FIC: Snow Day, YanaKiri, NC17
Title: Snow Day
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 4000
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: It's a snow day in Kanagawa.
It happens, once every generation or so, that Kanagawa manages to get enough snow stay on the ground for enough time that the entire prefecture shuts down. The midnight snowfall of several centimeters causes chaos come rush hour in the morning and glues Kirihara to the television, still in his pajamas with the hope of school being closed.
Kirihara is thrilled when the television reporter announces school closures and halfway down the list finally says “Rikkai Daigaku Fuzoku Chu…”.
Kirihara jumps up, pumping his fist and shouting “Yatta! No school! This is fucking awesome!”
“Shut up, idiot,” his sister says.
From the doorway, their mother clicks her tongue. “I’m going to the temple with Sakumi-kun today. Keiko, you stay home and babysit your bro-”
“Mo-om!” Kirihara and his sister both whine.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Kirihara says.
“He gave me bruises the last time I babysat him,” his sister says.
Kirihara thinks that she deserved to be punched in the leg that time. After all, just because she had a boyfriend over didn’t mean that Kirihara wanted him to be there and doing all sorts of nasty things like licking her neck and petting her arm when Kirihara was just one room away from them.
“Work it out between yourselves, please,” their mother says. She packs her purse up, grabs his winter coat, her boots, her scarf, her sunglasses, an umbrella and two pairs of gloves. She looks more like a mountaineer than a housewife wandering off to the neighbourhood temple with a friend.
“Please don’t make a mess of the living room,” she calls out. “Your father will be home in a few days and you know how he gets when the house is messy.”
Kirihara grumbles under his breath, “Yeah yeah yeah.”
As soon as the door closes, his sister turns to him. “Look, idiot, I’m not fucking babysitting you again. Can’t you go out and play tennis with someone? What about that brown Brazilian? Brazilians are good at babysitting, Catholics and all.”
Kirihara moves to kick her in the shin, but she ducks out of the way just in time.
“Why can’t you go away,” Kirihara says. “I won’t even tell mom about the condoms under your-”
The one thing Kirihara should have learned from his sister over the years is that girls are just as good as boys at giving headlocks. She has him in a flash, her arm choking his neck. Kirihara struggles to move, trying to lick her arm to get himself free, but she twists around and he can’t quite reach. He digs his nails into her forearm, but he bit his nails last week and they aren’t sharp anymore.
Damn.
“Shut up about that!” she yells.
“Let me go!”
“No!”
Kirihara tries to kick back, but she sidesteps. Stupid sister, one-footed split-steps must run in families.
The phone only has to ring once for his sister to run off to answer it. She curls his finger in the cord and whispers a breathy, “Hello?” She bats her eyelashes, sighing like those girls in dumb romance movies.
Kirihara picks himself up off the floor.
“It’s for you, idiot,” she says, shoving the phone in his chest.
Kirihara mutters, “Ow.” Then into the receiver he says, “Hello?”
“Akaya,” Yanagi-senpai says. “Practice has been cancelled.”
Kirihara curls up on the couch with the phone in the crook of his neck. “Yeah, guess so,” he says. As much as he likes tennis, it’s getting more and more depressing at tennis club with each passing week. The third years have only a month left before they’re done. Sometimes, the loneliness creeps up on Kirihara, along with the realization that he gets to be buchou.
Yanagi-senpai starts to talk about something but Kirihara doesn’t really listen. He looks out the window at the fine layer of snow coating everything, maybe an inch or two but enough to cause schools to close and businesses too. Enough salarymen have braved the roads to leave brown tracks of a hundred cars outside, but beyond that, the world is eerily still and quiet.
Except for the sound of his sister banging pots in the kitchen. “Hurry up! I wanna call my boyfriend!” she shouts.
“Hey senpai?” Kirihara asks. Yanagi-senpai stops talking. “Wanna come over to my house this afternoon?”
***
His sister pokes him in the chest with each rule she spouts off.
“No making a mess!” she snaps.
“No making a mess,” Kirihara grumbles.
“No destroying the television!”
“No destroying the television,” Kirihara repeats.
“No telling mom what I’m doing!”
“No telling mom what you’re doing,” Kirihara says. He sighs. Damn. That could have been funny.
“And NO touching my stuff!” Her finger jabs Kirihara in the chest hardest that time, right between two of his ribs. She turns to Yanagi-senpai, who is still red-faced and covered in snow from his knees down from his walk over here. “And YOU make sure he follows the rules or I’ll kill you both.”
Yanagi-senpai nods.
Kirihara nods, too.
His sister nods, then she slams the door when she leaves.
“Sorry,” Kirihara says. “I think my sister’s on her period or something. She’s a big bitch.”
“So is my sister,” Yanagi-senpai says. He unwinds his scarf from his neck. Small chunks of half-melted snow fall all over the entranceway. Kirihara blinks, then he remembers he should take Yanagi-senpai’s scarf and coat, be polite and all. He holds his arms out and Yanagi-senpai drops his scarf, then his coat.
“Saa, senpai?” Kirihara says. He grins as he shoves the coat and scarf into the shallow closet. “Did you know that we’re the only ones home?”
Yanagi-senpai makes a noise, the sort he makes when he knows something but doesn’t want to admit it.
“And my sister didn’t say we couldn’t do stuff,” Kirihara says, stepping closer.
Yanagi-senpai pats down Kirihara’s hair, making Kirihara scowl. “Akaya,” he says, but he doesn’t say anything more and Kirihara is pretty sure that Yanagi-senpai won’t mind.
They don’t talk about- because that would be gross, or just weird, but they’ve been going out since October, sorta. Kirihara doesn’t know exactly what to call it. It was after the Senbatsu, when they shared a room and a few really awkward and really wet kisses; Kirihara figures that he can say it’s going out enough to count.
Sometimes, Kirihara thinks that Yanagi-senpai wants to do more stuff, but they never get around to it and Yanagi-senpai always rolls off Kirihara whenever Kirihara sticks his hand under Yanagi-senpai’s t-shirt in the tennis clubhouse.
“Akaya,” he says. “We shouldn’t…”
He says that every time.
“I’m not a kid!” Kirihara shouts. I’m going to be buchou next year by myself. I can do it!
“When you act like that-” Yanagi-senpai starts to say, but he doesn’t finish that either. Kirihara scowls, folding his arms over his chest. He sticks out his lip and glares at Yanagi-senpai.
“I know about that stuff,” Kirihara says. Duh, everyone had sex-ed in first year.
Yanagi-senpai cringes.
Kirihara keeps glaring, but Yanagi-senpai’s furrowed forehead and his frown make Kirihara feel weird. His heart pounds in his chest. His throat feels all dry and his feet feel like cement weights. “Because sometimes…” I wanna do more stuff with you. His stomach flutters around, the same way it did right before the time it was announced in front of the whole tennis club that Kirihara was going to the Newcomer’s Tournament, or the time when Yukimura-buchou clapped after Kirihara played an OB so hard that he won a spot on the team as a freshman.
Yanagi-senpai frowns harder. He looks out the window, as if the thing blanket of snow is a lot more interesting and appealing than the saggy couch in Kirihara’s living room. At least inside it’s warm. Kirihara steps closer. His heart thumps on his ribs, right in the same place where his sister jabbed him.
“We could make a snowman,” Yanagi-senpai offers.
“You just took off your stuff, senpai,” Kirihara says.
“Aa.” Yanagi-senpai hums. “Yes, I did. What about video games? Do you have any new ones?”
“Since when do you care about my video games?” Kirihara asks.
Yanagi-senpai’s face looks pinker than before. He’s better at lying than Sanada-fukubuchou, but nowhere near as good as Yagyuu-senpai, who can look Niou-senpai straight in the face, without a single expression, and tell Sanada that no, he and Niou really didn’t plant that gay porn in Sanada’s tennisbag last week.
Kirihara steps closer again, hopping into his right foot. Yanagi-senpai backs up, ending up against the wall, with Kirihara pressed against his chest. Kirihara can feel his own heart pounding, and the blood rushes from his head down down down. It leaves him feeling light-headed and whoozy.
“Senpai,” Kirihara mutters. He licks his lips. Yanagi-senpai squeezes his eyes closed. Kirihara touches his neck, feeling the pulse under the hot skin, quickening like his own. “Senpai, don’t you like me?” he whispers.
Yanagi-senpai makes a funny sound, as though Kirihara’s choking him with the light brush of his fingertips. “You know that’s not true,” he croaks.
“Then let’s do stuff. No one’s around, not even my sister. And I promise I won’t say anything to anyone or say no and I won’t be loud, I promise,” Kirihara insists, punctuating each vow with a jab of his own finger, the slightest of rubs from his hips.
It was scary the first few times they kissed and Kirihara felt that press on his thigh that was from someone else and he didn’t know what to think, because Yanagi-senpai is bigger and taller and felt bigger and so much older, especially the way he kissed and used his tongue and licked the sides of Kirihara’s face, licked the sweat off the top of his mouth.
Even remembering it makes Kirihara’s stomach do flip-flops. And his cock swell between his legs, pressing up against his pants.
Kirihara stares up at him until Yanagi-senpai’s eyes start to flutter open. His dark eyes are all watery; he must be miserable and confused, too. And hard, like Kirihara is. Just looking at Yanagi-senpai makes Kirihara want to kiss him, and taste his tongue and put his hands under Yanagi-senpai’s striped shirt and feel his warm skin and listen to him gasp and moan.
“We’ll be safe too,” Kirihara says. He bites his lip so he doesn’t sniffle, then he shoves his face in Yanagi-senpai’s chest, smelling the laundry detergent and deodorant and something that smells a bit like cologne too. Kirihara smiles into the fabric. Yanagi-senpai got all fancy just to see me, he thinks.
The words are muffled when Kirihara says, “Senpai, I have condoms and stuff.”
But Yanagi-senpai must hear him, because Yanagi-senpai goes stiff, and he stops breathing; the rise and fall of his chest against Kirihara’s cheek no more. “Akaya,” whispered, barely audible, is the only sound in the room.
“You know that the age of consent is thirteen,” Kirihara adds. “And I’m not a kid. I'm fourteen.”
For the longest while, Yanagi-senpai just stands there. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t move, not even when Kirihara pulls back. Yanagi-senpai starts to slide down the wall, with his legs folding under him as he sits on the floor and stares out at the white nothing beyond the window. Trees are dusted, and hedges too. Slushy footprints line the sidewalks, attempts of people to go out into the world.
A single car drives by, the motion erratic and unused to the snow. The car swerves, making waving motions along the street, the crunch of the snow audible even inside Kirihara’s house.
Kirihara kneels down beside him. He touches the side of Yanagi-senpai’s face, stroking his thumb along Yanagi-senpai’s jaw. Leaning forward, Kirihara presses his mouth to the same place, then he does it again and a third time against Yanagi-senpai’s mouth, which is just as dry as his own.
Unlike the other times Kirihara kissed him this way, Yanagi-senpai doesn’t kiss back. He doesn’t open his mouth and slide his wet tongue over Kirihara’s lips. He doesn’t bit Kirihara’s bottom lip and tug at it. He doesn’t make the tingling feelings in Kirihara’s stomach.
Yanagi-senpai won’t even look at him. Kirihara’s insides twist up and he regrets his words. He shouldn’t have said it because now his senpai is angry and his hands move and he’s pushing himself up off the floor to leave. Kirihara’s stomach tingles, but not in a good way. More like a barfy guilt-inducing way.
“Shit,” Kirihara mouths.
It is his turn to stare out the window. He swallows the lump in his throat- it feels like he got a huge piece of sushi stuck there and it hurts, pressing from the inside out, making it hard to breathe.
“I’m an idiot,” he mutters. The breath that comes up is shuddered, laden with anger and sadness at himself and his stupid stupid words. I shoulda kept my mouth closed.
Yanagi-senpai nods. He grabs his coat. Kirihara knows the afternoon is ruined. It hurts. He looks away. Curling up his knees, Kirihara hugs them with his arms, burying the hot shame on his face.
Something taps his shoulder. Kirihara sniffs, then slowly looks up. Yanagi-senpai stands above him, a slight crease in his brow and a slight twitch to his lips. He holds out something, pressing it into Kirihara’s hands.
Neither of them say anything; Kirihara can’t say anything, not when he reads the words “Lubricating Jelly” on the label of the little bottle in his palm.
***
Kirihara’s bed is small. With just him, it feels big, American-sized with a mattress from the Ikea in Yokohama that his mom bought after Kirihara heard his father talking about American hotels once.
But with Yanagi-senpai lying in it with him, it’s squished. Knees bump and elbows poke into stomachs, awkward and tight, both of them pushed against each other.
They have never done this, lie in a bed together. Yanagi-senpai looks at Kirihara, but it is Kirihara who kisses him first. His heart aches, and so does his erection, now shoved up against Yanagi-senpai’s leg. Kirihara kisses, sloppy and wet, licking at Yanagi-senpai’s mouth until Yanagi-senpai’s mouth moves against his and the bed creaks and he rolls onto Kirihara, squishing him, but it’s okay. It feels heavy, but good.
Because this time, when Kirihara’s hands sneak under the hem of Yanagi-senpai’s shirt, his senpai doesn’t move away. If anything, he moves closer, gasping into the kiss when Kirihara skitters his fingertips along ribs, shoulder blades, pulling their bodies closer. His legs part, then they wrap around Yanagi-senpai’s legs.
It feels good, this. Kirihara leans back into his pillow as Yanagi-senpai kisses a trail over his neck, and along the collar of his shirt. He shivers and makes noises, unable to stop himself. “Akaya,” Yanagi-senpai mutters, his breath as hot as the repeated shiver that runs through Kirihara’s body.
They peel off clothes between kisses and Kirihara silently thanks his mother for leaving the heat on all morning because it would be cold in the house otherwise. He should feel cold, lying naked except for his socks, next to an equally almost naked Yanagi-senpai, but they crawl under the covers. Kirihara rolls on top, kissing Yanagi-senpai’s chest, his nipples, and smirking when Yanagi-senpai sucks in a breath and twitches.
“Is that good?” he asks. Kirihara runs his teeth along the nipple, then the other. Yanagi-senpai moans and it makes Kirihara even harder, ache even more, the rise of delicious tension between his legs growing.
“I have condoms,” he says, licking the skin around Yanagi-senpai’s bellybutton. It tastes a bit gross, like, well, bellybutton lint, but the way Yanagi-senpai shakes and clenches his legs around Kirihara, the way Yanagi-senpai arches his back and bites his lip, Kirihara likes it. He grins into Yanagi-senpai’s stomach and circles his tongue around his bellybutton again.
Condoms are completely forgotten about when Yanagi-senpai moans and the sound in Kirihara’s ears makes him moan, too, as pleasure electrifies his body, making every touch multiplied by a thousand, every kiss, too.
The covers are bunched up all over his head, and it is hard to move. An erection pokes his armpit and when Yanagi-senpai moves around, his hands on Kirihara’s shoulders, his stomach, his hips, Kirihara forgets about the condoms and everything else except oh god is he gonna touch me there?
The lubricating jelly is cold. They both gasp at the unexpected cool shock of the jelly. Kirihara forgets everything, his name, who he is, every single detail when a hand wraps cold at first, then warming up, around his swollen cock. He grabs the hand, his fingers picking up the slippery jelly oozing between them, and he reaches too, determine to make Yanagi-senpai shake as much as Kirihara himself is.
It’s weird. And scarier than anything, anything Kirihara has ever done. There’s not much room to move and they don’t kiss, they don’t do anything except sigh and breathe in each other’s ears as hands move, squeezing unsure at first, then tighter, longer, pulling and tugging.
Kirihara pants. Yanagi-senpai makes a sound like he’s crying, except he isn’t; it’s his sweat on Kirihara’s neck and his open mouth on Kirihara’s shoulder. The pressure builds inside Kirihara and his hand starts to slip on slick skin. Yanagi-senpai’s legs move too much as he digs his feet into the mattress. He’s close, too, Kirihara knows it.
Kirihara comes first. He can’t help it, not when Yanagi-senpai changes his grip, a sudden clench around the base, his fingers brushing Kirihara’s balls, so soft, and he is lost, groaning and bucking and shuddering, the waves making his body shake and writhe as he comes all over Yanagi-senpai’s hand.
His heart still beats, hard and furious in chest when he remembers that his hand is curled around Yanagi-senpai’s cock, bigger and thicker than his, and then suddenly, Yanagi-senpai gasps like he’s winded, and he’s moving, too, his body shivering, his fingernails digging into Kirihara’s arms and Kirihara can feel something new and hot and sticky all over his hand.
“Akaya,” Yanagi-senpai says.
***
If it was scary before, it’s scarier after. The covers are pulled up to their necks and the garbage can is littered with dirty Kleenexes, remnants of what they just did. Kirihara’s room smells more of come and the vaguely rubbery-scent of the jelly than the gymsocks of this morning.
Kirihara stares at the ceiling. It is as white as the snow outside. His breathing is normal again, but his heart flutters and pushes at his ribs like it is about to fly out of his chest.
Yanagi-senpai is quiet, too. His hands are folded together on top of the covers.
Kirihara doesn’t know what to say now. They did it¬- well, sorta, and now what? It feels like the world has changed, but it hasn’t. A hundred different things run through Kirihara’s head, including the realization that his stomach growls and he hasn’t had any lunch.
He rolls onto his side, away from Yanagi-senpai.
“Now what?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Yanagi-senpai says.
They don’t look at each other when underpants are pulled on and then pants and shirts, too. Kirihara stares at his feet. He saw bits of Yanagi-senpai’s naked skin, he licked some, too, and now he can’t even look up at Yanagi-senpai’s face.
Maybe I am just a dumb kid, he thinks. I can’t have sex and I can’t be buchou. Kirihara’s lip starts to quiver, making him feel stupider and younger than ever.
“Maybe I should go home,” Yanagi-senpai says.
Kirihara whips his head around. “No!” he says, before he thinks. Yanagi-senpai is right, though. Maybe he should. Maybe everything is messed up now, even more than when they kissed a few times in the clubhouse after Sanada-fukubuchou left them to lockup.
“I can stay if you want,” Yanagi-senpai says. He sounds strange, too, and his voice cracks a bit. Kirihara scratches his forehead. His senpai is supposed to be calm and collected and always know what to do but now he’s standing with his shoulders down and a pale, scared look on his face.
Kirihara nods. “Please stay,” he says. He forces himself to laugh. “My sister said that I needed a babysitter, remember? You have to stay!”
Yanagi-senpai’s mouth twitches. “Aa, she did, didn’t she?”
Kirihara nods again.
They eat instant ramen noodles on the couch, sitting at separate ends. Yanagi-senpai’s toes touch Kirihara’s knee, and they both jerk, as if they’ve been burned. Kirihara squishes himself deeper into the crack of the cushion, trying to keep to his side.
There is nothing on tv. Kirihara can’t bring himself to turn on his Playstation either. They sit silent, bowls littered on the floor, until Yanagi-senpai stretches his arms and gets up to get his coat. Kirihara doesn’t want to afternoon to end this way, with this strange feeling smothering everything. He should be feeling like a grown-up: he’s done it!- but he doesn’t know what this feeling is.
Except an ache. It was good when they didn’t think and they just touched. In the real world, things are different.
Kirihara hands Yanagi-senpai his scarf. Yanagi-senpai takes it, wraps it once around his neck, then he stops. “Aren’t you coming?” he asks.
“Coming where?”
“Outside,” Yanagi-senpai says. “Let’s build a snowman.”
Even though it is kids who make snowmen, Kirihara grabs his own coat. And his school scarf, and his mittens and hat and his boots. They stomp through the snow leaving a trail through the pristine white all the way into the back garden of Kirihara’s home. It isn’t that cold outside, but their breath puffs up like mushroom clouds and Kirihara’s cheeks prickle with the chill.
Kirihara grabs a fistful of snow, packing it between his palms to make a ball. It isn’t good snowman snow, too dry, and the clumps stick more to the wool of his mittens than they do to each other.
Kirihara doesn’t even know what hits him until a flash of white whizzes through the air and smacks him straight in the side of the head. Stunned, he stands for a moment staring down at the snowball before it registers inside that it is a snowball at his feet.
“Oi!” he yells.
Yanagi-senpai stands on the other side of the garden, back straight and arms posed just like Yagyuu-senpai when he does his laser beam. He grins at Kirihara.
Kirihara frantically packs a snowball of his own together, smushing the snow until it sticks enough, then he hurls his own snowball at Yanagi-senpai, who throws a second one back at Kirihara that hits him square in the chest. Kirihara runs, Yanagi-senpai runs too, and they chase each other around the tiny garden yard, snowballs flying as much as the yelps and the shouts and the laughter.
They end up laughing and collapsed on top of the trampled snow, cold and sweaty and damp and tangled up with each other. The laughter fades. Yanagi-senpai’s hat falls off his head. Kirihara’s smile falls off his face.
“Do you know what day today is?” Yanagi-senpai asks. His voice is thick.
Kirihara shakes his head. “Snow day?” he asks.
Yanagi-senpai laughs a little, but it sounds forced and fake. “It’s the fourteenth.”
Kirihara has no idea what Yanagi-senpai is talking about. But he can see something in Yanagi-senpai’s eyes, the reflection of Kirihara’s face in the black pupils. A boy sitting on top of another, with eyes just as wide and a face just as flushed from the effort of running around in the snow. Kirihara hesitates for a moment as they look at each other, then Kirihara kisses Yanagi-senpai.
Yanagi-senpai’s mouth is cold, but his tongue- it is hot and wet and pressing at Kirihara’s lips, before it slides in, touching all over his teeth, his tongue. A pleasant tingle fills Kirihara’s stomach and he kisses back, hard and eager. When Yanagi-senpai pulls away, he says, “Your sister didn’t say anything about this, ne?”
Kirihara laughs, sitting up straight before he shoves a fistful of snow into Yanagi-senpai’s ear.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 4000
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: It's a snow day in Kanagawa.
It happens, once every generation or so, that Kanagawa manages to get enough snow stay on the ground for enough time that the entire prefecture shuts down. The midnight snowfall of several centimeters causes chaos come rush hour in the morning and glues Kirihara to the television, still in his pajamas with the hope of school being closed.
Kirihara is thrilled when the television reporter announces school closures and halfway down the list finally says “Rikkai Daigaku Fuzoku Chu…”.
Kirihara jumps up, pumping his fist and shouting “Yatta! No school! This is fucking awesome!”
“Shut up, idiot,” his sister says.
From the doorway, their mother clicks her tongue. “I’m going to the temple with Sakumi-kun today. Keiko, you stay home and babysit your bro-”
“Mo-om!” Kirihara and his sister both whine.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Kirihara says.
“He gave me bruises the last time I babysat him,” his sister says.
Kirihara thinks that she deserved to be punched in the leg that time. After all, just because she had a boyfriend over didn’t mean that Kirihara wanted him to be there and doing all sorts of nasty things like licking her neck and petting her arm when Kirihara was just one room away from them.
“Work it out between yourselves, please,” their mother says. She packs her purse up, grabs his winter coat, her boots, her scarf, her sunglasses, an umbrella and two pairs of gloves. She looks more like a mountaineer than a housewife wandering off to the neighbourhood temple with a friend.
“Please don’t make a mess of the living room,” she calls out. “Your father will be home in a few days and you know how he gets when the house is messy.”
Kirihara grumbles under his breath, “Yeah yeah yeah.”
As soon as the door closes, his sister turns to him. “Look, idiot, I’m not fucking babysitting you again. Can’t you go out and play tennis with someone? What about that brown Brazilian? Brazilians are good at babysitting, Catholics and all.”
Kirihara moves to kick her in the shin, but she ducks out of the way just in time.
“Why can’t you go away,” Kirihara says. “I won’t even tell mom about the condoms under your-”
The one thing Kirihara should have learned from his sister over the years is that girls are just as good as boys at giving headlocks. She has him in a flash, her arm choking his neck. Kirihara struggles to move, trying to lick her arm to get himself free, but she twists around and he can’t quite reach. He digs his nails into her forearm, but he bit his nails last week and they aren’t sharp anymore.
Damn.
“Shut up about that!” she yells.
“Let me go!”
“No!”
Kirihara tries to kick back, but she sidesteps. Stupid sister, one-footed split-steps must run in families.
The phone only has to ring once for his sister to run off to answer it. She curls his finger in the cord and whispers a breathy, “Hello?” She bats her eyelashes, sighing like those girls in dumb romance movies.
Kirihara picks himself up off the floor.
“It’s for you, idiot,” she says, shoving the phone in his chest.
Kirihara mutters, “Ow.” Then into the receiver he says, “Hello?”
“Akaya,” Yanagi-senpai says. “Practice has been cancelled.”
Kirihara curls up on the couch with the phone in the crook of his neck. “Yeah, guess so,” he says. As much as he likes tennis, it’s getting more and more depressing at tennis club with each passing week. The third years have only a month left before they’re done. Sometimes, the loneliness creeps up on Kirihara, along with the realization that he gets to be buchou.
Yanagi-senpai starts to talk about something but Kirihara doesn’t really listen. He looks out the window at the fine layer of snow coating everything, maybe an inch or two but enough to cause schools to close and businesses too. Enough salarymen have braved the roads to leave brown tracks of a hundred cars outside, but beyond that, the world is eerily still and quiet.
Except for the sound of his sister banging pots in the kitchen. “Hurry up! I wanna call my boyfriend!” she shouts.
“Hey senpai?” Kirihara asks. Yanagi-senpai stops talking. “Wanna come over to my house this afternoon?”
***
His sister pokes him in the chest with each rule she spouts off.
“No making a mess!” she snaps.
“No making a mess,” Kirihara grumbles.
“No destroying the television!”
“No destroying the television,” Kirihara repeats.
“No telling mom what I’m doing!”
“No telling mom what you’re doing,” Kirihara says. He sighs. Damn. That could have been funny.
“And NO touching my stuff!” Her finger jabs Kirihara in the chest hardest that time, right between two of his ribs. She turns to Yanagi-senpai, who is still red-faced and covered in snow from his knees down from his walk over here. “And YOU make sure he follows the rules or I’ll kill you both.”
Yanagi-senpai nods.
Kirihara nods, too.
His sister nods, then she slams the door when she leaves.
“Sorry,” Kirihara says. “I think my sister’s on her period or something. She’s a big bitch.”
“So is my sister,” Yanagi-senpai says. He unwinds his scarf from his neck. Small chunks of half-melted snow fall all over the entranceway. Kirihara blinks, then he remembers he should take Yanagi-senpai’s scarf and coat, be polite and all. He holds his arms out and Yanagi-senpai drops his scarf, then his coat.
“Saa, senpai?” Kirihara says. He grins as he shoves the coat and scarf into the shallow closet. “Did you know that we’re the only ones home?”
Yanagi-senpai makes a noise, the sort he makes when he knows something but doesn’t want to admit it.
“And my sister didn’t say we couldn’t do stuff,” Kirihara says, stepping closer.
Yanagi-senpai pats down Kirihara’s hair, making Kirihara scowl. “Akaya,” he says, but he doesn’t say anything more and Kirihara is pretty sure that Yanagi-senpai won’t mind.
They don’t talk about- because that would be gross, or just weird, but they’ve been going out since October, sorta. Kirihara doesn’t know exactly what to call it. It was after the Senbatsu, when they shared a room and a few really awkward and really wet kisses; Kirihara figures that he can say it’s going out enough to count.
Sometimes, Kirihara thinks that Yanagi-senpai wants to do more stuff, but they never get around to it and Yanagi-senpai always rolls off Kirihara whenever Kirihara sticks his hand under Yanagi-senpai’s t-shirt in the tennis clubhouse.
“Akaya,” he says. “We shouldn’t…”
He says that every time.
“I’m not a kid!” Kirihara shouts. I’m going to be buchou next year by myself. I can do it!
“When you act like that-” Yanagi-senpai starts to say, but he doesn’t finish that either. Kirihara scowls, folding his arms over his chest. He sticks out his lip and glares at Yanagi-senpai.
“I know about that stuff,” Kirihara says. Duh, everyone had sex-ed in first year.
Yanagi-senpai cringes.
Kirihara keeps glaring, but Yanagi-senpai’s furrowed forehead and his frown make Kirihara feel weird. His heart pounds in his chest. His throat feels all dry and his feet feel like cement weights. “Because sometimes…” I wanna do more stuff with you. His stomach flutters around, the same way it did right before the time it was announced in front of the whole tennis club that Kirihara was going to the Newcomer’s Tournament, or the time when Yukimura-buchou clapped after Kirihara played an OB so hard that he won a spot on the team as a freshman.
Yanagi-senpai frowns harder. He looks out the window, as if the thing blanket of snow is a lot more interesting and appealing than the saggy couch in Kirihara’s living room. At least inside it’s warm. Kirihara steps closer. His heart thumps on his ribs, right in the same place where his sister jabbed him.
“We could make a snowman,” Yanagi-senpai offers.
“You just took off your stuff, senpai,” Kirihara says.
“Aa.” Yanagi-senpai hums. “Yes, I did. What about video games? Do you have any new ones?”
“Since when do you care about my video games?” Kirihara asks.
Yanagi-senpai’s face looks pinker than before. He’s better at lying than Sanada-fukubuchou, but nowhere near as good as Yagyuu-senpai, who can look Niou-senpai straight in the face, without a single expression, and tell Sanada that no, he and Niou really didn’t plant that gay porn in Sanada’s tennisbag last week.
Kirihara steps closer again, hopping into his right foot. Yanagi-senpai backs up, ending up against the wall, with Kirihara pressed against his chest. Kirihara can feel his own heart pounding, and the blood rushes from his head down down down. It leaves him feeling light-headed and whoozy.
“Senpai,” Kirihara mutters. He licks his lips. Yanagi-senpai squeezes his eyes closed. Kirihara touches his neck, feeling the pulse under the hot skin, quickening like his own. “Senpai, don’t you like me?” he whispers.
Yanagi-senpai makes a funny sound, as though Kirihara’s choking him with the light brush of his fingertips. “You know that’s not true,” he croaks.
“Then let’s do stuff. No one’s around, not even my sister. And I promise I won’t say anything to anyone or say no and I won’t be loud, I promise,” Kirihara insists, punctuating each vow with a jab of his own finger, the slightest of rubs from his hips.
It was scary the first few times they kissed and Kirihara felt that press on his thigh that was from someone else and he didn’t know what to think, because Yanagi-senpai is bigger and taller and felt bigger and so much older, especially the way he kissed and used his tongue and licked the sides of Kirihara’s face, licked the sweat off the top of his mouth.
Even remembering it makes Kirihara’s stomach do flip-flops. And his cock swell between his legs, pressing up against his pants.
Kirihara stares up at him until Yanagi-senpai’s eyes start to flutter open. His dark eyes are all watery; he must be miserable and confused, too. And hard, like Kirihara is. Just looking at Yanagi-senpai makes Kirihara want to kiss him, and taste his tongue and put his hands under Yanagi-senpai’s striped shirt and feel his warm skin and listen to him gasp and moan.
“We’ll be safe too,” Kirihara says. He bites his lip so he doesn’t sniffle, then he shoves his face in Yanagi-senpai’s chest, smelling the laundry detergent and deodorant and something that smells a bit like cologne too. Kirihara smiles into the fabric. Yanagi-senpai got all fancy just to see me, he thinks.
The words are muffled when Kirihara says, “Senpai, I have condoms and stuff.”
But Yanagi-senpai must hear him, because Yanagi-senpai goes stiff, and he stops breathing; the rise and fall of his chest against Kirihara’s cheek no more. “Akaya,” whispered, barely audible, is the only sound in the room.
“You know that the age of consent is thirteen,” Kirihara adds. “And I’m not a kid. I'm fourteen.”
For the longest while, Yanagi-senpai just stands there. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t move, not even when Kirihara pulls back. Yanagi-senpai starts to slide down the wall, with his legs folding under him as he sits on the floor and stares out at the white nothing beyond the window. Trees are dusted, and hedges too. Slushy footprints line the sidewalks, attempts of people to go out into the world.
A single car drives by, the motion erratic and unused to the snow. The car swerves, making waving motions along the street, the crunch of the snow audible even inside Kirihara’s house.
Kirihara kneels down beside him. He touches the side of Yanagi-senpai’s face, stroking his thumb along Yanagi-senpai’s jaw. Leaning forward, Kirihara presses his mouth to the same place, then he does it again and a third time against Yanagi-senpai’s mouth, which is just as dry as his own.
Unlike the other times Kirihara kissed him this way, Yanagi-senpai doesn’t kiss back. He doesn’t open his mouth and slide his wet tongue over Kirihara’s lips. He doesn’t bit Kirihara’s bottom lip and tug at it. He doesn’t make the tingling feelings in Kirihara’s stomach.
Yanagi-senpai won’t even look at him. Kirihara’s insides twist up and he regrets his words. He shouldn’t have said it because now his senpai is angry and his hands move and he’s pushing himself up off the floor to leave. Kirihara’s stomach tingles, but not in a good way. More like a barfy guilt-inducing way.
“Shit,” Kirihara mouths.
It is his turn to stare out the window. He swallows the lump in his throat- it feels like he got a huge piece of sushi stuck there and it hurts, pressing from the inside out, making it hard to breathe.
“I’m an idiot,” he mutters. The breath that comes up is shuddered, laden with anger and sadness at himself and his stupid stupid words. I shoulda kept my mouth closed.
Yanagi-senpai nods. He grabs his coat. Kirihara knows the afternoon is ruined. It hurts. He looks away. Curling up his knees, Kirihara hugs them with his arms, burying the hot shame on his face.
Something taps his shoulder. Kirihara sniffs, then slowly looks up. Yanagi-senpai stands above him, a slight crease in his brow and a slight twitch to his lips. He holds out something, pressing it into Kirihara’s hands.
Neither of them say anything; Kirihara can’t say anything, not when he reads the words “Lubricating Jelly” on the label of the little bottle in his palm.
***
Kirihara’s bed is small. With just him, it feels big, American-sized with a mattress from the Ikea in Yokohama that his mom bought after Kirihara heard his father talking about American hotels once.
But with Yanagi-senpai lying in it with him, it’s squished. Knees bump and elbows poke into stomachs, awkward and tight, both of them pushed against each other.
They have never done this, lie in a bed together. Yanagi-senpai looks at Kirihara, but it is Kirihara who kisses him first. His heart aches, and so does his erection, now shoved up against Yanagi-senpai’s leg. Kirihara kisses, sloppy and wet, licking at Yanagi-senpai’s mouth until Yanagi-senpai’s mouth moves against his and the bed creaks and he rolls onto Kirihara, squishing him, but it’s okay. It feels heavy, but good.
Because this time, when Kirihara’s hands sneak under the hem of Yanagi-senpai’s shirt, his senpai doesn’t move away. If anything, he moves closer, gasping into the kiss when Kirihara skitters his fingertips along ribs, shoulder blades, pulling their bodies closer. His legs part, then they wrap around Yanagi-senpai’s legs.
It feels good, this. Kirihara leans back into his pillow as Yanagi-senpai kisses a trail over his neck, and along the collar of his shirt. He shivers and makes noises, unable to stop himself. “Akaya,” Yanagi-senpai mutters, his breath as hot as the repeated shiver that runs through Kirihara’s body.
They peel off clothes between kisses and Kirihara silently thanks his mother for leaving the heat on all morning because it would be cold in the house otherwise. He should feel cold, lying naked except for his socks, next to an equally almost naked Yanagi-senpai, but they crawl under the covers. Kirihara rolls on top, kissing Yanagi-senpai’s chest, his nipples, and smirking when Yanagi-senpai sucks in a breath and twitches.
“Is that good?” he asks. Kirihara runs his teeth along the nipple, then the other. Yanagi-senpai moans and it makes Kirihara even harder, ache even more, the rise of delicious tension between his legs growing.
“I have condoms,” he says, licking the skin around Yanagi-senpai’s bellybutton. It tastes a bit gross, like, well, bellybutton lint, but the way Yanagi-senpai shakes and clenches his legs around Kirihara, the way Yanagi-senpai arches his back and bites his lip, Kirihara likes it. He grins into Yanagi-senpai’s stomach and circles his tongue around his bellybutton again.
Condoms are completely forgotten about when Yanagi-senpai moans and the sound in Kirihara’s ears makes him moan, too, as pleasure electrifies his body, making every touch multiplied by a thousand, every kiss, too.
The covers are bunched up all over his head, and it is hard to move. An erection pokes his armpit and when Yanagi-senpai moves around, his hands on Kirihara’s shoulders, his stomach, his hips, Kirihara forgets about the condoms and everything else except oh god is he gonna touch me there?
The lubricating jelly is cold. They both gasp at the unexpected cool shock of the jelly. Kirihara forgets everything, his name, who he is, every single detail when a hand wraps cold at first, then warming up, around his swollen cock. He grabs the hand, his fingers picking up the slippery jelly oozing between them, and he reaches too, determine to make Yanagi-senpai shake as much as Kirihara himself is.
It’s weird. And scarier than anything, anything Kirihara has ever done. There’s not much room to move and they don’t kiss, they don’t do anything except sigh and breathe in each other’s ears as hands move, squeezing unsure at first, then tighter, longer, pulling and tugging.
Kirihara pants. Yanagi-senpai makes a sound like he’s crying, except he isn’t; it’s his sweat on Kirihara’s neck and his open mouth on Kirihara’s shoulder. The pressure builds inside Kirihara and his hand starts to slip on slick skin. Yanagi-senpai’s legs move too much as he digs his feet into the mattress. He’s close, too, Kirihara knows it.
Kirihara comes first. He can’t help it, not when Yanagi-senpai changes his grip, a sudden clench around the base, his fingers brushing Kirihara’s balls, so soft, and he is lost, groaning and bucking and shuddering, the waves making his body shake and writhe as he comes all over Yanagi-senpai’s hand.
His heart still beats, hard and furious in chest when he remembers that his hand is curled around Yanagi-senpai’s cock, bigger and thicker than his, and then suddenly, Yanagi-senpai gasps like he’s winded, and he’s moving, too, his body shivering, his fingernails digging into Kirihara’s arms and Kirihara can feel something new and hot and sticky all over his hand.
“Akaya,” Yanagi-senpai says.
***
If it was scary before, it’s scarier after. The covers are pulled up to their necks and the garbage can is littered with dirty Kleenexes, remnants of what they just did. Kirihara’s room smells more of come and the vaguely rubbery-scent of the jelly than the gymsocks of this morning.
Kirihara stares at the ceiling. It is as white as the snow outside. His breathing is normal again, but his heart flutters and pushes at his ribs like it is about to fly out of his chest.
Yanagi-senpai is quiet, too. His hands are folded together on top of the covers.
Kirihara doesn’t know what to say now. They did it¬- well, sorta, and now what? It feels like the world has changed, but it hasn’t. A hundred different things run through Kirihara’s head, including the realization that his stomach growls and he hasn’t had any lunch.
He rolls onto his side, away from Yanagi-senpai.
“Now what?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Yanagi-senpai says.
They don’t look at each other when underpants are pulled on and then pants and shirts, too. Kirihara stares at his feet. He saw bits of Yanagi-senpai’s naked skin, he licked some, too, and now he can’t even look up at Yanagi-senpai’s face.
Maybe I am just a dumb kid, he thinks. I can’t have sex and I can’t be buchou. Kirihara’s lip starts to quiver, making him feel stupider and younger than ever.
“Maybe I should go home,” Yanagi-senpai says.
Kirihara whips his head around. “No!” he says, before he thinks. Yanagi-senpai is right, though. Maybe he should. Maybe everything is messed up now, even more than when they kissed a few times in the clubhouse after Sanada-fukubuchou left them to lockup.
“I can stay if you want,” Yanagi-senpai says. He sounds strange, too, and his voice cracks a bit. Kirihara scratches his forehead. His senpai is supposed to be calm and collected and always know what to do but now he’s standing with his shoulders down and a pale, scared look on his face.
Kirihara nods. “Please stay,” he says. He forces himself to laugh. “My sister said that I needed a babysitter, remember? You have to stay!”
Yanagi-senpai’s mouth twitches. “Aa, she did, didn’t she?”
Kirihara nods again.
They eat instant ramen noodles on the couch, sitting at separate ends. Yanagi-senpai’s toes touch Kirihara’s knee, and they both jerk, as if they’ve been burned. Kirihara squishes himself deeper into the crack of the cushion, trying to keep to his side.
There is nothing on tv. Kirihara can’t bring himself to turn on his Playstation either. They sit silent, bowls littered on the floor, until Yanagi-senpai stretches his arms and gets up to get his coat. Kirihara doesn’t want to afternoon to end this way, with this strange feeling smothering everything. He should be feeling like a grown-up: he’s done it!- but he doesn’t know what this feeling is.
Except an ache. It was good when they didn’t think and they just touched. In the real world, things are different.
Kirihara hands Yanagi-senpai his scarf. Yanagi-senpai takes it, wraps it once around his neck, then he stops. “Aren’t you coming?” he asks.
“Coming where?”
“Outside,” Yanagi-senpai says. “Let’s build a snowman.”
Even though it is kids who make snowmen, Kirihara grabs his own coat. And his school scarf, and his mittens and hat and his boots. They stomp through the snow leaving a trail through the pristine white all the way into the back garden of Kirihara’s home. It isn’t that cold outside, but their breath puffs up like mushroom clouds and Kirihara’s cheeks prickle with the chill.
Kirihara grabs a fistful of snow, packing it between his palms to make a ball. It isn’t good snowman snow, too dry, and the clumps stick more to the wool of his mittens than they do to each other.
Kirihara doesn’t even know what hits him until a flash of white whizzes through the air and smacks him straight in the side of the head. Stunned, he stands for a moment staring down at the snowball before it registers inside that it is a snowball at his feet.
“Oi!” he yells.
Yanagi-senpai stands on the other side of the garden, back straight and arms posed just like Yagyuu-senpai when he does his laser beam. He grins at Kirihara.
Kirihara frantically packs a snowball of his own together, smushing the snow until it sticks enough, then he hurls his own snowball at Yanagi-senpai, who throws a second one back at Kirihara that hits him square in the chest. Kirihara runs, Yanagi-senpai runs too, and they chase each other around the tiny garden yard, snowballs flying as much as the yelps and the shouts and the laughter.
They end up laughing and collapsed on top of the trampled snow, cold and sweaty and damp and tangled up with each other. The laughter fades. Yanagi-senpai’s hat falls off his head. Kirihara’s smile falls off his face.
“Do you know what day today is?” Yanagi-senpai asks. His voice is thick.
Kirihara shakes his head. “Snow day?” he asks.
Yanagi-senpai laughs a little, but it sounds forced and fake. “It’s the fourteenth.”
Kirihara has no idea what Yanagi-senpai is talking about. But he can see something in Yanagi-senpai’s eyes, the reflection of Kirihara’s face in the black pupils. A boy sitting on top of another, with eyes just as wide and a face just as flushed from the effort of running around in the snow. Kirihara hesitates for a moment as they look at each other, then Kirihara kisses Yanagi-senpai.
Yanagi-senpai’s mouth is cold, but his tongue- it is hot and wet and pressing at Kirihara’s lips, before it slides in, touching all over his teeth, his tongue. A pleasant tingle fills Kirihara’s stomach and he kisses back, hard and eager. When Yanagi-senpai pulls away, he says, “Your sister didn’t say anything about this, ne?”
Kirihara laughs, sitting up straight before he shoves a fistful of snow into Yanagi-senpai’s ear.