Title: Turbulence
Writer: Everlind
Wordcount: 11 906
Pairing: Ohtori/Shishido (Silver Pair)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Shishido being a bastard, a very angry Ohtori, foul language, Marui Bunta and cakes, Oshitari Yuushi and alcohol. That last rather warrants a warning all by itself. Oh! And rough sex.
Summary: The strength of a relationship is not measured by how little you fight, but by how you get through one. Even bad ones.
Disclaimer: The Prince of Tennis belongs to Konomi Takeshi. This story is based on characters and the universe of The Prince of Tennis, no money is being made from it.
Author's Notes: The long-promised honey-moon smut for my wife
namae_nashi.
Also: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHISHIDO!!!
*Special:* Number 070 'Storm' for the
Big Table of Doom PLEASE VISIT SHISHIDO'S BIRTHDAY FEST AT tori_shishi!!! Turbulence
Shishido stands before of his house -their house- and regrets drinking tea at lunch. It seems to boil in his stomach, splattering acid green taste into the back of his throat. He's glad he didn't get anything else, or it would have been laying in the bushes now.
He must know I'm back, Shishido reasons. If he's home he'll have heard my motorcycle. Unless he's on the piano.
But there's no strain of music creeping through the cracks. No sound at all. Only the soft patter of rain and the sloughing of cars out in the streets behind him.
What is he doing? Packing my bags?
Shishido shifts his weight, stares at the grained surface of the door as though it'll deliver him answers.
What am I going to say?
The key trembles before the lock. He's frightened of what he'll see on Choutarou's face. In the end he leans his forehead, softly, making no noise, against the wooden surface and whispers, "I'm so sorry."
As soon as it's out of his mouth, making a hazy white patch on the door as hot air meets chilled surface, the door opens. Shishido all but falls inside and would've fallen into Choutarou's arms had the latter not stepped aside to avoid exactly that from happening.
"Back so soon?" he asks and not with a little bite of sarcasm behind it.
Shishido flinches, but steps out of his shoes all the same and nods. Only when he's out of the genkan, does he actually look at Choutarou.
His hearts stops.
If he looks bad, Choutarou is worse. He looks terrible.
They look at each other. For the first time in a long while, Choutarou's eyes are hard and unreadable. With the gray weather outside the hallway is dark. All the shadows seem to collect in those eyes, dark and obscure.
"I didn't get fired," Shishido says, instead of sorry. "It's alright."
It's because he's looking so closely that he sees it. Choutarou can't close off his heart -thank god- but he's mastered the art of polite and kind distance. He can look glad to see someone and yet remain completely unreachable. Cold and isolated. It's a paradox in Choutarou that for all his selfless kindness, he's hard to reach out to. But Shishido is looking and close enough to see some of the ice shatter and flake off, showing a glimpse of pure panic that must've been festering these past three days, now finally thawing under pure relief.
Oh, Choutarou.
Of course, as soon as it slips out, he's walling himself in again.
Because I've hurt him, Shishido thinks.
"That's good," Choutarou says politely. His jaw clenches. In his neck his pulse-point flutters like crazy.
Still angry, but holding it back.
At his sides, his hands are white-knuckled fists, so tightly curled that the tendons pull up like ropey bridges under the skin in his arms.
Choutarou looks away from him and starts down the hallway, shoulders tense. Over his shoulder he tosses a: "Hungry?"
There's a wobbly catch on the second vowel. Shishido's heart makes a wobbly catch, too.
"I'm sorry," he says, the admission tossed at Choutarou's retreating back.
Choutarou stops. "I've still got some leftover soup from yesterday. I can heat it up if-"
"I'm sorry," Shishido repeats, louder and pricked. "Alright? I really am."
After he manages to clear his throat, Choutarou answers, "I don't want to talk about it." Then he disappears into the kitchen.
The cold lump in his stomach becomes a chunk of ice, yet somewhere in the center of it is a small flame of indignation. Didn't he say he was sorry? Following Choutarou into the kitchen, he finds him peering blankly into the fridge. Shishido can see the bowl of soup, right before his eyes, but Choutarou stares past it as though the spot is empty.
"Choutarou," he says again.
"Don't!" Choutarou suddenly snaps. "I said I don't want to talk about it. So don't push it!"
"I said I was sorry!" Shishido raises voice back.
The fridge is slammed shut. Everything inside of it rattles. A magnet is dislocated upon the impact and clatters to the ground. "Yes, you did. So what? It's all better now? You want me to forget that you were gone for three days, didn't even once send me a message to let me know where you were and come back looking starved? That's supposed to be alright now?" The last sentence is a loud yell that echoes around the kitchen.
Shishido blinks. He'd expected Choutarou to blow up over the slamming-the-door-shut-in-the-wake-of-the-Big-Three, but not this.
"You're so self-centered!" Choutarou goes on, flushed with anger. "You leave in a huff to sulk on that damn motorcycle in the pouring rain, stay away for three days, no message, no nothing, making me call around like an idiot just to find out where you are and whether you are alright, after which you come back looking like hell and expect a sorry to make it alright?
"Haven't you any idea how worried I was?"
That last he asks with a breaking voice, but he stands there tall and threatening, shoulders squared and eyes burning with angry desperation. His brows are dark and frowning, serious and demanding and his hair is a mess. The muscles in his neck are corded, lifting the silver chain up where it drapes around his neck.
It's absurdly sexy.
Shishido shakes his head. "I- I mean, what do you want from me besides an apology?!" he asks, upset and thrown off balance. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he reels.
Oh.
Fuck.
Choutarou gives a dark little chuckle and looks away from him. He might be angry but underneath, Shishido sees, he's hurt.
There's nothing for him left to do, but one thing. Despite the whole situation, he doesn't have any trouble doing it. It's just that besides saying it out loud one time and not to Choutarou directly (though he was there) at that, he simply refrained from doing so. Honestly, when do you speak those words? During sex? When everything is clouded by lust and physical need? After sex? When you're caught in the afterglow of an orgasm? In the middle of the day? When it feels like you're saying it to gain a favor, or just blurting it out without the respect it deserves? All the rest of the time? With a partner who hates talking about it and prefers for this kind of communication to happen without words?
It is not that he's never wanted to say it, because he does. So he says it now.
"I love you."
Choutarou stops breathing mid-way through on an inhale.
Shishido walks up to him, reaches to cradle Choutarou's face between his hands. "You know that, right?" he says. "I love you."
By now, this early in spring and with the rainclouds packed up in the sky, it is getting dark. There's only one light on, somewhere in the living room. There's a hazy orange rectangle that pools to a stop at their feet and a little glow is cast up into Choutarou's eyes.
The little reflection is enough for Shishido to see the sudden change in his partner's eyes from desperately angry at him to angrily desperate for him. He can brace himself, in the nick of time, when Choutarou grabs him, half lifts him, half shoves him into the kitchen table.
He hits the edge badly, which hurts his tailbone, but doesn't care, because after eight days of pure misery Choutarou is kissing him, hot and hungry and very off-aim, lips half on Shishido's bottom lip and chin, before he inches up. He opens his mouth and lets him, the warm and slick curl of his tongue inside, the soft lips clinging as he angles himself to the most advantageous position.
There's hands digging into his hips, fingertips bruising points of pressure as Choutarou pushes their bodies together, gathering Shishido to him.
Shishido lets him. His head is back at an extreme angle, his mouth open and accommodating for Choutarou to taste and feel and his own hands are scrabbling at the back under his palms, needing him closer.
Once before Choutarou had been like this and Shishido has to admit it's one the single most fucking hottest things he's ever experienced. The feel of Choutarou like that again, ready to, well, plunder and ravage him, turns him on something bad. He hooks a leg around his waist and hauls at the lapels of Choutarou's shirt to demand more.
Choutarou pulls back a little, to lick at the corner of his mouth, while his hands slide from the crest of his hips, to the front, following his belt to the buckle.
When the belt is yanked loose and his jeans pushed down, boxers along, Shishido knows it's not going to be pretty and slow and gentle. He's hard and obviously at that, with his white shirt from work catching idiotically on his erection, but Choutarou doesn't touch.
It's not going to be gentle and Shishido is really starting to like the idea of that, because it shows that Choutarou needs him as aggressively as Shishido is needing him.
And after five days of not being near each other and three more of being angry and miserable because of each other, gentle isn't what they need.
What he needs is this: his shirt half-undone and his jeans being dragged roughly down his legs and no damn foreplay, just those large hands kneading his buttocks and Choutarou's mouth hungry across his, just nipping and tasting, honestly tasting the inside of his mouth more than any pretense of kissing. Of course he fights when Choutarou turns him around roughly -no shame now in using pure strength- and shoves him at the table again so Shishido has to brace his hands and lean, that or loose his teeth as he faceplants on the surface. He resists and snarls, wordless and aroused and still untouched, and moves to turn back to face when Choutarou grabs his wrist and traps it, keeping him tied down into leaning forward.
He growls and bites the bicep next to his head, frustrated at the lack of being stroked and rubbed, the no hands exploring him, the not being able to move and do something about it.
In retaliation Choutarou nips at the back of his neck, where his shirt is open and gaping, teeth sharp and quick before he buries his face there, to find and lick the sheen of sweat that's collecting there. The hand that's not pinning Shishido brushes against his behind as he unbuckles his own pants, body arched over the bow of Shishido's back, with his mouth still latched on below his hairline.
He feels this: Choutarou a searing presence through his shirt, the cross around his neck tiptoeing between his shoulder blades, the steel clutch of his fingers around his wrist, his thighs against the back of his own. Lips at his hairline, hard and pressing. It's all about now and fast and no sweet nothingness, but what does it say about Choutarou's character that even amidst all the aggression, he's careful.
It hurts. It's been a week and he is too busy struggling against the hand around his wrist to relax, because it pisses him off that he's just about to open his mouth and beg to be fucked, or touched, or anything.
It's still not pretty. Not at all. Spit, Shishido presumes, because it doesn't go very smooth and slick when the finger presses inside. And for all that because of the lack of proper lubrication they should be extra careful, it pisses him off twice as bad. He's not being touched and he needs it, now, but instead Choutarou holds him down even firmer, using his body to press him towards the tabletop to keep him still.
So he bites the bicep again, too hard he realizes, but all Choutarou does is clamp his grip down even more punishingly and switch to two fingers.
"Keep still," he says, low and rough into his hair.
"Fuck you," Shishido snarls. He wants to say 'touch me', but he feels that this is what Choutarou is waiting for and that alone makes him refuse to say it, illogical though it is.
"No," Choutarou whispers. "The other way around."
Three fingers.
His mouth falls open and his hands claw. At the back of his neck, Choutarou just places one small kiss. Shishido opens his eyes and sees the tabletop, gleaming with the light from the living room and Choutarou's hand holding him down. Further and darker he sees his askew shirt and loose tie, hanging off him and he can see down his neckline through it, only to be confronted by the sight of himself hard and slick, between his spread legs.
Another tiny kiss.
There's pressure inside of him, slow and smooth and utterly gentle.
Shishido sobs. He hangs his head and tries to breathe. He's not begging for it, Choutarou can go and screw himself for all he cares but-
The fingers curl. Just so.
"PLEASE!" Shishido howls, voice torn from him. "Please. Oh God, please."
The first moment of joining like this, the basest and most raw amongst all their ways to make love to each other, is always something that brings the both of them up short.
On his wrist the hand doesn't hold him down any less firm, but the quality of the grip changes: not about holding Shishido down any longer, but about holding Shishido. As soon as the sting of pressures gives way and Choutarou is actually inside of him, he lets go of his cock to steady himself at Shishido's hip. Huge and trembling on him, and so wonderfully warm. Some part of him wishes he'd use the damn appendage to, you know, jack him off or whatever, but he's too lost in the sensation of Choutarou sinking deeper into him and the forehead resting on his shoulder as he does.
There's a soft, breathy but rough: "Aaaaah…" as he gets to the point his hips are plastered against Shishido's behind.
In unspoken agreement, they wait. Shishido wills the burn to ease, definitely only saliva, wills himself to stop shivering with need. Seriously hopes he won't come on the first thrust.
He doesn't, but it is close.
Instead he makes a completely humiliating sort of noise, a wild throb sound he didn't know he could make.
After that he doesn't need to tell Choutarou's he's good, that he's ready. The hand on his hip becomes Choutarou's arm wrapped around his middle, the whole way 'round, so tight and snug that he can lift Shishido towards him when he slams inside the second time. It's all he can do but brace himself for it, the again and again and again, hard and no shame and he wonders distantly whether he's screaming or Choutarou is or they both are. There's a mouth at his nape that is nibbling and kissing and sucking, hungry and needy at that.
It's not pretty at all.
In the middle of it, when Shishido worries he'll burst out in honest to fucking god tears if Choutarou doesn't do something, he just pleads: "Please. Please, I'm sorry, please. Touch me. Please, plea-"
And he'd burst out laughing like a maniac and nearly does, when Choutarou has the nerve to make a soothing noise at him, but before he can work up a good cackle he's being touched. Hand cupping over his cock, pressing him up against his stomach, thumb at the head of him and long fingers covering the rest and he can't even get a proper stroke in before Shishido can feel all the low heat spill tight and blinding.
He cries and then screams when Choutarou bites him.
It's not his style. Shishido is the biter between the two of them. But the sheer sharp sting of the teeth at the vulnerable skin of his neck suggests otherwise. Most of all, where Shishido sometimes bites purely out of a need to give vent to his arousal, Choutarou bites him, for real, out of sheer possessiveness. He can tell by the hands on him and the cock in him and the mouth on him that his partner is marking him, claiming him and reminding him that this is them. And during it all, Choutarou keeps on pushing within him, unapologetic but honest.
It's perfect.
The strength of his orgasm hurts and blinds him. He's face-down on the tabletop by then, mouth open and wordless past a certain point and his back is hollowed to have Choutarou as deep as he can and at some point the hand on his wrist slid down to his own.
Through the haze he can see their laced fingers.
He tries to dig in his nails, to ground himself, but instead he is wordless in the most wonderful sort of agony, too intense, especially when he keeps coming as Choutarou keeps moving, teeth still latched on his neck, hard and bruising. It doesn't help that he can feel Choutarou come, so deep and tightly are they locked and by the end of it, the both of them are just sort of crumpled on the table, making gasping sobs.
Shishido knows he is standing simply because Choutarou still is, or the other way around, but the both of them are trembling and quaking after the force of it.
That lasts until Choutarou carefully pulls out of him, which seems to signal the moment where they both slide towards the ground. The tiles are cold and definitely not very sexy to sit on when you've just had mind-blowing sex, but Shishido doesn't mind so much, especially when Choutarou has both arms wrapped around him and is murmuring all huskily at him.
Wait.
The murmuring part isn't so good, after all.
"I'm sorry," Choutarou is saying between sharp exhales. "I'm sorry."
Shishido turns to look at him. "What?"
"For-" he bows his head, hides his expression. "For everything. I was so stupid. I could've ruined everything, I'm so sorry, Ryou. I shouldn't have kissed you. I know why. I understand why. And now I've- I've hurt you-"
Shishido finds himself with his arms full of Choutarou, who isn't crying, but is having some sort of belated stress-unloading after the strength of his climax has cleared the path for it.
"Shhh," Shishido shushes into his hair. "I'm sorry, too. It's okay. I'm alright. I love you."
And then Choutarou does start to cry.
They are sitting together in the dark kitchen, on tiles that need a good scrub, mostly naked and disheveled, stained with one other's come, and it really, really isn't pretty.
But when Choutarou, between hitches in his breath and intonation, says, "I love you, too," Shishido knows this is one of those moments he'll remember until the day he drops stone-cold dead.
***
At two in the fucking morning, Shishido's cell-phone rings.
He's spooned up against Choutarou in the most perfect way ever, feeling him breathe and his heart beat and live. Not to mention he was sleeping, damn it. FInally, after a week and more of nothing, he was blissfully gone, just oblivion in the best way.
And now some asshole decides to call him.
Simply because some part of him still wonders if it is work, after all, or even his mother, who knows, he picks up.
"Who the fuck is this?" he growls as quietly as possible.
There's a laden silence. Then: "And? How did it go?"
"Yuushi?" Shishido hisses, not wanting to believe it.
"Was it any goo-"
He never gets to finish his sentence.
Choutarou shifts and steals the phone. "Yes, it was amazing." He says bluntly. "Now leave us alone." and with that, he hangs up.
Shishido can only stare.
"What?" Choutarou says, but there's a smile in the word. "Go to sleep," he adds. Arms warp around him, tug him into his embrace.
Shishido does.
He closes his eyes and sleeps, knowing he is safe.
-fin-
...back to part 1! Comments and feedback greatly appreciated.
This is for my lovely partner in crime
namae_nashi. I'm so sorry I got it done so late. I do hope you like it (well, the conclusion most of all, since you already read the rest of it). Thank you for having me. Someday I will figure out how to tell you this properly without writing smutty Silver Pair. I'm working on it.