(no subject)
title: yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
author: chartre
rating: r
pairing: ryopi
summary: a hand reached out on his back and he turned to his side, ryo, and found him, his hand squeezing on his arm, nudging him closer, closer, closer.
notes: fictional. based from a random phrase from a long list of random phrases which reuslurid and i gave plots to for fun. i miss ryopi, it's summer yo, so this calls for incoherent and shameful writing. \o/
Yesterday, All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away
ryopi
The night of a hundred memories held itself in a tiny hourglass of sand and glistening particles. It refused to be recalled as soon as all the sand particles were already found at the bottom half of the hourglass, and soon it had gone unnoticed as told. It was a night of a hundred memories, and all but one had forgotten.
It was, however, hours after the dead of night, time before the light flickered and showed signs of daylight. Pi sat on the red bench by the train station, collar up to his neck, hands cold in his pockets. There was an old, battered-up suitcase by his side, the thing could probably hold a few days worth, and there were visible scars of dried tears on his face. They could all probably tell.
His neighbors knew. His friends knew, but his family didn’t, first and fore mostly because he had no family to begin with. He was running low in faith. There wasn’t going to be enough for the next days, weeks to come, and it looked like he lacked the money. There must be enough for a few days, nothing more.
Cruel, he thought; the weather had been cruel to him that morning he decided on something completely without the choice of another. Cruel was the cold that numbed his entire body, and cruel was the heart that wounded his.
Pi looked up in all thought and wonder, and was not expecting for the least bit of chance that he would come face to face with a man almost, so to say, like him: disheveled clothing, dark eyes, and a sad outlook and perception of life ahead. He was mostly what he saw in himself at that moment, like looking right into a mirror and seeing himself only without the old tattered suitcase. The thing couldn’t be any less important, but who’d know?
Ryo saw in himself the power, or lack thereof, of a boy to run for miles and miles away from love and the easy life. It wasn’t all good, this life he had lived. Nothing ever came out good, and nothing or no one ever really cared whether love was genuine or existential. They all came and went, they all saw it, felt it, and words as they knew it were masked by delusion until completely distorted. Ryo thought he had broken his heart for too long, too many times.
This was why he was here.
This was why he saw himself sitting at the bench adjacent him. Tired beings they were, and they couldn’t have felt anything else but a link between broken halves.
Here were two lonely hearts with two different stories, with two different lives led by two different roads. It was at that morning where they both thought they could relate in conflict and with the desire and longing to be with someone.
Maybe it was already that time, Ryo thought.
His wife had an affair. She had an affair with the man living next door. Typical guy with looks, cash and guts to get a woman of another. It could’ve been okay, really. Thing was Pi loved her. He loved her with all he had and they were going to have a baby soon. His wife was carrying their child for six months and counting when she finally left him on one dead of the night when Pi was asleep, packed all her things on days Pi wasn’t home. He found himself alone and bankrupt the next day, his car gone and his house almost empty. He knew.
Pi sold the house. He thought he could move on by deciding on that, packed his things and left no traces, even if he knew his wife wouldn’t care to send him money or even a simple letter with I love you in it. She had already deliberately taken everything with her and Pi knew she didn’t plan to leave anything for him, and naturally the latter deemed no longer the truth anymore.
So he sold the house and left. Lived off others around his trip, never really stayed in a house too long because the permanent life seemed too… permanent. It reminded him too well and too much of everything.
He looked up at Ryo, their eyes meeting, and he smiled sadly.
He was a party boy ever since he last remembered. It may have been a long time ago, but he didn’t know, Ryo didn’t know. His social life was compared to that of a celebrity on constant high, drinks that kept him going, dirty dancing and the very more-than-often sex drives when he brought them home with him-wherever home was.
She was a pretty girl, Ryo thought. She was pretty, but pretty unlike all the other girls whose names and faces he’s already forgotten. He’d remember this one, Ryo thought, hopefully for as long as the next day onwards after the hangover would hit him. She was the only pretty young thing that night, soft and smooth everywhere, brown eyes, easy lips pressed into a thin pink smile, and Ryo thought this could finally be something genuine, life must agree.
He touched her here, held her there, and she cried into the night Ryo vowed he would remember. He kissed her. He told her he loved her.
The next day she left without morning contact. Ryo woke up just in time to find her at the bottom of his apartment about to board the bus. She didn’t take anything, didn’t take anything but his sweetheart sentiments. She never knew, she never might know, and Ryo damned her, and damned every other girl he’d thought to love, but never actually did because they all left in the morning. Ryo was just another face to them, he realized sooner than not. No one in the world could possibly take him seriously, not when life often gave him neon lights and tainted colored drinks in fancy and frosted glassware. Ryo cried a few times and hid himself.
He left town and moved on in hopes of living different life with different people, some place where he can grow up decent and respected again because he’s lost those, decency and respect.
Pi threw a hand over his shoulder and patted his back. “I’ll respect you,” he told him, “if you give me your faith.”
Ryo smiled, and for the first time in a long time, it was heartfelt over held back tears and overwrought pretense. Ryo liked it, he liked it a lot. For a minute they sat still as the dark gave way to the sun behind the green foliage. Ryo looked at Pi and noticed the tired lines of his face beneath the orange light, and thought that they couldn’t be so different after all.
Pi saw him again in town, the same one as the previous. He didn’t need that train ride after all, probably because Pi wanted this, expected some sort of second encounter with Ryo if he stayed tied to this town as close as possible, if hope was on his side.
He saw him sitting at an empty bar alone and possibly dying of everything he told him a few days ago. He thought for awhile, thought long about the pros and cons of entering that same bar and striking up a conversation with the lonely man. Pi was a lonely man, he wasn’t any different. He promised him some respect, and respect was what he was getting soon.
Pi walked in and sat on Ryo’s left, their eyes meeting again after he’s called out his drink. They shared a smile, and resumed in the silence, their shoulders as close as possible.
Ryo thought he’d never see him again, this man with no permanent home, no permanent occupation, no permanent anything. Ryo thought if he’s ever had lovers in the same case. The same case as his.
“I couldn’t,” he admitted, “I can’t.”
He said he didn’t have the ability to trust anymore. “I may have lost it.”
Ryo laughed. It was rather a serious matter, but he laughed. Ryo tried to restrain himself.
“I don’t think I can. At least not anymore,” he turned to Ryo with dark eyes, bitter face and pressed lips. It was hard not to look away, Ryo told himself as he forced it out of the habit in fear that this could just be like before, damning everybody that came and left his way. Ryo decided to enlighten him a little more on what he had been going through for the past couple of years. Pi sat close and listened intently to his stories until the rush of evening came.
Pi went to bed that night unable to collect all thought innate or not. The bed springs of the motel were particularly bouncy, and the ceiling looked as if it was too close to his face. It was exceptionally strange because living from house to house, it never troubled him, it shouldn’t be troubling him. He lied on his back facing the ceiling that looked as if it was too close to his face and thought. There wasn’t going to be any sleep tonight, Pi was sure of it.
Ryo refused to come home-whichever context he had to put it into-he told himself he’d never come home. He sat at the top of the hill of an open grassland a-few-minutes-walking-distance away from the town, somewhere quiet, somewhere unmarked. It smelled of clean grass and soft ground, Ryo approved.
There were no lights. A hand reached out on his back and he turned to his side, Ryo, and found him, his hand squeezing on his arm, nudging him closer, closer, closer. Security, he thought. He rested his head on Pi’s. The quiet was remarkable, he commended. Ryo could smell his soap despite the cold, and something started to fill in his heart, and it felt warm.
What was he doing here, Ryo wanted to know as he nestled closer, weighed his cheek on his shoulder. “What are we both doing here.”
They felt the brush of their shoulders, Ryo’s cheek on Pi’s and it was soft and worm, the touch. They stayed and sat in the silence, the heat finally settling, then lingering.
“So this is respect, huh,” Ryo muttered and pressed his face on Pi’s shoulder. Pi rubbed his arm. “You could call it that if you want.”
“What is this supposed to be anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Pi whispered, “but respect is good.”
They both thought it was almost perfect, this, them, everything. Almost, because Ryo was calm like that, but Pi wouldn’t let his hands linger any closer to Ryo’s. Almost, because Pi rested his hand over Ryo’s open palm, but the latter wouldn’t ease his fingers through his.
They held on. They held on tight, and Ryo almost fell asleep like that, if it weren’t for Pi’s constant breathing, the rise and fall of his chest and Ryo can feel that, the movement. Ryo figured he finally wanted to go home, but home was wherever he was.
She was a young girl about three, with her cute charm and baby-soft skin. Ryo idly waved at her from the bench, pulls on the sides of his lips and smiles. She waved back like she was familiar with him, and she was. She ran to him, and Ryo bent over to pat her head.
Neighbor’s little girl, Ryo told Pi. “The couple just moved in a few months ago. Her husband is usually away on business.”
“She’s beautiful,” Pi said, getting her attention and she smiled. “So beautiful.”
“She is, isn’t she,” Ryo looked at him, and Pi looked back. Their eyes met for awhile minutes probably couldn’t count, and Pi still held the little girl. So this was what if felt like, Ryo thought. Pi laughed. Ryo snickered and looked away, slipped his hands in his pockets nervously.
The girl ran. Her mother was there across the square, and Ryo noticed. He nodded and lifted a hand to acknowledge. Her mother smiled and nodded back. Pi looked up.
She was a young girl about three, with her cute charm and baby-soft skin, and Pi was reminded so much of so many things. She was so beautiful, this little lady, she aught to be lucky. He held her hand playfully as she held onto his fingers like she was so familiar with him, like she recognized him. They’d never met, Pi realized. He smiled sadly.
Ryo scooted nearer, their hands idly touching and Pi took notice of the subtlety. It was all so nostalgic, people walking around in the cool silence, and Ryo, he smiled at him when their eyes met. Pi bit his lip and laughed under his breath. Wordless.
Ryo looked up, and Pi did the same. The little girl ran off away from his grasp, ran off to his mother and he let her go. The silence lingered on and Pi noticed it all, when Ryo acknowledged the woman across the square, when she acknowledged him back and she too had noticed Pi.
There had been no definite trace of time since he last saw his wife, the woman he admitted to loving with all his life, until that very moment because it all was despise then, unadulterated loathing or not, revulsion and disgust.
“Her daughter is lucky to have a mother like her.”
Pi stood up, and the woman frowned. She held onto her daughter and they left without parting words. The little girl waved goodbye, her tiny hand stretched out high above her head, but no one had waved back. Ryo finally saw it and touched his arm.
Pi never saw her again, and he only hoped.
“Come home with me,” Ryo tried to relieve him of his dilemma, and he knew how it felt: the inability to forget, the inability to get rid of that predicament from his chest. They sat in his kitchen, Pi leaning over the table with darned elbows while Ryo sat so close beside him, his hand on his back. He stroked his shoulder and listened to his soft sobs mutely, cautious and meticulous of his own actions.
There was no rage, Ryo saw in his face. There were no traces of hate on his face, but he knew the weight of all these, and it was holding him down.
“Look at me,” he told him. “Pi, look at me-” their eyes met again, dark but shining, and Ryo finally couldn’t help but press their foreheads together, their eyes slowly closing as they did. Ryo could here him sigh, and Pi was the first to kiss him, but Ryo probed him to twist when he kissed him back.
Ryo’s hands ghosted around the skin of his hips, Pi’s on the planes of the small of Ryo’s back when he reached under his sweater.
Ryo didn’t wait, he didn’t stop, there simply was no time. He slipped his fingers through the waistband of his jeans, Pi gasping in his mouth and it was all tongue and teeth and skin.
“Is this okay,” Ryo asked him when they pulled back, still gasping and catching breaths. “Both of us, is this-”
“Yeah,” Pi immediately whispered, biting his bottom lip, and Ryo pulled him again for another wet kiss.
They slipped out of their clothes and kicked off their shoes, crawled under the covers of Ryo’s bed, their movement almost fleeting but slow, Ryo taking all his time and Pi didn’t mind it at all. Pi heaved when Ryo pushed, and breathed in deeper, his mouth opening in hushed gasps as Ryo pulled. It had been a long time since Ryo’s last done this, out of a vow he had promised to take on his entire life, never to break until that day but there was no trace of remorse. He tried to remember, his eyes heavy but vigilant under the half-light, half-darkness of the room as he watched Pi shut his eyes, lick his lips and soundless moan for every climax, for every push and pull he made.
He tried to remember, one hand on Pi’s shoulder and the other on the headboard while he slowed down when Pi finally winced his eyes shut and let out a distressed moan from the back of his throat, while he picked up the pace when Pi relaxed, when he felt so tight inside over all the heat coiling, the blood pulsing. The bed creaked and protested, and Ryo released, his body tightening, Pi’s body arching.
They both breathed in exhaustion, Ryo falling on his chest and it was then he realized that he was here, Pi, they both were, and they kissed again, bruising and biting. They stayed under the sheets like that, their hands searching beneath and Ryo finally held him, his fingers slowly easing through Pi’s. They were breathing, still breathing, and it was a reminder of what Ryo had done, and there was no remorse.
Pi climaxed. He listened to the soft gasps and half-moans Ryo made, and he climaxed. They woke up hours later, hips bruised and Ryo’s arms around his shoulders, face pressed to his collarbone. Pi remembered the silence, he listened and the quiet told him to stay.
“Let’s leave this town,” Ryo whispered through the skin on his neck. “Run away with me.”
“Where to?” Pi brushed his lips on his hair.
“Wherever. Anywhere.”
They packed all their things that evening, Pi’s old battered suitcase and all, Ryo’s cash altogether, slid into his car in the dead of night soundlessly and drove off.
He saw his daughter through the side mirror, her tiny hands pressed to glass of the window. Pi balled his fists over the jeans on his knees, and Ryo placed one hand over one and squeezed. He looked at Pi, and Pi looked at him.
“You have my faith in you,” he said, and he smiled. Pi smiled back, turned his palm over and threaded his fingers with Ryo’s. “We’re doing this together.”
They drove far away in the hours of dusk, the headlights of Ryo’s car bright and leading on the dark road. Ryo was running miles and miles away, away from broken memories, broken love and the easy life, and Pi was with him, this man of no permanent home. They ran away from town, they both did, together.
They weren’t so different, really.
author: chartre
rating: r
pairing: ryopi
summary: a hand reached out on his back and he turned to his side, ryo, and found him, his hand squeezing on his arm, nudging him closer, closer, closer.
notes: fictional. based from a random phrase from a long list of random phrases which reuslurid and i gave plots to for fun. i miss ryopi, it's summer yo, so this calls for incoherent and shameful writing. \o/
Yesterday, All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away
ryopi
The night of a hundred memories held itself in a tiny hourglass of sand and glistening particles. It refused to be recalled as soon as all the sand particles were already found at the bottom half of the hourglass, and soon it had gone unnoticed as told. It was a night of a hundred memories, and all but one had forgotten.
It was, however, hours after the dead of night, time before the light flickered and showed signs of daylight. Pi sat on the red bench by the train station, collar up to his neck, hands cold in his pockets. There was an old, battered-up suitcase by his side, the thing could probably hold a few days worth, and there were visible scars of dried tears on his face. They could all probably tell.
His neighbors knew. His friends knew, but his family didn’t, first and fore mostly because he had no family to begin with. He was running low in faith. There wasn’t going to be enough for the next days, weeks to come, and it looked like he lacked the money. There must be enough for a few days, nothing more.
Cruel, he thought; the weather had been cruel to him that morning he decided on something completely without the choice of another. Cruel was the cold that numbed his entire body, and cruel was the heart that wounded his.
Pi looked up in all thought and wonder, and was not expecting for the least bit of chance that he would come face to face with a man almost, so to say, like him: disheveled clothing, dark eyes, and a sad outlook and perception of life ahead. He was mostly what he saw in himself at that moment, like looking right into a mirror and seeing himself only without the old tattered suitcase. The thing couldn’t be any less important, but who’d know?
Ryo saw in himself the power, or lack thereof, of a boy to run for miles and miles away from love and the easy life. It wasn’t all good, this life he had lived. Nothing ever came out good, and nothing or no one ever really cared whether love was genuine or existential. They all came and went, they all saw it, felt it, and words as they knew it were masked by delusion until completely distorted. Ryo thought he had broken his heart for too long, too many times.
This was why he was here.
This was why he saw himself sitting at the bench adjacent him. Tired beings they were, and they couldn’t have felt anything else but a link between broken halves.
Here were two lonely hearts with two different stories, with two different lives led by two different roads. It was at that morning where they both thought they could relate in conflict and with the desire and longing to be with someone.
Maybe it was already that time, Ryo thought.
His wife had an affair. She had an affair with the man living next door. Typical guy with looks, cash and guts to get a woman of another. It could’ve been okay, really. Thing was Pi loved her. He loved her with all he had and they were going to have a baby soon. His wife was carrying their child for six months and counting when she finally left him on one dead of the night when Pi was asleep, packed all her things on days Pi wasn’t home. He found himself alone and bankrupt the next day, his car gone and his house almost empty. He knew.
Pi sold the house. He thought he could move on by deciding on that, packed his things and left no traces, even if he knew his wife wouldn’t care to send him money or even a simple letter with I love you in it. She had already deliberately taken everything with her and Pi knew she didn’t plan to leave anything for him, and naturally the latter deemed no longer the truth anymore.
So he sold the house and left. Lived off others around his trip, never really stayed in a house too long because the permanent life seemed too… permanent. It reminded him too well and too much of everything.
He looked up at Ryo, their eyes meeting, and he smiled sadly.
He was a party boy ever since he last remembered. It may have been a long time ago, but he didn’t know, Ryo didn’t know. His social life was compared to that of a celebrity on constant high, drinks that kept him going, dirty dancing and the very more-than-often sex drives when he brought them home with him-wherever home was.
She was a pretty girl, Ryo thought. She was pretty, but pretty unlike all the other girls whose names and faces he’s already forgotten. He’d remember this one, Ryo thought, hopefully for as long as the next day onwards after the hangover would hit him. She was the only pretty young thing that night, soft and smooth everywhere, brown eyes, easy lips pressed into a thin pink smile, and Ryo thought this could finally be something genuine, life must agree.
He touched her here, held her there, and she cried into the night Ryo vowed he would remember. He kissed her. He told her he loved her.
The next day she left without morning contact. Ryo woke up just in time to find her at the bottom of his apartment about to board the bus. She didn’t take anything, didn’t take anything but his sweetheart sentiments. She never knew, she never might know, and Ryo damned her, and damned every other girl he’d thought to love, but never actually did because they all left in the morning. Ryo was just another face to them, he realized sooner than not. No one in the world could possibly take him seriously, not when life often gave him neon lights and tainted colored drinks in fancy and frosted glassware. Ryo cried a few times and hid himself.
He left town and moved on in hopes of living different life with different people, some place where he can grow up decent and respected again because he’s lost those, decency and respect.
Pi threw a hand over his shoulder and patted his back. “I’ll respect you,” he told him, “if you give me your faith.”
Ryo smiled, and for the first time in a long time, it was heartfelt over held back tears and overwrought pretense. Ryo liked it, he liked it a lot. For a minute they sat still as the dark gave way to the sun behind the green foliage. Ryo looked at Pi and noticed the tired lines of his face beneath the orange light, and thought that they couldn’t be so different after all.
Pi saw him again in town, the same one as the previous. He didn’t need that train ride after all, probably because Pi wanted this, expected some sort of second encounter with Ryo if he stayed tied to this town as close as possible, if hope was on his side.
He saw him sitting at an empty bar alone and possibly dying of everything he told him a few days ago. He thought for awhile, thought long about the pros and cons of entering that same bar and striking up a conversation with the lonely man. Pi was a lonely man, he wasn’t any different. He promised him some respect, and respect was what he was getting soon.
Pi walked in and sat on Ryo’s left, their eyes meeting again after he’s called out his drink. They shared a smile, and resumed in the silence, their shoulders as close as possible.
Ryo thought he’d never see him again, this man with no permanent home, no permanent occupation, no permanent anything. Ryo thought if he’s ever had lovers in the same case. The same case as his.
“I couldn’t,” he admitted, “I can’t.”
He said he didn’t have the ability to trust anymore. “I may have lost it.”
Ryo laughed. It was rather a serious matter, but he laughed. Ryo tried to restrain himself.
“I don’t think I can. At least not anymore,” he turned to Ryo with dark eyes, bitter face and pressed lips. It was hard not to look away, Ryo told himself as he forced it out of the habit in fear that this could just be like before, damning everybody that came and left his way. Ryo decided to enlighten him a little more on what he had been going through for the past couple of years. Pi sat close and listened intently to his stories until the rush of evening came.
Pi went to bed that night unable to collect all thought innate or not. The bed springs of the motel were particularly bouncy, and the ceiling looked as if it was too close to his face. It was exceptionally strange because living from house to house, it never troubled him, it shouldn’t be troubling him. He lied on his back facing the ceiling that looked as if it was too close to his face and thought. There wasn’t going to be any sleep tonight, Pi was sure of it.
Ryo refused to come home-whichever context he had to put it into-he told himself he’d never come home. He sat at the top of the hill of an open grassland a-few-minutes-walking-distance away from the town, somewhere quiet, somewhere unmarked. It smelled of clean grass and soft ground, Ryo approved.
There were no lights. A hand reached out on his back and he turned to his side, Ryo, and found him, his hand squeezing on his arm, nudging him closer, closer, closer. Security, he thought. He rested his head on Pi’s. The quiet was remarkable, he commended. Ryo could smell his soap despite the cold, and something started to fill in his heart, and it felt warm.
What was he doing here, Ryo wanted to know as he nestled closer, weighed his cheek on his shoulder. “What are we both doing here.”
They felt the brush of their shoulders, Ryo’s cheek on Pi’s and it was soft and worm, the touch. They stayed and sat in the silence, the heat finally settling, then lingering.
“So this is respect, huh,” Ryo muttered and pressed his face on Pi’s shoulder. Pi rubbed his arm. “You could call it that if you want.”
“What is this supposed to be anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Pi whispered, “but respect is good.”
They both thought it was almost perfect, this, them, everything. Almost, because Ryo was calm like that, but Pi wouldn’t let his hands linger any closer to Ryo’s. Almost, because Pi rested his hand over Ryo’s open palm, but the latter wouldn’t ease his fingers through his.
They held on. They held on tight, and Ryo almost fell asleep like that, if it weren’t for Pi’s constant breathing, the rise and fall of his chest and Ryo can feel that, the movement. Ryo figured he finally wanted to go home, but home was wherever he was.
She was a young girl about three, with her cute charm and baby-soft skin. Ryo idly waved at her from the bench, pulls on the sides of his lips and smiles. She waved back like she was familiar with him, and she was. She ran to him, and Ryo bent over to pat her head.
Neighbor’s little girl, Ryo told Pi. “The couple just moved in a few months ago. Her husband is usually away on business.”
“She’s beautiful,” Pi said, getting her attention and she smiled. “So beautiful.”
“She is, isn’t she,” Ryo looked at him, and Pi looked back. Their eyes met for awhile minutes probably couldn’t count, and Pi still held the little girl. So this was what if felt like, Ryo thought. Pi laughed. Ryo snickered and looked away, slipped his hands in his pockets nervously.
The girl ran. Her mother was there across the square, and Ryo noticed. He nodded and lifted a hand to acknowledge. Her mother smiled and nodded back. Pi looked up.
She was a young girl about three, with her cute charm and baby-soft skin, and Pi was reminded so much of so many things. She was so beautiful, this little lady, she aught to be lucky. He held her hand playfully as she held onto his fingers like she was so familiar with him, like she recognized him. They’d never met, Pi realized. He smiled sadly.
Ryo scooted nearer, their hands idly touching and Pi took notice of the subtlety. It was all so nostalgic, people walking around in the cool silence, and Ryo, he smiled at him when their eyes met. Pi bit his lip and laughed under his breath. Wordless.
Ryo looked up, and Pi did the same. The little girl ran off away from his grasp, ran off to his mother and he let her go. The silence lingered on and Pi noticed it all, when Ryo acknowledged the woman across the square, when she acknowledged him back and she too had noticed Pi.
There had been no definite trace of time since he last saw his wife, the woman he admitted to loving with all his life, until that very moment because it all was despise then, unadulterated loathing or not, revulsion and disgust.
“Her daughter is lucky to have a mother like her.”
Pi stood up, and the woman frowned. She held onto her daughter and they left without parting words. The little girl waved goodbye, her tiny hand stretched out high above her head, but no one had waved back. Ryo finally saw it and touched his arm.
Pi never saw her again, and he only hoped.
“Come home with me,” Ryo tried to relieve him of his dilemma, and he knew how it felt: the inability to forget, the inability to get rid of that predicament from his chest. They sat in his kitchen, Pi leaning over the table with darned elbows while Ryo sat so close beside him, his hand on his back. He stroked his shoulder and listened to his soft sobs mutely, cautious and meticulous of his own actions.
There was no rage, Ryo saw in his face. There were no traces of hate on his face, but he knew the weight of all these, and it was holding him down.
“Look at me,” he told him. “Pi, look at me-” their eyes met again, dark but shining, and Ryo finally couldn’t help but press their foreheads together, their eyes slowly closing as they did. Ryo could here him sigh, and Pi was the first to kiss him, but Ryo probed him to twist when he kissed him back.
Ryo’s hands ghosted around the skin of his hips, Pi’s on the planes of the small of Ryo’s back when he reached under his sweater.
Ryo didn’t wait, he didn’t stop, there simply was no time. He slipped his fingers through the waistband of his jeans, Pi gasping in his mouth and it was all tongue and teeth and skin.
“Is this okay,” Ryo asked him when they pulled back, still gasping and catching breaths. “Both of us, is this-”
“Yeah,” Pi immediately whispered, biting his bottom lip, and Ryo pulled him again for another wet kiss.
They slipped out of their clothes and kicked off their shoes, crawled under the covers of Ryo’s bed, their movement almost fleeting but slow, Ryo taking all his time and Pi didn’t mind it at all. Pi heaved when Ryo pushed, and breathed in deeper, his mouth opening in hushed gasps as Ryo pulled. It had been a long time since Ryo’s last done this, out of a vow he had promised to take on his entire life, never to break until that day but there was no trace of remorse. He tried to remember, his eyes heavy but vigilant under the half-light, half-darkness of the room as he watched Pi shut his eyes, lick his lips and soundless moan for every climax, for every push and pull he made.
He tried to remember, one hand on Pi’s shoulder and the other on the headboard while he slowed down when Pi finally winced his eyes shut and let out a distressed moan from the back of his throat, while he picked up the pace when Pi relaxed, when he felt so tight inside over all the heat coiling, the blood pulsing. The bed creaked and protested, and Ryo released, his body tightening, Pi’s body arching.
They both breathed in exhaustion, Ryo falling on his chest and it was then he realized that he was here, Pi, they both were, and they kissed again, bruising and biting. They stayed under the sheets like that, their hands searching beneath and Ryo finally held him, his fingers slowly easing through Pi’s. They were breathing, still breathing, and it was a reminder of what Ryo had done, and there was no remorse.
Pi climaxed. He listened to the soft gasps and half-moans Ryo made, and he climaxed. They woke up hours later, hips bruised and Ryo’s arms around his shoulders, face pressed to his collarbone. Pi remembered the silence, he listened and the quiet told him to stay.
“Let’s leave this town,” Ryo whispered through the skin on his neck. “Run away with me.”
“Where to?” Pi brushed his lips on his hair.
“Wherever. Anywhere.”
They packed all their things that evening, Pi’s old battered suitcase and all, Ryo’s cash altogether, slid into his car in the dead of night soundlessly and drove off.
He saw his daughter through the side mirror, her tiny hands pressed to glass of the window. Pi balled his fists over the jeans on his knees, and Ryo placed one hand over one and squeezed. He looked at Pi, and Pi looked at him.
“You have my faith in you,” he said, and he smiled. Pi smiled back, turned his palm over and threaded his fingers with Ryo’s. “We’re doing this together.”
They drove far away in the hours of dusk, the headlights of Ryo’s car bright and leading on the dark road. Ryo was running miles and miles away, away from broken memories, broken love and the easy life, and Pi was with him, this man of no permanent home. They ran away from town, they both did, together.
They weren’t so different, really.