One-shot: Flow Under Your Touch

[sashjun]

Title: Flow Under Your Touch
Pairing/Group:Ryo/Ueda
Rating:R
Warnings: Inking
Summary: There’s a small dragon on the picture, tail curved around the body, small pointy ears and a mass of what someone might think is fire coming out of his big mouth. Ryo’s fingers burn as he traces the contours of the painting. He knows them too well. He knows it’s water and not fire the dragon is spouting.
Notes: Tebori is a form of traditional tattooing, more here. I tried to be as gentle as possible with the concepts of Japanese dragon mythology, please forgive me any misgivings.
9515 words. Written for je_holiday 2013, for dusk037, originally posted here.
Thanks to je_levy, my amazing supporter and beta.


Ryo thinks the man standing in their tattoo parlor is too pretty for a tattoo. He looks around, thick lip jutted out, eyes hidden by a long fringe, only tips of his fingers peeking from a too long sweater sleeves. Well, it’s cold outside. It’s the end of October, of course it’s cold outside. The man is wearing no socks and pants a bit too short.

Maybe he came to get a piercing. Ryo retreats to the back of the shop, letting Subaru deal with him. Subaru will hate it, and Ryo already feels better knowing that.

“You have a customer,” Subaru calls after him a few minutes later, a bit too chipper for Ryo's taste. The girlish man is standing in the doorway; the curtain already closed behind him.

In that moment, Ryo’s world changes.

“Can you do this?” The man hands him a picture. “Today. I’m ready. I know everything I need to.”

There’s a small dragon on the picture, tail curved around the body, small pointy ears and a mass of what someone might think is fire coming out of his big mouth. It’s only black and white, and Ryo’s fingers burn as he traces the contours. He knows them too well. He knows it’s water and not fire the dragon is spouting. His head snaps back up, and he finds dark eyes staring at him, unnerved.

“I want it on the back of my neck, here at the bottom,” The man turns around, and his hair is shaved high on his neck.

Ryo runs his fingers over the skin there, and the man heaves a breath.

“Will you do it?” he asks.

Ryo isn’t sure he can even say no. “What’s your name?” he asks.

The man turns around sharply, eyes properly catching Ryo’s for the first time. His bottom lip is between his teeth again. Ryo realizes the answer to his question will probably be a lie.

“Ueda,” the man says slowly.

“Well Ueda, are you sure that is the best place for a tattoo?” Ryo asks. The dragon’s tail would curve nicely around Ueda’s shoulder blade.

Ueda keeps looking at Ryo. Ryo, however, has his eyes fixed on the dragon.

“What are you thinking of?” Ueda asks, from too close in Ryo’s personal space, and his breath is too hot on Ryo’s cheek.

Ryo’s arm snakes around the man on instinct, tracing the spot he can see clearly in his mind. It’s a game, a dare, a territory much more dangerous than he hopefully lets on.

Ueda takes a sharp breath, as if something has just clicked. “Fine.”

Ryo’s hands haven’t shaken like this in years. Not even when he first took a needle and ink from his grandfather and sloppily inked his first line into his skin. He has to shake himself to not fall too deep into his memories. Not now.

“When was the last time you’ve eaten? Did you drink last night or today? Alcohol I mean. What about coffee or anything else with caffeine?”

Ueda’s lips purse into a half smile. “I told you. I’m ready. I’ve eaten, and I haven’t drunk anything but water in the last two days.”

“Usually people make an appointment,” Ryo says, trying to get himself on a bit of an autopilot.

“The guy in the shop said you’re free.”

“Fine, fine.” Ryo rakes a hand through his hair. “Pick the color.”

The bluish black Ueda reaches for right away flashes in streams in Ryo’s mind, tips of his fingers dirty, old but always sterile needles all around the floor of his grandfather’s room, a perfect dragon shining on the wrinkled skin of his stomach.

“Take your shirt off,” Ryo says at last, moving to the sink to get the soap and a simple razor. It’s never easy to stop from falling on old habits. Today, Ryo doesn’t even try.

His focus is completely on the task now; soap runs across Ueda’s bare neck, sharp razor drags across the skin, more soap, and only when Ryo taps a soft cloth over the shaven back does he realize the play of muscles under Ueda’s skin.

They don’t talk; only Ryo makes Ueda lie on a higher table. He pours the ink into the tube and pulls out the tattoo needle. Once again, the machine feels foreign in his hand. It will never be as perfect as the set of needles in the box under his bed.

“Don’t you need to draw it first?” Ueda’s voice is deep but loud and cuts across the veil of Ryo’s routine.

“No,” he says, glaring as Ueda shifts on the bed.

“It has to look exactly the same.” Ueda doesn’t move.

“It will.” Ryo’s fingers itch.

“It’s kind of permanent. Don’t be cocky.”

“You are welcome to leave and find someone else.” Ryo pushes his chair further away.

Ueda lies back down. “They say you’re the best. But if you fuck this up, I swear you won’t walk out of here.”

“You’re too pretty for talk like that,” Ryo dismisses him. Yet, there’s a shiver running up his spine.

Ryo’s hand is firm and smooth once the needle starts buzzing. There’s no music this time, just his and Ueda’s breathing as the ink seeps under Ueda’s skin, not too deep and not too shallow, slowly taking shape.

Ryo’s had his hip tattoo done when he was sixteen. The thin needle with ink dripping from it on his left side. The ink is completely blue by now.

They should take a break, but Ueda doesn’t speak, doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t squirm, and Ryo’s muscles work on old memory, sure and unstoppable. The tail curves right under the bone of Ueda’s shoulder blade, and Ryo is out of breath when he pulls away.

“Look at it,” he says, and Ueda stands up, walks to the mirrors facing one so that his back is to the other.

Ryo watches him, looking at the reddened patches around the perfect copy of Ueda’s drawing against the smooth skin. Now he observes. While Ueda’s eyes slide hungrily across his own back, Ryo’s eyes see the v-line in a low cut pair of jeans, the curve of Ueda’s hip, and the strong accent of his abs.

“It’s perfect,” Ueda mutters.

There’s need rising in Ryo. To make ink seep under Ueda’s skin, mark him with his own design; leave a sign on his underbelly where the light color of his skin meets the dark color of his jeans. And that, that has nothing to do with the dragon on Ueda’s back. Yet it’s all about the fire Ueda might breathe.

Ryo only has two tattoos. The second one was the last one his grandfather did, on the inside of his wrist, family name of Ryo’s mother.

Ueda jumps when Ryo touches the tattoo and covers it with bandage.

“Keep it on for a few hours,” he says, starting to explain the post care. Ueda grabs for his shirt, puts it on and strides out of the room without another word.

He doesn’t pay at the front desk.

Subaru looks at Ryo funny when the other drags him out for a drink that night. They sit down in Ryo’s favorite bar, dark, filled with cigarette smoke and guitar music. Band on a small stage plays too loudly for anyone to properly talk or listen.

“Maybe we should start taking their wallets or phones when they come in. That way less of them will run away,” Subaru shouts over the music.

Ryo thinks how his grandfather has always said that men of Hoori ran too much, too far away, and one day they would run too far to come back, to realize who they were.

“I have a feeling this one will come back,” he shouts back. Subaru gives him a strange look, but doesn’t say anything else, turning to watch the band. This is probably why Ryo hangs out with him, even if he sometimes feels like strangling him after spending an entire day in a stuffy and dark tattoo studio with him.

Ryo comes home late at night, takes a shower, drinks a glass of cold water then drops flat on his stomach next to his bed to reach underneath it. He pulls out a big wooden box. He sits cross-legged on his floor, slowly pulling out needle after needle, carefully wrapped in cotton, laying it out on the bed then cleaning all of them even if they were still gleaming from the last time. He runs his fingers over the case containing rolls of old paper, but doesn’t open it. He took it to a library once, copied it carefully, bound the copied pages so that the old ones of the original wouldn’t smudge and tear anymore when he reads. He remembers thinking he had it so much easier than his ancestors, but then he was just trying to preserve it. According to his grandfather, when the roll of writing currently lying on his bed was made, it was in secret, and against the wishes of the owners, pages painstakingly rewritten by hand at night.

Ryo wonders if Ueda has the original, one of them anyways, if that is where the dragon is from. He tells himself he can’t be sure. It might just be a coincidence. Old legends run deep and rampant in this country. His fingers still burn from where he touched Ueda’s back, and dragon’s tail curves around Ryo’s dreams when he finally sleeps that night.

Ueda comes back a week later, shortly before the closing time. Subaru grabs a stick from beneath a counter.

“Pay up,” he threatens. Ryo always tells him that if he ever cuts his hair, people will start laughing instead of feeling intimidated. As it is, Ueda just seems slightly amused from where Ryo is watching him, hidden behind the doorway to the back of the studio.

“I should charge you the interest too,” Subaru huffs when Ueda hands over the money.

“Is Nishikido here?” Ueda asks. There’s a sheen of sweat on his temples and his cheeks are pinkish. It’s almost as if he were running a fever, and his movements are sluggish as he looks around the place. Only when he turns, does Ryo notice a guitar case on his back. Ueda pulls his bottom lip in between his teeth, and Ryo grabs a water bottle as he steps up behind the counter.

“Hey,” Ueda starts when he sees him, eyes looking straight into Ryo’s. It’s unnerving, but then it seems like Ryo’s eyes is all Ueda sees because when Ryo hurls water at him, he doesn’t have time to move away.

The moment it hits, Ueda stumbles back, and Ryo swears he can hear him hiss. Ryo sees a dragon tail swooping in the air. When Ueda looks up at Ryo, his eyes are wide and almost unbelieving.

“Well then,” Subaru says, and there’s dark amusement in his voice, though Ryo’s pretty sure this time he is clueless. “Should I leave you two alone?”

“Let’s close up,” Ryo says slowly, and retreats to finish cleaning up at the back. He hears footsteps and knows Ueda’s in the room with him. He can hear Subaru whistling loudly in the front.

“How’s the tattoo doing?” Ryo asks, keeping his back to Ueda.

“It’s not what I hoped for,” Ueda says, “I thought you were the best. Did you spread the rumors yourself?”

“Maybe you just didn’t know what to ask for,” Ryo says, spinning around and finally looking back at Ueda. His heart is still beating faster than it should, and he hears water rushing in his ears. Ueda’s stance is firm, the confusion gone and replaced with determination. He is leaning against the shelves, and the guitar case is propped between his spread legs. “Maybe you hoped for a quick fix, but things can’t always be so easy. You have to earn it.”

“I paid,” Ueda says, dryly.

Ryo snorts.

“I don’t float on water anymore,” Ueda says, as if that was something you usually share with strangers over a cup of coffee, or a tattoo table. But Ryo can see Ueda watching him, eyes sinking under Ryo’s skin, the overwhelming presence of someone bursting form inside out.

“You play or do you just carry it around to look cool?” Ryo asks instead of an answer, pointing to Ueda’s guitar. Ueda’s shoulders relax a little.

“I don’t need a guitar to look cool.”

Ryo laughs and steps closer to him, stands there for a moment, taking in the heat radiating from Ueda, listening to his breathing that is heavier than it really should be. He looks exhausted. Ryo grabs the guitar case and drapes the strap over his own shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here. Subaru is eavesdropping, and he already thinks I’m awkward.”

Ueda is wearing boots today, but his pants are too short again, and Ryo notices bare shins as they walk towards the train station.

“If you drop the guitar, I will end you,” Ueda murmurs, zipping up his leather jacket and glancing at Ryo.

“I’m so scared,” Ryo says, voice flat. “Maybe I should remind you that you want something from me. And I’m under no obligation to give it.”

The confusion is back on Ueda’s face, just for a second. Then it’s like he doesn’t hear or see, eyes clouding and hands clutching the edges of his sleeves. “My father used to say that magic doesn’t exist in the world,” he says after a while, when they reach the metro station and Ryo stops, half watching the guy playing harmonica to the side of the stairs down, half watching Ueda.

“I used to argue that’s not true because every time you hear a good song, it’s like a new world is born in front of you and you can be whatever you want.”

“Ueda, what are you trying to be?” Ryo asks, a little annoyed. His own head is a mess of thoughts, and the man in front of him is talking bodily harm in one moment and fairytales in the next one. One moment, he looks like he wants to pick up and start running and in the next one, he is pressing close to Ryo in the swirl of people around them, and drawing Ryo in with a power he can barely fight.

It’s frustrating. Ryo’s mother used to say her father was living a fantasy that never was, that he was stuck between a dream and reality and it made him useless. She used to hate it when Ryo came to the dinner table with ink under his nails. If Ueda is the reason why his grandfather never moved, why he lived his whole life hoping one day he could prove to be worth of his honor, why his grandson is now marking thugs and clueless teenagers with ink, then what is left of his grandfather’s pride? Ryo feels the pull and push from Ueda, the idea that is there, yet the disbelief that clouds it beyond recognition.

Magic is within you. Ryo’s grandfather died, and Ryo grew up, believing that.

“You either run or you face what you are,” he says over the soft hum of Ueda’s voice to the tune of the harmonica. He thrusts the guitar case into his arms and runs down the steps. Maybe Ueda isn’t the only one who will have to stop running.

Ryo doesn’t sleep well that night, and on Saturday morning, he calls Yasu.

Yasu wouldn’t laugh at him if Ryo talked about dragons and water and long winding family trees and gods’ powers contained within a frail human body. Yasu is different than Subaru this way. If Ryo started talking, he would ask questions then soothe Ryo with a nod of his head and a palm pressing into his back. But it’s not like Ryo would, or could, talk about the box underneath his bed.

Yasu comes over with his own guitar, and they jam until Ryo is hungry and he feels almost normal again. Like his legacy hasn’t just become too real, too touchable for Ryo to just dream about it when the life he leads feels a little boring.

It takes another week before Ryo sees Ueda again. A week in which he floats between reality and the memories spiraling him out of his comfort and routine. The only time his mind isn’t full of images from old books and stories of emperors emerging from water is when he works, when there’s smooth skin under his fingers and a mechanical needle sends small tremors up his wrist. But once the customer leaves, flashes of dark blue ink seeping under the skin take a shape that’s been everywhere since the day he met Ueda.

No music in any bar is loud enough to drown out his thoughts, and Ryo wanders around the places he used to go see with his grandfather, even walks up the hill to his old house, watching forlornly as a young boy runs out of now freshly painted door with his father. Ryo’s mother has sold the house right after his grandfather’s dead, and they moved away soon after. Ryo dreams of sitting cross-legged on the tatami in the back of the house where everything smelled like history long forgotten.

When the dragon seeks you out, it is a matter of man’s honor to make him whole.

But he must believe. You both must. The dragon is the power and you are the way to realize it.

When Ueda shows up on Ryo’s door step, in shorts and a light hoodie, old muddy sneakers on his feet and looking like he ran several kilometers to get there, Ryo shuts the door in his face.

“Hey, at least let me have a glass of water,” Ueda says, breathless from behind the door.

“You told Subaru that we are fucking just so that he’d give you my address,” Ryo says back, and only then he wonders if the neighbors could hear them. Subaru sneered at him the day after Ueda came looking for him again while Ryo was out and kept asking him how it feels to be fucked by a guy who could pass for a girl if he wore a wig. It’s probably why Ryo’s been thinking about it before falling asleep the past two days when he tried to not think about other things. “I hate you.”

“I didn’t tell him that. He just assumed and I let him. It got me what I wanted,” Ueda says, and he doesn’t sound sorry at all. “Should I break down the door? I feel like I could right about now,” Ueda continues.

Ryo doesn’t need his landlord on his neck for damaging his property. He opens the door.

In the kitchen, Ueda makes a face around the rim of the glass of water, and Ryo snorts, but keeps his eyes on Ueda’s bare feet. No socks. That’s kind of gross actually. He scrunches his nose.

“I don’t actually know what I was expecting from getting that tattoo, but it wasn’t this. Nothing’s changed,” Ueda says.

Ryo feels muscles in his stomach contracting from nerves, and the air in the kitchen stills.

“You are so ignorant,” he says at the end, and Ueda’s eyebrows furrow, his fist clenches. He’s ready to pounce, and Ryo feels it in his own bones. But then Ueda takes a deep breath, refilling his glass and taking another big gulp.

“I wish you weren’t so,” Ueda stops. Ryo raises an eyebrow at him. He can feel another insult bubbling behind Ueda’s pretty wet lips. “Nakamaru says communication is good. He’s a friend, and sometimes he’s right, so I’m trying here … to communicate.”

Ryo huffs. “Are you implying I’m bad at it? And it’s called just talking. People do that. Normally.”

“You are about as bad at it as I am?” Ueda offers. The muscle in his cheek twitches, and Ryo can’t tell if it’s from irritation or if he’s laughing at Ryo. He still sits down at his table.

“Talk then,” he mutters, and watches as Ueda sits opposite of him, another refill of water placed in front of him.

“I’ve already told you. I don’t float on water anymore,” Ueda says slowly, watching for reaction. Ryo grips at his sweats underneath the table but says nothing.

“I burn up on the inside. There are times I have so much energy. I feel it’s going to burst from inside me. I need to run, run, never stop and then, then the energy’s gone and I just feel worn out. I want to sink under the water and never emerge. I’m happiest and the most restless when near the ocean or just a lake, whatever, and there is something …” Ueda stops to take a breath, and Ryo realizes he’s pulled his own chair further away from the table, that he’s staring.

“Something?”

“If you laugh, I’ll break your nose. You really don’t want your nose broken,” Ueda says.

Ryo grits his teeth. But he feels on the edge and not just because he is barely sitting properly by now.

“I feel like there’s something,” Ueda takes a deep breath, shakes his head, and Ryo senses how he searches but can’t find the words. “It just pulls and pushes. I know I’m not the only one. My father was always tired at the end, and-”

“Was?” Ryo whispers.

Ueda laughs hollowly. “For some time now, it’s like. If someone from my father’s side of family survives their fiftieth birthday, well, let’s just say celebrating it gets a whole new meaning. It burns you from inside.”

Silence stretches between them, and Ueda finishes his third glass of water.

Ryo’s been thinking about this too, how Ueda seemed confused at times, tiniest slivers of darkness that bears no knowledge when he looked into Ryo’s eyes. How maybe he didn’t have the book, how maybe the dragon keepers did a better job at passing the knowledge on than Hoori itself, how that must have felt, searching under the layers of fairytales, trudging against faithless and prejudice.

“Where did you find the dragon?” he asks.

“You aren’t laughing,” Ueda says, and it hangs between them.

“No, I’m not.”

“You aren’t going to mock me?”

“No.” Not yet, not for recognizing the signs. For being foolish, not knowing what to do maybe, but …

When the dragon seeks you out, it is a matter of man’s honor to make him whole.

“I found the picture in this box my grandmother left behind. She used to say it was her father’s. He died soon after the war. She said it was important. It’s how … it’s how I started looking for stories, for myself.”

Ryo opens his mouth to ask more.

“My turn,” Ueda beats him to it. “You saw it before, the dragon. You know me, or what I could be. How do you know?”

It’s a story longer than Ryo is ready to tell. “My grandfather, he showed it to me,” he says. “He taught me all he knew.” I could teach you.

Ueda looks at him, fists balled and lips pressed tight together, and once again, Ryo feels the energy shift between them, wonders if he should run. He wasn’t ready for this. This is the part his grandfather didn’t teach him about. He spent all his life waiting, so Ryo figures he didn’t know. He couldn’t ever teach him how to not run away from the power he is to help keep within its boundaries.

Before Ryo can move, Ueda slips from the chair and onto his knees.

“Please,” he says, bowing down. “I need to know.”

Some things may never change, some has however come a long way since the dark ages of secrecy and power when keeper was nothing more than a valuable servant always to be kept close.

Ryo grabs at Ueda’s shoulders, and he can practically feel the energy vibrating inside him. “Get up,” he mutters. Ueda does but doesn’t move away.

“I never had a choice, had I?” Ryo only asks.

Ueda suddenly feels very young yet very tired in his grasp. Still, Ryo’s mind flashes to the first time Ueda lied in front of him, skin coming alive beneath his fingers. Heat bursts inside him again, that rush of want that shouldn’t be there, that he knows has nothing to do with how he is to bring an old legend back to life, how he’s going to fulfil his grandfather’s lifelong wish. He drops his hands, fingers brushing down Ueda’s arms. He hears waves clashing against the shore, and out of the corner of his eye, he catches something moving fast around his kitchen. They both shiver this time.

“Who are you?” Ryo asks.

“I’m a dragon,” Ueda replies. Maybe Ueda doesn’t believe it yet, not completely. But he desperately wants to. Ryo can work with that. He allows himself a little smirk.

“Well, I’m glad we communicated,” he says, and pushes Ueda towards his door because his legs are shaking and he needs a moment or maybe at least a week to recuperate.

Ueda lets himself be pushed until he is stumbling over his own sneakers.

“Are you kicking me out?” he asks, incredulous. “Are you fucking with me?” Ueda seems almost hurt, disappointed.

Ryo grabs a pen and paper from the drawer by his genkan. He writes down Ueda’s family name, and names of great ancestors that his grandfather always talked about with fascination. Secrets are always hidden in plain sight; you just need to know what to search for. Ryo hesitates a little before he writes his mother’s maiden name too, the one hidden by a long sleeve rolled over his wrist.

“Give it another week. Your tattoo is still fresh. Give your body a bit of a break.” Ryo adds his own phone number to the scribbles on the paper then resolutely pushes Ueda out.

Ueda calls Ryo up a few days later and they meet in a small coffee shop. Ueda’s table is cramped with old books, one open over another and another, and there’s barely space for his big cup of tea. He barely looks up when Ryo sits next to him, cradling his coffee in his lap and watching Ueda flicker between old legends with hunger.

“This … it’s,” he stops himself again.

“Yes, if you told someone, they’d probably think you are a lunatic,” Ryo chuckles.

“My family already does. They think I’ve gone crazy.”

“You still live with them? Aren’t you a bit too old for that?” Ryo realizes he doesn’t know how old Ueda is.

“No, and if I’m old, you are too.”

Ueda is thirty, Ryo learns as he sips on his coffee. He didn’t really think he was older than Ryo. His skin is smooth and stretches dauntingly along his cheekbones.

Abruptly, Ueda stops reading and grabs for Ryo’s left wrist. Ryo flinches, hot coffee spilling over his fingers, and Ueda thumbs at his sleeve, hesitating. The coffee burns him, but Ryo doesn’t move. Ueda’s thumb moves again, the sleeve of Ryo’s t-shirt bunching up. Ueda stares at the bluish ink then traces it with his index finger. Ryo notices his pinky is crooked.

“I bought ink,” Ryo says in the end, jerking his wrist away when he notices how ragged his breathing has become. “You know what I’m going to do this time, right?”

Ueda nods.

“Come this Saturday, in the morning. It’ll be a long day.”

Ryo has not one, but five guitars lining the wall of his living room. He also has a simple keyboard in the corner, and Ueda’s eyes flicker between them, a little dumbfounded. It doesn’t matter how crazy it may sound. Other than ink, it has always been about music for Ryo, and he refuses to be ashamed by how he spends all his money on it. Right now, the guitars serve as a welcome distraction as Ryo pushes the couch away, spreads a cotton cloth over the rug, pushes around the heater so it’s closer to where he drops a pillow on the floor then another little to the side for himself to sit on. There’s a box already lying where his coffee table normally is, and bamboo sticks and ink containers lie atop. He slips into his bedroom and comes back in old fashioned cotton pants and a shirt, tightly wrapped around his middle. It feels foreign on him, only worn by his grandfather until now, and freshly washed this week, now smelling of detergent rather than ink. He takes a deep breath, and when he looks up, Ueda is watching him.

“That is pretty dramatic,” he says at the end, shaking himself off a little.

“Take your shirt off,” Ryo says, ignoring the mockery.

Ueda forces out a laugh. “Now that sounds much less appropriate in your living room than in the studio.”

Ryo gives him a look, and covers his mouth with a cloth. It conveniently covers the heat he feels rising on his face.

“I guess I still don’t have a say in where you ink me,” Ueda sighs and takes the shirt off, slowly sitting down across from Ryo.

“Your head goes there, lie on your back.” Ryo instructs, and he feels a rush of power when Ueda obeys, head leaning to the side so he can continue to watch.

“What’s your given name?” Ryo asks, as he sprays disinfectant over everything, slowly pulling out the needle to attach to the bamboo stick. He tapes it together, carefully, his mind relaxing at the familiarity.

“Tatsuya,” Ueda says, and Ryo actually lets out a laugh.

“Okay, this is where I laugh at you. It took you thirty years to figure this out, Tatsuya?”

Ueda huffs. “What’s yours?”

“Ryo.”

“Ryo,” Ueda repeats, and Ryo unrolls the old original paper from its tube. This time, he wants to see. He pulls on the gloves and slowly pulls Ueda’s sweats a little lower. He doesn’t know whose breath hitches. He touches a soft cloth over the skin and feels the warmth seep through it.

“I’m always so thirsty, always so hot,” Ueda rambles as Ryo sprays disinfectant over his skin and his gloves. He could do this bare handed, like his grandfather did, but he feels there are things he can do safer now, even if he itches for the direct touch.

“Shhh,” he says, and he is surprised how the sound, low and almost gentle, bounces off his walls. “I need you to stay still. Drawing the sharp lines takes the longest. You just need to breathe, slow and deep.”

Ueda nods, watching as Ryo opens the ink and grabs another clean cloth.

“Remember, it’s all about the faith, you need to believe in yourself. This is your power; I’m just helping you to find it within you. To be marked means to find the control within.”

Ueda nods. Ryo notices his biceps flexing. He scoots closer, legs crossed, and the needle held firmly between his fingers. The first time the skin gives under the pressure of the sharp tip, Ryo is taken back to the back room of his old house.

“Let me tell you a story of two men that went to war, promising to always stay close by because it was their faith. The story of a man who lost his keeper after each of them was sent to a different camp, and the story of his friend that never stopped waiting.”

The skin reddens after being pierced and rubbed by a cloth repeatedly, and a head of a dragon dips over the pale skin of Ueda’s underbelly, the torso stretching towards his hip. They don’t take breaks this time either. Ueda bites his lip a few times, and it gets red and swollen. Ryo’s toes touch his elbow as he shifts closer.

“Dragons are creatures of grace and power, of control and immense energy, free spirits that decided to live amongst us, choosing earth over their bellowed water only to be always drawn to it. You have to believe.”

Ryo’s hand never shakes which is why he notices when Ueda starts to shiver. He should be warm, the heater and his natural state aiding that, but his muscles are taunt, and his bottom lip is trembling. Ryo pulls his hands away, quickly sheds one of his gloves and runs his palm across Ueda’s neck and down his shoulder. The touch makes his own breath quicken, and his vision blurs with images too quick to really see.

“Just a little longer,” he whispers, palm rubbing across the collarbone. Ueda’s eyes are dark and something is stirring in them, and Ryo knows this is it. This is the push the man spread on his floor needed.

“Tatsuya, who are you?” he asks, pulling the hand away and quickly finding new gloves and more disinfectant. Ink seeps into his trousers, but he stays still.

“A dragon,” Ueda whispers, and a tail of ink curves around his hipbone, thin lines of dark black. It takes another hour before they are done, but the shivering subsides, and Ueda breathes normally again.

When Ryo pulls away, he slumps, arms aching from constant movement and head throbbing. “Stay still. I need to clean you,” he says, and realizes his voice is hoarse. He doesn’t remember what he talked about, and he doesn’t know how long he was sitting in that one position, but he feels like he has aged ten years and needs to sleep for a year.

“Your grandfather was a great man,” Ueda tells him when Ryo forces his arms to work again, cleaning the design. He doesn’t want to think about how much he has told Ueda, how much of his secrets he has spilled without knowing.

Ueda sits up and then stands up slowly.

“You shouldn’t go running for a while. Don’t stretch the skin too much,” Ryo notes, still kneeling down and quickly putting ink cans away. He wraps the needles in the cotton cloth to be cleaned later, rolling the old paper up and scrambling for the tube. Ueda nudges it towards him with his toe, and Ryo knows he wants to ask about it. Not yet, he pleads in his mind.

“Okay,” Ueda says at last.

“Go have a look,” Ryo points Ueda to the bathroom where he has a big mirror. He doesn’t go with him this time, he knows the skin is irritated and the lines are sharp, and he doesn’t want to see, not until later when the shades of blue add the true magic to the design he has never really hoped to draw into someone’s skin.

His knees almost give out when he tries to stand, legs still half asleep from the siting position. He manages before Ueda comes back, and scrambles for his phone to order food. Now that his mind isn’t so concentrated on his work, he is too hungry.

Ueda comes back, and Ryo dresses the tattoo in pads. Ueda flinches when Ryo’s fingers brush against his stomach and he lets out a loud breath. “Your fingers are as bad as mine,” he mutters, and Ryo pulls them away as if burned. He stares at the callouses on them and then on the goose bumps rising on Ueda’s arms. He shakes his head and pushes a can of ointment into Ueda’s hand.

It’s an unlabeled small can, and Ueda looks at it with doubt.

“This too runs in the family,” Ryo explains. “Better than anything you can buy.”

Ueda nods, and reaches for his shirt. The take out arrives just as Ryo pushes the couch back.

“I ordered for two,” Ryo mutters. He thought he’d want to be alone, but sitting in his kitchen watching Ueda pick on his food and drinking cup after cup of tea is okay too.

“Your sister, does she know how to do this too?” Ueda asks out of blue. Ryo must have talked about his family.

He chuckles at the idea. “My grandfather was a bit too old fashioned to teach a girl how to ink people with patterns of dragons across their hips,” he says. “Not that she couldn’t do it. She would probably be much better, much fiercer if she did.”

“I have a sister too,” Ueda trails off. “She doesn’t believe.” She doesn’t believe her brother.

Ryo wishes there was more food, so he didn’t have to think of an answer.

“Maybe one day,” he mutters.

“Are you teaching someone?” Ueda asks next, and Ryo scrunches his nose.

“Too many questions.” He starts picking up the boxes.

“But it’s important. Is there anyone else like you? You don’t have kids, what if something happens to you, what if, what if you never have any kids. You’re almost thirty, work in a tattoo studio and seem to be alone…”

Ueda’s meddling. Ueda’s pointing out a staleness of Ryo’s life just when Ryo finally feels like maybe he’s leaving it behind. Ryo runs a hand through his hair.

“Tatsuya,” he starts. Magic cannot be taught, magic has to be embraced. Ryo wishes he was as good at telling stories as his grandfather was. “I’ll see you in a week.”

“So what have you’ve been up to lately? The band you like so much played here last Saturday, and you didn’t show up,” Yasu says, as he drops three more beers in front of them.

When Ryo picks up his bottle, he can still feel the soreness of his arm muscles. He clearly forgot how much one has to be in shape for tebori.

“I bet he was fooling around with that guy that left without paying then came back for some water play with our Ryo-chan,” Subaru smirks.

“Shut up, it’s not that.” Ryo hisses at the memory of Ueda’s stomach beneath his fingers. He can’t stop thinking of it, and he knows it’s wrong, how with Ueda he has to tip toe this line between need and want and pride every time.

“What, he’s too fancy for good rock music in a crowded club?” Subaru continues to taunt.

“I was thinking I should open my own studio,” Ryo shouts over the music in hopes of shutting him up. It’s pretty effective. “You know, do things with just my hands and needles,” he adds.

“I will go broke,” Subaru moans.

Yasu smiles at him encouragingly. “I think it would be good for you, Ryo-chan,” he shouts.

Subaru kicks him under the table. The music gets louder. Ryo orders one more beer.

Ueda sits himself behind Ryo’s keyboard, with his shirt already off and sweats low enough so they don’t touch the new tattoo on his stomach. Ryo finds him like that, playing a smooth melody, when he returns from the bathroom. He can’t stop watching Ueda’s back, muscles playing under the skin simply because his hands move over the keys, the stark blue of his first dragon playing with the light from the window, and it’s almost as if it moves, creeps on Ryo. He clears his throat and steps closer, finger trailing his previous work.

“I must look like such a freak, a dragon here, a dragon there,” Ueda sighs, fingers slowing down over the keys.

Ryo thinks he is beautiful, and he feels a swell of pride because he added a tiny bit to the art piece sitting in front of him. Ueda doesn’t pull away from the touch, and Ryo smoothes over the lines etched in the skin with precision.

“Doesn’t your pinky get in the way?” he asks, when Ueda’s hands gain power and quickness over the keys again.

Ueda laughs, and it rumbles under Ryo’s fingers.

“You do have an eye for details I see,” he says. “But no, it doesn’t seem to be a problem. People keep hiring me to record, anyway.”

Ryo drops his hands. Ueda records music for living. He wants to ask so many questions.

“Go lie down,” he says instead.

Ryo tells stories, ones he remembers reading and hearing over and over again. The needle in his hand flits almost of its own, and he only halts when Ueda giggles, his stomach moving with it. He has to pause not to do damage to the design. He realizes too late that he’s been altering his voice for different characters. His cheeks burn with red, and Ueda watches him, dares to nudge his elbow more against Ryo's toes, and when it doesn’t work, he rubs his palm over Ryo’s knee.

Ryo takes a deep breath. “Who are you?” he asks. He only knows Ueda has to believe. Everything else is improvisation and instinct, but this feels important.

“A dragon,” Ueda says, and he sounds firmer this time.

Ryo packs up, and Ueda lets him dress the tattoo yet again. This time Ryo takes his time to watch the progress, the color now changing under the skin in shades of bluish and green waters. He grabs Ueda by his other hip to keep him still because he is squirming.

“Stop breathing on it,” Ueda grumbles, but when Ryo looks up, his eyes are gleaming and tips of his ears are pink. Ryo’s palm grazes down over the hip that he’d been holding on to, and Ueda jumps away.

“Maybe I can finish this myself,” he says, but Ryo shakes his head and carefully covers the fresh areas himself.

They end up eating together again, and Ryo finds Ueda’s calves pressed against his own. He looks up.

“Sometimes, it gets unbearable. I’m going to burst soon, I swear. It feels like I could make things fly left and right, like the water in this glass could spring free and become a gush that would flood your place, like I could be that.” Ueda bites his lip.

This part, Ryo’s only read about. Still he doesn’t want to give up an old tube, the long hidden stolen secrets. Over the years, keepers added their own notes and stories to it; it has changed. He moves his feet so that their legs are tangled under the table.

“You’ll get there,” he mutters.

Ryo knows the third session will be the last. Ueda comes in wearing proper boots and a scarf, proclaiming that he loves snow. He stops and stares a little when he realizes what he’s just said, but in the next moment he is brushing past Ryo, dropping all of his clothes except sweatpants and his undershirt and heading for Ryo’s living room. He wanders around, watches Ryo move furniture and set up. When Ryo goes to change, he pulls at his hand and draws him back.

“Play a song for me,” he says, picking one of Ryo’s guitars up for him.

“I don’t want to,” Ryo shakes his head. Ueda’s fingers are rough and tight around his wrist.

“You heard me play, it’s only fair I hear you too,” Ueda says firmly, but then he pouts, and that’s completely new, this almost playful man rocking on his heels in excitement.

“Fine,” Ryo says, dropping to the couch. Ueda sits on the armrest, and his face splits into bigger and bigger smile as Ryo runs through one of his favorite covers.

“It’s just like in my dream,” Ueda nods. “I knew we would sound good together.”

Ryo almost drops his guitar. Ueda backpedals, eyes wide.

“It’s not like that. Okay it is, but I have all sorts of weird dreams lately. I swim under the water, and there are others like me everywhere, and there’s tons of crazy stuff all around, all those stories you tell me in vivid colors and fast paced in front of my eyes, all the way until this moment.” Ueda stops blabbing. He takes the guitar from Ryo and goes to put it away.

“Take your shirt off,” Ryo says, on autopilot, and goes to change. I think it would be fun playing music with you, he doesn’t say.

Ryo’s noticed this the very first time he met Ueda. After a while, as he works, they start to breathe in sync. It makes the room even quitter somehow, and so he talks again. But his tongue gets tangled in big words as his hand moves to the last part of the dragon’s tail. Last patches of ink seep underneath Ueda’s skin, and somehow it isn’t as satisfying as Ryo has hoped for. The need to be under Ueda’s skin is still there, burning brighter now that his role in his life is fading away.

“What are you?” he asks, and his voice is small and uncertain. It’s not because he doesn’t believe though.

“A dragon,” Ueda hisses out, and Ryo’s hands retreat from the pattern.

He cleans it thoroughly before moving to close the ink and put the needles away. Only then he turns back around and helps Ueda up.

It’s beautiful, even if the skin is reddened from irritation. Still the colors of deep waters glisten on Ueda’s body as the dragon winds its way across Ueda’s lower abdomen. It moves with every breath Ueda takes, and it’s so inherently him that Ryo’s frozen in place, dizzy with it. He grabs Ueda’s shoulders for support, and this time it’s Ueda who smoothes his hands down his arms and settles them on his hips.

They stay like that for a moment until their breathing is once again in sync.

“It’s perfect,” Ueda mutters, head lowered and eyes wide. Ryo covers it before he is unable to let Ueda go.

Ryo still has leftovers from the curry he cooked last night, and Ueda gobbles it down with an appetite of a mine worker after a long shift. He is playing footsie with Ryo’s legs under the table until he hits his knee against the bottom of it, and his water glass topples over. It seeps into his skin, but instead of flinching away, he starts to laugh. It’s almost maniac, deep and loud in the way it’s happy, and Ryo feels like he doesn’t know this man at all. Like he has matured and became so much stronger just over the course of the few months they’ve known each other. His heart beats erratically as he gets up to clean the mess Ueda’s made. His eyes burn when he thinks of what he’s about to do next.

“Here,” he thrusts the old tube into Ueda’s hands.

“What is this?” Ueda asks, but he must know. Ryo has told that story too.

“For when someone else is ready to believe,” Ryo says.

Ueda springs to his feet and moves as if to give Ryo a hug, then retreats.

“I can’t,” Ueda tries to give the tube back. He is still as stubborn as in the beginning. “Without keepers there won’t be any dragons,” Ueda adds, almost angrily.

“My family tree is just as wide and thick as yours. There will always be someone.” Ryo risks one more touch, fingers curling around Ueda’s to secure them around the tube.

“Didn’t you say I should keep you close?” Ueda murmurs, inching closer again. Ryo steps back, colliding with his kitchen counter.

“Don’t take it all so literally. Besides, you chose to need us. I believe you can choose not to anymore,” he says.

Ueda takes a step back, brows furrowed, and Ryo feels the power behind his rage, shrinking beneath it. He wonders if this is what he has done.

After a moment, Ueda picks up his things and leaves, taking the tube with him and leaving Ryo’s life just as rudely and abruptly as he came into it. Ryo slides down his kitchen sink. Truth to be told, he has always sucked at just talking.

It gets really cold at the end of the year, and Ryo curses the time he’s chosen to look for a new studio. He walks around the city searching for a place with tatami mats and natural light, and when he finds it, he sells one of his guitars to be able to afford it. It’s a small house on a hill, enough for him to live and work in, with tatami floors and old wooden windows. He moves without hesitation. If Ueda wanted to find him, he would call or barge into Subaru’s tattoo studio again, but he has no reason to seek Ryo out anymore. He has fulfilled his task.

Ryo learns to live with visions of dragons disappearing around corners when he looks their way, with the slow burn of desire that still catches him off guard at night when he dreams of Tatsuya, the image of his body, contrasts and edges of it burned into his memory forever. It’s only a little because he was the legend Ryo barely hoped for. And it’s only a little because he has become the first in the long list of men Ryo’s hands holding his grandfather’s needles will leave a permanent mark on.

Once the word gets out, the customers come by themselves. What Ryo does is rare enough and desired, and he has made a good name for himself in the past, which makes him legitimate enough for people to come to him.

Ryo is different from all the other artists in the country. He never signs a name on his art, on the skin so generously offered for him to play with. There’s only one person he wishes had his name ebbed into their skin, and Ryo isn’t ready to chase that feeling away just yet.

It’s barely end of the winter when Ryo gets a call from a private number. He wants to tell Ueda how foolish it is of him to think Ryo wouldn’t pick up if he saw his name on the display. Instead, he grabs a jacket and runs to the shrine where Ueda wants to meet. It’s close to his new home, and as he runs, Ryo wonders if this means Ueda’s found him, if this means Ueda is capable of things now that are beyond Ryo’s grasp on reality. It’s been over three months since Ueda walked out of Ryo’s apartment with a final glance over his shoulder.

Ryo can see Ueda standing by the cleansing fountain that he’s come to like a lot, the dragon with pointy ears spouting water over clean rocks, rounded by the power of stream running over them for long, long years. Ueda’s hair is longer, and sun reflects a redish glow of it as it’s blown off Ueda’s face by the cold wind. Ueda looks almost noble like this, features softened and calmer. He used to fidget all the time, especially near water, even if it was only in the glass. Now his posture is strong as he watches Ryo’s futile efforts to catch his breath.

“I told you I’d wait,” he says calmly, and Ryo rolls his eyes.

“I just felt like going for a run,” he says.

Ueda laughs, and it’s still too loud and too powerful, and Ryo realizes this is how all of his laughter will be, head thrown back and body moving in waves. Ryo shouldn’t like that too.

“What are we doing here anyway?” he asks, and Ueda shrugs a little.

“I wanted to see your new neighborhood,” he says, and Ryo’s face must look comical because Ueda smirks. “I just heard it around the city that you opened a studio of your own,” he clarifies. “But maybe I should let you believe I can just suddenly feel everything you do and every time you run away from me.”

“I remember you leaving,” Ryo says, watching as the water stream in the fountain slows down, only small drops trickling down the dragon’s throat. Ueda’s smile is lopsided.

“And I remember being told to go away.”

The water soars, and Ryo feels wetness seeping into his jacket.

“Are you doing that?” Ryo whispers, looking around and rubbing his eyes. That’s not how water should flow, now spiraling down from the dragon’s open mouth, round and round until it softly blends with the water at the bottom of the basin.

“I went to swim in the ocean last week. It was wonderful,” Ueda says, grabbing for the wooden spoon and pouring water over Ryo’s hands to clean.

“In this weather?” Ryo asks. “And you didn’t sink?”

“I did. When I wanted to,” Ueda nods, and lets Ryo take over the spoon so he can wash his hands too.

Someone nears the fountain, and Ueda huffs a little. Ryo blinks, and the water streams down into the basin pulled only by gravitation.

Ryo doesn’t know what to pray for with Ueda next to him, pulling Ryo in with such a strength Ryo almost truly stumbles into him. He feels a long tail winding around his body, tight and strong and cold. He turns to Ueda sharply, but all he sees is Tatsuya looking at him cautiously as he drapes a hand over Ryo’s waist, to make him lean close.

“It took me a while to truly understand myself after I left your place. I’m still learning, but …” Ueda trails off, and he stirs Ryo back down the road he came here. “Do you like what I’ve become?” he asks in the end.

Ryo’s tongue is tied with too much of emotions on the tip of it. Now that he is this close, all the need and fire clashes over him, and he doubts Ueda’s fireworks could do anything but make it worse. Ryo would still want him, want this, whatever it is, as their breathing evens out into the same rhythm and they walk in silence.

“You’ve missed me,” Ryo says at the end, and he hoped for it to sound cool and confident, not this uncertain and hopeful at the same time.

“I came as soon as I felt I could,” Ueda offers, and Ryo lets him inside his house.

“One of your guitars is missing,” Ueda says after he’s looked around Ryo’s new living room. Ryo can’t keep still anymore. He steps close to Ueda, nods, and kisses him for the first time. Ueda’s arms wind around Ryo’s neck, and he kisses back. Ryo pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, making Ueda hiss and press closer.

“Tatsuya,” Ryo whispers, and a tongue pushes inside his mouth, slides against his own.

A strong arm wraps around Ryo’s waist again, keeping him as close as he can be.

Ryo wants this, so much, and he wants this now, trying to pull and push at Ueda so he can touch more, breathing in the scent of his body, no longer clogged by disinfectant and ink, tasting the hollow of his throat. But Ueda is like the rolling waves of water, washing over him, calming fingers running through his hair, palm rubbing slow circles into the small of Ryo’s back, grounding him.

“Take your shirt off,” Ryo says when they find Ryo’s bedroom. He is heady with how Ueda does just that while Ryo sits back on the edge of his bed. Ueda is standing between his spread legs, jeans open and hanging low on his hips, defined muscles of his stomach rising and falling with his quick breaths. The dragon on his lower stomach bristles under his skin, soars angrily when Ryo brings Ueda closer by his ass. Finally. Ryo traces it from its head to the tail, with his fingers and then with his mouth. He bites at the skin and soothes the bites with his tongue, and Ueda starts to whisper his name, voice trembling more and more as the time passes.

Ryo maps Ueda’s body with his fingertips, coming back to the strings of blueish ink, again and again. Every time, Ueda gasps and his nails dig deeper into Ryo’s now bare shoulders.

And just like that Ryo has all the time in the world, trying to make Ueda fall apart under his fingers, trying to press deeper under his skin, kissing his name across Ueda’s back, teeth latched onto his shoulder and fingers dipping in, and right there, where Ueda urges him, feeling Ueda inside out.

Later, with Ueda arched of the bed, steady dance of push and pull, Ryo sinks into him, as deep as Ueda lets him. All he feels is the man pressed against him, strong thighs caging him in place, arms enveloping him and dragging him closer, for more and faster when Ueda’s fingers find Ryo’s and lace together, nail shaped crescents red against the back of Ryo’s hand.

“Who am I?” Ueda breathes, tongue lapping over Ryo’s lips, playful.

“A dragon,” Ryo whispers into his ear, biting his earlobe, but he doesn’t miss the smug look that passes over Ueda’s face. “My dragon,” he dares to believe.

Ueda’s body snaps into another beautiful wave.

“I’ll keep you close to me,” he mouths into Ryo’s skin later, kissing across the name on Ryo’s left wrist.

When Ryo traces patterns across Ueda’s chest, when he really looks at his body, he sees his own signature drawn deep under his skin.