungry pang of its absence. It’s a moment more, but as he withdraws his fingers, he finds himself in echo of what Akira had already done. His hand does not wander down the landscape of his body, though the compulsion is stronger than Ryo himself can admit. Between them, he finds the ridge of his hip, the hard definition of muscle, and like Akira before him – his dampened fingers dip beneath the full of the fabric, a low noise wavering at the end of an exhale as his fingers and palm cage fully the weight and the heat of his cock. (And in a small and inane flicker, he thinks of how the additional wetness wasn't needed at all, a point he makes to remember later.)
Ryo doesn't quite kiss him. He leans into the scant spaces left between, the soft mold of his lips close enough to feel the hitch of Akira's breath. Every part of him seems to burn, the rough of Akira's palm so dissimilar from anyone at all who'd bothered to touch him this way. In the scattered occasions he'd acquainted himself with own body, it too had only been a means to an end. It too had been almost absent of any such consideration. He can't quite recall the last time he'd indulged the baser instincts that roiled up in him, keener to ignore the occasional flush of arousal than to feed it — keener to steer himself away from all that led him there to start. To acknowledge it was to accept it, to accept it was to invite something painful and vulnerable in, and Ryo has spent so much time boxing the full of the picture away, stowing it in disparate pieces through the whole of his heart. He doesn't know it, he tells himself. He makes himself believe it, no matter how his throat closes at the soft tilt of Akira's mouth, playful and earnest. He forces himself to believe it, no matter how his heart mumbles and shudders and thrums to see Akira look at him this way. Akira, a tight circuit of want for him. Akira, his dark eyes lidded and focused on what Ryo does, what Ryo says. Akira, who touches him with such reverence that Ryo can’t process what it is Akira stirs up in the sediment of himself, small and quiet — feeble as it pushes itself toward something Ryo feels in part the flush of serotonin, norepinephrine. It singes in contrast against the body of his want, the entirety of the wash of heat that colors the pale of his skin down to the ridge of his collarbone, wanders just beneath.
He's calculated as he tightens the curve of his fingers, his hand so much smaller than Akira’s own. He brushes the pad of his thumb against his frenulum, sweeps it up and over the head of his cock — breathes out he watches him, through the downward spill of his lashes. So close, he can make out the finer features of Akira's face. He can make out the Akira that had once rested beneath, the Akira that appears to him now in the angles Ryo's helped shape as though from the clay. His eyes touch upon them where his hand is not allowed. In his head, he maps the high of his cheekbones, skims the full of his lips. In his head, he traces all of him, learns the entirety of him as though it were himself. In his head – Ryo angles himself closer, strokes down the length of him with measured pressure and the fluid curve of his wrist. He keeps his pace like that, a small alteration in each persistent movement. ]
no subject
It’s what he reminds himself of, when Akira’s follows the instructions he lays bare. Akira, all clipped movement and heavy hands, cradles and curves him as though he were sea glass, a fragile and irreplaceable thing. He kisses along the nape of Ryo’s neck, kisses him with a tenderness and affection that he’s seen, but never felt from anyone, but him. It brings up in him something that stings and seethes, that pushes the air from his lungs in a rush as Akira couples it all with the cupping of his palms at his hips. As Akira pushes and directs the jumpsuit away from his skin, Ryo shudders at the first glance of cool air against all he typically keeps hidden. Everywhere that Akira touches, he leaves behind a wake of gooseflesh and Ryo can only just think to lift his hips when Akira shimmies the material of his jumpsuit past them. He shivers, sensuous and sudden, as Akira’s fingers span the tops of his thighs, and it’s an odd process from there, attempting to maneuver even further down what little material is left. It takes a clever kind of movement, the push of his own leg against the other as they inevitably part for fractions of a moment, the lack almost painful in the seconds that trail after it. This in itself is not an art, but he teaches Akira what he knows. He shows him how.
But, in the end, it is Ryo that follows him. In the foggy atmosphere that has settled between them, he moves with him, tacitly and explicitly, in perfect mirror the position Akira takes. It’s the way it always has been. It’s the way it’s always continued to be, from the time Ryo had followed him home from the shore, his bare feet brushing through the tall grass and clothes torn. No matter where Akira roamed, Ryo followed as much as Akira followed him. It was a loop, a closed and careful circle of something even Ryo could not comprehend. It was always something that kept him coming back, that kept him seeking Akira out. At the end of the world as he felt it could be, with the knowledge of war in his palms, he’d almost found himself wishing it had been a better circumstance. But, wishes meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Wishes would not save them from that. Wishes would not keep humanity alive, as much as wishes would not keep them alive themselves. But, it seems peripheral here. For a moment, it mutes itself beneath the heat of Akira’s palm, the path it paints across the lines of his body. It’s so much more than he would have granted himself, so much more reverent. His skin prickles and pines under the rough of fingers – the inherent strength in them tamed in the full of what they can touch. There’s nothing predatory in the way Akira tastes what he can with his senses, skirts into the shadows of his ribs and across his collarbone. Ryo presses into it, without even being fully cognizant of it. He his blood hums, tidal and restless beneath each pass.
But, the sounds that Akira makes only seem to build upon it. The subtle and notable movements of his body, the way his breath catches. Ryo’s mouth curls into something silent and satisfied as he ghosts the motion of holding him in the loose coil of his fingers through the last scrap of clothing that keeps them divided, eyes lidding at the prospect of his cock, pressed against the smooth skin of his palm. After all, Ryo’s approaches had always been considered before they were committed. Even here, in the thick of the air between them, Ryo keeps his head only just above it to know what can be done — what he can accomplish, with what knowledge he keeps within him, latent in its application until now. Until Akira, who laid himself beside him with only rudimentary hesitance, the uncertainty of what to do with one’s self in situations new and compelling, the full of him exposed to Ryo’s scrutiny. But, Ryo had never looked at Akira as he had looked at others. He had never looked at Akira as though he were less, as if he cared little for the stories he kept within the cage of his chest. He’d never looked at Akira with the weight of his disinterest, his straightforwardness and curiosity in the face of all that Ryo was and is a marvel by itself. Akira had been someone instead he’d opened his arms to time and again, called upon after the passage of years. Akira had instead been someone who Ryo spoke to across the small ocean of sheets, the names of constellations off his tongue both considering and careful, because —
The answer flees from him. It goes, as Akira goes and cuts across the midline of his body as easily as he cuts through his thoughts. They splinter in the sudden realization of what Akira intends, what he does and the gasp that claws its way up from his lungs is nothing at all like what Ryo knows. It’s a wounded and fragmented thing, a thing that ripples through the entirety of his frame as though caught by the edge of white teeth. His body responds automatically, like a match brushed against the dry of kindling, his fingers curling reflexively as his lips part. There’s something formless there behind it, something he can’t quite grasp in the languid stretch of tension between them both, the impression of Akira’s laugh catching at the rawness of his heart like an arrowhead. It hurts, but it hurts in such a way that Ryo finds himself drowned beneath. He’d never been this way before. He’d never allowed himself the presence of his voice before, but Akira pulls for it in ways he cannot understand and ways he cannot stifle before it bubbles up, exists.
Ryo had never lost himself in the boundaries of his body, but he loses himself for a moment now as the hand that touches Akira with such dedication drifts. It’s a half-completed thought, as it moves up the plain of Akira’s body, drags with it the liquid shadow that falls between the definition of muscle, across the pulse of Akira’s heart. It’s gone only momentarily, but Ryo finds himself again midway through the action, the flat of his palm turned to himself.
He catches on.
He parts his lips, runs the flat of his pink tongue from the heel of his palm to the tips of his fingers, curls them into the warmth of his own mouth to the first bend of his knuckles. The sounds he makes break against his own skin, breath coming short and sharp through his nose as his hips twitch up into the loose heat of Akira’s fist. It’s gentle, so gentle that Ryo feels the bloom of pleasure muffle the shape of his rationality. It dulls his thoughts, brings with it only sensation to answer the hungry pang of its absence. It’s a moment more, but as he withdraws his fingers, he finds himself in echo of what Akira had already done. His hand does not wander down the landscape of his body, though the compulsion is stronger than Ryo himself can admit. Between them, he finds the ridge of his hip, the hard definition of muscle, and like Akira before him – his dampened fingers dip beneath the full of the fabric, a low noise wavering at the end of an exhale as his fingers and palm cage fully the weight and the heat of his cock. (And in a small and inane flicker, he thinks of how the additional wetness wasn't needed at all, a point he makes to remember later.)
Ryo doesn't quite kiss him. He leans into the scant spaces left between, the soft mold of his lips close enough to feel the hitch of Akira's breath. Every part of him seems to burn, the rough of Akira's palm so dissimilar from anyone at all who'd bothered to touch him this way. In the scattered occasions he'd acquainted himself with own body, it too had only been a means to an end. It too had been almost absent of any such consideration. He can't quite recall the last time he'd indulged the baser instincts that roiled up in him, keener to ignore the occasional flush of arousal than to feed it — keener to steer himself away from all that led him there to start. To acknowledge it was to accept it, to accept it was to invite something painful and vulnerable in, and Ryo has spent so much time boxing the full of the picture away, stowing it in disparate pieces through the whole of his heart. He doesn't know it, he tells himself. He makes himself believe it, no matter how his throat closes at the soft tilt of Akira's mouth, playful and earnest. He forces himself to believe it, no matter how his heart mumbles and shudders and thrums to see Akira look at him this way. Akira, a tight circuit of want for him. Akira, his dark eyes lidded and focused on what Ryo does, what Ryo says. Akira, who touches him with such reverence that Ryo can’t process what it is Akira stirs up in the sediment of himself, small and quiet — feeble as it pushes itself toward something Ryo feels in part the flush of serotonin, norepinephrine. It singes in contrast against the body of his want, the entirety of the wash of heat that colors the pale of his skin down to the ridge of his collarbone, wanders just beneath.
He's calculated as he tightens the curve of his fingers, his hand so much smaller than Akira’s own. He brushes the pad of his thumb against his frenulum, sweeps it up and over the head of his cock — breathes out he watches him, through the downward spill of his lashes. So close, he can make out the finer features of Akira's face. He can make out the Akira that had once rested beneath, the Akira that appears to him now in the angles Ryo's helped shape as though from the clay. His eyes touch upon them where his hand is not allowed. In his head, he maps the high of his cheekbones, skims the full of his lips. In his head, he traces all of him, learns the entirety of him as though it were himself. In his head – Ryo angles himself closer, strokes down the length of him with measured pressure and the fluid curve of his wrist. He keeps his pace like that, a small alteration in each persistent movement. ]