Finding out the flavours (oneshot, Nishikido/Ohkura)
Ever since his childhood, Ryo has been always having this strange habit of remembering and recognizing people by associating them with flavours. He never told anyone about this, assuming they would find it weird and embarrassing, but that’s just how he has been going on in his social life for over twenty years now.
Usually it’s not hard to find the right flavor for the person he’s talking with, the thought coming to his head without even thinking, finding it’s place right away and never leaving. His mother is like a hot milk with cinnamon, which she was making for him when Ryo was young and couldn’t sleep at night. His father is a raw fish, the one he loves and the one Ryo hates so much. Subaru is a tinge of vanilla, because his whole house smelled like that when Ryo visited him for the first time, and Hina is a fresh, crunchy vegetable’s flavor, just like that. His neighbour is a flavor of home-cooked meal, the saleswoman working in a nearby, small shop Ryo tends to buy food in is a cold water flavor - thanks to her adoration toward blue color, visible all around her shop and her appearance; and the man Ryo often meets passing the rows of cars on the parking is a mint, thanks to the smell of mint tobacco he smokes.
Basically, everyone around him have a flavor, more or less concrete, but enough precise for Ryo to remember and recollect in the needed time. And his life has been easy like that - until he met the one person he couldn’t find the right flavor for. Tadayoshi Ohkura.
Even after so many years of knowing each other, of working together, drinking together, being friends and doing all the stuff friends tend to do - Ryo just can’t find his flavor. He had tried various things already - trying to associate him with his favorite ice-cream’s flavor (“It can be strawberry, but I like lemon ones too. Wait, or maybe the chocolate ones? Ryo-chan, don’t get mad, I really can’t decide!”), or with his favorite food (“You have to be insane, trying to make Ohkura pick his favorite dish, Ryo,” said Yasu when he heard Ryo asking Ohkura the question), or the thing Ohkura was supposed to cook after inviting Ryo over for a dinner (“It burnt,” Ohkura admitted, reaching for his phone and dialing the right number to order pizza), but nothing worked, leaving him without his flavor, being like a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
It wouldn’t be that bad, really, Ryo could live without knowing Ohkura’s flavor and not get frustrated every time he thought about it - but this lack of knowledge feels like he doesn’t know Ohkura at all. Flavours, being the very basis of his every contact with every person, became an integrate part of his life and the meanings of such words as friends, family, co-worker - and most of all, human being. So it’s only natural that he feels extremely uneasy every time he has to face the fact of not knowing the flavor of someone so close, so dear, as Ohkura. Sometimes he feels only disappointed - be it with himself, or with Ohkura, or really, with anyone who just happens to be in the line of his sight - sometimes he’s angry, and sometimes he just doesn’t feel anything, trying to cut himself off of this, lying to himself it’s not that important to think about it each time he sees Ohkura.
*
It’s in the eighth year of their friendship, when Ryo finds out what seems to be one of the biggest riddles of his life. They’re half-laying on the both ends of Ryo’s couch, Ohkura’s legs outstretched, foots stuffed between Ryo’s ones, who has his legs slightly bent. He’s using his thighs as a support for a notebook he’s scribbling in, random words of the future song he tries to write, while Ohkura just chills out after the busy day while reading an article in a newspaper and drinking some juice he bought on his way (“I hate the fact that the only things to drink in your apartment are coffee, beer and some leftovers of cheap tea”). It’s a quiet, steady evening after the late dinner, Ryo inviting Ohkura and Ohkura gladly accepting the offer.
“Why are you even still there, anyway?” Ryo asks suddenly after Ohkura wiggles his leg, accidentally brushing the tips of his fingers over the bottom of Ryo’s thigh. “You can read your newspaper in your own home, you know.”
“But your couch is more comfy,” he replies with simplicity, smiling softly while not even looking at Ryo, too absorbed by the words printed on a thin, grey paper. That’s why he doesn’t notice Ryo staring at him, eyes sparking with curiosity that hits him once again, with force so strong he can’t just easily shrug it off and forget like it doesn’t matter. It’s the moment, when Ryo wants to ask questions, but he doesn’t know what he could possibly ask about. It’s the moment, when he wants to scream, but he knows it won’t help him in any way. It’s the moment, when he gets so desperate he doesn’t even think about his doings anymore, acting on impulse, making things his mind - or heart, or whatever it really is - dictates him to do.
And only that’s why here and now he suddenly changes his position, getting on his knees, not really caring about his notes falling down on a carpet, ball-pen rolling under the coffee table. He doesn’t stop even when Ohkura lifts his head up, glancing at Ryo questioningly - Ryo ignores this and straddles his hips, and reaches out with a hand, cold fingers sneaking on the back of the other one’s neck. Before any word is uttered, and before Ohkura manages to react in any verbal or nonverbal way, Ryo has his mouth under his own, lips soft and warm, the flavor on them ready to be tasted, making Ryo shudder with wild excitement that has it’s peak somewhere in his stomach.
Ryo can feel fingers of one of Ohkura’s hands clenching around his arm, gripping the material of his t-shirt tightly and twisting it a bit. He doesn’t push him away though, and neither of them know if that’s because he wants this or is just simply curious - or maybe frightened even? - but it’s not like it’s important, not when Ryo gives Ohkura’s lower lip a short lick, small preamble to the full, sloppy and somewhat awkward kiss they share just a second later.
When Ryo pulls back, only mere few centimeters, it’s just to lick his own lips, trying hard to concentrate on a flavor, but failing miserably, being too preoccupied with Ohkura’s face right in front of him, surprised and slightly flushed, eyes wide and bright, and the expectation visible all over him.
“Flavor,” Ryo whispers then, not knowing what to do. “I can’t decide what flavor you’re for me. Everyone has one, everyone but you. I have to know this, because otherwise I’ll go mad very soon, after all those years of not knowing.”
It’s somehow desperate, those words coming out of his mouth. Like a plea, request for help, for any kind of hint, for release from that trap he had fallen into the day he met Ohkura for the first time.
There are a few painfully long moments when Ohkura only looks at him, and Ryo isn’t sure of anything anymore, not knowing if he should retire, or go on, or just wait. He doesn’t have that much time to think about it though; because soon Ohkura moves his other hand, lifting the glass filled with his juice and bringing it to his lips. He drinks the juice slowly, a few small sips, never breaking the eye contact with Ryo, who’s observing him carefully. He sees everything - the way his lips are parting, the movement of his Adam’s apple, and the small, thin trickle of red juice escaping the right corner of Ohkura’s mouth when he takes the last gulp and lets the glass find it’s place on a carpet.
It’s just the next impulse, Ryo leaning in and sucking lightly on a spot on Ohkura’s neck, the one where single red drop stopped in it’s tracks. When he feels him shifting a bit, exposing the skin on his neck, Ryo feels encouraged and he goes on, lips following the sweet and slightly sour wetness, matching so well with the smooth, warm skin he can feel with every cell of his body. When Ryo reaches Ohkura’s lips he doesn’t hesitate anymore, kissing him almost hungrily, as if his life depends on it. And somehow it does, he’s sure about it when he finds out that Ohkura kissing him back - with that flavor that is definitely so much like him - is probably the best thing that has happened in his life in a long time now. His tongue is wet and warm, and it feels perfect while dancing along with Ryo’s own in that kiss, all heated and rushed, hands suddenly gripping on clothes and whimpers escaping their lips in between, both silently complaining it’s too little, and too soft, and definitely not enough.
“Ryo,” the younger one whispers, losing his voice when Ryo’s hands find it’s way underneath Ohkura’s shirt, slightly rough fingertips caressing his sensitive skin, grazing hardening nipples, making all those things that has Ohkura shuddering and moaning softly, back arching and head tilted back.
Ryo is mesmerized - suddenly finding the right flavor, or more likely describing the one he has found already, is not as much important as it had been just a few minutes before. Because now he discovers something else, something even more fascinating - something he thinks he might have been thinking about earlier, but had never thought it had any chance of becoming true.
“Don’t space out,” comes the half-question, half-demand after a while, Ohkura catching Ryo and his thoughts wandering around, too many things to think about, too little time to catch up with them. “And do something, anything. Flavours, smells, it doesn’t matter, just touch me, Ryo. Touch me.”
The answer is in his smile, still wide as ever, but now with an addition of seduction, and a promise visible in Ryo’s eyes. Because that touch - it’s what he wants now too, nothing more and nothing less, just a pure feeling not limited by stupid barriers of clothes, or messed up thoughts, or anything that could possibly disturb them right now.
Everything Ryo does is slow though. It’s almost as if he wants to let it be as long as possible, savoring the taste of Ohkura’s skin under his tongue, and the way he tangles his long, slim fingers in Ryo’s black, short hair, demanding him to go on, to stop teasing, to do something more than barely tickling Ohkura’s arousal. But it’s Ryo who dictates the pace now, having Ohkura under him, willing to take anything he offers. And they like it, both of them, no matter how strange this wouldn’t be - those kisses and this intimacy, after all years they’ve known each other - it’s what both of them want. Ryo tasting the flavours, and Ohkura letting to be tasted.
If someone had wanted to know how they found themselves in bedroom, sprawled on Ryo’s king-sized bed, they wouldn’t know how to answer. It just happened, like everything this evening does, without much thinking and acknowledging. It’s in the instincts, in Ryo’s slightly trembling hands, unzipping Ohkura’s tight jeans, and in Ohkura’s frantic breath when he feels fingers on him and inside of him, doing things he could only dreamt of until now. It’s in the arched back and silent scream when Ryo slips in with one swift movement of hips, and in a kiss he steals, distracting Ohkura from the uncomfortable feeling, making him moan and go with the flow when Ryo starts to move, creating delicious friction that has them shaking out of excitement.
Multiple Ryos are escaping Ohkura’s lips, and an equal number of Tadayoshis is slipping past Ryo’s ones, some whispered in the thick air around them, and some moaned into the shoulder when Ryo leans in and Ohkura bites him, leaving the red marks of his teeth on the tanned skin. They finds themselves at the edge all too soon, Ohkura’s legs wrapping around Ryo’s slim hips, and Ryo’s fingers dipping into the skin of Ohkura’s ones. His thrusts soon become shallow and fast, matching with the younger one’s hand sliding up and down his own erection. The last moan and the final push, and then only blackness, and the feeling of suffocating, and fingers searching for the other one’s face, desperate for a kiss, for continuation of the delicious intimacy, for more, whatever this more can be. They are glad to give it to each other, not caring about the stickiness all over them, about the smell, about wetness on Ohkura’s thighs or hair sticking to Ryo’s face in a very messy way. It just doesn’t matter, not when instincts are still present and active, demanding everything they need to become satisfied, right until they fall into deep sleep, not being able to utter even one coherent sentence.
*
When Ryo wakes up the following morning, it’s to the unfamiliar, tickling sensation. He cracks one eye open, squinting a bit because of the sudden brightness hitting him immediately. It takes him a while, before he’s able to actually see anything more than a blurred mixture of colors and textures.
“It tickles,” he says when he spots Ohkura’s hand, long fingers tracing patterns on his stomach which feels more like a touch of butterfly’s wings than anything else.
“I know,” Ohkura answers easily, small smile curving his lips a little. “I wanted to wake you up,” he continues and Ryo doesn’t say anything, believing he’ll find out what it is that needed him to wake up so early. “I’m just curious. About that flavor you told me yesterday. Did you find out what it is?”
Ryo looks at him, musing over his words. Flavor. Something he wanted to find out so desperately, yet somewhere in the middle of last night he completely stopped caring about, too occupied with everything else. But he remembers; even now he can still taste those kisses and that skin, every inch of it he had his lips on back then.
There is no answer when Ryo just moves a bit, laying on his stomach now and snuggling face into the crook of Ohkura’s neck, evidently trying to escape from the irritating lightness that clashes with his sleep slowly drifting away and away. The younger one is just about to ask once again, when Ryo whispers lazily in his skin, voice muffled but still audible, “It’s cherry, of course.”
Usually it’s not hard to find the right flavor for the person he’s talking with, the thought coming to his head without even thinking, finding it’s place right away and never leaving. His mother is like a hot milk with cinnamon, which she was making for him when Ryo was young and couldn’t sleep at night. His father is a raw fish, the one he loves and the one Ryo hates so much. Subaru is a tinge of vanilla, because his whole house smelled like that when Ryo visited him for the first time, and Hina is a fresh, crunchy vegetable’s flavor, just like that. His neighbour is a flavor of home-cooked meal, the saleswoman working in a nearby, small shop Ryo tends to buy food in is a cold water flavor - thanks to her adoration toward blue color, visible all around her shop and her appearance; and the man Ryo often meets passing the rows of cars on the parking is a mint, thanks to the smell of mint tobacco he smokes.
Basically, everyone around him have a flavor, more or less concrete, but enough precise for Ryo to remember and recollect in the needed time. And his life has been easy like that - until he met the one person he couldn’t find the right flavor for. Tadayoshi Ohkura.
Even after so many years of knowing each other, of working together, drinking together, being friends and doing all the stuff friends tend to do - Ryo just can’t find his flavor. He had tried various things already - trying to associate him with his favorite ice-cream’s flavor (“It can be strawberry, but I like lemon ones too. Wait, or maybe the chocolate ones? Ryo-chan, don’t get mad, I really can’t decide!”), or with his favorite food (“You have to be insane, trying to make Ohkura pick his favorite dish, Ryo,” said Yasu when he heard Ryo asking Ohkura the question), or the thing Ohkura was supposed to cook after inviting Ryo over for a dinner (“It burnt,” Ohkura admitted, reaching for his phone and dialing the right number to order pizza), but nothing worked, leaving him without his flavor, being like a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
It wouldn’t be that bad, really, Ryo could live without knowing Ohkura’s flavor and not get frustrated every time he thought about it - but this lack of knowledge feels like he doesn’t know Ohkura at all. Flavours, being the very basis of his every contact with every person, became an integrate part of his life and the meanings of such words as friends, family, co-worker - and most of all, human being. So it’s only natural that he feels extremely uneasy every time he has to face the fact of not knowing the flavor of someone so close, so dear, as Ohkura. Sometimes he feels only disappointed - be it with himself, or with Ohkura, or really, with anyone who just happens to be in the line of his sight - sometimes he’s angry, and sometimes he just doesn’t feel anything, trying to cut himself off of this, lying to himself it’s not that important to think about it each time he sees Ohkura.
*
It’s in the eighth year of their friendship, when Ryo finds out what seems to be one of the biggest riddles of his life. They’re half-laying on the both ends of Ryo’s couch, Ohkura’s legs outstretched, foots stuffed between Ryo’s ones, who has his legs slightly bent. He’s using his thighs as a support for a notebook he’s scribbling in, random words of the future song he tries to write, while Ohkura just chills out after the busy day while reading an article in a newspaper and drinking some juice he bought on his way (“I hate the fact that the only things to drink in your apartment are coffee, beer and some leftovers of cheap tea”). It’s a quiet, steady evening after the late dinner, Ryo inviting Ohkura and Ohkura gladly accepting the offer.
“Why are you even still there, anyway?” Ryo asks suddenly after Ohkura wiggles his leg, accidentally brushing the tips of his fingers over the bottom of Ryo’s thigh. “You can read your newspaper in your own home, you know.”
“But your couch is more comfy,” he replies with simplicity, smiling softly while not even looking at Ryo, too absorbed by the words printed on a thin, grey paper. That’s why he doesn’t notice Ryo staring at him, eyes sparking with curiosity that hits him once again, with force so strong he can’t just easily shrug it off and forget like it doesn’t matter. It’s the moment, when Ryo wants to ask questions, but he doesn’t know what he could possibly ask about. It’s the moment, when he wants to scream, but he knows it won’t help him in any way. It’s the moment, when he gets so desperate he doesn’t even think about his doings anymore, acting on impulse, making things his mind - or heart, or whatever it really is - dictates him to do.
And only that’s why here and now he suddenly changes his position, getting on his knees, not really caring about his notes falling down on a carpet, ball-pen rolling under the coffee table. He doesn’t stop even when Ohkura lifts his head up, glancing at Ryo questioningly - Ryo ignores this and straddles his hips, and reaches out with a hand, cold fingers sneaking on the back of the other one’s neck. Before any word is uttered, and before Ohkura manages to react in any verbal or nonverbal way, Ryo has his mouth under his own, lips soft and warm, the flavor on them ready to be tasted, making Ryo shudder with wild excitement that has it’s peak somewhere in his stomach.
Ryo can feel fingers of one of Ohkura’s hands clenching around his arm, gripping the material of his t-shirt tightly and twisting it a bit. He doesn’t push him away though, and neither of them know if that’s because he wants this or is just simply curious - or maybe frightened even? - but it’s not like it’s important, not when Ryo gives Ohkura’s lower lip a short lick, small preamble to the full, sloppy and somewhat awkward kiss they share just a second later.
When Ryo pulls back, only mere few centimeters, it’s just to lick his own lips, trying hard to concentrate on a flavor, but failing miserably, being too preoccupied with Ohkura’s face right in front of him, surprised and slightly flushed, eyes wide and bright, and the expectation visible all over him.
“Flavor,” Ryo whispers then, not knowing what to do. “I can’t decide what flavor you’re for me. Everyone has one, everyone but you. I have to know this, because otherwise I’ll go mad very soon, after all those years of not knowing.”
It’s somehow desperate, those words coming out of his mouth. Like a plea, request for help, for any kind of hint, for release from that trap he had fallen into the day he met Ohkura for the first time.
There are a few painfully long moments when Ohkura only looks at him, and Ryo isn’t sure of anything anymore, not knowing if he should retire, or go on, or just wait. He doesn’t have that much time to think about it though; because soon Ohkura moves his other hand, lifting the glass filled with his juice and bringing it to his lips. He drinks the juice slowly, a few small sips, never breaking the eye contact with Ryo, who’s observing him carefully. He sees everything - the way his lips are parting, the movement of his Adam’s apple, and the small, thin trickle of red juice escaping the right corner of Ohkura’s mouth when he takes the last gulp and lets the glass find it’s place on a carpet.
It’s just the next impulse, Ryo leaning in and sucking lightly on a spot on Ohkura’s neck, the one where single red drop stopped in it’s tracks. When he feels him shifting a bit, exposing the skin on his neck, Ryo feels encouraged and he goes on, lips following the sweet and slightly sour wetness, matching so well with the smooth, warm skin he can feel with every cell of his body. When Ryo reaches Ohkura’s lips he doesn’t hesitate anymore, kissing him almost hungrily, as if his life depends on it. And somehow it does, he’s sure about it when he finds out that Ohkura kissing him back - with that flavor that is definitely so much like him - is probably the best thing that has happened in his life in a long time now. His tongue is wet and warm, and it feels perfect while dancing along with Ryo’s own in that kiss, all heated and rushed, hands suddenly gripping on clothes and whimpers escaping their lips in between, both silently complaining it’s too little, and too soft, and definitely not enough.
“Ryo,” the younger one whispers, losing his voice when Ryo’s hands find it’s way underneath Ohkura’s shirt, slightly rough fingertips caressing his sensitive skin, grazing hardening nipples, making all those things that has Ohkura shuddering and moaning softly, back arching and head tilted back.
Ryo is mesmerized - suddenly finding the right flavor, or more likely describing the one he has found already, is not as much important as it had been just a few minutes before. Because now he discovers something else, something even more fascinating - something he thinks he might have been thinking about earlier, but had never thought it had any chance of becoming true.
“Don’t space out,” comes the half-question, half-demand after a while, Ohkura catching Ryo and his thoughts wandering around, too many things to think about, too little time to catch up with them. “And do something, anything. Flavours, smells, it doesn’t matter, just touch me, Ryo. Touch me.”
The answer is in his smile, still wide as ever, but now with an addition of seduction, and a promise visible in Ryo’s eyes. Because that touch - it’s what he wants now too, nothing more and nothing less, just a pure feeling not limited by stupid barriers of clothes, or messed up thoughts, or anything that could possibly disturb them right now.
Everything Ryo does is slow though. It’s almost as if he wants to let it be as long as possible, savoring the taste of Ohkura’s skin under his tongue, and the way he tangles his long, slim fingers in Ryo’s black, short hair, demanding him to go on, to stop teasing, to do something more than barely tickling Ohkura’s arousal. But it’s Ryo who dictates the pace now, having Ohkura under him, willing to take anything he offers. And they like it, both of them, no matter how strange this wouldn’t be - those kisses and this intimacy, after all years they’ve known each other - it’s what both of them want. Ryo tasting the flavours, and Ohkura letting to be tasted.
If someone had wanted to know how they found themselves in bedroom, sprawled on Ryo’s king-sized bed, they wouldn’t know how to answer. It just happened, like everything this evening does, without much thinking and acknowledging. It’s in the instincts, in Ryo’s slightly trembling hands, unzipping Ohkura’s tight jeans, and in Ohkura’s frantic breath when he feels fingers on him and inside of him, doing things he could only dreamt of until now. It’s in the arched back and silent scream when Ryo slips in with one swift movement of hips, and in a kiss he steals, distracting Ohkura from the uncomfortable feeling, making him moan and go with the flow when Ryo starts to move, creating delicious friction that has them shaking out of excitement.
Multiple Ryos are escaping Ohkura’s lips, and an equal number of Tadayoshis is slipping past Ryo’s ones, some whispered in the thick air around them, and some moaned into the shoulder when Ryo leans in and Ohkura bites him, leaving the red marks of his teeth on the tanned skin. They finds themselves at the edge all too soon, Ohkura’s legs wrapping around Ryo’s slim hips, and Ryo’s fingers dipping into the skin of Ohkura’s ones. His thrusts soon become shallow and fast, matching with the younger one’s hand sliding up and down his own erection. The last moan and the final push, and then only blackness, and the feeling of suffocating, and fingers searching for the other one’s face, desperate for a kiss, for continuation of the delicious intimacy, for more, whatever this more can be. They are glad to give it to each other, not caring about the stickiness all over them, about the smell, about wetness on Ohkura’s thighs or hair sticking to Ryo’s face in a very messy way. It just doesn’t matter, not when instincts are still present and active, demanding everything they need to become satisfied, right until they fall into deep sleep, not being able to utter even one coherent sentence.
*
When Ryo wakes up the following morning, it’s to the unfamiliar, tickling sensation. He cracks one eye open, squinting a bit because of the sudden brightness hitting him immediately. It takes him a while, before he’s able to actually see anything more than a blurred mixture of colors and textures.
“It tickles,” he says when he spots Ohkura’s hand, long fingers tracing patterns on his stomach which feels more like a touch of butterfly’s wings than anything else.
“I know,” Ohkura answers easily, small smile curving his lips a little. “I wanted to wake you up,” he continues and Ryo doesn’t say anything, believing he’ll find out what it is that needed him to wake up so early. “I’m just curious. About that flavor you told me yesterday. Did you find out what it is?”
Ryo looks at him, musing over his words. Flavor. Something he wanted to find out so desperately, yet somewhere in the middle of last night he completely stopped caring about, too occupied with everything else. But he remembers; even now he can still taste those kisses and that skin, every inch of it he had his lips on back then.
There is no answer when Ryo just moves a bit, laying on his stomach now and snuggling face into the crook of Ohkura’s neck, evidently trying to escape from the irritating lightness that clashes with his sleep slowly drifting away and away. The younger one is just about to ask once again, when Ryo whispers lazily in his skin, voice muffled but still audible, “It’s cherry, of course.”