[smapfic] Day will come that I will mourn you (part I)
what the fuck even.
this is entirely dedicated to tsuristyle who inspired me with all the crazy amounts of SMAPfic she'd written (which you should absolutely read) and reignited my love for the boys at the time of crisis.
this was supposed to be a quick PWP ficlet. I don't know what happened. at over 11k words, it's the longest fanfic I've ever posted. it's also probably not what you'd normally expect from me, seeing as it's a total AU, it has some semblance of a plot, and it's probably the least pretentious thing I've written. I honestly can't tell if it's good. it felt like a wild ride, rushing through the first half like possessed in a matter of two days, but my writing was definitely rusty, so I don't know.
it's heavily inspired by Sons of Anarchy, which is also my main source of knowledge about MC culture (heh). more notes at the end, because I may have been gone for a while, but I've never stopped rambling on and on.
also yeah, warnings: contains violence, including guns and death of unimportant secondary OCs. also explicit sex, which, while consensual, is majorly underdiscussed.
the title is paraphrased from RHCP's Dani California.
this fic is absolutely trashy and proudly so.
[the full fic on AO3]
part I, because apparently I've exceeded LJ's character limit. :(
Day will come that I will mourn you
He came from the west. In blinding sun, deafening roar of the engine, he could’ve been something that came from the sky. He wasn’t. The worn leather of his vest, of the gloves on his hands, boots on his feet, was as earthly as dirt. The big black motorcycle didn’t seem half as menacing in the parking space of the run-down gas station. The man took his helmet off and looked around.
Tsuyoshi didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he felt slightly dizzy. He inhaled deeply then, wishing himself invisible and not like he’d been staring at all. The man on the Harley was definitely looking at him. Tsuyoshi shrugged his shoulders and tried to look busy staring at the dust on his sneakers.
It didn’t seem to work. In a moment, he heard approaching footsteps. Seated on a concrete block near the edge of the parking lot, he needed to look up, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. The biker walked up with a swagger, frowning at Tsuyoshi from behind his sunglasses.
“You work here?” he asked.
“No,” Tsuyoshi shook his head. “Just waiting for my ride.”
“Seen the men from that car?” He pointed towards the red BMW, the only other vehicle parked at the station.
“Yeah. They went behind the store.”
The man looked around again, scanning the surroundings as if he was searching for something in particular - or committing every detail to memory. There was something restless about him, like an itch or anticipation. It made Tsuyoshi nervous in a way he couldn’t quite grasp.
“How many?” the man asked.
“What?”
“How many men went there?”
That was when Tsuyoshi got a bad feeling about this.
“Uhm...”
The men from the car looked like thugs. Tsuyoshi had been camped at the station for a good hour, tired after walking all morning. No cars had stopped for him, no matter how desperately he’d been waving. He hadn’t had any more luck at the gas station. Even so, when he saw the men getting out of the BMW, he quickly decided against asking them for a lift.
It might’ve had something to do with the handle of a gun sticking out from one of the men’s waistband.
And the biker - Tsuyoshi hadn’t missed the patches on his vest, the colors of his motorcycle club. He wasn’t that well-versed in outlaw culture, but he’d heard the rumors. He’d seen them too, ride through the town like kings, and the sort of bloody things that tended to follow. He knew it was bad news.
“How. Many,” the man repeated, loud and clear. There was something around his jaw now, in the curve of his mouth: angry and amused at the same time.
Tsuyoshi swallowed. His throat was oddly dry.
“Two from the car. One guy was waiting for them here.”
“Okay.” The man glanced around before looking back down at Tsuyoshi again. “You might wanna get the hell out of here.” With that, he turned on his heel and walked away, heading unmistakably towards the back of the store.
Tsuyoshi sighed. He picked up his backpack from the ground and took out a bottle of water to gulp down half of it in one go. He then dug out his phone. The battery had died. He could go inside the store to charge it. Although it wasn’t like he had anyone to call. Or he could just hit the road again and hopefully hitch a ride before the end of the day. This was definitely not a good place. For anything.
He didn’t move an inch.
He was still clutching his phone when he heard raised voices, arguing, shouting, then abrupt silence. He was listening carefully now, almost hearing the seconds tick by inside his head, one, two three.
And then shots. One, two. Three.
A scream and running and it was like time slowed down and the air was thick like grease. Tsuyoshi saw a man, the driver of the red car, rushing from behind the corner of the store building, gun in his hand, his mouth moving but not making any sound. The biker followed and the man turned around and pointed the gun at him.
Four.
He missed, a shout from another direction drew his attention away. Both the man with the gun and Tsuyoshi turned their heads towards the entrance to the store, where the cashier had run out and stood frozen now, eyes wide in shock.
Five. Tsuyoshi didn’t even see him pull the trigger. He was still staring helplessly at the cashier, who suddenly went limp and fell to the ground.
Six.
The biker was still pointing his own gun at the gunman’s body lying on the asphalt, as he walked up to him, right until he was standing directly above him.
Seven, eight, nine.
Now that seemed completely unnecessary.
The silence after that was unbearable. Tsuyoshi felt suddenly lightheaded and like maybe he was going to puke. He leaned forward and closed his eyes.
“Hey, you!”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“Drop that phone!”
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
He looked up again to see the biker aiming his gun at him now, approaching slowly. His previous swaggering manner was gone; he threaded softly like a cat, watching Tsuyoshi with alert eyes. Tsuyoshi didn’t quite understand what was happening, until he remembered the phone in his hands and how it might look as if he was going to call the police.
“It’s dead. The battery. It doesn’t work. See?” he shouted back, holding up the phone, even if there was no way the man would be able to check it for himself from the distance. “I’m dropping it now.”
The biker didn’t lower the gun, but he quickened his pace, frowning again like a man with a dilemma. He barely spared the phone a glance before stepping onto it with the heel of his boot, successfully crushing it into pieces.
“Did you really have to...” Tsuyoshi started but was abruptly cut off by the biker who grabbed his arm and jerked him up to his feet.
“I told you to get the fuck out of here. You might just do that now, if you weren’t compelled before,” he gritted through his teeth. “Your ride gonna get here soon?”
Tsuyoshi bit his lip.
“I lied,” he admitted, not quite looking at the man. He couldn’t read his expression behind the sunglasses anyway and it freaked him out more. “I’m not waiting for anyone.”
The man cursed.
Then they both heard it.
Like a rolling thunder fronting a storm, a rumble of multiple engines echoed from a distance, growing and growing steadily into ominous growl that Tsuyoshi would swear he could feel vibrating in some hollow space inside his rib cage. He could imagine it to be the voice of an animal, a beast so huge it would be casting shadow on the road long before it got near.
The biker’s face looked as if he’d seen that beast before.
“Fuck. Fucking… Shit. Come on!” he shouted, putting the gun back into its holster on the inside of his vest, and darted towards his bike. Confused, Tsuyoshi slung his backpack over his shoulder and ran after him.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked.
The biker was already straddling the motorcycle and he thrust his helmet at Tsuyoshi.
“Get on,” he barked with no further explanation.
“What?”
“Get on the bike!”
“Why?”
“These?” he pointed towards the dead body of the BMW driver on the ground. “These were bad guys. And there are more of them coming this way. They’re not going to ask you questions. So either get on the fucking bike or stay here and wait to get shot.”
Tsuyoshi got on the bike.
He had ridden a motorcycle before, but never like this.
This was life or death and it felt like it. The wind felt like fire on his skin, the noise made him deaf, he could barely keep his eyes open. Feeling the mechanical power under him with a human body pressed to his chest was almost arousing, and he’d swear he could taste the speed in his mouth, on his tongue, electric and sour. His stomach was flipping at first as they were gaining speed, then it settled and he started to enjoy the mad ride. He even whooped excitedly, at which the biker seemed to shake his head, whipping Tsuyoshi in the face with his ponytail.
Then, after they took a turn at full speed that nearly sent Tsuyoshi flying off the bike, he caught a glimpse of the rear-view mirror and his heart sank. There was a whole column of black motorcycles following them, the riders all clad in black leather, but somehow he didn’t think they were friends. More like ghost riders, the Wild Hunt, smelling fear and guilt like it was blood. Tsuyoshi almost didn’t believe they were real. But he could tell the biker saw them too, by the way his grip on the handles tightened and he shifted slightly, accelerating.
“Are they going to kill us?” Tsuyoshi shouted over the noise of the engine.
“Not if they can’t catch us!” the man replied. “Hold on!”
The next moments were something that Tsuyoshi would later remember like a dream. Blurry on the details, not real, a collection of disjointed impressions: roaring, shouting, a burn in his throat, an ache in his limbs, a fear so surreal that it felt like ecstasy. Logically he must’ve thought he was going to die, but he would only have the memory of being the most alive he’d ever been.
They kept gaining speed until it didn’t seem possible to go any faster. Tsuyoshi had no idea anymore if they were still being followed. It occurred to him, like a flash that came and went, that he didn’t know anything about the man riding the motorcycle, what he was capable of - other than shooting people dead - and yet Tsuyoshi’s life depended on him and only him and his skill.
Tsuyoshi might’ve closed his eyes at some point. He wouldn’t remember.
He didn’t know how the man managed to see it - everything was moving too fast for Tsuyoshi to see anything - but there was an opening between the bushes on the side of the road. It happened just like that, one moment they were rushing down the road about to break their necks, the next the man shouted something that Tsuyoshi didn’t hear and swerved off the road, in between the bushes, down the narrow path that emerged all of a sudden like a miracle.
Or like a death trap. Now, Tsuyoshi was sure they weren’t going to survive.
He screamed when the bike started jolting down the bumpy path, but his voice was lost in the noise. They continued, keeping balance through sheer momentum, up to the line of trees, where the final jump knocked the bike onto its side, sending it gliding on the ground for several feet further, while they were both thrown off. Tsuyoshi didn’t even have the time to brace himself for the impact. He just hit the dirt, rolled over, and that was it.
He didn’t know when it got silent. The bike might have still been running for a moment longer, or it was just phantom engine in Tsuyoshi’s head. He was lying on his side and he was breathing. That was the first thing he realized when the initial shock started to fade away. So he was alive. Everything seemed to hurt, but at least he could feel all his limbs; that meant he still had them. Slowly, he started to move. More hurt, nausea, but he didn’t think he had broken anything. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get up yet, though.
“Well, fuck me sideways. That was something,” he heard on his right. He made the effort to sit up.
The biker was pulling himself to his feet, dusting off his jeans. He took off his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“You okay there?” he asked Tsuyoshi, walking up to him.
“Yeah… I think so,” Tsuyoshi managed to rasp out.
“Glad you had the helmet on, aren’t ya,” the man said, knocking with his knuckles on Tsuyoshi’s helmet-covered head. It was the man’s helmet that he’d given to Tsuyoshi and wasn’t wearing one himself as a result. Tsuyoshi didn’t even know what to say about that, so he kept quiet.
He watched the man go over to his bike and examine it for damage. He didn’t seem too concerned, so Tsuyoshi took that for a good sign. But when the biker tried to pull the machine up into a standing position, he unexpectedly hissed and dropped it. He looked at his left arm with a frown, as if it offended him, then just slid to the ground and sat leaning against the motorcycle, face turned towards the sky and eyes closed.
Tsuyoshi finally forced himself to get up. He still felt a bit weak in the knees, but after a couple of steps he got steadier. At least he didn’t feel like he was going to faint anymore.
He crouched in front of the biker, unbuckling the helmet and dropping it onto the ground.
There was a patch of bloody red on the biker’s left sleeve, above his elbow; bigger, darker stains that had dried up already, and fresher, brighter ones in the middle. Like a flower, a watercolor painting of a flower, a tear in the fabric right across.
“You’re hurt,” Tsuyoshi said.
“It’s no big deal. That scum at the station shot me,” the man replied, opening his eyes. He looked at Tsuyoshi curiously, searching.
It was a number of things: the sudden face-to-face proximity, the man bringing up the incident from the gas station that Tsuyoshi really didn’t want to think about. The fact that they’d just escaped death, together, literally holding on to each other. And maybe also the insignificant observation Tsuyoshi had subconsciously made earlier and was now gradually more and more aware of, that the man was really, really attractive. It all made him feel intimidated and vulnerable, being looked at like that. He didn’t want the man to know that, and yet was sure that it was clear in his face, just short of written out in bold letters on his forehead.
He tried to focus on the man’s wound and on helping him. He didn’t even question why he wanted to do that, considering the man was a criminal and he wasn’t exactly dying in Tsuyoshi’s arms, either.
“Take off your shirt,” Tsuyoshi said, settling on the ground on the man’s left.
The man broke into a grin.
“Normally I’d expect you to ask me to dinner first...” he said with barely a hint of mockery in his voice, which somehow made it even more mortifying.
Tsuyoshi blushed like mad. “I just wanted to look at your wound, see if it’s serious,” he hurried to explain. “I didn’t mean anything...”
“Relax,” the man cut him off. “I was kidding.” But he was still smirking. “I definitely don’t expect dinner first,” he added with a wink and moved to shrug off his leather vest, while Tsuyoshi stared with an open mouth.
Many people had told Tsuyoshi that he was naïve and oblivious, and yet he was the only one who knew the true extent of that. He kept learning things the hard way and then making the same mistakes again. He kept putting his foot in his mouth like it belonged there, realizing he was on the course towards disaster and yet continuing with a stubbornness worthy of a better cause. He wasn’t one to make sharp observations. His observations usually came long after, too late to even feel bitter.
But one thing he knew to be a fact of life was not to ever hit on men like this one. There was no way it would end well, and a hundred ways in which it would end badly, to varying degrees. Men who looked like sex, men who smirked confidently no matter the dire circumstances, who walked like they owned the earth and looked at you like they could drown you - they had nothing to want from Tsuyoshi. And they had everything Tsuyoshi could want.
And that didn’t even include men who killed people and rode motorcycles like maniacs. Those, Tsuyoshi had no idea what they could want.
So he didn’t think the man was flirting with him. He probably wasn’t even attracted to men, he was just mocking him, especially if Tsuyoshi was as transparent as he assumed himself to be. He could deal with that. It could’ve been worse, a violent and bloody kind of worse.
“I’m Tsuyoshi, by the way,” Tsuyoshi said, watching him fold his leather and lay it down on a patch of grass.
The man hesitated, undoing the first button of his plaid shirt.
“Kimura,” he finally said, and looked startled when he was met with Tsuyoshi’s friendly smile.
In a moment Tsuyoshi wasn’t smiling anymore, though. The temporary silence was broken by the sound of coming engines. Tsuyoshi looked around nervously, but they were too far away from the main road, hidden behind foliage. He almost jumped in surprise when he felt a warm grip on his wrist. Kimura - whether that was his real name or not - held Tsuyoshi tightly, pulling him close.
“Don’t move,” he hissed. “Quiet.”
They waited, the sound growing louder. The only way they could be found was if the men chasing them saw the tire track on the path. That, and they’d have to believe that anyone in their right mind had attempted riding that way.
It occurred to Tsuyoshi that Kimura might be completely mad.
And then the sound was growing distant again, quieting down.
Tsuyoshi looked at the other man with wide eyes, still too afraid to breathe out with relief.
Kimura grinned. “We did it,” he declared, unceremoniously letting go of Tsuyoshi’s arm. “You wanna stare at my naked body now?” he asked, going back to unbuttoning his shirt as if nothing had happened.
Tsuyoshi fell back to the ground, deciding he wasn’t getting up anytime today. Or anytime this century, for that matter.
The wound wasn’t life-threatening, but it needed stitches.
“You need stitches,” Tsuyoshi announced, after examining it thoroughly and pretending he wasn’t stealing glances at the rest of the naked skin he was presented with, the smooth collarbone that just seemed so lickable, and the brown nipple. Also immensely lickable.
He was so screwed.
Kimura hadn’t even taken his shirt completely off, just shrugged off the left sleeve. He sat there, some strands of his long, bleached rather than sun-bleached hair falling onto his face. He seemed annoyed by Tsuyoshi’s serious concern.
“Unless you’re gonna tell me that you’re a medical professional, tough luck. ‘Cause hospitals tend to get funny about bullet wounds, if you know what I mean.”
“Uhm...” Tsuyoshi scratched his head, hesitating.
“What?” Kimura looked at him with focus, finally losing the sarcastic flair. “Are you a doctor or something?”
“Kind of.”
“What does that mean?”
“...I’m a trained veterinarian.”
A beat of silence followed, and then suddenly Kimura was laughing, loud and unguarded, so unlike everything about him so far that Tsuyoshi was awed, completely swept away. Kimura had this incongruous effect on him, uprooting his priorities and crippling his instincts. Tsuyoshi was able to instantly dismiss the whole nightmare he’d just been put through - by the very man who was sitting with him laughing right now. It scared him, yes, but it excited him more.
“I could patch you up, but I’d need some supplies,” he went on to say when Kimura calmed down again.
“Know what? I can get you supplies. But you’d need to come with me.” That look again, searching, questioning, making Tsuyoshi increasingly frustrated. If only he knew what the man was looking for. “Do you really have nowhere to be?”
Tsuyoshi shrugged.
“I’m hitch-hiking. Just going on a trip, figuring some things for myself, you know… I graduated last month but I didn’t feel like I had a direction, so...”
“Wait,” Kimura blinked, registering that information. “So you’re basically a student? You haven’t actually worked as a vet?”
“I did some internships!” Tsuyoshi protested. “I gave stitches to a cow! You can’t be more difficult than that.”
“Oh trust me. I can be plenty difficult,” Kimura said, voice dropping to the fatal register of velvet and honey. “If you ask nicely.”
He was definitely not flirting. That was not what was going on there.
Tsuyoshi shook it off.
“I have some basic first aid stuff in my backpack,” he said. “I’ll put bandage on this for now, and we can go.”
Kimura was standing, buttoning up his shirt, a cigarette between his lips. Tsuyoshi wondered how much time they’d spent here. He’d lost his watch a couple of days earlier, and now that Kimura had destroyed his phone, he couldn’t even check the time. It seemed like a small inconvenience, though. He found himself quite calm about not having any sort of device on him. Relieved, even, as if he’d been freed from some sort of obligation.
“Just a sec,” Kimura mouthed around the cigarette. “I need to piss.”
He had the decency to walk away towards a neighboring tree. Not wanting to stare, Tsuyoshi turned towards the motorcycle, still lying on its side on the ground.
He dropped his backpack and bent to grab the bike. Heavy as it was, he managed to lift it off the ground and he was halfway up to moving it into upright position, when he heard Kimura yelling, “Don’t fucking touch my bike!”
Tsuyoshi froze, unsure of what that was about. His arms shook and he was going to drop the beast again, probably on his foot, when Kimura came running and took over, finally getting the motorcycle to stand on its own. He was still very close, and suddenly he pressed himself against Tsuyoshi, chest to back, hips to ass, chin on Tsuyoshi’s shoulder.
“Don’t. Ever. Touch my bike. Without permission,” he whispered, once again in that seductive voice, but it was obviously taunting now. Tsuyoshi shivered and Kimura let go, not bothering to comment on that reaction.
“But I sat on it? I rode with you?” Tsuyoshi turned around, staring incredulously at Kimura, who was nonchalantly pulling his leather gloves on.
“Yeah,” he said, looking up. “And you’ll only sit on it when I tell you to.”
Their eyes met and it felt like something was going to catch fire from the sparks. Tsuyoshi found himself unable to find words, his defiance struggling with desire to submit. He wasn’t afraid of Kimura in the sense of his gun and violence.
(He was afraid, although he didn’t quite realize that at the time, of what else there was, hidden between the lines, calling to him: a promise of a different world, recklessness and risk, and the kind of passion that could slowly smother him, steal away his oxygen, leave him with an echo of laughter and the sound of an engine.)
But he started to believe in the possibility that it wasn’t just a game, that Kimura meant to do exactly what he was doing. Tsuyoshi wanted to tell him to drop it. To take him, right there and then, on the ground, any way he wanted because Tsuyoshi was ready to do anything; or just stop, stop teasing him, stop throwing these words at him like it was easy. And he could tell that Kimura was waiting for him to say something, even if he wasn’t sure what it was.
Tsuyoshi was the first one to look away.
“Okay,” he heard Kimura say, “you can touch my bike now.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna need help getting it back on the road. We’re definitely not riding this way again.”
Tsuyoshi breathed a private sigh of relief. If he were to get on the bike now, he was sure he’d be pressing a considerable hard-on against Kimura’s ass. At least pushing the heavy machine through grass and dirt was going to kill that problem.
This time, he really enjoyed the ride.
Judging from the sun, it was late afternoon. The wind felt good on his skin and the speed was enough to make him feel like flying but not enough to make his life flash in front of his eyes - save for those moments when Kimura sped up on purpose, probably trying to scare him, judging by the laugh he let out when Tsuyoshi squeaked this one time on a sharp turn.
He was gripping Kimura’s waist and well, this was one aspect of riding that he didn’t have the time to consider before. It felt intimate, in a comfortable way, and he really had to keep his mind from wandering. He even tried to find a different way of sitting, maybe if he leaned back, or held onto something else, until Kimura yelled at him to stop fidgeting if he didn’t want them to crash. Tsuyoshi resigned himself to squeezing the motorcycle with his legs occasionally so that he wouldn’t slide into Kimura’s back.
He shifted to the left again when he got smacked in the face with Kimura’s long hair and caught a glimpse of his injured arm. The sleeve of his shirt was bulged in the place where he had the bandage underneath and, shit. Tsuyoshi could swear there were fresh blood stains on the fabric. He leaned forward again.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Why?” came Kimura’s confused reply.
“I think your arm is bleeding again.”
“I’m fine!”
But he sped up again after that, and Tsuyoshi wondered if it wasn’t so much to scare him, as it was Kimura trying to get to their destination as quickly as possible.
“Do you want to switch?” Tsuyoshi tried asking after a moment. “I have a motorcycle license, you know.”
“I don’t switch,” was the answer, which, in hindsight, Tsuyoshi might’ve expected. “And which part of don’t touch my bike did you not understand?”
Tsuyoshi shook his head and decided not to argue the logic of that. Shouting into someone’s ear on a vehicle moving at high speed didn’t make for the best conversational environment.
Thankfully, it wasn’t much later when they reached an exit from the road that led them to a wide parking lot next to a roadside bar. There were a couple of motorcycles parked there already. Kimura went to the furthest corner and killed the engine. Tsuyoshi looked around. The bar was a rather big building, the walls painted black with colorful graffiti in a few spots. The Black Rabbit said the neon sign, and next to the letters, there was indeed something that might be a rabbit, Tsuyoshi guessed, its red eyes glowing faintly in the daylight.
“Get off,” Kimura urged him.
“Are we getting medical supplies from a bar?”
“My friend runs this place. He’s very resourceful.”
The inside of the bar was dark, mostly covered in wood, with black and red color scheme. The couple of men sitting at random tables were all bikers, in leather vests, although, Tsuyoshi noticed, their patches were different. So this wasn’t a clubhouse, or at least not Kimura’s clubhouse. Some of the men greeted Kimura, shouting when he appeared in the doorway and raising their glasses at him. Kimura nodded, returning the greetings, but he made a beeline for the tall blond man behind the bar, who grinned at them, straightening up from where he was huddled over a sketchbook.
“Kimura,” he said. “And you’ve got a new boy toy?”
Kimura rolled his eyes. “Like you’re one to talk.”
“Please don’t cheapen my relationship, it’s a beautiful, pure thing.”
Kimura flashed his teeth in a grin of his own. “I’ve been there, remember? I know exactly how pure he is.”
Tsuyoshi, who was initially rather indignant at being referred to as a boy toy, stopped even trying to make sense of the conversation. Then the bartender noticed Kimura’s arm, the sleeve halfway soaked in blood by now, and stopped grinning.
“Shit. You okay?” he asked seriously.
“Yeah, this is actually why I’m here. I need a couple of stitches. He,” Kimura pointed towards Tsuyoshi with his thumb, “is here to help with that. Tsuyoshi. Tsuyoshi, this is Shingo.”
Shingo just stared at him with curiosity but didn’t say anything, so Tsuyoshi gave him an awkward wave. To his surprise, Shingo waved back before turning back to Kimura.
“I’ve got everything you need in the back room. Through the door and to the left… You know your way around, right?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“You want a drink?”
“Hell yeah.”
Shingo put a glass down on the counter.
“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tsuyoshi chimed in.
Shingo looked up at him sharply.
“I’ve got everything you need except for anesthetics,” he said. “So he’s getting that drink. You, on the other hand, aren’t getting a drop of booze until he’s all nice and patched up.”
Tsuyoshi wasn’t going to argue with that.
Kimura leaned back in the chair, taking a drag of the cigarette. It was his fourth or fifth one. Tsuyoshi really didn’t need to breathe in all the second-hand smoke while he was working, but he hadn’t said a word about that. The whole procedure had been nerve-wracking already.
“All done,” he said, patting Kimura on the elbow.
“Wow,” Kimura glanced at the fresh bandage. “Thanks.” He sounded groggy.
He’d complained about everything at first, questioning Tsuyoshi’s abilities, until Tsuyoshi snapped at him, “I don’t have to do this, you know? So if you don’t want me to, just say it.” After that Kimura shut up and chain-smoked in concentration, forehead glistening with sweat. Tsuyoshi sweated like crazy himself, wiping at his face clumsily with his arm. He wasn’t even bothered by Kimura’s lack of shirt this time.
Kimura stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and glanced at Tsuyoshi as if he was expecting him to do something. Tsuyoshi had no idea what that was.
“So… What are you going to do now?”
Ah. That was something Tsuyoshi hadn’t thought about since morning. Too busy running for his life, almost dying in a motorcycle accident and providing health services to a known killer. And the thing was, he didn’t even think of Kimura as a killer. There was that horrible memory of gunshots and seeing a man drop to the ground, but it felt like another lifetime, or something he’d seen in a movie, not in person. And then there was Kimura that he’d ridden the bike with, suffered his innuendos and taken care of his injury, and he didn’t seem like a bad person. Kimura, who could’ve easily killed him too, just shot him point-blank in the head, gotten rid of the only witness, but he’d saved him instead. Tsuyoshi had a hard time trying to consolidate these pieces of what had become his reality.
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about… I’ve been going east, so if you can point me in the right direction...”
“Hey,” Kimura cut through his stream of stuttering consciousness. “You can stay the night here. Shingo has an apartment upstairs and there are a couple of spare rooms. He won’t mind. I mean, it’s getting late and you might not be able to get a ride before it gets dark. Or,” he added after a second, probably seeing the conflict in Tsuyoshi’s face, “I can get someone to give you a ride to the nearest town, if you’d rather find a hostel or something.”
“You’re not scared that I’m going to call the cops on you?”
“Well, you don’t have a phone,” Kimura pointed out with a grin. “And… I guess you could’ve done that already if you wanted to. You didn’t need to come here with me.”
Tsuyoshi frowned.
“Does that make me an accessory to a crime?” he asked.
“I think so? But if anyone asks, you can just say that I made you do it at gunpoint. I won’t mind.”
Tsuyoshi shook his head and stared at the mess on the table, pieces of bloody gauze, discarded gloves; he needed to clean that, he needed to stop thinking. Or start thinking.
“What are you going to do?” he asked before he could think better of it.
Kimura pouted. “I need to get back to my club, but… Maybe they’ll survive without me ‘til tomorrow,” he winked.
Tsuyoshi wasn’t sure if that meant he was going to stay at the bar as well, but he felt too shy to ask, paranoid that Kimura would discern an intention in that question.
Kimura’s clothes were lying on another chair, his shirt and his vest. Absentmindedly, Tsuyoshi reached for the leather. It was well-worn, the patches fraying on some edges, obviously repaired a couple of times. Tsuyoshi was curious about it, what it all stood for. Maybe if he could understand better where Kimura was coming from…
“Don’t touch my cut,” Kimura warned in that same tone of voice that Tsuyoshi had heard a couple of times already, both angry and amused. He still wasn’t sure if Kimura was serious about it.
He looked from the vest - the cut, Kimura’d called it - to the man sitting in front of him, and back.
“You’re awfully possessive,” he commented.
And there it was again, the smirk and the dark look that wanted to swallow him. Kimura leaned forward, one hand on the armrest of Tsuyoshi’s chair. He had tattoos on both forearms and on the right side of his ribs, mostly black and gray with just a splash of color here and there. Tsuyoshi had tried not to stare, but he had an urge to trace the patterns with his fingers like he could learn them this way.
“Yeah,” Kimura said. “I am.”
“I’m sorry, I...” Tsuyoshi stuttered out but he didn’t know what he wanted to say. His mind was blank, his breathing shallow.
“Don’t be.”
Kimura was standing now, bending down and bracing himself with both arms on Tsuyoshi’s chair. He paused, maybe hesitating, or giving Tsuyoshi a moment to decide if he wanted to push him away.
Tsuyoshi didn’t move.
Kimura tasted viciously of cigarettes, which didn’t matter one bit. But he was kissing Tsuyoshi slowly and that was unlike anything Tsuyoshi had expected, not ravishing or demanding, but calming and safe. Tsuyoshi tilted his face up and Kimura raised one hand to run his fingers through Tsuyoshi’s hair, making Tsuyoshi gasp with something that suddenly gripped him inside his chest and didn’t want to let go. He wanted to put his hands on Kimura, reading this as the long-awaited permission to touch his skin, and yet the only thing his body seemed capable of was kiss back.
With Kimura standing between his legs, he kept spreading his thighs wider, indicating the invitation that he wasn’t able to choke out in words. He wanted Kimura pressed close to him, pressed into him, he wanted to feel him everywhere. His lips were surprisingly soft. And he was so good, kissing Tsuyoshi in just the right way, keeping to that edge between too much and not enough that made Tsuyoshi want to beg for more. Tsuyoshi was not in control of anything and he just didn’t care.
It ended with less warning than it’d started.
Last lingering press of lips and Kimura was straightening up, looking at Tsuyoshi with a self-satisfied smile. Tsuyoshi was catching his breath, waiting for a cue.
Kimura just stepped back and stretched lazily, making Tsuyoshi’s mouth dry.
Then he picked up his clothes.
“I think I’m going to take a shower,” he said.
Tsuyoshi blinked.
“Is that...” he started uncertainly.
“Not an invitation.”
“Oh. Okay.” Tsuyoshi kept staring, trying to catch a single thread of the knot of thoughts rolling through his mind, and failing hard. “Don’t get your bandages wet,” he dutifully warned in a voice that wasn’t his own.
xxx
[part II]
this is entirely dedicated to tsuristyle who inspired me with all the crazy amounts of SMAPfic she'd written (which you should absolutely read) and reignited my love for the boys at the time of crisis.
this was supposed to be a quick PWP ficlet. I don't know what happened. at over 11k words, it's the longest fanfic I've ever posted. it's also probably not what you'd normally expect from me, seeing as it's a total AU, it has some semblance of a plot, and it's probably the least pretentious thing I've written. I honestly can't tell if it's good. it felt like a wild ride, rushing through the first half like possessed in a matter of two days, but my writing was definitely rusty, so I don't know.
it's heavily inspired by Sons of Anarchy, which is also my main source of knowledge about MC culture (heh). more notes at the end, because I may have been gone for a while, but I've never stopped rambling on and on.
also yeah, warnings: contains violence, including guns and death of unimportant secondary OCs. also explicit sex, which, while consensual, is majorly underdiscussed.
the title is paraphrased from RHCP's Dani California.
this fic is absolutely trashy and proudly so.
[the full fic on AO3]
part I, because apparently I've exceeded LJ's character limit. :(
Day will come that I will mourn you
He came from the west. In blinding sun, deafening roar of the engine, he could’ve been something that came from the sky. He wasn’t. The worn leather of his vest, of the gloves on his hands, boots on his feet, was as earthly as dirt. The big black motorcycle didn’t seem half as menacing in the parking space of the run-down gas station. The man took his helmet off and looked around.
Tsuyoshi didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he felt slightly dizzy. He inhaled deeply then, wishing himself invisible and not like he’d been staring at all. The man on the Harley was definitely looking at him. Tsuyoshi shrugged his shoulders and tried to look busy staring at the dust on his sneakers.
It didn’t seem to work. In a moment, he heard approaching footsteps. Seated on a concrete block near the edge of the parking lot, he needed to look up, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. The biker walked up with a swagger, frowning at Tsuyoshi from behind his sunglasses.
“You work here?” he asked.
“No,” Tsuyoshi shook his head. “Just waiting for my ride.”
“Seen the men from that car?” He pointed towards the red BMW, the only other vehicle parked at the station.
“Yeah. They went behind the store.”
The man looked around again, scanning the surroundings as if he was searching for something in particular - or committing every detail to memory. There was something restless about him, like an itch or anticipation. It made Tsuyoshi nervous in a way he couldn’t quite grasp.
“How many?” the man asked.
“What?”
“How many men went there?”
That was when Tsuyoshi got a bad feeling about this.
“Uhm...”
The men from the car looked like thugs. Tsuyoshi had been camped at the station for a good hour, tired after walking all morning. No cars had stopped for him, no matter how desperately he’d been waving. He hadn’t had any more luck at the gas station. Even so, when he saw the men getting out of the BMW, he quickly decided against asking them for a lift.
It might’ve had something to do with the handle of a gun sticking out from one of the men’s waistband.
And the biker - Tsuyoshi hadn’t missed the patches on his vest, the colors of his motorcycle club. He wasn’t that well-versed in outlaw culture, but he’d heard the rumors. He’d seen them too, ride through the town like kings, and the sort of bloody things that tended to follow. He knew it was bad news.
“How. Many,” the man repeated, loud and clear. There was something around his jaw now, in the curve of his mouth: angry and amused at the same time.
Tsuyoshi swallowed. His throat was oddly dry.
“Two from the car. One guy was waiting for them here.”
“Okay.” The man glanced around before looking back down at Tsuyoshi again. “You might wanna get the hell out of here.” With that, he turned on his heel and walked away, heading unmistakably towards the back of the store.
Tsuyoshi sighed. He picked up his backpack from the ground and took out a bottle of water to gulp down half of it in one go. He then dug out his phone. The battery had died. He could go inside the store to charge it. Although it wasn’t like he had anyone to call. Or he could just hit the road again and hopefully hitch a ride before the end of the day. This was definitely not a good place. For anything.
He didn’t move an inch.
He was still clutching his phone when he heard raised voices, arguing, shouting, then abrupt silence. He was listening carefully now, almost hearing the seconds tick by inside his head, one, two three.
And then shots. One, two. Three.
A scream and running and it was like time slowed down and the air was thick like grease. Tsuyoshi saw a man, the driver of the red car, rushing from behind the corner of the store building, gun in his hand, his mouth moving but not making any sound. The biker followed and the man turned around and pointed the gun at him.
Four.
He missed, a shout from another direction drew his attention away. Both the man with the gun and Tsuyoshi turned their heads towards the entrance to the store, where the cashier had run out and stood frozen now, eyes wide in shock.
Five. Tsuyoshi didn’t even see him pull the trigger. He was still staring helplessly at the cashier, who suddenly went limp and fell to the ground.
Six.
The biker was still pointing his own gun at the gunman’s body lying on the asphalt, as he walked up to him, right until he was standing directly above him.
Seven, eight, nine.
Now that seemed completely unnecessary.
The silence after that was unbearable. Tsuyoshi felt suddenly lightheaded and like maybe he was going to puke. He leaned forward and closed his eyes.
“Hey, you!”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“Drop that phone!”
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
He looked up again to see the biker aiming his gun at him now, approaching slowly. His previous swaggering manner was gone; he threaded softly like a cat, watching Tsuyoshi with alert eyes. Tsuyoshi didn’t quite understand what was happening, until he remembered the phone in his hands and how it might look as if he was going to call the police.
“It’s dead. The battery. It doesn’t work. See?” he shouted back, holding up the phone, even if there was no way the man would be able to check it for himself from the distance. “I’m dropping it now.”
The biker didn’t lower the gun, but he quickened his pace, frowning again like a man with a dilemma. He barely spared the phone a glance before stepping onto it with the heel of his boot, successfully crushing it into pieces.
“Did you really have to...” Tsuyoshi started but was abruptly cut off by the biker who grabbed his arm and jerked him up to his feet.
“I told you to get the fuck out of here. You might just do that now, if you weren’t compelled before,” he gritted through his teeth. “Your ride gonna get here soon?”
Tsuyoshi bit his lip.
“I lied,” he admitted, not quite looking at the man. He couldn’t read his expression behind the sunglasses anyway and it freaked him out more. “I’m not waiting for anyone.”
The man cursed.
Then they both heard it.
Like a rolling thunder fronting a storm, a rumble of multiple engines echoed from a distance, growing and growing steadily into ominous growl that Tsuyoshi would swear he could feel vibrating in some hollow space inside his rib cage. He could imagine it to be the voice of an animal, a beast so huge it would be casting shadow on the road long before it got near.
The biker’s face looked as if he’d seen that beast before.
“Fuck. Fucking… Shit. Come on!” he shouted, putting the gun back into its holster on the inside of his vest, and darted towards his bike. Confused, Tsuyoshi slung his backpack over his shoulder and ran after him.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked.
The biker was already straddling the motorcycle and he thrust his helmet at Tsuyoshi.
“Get on,” he barked with no further explanation.
“What?”
“Get on the bike!”
“Why?”
“These?” he pointed towards the dead body of the BMW driver on the ground. “These were bad guys. And there are more of them coming this way. They’re not going to ask you questions. So either get on the fucking bike or stay here and wait to get shot.”
Tsuyoshi got on the bike.
He had ridden a motorcycle before, but never like this.
This was life or death and it felt like it. The wind felt like fire on his skin, the noise made him deaf, he could barely keep his eyes open. Feeling the mechanical power under him with a human body pressed to his chest was almost arousing, and he’d swear he could taste the speed in his mouth, on his tongue, electric and sour. His stomach was flipping at first as they were gaining speed, then it settled and he started to enjoy the mad ride. He even whooped excitedly, at which the biker seemed to shake his head, whipping Tsuyoshi in the face with his ponytail.
Then, after they took a turn at full speed that nearly sent Tsuyoshi flying off the bike, he caught a glimpse of the rear-view mirror and his heart sank. There was a whole column of black motorcycles following them, the riders all clad in black leather, but somehow he didn’t think they were friends. More like ghost riders, the Wild Hunt, smelling fear and guilt like it was blood. Tsuyoshi almost didn’t believe they were real. But he could tell the biker saw them too, by the way his grip on the handles tightened and he shifted slightly, accelerating.
“Are they going to kill us?” Tsuyoshi shouted over the noise of the engine.
“Not if they can’t catch us!” the man replied. “Hold on!”
The next moments were something that Tsuyoshi would later remember like a dream. Blurry on the details, not real, a collection of disjointed impressions: roaring, shouting, a burn in his throat, an ache in his limbs, a fear so surreal that it felt like ecstasy. Logically he must’ve thought he was going to die, but he would only have the memory of being the most alive he’d ever been.
They kept gaining speed until it didn’t seem possible to go any faster. Tsuyoshi had no idea anymore if they were still being followed. It occurred to him, like a flash that came and went, that he didn’t know anything about the man riding the motorcycle, what he was capable of - other than shooting people dead - and yet Tsuyoshi’s life depended on him and only him and his skill.
Tsuyoshi might’ve closed his eyes at some point. He wouldn’t remember.
He didn’t know how the man managed to see it - everything was moving too fast for Tsuyoshi to see anything - but there was an opening between the bushes on the side of the road. It happened just like that, one moment they were rushing down the road about to break their necks, the next the man shouted something that Tsuyoshi didn’t hear and swerved off the road, in between the bushes, down the narrow path that emerged all of a sudden like a miracle.
Or like a death trap. Now, Tsuyoshi was sure they weren’t going to survive.
He screamed when the bike started jolting down the bumpy path, but his voice was lost in the noise. They continued, keeping balance through sheer momentum, up to the line of trees, where the final jump knocked the bike onto its side, sending it gliding on the ground for several feet further, while they were both thrown off. Tsuyoshi didn’t even have the time to brace himself for the impact. He just hit the dirt, rolled over, and that was it.
He didn’t know when it got silent. The bike might have still been running for a moment longer, or it was just phantom engine in Tsuyoshi’s head. He was lying on his side and he was breathing. That was the first thing he realized when the initial shock started to fade away. So he was alive. Everything seemed to hurt, but at least he could feel all his limbs; that meant he still had them. Slowly, he started to move. More hurt, nausea, but he didn’t think he had broken anything. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get up yet, though.
“Well, fuck me sideways. That was something,” he heard on his right. He made the effort to sit up.
The biker was pulling himself to his feet, dusting off his jeans. He took off his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“You okay there?” he asked Tsuyoshi, walking up to him.
“Yeah… I think so,” Tsuyoshi managed to rasp out.
“Glad you had the helmet on, aren’t ya,” the man said, knocking with his knuckles on Tsuyoshi’s helmet-covered head. It was the man’s helmet that he’d given to Tsuyoshi and wasn’t wearing one himself as a result. Tsuyoshi didn’t even know what to say about that, so he kept quiet.
He watched the man go over to his bike and examine it for damage. He didn’t seem too concerned, so Tsuyoshi took that for a good sign. But when the biker tried to pull the machine up into a standing position, he unexpectedly hissed and dropped it. He looked at his left arm with a frown, as if it offended him, then just slid to the ground and sat leaning against the motorcycle, face turned towards the sky and eyes closed.
Tsuyoshi finally forced himself to get up. He still felt a bit weak in the knees, but after a couple of steps he got steadier. At least he didn’t feel like he was going to faint anymore.
He crouched in front of the biker, unbuckling the helmet and dropping it onto the ground.
There was a patch of bloody red on the biker’s left sleeve, above his elbow; bigger, darker stains that had dried up already, and fresher, brighter ones in the middle. Like a flower, a watercolor painting of a flower, a tear in the fabric right across.
“You’re hurt,” Tsuyoshi said.
“It’s no big deal. That scum at the station shot me,” the man replied, opening his eyes. He looked at Tsuyoshi curiously, searching.
It was a number of things: the sudden face-to-face proximity, the man bringing up the incident from the gas station that Tsuyoshi really didn’t want to think about. The fact that they’d just escaped death, together, literally holding on to each other. And maybe also the insignificant observation Tsuyoshi had subconsciously made earlier and was now gradually more and more aware of, that the man was really, really attractive. It all made him feel intimidated and vulnerable, being looked at like that. He didn’t want the man to know that, and yet was sure that it was clear in his face, just short of written out in bold letters on his forehead.
He tried to focus on the man’s wound and on helping him. He didn’t even question why he wanted to do that, considering the man was a criminal and he wasn’t exactly dying in Tsuyoshi’s arms, either.
“Take off your shirt,” Tsuyoshi said, settling on the ground on the man’s left.
The man broke into a grin.
“Normally I’d expect you to ask me to dinner first...” he said with barely a hint of mockery in his voice, which somehow made it even more mortifying.
Tsuyoshi blushed like mad. “I just wanted to look at your wound, see if it’s serious,” he hurried to explain. “I didn’t mean anything...”
“Relax,” the man cut him off. “I was kidding.” But he was still smirking. “I definitely don’t expect dinner first,” he added with a wink and moved to shrug off his leather vest, while Tsuyoshi stared with an open mouth.
Many people had told Tsuyoshi that he was naïve and oblivious, and yet he was the only one who knew the true extent of that. He kept learning things the hard way and then making the same mistakes again. He kept putting his foot in his mouth like it belonged there, realizing he was on the course towards disaster and yet continuing with a stubbornness worthy of a better cause. He wasn’t one to make sharp observations. His observations usually came long after, too late to even feel bitter.
But one thing he knew to be a fact of life was not to ever hit on men like this one. There was no way it would end well, and a hundred ways in which it would end badly, to varying degrees. Men who looked like sex, men who smirked confidently no matter the dire circumstances, who walked like they owned the earth and looked at you like they could drown you - they had nothing to want from Tsuyoshi. And they had everything Tsuyoshi could want.
And that didn’t even include men who killed people and rode motorcycles like maniacs. Those, Tsuyoshi had no idea what they could want.
So he didn’t think the man was flirting with him. He probably wasn’t even attracted to men, he was just mocking him, especially if Tsuyoshi was as transparent as he assumed himself to be. He could deal with that. It could’ve been worse, a violent and bloody kind of worse.
“I’m Tsuyoshi, by the way,” Tsuyoshi said, watching him fold his leather and lay it down on a patch of grass.
The man hesitated, undoing the first button of his plaid shirt.
“Kimura,” he finally said, and looked startled when he was met with Tsuyoshi’s friendly smile.
In a moment Tsuyoshi wasn’t smiling anymore, though. The temporary silence was broken by the sound of coming engines. Tsuyoshi looked around nervously, but they were too far away from the main road, hidden behind foliage. He almost jumped in surprise when he felt a warm grip on his wrist. Kimura - whether that was his real name or not - held Tsuyoshi tightly, pulling him close.
“Don’t move,” he hissed. “Quiet.”
They waited, the sound growing louder. The only way they could be found was if the men chasing them saw the tire track on the path. That, and they’d have to believe that anyone in their right mind had attempted riding that way.
It occurred to Tsuyoshi that Kimura might be completely mad.
And then the sound was growing distant again, quieting down.
Tsuyoshi looked at the other man with wide eyes, still too afraid to breathe out with relief.
Kimura grinned. “We did it,” he declared, unceremoniously letting go of Tsuyoshi’s arm. “You wanna stare at my naked body now?” he asked, going back to unbuttoning his shirt as if nothing had happened.
Tsuyoshi fell back to the ground, deciding he wasn’t getting up anytime today. Or anytime this century, for that matter.
The wound wasn’t life-threatening, but it needed stitches.
“You need stitches,” Tsuyoshi announced, after examining it thoroughly and pretending he wasn’t stealing glances at the rest of the naked skin he was presented with, the smooth collarbone that just seemed so lickable, and the brown nipple. Also immensely lickable.
He was so screwed.
Kimura hadn’t even taken his shirt completely off, just shrugged off the left sleeve. He sat there, some strands of his long, bleached rather than sun-bleached hair falling onto his face. He seemed annoyed by Tsuyoshi’s serious concern.
“Unless you’re gonna tell me that you’re a medical professional, tough luck. ‘Cause hospitals tend to get funny about bullet wounds, if you know what I mean.”
“Uhm...” Tsuyoshi scratched his head, hesitating.
“What?” Kimura looked at him with focus, finally losing the sarcastic flair. “Are you a doctor or something?”
“Kind of.”
“What does that mean?”
“...I’m a trained veterinarian.”
A beat of silence followed, and then suddenly Kimura was laughing, loud and unguarded, so unlike everything about him so far that Tsuyoshi was awed, completely swept away. Kimura had this incongruous effect on him, uprooting his priorities and crippling his instincts. Tsuyoshi was able to instantly dismiss the whole nightmare he’d just been put through - by the very man who was sitting with him laughing right now. It scared him, yes, but it excited him more.
“I could patch you up, but I’d need some supplies,” he went on to say when Kimura calmed down again.
“Know what? I can get you supplies. But you’d need to come with me.” That look again, searching, questioning, making Tsuyoshi increasingly frustrated. If only he knew what the man was looking for. “Do you really have nowhere to be?”
Tsuyoshi shrugged.
“I’m hitch-hiking. Just going on a trip, figuring some things for myself, you know… I graduated last month but I didn’t feel like I had a direction, so...”
“Wait,” Kimura blinked, registering that information. “So you’re basically a student? You haven’t actually worked as a vet?”
“I did some internships!” Tsuyoshi protested. “I gave stitches to a cow! You can’t be more difficult than that.”
“Oh trust me. I can be plenty difficult,” Kimura said, voice dropping to the fatal register of velvet and honey. “If you ask nicely.”
He was definitely not flirting. That was not what was going on there.
Tsuyoshi shook it off.
“I have some basic first aid stuff in my backpack,” he said. “I’ll put bandage on this for now, and we can go.”
Kimura was standing, buttoning up his shirt, a cigarette between his lips. Tsuyoshi wondered how much time they’d spent here. He’d lost his watch a couple of days earlier, and now that Kimura had destroyed his phone, he couldn’t even check the time. It seemed like a small inconvenience, though. He found himself quite calm about not having any sort of device on him. Relieved, even, as if he’d been freed from some sort of obligation.
“Just a sec,” Kimura mouthed around the cigarette. “I need to piss.”
He had the decency to walk away towards a neighboring tree. Not wanting to stare, Tsuyoshi turned towards the motorcycle, still lying on its side on the ground.
He dropped his backpack and bent to grab the bike. Heavy as it was, he managed to lift it off the ground and he was halfway up to moving it into upright position, when he heard Kimura yelling, “Don’t fucking touch my bike!”
Tsuyoshi froze, unsure of what that was about. His arms shook and he was going to drop the beast again, probably on his foot, when Kimura came running and took over, finally getting the motorcycle to stand on its own. He was still very close, and suddenly he pressed himself against Tsuyoshi, chest to back, hips to ass, chin on Tsuyoshi’s shoulder.
“Don’t. Ever. Touch my bike. Without permission,” he whispered, once again in that seductive voice, but it was obviously taunting now. Tsuyoshi shivered and Kimura let go, not bothering to comment on that reaction.
“But I sat on it? I rode with you?” Tsuyoshi turned around, staring incredulously at Kimura, who was nonchalantly pulling his leather gloves on.
“Yeah,” he said, looking up. “And you’ll only sit on it when I tell you to.”
Their eyes met and it felt like something was going to catch fire from the sparks. Tsuyoshi found himself unable to find words, his defiance struggling with desire to submit. He wasn’t afraid of Kimura in the sense of his gun and violence.
(He was afraid, although he didn’t quite realize that at the time, of what else there was, hidden between the lines, calling to him: a promise of a different world, recklessness and risk, and the kind of passion that could slowly smother him, steal away his oxygen, leave him with an echo of laughter and the sound of an engine.)
But he started to believe in the possibility that it wasn’t just a game, that Kimura meant to do exactly what he was doing. Tsuyoshi wanted to tell him to drop it. To take him, right there and then, on the ground, any way he wanted because Tsuyoshi was ready to do anything; or just stop, stop teasing him, stop throwing these words at him like it was easy. And he could tell that Kimura was waiting for him to say something, even if he wasn’t sure what it was.
Tsuyoshi was the first one to look away.
“Okay,” he heard Kimura say, “you can touch my bike now.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna need help getting it back on the road. We’re definitely not riding this way again.”
Tsuyoshi breathed a private sigh of relief. If he were to get on the bike now, he was sure he’d be pressing a considerable hard-on against Kimura’s ass. At least pushing the heavy machine through grass and dirt was going to kill that problem.
This time, he really enjoyed the ride.
Judging from the sun, it was late afternoon. The wind felt good on his skin and the speed was enough to make him feel like flying but not enough to make his life flash in front of his eyes - save for those moments when Kimura sped up on purpose, probably trying to scare him, judging by the laugh he let out when Tsuyoshi squeaked this one time on a sharp turn.
He was gripping Kimura’s waist and well, this was one aspect of riding that he didn’t have the time to consider before. It felt intimate, in a comfortable way, and he really had to keep his mind from wandering. He even tried to find a different way of sitting, maybe if he leaned back, or held onto something else, until Kimura yelled at him to stop fidgeting if he didn’t want them to crash. Tsuyoshi resigned himself to squeezing the motorcycle with his legs occasionally so that he wouldn’t slide into Kimura’s back.
He shifted to the left again when he got smacked in the face with Kimura’s long hair and caught a glimpse of his injured arm. The sleeve of his shirt was bulged in the place where he had the bandage underneath and, shit. Tsuyoshi could swear there were fresh blood stains on the fabric. He leaned forward again.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Why?” came Kimura’s confused reply.
“I think your arm is bleeding again.”
“I’m fine!”
But he sped up again after that, and Tsuyoshi wondered if it wasn’t so much to scare him, as it was Kimura trying to get to their destination as quickly as possible.
“Do you want to switch?” Tsuyoshi tried asking after a moment. “I have a motorcycle license, you know.”
“I don’t switch,” was the answer, which, in hindsight, Tsuyoshi might’ve expected. “And which part of don’t touch my bike did you not understand?”
Tsuyoshi shook his head and decided not to argue the logic of that. Shouting into someone’s ear on a vehicle moving at high speed didn’t make for the best conversational environment.
Thankfully, it wasn’t much later when they reached an exit from the road that led them to a wide parking lot next to a roadside bar. There were a couple of motorcycles parked there already. Kimura went to the furthest corner and killed the engine. Tsuyoshi looked around. The bar was a rather big building, the walls painted black with colorful graffiti in a few spots. The Black Rabbit said the neon sign, and next to the letters, there was indeed something that might be a rabbit, Tsuyoshi guessed, its red eyes glowing faintly in the daylight.
“Get off,” Kimura urged him.
“Are we getting medical supplies from a bar?”
“My friend runs this place. He’s very resourceful.”
The inside of the bar was dark, mostly covered in wood, with black and red color scheme. The couple of men sitting at random tables were all bikers, in leather vests, although, Tsuyoshi noticed, their patches were different. So this wasn’t a clubhouse, or at least not Kimura’s clubhouse. Some of the men greeted Kimura, shouting when he appeared in the doorway and raising their glasses at him. Kimura nodded, returning the greetings, but he made a beeline for the tall blond man behind the bar, who grinned at them, straightening up from where he was huddled over a sketchbook.
“Kimura,” he said. “And you’ve got a new boy toy?”
Kimura rolled his eyes. “Like you’re one to talk.”
“Please don’t cheapen my relationship, it’s a beautiful, pure thing.”
Kimura flashed his teeth in a grin of his own. “I’ve been there, remember? I know exactly how pure he is.”
Tsuyoshi, who was initially rather indignant at being referred to as a boy toy, stopped even trying to make sense of the conversation. Then the bartender noticed Kimura’s arm, the sleeve halfway soaked in blood by now, and stopped grinning.
“Shit. You okay?” he asked seriously.
“Yeah, this is actually why I’m here. I need a couple of stitches. He,” Kimura pointed towards Tsuyoshi with his thumb, “is here to help with that. Tsuyoshi. Tsuyoshi, this is Shingo.”
Shingo just stared at him with curiosity but didn’t say anything, so Tsuyoshi gave him an awkward wave. To his surprise, Shingo waved back before turning back to Kimura.
“I’ve got everything you need in the back room. Through the door and to the left… You know your way around, right?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“You want a drink?”
“Hell yeah.”
Shingo put a glass down on the counter.
“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tsuyoshi chimed in.
Shingo looked up at him sharply.
“I’ve got everything you need except for anesthetics,” he said. “So he’s getting that drink. You, on the other hand, aren’t getting a drop of booze until he’s all nice and patched up.”
Tsuyoshi wasn’t going to argue with that.
Kimura leaned back in the chair, taking a drag of the cigarette. It was his fourth or fifth one. Tsuyoshi really didn’t need to breathe in all the second-hand smoke while he was working, but he hadn’t said a word about that. The whole procedure had been nerve-wracking already.
“All done,” he said, patting Kimura on the elbow.
“Wow,” Kimura glanced at the fresh bandage. “Thanks.” He sounded groggy.
He’d complained about everything at first, questioning Tsuyoshi’s abilities, until Tsuyoshi snapped at him, “I don’t have to do this, you know? So if you don’t want me to, just say it.” After that Kimura shut up and chain-smoked in concentration, forehead glistening with sweat. Tsuyoshi sweated like crazy himself, wiping at his face clumsily with his arm. He wasn’t even bothered by Kimura’s lack of shirt this time.
Kimura stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and glanced at Tsuyoshi as if he was expecting him to do something. Tsuyoshi had no idea what that was.
“So… What are you going to do now?”
Ah. That was something Tsuyoshi hadn’t thought about since morning. Too busy running for his life, almost dying in a motorcycle accident and providing health services to a known killer. And the thing was, he didn’t even think of Kimura as a killer. There was that horrible memory of gunshots and seeing a man drop to the ground, but it felt like another lifetime, or something he’d seen in a movie, not in person. And then there was Kimura that he’d ridden the bike with, suffered his innuendos and taken care of his injury, and he didn’t seem like a bad person. Kimura, who could’ve easily killed him too, just shot him point-blank in the head, gotten rid of the only witness, but he’d saved him instead. Tsuyoshi had a hard time trying to consolidate these pieces of what had become his reality.
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about… I’ve been going east, so if you can point me in the right direction...”
“Hey,” Kimura cut through his stream of stuttering consciousness. “You can stay the night here. Shingo has an apartment upstairs and there are a couple of spare rooms. He won’t mind. I mean, it’s getting late and you might not be able to get a ride before it gets dark. Or,” he added after a second, probably seeing the conflict in Tsuyoshi’s face, “I can get someone to give you a ride to the nearest town, if you’d rather find a hostel or something.”
“You’re not scared that I’m going to call the cops on you?”
“Well, you don’t have a phone,” Kimura pointed out with a grin. “And… I guess you could’ve done that already if you wanted to. You didn’t need to come here with me.”
Tsuyoshi frowned.
“Does that make me an accessory to a crime?” he asked.
“I think so? But if anyone asks, you can just say that I made you do it at gunpoint. I won’t mind.”
Tsuyoshi shook his head and stared at the mess on the table, pieces of bloody gauze, discarded gloves; he needed to clean that, he needed to stop thinking. Or start thinking.
“What are you going to do?” he asked before he could think better of it.
Kimura pouted. “I need to get back to my club, but… Maybe they’ll survive without me ‘til tomorrow,” he winked.
Tsuyoshi wasn’t sure if that meant he was going to stay at the bar as well, but he felt too shy to ask, paranoid that Kimura would discern an intention in that question.
Kimura’s clothes were lying on another chair, his shirt and his vest. Absentmindedly, Tsuyoshi reached for the leather. It was well-worn, the patches fraying on some edges, obviously repaired a couple of times. Tsuyoshi was curious about it, what it all stood for. Maybe if he could understand better where Kimura was coming from…
“Don’t touch my cut,” Kimura warned in that same tone of voice that Tsuyoshi had heard a couple of times already, both angry and amused. He still wasn’t sure if Kimura was serious about it.
He looked from the vest - the cut, Kimura’d called it - to the man sitting in front of him, and back.
“You’re awfully possessive,” he commented.
And there it was again, the smirk and the dark look that wanted to swallow him. Kimura leaned forward, one hand on the armrest of Tsuyoshi’s chair. He had tattoos on both forearms and on the right side of his ribs, mostly black and gray with just a splash of color here and there. Tsuyoshi had tried not to stare, but he had an urge to trace the patterns with his fingers like he could learn them this way.
“Yeah,” Kimura said. “I am.”
“I’m sorry, I...” Tsuyoshi stuttered out but he didn’t know what he wanted to say. His mind was blank, his breathing shallow.
“Don’t be.”
Kimura was standing now, bending down and bracing himself with both arms on Tsuyoshi’s chair. He paused, maybe hesitating, or giving Tsuyoshi a moment to decide if he wanted to push him away.
Tsuyoshi didn’t move.
Kimura tasted viciously of cigarettes, which didn’t matter one bit. But he was kissing Tsuyoshi slowly and that was unlike anything Tsuyoshi had expected, not ravishing or demanding, but calming and safe. Tsuyoshi tilted his face up and Kimura raised one hand to run his fingers through Tsuyoshi’s hair, making Tsuyoshi gasp with something that suddenly gripped him inside his chest and didn’t want to let go. He wanted to put his hands on Kimura, reading this as the long-awaited permission to touch his skin, and yet the only thing his body seemed capable of was kiss back.
With Kimura standing between his legs, he kept spreading his thighs wider, indicating the invitation that he wasn’t able to choke out in words. He wanted Kimura pressed close to him, pressed into him, he wanted to feel him everywhere. His lips were surprisingly soft. And he was so good, kissing Tsuyoshi in just the right way, keeping to that edge between too much and not enough that made Tsuyoshi want to beg for more. Tsuyoshi was not in control of anything and he just didn’t care.
It ended with less warning than it’d started.
Last lingering press of lips and Kimura was straightening up, looking at Tsuyoshi with a self-satisfied smile. Tsuyoshi was catching his breath, waiting for a cue.
Kimura just stepped back and stretched lazily, making Tsuyoshi’s mouth dry.
Then he picked up his clothes.
“I think I’m going to take a shower,” he said.
Tsuyoshi blinked.
“Is that...” he started uncertainly.
“Not an invitation.”
“Oh. Okay.” Tsuyoshi kept staring, trying to catch a single thread of the knot of thoughts rolling through his mind, and failing hard. “Don’t get your bandages wet,” he dutifully warned in a voice that wasn’t his own.
xxx
[part II]