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With all the rain, the carpeted club felt stuffy and hot and smelled like wet dog. Scanning the patrons’ faces for Daigo’s was like hunting down someone based off an artist’s rendering—he knew the basic features, but it had been so many years since he last saw him that he had to make up the details. When he spotted him, his first thought was: that makes sense. He’d long since left the clutches of boyhood but his face was still fine-boned and delicate, which he was trying to compensate for with an ugly scowl and facial hair. He looked faintly sweaty. Kiryu remembered him always looking faintly sweaty. Their eyes met and Kiryu expected to see some amount of surprise, but Daigo just squinted at him and dropped his arm over the shoulders of the woman sitting next to him, and then his cronies started yelling.
—
Kiryu went looking for him that night knowing he’d have to beat the shit out of him, and he was prepared. Neither of them were at their peak but Daigo was even farther from his and he went down easy. An onlooker who heard the commotion was threatening to call the cops, so after Daigo agreed to hear him out, they walked in tense silence to a nearby park. It was strange being in Kamurocho with Daigo again and he kept looking over at him to remind himself that Daigo was nearly thirty and not the ropey, sullen young adult he used to entertain.
Daigo listened carefully and when Kiryu was done, he said, “And you think I can fix this.”
“People are drawn to you,” Kiryu said again. “And I think you’re the only one who can fix this.”
Daigo scowled down at the ground.
“You’re weirdly naive for someone who’s been through so much shit.”
“I’m not. I know.”
Kiryu watched him rub the back of his neck and he could see his resolve cracking. He never thought of himself as particularly persuasive, but people always seemed to do what he asked.
Daigo said, “We haven’t talked in… ten? Eleven years? You don’t know anything about me. That’s a big bet to place on a horse you’ve never seen run.”
“So I’ll buy you a drink,” Kiryu said simply, hoping to sweeten the deal. “Let’s talk.”
Daigo glanced over at him and the trash can fire leapt and twisted and threw shadows over his face. The new welt on his cheek didn’t look so bad in the dark.
“Alright,” he said, sounding predictably wary. “Lead the way.”
—
They picked a quiet wood-panelled bar with a good whiskey selection and space at the counter. Kiryu bought the first round and Daigo didn’t say much until he was a drink and a half in.
“You’ve been out for a year and you’re only coming to see me now that you need something. Don’t think I’m missing that.”
“Sorry. It’s been a rough year.”
Daigo chuckled dryly. “Don’t I know it.”
Kiryu wondered exactly what constituted a rough year for Daigo. Yayoi said he was a mess after getting out, but what did that mean? A drinking problem, but what else? He didn’t know many people he’d watched grow up the way he watched Daigo, and none that were still alive. Being invested in someone’s goings-on felt strange.
“What have you been up to?” Kiryu asked.
“Nothing worth mentioning.”
He believed him and decided not to ask. He could paint a neat enough picture from what he pieced together and thought, as he often did, about Nishiki. Him and Daigo didn’t have much in common, but Nishiki went through the same self-destructive streak Daigo was clearly in the throes of and Kiryu had seen it firsthand.
“What about you?” Daigo asked. “Since all that shit last year, nobody’s heard a peep from you, you’re like a ghost. You move out of town?”
“A bit.”
“Alone?”
Kiryu shook his head. He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to show a black and white photo booth picture of him and Haruka; in it, she had her chin resting on top of his head and her hands on his cheeks. He had another photo from the strip on his nightstand back home and Haruka had the other two.
Daigo snorted. “No shit! When’d you find time to have a kid? Conjugal visit?”
“She’s not my daughter.”
It felt funny to say. He saw Daigo glance at him out of the corner of his eye and wondered how much he’d heard about the events of last year, and whether he was smart enough not to pry.
“It’s just the two of you?” Daigo asked carefully.
“Yeah.”
He paused and rubbed his nose.
“Well, cute kid. She got a name?”
“Haruka.”
Daigo hummed. “Haruka. Okay. And you’re liking that? Being a dad?”
Kiryu didn’t know how to answer that any more than if Daigo had asked if he liked breathing oxygen or waking up in the morning. Haruka was one of the only things he’d ever cared about and to boil that down to do you like it, while well-meaning, was impossible.
So he said, “Yeah,” and left it at that. Daigo laughed at him.
“I’ll know I’ve made it when I can finally get two words out of you, Kiryu…” He paused. “...san.”
“What was that?”
He laughed and shook his head. “I was thinking about back when I used to call you Kiryu-kun. When you were a grown-ass man and I was about yea high.”
Kiryu thought instantly of Majima, who had called him ‘Kiryu-chan’ since the moment he met him and probably would until the day he died.
“You stopped soon enough. You weren’t old enough for it to be awkward.”
Daigo knocked back the rest of his drink and motioned at the barkeep for another. “Not as awkward as you calling me Master Daigo right into my teens. I half expected you to rock up tonight and still be on that.”
Kiryu stiffened. “I’m not in the family anymore.”
“Yeah, yeah, but you’re proper. You were always a by-the-book guy.”
Kiryu laughed. “To be honest, I expected you to still be a spoiled brat. But you don’t talk like that anymore.”
“We both grew up.” Daigo bumped his arm into Kiryu’s. “Speaking of which, don’t think I’m not buying your drinks here.”
It was a little network of things that Kiryu noticed as individual actions but didn’t string together into something bigger until it was already in motion: Daigo hitting him on the arm and chuckling at everything he said, the slow progression of his body language moving towards Kiryu’s until they were so close their knees brushed. Later, he would remember naively thinking, I don’t remember him being so touchy and he’d be embarrassed. He was never great at reading people when his life wasn’t on the line.
The night grew long and he planned on calling it quits, but when he came back from the washroom, Daigo had ordered him another drink and he’d had enough before that one to think it was a good idea. Tomorrow’s long trip to Osaka and the herculean task they had when they got there didn’t seem so pressing after five glasses of whiskey, and the bar was warm and intimate and talking to such an old friend settled deep and comforting in his bones. Calling Daigo his friend was a stretch, but the length of their history made it seem true.
Daigo slipped a pack of smokes from his jacket and glanced at Kiryu as he returned. He nodded at the drink in thanks and Daigo dismissed it with a wave of his hand.
“Last one, I promise,” he said, somehow distracted. “It’s getting late, I should probably just go for it.”
“Go for what?”
He knocked a smoke from the pack and put it between his lips.
“Alright. Well, we haven’t seen each other in a while, right? So correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re—” He paused to flick at his lighter a couple times, unsuccessfully. Kiryu pulled his own out and lit it for him. “You’re all about efficiency. You know. Only saying what needs to be said. Doing what’s gotta be done.”
“Mm.” Kiryu nodded and went to put his lighter away, but Daigo snagged his wrist.
“Wait, it didn’t catch.”
Kiryu clicked the lighter back on. Daigo bent his head towards the flame and sucked on his smoke, the bright light of the fire casting shadows under his eyelashes. The tip of his smoke burned and the lighter clicked off. He raised his head and let smoke trail from his nose.
“Efficiency,” he said again. He didn’t let go of Kiryu’s wrist and their joined hands hung between them. “That’s something you value?”
“Sure,” Kiryu said, not thinking much of it beyond this should definitely be his last drink.
Daigo leaned in towards him. Kiryu didn’t see what brand he smoked but there was a little gold band around the filter and the smoke was acrid and harsh, nearly acidic. Their faces were only a foot apart when Daigo finally spoke.
“Then I feel like I’m not totally off base by suggesting that… if we stay in the same place tonight, we’ll get an earlier start tomorrow morning. You know?”
To Kiryu’s credit, it only took him five long seconds. He jumped from confusion to anger to embarrassment before landing hard in I have to get out of here, whatever you’d call that. He yanked his hand back before he could consider what was polite or smart. He stood up so fast his bar stool shot back and nearly toppled over, and Daigo stood, too.
“Wait—”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Hey!”
The night air was crisp and burned in his lungs. It had stopped raining but puddles collected in the alley’s deep craters of broken asphalt and splashed up his cuffs as he charged away from the bar. He heard the door bang open and shut behind him.
“Kiryu-san—”
“No.”
“Kiryu.”
He stopped and spun around. Daigo was right behind him and looked more confused than anything else. Kiryu fumed silently and waited. A few excruciating seconds ticked by before Daigo spoke.
“You really never thought about it?”
“About what?”
“You and me.”
Kiryu had been quietly dreading that moment for most of his life, since Daigo hit puberty and started looking at him the way he did. He thought—assumed, hoped—that he’d been reading him wrong back then, and meeting him that night, he was sure enough time had passed to erase whatever crush a younger Daigo harboured. He was shocked to be proven wrong.
“You’re joking,” he bit out.
“The fuck would I joke about this? You think it’s funny?”
“Then what?”
Daigo visibly steeled himself.
“Maybe I’ve seen how you’ve been looking at me and I’m tired of waiting.”
The back of Kiryu’s neck got hot. His entire world warped and waved for a moment like a heat mirage, and when it came back, it was different. There it was. No mishearing it. Daigo was interested in him. Daigo was interested in him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tried. Daigo frowned hard.
“Don’t play stupid. You of all people know exactly what I’m talking about."
“What does that mean?”
“It means I know about you and that crazy old fuck, Majima.”
Kiryu’s stomach flipped. He grabbed the front of Daigo’s shirt and wrenched it up under his chin. “You don’t know shit.”
“Everyone knows, are you kidding me? The way you—”
Kiryu jammed his knuckles into his throat and he hissed in pain.
“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”
Daigo laughed. “I understand. I think I’m the only one who does.” He tipped his chin up. “You look at him the way I look at you.”
The sensation that was ‘fight or flight’ in other people and just ‘fight’ in Kiryu started pricking at his fingers and burning in the back of his throat. His heart wouldn’t slow down, his breath rasped between his lips and he wanted to leave but he couldn’t drag his gaze off Daigo’s smug, heavy-lidded eyes.
“You had to know already, right? Been my whole life. Or, most of it," Daigo purred. "I saved myself for you.”
Kiryu made a noise of disgust and let him go.
“You did not.”
Daigo rubbed his throat. “No, but can you imagine? If I were some simpering little virgin, holding a torch for you all these years?”
“That’s sick.”
“Aw, lighten up. I fucked a lot of guys who look like you, that’s close.” Daigo had always been too good at lying for Kiryu to catch him. He said nothing and Daigo took a step closer. “What do you think of that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You’re not thinking about me rolling around with some big, battle-hardened older dude?” He leaned up into Kiryu’s face. “They always try to get me to call them daddy and I never do.”
Kiryu hit him, not a punch but an open palm smack to the head that echoed sharply. He was so embarrassed his stomach hurt and his chest was tight and hitting him was all he knew how to do. Humiliation was painful and subjective and he didn’t know how to shrug it off like he would something else, how he’d even go about being okay with the things Daigo was saying to him.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” he snarled, panicked and desperate to regain even an inch of ground. His palm stung from the hit. Daigo rubbed his cheek and scowled up at him and every one of Kiryu’s senses tunneled on his hand scraping over his stubble, the pull of his gleaming skin. They were too close. He didn’t step back.
Daigo spat, “I’m not a kid, you coward, I’m a grown man. So what if I’ve got… things I want?”
“I’ll think you’re a man when you start acting like one.”
Daigo huffed angrily. “Doesn’t a man take what he wants?”
“A man knows his limits. Understands the world around him.”
“That’s fucking rich, coming from you. You don’t have limits, you’ll push yourself ’til you’re dead. Isn’t that the way to be?” He exhaled hard and fisted his hands in Kiryu’s collar. “I think a man takes what he wants.”
He yanked Kiryu towards him and crushed their mouths together. All the air got knocked out of Kiryu’s lungs. Daigo smelled like sweat and showy cologne and that was it. Kiryu shoved at him and realized, dimly, that he was kissing back. Daigo’s lips slid against his—small, soft, bitten raw on the slick inside of his lower lip. It was fast and hard and his calloused fingers clutched at his face and dragged him closer, his mouth opened wider, teeth grazing his lip, his head cracking back against the wall as Kiryu surged into him, furious and unthinking and drowning in it. Daigo’s tongue moved against his and tasted like liquor, and he buried his hands in Kiryu’s hair and pulled it between his fingers so hard it hurt. He felt his hands dig into Daigo’s leather-clad hips like his fingers didn’t belong to him, one hand sliding back to grab his ass, one inside his jacket and bunching up his thin shirt to get at the hot, sticky skin of his rib cage, pushing his thumb against the shape of his bones. He couldn’t think. His eyes were squeezed shut so hard colours danced behind the dark of his eyelids. Daigo’s whiskey spit. Daigo’s throat rumbling a groan that he felt down his spine and between his legs. He was just short enough that Kiryu could feel him tip his chin up to kiss him, shoving his hips against his to feel him push back, all but devouring him.
It got slow. Daigo took his lower lip between his teeth and pulled hard. When he let go, spit strung between them. Kiryu’s heart banged around his chest like a trapped bird and he could hear Daigo’s heavy breathing and feel the heat of it on his face. Up close, he could see each one of his eyelashes, the tired hollows under his eyes, a smattering of freckles on his cheeks.
“Jesus Christ,” Daigo muttered, his tone mirroring the shock and awe and plummeting What Have I Done that Kiryu was grappling with. Kiryu’s hands were still on him, tight enough to bruise; if he didn’t let go, he couldn’t tell he was shaking. He swallowed, his throat dry, his mind moving painfully slow. Daigo’s hands were still in his hair. His fingers twitched. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”
Neither did I, Kiryu wanted to say and didn’t. He was furious, terrified, turned on, and he didn’t want to act on any of those things. He wanted to knock Daigo out and escape while he was unconscious, or go back in time.
Daigo said, “Let’s go somewhere,” and Kiryu’s heart dropped into his shoes. All his anger and disappointment and lust was burning into a fire of chemistry between them and he hated it. He was staring at Daigo’s mouth and he hated it. He kept getting handed opportunities to ruin the Dojima family and he wondered how many of them he was going to take.
He said, “No.”
Daigo’s hands tugged at his hair. “Yes.”
“No, Daigo.”
Daigo leaned up until their lips brushed as he spoke. He slid a hand down Kiryu’s stomach.
“You can’t kiss like that and tell me no.” He palmed his hard-on through his slacks. “This isn’t telling me no.”
Kiryu grabbed his wrist but didn’t pull him away. “I’m telling you no.”
Daigo was still breathing hard. Kiryu’s lip stung where he’d bit it. His dick pulsed and he knew Daigo could feel it. He squeezed his wrist harder.
Suddenly, he was winded. Something hit him in the gut; Daigo’s knee. He stumbled backwards and stepped into a puddle and soaked his shoes. Daigo scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand and snarled, “Then quit wasting my fucking time.”
He stormed off before Kiryu could think of anything to say, which, he decided, was the best thing for both of them.
—
He was staying at a grimy motel across the highway and he didn’t want to go there. He wanted to be alone, but he didn’t. He couldn’t stop thinking about Daigo, whether his wounded pride would be enough to ruin the Tojo Clan, and what it would have been like if he hadn’t said no. In his head, he was still back in that alley with Daigo’s hand shoved between his legs. It didn’t seem real. It was Daigo.
After walking a fruitless lap around the block, he called the only person he ever visited Kamurocho for during his year away. He picked up after two rings and answered with the same spiel he always did.
“Majima Construction, ya got President Majima here. What can I do ya for?”
“It’s late. Are you in the city?”
He laughed bright and loud, like he was surprised.
“Weren’t ya just here on Sunday? I’m flattered, but a man needs space.”
“I’m serious.”
Majima paused. When he spoke again there was sincerity in his tone, if you wanted to hear it. “For you, sweetcheeks, I’m anywhere.”
“Thank you.”
“We talkin’ a ‘put the champagne on ice and wax my taint’ kinda deal or ‘you’ll be where I am in twenty minutes’ kinda deal?”
“You’re at your office?”
“The second one. Gotcha.” He sighed. “Yeah, I’m still workin’.”
“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there in twenty.”
—
Seeing Majima posted up in the Florist’s old office jarred Kiryu the first time he visited him, an overlap between his old life and his new life that his brain couldn’t reconcile. Majima had made the place his own; stacks of papers and file folders sat around old filing cabinets and rarely in them, an overstuffed leather sofa had been dragged into the middle of the room, a coffee table sat piled with magazines and empty beer cans, strings of lights hung off the fish tank, and he had an espresso machine on his desk. A massive, ugly statue of a dog stood guard by one of the pillars and a ragtag collection of UFO Catcher prizes sat by its feet as if proudly on display.
Sometimes when Kiryu came in, Majima was playing pinfinger, cutting his own hair or playing raucous drinking games with any number of his adoring employees, and sometimes he was working. Today, he was working. He was slumped over some document with one tall stack of paper to his right and a shorter stack to his left, chewing a pen as he read. He glanced up when the massive door groaned as it swung shut.
“Evenin’,” he said mildly. He dropped the pen, sat up and stretched. “Ya here to help me out? Any good with bookkeeping?”
“No.”
“Didn’t ya used to be in accounting? Some kinda business shit?”
“Real estate.”
“Whatever. Same shit, different day, ya know?”
“I know.”
The long walk all the way to his desk was always awkward because Majima watched him the whole time. He stood and came around the side of the desk to lean against the front edge and gestured at the couch as Kiryu approached.
“Sit, sit. You in trouble?”
“No,” Kiryu sighed, still standing. He rubbed a thumb over his knuckles, one of them split from his fight with Daigo. “Well… yes.”
Majima scowled, not hard enough to hide his smile.
“I’m gonna say no if ya ask me for help. I swear to God I’m gonna say no one of these days, just you watch me.”
Kiryu shook his head. “No, uh. I wanted to talk to you.”
Majima’s mirth dropped away at that. He made his way to the couch and sat without taking his eyes off Kiryu.
“I’m in trouble?”
“No.”
“Is Haru-chan in trouble?”
“She’s fine.”
“She likes the sketchbook I got her?”
“She loves it.” Kiryu sat on the edge of the coffee table in front of him and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s about… something I’m dealing with right now.”
Majima visibly relaxed.
“Oh, I get it. You’re lookin’ to upgrade your plan.”
“My plan?”
“Yeah, your plan.” He went back to smiling. He never stopped for long. “‘Cause right now, you’re on the ‘macho sex and occasional drinking buddy’ plan. For an extra ten Gs, I can start tenderly lacing our fingers while we’re lyin’ around afterwards, but by the sounds of it, you’re looking to bump it all the way up to the ‘I’m your fucking therapist’ plan, which is gonna cost ya.”
Kiryu wanted to smile, but he couldn’t make it happen. “Okay.”
Majima waited a few seconds, then added, “I mean, unless ya make it worth my time. Give it a shot.”
When Kiryu thought about seeing Majima, he hadn’t thought enough about actually telling him. He couldn’t think of a way to phrase it that made it sound alright, and when he finally decided on something, the words tumbled awkwardly from his mouth.
“Daigo kissed me.” There was a long, long pause. “I… kissed him back.”
Majima’s stunned silence in the seconds that followed was like the lag between a flash of lightning and the clap of thunder. Then he roared laughing.
“You’re kidding me! You dumb son of a fuck!”
“Goro—”
“The Dojima brat?” he howled. “Why not stick your dick in a mousetrap next time and save some energy? Get syphilis from a fuckin’ toilet seat?”
“That’s enough.”
“That kid’s had ya wrapped around his little finger since he was old enough to walk, but I didn’t think you were that stupid!” His heaving laughter fell and he wiped tears from his eye with the heel of his palm. “With brains like that, you’re lucky you’re pretty. Jesus fucking Christ.”
Kiryu squeezed his eyes shut. “I know.”
Majima chuckled and leaned back into the couch. “I’m hurt, by the way. Crushed. I had to ride your dick for months before ya kissed me on the fuckin’ mouth, what gives? I’m chopped liver?”
With Majima it had been easy, or easier. It first happened during a fight in a parking lot in the middle of the night. They were kicking and rolling on the pavement between a sports car and a low wall, and Majima pinned him down and pressed his face to the hollow of his jaw. Kiryu would never forget that first second—the physical closeness of a fight becoming the physical closeness of something else, instantly, before any kiss or anything else, and they could never come back from it. He still remembered feeling Majima’s breath shake against his skin. He had dug his hands into his his face, Majima slotted his legs between his and they ground against each other until they came, sweating in the muggy night air and clinging to each other with a desperation they’d never talked about. No panache, no posturing. It was terrifying.
That was about a year ago. Like two angry cats, they each froze at the idea of one another, poised and snarling and ready to attack, with each too afraid of getting smacked—or too busy calculating their smack—to make the first move. So neither of them got smacked, and somehow they settled into something worthwhile. Not without a few black eyes, shouting matches and sore spots, but it worked.
Kiryu settled on, “It’s different,” which was true. He looked up and Majima was watching him, his face open and appraising.
“Tell me you ain’t fallin’ for the kid,” he said slowly. “Gimme that, at least.”
Kiryu shook his head. “No. No. It’s… complicated.”
“No shit.”
He managed a smile. “Are you jealous?”
Majima sucked his teeth and looked away. “Of some greasy twink with a stable fulla daddy issues? Perish the thought.”
Kiryu rested his elbows on his knees and leaned in. “It’s different than with you,” he said again. Majima waved his hand at him.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Kiryu reached out, turned his face towards him and kissed him. He hesitated in his surprise, then melted into him. He kissed slow and lazy, fisting a hand in Kiryu’s shirt to pull him closer and make him lift off the table. Kiryu curled a hand around the back of his neck and let him. He didn’t know when things with Majima had become easy, but they had. Familiar and disarming. It snuck up on him.
Majima leaned back and tugged on Kiryu’s shirt. “I ain’t gonna compete for ya, Kaz,” he said, low and hard, “and if you’re tryina make me, we got real different ideas about what this thing is we got goin’ on.”
“I’m not,” Kiryu said. He felt dizzy. This was as close as they ever got to talking about it and it made his palms sweat. “It’s not like that.”
“You’re damn right it ain’t.”
Kiryu wanted to kiss him again. He still had his hand around his nape and his skin burned under his palm. He watched Majima’s gaze flick to his mouth and back up. He started trying to calculate what time he had to wake up at and how late he could stay awake and still be ready for tomorrow.
Majima went tch and gave him a little push. He sat back on the coffee table, their knees knocking together. Majima got his smokes out, offered Kiryu one and lit it for him.
“Ya gonna fuck him?” he asked, sucking on his smoke. Kiryu was ashamed of the long silence that preceded his answer, and then, of his answer.
“I hope not.”
Majima laughed. “You poor bastard.”
“I know.”
“Ya realize you can just… not have sex with him?”
Kiryu looked away. “Yeah.”
“Ya don’t seem so sure.”
“He’s… persuasive.”
“Yeah, ’cause ya spent half your teens and twenties lettin’ Young Master lead you around the city by the nose. Tough to untangle that.”
“I don’t think that’s right.”
“I think it’s got somethin’ to do with it. You’re big into that duty and obligation shit, ya know? Ya pretend it’s not like that, ’cause he’s a grown man and whatever, but I feel like he’s still the boss’s kid in your head. Despite, ya know. Everything.” Majima leaned forward and tapped his smoke onto an ashtray by Kiryu’s hip. “Quit sittin’ on the table like a fuckin’ idiot, get over here.”
He scooted over and Kiryu smiled and sat next to him. His arm over the back of the couch was snug against the back of Kiryu’s shoulders.
“You’re a surprisingly good listener,” Kiryu said. Majima snorted.
“Ya misunderstand. I ain’t tryina help. If I had my way? I hope ya ream the kid to within an inch of his life, then never call him again. He’s an oversized brat. Needs a shot of reality.”
“That’s… fair.”
“An’ I hope it blows up in your face too, so ya get knocked down a peg for having the stones to fuck a twenty-year-old, ya dog.”
“I think he’s thirty.”
“Semantics. But he’s lucky he takes after his ma, I’ll give him that. Old man Dojima was a toad, and he’s…” He paused. Kiryu watched him struggle with the compliment. “...He’s got something goin’ for him.”
Daigo was indisputably pretty. Majima’s inability to say so was a testament to that.
“He’s kind of handsome,” Kiryu offered. Majima curled his lip.
“If ya like that slimy tweaker type of look, I guess.” He stubbed out his smoke. “If ya fool around with him and I see him again, I’m gonna ask him how he liked takin’ my ride for a spin.”
“Don’t.”
“He should know the score! I can’t have him thinkin’ he planted the first flag! Put the first footsteps on the goddamn moon!”
“I’m the moon?”
“Don’t read too much into it.”
Kiryu smiled. He pushed his luck past the boundaries of what him and Majima had established to date and cupped his face, running his thumb over his cheek.
“You’re not being very cool.”
Majima swatted him away. “Says the guy gearin’ up to fuck his little brother.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You’re disgusting, ya freak.”
He ducked under Majima’s hand and kissed him. Majima made a soft sound in his throat and kissed him back, let him press him back against the arm of the couch.
“So—my plan,” Kiryu said, and Majima laughed against his mouth.
“What about it? You lookin’ to back outta the contract? Refinance?”
“I should get perks, I think. For being such a good customer.”
Majima pulled off his gloves and buried his hands in his hair.
“Yeah? Add on a couple features?”
“That thing about holding hands sounded pretty good. Can I get that for free?”
“I gotta talk to my manager and get back to ya. But I wouldn’t worry about it, the guy’s a fuckin’ sap.”
“I know.”
The past day and a half had been a whirlwind made worse by the confusion with Daigo, and he craved stability. Majima wasn’t that, but he was close. The glossy press of his eyepatch under his eye was familiar and he had never kissed anyone often enough to have any part of it become familiar before. Something that felt dangerously close to comfort tugged at his chest and he promised himself, quietly and without expecting much, that he’d let himself investigate it when all this was over.
—
He left Majima’s an hour later with a spring in his step, a tired, pleasant ache in his muscles and a sense of optimism, the last of which disappeared when his phone rang during his walk back to the motel and Daigo’s name was on his call display.
He considered not answering, but there was a chance that it was about something serious. He picked up.
“Hello?”
“Kiryu?”
He didn’t sound particularly panicked. That was either very good or very bad.
“What’s going on?”
There was a long, long pause. Too long to be unintentional.
“I’ve been trying to answer that,” Daigo said.
Kiryu stopped walking. He was at a crosswalk and he stepped away from the curb and pressed his back to a telephone pole. “This is about—”
“You kissed me.”
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”
“You kissed me!”
“You kissed me!” he shouted. A woman crossing the street jumped in shock and hurried away.
“You kissed me back!” Daigo hissed through the phone. “You liked it. You coulda beat the shit out of me for it and you didn’t.”
“So repay that favour by never talking about it again.”
Daigo made an indescribable, frustrated sound.
“You can’t let me get so close and expect me to just ignore it, I’m not— You let me grab your fucking dick, I’m supposed to just pretend you didn’t?”
“That’s my plan.”
“Being a fucking coward isn’t a plan. What are you so scared of?”
“It’s not scared, it’s—” Kiryu ran a hand through his hair. “You, uh, have a crush. I understand. I get it. But you can’t—”
Daigo’s voice changed somehow, like he moved closer to the phone or into another room.
“Don’t say crush like it’s fucking harmless. I just got done beating off so many times I thought I was gonna die—”
“You—”
“No, shut up. I was thinking about you and your mouth and your fucking hands on me, and I couldn’t stop coming. That kiss, man, you can’t tell me you don’t want to know where that goes.”
Kiryu had such a tight grip on his phone that his knuckles ached.
“You’re wasted. Hang up.”
“No, I wanna talk about this.”
“You think you want to talk about this.”
“You know better than me what I want?”
“This is a bad idea.” Kiryu shifted his phone against his ear. “Whatever you’re doing—whatever you think this is—it’s not. Whatever you think it’s going to be, it’s not.”
“You think this is easy?” Daigo spat. “You think I want this? I’d have better luck seducing fucking—fuckin’ Kashiwagi than I would getting you to—” He cut himself off and growled in frustration. “I just—you’re—my whole life, I’ve been—”
“I’m going to do you another favour and pretend this call never happened,” Kiryu said. “Drink some water. Sober up. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
Daigo made some vague, exasperated noise as his vitriol burned away. “How long do you think you can keep ignoring me for?”
It was a good question. Kiryu turned it over in his head.
“As long as I can.”
There was silence on the other end. The shhff shfff of a jacket.
“So then what happens when you can’t?”
It was Kiryu’s turn to pause. He could hear his pulse thundering in his ears.
“Go to bed, Daigo,” he said, and hung up.
—
To Daigo’s credit, he was smart enough not to say anything about it when they met at the train station the following day and Kiryu was surprised he showed up at all. He hoisted an overnight bag onto his shoulder, shoved his hands into the pockets of his massive jacket and petulantly refused to meet Kiryu’s gaze. He talked sparingly on the train and nursed his hangover with an unbroken stream of coffee and cigarettes. Kiryu thought it would be too petty to not sit next to him, so he did, and their knees only knocked together once. Daigo’s jacket was too thick for their arms to touch.
They split up quickly once they reached Sotenbori, Kiryu eager to clear his head, Daigo evidently looking to stew in his own. Everything after that was a whirlwind. He met Goda Ryuji, which seemed more like cosmic intervention than coincidence, and watched with hundreds of other people as the Millennium Tower blew up on the big screen over and over again. He stumbled back to the hotel in a daze. By the time he was in the elevator he had twelve texts, one from Daigo and eleven from other people.
you hear what happened?
The hallway carpet hushed his footsteps. He pulled his room key from his pocket and listened as he passed Daigo’s room; quiet. His own was a few doors down. He went in, flicked on the light and thumped onto the bed before texting Daigo back.
Yes. Going to sleep
we’re not going back?
There’s nothing we could do. Rest up
The inaction felt wrong but gallivanting back to Kamurocho in the dead of night and leaving behind their business with the Omi Alliance wasn’t going to help anyone. Kiryu dropped his phone on the bed, hung his jacket over the back of a chair and unbuttoned his shirt. He watched his hands and noticed again the angry flash of his split knuckle from the night before, and thought again of Daigo. He lay on the bed, too wired to sleep, and let his thoughts jump from the clan back home to Daigo, Majima, the sonic boom of shattering glass, Goda Ryuji’s slicked-back hair, Majima’s quip about holding hands, coming in his mouth on the shitty couch in his office, the curve of Daigo’s ass under his palm, the screams of people standing at the foot of the tower, Ryuji’s voice like rolling thunder, reeking of blood.
When there was a soft knock at the door, he knew it wasn’t a dozen armed Go-Ryu men. He expected Daigo and that’s what he got. He knew he’d have better odds against the Go-Ryu.
Daigo slouched in the hallway with a feigned casual air.
“Hullo.”
He was clean-shaven, his hair was damp and he smelled like the hotel soap. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, or shoes.
Kiryu went, “Hm,” and stared down at him. Daigo shifted his weight back and forth, let his eyes flick clandestine over Kiryu’s bare chest and back up to his face.
“You busy?”
“I’m going to sleep. You should, too.”
“I wanna talk.”
“About the—”
“Not the bombing.”
He didn’t need to explain what the other thing was. Kiryu tensed.
“That’s a bad idea.”
In that moment, he felt how he imagined ancient generals felt defending their castles from raids. The threshold between the hallway and his hotel room was the last line of defense between him and certain death. Or, a kind of death. Defeat.
Then Daigo said, “Please. C’mon.”
He sounded small and genuine and Kiryu felt his last bastion crumble. He rubbed his chin, cast his eyes down and stepped out of the way, motioning for Daigo to enter with a jerk of his head. Daigo all but clicked his heels together as he walked in. Kiryu caught his smile as he turned to shut the door behind him and got the sinking feeling that he’d been played.
Daigo sauntered into the middle of the room and looked around. “Your boyfriend know you’re here?”
“Yes,” Kiryu snapped. And then: “He’s not my boyfriend.”
Daigo was already smirking at him.
“Too slow.”
Kiryu put his shirt back on under Daigo’s disapproving gaze. He sat on the end of the bed as Daigo lowered himself into the desk chair, leaned back and laced his hands over his stomach. He seemed to be waiting for something. Kiryu frowned.
“You wanted to talk,” he tried. Daigo shrugged.
“I was waiting to see if you had anything to say.”
Kiryu was a bundle of nerves. When he closed his eyes he saw the Millennium Tower erupt in heat and light and pressure, again. He saw Daigo’s freckles and spit-wet lips in the low light of an alley.
“No,” he lied.
Daigo set his knees a little wider.
“Okay. Well, you fight stuff, as a rule. That’s what you do.”
Kiryu couldn’t argue. “Okay.”
“Right. So, I wanna see what it’d take you to do more than that. When it becomes worth it for you.”
Kiryu burned with embarrassment. It was foreign and uncomfortable and felt like choking, and it made him angry because anger was something he could fight about.
He said, “We talked on the phone.”
Daigo waved his hand. “Sure. You told me I had a crush, I said ‘beat off’ a million times and embarrassed the hell out myself. But we didn’t get anywhere.”
“How can you think about sex at a time like this?”
It was the first time either of them had said sex so plainly.
“Call it a distraction,” Daigo said. “Creature comforts.”
Kiryu felt like he had exited his body, pins and needles pricking where he’d left it behind. There was Daigo in the hotel room’s one ugly chair. Himself perched on the bed, his straight spine betraying discomfort. He didn’t know how to relax. He only knew how to be confident when he genuinely felt confident, which was most of the time, but Daigo made him question himself.
He started running his thumb methodically over the chair’s lacquered wooden arm, back and forth. He was watching Kiryu closely, like there was something he was waiting for. He shifted his weight into his toes, then back down. Splayed out some more.
“But seriously. Do you want to?”
Kiryu swallowed a lump in his throat. “What I want doesn’t matter.”
Daigo looked genuinely puzzled. “What else is there?”
“Everything. The clan. Your mother.” He grimaced. “Patricide. It’s a mess.”
Daigo grunted noncommittally. They looked at each other for a few long, difficult seconds, and eventually he said, “So you do want me.”
Kiryu closed his eyes and sighed. “You’re not listening.”
“I’m listening plenty. You said there’s other shit in play, but you didn’t say no. A regular guy woulda said no.”
“You’re the son of a chairman, how do you not understand duty? I can’t. There’s a history there. We—”
“You’re not a family man anymore, remember?” Daigo tipped his chin up. “You forget that a lot for someone who doesn’t wanna get back into the life.”
“Everything I am, I owe to the Tojo Clan. You don’t get to leave that behind, civilian or not.” Kiryu rubbed his neck to have something to do with his hands. “I watched you grow up. Obviously I have… some kind of… Uh, you’re…” Kiryu aborted about five different sentences. Daigo wasn’t his friend. He wasn’t his brother. They hadn’t interacted with any frequency since Daigo was a mean, gawky teenager oozing with hormones and untapped potential. He wanted to see the man Daigo would become, and he wanted it to be a good one. However he wanted to categorize it, he had a deep affection for him and a respect for him that was just starting to grow beyond obligatory family ties. He saw friendship in their future, even if they weren’t there yet. He couldn’t imagine telling him any of that. “You’re important,” he said finally, feeling stupid. Daigo gave him a dumb little smile.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t read too much into it.”
Daigo stood up and plucked Kiryu’s cigarettes off the top of a dresser.
“Can I smoke in here?”
“No.”
He lit a smoke. He tossed the pack at Kiryu, who caught it and whipped it back at him. It bounced off his arm. He ignored it and walked lazily to one end of the room and then back, smoking and pacing.
“I was lying when I said everyone knows about you and Majima-san, by the way.”
Kiryu was surprised by the relief that washed over him. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I just, you know. What’s that saying?” He took a long drag on his smoke and said in English, “Game recognize game.”
Kiryu didn’t get it, but he understood the sentiment. “You’re bluffing.”
“Nah, I just know what it looks like when two guys wanna fuck each other. But that’s something you know from experience. Most people wouldn’t catch on.”
Kiryu was deeply uncomfortable at the thought that anyone could know anything about him, especially about Majima. He was good at hiding it—he knew he was—but if Daigo could know, so could others, and if they knew, they could end him. They could end Majima, too; it was like Haruka getting kidnapped, except it could cut both ways. Caring about anyone was a weakness and Kiryu had two people he cared about, maybe three if you counted Daigo, plus a weak but vast network of others, dead and alive. That was already too many.
Daigo stood a few paces away, watching him. Kiryu looked back. Daigo wasn’t strictly handsome but there was something deeply enigmatic about him, something that made a vulnerable thing in Kiryu’s core ring like a struck bell.
Daigo said, “Must be lonely, being so tough. If you wanna stay tough, nobody gets to know anything about you.”
Kiryu waited for the clear, perfect a-ha! moment in himself when his infallible moral compass told him what was right. Daigo took a step closer, looking up at him, wary like he was approaching a predator. It still wasn’t clear. It didn’t feel good or bad, just a not-unpleasant mix of both. The adrenaline rush felt like falling and he stood up from the bed in the hopes of regaining ground. Daigo looked him over.
“I’m not asking you to move mountains. Or even fix anything.” He was right in front of him. He reached out and crushed his cigarette into the tray on the nightstand without taking his eyes off Kiryu’s face. “I just wanna do something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, with a guy I respect.”
Kiryu swallowed hard. His wheels were spinning out. He was so, so tired.
“You don’t tell anyone. If this gets out, the entire—”
“It won’t.” He could see Daigo’s eyes gleam as he understood, tension and lust and energy rolling under his skin. He was like a magnet, a lightning rod, and Kiryu was drawn to him. “It’s just you and me.”
He ran his hands up Kiryu’s chest, nearly too light for him to feel, and Kiryu closed his palm around the side of his neck. He spoke slowly and let every word drip with gravity.
“I have made—so—many—mistakes, Daigo.” He slid his hand downwards and fisted it in the front of his shirt. He couldn’t keep the desperation out of his tone and hoped it pleaded his case. “Don’t make this another one.”
Daigo was already leaning in. “Got it.”
He let him press his lips to his and every nerve in his body started singing. Daigo tipped his head, pushed closer, slid his tongue against Kiryu’s lower lip. Mint and smoke and no whiskey. Their lips parted long enough that he heard him whisper shit and suck in a panicked, excited breath before he kissed him again. He twisted his fist and yanked him closer and he groaned low and perfect in the back of his throat, melted his body against Kiryu’s, gave in. There was something powerful in making someone so prickly and obstinate turn to puddy in your hands. He ran his hand down Kiryu’s arm and squeezed his bicep hard, slid over the swell of his forearm. Kiryu felt his chest shudder.
“You’d better not be fucking with me,” he said against Kiryu’s mouth. Kiryu made a vaguely negative noise and kissed him again, closed a hand around his hip and tugged. “I swear, if you—”
“You could stop talking and find out.”
Daigo kissed him so hard he nearly shoved him over. His movements were manic and fast, as if he were trying to cram everything into the time before Kiryu inevitably changed his mind, his hands gripping his sides, digging into his back, fumbling with his belt. He sat him on the bed and when he made him lie back, he went willingly.
Daigo climbed on top of him and the force and urgency felt too much like a fight; his instincts kicked in and he grabbed Daigo’s shoulder, snatched and rolled until he was on top and slammed him back into the bed. Daigo choked as the air got knocked out of his lungs and Kiryu jammed a leg between his, not gently.
He slapped his hands on Kiryu’s face and held on. Kiryu went still. The face below his was an anchor in an unfamiliar port. His breath burned in his lungs.
“Easy,” Daigo rasped. “Let’s play nice.”
Kiryu’s heart was beating so fast it hurt. He let Daigo pull him down, ground his hips into him when Daigo rutted against him. He thought it might feel like a weird, sick favour, but it didn’t. It would have been easier if it did. Each roll of his hips made heat lick up his belly and each time Daigo nipped his lip he wanted to bite him back. Daigo got his shirt open and let his hands roam hungry over his bare chest and up his back. Kiryu sat back to push his shirt off and Daigo stared up at him where he knelt over his thighs. He ran a hand down his stomach.
“Shit, I’d better look like you when I’m your age.”
His face was flushed and it looked good on him. Kiryu lowered back down and Daigo’s hand slid over his hip and the swell of his ass. He grazed his teeth against his jaw, pressed his open mouth to Daigo’s throat and felt his hips push helplessly upwards.
“You’re into it,” Daigo breathed.
Kiryu slid his mouth down his throat and spoke with his lips on his skin. “You didn’t think I would be?”
Daigo tipped his head back. His breath stuttered and his hand tightened on Kiryu’s ass, the other curled around his muscled forearm.
“Thought you’d be—” He broke off when Kiryu bit him. “—cold.”
“Mm.”
“Obligatory.”
Kiryu ran a hand down the flat of his stomach and felt his muscles tense. His fingertips dipped below his waistband.
“I don’t do things I don’t like,” he said quietly. Daigo was holding his breath. He worked his belt free and Daigo went silent, only a soft sound of surprise escaping him when Kiryu slid a hand into his briefs. He was already hard and useless flattery registered somewhere in Kiryu’s brain. Daigo let out a shaky breath.
“How do you see this going?”
Kiryu wrapped his fingers around him and felt him buck up into his hand. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“No judgement?”
“None.”
He squeezed him in his fist and Daigo sighed.
“I want you to fuck me so hard I can’t stand.”
He said it like it was nothing and Kiryu didn’t know what to do with it any more than he ever knew what to do with Daigo. He kissed him because it felt like he should and he suppressed the part of himself that wanted to say that’s irresponsible, we have a lot to do tomorrow. Daigo tore at his pants and he pushed Daigo’s shirt up under his arms, letting his hands roam over the expanse of his chest. His body was slim and almost soft, brown nipples and a dusting of chest hair, and it clearly belonged to someone who used to care about it and currently didn’t. He wasn’t unattractive. Kiryu couldn’t tell if he was overconfident or under-confident because if you were good enough at lying, they looked the same, and Daigo was.
Daigo stared at him like he was… something. He bowed his head as he pulled Daigo’s pants off and chucked them on the floor, and when he looked up, he was still staring.
“Stop it,” he said, feeling childish. Daigo propped up on his arms.
“What do you mean, stop it? We’re doing this, aren’t we?”
“I…” He didn’t have the words for it. Daigo looked hungry. He looked like he expected something out of this that he wasn’t going to give him, but that couldn’t be right. Daigo tipped his head to the side, ran his hand down his stomach and wrapped his fingers around his own dick. He gave it a couple languid strokes.
“You think too much. C’mere.”
He wasn’t wrong. Kiryu covered his body with his and kissed him, and the press of bare skin was electric. He remembered what Majima said about kissing and still didn’t know what to make of it; it had taken him months to kiss Majima because kissing was something strange and vulnerable. He wanted to seem tough in front of Majima but he didn’t care what Daigo thought of him. They had known each other for so long and since such a young age that it was just one of many dumb, vulnerable things they’d shown one another: Kiryu remembered Daigo as a knock-kneed brat in a school uniform and Daigo remembered Kiryu as a fresh-faced, earnest errand boy, and there weren’t many secrets you could keep after that.
Daigo kissed like he meant it and it was intoxicating. Kiryu’s eyes rolled shut. He slung a leg around his hips and pulled him in, but Kiryu pulled back.
“I don’t have…”
“Check my pants.”
He sat back enough to boggle at him. “You—”
He grabbed Daigo’s rumpled leather pants off the floor and found a string of lubed condoms in one of the pockets.
Daigo said, “I don’t think you’re getting the full scope of I’ve wanted to fuck you my whole life. As if I’d let a fuckin’ condom stop me.”
Kiryu couldn’t decide whether he was horrified or impressed. He tore one open and rolled it on with Daigo petulantly hurrying him the whole time, pulling at him as if there was any closer space to get into. He opened his hips and Kiryu lowered himself down, his forearms framing his head. Facing each other was intimate and he regretted the choice. Daigo’s mouth was swollen and kissed-out and he looked wild and excited and nervous.
Kiryu lined up and said, one last time, “Don’t make me regret this,” his lips moving against his temple. Daigo laughed hoarsely.
“You here to fuck me or tell me a story, old man?”
Kiryu started to push inside him in answer. Daigo’s back arched up and he froze, his nails digging into Kiryu’s arm.
“Oh my God—”
Kiryu pulled out and slid back inside him deeper, again, deeper. Daigo’s spine pulled off the bed like a bowstring. In one more long stroke he was buried inside him and his head spun with nerves and pleasure. He pressed his face into Daigo’s neck to keep from doing or saying something stupid, breathed deep and went still for a moment before he started to move. He didn’t know how much he could take and listened to his breath catch in his throat as he rolled his hips, got nothing but encouragement and thrust harder, rising up to his elbows for leverage. He lost sense of time. Daigo was tight and hungry and drew him in and it was so overwhelmingly good that he couldn’t think and didn’t want to, didn’t want to do anything but buck into the wet heat of the body under his and feel Daigo’s hands claw at his shoulders and drag down his back. It was like being pulled under a river by the current.
Daigo swore and bit back moans and dug his heels into the small of Kiryu’s back. He tipped his head back, Kiryu sucked at his throat and he shuddered.
“Harder.”
“It’ll leave a—”
“Come on.”
He sucked the soft skin of his neck and felt his pulse thunder under his tongue. Daigo twisted and sighed under him and slid a hand between their bodies to palm his own dick. His voice was fast and broken in Kiryu’s ear.
“Shit—I’m gonna come—”
Kiryu pushed up on his hands and thrust faster, harder, and watched as Daigo touched himself, his eyes screwed shut, his shoulders tense and straining, a red-blue mark on his neck where blood had welled to the surface. He felt his body tighten and pulse around him as he started to come and it took every ounce of his self control not to follow him over the edge. His back lifted off the bed as he came, dripping thick over his knuckles. Kiryu slowed his movements and then stopped, and Daigo’s chest heaved.
“Fuck. Fuck.” He curled a hand around the back of Kiryu’s neck and pulled him down, then slid his arms around his shoulders. “Alright.”
Kiryu closed his eyes. He pulsed inside him and Daigo twitched. He could feel his heart racing against his.
Daigo asked, “You wanna bust or give it a sec?”
Kiryu dug his head against his shoulder. “Give it a sec.”
He detangled himself from Daigo’s limbs and pulled out. He sat on the edge of the bed and scrubbed a hand over his face; there were red marks on his arms from Daigo’s hands and nails and he couldn’t get his heart to slow down, which he figured was from more than exertion. He hadn’t expected to feel so awkward afterwards and was sorely disappointed by it.
He looked over his shoulder. Daigo sat up and peeled his sweat-wet shirt off, then starfished in the middle of the bed, wiping idly at his own cum with a corner of the bedspread.
“That was quick,” Kiryu said.
Daigo sighed happily. “That was round one. Gimme a minute.”
Kiryu stood, stretched his hands to the ceiling and made a slow lap of the hotel room; he was still hard and walking around with an erection felt ridiculous. He picked up his smokes off the floor from where he’d thrown them at Daigo earlier and lit one. Daigo made a grabby motion with his hand and he tossed him the pack and lighter, then joined him on the bed. For a few minutes they smoked in an almost tense silence, not that Daigo seemed to notice that it was tense. He rubbed a hand idly over his chest and stomach and stared up at the ceiling or closed his eyes. He tapped his cigarette into a water glass Kiryu had left on the nightstand. Kiryu watched him and was surprised by how deeply he still burned for him, reliving the feeling of being buried inside him, wrapped around him, letting him stroke his hands through his hair. His dick bobbed against his stomach at the thought of it.
Daigo said, “You’re good at that,” and dropped his cigarette butt into the glass of water.
Kiryu said, “Thank you,” and Daigo laughed at him.
“You’re welcome.” He tipped his head back to look up at him. “You do it much?”
“Sometimes.”
Daigo was plainly unimpressed by the brevity but let it slide. He shifted up the bed until he sat next to him, his eyes locked obviously on his hard dick. He touched himself lightly, dragging his fingertips up his length.
“Balls deep and you’re still on lockdown, though. You never really let go.”
Six or eight months ago he would have been right, but, Kiryu thought, it was different now. Drenched in sweat and wrapped around one another, Majima would either not let him come or make him come so many times he was shaking and sobbing, and for those few minutes, his world began and ended at the edges of his bed. He’d never been anywhere else, he’d never done anything else, his face was numb and his body was on fire and he wanted to drop everything he’d ever known and stay twisted in his sheets until the day he died because it was the only thing that made him feel alive. Majima would hang his face over his, watch the play of pleasure and pain over his features and say things that made him burn with a happy sort of embarrassment for days after. Sex had never been important to him before that. He snapped out of it afterwards, but it still happened.
“I do,” Kiryu said finally, turning to look at him. “Just not here.”
Daigo smiled wryly. “Ouch.”
“Nothing personal.”
“Right.”
His skin was flushed and glowing, his hair was pushed back from his face and he looked like a different man than he did that morning when he was morose, gray and hung over. Kiryu reached over him to drop his smoke into the water glass and Daigo trailed his hand down his arm as he did it, and again as he pulled back. It tickled. When he settled back against the headboard, it was close enough that their shoulders touched. He pressed his thumb against the mark he’d left on Daigo’s neck.
“It’s dark.”
Daigo chuckled. “That’s okay.”
He brushed his knuckles against the back of Kiryu’s thigh. Kiryu asked, “Did it make you come?”
Daigo laughed again. “I—yeah. I like that kinda shit, I dunno why.” He slid his hand more obviously down Kiryu’s leg. “It hurts, but like… the right amount.”
“Yeah.”
Kiryu watched Daigo’s hand on him as it moved closer to the crux of his thighs. His breath started to quicken. Daigo scraped his nails lightly over his skin and precum beaded at the tip of his dick. Another laugh.
“Fuck, look at you.” Daigo teased a finger against his slit and he tried not to push up into his hand. “You got no right being this hot.”
Kiryu turned his head and kissed him. He kissed back hard, slid his fist down Kiryu’s length and pressed closer; Kiryu groaned into his mouth and felt his answering sound rumble against him. Daigo trailed his open mouth across his jaw and down his neck and worked him tight and slow in his fist.
“There we go,” Daigo mumbled, moving down his body. “I wanna hear you.”
He slid his tongue over his nipple and Kiryu burned with equal embarrassment and pleasure. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. It was different than with Majima, who was his only frame of reference—Majima talked, snarled, laughed, bit him and told him what to do, wasn’t afraid of asking for what he wanted. With Daigo it was already less fun and more tense, heavy as two decades of absence and disappointment unraveled between them. The false intimacy created by time made Kiryu feel vulnerable and sloppy in a way he hated. Somewhere in his head, Daigo was still the kid he never learned to say no to.
He was so wound up that each time Daigo bit or sucked at him he jolted into his touch, and when he took his dick in his mouth, he melted.
Daigo hummed happily around him and he stared up at the ceiling, too embarrassed to watch. The hotel was old and the crown moulding was cracking away from the wall. Daigo knew what he was doing. The wallpaper was champagne-coloured like an old car. Kiryu covered his face with his hand, then uncovered it. He clenched his hands in the sheets. Daigo swirled his tongue around the head of his dick, and when he bucked up into his mouth, he took him into his throat.
Kiryu dropped his head back against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. “Shit.”
Daigo made another pleased sound, but didn’t stop. Kiryu lifted a hand and hesitated. He slowly brought it down on Daigo’s bobbing head and Daigo groaned around him. He opened his eyes. He could see Daigo’s calves at the end of the bed where he lay in front of him and forced himself to trace his gaze up his naked body. His thighs. His ass clenching as he rubbed off against the bed. The vibrant ink of his tattoo with its golden flames licking up the rolling muscles in his shoulders. His glossy black hair, wide shoulders, his fist dragging to meet his mouth, wet with spit.
Kiryu put a hand against his forehead. “Get up.”
Daigo pulled off him with an obscene pop and propped himself up on his elbows. “That good?”
Kiryu yanked him up and kissed him so hard their teeth hit. Daigo shoved him and laughed and pulled him down, and they scuffled and rolled and tried to pin one another, just shy of violent, and kissed until they tasted blood. Kiryu got Daigo on his stomach with an arm twisted behind his back and one of Kiryu’s knees digging into his thigh. He slid his dick against his ass and braced a hand against the back of his shoulders.
“Like this?” he panted. The specifics of whatever Daigo said were lost in the comforter but he pushed his hips back against Kiryu’s.
Kiryu dug in the sheets for the condoms from earlier and tore open a new packet. His hands were shaking and his head was pounding as he rolled it on. He dragged Daigo to the edge of the bed by his hips and stood, bending him over it. In one slow, tortuous thrust, he was inside him and Daigo sounded like he was dying. His back was heaving. Kiryu pulled out and slid back in and watched him babble, his hands grasping in the sheets, his shoulders shuddering. “Fucking shit—”
It was too much. He grabbed his waist and started hammering into him, his rushing breath a chorus with the slap of their skin and Daigo’s curses and threats and pleas. Daigo met him at every thrust, his feet slipping against the floor for purchase. It was wild and almost callous without the uncertainty of earlier and lust pulled hot in his belly as he drove into him again and again, watched him twist under him and ran his hands down his beautiful back.
He always wondered with a sinking anxiety whether the dragon wrapped around the sword on Daigo’s back was supposed to be him, a weapon for the Dojima family to wield, and felt a strange kind of possessiveness as he looked down at him. He was nearly angry at Daigo for making him do this, for making him want to. He didn’t know whether his own motive was plain lust or worse, a desperate attempt to speed up the repair of a broken relationship. He was mad at Daigo for the way he idolized him for all those years and how it still didn’t make him a better man in the end, and he was desperate to shape even a small part of his future the way he wanted it. Some sad, tiny part of him thought: if I show him this one night of kindness and affection, he’ll be better for it. It’ll fix him. He knew it wasn’t true, but it made him feel better.
Daigo’s whole body got tight and his hands tore at the sheets. “Oh, Christ—”
He shoved his hips desperately against the bed and came again. Kiryu bowed over him and curled an arm around his head and another around his shoulders. He spoke with his lips behind his ear, his chest pressed to Daigo’s back.
“Hold on.”
The stop-and-go and long denial of earlier was tough to unknot no matter how hard he fucked him and he kept his arms around him to hold him in place. His thighs ached and Daigo sobbed in pleasure, reached back for him and dug his fingers into his nape. He was dizzy with need, maybe regret, shame, a dozen other things, and as he thrust into him again and again on that final stretch, he couldn’t stop thinking:
Why are you doing this?
Who are you doing this for?
He didn’t want it to end because he didn’t want to examine it, but he was so close his hands were shaking. When he came it knocked the life out of him and wrung him out until he was done—this perfect, unbearable thing.
His heart kicked a bass drum in his ears. Daigo was panting and hung his head and Kiryu tucked his face into the crook of his neck. His forearm was still curled around his head and he buried a hand in his hair. Daigo squeezed the back of his neck.
“Holy shit.”
There was no inch of them that wasn’t touching and the intimacy was heavy and oppressive. They stayed plastered together for almost a minute, catching their breath and feeling the other’s heartbeat thump off-kilter with their own. Then Daigo pushed up onto his elbows and nudged him off. Kiryu staggered to his feet and shucked the condom. Daigo rolled onto his back, still breathing hard. His chest and stomach were criss-crossed with red marks from being pushed into the sheets. He stared up at the ceiling and Kiryu stared down at him.
Who are you doing this for?
Post-sex minutiae followed; Daigo disappeared into the washroom, Kiryu lit a smoke and sat against the headboard on the drier half of the bed. When Daigo returned, he said nothing. He sat next to Kiryu, who passed him his smokes. The longer their silence stretched, the worse it got, until it was so bad Kiryu couldn’t stand it.
“You feel okay?”
Daigo waved his hand. “No damage.”
Kiryu turned his head to look at him. Daigo did the same. His face was tense like he was back to being guarded, as if he could sense Kiryu’s regret. He realized he probably wasn’t hiding it very well.
Daigo reached out and brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. He let him, even though it made his stomach flip. His hand fell back into his lap.
“Thanks,” he said. Short and sharp.
Kiryu didn’t want it to end so stilted. He fluffed one of the pillows, lay down and propped it behind his head, and after a moment, Daigo followed suit. He lay a little closer than he had been. After another minute, his cigarette butt joined the others bobbing in the water glass on the nightstand and he ran a hand through his hair and laughed.
“Fuck, what do you say after that?”
Kiryu smiled down at his hands. “I don’t know.”
“I want a drink. Shit, I want a drink.”
“It’s late.”
“I know, I know. Gimme another smoke.”
Kiryu passed him his smokes and after that it was a little easier, the silence more companionable. He thought he could make it work.
Daigo said, “Alright, I’m only gonna get at this one more time, but—how long have you been with Mad Dog?”
“I’m not—”
“—and I’m not a fuckin’ idiot. Come on”
Kiryu could feel his gaze burning into the side of his face. He blew a smoke ring up towards the ceiling, a trick Majima taught him. He wasn’t very good at it.
“Since I got out,” he confessed quietly. “About a year.”
Been with was generous but he didn’t correct him, and he had a hunch they had very different definitions of being with someone. Daigo said nothing for a long time and Kiryu dropped his smoke into the glass and watched Daigo dig his foot absentmindedly in the sheets.
Eventually, Daigo said, “That’s a long time.”
“I guess.”
Then, with all his habitual grace, he asked, “Are you gay?”
Kiryu sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “That kind of thing doesn’t matter to me.” He glanced at Daigo from under his palm. “It matters to you?”
Daigo’s sigh matched the tiredness of his own.
“I gotta put a kid in somebody,” he said, flippant. He stretched his arms above his head. “Should probably have a son.”
Kiryu understood a few key metrics of being someone’s son in the way Kazama raised him, but there were some he’d never understand. The concept of lineage was one of them. Kazama was his father, Nishiki was his brother, and that’s what was important. He didn’t think Kazama ever cared about him passing on his bloodline because they never shared one in the first place, and he wondered what kind of very different conversations Daigo and Yayoi had about that.
Grimly, he remembered Yayoi. He thought ahead to when he’d inevitably have to look her in the eye after this.
“I guess,” he said. Not helpful.
Daigo’s foot was touching his. He didn’t pull away.
Daigo went, “Hey.”
“Hm?”
“Let me see your back.”
His voice was quiet and hesitant, like he was embarrassed. Kiryu couldn’t read his expression.
“Why?”
“I’ve never really got a good look. Might as well take the opportunity while I’ve got you naked.”
Kiryu hesitated, then rolled onto his stomach with his arms folded under his head. Daigo sat up and looked down at him.
“Shit. That’s some linework.”
“Mm.”
He ran his hand across Kiryu’s shoulders, tentative at first, then bolder. He spoke slow and disjointed, as if to himself.
“It’s like… there’s the Kiryu who took me bowling when I was ten, and there’s the Dragon of Dojima. The family friend and the… guy who went to jail.” His fingers brushed over the expanse of his back, tracing the dragon’s sinuous spine. “Took a while for them to become the same. If they ever did.”
Kiryu was quiet for a while. Daigo’s hand was colder than his skin and slid further down to where the dragon’s claws and tail curled over his ass. He closed his eyes and rested his head on his folded arm.
“You couldn’t tell the difference, or you weren’t looking for it?” he mumbled. “I remember taking you bowling. There was that one time a guy came at you and I slammed his face into the ball return.”
“That was you being Kiryu.”
“He didn’t get up.” He turned half around. “I—”
Daigo kissed him. In the absence of sex, it was slow and almost tender, and Kiryu kissed back without thinking much of it. Daigo’s hand was splayed in the middle of his back and his body curled over his, his chest pressed to his shoulder blades. His skin smelled like cigarettes and aftershave. He half expected him to go for another round, even though it was so late it was becoming early, but he pulled back with this unbearable gentleness and that was that. He lay down again and Kiryu turned over.
“Your back is one of the best I’ve ever seen,” Kiryu said. “Makes sense. A Dojima.”
“Yeah.”
One last silence spun between them. With the heady tension of lust abated, all he could think about is the enormity of what they’d done and how it would define their relationship going forward. Based on everything he knew about Daigo, he didn’t seem like a man who forgave or forgot, for better or for worse.
“What’s Majima’s like? I’ve never seen it.”
“His ink?”
“Yeah.”
Just like when Daigo had first barged into his hotel room, Kiryu’s stomach sunk with apprehension. The feeling was a looming you are not going to like this.
“Why do you keep asking about him?”
“Morbid curiosity. Humour me.”
Kiryu sighed.
“It’s… in the centre of his back, it’s a big hannya, with parted hair and gold teeth.” He moved a hand idly in the air in front of him as he spoke, tracing the imaginary whorls of Majima’s tattoo. “And all down to the backs of his legs and up to his neck, these black waves, and cherry blossoms. And then over his arms, onto his chest, he’s got these snakes.” He patted his chest where the heads of Majima’s twin snakes rested.
“Goes over his ass?”
“Yeah.”
Daigo shuddered. “Never envied those guys. Worse than yours.”
Kiryu could see Majima’s ink as clearly as if it were in front of him. There was a blossom that rested perfectly at the crest of his ass that he’d pressed his lips to more times than he could count. He liked the sharp seam down his side that divided the tattooed skin of his back and the unblemished skin of his front. He liked the way a couple scars cut through the ink as if the artist missed a spot.
Daigo said, “I got no idea what you see in that guy.”
It didn’t carry the levity Kiryu expected. Not a playful jab.
He asked himself what he saw in Majima often and never got a clear answer. He was exciting, brave, quick, terrifying and maybe not smart, but no stupider than himself. He had a big heart that he hid very, very well. He found him excruciatingly handsome despite all available evidence and he loved the way he moved; he’d never met someone so ridiculously at home in their own body, his mind and his form in perfect unison and always twisting, rolling, touching, kicking, stabbing, lunging, a perpetual motion machine of a man. He was exhausting. He was nerve wracking. He gave otherworldly head. Kiryu felt brighter when he was around him, like a lamp on a cranked-up dimmer switch, which he figured probably meant that he was happy.
He said, “Have you ever just… known?”
Daigo sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, snagged his shirt with his toe and flung it up into his hands. He pulled it back on. It was tight across his shoulders and stuck to sweat in the small of his back. He didn’t turn around.
“I thought I did.”
Kiryu froze. Everything started to go slow.
“Uh. You mean…”
“Don’t make me say it,” Daigo spat. “I wanna walk out of here with a shred of dignity, thanks.”
The realization hit Kiryu like a train.
You missed every single sign.
Daigo flirting so ardently at the bar, the way he looked at him when he undressed him, the constant kissing, waxing poetic about his back, slurring over the phone my whole life, I—
He corrected himself.
You ignored every single sign.
Daigo stalked around the bed to find his briefs and struggled to yank his pants on. Watching him felt like running downhill too fast to stop, digging his heels in and only stumbling harder. The damage had already been done and there was no going back.
He tried to figure out why he’d done it, as if that would help anything; he was horny, he was mad at him, he wanted to see if he could return the feelings, he wanted to prove that he could think about someone other than Majima. Part of him knew from the jump that Daigo wasn’t messing around, or as tough as he acted, but he thought he was being kind by ignoring it. In reality, it was nothing but pure thoughtlessness and another failed attempt to read him.
Daigo picked up the last condom packet they never used and, thinking better of it, threw it back down. He snatched Kiryu’s smokes off the bed as he stormed by and nearly crumpled the pack in his fist before shoving it into his pocket like a consolation prize. Kiryu started to get off the bed, still naked, not sure what he was going to do when he was standing. Daigo was already at the door and the last few seconds he had to fix things were slipping through his fingers.
“Daigo…”
“What?” he snapped, looking back over his shoulder.
Kiryu could feel his face scrunching up into something full of pity and he couldn’t stop it.
“I told you. This isn’t—wasn’t—like that.”
He knew it was the wrong thing to say the second it was out of his mouth. Daigo snarled at him.
“Great! You told me! Thanks for the clarification, you’re a saint.” He tore open the door and stepped out into the hallway. “I’ve been nuts about you since I was fourteen, and you fucking knew it, too.”
He slammed the door so hard it rung in Kiryu’s ears. He had one knee on the bed and one foot on the floor like he was going to spring off and run after him, but he stayed perched there, frozen. Down the hall, Daigo’s door slammed like a delayed echo.
He heard Majima’s voice so clearly that he must have spoken the same words in person, and Kiryu had no doubt that he did.
You’re so bad at this.
He fell backwards onto the bed and dropped an arm over his eyes. He felt sorry for himself for two minutes, then dragged his feet into the shower. The dissipated adrenaline made his muscles weak and rubbery and the shower head shot out water like needles. He thought about worse things than Daigo to put everything in perspective—the family office going up in flames, Terada lying dead in government custody somewhere, Haruka holed up at Sunflower again while he went off and did his bad-boy bullshit—and he felt like garbage, but in a way that was more easily measured. In the end, it was just one more thing he had to put right.