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Sappho begins with a sweet apple and ends in infinite hunger. From her inchoate little poem we learn several things about eros. The reach of desire is defined in action: beautiful (in its object), foiled (in its attempt), endless (in time).
—Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay, Anne Carson
The family restaurant was quieter than usual. At 2AM it was always slow, but there were usually stragglers: drunk college kids, either loud or on the verge of passing out; suspicious looking salarymen with noose-like ties loosened or thrown over a shoulder; a couple of weirdos drawing manga until the sun rose.
But tonight it was entirely empty. Just Satomi and the line cook who’s so quiet that Satomi sometimes forgets he’s even there—Satomi struck up conversation with him once, out of politeness, and got such a cold shoulder that it turned him off from ever trying the maneuver again. So, really, it was just Satomi. Just Satomi and the treacherous landscape of his consciousness.
He taps his fingers against his thigh a few times, then takes his phone out. He feels a traitorous lurch of his stomach when he sees a new message, but it’s just from Mana, something about the business class they’re in together. A homework question. He replies with careful fingers on the keypad, taking his time with the distraction. Ends the message with: Do you need any more help?
He waits for a couple minutes but there’s no reply. Then, gritting his teeth, angry at his fingers for their muscle memory, he swipes back to his main message log. Scrolls down. Clicks on a familiar contact.
His own message sits there unanswered:
What are you doing for Christmas?
Sent almost a week ago now. Kyouji usually responds to him within the same day. Even if he’s busy with—whatever it is he does, then maybe it’ll take a couple days, which Satomi understands. It’s not like he’s always a particularly speedy texter himself. But it’s never taken Kyouji this long to reply, not once, or, well, Satomi thinks with rising panic, yes, once, but not since—
No. Satomi takes a deep breath. There’s no reason to think about that anymore. He tries to blink away spots behind his closed eyes, but he can’t get the vague outline of the crumpled car out of his head. The fear. Then those empty years. A twinge of pain hits him, this time physical. He unclenches his hand from where he realizes it’s holding the phone white-knuckle tight.
It’s fine. He’s fine. Probably he’s fine. And anyway—Kyouji had promised.
I’m not gonna die and leave you behind like that, Satomi-kun.
Let Satomi be the first to say that the man has his faults: but he hasn’t broken a promise yet.
So he’ll wait. Satomi’s gotten very good at waiting.
Time passes. Satomi’s mind wanders. He watches a couple from outside the window cross the street hand in hand, gloved in the December cold. They have matching hats, too. It’s tacky in a cute sort of way; nothing Satomi would do, at any rate, but he understands the statement that it makes. No one looking would be able to mistake them for anything other than what they are: lovers.
Satomi bites his tongue. He thinks about uncle. Thinks about dad. He stands there at the counter of the empty restaurant and stares at the black screen of his phone.
He somehow gets through the rest of the shift. Then, in an exhausted daze, he goes back to his apartment and goes to sleep.
Then he wakes up to two things: painfully bright winter sunlight slatting sharp angles onto the tatami, and a notification on his phone.
-
Narita Kyouji 13:14
Is Satomi-kun up for a visit?
-
They meet up in Osaka on Christmas Eve. Satomi brings his piggy bank and a stomach full of violently buzzing bees.
He has a plan; he rehearsed; the pieces fit together—not with ease, but they do fit—within the confines of his own head.
But of course Kyouji flips the script on him before he even gets a word out.
“Do I finally get to meet your family now?” Kyouji asks. He’s dressed formally today, pressed white shirt tucked neatly into those long slacks. Shiny shoes, the ones with the slight heel, as if Kyouji has any need to be taller than he already is. Satomi only registers the question after he looks, after a handful of beats pass.
“What?” Satomi asks. He blinks. “Why would you be meeting my family?”
Kyouji shrugs. They start walking away from the station together. It’s early morning, busy. Sidestepping an errant pedestrian, he says, “Dunno. Thought maybe they’d be curious.”
Satomi feels his mouth do something strange. He says, “They have no idea who you are.”
“Ouch, Satomi-kun,” Kyouji replies with a slight laugh. Maybe a little bruised, but when it comes to Kyouji, who knows. “Though, yeah, maybe that’s for the best.”
Satomi runs his tongue along the row of his bottom teeth. He looks down at the sidewalk and thinks. “If you want to come up with an alternate version of how we met,” he says eventually, “then, I mean. I guess.”
Kyouji hums, looking away. “You never told them about our karaoke lessons?”
Satomi wants to say something like don’t be naïve, but he can’t tell if Kyouji’s making a cynical joke or asking a genuine question. Especially not with his face turned away like that. It’s probably the former, anyway—surely he knows what the optics of that would be. So Satomi just huffs.
Kyouji turns to look back at him. Stares for a while, then says, “Well, it’s alright. Maybe next time.”
Relief and disappointment mingle in Satomi’s chest. Then a stupid flutter of hope as he registers next time. Kyouji telling him in all of these ways that he isn’t going to leave again. Stupid to believe it, maybe, but Satomi still does.
But it reminds him: “Have you been busy?” Satomi asks. Then, their running gag: “Is your boss dead yet?”
Kyouji laughs, shaking his head. “Be patient, Satomi-kun,” he replies. “He’s not even that old.”
“He’s old enough,” Satomi says.
Kyouji gives him a wry smile. Then he continues, “But yeah, it’s been busy. End of year stuff can get hectic. I’m one of the few bastards with a head for numbers, so the boss always ropes me into balancing the books. Like I’m some fucking accountant.” He laughs. “Plus, y’know, everything else I gotta do.”
Why the hell would they not just outsource their accounting? Satomi thinks. God knows there are enough shady CPAs out there. Whatever. He mutters, then, “Are you not allowed to have your phone with you, or?”
Satomi tilts his head up to look up at him, finds Kyouji already looking back. He’s making one of those faces that Satomi loves and hates so much, a knowing, half-smiling thing. The natural red of his mouth like a gash.
He asks, “Did Satomi-kun miss me?”
Annoyance rises up harsh and fast, only half-warranted. This endlessly frustrating man. Can he ever answer a question straightforwardly? Can it for once not get turned around to be about what Satomi’s feeling? What Satomi wants?
Sometimes Kyouji—especially this new Kyouji—feels like nothing more than the outline of a person. Unreal. Just a being for Satomi to project onto, no true feelings of his own. It’s become more than frustrating. Enraging. Incensing. Satomi feels tiny, dormant volcanoes inside him, heating up.
Satomi replies, voice unwavering, “Did Kyouji-san miss me?”
Kyouji stops in the middle of the sidewalk. There are pedestrians all around them, trying to walk around this obstacle of a man. Satomi waits, looks up at him, forces himself not to think about what everyone else is seeing.
Kyouji taps the toe of his shoe against the pavement a couple times, scuffing it. Satomi glances down at the mark; he knows it’ll be gone by the next time they see each other.
Eventually he answers: “Sure I did.”
Casual tone. That same easy half-smile. All of it at odds with the way he had stopped so suddenly. Satomi doesn’t really know what he expected—more than a couple of words in the same tone you’d use with your nephew, maybe—god, don’t think about that—but it’s possible that this is as honest as Kyouji can stand to be, now. Like it’s all coming from behind a plane of bulletproof glass.
At the end of the day, Satomi doesn’t know him as well as he thinks he does. He’s reminded of that fact every single time they meet, and yet. And yet.
Satomi turns around and starts walking again. He feels childish and stupid. His backpack feels somehow heavier than before. Kyouji, after a beat, comes back up to join him. They walk in the same direction, but, even despite his long legs, the entire time: Kyouji remains a half-stride behind.
-
They walk for more than ten minutes before Satomi asks, “Where are we going?”
Kyouji blinks. The empty arms of a maple tree branch out from behind him. “I was following you,” he says.
-
Somehow they end up at Kyouji’s place.
It’s bigger than Satomi had imagined. When he pictured himself in it—which he did only on rare, pathetic occasions, or in dreams—it seemed more like his own apartment. Small, a place for containment, even though he knew that was stupid, considering the yakuza money and Kyouji’s expensive taste. That ruined watch still sits in his locker, in his coworker’s plastic bag, like a symbol of something worse. But Satomi knows that all of this is just the limit of his own imagination. Kyouji’s place doesn’t contain; the emptiness opens itself up; it changes the inhabitants and makes them smaller.
While Satomi uselessly psychoanalyzes inanimate objects, Kyouji gets him a glass of water. Satomi takes it with a mumbled thanks. He wipes a finger against the condensation and feels a distant hunger, like he’d eat if there was food in front of him but it isn’t worth it to ask.
Kyouji sits next to him on the couch, a person-sized gap between them. He has a glass of water too, one that he holds precariously by the rim until he sets it down on the table in front of them.
Satomi, eyes tracking the movement, asks, “You didn’t want a beer or something?”
Kyouji raises an eyebrow. “At ten-thirty in the morning?”
Satomi flushes slightly. “That’s where you draw the line?” he asks.
“You have to draw it somewhere, don’t you?” Kyouji asks. The words land heavier than their innocuity really warrants. “But alcohol isn’t my vice of choice, anyway.”
He shifts, the leather of the couch creaking, to take out a pack of cigarettes from the left pocket of his slacks. Satomi watches his steady hands as he taps one out, as the shape of it is placed between his lips. Then the lighter, that tiny red flame, igniting.
“You should open the window if you’re going to smoke inside,” Satomi says. The apartment didn’t even smell harshly of cigarettes when he walked in, just the same faint traces he can sometimes smell on Kyouji, so clearly he doesn’t always act like an animal by smoking with no ventilation—
“Ah, you’re right,” Kyouji says around the cigarette; Satomi watches as it bobs with the motion. “But it’s so cold. Did you know it might snow?”
Satomi furrows his eyebrows. “No. Really? Here in Osaka?”
Kyouji hums, standing up. “Stranger things have happened,” he says. He walks over to the balcony door, slides it open. There’s a gust of bright cold air that makes Satomi shiver. “You coming?”
Satomi hesitates. Then he follows. Once they’re standing side-by-side at the railing, he says, “You could have just kept the door open. We didn’t actually have to go outside.”
Kyouji shakes his head, taking a drag of the cigarette. “No, Satomi-kun was right. It’s bad to smoke indoors.”
“A lot of people would say it’s bad to smoke in general,” Satomi replies.
Kyouji huffs a laugh; the smoke mingles with his breath in the gray winter air. “That’s true,” he says. “I guess it’s that point about drawing the line again.”
Silence for a while. Satomi watches him take another drag. The smoke burns his lungs, even just secondhand. Hurting without even having. Maybe it would be better to just—
“Can I try?”
Kyouji stutters on an inhale, but he doesn’t choke. He’s too practiced. “Try?” he asks.
“That,” Satomi says. He jerks his chin towards the cigarrette, dangling loosely between Kyouji’s fingers, those sharp, prominent knuckles.
Kyouji’s face stays placid, though his eyes are a little wide. It looks like he debates with himself for a second, but then something loosens in his posture and then he’s holding the half-smoked cig between them. Satomi has a minor debate of his own, but then he just goes for it: tilting his head at an awkward angle so that he can put his lips where Kyouji’s just were, on the wet end of the cigarette that Kyouji still holds in his hand.
He inhales. And then he chokes.
Humiliating, with a violence. His lungs try to expel the foreign substance that he willingly consumed; he arches over the railing with a hand covering his mouth as they fail to do so. Something inside, stuck.
And then he feels Kyouji’s hand, right there in the center of his back as he coughs and coughs.
“You inhaled too deeply, Satomi-kun,” he says. “Sorry, I should have told you. You’re not supposed to take it all inside like that.”
The words ricochet like pinballs inside Satomi’s skull. The pressure of Kyouji’s hand on his back, moving in slow circles, even through the layers of his clothes, makes his head feel fuzzy and strange. Eventually he straightens and Kyouji’s hand falls away. Satomi feels a distant pang in his chest, and then says:
“Let me try again.”
Kyouji’s eyebrows raise. “Really?”
“Really,” Satomi says. “I’ll do it right this time. Just—teach me. Tell me how.”
Kyouji’s eyebrows lower, and so do his eyelids, just a little. He leans more casually against the railing, purses his lips, taps at the cigarette with his forefinger. Looks at Satomi with something kindling in his gaze. His mouth works, and Satomi can see him biting at the sides of his cheeks, but then he just says, “Okay.” And then, more surely: “C’mere.”
Satomi does. They’re standing close enough that Satomi has to tilt his head uncomfortably far up. Then Kyouji raises his hand to Satomi’s mouth.
“I’ll hold it,” Kyouji says. “Just put your lips around it like you did before.”
Satomi's heart beats heavily in his chest as he follows Kyouji’s instructions. The end of the cigarette is still a little damp; a mixture, Satomi thinks with a horrible thrill, of his and Kyouji’s spit. It’s wet and a little warm.
Kyouji says, “Then suck.” Satomi’s pulse kicks so hard he can feel it in his throat. He does, cheeks hollowing a little bit. “Yeah. But gently, Satomi, not like earlier. Slow. Hold it in your mouth for a second.”
Satomi’s head is still fuzzy, his body humming like a live wire. The feel of it makes him dizzy; he tries to do what Kyouji is telling him, but it’s so—he has to hold tight onto the freezing cold railing so that his knees don’t start to buckle. Kyouji’s looking right at him.
“Then you inhale. Slow, slow.” Satomi inhales; Kyouji does it too, like a mirror.
It still hurts, still burns. But this time with less violence. If a forest fire could be kind, Satomi thinks, it would feel just like this.
“There you are,” Kyouji says, quiet. He takes the cigarette away. Then, using that same hand’s thumb, he swipes once, quick, up at Satomi’s cheekbone. It leaves tender heat in its wake, the rosebush bloom of a flush. “Then you can let it go.”
Satomi trembles. He stands there, newly touched, and tries to let it go.
-
Satomi still feels phantom smoke in his lungs for a long time after. A phantom caress on the highest point of his cheek. He buys himself a pack of Kyouji’s brand, later. Standing on his own tiny balcony, he tries to recreate the feeling. It isn’t the same at all. He throws the rest out.
-
But for now it’s still Christmas Eve—the most romantic day of the year, they say. Kyouji asks if he wants to go out for lunch. Satomi thinks about the date, the number of couples they’re going to be surrounded by, and says that he’d rather order in. Kyouji says okie doke, goes to the kitchen to grab a menu, picks up his phone, pays for everything. Satomi sits on his couch and rubs at his chest and watches the shape of Kyouji’s mouth move against the receiver.
He tells himself to get it together. They’ve gone off-script—what happened to his plan? Satomi takes a deep, lingering breath, then reaches towards the floor for his backpack. He digs around inside for his piggy bank. He pulls it out, sets it on the center couch cushion and waits for Kyouji to come back.
When he does, he stops a few paces away. He asks, “What’s that?”
Satomi answers, hand in a tight fist, “It’s a gift.”
Kyouji sits. Satomi explains. It comes out only vaguely like what he rehearsed:
I’m sorry about the tattoo. I know the reminder must be—well—you never roll up your sleeves anymore. And anyway it was my fault, I didn’t teach you properly, or something like that, and then I showed up at the bar and embarrassed both of us and it made the boss think whatever he thought so that he’d put my name on your—even though we were just—whatever we were. It’s not fair for you to have to deal with that forever. So please accept this gift and erase my name from your skin.
Then there’s silence. Kyouji’s just looking at him. Satomi adds, stumbling, “There’s a little extra, um, for the watch I never returned. I lost it somewhere. I hope you can forgive me for that too.”
Satomi waits. Kyouji’s statue-still.
Eventually: “Is this really what you want?”
The question hits him with unexpected cruelty. Satomi bites down on his tongue hard.
This is what Kyouji’s always doing: this false deferral, making it about Satomi, when all of it is really just because Kyouji’s too afraid—to take the first step, to say anything true, to take responsibility for once. Giving Satomi these flimsy, ostensible reins. It’s not about what Satomi wants; it never has been. Even if Satomi confessed right now—he knows Kyouji wouldn’t accept it.
So Satomi replies, “Does it matter?”
Kyouji’s face darkens. “What kind of question is that?” he asks. “Of course it does.”
“Really?” Satomi asks. His voice sounds hard even to his own ears.
“Really,” Kyouji repeats firmly. “Satomi-kun, c’mon—”
“So if I told you I wanted… something else, right now, would you listen?”
A beat of silence. Kyouji tilts his head. There’s something undeniably predacious in the movement. He says, “I think that would depend on what you were asking for.” These slow, lingering words.
Satomi says, around the flames in his chest, burning his lungs and his heart, “I think you already know, don’t you?”
Kyouji lets out a breath. He looks at Satomi; Satomi can feel the intent touching him like a physical thing. Then Kyouji turns his gaze away, towards the empty wall.
He says, finally, “I think Satomi-kun might be giving me more credit than I deserve."
That’s always been true—but not now, not with this. Satomi bites at his mouth and replies, “I think Kyouji-san might be acting purposefully obtuse.”
Kyouji makes a noise, an attempt at a laugh. “Do you even know…”
Satomi waits, but Kyouji doesn’t finish his question. Instead, he says, “Satomi-kun, I don’t think I can give you what you’re asking for.”
Satomi’s mouth opens, but then Kyouji adds: “But I like my tattoo. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to keep it.”
A crumpled inturn of Satomi’s eyebrows. That fire in his chest, now at a different pitch; a shocking new kind of pain rises up alongside it. Then it just comes out: “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
Kyouji sighs. “Satomi—”
“Why did you pick me up?” Satomi asks. The question, the one he’s thought about a thousand times over, manifests solidly in the air between them.
“What?” Kyouji asks.
“That first time. At choir. Why were you even there?”
Kyouji looks confused, but he eventually answers: “I got caught in the rain. I ducked into a building, and then I heard singing. It—” He ducks his head, laughs in a bleak sort of way. “I don’t know. I thought it was fate, or something like it.”
Satomi swallows against his ache, looking down at his own small hands. “Why me, then?”
Kyouji, head in a mirrored bow, says, “You had a sweet voice. More than anyone else up there.” A breath. Then: “I didn’t realize it would—”
Satomi’s eyes snap up. “Would what?”
Kyouji pats at his pockets for his box of cigarettes; he quickly seems to realize that he left them on the kitchen counter. He swears quietly and gets up.
Satomi huffs. He stands up and follows. The flighty bastard can try to escape all he wants—Satomi isn’t stopping this conversation halfway.
In the kitchen: Kyouji’s shaking hands as they tap out a cigarette. Satomi indulges himself in watching for a few seconds, those long fingers, the prominent veins at the wrist, before he asks again, “Would what?”
Kyouji’s eyes cut up—he looks away with a frantic sort of noise, mumbling, “Where the hell is my lighter?”
Again: “Would what, Kyouji-san?”
Take-out menus get scattered all over the counter as he looks. Satomi could tell him that he left the lighter resting on the railing outside on his balcony. He doesn’t. Instead, he opens his mouth to ask, again—
But then Kyouji cuts him off: “I didn’t realize it would end up like this. Okay? What else do you want me to say?” His hand is gripping tight at the counter’s edge.
Satomi looks around the apartment. It’s like right out of a magazine catalogue—there’s nothing of Kyouji in it. Everything about him is contained in the man itself. That means feelings, too, as well as truth. Locked up close. Everything else, Satomi included, is outside.
But he can try to break through. He needs to at least try. “Like this,” Satomi repeats. “So, to you, that means—what?”
Kyouji lifts his head, but he doesn’t look at Satomi; his line of sight goes right past him and through the glass of the balcony doors. Like he’s seeing something that isn’t there anymore: maybe the Satomi from earlier who had followed his directions, who stood close and looked up at him, who used his mouth in the way Kyouji had told him. Like that. Like this.
Satomi purses his lips. There are flames licking up his spine. He won’t even say it. All this time and Kyouji won’t even fucking say it.
“Really?” Satomi asks. “Nothing?”
Kyouji looks back down. His voice is steady again as he says, “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. It wasn’t my intention.”
A beat. Then another. And then the volcano inside Satomi finally erupts.
“You’re such a goddamn coward,” he says. His voice cracks halfway through. “Christ. You really—”
“Satomi-kun—”
“You can’t even—you don’t tell me anything,” Satomi says, “you—you were more honest when I was a kid. I don’t know how you even—”
Kyouji says, cutting him off, “You’re—look, Satomi, back then, it—it didn’t matter,” which is such an absurd thing to say that it actually stuns Satomi into silence for a few seconds.
“It didn’t matter?” Satomi eventually repeats, hearing his voice reach a higher pitch, verging on shrill; it’s ironic, he thinks distantly, the way he almost sounds like his middle school self. “After all that? Are you kidding me?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kyouji says. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
Satomi says, “I don’t know what you mean at all.” Two clenched fists at his sides. “I never do.”
Kyouji’s broad hand comes up to his own face, rubs at the space between his eyebrows, like he has a headache, like Satomi’s hurting him. As if Satomi asked for any of this. As if he asked to be picked up after choir that day in the torrential rain, as if he asked for the passenger seat to be his, as if he asked for those fucking strawberries—as if he wanted his life to be irrevocably changed when he didn’t even realize it was happening.
But it happened. And now here they are, altered.
And then Satomi’s too tired to hold it back.
“I like you,” he says. Scorching, roiling lava, inside and out. “Obviously you already know. But if it’s between neither of us saying it, and one of us, then I’ll say it.”
For a while there’s silence. What little hope Satomi still had drains out of his body, slow, replacing the fire with something cold and hard and terrible.
It might be the worst thing he’s ever felt. Satomi wishes so badly that he could leave. Wishes he never came here in the first place. Wishes he wasn’t so pathetically sentimental—that he could forget what it felt like to be the true center of Kyouji’s attention, if he ever even was, if the fallacy of his childish memory can even be believed.
Satomi used to cry at the drop of a hat back then. He’s stronger now, mostly, or at least better at hiding his weakness, but right now he can’t help it; he feels a tear coalesce right there under his eye, and then it’s falling, and then his entire face is scrunching up like he’s fourteen years old again—
“Hey,” Satomi hears, and then Kyouji is right there in front of him, the whole of him, a full-body thrill every single time, and the knowledge of it makes Satomi start crying properly, these shuddering sobs that he didn’t even know he still had in him, this man, this hurricane of a person that Satomi will never truly have or touch or know, he’s right here, he is, and yet he’s still so far away.
“Hey, Satomi-kun, sweet—” a cut-off, half-spoken tenderness, an awful clench of Satomi’s bleeding heart, “hey, don’t cry, please—”
“Stupid,” Satomi says, not knowing whether he means himself or the man currently wrapping his arms around him, a hug finally reciprocated at what feels like the worst possible moment. Satomi’s glasses get crushed in the embrace, getting wet and probably ruined, just like his ridiculous, fatuous heart as he repeats, “stupid, stupid, so stupid—”
“I know,” Kyouji says, a hand at the nape of Satomi’s neck, fingertips pressing in so soft, “I know, trust me, I know.”
Satomi cries and shakes and cries some more. Kyouji holds him as he weathers the storm. Outside, though he’s unable to see it, it starts to snow.
Kyouji’s chin rests against the top of his head. At some point, Satomi feels a different sort of touch there—Kyouji’s mouth, he thinks, pressure like a kiss.
Or, like so much else, maybe he only imagined it.
-
Kyouji says he should stay for the rest of the day. Or at least a little longer. Satomi wipes his eyes and shoves his heart back into his chest and says that he really should be getting back to his family. Kyouji doesn’t press it.
-
Kyouji doesn’t message him, either.
-
For a long time.
-
And, sure, neither does Satomi, but—the person who got rejected shouldn’t have to reach out first. That’s cruel. Mana agrees with him, and Maruyama nods along too.
He gives up the ‘friend’ ruse, if they even believed it in the first place. They do all of the supportive friend things: telling Satomi that he deserves better, that that old guy was a bastard anyway, really, Okapi, you can do so much better than him—
Lke they would even know; they probably think Kyouji’s some random thirty year old salaryman, not—whatever he is, which, Satomi realizes, would probably prove their point even more, but whenever he feels like elaborating, something stops him.
Kyouji’s not anyone else’s to know. Kyouji’s barely his, and barely even his own. If Satomi doesn’t hold on: what’s left?
-
Satomi still dreams.
They’re made worse with the distance.
Kyouji, already frustratingly made up of parts that Satomi finds devastatingly and disastrously attractive, becomes somehow even more idealized in his subconscious: never a hair out of place, teeth straight and white, a smile like some distant god. But he still has the wrinkles, those crow’s feet. Satomi tries not to think too hard about what that says about him.
Sometimes it’s the karaoke room, and Satomi’s primary emotion is always red-hot fear that morphs into red-hot something else. Sometimes it’s Bar Katsuko, and he can see vividly the Kyouji who had come back from the dead, from Hell, who Satomi had touched the face of to make sure was real. Bruised and a little bloody at the temple and at the mouth. The taste of it always metallic and sweet.
The faint smell of cigarettes that clings to his body in these dreams doesn’t make his nose twitch; no, dream-Satomi takes big lungfuls of it as he presses himself against the side of Kyouji’s neck. His stubble doesn’t prick or itch or do anything other than make Satomi burn hotter. Kyouji touches him and he feels small in the arms of something much bigger, held, desired beyond desire. Monstrous in scale but never in essence. Never in his life has he been touched like that. He doesn’t even know if it’s possible, to be touched like that.
-
An empty chat box. A year passes.
Four seasons. Somehow, a year.
-
Time draws out like a blade. Eventually a message does come.
Narita Kyouji 23:32
I hope you’re doing well.
The words make him seethe. Despite his more rational self knowing that he’s equally responsible for their radio silence over the past year, he curses Kyouji viciously in his head: stupid yakuza, cruel man, disgusting pervert, how dare you gouge my heart out and then wish me well, do you even understand what you’ve done to me? You said you didn’t back then, but do you now? Do you regret it, Kyouji-san, do you even care at all?
Forget care: If I asked, would you even give me the courtesy of a real answer?
-
Satomi already knows there’s no use.
But in dreams—
-
Satomi never replies to Kyouji’s message. Instead, he goes to concerts.
The noise and the crowd begin to grow on him; it’s easier, that way, to not think about anything else. Satomi gets really into this group called Bizarre World. They can barely fill up a tiny venue, but Satomi likes them—likes the way the harshness of the discordant guitars all fuzz together into something else, likes the way he only understands the vocalist half the time, likes the way the guitarist with the short hair looks when he’s concentrating.
One night, maybe Satomi’s fourth or fifth time seeing them, after the band packs up and the crowd mostly files out and Satomi runs out of reasons to linger, the guitarist comes up to him.
“I see you in the crowd a lot,” he says to Satomi, drink in hand. He’s taller, up close. “You big into shoegaze?”
“Is that what it’s called?” Satomi asks. It’s a genuine question, but the guy laughs like he’s told a joke.
“Yeah, man,” he says, amused. His little huffs of laughter slowly trail off. The purple light of the venue douses him in some vague unreality. He looks Satomi up and down. “Or are you into something else?”
Oh, Satomi thinks. Then: alright. Might as well.
The guy—Akira, he learns, though he didn’t ask—takes him back to his place. It’s a tiny studio not dissimilar to Satomi’s own, with similarly thin walls; he can hear music coming from somewhere above or below.
They make out for a while on his couch. It is, for all intents and purposes, Satomi’s first kiss. It’s alright. Satomi’s mind wanders, during, picturing a different couch, a different sort of weight above him.
Then he hears: “Can I ask you something?” Satomi nods, tries to reorient himself, to remember where he really is. “How old are you?”
Satomi replies, “Nineteen.” He doesn’t think it matters much; the guy probably just wants to know whether he has to keep using formal language, but then Satomi hears him suck in a breath through his teeth. He frowns. “What?”
“I’m twenty-five,” he says. A slightly awkward wince as he repositions himself, so that his dick isn’t pressing so insistently into Satomi’s thigh. “So, I mean, if you’re uncomfortable…”
Satomi has to bite down hard on his tongue so as to not laugh aloud. Twenty-five. Uncomfortable. The universe is an absurd, unbearable place.
“No,” Satomi says, leaning back up to attach their mouths again. “I seriously don’t care at all.”
-
Half a year is spent with distractions of that nature. Mostly guys, a few girls just to see. It’s all pretty much just okay. He doesn’t feel as mature as he thought he would. Doesn’t feel changed. Instead an emptiness grows. No matter what he does, there’s something missing. There’s always somebody missing.
-
Satomi turns twenty on a Friday.
His friends want to go out drinking; Satomi would rather stay in, but he owes it to them to go along with it. He hasn’t been an ideal friend lately, what with the hook-ups and the distance and then the full-body depression when he realized it was all fruitless, impossible, because every single time in bed he just ends up thinking about him instead—and then now, trying to be well-adjusted when he just isn’t, when all he wants is to be a regular person, a boy who can relate to his peers, just, normal, a boy to whom none of this ever happened—
Happy birthday, Oka Satomi, he tells himself. Welcome to the rest of your life.
So he goes out. He drinks. The dark wood paneling of the bar reminds him of being fourteen, of a voice-ruining rendition of Kurenai, of men brought back to life. He drinks some more. The bartender looks to be about Kyouji’s age; the button-up he’s wearing is open almost halfway down his chest. Satomi stares at him for a while, but when the man sidles up to him with arms crossed as he leans against the countertop, a leering grin and a mouth about to speak, Satomi feels a wave of nausea so strong it almost knocks him over. When he goes to the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror, he barely recognizes himself.
At some point he goes home—or more accurately, he is brought home. Mana, his lovely friend, stronger than she looks in so many ways, walking in step with him as he leans his weight against her. The dark, brisk air around them, colder than it should be for April. It almost feels like winter.
They reach his doorstep. He turns, smelling her sweet perfume. He mumbles, “I should have fallen in love with you instead.”
Satomi hears her let out a small laugh. A beep, a latch unlocking. “Let’s get you to bed,” she says.
Then, somehow, he’s in bed. The door shuts with a click. The streetlights from outside his window make his shadowy apartment look haunted. Satomi feels it. Haunted.
But he’s alone. The sheer truth of it settles between the knobs of his spine. Satomi cries for the first time in a long time, silently, face pressed hard against something soft. Somehow, eventually, sleep wraps him up in the empty arms of its branches.
A relief: he doesn’t dream.
-
Satomi wakes up and feels an acute sense of deja vu even before he checks his phone. But there, a notification in the harsh glare of the morning sun:
Narita Kyouji 23:32
Does Satomi-kun want to attend a funeral with me?
-
The boss is dead. Kyouji’s boss is dead.
Satomi doesn’t actually attend the funeral, because why would he, but the gesture is…
Satomi thinks about it all the way to Osaka, that next week, frustrated at his acquiescence, his willingness to come despite it all: What am I even doing? Is there really space for me in Kyouji’s life now? Am I still willing to try, after everything? Has Kyouji ever even—
Until the day you don’t need me anymore, Kyouji had said. Satomi has spent the last two years trying not to need him, not reaching out because reaching out would have felt like a defeat; a consolation prize, those dinners where they talk around anything real, where they don’t touch. The way Kyouji holds him at arm’s length, the way he smiles like the distance is something honorable.
Perhaps for someone else it would be. But Satomi has never been that person. Not at fourteen, and especially not now.
So maybe it’s futile to even think about a world in which he doesn’t come. Just like how it’s impossible to think of his life without Kyouji in it at all—there’s no going back, no making up for it, no forgetting. There’s just now. There’s just this.
-
New spring air like the caress of a thumb on Satomi’s face as he steps off the train. He walks, smelling the bloom of unseen flowers. He turns a corner. And there, leaning against a pillar, broad and handsome as ever in his full suit, is Narita Kyouji.
Satomi walks towards him, burning-red heart in his throat.
“Hey there, stranger,” Kyouji says. “You been staying out of trouble? It’s been a long time, y’know. I really missed you a whole lot—”
Satomi shoves him; he budges only barely, laughing suddenly in such an unrestrained way that Satomi is immediately transported back to the karaoke room, to the Kyouji that he thought may have been lost for good, suddenly—again, again—brought back to life.
It’s that younger Satomi who speaks: “What the hell is wrong with you,” he says, trying to shove him again, feeling juvenile and stupid and wrong-footed. All of it mixed with those terrifying early stirrings of joy.
Kyouji just keeps laughing. His face scrunched up with mirth, eyes sparkling, his slightly crooked canine cutting into his lower lip. It’s—it makes Satomi feel like—
“What’s so funny.” Satomi tries and fails to sound stern; he should be upset, he should be cursing Kyouji out, but he can’t explain how oddly thoughtless he feels in his presence, light, like maybe finally soon he can just let it go and—
Kyouji says, “I missed you, Satomi-kun.” He reaches, holds one of Satomi’s wrists in a loose fist. “Did you miss me, too?”
Satomi breathes in. Secondhand smoke and the clarity of spring. His head is spinning, but there’s only ever been one answer to that question, through all of it, even the worst parts. Half a decade of his life, stained crimson by an artless hand. A hand that, now, holds onto him like it matters whether or not he stays. A hand that might let go again, a darker part of his mind reminds him, but right now Satomi’s just—
He says yes. Yes, he missed him. And then he shoves Kyouji again, who actually stumbles this time, and then Satomi’s burgeoning joy bubbles up and boils over and then he’s laughing too, they’re laughing together, right there in the middle of the station.
-
They go to Kyouji’s place again. This time there are boxes everywhere.
“Careful,” Kyouji says, right as Satomi stumbles and trips over an errant piece of cardboard.
“Thank you,” Satomi replies, deadpan. One of Kyouji’s wry smiles. Satomi looks around the room. He asks, “You’re moving?”
Kyouji replies, “Yeah. Next week. This is one of the old man’s buildings. I’d rather go somewhere else.”
Satomi stares at the blankness of the walls. It makes sense, he realizes. He doesn’t know why he never thought that might’ve been the case before, that the bleak emptiness wasn’t necessarily Kyouji’s own will. But the four caging walls of this place still dampen his joy from the station. Things feel solid and more real in here, in a way that makes his earlier levity feel suddenly very far away.
And the vivid sense memory of what happened here last time, crawling up Satomi’s spine like so many spiders—that isn’t helping, either.
Satomi asks, swallowing, “Are you going to stay in Osaka?”
Kyouji hums. He moves a box from the couch so that there’s room to sit. “No,” he says. He’s not looking at Satomi as he speaks. Then: “I thought Tokyo might be a nice place to start over.”
Satomi stares.
Kyouji sits down. He looks up at him, still halfway across the room. “Would that be okay?” he asks.
“Why are you asking me,” Satomi replies. Hope’s golden buzz, like dangerous wasps in his sternum. “Tokyo’s a big city.”
“It is,” Kyouji says. He taps at his knee a couple times. “But it’s where you are, too.”
Satomi looks down at the floor. He can still viscerally feel what it had been like to stand here and sob in the circle of Kyouji’s arms, how immature and unwanted he had felt. And now Kyouji’s acting like it never happened, like the two years of near-radio silence had been nothing. Maybe, to him, they had been.
But now he’s asking Satomi for something, in his roundabout way. It’s not enough. It’s not enough at all, how could it be, not after Kyouji—
“You left me alone,” Satomi says.
There’s silence.
“You said you wouldn’t,” Satomi continues. That burning feeling again, his insides raw and bruise-tender. “Not again. But you did.”
Kyouji takes a breath. His dark eyebrows are turned inwards. Eventually he says, “I thought you didn’t need me anymore.” His hand now wrapped around his own knee. The bone of his wrist.
“That’s a terrible excuse,” Satomi says. “Try again.”
Kyouji leans back against the couch. He took his suit jacket off when they came in, but his shirtsleeves are still cuffed at the wrist; Satomi’s subconscious does what it’s good at, which is imagining the ink that hides beneath the pressed fabric, his name in that tacky font, an indelible mark. Satomi stares and stares, like if he looks hard enough, maybe it could somehow magically come into lucid focus.
Eventually Kyouji says, “I wasn’t going to drag you down into that world with me. I’ve told you that. The boss, he was…” He lets out a long rush of air. “It doesn’t matter now. But it was no place for you, okay?”
It’s a better one, but it’s still an excuse. It’s still Kyouji pretending to follow Satomi’s lead while controlling everything behind the scenes. But that part about—
“Did your boss hurt you?”
Kyouji’s eyes cut up to meet his. There’s something blazing there, some fiery unearthing. “We’re yakuza,” he says, sharp. “I got hurt all the time.”
Of course he wouldn’t say anything about it outright. Satomi doesn’t know what he expected: Yes, Satomi-chan, I was young and I got hurt by an older man too, he took advantage of me and now I know all about the cycle of abuse, but no, I’m not like him, except for the equally numerous ways in which I am?
No. That would be absurd.
So it’s a good thing Satomi’s already figured it out.
He walks over to stand in front of Kyouji. Looks down at him, on the couch. Thinks it, feels it, and then just says it:
“You hurt me.”
The words seem to hit Kyouji like a physical blow. His expression is raw, half-torn apart.
“That very first time we met—maybe you were already hurting me then. I don’t really think so, but I don’t know. Maybe I was too young to know.”
He can visibly see the way Kyouji is holding himself together, body tight like he’s taking hit after hit. Half of Satomi wants to tell him it’s okay. The other half says, good.
“But you know what really hurt me? More than anything else?” Satomi asks.
Kyouji looks up at him.
“The fact that you left. Over and over. Even when you were right in front of me, you—you weren’t. Do you know what that feels like?”
“Satomi,” Kyouji says.
It all spills out: “I’m sure you had your reasons. The yakuza thing, my age, whatever. You never touched me once. But it wasn’t honorable like you think. One day you’d look at me like you wanted me more than anything in the world—and the next you’d ask about my studies like I was some kid you were forced to share a meal with. Can you even imagine being on the receiving end of that?”
Their legs are almost touching. Satomi feels, for once, larger than the man beneath him.
“I never once thought it was honorable,” Kyouji says. His eyes are closed.
“You’re right. Maybe none of this should have happened at all. But it did. And the mark it left is going to be there forever. I’ve come to terms with that. Have you?”
Kyouji doesn’t move.
“Open your eyes,” Satomi says. “Look at me.” Then: “Please.”
The heady thrill of Kyouji’s gaze on him, then. His eyes, usually stillwater calm, reflecting crashing tides. In a fitting sort of paradox, the water he finds there only stokes the fire inside Satomi, igniting, burning.
Kyouji’s hand twitches upwards, a half-aborted reaching. They look at each other, and then Satomi puts a knee down on the couch, right in between Kyouji’s spread legs.
“Have you?” Satomi asks again.
“I just want to do what’s best for you,” Kyouji says. His hand twitches again, closer to Satomi’s thigh.
“The time for that has already passed,” Satomi says. He puts more weight onto the couch, leaning slightly forward. “Now you just have to take responsibility. You have to trust that I know what I want.”
There’s a beat of hot, hazy silence. “Yeah?” Kyouji asks. “What does Satomi-kun want?”
“Are you going to listen this time?” Satomi asks. He puts a hand on the cushion behind Kyouji’s back. He’s practically halfway in his lap.
“I’ve always listened,” Kyouji says.
“Semantic bastard,” Satomi mutters. Kyouji slowly starts to grin. The sharp line of it does something awful to Satomi’s brain, which is why he continues with, “Okay. Are you going to obey, then?”
Kyouji looks surprised, and then his grin gets darker and wider. Satomi’s so embarrassed, but if this is what it takes—
“Alright, Satomi-kun,” he says. A hand snakes around his leg, right at the sensitive crook behind his knee. He has to suppress a shiver. “If you really—”
“I want you,” Satomi says, cutting him off. Firm and unambiguous; no more double meanings; enough talking around it, enough, enough.
Kyouji’s hand tightens around his leg. Satomi continues: “And I know you want me too. I like it. I’ve always liked it. It’s the only thing I want. So can you please just get over yourself and—”
With one strong arm around his waist, Kyouji pulls Satomi down properly onto his lap. Satomi’s heart spins, flips.
Kyouji says, “Say ‘please’ again,” right into the shell of Satomi’s ear. He’s so damn annoying, and Satomi tells him so, but then Kyouji’s mouth is pressing into the tender dip right beneath his ear and Satomi lets out a rush of breath that, yeah, okay, maybe sounds a little bit like please.
“Thank you for asking so nicely,” Kyouji says. The heat of his breath against Satomi’s already flaming skin makes him burn even hotter. “I mean it. For being patient, too.”
Satomi’s back arches as Kyouji puts his mouth right on his pulse point. He makes a small noise; Kyouji’s hand tightens around his waist. He’s already getting hard, which would be humiliating if he couldn’t feel Kyouji, too, shifting beneath him.
Satomi pulls away, breathing heavily. Kyouji’s eyebrows furrow a little. His mouth is red. Satomi looks, wants, aches. He replies, “You’re welcome, Kyouji-san.”
Then he leans in to kiss him properly.
It’s so much better than any of Satomi’s other kisses have been, which is really a no-brainer, but the truth of it still shocks him: it feels like he’s never been kissed before, like no other human being has ever even touched him, like he’s being reborn over and over again with every press of Kyouji’s lips, every swipe of tongue, every squeezing grip at his waist.
Satomi can’t really help the way he starts rocking forward; it feels unreal, like his body isn’t even his anymore, the way Kyouji’s other hand is stroking up and down his spine, the way it moves up to thumb at a nipple, Satomi’s entire body shuddering forward at the pleasure of it.
“You’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen, Satomi-kun, fuck,” Kyouji says. “Does it feel good?”
It’s such a stupid question but Satomi nods anyway, because it does, it does, and then Kyouji’s pressing Satomi’s hips down with more force, moving him against the hard line of his own body, and the feeling of it, the look on Kyouji’s face, it’s like every wet dream Satomi’s ever had has come to devastatingly vivid life.
Satomi can feel his glasses slipping down his nose; he hears himself let out a mortifying noise, but Kyouji seems to like it; he starts mumbling nonsense into the space between them as they move: pretty, sweet thing, there you go, you can be loud, just like that.
Satomi keeps wanting to kiss him properly but he can’t, not with the excruciatingly hot verbal assault, and because he can’t keep his own mouth closed for long enough. He keeps breathing tiny whines into Kyouji’s lungs.
It’s too much, it’s not enough. Satomi says, “Touch me.”
Kyouji says, “I am touching you, sweetheart,” but Satomi’s shaking his head, has to bring his own hands down from where they were clutching at Kyouji’s shoulders to fumble at his own waistband.
Through the haze, Satomi sees Kyouji swallow. And then his broad, deft hands are unbuttoning Satomi’s pants and pulling them down, his briefs too, and then Kyouji’s palm is wrapping around him, the warm pressure of it like a brand and a salve at once. Hurting, healing, again and again and again.
“Is this what you wanted?” Kyouji asks him. He spits into his hand, which makes it better, slicker, unbelievably, breathlessly good, burning hot sun in his stomach good, just—perfect—
Satomi, not wanting to be seen as he falls apart, tucks his head into the crook of Kyouji’s neck. There he nods, forehead against Kyouji’s stubble, feeling the sharp prick of it; he thinks, yes, this is it, this and everything else, with you anything, anything at all—
“You feel so good in my hand,” Kyouji says, “you’re the perfect size, just fucking right, god, I can’t believe you’re finally…”
The words, the feeling, all of it—Satomi feels like he’s going to shake apart.
I don’t even know if it’s possible to be touched like that, Satomi had thought to himself once, upon waking up from a dream. Turns out it is. Turns out real life is incomparable to any fantasy, just by the sheer fact of its reality. This is real. Kyouji wants him back. This is real—
“I’m,” Satomi starts, hips jerking forward with such violent need, “Kyouji-san, I’m going to—”
“Yeah,” Kyouji says, “Go ahead, baby, let go.”
Satomi comes like that, in Kyouji’s lap, aching with the white-hot pleasure of it, squirming and moaning and getting Kyouji’s hand and shirt and pant leg all messy. Kyouji’s still talking filth, touching him gently, easing him through it.
Eventually his breathing slows; at some point the room stops spinning.
There’s quiet for a little while. Kyouji’s other hand goes back to stroking up and down his spine. Then he presses a firm kiss to the top of Satomi’s head. There’s no ambiguity to it, not this time. It feels nice enough that Satomi almost says something really stupid. Now’s not the time. It can wait.
Instead, Satomi mumbles, face still pressed into Kyouji’s shoulder, “Sorry.”
Kyouji lets out a breath, a half-laugh. “What does Satomi-kun have to be sorry about?”
“The mess,” Satomi says. He lifts his head a little bit to look down, grimaces at the spot on Kyouji’s dark slacks. Puts a finger to the wetness, feels that sexygross sort of flip in his stomach.
Satomi looks back up. Kyouji’s laughing for real. “I couldn’t care less, sweetheart. Seriously.”
"Yeah," Satomi says. “But I'm a nice kid, remember? I’ll make it up to you anyway."
Kyouji still looks a little disbelieving. That incredulous sort of happiness. Satomi pulls him in and shows him what he means.
-
At some point, Kyouji takes his shirt off. The back tattoo is impressive, even beautiful, but Satomi can’t take his eyes off Kyouji’s forearm. He stares at his given name, dark against Kyouji’s pale skin, for a long time.
Later, he traces it with his fingertips. Even later, he puts his mouth to it.
For now, though, Kyouji asks: “You know how you told me it was forever for you? What I did, the mark I left?”
Satomi nods.
Kyouji says, “Your mark was forever for me, too.” He brushes a thumb against the characters, soft, the same way he touches Satomi. “What else did you think this was?”