eyeshield 21 | brief lives
Eyeshield 21 | Sakuraba/Takami | 2000 words | beta'd by kokanshu.
Check tags for warnings. Dedicated to blizzardseason, based on this. Endless thanks to kokanshu for the beta, the computer help, and the whole being-an-island-of-calm-while-I-foamed- at-the-mouth-in-a-corner thing. You rock. ♥
Brief Lives
“Wear your scars with pride,” Ootawara advises him, slurred and ruddy-faced on the fifth time he cracks a ceramic mug by accidentally banging it against the table. His drunkenness is like a mantle: sweeping, corpulent, slightly furred around the edges. He wears it like a king, and good thing, too, because Takami's pretty sure there's a pair of boxers making friends with the koi fish in the ornamental pool outside. The proprietor doesn't object; then again, when it comes to Ootawara, so very few people do.
“Sure,” he says, and smiles, because they won and the sake is good and if there's one thing football had taught him, it's that there's a time and place for everything and this is not it. Ootawara grins and slaps him on the back-hello, crack number six-and what do you know, Takami doesn't even wince that much anymore.
The words still settle leaden-heavy in the pit of his stomach, pressing like a fist into his gut as he joins the team effort of putting Ootawara to bed. He's not easily rattled, but everyone has their buttons-those big, conspicuous monstrosities, painted a jaunty red and placed smack in the middle of the console.
What's there to boast in a bum leg? His scars were not earned in battle, and in any case, he lost. There is grace, and there is grace achieved through hard work, but his case is neither nor and that's the worst, the absolute bottom, because being bad is even worse than being nothing.
On the floor, Ootawara snores, wiped-out and completely eclipsing the futon. Takami steps over his head, perhaps not as carefully as he should, and turns his too-slow footsteps homeward.
*
It's semi-dark outside, late night depression mixing with open windows and the thousand city lights, blended together in a wash of rainbow and coal-grey. There is no real darkness and no real light; the city throws up a sprinkling of multicoloured aurorae which dance on the bottom of the overhanging clouds, like the inside of a decorative Christmas globe. Shake it hard enough and you could almost taste the snow.
He doesn't look at his watch, because the hands would be indecipherable and he refuses to get digital. (It's always the same; six-point-five, six-point five exactly.) The others have already beat it, each to hearth and home, but he accedes to no curfew. He moved out of his parents' house a long time ago and reports to no one except Gunpei. Still, he takes a cab: tomorrow heralds early morning training, just like yesterday and the day before and tomorrow and the day after and the day after and the day after that too-besides, it was getting windy out.
“Use the shortcuts,” he tells the driver, sliding into the back seat. There's not much legroom; his knee digs into the door, frayed upholstery and metal cold against his calf. He can feel it through the jeans-everywhere except the scar, which is neither cool nor hot, just a dead zone on his flesh.
Neither useful nor beautiful. He is 99.35% man and 0.65% a waste of space.
Despite his warning the cabbie gets embroiled in a traffic jam, so he decides, fuck it: pays the fare and steps out into the middle of a six-lane road, cars standing frozen all around him like the most flashy glacial slide on Earth. All the purring engines and honks sound pretty much like Ootawara sleeping, and he's suffused by a distinct sense of déjà vu as he walks, the yellow line playing witness to his roadside march.
*
It's not that he has self-esteem issues (though he does) or that he's uncomfortable in his own skin (though he is) it's just that he never touches that place. Not in the shower, not in bed, not even directly when he's putting on socks. And there's something to be said for personal habits, because Sakuraba doesn't ever either.
He trudges through the lobby door; up the staircase in a steady hut-two pace (training always training harder better faster stronger); his apartment is on the fifth floor, which is regrettable, because he can swear the building gets narrower the further you go up.
Sakuraba, like a well-trained puppy, picked up on Takami's habits and forged them into gospel. He was a very attentive lover, they both were: always in-tune, always receptive, basking in it-but in this case the message was diamond-cut. No man's land. Do not approach.
He opens the door to his flat, cursing a bit at the rusted lock, stumbling and bumping into things with the lights out. Everything is exactly as he left it. Everything is exactly the same and his leg aches like an open bullet wound and he thinks, as he does every night, that one day he'll wake up and there will actually be bloodstains on the carpet.
Sakuraba never touched his scar. Sakuraba was tame, except one day, between one blink and the next, he cut his hair and deepened his frown and his eyes became terracotta-brown like fired clay. Something changed; a thing he couldn't name, despite harbouring suspicions as to being its instigator-and he changed along with it, just a bit, probably in self-defence.
It's this Sakuraba who waits for him when he opens the door to his room, who grabs him by the shirtfront and throws him on the bed with way more strength than he has any right to possess. The new Sakuraba acts with lightning speed: shucks their pants and socks and holds Takami's boxers to his nose, inhaling just a moment before tossing them aside. It's quite possibly one of the most arousing things he's ever seen, and it's all this new Sakuraba's doing.
“What-” but the new Sakuraba doesn't allow room for questions, just pins Takami down, eyes crinkling in mischief. He did leave early that evening, Takami recalls breathlessly, but the thought is overruled by the striking realization that Sakuraba is wearing a White Knights shirt and nothing else and his skin is to unbelievably pale and oh, oh, oh hell.
“Don't move,” Sakuraba whispers, as if the lack of proper lighting, the open door, somehow makes them illicit. Takami doesn't, and Sakuraba shifts his balance, skinned knees rumpling the sheets as he snakes to the foot of the bed. Takami is naked, absolutely naked except for his glasses, which Sakuraba knows he hates to have removed. The hairs on his legs stand on end.
“I waited for you.” It's soft, but Takami hears it even through the constant Tokyo mayhem. “You took your time.”
“Cab got stuck.” He swallows, unexpectedly dry in the mouth. “Traffic.”
“Takami-san shouldn't have given me his keys,” Sakuraba laughs quietly. “I get bored easily, I couldn't stop thinking.”
“Hm?” The air in his room is cold but Sakuraba is warm and his heart is pumping like a steam train-the contrasts are immensely distracting. He blinks.
“I was thinking about Takami-san's legs.” The way he says it is completely straightforward, like a veritable tiger striped in syllables, clawed and smooth as anything. “You have very nice legs, you know.”
“I do?” He doesn't say: no, I don't. This new Sakuraba defies contradictions.
“Mmm, yes. I started about... here.” And there's a palm around his right ankle, warm and confident, then Sakuraba leans down and there's a tongue which, okay, hello, he makes an embarrassing noise.
“Don't move.” This Sakuraba is all sharp edges and a five o'clock shadow as he mouths at the area, wet and too-close to the skin. Takami's toes curl involuntarily; the act does not go unnoticed, and Sakuraba shoots him a look which says simply, Hold on, you have no idea. Takami wishes he could press the heel of his palm below his navel, to quell the rush of heat which flares up there.
Ankle and the skin around his Achilles tendon veritably glowing, his assailant moves upwards, licking against the hair and tracing the contours of his soleus muscles. It's mostly bone and little flesh but Sakuraba makes every inch of him shiver, nerve-ends dancing like the play of reflected lights on the underbellies of the clouds outside. He's used to thinking in medical terms, calcaneus and malleolus and efficient, but Sakuraba's curving teeth make it a little hard to concentrate on anything but-oh, yes, that.
“Ahhh,” he says, because Sakuraba's running his nails up the other calf and making little pleased noises and his cock is starting to get interested. His hips twitch, just a fraction, and he'd kick out of pure reflex except Sakuraba's resting on his leg like some giant cat, lapping at the skin, claws out and lazily at ready. It's maddening and also starting to ache a bit, but that's another part of the new Sakuraba: there are no requests, just enforced orders. He's being pushed in all the right places.
Sakuraba's tongue slides up, kissing at the pressure points, and Takami tries not to squirm like a total girl. If his toes curl any more they'd go the full 360o.
He's all wound up in the nipping and mouthing and doing-that-incredibly-hot-thing-with-the-dragging-of-lips-and-making-obscene-noises, but not enough to miss Sakuraba inching north, neck craning as he bends over Takami's leg, working straight towards the scarring. Takami jerks away, pure self-preservative instinct and social paranoia coming to the fore, but Sakuraba grabs his calf with an iron grip, pinning it down with a thump and literally growling-
“Don't. Move.”
And Takami freezes, not even breathing, coiled up tighter than a thousand metal springs as Sakuraba holds his leg in a vice-grip and licks a long, slow line right across the borders of ground zero.
“Okay, now move,” he purrs, and Takami shudders so hard he nearly falls apart, coming undone by degrees as Sakuraba does it again and again, nipping at that tender spot on the back of his knee and grazing his fingertips across the ridges of raised skin.
He pants so hard he becomes dizzy, cock stiff and throbbing; hypersensitive and low on oxygen like that precious sky-blue moment on Mount Fuji. The highest pass on Earth, he thinks wildly, and knows that this Sakuraba can catch anything thrown at him, can take anything no matter how much Takami gives and gives and gives.
By the time Sakuraba reaches his cock he is already an incoherent, sweaty mess, hips thrusting desperately and glasses all askew. Sakuraba takes one look at his masterpiece, flushed and triumphant, then bends down and takes Takami in his mouth.
He does kick out then, and make a sort of choked nnghh noise, and buck up into Sakuraba's mouth and that gorgeous wet smooth heat-after that, his glasses fall off, and everything goes a bit fuzzy.
*
When he wakes up the morning after, five minutes before the alarm clock, Sakuraba's snoring like a chainsaw into the pillow. He lies stock-still, not moving a muscle, then very carefully reaches up and licks his fingers, once. He snakes his hand down-slowly, slowly-past the hip, the bent knee, and then with infinite care touches the tips of his fingers to the scar.
It feels-strange, but that's just the thing; it feels. He spends a minute just exploring the texture and shape, the bumpy ridges, blurring the old self-inflicted borders. When he glances up, Sakuraba's looking at him with smiling terracotta eyes.
All characters © their respective owners; I claim no right nor profit.
Check tags for warnings. Dedicated to blizzardseason, based on this. Endless thanks to kokanshu for the beta, the computer help, and the whole being-an-island-of-calm-while-I-foamed- at-the-mouth-in-a-corner thing. You rock. ♥
Brief Lives
“Wear your scars with pride,” Ootawara advises him, slurred and ruddy-faced on the fifth time he cracks a ceramic mug by accidentally banging it against the table. His drunkenness is like a mantle: sweeping, corpulent, slightly furred around the edges. He wears it like a king, and good thing, too, because Takami's pretty sure there's a pair of boxers making friends with the koi fish in the ornamental pool outside. The proprietor doesn't object; then again, when it comes to Ootawara, so very few people do.
“Sure,” he says, and smiles, because they won and the sake is good and if there's one thing football had taught him, it's that there's a time and place for everything and this is not it. Ootawara grins and slaps him on the back-hello, crack number six-and what do you know, Takami doesn't even wince that much anymore.
The words still settle leaden-heavy in the pit of his stomach, pressing like a fist into his gut as he joins the team effort of putting Ootawara to bed. He's not easily rattled, but everyone has their buttons-those big, conspicuous monstrosities, painted a jaunty red and placed smack in the middle of the console.
What's there to boast in a bum leg? His scars were not earned in battle, and in any case, he lost. There is grace, and there is grace achieved through hard work, but his case is neither nor and that's the worst, the absolute bottom, because being bad is even worse than being nothing.
On the floor, Ootawara snores, wiped-out and completely eclipsing the futon. Takami steps over his head, perhaps not as carefully as he should, and turns his too-slow footsteps homeward.
*
It's semi-dark outside, late night depression mixing with open windows and the thousand city lights, blended together in a wash of rainbow and coal-grey. There is no real darkness and no real light; the city throws up a sprinkling of multicoloured aurorae which dance on the bottom of the overhanging clouds, like the inside of a decorative Christmas globe. Shake it hard enough and you could almost taste the snow.
He doesn't look at his watch, because the hands would be indecipherable and he refuses to get digital. (It's always the same; six-point-five, six-point five exactly.) The others have already beat it, each to hearth and home, but he accedes to no curfew. He moved out of his parents' house a long time ago and reports to no one except Gunpei. Still, he takes a cab: tomorrow heralds early morning training, just like yesterday and the day before and tomorrow and the day after and the day after and the day after that too-besides, it was getting windy out.
“Use the shortcuts,” he tells the driver, sliding into the back seat. There's not much legroom; his knee digs into the door, frayed upholstery and metal cold against his calf. He can feel it through the jeans-everywhere except the scar, which is neither cool nor hot, just a dead zone on his flesh.
Neither useful nor beautiful. He is 99.35% man and 0.65% a waste of space.
Despite his warning the cabbie gets embroiled in a traffic jam, so he decides, fuck it: pays the fare and steps out into the middle of a six-lane road, cars standing frozen all around him like the most flashy glacial slide on Earth. All the purring engines and honks sound pretty much like Ootawara sleeping, and he's suffused by a distinct sense of déjà vu as he walks, the yellow line playing witness to his roadside march.
*
It's not that he has self-esteem issues (though he does) or that he's uncomfortable in his own skin (though he is) it's just that he never touches that place. Not in the shower, not in bed, not even directly when he's putting on socks. And there's something to be said for personal habits, because Sakuraba doesn't ever either.
He trudges through the lobby door; up the staircase in a steady hut-two pace (training always training harder better faster stronger); his apartment is on the fifth floor, which is regrettable, because he can swear the building gets narrower the further you go up.
Sakuraba, like a well-trained puppy, picked up on Takami's habits and forged them into gospel. He was a very attentive lover, they both were: always in-tune, always receptive, basking in it-but in this case the message was diamond-cut. No man's land. Do not approach.
He opens the door to his flat, cursing a bit at the rusted lock, stumbling and bumping into things with the lights out. Everything is exactly as he left it. Everything is exactly the same and his leg aches like an open bullet wound and he thinks, as he does every night, that one day he'll wake up and there will actually be bloodstains on the carpet.
Sakuraba never touched his scar. Sakuraba was tame, except one day, between one blink and the next, he cut his hair and deepened his frown and his eyes became terracotta-brown like fired clay. Something changed; a thing he couldn't name, despite harbouring suspicions as to being its instigator-and he changed along with it, just a bit, probably in self-defence.
It's this Sakuraba who waits for him when he opens the door to his room, who grabs him by the shirtfront and throws him on the bed with way more strength than he has any right to possess. The new Sakuraba acts with lightning speed: shucks their pants and socks and holds Takami's boxers to his nose, inhaling just a moment before tossing them aside. It's quite possibly one of the most arousing things he's ever seen, and it's all this new Sakuraba's doing.
“What-” but the new Sakuraba doesn't allow room for questions, just pins Takami down, eyes crinkling in mischief. He did leave early that evening, Takami recalls breathlessly, but the thought is overruled by the striking realization that Sakuraba is wearing a White Knights shirt and nothing else and his skin is to unbelievably pale and oh, oh, oh hell.
“Don't move,” Sakuraba whispers, as if the lack of proper lighting, the open door, somehow makes them illicit. Takami doesn't, and Sakuraba shifts his balance, skinned knees rumpling the sheets as he snakes to the foot of the bed. Takami is naked, absolutely naked except for his glasses, which Sakuraba knows he hates to have removed. The hairs on his legs stand on end.
“I waited for you.” It's soft, but Takami hears it even through the constant Tokyo mayhem. “You took your time.”
“Cab got stuck.” He swallows, unexpectedly dry in the mouth. “Traffic.”
“Takami-san shouldn't have given me his keys,” Sakuraba laughs quietly. “I get bored easily, I couldn't stop thinking.”
“Hm?” The air in his room is cold but Sakuraba is warm and his heart is pumping like a steam train-the contrasts are immensely distracting. He blinks.
“I was thinking about Takami-san's legs.” The way he says it is completely straightforward, like a veritable tiger striped in syllables, clawed and smooth as anything. “You have very nice legs, you know.”
“I do?” He doesn't say: no, I don't. This new Sakuraba defies contradictions.
“Mmm, yes. I started about... here.” And there's a palm around his right ankle, warm and confident, then Sakuraba leans down and there's a tongue which, okay, hello, he makes an embarrassing noise.
“Don't move.” This Sakuraba is all sharp edges and a five o'clock shadow as he mouths at the area, wet and too-close to the skin. Takami's toes curl involuntarily; the act does not go unnoticed, and Sakuraba shoots him a look which says simply, Hold on, you have no idea. Takami wishes he could press the heel of his palm below his navel, to quell the rush of heat which flares up there.
Ankle and the skin around his Achilles tendon veritably glowing, his assailant moves upwards, licking against the hair and tracing the contours of his soleus muscles. It's mostly bone and little flesh but Sakuraba makes every inch of him shiver, nerve-ends dancing like the play of reflected lights on the underbellies of the clouds outside. He's used to thinking in medical terms, calcaneus and malleolus and efficient, but Sakuraba's curving teeth make it a little hard to concentrate on anything but-oh, yes, that.
“Ahhh,” he says, because Sakuraba's running his nails up the other calf and making little pleased noises and his cock is starting to get interested. His hips twitch, just a fraction, and he'd kick out of pure reflex except Sakuraba's resting on his leg like some giant cat, lapping at the skin, claws out and lazily at ready. It's maddening and also starting to ache a bit, but that's another part of the new Sakuraba: there are no requests, just enforced orders. He's being pushed in all the right places.
Sakuraba's tongue slides up, kissing at the pressure points, and Takami tries not to squirm like a total girl. If his toes curl any more they'd go the full 360o.
He's all wound up in the nipping and mouthing and doing-that-incredibly-hot-thing-with-the-dragging-of-lips-and-making-obscene-noises, but not enough to miss Sakuraba inching north, neck craning as he bends over Takami's leg, working straight towards the scarring. Takami jerks away, pure self-preservative instinct and social paranoia coming to the fore, but Sakuraba grabs his calf with an iron grip, pinning it down with a thump and literally growling-
“Don't. Move.”
And Takami freezes, not even breathing, coiled up tighter than a thousand metal springs as Sakuraba holds his leg in a vice-grip and licks a long, slow line right across the borders of ground zero.
“Okay, now move,” he purrs, and Takami shudders so hard he nearly falls apart, coming undone by degrees as Sakuraba does it again and again, nipping at that tender spot on the back of his knee and grazing his fingertips across the ridges of raised skin.
He pants so hard he becomes dizzy, cock stiff and throbbing; hypersensitive and low on oxygen like that precious sky-blue moment on Mount Fuji. The highest pass on Earth, he thinks wildly, and knows that this Sakuraba can catch anything thrown at him, can take anything no matter how much Takami gives and gives and gives.
By the time Sakuraba reaches his cock he is already an incoherent, sweaty mess, hips thrusting desperately and glasses all askew. Sakuraba takes one look at his masterpiece, flushed and triumphant, then bends down and takes Takami in his mouth.
He does kick out then, and make a sort of choked nnghh noise, and buck up into Sakuraba's mouth and that gorgeous wet smooth heat-after that, his glasses fall off, and everything goes a bit fuzzy.
*
When he wakes up the morning after, five minutes before the alarm clock, Sakuraba's snoring like a chainsaw into the pillow. He lies stock-still, not moving a muscle, then very carefully reaches up and licks his fingers, once. He snakes his hand down-slowly, slowly-past the hip, the bent knee, and then with infinite care touches the tips of his fingers to the scar.
It feels-strange, but that's just the thing; it feels. He spends a minute just exploring the texture and shape, the bumpy ridges, blurring the old self-inflicted borders. When he glances up, Sakuraba's looking at him with smiling terracotta eyes.
All characters © their respective owners; I claim no right nor profit.