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“Sleepy?” Kyouji peers up at him at an angle, gaze flicking from him towards the bed behind them.
“Not really…” The last thing he needs is to prolong this by Kyouji thinking he needs a nap, or something.
Kyouji gives a little hum as a response, cheek rubbing back against the fabric of Satomi’s pants.
Tether, pickedaxe
Satomi’s legs—particularly the one that Kyouji is resting his head on—have gone past pins-and-needles. Sensation has re-emerged into this dull, heavy ache that radiates from hip to ankle. Satomi shifts as much as he can in the chair, but, tied up, this amounts to the tiniest bit of hip wriggling and foot twisting.
He’s careful because he doesn’t want to jostle Kyouji either—for whatever reason, Kyouji is acting like a slug recovering from being salted; he’s practically oozing into a puddle on the floor, clutching onto Satomi to hold onto his shape. Maybe he’s just full. Satomi’s never seen him eat this much food in one sitting before (which isn’t saying much); mouthful after mouthful, eyes fixed on Satomi more than on his spoon. Satomi feels kind of weirded out but also sorry for him if he’s feeling sick.
A moment later, Satomi mentally kicks himself because hold on for a second: there’s no reason for Satomi to care about Kyouji's comfort right now. Kyouji isn't the one tied to a chair in a weird room.
Right. Maybe he should try to kick Kyouji instead? It feels like the ropes have loosened just enough. If he tipped as much weight as he could against the back of the chair, he'd probably manage to tilt the chair back again…
It might work. It might smash Satomi’s head in when the chair tips over, but it might also finally tell Kyouji that Satomi is like. Serious about not enjoying this and wanting to go home. Kyouji can’t just treat Satomi like a, a wind-up toy for his amusement, and brush off everything Satomi says like Satomi’s just a child making half-hearted complaints about having to go on a school trip. Satomi really does have to go home.
Satomi doesn’t know what he needs to do for Kyouji to take him seriously—just as a person, if not as an adult with fully formed thoughts and feelings. It sucks.
He tests the heel of his feet against the floor. He has a slight bit more range of motion than before. It might work.
Or maybe it might backfire.
At the very back of his overworked hindbrain, there's a palm-sized version of Satomi with a pointer aimed a chalkboard, and the equation on the chalkboard roughly goes like this: if Satomi puts up too much of a fuss, Kyouji might actually take him seriously in deciding he's too much trouble, and then Kyouji will just… stop messaging, stop showing up, and never meet Satomi again. One plus one, two.
But Satomi’s legs are really gonna fall off soon.
“Kyouji-san.” He tries again, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. He doesn’t know what to do.
“Mhm.”
“My legs really hurt.”
Kyouji turns his head, looking up at Satomi from below with that lazy, half-lidded expression. The light from the single bulb in the ceiling catches on his eyelashes.
“Yeah?” He sounds almost absentmindedly drowsy. His mouth is set in this way that’s almost a smile.
Satomi stares at this horrible hair-gelled slug. Did he not hear what Satomi just said? Satomi’s eye twitches. “I can’t feel my toes.”
Kyouji looks down at the ropes for a moment; the loops, the knots between Satomi’s ankles. Satomi can see Kyouji’s expression change a little bit, but he can’t read it at all. Satomi has this sudden, horrific premonition that Kyouji is gonna say something insane like: ohh, let me massage your feet for you Satomi-kun.
“Alright.” Kyouji says. “Let’s move you somewhere more comfortable, then.”
For the first time in ten minutes, Satomi feels hopeful. “You’re going to untie me?”
“Mhm.”
Kyouji pushes himself upright off Satomi’s lap. The abrupt absence of weight is unsettling; the cold of the room rushes in as if to fill the space. He shivers. He’s interrupted in his thoughts by the sounds of an old man groaning and popping his joints. What the… Satomi looks up. Kyouji is stretching, the hem of his shirt riding up to flash a stripe of stomach. Satomi looks right back down at the floor.
His ears feel hot.
Then Kyouji crouches again, fishes something—a knife—out of his suit pocket, and Satomi tenses on instinct before he realizes Kyouji is only cutting the rope around his ankles. The pressure peels away in a hot rush, and Satomi’s feet tingle so hard it hurts.
Kyouji gets to work on some of the ropes around Satomi’s torso too, but it’s only after a few seconds that Satomi realises he isn’t undoing everything—just the stuff keeping Satomi on the chair. His wrists stay bound, connected to the loop around his chest.
“Up you go, Satomi-kun.”
Satomi doesn’t have the time to ask what Kyouji means before big hands are hoisting him up by the armpits—there’s a humiliating moment where Satomi’s feet aren’t even touching the floor, where his weight is fully in Kyouji’s hands and it doesn’t feel like Kyouji is even exerting himself.
Before Satomi can think to loudly protest his rights, he gets set down on the bed. His knees buckle immediately, and he barely keeps himself upright. He wobbles. It’s hard; he can’t really stabilise himself with his hands bound behind his back.
Satomi’s tongue works around how he’s going to tell Kyouji to adjust his glasses too, because they’re like, two millimetres away from falling off his nose now.
He tries his best on his own, tipping his head this way and that, and then he stops when he sees Kyouji taking off his shoes. Satomi goes stock still as Kyouji takes off his suit jacket after that, folding it neatly over the back of the now empty chair. When he rolls up his shirt sleeves, Satomi sees the bottom edge of his irezumi emerge, the tiniest curl of black ink at the inside of Kyouji’s forearm.
“Move over,” Kyouji says.
“Um.” Satomi says. Kind of unnerved, Satomi obediently scoots a couple of inches towards the back wall.
Kyouji sits down beside him. The mattress makes an alarming dip and Satomi has to brace with his bound hands to keep from tipping over. Kyouji makes this little shooing motion and Satomi shuffles further, knees pressed together, until he’s most of the way across the mattress.
For a second, he wonders if he could roll onto the ground and make a break for it.
The prospect of Kyouji catching him easily and then being disappointed with how childish Satomi is acting… Nevermind, it puts Satomi off that idea immediately.
Which is really stupid, because Kyouji is the childish one for kidnapping Satomi, but. You have to roll with the punches you’re given. Or something.
They sit like that for a moment. Satomi looks down at the mattress, feeling immensely awkward. Now that Satomi is up close, he can see it’s been stripped and the bedding replaced recently—he can smell some really strong laundry detergent. And mothballs. Like the sheets were cleaned then folded up and stored in a closet somewhere for a long time. Did Kyouji change the sheets? Where did he get all this red bedding from? Even the pillows up at the head of the bed are red.
The image of Kyouji sleeping with stuff like this at home makes Satomi cringe. The X Japan song plays in the back of his mind.
“You can lie down if you want, Satomi-kun.” Kyouji says.
“I don’t want to lie down.”
“You said you were tired.”
“I didn’t say that. I said my legs hurt.”
They’re starting to hurt more now, actually, all the numbness prickling painfully back to life. As soon as Satomi realises that, the pain hits all at once and he has to shut up to concentrate on not crying again.
Out of the corner of his eye, Satomi notices Kyouji leaning back on his elbows, then going all the way down onto the bed, until he’s flat on his back with his arms folded behind his head.
Kyouji catches Satomi’s eye and grins. “Come here, Satomi-kun.”
“No way.”
“Satomi-kun.”
Kyouji reaches over and catches the hem of Satomi’s shirt, the corner that slipped out of his trousers ages ago, between two fingers. He gives the tiniest little tug. Satomi frowns.
He could pull away, but for some reason he lets himself get pulled down—maybe it’s because his legs are still so tingly; and his back has started aching from sitting straight for so long; and his head does feel kind of heavy; and the contours of the room have become familiar enough that it just feels kind of quiet now instead of eerie and unsettling.
He should have probably calculated what having two tied hands would do to his balance.
He starts falling and tips right into Kyouji. There’s a moment of panic where he scrambles to re-right himself and fails; gravity wins and his shoulder mashes into Kyouji’s ribs. Kyouji rolls onto his side and suddenly there’s a warm arm folding over his waist, pulling him in. His laugh vibrates through Satomi’s chest.
Is this what it’s like being hugged by a bear? Kyouji’s arm is hot as a furnace. Maybe Satomi should play dead. He tries, pretty unsuccessfully, to wriggle away.
Kyouji laughs, low. “Satomi-kun, you’re like a little tipped-over bottle.”
“That’s because you—” Satomi struggles to find the right word for his outrage. He gives up. The bridge of his nose hurts where his glasses are digging into it. He shifts his head so he’s looking at the ceiling instead. “Please move over, Kyouji-san.”
“No way, I’m comfortable here.”
“Please don’t be so comfortable.”
Somehow, more than before, Satomi is hyperaware of every shuffle and jostle and slight motion of the body behind him. Kyouji’s hand—the one not draped loosely over Satomi’s waist—reaches in front of Satomi’s face, plucks Satomi’s glasses right off and folds them one-handed. He deposits Satomi’s glasses to the side.
Behind him, Kyouji exhales. “You’re so skinny.” He says.
“Not really.” Satomi tries not to act as affronted as he feels. “You’re just big.”
For a little while that’s all there is. Satomi listening to his own slowing pulse, to Kyouji’s breathing, to the hum of pipes in the walls. There are mold spots on the wall, creeping up the white plaster. He can feel the warmth of the body behind him, along the whole length of his spine; even where there’s space between them it’s barely an inch of air. Thin enough that Satomi can feel Kyouji’s body heat.
The hand on Satomi’s hip is heavy and warm and broad. Kyouji smells like cigarettes.
Satomi starts wanting to wriggle around and make himself more comfortable, but he also doesn’t want to disturb Kyouji. This train of conscientious thought immediately runs into a dead end when he thinks: wait, no, what if Kyouji is falling asleep? Is Satomi going to just have to lie here? Until Kyouji wakes up? This yakuza guy is just gonna sleep like a baby while Satomi is tied up next to him? The panic comes back all at once.
“Um. Kyouji-san.” Satomi says.
“Mhm?”
Oh good. Kyouji is still awake.
“What’s the, um. What’s the time. I… should really be getting back, Kyouji-san.” He barely bites back the: my mum’s probably missing me. His eyes burn. He wishes he didn’t sound like such a child.
“It’s not that late, around eight?” Kyouji’s hand slides, just a little bit. Up Satomi’s hip, over the dip at his waist. Satomi’s shirt rucks up an inch under the heel of Kyouji’s palm, and the strip of skin above his waistband meets air, and then meets the warm, rough pad of Kyouji’s thumb.
“Kyouji-san.” Satomi says again. He’s trying to sound exasperated, but his voice comes out smaller than he wants it to.
Kyouji’s thumb stays on the bare skin above Satomi’s waistband, drawing a slow lazy stroke back and forth across the same inch of him, like Kyouji isn’t even thinking about it. He probably isn’t.
Well, Satomi is.
Satomi’s stomach keeps jumping under the motion. Muscles contracting, flesh twitching beneath the arc of Kyouji’s thumb. Kyouji doesn’t seem to notice. Kyouji is a stupid, idiotic, thoughtless guy, so of course he doesn’t notice.
“Hm?” Kyouji’s voice is right behind Satomi’s ear now. Satomi can feel Kyouji’s breath, stirring the hair at his temple.
“Your, uh.” There’s no way Satomi is going to be too embarrassed to say it. There’s no way. He forces himself to. “Your thumb.”
“My thumb?” A pause. “Is it ticklish? Sorry, Satomi-kun.”
The motion stops. Satomi exhales. Kyouji’s hand stays right where it is.
Kyouji’s knee bumps the back of his calf and he doesn’t pull that away either; he just settles it there, and now Satomi can feel the long heat of Kyouji’s thigh against the back of his own. It’s like being curled up next to a radiator.
It’s not that bad, Satomi supposes; the room is pretty cold.
Unfortunately, the next thing his brain decides to flag is kind of... Satomi squirms a little. Presses his knees together. Tries not to move his hips too much. He's been needing the bathroom for a little while now, but lying down and staying down has tipped the need from background static to a nagging problem. He shouldn’t have let Kyouji force-feed him all that orange juice.
At least it's only a number one. He can hold it. He could even say something about it—it’s on the tip of his tongue, Kyouji-san, I need the bathroom, and that might actually be the thing that finally gets him untied.
He doesn't say it.
He’s not sure why he doesn’t.
Well. Maybe he does. The reason is just kind of really weird and stupid and too embarrassing to even think at himself, let alone verbalise. Only—Kyouji is also being really weird and stupid today, so. It cancels out. Or something close enough.
There was an article Satomi read once, back when Masami was in his bouldering phase and had pointedly never invited his homebody younger brother along to his climbing gym. Something about how mountain climbers eventually stopped being afraid of falling. Their bodies just got tired of the adrenaline and quit producing it, and after that they could hang off a cliff face the way other people hung laundry. The downside, the article said, was that they also lost the ability to tell when they were actually about to die.
Kyouji’s thumb is still resting warm and motionless above Satomi’s waistband.
Satomi tries to think about something else. He spots the pillows out of the corner of his eye. Neither of them are lying on one. The pillows are shoved up top and out of the way; they’re decorative, red velvet. Satomi wonders if the one he’s looking at is meant to be heart shaped. Now those pillows don’t look like they’ve been washed recently. After a moment, Satomi decides he doesn’t want to ask about it.
It feels weird not being able to see Kyouji’s expression. But the alternative is for Satomi to wriggle his body like a worm and roll over, and then he’d be face to face with Kyouji, which seems like a worse situation than just looking at the out-of-focus wall. Even though he desperately wants to know what face Kyouji is making, what Kyouji is thinking, what’s wrong with Kyouji today—is he going to go back to normal?
If nothing else, at least the hand on his waist is more reassuring than not.
Satomi has a vaguely optimistic thought just then about, wait, his legs are free, maybe he can knee Kyouji in the balls and then make a run for it. It’s a good plan to keep in his back pocket.
He tries not to think about whether his parents have noticed he isn’t home yet. He’s not sure whether he should bring that up with Kyouji again; that at the very least he should text his mum to say he’s having a sleepover or something.
It would be bad if they put out missing notices for Satomi, wouldn’t it? Not that the police do that if you’ve been missing for less than 12 hours. Probably. But if the police get involved and ask absolutely anyone with eyes at Satomi’s school, sooner or later Kyouji’s black Century is going to pop up, and then some kind of convenience store camera footage of Satomi with Kyouji is going to show up with it—and that would be bad for both of them. Wouldn’t it?
The bulb above them keeps humming, and now that Satomi has noticed it, the hum just gets louder the longer he listens.
Behind him, Kyouji shifts. Just a little—an adjustment of weight, a slight roll closer. Satomi feels the front of Kyouji’s shirt press flush along his back, a couple of buttons bumping into his spine.
Kyouji’s breath, which had been slow and even, hitches. Satomi only catches this because he’s been listening to Kyouji breathing for so long by now.
“Kyouji-san?”
Satomi feels like a broken record, saying the same name over and over.
“Mm.” Kyouji’s voice is rougher than before. Maybe it’s lung cancer and the cigarettes are catching up to him. “Yeah?”
Satomi has no idea what he wanted to say.
Kyouji’s hand flexes a little on his hip—Satomi feels the fingers spread out a fraction wider, the heel of Kyouji’s palm pressing in. His nose nudges into the hair at the back of Satomi’s neck. Satomi can feel the warm push of Kyouji’s exhale all the way down his nape, raising every hair there at once.
“…Kyouji-san.” He swallows. Casts around for something to say. “That tickles.”
“Sorry.” Kyouji doesn’t move.
A few seconds later he moves, but only to press his face in a little harder, like he’s trying to muffle something against the back of Satomi’s head. The arm around Satomi’s waist tightens, a brief squeeze that pushes the air out of Satomi’s lungs all at once. Kyouji’s knee, the one bumped up against the back of Satomi’s calf, slides up the line of his thigh by maybe an inch and then stops.
Satomi, reflexively, tries to twist away. Unfortunately the rope around his wrists and chest end up pulling on each other in a weird way and all he manages is to press his back more firmly into Kyouji’s chest. He pushes at Kyouji’s abdomen with his fingers, trying to go for whatever motion the cord will let him make.
Almost immediately Kyouji clamps a hand on his hip, hard enough that Satomi’s eyes sting. That hurts, Satomi’s about to snap, betrayed and furious, but then Kyouji does give Satomi a bit more space, shifting his lower body back.
“Don’t move so much,” Kyouji says. Satomi is a little too upset to care about how strained he sounds.
“You’re the one moving. And my arms hurt too.”
Satomi doesn’t think he manages to hide how close he is to tears with that one. His lip wobbles. He’s glad he isn’t facing Kyouji.
He concentrates on his breathing, because if he dissolves into a wet and blabbering mess again—he's going to, he doesn’t know, he’s going to walk into traffic and reincarnate as an unkillable snapping turtle that follows Kyouji around to bite at his ankles. He hates this. When he was a kid, he used to get himself worked up over the stupidest things too, like his mum packing him the wrong juice for a school trip.
He tells himself he doesn’t give a shit about whatever Kyouji is doing behind him. He does hear Kyouji mutter something, but it’s too low and raspy for Satomi to catch and Satomi doesn’t care for whatever Kyouji is going to say unless Kyouji is about to untie him and put him back in the car and drive them to Karaoke Heaven.
His shoulders are shaking. What's worse is he can still feel Kyouji's breath on the back of his neck—Kyouji does this really big, long exhale that comes out so even and calm Satomi almost flops his roped body around and headbutts him.
Asshole. Jerk.
The arm around Satomi’s waist unfolds. The thumb lifts off his stomach. The heat at his back peels away all at once, a whole side of him suddenly cold.
The mattress creaks. Kyouji is sitting up.
“Kyouji-san?” Satomi says, struggling to move without his hands to help him. Without Satomi’s glasses, Kyouji sitting up is just a tall dark smudge against the lightbulb’s blur. The smudge runs a hand down its face. Its expression is unreadable.
“Stay there a sec, Satomi-kun.”
The mattress springs back as Kyouji’s weight lifts off it.
“Wait—Kyouji-san—” There’s no way Kyouji doesn’t hear the edge of panic in Satomi’s voice, but Kyouji just downright ignores it. He ignores Satomi too. He doesn’t even look at Satomi again as he leaves. The door clicks shut behind him.
Then Kyouji’s footsteps get farther and farther away, until they’re no longer audible.
What.
What the fuck. Satomi sits up properly.
A second passes. Then two. The light on the ceiling hums. Somewhere outside the building, a car drives past and vanishes.
Satomi can hear his own heart in his ears. He can hear his wet, beleaguered breathing too, snotty and uneven and horribly loud in the silence.
Hold on. Satomi’s mind is blank. Did Kyouji just leave him here? Without even untying him? Is he leaving leaving? Is he going to come back? But Kyouji told Satomi to wait.
He counts from one to one hundred to try to calm himself down. He tries to time his exhales to the numbers. One. Two. Three. By ten he’s stopped following his own breathing advice. By thirty he’s not counting so much as saying numbers in his head at random. By… thirty-something, he’s lost the thread entirely, and he’s too busy making himself sick and incandescent with fury.
Kyouji is such an asshole. Kyouji is such an asshole.
Satomi doesn’t even know where he is or how to get home from here. He can’t even put his glasses on because he can’t get out of these stupid ropes.
He counts to one hundred again.
Just as Satomi has finally made his mind to stop hyperventilating and use this chance to get off the bed and make a run for it—because who in their right mind would stay sitting here, waiting to see if they’ve actually been abandoned by their kidnapper—the door finally swings open again.
Kyouji’s hair is wet.
A wire in Satomi’s brain short circuits.
This guy. Did he take a—A shower?—While Satomi was still. There’s no way.
“You asshole.” Satomi says, half shouting.
Kyouji comes closer and Satomi can see a little more clearly now; his hair is wet, but so is his collar. The top button of Kyouji’s shirt is undone; there’s a damp patch going down to his chest, almost, the dark of his irezumi showing through the translucent fabric.
He moves around the bed and crouches by Satomi’s side, eye-level. He looks rueful, apologetic; his mouth is set in that lazy half-smile that Satomi can immediately associate with him being maximally annoying.
“Sorry about that, Satomi-kun.”
Even his voice is back to normal; low, drawling, faintly sleazy.
Satomi stares. All the words in his throat are knocked out of place by the ordinariness of it.
“Alrighty then!” The cheerfulness is back too. “Let’s get you home.”
The knife comes back out of his pocket. Satomi looks down as the cool flat edge of it slips carefully between his wrist and the rope. The blade does a little bit of sawing, and then the cord gives, easy as that—the blood rushes back to his hands in a hot sting. The loop around Satomi’s chest goes next. Kyouji peels the coils off like he’s unwrapping live tuna from a fishing net.
Satomi sits up and rubs at his wrists and refuses to look at Kyouji.
His glasses are pressed back into his hand. He puts them on. The room snaps into focus: the red bedding, the mould creeping up the wall, Kyouji crouched in front of Satomi with his sleeves still rolled to the elbow and the curl of a crane’s feather still showing on his forearm.
“Up you get, Satomi-kun,” Kyouji says, good humoured. He offers Satomi his hand.
Satomi stares at this hand. He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.
Eventually, he gets up on his own. “I can walk.” He mutters.
Kyouji’s hand hovers in the air for just a moment longer. And then he stands up too.
He trails Kyouji back through the two strange rooms, back through the hallway, back to the abandoned-looking alley. It’s nighttime, now. Kyouji opens the passenger door for him, and finally hands him his backpack.
Tether, pickedaxe