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It was a hot, syrupy summer afternoon when the dusty blue sedan loped gently into his drivethrough, the click of its doors opening and closing crisp and clear in the otherwise sleepy suburban neighborhood. Satoru was busy tending to the stove, where a pan of meatballs in blood-red tomato sauce and a pot of spaghetti noodles simmered, just reaching a perfect al dente when his doorbell rang, prompting him to drop the spatula and quickly wipe his hands on the kitchen cloth. As he hurried to the front he checked himself quickly in the hallway mirror, tussling his hair just so, practicing a winning smile. Then he opened the door.
“Higuruma, nice to see you!” Satoru greeted the social worker warmly, extending a hand, but his eyes slipped easily from his sallow face and searched the empty space on either side of him.
“You as well, Satoru.” Higuruma’s handshake was firm, professional. Noting Satoru’s slightly crestfallen expression, he allowed a smile. “Come on, Yuuji. Don’t be afraid,” he reached behind himself and gently coaxed the miniature figure that had been hiding behind his legs to come out.
The boy was still tightly grasping the fabric of Higuruma’s slacks with one hand as he circled around, his wide, uncertain eyes landing on Satoru with apprehension. The top of his rosy head, upon which lay pinned two tiger ears, hardly brushed his hip. Satoru couldn’t help the delighted laugh that left him.
“Hey there, buddy!” He crouched down to his eye level. The movement incurred an alarmed twitch from the boy’s tail, a quick dilation of his pupils. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. You’re gonna be living with me from now on, okay?”
“But I don’t wanna.” Yuuji shook his head quickly, voice pitching to a whine as he looked up at his social worker for rescue. Satoru had expected initial rejection, but it stung at his heart regardless. “Higuruma, I wanna go home. I don’t wanna stay here.”
Higuruma ran a warm hand over the top of the boy’s head to soothe the clawing at his pants. “We talked about this, Yuuji. You can’t go back anymore. Satoru will take great care of you, alright? And I’ll come around every month or so to check up on you.”
Yuuji was still whining, a low, wounded noise which emitted from the back of his throat, when the social worker gently extracted the boy from his leg. Satoru stood up with a satisfied smile and shifted to the side to let him usher the boy over the doorstep. “Are you sure you don’t wanna stay for some dinner, Higuruma? I’ve got a few beers in the fridge, too.”
“I have to get going, unfortunately.” Higuruma gave the devastated boy a last, encouraging smile before he turned back to Satoru, running a hand through his hair with a sigh. “Let me know if there’s any trouble with him. He’s gonna have a hard time adjusting to everything. You have my number.”
“Of course.” Satoru patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I’m certain we’ll do terrifically.”
The door clicked shut just as the sedan’s engine rumbled to life. Yuuji was still standing timidly in the hallway, fidgeting with the black tip of his tail. Satoru wanted desperately to scoop him up into his arms and spin him around and around, to express the ecstatic joy in his heart, but he abstained, not wishing to scare the boy off. Instead he reached out tentatively and pet the soft hair in between his ears with a welcoming smile. “Are you hungry, cutie?”
There was no softening of the expression, no gentle nuzzle into the palm as there had been with Higuruma. But that was an issue to be solved with time, Satoru reasoned. Time they had in abundance, time that suddenly stretched out into a long, inexhaustible highway, calling to his wanderlust.
“Yeah, kinda.” The boy said demurely, glancing up at Satoru then back down to the floor.
“I make some mean spaghetti. Have you ever heard of it before?” At Yuuji’s head shake, the man extended a hand towards him. “It’s real good. Big balls of meat in thick, savory tomato sauce. C’mere, baby, let me show you.”
The boy hesitated only for a moment. Enticed by his description, he put his small hand in Satoru’s and they walked into the kitchen, where his nose worked tirelessly, categorizing scents he’d never encountered before. He sneezed delicately when Satoru crushed more black pepper into the meatballs as a finishing touch, which earned a laugh and another pet.
“Sit up here.” Satoru patted the cushion of the dining room chair after placing two heaping plates of spaghetti on the table. Yuuji, who had been ogling the food over the edge of the mahogany, head craned since he was not tall enough to completely see over it, hurried to obey, scrambling up onto the cushion on his knees and pulling the plate closer to him with an eager lick of his lips.
He grabbed one meatball from the top with his bare hand and took a bite. “It’s really good!” He exclaimed through chews, his eyes lighting up and landing on Satoru, who sat across from him with his chin propped up on a hand.
“I’m glad you like it.” The man idly twirled the fork around in his noodles, circling over and over, but he didn’t take a bite yet. He reached over and wiped away a smear of tomato sauce from the corner of Yuuji’s mouth, a gesture unnoticed in the vigor of his feasting. “How about I make you spaghetti every night? For tomorrow, tomorrow’s tomorrow, tomorrow’s tomorrow’s tomorrow…”
Yuuji giggled at his soft sing-song. “Yeah! I like that. I’d like that a lot!”
Just like that, most of his apprehension had been melted away, by a hot meal, sweet words, the feeling of a full stomach. He became sleepy after having his fill, cracking big yawns that showed off his little baby fangs and the gap where a tooth or two had fallen. He let Satoru guide him to his new bedroom with little complaint, rubbing at his eyes and fighting fruitlessly to stay awake. The mattress dipped ever so slightly under his knobby knees as he clambered inside the covers Satoru held open, and a loose purr escaped his throat as his head hit the feather-soft pillow.
“Goodnight, baby.” Satoru pulled the blanket over his shoulders and rubbed his back under the guise of getting him settled. He lingered in the doorway for a long time, savoring the even rise and fall of his chest, the slackness of his open mouth, the careless arrangement of his limbs. The composition of his face in the moonlight stirred him, and when he left and returned he held a camera typically used for bird watching in the local hills. He snapped a picture, a first captured forever in film. The first of many firsts, each waiting to be captured, savored in his thoughtful hands. The thought pleased him and Satoru went to bed, dreaming of songbirds.
The first few weeks of their cohabitation were a difficult adjustment for Yuuji. It started in the morning, when Satoru caught him attempting to slip through the front door, still somewhere in dreamland. “Need to pee.” He reasoned, his face tight with his aching bladder. He was very averse to the idea of urinating inside of their living place. The toilet mystified him. (“But where does the pee go? Won’t it make the house smell?”) The boy marveled at the way the yellowed water twirled and disappeared into the siphon-jet with a terrible gurgling sound, only to be spit back out clean.
Similarly, household running water was a source of fascination. He stood by the bath tub as Satoru demonstrated how the showerhead worked, and took some fun in snapping the facet on and off in rapid succession. “It’s like I can control a waterfall!”
“Yes, well, you’re going to have to go into the waterfall, Yuuji.” Satoru began, expression exaggerated with faux disgust as he waved a hand in front of his nose. “Because you stink!”
Yuuji’s ears spun backwards in concern, brows pinching upwards. “I do?”
“Yes, you do. Now, I’ll help you shower since it’s your first time, alright?”
The faded t-shirt was slipped off through the boy’s raised arms, baring the soft, faintly rounded tummy, the distinct tan lines on his lithe biceps and collarbone, evidences of a life spent outside sweating under the sun, laughing amidst a woodsy flower field. He shied away when his firm hands landed on the waistband of his shorts and gently pushed them away, the apples of his cheek turning red. “Grandpa said I shouldn’t let strangers see there.”
His heart constricted with how precious the way he said it was. “Grandpa’s right.” Satoru affirmed with a gentle voice, placing a hand on the boy’s arm from where he was crouched before him on the linoleum. “But I’m not a stranger, Yuuji. Do you remember what Higuruma said? I’m your family now.”
“Family?” He was still not quite sure, but he slowly nodded his head, clinging to the warmth of that word, the comfort it promised. “Okay then. You can…”
He smiled. “There we go, baby.” Satoru slid his shorts down, then his briefs, internally reveling in every inch of exposed skin, from his chubby inner thighs to the shy little cock nestled in between. He helped him step into the bathtub and grabbed the showerhead, laughed at the way Yuuji whined when he turned it on over his head. He lathered some shampoo between his palms and began to scrub the boy’s frankly filthy scalp whilst he sat pliantly, back to the edge, toying with a rubber duck he’d found on the wall sill.
Once finished, he wrapped him up in a thick, large towel and hoisted him up into his arms, which elicited a joyous shriek. “There, not so bad, was it?” He teased with a kindly smile, an arm wrapped securely around the boy’s legs.
“No,” Yuuji shook his head with an equally big smile and leaned his head down to sniff at Satoru’s snowy white hair. “I smell the same as you now. Like peaches. Now we’re really like a pack!”
That’s right. Yuuji relied on scents heavily as a hybrid, a whole world of sensory input that Satoru was not privy to. Scent marking likely played a big part in socialization. He felt a pang of inadequacy at having no scent glands to truly mark Yuuji as his, but he supposed the commercial, chemical peach smell would have to suffice.
“Yeah.” He murmured as he walked them to the kitchen. “Like a family.”
There was a certain wild nature to him, a boundless energy that resisted containment. It reminded him of panthers caught in suffocating zoo cages, pacing endlessly back and forth, driven by an innate survival instinct to keep moving, to hunt. Likewise, Yuuji did not do well in idleness.
Satoru had left him in the living room as he spoke to a colleague over the landline for a few minutes, only to drop the phone midway speaking as a loud crash startled him. He found Yuuji wiggling under a fallen bookcase, winded but smiling, clutching victoriously in his hand a rabbit statue from the top shelf.
Since then, he took him on long hikes through nearby mountains to expend that energy, where he often found himself following after the boy’s swift feet as he ran ahead, hopping nimbly between river stones, navigating the maze of tree roots on the ground with ease. He’d lost track of him once. As Satoru began to call through the woods with increasing desperation, a shadow leaped from a tree limb and sent them both tumbling to the ground. “You rascal!” He was angry, yes, but the relief was stronger. He couldn’t help but be swept up in the boy’s infectious laughter, basking in the liveliness of his limbs, the heat of his small body against his chest.
The best part of their day was the winding down. After an afternoon of play Yuuji would become tuckered out, putty in his arms as he inevitably found his way into the man’s lap, the soft drone of the TV and the heartbeat against his cheek lulling the boy to sleep. Endearingly, his tail would wind tight around Satoru’s forearm, making sure of his presence even as he slumbered. His initial shyness had evaporated, and in its place Satoru found an almost obsessive clinginess. The boy rarely slept in his own bedroom anymore, preferring to slip into Satoru’s instead under the intimate cover of night. When he tucked the Yuuji’s head under his chin, a low, rumbling noise would reverberate from his chest into his own, an involuntary admission of love.
A cool August morning, still grey with dawn. Yuuji was still yawning, unused to waking so early, as Satoru guided his arms into the straps of his backpack. School as a concept discontented him (“So we just read books all day? No way!”), but he’d warmed up to it after Satoru explained to him all the new friends he’d make. He was almost sad to part with him, even for a measly schoolday. But alas, he needed to report back to work after his extended leave.
“Be good, alright?” He crouched down to his level, ruffling his already sleep-tussled hair with a faintly melancholic smile. Already, he felt that the boy was growing up too fast. “Come here, give Satoru a goodbye kiss.” He tapped the side of his cheek expectantly.
Yuuji took the bait. “Bye!” He leaned in, and his soft lips smushed against the side of his cheek with an exaggerated mwah, followed by a fit of tinkling giggles, so precious, so sweet, Satoru couldn’t help but close the infinitesimal distance between them again and plant a kiss on his open, laughing mouth.
Immediately, he stilled, caught between shock and play. Satoru capitalized on that interline moment of maleability, where thoughts and assumptions could be molded by a deft hand. “Good boy, Yuuji. Now come on, you’re going to be late.” He said casually, standing and moving towards the door.
Yuuji didn’t move to follow quite yet, a hand raised to his lips, fingers tracing where Satoru had touched. There was a childish confusion in his eyes. “Why’d you kiss me here?”
“Cause we’re family, Yuuji, and I love you.” He let a wounded pout cross his face. “Unless you don’t love me?”
“I do!” Yuuji hurried to amend. “But–” But family don’t kiss there.
“The bus is here, baby. C’mon,” he pivoted, “aren’t you excited?”
Through the opened door Yuuji caught a glimpse of the noisy, bright yellow school bus, and his tiger ears twitched, no doubt catching the squeals of the children inside. The brush of their lips was forgotten as he bounded towards it, and, beaming, he waved enthusiastically at Satoru through the passenger window for as long as he could, until the bus rounded the corner, leaving him to savor the lingering sweetness in his mouth with a fond shake of his head.
The morning kisses became a regular thing, a part of their routine Yuuji adapted to with remarkable pliability despite its initial strangeness. For him it was just something they did, as ordinary as brushing his teeth every morning. For Satoru it was a way to steal some sunshine for the rest of his dim work day, a potent micro-dose of Yuuji to sustain him the 8 hours they were apart.
It was also the opening of the gateway to hell. Satoru prided himself on his self control. Upon his hands he wrapped invisible shackles to not let them stray below the curve of Yuuji’s lower back during their couch cuddles, to keep away from the edge of the boy’s t-shirt where warm skin called like a siren. But they were loosening, slowly corroded by the endearing eagerness with which Yuuji stood on his tip toes and tugged his shirt tie downwards to give him a goodbye kiss each morning.
He was getting desperate. The thrill of toeing the line between parental affection and his filthy desires had worn off, and now he simply felt ravenous, a hunger as vast as the sky. But he adored the boy’s innocence, that charming naivete, too much to risk truly spoiling it.
The solution came to him in the form of a sickly yellow pill bottle. It gleamed like gold in Shoko’s hand. “These will knock you out for sure, if everything else really isn’t working.” She exhaled smoke and tossed the pills to him, pushing off of the plain white hospital wall she had been leaning against. “And again, I never gave it to you.”
“Who even is Doctor Ieri?” Satoru pocketed it with a grin and went on his merry way, whistling a happy tune.
It found permanent residence in his spice cabinet. The first time, that evening, his hands shook as he retrieved the magic bottle and carefully coaxed out one white and blue capsule. On the counter in front of him was Yuuji’s nightly chocolate milk, warm from the microwave. He gingerly twisted the two ends apart, and poured approximately half (he wasn’t crazy enough to use all) of the white substance into the boy’s drink,
He returned to the dining room table, where an array of papers lay scattered, covered in idle doodles, angry scratch-outs, and clumsy, unpracticed numbers. In the center sat Yuuji, cheek to the mahogany, hopelessly defeated by the equation 6 x 7. “Hey there, tiger,” he sat down next to him and gently cupped his little face in his hand, “perk up. I made your favorite.”
His nostrils flared, and his spine shot ramrod straight. “Chocolate milk!”
Satoru watched with rapt attention the way his throat bobbed as he took greedy sips, the flick of pink tongue at the corner of his mouth gathering the last of his treat. His heart was pounding in his ears, so loudly he almost couldn’t hear his own voice, patiently explaining arithmetic as his gaze darted every so often to Yuuji’s face, noting with almost painful excitement the slowing blinks of his eyes, as if his eyelids were sticking together. Inevitably, sweetly, the boy yawned, and his head fell against Satoru’s shoulder. “‘M sleepy.” By the time Satoru dared to look to his side, Yuuji was out like a light.
For a moment he sat there, vibrating inside of his skin. Then, he gently gathered the boy’s lax, doll-like body into his arms and carried him bridal style to his own bedroom, with the dinosaur-themed bedsheets and toys scattered across the floor, one of which gave a protestant squeak as he stepped upon it.
He laid him down on the bed. Suddenly, Satoru felt light-headed looking down upon Yuuji’s serene face, illuminated by soft, silvery moonlight, and he sat down beside him, the mattress dipping under his weight. He trailed a worshipful hand across his cheek, then let it slip downwards, savoring the delicate curve of his neck around which Satoru’s fingers met if circled. Down, down, then up, dragging the hem of his t-shirt northwards, exposing to his fervid eyes the smooth plane of his stomach, the pink, adorable nipples hardening in the cool air. The wave of arousal that washed over him made his head rush. He adjusted himself in his uncomfortably tight jeans with a shaky exhale.
“You’re so pretty, baby,” Satoru murmured to himself as he reached out to toy with one rosy bud, a part of him hoping Yuuji’s subconscious would hear him somehow. “So fucking pretty. God, I want to eat you up.”
He dipped his head downwards and kissed his unresponsive lips, diverging from their chaste morning pecks as his tongue wound into his mouth greedily, committing the shape of his teeth to memory. His other hand tugged the boy’s shorts downwards alongside his briefs, and he groaned as he caught sight of his little cock flushed and leaking against his stomach.
“You really know how to make dad happy.” He remarked with a charmed laugh. He was barely a handful in his palm, and when he stroked his little length the boy’s back arched in his slumber, the faintest of whimpers escaping him as his brows knit together. Growing increasingly impatient, Satoru drew back to wrestle with his belt buckle. He let out a soft moan of relief as he wrapped a hand around his aching cock, dripping pre-come despite not being touched at all. “See what you do to me, tiger?”
Hastily, he wrapped one hand around both of the boy’s ankles and slung them over one of his shoulders. With the other, he directed his length in between the plush fat of his inner thighs, his eyes rolling back as the front of his thighs slapped against Yuuji’s buttocks. “Fuck! God, Yuuji…”
He’d have loved to sink inside of Yuuji’s hole instead, but he knew he’d break the poor thing. That was something to be savored later, preferably with his boy awake and wanting, flowering for him willingly. The vision–Yuuji’s face contorted in pleasure, begging for him sweetly as he sank deep inside him–superimposed over the present, over his innocently tranquil face. It sent him over the edge, and for a moment Satoru’s vision whited out, his hand barely catching himself from crushing Yuuji as he crumpled forward with the force of his orgasm.
He took a few moments to gather himself. When he looked downwards, he saw the boy’s abdomen streaked with pearly strands of cum, some reaching far enough to soil his t-shirt. He sighed at the thought of clean-up, then refocused on the boy’s face with affection. He planted a fatherly kiss upon his forehead. “Good job, baby.”
In the morning, Yuuji awoke none the wiser, tucked against Satoru’s chest. He didn’t notice that his t-shirt had conspicuously changed from the evening. He kissed his dad goodbye at the door and went to school, and the unassuming days of his early childhood rolled onwards, untroubled by the monster that emerged at nighttime.