because kia said so.
just as a warning, this fic deals with romantic advances on a 43-year-old man by a 14-year-old boy. who knows what it'll contain when i'm done with it, but for now it's rated pg-13.
He knows something is afoot when Keigo lingers after practice, perched on a bench like some kind of coquettish Adonis, lotioning his legs at length. They are bare, Sakaki notes, he's certain by Keigo's contrivance, because they haven't always been. It's not surprising, and Keigo is neither the first nor last boy in these locker rooms to groom himself so. His uniform pants are folded neatly on the bench beside, and he looks as though he has no intention whatsoever of wearing them anytime soon; his black boxer-briefs, snug and flattering, peek out from beneath his shirt and draw Sakaki's eyes again and again. The back right side is embroidered with 'AK' in gold, Sakaki recalls, as all of his underwear are. How pretentious and charming.
After a long drinking-in of Keigo's lithe limbs, Sakaki lifts his gaze and is captured, irrefusably, by Keigo's eyes, best described with superfluous colour words like 'peacock' and 'ocean.' He got those eyes from his mother, as Sakaki is all too aware; she's intense and charismatic and very fond of Sakaki, much like her son, but only half as tempting. Sakaki will never say so.
Keigo's satisfied smirk tells him everything he wants to know: yes, he saw Sakaki looking, and no, he really doesn't mind. Neither of these facts are enough to liberate Sakaki, so he merely dips his head in acknowledgement, giving away nothing else.
This, Sakaki will realize some weeks later, in a moment of profound comprehension and disbelief, is the beginning of a slow seduction, marked by childish impatience and full-grown desire.
-
June is nearly half-over when realization - and Keigo - is finally upon him. The rain is in sheets on the windows, the locker room empty, and Keigo has inexplicably found his way into Sakaki's lap, a knee on either edge of the chair.
"You won't look at me?" he asks. His voice is deeper than Sakaki thought, or perhaps huskier and simply resonating off the walls of the office. Sakaki doesn't answer, but examines the paper in his hand again, more closely, until Keigo snatches it away in a puerile fit of impetuousness and tosses it aside. It drifts gaily to the ground. Without anything left to otherwise occupy himself, Sakaki turns his attention to Keigo's face, and only his face. That alone is temptation enough.
Leaning closer, Keigo orders, "Look at me." The imperious tone of the demand brings a few years' worth of memories of foot-stomping, bossy little Keigo to the surface. Perhaps Keigo is not so formidable an enemy as Sakaki believed him to have grown into already.
"I am looking at you, Keigo."
"Touch me," Keigo says next, and takes Sakaki's hands to place them where he will. Sakaki forgoes all feigned dispassion and pulls his hands back sharply. His enemy is not Keigo, but himself, as always; he will fight this battle with himself, and Keigo is merely caught in the crossfire.
"Touch me," repeats Keigo, reaching for his hands once more. When Sakaki places his hands on the arms of his chair, deliberate with calm, Keigo slows down, seeming to rethink his approach. "I see you watching me. You know that, don't you?" How sure of his victory the boy sounds. "You want to touch me, and I'm telling you that you can."
Now Sakaki's mouth cants upward with a smirk, well-worn for years and rightfully assured. "I need no permission from you." It is not Keigo's permission that he requires. No one's permission but his own will do, and he will never permit himself to cross the boundaries that he's set.
Keigo is clearly confused; more clearly frustrated. His painstakingly crafted confidence is wearing thin, and soon his momentum will dissipate. Sakaki need only wait.
"Then why," Keigo wants to know, "have you not had me yet?" The buttons on Sakaki's shirt are coming apart, one by one, and God help him, Sakaki has yet to stop him. "Why do you hold back, especially now?"
'Because I don't want you' is what Sakaki should say, perhaps. A lie, yes, but the truth is too much, even if Keigo thinks he knows it. Too much for Keigo to hear, too much for Sakaki to admit. He doesn't answer, choosing instead to finally reach up and push away Keigo's hands. Only then is he daring enough to really touch him, pushing him back by the shoulders as he moves to stand up.
Annoyed, Keigo takes fistfuls of his shirt, leaning up to look Sakaki in the eye. The distance isn't as great as it once was, and the proximity prickles Sakaki's skin. It's all he can do not to hold his breath with Keigo this close. "Take me, Tarou."
He's done it again, thank God, Sakaki thinks as he surrenders to quiet, restrained laughter. He is deeply fortunate that Keigo is still a child, ignorant and ridiculous enough to make resistance a simpler task. In a few more years, Sakaki will be lost to him, he's quite sure, should Keigo ever choose to entice him again.
"'Take' you?" Sakaki echoes in the face of Keigo's bewilderment. "You ridiculous child." Reaching past, he opens the door and holds it there, a silent prompt for Keigo to take his leave, before further humiliation should befall him.
Keigo will do nothing easily. "There is nothing ridiculous about this!" he protests, even as he releases his grip on Sakaki. "You can't hide it; I know you want me." His momentum has dissolved altogether and his confidence has begun to flag. Frustration shines through the conviction. "Just give in already!"
There will be no giving in just yet, and that thought brings with it both satisfaction and agony. Once Keigo has stormed out, righteously indignant, Sakaki sinks back down in his chair. He thinks of Keigo and the flash in his eyes, the way he said his name: 'Tarou,' as if it were his God-given right; the heat of Keigo's hands on his chest, legs straddling his thighs, and how close, how very close Keigo had been just before the spell broke. There is no shame in this, not after this many years. No, this is the glory of the whole thing. This is the retreat cheer, the celebration of a battle not lost.
The war continues.
-
Though Keigo would not have you know it, he is not the only attractive boy in the Hyoutei locker rooms. He is, so far as Sakaki is concerned, the most attractive, but by no means is he the only. It's only natural, then, that Sakaki's gaze be drawn now and again by Shishido's well-muscled legs, Ootori's broad shoulders or Akutagawa's full lips. He looks them over as he does Keigo, carefully and with discretion, lets their unwitting exhibitions heat him slowly from the inside out.
He is subtle enough that they should not suspect. However, when one is being studied in turn, it becomes considerably more difficult to hide what things one is studying.
Keigo comes to stand beside him at practice one afternoon, glistening with sweat and glimmering with malicious intent. He drinks greedily from his water bottle, watching Sakaki from the corner of one ambitious eye just as Sakaki watches him. His Adam's apple moves once, twice, thrice, and then he lowers the bottle, smirking triumph. Sakaki turns his eyes to the court again, deliberate and unaffected. He is pleased to see Keigo's expression twist with annoyance in his peripheral field of vision.
After a silence, Keigo announces, "I've seen you watching the others, too, you know."
Before he can stop himself, Sakaki's eyebrows rise a centimeter or so in surprise. He says nothing still; no need to add to the boy's brightening look of victory.
"You must be in fits," Keigo continues, unbidden. "All these beautiful boys all the time, and you beside yourself." Without looking away from the match in front of them, he asks, "Do you think about them the way you think about me, Tarou?"
There it is again: his name, rolled elegantly in Keigo's mouth, the last syllable just throaty enough to make the hairs on the back of Sakaki's neck rise. Despite the feeling of electricity crawling through his skin, he responds with feigned apathy. "I haven't a clue what you're talking about."
Keigo turns to face him, as if Sakaki, still looking straight ahead, will be powerless with Keigo's gaze on him. "Exactly what I said. Do you think about them, Tarou?"
"On occasion," Sakaki responds casually. He can't resist the opportunity to mince words with such an easily-roused opponent. "Particularly during tennis season. Just yesterday, I was thinking that Shishido could use some additional stamina training."
True to form, Keigo whips the towel from around his neck in a tizzy. "Do you think of them when you jerk off?" It hardly sounds like a question anymore; his tone is demanding and forceful. It is enough to startle Sakaki into looking his way.
A silence stretches between them, the boy looking impatient and the man thoughtful. At last, Sakaki asks, "I would like you to rally with Ootori, now that he's finished with his practice match." He cuts off any impending arguments, adding, "There will be a few players too fast for you this season, if you're not mindful of your training."
"There will be no player too fast for me," Keigo retorts, but he's throwing down his towel and his bottle on top of it. "And you will not continue to evade me, either."
Sakaki wonders.
-
By the next week, Keigo has devised yet another new approach. Like those that came before it, this new plan requires catching Sakaki alone and, hopefully, unguarded. The laws of youth and impatience dictate that Keigo should always attempt to seduce Sakaki with as much skin showing as possible, but he takes his opportunity at piano lessons this time. Sakaki finds this intriguing, since Keigo is often wearing more clothing for his piano lessons than any other occasion when the two of them are together.
In the midst of the Turkish March, he moves his first pawn, informal as always in his speech. "May I ask you a question?" Sakaki steps unwittingly into the trap laid bare before him.
"I suppose so."
"What is it that you enjoy so much about boys my age?"
Suddenly, the distance between Keigo seated on the piano bench and Sakaki standing behind him seems inappropriately scant. The question makes the song sound precocious.
"Is it our youthful spirits?" Keigo's tone is so innocuous as to be grating. "Or is it our youthful bodies?" He must have practiced this speech at great lengths for that accusation to sound so pleasant. "Smooth skin, thin frames, and most of us just growing into our long limbs...."
A vision of Keigo, all supple suede skin, narrow hips and almost-elegant legs, blitzes through Sakaki's mind. He inhales slowly, beginning a deliberate pace around the piano just to get away from the boy.
"No? Perhaps it is our spirits, then. As yet untouched by the greater darknesses of the world, innocent of every sin but ignorance. Do you enjoy touching our pure souls, as well?"
"Keigo." The word spills from Sakaki's mouth vehemently enough to startle even him. "That's enough."
At last, the capricious, daring notes of the Turkish March come to a halt. Keigo turns his face up to Sakaki, wearing a mask of utter serenity. "Do you hold back for fear of corrupting me?"
As always, Keigo has managed to circle this back to himself with admirable speed, turning 'us' into 'me' and offering a glimpse of his true motivation. His understanding of the situation, however, has hardly improved.
The far side of the piano seems a safe place to linger, well out of the boy's reach. "You'll all corrupt yourselves much faster than I could accomplish it on my own." He realises he's made the grave mistake of not denying the allegations, a realisation reflected in Keigo's eyes twofold.
"What is it, then?" Keigo folds his hands harmlessly in his lap, bringing Sakaki to wonder if the boy hasn't noticed, after all, the tense edge that this topic brings. Perhaps he gives the boy too little credit. "I see you watching me, wanting me; all of us, but me most of all." This should have sounded arrogant, but he states it simply, and it becomes a fact. "You know that I would have you." Still he is so certain that his permission is all Sakaki should need. Sakaki is sure that he must also think that the boy himself is all Sakaki should need. That assumption, at least, may contain some measure of truth, but Sakaki's needs are only a few brushstrokes in this mural.
"There are a great many things that you would have," Sakaki says to the Oriental rug beneath his feet, "that I notice you do not have."
Keigo takes survey of Sakaki's calm expression and still hands. He takes survey of his fingernails and cuticles. "Yes, well. There are a few things I would have that would not have me, and since that is clearly not the case here...."
Sakaki sees his escape and seizes it. It will not be a clean getaway, but the time for that has long passed. Feigning an even deeper apathy, he raises his challenge. "Is it not the case, boy?"
The address does not go unnoticed. Keigo's sudden uncertainty settles over the room like a cool fog.
"Do you not think that if I would have you, I would already have done so?" His well-timed sidelong glance pins Keigo down, making him squirm as much from discomfort as a stirring low in his stomach, no doubt. "Do not make the mistake of believing that your permission is enough to liberate me, nor your refusal enough to stop me." The lies, bolstered by truths, are gaining a momentum all their own now. "Your ego and audacity are outgrowing you in spades, boy. Now play that piece again, and mind your tempo."
For once in fifteen years, Keigo does not argue.
-
Days pass with no exchange between them beyond what is required as captain and coach. Sakaki does not miss the boy's brass. The peace is welcome, for as long as it lasts. The nerves that Keigo had been steadily wearing thin over these past weeks are repaired, such that when Keigo's dissatisfaction finally brings them face-to-face once more, Sakaki is prepared for his student's army of imperious allegations.
"I know," Keigo declares in the secluded safety of Sakaki's closed office, "that I have not been imagining your attraction to me. You watch me, you -" This speech is unprepared, and he stumbles, grasping for words with more clarity. "You want me. You must dream of me. I have told you that I'd have you, so what-"
He falls abruptly, angrily silent, watching Sakaki with a look hardened by pure frustration. To be the only one who has tipped his hand must be so very infuriating. It mollifies Sakaki's cutthroat nature to see the boy so utterly bound up in his own seething as to be unable to speak.
"You are, without a doubt, an attractive boy." Keigo is surprised, though not by the information, Sakaki suspects; rather, by the admission. It's much more than Sakaki has granted him thus far. "I do enjoy watching you. However, to watch and to want are not the same, and to want and to take are quite dissimilar, indeed."
As this information sinks in, Keigo's expression cycles through the seasons: he grows bright with hope and incredulity, swelters briefly with shock and indignation, then cools, cools, cools into thinly veiled hurt, and deeper, into an icy veneer of righteous displeasure.
"I see," he says, and the encounter ends as abruptly as it began, leaving Sakaki wondering, uneasily, just what he may have catalyzed.
He knows something is afoot when Keigo lingers after practice, perched on a bench like some kind of coquettish Adonis, lotioning his legs at length. They are bare, Sakaki notes, he's certain by Keigo's contrivance, because they haven't always been. It's not surprising, and Keigo is neither the first nor last boy in these locker rooms to groom himself so. His uniform pants are folded neatly on the bench beside, and he looks as though he has no intention whatsoever of wearing them anytime soon; his black boxer-briefs, snug and flattering, peek out from beneath his shirt and draw Sakaki's eyes again and again. The back right side is embroidered with 'AK' in gold, Sakaki recalls, as all of his underwear are. How pretentious and charming.
After a long drinking-in of Keigo's lithe limbs, Sakaki lifts his gaze and is captured, irrefusably, by Keigo's eyes, best described with superfluous colour words like 'peacock' and 'ocean.' He got those eyes from his mother, as Sakaki is all too aware; she's intense and charismatic and very fond of Sakaki, much like her son, but only half as tempting. Sakaki will never say so.
Keigo's satisfied smirk tells him everything he wants to know: yes, he saw Sakaki looking, and no, he really doesn't mind. Neither of these facts are enough to liberate Sakaki, so he merely dips his head in acknowledgement, giving away nothing else.
This, Sakaki will realize some weeks later, in a moment of profound comprehension and disbelief, is the beginning of a slow seduction, marked by childish impatience and full-grown desire.
-
June is nearly half-over when realization - and Keigo - is finally upon him. The rain is in sheets on the windows, the locker room empty, and Keigo has inexplicably found his way into Sakaki's lap, a knee on either edge of the chair.
"You won't look at me?" he asks. His voice is deeper than Sakaki thought, or perhaps huskier and simply resonating off the walls of the office. Sakaki doesn't answer, but examines the paper in his hand again, more closely, until Keigo snatches it away in a puerile fit of impetuousness and tosses it aside. It drifts gaily to the ground. Without anything left to otherwise occupy himself, Sakaki turns his attention to Keigo's face, and only his face. That alone is temptation enough.
Leaning closer, Keigo orders, "Look at me." The imperious tone of the demand brings a few years' worth of memories of foot-stomping, bossy little Keigo to the surface. Perhaps Keigo is not so formidable an enemy as Sakaki believed him to have grown into already.
"I am looking at you, Keigo."
"Touch me," Keigo says next, and takes Sakaki's hands to place them where he will. Sakaki forgoes all feigned dispassion and pulls his hands back sharply. His enemy is not Keigo, but himself, as always; he will fight this battle with himself, and Keigo is merely caught in the crossfire.
"Touch me," repeats Keigo, reaching for his hands once more. When Sakaki places his hands on the arms of his chair, deliberate with calm, Keigo slows down, seeming to rethink his approach. "I see you watching me. You know that, don't you?" How sure of his victory the boy sounds. "You want to touch me, and I'm telling you that you can."
Now Sakaki's mouth cants upward with a smirk, well-worn for years and rightfully assured. "I need no permission from you." It is not Keigo's permission that he requires. No one's permission but his own will do, and he will never permit himself to cross the boundaries that he's set.
Keigo is clearly confused; more clearly frustrated. His painstakingly crafted confidence is wearing thin, and soon his momentum will dissipate. Sakaki need only wait.
"Then why," Keigo wants to know, "have you not had me yet?" The buttons on Sakaki's shirt are coming apart, one by one, and God help him, Sakaki has yet to stop him. "Why do you hold back, especially now?"
'Because I don't want you' is what Sakaki should say, perhaps. A lie, yes, but the truth is too much, even if Keigo thinks he knows it. Too much for Keigo to hear, too much for Sakaki to admit. He doesn't answer, choosing instead to finally reach up and push away Keigo's hands. Only then is he daring enough to really touch him, pushing him back by the shoulders as he moves to stand up.
Annoyed, Keigo takes fistfuls of his shirt, leaning up to look Sakaki in the eye. The distance isn't as great as it once was, and the proximity prickles Sakaki's skin. It's all he can do not to hold his breath with Keigo this close. "Take me, Tarou."
He's done it again, thank God, Sakaki thinks as he surrenders to quiet, restrained laughter. He is deeply fortunate that Keigo is still a child, ignorant and ridiculous enough to make resistance a simpler task. In a few more years, Sakaki will be lost to him, he's quite sure, should Keigo ever choose to entice him again.
"'Take' you?" Sakaki echoes in the face of Keigo's bewilderment. "You ridiculous child." Reaching past, he opens the door and holds it there, a silent prompt for Keigo to take his leave, before further humiliation should befall him.
Keigo will do nothing easily. "There is nothing ridiculous about this!" he protests, even as he releases his grip on Sakaki. "You can't hide it; I know you want me." His momentum has dissolved altogether and his confidence has begun to flag. Frustration shines through the conviction. "Just give in already!"
There will be no giving in just yet, and that thought brings with it both satisfaction and agony. Once Keigo has stormed out, righteously indignant, Sakaki sinks back down in his chair. He thinks of Keigo and the flash in his eyes, the way he said his name: 'Tarou,' as if it were his God-given right; the heat of Keigo's hands on his chest, legs straddling his thighs, and how close, how very close Keigo had been just before the spell broke. There is no shame in this, not after this many years. No, this is the glory of the whole thing. This is the retreat cheer, the celebration of a battle not lost.
The war continues.
-
Though Keigo would not have you know it, he is not the only attractive boy in the Hyoutei locker rooms. He is, so far as Sakaki is concerned, the most attractive, but by no means is he the only. It's only natural, then, that Sakaki's gaze be drawn now and again by Shishido's well-muscled legs, Ootori's broad shoulders or Akutagawa's full lips. He looks them over as he does Keigo, carefully and with discretion, lets their unwitting exhibitions heat him slowly from the inside out.
He is subtle enough that they should not suspect. However, when one is being studied in turn, it becomes considerably more difficult to hide what things one is studying.
Keigo comes to stand beside him at practice one afternoon, glistening with sweat and glimmering with malicious intent. He drinks greedily from his water bottle, watching Sakaki from the corner of one ambitious eye just as Sakaki watches him. His Adam's apple moves once, twice, thrice, and then he lowers the bottle, smirking triumph. Sakaki turns his eyes to the court again, deliberate and unaffected. He is pleased to see Keigo's expression twist with annoyance in his peripheral field of vision.
After a silence, Keigo announces, "I've seen you watching the others, too, you know."
Before he can stop himself, Sakaki's eyebrows rise a centimeter or so in surprise. He says nothing still; no need to add to the boy's brightening look of victory.
"You must be in fits," Keigo continues, unbidden. "All these beautiful boys all the time, and you beside yourself." Without looking away from the match in front of them, he asks, "Do you think about them the way you think about me, Tarou?"
There it is again: his name, rolled elegantly in Keigo's mouth, the last syllable just throaty enough to make the hairs on the back of Sakaki's neck rise. Despite the feeling of electricity crawling through his skin, he responds with feigned apathy. "I haven't a clue what you're talking about."
Keigo turns to face him, as if Sakaki, still looking straight ahead, will be powerless with Keigo's gaze on him. "Exactly what I said. Do you think about them, Tarou?"
"On occasion," Sakaki responds casually. He can't resist the opportunity to mince words with such an easily-roused opponent. "Particularly during tennis season. Just yesterday, I was thinking that Shishido could use some additional stamina training."
True to form, Keigo whips the towel from around his neck in a tizzy. "Do you think of them when you jerk off?" It hardly sounds like a question anymore; his tone is demanding and forceful. It is enough to startle Sakaki into looking his way.
A silence stretches between them, the boy looking impatient and the man thoughtful. At last, Sakaki asks, "I would like you to rally with Ootori, now that he's finished with his practice match." He cuts off any impending arguments, adding, "There will be a few players too fast for you this season, if you're not mindful of your training."
"There will be no player too fast for me," Keigo retorts, but he's throwing down his towel and his bottle on top of it. "And you will not continue to evade me, either."
Sakaki wonders.
-
By the next week, Keigo has devised yet another new approach. Like those that came before it, this new plan requires catching Sakaki alone and, hopefully, unguarded. The laws of youth and impatience dictate that Keigo should always attempt to seduce Sakaki with as much skin showing as possible, but he takes his opportunity at piano lessons this time. Sakaki finds this intriguing, since Keigo is often wearing more clothing for his piano lessons than any other occasion when the two of them are together.
In the midst of the Turkish March, he moves his first pawn, informal as always in his speech. "May I ask you a question?" Sakaki steps unwittingly into the trap laid bare before him.
"I suppose so."
"What is it that you enjoy so much about boys my age?"
Suddenly, the distance between Keigo seated on the piano bench and Sakaki standing behind him seems inappropriately scant. The question makes the song sound precocious.
"Is it our youthful spirits?" Keigo's tone is so innocuous as to be grating. "Or is it our youthful bodies?" He must have practiced this speech at great lengths for that accusation to sound so pleasant. "Smooth skin, thin frames, and most of us just growing into our long limbs...."
A vision of Keigo, all supple suede skin, narrow hips and almost-elegant legs, blitzes through Sakaki's mind. He inhales slowly, beginning a deliberate pace around the piano just to get away from the boy.
"No? Perhaps it is our spirits, then. As yet untouched by the greater darknesses of the world, innocent of every sin but ignorance. Do you enjoy touching our pure souls, as well?"
"Keigo." The word spills from Sakaki's mouth vehemently enough to startle even him. "That's enough."
At last, the capricious, daring notes of the Turkish March come to a halt. Keigo turns his face up to Sakaki, wearing a mask of utter serenity. "Do you hold back for fear of corrupting me?"
As always, Keigo has managed to circle this back to himself with admirable speed, turning 'us' into 'me' and offering a glimpse of his true motivation. His understanding of the situation, however, has hardly improved.
The far side of the piano seems a safe place to linger, well out of the boy's reach. "You'll all corrupt yourselves much faster than I could accomplish it on my own." He realises he's made the grave mistake of not denying the allegations, a realisation reflected in Keigo's eyes twofold.
"What is it, then?" Keigo folds his hands harmlessly in his lap, bringing Sakaki to wonder if the boy hasn't noticed, after all, the tense edge that this topic brings. Perhaps he gives the boy too little credit. "I see you watching me, wanting me; all of us, but me most of all." This should have sounded arrogant, but he states it simply, and it becomes a fact. "You know that I would have you." Still he is so certain that his permission is all Sakaki should need. Sakaki is sure that he must also think that the boy himself is all Sakaki should need. That assumption, at least, may contain some measure of truth, but Sakaki's needs are only a few brushstrokes in this mural.
"There are a great many things that you would have," Sakaki says to the Oriental rug beneath his feet, "that I notice you do not have."
Keigo takes survey of Sakaki's calm expression and still hands. He takes survey of his fingernails and cuticles. "Yes, well. There are a few things I would have that would not have me, and since that is clearly not the case here...."
Sakaki sees his escape and seizes it. It will not be a clean getaway, but the time for that has long passed. Feigning an even deeper apathy, he raises his challenge. "Is it not the case, boy?"
The address does not go unnoticed. Keigo's sudden uncertainty settles over the room like a cool fog.
"Do you not think that if I would have you, I would already have done so?" His well-timed sidelong glance pins Keigo down, making him squirm as much from discomfort as a stirring low in his stomach, no doubt. "Do not make the mistake of believing that your permission is enough to liberate me, nor your refusal enough to stop me." The lies, bolstered by truths, are gaining a momentum all their own now. "Your ego and audacity are outgrowing you in spades, boy. Now play that piece again, and mind your tempo."
For once in fifteen years, Keigo does not argue.
-
Days pass with no exchange between them beyond what is required as captain and coach. Sakaki does not miss the boy's brass. The peace is welcome, for as long as it lasts. The nerves that Keigo had been steadily wearing thin over these past weeks are repaired, such that when Keigo's dissatisfaction finally brings them face-to-face once more, Sakaki is prepared for his student's army of imperious allegations.
"I know," Keigo declares in the secluded safety of Sakaki's closed office, "that I have not been imagining your attraction to me. You watch me, you -" This speech is unprepared, and he stumbles, grasping for words with more clarity. "You want me. You must dream of me. I have told you that I'd have you, so what-"
He falls abruptly, angrily silent, watching Sakaki with a look hardened by pure frustration. To be the only one who has tipped his hand must be so very infuriating. It mollifies Sakaki's cutthroat nature to see the boy so utterly bound up in his own seething as to be unable to speak.
"You are, without a doubt, an attractive boy." Keigo is surprised, though not by the information, Sakaki suspects; rather, by the admission. It's much more than Sakaki has granted him thus far. "I do enjoy watching you. However, to watch and to want are not the same, and to want and to take are quite dissimilar, indeed."
As this information sinks in, Keigo's expression cycles through the seasons: he grows bright with hope and incredulity, swelters briefly with shock and indignation, then cools, cools, cools into thinly veiled hurt, and deeper, into an icy veneer of righteous displeasure.
"I see," he says, and the encounter ends as abruptly as it began, leaving Sakaki wondering, uneasily, just what he may have catalyzed.