It'd only been under the crushing weight of a truly innumerable amount of drinks that he'd collapsed into unconsciousness, and the rest of today has been a slow drag through a simultaneous hangover and haze of pursuing ramifications. Long story short, he hadn't gotten a lot done besides lying around, poking at the communicator, and dragging himself to go find food a few times. And now the clock has rolled around to what stands for night hours on a timeless space station once again, and he's lying in bed. Looking up at the ceiling, not feeling even the slightest bit tired. His brain is a crawling slide-show of events from the last 48 hours, catching often at his booze-blurred memories of the party, of the trek back to the room, of waking up at some point this morning ("morning") in a fairly-tangled pile with Ryo on his bed.
His breath leaves him in a long, slow sigh. He's not really used to dealing with a snarl of his own emotions that he can't untangle. That'd been simply an aspect of him for as long as he'd been alive: he was largely an open book, both to himself and to others. But this had been one thing he'd always kept hidden, at first because he undermined its perceived importance and prominence and then later out of fear that it would complicate or otherwise derail something that was already vital to him.
But...
...well...
...it'd already happened, right? And things weren't that weird. Despite the stormcloud of a hangover that'd been raging in his head today, reducing him to about one-fourth of the boisterous kinda person he usually was, things between him and Ryo had seemed pretty normal. Ryo was the type of person to put up walls, and Akira was the kind of person who noticed them, and he hadn't noticed any additional barricades go up. So...]
@r.asuka hey are you awake
[Because, from up here, he can't really tell. He's still, but Akira can't really decide either awake or asleep based on the rhythm of the breathing that he can hear.
Even under his previous state of inebriation, he'd laid in bed and listened to the steady rise and fall of Akira's breathing until it had brought unconsciousness in fleeting fits over his own head. It had only been in the morning that he'd gotten any real sleep, Akira's body tangled up with his. He'd complained a little then, when Akira had taken to moving, but he'd never been good at getting out of bed. In the end, he'd kept Akira longer than he'd likely intended, but he hadn't protested it and Ryo had felt relatively relaxed, even despite the incessant, pounding headache that all drinking binges end with.
It'd been a long time, since he'd allowed himself to slip like this. It had been a longer time since he'd been that close to Akira. The last had been a summer evening before Jenny had come to take him, Akira's dark eyes seeking his in the grey light of the dawn. Across the sea of blue sheets, Ryo had welcomed him into his arms as he always had. They'd fallen asleep again like that, until Akira's caretakers then had woken them back up. It was the last time, before now, that they had come close to any proximity like that.
If Akira had spent the day in bed, so too had Ryo with his head buried under the sparse pillows provided by the station and his hands periodically (and blindly) moving through the code he'd been working with. The communicator was as familiar to him now as own computer, his own tablets — and so it is of no surprise that he's already able to utilize it without much fuss or focus, should that be something he demanded. Unlike Akira, however, he'd bothered not at all to even get food with which to hopefully settle his stomach with, knowing himself to only accept water in times like this. He'd tried to coax Akira to drink some of it last night to prevent brunt of their collective misery, but he himself had failed to truly manage it.
And now, with no residual aches left, he finds himself scrolling through the community in an hour most were typically asleep at. It isn't adequate enough to keep him fully distracted from the course of last night, but it is enough that he is able to lose himself partially to it. There's always information on the network to spare should he have need of it and now is no exception as he makes notes to himself in the metaphorical margins. It's always something he'd done. It was a constant, something consistent — routine against the swell of odd and ignored emotions that sat caged behind his ribs. He breathes around them, as much as Akira breathes around his.
He knows Akira is still awake. He's known it for a while now. But, it seems Akira couldn't confirm that he was too as the notification comes up on his communicator. He turns head toward the top bunk and taps out a response with no pause to read it. He has a feeling of what it says. ]
@dabil I'm awake.
[ In the dim, the faint light from the communicator catches the blue of his eyes. And, without a second's pause, continues: ]
@dabil Did you want to talk?
[ Like when they were kids, in the small spaces between them in the quiet of Akira's oldest room. If they stayed awake long enough, the moon would travel past his open window and Ryo would tell him of all he knew about the constant cycles and lunar tides, while Akira told him of folkore — tales tall enough to scrape the stars.
There's nothing known like that here, besides them. ]
[He hadn't minded the slow start to getting up the previous morning. The water that Ryo had convinced him to drink before passing out hadn't been enough to perfectly combat the sizable amount of alcohol he'd imbibed, and so he'd awoken to a jackhammer pounding against the inside of his brain, pounding behind his eyes. So when even the slightest movement had elicited a murmur of response from Ryo, nestled up against him, he'd remained still. He'd closed his eyes, tried his best to calm the slow-motion riot of thoughts and emotions crashing around inside of his skull, and he'd stolen what little sleep he could until they'd both finally roused from unconsciousness.
In all honesty, that part of the day had been more worth mentioning than the rest of it. Even though his body had seen it fit to punish him for his foolishness with alcohol the night before whenever he'd bobbed up into consciousness yet again, he'd at least had the slow rhythm of Ryo's breathing to lull him, the steadiness of the warmth of his body where they were half-tangled and half-held by the other, the scent of him which he really could not manage to put to words except by just saying it was his. In comparison to this, finally accepting being awake and extricating themselves from one another had seemed dull in comparison. Water had dulled the aching of his head and his body, food had helped the sour feeling in his gut, but he can't say grappling with the serpentine cycle of his thoughts and the confused slush of emotion in his heart had done him much good at all.
So now he's here, having made basically zero headway in his internal deliberations.
He hears the slightest rustle of bedding, and he peeks out over the edge of the bunk to catch the blue eyes peering up at him from the dark, illuminated by the small square of light emanating from the communicator. Akira's have their own glint, though it's more like a cat's eyes caught in a camera; he ducks back into his bed, for some reason finding the avenue of conversation through the communicator a little easier than giving it all a voice.]
@r.asuka yeah @r.asuka as long as you're not tired or anything though
[Though he knew he wouldn't be. If he was needed, Ryo would be there for him; Akira knew this as intrinsically as he knew anything about himself. That, and Ryo barley ever seemed to sleep regardless; with as much sleep as (he assumes) he got last night, he's probably set for a few more days at the very least.
In all honesty, the hurdle that he'd set up for them was something a little uncharacteristic, simply because they usually assumed such a thing wouldn't be the case. But there was a lot of this that was out of the ordinary, slightly uncharacteristic, truthfully unwieldy in unpracticed hands. He remains still up in his top bunk, eyes on the dim screen of his communicator.]
[ Ryo's always chased the tail of his own emotions. It was not to say he did not understand them or could not understand them — it was that he found it easier to deny all and any that could complicate the whole of his life, could injure him beyond any possible repair. And yet, like most creatures, he'd long conflated the danger that could be with the danger that is. Even if he does not know it, the mechanism is there and the mechanism exists. It keeps with him, as it has always kept with him, since he'd been known as "Ryo" to all that he'd met.
Still, there was something in the quiet of their morning. Ryo's sleeps were typically shallow and dreamless, but there had been something deeper about that one. It had lulled him in such a way that the usual awareness of his surroundings had faded away into nothingness, a contrast to all that he usually maintained. It had only been himself, Akira, and the loose cast of the sheets across them. He hadn't used the pillows that had come along with the quarter's beds, but instead had found himself at times supported by the bend of Akira's arm, the crest of his shoulder. He hadn't really known when they had separated, but it had been well into the "morning" by the time they did.
Yet, he watches the way Akira shies back as he responds to him. He's seen this before, this kind of anxiousness, though once cast at the red of double-doors, the snapping of maws — elsewhere, in their childhood. Akira had always expressed his anxieties as much as he expressed anything else with him, at least to Ryo and the closed circle of his arms. It takes a moment, but Ryo types back with no less precision than before, letting his gaze rest where Akira lays for a moment longer, before taking in gray of the metallic ceilings above them. ]
@dabil It's okay. @dabil I'm not tired.
[ Akira was already right to think he wouldn't be. He could never manage something bordering typical rest, just as much he could not manage the odd mathematics that went into the entire span of last night. It was out of the ordinary to say the least, but it had happened. That much is what still remained perfectly clear. ]
[He wasn't used to the contents of his mind and his heart being confusing to him. It'd always been one of Akira's most distinguishing features, that he was so in-tune with both his own feelings and those of others, being so finely acquainted to the secret language that emotion was written in. But these - perhaps it was because he didn't have as much experience with them. Akira has been, at best, a bystander to affection that burned and bubbled up past the closeness of friendship, the kinship of family. Where he might've started to sense them growing unchecked and soon out-of-control, he found he could do little to stay or control them, deciding only to turn a blind eye.
They were complications. And though both himself and Ryo were of a unique importance to one another, he can't say he was ever given any reason to assume anything beyond that. Ryo Asuka did not exactly make himself available for such attachments; over the course of dozens of strains of conversations, many of which Akira firmly remembered despite the degradation that ten years would have on one's memory, he feels he didn't have much of a reason to believe it would be valid for him. Emotions were just chemicals released from the brain, right? Attachments to family was just an evolutionary tactic to help them survive through infancy. The bond of friendship was just something humankind developed, realizing collectively that they could accomplish with many what they could never hope to achieve alone.
It might be true, but it'd always rung hollow to him. The truth and the science of it might be the container, the empty vessel, but it was the matter generated in the heart that filled it. People, to him, would never be purely logical beings. Because they weren't. Idiosyncratic, paradoxical, unpredictable. They were all each to themselves their own vessels, spilling over, cracking, leaking, growing empty. An explanation could only go so far.
Across the span of the room, Akira can be heard typing, the dull tapping sound of fingers against the screen. Then silence. Then a rapid succession of taps: backspacing, perhaps, and then the cycle all over again. This goes on for a minute or so, then it's supplanted by a low groan from the back of his throat, a long and exasperated sigh. He types again.]
@r.asuka can I come down there
[How was he supposed to put into words which he couldn't even make sense of in his own head? He doesn't know, but he thinks, he thinks maybe if he's in front of Ryo, maybe he'll be able to figure it out. Because he hadn't felt so confused and frustrated earlier this morning, when he'd awoken to find the guy sleeping with his head resting against his shoulder, peaceful and quiet.
It might not be something elegant (as if he could really manage much of that, though, really), but he knows he'll be able to say something. So he waits, steadied against this one last barrier he had set up for himself.]
[ At the end of the day, human beings were innately social. All humans, every solitary one, were no better than the animals that flew or swum. What could one human possibly do, with the limitations imposed by their own evolution? That drive for closeness, the complex webbing of reasons they built themselves into societies as easily as they built themselves into militant strategies, was only the culmination of natural selection. All the contingencies and branches that allowed them to survive in a world where the most brutal of apex predators could outrun and overpower them all was the only mercy they had, but mercy is not a peace treaty. Mercy is only this: a single fledging of Darwin's finches, waiting to see if the next brood would be enough to strip their reins from them.
To Ryo, it was simplest to think of human need and desire like this. To one whose work insists on structure and logic, it seems a natural complement. At least, at first. Like all things about Ryo Asuka, his beliefs were systems carefully kept as much as they were questioned by others and himself. No matter how many times he'd argued it with Akira as children, the conviction had remained. No matter how many times his reactions had not been squarely logical, it had been something he'd always done: explain it away. But, Akira had always been his one remarkable exception. He had always been something that Ryo could not replicate and did not wish to replicate elsewhere.
It was Akira's gentleness, his earnestness, his willingness that had kept him by his side all these years. Even after their separation, so little about that had changed when it was Ryo who instead welcomed Akira into his arms. To Ryo, Akira was a port — a harbor to linger with, no matter how little he understood about the occasion swell of his emotions when he'd approached it. Akira's friendship and companionship were measureless, something that Ryo would not have long ago bothered with, had Akira had not been the first thing he knew (again) about the world on that day where he was left to wake at once abandoned and afraid.
Suffice to say, when Akira groans, it is something that perhaps resonates with him in ways that he both certain and uncertain of — where Akira was unaccustomed to not knowing the exact lay of his emotional reactions, to Ryo it is another aspect about this that is familiar. And while Ryo cannot call it by its title as easily as any other can, he waits for the response that Akira keeps back.
There's a small pause, almost to consider what it is that Akira's seeking to do, before responding with: ]
@dabil If you'd like.
[ The implication of only if remains unsaid. He knows that Akira is aware of it, as much as Akira is seeking out a solution or an answer as much as Ryo is seeking out the answers of his own questions. Sometimes, pulling for the truth of the matter was difficult without seeing it directly before the self. And, in a way, perhaps that's what it is here. ]
[Almost immediately after the message was sent, a dark shadow passes in front of the bunk bed and thumps down to the ground, pausing for just a moment before crossing the threshold and climbing up onto the bed, crossing over a portion of it so he can sit near where Ryo lay.
He reaches out to Ryo's hand, the one that held the communicator strapped around his wrist. His fingers fumble blindly for a moment, searching the smooth edge of the device before finding the button that turned off the screen. Once pressed, they fall into darkness; it's only a few seconds before his eyes adjust, however. A demon's sight is strongest in the dark, as it was the time they roved and hunted. He can see Ryo fairly well, though all the color was washed out of him, painted in grayscale. He almost wishes his eyesight was worse, because maybe he would feel a little less anxious if he couldn't see anything, if he could pretend he was just speaking into the emptiness of an empty room, practicing for when he'd say the same to him, except so much more concise and well than he'd manage right now.
They hadn't talked much through today besides the sparsest conversations on how best to alleviate hangovers and the like, existing like separate planets spinning on their own independent axises, going about their own business. Breaking the wide breadth of that collective silence was a difficult act, like staring at a blank piece of paper and feeling that the first line of text put on it must be something good enough to destroy that newness forever.
Akira realizes his hand was still loose around Ryo's wrist. He releases him, gently, and then folds both hands into his lap.
He takes a deep breath, and then he releases it, and then he punches through all of the barriers that might've otherwise tried to trip him up.]
When we kissed last night, at the party, how - how did you feel about it?
[He knows by the time he's arrived to the end of his question that he's already hitting a problem area. Asking Ryo about how he felt about things... had never exactly ended well. It had usually ended with him seeming confused to the point of vexation and Akira just feeling stymied. He shakes his head.] No, no. Hold on. [Another gruff sound of frustration dwells in his throat as he sifts past that, pushing past the last remaining worries and concerns. If he'd really been unsure about it, he probably wouldn't have said he should come down here, right? And, hell, it'd already happened once (more than once, actually), and if he wasn't really interested, he could just say that and they'd move on. That'd be better than just thinking about it all the time.
He speaks up again and the words come like the first swell of high tide, drawn out by the powerful pull of a distant force.] What I mean is, would that - is it something you'd want to do again?
Despite all the inherent speed and grace that body afforded him, there's something almost delicate in the way he joins Ryo after a moment's pause. There's something at once quiet and tentative in the way he reaches for him, in ways both known and unknown to him. Akira's crossing into his space doesn't garner anything unusual, only a faint complaint dying before it ever forms as Akira takes up his wrist, turns his communicator off. He'll have to redo what he was working with, but it hardly matters now considering the odd disquiet that settles between them like a darker ocean, its edges almost unable to discerned. He knows that even now, Akira can see him in shadows he's created — soft, grey lines pale and impressionistic. For Ryo himself, the failure of light is the failure of one of his senses. No matter how his eyes adjust, the pitch is too much. However, he isn't fearful of it.
Despite everything, he knows where Akira is. He can almost imagine the pinch of his expression, the way his brows pull together before he speaks. There's a certain gravity in what he's about to say, but Akira has never been good at not telegraphing what is important to him. He knows that sometimes, it is easiest for others to say the hardest things behind a shroud, something Akira enacts now as before he ever opens his mouth to ask him.
Is it something you'd want to do again?
It isn't surprise that comes up in response to it, as much as it is a small storm of questions that well up against his ribs like a high tide, each more vague and indistinct than last beyond what he knows would be practical, what would be for the best. He'd always wanted to protect Akira. Since they were small, he'd shielded him from the cruelty of their peers, the individuals that would have made him so easily burst into tears. He'd always wanted to and it was something that grew within him even in all the years that they'd spent apart.
So, he doesn't ask why it is Akira would like to with him. He doesn't think about the way his pulse mumbles something like nerves in his ears. He only allows himself to acknowledge the situation they've now found themselves trapped in. He only lets himself think of what it is that could help him, what it is that Akira needs — what is that Ryo can give him. But, the word is already there off his tongue before he can align it. It slips in under the secondary action he takes as he nods, only once. ]
Yes.
[ He lifts his hand against the silence, knowing without knowing where sharper angles of Akira's face would be. His fingers skate briefly across the cut of his jaw as he reaches, pushes back to curl the black of his hair behind the shell of his ear. It's a gesture he's committed before, perhaps, but there's something more thoughtful about it. He lingers there, for the space of a breath or two, before he asks: ]
Is it something you would? [ He can anticipate the answer. No one phrases questions that way without desire to act upon what is requested. Ryo's hand travels back, but doesn't leave. Not really. Instead, the flat of his palm comes to frame his face gently, the calloused meat of his thumb passing aimless and slow across the contour of his cheek. ]
[There was a bit of an open conflict between the natural state of this body and the energy it possessed versus Akira's personal predisposition and demeanor. It was obvious enough to any who had known him before that his transformation had not only affected his physicality but his personality — he was the same kid at his core, sure, but he was more outspoken, more charismatic, more driven. It's not that some of these elements didn't exist before, beneath the surface and just waiting for the right time and place (and likely person) to be charmed forward, but his fusion had hooked into them and drawn them out, woven them in with the elements of both human and demon that had gotten irrevocably tangled.
It's why he seemed so often contradictory. He asks permission despite having a good idea of the answer, deftly and precisely placing himself in Ryo's space despite also performing a specific sort of fragility that alluded to the vulnerability he kept hidden from everyone except for Ryo. He knows in the end, if (when?) Ryo rebuffs his question, he wouldn't hold it against him. He'd always have a logical explanation for it, a verbal mapping of the structure of his own thoughts and feelings, the exact route he had followed chemically and psychologically to land him here. He figures something like that'll make him feel better, though he knows from experience it would only force him into a container that felt cramped.
He's already prepared himself for that potential outcome, building up his expectations for it as the brief silence stretches between them, one where he can quite plainly see the thoughts slowly but very surely processing through Ryo's mind behind the blinded veils of his eyes. But then he — nods. He nods? Akira grows very still, surprise rattling through his chest, his heart ricocheting off the walls of his ribcage.
Yes.
He blinks slowly, owlishly in the utter darkness. Though his eyes move automatically to track the movement of Ryo's hand, lifted from where it had rested in his lap, moving as if he could see just as well as Akira could in the pitch to come to travel across the line of his jaw, feather-light yet with strength of intention. He has the impulse to lean into the touch, yearning for the affirmation and the affection, but there's a systematic paralysis that's worked its way through him, still waiting for further confirmation that would clear away the clinging concern that he'd managed to mentally mince words and misunderstand completely.
After the question is posed, there is a moment of complete silence and still in the dark of the room; even under the spread of Ryo's palm Akira does not move, himself now processing, fumbling through a half-dozen methods of response.
But Akira Fudo follows his heart, and if this new body and this new self of his had any adjustment to make, it was only that he was doubly as impulsive as he might've been otherwise. He doesn't answer. There's only the short sigh of expelling air from his lungs that he'd belatedly realized had grown stale, and then he's moving forward, rolling with all of the fluidity and purpose of water tumbling down as a falls. Now its his hand that travels along Ryo's jaw, guiding him lightly so that they could align and allow their lips to meet.
It's different here — in the dark and privacy of their own room, there are no wide and curious eyes to bore into his back, no mercenary mouths to contribute commentary either supportive or mocking or comedic. Akira had never cared much for the judgments of others, but he hadn't wanted to make Ryo feel even more uncomfortable in a situation he'd not even wanted to be in in the first place. But no such social shackles bound him here. The initially-steady warmth of emotion that accompanies the press of his lips to Ryo's own, moving not only to encourage but also to mark to what extent he was ready here and now to follow — it's like this for a moment before growing heated, growing hungry, reflecting on the inward knowledge he had that what had happened last night had been enough to fill his mind nearly all day but it hadn't been nearly enough. There's a steady pull in his gut for more, and neither the human nor the devil in him had any way of resisting or combating that; the breath that escapes him is sharp-edged, almost a pant, as their lips separate infinitesimally, allowing for his own to part and allow his tongue to swipe across the line of Ryo's mouth: a brusque request, but a request all the same.
He can feel the pressure of it building within the cage of his chest; the shape of it is something he's perfectly familiar with, and it's in this that he finds some discomforting comfort, that he'd most likely be able to leash and chain himself should he suddenly bypass a boundary that Ryo was not prepared to cross. He'd have no way of knowing; this is uncharted territory.
But if Ryo was as unconcerned with limits as he was, well...
It was a bridge that would have to be burned when they came to it.]
[ A small and quiet part of him knows the sting of rejection.
In the dark, something in him without his knowing contemplates the possibility, feels it acutely in the silences they (for a moment) wear. In the deepest parts of him, it struggles against the potential realities of it losing what it has left. It presses into the tender heart of his joints, causes the slow ripple of something cold beneath the surface of all that Ryo is and ever would be. In the end, it is cut-off with the brush of fingers across his jaw. It's muted, before it ever comes to light, by the press of Akira's lips against his.
If Ryo were more honest, he would have admitted it was relief and something else that passed through the whole of him with each, unsteady exhalation of breath that fanned across his cheek. But, the human body cares little for what cannot be heard. Under him, Ryo's body is pliant and at once inquisitive — directive, though he catches the small hum that threatens to vocalize itself as Akira rewrites the sentiment behind it.
Akira had always snuck into the parts of him that Ryo had kept hidden. He'd always pressed his fingers against the firm separations that kept Ryo from humans, built for him doorways that he could pass through with any hint of willingness — his arms opened wide for him across the newest thresholds. And here, Ryo takes the first steps toward him in ways he hadn't for others in America. His curiosities then had been empty stakes, his actions and reactions not at all so bold. There's an odd welling of warmth within him, a fainter tremble beneath his skin that translates into the way he responds to him, a mirror and a match for the pace Akira takes with this. It isn't unlike what had happened last night, but it is newer. It's foreign, in the way that only the privacy of their room brings. In the absence of light, all that Akira is is a tangible thing — his shifts in emotion like hands against his skin. Once again without sight, there's an ambiguity. Akira's all that keeps him in place, anchored to a certain space though he can feel the impression of the room around them.
Kissing isn't new, inventive. It's a way to communicate, to read intentions. It's a way for bodies to acclimate to foreign hosts, to investigate biological compatibility. It's a way to protect the self. It's a way to bond. But, Ryo takes the smaller space to inhale, a hitch of a thing that he can't quite smother before it's already there.
But, Ryo's mouth still parts for him and his heart still thrums with the rush of adrenaline each small and sound and touch brings. The hand that had cradled Akira's cheek somehow now in the thick of his dark hair, tangled in ways both assuring and irreparable. His nails scrape toward Akira's scalp in absent bursts, before his fingers finally commit to curl. He knots them there, keeps Akira there — welcomes him as Akira had always welcomed him. It is all they'd ever done, wasn't it? Like an echo tossed along the shore, picked up by the other who would give it back to them, they'd forever given the answers to each other's questions as best as they could. As best as they still can, when those inquiries that go without completion now stack up higher about them.
Ryo Asuka has never been shy, not really. He'd never been quiet about the basics of his desires, but Akira is different. He'd always been different. And like Ryo leads Akira, Akira too leads him. When Akira starved, Ryo sated. And when Ryo starved, Akira found ways too to fill him.
It's just the way it's always been. It's just the way that it would always be, was Ryo's reasoning. No more, no less. ]
[Akira had never once been one to take more than he was given, than he was offered. With how he had been raised and how he had shaped himself, he had been conscientious to a fault. With as keen an insight as he had into the hearts of others, as someone who found it almost easier to wear the feelings and see the perspectives of friends and family and strangers than to withdraw into his own, it had just been part and parcel. He had tempered his own wants, deflected the importance of his own needs. It'd made sense to do so. He had never meant as much to himself as those he cared about, and the thought of placing himself before them, of hurting them in any way with that intention, was abhorrent to him on the level of wounding.
He might've worried about it here, but he'd sensed too much truth behind Ryo's words, picking up both consciously and subconsciously to the clues attributed to tone of voice, expression, body language. There are no harsh lines or sharp angles to provide any sense of hesitation or caution to him as he folds into Ryo; he bends to meet him, willing and — what he has to perceive as wanting. As long as he'd known him, Ryo had never suffered less; if he had ever put up with something he would prefer not to, it had usually been to humor Akira, and even then his sour attitude about it was usually veiled in what stood to be one of his jokes, shared just between them. He sensed none of that now, though. Ryo had always preferred the brightness of flat truth to the warm glow of heartfelt sincerity, but even now he felt he could feel the flicker of it; it bloomed against his chest, where it rested over Ryo's own. Akira feels as though he's only sensed such a thing a few times in Ryo, always rare and ephemeral and under-developed before it disappears. But it always excites, thrilling him to his core, making him want to chase endlessly after it — something with which he could use as leverage to finally take Ryo firmly by the hand, pulling him to stand on completely equal ground and convince him of the things he had always denied.
He's been trying to encourage him to follow him down this road for over ten years now, and he's succeeded in some steps, lost a few others. All of that time had taught Akira patience, however. He's more than willing to play the long game. To him, Ryo is more than worth it.
Akira may have never been one to want to take more than he was given, but when Ryo replies to his wordless request with acquiesce and he returns to kiss him again, unabashed and with continually lessening restraint, he strongly feels himself having being given an inch and wanting to take it a mile. There had been something hot and bright and burning in the cage of his ribs and now it roars and it spreads, and he has to do what he can to contain it. He keeps it clasped tight between his hands, and he kisses Ryo with brazen inexperience that offered his heart in the same way; he only goes so far as to ascertain that Ryo was willing to follow, but even then — the taste of him, the soft mold of his lips, the exaggerated interval of his breath, it all keeps stoking the want in him, of everything, of anything, until it feels almost overpowering, pressing into the back of his skull like a base need.
He wants —
He has so rarely wanted anything before.
Ryo's fingers rake through his hair, running lines against his scalp; he responds at first in a low hum, and then as those fingers tighten to knot into his hair hold him to him, the sound deepens to something almost like a growl, resonant in the hollow of his throat. The hand that had once grazed Ryo's jaw moves to the back of his head, cradling it at the junction with his neck, idly taking note of how the buzzed hair had started to grow back slightly longer. With this slightly different vantage, he kisses him a little more aggressively, seeing to what extent he could be incited. His other hand seeks out the softness of his side, just below the sharp landmark of his ribs; he finds himself slightly annoyed and frustrated at the jumpsuit, not allowing passage that the hem of a shirt might. His hand continues, then, coming to rest splayed against the small of Ryo's back, his fingertips curling ever-so-slightly to give the impression at scratching at him, encouraging the bow of his back and the shifting of his body to meet Akira's as he fixes his posture (which had grown more and more awkward the further this continued). He unfolds himself from where he had been sitting, settling down to where he was far more comfortable, an elbow and a forearm supporting him over where he held Ryo beneath him. He tries to moderate his tempo, and it's evident enough from an occasional sharp increase in heat and intent which he soon leashes and returns, reminding himself that he is patient as he had learned to be, unwilling to budge in his conviction to not take anything more than what was offered.
But as straight-forward as he is, Akira has always been so easy to read.]
While Akira waited, Ryo had taken. Ryo had taken with both of his hands the knowledge that scholars could give him, the accolades and praises they piled upon him. But, such things were empty and such things were aimless. They were passionless affairs – marriages of practicality. With wealth came an easier means to live, came access to what could protect him – them. With recognition came the ability to bring his plans to fruition. A someone, in world that cared to recognize none. But, there had always been a lack of a vital spark. There had always been he absence of a passion in the actions he’d commit. There had always been a pace he’d followed, routines he did not bend. But, Akira – waiting and watching – had broken through all of them.
It had always been Akira, in the end.
No matter what he had told himself, he’d have sought him anywhere. Across oceans, across continents – across a space so fathomless that even Ryo could not comprehend it – he’d have followed in the paths Akira left. He’d have wound up here, beside him, in the shapeless hours that fanned about them in the loose tails of days. He sees what it is that Akira extends to him now, but his fingers don’t curl about it. He sees the shape and the bloom of it, a warm light that sears against him like the synchronicity of breaths, but there is something fixed and solid in the core of him. There is something tentative, where the word in its entirety did not belong. It is a small and fragile thing, a fissure so faint and so deep that even the way that Akira holds him aches, bruises within him like the scrape of harsh stones across the pale face of the moon.
Akira had always likened its shadows to that a rabbit. Each dull and desperate scar across its surface, something soft and timid – tame. He feels his pulse thread at second brush of lips, the third, the countless – each intermittently hungry against his. He’d been kissed with more experience, with more intent, but the blistering sincerity stirs up something in the sediment of him. It slips between his understanding like the soft sounds he can’t quite suppress, breathy and muted. No matter how he tries to swallow them, they spill from him as though Akira had reopened something in him that had never been once opened to begin with – they bubble up, regardless of the attempts he makes. They come even as Ryo feels the sway of his frustrations, the need to touch what he can of him. And perhaps it is less thought than instinct that leads Ryo’s pale hand to wedge its way between them, steady and cool in the way he finds the zipper of his jumpsuit even in the adjustment of Akira’s body, the way he asks for more of Ryo’s nearer to him.
It isn’t artful, but it is precise. He doesn’t hesitate between the gentle shaping of a "here," caught between another kiss. He tugs the zipper down to rest the tab above the dip of his navel, shows to him more skin than he has shown to him years. He's as pale as can be remembered, the whole of him a contrast to the darker garments they'd been forced to wear.
He doesn’t linger. That same hand comes up — trails its fingers into the shallow valleys between his ribs, skims back with the flat of his palm to the broad of his back. It splays there, feeling the working of musculature and the pull of Akira's breath. Like all of Ryo's touches, it isn't meant to ask. It is a shield, a protective and possessive gesture against the darkness that curls around them like a heat. It molds to every inch of him, as Akira molds to every inch of him – a conversation in nerves and taste, as Ryo accepts and gives. Where Akira is inexperienced, Ryo is refined. He guides, as much as he allows the sincerity and newness of Akira’s attempts to wash over him. He suggests, steers with no more than the occasional shudder of breath. People have done this forever, he thinks. People have always wanted and craved and desired to smooth their carnal edges, to cut their teeth against the edge of chemical highs, for some more potent than the crush of powder or the hot weight of a loaded gun. Here, Ryo feels a division of himself. The longer he holds onto the logical process, the more the deprivation of his senses intrudes. Each fumbling and instinctive exploration of his body is like a lit match. Where each touch lands burns like a Roman candle down to the bone, the marrow. It illuminates so briefly where it is Akira moves within the dimness, impresses within him the idea of Akira’s want like the shower of embers after it.
Ryo reaches what he can, tracks the pads of his fingers near the curvature of his spine, moves in sweeps both contemplative and purposeful down each step of vertebrae. Where Akira aims to incite, Ryo finds himself in echo – Akira had always easy to read. Like the passage of waves over sand, dragging furrows into the pale of its skin, Ryo follows his touch like a pale sliver of glass to be smoothed by its dedicated rhythm. At the end, he won’t return the same – but, he never was since Akira had pulled him against him when they were only children. He never had been the same after that, his impossible sharpness (in some ways) rounded to be held by the hands that helped mold him. But, there are some things that Ryo has never managed even under that care. There’s some things that Ryo cannot reach into himself to examine, but he can brush against. He knows the restraint that Akira is exerting here. He feels it in the way he kisses him, in the way each time he reaches back to him – licks up into his mouth, tongue tasting the tip of sharpened canines – that determination is held back, pulled back.
Ryo lets his nails catch, scrape in the next escalation, enough to give permission. He knows more than anyone that Akira would never mean to hurt him, he knows more than anyone that without a lead he would wait at the outskirts of all that he desired before he let himself in. But, Ryo had always been willing to take most of what Akira could have possibly desired to give. Ryo had always been hungry for it, in the smallest and quietest parts of him – he’d starved for it. And though he does not allow himself to admit, Ryo had always given more to Akira than he thought he could possibly care to give.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, that that carries through even here. It shouldn’t be a surprise, that Ryo has no intention to reject what is presented to him in the dark of their quarters – in the small space of his bed. ]
[The vast majority of life itself was tedium. People wouldn't say as much as quickly; optimists would say that each day is a gift and pessimists would decry the tiresome minutia that caught and snagged through the passage of each, but the truth of it all was that a year in one's life was like a book, each day a page opened to and laboriously read. You remembered much of the ones you had just seen, and you could easily find a bit you wanted to remark on further from these, but when weeks and then months compressed into a fine sheaf, you end up finishing the volume and setting it aside. There are a few things you can remember very well; the brain prioritized, using a limited number of marks so they could be found again, set permanently into memory. But everything else was more or less lost. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing — those days were often little more than rote routine, the steady process of survival. It would be wasteful to crowd the mind with thoughts of common meals eaten, chores done, banal conversations had, especially when there are far more meaningful landmarks that would get buried in the crush.
Akira had gone ten years without seeing Ryo, and so few of those felt as though they had much for him to remember. He subdivided time into rare phone calls from his parents, shoes received in the mail, track meets alongside Miki, holiday spreads prepared by the Makimuras. But even these were far and few between, the colors faded and dull, the push and the sway of his thoughts and feelings always muted in the recollection of memory. One can get lulled into sleep-walking through much of their life if they were not careful, and Akira had gone into it willingly — with Ryo having been led by the hand out of his life so long ago and his parents going shortly thereafter, leaving him with the promise to one day catch up, he had been conservative in the way he lived. One day he could fold away these years and largely forget them, because one day he would catch up to those that had gone on ahead of him.
Then life would start for real, as something worth remembering.
Ryo's arrival back into his life had been a jolt out of deep sleep, his consciousness drug back out of him as slow as his name had been upon seeing him, staggered by unfamiliarity and disbelief. Now he was alive again, and along with it came all of its soaring joy and scouring misery, compacted into such a short amount of time that it felt as though time itself warped, each day becoming the length of a year with so much standing out as necessary to be remembered in perfect clarity. Whether it was the chaos and violence that they navigated and weathered back home or the far more subtle menace that seemed to hang over this place, Akira dives into it with all of the dedication and conviction of someone having finally found something to take a stand for. Many shatter themselves into different facets, some specific to face certain aspects of their lives so that the rest might remain hidden, but Akira had never bothered with such a thing; there's a whole-heartedness to everything he does, and there's no difference, whether it's the campaign that they had worked together in back home or how they clung to one another here, for safety and survival.
But this wasn't either of those. It wasn't, but in the way that Akira holds Ryo to him and Ryo moves to match and meet with every change of tempo, he finds that it's no less intrinsic or vital. He may be a fool sometimes, but Akira could read people, and he wouldn't even need such a keen skill in that to be able to pick up on how Ryo responded to each step, each action. There's the briefest shred of a pause after the first time he catches one of the subdued sounds that emit from the guy's throat, but then he surges forward again, the line of his lips curving into a smile as he kisses him deep, as if to chase it to its origin; he feels bright and hot the sharp impulse to move and to do the same to the tender span of his neck, to try to corner the vibration there, to get his teeth against it— he moves past the impulse, but only for now.
He doesn't at first get the purpose of his hand interjected between them; he allows it, lifting his body up a little more away from him, but his attention is quite diverted elsewhere, and it's not until the hand moves once more and he returns to rest now against skin rather than impersonal fabric and Ryo mouths the telling word into his own that he realizes what he'd done. Thrill strikes him like lightning. He lavishes one more kiss on Ryo before separating from him, and he leans back to look over to what Ryo had bore to him, filling the space between them with a hot and ragged breath. He'd never really allowed himself to dwell on the thought, but Ryo is beautiful, the pale skin standing out as plain to him in the colorless dark as the moon breaking through dark clouds. A rough laugh, heh, edges into the tail end of the breath leaving his lungs, and he pulls back the hand that had rested in the small of Ryo's back, this time snaking it around his narrow waist so he could hold him close and bodily move him a bit upwards, coordinating with the hand that still cradled the back of his head so that he could sit him up a bit more against the pillows and the wall. But that's still quite not good enough. He keeps moving — he sits up a bit and moves his knee, which had once rested alongside where Ryo was in the center of the bed, to carefully interject between both of Ryo's. He applies some guiding pressure outwards, wanting for him to give enough space for Akira to comfortably settle between. He couldn't be content anymore with how they were positioned now. His brain remarks simply: he wanted Ryo beneath him, he wanted him around him, he wanted to lose himself in him — he wanted it all and nothing less, and having been given no resistance since he had first pressed his lips back to Ryo's own, he found the building momentum in the back of his skull impossible to deny.
He goes flush against Ryo once more, the palm of his hand feeling maybe a bit too rough as he follows a similar path that Ryo had on his body, following the curving line of his ribcage, fingertips explorative of the soft and vulnerable flesh below, crossing to the broad, smooth planes of his back. His forearm becomes a bar which acts to keep Ryo pressed up against him, and he kisses him again, everything about him open and receptive to each tiny piece of guidance and feedback, and the spaces between he fills with impulse, still seeking out what would pull Ryo from his characteristic composure (already well on its way to being truly shattered regardless), crazily curious to what it would look like, what it would sound like, what it would feel like. They mutually enable one another into a dangerous cycle, Akira's breathing whipping up sharp and fast, falling into the patterns of the fingertips tracing the delineations of muscle and bone along his back, and how whenever he reminds himself of himself, Ryo seems to notice and to pursue, his tongue purposeful against the sharp edge of his teeth, his nails seeming either to grant permission or to dare as they drag sharply down his back.
Akira presses a low moan into Ryo's mouth at this and then, surprisingly — stops kissing him, though only to move his mouth to the corner of his jaw, where it joins with his neck, just below his ear. As he presses his mouth to the spot, his tongue hot against the skin, his voice rasping slightly in his breath, the hand at the back of Ryo's head tilts so that he would bare more of his throat toward him. He draws back again for just a moment, his lips another sharp smile, a laugh implied in his tone as he finds his voice for the first time in quite a few minutes.] Fuck, Ryo, [and he presses another messy kiss just beneath the line of his jaw, following it away from his throat.] They teach you stuff like this in America?
[The lilt in his tone paints it as a joke. As if he'd give up a chance to rib at him a little bit.
And he doesn't give him too much time to comfortably answer, continuing to press his mouth along the line of his jaw, just once the keen edge of teeth grazing — though only for the briefest of moments before he moves down, seeking out the thrum and the warmth of the blood rushing through the vulnerable space of his neck. He likes the smell, sweet and enticing even beneath the skin. He kisses him here too, rough and unrestrained, the hand at the back of Ryo's head finally relinquishing him to slowly drag blunt fingernails along the path of his spine to the space between his shoulderblades. Within him rages a stark dichotomy: the furious desire to move forward at as quick of a pace as he could manage, and yet another that refused to give up what he had been given, insistent on taking each new thing and pressing it carefully into his memory so that he would not forget. Patience and impatience, each playing in different ways in his actions and his reactions, waging an internal war that would, at some point, be won, one way or another.]
[ For all the momentum that Ryo brings, he has no realization of who it is for.
Since the beginning, he'd paced himself relentlessly. No matter the challenges that stood in his way, he'd torn through them with dangerous precision, his peculiar ambition a knife's point. No matter how deeply he struck at the root of it, it never bled answers from the whole of its source. It wouldn't, so long as he looked away. But, he'd come to Akira anyway. He'd returned to him in the humid stretch of days, summer in Japan a lumbering and languid thing that stuck to the skin like a curse. Akira had been the only one he had really seen in the mess, a slip of a figure in the shell of a boat. He'd been the only one who mattered to him at all, his name bright and welcomed off his tongue, as though Ryo had never left him at all.
In that world that had fallen apart, the Ryo back then had known he the only one he could trust. The Ryo now knows that he will be the only one he ever does, all tensions and cautions the human body would usually bring to proximity lost to Akira's hands, his earnest direction. He feels the full pause of Akira's scrutiny as he pushes back. He knows where his gaze lingers, touches. Ryo is not shy, but desire when laid bare is tempting, heady. He breathes around the unsteady tempo of his heart, the prickle of something Ryo doesn't have the mind to examine a cool rush in contrast to the way his body hums. Ryo doesn't fight Akira's insistence, but cooperates as he's always done. Ryo yields, as Akira yields, his legs framing Akira's as he settles in between them, the bruising force behind his kisses greeted with the graze of blunter teeth.
It's base and it's gentle, in that Akira has always been gentle. Ryo sees the contrast, as he would have seen the smiles he gives against his mouth, the impression of it there even he can no longer feel it. Akira's arm about his waist is an anchor and a brace, something that keeps Ryo from losing the actuality of what is occurring — a reminder of who it is and what Ryo will always allow in the muted parts of himself. Akira had always been allowed the breadth of himself, in all ways that he could permit. Whether it was the weight of Ryo's hand in his, the truth of his words, or the protection he could spare — Akira had gotten it all.
And so, even when he teases him, Ryo knows full well he'd expected nothing else. The laugh asks for his, but his own have always been rare. It shows up in the way his eyes lid, the way his hands draw back to settle against the angles of his face, in the faint curve of his lips — the pass of his tongue at the corner, the numbness left in Akira's wake something at once peculiar and satisfying. ]
Maybe, [ he breathes, in the spaces he's permitted. The fingers of one hand graze like a kiss against the underside of Akira's jaw as he bears the pale of his throat to him. He curls them at the junction, the soft shadows beneath the shell of Akira's ear, brushes the backs of knuckles along the nape of his neck. Akira's skin is warmer than his own. Each point of contact burns, but Ryo finds himself curling toward the source as if a snake in summer heat. He suns himself beneath the singular point of Akira's attention, his next exhalation a tremble of a thing as Akira tastes the skin he willingly gives to him with the compliant tilt of his head. The graze of teeth draws a shudder out of him, a closed circuit from head to foot, and he bites at the inside of his own cheek to keep the full of it to himself. It's a murmur, a moan, trapped against the back of his teeth — sharp and sweet against his tongue. There are no words to play it off. He wouldn't be able to retrieve them. They scatter further out as Akira laves attention along the steady rush of his pulse, his own hand turning to run over the round of his shoulder — for once hot as it the other comes to pair it, the flat of his nails an implication, a potential promise to bite and brandish, so light as they are now.
He'd helped make this body, the one that keeps him willing and captive. He'd helped create it, with the pulse of bodies like the pulse of music, a battle cry for all that made them alive and wanting. But, Akira had always been a thing that had lit up the dark. Akira had always been brilliant and sensitive in all the ways that Ryo needed after traveling so long and so alone in the vast expanse of nothingness, the consuming world of sea and salt. Akira had always been brighter than even he, his own glow cold and absent in comparison. There was no real charm in someone like him, his beauty and intelligence a mask for the ugly things beneath. As though he were marble, only the surface was polished to hide the veins of impurities that cut through the whole of his being.
But, Akira hadn't minded them. Akira had embraced them, taken them in stride to ease. And each time Akira did, a little more of himself fell away. A little more of what Ryo had been had mended, had molded into something else as though he were clay staining the hands of the one who found him. It's an inevitability, as much as Akira singes at his edges with promise of alternatives that not all the world dangled the blade of pendulum above him.
It wasn't that way, but Akira holds him as much Ryo holds to him, ingrains the topography of muscle and bone into memory. Even as Akira's nails scrape in much the way his own do now in reflex, he finds himself swallowing the shape of Akira's name — pulled up from the core of him, the resulting break of his breath and the shallow arch of his back a give against the ache Akira's nails drag up in their wake. ]
[If they were completely aware of the situation and what had happened, many would probably wonder why. Out of all of the people Ryo had come into contact with over the last ten years, of all of those people so brilliant and so well-connected, why had he chosen to go back to Japan? To find some no one kid in the middle of Tokyo, someone with no remarkable scores in academics, no considerable strength in athletics? It might seem like a mistake, some sort of sentimental misstep which would only hinder the cause he sought to accomplish. Akira had never quite seen it that way, though. It had been a surprise, sure, but as soon as he'd been swept up into Ryo's arms, driven away in the passenger seat of his car, had it explained to him what was going on and what they would need to do, it'd all seemed to click into place. Of course it would be him. Just as Ryo trusted in Akira, he found he trusted no one else in the world as easily as he did him. So he had agreed easily, leaving all other considerations and cautions behind, never once giving much credence to the internal questioning of, "why me?" Because he knew the answer.
He had only wished that he could've been of more use to Ryo, and then he had been given a body that could. Funny how things work out like that sometimes.
There are similar veins which run through this, the gradual escalation of physical intimacy, the rising of the heat between them, the somewhat dischordant crescendo of breath. He doesn't find questions or concerns tugging at him now, their tangling lines easily severed by truth which swelled in his chest, burned in his gut, pressed down against the bow of his shoulders like a thousand pounds of weight. It doesn't feel to him that something monumentous has suddenly shifted and changed. No, it feels more apt to say that they were now finally acknowledging a thread which connects them — one which they had been turning a blind eye to for so long it was difficult to know how long it had been there to start. And so it is a part of them, as individuals and also as they were drawn into one relationship, but yet it was also still so bright, so thrilling, so new.
Akira hums as Ryo's hands move to frame his face, the sound softer and gentler than others, fond and light; he slows in what he is doing at the attention, but only slightly. He isn't sure what it is about the way the touch moves across his face, the line of his jaw, the curve of his ear, the line of his neck — feather-light, fleeting, fully intentional — but it's crazily intimate to him, raising goosebumps along the back of his neck, causing his eyes to grow heavily-lidded and then close. He gives one more singular, warm laugh into the soft space beneath Ryo's jaw, and he jokingly mouths the word, "maybe," into a breath before continuing on.
He has been attentive, paying close attention. Akira had always been a poor student when it came to marks on tests, but he was a savant at reading people, and he wouldn't have even required such a skill to be able to take full note of the responses both he and Ryo gave to the touch of mouths, tongues, hands. Teeth. It's funny — it'd been an accident. A slight miscalculation, the product of still getting used to a body that was markedly different from the one he'd had for sixteen years in nearly every single way. But as the keen edge of his teeth skates along Ryo's skin and he feels him, all of him, waver beneath him, a crushed sound stopping against the cruel gates of lips and teeth, Akira slows. He stops, looking up from where he'd stooped to the tender flesh of his neck, looking at Ryo's face. For a brief moment he stares in the darkness, weighing what he could do and what he should do, feeling the hands sweeping along the broad planes of his back to rest at his shoulders, the bite of nails little more than an insinuation, though perhaps they were more of a promise.
Akira's hands move as he lowers his attention back to Ryo's neck. The hand at his back follows the line of his spine from just below his shoulder-blades towards the small of his back, sensing the tension and the sway to it, reinforcing the curve and allowing no space between them. The one resting at his nape moved to cup his face at the curve of his jaw, almost mimicking what had been done to him a few moments before. But Akira is no instrument made for delicacy or sublety; the movement is gentle yet flat in its simplicity, the fingers moving past the shell of his ear towards his hair, the meat of his thumb resting soft near the point of his chin. But here is where the intention deviates and becomes clear. His hand provides gentle pressure, faint encouragement, for his mouth to open — Akira demands nothing, insists on nothing, only ever moving to make request. If accepted, the pad of his thumb runs along the range of his teeth.
They had been cruel gates, after all. Frustrating. Akira had felt robbed. He wants it all, but he wants it given to him.
His mouth falls to kiss at Ryo's neck again, lips and tongue slow and languid, stretching out whatever tension he could make. And then he brings his teeth down into the soft, fair skin. He doesn't even do so with much force — certainly not enough to bruise, though the wicked points of his sharpened canines don't need very much at all to pierce such tender skin. He hadn't really anticipated that, nor the sensation of it, something which fans a flame riotous and primal, one which causes him to draw in a breath through his nose and immediately roll his hips against Ryo's, the movement fluid and purposeful. It's a fire that feeds itself. The need only grows, becomes sharp, becomes painful. It's with a sizable moan that he presses even closer to him, crushing him to his body, his tongue thick and hot as it passes over the torn skin. The taste of the blood beading there was also something he hadn't expected — the smell had always been sweet, but it's like honey in his mouth, one which marries the heat in the pit of his gut with the energy which pooled in need in his hips; they roll again against Ryo's, that need immediate, approaching the edge of desperation.]
[ Akira had always been the only one to consider him.
And so, Akira had been the only person Ryo'd ever considered at all. Akira, in all his presumed unremarkable nature, was the least unremarkable of all. Socially, personally, it shouldn't have been that way according to his image, appearance. He shouldn't have been close enough to feel even the barest brush of Ryo's attention, but Akira had always had it all. And Ryo had never questioned it, even if others would. Akira was every kind and delicate thing that Ryo was not. He was playful and inquisitive, genuine in his expressions. He was the only person who had ever cried for him, a child who knew nothing of himself and still knows nothing at all. But, Ryo had always wanted to keep him close. He had always wanted to shield him from all that would harm him — by the box-cutter in his hand as children, the use of his fists. He still remembers the small sun of Akira's relief when Ryo had "found" his shoes in the pile of those who had bullied him, his scraped knuckles and bruised palms tucked behind his back. He still recalls the way he'd pulled Akira into his arms after the conclusion of years, the muzzle of his gun still smoking at the docks. He'd kept it crossed against them, an additional warn to those who would have pulled him from him.
His body had been different then, but he is still Akira even now as Ryo feels out the way Akira's body responds to each touch. As his eyes start to adjust, he can make out the gray of his angles, softened as Akira hums. He can feel the rise of gooseflesh across the back of Akira's neck as his fingers move. He can feel the fan of his breath, the shape of his laugh, the seared impression of a facetious "maybe," written into his skin.
He needed Akira. He'd always needed him, even if that thought won't be pulled to the surface by the wake of Akira's kisses, the trail of his nails in echo of Ryo's earlier explorations. Ryo had needed him since he'd washed ashore, an integral and answering part of him that (if pulled) would tear apart the already crumbling foundations. Akira Fudo was like ivy, so deeply embedded in the mortar of what made Ryo Asuka what he was that the absence of Akira was the absence of all that Ryo Asuka could be or ever was. It's an odd and unknowable ache that roots behind his ribs as Akira pauses in the aftermath of nails against his back — the test of teeth against his throat in fumbling error.
He knows what Akira is putting together. He knows it as soon as he feels the weight of his eyes on him, the way his skin prickles from the sudden lack of contact. The air of the room is cooler than the brush of Akira's lips and Ryo reflexively shivers from the sudden fluctuation, the directive glide of Akira's rougher palm across his nape and across his jaw. But, some truths are more difficult and some truths are more acceptable and Ryo finds a tendril of hesitation in himself before he relents to the pressure of Akira's thumb. He lets Akira feel the swell of his lip, the border of his teeth. He'd tried to keep to himself the contradictory vocalizations that rose up in him, the faceted reasons he couldn't explain (or wouldn't) tangled up within it. He minds himself to curb them, even as Akira takes the knowledge he is given like a flame to the cast of complexity, the way forward in the dark.
Humans work within the realm of reward, of consequence. Akira tests the bounds of it with the slow pass of his lips and tongue again across the tender flesh of his neck, bared to him without thought. For all those favorable reactions, they craved it until there was no room for more. They took their fill of it, as Akira takes his fill of it and Ryo lets him, the first burst of pain like a low chord struck. It strings through the whole of him, washes each thought out with a physiological insistence — a libidinous thrumming both searing and pleasurable, head jerking up into the hold of his palm.
The sound he makes is fragile, splintering thing. It breaks over his teeth and tongue in a rush, something that gives more than it should and shows more than it might as he brackets him with the lift of his knees and hook an ankle across the back of his legs. Instinct has always been tidal, roaring and retreating, and Ryo's body leans into the heady way it surges forward, the cant of his hips into the grind of Akira's enough to drag the air from his lungs. Each exhalation scrapes against the darkness of the room, punctures the full of what Ryo knows himself to be.
Pain and pursuit have always been integrally linked. It's a flood of endorphins, the components of fight and flight, the conversion of serotonin and melatonin. They slot together as they do, so close that there is no definitive line between them. In the pitch, Ryo can only feel where the heat of his body ends and where Akira's begins, a warmth incomparable to any that he'd ever endured before.
The nails of one hand bite into the line of his shoulders, the other traveling in a hot sweep down the broad plain of his back. Like the flush of alcohol, of drugs — it's difficult for to form linear thought as his inhalations stagger in the next desperate roll of Akira's hips, but he does. It's just enough to make his palm come to rest against the back of his hip, thumb pressed to the dip of his spine. The scant material that presses across the skin here is a detraction from what is needed, the more apt conclusion. He knows what Akira wants. He knows what it is he's been wanting, the tips of his fingers skimming under just enough to pass along the crest of his hipbone, press against it with the full of his fingertips. They pin.
Go ahead, is the message. Go ahead, is what is written in the tip of Ryo's tongue pressed flat to the meat of Akira's thumb, tasting the rough of the skin, curling against its contour. ]
[It is a unique feeling, to be needed. Before Ryo, Akira had never felt it so strongly, so distinctly. There was one's family, sure, but that seemed an entirely different sort of connection — in that sort of structure, each individual was like a digit on a hand, and one might not feel it particularly needed another, because it was often taken for granted that they were all part of the same whole. But Ryo had been a different, alien thing, and even though weeks and months couldn't entirely erode the wall that he built between himself and other people, Akira had figured out ways to circumvent it. He knew where the few cracks and loose bricks were located, where he could most easily reach out to Ryo in the few ways that he knew how to. He had never changed him, but he had never wanted to. For two creatures so starkly different they had proved adamant to learn to understand one another, decoding personal tells and body language, creating a dialect that existed between them and no one else.
It had developed between them a sort of mutual reliance that would permit crossing oceans, braving beds of demons, and combing through increasingly dangerous Tokyo streets. It is its own sort of madness, because to need someone and to feel needed (or, perhaps to need the feeling of being needed) was dangerous, potentially addictive. After over ten years of being a son left behind and an addition to a family that he did love but also did not truly belong to, the strident tenacity with which Ryo had pursued him had seemed a contrast, a bright light after so long in the dark. Though he had people he cared for, no one else held such a single-minded dedication to him, and it inspired the same to well up in his own chest, overflowing from his sensitive, sentimental heart.
He hadn't known (or, perhaps, simply hadn't known for sure) that this which he kept bottled up within the cage of his chest could be fed, could be heated, could be coaxed into a roiling boil which set his blood to simmer, seeking out whatever pathways it could for escape. Akira is an instinctual creature. He does not calculate, he does not plan. He pursues his pleasure down primal pathways, mindful of his own desires, sure, but also keenly attentative for what seemed to enkindle Ryo's. It's not in Akira's nature to be selfish, and he seems to find just as much (if not more) gratification in shattering the impossible composure that he had pictured Ryo with for so long, though it's a gray sort of boundary he crosses as he manipulates Ryo into parting his lips, opening his mouth; it's challenging something he personally doesn't understand, as unabashed of a creature he is, but it stands as an invitation to him to shed such concerns. If Ryo had refused, he would have let it go, trusting in him to draw his own boundaries — but he did not. Akira smiles, the brush of his fingers past Ryo's ear growing more gentle and considerate, an appreciative sort of caress. Whether it was something he truly agreed to or just something he conceded to him for him, Akira decides not to worry — the minutiea were less important, unnecessary when time itself felt short and pressing (though they had all the time in the world).
It's not something he would have done otherwise. Akira has few inhibitions, but the one he holds fast to was that he would refuse to use this body in any way that would hurt Ryo, but — this becomes a far foggier situation at the reaction his body had to the sharpness of teeth against delicate skin, how malleable he felt beneath the occasional strong direction of his hands. Those concerns were subdued and then washed away, replaced by the echo of the noise which escapes Ryo kept purposefully reverberating in his mind, sharp and breathless with the shock of it yet underscored with the saturation of pleasure; the blaze Akira's been keeping contained roars inside of him, wild and desperate. It all happens at once then: Ryo's knees rising to lock at his sides, the nails biting into his shoulder, the way his body seems to pursue the same sort of blunted relief that Akira's does, accompanied by the increased tempo of breath which had grown (and he had grown it this way) rough and fraying, less and less content with the rules of the game as they were so far. Accompanied by the path of the hand across his back, to his waist, continuing to the bony landmark of his hip, bypassing the thin material to press to —
All at once Akira stops, or all except for the shudder that it sent up the column of his spine, the slightly choked sound lodging in his throat. Over the last few minutes he had stretched himself taut, tense and yearning, a circuitous storm kept penned inside of him until — well, he didn't have an until because he didn't think that far ahead, always only pursuing the next step of what was directly in front of him. But what was directly in front of him now — the concurrent insistence of Ryo's fingers and the way he tongues over the pad of his thumb suddenly derail him, as if asking for an answer he didn't quite yet have. He breathes in a short, ragged gasp, the exhale escaping as an affected,] Ryo, [lifting himself away from him just enough to create some space between them, searching out his eyes in the dark. Akira's own are molten with want but simultaneously churning with a vague uncertainty — not with what he wanted to do (because he had no end to what he felt right now that he wanted to do), but how exactly it would be done. He is all broad strokes of instincts and desires and none of the specifics or details, and the result is tension causing the barrier of his skin to grow thin and stressed against what it fought to keep contained inside of him.]
What — [he moves the hand that had held fast to his jaw carefully down the line of his neck, thumb leaving a cool trail of saliva, and as it reaches the hollow of his throat it follows the pathway of his collarbone, arriving to almost aimlessly tug at the fabric of the clothing which still (maddeningly, infuriatingly) kept most of Ryo's body from him. He rediscovers what he'd been trying to ask as he does so.] What should I... [Why the fuck is this so difficult to phrase? Akira is an unabashed creature but now he feels a hot frustration wash down over his shoulders, aggravated at his own piecemeal ineptitude. (Maybe his porn search history should've had a little more variety.) With his point made at the shoulder of his jumpsuit he searches out the zipper that Ryo had pulled down to his navel a few moments ago, tugging it down as best he could before it caught against a fold in the fabric. A rumble issues from deep in his chest; instead he reaches to splay his hand hot against the fluttering flesh of Ryo's stomach, moving it downwards incrementally. His breathing is picking back up again, sounding more like a pant than anything else; he's desperate to move his hips for the possibility of outlet for all of this kept pent-up inside of him, desperate for anything.]
Just tell me what to do. [The words leave him all in a heated rush, in a single issue of the bellows of his breath, but they ring more like a plea. Because Ryo would know, and he would — he always does.]
[ Humans had always communicated with the full of their bodies.
Whether it was with the subtle dip of their shoulders, the tilt of their head, the brush of their hands — Ryo could discern intention but cared little to discern the emotions behind it. It hadn’t mattered to him, as much as Akira had mattered to him. In the past, pressed into the corners of clubs with the thrum of music like a secondary heart, he didn’t care at all of what else others may have wanted at the end of a handful of moments they though they had him to themselves. Ryo would never admit the adjustments he’d made, the dissatisfied conclusions he’d come up with. What was the point of doing something so base, beyond ingrained imperative?
He never found an answer. Or, perhaps, he’d looked to untangle the knots within himself with the wrong hands, the wrong touch, the wrong press of lips against the pale of his skin like a brand. It was all only a means to reproduce, for some a way to release stress. For others, it was pleasure for pleasure’s sake, but – Akira’s hand is gentle. He feels the rough of his fingers at his hairline. His stomach lurches, in ways he can’t identify as the implication of a smile rests in the gesture. He almost flinches from the flare of vulnerability he feels, but Akira keeps him pinned and Akira keeps him occupied with the sear of his mouth, the snag of his teeth across flesh.
Akira had always been the only fixture in his life. Beyond Jenny, Akira had been the only one he wanted to grant his attentions to. He’d been the only one at all that he could seek out, would think to seek out — would risk the world with, the thread tied about its circumference a messy web between their too young hands.
But, here, the urgency singes differently. It circles the periphery, but the unspooling of time is ineffable and incalculable. To stay here, in this space they now occupy, could be as endless as the events that spun about them allowed, but sex was an urge. It was a driving force for many. And impatience and patience clips at Akira’s heel as Ryo inspires in him a pause so profound that he seeks him out.
Akira, he tries, though it is only his lips that move about the rise and fall of syllables. The sound does not follow, caught up in his lungs like the hot burn of smoke. It makes his eyes flutter in the sudden and unbidden absence of Akira’s weight, his eyebrows knitting for the briefest of moments before he knows innately, what it is that Akira needs. Before he can formulate it with his tongue, before he can say it with the full of his body, Ryo puzzles out the shape of it and understands it in the way that he can understand it – an unknown territory, a word unable to be read, a hypothesis unable to be supported even despite the full of one’s desires. He could have guessed. But, there’s no frustration that digs into the full of him. There is no ridicule. It’s only — ]
Akira, [ he starts again, his name like a worried stone in his mouth. He knows the shape of it intimately, the rounded edges of it — light and sweet against his tongue. Even if his voice frays in ways rawer than tender around the effort it takes to draw air into his lungs, Akira’s trepidation signals the same actions it always does. He’d always been there to ground Akira, assure him, as much as Akira had assured Ryo in ways he could not and still cannot allow himself to understand.
But, that shudder has stoked something hungry and silent in him — the cool of his exterior there, but thawing underneath. He can’t stem the inevitable way it will fissure in places, the few and scattered times he’d done this strange in comparison. It’d been a curiosity, an itch. This — he shoves the thought aside, focuses with the remaining restraint he keeps lashed about himself. ]
We'll handle this first, [ he breathes out, his words catching against shorter exhalations — the impression of Akira's form bracketing him in. He feels comfortable beneath him like this, surrounded in the warmth that was distinctly his. Ryo feels out the shape of him with the hand that’s dipped beneath the only fabric left, maps the harder lines of his body and down the musculature of an arm. Ryo's hand, imbued with the heat he'd stolen from him, rests over the one that trails the soft skin of his stomach. The muscles beneath the rough of Akira's palm flutter and clench and Ryo can just make out the tension that threads through him. He curls his fingers beneath the meat of Akira's palm, gives it a directive nudge toward the teeth of the zipper. The hand at Akira’s shoulder lingers, before lifting and lowering to rest against the sheets. He leans up on his elbow then, mindful, presses his lips to the corner of his mouth. Akira smells sharp, heady. Ryo catches the scent of him again, similar and dissimilar to the Akira he’d always known as he breathes in, slow and thin and steadying. He can feel the material of his jumpsuit dip, the way it pools off one shoulder to follow to the crook of the elbow he rests on. This close, he can see the desperation that fans through Akira like a flame, that rests in his expression like a familiar scripture, something different in the way that an encounter with Akira impacts him. It scrapes against the surface of all that Ryo is like the pale shell of the moon. He lowers the lift of his knees, but keeps their legs tangled – his ankle strokes down the back of his calf. He feels the tension here too and he doesn’t think at all as he kisses him once and fleetingly, the hand that guides Akira’s dipping beneath what little the fabric of his jumpsuit has left to hide. He leaves it against the hotter skin of his hip. It’s an invitation to make good on what he says, what he suggests. ]
It's okay, [ he leaves against Akira's skin. I have you, is there too, a muted thing that curls between them as he pulls back just enough to see him. The weight of Akira’s gaze is almost sears him in how much it desires and the hand that had once instructed lifting. His fingers, once so cool, trace the newer angles of Akira’s face. Like this, Ryo can almost see him clearly in the dark and he takes a breath, primal impulse bearing down against logical process like a rock thrown offshore. Eventually, even that would be worn away beneath the unwavering heat that’s hooked into his gut. Arousal is a long process, a constellation of fragmented sentences and chemicals strung together into a complex and instinctual narrative. What Ryo feels now is just that, an evolutionary weave and a biological imperative – encoded in the language his genetics has left. That constancy and certainty steadies him, though the proclamation Akira had issued hums through him like a current, like the barometric dip of atmospheric pressure before a storm comes it. Ryo aches in a way that’s bone deep and painful, his heartrate stuttering with each smaller move Akira makes, the evidence of his want in the way Akira speaks to him, presses close to him. Ryo shifts beneath him, a short and shivering stretch that comes as reflex. ] Once that's off, lie down on your side. [ His eyes lid against the way he presses his own hip into the manipulated curve of Akira’s palm. ] Face me.
[ It will have to do for now, he knows. Until he can tell him of anything else, it's better to start without further wait. ]
Don't be afraid to touch me, [ he continues in a murmur. The hand that frames Akira’s face snakes downward in demonstration, down along the column of his throat, along the front of his chest. It rests briefly there, feeling the pace of Akira’s heart beneath his skin. Fast, like his own, with the steady stream of adrenaline. It must be as loud, he knows, in Akira’s ears. It must be just as unbearable to strain to hear over, but — Ryo’s hand continues to firmer plain of his abs, sweeps over the hardness of muscle there with a sort of reverence for what they’ve made of him. ] You're familiar with yourself, aren't you? [ Ryo’s hand isn’t shy, doesn’t halt with uncertainty. Akira had asked, plainly and openly. And Ryo had translated it, in the markers of language Akira’s body and voice left across his own.
It’s a narrow space to work with, the back of his own hand brushing up against himself as much as Akira. He swallows an immediate hitch of breath, the smooth of his palm molding with gentle conviction against the press of Akira’s cock against the tight of the briefs he wears. His fingers drag against the thick of its outline, the pad of his thumb angled to press just beneath the head. He swallows reflexively, the pink of his tongue touching against the corner of his own mouth. ] Treat me like that, [ he says, his voice more a singular bloom of breath. He doesn’t look away, his eyes trained on where he knows Akira’s must be. He keeps his own body still, strokes Akira once and slow through the scant material. The corners of his lips catch against something softer, almost indiscernible in the dim and against the shallows of his inhalations, exhalations. ] I trust you.
[ And he does. He always has. Since the moment he’d pulled his cold body to him, wrapped his arms around the frame that had been without touch for as long as Ryo could recall. Akira had always been careful, had never intruded. He’d waited for Ryo, with his hand outstretched. He’d closed so many distances, even if Ryo could not fully read the scope and depth of it. Even if he could not admit to himself the entirety of it, a small and fragile thing a splinter between his ribs, angled at his heart.
I trust you. ]
Edited (there... now i can be shy and die forever) 2018-06-17 19:24 (UTC)
[What he was gave him a unique perspective here — the crush of the dark was something which seemed to accept him as a piece of it, settling against the shape of his body like a thick cloak, giving way to him so that he could see before him Ryo painted in the grayscale of night. Even without the word escaping from him audibly he could read it upon his lips, and it is — it always is, though in differing tones and capacities — something that surges through his blood like a rush of adrenaline; the care and attention he gave each syllable of his name always tugged at his heart, focused his mind, grasped at all of the disparate parts of himself and drew them together to once again coalesce. In a way, Akira's vulnerability had been a bizarre strength of his — when worn so openly, bared with such sincerity to a world so interested in hiding every perceived flaw, it twisted into a kind of inverse aegis. People attacked insecurities that they saw in others. It was something embedded in human society that demanded uniformity and conformity, but when those insecurities were not exactly that, when they were flaws that were understood and accepted and worn as plainly anything else, they resisted that sort of attention. He had simply been fortunate, because to be straight-forward had always felt natural to him, and it had only just worked out that it would one day protect him in certain ways from those that would see him hurt. What he presented to Ryo now, the vulnerability of ignorance, was something that fluttered as nerves in the pit of his gut for just a second, but then it was gone, all too easy to give into the personal assurance that his friend would never draw judgments, that he would only ever try to supply the aid sought when approached. Just as Akira would do, if the situation were reversed.
Ryo's lips move again, this time producing the sound of his name; Akira's eyes glint in the dark, and he shifts ever-so-slightly before settling once more in a quiet affirmation, an acknowledgment that he was paying rapt attention. There's a warm, "mm," embedded in one of the shortened breaths that escapes him at the directive, though he catches and stalls when Ryo's hand moves, the purposeful path of it underlining and accentuating the tension that worked its way throughout the musculature of his body. Whatever path his own hand might have been aimlessly forging stops as he feels the touch trailing down the length of his arm, coming to rest over the top of his hand — Ryo's hands always seem so much smaller, so much more delicate than his own, but with the way his fingers search out the spaces between his fingers and hook through them towards his palm, he realizes that such observations were trite and petty, because regardless of the truth of it it was Ryo that took hold of him with patience and precision. Akira relinquishes the control willingly, always so accepting and trusting of the guidance Ryo had given to him. He takes a moment to rectify what his frustration had before stymied him, the measuredness that Ryo's guidance steadying him to draw the zipper down toward its terminal without accidental snag against rumpled fabric, all as Ryo lifts himself onto the support of his elbow, allowing the clothing still clinging around his shoulders to fall away. The entire exchange is so slow, so methodical, there's something almost choreographed about it, down to the light kiss that he pressed to the corner of Akira's mouth. The spot seems to burn even after he moves away, the casual intimacy of the gesture clamoring in the base of his skull, eliciting a resounding ache in the center of his chest.
As with any dance one sought to teach to another, there was the guidance and the demonstration, then the gap which was left for the follow-through, the accumulation of understanding gained throughout the process. His eyes lid in a slow blink as Ryo stretches out his legs to tangle with own, missing just for a moment the second ephemeral kiss given to him — his lips move to shape around Ryo's, following a swell from his heart, but he leans away and Akira merely preserves the feeling, marking it for later. With his hand left against Ryo's hip, he finds the pad of his thumb absent-mindedly tracing the crest of bone there as he reaches up with his other hand to help with the other sleeve, tugging it off of his shoulder and slowly pulling it down his arm, which had been too busy guiding him to shed the unnecessary layer, and away from his body. It's okay. Akira's eyes had been tracking along the shape of his body, the lines of his arms, but his attention returns to Ryo's face now, some of the intensity having grown a little more soft, a little more out-of-focus for the time being. His head tilts ever-so-slightly into the touch to his face; he doesn't look down as both of his hands come to Ryo's hips, the movements strong and careful as he shucks the jumpsuit away from him, down along the soft lines of his thighs. He knows he wouldn't be able to get it much further than that — not with the way they're situated, with the chaos their legs were thrown into — but it was at the very least functional. He leans closer to him again, as if by gravitational pull to the nearly-unmarred bared skin, the space between them hot and weighted down by the mutual intent and desire otherwise tempered by the faintly ponderous exchange that was not yet concluded.
Each tiny shift or shudder that runs through Ryo's body goes throughout the entirety of his own — he feels it now, causing his breath to leave him in a brisk exhale, his hands once more coming to rest at the familiar landmarks of Ryo's hips, his palms warm and rough as they rove slowly over his sides, fingers slipping towards his back idly, if not only for the sensation of grasping him there. He is talking again, and Akira's eyes lift once more to watch, blinking in faint surprise — as it's not what he would've anticipated, but he has no questions, no qualms in simply doing as he was instructed. He moves forward to kiss Ryo, a long yet singular act, the full drag of his tongue over his lips.] Okay. [The simple, short word felt thick as it passed from his throat, falling from his lips much lower than it might usually. His head dips down to his neck, towards the side of him that he'd bitten before — the torn skin still bleeds, though not much, and he finds the thought that, don't want to stain, sluggishly and foolishly working through his mind, held perhaps as an excuse he might use to swipe his tongue along the trail of blood, eyes lidding at the heavy, cordial taste. He doesn't dwell on it, treating this as just one more part of the choreography as he maneuvers himself onto his side, kept levered up by his elbow, still not allowing too much space between them as his eyes search out Ryo's face in the dark once more.
The path that Ryo's hand finds down the front of his body is one left prickling in the absence of touch — he always feels a bit cool to the touch, though most people were, simply in the difference between them and Akira's naturally-warmer body temperature, fanned even hotter now, with arousal and passion causing his rapidly-beating heart to force the circulation of his blood to a fever's pitch. The rush of it was loud, a demanding force in his ears, pushing at the back of his skull, but it — actually wasn't that hard to keep at bay, not with Ryo to focus on, with the movement of his hand and the sound of his voice. It cut through everything else, through the riot that desire and impulse were waging in this body of his. With someone else, it might've been more difficult to focus, to keep chained instincts of his that might grow too much for him to properly control, but with Ryo... he has years of experience clinging to his every word, watching the expertise of his hands. It makes it easy in comparison.
He follows the directive. As Ryo continues speaking, with the thoughtful pauses stringing themselves between the statements, Akira's hand roams up from its place on the ridge of his hipbone, pressing for a moment into the soft flesh at his side before going further upward to trace the tips of his fingers in the defined gaps in his ribs. He gives himself a reminder to try to force him to eat more later — he never really seems to. The path continues, palm warm and rough as it crosses over his chest, passing over the rise of his nipple toward the bony architecture of his collarbone, the pads of his fingers tracing the line of it, the forms of the muscles there. His skin is so smooth, so soft, and despite how faintly cool he feels, he can also feel the occasional leap and twinge at his touch — it elicits an almost childlike wonder and excitement in him, the simple unbridled joy of power under his hand.
But... he would never say it, and it only crosses over his face in a single moment where his brows knit together, but — he doesn't think he entirely agrees. Not with what Ryo says, not with the idea of treating him like he treats himself. To Akira, these were two totally different, incongruous scenarios, so far separate they might as well have an ocean between them. With himself, it was just a means to an end, whatever he found made it easier to achieve the pleasure of release and the relief of the lifting of the burden arousal (which it certainly felt like, sometimes, but certainly didn't feel the same way to him now, feeling instead like something both borrowed and shared). It was entirely impersonal. There was none of the gentleness to it, none of the care and consideration that he found easing into his every motion here, far more absorbed in Ryo and the affects he had upon him than the same for his own body (because he knows that would follow). He was so much more entranced in this, in the intensely intimate and interconnected personal nature of it — it heightened everything, underlined everything, bringing him already far more satisfaction even before they'd even really started than anything else had given him beforehand.
He anticipated where Ryo's hand would end up — or perhaps his body had merely yearned so much for it that it had bled over into expectations — but regardless of that source, he found he couldn't have properly prepared himself for it. At first the pressure of his palm is a vague and formless thing through the thin fabric, and even that is enough to cause his lungs to suddenly draw in a soft gasp of air, holding onto it out of the shock of a sensual tenderness that only grew more and more pronounced as the fingers curled to find the shape of him. Akira once again goes completely still, even the air held in his lungs, the hand which he'd begun to trail back down Ryo's side. The careful press of his thumb releases him from his momentary paralysis — his cock twitches in Ryo's hand, his body unlocking in a quaking shudder, and the sound that catches and then breaks in his throat is smaller and more delicate than those that had come before it, belonging to him, sure, but also to the person he had been, separate from everything that had changed him. His breath, once again freed from its momentary captivity, exists as faintly ragged pants pressed into the small space between him. His eyes are very nearly closed as he continues, his voice warm and soft like silk, accompanied by the slow stroke up and down his length; Akira's voice is little more than a rattle in the already rough-edged cycle of air in and out of his lungs. Ryo's hand on him brings about in him a completely paradoxical response — for a moment he feels nearly all of the strength go out of him, brought weak and low and willing to do anything for him to keep going, But kept behind that was the storm, the riot, the pressing urge and need for more, the endless and restless energy that would promise to deliver it to him.
I trust you.
His hand resumes its movement, and he wastes no time in deliberation or hesitation before it follows the prime meridian of Ryo's body past where the remainder of his jumpsuit had been pooled moments past, coming to at first mimic what Ryo had just done to him — to form his hand to him through the fabric that separated them, to move against him despite its interference. But, no. A grumble like a low growl rumbles in his throat; his hand retreats just enough to slip beneath the edge of his briefs, plunging deeper to wrap his hand around his cock. Well, he feels hot enough here, and there's the faintest hint of a laugh to Akira's breath as his fingers ripple around Ryo's length, moving upwards towards the head and then growing infinitesimally stronger, more intent as he stroked down. The movements are still slow, however, languid enough to match Ryo's own, though his touch becomes almost feather-light as it travels back upwards again, giving him opportunity enough to pass the meat of his thumb over the tip. As he does this he leans in closer to him, close enough to Ryo that he could kiss him if he wanted, though for now he refrains — there's still a laughing lilt to the line of his mouth, his eyes heavily-lidded though alert to him, as ever, as always.]
[ 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. ]
[They were inverses, and stubborn ones — the simultaneous effect of a positive and a negative force trying to assert power over one another. Akira had brandished the dangerous tenderness of an openly-bared heart as an example and invitation to Ryo, always trying to convince him to let go of the seashell armor he had gathered up around him, hoping that the steadiness of a home and someone to care for him would wash away the cold and the brine he'd once felt matting his hair and crusting over his skin. Ryo had never succumbed to that argument, though he had faltered, and that had been enough for Akira. But each and every step of the way Ryo had struggled to impress upon him the foolishness of his so-called empathetic bravery, pointing out what would hurt him and seeking to excise potential threats when he refused to accept either change or distance. This essential difference within the both of them was immutable — it would always be there, to shape both them and their points of view. These fundamental differences would never act as lines of division between them because they originated from the same place — from the overwhelming importance placed in another person, coupled with instinct to protect and defend that which they held most dear. This would only ever draw them back to one another, like the incessant magnetic pull of the poles or the slow cosmic draw of the oceans to the moon.
It was always like that: a push and pull, of words and intent, of actions and reactions. Just as there was no word Ryo said that went unconsidered by Akira, there was no subsequent guiding motion he performed that didn't go without its proper response. They worked together in equal parts to rid him of the jumpsuit, mutually rewarded by the sweep of Akira's hands over the newly-bared skin, the way Ryo's body shuddered beneath his palms at the touch. He would never have gone this far, to settle alongside Ryo with little more than heat and tempered impatience between them, if he had experienced anything else but nearly reckless enthusiasm, in word and voice and etched into every movement of his body. Regardless of what the beast grafted into each and every one of his cells demanded of him, he would've been able to contain it, but as it is — with Ryo's blood seeming to rush just as hot as his own, his breaths echoing in similar discordance, the sweep of his eyelashes hiding a similar level of liquid desire, well. It only turns him on even more, but fortunately it seems matched and met in Ryo, palpable even when his hands aren't directly on him, thick on his tongue even with it kept behind his teeth. He reads it in him the way he would anything else.
Ryo has always been calm, collected, fastidious. It paints his every decision, as it carries over into motion, and it does so in a way that Akira can't even find himself aggravated with because it's so him, that to insist otherwise would be to deface his agency. The shaping of his fingers through the fabric was so slow he could count it with his racing heartbeats, could count it with the breaths that scraped their way up and down his trachea, anticipating what they promised, yearning so much for it that it nearly pressed pleas into his mouth. But, no, sometimes when he was like this, Ryo merely needed a push, and that's what Akira's brusque actions were — where Ryo would weigh and consider his action, constructing it in his mind so that he could perfectly see the outcome before he even sought to enact it, Akira followed his gut. It usually had mixed results. And here it's the same. As his hand had forged its way insistently downward, he leaned in closer, his head ever-so-slightly angled, keeping a seemingly-promised kiss withheld in a vague echo of Ryo's hand against him, though the difference was in his own. His heart gives a sharp hammer as his body reacts to the sudden stroke of his hand; he surges forward to be able to ride this reaction, mouth opening to catch the round of Ryo's bottom lip gently in his teeth at the same moment the gasp broke over them, impressing his ownership over it — though there is a low groan in the back of his throat as Ryo's fingers reflexively curl around him.
It's short-lived. He releases Ryo's lip as soon as that pressure moves away (there's no taste of blood), as soon as the familiarity of the sound of his voice to when he'd broken the skin of his neck with his teeth. That — hadn't been his intention. He's lost for a moment, confused, separating enough from Ryo so that he could see him lift his hand towards himself, presenting the palm. He seems borderline baffled as he draws his tongue up the breadth of his hand (though he can't deny reading the lasciviousness of the action, his breath forming a warm bloom between them as his eyes caught the way his fingers curled into his mouth). He doesn't stop moving at this, though he's keenly aware of the crack of his voice around the shelf of his fingers, the way that his body leaps when the drag of his fingers grow faint enough to only serve as a distant reminder of what they had just done. No, he finally understands when Ryo's hand falls past his waist once more, not distracted from mirroring what he had done just moments prior. His mouth drops open another small increment as his hand bypasses the border of fabric and wraps, warm and slick, around his cock, the movements still characteristically measured but feeling utterly licentious with how easy it is — every ministration before this had been so slow, so tantalizing, so formless and ephemeral, it had stretched out his anticipation to the breaking point of this moment. The spread of his thumb upwards, bare and wet over the head, causes what remainder of air in his lungs to leave him in a low moan; the sensation of that, of the tempo that Ryo's hand begins to find over him — it knocks away everything else, and he can't stop himself from pressing his hips forward slightly into the touch, almost greedy now that what he had yearned for had been given.
But — on the heels of the pleasure thrumming up along the highway of his spine to crash into the base of his skull, he's — frustrated. His mouth closes with a faintly audible click of his jaws, and he removes his hand from Ryo, lifting it up towards him as he ducks his head. There's none of the measured salaciousness, no artistry or form to it. He is all speed and function as he mimics Ryo yet again, his tongue rasping over his palm and the undersides of his fingers. He wastes no time, reaching once more past the interfering boundary of cloth, but then he changes tact, like a train changing its track — his movements become a bit slower, a bit more careful, first little more than the light press of his fingertips as the rough of his palm pass slick over the head of his cock, slowly rotating his hand so that it passed through the gap formed in the curl of his thumb and forefinger, coupled with the pressure of the purlicue of his hand and the meat of his thumb. He strokes him once, slowly and carefully, looking to find a similar ease with the additional wetness. As he does this he angles his head upward, not lifting it but instead pressing his open mouth to Ryo's throat, his tongue running over the shape of his Adam's apple, the ever-so-slight drag of his lower teeth following. They are somewhat discordant, the roughness of that kiss and how methodical the movement of his hand is, but they follow the same tempo for a few beats. Then he lifts his head once more, distributing a single, fleeting kiss to the line of his jaw before returning to where their lips were so close they might nearly touch, though for now all Akira does is bring the rough, affected presence of his breathing to that infinitesimal space, his gaze flicking upwards through heavy eyelashes to capture his own.]
As children, they’d crossed each other naturally like the shadow of the moon against the blue shell of the Earth, the soft swell of the ocean. Ryo was an absent and loveless thing, something to be gazed upon at a distance. But, Akira harbored in him all that was rich and warm and somehow beautiful, the press of his fingers in his like soil to roots or sun to flowers. Where Akira waited, Ryo followed in ways he did not recognize. Like the washing of salt from the earth, little by little Akira had made all of Ryo more hospitable, less opposed to the growth that could come so long as it was him who coaxed Ryo into Spring, no matter how he tried to supplant the tentative, fragile sprigs. Akira had always bloomed to him, even if he could not see it. Akira had always been something welcoming, a being that gathered light instead of merely reflecting it toward what deserved it most.
And here, Ryo finds himself in the grey of comprehension. He knows the composition of chemicals that floods through him, Akira, the bursts of adrenaline and the rush of dopamine. He knows the addictive qualities of what is and what will be, but beneath his explanations yawns something indistinct and weighted — something that draws up smaller gasps where he had once been silent, the skim of Akira’s teeth and tongue at his throat, catching against his lower lip enough to pull up the audible hitch of breath, the instinctual reaction to arch and mold against all that he gives him. Ryo too is greedy in ways he does not recognize, but his body fully crystallizes beneath the heavy stretch of their shared heat against his skin.
Humans chase pleasure their entire lives. They take risks, they plunge forward into feats both moral and immoral, coast in and out of the shadows of society like the way hands coast past hips. Ryo’s justifications are buried in the flesh of him, but the way Akira follows into perfect mirror — the lazy curvature of his hand about his cock, slicked, Ryo finds a matching note in the way he drags the pad of his fingers up the shaft, the careful and calculated application of pressure. Akira’s hand is stronger and rougher in comparison to his own, but he can feel so acutely each effort at softness — the impression of care that Ryo never once took with himself. Akira takes his time, as much Ryo does without ever bringing into the focus the cause. Even as Akira brushes his lips against his jaw, peers at him across the minuscule expanse as he settles back beside him — the recognition willfully blurs. It becomes hazy, the more his body wants, responds in ways far more noticeable to Akira than they would ever be to him.
It’s a minute distance, but the fissure runs deep. It runs painfully into all that Ryo is, but still he finds a way across it. Like the first rush of water over seawalls, the destructive tide brought up by storms — a certain determination to take all that it can back into the dark of its body, pulling back stone and mortar. His nose brushes against Akira’s as he leans in, presses his mouth to the corner of Akira’s lips. It’s soft and it’s fleeting, like the burning of fog off the ocean. It comes back again, in a shudder of a breath, formless words breaking across Akira’s skin like waves against palms. It skims through the whole of what could be but does not quite exist as he presses up into the loose circle of Akira’s fist, his own hand keeping a languid tempo, the next exhalation caught against the mold of his lips as Ryo finally commits to the act after a long draw.
He’d never bothered with others quite like this. Kisses had been perfunctory and performative. But, there’s something compulsive and sharp in him that seeks to do this — and in the moment he indulges what he would typically pass off as baser needs. For a moment, there’s a flare of inquisitive hunger in the way he licks at the seam of Akira’s lips, asks for what he had granted Akira earlier. For a moment, he thinks of the way that Akira had watched him through the sweep of his lashes and his every thought tangles into a indefinable loop that does not allow itself to be undone.
And it pulls taut, like the cast of desire and the welling of all things hot and shapeless he cannot begin to place behind the cage of his ribs.
Akira had always been so transparent. He had been always there for Ryo to read, just as he reads him now, but blinds himself to the most critical edge. Like rainwater across the petals of skeleton flowers, the rubbing of scales off a moth’s wings. There are some things that do not fade under scrutiny. There are some things that Ryo cannot grasp in both his hands, because he keeps them closed. There are some things — and Ryo almost sighs, a sound both low and warm, against the full of Akira’s lips. ]
[No person was meant to navigate life alone. They weren't constructed that way. Maybe Ryo would have a more educated or artful way of putting it, weaving together a loose enough tapestry of evolutionary behavioral theory that would support it or otherwise, painting human beings as the types of creatures that thrived upon cooperation and coordination, almost dependent in a way on connection, on community, on the bonds that could form which could stave away the less desirable trappings of the curse of consciousness and conscience. It certainly seemed that Ryo had tried to be an exclusion to this social tendency, but Akira had been a flaw in that, tethering the other boy to himself in a single fragile moment on the cliffs by the roaring ocean. He hadn't necessarily sought to change him — just to shine light on what he might not notice naturally, hoping that he (already so much smarter and cleverer than Akira could ever be) would come to his own new conclusions. He believes in some small ways it's worked, ways which he would give a faint smile to and keep to himself.
In others he has definitive proof.
By the necessity of his new body he is often rough and brusque in his actions, following the physical demeanor and energy that now feels inherent to himself, but in matters that tangled up between the mind and the heart, his touch can be far more subtle. With their proximity, with his single and determined focus on Ryo, he is cognizant of each and every action and reaction, the jump of skin and the shudder of flesh and the serrated quality of breath — he can sense the tentative warmth of his lips as they search out his own, the somewhat distant sense of something else, hesitant and slightly under-developed, reaching out to its full extent towards him in these moments. They were not something he would lord over Ryo. They are both stubborn to their cores, alternatingly an unstoppable force and an immovable object in different situations. These were things he would also keep to himself, to preserve in himself not the hope but the fervent belief that Ryo was wrong and that one day he would come to realize it. But Akira could be patient for that day, and he would be more than willing to help pile up the conflicting evidence in the meanwhile.
To the best of his ability Akira is careful. Though there is an undeniable pressure burning bright inside of him, thrumming through his veins, pressing against the thin barrier of his skin, he wrestles it down and overpowers it, keeping it restrained as he otherwise mimics a similar pace as Ryo's, hand naturally forming to whatever he notices elicits the best response from him, very little falling through the cracks of his visual and physical attention. That is, of course, until the almost indiscernible turn of his head, the feather-light touch of his lips to the corner of his mouth. He feels something in it as it retreats, something lingering in the air like a half-finished statement. Akira hangs on those invisible words, his eyes lidding heavily once more at the slick stimulation of Ryo's hand up and down his length — the distinct press of Ryo's hips into his hand. His rough breath blooms tense and hot against the side of Ryo's face, the pace of his hand increasing for a few strokes, the circle of his fingers tightening ever-so-slightly, rippling around the shape of his cock to try to push him just a bit further — before he calms and returns to the previous tempo, he leashes himself, because that insistent force within him doesn't want to wait, it wants to batter and break its way free, to pull exultation from Ryo by force and take it from him for his own pleasure as well, but it — like so many other things on a daily basis he enforces control over, ever unwilling to become something like that.
Those impulses become much quieter as Ryo finally capitalizes on what he'd been alluding to — Akira had waited for him with all the patience he can muster, eyes flickering up once through his lashes to look at him, an expression caught between concern and something a little more difficult to name (something soft, yearning, quietly expectant) settling onto his face. He wouldn't bypass what he was deliberating to kiss him; he waited until Ryo came to that decision his own, the light ghosting sensation of his lips finally solidifying into the full press of his lips against his own, moving with their own impetus and intent, aided by the inquiry of the hot sweep of tongue against the closed line of his mouth. It ran through Akira's body like an electric shock; he twinges at the honest desire of it, personal and plain, and he is stalled by this for the briefest of moments before he rushes into compliance. His lips part, and his tongue slips forward to taste at the inside of his lip, at the border of his teeth — but he doesn't follow-through with the instinct to press more than that, instead taking a slightly more passive role. It had been Ryo that had initiated this this time, after all, and he waits, wanting, for him to take his advantage in that. Because the noisier, more avaricious pieces of himself seem to grow a little bit more subdued when Ryo does something like that — the gravitational pull towards him, towards every single little thing he did was so much stronger than that personal division.
Though it's not something he can chase from himself entirely. There's aspects and elements of it that bake themselves into his physicality, into his mien, from a slight increase to the heat radiating from his body to the quick, harsh-edged quality to his breathing. There's much to this that he wants to continue to cling to — the impossible closeness he feels to Ryo, with so few barriers remaining (now that they've coordinated to knock a few of the remaining ones down). Regardless of the baseness of his straightforward, bodily desire, Akira is an emotional and sentimental creature, and it's the strength of that which reduces the shear heat of his body to just these few noticeable aspects —
But it's an internal struggle that would continue as the moments pass by, marked by its own quiet attrition.]
[ He’d grown around the impression Akira had left behind.
In his first days in America, Ryo found himself retracing the shape of their last memory, worn smooth by dedication like waves to stone or perhaps Orpheus to Eurydice, his footsteps followed so long as he did not look back to see if Akira was there behind him after all. He recalls that, until they could no longer see the shape of one another against the bright and rolling hills, Akira had watched him go.
He remembers thinking he’d have like to have returned. He would have liked to have trekked back, just long enough to rub the soft pads of his thumbs across the damp skin beneath Akira’s dark eyes and told him not to cry. Not anymore. But, Akira had always told him it was Ryo who cried too. Akira had always cried when Ryo couldn’t, his heart unable to comprehend what it was it felt. He remembers the way Akira’s small hand had balled up in the front of his red shirt, so close to where the sticky ache welled up behind Ryo’s ribs too. He remembers thinking he’d come to find Akira again. Somehow.
He thinks now that it feels almost the same now, as Akira gives and retreats — gives again with the subtle change of pacing, the constriction of his fingers. He thinks Akira follows so dutifully in the path that he’s laid for him, as much as Ryo follows his. Akira’s hand about him is a vivid heat, his palm as grounding as it is freeing, his exploratory touches enough to pull from him breaths both waning and uneven. Each sensation, the stirring something tidal and reaching. Each pass breaks off a little more of him. Each exhalation Akira presses against the pale of his skin makes him forget the hardest boundaries of himself, his harsh edges eroded into something soft and pliant. Wanting.
Where Akira struggles with the basest parts of himself, Ryo struggles to keep all that he is aligned. All that is left is so fragile, fleeting. He holds onto it tightly, because that is all he has ever done. He can't name what it is that rests in the depths of himself. In the dark, Akira's affections are a fixed point on a horizon he's always known, but can't fully contain. It waits for Ryo to let them come. And he does, in some ways. He does in ways he isn't fully sure of. But, Akira —
They'd always been so stubborn. Akira's ideologies skim across him as much as Ryo's skim across Akira. Yet, he'd never belittled Akira for all that he held within. He had never faulted him for his thoughts, had never held himself above them. Akira's perspectives, his thoughtfulness, his consideration for all that the world thought was unforgivable and unpalatable in him — Akira's body yields to him as much as Ryo's yields to him. Each small, blistering sound is swallowed up by the heat of Akira's mouth as he licks in, traces the blunt edge of teeth and the harder points of canines. Ryo's gentleness for him was incomparable. Irrefutable, when placed beside any other. He takes such time to map anything Akira relents to him, presents to him with a willingness so bright it sears across each separation. Akira tastes warm and sweet, metallic across the tip of his tongue. And Ryo knows it is himself, a part of him.
There's a low sound that breaks at the base of his throat before he can contain it, the lines of his body alight with the realization. It moves through him like an undertow, something he can't pin down. He can't raise his head above it. He doesn't wonder what will happen if he doesn't.
Instead, Ryo's curls his fingers a little tighter — makes a firmer circle with his thumb and index finger, stroke him slow and even from base to head. There's no pause between as he curves his wrist, catches just below the ridge. Akira's cock still strains against his palm. And like Akira, there is no deeper concern for himself. There is only what he can do, what he can provide him — and he pulls back just enough to catch the meat of Akira's bottom lip between his teeth. It's a momentary hold, but — the returning kiss isn't without its own pressure. There's no lightness in it, firmer and surer. It's a balm, as much as it is something else. ]
[In the wake of the sorrow of losing his childhood friend, of his parents removing themselves from his life, of moving someplace so huge and loud and crowded and new, of being grafted onto a surrogate family, he had clung to optimism that Ryo would find some sort of happiness in America. With no number or address or email to use to keep in contact with him, that blind hope had been all that he had to link him to his friend — that, and the fledgling feeling that he'd see him again one day that he'd carried at the fragile core of his heart, sheltered like a flame from mercenary winds. It'd been a quiet, soft feeling of relief that'd bloomed in his heart when his mom had sent him the link to one of Ryo's webshows, embedded in an excitable message about "that boy you used to play with when you were kids." He was okay, but — there it grew conflicted. Because Akira could tell immediately he wasn't happy, but at least he was okay, and he had seemingly found some kind of renown and prestige. That he had hadn't surprised him at all. It'd always felt like he was destined for some sort of greatness.
Akira had never been like that; he quietly accepted that he had been born and destined for mediocrity, only breaking from that tentative mold when power had been chanced upon him. He tried not to question it. He merely accepted his lot, as he always had, doing what he could to learn to anticipate its occasionally-hazardous sways, grateful for its reckless strength which gave him — finally — some means of helping Ryo beyond the emotional scaffolding of their friendship. Even with this uneven lack of equity in his mind between them, he had rejected thoughts of deserving, the much truer line of belonging running so deep and so strongly between them that it shattered any such flimsy concerns. He simply knew that he belonged with Ryo, that together they were so much greater than the sum of their parts, their strengths and weaknesses overlapping in such a way that it made them almost seamless. No, they did not begrudge one another those weaknesses or idolize too highly those strengths, accepting of even the aspects they disagreed with.
It's what you did, when you cared for someone.
It is a give and take, a push and pull, a wax and wane, an ebb and flow — a continuous conversation, a ceaseless compromise. It's that way now, with hands goading, lips guiding, the restless energy running throughout them willing. Ryo's tongue slipping into his mouth elicits a sudden rush of hot excitement, his breath escaping as a huff. He kisses him back, meeting him at the places of his examination, tongue running slick and flush against his own. He'd forgotten about the faint taste of blood. It'd run into everything else, the coppery taste transmuted sweet and heady on his tongue, shared with Ryo's. As ever there is a small, immutable gulf in their demeanor, with Ryo never seeming to break from being careful and deliberate, though Akira gave in so easily to thrill and impulse and sharp, unabashed want. It's uniquely excruciating. Every indication of Ryo's interest and initiative to himself and to his body cuts into him deep, makes him bleed for more, and fast, and yet — he is so damn slow, so damn gentle and measured, and the soft and gentle human core at him aches even stronger for this, clinging to the depth of affection that it seemed to belie, ever susceptible to such displays from Ryo — but he's no entirely that kid anymore, and the rest of him is wearing thin, running ragged, less and less likely to be able to keep going on like this —
Ryo seems to react as if he knows, and maybe he does — Akira's always worn so much on his sleeve, projecting all the rest, and his readiness to the increase in tightness of his hand around him, the slow but strong draw, the deft manipulation of his wrist is — in a word, apparent. He throbs, staggers and breaks the pace of their kiss with a sizable gasp, his body seizing up for a moment, hand growing still and tight at the base of Ryo's cock. Teeth catch at his lip, and it seems for a moment almost a knowing sort of gesture, and Akira is moaning in a way that trails into something almost like a growl into Ryo's mouth as he returns to kiss him, grateful for the determination and intent in the circuit of his movements, meeting it and surpassing it, fraught with a heat and a pressure he can't properly keep contained any longer. His hand resumes its movement, keeping a steady and quicker pace as it runs up and down his length, lacking any and all subtle demonstrations (because this body of his was not made for finesse). His other, free up until this point, twists to tangle into the loose bedding; his hips push forward again; he kisses Ryo with a fierceness he's kept at bay thus far, trading his gasping breaths for the taste and heat of his mouth and tongue until his head swims and forces him to break it if just for a moment, gulping at a lungful of air.]
Ryo, [is what accompanies the following, rushing exhale. His eyes flick upwards to find his and — it should be easy, he should be able to just ask, but he can't, the interconnecting inputs of his body and heart and mind all tangled into an inconceivable snarl that he couldn't possibly attempt to fathom in real time. Instead he gives a labored breath, leaning forward and angling his head so that his forehead taps against Ryo's as his eyes fall nearly closed once more, focusing on reining in his ratcheting body temperature, the desperate bellows of his breath. He stays there, as if Ryo would more easily glean from him what he needed to communicate through topical osmosis, taking from him the burden of translating into words the riot that was running through this body of his, catching in his throat and coiling, hot and eager, in the pit of his stomach.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(closed to ryo)
It'd only been under the crushing weight of a truly innumerable amount of drinks that he'd collapsed into unconsciousness, and the rest of today has been a slow drag through a simultaneous hangover and haze of pursuing ramifications. Long story short, he hadn't gotten a lot done besides lying around, poking at the communicator, and dragging himself to go find food a few times. And now the clock has rolled around to what stands for night hours on a timeless space station once again, and he's lying in bed. Looking up at the ceiling, not feeling even the slightest bit tired. His brain is a crawling slide-show of events from the last 48 hours, catching often at his booze-blurred memories of the party, of the trek back to the room, of waking up at some point this morning ("morning") in a fairly-tangled pile with Ryo on his bed.
His breath leaves him in a long, slow sigh. He's not really used to dealing with a snarl of his own emotions that he can't untangle. That'd been simply an aspect of him for as long as he'd been alive: he was largely an open book, both to himself and to others. But this had been one thing he'd always kept hidden, at first because he undermined its perceived importance and prominence and then later out of fear that it would complicate or otherwise derail something that was already vital to him.
But...
...well...
...it'd already happened, right? And things weren't that weird. Despite the stormcloud of a hangover that'd been raging in his head today, reducing him to about one-fourth of the boisterous kinda person he usually was, things between him and Ryo had seemed pretty normal. Ryo was the type of person to put up walls, and Akira was the kind of person who noticed them, and he hadn't noticed any additional barricades go up. So...]
@r.asuka hey are you awake
[Because, from up here, he can't really tell. He's still, but Akira can't really decide either awake or asleep based on the rhythm of the breathing that he can hear.
He's... just wonderin'.]
no subject
Even under his previous state of inebriation, he'd laid in bed and listened to the steady rise and fall of Akira's breathing until it had brought unconsciousness in fleeting fits over his own head. It had only been in the morning that he'd gotten any real sleep, Akira's body tangled up with his. He'd complained a little then, when Akira had taken to moving, but he'd never been good at getting out of bed. In the end, he'd kept Akira longer than he'd likely intended, but he hadn't protested it and Ryo had felt relatively relaxed, even despite the incessant, pounding headache that all drinking binges end with.
It'd been a long time, since he'd allowed himself to slip like this. It had been a longer time since he'd been that close to Akira. The last had been a summer evening before Jenny had come to take him, Akira's dark eyes seeking his in the grey light of the dawn. Across the sea of blue sheets, Ryo had welcomed him into his arms as he always had. They'd fallen asleep again like that, until Akira's caretakers then had woken them back up. It was the last time, before now, that they had come close to any proximity like that.
If Akira had spent the day in bed, so too had Ryo with his head buried under the sparse pillows provided by the station and his hands periodically (and blindly) moving through the code he'd been working with. The communicator was as familiar to him now as own computer, his own tablets — and so it is of no surprise that he's already able to utilize it without much fuss or focus, should that be something he demanded. Unlike Akira, however, he'd bothered not at all to even get food with which to hopefully settle his stomach with, knowing himself to only accept water in times like this. He'd tried to coax Akira to drink some of it last night to prevent brunt of their collective misery, but he himself had failed to truly manage it.
And now, with no residual aches left, he finds himself scrolling through the community in an hour most were typically asleep at. It isn't adequate enough to keep him fully distracted from the course of last night, but it is enough that he is able to lose himself partially to it. There's always information on the network to spare should he have need of it and now is no exception as he makes notes to himself in the metaphorical margins. It's always something he'd done. It was a constant, something consistent — routine against the swell of odd and ignored emotions that sat caged behind his ribs. He breathes around them, as much as Akira breathes around his.
He knows Akira is still awake. He's known it for a while now. But, it seems Akira couldn't confirm that he was too as the notification comes up on his communicator. He turns head toward the top bunk and taps out a response with no pause to read it. He has a feeling of what it says. ]
@dabil I'm awake.
[ In the dim, the faint light from the communicator catches the blue of his eyes. And, without a second's pause, continues: ]
@dabil Did you want to talk?
[ Like when they were kids, in the small spaces between them in the quiet of Akira's oldest room. If they stayed awake long enough, the moon would travel past his open window and Ryo would tell him of all he knew about the constant cycles and lunar tides, while Akira told him of folkore — tales tall enough to scrape the stars.
There's nothing known like that here, besides them. ]
no subject
In all honesty, that part of the day had been more worth mentioning than the rest of it. Even though his body had seen it fit to punish him for his foolishness with alcohol the night before whenever he'd bobbed up into consciousness yet again, he'd at least had the slow rhythm of Ryo's breathing to lull him, the steadiness of the warmth of his body where they were half-tangled and half-held by the other, the scent of him which he really could not manage to put to words except by just saying it was his. In comparison to this, finally accepting being awake and extricating themselves from one another had seemed dull in comparison. Water had dulled the aching of his head and his body, food had helped the sour feeling in his gut, but he can't say grappling with the serpentine cycle of his thoughts and the confused slush of emotion in his heart had done him much good at all.
So now he's here, having made basically zero headway in his internal deliberations.
He hears the slightest rustle of bedding, and he peeks out over the edge of the bunk to catch the blue eyes peering up at him from the dark, illuminated by the small square of light emanating from the communicator. Akira's have their own glint, though it's more like a cat's eyes caught in a camera; he ducks back into his bed, for some reason finding the avenue of conversation through the communicator a little easier than giving it all a voice.]
@r.asuka yeah
@r.asuka as long as you're not tired or anything though
[Though he knew he wouldn't be. If he was needed, Ryo would be there for him; Akira knew this as intrinsically as he knew anything about himself. That, and Ryo barley ever seemed to sleep regardless; with as much sleep as (he assumes) he got last night, he's probably set for a few more days at the very least.
In all honesty, the hurdle that he'd set up for them was something a little uncharacteristic, simply because they usually assumed such a thing wouldn't be the case. But there was a lot of this that was out of the ordinary, slightly uncharacteristic, truthfully unwieldy in unpracticed hands. He remains still up in his top bunk, eyes on the dim screen of his communicator.]
no subject
Still, there was something in the quiet of their morning. Ryo's sleeps were typically shallow and dreamless, but there had been something deeper about that one. It had lulled him in such a way that the usual awareness of his surroundings had faded away into nothingness, a contrast to all that he usually maintained. It had only been himself, Akira, and the loose cast of the sheets across them. He hadn't used the pillows that had come along with the quarter's beds, but instead had found himself at times supported by the bend of Akira's arm, the crest of his shoulder. He hadn't really known when they had separated, but it had been well into the "morning" by the time they did.
Yet, he watches the way Akira shies back as he responds to him. He's seen this before, this kind of anxiousness, though once cast at the red of double-doors, the snapping of maws — elsewhere, in their childhood. Akira had always expressed his anxieties as much as he expressed anything else with him, at least to Ryo and the closed circle of his arms. It takes a moment, but Ryo types back with no less precision than before, letting his gaze rest where Akira lays for a moment longer, before taking in gray of the metallic ceilings above them. ]
@dabil It's okay.
@dabil I'm not tired.
[ Akira was already right to think he wouldn't be. He could never manage something bordering typical rest, just as much he could not manage the odd mathematics that went into the entire span of last night. It was out of the ordinary to say the least, but it had happened. That much is what still remained perfectly clear. ]
no subject
They were complications. And though both himself and Ryo were of a unique importance to one another, he can't say he was ever given any reason to assume anything beyond that. Ryo Asuka did not exactly make himself available for such attachments; over the course of dozens of strains of conversations, many of which Akira firmly remembered despite the degradation that ten years would have on one's memory, he feels he didn't have much of a reason to believe it would be valid for him. Emotions were just chemicals released from the brain, right? Attachments to family was just an evolutionary tactic to help them survive through infancy. The bond of friendship was just something humankind developed, realizing collectively that they could accomplish with many what they could never hope to achieve alone.
It might be true, but it'd always rung hollow to him. The truth and the science of it might be the container, the empty vessel, but it was the matter generated in the heart that filled it. People, to him, would never be purely logical beings. Because they weren't. Idiosyncratic, paradoxical, unpredictable. They were all each to themselves their own vessels, spilling over, cracking, leaking, growing empty. An explanation could only go so far.
Across the span of the room, Akira can be heard typing, the dull tapping sound of fingers against the screen. Then silence. Then a rapid succession of taps: backspacing, perhaps, and then the cycle all over again. This goes on for a minute or so, then it's supplanted by a low groan from the back of his throat, a long and exasperated sigh. He types again.]
@r.asuka can I come down there
[How was he supposed to put into words which he couldn't even make sense of in his own head? He doesn't know, but he thinks, he thinks maybe if he's in front of Ryo, maybe he'll be able to figure it out. Because he hadn't felt so confused and frustrated earlier this morning, when he'd awoken to find the guy sleeping with his head resting against his shoulder, peaceful and quiet.
It might not be something elegant (as if he could really manage much of that, though, really), but he knows he'll be able to say something. So he waits, steadied against this one last barrier he had set up for himself.]
no subject
To Ryo, it was simplest to think of human need and desire like this. To one whose work insists on structure and logic, it seems a natural complement. At least, at first. Like all things about Ryo Asuka, his beliefs were systems carefully kept as much as they were questioned by others and himself. No matter how many times he'd argued it with Akira as children, the conviction had remained. No matter how many times his reactions had not been squarely logical, it had been something he'd always done: explain it away. But, Akira had always been his one remarkable exception. He had always been something that Ryo could not replicate and did not wish to replicate elsewhere.
It was Akira's gentleness, his earnestness, his willingness that had kept him by his side all these years. Even after their separation, so little about that had changed when it was Ryo who instead welcomed Akira into his arms. To Ryo, Akira was a port — a harbor to linger with, no matter how little he understood about the occasion swell of his emotions when he'd approached it. Akira's friendship and companionship were measureless, something that Ryo would not have long ago bothered with, had Akira had not been the first thing he knew (again) about the world on that day where he was left to wake at once abandoned and afraid.
Suffice to say, when Akira groans, it is something that perhaps resonates with him in ways that he both certain and uncertain of — where Akira was unaccustomed to not knowing the exact lay of his emotional reactions, to Ryo it is another aspect about this that is familiar. And while Ryo cannot call it by its title as easily as any other can, he waits for the response that Akira keeps back.
There's a small pause, almost to consider what it is that Akira's seeking to do, before responding with: ]
@dabil If you'd like.
[ The implication of only if remains unsaid. He knows that Akira is aware of it, as much as Akira is seeking out a solution or an answer as much as Ryo is seeking out the answers of his own questions. Sometimes, pulling for the truth of the matter was difficult without seeing it directly before the self. And, in a way, perhaps that's what it is here. ]
no subject
He reaches out to Ryo's hand, the one that held the communicator strapped around his wrist. His fingers fumble blindly for a moment, searching the smooth edge of the device before finding the button that turned off the screen. Once pressed, they fall into darkness; it's only a few seconds before his eyes adjust, however. A demon's sight is strongest in the dark, as it was the time they roved and hunted. He can see Ryo fairly well, though all the color was washed out of him, painted in grayscale. He almost wishes his eyesight was worse, because maybe he would feel a little less anxious if he couldn't see anything, if he could pretend he was just speaking into the emptiness of an empty room, practicing for when he'd say the same to him, except so much more concise and well than he'd manage right now.
They hadn't talked much through today besides the sparsest conversations on how best to alleviate hangovers and the like, existing like separate planets spinning on their own independent axises, going about their own business. Breaking the wide breadth of that collective silence was a difficult act, like staring at a blank piece of paper and feeling that the first line of text put on it must be something good enough to destroy that newness forever.
Akira realizes his hand was still loose around Ryo's wrist. He releases him, gently, and then folds both hands into his lap.
He takes a deep breath, and then he releases it, and then he punches through all of the barriers that might've otherwise tried to trip him up.]
When we kissed last night, at the party, how - how did you feel about it?
[He knows by the time he's arrived to the end of his question that he's already hitting a problem area. Asking Ryo about how he felt about things... had never exactly ended well. It had usually ended with him seeming confused to the point of vexation and Akira just feeling stymied. He shakes his head.] No, no. Hold on. [Another gruff sound of frustration dwells in his throat as he sifts past that, pushing past the last remaining worries and concerns. If he'd really been unsure about it, he probably wouldn't have said he should come down here, right? And, hell, it'd already happened once (more than once, actually), and if he wasn't really interested, he could just say that and they'd move on. That'd be better than just thinking about it all the time.
He speaks up again and the words come like the first swell of high tide, drawn out by the powerful pull of a distant force.] What I mean is, would that - is it something you'd want to do again?
[And he feels the air freeze in his lungs.]
no subject
Despite all the inherent speed and grace that body afforded him, there's something almost delicate in the way he joins Ryo after a moment's pause. There's something at once quiet and tentative in the way he reaches for him, in ways both known and unknown to him. Akira's crossing into his space doesn't garner anything unusual, only a faint complaint dying before it ever forms as Akira takes up his wrist, turns his communicator off. He'll have to redo what he was working with, but it hardly matters now considering the odd disquiet that settles between them like a darker ocean, its edges almost unable to discerned. He knows that even now, Akira can see him in shadows he's created — soft, grey lines pale and impressionistic. For Ryo himself, the failure of light is the failure of one of his senses. No matter how his eyes adjust, the pitch is too much. However, he isn't fearful of it.
Despite everything, he knows where Akira is. He can almost imagine the pinch of his expression, the way his brows pull together before he speaks. There's a certain gravity in what he's about to say, but Akira has never been good at not telegraphing what is important to him. He knows that sometimes, it is easiest for others to say the hardest things behind a shroud, something Akira enacts now as before he ever opens his mouth to ask him.
Is it something you'd want to do again?
It isn't surprise that comes up in response to it, as much as it is a small storm of questions that well up against his ribs like a high tide, each more vague and indistinct than last beyond what he knows would be practical, what would be for the best. He'd always wanted to protect Akira. Since they were small, he'd shielded him from the cruelty of their peers, the individuals that would have made him so easily burst into tears. He'd always wanted to and it was something that grew within him even in all the years that they'd spent apart.
So, he doesn't ask why it is Akira would like to with him. He doesn't think about the way his pulse mumbles something like nerves in his ears. He only allows himself to acknowledge the situation they've now found themselves trapped in. He only lets himself think of what it is that could help him, what it is that Akira needs — what is that Ryo can give him. But, the word is already there off his tongue before he can align it. It slips in under the secondary action he takes as he nods, only once. ]
Yes.
[ He lifts his hand against the silence, knowing without knowing where sharper angles of Akira's face would be. His fingers skate briefly across the cut of his jaw as he reaches, pushes back to curl the black of his hair behind the shell of his ear. It's a gesture he's committed before, perhaps, but there's something more thoughtful about it. He lingers there, for the space of a breath or two, before he asks: ]
Is it something you would? [ He can anticipate the answer. No one phrases questions that way without desire to act upon what is requested. Ryo's hand travels back, but doesn't leave. Not really. Instead, the flat of his palm comes to frame his face gently, the calloused meat of his thumb passing aimless and slow across the contour of his cheek. ]
no subject
It's why he seemed so often contradictory. He asks permission despite having a good idea of the answer, deftly and precisely placing himself in Ryo's space despite also performing a specific sort of fragility that alluded to the vulnerability he kept hidden from everyone except for Ryo. He knows in the end, if (when?) Ryo rebuffs his question, he wouldn't hold it against him. He'd always have a logical explanation for it, a verbal mapping of the structure of his own thoughts and feelings, the exact route he had followed chemically and psychologically to land him here. He figures something like that'll make him feel better, though he knows from experience it would only force him into a container that felt cramped.
He's already prepared himself for that potential outcome, building up his expectations for it as the brief silence stretches between them, one where he can quite plainly see the thoughts slowly but very surely processing through Ryo's mind behind the blinded veils of his eyes. But then he — nods. He nods? Akira grows very still, surprise rattling through his chest, his heart ricocheting off the walls of his ribcage.
Yes.
He blinks slowly, owlishly in the utter darkness. Though his eyes move automatically to track the movement of Ryo's hand, lifted from where it had rested in his lap, moving as if he could see just as well as Akira could in the pitch to come to travel across the line of his jaw, feather-light yet with strength of intention. He has the impulse to lean into the touch, yearning for the affirmation and the affection, but there's a systematic paralysis that's worked its way through him, still waiting for further confirmation that would clear away the clinging concern that he'd managed to mentally mince words and misunderstand completely.
After the question is posed, there is a moment of complete silence and still in the dark of the room; even under the spread of Ryo's palm Akira does not move, himself now processing, fumbling through a half-dozen methods of response.
But Akira Fudo follows his heart, and if this new body and this new self of his had any adjustment to make, it was only that he was doubly as impulsive as he might've been otherwise. He doesn't answer. There's only the short sigh of expelling air from his lungs that he'd belatedly realized had grown stale, and then he's moving forward, rolling with all of the fluidity and purpose of water tumbling down as a falls. Now its his hand that travels along Ryo's jaw, guiding him lightly so that they could align and allow their lips to meet.
It's different here — in the dark and privacy of their own room, there are no wide and curious eyes to bore into his back, no mercenary mouths to contribute commentary either supportive or mocking or comedic. Akira had never cared much for the judgments of others, but he hadn't wanted to make Ryo feel even more uncomfortable in a situation he'd not even wanted to be in in the first place. But no such social shackles bound him here. The initially-steady warmth of emotion that accompanies the press of his lips to Ryo's own, moving not only to encourage but also to mark to what extent he was ready here and now to follow — it's like this for a moment before growing heated, growing hungry, reflecting on the inward knowledge he had that what had happened last night had been enough to fill his mind nearly all day but it hadn't been nearly enough. There's a steady pull in his gut for more, and neither the human nor the devil in him had any way of resisting or combating that; the breath that escapes him is sharp-edged, almost a pant, as their lips separate infinitesimally, allowing for his own to part and allow his tongue to swipe across the line of Ryo's mouth: a brusque request, but a request all the same.
He can feel the pressure of it building within the cage of his chest; the shape of it is something he's perfectly familiar with, and it's in this that he finds some discomforting comfort, that he'd most likely be able to leash and chain himself should he suddenly bypass a boundary that Ryo was not prepared to cross. He'd have no way of knowing; this is uncharted territory.
But if Ryo was as unconcerned with limits as he was, well...
It was a bridge that would have to be burned when they came to it.]
no subject
In the dark, something in him without his knowing contemplates the possibility, feels it acutely in the silences they (for a moment) wear. In the deepest parts of him, it struggles against the potential realities of it losing what it has left. It presses into the tender heart of his joints, causes the slow ripple of something cold beneath the surface of all that Ryo is and ever would be. In the end, it is cut-off with the brush of fingers across his jaw. It's muted, before it ever comes to light, by the press of Akira's lips against his.
If Ryo were more honest, he would have admitted it was relief and something else that passed through the whole of him with each, unsteady exhalation of breath that fanned across his cheek. But, the human body cares little for what cannot be heard. Under him, Ryo's body is pliant and at once inquisitive — directive, though he catches the small hum that threatens to vocalize itself as Akira rewrites the sentiment behind it.
Akira had always snuck into the parts of him that Ryo had kept hidden. He'd always pressed his fingers against the firm separations that kept Ryo from humans, built for him doorways that he could pass through with any hint of willingness — his arms opened wide for him across the newest thresholds. And here, Ryo takes the first steps toward him in ways he hadn't for others in America. His curiosities then had been empty stakes, his actions and reactions not at all so bold. There's an odd welling of warmth within him, a fainter tremble beneath his skin that translates into the way he responds to him, a mirror and a match for the pace Akira takes with this. It isn't unlike what had happened last night, but it is newer. It's foreign, in the way that only the privacy of their room brings. In the absence of light, all that Akira is is a tangible thing — his shifts in emotion like hands against his skin. Once again without sight, there's an ambiguity. Akira's all that keeps him in place, anchored to a certain space though he can feel the impression of the room around them.
Kissing isn't new, inventive. It's a way to communicate, to read intentions. It's a way for bodies to acclimate to foreign hosts, to investigate biological compatibility. It's a way to protect the self. It's a way to bond. But, Ryo takes the smaller space to inhale, a hitch of a thing that he can't quite smother before it's already there.
But, Ryo's mouth still parts for him and his heart still thrums with the rush of adrenaline each small and sound and touch brings. The hand that had cradled Akira's cheek somehow now in the thick of his dark hair, tangled in ways both assuring and irreparable. His nails scrape toward Akira's scalp in absent bursts, before his fingers finally commit to curl. He knots them there, keeps Akira there — welcomes him as Akira had always welcomed him. It is all they'd ever done, wasn't it? Like an echo tossed along the shore, picked up by the other who would give it back to them, they'd forever given the answers to each other's questions as best as they could. As best as they still can, when those inquiries that go without completion now stack up higher about them.
Ryo Asuka has never been shy, not really. He'd never been quiet about the basics of his desires, but Akira is different. He'd always been different. And like Ryo leads Akira, Akira too leads him. When Akira starved, Ryo sated. And when Ryo starved, Akira found ways too to fill him.
It's just the way it's always been. It's just the way that it would always be, was Ryo's reasoning. No more, no less. ]
no subject
He might've worried about it here, but he'd sensed too much truth behind Ryo's words, picking up both consciously and subconsciously to the clues attributed to tone of voice, expression, body language. There are no harsh lines or sharp angles to provide any sense of hesitation or caution to him as he folds into Ryo; he bends to meet him, willing and — what he has to perceive as wanting. As long as he'd known him, Ryo had never suffered less; if he had ever put up with something he would prefer not to, it had usually been to humor Akira, and even then his sour attitude about it was usually veiled in what stood to be one of his jokes, shared just between them. He sensed none of that now, though. Ryo had always preferred the brightness of flat truth to the warm glow of heartfelt sincerity, but even now he felt he could feel the flicker of it; it bloomed against his chest, where it rested over Ryo's own. Akira feels as though he's only sensed such a thing a few times in Ryo, always rare and ephemeral and under-developed before it disappears. But it always excites, thrilling him to his core, making him want to chase endlessly after it — something with which he could use as leverage to finally take Ryo firmly by the hand, pulling him to stand on completely equal ground and convince him of the things he had always denied.
He's been trying to encourage him to follow him down this road for over ten years now, and he's succeeded in some steps, lost a few others. All of that time had taught Akira patience, however. He's more than willing to play the long game. To him, Ryo is more than worth it.
Akira may have never been one to want to take more than he was given, but when Ryo replies to his wordless request with acquiesce and he returns to kiss him again, unabashed and with continually lessening restraint, he strongly feels himself having being given an inch and wanting to take it a mile. There had been something hot and bright and burning in the cage of his ribs and now it roars and it spreads, and he has to do what he can to contain it. He keeps it clasped tight between his hands, and he kisses Ryo with brazen inexperience that offered his heart in the same way; he only goes so far as to ascertain that Ryo was willing to follow, but even then — the taste of him, the soft mold of his lips, the exaggerated interval of his breath, it all keeps stoking the want in him, of everything, of anything, until it feels almost overpowering, pressing into the back of his skull like a base need.
He wants —
He has so rarely wanted anything before.
Ryo's fingers rake through his hair, running lines against his scalp; he responds at first in a low hum, and then as those fingers tighten to knot into his hair hold him to him, the sound deepens to something almost like a growl, resonant in the hollow of his throat. The hand that had once grazed Ryo's jaw moves to the back of his head, cradling it at the junction with his neck, idly taking note of how the buzzed hair had started to grow back slightly longer. With this slightly different vantage, he kisses him a little more aggressively, seeing to what extent he could be incited. His other hand seeks out the softness of his side, just below the sharp landmark of his ribs; he finds himself slightly annoyed and frustrated at the jumpsuit, not allowing passage that the hem of a shirt might. His hand continues, then, coming to rest splayed against the small of Ryo's back, his fingertips curling ever-so-slightly to give the impression at scratching at him, encouraging the bow of his back and the shifting of his body to meet Akira's as he fixes his posture (which had grown more and more awkward the further this continued). He unfolds himself from where he had been sitting, settling down to where he was far more comfortable, an elbow and a forearm supporting him over where he held Ryo beneath him. He tries to moderate his tempo, and it's evident enough from an occasional sharp increase in heat and intent which he soon leashes and returns, reminding himself that he is patient as he had learned to be, unwilling to budge in his conviction to not take anything more than what was offered.
But as straight-forward as he is, Akira has always been so easy to read.]
no subject
While Akira waited, Ryo had taken. Ryo had taken with both of his hands the knowledge that scholars could give him, the accolades and praises they piled upon him. But, such things were empty and such things were aimless. They were passionless affairs – marriages of practicality. With wealth came an easier means to live, came access to what could protect him – them. With recognition came the ability to bring his plans to fruition. A someone, in world that cared to recognize none. But, there had always been a lack of a vital spark. There had always been he absence of a passion in the actions he’d commit. There had always been a pace he’d followed, routines he did not bend. But, Akira – waiting and watching – had broken through all of them.
It had always been Akira, in the end.
No matter what he had told himself, he’d have sought him anywhere. Across oceans, across continents – across a space so fathomless that even Ryo could not comprehend it – he’d have followed in the paths Akira left. He’d have wound up here, beside him, in the shapeless hours that fanned about them in the loose tails of days. He sees what it is that Akira extends to him now, but his fingers don’t curl about it. He sees the shape and the bloom of it, a warm light that sears against him like the synchronicity of breaths, but there is something fixed and solid in the core of him. There is something tentative, where the word in its entirety did not belong. It is a small and fragile thing, a fissure so faint and so deep that even the way that Akira holds him aches, bruises within him like the scrape of harsh stones across the pale face of the moon.
Akira had always likened its shadows to that a rabbit. Each dull and desperate scar across its surface, something soft and timid – tame. He feels his pulse thread at second brush of lips, the third, the countless – each intermittently hungry against his. He’d been kissed with more experience, with more intent, but the blistering sincerity stirs up something in the sediment of him. It slips between his understanding like the soft sounds he can’t quite suppress, breathy and muted. No matter how he tries to swallow them, they spill from him as though Akira had reopened something in him that had never been once opened to begin with – they bubble up, regardless of the attempts he makes. They come even as Ryo feels the sway of his frustrations, the need to touch what he can of him. And perhaps it is less thought than instinct that leads Ryo’s pale hand to wedge its way between them, steady and cool in the way he finds the zipper of his jumpsuit even in the adjustment of Akira’s body, the way he asks for more of Ryo’s nearer to him.
It isn’t artful, but it is precise. He doesn’t hesitate between the gentle shaping of a "here," caught between another kiss. He tugs the zipper down to rest the tab above the dip of his navel, shows to him more skin than he has shown to him years. He's as pale as can be remembered, the whole of him a contrast to the darker garments they'd been forced to wear.
He doesn’t linger. That same hand comes up — trails its fingers into the shallow valleys between his ribs, skims back with the flat of his palm to the broad of his back. It splays there, feeling the working of musculature and the pull of Akira's breath. Like all of Ryo's touches, it isn't meant to ask. It is a shield, a protective and possessive gesture against the darkness that curls around them like a heat. It molds to every inch of him, as Akira molds to every inch of him – a conversation in nerves and taste, as Ryo accepts and gives. Where Akira is inexperienced, Ryo is refined. He guides, as much as he allows the sincerity and newness of Akira’s attempts to wash over him. He suggests, steers with no more than the occasional shudder of breath. People have done this forever, he thinks. People have always wanted and craved and desired to smooth their carnal edges, to cut their teeth against the edge of chemical highs, for some more potent than the crush of powder or the hot weight of a loaded gun. Here, Ryo feels a division of himself. The longer he holds onto the logical process, the more the deprivation of his senses intrudes. Each fumbling and instinctive exploration of his body is like a lit match. Where each touch lands burns like a Roman candle down to the bone, the marrow. It illuminates so briefly where it is Akira moves within the dimness, impresses within him the idea of Akira’s want like the shower of embers after it.
Ryo reaches what he can, tracks the pads of his fingers near the curvature of his spine, moves in sweeps both contemplative and purposeful down each step of vertebrae. Where Akira aims to incite, Ryo finds himself in echo – Akira had always easy to read. Like the passage of waves over sand, dragging furrows into the pale of its skin, Ryo follows his touch like a pale sliver of glass to be smoothed by its dedicated rhythm. At the end, he won’t return the same – but, he never was since Akira had pulled him against him when they were only children. He never had been the same after that, his impossible sharpness (in some ways) rounded to be held by the hands that helped mold him. But, there are some things that Ryo has never managed even under that care. There’s some things that Ryo cannot reach into himself to examine, but he can brush against. He knows the restraint that Akira is exerting here. He feels it in the way he kisses him, in the way each time he reaches back to him – licks up into his mouth, tongue tasting the tip of sharpened canines – that determination is held back, pulled back.
Ryo lets his nails catch, scrape in the next escalation, enough to give permission. He knows more than anyone that Akira would never mean to hurt him, he knows more than anyone that without a lead he would wait at the outskirts of all that he desired before he let himself in. But, Ryo had always been willing to take most of what Akira could have possibly desired to give. Ryo had always been hungry for it, in the smallest and quietest parts of him – he’d starved for it. And though he does not allow himself to admit, Ryo had always given more to Akira than he thought he could possibly care to give.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, that that carries through even here. It shouldn’t be a surprise, that Ryo has no intention to reject what is presented to him in the dark of their quarters – in the small space of his bed. ]
no subject
Akira had gone ten years without seeing Ryo, and so few of those felt as though they had much for him to remember. He subdivided time into rare phone calls from his parents, shoes received in the mail, track meets alongside Miki, holiday spreads prepared by the Makimuras. But even these were far and few between, the colors faded and dull, the push and the sway of his thoughts and feelings always muted in the recollection of memory. One can get lulled into sleep-walking through much of their life if they were not careful, and Akira had gone into it willingly — with Ryo having been led by the hand out of his life so long ago and his parents going shortly thereafter, leaving him with the promise to one day catch up, he had been conservative in the way he lived. One day he could fold away these years and largely forget them, because one day he would catch up to those that had gone on ahead of him.
Then life would start for real, as something worth remembering.
Ryo's arrival back into his life had been a jolt out of deep sleep, his consciousness drug back out of him as slow as his name had been upon seeing him, staggered by unfamiliarity and disbelief. Now he was alive again, and along with it came all of its soaring joy and scouring misery, compacted into such a short amount of time that it felt as though time itself warped, each day becoming the length of a year with so much standing out as necessary to be remembered in perfect clarity. Whether it was the chaos and violence that they navigated and weathered back home or the far more subtle menace that seemed to hang over this place, Akira dives into it with all of the dedication and conviction of someone having finally found something to take a stand for. Many shatter themselves into different facets, some specific to face certain aspects of their lives so that the rest might remain hidden, but Akira had never bothered with such a thing; there's a whole-heartedness to everything he does, and there's no difference, whether it's the campaign that they had worked together in back home or how they clung to one another here, for safety and survival.
But this wasn't either of those. It wasn't, but in the way that Akira holds Ryo to him and Ryo moves to match and meet with every change of tempo, he finds that it's no less intrinsic or vital. He may be a fool sometimes, but Akira could read people, and he wouldn't even need such a keen skill in that to be able to pick up on how Ryo responded to each step, each action. There's the briefest shred of a pause after the first time he catches one of the subdued sounds that emit from the guy's throat, but then he surges forward again, the line of his lips curving into a smile as he kisses him deep, as if to chase it to its origin; he feels bright and hot the sharp impulse to move and to do the same to the tender span of his neck, to try to corner the vibration there, to get his teeth against it— he moves past the impulse, but only for now.
He doesn't at first get the purpose of his hand interjected between them; he allows it, lifting his body up a little more away from him, but his attention is quite diverted elsewhere, and it's not until the hand moves once more and he returns to rest now against skin rather than impersonal fabric and Ryo mouths the telling word into his own that he realizes what he'd done. Thrill strikes him like lightning. He lavishes one more kiss on Ryo before separating from him, and he leans back to look over to what Ryo had bore to him, filling the space between them with a hot and ragged breath. He'd never really allowed himself to dwell on the thought, but Ryo is beautiful, the pale skin standing out as plain to him in the colorless dark as the moon breaking through dark clouds. A rough laugh, heh, edges into the tail end of the breath leaving his lungs, and he pulls back the hand that had rested in the small of Ryo's back, this time snaking it around his narrow waist so he could hold him close and bodily move him a bit upwards, coordinating with the hand that still cradled the back of his head so that he could sit him up a bit more against the pillows and the wall. But that's still quite not good enough. He keeps moving — he sits up a bit and moves his knee, which had once rested alongside where Ryo was in the center of the bed, to carefully interject between both of Ryo's. He applies some guiding pressure outwards, wanting for him to give enough space for Akira to comfortably settle between. He couldn't be content anymore with how they were positioned now. His brain remarks simply: he wanted Ryo beneath him, he wanted him around him, he wanted to lose himself in him — he wanted it all and nothing less, and having been given no resistance since he had first pressed his lips back to Ryo's own, he found the building momentum in the back of his skull impossible to deny.
He goes flush against Ryo once more, the palm of his hand feeling maybe a bit too rough as he follows a similar path that Ryo had on his body, following the curving line of his ribcage, fingertips explorative of the soft and vulnerable flesh below, crossing to the broad, smooth planes of his back. His forearm becomes a bar which acts to keep Ryo pressed up against him, and he kisses him again, everything about him open and receptive to each tiny piece of guidance and feedback, and the spaces between he fills with impulse, still seeking out what would pull Ryo from his characteristic composure (already well on its way to being truly shattered regardless), crazily curious to what it would look like, what it would sound like, what it would feel like. They mutually enable one another into a dangerous cycle, Akira's breathing whipping up sharp and fast, falling into the patterns of the fingertips tracing the delineations of muscle and bone along his back, and how whenever he reminds himself of himself, Ryo seems to notice and to pursue, his tongue purposeful against the sharp edge of his teeth, his nails seeming either to grant permission or to dare as they drag sharply down his back.
Akira presses a low moan into Ryo's mouth at this and then, surprisingly — stops kissing him, though only to move his mouth to the corner of his jaw, where it joins with his neck, just below his ear. As he presses his mouth to the spot, his tongue hot against the skin, his voice rasping slightly in his breath, the hand at the back of Ryo's head tilts so that he would bare more of his throat toward him. He draws back again for just a moment, his lips another sharp smile, a laugh implied in his tone as he finds his voice for the first time in quite a few minutes.] Fuck, Ryo, [and he presses another messy kiss just beneath the line of his jaw, following it away from his throat.] They teach you stuff like this in America?
[The lilt in his tone paints it as a joke. As if he'd give up a chance to rib at him a little bit.
And he doesn't give him too much time to comfortably answer, continuing to press his mouth along the line of his jaw, just once the keen edge of teeth grazing — though only for the briefest of moments before he moves down, seeking out the thrum and the warmth of the blood rushing through the vulnerable space of his neck. He likes the smell, sweet and enticing even beneath the skin. He kisses him here too, rough and unrestrained, the hand at the back of Ryo's head finally relinquishing him to slowly drag blunt fingernails along the path of his spine to the space between his shoulderblades. Within him rages a stark dichotomy: the furious desire to move forward at as quick of a pace as he could manage, and yet another that refused to give up what he had been given, insistent on taking each new thing and pressing it carefully into his memory so that he would not forget. Patience and impatience, each playing in different ways in his actions and his reactions, waging an internal war that would, at some point, be won, one way or another.]
no subject
Since the beginning, he'd paced himself relentlessly. No matter the challenges that stood in his way, he'd torn through them with dangerous precision, his peculiar ambition a knife's point. No matter how deeply he struck at the root of it, it never bled answers from the whole of its source. It wouldn't, so long as he looked away. But, he'd come to Akira anyway. He'd returned to him in the humid stretch of days, summer in Japan a lumbering and languid thing that stuck to the skin like a curse. Akira had been the only one he had really seen in the mess, a slip of a figure in the shell of a boat. He'd been the only one who mattered to him at all, his name bright and welcomed off his tongue, as though Ryo had never left him at all.
In that world that had fallen apart, the Ryo back then had known he the only one he could trust. The Ryo now knows that he will be the only one he ever does, all tensions and cautions the human body would usually bring to proximity lost to Akira's hands, his earnest direction. He feels the full pause of Akira's scrutiny as he pushes back. He knows where his gaze lingers, touches. Ryo is not shy, but desire when laid bare is tempting, heady. He breathes around the unsteady tempo of his heart, the prickle of something Ryo doesn't have the mind to examine a cool rush in contrast to the way his body hums. Ryo doesn't fight Akira's insistence, but cooperates as he's always done. Ryo yields, as Akira yields, his legs framing Akira's as he settles in between them, the bruising force behind his kisses greeted with the graze of blunter teeth.
It's base and it's gentle, in that Akira has always been gentle. Ryo sees the contrast, as he would have seen the smiles he gives against his mouth, the impression of it there even he can no longer feel it. Akira's arm about his waist is an anchor and a brace, something that keeps Ryo from losing the actuality of what is occurring — a reminder of who it is and what Ryo will always allow in the muted parts of himself. Akira had always been allowed the breadth of himself, in all ways that he could permit. Whether it was the weight of Ryo's hand in his, the truth of his words, or the protection he could spare — Akira had gotten it all.
And so, even when he teases him, Ryo knows full well he'd expected nothing else. The laugh asks for his, but his own have always been rare. It shows up in the way his eyes lid, the way his hands draw back to settle against the angles of his face, in the faint curve of his lips — the pass of his tongue at the corner, the numbness left in Akira's wake something at once peculiar and satisfying. ]
Maybe, [ he breathes, in the spaces he's permitted. The fingers of one hand graze like a kiss against the underside of Akira's jaw as he bears the pale of his throat to him. He curls them at the junction, the soft shadows beneath the shell of Akira's ear, brushes the backs of knuckles along the nape of his neck. Akira's skin is warmer than his own. Each point of contact burns, but Ryo finds himself curling toward the source as if a snake in summer heat. He suns himself beneath the singular point of Akira's attention, his next exhalation a tremble of a thing as Akira tastes the skin he willingly gives to him with the compliant tilt of his head. The graze of teeth draws a shudder out of him, a closed circuit from head to foot, and he bites at the inside of his own cheek to keep the full of it to himself. It's a murmur, a moan, trapped against the back of his teeth — sharp and sweet against his tongue. There are no words to play it off. He wouldn't be able to retrieve them. They scatter further out as Akira laves attention along the steady rush of his pulse, his own hand turning to run over the round of his shoulder — for once hot as it the other comes to pair it, the flat of his nails an implication, a potential promise to bite and brandish, so light as they are now.
He'd helped make this body, the one that keeps him willing and captive. He'd helped create it, with the pulse of bodies like the pulse of music, a battle cry for all that made them alive and wanting. But, Akira had always been a thing that had lit up the dark. Akira had always been brilliant and sensitive in all the ways that Ryo needed after traveling so long and so alone in the vast expanse of nothingness, the consuming world of sea and salt. Akira had always been brighter than even he, his own glow cold and absent in comparison. There was no real charm in someone like him, his beauty and intelligence a mask for the ugly things beneath. As though he were marble, only the surface was polished to hide the veins of impurities that cut through the whole of his being.
But, Akira hadn't minded them. Akira had embraced them, taken them in stride to ease. And each time Akira did, a little more of himself fell away. A little more of what Ryo had been had mended, had molded into something else as though he were clay staining the hands of the one who found him. It's an inevitability, as much as Akira singes at his edges with promise of alternatives that not all the world dangled the blade of pendulum above him.
It wasn't that way, but Akira holds him as much Ryo holds to him, ingrains the topography of muscle and bone into memory. Even as Akira's nails scrape in much the way his own do now in reflex, he finds himself swallowing the shape of Akira's name — pulled up from the core of him, the resulting break of his breath and the shallow arch of his back a give against the ache Akira's nails drag up in their wake. ]
no subject
He had only wished that he could've been of more use to Ryo, and then he had been given a body that could. Funny how things work out like that sometimes.
There are similar veins which run through this, the gradual escalation of physical intimacy, the rising of the heat between them, the somewhat dischordant crescendo of breath. He doesn't find questions or concerns tugging at him now, their tangling lines easily severed by truth which swelled in his chest, burned in his gut, pressed down against the bow of his shoulders like a thousand pounds of weight. It doesn't feel to him that something monumentous has suddenly shifted and changed. No, it feels more apt to say that they were now finally acknowledging a thread which connects them — one which they had been turning a blind eye to for so long it was difficult to know how long it had been there to start. And so it is a part of them, as individuals and also as they were drawn into one relationship, but yet it was also still so bright, so thrilling, so new.
Akira hums as Ryo's hands move to frame his face, the sound softer and gentler than others, fond and light; he slows in what he is doing at the attention, but only slightly. He isn't sure what it is about the way the touch moves across his face, the line of his jaw, the curve of his ear, the line of his neck — feather-light, fleeting, fully intentional — but it's crazily intimate to him, raising goosebumps along the back of his neck, causing his eyes to grow heavily-lidded and then close. He gives one more singular, warm laugh into the soft space beneath Ryo's jaw, and he jokingly mouths the word, "maybe," into a breath before continuing on.
He has been attentive, paying close attention. Akira had always been a poor student when it came to marks on tests, but he was a savant at reading people, and he wouldn't have even required such a skill to be able to take full note of the responses both he and Ryo gave to the touch of mouths, tongues, hands. Teeth. It's funny — it'd been an accident. A slight miscalculation, the product of still getting used to a body that was markedly different from the one he'd had for sixteen years in nearly every single way. But as the keen edge of his teeth skates along Ryo's skin and he feels him, all of him, waver beneath him, a crushed sound stopping against the cruel gates of lips and teeth, Akira slows. He stops, looking up from where he'd stooped to the tender flesh of his neck, looking at Ryo's face. For a brief moment he stares in the darkness, weighing what he could do and what he should do, feeling the hands sweeping along the broad planes of his back to rest at his shoulders, the bite of nails little more than an insinuation, though perhaps they were more of a promise.
Akira's hands move as he lowers his attention back to Ryo's neck. The hand at his back follows the line of his spine from just below his shoulder-blades towards the small of his back, sensing the tension and the sway to it, reinforcing the curve and allowing no space between them. The one resting at his nape moved to cup his face at the curve of his jaw, almost mimicking what had been done to him a few moments before. But Akira is no instrument made for delicacy or sublety; the movement is gentle yet flat in its simplicity, the fingers moving past the shell of his ear towards his hair, the meat of his thumb resting soft near the point of his chin. But here is where the intention deviates and becomes clear. His hand provides gentle pressure, faint encouragement, for his mouth to open — Akira demands nothing, insists on nothing, only ever moving to make request. If accepted, the pad of his thumb runs along the range of his teeth.
They had been cruel gates, after all. Frustrating. Akira had felt robbed. He wants it all, but he wants it given to him.
His mouth falls to kiss at Ryo's neck again, lips and tongue slow and languid, stretching out whatever tension he could make. And then he brings his teeth down into the soft, fair skin. He doesn't even do so with much force — certainly not enough to bruise, though the wicked points of his sharpened canines don't need very much at all to pierce such tender skin. He hadn't really anticipated that, nor the sensation of it, something which fans a flame riotous and primal, one which causes him to draw in a breath through his nose and immediately roll his hips against Ryo's, the movement fluid and purposeful. It's a fire that feeds itself. The need only grows, becomes sharp, becomes painful. It's with a sizable moan that he presses even closer to him, crushing him to his body, his tongue thick and hot as it passes over the torn skin. The taste of the blood beading there was also something he hadn't expected — the smell had always been sweet, but it's like honey in his mouth, one which marries the heat in the pit of his gut with the energy which pooled in need in his hips; they roll again against Ryo's, that need immediate, approaching the edge of desperation.]
no subject
And so, Akira had been the only person Ryo'd ever considered at all. Akira, in all his presumed unremarkable nature, was the least unremarkable of all. Socially, personally, it shouldn't have been that way according to his image, appearance. He shouldn't have been close enough to feel even the barest brush of Ryo's attention, but Akira had always had it all. And Ryo had never questioned it, even if others would. Akira was every kind and delicate thing that Ryo was not. He was playful and inquisitive, genuine in his expressions. He was the only person who had ever cried for him, a child who knew nothing of himself and still knows nothing at all. But, Ryo had always wanted to keep him close. He had always wanted to shield him from all that would harm him — by the box-cutter in his hand as children, the use of his fists. He still remembers the small sun of Akira's relief when Ryo had "found" his shoes in the pile of those who had bullied him, his scraped knuckles and bruised palms tucked behind his back. He still recalls the way he'd pulled Akira into his arms after the conclusion of years, the muzzle of his gun still smoking at the docks. He'd kept it crossed against them, an additional warn to those who would have pulled him from him.
His body had been different then, but he is still Akira even now as Ryo feels out the way Akira's body responds to each touch. As his eyes start to adjust, he can make out the gray of his angles, softened as Akira hums. He can feel the rise of gooseflesh across the back of Akira's neck as his fingers move. He can feel the fan of his breath, the shape of his laugh, the seared impression of a facetious "maybe," written into his skin.
He needed Akira. He'd always needed him, even if that thought won't be pulled to the surface by the wake of Akira's kisses, the trail of his nails in echo of Ryo's earlier explorations. Ryo had needed him since he'd washed ashore, an integral and answering part of him that (if pulled) would tear apart the already crumbling foundations. Akira Fudo was like ivy, so deeply embedded in the mortar of what made Ryo Asuka what he was that the absence of Akira was the absence of all that Ryo Asuka could be or ever was. It's an odd and unknowable ache that roots behind his ribs as Akira pauses in the aftermath of nails against his back — the test of teeth against his throat in fumbling error.
He knows what Akira is putting together. He knows it as soon as he feels the weight of his eyes on him, the way his skin prickles from the sudden lack of contact. The air of the room is cooler than the brush of Akira's lips and Ryo reflexively shivers from the sudden fluctuation, the directive glide of Akira's rougher palm across his nape and across his jaw. But, some truths are more difficult and some truths are more acceptable and Ryo finds a tendril of hesitation in himself before he relents to the pressure of Akira's thumb. He lets Akira feel the swell of his lip, the border of his teeth. He'd tried to keep to himself the contradictory vocalizations that rose up in him, the faceted reasons he couldn't explain (or wouldn't) tangled up within it. He minds himself to curb them, even as Akira takes the knowledge he is given like a flame to the cast of complexity, the way forward in the dark.
Humans work within the realm of reward, of consequence. Akira tests the bounds of it with the slow pass of his lips and tongue again across the tender flesh of his neck, bared to him without thought. For all those favorable reactions, they craved it until there was no room for more. They took their fill of it, as Akira takes his fill of it and Ryo lets him, the first burst of pain like a low chord struck. It strings through the whole of him, washes each thought out with a physiological insistence — a libidinous thrumming both searing and pleasurable, head jerking up into the hold of his palm.
The sound he makes is fragile, splintering thing. It breaks over his teeth and tongue in a rush, something that gives more than it should and shows more than it might as he brackets him with the lift of his knees and hook an ankle across the back of his legs. Instinct has always been tidal, roaring and retreating, and Ryo's body leans into the heady way it surges forward, the cant of his hips into the grind of Akira's enough to drag the air from his lungs. Each exhalation scrapes against the darkness of the room, punctures the full of what Ryo knows himself to be.
Pain and pursuit have always been integrally linked. It's a flood of endorphins, the components of fight and flight, the conversion of serotonin and melatonin. They slot together as they do, so close that there is no definitive line between them. In the pitch, Ryo can only feel where the heat of his body ends and where Akira's begins, a warmth incomparable to any that he'd ever endured before.
The nails of one hand bite into the line of his shoulders, the other traveling in a hot sweep down the broad plain of his back. Like the flush of alcohol, of drugs — it's difficult for to form linear thought as his inhalations stagger in the next desperate roll of Akira's hips, but he does. It's just enough to make his palm come to rest against the back of his hip, thumb pressed to the dip of his spine. The scant material that presses across the skin here is a detraction from what is needed, the more apt conclusion. He knows what Akira wants. He knows what it is he's been wanting, the tips of his fingers skimming under just enough to pass along the crest of his hipbone, press against it with the full of his fingertips. They pin.
Go ahead, is the message. Go ahead, is what is written in the tip of Ryo's tongue pressed flat to the meat of Akira's thumb, tasting the rough of the skin, curling against its contour. ]
no subject
It had developed between them a sort of mutual reliance that would permit crossing oceans, braving beds of demons, and combing through increasingly dangerous Tokyo streets. It is its own sort of madness, because to need someone and to feel needed (or, perhaps to need the feeling of being needed) was dangerous, potentially addictive. After over ten years of being a son left behind and an addition to a family that he did love but also did not truly belong to, the strident tenacity with which Ryo had pursued him had seemed a contrast, a bright light after so long in the dark. Though he had people he cared for, no one else held such a single-minded dedication to him, and it inspired the same to well up in his own chest, overflowing from his sensitive, sentimental heart.
He hadn't known (or, perhaps, simply hadn't known for sure) that this which he kept bottled up within the cage of his chest could be fed, could be heated, could be coaxed into a roiling boil which set his blood to simmer, seeking out whatever pathways it could for escape. Akira is an instinctual creature. He does not calculate, he does not plan. He pursues his pleasure down primal pathways, mindful of his own desires, sure, but also keenly attentative for what seemed to enkindle Ryo's. It's not in Akira's nature to be selfish, and he seems to find just as much (if not more) gratification in shattering the impossible composure that he had pictured Ryo with for so long, though it's a gray sort of boundary he crosses as he manipulates Ryo into parting his lips, opening his mouth; it's challenging something he personally doesn't understand, as unabashed of a creature he is, but it stands as an invitation to him to shed such concerns. If Ryo had refused, he would have let it go, trusting in him to draw his own boundaries — but he did not. Akira smiles, the brush of his fingers past Ryo's ear growing more gentle and considerate, an appreciative sort of caress. Whether it was something he truly agreed to or just something he conceded to him for him, Akira decides not to worry — the minutiea were less important, unnecessary when time itself felt short and pressing (though they had all the time in the world).
It's not something he would have done otherwise. Akira has few inhibitions, but the one he holds fast to was that he would refuse to use this body in any way that would hurt Ryo, but — this becomes a far foggier situation at the reaction his body had to the sharpness of teeth against delicate skin, how malleable he felt beneath the occasional strong direction of his hands. Those concerns were subdued and then washed away, replaced by the echo of the noise which escapes Ryo kept purposefully reverberating in his mind, sharp and breathless with the shock of it yet underscored with the saturation of pleasure; the blaze Akira's been keeping contained roars inside of him, wild and desperate. It all happens at once then: Ryo's knees rising to lock at his sides, the nails biting into his shoulder, the way his body seems to pursue the same sort of blunted relief that Akira's does, accompanied by the increased tempo of breath which had grown (and he had grown it this way) rough and fraying, less and less content with the rules of the game as they were so far. Accompanied by the path of the hand across his back, to his waist, continuing to the bony landmark of his hip, bypassing the thin material to press to —
All at once Akira stops, or all except for the shudder that it sent up the column of his spine, the slightly choked sound lodging in his throat. Over the last few minutes he had stretched himself taut, tense and yearning, a circuitous storm kept penned inside of him until — well, he didn't have an until because he didn't think that far ahead, always only pursuing the next step of what was directly in front of him. But what was directly in front of him now — the concurrent insistence of Ryo's fingers and the way he tongues over the pad of his thumb suddenly derail him, as if asking for an answer he didn't quite yet have. He breathes in a short, ragged gasp, the exhale escaping as an affected,] Ryo, [lifting himself away from him just enough to create some space between them, searching out his eyes in the dark. Akira's own are molten with want but simultaneously churning with a vague uncertainty — not with what he wanted to do (because he had no end to what he felt right now that he wanted to do), but how exactly it would be done. He is all broad strokes of instincts and desires and none of the specifics or details, and the result is tension causing the barrier of his skin to grow thin and stressed against what it fought to keep contained inside of him.]
What — [he moves the hand that had held fast to his jaw carefully down the line of his neck, thumb leaving a cool trail of saliva, and as it reaches the hollow of his throat it follows the pathway of his collarbone, arriving to almost aimlessly tug at the fabric of the clothing which still (maddeningly, infuriatingly) kept most of Ryo's body from him. He rediscovers what he'd been trying to ask as he does so.] What should I... [Why the fuck is this so difficult to phrase? Akira is an unabashed creature but now he feels a hot frustration wash down over his shoulders, aggravated at his own piecemeal ineptitude. (Maybe his porn search history should've had a little more variety.) With his point made at the shoulder of his jumpsuit he searches out the zipper that Ryo had pulled down to his navel a few moments ago, tugging it down as best he could before it caught against a fold in the fabric. A rumble issues from deep in his chest; instead he reaches to splay his hand hot against the fluttering flesh of Ryo's stomach, moving it downwards incrementally. His breathing is picking back up again, sounding more like a pant than anything else; he's desperate to move his hips for the possibility of outlet for all of this kept pent-up inside of him, desperate for anything.]
Just tell me what to do. [The words leave him all in a heated rush, in a single issue of the bellows of his breath, but they ring more like a plea. Because Ryo would know, and he would — he always does.]
(cw/tw: consensual sex between two teens)
Whether it was with the subtle dip of their shoulders, the tilt of their head, the brush of their hands — Ryo could discern intention but cared little to discern the emotions behind it. It hadn’t mattered to him, as much as Akira had mattered to him. In the past, pressed into the corners of clubs with the thrum of music like a secondary heart, he didn’t care at all of what else others may have wanted at the end of a handful of moments they though they had him to themselves. Ryo would never admit the adjustments he’d made, the dissatisfied conclusions he’d come up with. What was the point of doing something so base, beyond ingrained imperative?
He never found an answer. Or, perhaps, he’d looked to untangle the knots within himself with the wrong hands, the wrong touch, the wrong press of lips against the pale of his skin like a brand. It was all only a means to reproduce, for some a way to release stress. For others, it was pleasure for pleasure’s sake, but – Akira’s hand is gentle. He feels the rough of his fingers at his hairline. His stomach lurches, in ways he can’t identify as the implication of a smile rests in the gesture. He almost flinches from the flare of vulnerability he feels, but Akira keeps him pinned and Akira keeps him occupied with the sear of his mouth, the snag of his teeth across flesh.
Akira had always been the only fixture in his life. Beyond Jenny, Akira had been the only one he wanted to grant his attentions to. He’d been the only one at all that he could seek out, would think to seek out — would risk the world with, the thread tied about its circumference a messy web between their too young hands.
But, here, the urgency singes differently. It circles the periphery, but the unspooling of time is ineffable and incalculable. To stay here, in this space they now occupy, could be as endless as the events that spun about them allowed, but sex was an urge. It was a driving force for many. And impatience and patience clips at Akira’s heel as Ryo inspires in him a pause so profound that he seeks him out.
Akira, he tries, though it is only his lips that move about the rise and fall of syllables. The sound does not follow, caught up in his lungs like the hot burn of smoke. It makes his eyes flutter in the sudden and unbidden absence of Akira’s weight, his eyebrows knitting for the briefest of moments before he knows innately, what it is that Akira needs. Before he can formulate it with his tongue, before he can say it with the full of his body, Ryo puzzles out the shape of it and understands it in the way that he can understand it – an unknown territory, a word unable to be read, a hypothesis unable to be supported even despite the full of one’s desires. He could have guessed. But, there’s no frustration that digs into the full of him. There is no ridicule. It’s only — ]
Akira, [ he starts again, his name like a worried stone in his mouth. He knows the shape of it intimately, the rounded edges of it — light and sweet against his tongue. Even if his voice frays in ways rawer than tender around the effort it takes to draw air into his lungs, Akira’s trepidation signals the same actions it always does. He’d always been there to ground Akira, assure him, as much as Akira had assured Ryo in ways he could not and still cannot allow himself to understand.
But, that shudder has stoked something hungry and silent in him — the cool of his exterior there, but thawing underneath. He can’t stem the inevitable way it will fissure in places, the few and scattered times he’d done this strange in comparison. It’d been a curiosity, an itch. This — he shoves the thought aside, focuses with the remaining restraint he keeps lashed about himself. ]
We'll handle this first, [ he breathes out, his words catching against shorter exhalations — the impression of Akira's form bracketing him in. He feels comfortable beneath him like this, surrounded in the warmth that was distinctly his. Ryo feels out the shape of him with the hand that’s dipped beneath the only fabric left, maps the harder lines of his body and down the musculature of an arm. Ryo's hand, imbued with the heat he'd stolen from him, rests over the one that trails the soft skin of his stomach. The muscles beneath the rough of Akira's palm flutter and clench and Ryo can just make out the tension that threads through him. He curls his fingers beneath the meat of Akira's palm, gives it a directive nudge toward the teeth of the zipper. The hand at Akira’s shoulder lingers, before lifting and lowering to rest against the sheets. He leans up on his elbow then, mindful, presses his lips to the corner of his mouth. Akira smells sharp, heady. Ryo catches the scent of him again, similar and dissimilar to the Akira he’d always known as he breathes in, slow and thin and steadying. He can feel the material of his jumpsuit dip, the way it pools off one shoulder to follow to the crook of the elbow he rests on. This close, he can see the desperation that fans through Akira like a flame, that rests in his expression like a familiar scripture, something different in the way that an encounter with Akira impacts him. It scrapes against the surface of all that Ryo is like the pale shell of the moon. He lowers the lift of his knees, but keeps their legs tangled – his ankle strokes down the back of his calf. He feels the tension here too and he doesn’t think at all as he kisses him once and fleetingly, the hand that guides Akira’s dipping beneath what little the fabric of his jumpsuit has left to hide. He leaves it against the hotter skin of his hip. It’s an invitation to make good on what he says, what he suggests. ]
It's okay, [ he leaves against Akira's skin. I have you, is there too, a muted thing that curls between them as he pulls back just enough to see him. The weight of Akira’s gaze is almost sears him in how much it desires and the hand that had once instructed lifting. His fingers, once so cool, trace the newer angles of Akira’s face. Like this, Ryo can almost see him clearly in the dark and he takes a breath, primal impulse bearing down against logical process like a rock thrown offshore. Eventually, even that would be worn away beneath the unwavering heat that’s hooked into his gut. Arousal is a long process, a constellation of fragmented sentences and chemicals strung together into a complex and instinctual narrative. What Ryo feels now is just that, an evolutionary weave and a biological imperative – encoded in the language his genetics has left. That constancy and certainty steadies him, though the proclamation Akira had issued hums through him like a current, like the barometric dip of atmospheric pressure before a storm comes it. Ryo aches in a way that’s bone deep and painful, his heartrate stuttering with each smaller move Akira makes, the evidence of his want in the way Akira speaks to him, presses close to him. Ryo shifts beneath him, a short and shivering stretch that comes as reflex. ] Once that's off, lie down on your side. [ His eyes lid against the way he presses his own hip into the manipulated curve of Akira’s palm. ] Face me.
[ It will have to do for now, he knows. Until he can tell him of anything else, it's better to start without further wait. ]
Don't be afraid to touch me, [ he continues in a murmur. The hand that frames Akira’s face snakes downward in demonstration, down along the column of his throat, along the front of his chest. It rests briefly there, feeling the pace of Akira’s heart beneath his skin. Fast, like his own, with the steady stream of adrenaline. It must be as loud, he knows, in Akira’s ears. It must be just as unbearable to strain to hear over, but — Ryo’s hand continues to firmer plain of his abs, sweeps over the hardness of muscle there with a sort of reverence for what they’ve made of him. ] You're familiar with yourself, aren't you? [ Ryo’s hand isn’t shy, doesn’t halt with uncertainty. Akira had asked, plainly and openly. And Ryo had translated it, in the markers of language Akira’s body and voice left across his own.
It’s a narrow space to work with, the back of his own hand brushing up against himself as much as Akira. He swallows an immediate hitch of breath, the smooth of his palm molding with gentle conviction against the press of Akira’s cock against the tight of the briefs he wears. His fingers drag against the thick of its outline, the pad of his thumb angled to press just beneath the head. He swallows reflexively, the pink of his tongue touching against the corner of his own mouth. ] Treat me like that, [ he says, his voice more a singular bloom of breath. He doesn’t look away, his eyes trained on where he knows Akira’s must be. He keeps his own body still, strokes Akira once and slow through the scant material. The corners of his lips catch against something softer, almost indiscernible in the dim and against the shallows of his inhalations, exhalations. ] I trust you.
[ And he does. He always has. Since the moment he’d pulled his cold body to him, wrapped his arms around the frame that had been without touch for as long as Ryo could recall. Akira had always been careful, had never intruded. He’d waited for Ryo, with his hand outstretched. He’d closed so many distances, even if Ryo could not fully read the scope and depth of it. Even if he could not admit to himself the entirety of it, a small and fragile thing a splinter between his ribs, angled at his heart.
I trust you. ]
no subject
Ryo's lips move again, this time producing the sound of his name; Akira's eyes glint in the dark, and he shifts ever-so-slightly before settling once more in a quiet affirmation, an acknowledgment that he was paying rapt attention. There's a warm, "mm," embedded in one of the shortened breaths that escapes him at the directive, though he catches and stalls when Ryo's hand moves, the purposeful path of it underlining and accentuating the tension that worked its way throughout the musculature of his body. Whatever path his own hand might have been aimlessly forging stops as he feels the touch trailing down the length of his arm, coming to rest over the top of his hand — Ryo's hands always seem so much smaller, so much more delicate than his own, but with the way his fingers search out the spaces between his fingers and hook through them towards his palm, he realizes that such observations were trite and petty, because regardless of the truth of it it was Ryo that took hold of him with patience and precision. Akira relinquishes the control willingly, always so accepting and trusting of the guidance Ryo had given to him. He takes a moment to rectify what his frustration had before stymied him, the measuredness that Ryo's guidance steadying him to draw the zipper down toward its terminal without accidental snag against rumpled fabric, all as Ryo lifts himself onto the support of his elbow, allowing the clothing still clinging around his shoulders to fall away. The entire exchange is so slow, so methodical, there's something almost choreographed about it, down to the light kiss that he pressed to the corner of Akira's mouth. The spot seems to burn even after he moves away, the casual intimacy of the gesture clamoring in the base of his skull, eliciting a resounding ache in the center of his chest.
As with any dance one sought to teach to another, there was the guidance and the demonstration, then the gap which was left for the follow-through, the accumulation of understanding gained throughout the process. His eyes lid in a slow blink as Ryo stretches out his legs to tangle with own, missing just for a moment the second ephemeral kiss given to him — his lips move to shape around Ryo's, following a swell from his heart, but he leans away and Akira merely preserves the feeling, marking it for later. With his hand left against Ryo's hip, he finds the pad of his thumb absent-mindedly tracing the crest of bone there as he reaches up with his other hand to help with the other sleeve, tugging it off of his shoulder and slowly pulling it down his arm, which had been too busy guiding him to shed the unnecessary layer, and away from his body. It's okay. Akira's eyes had been tracking along the shape of his body, the lines of his arms, but his attention returns to Ryo's face now, some of the intensity having grown a little more soft, a little more out-of-focus for the time being. His head tilts ever-so-slightly into the touch to his face; he doesn't look down as both of his hands come to Ryo's hips, the movements strong and careful as he shucks the jumpsuit away from him, down along the soft lines of his thighs. He knows he wouldn't be able to get it much further than that — not with the way they're situated, with the chaos their legs were thrown into — but it was at the very least functional. He leans closer to him again, as if by gravitational pull to the nearly-unmarred bared skin, the space between them hot and weighted down by the mutual intent and desire otherwise tempered by the faintly ponderous exchange that was not yet concluded.
Each tiny shift or shudder that runs through Ryo's body goes throughout the entirety of his own — he feels it now, causing his breath to leave him in a brisk exhale, his hands once more coming to rest at the familiar landmarks of Ryo's hips, his palms warm and rough as they rove slowly over his sides, fingers slipping towards his back idly, if not only for the sensation of grasping him there. He is talking again, and Akira's eyes lift once more to watch, blinking in faint surprise — as it's not what he would've anticipated, but he has no questions, no qualms in simply doing as he was instructed. He moves forward to kiss Ryo, a long yet singular act, the full drag of his tongue over his lips.] Okay. [The simple, short word felt thick as it passed from his throat, falling from his lips much lower than it might usually. His head dips down to his neck, towards the side of him that he'd bitten before — the torn skin still bleeds, though not much, and he finds the thought that, don't want to stain, sluggishly and foolishly working through his mind, held perhaps as an excuse he might use to swipe his tongue along the trail of blood, eyes lidding at the heavy, cordial taste. He doesn't dwell on it, treating this as just one more part of the choreography as he maneuvers himself onto his side, kept levered up by his elbow, still not allowing too much space between them as his eyes search out Ryo's face in the dark once more.
The path that Ryo's hand finds down the front of his body is one left prickling in the absence of touch — he always feels a bit cool to the touch, though most people were, simply in the difference between them and Akira's naturally-warmer body temperature, fanned even hotter now, with arousal and passion causing his rapidly-beating heart to force the circulation of his blood to a fever's pitch. The rush of it was loud, a demanding force in his ears, pushing at the back of his skull, but it — actually wasn't that hard to keep at bay, not with Ryo to focus on, with the movement of his hand and the sound of his voice. It cut through everything else, through the riot that desire and impulse were waging in this body of his. With someone else, it might've been more difficult to focus, to keep chained instincts of his that might grow too much for him to properly control, but with Ryo... he has years of experience clinging to his every word, watching the expertise of his hands. It makes it easy in comparison.
He follows the directive. As Ryo continues speaking, with the thoughtful pauses stringing themselves between the statements, Akira's hand roams up from its place on the ridge of his hipbone, pressing for a moment into the soft flesh at his side before going further upward to trace the tips of his fingers in the defined gaps in his ribs. He gives himself a reminder to try to force him to eat more later — he never really seems to. The path continues, palm warm and rough as it crosses over his chest, passing over the rise of his nipple toward the bony architecture of his collarbone, the pads of his fingers tracing the line of it, the forms of the muscles there. His skin is so smooth, so soft, and despite how faintly cool he feels, he can also feel the occasional leap and twinge at his touch — it elicits an almost childlike wonder and excitement in him, the simple unbridled joy of power under his hand.
But... he would never say it, and it only crosses over his face in a single moment where his brows knit together, but — he doesn't think he entirely agrees. Not with what Ryo says, not with the idea of treating him like he treats himself. To Akira, these were two totally different, incongruous scenarios, so far separate they might as well have an ocean between them. With himself, it was just a means to an end, whatever he found made it easier to achieve the pleasure of release and the relief of the lifting of the burden arousal (which it certainly felt like, sometimes, but certainly didn't feel the same way to him now, feeling instead like something both borrowed and shared). It was entirely impersonal. There was none of the gentleness to it, none of the care and consideration that he found easing into his every motion here, far more absorbed in Ryo and the affects he had upon him than the same for his own body (because he knows that would follow). He was so much more entranced in this, in the intensely intimate and interconnected personal nature of it — it heightened everything, underlined everything, bringing him already far more satisfaction even before they'd even really started than anything else had given him beforehand.
He anticipated where Ryo's hand would end up — or perhaps his body had merely yearned so much for it that it had bled over into expectations — but regardless of that source, he found he couldn't have properly prepared himself for it. At first the pressure of his palm is a vague and formless thing through the thin fabric, and even that is enough to cause his lungs to suddenly draw in a soft gasp of air, holding onto it out of the shock of a sensual tenderness that only grew more and more pronounced as the fingers curled to find the shape of him. Akira once again goes completely still, even the air held in his lungs, the hand which he'd begun to trail back down Ryo's side. The careful press of his thumb releases him from his momentary paralysis — his cock twitches in Ryo's hand, his body unlocking in a quaking shudder, and the sound that catches and then breaks in his throat is smaller and more delicate than those that had come before it, belonging to him, sure, but also to the person he had been, separate from everything that had changed him. His breath, once again freed from its momentary captivity, exists as faintly ragged pants pressed into the small space between him. His eyes are very nearly closed as he continues, his voice warm and soft like silk, accompanied by the slow stroke up and down his length; Akira's voice is little more than a rattle in the already rough-edged cycle of air in and out of his lungs. Ryo's hand on him brings about in him a completely paradoxical response — for a moment he feels nearly all of the strength go out of him, brought weak and low and willing to do anything for him to keep going, But kept behind that was the storm, the riot, the pressing urge and need for more, the endless and restless energy that would promise to deliver it to him.
I trust you.
His hand resumes its movement, and he wastes no time in deliberation or hesitation before it follows the prime meridian of Ryo's body past where the remainder of his jumpsuit had been pooled moments past, coming to at first mimic what Ryo had just done to him — to form his hand to him through the fabric that separated them, to move against him despite its interference. But, no. A grumble like a low growl rumbles in his throat; his hand retreats just enough to slip beneath the edge of his briefs, plunging deeper to wrap his hand around his cock. Well, he feels hot enough here, and there's the faintest hint of a laugh to Akira's breath as his fingers ripple around Ryo's length, moving upwards towards the head and then growing infinitesimally stronger, more intent as he stroked down. The movements are still slow, however, languid enough to match Ryo's own, though his touch becomes almost feather-light as it travels back upwards again, giving him opportunity enough to pass the meat of his thumb over the tip. As he does this he leans in closer to him, close enough to Ryo that he could kiss him if he wanted, though for now he refrains — there's still a laughing lilt to the line of his mouth, his eyes heavily-lidded though alert to him, as ever, as always.]
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. ]
no subject
It was always like that: a push and pull, of words and intent, of actions and reactions. Just as there was no word Ryo said that went unconsidered by Akira, there was no subsequent guiding motion he performed that didn't go without its proper response. They worked together in equal parts to rid him of the jumpsuit, mutually rewarded by the sweep of Akira's hands over the newly-bared skin, the way Ryo's body shuddered beneath his palms at the touch. He would never have gone this far, to settle alongside Ryo with little more than heat and tempered impatience between them, if he had experienced anything else but nearly reckless enthusiasm, in word and voice and etched into every movement of his body. Regardless of what the beast grafted into each and every one of his cells demanded of him, he would've been able to contain it, but as it is — with Ryo's blood seeming to rush just as hot as his own, his breaths echoing in similar discordance, the sweep of his eyelashes hiding a similar level of liquid desire, well. It only turns him on even more, but fortunately it seems matched and met in Ryo, palpable even when his hands aren't directly on him, thick on his tongue even with it kept behind his teeth. He reads it in him the way he would anything else.
Ryo has always been calm, collected, fastidious. It paints his every decision, as it carries over into motion, and it does so in a way that Akira can't even find himself aggravated with because it's so him, that to insist otherwise would be to deface his agency. The shaping of his fingers through the fabric was so slow he could count it with his racing heartbeats, could count it with the breaths that scraped their way up and down his trachea, anticipating what they promised, yearning so much for it that it nearly pressed pleas into his mouth. But, no, sometimes when he was like this, Ryo merely needed a push, and that's what Akira's brusque actions were — where Ryo would weigh and consider his action, constructing it in his mind so that he could perfectly see the outcome before he even sought to enact it, Akira followed his gut. It usually had mixed results. And here it's the same. As his hand had forged its way insistently downward, he leaned in closer, his head ever-so-slightly angled, keeping a seemingly-promised kiss withheld in a vague echo of Ryo's hand against him, though the difference was in his own. His heart gives a sharp hammer as his body reacts to the sudden stroke of his hand; he surges forward to be able to ride this reaction, mouth opening to catch the round of Ryo's bottom lip gently in his teeth at the same moment the gasp broke over them, impressing his ownership over it — though there is a low groan in the back of his throat as Ryo's fingers reflexively curl around him.
It's short-lived. He releases Ryo's lip as soon as that pressure moves away (there's no taste of blood), as soon as the familiarity of the sound of his voice to when he'd broken the skin of his neck with his teeth. That — hadn't been his intention. He's lost for a moment, confused, separating enough from Ryo so that he could see him lift his hand towards himself, presenting the palm. He seems borderline baffled as he draws his tongue up the breadth of his hand (though he can't deny reading the lasciviousness of the action, his breath forming a warm bloom between them as his eyes caught the way his fingers curled into his mouth). He doesn't stop moving at this, though he's keenly aware of the crack of his voice around the shelf of his fingers, the way that his body leaps when the drag of his fingers grow faint enough to only serve as a distant reminder of what they had just done. No, he finally understands when Ryo's hand falls past his waist once more, not distracted from mirroring what he had done just moments prior. His mouth drops open another small increment as his hand bypasses the border of fabric and wraps, warm and slick, around his cock, the movements still characteristically measured but feeling utterly licentious with how easy it is — every ministration before this had been so slow, so tantalizing, so formless and ephemeral, it had stretched out his anticipation to the breaking point of this moment. The spread of his thumb upwards, bare and wet over the head, causes what remainder of air in his lungs to leave him in a low moan; the sensation of that, of the tempo that Ryo's hand begins to find over him — it knocks away everything else, and he can't stop himself from pressing his hips forward slightly into the touch, almost greedy now that what he had yearned for had been given.
But — on the heels of the pleasure thrumming up along the highway of his spine to crash into the base of his skull, he's — frustrated. His mouth closes with a faintly audible click of his jaws, and he removes his hand from Ryo, lifting it up towards him as he ducks his head. There's none of the measured salaciousness, no artistry or form to it. He is all speed and function as he mimics Ryo yet again, his tongue rasping over his palm and the undersides of his fingers. He wastes no time, reaching once more past the interfering boundary of cloth, but then he changes tact, like a train changing its track — his movements become a bit slower, a bit more careful, first little more than the light press of his fingertips as the rough of his palm pass slick over the head of his cock, slowly rotating his hand so that it passed through the gap formed in the curl of his thumb and forefinger, coupled with the pressure of the purlicue of his hand and the meat of his thumb. He strokes him once, slowly and carefully, looking to find a similar ease with the additional wetness. As he does this he angles his head upward, not lifting it but instead pressing his open mouth to Ryo's throat, his tongue running over the shape of his Adam's apple, the ever-so-slight drag of his lower teeth following. They are somewhat discordant, the roughness of that kiss and how methodical the movement of his hand is, but they follow the same tempo for a few beats. Then he lifts his head once more, distributing a single, fleeting kiss to the line of his jaw before returning to where their lips were so close they might nearly touch, though for now all Akira does is bring the rough, affected presence of his breathing to that infinitesimal space, his gaze flicking upwards through heavy eyelashes to capture his own.]
no subject
As children, they’d crossed each other naturally like the shadow of the moon against the blue shell of the Earth, the soft swell of the ocean. Ryo was an absent and loveless thing, something to be gazed upon at a distance. But, Akira harbored in him all that was rich and warm and somehow beautiful, the press of his fingers in his like soil to roots or sun to flowers. Where Akira waited, Ryo followed in ways he did not recognize. Like the washing of salt from the earth, little by little Akira had made all of Ryo more hospitable, less opposed to the growth that could come so long as it was him who coaxed Ryo into Spring, no matter how he tried to supplant the tentative, fragile sprigs. Akira had always bloomed to him, even if he could not see it. Akira had always been something welcoming, a being that gathered light instead of merely reflecting it toward what deserved it most.
And here, Ryo finds himself in the grey of comprehension. He knows the composition of chemicals that floods through him, Akira, the bursts of adrenaline and the rush of dopamine. He knows the addictive qualities of what is and what will be, but beneath his explanations yawns something indistinct and weighted — something that draws up smaller gasps where he had once been silent, the skim of Akira’s teeth and tongue at his throat, catching against his lower lip enough to pull up the audible hitch of breath, the instinctual reaction to arch and mold against all that he gives him. Ryo too is greedy in ways he does not recognize, but his body fully crystallizes beneath the heavy stretch of their shared heat against his skin.
Humans chase pleasure their entire lives. They take risks, they plunge forward into feats both moral and immoral, coast in and out of the shadows of society like the way hands coast past hips. Ryo’s justifications are buried in the flesh of him, but the way Akira follows into perfect mirror — the lazy curvature of his hand about his cock, slicked, Ryo finds a matching note in the way he drags the pad of his fingers up the shaft, the careful and calculated application of pressure. Akira’s hand is stronger and rougher in comparison to his own, but he can feel so acutely each effort at softness — the impression of care that Ryo never once took with himself. Akira takes his time, as much Ryo does without ever bringing into the focus the cause. Even as Akira brushes his lips against his jaw, peers at him across the minuscule expanse as he settles back beside him — the recognition willfully blurs. It becomes hazy, the more his body wants, responds in ways far more noticeable to Akira than they would ever be to him.
It’s a minute distance, but the fissure runs deep. It runs painfully into all that Ryo is, but still he finds a way across it. Like the first rush of water over seawalls, the destructive tide brought up by storms — a certain determination to take all that it can back into the dark of its body, pulling back stone and mortar. His nose brushes against Akira’s as he leans in, presses his mouth to the corner of Akira’s lips. It’s soft and it’s fleeting, like the burning of fog off the ocean. It comes back again, in a shudder of a breath, formless words breaking across Akira’s skin like waves against palms. It skims through the whole of what could be but does not quite exist as he presses up into the loose circle of Akira’s fist, his own hand keeping a languid tempo, the next exhalation caught against the mold of his lips as Ryo finally commits to the act after a long draw.
He’d never bothered with others quite like this. Kisses had been perfunctory and performative. But, there’s something compulsive and sharp in him that seeks to do this — and in the moment he indulges what he would typically pass off as baser needs. For a moment, there’s a flare of inquisitive hunger in the way he licks at the seam of Akira’s lips, asks for what he had granted Akira earlier. For a moment, he thinks of the way that Akira had watched him through the sweep of his lashes and his every thought tangles into a indefinable loop that does not allow itself to be undone.
And it pulls taut, like the cast of desire and the welling of all things hot and shapeless he cannot begin to place behind the cage of his ribs.
Akira had always been so transparent. He had been always there for Ryo to read, just as he reads him now, but blinds himself to the most critical edge. Like rainwater across the petals of skeleton flowers, the rubbing of scales off a moth’s wings. There are some things that do not fade under scrutiny. There are some things that Ryo cannot grasp in both his hands, because he keeps them closed. There are some things — and Ryo almost sighs, a sound both low and warm, against the full of Akira’s lips. ]
no subject
In others he has definitive proof.
By the necessity of his new body he is often rough and brusque in his actions, following the physical demeanor and energy that now feels inherent to himself, but in matters that tangled up between the mind and the heart, his touch can be far more subtle. With their proximity, with his single and determined focus on Ryo, he is cognizant of each and every action and reaction, the jump of skin and the shudder of flesh and the serrated quality of breath — he can sense the tentative warmth of his lips as they search out his own, the somewhat distant sense of something else, hesitant and slightly under-developed, reaching out to its full extent towards him in these moments. They were not something he would lord over Ryo. They are both stubborn to their cores, alternatingly an unstoppable force and an immovable object in different situations. These were things he would also keep to himself, to preserve in himself not the hope but the fervent belief that Ryo was wrong and that one day he would come to realize it. But Akira could be patient for that day, and he would be more than willing to help pile up the conflicting evidence in the meanwhile.
To the best of his ability Akira is careful. Though there is an undeniable pressure burning bright inside of him, thrumming through his veins, pressing against the thin barrier of his skin, he wrestles it down and overpowers it, keeping it restrained as he otherwise mimics a similar pace as Ryo's, hand naturally forming to whatever he notices elicits the best response from him, very little falling through the cracks of his visual and physical attention. That is, of course, until the almost indiscernible turn of his head, the feather-light touch of his lips to the corner of his mouth. He feels something in it as it retreats, something lingering in the air like a half-finished statement. Akira hangs on those invisible words, his eyes lidding heavily once more at the slick stimulation of Ryo's hand up and down his length — the distinct press of Ryo's hips into his hand. His rough breath blooms tense and hot against the side of Ryo's face, the pace of his hand increasing for a few strokes, the circle of his fingers tightening ever-so-slightly, rippling around the shape of his cock to try to push him just a bit further — before he calms and returns to the previous tempo, he leashes himself, because that insistent force within him doesn't want to wait, it wants to batter and break its way free, to pull exultation from Ryo by force and take it from him for his own pleasure as well, but it — like so many other things on a daily basis he enforces control over, ever unwilling to become something like that.
Those impulses become much quieter as Ryo finally capitalizes on what he'd been alluding to — Akira had waited for him with all the patience he can muster, eyes flickering up once through his lashes to look at him, an expression caught between concern and something a little more difficult to name (something soft, yearning, quietly expectant) settling onto his face. He wouldn't bypass what he was deliberating to kiss him; he waited until Ryo came to that decision his own, the light ghosting sensation of his lips finally solidifying into the full press of his lips against his own, moving with their own impetus and intent, aided by the inquiry of the hot sweep of tongue against the closed line of his mouth. It ran through Akira's body like an electric shock; he twinges at the honest desire of it, personal and plain, and he is stalled by this for the briefest of moments before he rushes into compliance. His lips part, and his tongue slips forward to taste at the inside of his lip, at the border of his teeth — but he doesn't follow-through with the instinct to press more than that, instead taking a slightly more passive role. It had been Ryo that had initiated this this time, after all, and he waits, wanting, for him to take his advantage in that. Because the noisier, more avaricious pieces of himself seem to grow a little bit more subdued when Ryo does something like that — the gravitational pull towards him, towards every single little thing he did was so much stronger than that personal division.
Though it's not something he can chase from himself entirely. There's aspects and elements of it that bake themselves into his physicality, into his mien, from a slight increase to the heat radiating from his body to the quick, harsh-edged quality to his breathing. There's much to this that he wants to continue to cling to — the impossible closeness he feels to Ryo, with so few barriers remaining (now that they've coordinated to knock a few of the remaining ones down). Regardless of the baseness of his straightforward, bodily desire, Akira is an emotional and sentimental creature, and it's the strength of that which reduces the shear heat of his body to just these few noticeable aspects —
But it's an internal struggle that would continue as the moments pass by, marked by its own quiet attrition.]
no subject
In his first days in America, Ryo found himself retracing the shape of their last memory, worn smooth by dedication like waves to stone or perhaps Orpheus to Eurydice, his footsteps followed so long as he did not look back to see if Akira was there behind him after all. He recalls that, until they could no longer see the shape of one another against the bright and rolling hills, Akira had watched him go.
He remembers thinking he’d have like to have returned. He would have liked to have trekked back, just long enough to rub the soft pads of his thumbs across the damp skin beneath Akira’s dark eyes and told him not to cry. Not anymore. But, Akira had always told him it was Ryo who cried too. Akira had always cried when Ryo couldn’t, his heart unable to comprehend what it was it felt. He remembers the way Akira’s small hand had balled up in the front of his red shirt, so close to where the sticky ache welled up behind Ryo’s ribs too. He remembers thinking he’d come to find Akira again. Somehow.
He thinks now that it feels almost the same now, as Akira gives and retreats — gives again with the subtle change of pacing, the constriction of his fingers. He thinks Akira follows so dutifully in the path that he’s laid for him, as much as Ryo follows his. Akira’s hand about him is a vivid heat, his palm as grounding as it is freeing, his exploratory touches enough to pull from him breaths both waning and uneven. Each sensation, the stirring something tidal and reaching. Each pass breaks off a little more of him. Each exhalation Akira presses against the pale of his skin makes him forget the hardest boundaries of himself, his harsh edges eroded into something soft and pliant. Wanting.
Where Akira struggles with the basest parts of himself, Ryo struggles to keep all that he is aligned. All that is left is so fragile, fleeting. He holds onto it tightly, because that is all he has ever done. He can't name what it is that rests in the depths of himself. In the dark, Akira's affections are a fixed point on a horizon he's always known, but can't fully contain. It waits for Ryo to let them come. And he does, in some ways. He does in ways he isn't fully sure of. But, Akira —
They'd always been so stubborn. Akira's ideologies skim across him as much as Ryo's skim across Akira. Yet, he'd never belittled Akira for all that he held within. He had never faulted him for his thoughts, had never held himself above them. Akira's perspectives, his thoughtfulness, his consideration for all that the world thought was unforgivable and unpalatable in him — Akira's body yields to him as much as Ryo's yields to him. Each small, blistering sound is swallowed up by the heat of Akira's mouth as he licks in, traces the blunt edge of teeth and the harder points of canines. Ryo's gentleness for him was incomparable. Irrefutable, when placed beside any other. He takes such time to map anything Akira relents to him, presents to him with a willingness so bright it sears across each separation. Akira tastes warm and sweet, metallic across the tip of his tongue. And Ryo knows it is himself, a part of him.
There's a low sound that breaks at the base of his throat before he can contain it, the lines of his body alight with the realization. It moves through him like an undertow, something he can't pin down. He can't raise his head above it. He doesn't wonder what will happen if he doesn't.
Instead, Ryo's curls his fingers a little tighter — makes a firmer circle with his thumb and index finger, stroke him slow and even from base to head. There's no pause between as he curves his wrist, catches just below the ridge. Akira's cock still strains against his palm. And like Akira, there is no deeper concern for himself. There is only what he can do, what he can provide him — and he pulls back just enough to catch the meat of Akira's bottom lip between his teeth. It's a momentary hold, but — the returning kiss isn't without its own pressure. There's no lightness in it, firmer and surer. It's a balm, as much as it is something else. ]
no subject
Akira had never been like that; he quietly accepted that he had been born and destined for mediocrity, only breaking from that tentative mold when power had been chanced upon him. He tried not to question it. He merely accepted his lot, as he always had, doing what he could to learn to anticipate its occasionally-hazardous sways, grateful for its reckless strength which gave him — finally — some means of helping Ryo beyond the emotional scaffolding of their friendship. Even with this uneven lack of equity in his mind between them, he had rejected thoughts of deserving, the much truer line of belonging running so deep and so strongly between them that it shattered any such flimsy concerns. He simply knew that he belonged with Ryo, that together they were so much greater than the sum of their parts, their strengths and weaknesses overlapping in such a way that it made them almost seamless. No, they did not begrudge one another those weaknesses or idolize too highly those strengths, accepting of even the aspects they disagreed with.
It's what you did, when you cared for someone.
It is a give and take, a push and pull, a wax and wane, an ebb and flow — a continuous conversation, a ceaseless compromise. It's that way now, with hands goading, lips guiding, the restless energy running throughout them willing. Ryo's tongue slipping into his mouth elicits a sudden rush of hot excitement, his breath escaping as a huff. He kisses him back, meeting him at the places of his examination, tongue running slick and flush against his own. He'd forgotten about the faint taste of blood. It'd run into everything else, the coppery taste transmuted sweet and heady on his tongue, shared with Ryo's. As ever there is a small, immutable gulf in their demeanor, with Ryo never seeming to break from being careful and deliberate, though Akira gave in so easily to thrill and impulse and sharp, unabashed want. It's uniquely excruciating. Every indication of Ryo's interest and initiative to himself and to his body cuts into him deep, makes him bleed for more, and fast, and yet — he is so damn slow, so damn gentle and measured, and the soft and gentle human core at him aches even stronger for this, clinging to the depth of affection that it seemed to belie, ever susceptible to such displays from Ryo — but he's no entirely that kid anymore, and the rest of him is wearing thin, running ragged, less and less likely to be able to keep going on like this —
Ryo seems to react as if he knows, and maybe he does — Akira's always worn so much on his sleeve, projecting all the rest, and his readiness to the increase in tightness of his hand around him, the slow but strong draw, the deft manipulation of his wrist is — in a word, apparent. He throbs, staggers and breaks the pace of their kiss with a sizable gasp, his body seizing up for a moment, hand growing still and tight at the base of Ryo's cock. Teeth catch at his lip, and it seems for a moment almost a knowing sort of gesture, and Akira is moaning in a way that trails into something almost like a growl into Ryo's mouth as he returns to kiss him, grateful for the determination and intent in the circuit of his movements, meeting it and surpassing it, fraught with a heat and a pressure he can't properly keep contained any longer. His hand resumes its movement, keeping a steady and quicker pace as it runs up and down his length, lacking any and all subtle demonstrations (because this body of his was not made for finesse). His other, free up until this point, twists to tangle into the loose bedding; his hips push forward again; he kisses Ryo with a fierceness he's kept at bay thus far, trading his gasping breaths for the taste and heat of his mouth and tongue until his head swims and forces him to break it if just for a moment, gulping at a lungful of air.]
Ryo, [is what accompanies the following, rushing exhale. His eyes flick upwards to find his and — it should be easy, he should be able to just ask, but he can't, the interconnecting inputs of his body and heart and mind all tangled into an inconceivable snarl that he couldn't possibly attempt to fathom in real time. Instead he gives a labored breath, leaning forward and angling his head so that his forehead taps against Ryo's as his eyes fall nearly closed once more, focusing on reining in his ratcheting body temperature, the desperate bellows of his breath. He stays there, as if Ryo would more easily glean from him what he needed to communicate through topical osmosis, taking from him the burden of translating into words the riot that was running through this body of his, catching in his throat and coiling, hot and eager, in the pit of his stomach.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)