Scenes From A Sumeragi's Sexual Awakening (Tokyo Babylon, Seishirou/Subaru, Hokuto)
I didn't intend to work on this until later -- I still have Family-Style Ficbits to do, and memento mori -- but work was beyond sucky today, and I needed this to cheer me up. A good part of the blame for this is, as always, Mith's.
I might not have computer access from now until the seventh, as I'm going to a resort in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania with my dad and my sisters. Hopefully I'll at least have cell phone access, and will be able to get a good amount of writing in.
Scenes from a Sumeragi's Sexual Awakening. Tokyo Babylon, Seishirou/Subaru, Hokuto. 2650 words, R. Spoiler-free, warnings for frank discussion of sexuality, innuendo like whoa, teenage fantasies, and wakashudo.
Subaru Sumeragi tries not to think about sex much. What happens when he's forced to?
“Subaru-san,” Grandmother says. “You’re developing into a strong onmyouji. Once you mature, your powers will be formidable.”
“Thank you, Grandmother.” Subaru keeps his palms flat on his thighs, the way he’s been taught. Hokuto hates sitting still like this, she always fidgets when she has to hold the seiza position for too long, but he doesn’t mind. It calms him, centers him, and he thinks he’d like the feeling even if it weren’t vital to the practice of onmyodo.
“You will become the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi soon,” she says. “Do you understand what that entails?”
“Yes, Grandmother,” he says. “I’m prepared to protect Japan and maintain the balance between the spiritual world and the mundane world.” It’s a lesson he memorized years ago, almost before he can remember; he knows the words better than he knows the faces of his parents.
“As the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi, you will also be expected to ensure that your line continues. Do you know what that means, Subaru-san?”
He hesitates. “I think so, Grandmother. It means I need to have descendants, doesn’t it?”
She almost smiles-for Grandmother, it’s almost a smile. “‘Children’ would be the more appropriate term, but yes. You will need to sire an heir someday, when you’ve come of age. Are you prepared to do that?”
“Yes,” he says. “If it’s my duty to the clan, I’ll do it.” He hesitates. “I don’t need to do it now, do I?” He learned about having children in school, having children and how they’re created, and he doesn’t think it sounds very pleasant. His sensei said they’d look on the idea more favorably when they got older, so maybe he will, too.
“Of course not,” Grandmother reassures him. “Not for many years, I expect. Very well. If you’re prepared to do your duty by the clan, I will find books on wakashudo for you. Given what I’ve observed about you, I expect you’ll find them useful.”
Subaru frowns. He’s heard the word before, he thinks, but in passing, something some of his classmates might have been giggling over. “Grandmother, what is wakashudo?”
“The way of the youth,” she says. “The practice has gone out of fashion these days, but I believe we can find an appropriate teacher for you.”
“Oh,” Subaru says. “Thank you very much, Grandmother.”
An hour later, Hokuto explains what wakashudo is in more detail and tells him just what the older man in that kind of a relationship does with his younger pupil, and Subaru spends the better part of the afternoon hiding under his blankets.
***
“Hokuto,” Subaru says for the thousandth, or at least the tenth, time this evening, “we covered all this in school.”
Hokuto shines her laser pointer on his chin, the tassel on her hat quivering in reproach. She has a set of jeweled horn-rimmed glasses with the lenses popped out perched on her nose, and they magnify her glare. “They only teach you the basics in school, Subaru. If you want to impress an experienced older man like Sei-chan, you need the advanced lessons.”
“Hokuto,” he protests weakly, his face turning the same shade of red as his jacket, but she barrels on, ignoring him.
“And a lot of the stuff they teach you in school isn’t relevant to you and Sei-chan anyway, because you’re not a girl.”
Subaru sputters.
“Well, you aren’t,” she says, “even if people mistake you for one because you have such a cute face. And anyway, they don’t teach you how to take charge of your pleasure in school.”
And who taught you how to do that? he almost wants to ask her, but he’s afraid she’ll answer. Instead, he says, “I think-ah, I think it seems fairly straightforward…”
“It is with men,” Hokuto says, and scoffs. “Men just need to thrust into something tight enough-”
“Hokuto!”
“But there are lots of tips and tricks for turning a good sexual experience into a great one, and that’s what I’m going to teach you,” she continues, shining the laser pointer onto the easel she set up. She’s actually prepared posters for this, Subaru realizes, a whole stack of them. Now he knows why she wouldn’t let him into her room yesterday, at least, and why he found so many little bottles of glue in the garbage this morning. TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR PLEASURE is scrawled in pink on the first one, the lettering thick and cheerful. Hokuto plucks the first poster away and reveals the one beneath, a diagram of the male body with a few closeups of-certain areas, his cheeks get bright again-on each side of the figure. She pasted a photo of his head on the figure’s body, he notices, and buries his head in his hands before Hokuto marches over and pokes him in the shoulder.
“Subaru, you’re not going to learn anything if you don’t look,” she says. “And I spent all of last afternoon working on these.”
He swallows and forces his head up, tries not to look at the shy smiling photograph of himself, but if he doesn’t look there he has to look at those diagrams. She must have copied them from a medical textbook, and if he didn’t want to crawl under the floorboards and never come out again he’d have to admire the effort she’s invested in this.
“I’ll keep this part brief, since you learned most of it already, and I want to get to the fun part.” Hokuto clicks her laser pointer on and shines it on the inset in the top right corner. “You should already know how a penis works, and what all the different parts of it are called and what they do. But just to make sure-quick quiz!” She balances on the balls of her feet. “What does the vas deferens do?”
“Hokuto, this is embarrassing…”
“It’s just you and me here.” She clicks the laser pointer off. “And it’s not embarrassing, Subaru. It’s your body, and you need to know what your body does and how to take care of it. I’m not going to be next to you telling you all this when Sei-chan finally makes you his lover, you know. You’re going to have to know it on your own by then.” The smile twitching up the corners of her mouth seems smaller. “You’re growing up, Subaru. You do know that, don’t you? You can tell, right?”
“I know,” he says. “I do. And you, you’re getting older too…”
Hokuto grins wolfishly. “It’s about time you noticed.”
Subaru’s brain skips and skids to a halt. He glances at the TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR PLEASURE sign lying on the ground, remembers how certain she sounded when she talked about what men wanted, recalls how often Hokuto seems to be out of the house on dates these days.
No. She hasn’t.
-she has. She did.
“Hokuto,” he finally says. “You-did you-you did, didn’t you?”
“I thought you already knew!”
“I-no, I never thought-”
Hokuto shakes her head good-naturedly. “I don’t know much more obvious I could have made it. You’re so dense sometimes, Subaru. I told you I was taking my relationship to the next level, silly.”
“Yes, I know, but I thought…” He scratches the back of his neck. He should have known what that meant, he knows he should have, he just didn’t. “I thought wrong, I guess.”
Hokuto leans forward and hugs him around the shoulders. “You’ve managed to stay so innocent. Try not to change too much, okay? No matter what I teach you, or whatever else happens? I don’t know what I’d do if you became as filthy-minded as Sei-chan.”
“Seishirou-san isn’t-” he protests. “He’s really very kind.”
She pulls back from the hug and crosses her arms over her chest. “Well, I wouldn’t trust him with my little brother if I thought he wouldn’t be good for you,” she says. “But he’s still a pervert.”
“He doesn’t mean any of it.” Subaru stares at his shoes. “He just likes to tease me, that’s all.”
“Subaru?”
“Yes?”
“You’re such an idiot.”
He blinks.
“Never mind,” she says. “And anyway, you’ve been dodging my question. What does the vas deferens do?”
“It, um.” Subaru coughs. “Do I have to say it out loud?”
“Yes. Articulate your desire, Subaru! Open communication is the foundation every healthy relationship is built on.”
“The vas deferens delivers the sperm to the testes,” he mumbles to the carpet.
“Good job! Now we can move on to the fun parts. I call the next poster ‘Prostate Pleasure.’”
He chokes. “Prostate-”
“The ejaculatory ducts lie in the prostate gland,” Hokuto says, lifting the second poster free. Subaru keeps his eyes on the floor. “During orgasm, sperm travels from the vas deferens-that’s why I asked you about it earlier, it’s important to know how your orgasms work-to the urethra through the ejaculatory ducts. That’s why stimulating the prostate makes some men orgasm right on the spot. Other men still need other stimulation, but getting the prostate involved makes orgasms even better. Subaru, look up, I made sure to copy down positions where the prostate gets a lot of direct stimulation. See?”
He does. She shines her laser pointer towards where two of the men are-um, joined. His face flares red, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop blushing. Ever. “The partner on top needs to aim down just a little,” she says. “He doesn’t even need to go that deep, he just needs to hit the right angle.”
“…Hokuto,” Subaru says once his mouth works again. “Why did you paste Seishirou-san’s and my head over all the diagrams?”
“To add extra relevance to the lesson, of course!” She shines the laser pointer over Seishirou’s right eye. “And do you know how hard it was to track down photos where you were both smiling? Besides, color copies aren’t cheap. I think they turned out well, though.”
Subaru wonders if he knows any spells that would let him sink into the floor.
***
Seishirou’s arms circle around Subaru’s chest, warm and-and solid, and when Seishirou pulls him in close, back-to-front, he can’t help but notice that his head fits into the space under Seishirou’s chin. Subaru nestles against him, touches the crook of his elbow and wonders what his bare skin feels like, if Seishirou’s even warmer without the cloth muffling things. He feels a flush creep up the back of his neck and color his face, spread over the rest of his skin and heat it until it prickles, the friction between his skin and the cloth’s almost too much, too stifling, and he-he rubs against Seishirou and whimpers and then the cloth dissolves, drips away like water and flows away and leaves him. Leaves him bare in Seishirou’s lap, stripped of everything except his gloves and then Seishirou brings Subaru’s palms to his lips and the cloth catches fire but it doesn’t hurt, Seishirou slips his hand down Subaru’s chest and pets him, soft and slow and-he’s moving his hips the same kind of way Seishirou’s touching him, he’s moving with Seishirou. Subaru’s skin pulls tight when he realizes and Seishirou laughs, low and rich-
-and then he’s drowned out by a high-pitched whirr; the sound cuts through Seishirou and dissolves him and Subaru reaches forward, tries to grab a fistful of Seishirou’s jacket and says “No, don’t…”
The whirring clicks off. “I’m sorry, Subaru-kun. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“-oh,” Subaru says, when he remembers how to talk again. He cracks his eyes open. He’s in Seishirou’s apartment-no, more than that, he realizes when he looks at how his right hand’s curled around the blankets and fisted tight in them, he’s in Seishirou’s bed.
In Seishirou’s bed. Um.
And Seishirou kneels on the floor and smiles up at him, the vacuum cleaner’s handle resting against the side of his head. “Good morning.”
“M-,” he starts to reply, but then other things start to register: just where Seishirou’s staring, for one, and once he figures that out he realizes where his left hand is. Splayed over his stomach, his fingers curling around. Um. And he’s. Um. He’s-it’s almost painful, he can’t stop his hips from shivering and grinding up and it’s not going away even with Seishirou watching, it’s just getting worse. “M-,” he tries again, ignores how badly his voice squeaks and cracks. Maybe he shouldn’t talk. Maybe he just really shouldn’t say anything at all.
“Are you all right?”
“Y-I’m fine!” Think of something else, he tells himself. Anything else. Maybe it’ll go away on its own? He casts his mind around for other topics. Hokuto sewing his outfits-but then he thinks about the dream and his clothes melting away and that’s no good. Dinner two nights ago. That’s safe, isn’t it? Seishirou and Hokuto made stir-fry, and the three of them had parfaits for dessert, and Seishirou licked his spoon all over because he knew Subaru was watching-licked it and sucked on it, too, his tongue curling around-
This isn’t working.
Seishirou smiles, his lenses glinting. “Do you need any help with that, Subaru-kun?”
That makes the words tumble out of him. “N-n-no! I’m, um, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s-it’s very considerate of you to offer,” oh no, why did he say that, “I mean, I’m, um, thank you for showing your concern but I’m fine, I’m all right, thank you…” His throat dries up before he can get the rest of it out, whatever it would have been. Seishirou’s still smiling, waiting for him to finish. Wait. Waiting for him to finish. Oh no. Oh no.
“M-may I use your shower?” he finally manages. He-he shouldn’t do this, not in Seishirou’s house, it’s rude, it’s shameful, but if he doesn’t reach the shower he’ll end up doing it in Seishirou’s bed, and that’s even worse.
“Of course. What’s mine is yours.”
“You’re…” He swallows, licks his parched lips. “You’re very generous, Seishirou-san.”
“Would you like me to join you?”
Subaru’s mouth hangs open, which is terribly impolite, he knows, but he can’t bring himself to close it.
“I can reach the spots you can’t,” Seishirou says, dropping his voice. Subaru’s not sure what travels up his spine, but it’s something, something that makes his skin tingle and his mind fog.
“I, ah, I-I think I’ll be all right on my own, but thank you again for letting me use your shower and for letting me stay here and well, um, you don’t have to do all this-”
“But I want to make you happy,” Seishirou says. He places his hand over Subaru’s-the one fisted in the covers, Subaru really needs to move the other one no matter how much he wants to keep it there, he can’t act like this with Seishirou in the room-and squeezes. “So if there’s anything else I can do to make you comfortable…”
He-that anything, the way Seishirou almost purred it, what it could suggest-
Subaru wrenches his left hand away from himself. “No, I don’t want to impose or be a bother, and you’ve done so much for me already-it’s fine, Seishirou-san, I’m just happy that you’ll let me use the shower.”
“You know where it is, don’t you?”
Subaru nods.
“You can use one of the white towels,” Seishirou says. “They’re almost as fluffy and soft as you are, Subaru-kun.”
Subaru stammers something at that, a mixture of thanks and embarrassment and reassurance that he’s fine and that he’s grateful and that he’s glad, really, he’s glad for all of this.
As he walks to the bathroom, his hands cupped over himself but not touching, Seishirou calls after him, “Try not to drop the soap.”
Author's Note: I know, I know, photos of onmyouji aren't supposed to exist, but if we go by anime canon, there's at least one picture of Seishirou, Subaru, and Hokuto floating around. So that's my justification. Hey, if it makes Subaru blush...
I might not have computer access from now until the seventh, as I'm going to a resort in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania with my dad and my sisters. Hopefully I'll at least have cell phone access, and will be able to get a good amount of writing in.
Scenes from a Sumeragi's Sexual Awakening. Tokyo Babylon, Seishirou/Subaru, Hokuto. 2650 words, R. Spoiler-free, warnings for frank discussion of sexuality, innuendo like whoa, teenage fantasies, and wakashudo.
Subaru Sumeragi tries not to think about sex much. What happens when he's forced to?
“Subaru-san,” Grandmother says. “You’re developing into a strong onmyouji. Once you mature, your powers will be formidable.”
“Thank you, Grandmother.” Subaru keeps his palms flat on his thighs, the way he’s been taught. Hokuto hates sitting still like this, she always fidgets when she has to hold the seiza position for too long, but he doesn’t mind. It calms him, centers him, and he thinks he’d like the feeling even if it weren’t vital to the practice of onmyodo.
“You will become the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi soon,” she says. “Do you understand what that entails?”
“Yes, Grandmother,” he says. “I’m prepared to protect Japan and maintain the balance between the spiritual world and the mundane world.” It’s a lesson he memorized years ago, almost before he can remember; he knows the words better than he knows the faces of his parents.
“As the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi, you will also be expected to ensure that your line continues. Do you know what that means, Subaru-san?”
He hesitates. “I think so, Grandmother. It means I need to have descendants, doesn’t it?”
She almost smiles-for Grandmother, it’s almost a smile. “‘Children’ would be the more appropriate term, but yes. You will need to sire an heir someday, when you’ve come of age. Are you prepared to do that?”
“Yes,” he says. “If it’s my duty to the clan, I’ll do it.” He hesitates. “I don’t need to do it now, do I?” He learned about having children in school, having children and how they’re created, and he doesn’t think it sounds very pleasant. His sensei said they’d look on the idea more favorably when they got older, so maybe he will, too.
“Of course not,” Grandmother reassures him. “Not for many years, I expect. Very well. If you’re prepared to do your duty by the clan, I will find books on wakashudo for you. Given what I’ve observed about you, I expect you’ll find them useful.”
Subaru frowns. He’s heard the word before, he thinks, but in passing, something some of his classmates might have been giggling over. “Grandmother, what is wakashudo?”
“The way of the youth,” she says. “The practice has gone out of fashion these days, but I believe we can find an appropriate teacher for you.”
“Oh,” Subaru says. “Thank you very much, Grandmother.”
An hour later, Hokuto explains what wakashudo is in more detail and tells him just what the older man in that kind of a relationship does with his younger pupil, and Subaru spends the better part of the afternoon hiding under his blankets.
***
“Hokuto,” Subaru says for the thousandth, or at least the tenth, time this evening, “we covered all this in school.”
Hokuto shines her laser pointer on his chin, the tassel on her hat quivering in reproach. She has a set of jeweled horn-rimmed glasses with the lenses popped out perched on her nose, and they magnify her glare. “They only teach you the basics in school, Subaru. If you want to impress an experienced older man like Sei-chan, you need the advanced lessons.”
“Hokuto,” he protests weakly, his face turning the same shade of red as his jacket, but she barrels on, ignoring him.
“And a lot of the stuff they teach you in school isn’t relevant to you and Sei-chan anyway, because you’re not a girl.”
Subaru sputters.
“Well, you aren’t,” she says, “even if people mistake you for one because you have such a cute face. And anyway, they don’t teach you how to take charge of your pleasure in school.”
And who taught you how to do that? he almost wants to ask her, but he’s afraid she’ll answer. Instead, he says, “I think-ah, I think it seems fairly straightforward…”
“It is with men,” Hokuto says, and scoffs. “Men just need to thrust into something tight enough-”
“Hokuto!”
“But there are lots of tips and tricks for turning a good sexual experience into a great one, and that’s what I’m going to teach you,” she continues, shining the laser pointer onto the easel she set up. She’s actually prepared posters for this, Subaru realizes, a whole stack of them. Now he knows why she wouldn’t let him into her room yesterday, at least, and why he found so many little bottles of glue in the garbage this morning. TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR PLEASURE is scrawled in pink on the first one, the lettering thick and cheerful. Hokuto plucks the first poster away and reveals the one beneath, a diagram of the male body with a few closeups of-certain areas, his cheeks get bright again-on each side of the figure. She pasted a photo of his head on the figure’s body, he notices, and buries his head in his hands before Hokuto marches over and pokes him in the shoulder.
“Subaru, you’re not going to learn anything if you don’t look,” she says. “And I spent all of last afternoon working on these.”
He swallows and forces his head up, tries not to look at the shy smiling photograph of himself, but if he doesn’t look there he has to look at those diagrams. She must have copied them from a medical textbook, and if he didn’t want to crawl under the floorboards and never come out again he’d have to admire the effort she’s invested in this.
“I’ll keep this part brief, since you learned most of it already, and I want to get to the fun part.” Hokuto clicks her laser pointer on and shines it on the inset in the top right corner. “You should already know how a penis works, and what all the different parts of it are called and what they do. But just to make sure-quick quiz!” She balances on the balls of her feet. “What does the vas deferens do?”
“Hokuto, this is embarrassing…”
“It’s just you and me here.” She clicks the laser pointer off. “And it’s not embarrassing, Subaru. It’s your body, and you need to know what your body does and how to take care of it. I’m not going to be next to you telling you all this when Sei-chan finally makes you his lover, you know. You’re going to have to know it on your own by then.” The smile twitching up the corners of her mouth seems smaller. “You’re growing up, Subaru. You do know that, don’t you? You can tell, right?”
“I know,” he says. “I do. And you, you’re getting older too…”
Hokuto grins wolfishly. “It’s about time you noticed.”
Subaru’s brain skips and skids to a halt. He glances at the TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR PLEASURE sign lying on the ground, remembers how certain she sounded when she talked about what men wanted, recalls how often Hokuto seems to be out of the house on dates these days.
No. She hasn’t.
-she has. She did.
“Hokuto,” he finally says. “You-did you-you did, didn’t you?”
“I thought you already knew!”
“I-no, I never thought-”
Hokuto shakes her head good-naturedly. “I don’t know much more obvious I could have made it. You’re so dense sometimes, Subaru. I told you I was taking my relationship to the next level, silly.”
“Yes, I know, but I thought…” He scratches the back of his neck. He should have known what that meant, he knows he should have, he just didn’t. “I thought wrong, I guess.”
Hokuto leans forward and hugs him around the shoulders. “You’ve managed to stay so innocent. Try not to change too much, okay? No matter what I teach you, or whatever else happens? I don’t know what I’d do if you became as filthy-minded as Sei-chan.”
“Seishirou-san isn’t-” he protests. “He’s really very kind.”
She pulls back from the hug and crosses her arms over her chest. “Well, I wouldn’t trust him with my little brother if I thought he wouldn’t be good for you,” she says. “But he’s still a pervert.”
“He doesn’t mean any of it.” Subaru stares at his shoes. “He just likes to tease me, that’s all.”
“Subaru?”
“Yes?”
“You’re such an idiot.”
He blinks.
“Never mind,” she says. “And anyway, you’ve been dodging my question. What does the vas deferens do?”
“It, um.” Subaru coughs. “Do I have to say it out loud?”
“Yes. Articulate your desire, Subaru! Open communication is the foundation every healthy relationship is built on.”
“The vas deferens delivers the sperm to the testes,” he mumbles to the carpet.
“Good job! Now we can move on to the fun parts. I call the next poster ‘Prostate Pleasure.’”
He chokes. “Prostate-”
“The ejaculatory ducts lie in the prostate gland,” Hokuto says, lifting the second poster free. Subaru keeps his eyes on the floor. “During orgasm, sperm travels from the vas deferens-that’s why I asked you about it earlier, it’s important to know how your orgasms work-to the urethra through the ejaculatory ducts. That’s why stimulating the prostate makes some men orgasm right on the spot. Other men still need other stimulation, but getting the prostate involved makes orgasms even better. Subaru, look up, I made sure to copy down positions where the prostate gets a lot of direct stimulation. See?”
He does. She shines her laser pointer towards where two of the men are-um, joined. His face flares red, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop blushing. Ever. “The partner on top needs to aim down just a little,” she says. “He doesn’t even need to go that deep, he just needs to hit the right angle.”
“…Hokuto,” Subaru says once his mouth works again. “Why did you paste Seishirou-san’s and my head over all the diagrams?”
“To add extra relevance to the lesson, of course!” She shines the laser pointer over Seishirou’s right eye. “And do you know how hard it was to track down photos where you were both smiling? Besides, color copies aren’t cheap. I think they turned out well, though.”
Subaru wonders if he knows any spells that would let him sink into the floor.
***
Seishirou’s arms circle around Subaru’s chest, warm and-and solid, and when Seishirou pulls him in close, back-to-front, he can’t help but notice that his head fits into the space under Seishirou’s chin. Subaru nestles against him, touches the crook of his elbow and wonders what his bare skin feels like, if Seishirou’s even warmer without the cloth muffling things. He feels a flush creep up the back of his neck and color his face, spread over the rest of his skin and heat it until it prickles, the friction between his skin and the cloth’s almost too much, too stifling, and he-he rubs against Seishirou and whimpers and then the cloth dissolves, drips away like water and flows away and leaves him. Leaves him bare in Seishirou’s lap, stripped of everything except his gloves and then Seishirou brings Subaru’s palms to his lips and the cloth catches fire but it doesn’t hurt, Seishirou slips his hand down Subaru’s chest and pets him, soft and slow and-he’s moving his hips the same kind of way Seishirou’s touching him, he’s moving with Seishirou. Subaru’s skin pulls tight when he realizes and Seishirou laughs, low and rich-
-and then he’s drowned out by a high-pitched whirr; the sound cuts through Seishirou and dissolves him and Subaru reaches forward, tries to grab a fistful of Seishirou’s jacket and says “No, don’t…”
The whirring clicks off. “I’m sorry, Subaru-kun. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“-oh,” Subaru says, when he remembers how to talk again. He cracks his eyes open. He’s in Seishirou’s apartment-no, more than that, he realizes when he looks at how his right hand’s curled around the blankets and fisted tight in them, he’s in Seishirou’s bed.
In Seishirou’s bed. Um.
And Seishirou kneels on the floor and smiles up at him, the vacuum cleaner’s handle resting against the side of his head. “Good morning.”
“M-,” he starts to reply, but then other things start to register: just where Seishirou’s staring, for one, and once he figures that out he realizes where his left hand is. Splayed over his stomach, his fingers curling around. Um. And he’s. Um. He’s-it’s almost painful, he can’t stop his hips from shivering and grinding up and it’s not going away even with Seishirou watching, it’s just getting worse. “M-,” he tries again, ignores how badly his voice squeaks and cracks. Maybe he shouldn’t talk. Maybe he just really shouldn’t say anything at all.
“Are you all right?”
“Y-I’m fine!” Think of something else, he tells himself. Anything else. Maybe it’ll go away on its own? He casts his mind around for other topics. Hokuto sewing his outfits-but then he thinks about the dream and his clothes melting away and that’s no good. Dinner two nights ago. That’s safe, isn’t it? Seishirou and Hokuto made stir-fry, and the three of them had parfaits for dessert, and Seishirou licked his spoon all over because he knew Subaru was watching-licked it and sucked on it, too, his tongue curling around-
This isn’t working.
Seishirou smiles, his lenses glinting. “Do you need any help with that, Subaru-kun?”
That makes the words tumble out of him. “N-n-no! I’m, um, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s-it’s very considerate of you to offer,” oh no, why did he say that, “I mean, I’m, um, thank you for showing your concern but I’m fine, I’m all right, thank you…” His throat dries up before he can get the rest of it out, whatever it would have been. Seishirou’s still smiling, waiting for him to finish. Wait. Waiting for him to finish. Oh no. Oh no.
“M-may I use your shower?” he finally manages. He-he shouldn’t do this, not in Seishirou’s house, it’s rude, it’s shameful, but if he doesn’t reach the shower he’ll end up doing it in Seishirou’s bed, and that’s even worse.
“Of course. What’s mine is yours.”
“You’re…” He swallows, licks his parched lips. “You’re very generous, Seishirou-san.”
“Would you like me to join you?”
Subaru’s mouth hangs open, which is terribly impolite, he knows, but he can’t bring himself to close it.
“I can reach the spots you can’t,” Seishirou says, dropping his voice. Subaru’s not sure what travels up his spine, but it’s something, something that makes his skin tingle and his mind fog.
“I, ah, I-I think I’ll be all right on my own, but thank you again for letting me use your shower and for letting me stay here and well, um, you don’t have to do all this-”
“But I want to make you happy,” Seishirou says. He places his hand over Subaru’s-the one fisted in the covers, Subaru really needs to move the other one no matter how much he wants to keep it there, he can’t act like this with Seishirou in the room-and squeezes. “So if there’s anything else I can do to make you comfortable…”
He-that anything, the way Seishirou almost purred it, what it could suggest-
Subaru wrenches his left hand away from himself. “No, I don’t want to impose or be a bother, and you’ve done so much for me already-it’s fine, Seishirou-san, I’m just happy that you’ll let me use the shower.”
“You know where it is, don’t you?”
Subaru nods.
“You can use one of the white towels,” Seishirou says. “They’re almost as fluffy and soft as you are, Subaru-kun.”
Subaru stammers something at that, a mixture of thanks and embarrassment and reassurance that he’s fine and that he’s grateful and that he’s glad, really, he’s glad for all of this.
As he walks to the bathroom, his hands cupped over himself but not touching, Seishirou calls after him, “Try not to drop the soap.”
Author's Note: I know, I know, photos of onmyouji aren't supposed to exist, but if we go by anime canon, there's at least one picture of Seishirou, Subaru, and Hokuto floating around. So that's my justification. Hey, if it makes Subaru blush...