FIC: Rewind Forward (D1) 46/63
Title: Rewind Forward (46/63)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
Cold sweat drips down Niou's face. He balls his fist in his pocket to keep from pulling at his collar to fan himself off. Yagyuu turns around at the sound of Niou's footsteps. "Ah," he says, raising his hand. "Niou-kun."
There is a bag in Yagyuu's hands, one from a fancy department store in Tokyo. A bouquet of flowers sticks out from the end of the bag-fresh daisies and yellow flowers and orchids, all crisp and bright colours. The only fresh flowers Niou's family ever has at home are stunted ones from the garden that collect insects and wilted leaves.
Niou's insides curdle. Only that megane dork would bother to go to all this trouble.
"What're those for?" Niou mutters. He nods to Yagyuu's bag.
Yagyuu looks down at his bag, then back up to him. His glasses slide down his nose. "For your family having me over for dinner," he says, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world. Too polite by far. Niou shrugs and tries to play it off. He grinds the toe of his sneaker into the pavement, wishing his body would calm down and his blood would stop pulsing everywhere. His hair is wet with sweat, wet from the bath and his t-shirt chokes him. He swallows.
"Not like we're having anything special," Niou says. Yagyuu favours him with a bland smile and a cock of his head that says Shall we go?
Yagyuu walks with an easy bounce to his steps. Niou heaves his body behind Yagyuu's shadow, wincing inside when Yagyuu asks which way to turn at the lights. Niou twists his hands in his pockets and blinks-his vision is blurred at the edges, but the sky is clear overhead. The cars are fewer and fewer, although they walk on the main roads, walking past the post office and another conbini, past a field of scrubby grass and a large pharmacy. Niou's mouth is dry. His shorts feel too tight and he swaggers his step to keep his erection from rubbing more. It's embarrassing enough already.
Yagyuu wears a polo shirt tucked into a pair of long shorts. A sliver of skin peeks out between Yagyuu's pulled-up socks and his shorts. He looks as dorky as ever, like he belongs on the golf course.
The worst part is, he would fit right in with Niou's family in all their megane dork glory, putting balls over a green lawn and chortling over jokes about birdies and eagles and bogies and shit. Niou rolls his eyes at the thought.
At the next set of lights, Yagyuu stops. The light flashes green, but he stands there holding a hand out to stop Niou when he starts to cross.
Niou blinks. "Eh?"
"What?" Yagyuu asks. He frowns. The bag slips lower in his hand. Niou can smell a cheap little noodle bar nearby and curry fumes that float around the thick, muggy evening air.
Niou raises an eyebrow. He looks at Yagyuu through the veil of his hair which hangs limp over his eyes. A faint breeze stirs and rattles a plastic bag on the side of the road. It puffs up, then collapses.
"We gave it our best today," Yagyuu says.
He misses the point completely.
There are times that Niou wonders just how much Yagyuu really does catch onto and see for himself, but now is not one. Niou smirks at him and snorts. If Yagyuu wants to play dumb, Niou will lead him on. "It was a good game," Niou says. "The looks on their faces…"
Yagyuu's lenses flash. The light changes to red and Niou can see a sharp smile of Yagyuu's own. It makes his stomach settle-just for the briefest of moments-because Yagyuu walks ahead of him, moving closer to Niou's house. Fresh sweat dribbles down Niou's spine, sending unconscious shudders through his body as he watches Yagyuu. Yagyuu is tall and confident in his gait; his butt fills his pants, enough to make Niou swallow the lump in his throat.
It doesn't matter how dorky Yagyuu is, Niou wants him. His heart flutters and his head spins and he wants Yagyuu so much his knees go jelly-like. When Yagyuu calls out his name on the other side of the road, Niou stumbles on the curb.
They are getting closer.
Niou looks at Yagyuu under the light of the streetlamps they walk under, transient in and out of the deep shadows. His hair is smooth and he smells fresh-he must have showered, too. Yagyuu has a single little cowlick standing up at the back of his head. Niou wants to reach out and touch it, to touch Yagyuu's soft, silky hair and press his face to the back of Yagyuu's neck where his collar is popped up. But he doesn't and he can't because Yagyuu isn't like that and the constant mental reminders make Niou hollow and aching inside.
He sighs. Of course it would be him to want something unattainable. Punishment for his personality, payback for all the times he irritated and annoyed everyone else with comments and pranks and snide snickering.
Yagyuu's step falls off a beat. "This is a nice neighbourhood," he says. "I assumed you lived around here."
Niou looks around at the identical houses and the similar cement garden walls with ivy and vines and iron-gates. They are all so much smaller than Yagyuu's grand home with the expensive antiques and multiple pasokons. Here, laundry flutters out of windows and there's a pothole in the middle of the road. Yagyuu doesn't notice, he just keeps walking down the street.
Then Yagyuu stops in front of the gate. Niou's blood freezes. Yagyuu drags a fingertip over the name plaque along the garden and his lips mouth the words "Niou Family". Niou can't speak. Through the gate, he can see his father's white VW Golf sitting in the driveway. Lights stream from the windows as shadows move about inside. His family is waiting inside. Yagyuu is waiting by the gate. Thick silence descends, apart from the chirp of crickets, and the department store bag rustles.
Niou's entire body is numb. He doesn't realize he's holding his breath until Yagyuu touches his arm and makes him gasp. The touch electrifies his skin. All the hairs on his body stand up and bristle. Niou shivers.
"I forgot to give this back to you earlier," Yagyuu says. Niou glances down. In the half-light, he has to squint to make out the shape of the hair elastic sitting in his palm. Yagyuu's earlier smile is gone, replaced with a thin set of his lips and a bob of his throat.
He's not nervous! Niou thinks.
But Yagyuu's fist curls tight around the handle of his bag and he pushes his glasses up his nose, hiding whatever flickering emotions that might cross his face-Niou isn't sure. On the surface, Yagyuu's face is calm and his tight posture the same as always. He's impossible to read like this.
"Even if we lost the championship," Yagyuu murmurs. "Today was the best game."
Niou's palm tingles. His arm is tired from all the racket swinging, all the lasers of this afternoon. And now, his legs are crumpling underneath himself the longer he hesitates going inside. Crawling under a gutter and hiding seems like a good idea, except for the fact Yagyuu blocks his escape path. Niou takes a deep breath and summons up whatever courage must lurk deep down in the depths of his belly in order to unlatch the gate and hold it open for Yagyuu.
"We're here," he says. The awkward silence is too much for him. The gate squeaks on the hinges and Niou can't take it anymore. Before Yagyuu steps inside, Niou shoves past him and sticks out his tongue.
Yagyuu sniffs. "Niou-kun!" he says.
"Sorry," Niou drawls. "Just so hungry I couldn't wait for your slow gentleman ass."
Yagyuu opens his mouth, but he closes it again and frowns. Guilt pokes Niou in the stomach, but he shoves it down. Yagyuu walks up the pathway and peeks around the choppy hydrangea bushes and ornamental bonsais that have grown out the wrong way. He looks around with big, myopic eyes and blinks when he sees the Golf.
Niou bites his lip and looks up at the sky. A single star-or maybe a planet-hovers bright on the line of the horizon, out towards the sea. It sparkles and wavers, the light inconsistent, but brighter than any other lights in the sky.
Please let Yagyuu like them.
***
The door clicks shut.
Niou toes his sneakers off. Yagyuu sets his bag down and unties his shoes, lining them up against the wall. Niou can't think, he can't move, he can only stand there, transfixed and choking when his mother comes out of the kitchen with a smile on her face. She looks around and her smile widens.
"You must be Yagyuu-kun," she says.
Niou's ribcage collapses. He can't breathe, either.
Yagyuu looks at her and nods, bowing his head a little. "Yes," he says. "Thank you for having me, Niou-san." He holds out the bag and says, "Please accept these." His voice is even and smooth. Niou can't read his reaction.
Except when Yagyuu blinks. Niou's father comes out of the main room, his glasses down around his nostrils. Yagyuu bows his head again and repeats himself. Niou's father says something that escapes Niou's ears-all he can hear instead is a deafening rush of wind, like the air in the subway tunnels before a train pulls in and blows him back. Niou rocks back on his heel. His balance is off. His knees wobble.
His mother covers her mouth with her hand and looks at the flowers. She thanks Yagyuu and hands the bag to Niou's father, who pulls out a bottle. "Sake?" he asks. He blinks. "Aa, thank you, Yagyuu-kun."
Yagyuu ducks his head for the bazillionth time. Niou glances at the closet and wonders if he can slink under the crack in the doorway and hide forever behind the woolen winter coats.
Yagyuu's eyes flick around the front room, taking in the tacky, lumpy furniture covered in ratty homemade afghans and the dumb plastic flower arrangement his sister made. "Do you do ikebana?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou bangs his head on the wall and squeezes his eyes shut. He cringes.
Niou's mother shakes her head. "No, no, Mayu does." When Yagyuu gives her a blank look, she explains. "Mayu is Masaharu's neesan."
"Ah," Yagyuu says. "Niou-kun doesn't talk about her much."
With good reason! Niou thinks. The plastic flower arrangement of baby's breath and dusty carnations laughs at him, all discoloured and sneeze-inducing.
On cue, his sister pads into the room, shuffling around in cheap health slippers like the rest of their family. Yagyuu wears the guest pair. Niou's bare feet stick to the floor, cool and clammy. "You're the tennis friend," his sister says.
Yagyuu keeps nodding. He's polite to a fault, like a robot. Niou's mother gushes over the stupid flowers from the department store. Niou's father says he would offer Yagyuu a drink if he was legal. Niou keeps banging his head again on the wall. His skull throbs. If it were possible, he would burrow under his skin and bury his head in his twisted insides.
Instead, he shuffles behind Yagyuu and his family. His brother prances down the stairs, in all his megane glory with a tucked-in t-shirt and bowl-cut black hair. He and Yagyuu blink at each other. His brother sticks his hand out. "I'm Makio," he says.
Niou's mole twitches. His eye keeps twitching. His mother gives him a funny look before she turns around the corner and disappears into the kitchen. Then she pops back out with a choice of two vases for the flowers.
Niou's sister points to the white one. "It would look better with the orchids," she says. "They're too delicate for the lacquer."
The timer on the rice cooker beeps. Niou's sister sets the flowers on the table. Niou stands there, unsure of what to do, but sure that he doesn't want to be here as the weirdness between him and Yagyuu lingers. Yagyuu shifts his weight. Niou's temple pulses against his brain.
It's not as if they talk about much when they're together, just usual things like tennis or how many laps Sanada gave Niou for lipping him off again. Niou isn't going to bring up their switch in front of anyone-let alone his family-because the switch means secrets means his sick gay fantasies about taking Yagyuu's hand right now and dragging him upstairs to his bedroom.
Through the windows, Niou can see the trees rustling, but he can't hear anything over the grating sounds of his mother clanking plates and chopsticks in the kitchen, or his father's shuffling over the floor: into the main room, into the bathroom, he doesn't stop. Niou rubs a hand through his hair and bites his lip to stop from yanking his scalp off.
"Niou-kun?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou stiffens. He looks at Yagyuu out of the corner of his eye.
"We're having unagi tonight, Yagyuu-kun," his mother says. "Masaharu, help your sister set the table."
Niou's eye twitches again. His sister hands him the chopsticks, but Yagyuu cuts in. "Let me," he says.
"Oh no, you're the guest," Niou's mother tells him. "Masaharu!" The rice cooker sputters water up from the air hole in the lid. His sister huffs. His brother just stands there, smiling like a lame megane loser.
Niou purses his lips and takes the damn chopsticks. I'm not a fucking housewife, he thinks, but Yagyuu's here and as much as Niou wants to talk back to his mother, his mouth is dry and his voice will crack and that would be even more embarrassing.
He sets the table.
Yagyuu sits beside him, across from his siblings.
Whether it's worse to look at Yagyuu all through supper, or to sit beside him and have their thighs touch, Niou doesn't know. Both are awful. He swallows a thick wad of mucus. Nothing happens. He picks up his glass of water that sweats even more than he does. Niou chugs the whole thing and belches.
His family cringes. Niou's mother sets the plate of eel down in front of Yagyuu and frowns. "Masaharu, you have a guest!"
Niou shrugs. He looks at Yagyuu, who pushes his glasses up and frowns too.
The tension in his belly doesn't subside a bit. Niou feels as crappy as ever. He sits and chews his food. It sticks on the inside of his throat and bubbles up from his stomach, acrid and sour. He leans lower and his father tells him to sit up. Niou glares at him. I'm not a child! But his father's asking Yagyuu questions about what his dad does and no one is paying attention to him except his mother, who flashes little smiles and winks.
Niou really really wants to die.
"This is so good!" Yagyuu says. He eats faster than Niou has ever seen him, almost at pace with Marui the fatty. Niou's mother flushes. God, she's eating up his manners! She practically giggles when Yagyuu tells her that this is the best meal he's had all summer-Niou's face feels hot, angry and feverish when Yagyuu gushes, all polite words and prepared lines that he's told a thousand adults a hundred times before.
Niou can barely swallow. Any other day, he'd be eating the sweet, smooth eel like it was nothing special, drenched in sauce over his rice, but today, it sits like a stone in his gut. His sister asks Yagyuu about his family.
Yagyuu's easy expression falls and his jaw hardens, his eyes darken. "I have a younger sister," he says, "and my mother used to teach."
"Oh?" Niou's mother presses. "More tea?" she offers, holding the pitcher up. Yagyuu nods. It's barley tea. Niou hates the stuff, but he sips his glass anyway.
"She used to teach Niou-kun," he adds, turning to Niou. His lenses flash with the fluorescent lights of the kitchen. Niou slides deeper down his chair, groaning inside.
"What a small world!" his mother says. "Masaharu was very smitten with her, you know."
Niou doesn't think his face can burn any hotter. Under the table, he kicks his leg, hoping to hit someone in his family. Instead, his foot smarts with a sharp pain. He jerks back when his toes smash into a table leg.
He watches the clock tick. The second hand moves backward and supper never seems to end. His brother asks Yagyuu about junior high school classes. Yagyuu asks about Niou's father, and how Niou-kun never said what you did, Yagyuu-san, does your firm do much work around Yokohama?
The porch light outside gets brighter as the sky gets darker and little swarms of flies gather around. Niou wipes his palms on the thighs of his shorts and he can see dark patches of sweat when he glances down. Yagyuu never notices. He eats all the pickles from his dishes and then accepts more when Niou's mother offers. "My mother doesn't cook much," he says.
That's an understatement, Niou thinks.
"I'm sure she's very lovely to have raised such a polite son," Niou's mother says. His sister asks Yagyuu-kun if he would like her pickles as well.
Niou grinds his teeth when Yagyuu takes them with a nod. He can taste chalk on his tongue when her chopsticks drop little yellow daikon pickles onto Yagyuu's dish. Niou's own dishes are filled with pickles, but he never offered and Yagyuu doesn't seem to care and-
His heart throbs. His eye keeps twitching. The room is too warm-why does his lame family never have the A/C at 20 instead of 23 when it's too damn hot in here!
Something pokes his knee. Niou sits up. Something pokes his knee again and Niou isn't imagining things. His breath catches in his throat, a bobbing electric current that makes his cock twitch, too. Carefully, Niou reaches along his leg, brushing another hand with his fingertips. His intestines melt to the floor.
All the blood in his body pools between his legs. The walls in the room close in around him, falling down as his mother stands up and says something. Niou can't move a muscle, except for his fingers, when Yagyuu's hand skirts over his in a long, lingering touch that makes his pulse race and his head float.
And then Yagyuu brings his hand up from out under the table to accept a bowl of tokoroten jelly that Niou's mother hands him.
Yagyuu did it on purpose.
Just to leave Niou here in a puddle of nerves and hormones as jelly is served. Niou barely ate half of his dinner and he picked at the rest. His stomach churns, but not with that sort of hunger. He closes his eyes for an instant and relives the touches from today-all Yagyuu's fingers dancing over his sensitized skin that still hums. Niou shivers. He's hard and swollen and his balls are tight. Niou shifts in his seat, trying to make the tension leave.
Yagyuu slurps at the strands of jelly. His eyes roll back, but he doesn't moan. Niou's father excuses himself from the table with a newspaper tucked under his arm. His brother asks Yagyuu if he wants to see his new boardgame. Under normal circumstances, Niou would gag. Under the current circumstances, he can barely manage to remember he needs to breathe.
His sister and mother start to clear the table and Yagyuu asks if he can help. For a second, Niou swears his sister's face brightens as her glasses slip down her nose a fraction. He balls his fist, but his erection is harder than ever.
He's MINE! Niou glares at her from under the hair in his eyes. Yagyuu stands and bows and thanks Niou's mother for supper. "Thank you for having me," he says. He looks at Niou.
All eyes are on Niou. The hairs on his body prickle and his throat bobs. His chair scrapes when he scrambles to stand up and escape, and he cringes. Niou waits and his heart swells. His shoulders are slumped so low his back aches, but his dick aches too and if he were to stand up any straighter, it would be painfully obvious that he's hard. Niou shifts his weight to his right side, trying to escape and turn and hide his body all at once.
"Why don't you go show Yagyuu-kun your room?" his mother asks. "Father can drive him home later tonight."
Yagyuu bows his head again. "If it's not too much trouble…"
She shakes her head. "Of course not, ne Father?"
From the bathroom, Niou's father calls out, "No, no it's certainly not."
Not the GOLF!
Niou trips on a leg of his chair.
***
The walk to his bedroom is a death march.
Yagyuu looks at all the family photos on the wall. His eyebrows rise.
Niou's body is heavy, immeasurably leaden and his feet like cement, clomping up the creaking steps. His house smells weird and cheap, unlike the sharp smell of citrus cleaner in Yagyuu's place. They have cheap department store curtains tacked over all the windows and the warmth swelters up here. Niou doesn't turn on the hallway light. Yagyuu doesn't need to see his erection anymore than Niou needs to acknowledge it.
But it's hard to walk. He side-steps his stride a little to ease the tightness of his shorts, but it doesn't help. His cock brushes the inside of his underpants and Niou bites his lip to keep from gasping. His hands shake on his bedroom door.
The final frontier.
"Your house is nice," Yagyuu says. His voice is a low murmur that courses down Niou's spine, smooth and shivery. Niou fumbles with the door latch.
Yeah right, Niou thinks. No fancy antiques, no expensive take-away or lacquer cabinets imported from Korea, no sports cars or pasokons for each of his siblings, no nothing like that, just a bunch of fucking lame megane dorks in a boring middle-class house that Niou doesn't fit into.
His room stinks like bleach and cologne. He gags. Niou kicks his dartboard out of the way when he turns the light on. Yagyuu closes the door behind them. It clicks and echoes.
Niou doesn't look, but he does glance to his window. He left it open a crack and hot, sticky summer air seeps in to ruffle his curtains. Yagyuu moves around and crunches on Niou's dirty floor, touching things with his long fingers and making little hums in the back of his throat. It's the same sort of thing he did all those months-years-ago at Yagyuu's house, only different.
Yagyuu moves. Niou breathes. He touches the gauzy cotton fabric of his curtains and he can feel the dampness in them and in the air from outside. In the distance, he can hear the low pops of fireworks exploding, then the rattle of a train. The summer sounds sings, but inside here, a quiet settles.
His heart throbs.
His cock throbs, too. Niou closes his eyes and breathes in the night air. Footsteps move closer and he stiffens when Yagyuu clears his throat.
"You have Sanada's face on your dartboard," he says.
Slowly-achingly slowly-Niou turns to Yagyuu. He exhales and gathers himself, smoothes out his palms and looks up.
Right as Yagyuu sits down on his bed.
His bed!
Niou falls forward.
"Are you okay?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou gets to his feet. His legs shake. "I'm fine," he mutters, but he's flushing still. Niou sits on the other end of his bed, away from Yagyuu though his body aches to be closer. He's cut down to the ribs and bleeding inside from the repression of holding himself in check. He won't run to the bathroom and jerk himself off, as tempting as it might be. No, he can sit here and talk with Yagyuu.
I can do it.
He balls his fist. Yagyuu cocks his head and stretches his neck out, always pushing Niou one step further with the way he can sit there, legs crossed and arms leaning back on his bed, so casual and poised all at once. So fucking gorgeous just doing nothing.
Niou's tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. His eyes rove across Yagyuu's arms, seeing the fine hairs and the shifting muscles in his forearms, the taught tendons in his wrist. Niou's imagined those hands, those arms on his body hundreds of times before, curled around his dick tight as they squeeze and milk his cock until he comes.
Now, he sits and shivers with a cold frisson, just like that dream, in the forest, when Yagyuu told him to get to his knees and masturbate.
"Niou-kun?"
Niou stops thinking. His skin is hot.
"Your family is nice," Yagyuu says.
Niou flops back on his bed for a second. Yagyuu looks down at him, his features upside down and his cowlick sticking up at the back of his head. Niou lifts a hand to reach for it and pull, but then he remembers himself. He remembers the fact his dick is poking his shorts and he's flushed with sweat and desire and this is not good.
He sits up so fast his head spins. For a moment Niou sits there, dazed, until he shakes his head out and exhales through his nose. Another train rushes by, flashing lights and tatan tatan chugging over the tracks.
"Can I ask something?" Niou says. Yagyuu pauses in the middle of pushing up his glasses and lifts his head. He nods once. Niou swallows.
"Why were there condoms in your tennisbag?"
His chest squeezes and his intestines twist up in knots, pushing against his stomach and making Niou nearly gag as Yagyuu blinks. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and says nothing. He doesn't even fix his glasses. Niou hangs his head and mouths "Fuck".
Shouldn't have asked. Shouldn't have ASKED!
Each second more that passes his cock softens. Shadows deepen over Yagyuu's face, especially behind his glasses as his eyes darken.
Out of nowhere, Niou hears Yagyuu's voice. It rings in his ears. It makes the curtains flutter and a cold draft slither over Niou's skin.
"Because my father thinks I have a girlfriend, that's why."
Time stops.
The atmosphere collapses on to Niou and he can't breathe. All he can do is gape and gag with his mouth open as Yagyuu's words echo over and over in his ears, tormenting him with their meaning. His eyes sting. His stomach heaves. Niou bites down and clenches his jaw, hard enough to make his bones crack.
"Do- do you?" he manages. His voice breaks. He doesn't care. He looks at Yagyuu, begging with his eyes that shake too much, that sting too much, that plead too much, all over again.
Yagyuu sniffs. He doesn't say anything for the longest time and Niou sinks further down into his mattress, his shoulders slumping so low his chin presses to his knees.
Finally, Yagyuu says, "You watch me close enough, don't you know the answer?"
Niou whips his head around. Something wet threatens the corner of his eye and makes Yagyuu's face blurrier than ever, like a lens out of focus. His mouth tastes ashen, but sweet from the BBQ eel too. The lump inside his throat blooms as Yagyuu stares at him without words.
Yagyuu frowns.
Niou wants to cry. Or maybe throw himself at Yagyuu's feet and hope and beg Yagyuu not to say anything more before his heart bleeds into his stomach and kills him.
Yagyuu sighs again, then opens his mouth. His voice is low and soft and Niou can't hear the words, just the tone as he watches the variable emotions flicker over Yagyuu's face: disappointment and resignation, and then his eyes look up over the rim of his glasses as he reaches over to tap Niou on the shoulder.
"Were you listening to me?" he asks.
Niou says nothing.
Yagyuu's lips twitch. He touches the side of his mouth, right where Niou's mole had been earlier today. "I need time to think…about this," he whispers.
Niou's mole tingles. His body goes numb, his blood cold. Yagyuu pauses and looks toward the window, his eyes roaming over Niou's old blue curtains and the UFO catcher plastic water gun sitting on the window sill. His lips curl up and Niou feels something akin to a sob shake his abdomen-almost, but not quite.
"Give me a little time, please," Yagyuu says.
Niou wants to laugh. His voice is strangled when he tries. Awkwardness hangs thick in the air between them. Niou pushes himself off the bed and Yagyuu's eyes follow, watching his motions as he pads across the room with a hand to his hot face. "So…you don't have a girlfriend," Niou mutters.
"No," Yagyuu says.
Niou forces a laugh. I'm such an idiot, he thinks.
But why was Yagyuu hard today, then?
Niou touches the edge of his desk, feeling the paint chipped off of the worn wood. He takes a deep breath and exhales through his nose. It whistles, almost like the A/C over his head.
"Niou-kun?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou shakes his head. It was nothing. It is nothing.
He says the first thing that comes to mind.
Yagyuu blinks and his glasses slip down his nose. He's surprised at the request, but he says, "Yes, a popsicle sounds good," with a small smile anyway.
***
They eat popsicles on the back porch under the orange-tinted security light. His mother wouldn't allow them to eat in Niou's bedroom and Niou isn't going to push the matter when Yagyuu is here. His body-and mind-is too exhausted.
He leans against the wall of the house and looks out across the garden. Yagyuu slurps and sucks on the popsicle. Niou takes the whole thing into his mouth and waggles his eyebrows. "Look, I'm Sanada," he says around the popsicle. His lips stick to the sides.
He gets a frown out of Yagyuu, but a laugh, too. It feels good, all warm and fuzzy in his belly. He nearly gags and Yagyuu laughs harder. His voice is music to Niou's ears, velvety and deep and sweeter than the fruity mango popsicle he sucks on.
"You need to practice, Sanada-kun," Yagyuu says. "You'd disappoint…" Yagyuu bites his bottom lip and licks a spot of melted popsicle from the corner of his mouth. "Aa, never mind. That was rude."
Niou rolls his eyes, but his face is hot. He ducks deeper under a shadow and exhales. The windows are all closed in the house, but the lingering doubt that his family could hear doesn't dissipate. He licks at the side of the popsicle. It tastes better than it should: sweet and syrupy and cool on his tongue.
Niou imagines Yagyuu's kisses would be the same. He rolls the taste around his mouth, savouring it as the popsicle oozes down his fingers. Niou snorts to play it cool, even though wafts of humid air blow over his skin and press against his neck. The way Yagyuu might. The way Yagyuu does in his dreams.
Niou shivers.
"Didn't know you could be rude," he says.
Yagyuu hums. He stops licking his popsicle for a moment. It gleams orange in the light, the same as his lips. Niou leans deeper in the shadows and breathes. He's half-hard standing here, so he crouches down in a vain attempt to hide his erection. Yagyuu probably knows about that too anyway.
"To be your friend, isn't it a prerequisite?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou grunts. "Never tried it out before," he mumbles.
Yagyuu clears his throat. Niou realizes that his hand is sticky and the popsicle melting on the top of his foot, seeping between his toes. He blinks and his words echo. Niou cringes. Fuck, he thinks.
Yagyuu is the one to break the silence. Niou can slip into that easier pattern of being with Yagyuu when Yagyuu takes the cue and shakes his head at him. "Well, I think it is," he says. "Today was fun. I enjoyed being you."
Niou kicks the popsicle stick off his foot. It slides down to the ground beside him. Everything smells of damp earth and that heavy haze of minerals that comes before a rain. He looks up, seeing the deep clouds rolling over a half-moon. The pearly light is obscured by the city. He can remember seeing Yagyuu's erection and the tingles it sent through his body, electrifying his senses to every smirk, every stupid laugh, every motion and word Yagyuu said in his voice. The sensations haven't left-Niou can feel them, rearing their head again as his leg falls asleep and his cock swells, pounding between his legs.
He says nothing. He has nothing to say, except, "Puri."
He's never been much of a talker.
"How do you think Yukimura-kun will react?" Yagyuu prompts. He frowns, sighing into the thick air between them. When Niou says nothing, Yagyuu exhales loudly and clicks his tongue. "Niou-kun?"
Niou shrugs. His dick is hard. He doesn't care about Yukimura right now, not when he'd rather think about walking back up to his room and throwing away whatever Yagyuu said earlier, pushing Yagyuu into his wall and demanding what he wants.
What he needs.
What Yagyuu isn't ready for.
Resting his chin on his knees, Niou shrugs his shoulders. "We've never seen him lose. We've never lost before."
"We never have," Yagyuu says. He looks around, holding his bare popsicle stick up and looking like he wants to throw it into the bin. Niou reaches out and rolls forward a little, picking up his sticky popsicle stick. He wedges the end of it into the nearest planter. A fern tickles the back of his hand.
"Maybe he'll be high on morphine and Sanada will get off easy," Niou says.
"The surgery shouldn't have been too invasive," Yagyuu says. He holds onto his popsicle stick. A train rushes by, a flashing of yellow lights that illuminates the back yard in an eerie glow for an instant before disappearing once more.
"You asked your dad about it."
Yagyuu nods. "It sounded pioneering, but Yukimura-kun will probably recover quickly."
Niou snorts, a little laugh bubbling up out of his throat. He rocks back and forward on his toes, bumping the edge of the porch with his bum. "If Sanada doesn't kill him first."
"There is that," Yagyuu says.
Glancing back over his shoulder, Niou blows the hair from his eyes to have a good look at Yagyuu. Yagyuu has his arms crossed over his body, all defensive despite the lethargic heat that makes Niou's eyelids drip. His long legs stick out as he leans against the wall, toes nearly touching Niou's back. Yagyuu's eyes are black, his glasses on fire with the lamplight. His hair hangs, the cowlick gone, and his face is shiny with sweat, with oil, with everything that Niou just wants to lick off.
His mouth is dry and woolen. Yagyuu turns his head, his neck elongating and his jaw more prominent from this angle. Niou's chest is too tight and his dick keeps pounding, pulsing against his shorts. He squirms a little and sticks his foot out, shaking the sleep from it.
"It will be strange having Yukimura-kun back," Yagyuu says. "He's been gone all season. We'll all have to adjust-"
Before Niou can respond, the porch door slides open. Yagyuu stiffens. Niou leans forward and brushes the summer film off his calves. His mother sticks her head through the doorway. "Boys, it's getting late," she says.
Yagyuu nods and bows his head, thanking Niou's family for the seventeenth time or so. Niou bites his lip and hunches his shoulders. From inside the house, his father calls out that he'll start the car. Niou's shoulders fall lower, but he steps over the threshold back inside anyway.
Yagyuu has seen the worst.
There's nothing really left.
Sighing, Niou shuffles behind his father and Yagyuu out to the Golf. The car is clean and smells faintly of coffee. There are no crumbs wedged between the seats, no gum wrappers on the floor, nothing except a Tokyo map tucked into the holder in the passenger side door.
Niou sits in his usual spot: back, left-hand side. Yagyuu sits beside him on the right. His father starts the car and asks Yagyuu where he lives. When Yagyuu tells him, his father nods and says, "That's a nice neighbourhood."
Niou's gaze shifts from the passing streetlights and neon shop front signs to Yagyuu, sitting in the dark, his glasses reflecting the rainbow lights of the suburban night. Niou's insides knot up again, but nowhere near as tight as this afternoon. His body sinks into the seat, his limbs tired and his mind just as heavy.
He was so worried, but now it seems so trivial.
Yagyuu turns and catches his eye. Niou turns back to the window, his eyes glazing over as the city rushes by and his father turns onto the expressway. The turn signal clicks, a staccato beat like his pulse. Niou swallows. Yagyuu answers another question, giving away nothing and everything with his simple, polite responses. "Yes, my father works in the Yokohama General Hospital. He's a cardiologist."
Doctor of the heart.
Niou snorts. Figures. His heart pounds, doki doki doki doki when Yagyuu moves, touching the seatbelt, touching his leg, touching the spot on the seat between them in the dark where he probably thinks Niou can't see, but Niou can.
His long fingers tap the seat. Niou's father changes lanes. He glances back in the rear-view mirror, his eyes wavering over the top of his glasses before he looks ahead again. Niou concentrates on breathing. He counts his exhaling. One two…
Yagyuu's fingers move closer to him, dancing across the shadows between street lights.
Three…four…
The Golf jerks over a hump in the road. Yagyuu's hand brushes Niou's thigh-he sucks a breath in and squeezes his eyes shut. His dick pulses, throbbing hot between his legs despite the frigid blast of the A/C over his arms and shins.
Yagyuu is killing him on purpose. Niou falls onto the car door and keeps his eyes closed. He shifts his body, his legs cramp up at being squashed, but he sits and bears it. He'll be home soon enough.
The suburbs pass in a rushing whir, like Yagyuu's laser. His father turns onto an off-ramp and they drive through familiar houses, bigger and better than his own. There is a conbini on the corner and a bus across the road they turn perpendicular onto.
Yagyuu's street.
His father drives up to the curb, right where Yagyuu says he lives. Lights are on inside and there is a white Toyota in the driveway. Niou cracks an eye open to see Yagyuu frown. His mother is home, but his father probably has a shift at the hospital tonight.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Yagyuu calls. He closes the car door and waves. Niou's heart stops when he looks up. His body freezes to the spot, his veins constrict and his chest too. Yagyuu flashes him a little smile, quirky and lopsided and the hint of his white teeth glimmer. The smile reaches his eyes, narrowed with sleep and amusement and his fingers wiggle.
Niou looks away. His body is on fire with a cold fever.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17 (eventual)
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Niou, meet Yagyuu.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for everything.
Cold sweat drips down Niou's face. He balls his fist in his pocket to keep from pulling at his collar to fan himself off. Yagyuu turns around at the sound of Niou's footsteps. "Ah," he says, raising his hand. "Niou-kun."
There is a bag in Yagyuu's hands, one from a fancy department store in Tokyo. A bouquet of flowers sticks out from the end of the bag-fresh daisies and yellow flowers and orchids, all crisp and bright colours. The only fresh flowers Niou's family ever has at home are stunted ones from the garden that collect insects and wilted leaves.
Niou's insides curdle. Only that megane dork would bother to go to all this trouble.
"What're those for?" Niou mutters. He nods to Yagyuu's bag.
Yagyuu looks down at his bag, then back up to him. His glasses slide down his nose. "For your family having me over for dinner," he says, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world. Too polite by far. Niou shrugs and tries to play it off. He grinds the toe of his sneaker into the pavement, wishing his body would calm down and his blood would stop pulsing everywhere. His hair is wet with sweat, wet from the bath and his t-shirt chokes him. He swallows.
"Not like we're having anything special," Niou says. Yagyuu favours him with a bland smile and a cock of his head that says Shall we go?
Yagyuu walks with an easy bounce to his steps. Niou heaves his body behind Yagyuu's shadow, wincing inside when Yagyuu asks which way to turn at the lights. Niou twists his hands in his pockets and blinks-his vision is blurred at the edges, but the sky is clear overhead. The cars are fewer and fewer, although they walk on the main roads, walking past the post office and another conbini, past a field of scrubby grass and a large pharmacy. Niou's mouth is dry. His shorts feel too tight and he swaggers his step to keep his erection from rubbing more. It's embarrassing enough already.
Yagyuu wears a polo shirt tucked into a pair of long shorts. A sliver of skin peeks out between Yagyuu's pulled-up socks and his shorts. He looks as dorky as ever, like he belongs on the golf course.
The worst part is, he would fit right in with Niou's family in all their megane dork glory, putting balls over a green lawn and chortling over jokes about birdies and eagles and bogies and shit. Niou rolls his eyes at the thought.
At the next set of lights, Yagyuu stops. The light flashes green, but he stands there holding a hand out to stop Niou when he starts to cross.
Niou blinks. "Eh?"
"What?" Yagyuu asks. He frowns. The bag slips lower in his hand. Niou can smell a cheap little noodle bar nearby and curry fumes that float around the thick, muggy evening air.
Niou raises an eyebrow. He looks at Yagyuu through the veil of his hair which hangs limp over his eyes. A faint breeze stirs and rattles a plastic bag on the side of the road. It puffs up, then collapses.
"We gave it our best today," Yagyuu says.
He misses the point completely.
There are times that Niou wonders just how much Yagyuu really does catch onto and see for himself, but now is not one. Niou smirks at him and snorts. If Yagyuu wants to play dumb, Niou will lead him on. "It was a good game," Niou says. "The looks on their faces…"
Yagyuu's lenses flash. The light changes to red and Niou can see a sharp smile of Yagyuu's own. It makes his stomach settle-just for the briefest of moments-because Yagyuu walks ahead of him, moving closer to Niou's house. Fresh sweat dribbles down Niou's spine, sending unconscious shudders through his body as he watches Yagyuu. Yagyuu is tall and confident in his gait; his butt fills his pants, enough to make Niou swallow the lump in his throat.
It doesn't matter how dorky Yagyuu is, Niou wants him. His heart flutters and his head spins and he wants Yagyuu so much his knees go jelly-like. When Yagyuu calls out his name on the other side of the road, Niou stumbles on the curb.
They are getting closer.
Niou looks at Yagyuu under the light of the streetlamps they walk under, transient in and out of the deep shadows. His hair is smooth and he smells fresh-he must have showered, too. Yagyuu has a single little cowlick standing up at the back of his head. Niou wants to reach out and touch it, to touch Yagyuu's soft, silky hair and press his face to the back of Yagyuu's neck where his collar is popped up. But he doesn't and he can't because Yagyuu isn't like that and the constant mental reminders make Niou hollow and aching inside.
He sighs. Of course it would be him to want something unattainable. Punishment for his personality, payback for all the times he irritated and annoyed everyone else with comments and pranks and snide snickering.
Yagyuu's step falls off a beat. "This is a nice neighbourhood," he says. "I assumed you lived around here."
Niou looks around at the identical houses and the similar cement garden walls with ivy and vines and iron-gates. They are all so much smaller than Yagyuu's grand home with the expensive antiques and multiple pasokons. Here, laundry flutters out of windows and there's a pothole in the middle of the road. Yagyuu doesn't notice, he just keeps walking down the street.
Then Yagyuu stops in front of the gate. Niou's blood freezes. Yagyuu drags a fingertip over the name plaque along the garden and his lips mouth the words "Niou Family". Niou can't speak. Through the gate, he can see his father's white VW Golf sitting in the driveway. Lights stream from the windows as shadows move about inside. His family is waiting inside. Yagyuu is waiting by the gate. Thick silence descends, apart from the chirp of crickets, and the department store bag rustles.
Niou's entire body is numb. He doesn't realize he's holding his breath until Yagyuu touches his arm and makes him gasp. The touch electrifies his skin. All the hairs on his body stand up and bristle. Niou shivers.
"I forgot to give this back to you earlier," Yagyuu says. Niou glances down. In the half-light, he has to squint to make out the shape of the hair elastic sitting in his palm. Yagyuu's earlier smile is gone, replaced with a thin set of his lips and a bob of his throat.
He's not nervous! Niou thinks.
But Yagyuu's fist curls tight around the handle of his bag and he pushes his glasses up his nose, hiding whatever flickering emotions that might cross his face-Niou isn't sure. On the surface, Yagyuu's face is calm and his tight posture the same as always. He's impossible to read like this.
"Even if we lost the championship," Yagyuu murmurs. "Today was the best game."
Niou's palm tingles. His arm is tired from all the racket swinging, all the lasers of this afternoon. And now, his legs are crumpling underneath himself the longer he hesitates going inside. Crawling under a gutter and hiding seems like a good idea, except for the fact Yagyuu blocks his escape path. Niou takes a deep breath and summons up whatever courage must lurk deep down in the depths of his belly in order to unlatch the gate and hold it open for Yagyuu.
"We're here," he says. The awkward silence is too much for him. The gate squeaks on the hinges and Niou can't take it anymore. Before Yagyuu steps inside, Niou shoves past him and sticks out his tongue.
Yagyuu sniffs. "Niou-kun!" he says.
"Sorry," Niou drawls. "Just so hungry I couldn't wait for your slow gentleman ass."
Yagyuu opens his mouth, but he closes it again and frowns. Guilt pokes Niou in the stomach, but he shoves it down. Yagyuu walks up the pathway and peeks around the choppy hydrangea bushes and ornamental bonsais that have grown out the wrong way. He looks around with big, myopic eyes and blinks when he sees the Golf.
Niou bites his lip and looks up at the sky. A single star-or maybe a planet-hovers bright on the line of the horizon, out towards the sea. It sparkles and wavers, the light inconsistent, but brighter than any other lights in the sky.
Please let Yagyuu like them.
***
The door clicks shut.
Niou toes his sneakers off. Yagyuu sets his bag down and unties his shoes, lining them up against the wall. Niou can't think, he can't move, he can only stand there, transfixed and choking when his mother comes out of the kitchen with a smile on her face. She looks around and her smile widens.
"You must be Yagyuu-kun," she says.
Niou's ribcage collapses. He can't breathe, either.
Yagyuu looks at her and nods, bowing his head a little. "Yes," he says. "Thank you for having me, Niou-san." He holds out the bag and says, "Please accept these." His voice is even and smooth. Niou can't read his reaction.
Except when Yagyuu blinks. Niou's father comes out of the main room, his glasses down around his nostrils. Yagyuu bows his head again and repeats himself. Niou's father says something that escapes Niou's ears-all he can hear instead is a deafening rush of wind, like the air in the subway tunnels before a train pulls in and blows him back. Niou rocks back on his heel. His balance is off. His knees wobble.
His mother covers her mouth with her hand and looks at the flowers. She thanks Yagyuu and hands the bag to Niou's father, who pulls out a bottle. "Sake?" he asks. He blinks. "Aa, thank you, Yagyuu-kun."
Yagyuu ducks his head for the bazillionth time. Niou glances at the closet and wonders if he can slink under the crack in the doorway and hide forever behind the woolen winter coats.
Yagyuu's eyes flick around the front room, taking in the tacky, lumpy furniture covered in ratty homemade afghans and the dumb plastic flower arrangement his sister made. "Do you do ikebana?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou bangs his head on the wall and squeezes his eyes shut. He cringes.
Niou's mother shakes her head. "No, no, Mayu does." When Yagyuu gives her a blank look, she explains. "Mayu is Masaharu's neesan."
"Ah," Yagyuu says. "Niou-kun doesn't talk about her much."
With good reason! Niou thinks. The plastic flower arrangement of baby's breath and dusty carnations laughs at him, all discoloured and sneeze-inducing.
On cue, his sister pads into the room, shuffling around in cheap health slippers like the rest of their family. Yagyuu wears the guest pair. Niou's bare feet stick to the floor, cool and clammy. "You're the tennis friend," his sister says.
Yagyuu keeps nodding. He's polite to a fault, like a robot. Niou's mother gushes over the stupid flowers from the department store. Niou's father says he would offer Yagyuu a drink if he was legal. Niou keeps banging his head again on the wall. His skull throbs. If it were possible, he would burrow under his skin and bury his head in his twisted insides.
Instead, he shuffles behind Yagyuu and his family. His brother prances down the stairs, in all his megane glory with a tucked-in t-shirt and bowl-cut black hair. He and Yagyuu blink at each other. His brother sticks his hand out. "I'm Makio," he says.
Niou's mole twitches. His eye keeps twitching. His mother gives him a funny look before she turns around the corner and disappears into the kitchen. Then she pops back out with a choice of two vases for the flowers.
Niou's sister points to the white one. "It would look better with the orchids," she says. "They're too delicate for the lacquer."
The timer on the rice cooker beeps. Niou's sister sets the flowers on the table. Niou stands there, unsure of what to do, but sure that he doesn't want to be here as the weirdness between him and Yagyuu lingers. Yagyuu shifts his weight. Niou's temple pulses against his brain.
It's not as if they talk about much when they're together, just usual things like tennis or how many laps Sanada gave Niou for lipping him off again. Niou isn't going to bring up their switch in front of anyone-let alone his family-because the switch means secrets means his sick gay fantasies about taking Yagyuu's hand right now and dragging him upstairs to his bedroom.
Through the windows, Niou can see the trees rustling, but he can't hear anything over the grating sounds of his mother clanking plates and chopsticks in the kitchen, or his father's shuffling over the floor: into the main room, into the bathroom, he doesn't stop. Niou rubs a hand through his hair and bites his lip to stop from yanking his scalp off.
"Niou-kun?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou stiffens. He looks at Yagyuu out of the corner of his eye.
"We're having unagi tonight, Yagyuu-kun," his mother says. "Masaharu, help your sister set the table."
Niou's eye twitches again. His sister hands him the chopsticks, but Yagyuu cuts in. "Let me," he says.
"Oh no, you're the guest," Niou's mother tells him. "Masaharu!" The rice cooker sputters water up from the air hole in the lid. His sister huffs. His brother just stands there, smiling like a lame megane loser.
Niou purses his lips and takes the damn chopsticks. I'm not a fucking housewife, he thinks, but Yagyuu's here and as much as Niou wants to talk back to his mother, his mouth is dry and his voice will crack and that would be even more embarrassing.
He sets the table.
Yagyuu sits beside him, across from his siblings.
Whether it's worse to look at Yagyuu all through supper, or to sit beside him and have their thighs touch, Niou doesn't know. Both are awful. He swallows a thick wad of mucus. Nothing happens. He picks up his glass of water that sweats even more than he does. Niou chugs the whole thing and belches.
His family cringes. Niou's mother sets the plate of eel down in front of Yagyuu and frowns. "Masaharu, you have a guest!"
Niou shrugs. He looks at Yagyuu, who pushes his glasses up and frowns too.
The tension in his belly doesn't subside a bit. Niou feels as crappy as ever. He sits and chews his food. It sticks on the inside of his throat and bubbles up from his stomach, acrid and sour. He leans lower and his father tells him to sit up. Niou glares at him. I'm not a child! But his father's asking Yagyuu questions about what his dad does and no one is paying attention to him except his mother, who flashes little smiles and winks.
Niou really really wants to die.
"This is so good!" Yagyuu says. He eats faster than Niou has ever seen him, almost at pace with Marui the fatty. Niou's mother flushes. God, she's eating up his manners! She practically giggles when Yagyuu tells her that this is the best meal he's had all summer-Niou's face feels hot, angry and feverish when Yagyuu gushes, all polite words and prepared lines that he's told a thousand adults a hundred times before.
Niou can barely swallow. Any other day, he'd be eating the sweet, smooth eel like it was nothing special, drenched in sauce over his rice, but today, it sits like a stone in his gut. His sister asks Yagyuu about his family.
Yagyuu's easy expression falls and his jaw hardens, his eyes darken. "I have a younger sister," he says, "and my mother used to teach."
"Oh?" Niou's mother presses. "More tea?" she offers, holding the pitcher up. Yagyuu nods. It's barley tea. Niou hates the stuff, but he sips his glass anyway.
"She used to teach Niou-kun," he adds, turning to Niou. His lenses flash with the fluorescent lights of the kitchen. Niou slides deeper down his chair, groaning inside.
"What a small world!" his mother says. "Masaharu was very smitten with her, you know."
Niou doesn't think his face can burn any hotter. Under the table, he kicks his leg, hoping to hit someone in his family. Instead, his foot smarts with a sharp pain. He jerks back when his toes smash into a table leg.
He watches the clock tick. The second hand moves backward and supper never seems to end. His brother asks Yagyuu about junior high school classes. Yagyuu asks about Niou's father, and how Niou-kun never said what you did, Yagyuu-san, does your firm do much work around Yokohama?
The porch light outside gets brighter as the sky gets darker and little swarms of flies gather around. Niou wipes his palms on the thighs of his shorts and he can see dark patches of sweat when he glances down. Yagyuu never notices. He eats all the pickles from his dishes and then accepts more when Niou's mother offers. "My mother doesn't cook much," he says.
That's an understatement, Niou thinks.
"I'm sure she's very lovely to have raised such a polite son," Niou's mother says. His sister asks Yagyuu-kun if he would like her pickles as well.
Niou grinds his teeth when Yagyuu takes them with a nod. He can taste chalk on his tongue when her chopsticks drop little yellow daikon pickles onto Yagyuu's dish. Niou's own dishes are filled with pickles, but he never offered and Yagyuu doesn't seem to care and-
His heart throbs. His eye keeps twitching. The room is too warm-why does his lame family never have the A/C at 20 instead of 23 when it's too damn hot in here!
Something pokes his knee. Niou sits up. Something pokes his knee again and Niou isn't imagining things. His breath catches in his throat, a bobbing electric current that makes his cock twitch, too. Carefully, Niou reaches along his leg, brushing another hand with his fingertips. His intestines melt to the floor.
All the blood in his body pools between his legs. The walls in the room close in around him, falling down as his mother stands up and says something. Niou can't move a muscle, except for his fingers, when Yagyuu's hand skirts over his in a long, lingering touch that makes his pulse race and his head float.
And then Yagyuu brings his hand up from out under the table to accept a bowl of tokoroten jelly that Niou's mother hands him.
Yagyuu did it on purpose.
Just to leave Niou here in a puddle of nerves and hormones as jelly is served. Niou barely ate half of his dinner and he picked at the rest. His stomach churns, but not with that sort of hunger. He closes his eyes for an instant and relives the touches from today-all Yagyuu's fingers dancing over his sensitized skin that still hums. Niou shivers. He's hard and swollen and his balls are tight. Niou shifts in his seat, trying to make the tension leave.
Yagyuu slurps at the strands of jelly. His eyes roll back, but he doesn't moan. Niou's father excuses himself from the table with a newspaper tucked under his arm. His brother asks Yagyuu if he wants to see his new boardgame. Under normal circumstances, Niou would gag. Under the current circumstances, he can barely manage to remember he needs to breathe.
His sister and mother start to clear the table and Yagyuu asks if he can help. For a second, Niou swears his sister's face brightens as her glasses slip down her nose a fraction. He balls his fist, but his erection is harder than ever.
He's MINE! Niou glares at her from under the hair in his eyes. Yagyuu stands and bows and thanks Niou's mother for supper. "Thank you for having me," he says. He looks at Niou.
All eyes are on Niou. The hairs on his body prickle and his throat bobs. His chair scrapes when he scrambles to stand up and escape, and he cringes. Niou waits and his heart swells. His shoulders are slumped so low his back aches, but his dick aches too and if he were to stand up any straighter, it would be painfully obvious that he's hard. Niou shifts his weight to his right side, trying to escape and turn and hide his body all at once.
"Why don't you go show Yagyuu-kun your room?" his mother asks. "Father can drive him home later tonight."
Yagyuu bows his head again. "If it's not too much trouble…"
She shakes her head. "Of course not, ne Father?"
From the bathroom, Niou's father calls out, "No, no it's certainly not."
Not the GOLF!
Niou trips on a leg of his chair.
***
The walk to his bedroom is a death march.
Yagyuu looks at all the family photos on the wall. His eyebrows rise.
Niou's body is heavy, immeasurably leaden and his feet like cement, clomping up the creaking steps. His house smells weird and cheap, unlike the sharp smell of citrus cleaner in Yagyuu's place. They have cheap department store curtains tacked over all the windows and the warmth swelters up here. Niou doesn't turn on the hallway light. Yagyuu doesn't need to see his erection anymore than Niou needs to acknowledge it.
But it's hard to walk. He side-steps his stride a little to ease the tightness of his shorts, but it doesn't help. His cock brushes the inside of his underpants and Niou bites his lip to keep from gasping. His hands shake on his bedroom door.
The final frontier.
"Your house is nice," Yagyuu says. His voice is a low murmur that courses down Niou's spine, smooth and shivery. Niou fumbles with the door latch.
Yeah right, Niou thinks. No fancy antiques, no expensive take-away or lacquer cabinets imported from Korea, no sports cars or pasokons for each of his siblings, no nothing like that, just a bunch of fucking lame megane dorks in a boring middle-class house that Niou doesn't fit into.
His room stinks like bleach and cologne. He gags. Niou kicks his dartboard out of the way when he turns the light on. Yagyuu closes the door behind them. It clicks and echoes.
Niou doesn't look, but he does glance to his window. He left it open a crack and hot, sticky summer air seeps in to ruffle his curtains. Yagyuu moves around and crunches on Niou's dirty floor, touching things with his long fingers and making little hums in the back of his throat. It's the same sort of thing he did all those months-years-ago at Yagyuu's house, only different.
Yagyuu moves. Niou breathes. He touches the gauzy cotton fabric of his curtains and he can feel the dampness in them and in the air from outside. In the distance, he can hear the low pops of fireworks exploding, then the rattle of a train. The summer sounds sings, but inside here, a quiet settles.
His heart throbs.
His cock throbs, too. Niou closes his eyes and breathes in the night air. Footsteps move closer and he stiffens when Yagyuu clears his throat.
"You have Sanada's face on your dartboard," he says.
Slowly-achingly slowly-Niou turns to Yagyuu. He exhales and gathers himself, smoothes out his palms and looks up.
Right as Yagyuu sits down on his bed.
His bed!
Niou falls forward.
"Are you okay?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou gets to his feet. His legs shake. "I'm fine," he mutters, but he's flushing still. Niou sits on the other end of his bed, away from Yagyuu though his body aches to be closer. He's cut down to the ribs and bleeding inside from the repression of holding himself in check. He won't run to the bathroom and jerk himself off, as tempting as it might be. No, he can sit here and talk with Yagyuu.
I can do it.
He balls his fist. Yagyuu cocks his head and stretches his neck out, always pushing Niou one step further with the way he can sit there, legs crossed and arms leaning back on his bed, so casual and poised all at once. So fucking gorgeous just doing nothing.
Niou's tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. His eyes rove across Yagyuu's arms, seeing the fine hairs and the shifting muscles in his forearms, the taught tendons in his wrist. Niou's imagined those hands, those arms on his body hundreds of times before, curled around his dick tight as they squeeze and milk his cock until he comes.
Now, he sits and shivers with a cold frisson, just like that dream, in the forest, when Yagyuu told him to get to his knees and masturbate.
"Niou-kun?"
Niou stops thinking. His skin is hot.
"Your family is nice," Yagyuu says.
Niou flops back on his bed for a second. Yagyuu looks down at him, his features upside down and his cowlick sticking up at the back of his head. Niou lifts a hand to reach for it and pull, but then he remembers himself. He remembers the fact his dick is poking his shorts and he's flushed with sweat and desire and this is not good.
He sits up so fast his head spins. For a moment Niou sits there, dazed, until he shakes his head out and exhales through his nose. Another train rushes by, flashing lights and tatan tatan chugging over the tracks.
"Can I ask something?" Niou says. Yagyuu pauses in the middle of pushing up his glasses and lifts his head. He nods once. Niou swallows.
"Why were there condoms in your tennisbag?"
His chest squeezes and his intestines twist up in knots, pushing against his stomach and making Niou nearly gag as Yagyuu blinks. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and says nothing. He doesn't even fix his glasses. Niou hangs his head and mouths "Fuck".
Shouldn't have asked. Shouldn't have ASKED!
Each second more that passes his cock softens. Shadows deepen over Yagyuu's face, especially behind his glasses as his eyes darken.
Out of nowhere, Niou hears Yagyuu's voice. It rings in his ears. It makes the curtains flutter and a cold draft slither over Niou's skin.
"Because my father thinks I have a girlfriend, that's why."
Time stops.
The atmosphere collapses on to Niou and he can't breathe. All he can do is gape and gag with his mouth open as Yagyuu's words echo over and over in his ears, tormenting him with their meaning. His eyes sting. His stomach heaves. Niou bites down and clenches his jaw, hard enough to make his bones crack.
"Do- do you?" he manages. His voice breaks. He doesn't care. He looks at Yagyuu, begging with his eyes that shake too much, that sting too much, that plead too much, all over again.
Yagyuu sniffs. He doesn't say anything for the longest time and Niou sinks further down into his mattress, his shoulders slumping so low his chin presses to his knees.
Finally, Yagyuu says, "You watch me close enough, don't you know the answer?"
Niou whips his head around. Something wet threatens the corner of his eye and makes Yagyuu's face blurrier than ever, like a lens out of focus. His mouth tastes ashen, but sweet from the BBQ eel too. The lump inside his throat blooms as Yagyuu stares at him without words.
Yagyuu frowns.
Niou wants to cry. Or maybe throw himself at Yagyuu's feet and hope and beg Yagyuu not to say anything more before his heart bleeds into his stomach and kills him.
Yagyuu sighs again, then opens his mouth. His voice is low and soft and Niou can't hear the words, just the tone as he watches the variable emotions flicker over Yagyuu's face: disappointment and resignation, and then his eyes look up over the rim of his glasses as he reaches over to tap Niou on the shoulder.
"Were you listening to me?" he asks.
Niou says nothing.
Yagyuu's lips twitch. He touches the side of his mouth, right where Niou's mole had been earlier today. "I need time to think…about this," he whispers.
Niou's mole tingles. His body goes numb, his blood cold. Yagyuu pauses and looks toward the window, his eyes roaming over Niou's old blue curtains and the UFO catcher plastic water gun sitting on the window sill. His lips curl up and Niou feels something akin to a sob shake his abdomen-almost, but not quite.
"Give me a little time, please," Yagyuu says.
Niou wants to laugh. His voice is strangled when he tries. Awkwardness hangs thick in the air between them. Niou pushes himself off the bed and Yagyuu's eyes follow, watching his motions as he pads across the room with a hand to his hot face. "So…you don't have a girlfriend," Niou mutters.
"No," Yagyuu says.
Niou forces a laugh. I'm such an idiot, he thinks.
But why was Yagyuu hard today, then?
Niou touches the edge of his desk, feeling the paint chipped off of the worn wood. He takes a deep breath and exhales through his nose. It whistles, almost like the A/C over his head.
"Niou-kun?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou shakes his head. It was nothing. It is nothing.
He says the first thing that comes to mind.
Yagyuu blinks and his glasses slip down his nose. He's surprised at the request, but he says, "Yes, a popsicle sounds good," with a small smile anyway.
***
They eat popsicles on the back porch under the orange-tinted security light. His mother wouldn't allow them to eat in Niou's bedroom and Niou isn't going to push the matter when Yagyuu is here. His body-and mind-is too exhausted.
He leans against the wall of the house and looks out across the garden. Yagyuu slurps and sucks on the popsicle. Niou takes the whole thing into his mouth and waggles his eyebrows. "Look, I'm Sanada," he says around the popsicle. His lips stick to the sides.
He gets a frown out of Yagyuu, but a laugh, too. It feels good, all warm and fuzzy in his belly. He nearly gags and Yagyuu laughs harder. His voice is music to Niou's ears, velvety and deep and sweeter than the fruity mango popsicle he sucks on.
"You need to practice, Sanada-kun," Yagyuu says. "You'd disappoint…" Yagyuu bites his bottom lip and licks a spot of melted popsicle from the corner of his mouth. "Aa, never mind. That was rude."
Niou rolls his eyes, but his face is hot. He ducks deeper under a shadow and exhales. The windows are all closed in the house, but the lingering doubt that his family could hear doesn't dissipate. He licks at the side of the popsicle. It tastes better than it should: sweet and syrupy and cool on his tongue.
Niou imagines Yagyuu's kisses would be the same. He rolls the taste around his mouth, savouring it as the popsicle oozes down his fingers. Niou snorts to play it cool, even though wafts of humid air blow over his skin and press against his neck. The way Yagyuu might. The way Yagyuu does in his dreams.
Niou shivers.
"Didn't know you could be rude," he says.
Yagyuu hums. He stops licking his popsicle for a moment. It gleams orange in the light, the same as his lips. Niou leans deeper in the shadows and breathes. He's half-hard standing here, so he crouches down in a vain attempt to hide his erection. Yagyuu probably knows about that too anyway.
"To be your friend, isn't it a prerequisite?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou grunts. "Never tried it out before," he mumbles.
Yagyuu clears his throat. Niou realizes that his hand is sticky and the popsicle melting on the top of his foot, seeping between his toes. He blinks and his words echo. Niou cringes. Fuck, he thinks.
Yagyuu is the one to break the silence. Niou can slip into that easier pattern of being with Yagyuu when Yagyuu takes the cue and shakes his head at him. "Well, I think it is," he says. "Today was fun. I enjoyed being you."
Niou kicks the popsicle stick off his foot. It slides down to the ground beside him. Everything smells of damp earth and that heavy haze of minerals that comes before a rain. He looks up, seeing the deep clouds rolling over a half-moon. The pearly light is obscured by the city. He can remember seeing Yagyuu's erection and the tingles it sent through his body, electrifying his senses to every smirk, every stupid laugh, every motion and word Yagyuu said in his voice. The sensations haven't left-Niou can feel them, rearing their head again as his leg falls asleep and his cock swells, pounding between his legs.
He says nothing. He has nothing to say, except, "Puri."
He's never been much of a talker.
"How do you think Yukimura-kun will react?" Yagyuu prompts. He frowns, sighing into the thick air between them. When Niou says nothing, Yagyuu exhales loudly and clicks his tongue. "Niou-kun?"
Niou shrugs. His dick is hard. He doesn't care about Yukimura right now, not when he'd rather think about walking back up to his room and throwing away whatever Yagyuu said earlier, pushing Yagyuu into his wall and demanding what he wants.
What he needs.
What Yagyuu isn't ready for.
Resting his chin on his knees, Niou shrugs his shoulders. "We've never seen him lose. We've never lost before."
"We never have," Yagyuu says. He looks around, holding his bare popsicle stick up and looking like he wants to throw it into the bin. Niou reaches out and rolls forward a little, picking up his sticky popsicle stick. He wedges the end of it into the nearest planter. A fern tickles the back of his hand.
"Maybe he'll be high on morphine and Sanada will get off easy," Niou says.
"The surgery shouldn't have been too invasive," Yagyuu says. He holds onto his popsicle stick. A train rushes by, a flashing of yellow lights that illuminates the back yard in an eerie glow for an instant before disappearing once more.
"You asked your dad about it."
Yagyuu nods. "It sounded pioneering, but Yukimura-kun will probably recover quickly."
Niou snorts, a little laugh bubbling up out of his throat. He rocks back and forward on his toes, bumping the edge of the porch with his bum. "If Sanada doesn't kill him first."
"There is that," Yagyuu says.
Glancing back over his shoulder, Niou blows the hair from his eyes to have a good look at Yagyuu. Yagyuu has his arms crossed over his body, all defensive despite the lethargic heat that makes Niou's eyelids drip. His long legs stick out as he leans against the wall, toes nearly touching Niou's back. Yagyuu's eyes are black, his glasses on fire with the lamplight. His hair hangs, the cowlick gone, and his face is shiny with sweat, with oil, with everything that Niou just wants to lick off.
His mouth is dry and woolen. Yagyuu turns his head, his neck elongating and his jaw more prominent from this angle. Niou's chest is too tight and his dick keeps pounding, pulsing against his shorts. He squirms a little and sticks his foot out, shaking the sleep from it.
"It will be strange having Yukimura-kun back," Yagyuu says. "He's been gone all season. We'll all have to adjust-"
Before Niou can respond, the porch door slides open. Yagyuu stiffens. Niou leans forward and brushes the summer film off his calves. His mother sticks her head through the doorway. "Boys, it's getting late," she says.
Yagyuu nods and bows his head, thanking Niou's family for the seventeenth time or so. Niou bites his lip and hunches his shoulders. From inside the house, his father calls out that he'll start the car. Niou's shoulders fall lower, but he steps over the threshold back inside anyway.
Yagyuu has seen the worst.
There's nothing really left.
Sighing, Niou shuffles behind his father and Yagyuu out to the Golf. The car is clean and smells faintly of coffee. There are no crumbs wedged between the seats, no gum wrappers on the floor, nothing except a Tokyo map tucked into the holder in the passenger side door.
Niou sits in his usual spot: back, left-hand side. Yagyuu sits beside him on the right. His father starts the car and asks Yagyuu where he lives. When Yagyuu tells him, his father nods and says, "That's a nice neighbourhood."
Niou's gaze shifts from the passing streetlights and neon shop front signs to Yagyuu, sitting in the dark, his glasses reflecting the rainbow lights of the suburban night. Niou's insides knot up again, but nowhere near as tight as this afternoon. His body sinks into the seat, his limbs tired and his mind just as heavy.
He was so worried, but now it seems so trivial.
Yagyuu turns and catches his eye. Niou turns back to the window, his eyes glazing over as the city rushes by and his father turns onto the expressway. The turn signal clicks, a staccato beat like his pulse. Niou swallows. Yagyuu answers another question, giving away nothing and everything with his simple, polite responses. "Yes, my father works in the Yokohama General Hospital. He's a cardiologist."
Doctor of the heart.
Niou snorts. Figures. His heart pounds, doki doki doki doki when Yagyuu moves, touching the seatbelt, touching his leg, touching the spot on the seat between them in the dark where he probably thinks Niou can't see, but Niou can.
His long fingers tap the seat. Niou's father changes lanes. He glances back in the rear-view mirror, his eyes wavering over the top of his glasses before he looks ahead again. Niou concentrates on breathing. He counts his exhaling. One two…
Yagyuu's fingers move closer to him, dancing across the shadows between street lights.
Three…four…
The Golf jerks over a hump in the road. Yagyuu's hand brushes Niou's thigh-he sucks a breath in and squeezes his eyes shut. His dick pulses, throbbing hot between his legs despite the frigid blast of the A/C over his arms and shins.
Yagyuu is killing him on purpose. Niou falls onto the car door and keeps his eyes closed. He shifts his body, his legs cramp up at being squashed, but he sits and bears it. He'll be home soon enough.
The suburbs pass in a rushing whir, like Yagyuu's laser. His father turns onto an off-ramp and they drive through familiar houses, bigger and better than his own. There is a conbini on the corner and a bus across the road they turn perpendicular onto.
Yagyuu's street.
His father drives up to the curb, right where Yagyuu says he lives. Lights are on inside and there is a white Toyota in the driveway. Niou cracks an eye open to see Yagyuu frown. His mother is home, but his father probably has a shift at the hospital tonight.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Yagyuu calls. He closes the car door and waves. Niou's heart stops when he looks up. His body freezes to the spot, his veins constrict and his chest too. Yagyuu flashes him a little smile, quirky and lopsided and the hint of his white teeth glimmer. The smile reaches his eyes, narrowed with sleep and amusement and his fingers wiggle.
Niou looks away. His body is on fire with a cold fever.