Secondhand Smoke
.
I have been sitting on this prompt for two goddamned months and have revised and tweaked it more than anything else I have ever written, including the M.A. thesis.
I am so damned proud of this piece. I hope I'm right to be.
Title: Secondhand Smoke
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon
Characters: Subaru, Seishirou
Rating: NC-17. Sex, violence, coercion. The prompt is your warning.
Words: 3600
Spoilers: for the end of TB. This takes place in March of 1996.
Irony Cudgel Index: No OJ, no straw, when you give it to me, yeah, give it to me raw.
Prompt: Tokyo Babylon, Seishirou/Subaru: cigarette burns, sadism - “I came to represent and carve my name within your chest”
---
Secondhand Smoke
tokyo babylon
Mithrigil Galtirglin
1996.03.24
04:17
-shoes. Subaru actually walked into the hall and halfway down the first flight of stairs without shoes. Remembered to put jeans and a shirt on-remembered his keys-remembered the change for the vending machine, enough for two packs since he won’t have time tomorrow-hasn’t slept but knows to the minute how long he’s been trying to-but forgot. Shoes.
He stands there, one foot higher than the other, just pauses, just groans. The tile under his feet is beaten dry, antiseptic-cold, pummeled with air conditioner that sinks, spirals, congeals. Each step’s edged in ridges of metal. He curls his toes around the top one, over it, shivers.
Don’t bother going back, he thinks-it can’t be undone.
He falls into a rhythm, a dirge, spiraling down those stairs. They get warmer, or his feet get desensitized, as he goes. Six more flights, and maybe that was the right idea, maybe walking in circles like this will put him to sleep. Maybe he’ll just keel over like a homeless person at the bottom, slide down the wall, concrete for a mattress and litter for a pillow. He doesn’t. The bar that crosses the door to the lobby is almost a surprise. He pushes it with his hips as much as his hands. Warm-starched-lobby carpet is a real shock after that, enough to wake him up, undo whatever progress he’d made toward sleep. He can hear the second hand of the clock over the security guard’s empty desk clacking to itself. There’s only one other hand, minute overlaying hour overlaying the stem of an Arabic 4. Black on black on white, plastic white. His feet drag at half that tempo out the complex door, onto the street.
Concrete under him, now. He wonders if he’s ever actually felt that before, without shoes. Probably not.
The nearest row of machines is somewhere left, in an offshoot half-alleyway that angles toward the landlord’s office. First three of drinks, then three of snacks, then two of cigarettes. Mild Sevens dominate the second cigarette machine. He knows the landlord smokes them too, not Select though. Menthol. Subaru’s tried that, twice to be sure, and no. It’s not…not the feeling he wants, from smoking.
Coins scrape down the slot, clatter into their files. He doesn’t bother checking, knows which number to press.
Interface warbles at him. It’s worse than an alarm clock.
Subaru checks-both slots of Select are empty. He closes his eyes, leans his head forward into the glass, opens them again. The colors of all the other boxes and labels and garish fonts swim around him hazily, white on blue, white on green, gold on red, English letters mostly. He blocks them out.
“Oh, were these the last ones?”
“-Seishirou-san-” -behind him, leaning on the landlord’s door, his mouth already smirking around a filter-
His lighter snaps like steam, fills the alleyway. “I keep telling you that’s bad for your health.”
Subaru glares. “Living is bad for my health.”
“That’s true,” Seishirou says, letting his cupped hand down once the cigarette catches, smolders. The lighter lingers there for long enough to notice, for there to be three dying flames, one in each lens of his sunglasses and then, the real one, the first to go out. “Like any addiction, really. Keeps you moving, kills you slowly.” He holds the cigarette in straight fingers, exhales white, tucks the lighter away. “You can’t possibly want to die.”
“You can’t possibly understand,” Subaru snaps back. “You don’t know what anything feels like.”
Seishirou smiles, then, not showing his teeth but it’s still white, like he’s sucked all the light in from the street and is just letting Subaru have a glimpse of it through his mouth. -He’s closer. Concrete digs into Subaru’s feet. Bare feet. “Not personally, no,” Seishirou admits, but it doesn’t weaken him at all. He holds the cigarette to the side, almost like he’s talking to it, not him. “Except perhaps addiction. But that’s not a feeling in and of itself,” he adds, leaning in-
-Subaru ducks aside-
-the lighter clicks open, sputters near his ear-his eyes reflect in the metal, swirling, afraid, grey, childish. “Just a way of proving you’re alive,” Seishirou finishes. “Something like that, Subaru-kun?”
Butane burns, smoke falls. Subaru holds his breath just out of spite.
The lighter’s still going, but Seishirou holds it steady, even when he brings the cigarette to his lips, drags on it long. “I can’t allow anything to hurt you but me,” he-
slams his mouth onto Subaru’s and
Subaru holds down his lips, keeps them closed, feels the glass on his back and the grit between his toes and the fire, the lighter, the secondhand smoke, he knows he can’t move but he won’t open for this, not even if Seishirou’s mouth is that hot, that-
-hot ash bites Subaru’s neck and he screams-
and fills him with the smoke, Select and Seishirou’s tongue, shoving, drilling the taste in, flattening over Subaru’s until he gasps and gags once the scream’s wrung out. His neck-throbbing-a round raised prickling burn-awake.
Awake enough to get out, hammer the arm with the lighter out of the way and tear past it, but-but not enough to run. Seishirou’s hand waves and something dead flies out of it. Ash. Filter. Subaru barely sees it, through fog, fog, not tears. The-the fingertips on that hand almost-touch the burn on Subaru’s neck, circle it, there are blisters there already, blood and water and he doesn’t know what else. He flinches away, as much as he can, twitching, needing air, real air, not this.
“It’s changed your voice,” Seishirou says, stroking the burn-is-is Subaru leaning in to that? It feels- “Well. That, and getting older. Not that you aren’t still cute,” he adds, and the press gets harder-and the spout of the lighter, still hot but not ignited, runs up the vein that’s throbbing on the other side of Subaru’s neck and that-no-the gear, warm like ceramic, warm like Seishirou’s hands, sweat, butane. “It’s exciting.”
What’s left of Subaru’s breath stutters, swells.
The hand on his neck shifts, strokes up under Subaru’s chin with the back of the nails, then pulls away. Wet shivers coagulate into almost a gasp, and-and Subaru cranes his neck up after that touch, trying to follow it-it disgusts him, and he stops, but it’s too late.
Seishirou takes out another cigarette from his suit jacket, raps the filter on Subaru’s lower lip, pushes the hand holding the lighter, his left, up to trap Subaru’s chin and back him into the glass by it. Subaru’s hands are shaking but he manages, he grabs onto that wrist and strangles it, puts all his weight on it-the lighter drops from Seishirou’s left to right hand like it’s planned that way and he raises it, scrapes it on, lets the flame wave in front of Subaru’s wild eyes. It-the light breaks past the glasses and Subaru can see Seishirou’s eyes, real, fake.
He snakes up his left hand, the one Subaru’s trying to stop-it’s like a vice on Subaru’s chin. He pins the cigarette to Subaru’s lips, parts them, shoves his fingers in. Lights it. Smiles.
Inhaling is more like choking after that.
Seishirou’s fingers run along Subaru’s teeth, which can’t clench, can’t keep steady-and Subaru’s hands can’t either, he’s slipping out of his hold on Seishirou’s wrist, coughing, tearing up. He bucks, swerves, nothing works, and then Seishirou’s aligned with him and laughing, almost, chuckling into Subaru’s mouth next to the fingers holding the cigarette. Because he knows. Because he can feel that, the same as Subaru can. How-how-why he’s staying.
“And here I thought you’d reserve the smoking for after sex,” he-chides, and-and holds his leg hard and even, pushing Subaru off his heels, toes scraping concrete. The zipper on Subaru’s jeans is cold, shoving through the flap of his shorts and onto his skin-he can feel Seishirou’s steady pulse through the metal, so much slower than his own. He moans around the cigarette and sputters when that drags the smoke too deep, when-when it makes the spit around Seishirou’s fingers curl into steam, twitching steam, mixing with the ashes.
Subaru tries to speak, tries to glare. The answer’s only smoke and saliva.
“Don’t worry,” Seishirou says, pulling the half-done cigarette away, a trail of spit stretching between his fingertips and Subaru’s mouth. “It won’t hurt more than living.”
Another-another kiss, or-or at least it’s Seishirou’s mouth, on Subaru’s, his tongue between the fingers that Subaru is still gagging on. His sunglasses slide across Subaru’s cheek, covered in sweat. Subaru tries to tighten his hands, still shaking, and can’t-they slip, and he slips, the back of his head bashes into the glass, Seishirou’s palm shoves into his jaw and he tastes like more than cigarettes, like blood and want and malice.
Does this mean that I’m almost a threat to him?
Subaru tears his mouth away, out of shock, out of a need for air. He grabs onto something, anything, both hands, and it turns out to be Seishirou’s hair, and that feels so good, so cold between his fingers, colder than the glass. His left elbow whacks into the vending machine’s buttons, letters, numbers-Seishirou’s going to snap his neck like this, maybe this is it, maybe it’ll finally be over-but he doesn’t, Seishirou puts his mouth there, instead, sucks on the cigarette burn and rings it with his teeth and everything in Subaru tightens, every joint flares.
It-it might. It might mean that he’s stronger, older, that-that something’s changed.
Subaru knits his hands through Seishirou’s hair, pulls, runs his knuckles along Seishirou’s scalp and that earns Subaru the scrape of teeth over the burn and something snaps, on him, in him. He’d laugh but his throat’s gone ragged and dry and the light, the light of the vending machines is spinning overhead, red and white. Someth-pain, oh, real pain, when ash dribbles into the crook of his elbow and traces down, steady, a seam, and he has to let go of Seishirou’s hair but that’s fine, anything’s fine now, white needles scraping down his forearm to his wrist, to where his hands are already burning, where-where Seishirou’s always been-
He bites one burn and stabs in another. Blisters rupture in Subaru’s neck and new ones bubble up out of his wrist right between the bones.
Subaru’s too wound up to even ache.
The one of his hands that’s still in Seishirou’s hair goes slack, falls to the collar of his suit. Seishirou’s wet, there, the back of his neck, he’s sweating-Subaru’s not sure what that means but it, it feels like a good meaning, and he says so. Or thinks he does. That this is good. That this is something he wants. That he wants more of this, more of the pain, more of the burn, just more of Seishirou because that’s what Seishirou is, the burn. Please. Subaru thinks he says it, some of it-Seishirou’s mouth abandons his neck, wet, leaving only his tongue, tracing up Subaru’s jawline. Subaru tries to kiss him first, misses, and his mouth ends up half on the sunglasses and half on Seishirou’s cheek.
When Subaru laughs, he can feel it in the burns, bitter and wheezing. His hand, the one that’s not burning and throbbing and alive is falling-glowing-brushing down Seishirou’s lapel, lower, to where-where Subaru’s hips are moving, he hadn’t even noticed that but they are so that’s where he stops. Over Seishirou’s. Under the flap of his jacket.
Seishirou’s tongue stops on Subaru’s chin-he, something, something clamps down on the burns on Subaru’s other wrist and-nails, blisters-white- “Not so innocent,” Seishirou breathes or laughs or whispers, “are you, Subaru-kun?”
And whose fault is that? some part of Subaru asks.
But it doesn’t get voiced-the-the hand on Subaru’s chin, the hand tilting him up, it lowers, throttles him, and all Subaru can do aloud is agree. He throws back his head to let that word out. He tries to clench his fists and can’t, can’t anything. Seishirou’s fingers jam slick into his neck and the pain there is sharp, on that one side, the burst burn-Subaru can see glare on those sunglasses, advertising lights and scars and he wants those off, wants-wants. He wrenches his head, slams it into the side of Seishirou’s face, not the blind side but that-that works, the earpiece of the glasses snaps and the spoke slices into Subaru but that’s okay, he can see it just for a hazy second, surprise in the left eye, real, gold, bracken embers of gold.
And then that smile. “So cute,” Seishirou says.
Subaru’s toenails catch on the concrete when Seishirou lifts him, bodily off the ground and off his leg and slams him into the glass. Like-like there’s something stuck, like he paid for something and the machine ate it-the boxes of cigarettes shake behind Subaru and the world’s spinning and red and he wants so much, wants what the fake white eye is reflecting and what the real one’s hiding and he knows there’s more there than the smirk and the smoke but-but he can’t say anything at all, can’t even breathe-
-Subaru’s jeans are hanging open-
-coming down-
-yes-
The glasses hit the concrete.
Subaru’s pants and underwear are down, waistbands digging into his thighs, the glass of the machine grimy and sucking against his backside. The lighter’s still in Seishirou’s hand, and he’s-he uncaps it, he’s running the fixture along where Subaru’s taut and hard, ceramic and metal and white-hot panic, panic and want and they’re almost the same. Seishirou’s hand is scalding, sticking (from the blisters? Oh) and slow, slow and gentle and if it wasn’t for the throbbing of open, rotten wounds and no air to breathe this would be-would be-
His fist tightens on Seishirou’s beltloops and something pulls, breaks, undoes. Pops. Hisses. He-he tore the clasp off and the zipper’s half open and Seishirou hammers their lips together, steals what little air Subaru has left, quick and harsh. His palm’s almost crushing Subaru’s windpipe-he’s-this is the end, he’s going to die like this, barefoot and burnt under a vending machine with his underwear hobbling his knees and-and Seishirou’s hands-Seishirou’s hands let go, and black floods into Subaru’s eyes when his head hits the glass again, hard.
Seishirou-Seishirou sets him-sets Subaru down, he thinks, his foot’s on something, something smooth and not concrete but not tile either. He knows he’s smiling, or his face feels like that where his neck doesn’t bend anymore, lolling forward eyes-only and briefs, Subaru thinks, or thinks he thinks, where does Seishirou-san get black briefs?, and then that doesn’t matter either. Seishirou’s hands come up again, block out Subaru’s chance to find his eyes and-and spin him around, slam him face first into the glass. By the neck.
There’s a hot pain along Subaru’s left foot, a bleeding pain. It sends a shiver up through him when he braces himself on the glass, pillows his forehead in his arm and he can see the second cigarette burn now, a jagged black star, cruel and sudden white blisters framed with bracken ash-nothing like the glowing pentagrams, sucking up the fluorescent light, dizzy next to his eyes. Subaru laughs or moans or neither, there’s just no sound, and everything inside him itches and bleeds.
Seishirou’s hands. They’re-the lighter’s still there, he’s stretching Subaru and pressing his fingers in and his mouth’s on the side of Subaru’s neck, hissing into the raw, ruptured skin. “Does it burn?”
“Y-yes-”
The hand with the lighter comes around front again, sliding, warm with sweat. “Do you want it to?”
“Yes-yes-let it-”
Seishirou grabs him, ca-caresses him, the cap of the lighter is sharp but everything’s solid and gentle and right, and he’s-he’s aligned with Subaru, but not pushing in, not, and that’s-Subaru remembers his other hand, needs it, lets it down between himself and the glass of the machine and it grapples with Seishirou’s, holds him there. This is yours, all of this, all of me, take it. Fingers intertwine and knuckles lock, shove-Subaru’s out, the scars still glowing-Seishirou’s around him with the lighter between.
There’s spit in the laughter, warm, spiking down Subaru’s neck. Seishirou-doesn’t thrust in but-but edges in, slowly, drawing it out, making it-making it hurt so much-
Their hands tangle, Seishirou’s guides and Subaru’s keeps him there-the buttons of Seishirou’s jacket cut into Subaru’s back through his soaked T-shirt-the knot and the pins of his tie stab at the base of Subaru’s skull. Subaru’s foot bleeds onto the concrete, scrapes, can’t balance. Senseless empty pleas dribble out of his throat. It takes minutes, spinning wired minutes and when Seishirou’s finally in him nothing settles, he jams his left hand into Subaru’s neck, digs his thumb into the burn and everything else into the bruises, new wet bruises. The first thrust is sudden and cuts and Subaru’s whole body bangs into the glass, the machine spasms and teeters and there’s a swarm of brands, letters and colors and so much pain, so many different kinds of pain, invasive and explosive and Seishirou whispers, “Are you alive?”
Burn.
Something seeps down from the red behind Subaru’s eyes and the pain evaporates, all of it at once, immolating, giddy and dizzy and gone-gone-
The neck of his shirt tears. Seishirou’s nails dig into Subaru’s chest.
When Subaru comes, he can hear it.
It’s not over, not at all, the world’s still clanging and clattering and dripping. Seishirou’s unforgiving-uncaring, slow and hurtful and harsh but Subaru’s past pain, all there is is fire. There are tremors and spines and gaping pores and broken skin, that’s all, he’s wasting away to nothing, nothing’s real and nothing’s steady and he is nothing and Subaru looks up, raises his eyes to the glass and the neat rows of cigarettes behind it. Reflections. Overlap. Hour hand, minute hand. The outline of Seishirou behind him. Around him. In him. The slits of his eyes, his parted teeth.
It’s like dropping a kekkai. All the wounds open up at once.
Seishirou finishes, drills into Subaru with a voiceless gasp and Subaru slips, scrabbles to hold on to the vending machine but only gets the snap of buttons and the swipe of wet fingertips, spreading filth across the glass. The ground drops out from under him and Seishirou’s grip on his neck is all that’s holding him up, he knows, all that’s keeping him from being litter, a corpse on the floor.
“Subaru-kun,” Seishirou exhales, still invading, stroking the flat, wet backs of his nails up, down, along the spike of Subaru’s sternum. Subaru’s teeth chatter. The reflection is smiling, unreadable-satisfied, like-like he always used to be. “Whatever happened to you?”
-He sees his own reflection now, in the shining cellophane beyond the glass.
Disgust wells up through every break in his skin.
He doesn’t wait for Seishirou to pull out-Subaru shoves, pushes himself off the glass even though his legs are boneless and shaking, and staggers forward, manages to turn so that he can lean on his back. He slips down the front of the machine but stops himself, straightens out as best he can. Something drips down his thighs like curdled sweat. The wrinkles of his shirt are hard. “You,” he spits. “You’re a-bad influence.”
Seishirou smiles, curls a loose fist to clean himself off, enough to pull his briefs and pants back up. “That makes sense,” he says, nudging the remains of his sunglasses through Subaru’s blood on the concrete with-with the toe of his boot, a streak of white across the black shine. White-his eye-smoke-white, bone-white, semen-white- “But you’ve got an addictive personality.”
Subaru glares until the corners of his eyes start to tear. He leans there, holding back, relying on the glass until long after Seishirou’s stopped. Seishirou stands across from him, framed in the landlord’s door, calm and straight and steady, his eye-his eye saying nothing. He reaches out once, cups Subaru’s bruised chin-his fingertips are filthy, sticking, warm-sour-and runs his thumb across Subaru’s lower lip until it stops trembling, until it’s dry. But that shaking doesn’t go away, just shifts and dribbles down until it’s in Subaru’s fists, curled tight at his sides, his own nails in his palms, the pentagram scars white and swollen.
“Admiring your-your work?” Subaru manages.
Seishirou smiles, stops with the bitter pad of his thumb on the corner of Subaru’s mouth. “How can I not?”
Even the awkward set of his pants with the waistband ruined doesn’t seem out of place when Seishirou turns, nods politely, and walks away, the end of night and the strung-out streetlights drinking him down. Every breath Subaru takes hurts sharper, hurts further in.
It can’t be undone, he repeats to himself. The thought spirals with him up the stairs, crumbles into the trail of blood his foot leaves on the concrete, the carpet, the tile.
---
-
-
Music from the prompt
Mindless Self-Indulgence: cover, “Bring the Pain”
moving to your left
i came to represent and carve my name within your chest
you can come test, realize it’s no contest, son
i'm the gun who won the whole wild west
Original lyrics and rap by Method Man.
-
Photo illustrations courtesy of myself (as Seishirou) and puella_nerdii (as Subaru)
photography by lassarina
(not explicit)
* “I keep telling you that’s bad for your health.”
* “It’s changed your voice.”
* Another-another kiss, or-or at least it’s Seishirou’s mouth, on Subaru’s, his tongue between the fingers that Subaru is still gagging on.
* It might mean that he’s stronger, older. That something’s changed.”
* The glasses hit the concrete.
* “Subaru-kun. Whatever happened to you?”
* “You. You’re a bad influence.”
* “Admiring your work?”
-
.
I have been sitting on this prompt for two goddamned months and have revised and tweaked it more than anything else I have ever written, including the M.A. thesis.
I am so damned proud of this piece. I hope I'm right to be.
Title: Secondhand Smoke
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon
Characters: Subaru, Seishirou
Rating: NC-17. Sex, violence, coercion. The prompt is your warning.
Words: 3600
Spoilers: for the end of TB. This takes place in March of 1996.
Irony Cudgel Index: No OJ, no straw, when you give it to me, yeah, give it to me raw.
Prompt: Tokyo Babylon, Seishirou/Subaru: cigarette burns, sadism - “I came to represent and carve my name within your chest”
---
Secondhand Smoke
tokyo babylon
Mithrigil Galtirglin
1996.03.24
04:17
-shoes. Subaru actually walked into the hall and halfway down the first flight of stairs without shoes. Remembered to put jeans and a shirt on-remembered his keys-remembered the change for the vending machine, enough for two packs since he won’t have time tomorrow-hasn’t slept but knows to the minute how long he’s been trying to-but forgot. Shoes.
He stands there, one foot higher than the other, just pauses, just groans. The tile under his feet is beaten dry, antiseptic-cold, pummeled with air conditioner that sinks, spirals, congeals. Each step’s edged in ridges of metal. He curls his toes around the top one, over it, shivers.
Don’t bother going back, he thinks-it can’t be undone.
He falls into a rhythm, a dirge, spiraling down those stairs. They get warmer, or his feet get desensitized, as he goes. Six more flights, and maybe that was the right idea, maybe walking in circles like this will put him to sleep. Maybe he’ll just keel over like a homeless person at the bottom, slide down the wall, concrete for a mattress and litter for a pillow. He doesn’t. The bar that crosses the door to the lobby is almost a surprise. He pushes it with his hips as much as his hands. Warm-starched-lobby carpet is a real shock after that, enough to wake him up, undo whatever progress he’d made toward sleep. He can hear the second hand of the clock over the security guard’s empty desk clacking to itself. There’s only one other hand, minute overlaying hour overlaying the stem of an Arabic 4. Black on black on white, plastic white. His feet drag at half that tempo out the complex door, onto the street.
Concrete under him, now. He wonders if he’s ever actually felt that before, without shoes. Probably not.
The nearest row of machines is somewhere left, in an offshoot half-alleyway that angles toward the landlord’s office. First three of drinks, then three of snacks, then two of cigarettes. Mild Sevens dominate the second cigarette machine. He knows the landlord smokes them too, not Select though. Menthol. Subaru’s tried that, twice to be sure, and no. It’s not…not the feeling he wants, from smoking.
Coins scrape down the slot, clatter into their files. He doesn’t bother checking, knows which number to press.
Interface warbles at him. It’s worse than an alarm clock.
Subaru checks-both slots of Select are empty. He closes his eyes, leans his head forward into the glass, opens them again. The colors of all the other boxes and labels and garish fonts swim around him hazily, white on blue, white on green, gold on red, English letters mostly. He blocks them out.
“Oh, were these the last ones?”
“-Seishirou-san-” -behind him, leaning on the landlord’s door, his mouth already smirking around a filter-
His lighter snaps like steam, fills the alleyway. “I keep telling you that’s bad for your health.”
Subaru glares. “Living is bad for my health.”
“That’s true,” Seishirou says, letting his cupped hand down once the cigarette catches, smolders. The lighter lingers there for long enough to notice, for there to be three dying flames, one in each lens of his sunglasses and then, the real one, the first to go out. “Like any addiction, really. Keeps you moving, kills you slowly.” He holds the cigarette in straight fingers, exhales white, tucks the lighter away. “You can’t possibly want to die.”
“You can’t possibly understand,” Subaru snaps back. “You don’t know what anything feels like.”
Seishirou smiles, then, not showing his teeth but it’s still white, like he’s sucked all the light in from the street and is just letting Subaru have a glimpse of it through his mouth. -He’s closer. Concrete digs into Subaru’s feet. Bare feet. “Not personally, no,” Seishirou admits, but it doesn’t weaken him at all. He holds the cigarette to the side, almost like he’s talking to it, not him. “Except perhaps addiction. But that’s not a feeling in and of itself,” he adds, leaning in-
-Subaru ducks aside-
-the lighter clicks open, sputters near his ear-his eyes reflect in the metal, swirling, afraid, grey, childish. “Just a way of proving you’re alive,” Seishirou finishes. “Something like that, Subaru-kun?”
Butane burns, smoke falls. Subaru holds his breath just out of spite.
The lighter’s still going, but Seishirou holds it steady, even when he brings the cigarette to his lips, drags on it long. “I can’t allow anything to hurt you but me,” he-
slams his mouth onto Subaru’s and
Subaru holds down his lips, keeps them closed, feels the glass on his back and the grit between his toes and the fire, the lighter, the secondhand smoke, he knows he can’t move but he won’t open for this, not even if Seishirou’s mouth is that hot, that-
-hot ash bites Subaru’s neck and he screams-
and fills him with the smoke, Select and Seishirou’s tongue, shoving, drilling the taste in, flattening over Subaru’s until he gasps and gags once the scream’s wrung out. His neck-throbbing-a round raised prickling burn-awake.
Awake enough to get out, hammer the arm with the lighter out of the way and tear past it, but-but not enough to run. Seishirou’s hand waves and something dead flies out of it. Ash. Filter. Subaru barely sees it, through fog, fog, not tears. The-the fingertips on that hand almost-touch the burn on Subaru’s neck, circle it, there are blisters there already, blood and water and he doesn’t know what else. He flinches away, as much as he can, twitching, needing air, real air, not this.
“It’s changed your voice,” Seishirou says, stroking the burn-is-is Subaru leaning in to that? It feels- “Well. That, and getting older. Not that you aren’t still cute,” he adds, and the press gets harder-and the spout of the lighter, still hot but not ignited, runs up the vein that’s throbbing on the other side of Subaru’s neck and that-no-the gear, warm like ceramic, warm like Seishirou’s hands, sweat, butane. “It’s exciting.”
What’s left of Subaru’s breath stutters, swells.
The hand on his neck shifts, strokes up under Subaru’s chin with the back of the nails, then pulls away. Wet shivers coagulate into almost a gasp, and-and Subaru cranes his neck up after that touch, trying to follow it-it disgusts him, and he stops, but it’s too late.
Seishirou takes out another cigarette from his suit jacket, raps the filter on Subaru’s lower lip, pushes the hand holding the lighter, his left, up to trap Subaru’s chin and back him into the glass by it. Subaru’s hands are shaking but he manages, he grabs onto that wrist and strangles it, puts all his weight on it-the lighter drops from Seishirou’s left to right hand like it’s planned that way and he raises it, scrapes it on, lets the flame wave in front of Subaru’s wild eyes. It-the light breaks past the glasses and Subaru can see Seishirou’s eyes, real, fake.
He snakes up his left hand, the one Subaru’s trying to stop-it’s like a vice on Subaru’s chin. He pins the cigarette to Subaru’s lips, parts them, shoves his fingers in. Lights it. Smiles.
Inhaling is more like choking after that.
Seishirou’s fingers run along Subaru’s teeth, which can’t clench, can’t keep steady-and Subaru’s hands can’t either, he’s slipping out of his hold on Seishirou’s wrist, coughing, tearing up. He bucks, swerves, nothing works, and then Seishirou’s aligned with him and laughing, almost, chuckling into Subaru’s mouth next to the fingers holding the cigarette. Because he knows. Because he can feel that, the same as Subaru can. How-how-why he’s staying.
“And here I thought you’d reserve the smoking for after sex,” he-chides, and-and holds his leg hard and even, pushing Subaru off his heels, toes scraping concrete. The zipper on Subaru’s jeans is cold, shoving through the flap of his shorts and onto his skin-he can feel Seishirou’s steady pulse through the metal, so much slower than his own. He moans around the cigarette and sputters when that drags the smoke too deep, when-when it makes the spit around Seishirou’s fingers curl into steam, twitching steam, mixing with the ashes.
Subaru tries to speak, tries to glare. The answer’s only smoke and saliva.
“Don’t worry,” Seishirou says, pulling the half-done cigarette away, a trail of spit stretching between his fingertips and Subaru’s mouth. “It won’t hurt more than living.”
Another-another kiss, or-or at least it’s Seishirou’s mouth, on Subaru’s, his tongue between the fingers that Subaru is still gagging on. His sunglasses slide across Subaru’s cheek, covered in sweat. Subaru tries to tighten his hands, still shaking, and can’t-they slip, and he slips, the back of his head bashes into the glass, Seishirou’s palm shoves into his jaw and he tastes like more than cigarettes, like blood and want and malice.
Does this mean that I’m almost a threat to him?
Subaru tears his mouth away, out of shock, out of a need for air. He grabs onto something, anything, both hands, and it turns out to be Seishirou’s hair, and that feels so good, so cold between his fingers, colder than the glass. His left elbow whacks into the vending machine’s buttons, letters, numbers-Seishirou’s going to snap his neck like this, maybe this is it, maybe it’ll finally be over-but he doesn’t, Seishirou puts his mouth there, instead, sucks on the cigarette burn and rings it with his teeth and everything in Subaru tightens, every joint flares.
It-it might. It might mean that he’s stronger, older, that-that something’s changed.
Subaru knits his hands through Seishirou’s hair, pulls, runs his knuckles along Seishirou’s scalp and that earns Subaru the scrape of teeth over the burn and something snaps, on him, in him. He’d laugh but his throat’s gone ragged and dry and the light, the light of the vending machines is spinning overhead, red and white. Someth-pain, oh, real pain, when ash dribbles into the crook of his elbow and traces down, steady, a seam, and he has to let go of Seishirou’s hair but that’s fine, anything’s fine now, white needles scraping down his forearm to his wrist, to where his hands are already burning, where-where Seishirou’s always been-
He bites one burn and stabs in another. Blisters rupture in Subaru’s neck and new ones bubble up out of his wrist right between the bones.
Subaru’s too wound up to even ache.
The one of his hands that’s still in Seishirou’s hair goes slack, falls to the collar of his suit. Seishirou’s wet, there, the back of his neck, he’s sweating-Subaru’s not sure what that means but it, it feels like a good meaning, and he says so. Or thinks he does. That this is good. That this is something he wants. That he wants more of this, more of the pain, more of the burn, just more of Seishirou because that’s what Seishirou is, the burn. Please. Subaru thinks he says it, some of it-Seishirou’s mouth abandons his neck, wet, leaving only his tongue, tracing up Subaru’s jawline. Subaru tries to kiss him first, misses, and his mouth ends up half on the sunglasses and half on Seishirou’s cheek.
When Subaru laughs, he can feel it in the burns, bitter and wheezing. His hand, the one that’s not burning and throbbing and alive is falling-glowing-brushing down Seishirou’s lapel, lower, to where-where Subaru’s hips are moving, he hadn’t even noticed that but they are so that’s where he stops. Over Seishirou’s. Under the flap of his jacket.
Seishirou’s tongue stops on Subaru’s chin-he, something, something clamps down on the burns on Subaru’s other wrist and-nails, blisters-white- “Not so innocent,” Seishirou breathes or laughs or whispers, “are you, Subaru-kun?”
And whose fault is that? some part of Subaru asks.
But it doesn’t get voiced-the-the hand on Subaru’s chin, the hand tilting him up, it lowers, throttles him, and all Subaru can do aloud is agree. He throws back his head to let that word out. He tries to clench his fists and can’t, can’t anything. Seishirou’s fingers jam slick into his neck and the pain there is sharp, on that one side, the burst burn-Subaru can see glare on those sunglasses, advertising lights and scars and he wants those off, wants-wants. He wrenches his head, slams it into the side of Seishirou’s face, not the blind side but that-that works, the earpiece of the glasses snaps and the spoke slices into Subaru but that’s okay, he can see it just for a hazy second, surprise in the left eye, real, gold, bracken embers of gold.
And then that smile. “So cute,” Seishirou says.
Subaru’s toenails catch on the concrete when Seishirou lifts him, bodily off the ground and off his leg and slams him into the glass. Like-like there’s something stuck, like he paid for something and the machine ate it-the boxes of cigarettes shake behind Subaru and the world’s spinning and red and he wants so much, wants what the fake white eye is reflecting and what the real one’s hiding and he knows there’s more there than the smirk and the smoke but-but he can’t say anything at all, can’t even breathe-
-Subaru’s jeans are hanging open-
-coming down-
-yes-
The glasses hit the concrete.
Subaru’s pants and underwear are down, waistbands digging into his thighs, the glass of the machine grimy and sucking against his backside. The lighter’s still in Seishirou’s hand, and he’s-he uncaps it, he’s running the fixture along where Subaru’s taut and hard, ceramic and metal and white-hot panic, panic and want and they’re almost the same. Seishirou’s hand is scalding, sticking (from the blisters? Oh) and slow, slow and gentle and if it wasn’t for the throbbing of open, rotten wounds and no air to breathe this would be-would be-
His fist tightens on Seishirou’s beltloops and something pulls, breaks, undoes. Pops. Hisses. He-he tore the clasp off and the zipper’s half open and Seishirou hammers their lips together, steals what little air Subaru has left, quick and harsh. His palm’s almost crushing Subaru’s windpipe-he’s-this is the end, he’s going to die like this, barefoot and burnt under a vending machine with his underwear hobbling his knees and-and Seishirou’s hands-Seishirou’s hands let go, and black floods into Subaru’s eyes when his head hits the glass again, hard.
Seishirou-Seishirou sets him-sets Subaru down, he thinks, his foot’s on something, something smooth and not concrete but not tile either. He knows he’s smiling, or his face feels like that where his neck doesn’t bend anymore, lolling forward eyes-only and briefs, Subaru thinks, or thinks he thinks, where does Seishirou-san get black briefs?, and then that doesn’t matter either. Seishirou’s hands come up again, block out Subaru’s chance to find his eyes and-and spin him around, slam him face first into the glass. By the neck.
There’s a hot pain along Subaru’s left foot, a bleeding pain. It sends a shiver up through him when he braces himself on the glass, pillows his forehead in his arm and he can see the second cigarette burn now, a jagged black star, cruel and sudden white blisters framed with bracken ash-nothing like the glowing pentagrams, sucking up the fluorescent light, dizzy next to his eyes. Subaru laughs or moans or neither, there’s just no sound, and everything inside him itches and bleeds.
Seishirou’s hands. They’re-the lighter’s still there, he’s stretching Subaru and pressing his fingers in and his mouth’s on the side of Subaru’s neck, hissing into the raw, ruptured skin. “Does it burn?”
“Y-yes-”
The hand with the lighter comes around front again, sliding, warm with sweat. “Do you want it to?”
“Yes-yes-let it-”
Seishirou grabs him, ca-caresses him, the cap of the lighter is sharp but everything’s solid and gentle and right, and he’s-he’s aligned with Subaru, but not pushing in, not, and that’s-Subaru remembers his other hand, needs it, lets it down between himself and the glass of the machine and it grapples with Seishirou’s, holds him there. This is yours, all of this, all of me, take it. Fingers intertwine and knuckles lock, shove-Subaru’s out, the scars still glowing-Seishirou’s around him with the lighter between.
There’s spit in the laughter, warm, spiking down Subaru’s neck. Seishirou-doesn’t thrust in but-but edges in, slowly, drawing it out, making it-making it hurt so much-
Their hands tangle, Seishirou’s guides and Subaru’s keeps him there-the buttons of Seishirou’s jacket cut into Subaru’s back through his soaked T-shirt-the knot and the pins of his tie stab at the base of Subaru’s skull. Subaru’s foot bleeds onto the concrete, scrapes, can’t balance. Senseless empty pleas dribble out of his throat. It takes minutes, spinning wired minutes and when Seishirou’s finally in him nothing settles, he jams his left hand into Subaru’s neck, digs his thumb into the burn and everything else into the bruises, new wet bruises. The first thrust is sudden and cuts and Subaru’s whole body bangs into the glass, the machine spasms and teeters and there’s a swarm of brands, letters and colors and so much pain, so many different kinds of pain, invasive and explosive and Seishirou whispers, “Are you alive?”
Burn.
Something seeps down from the red behind Subaru’s eyes and the pain evaporates, all of it at once, immolating, giddy and dizzy and gone-gone-
The neck of his shirt tears. Seishirou’s nails dig into Subaru’s chest.
When Subaru comes, he can hear it.
It’s not over, not at all, the world’s still clanging and clattering and dripping. Seishirou’s unforgiving-uncaring, slow and hurtful and harsh but Subaru’s past pain, all there is is fire. There are tremors and spines and gaping pores and broken skin, that’s all, he’s wasting away to nothing, nothing’s real and nothing’s steady and he is nothing and Subaru looks up, raises his eyes to the glass and the neat rows of cigarettes behind it. Reflections. Overlap. Hour hand, minute hand. The outline of Seishirou behind him. Around him. In him. The slits of his eyes, his parted teeth.
It’s like dropping a kekkai. All the wounds open up at once.
Seishirou finishes, drills into Subaru with a voiceless gasp and Subaru slips, scrabbles to hold on to the vending machine but only gets the snap of buttons and the swipe of wet fingertips, spreading filth across the glass. The ground drops out from under him and Seishirou’s grip on his neck is all that’s holding him up, he knows, all that’s keeping him from being litter, a corpse on the floor.
“Subaru-kun,” Seishirou exhales, still invading, stroking the flat, wet backs of his nails up, down, along the spike of Subaru’s sternum. Subaru’s teeth chatter. The reflection is smiling, unreadable-satisfied, like-like he always used to be. “Whatever happened to you?”
-He sees his own reflection now, in the shining cellophane beyond the glass.
Disgust wells up through every break in his skin.
He doesn’t wait for Seishirou to pull out-Subaru shoves, pushes himself off the glass even though his legs are boneless and shaking, and staggers forward, manages to turn so that he can lean on his back. He slips down the front of the machine but stops himself, straightens out as best he can. Something drips down his thighs like curdled sweat. The wrinkles of his shirt are hard. “You,” he spits. “You’re a-bad influence.”
Seishirou smiles, curls a loose fist to clean himself off, enough to pull his briefs and pants back up. “That makes sense,” he says, nudging the remains of his sunglasses through Subaru’s blood on the concrete with-with the toe of his boot, a streak of white across the black shine. White-his eye-smoke-white, bone-white, semen-white- “But you’ve got an addictive personality.”
Subaru glares until the corners of his eyes start to tear. He leans there, holding back, relying on the glass until long after Seishirou’s stopped. Seishirou stands across from him, framed in the landlord’s door, calm and straight and steady, his eye-his eye saying nothing. He reaches out once, cups Subaru’s bruised chin-his fingertips are filthy, sticking, warm-sour-and runs his thumb across Subaru’s lower lip until it stops trembling, until it’s dry. But that shaking doesn’t go away, just shifts and dribbles down until it’s in Subaru’s fists, curled tight at his sides, his own nails in his palms, the pentagram scars white and swollen.
“Admiring your-your work?” Subaru manages.
Seishirou smiles, stops with the bitter pad of his thumb on the corner of Subaru’s mouth. “How can I not?”
Even the awkward set of his pants with the waistband ruined doesn’t seem out of place when Seishirou turns, nods politely, and walks away, the end of night and the strung-out streetlights drinking him down. Every breath Subaru takes hurts sharper, hurts further in.
It can’t be undone, he repeats to himself. The thought spirals with him up the stairs, crumbles into the trail of blood his foot leaves on the concrete, the carpet, the tile.
---
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Music from the prompt
Mindless Self-Indulgence: cover, “Bring the Pain”
moving to your left
i came to represent and carve my name within your chest
you can come test, realize it’s no contest, son
i'm the gun who won the whole wild west
Original lyrics and rap by Method Man.
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Photo illustrations courtesy of myself (as Seishirou) and puella_nerdii (as Subaru)
photography by lassarina
(not explicit)
* “I keep telling you that’s bad for your health.”
* “It’s changed your voice.”
* Another-another kiss, or-or at least it’s Seishirou’s mouth, on Subaru’s, his tongue between the fingers that Subaru is still gagging on.
* It might mean that he’s stronger, older. That something’s changed.”
* The glasses hit the concrete.
* “Subaru-kun. Whatever happened to you?”
* “You. You’re a bad influence.”
* “Admiring your work?”
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.