Initiation Rites (X, Fuuma/Yuuto/Kanoe/Subaru)
So. Um. This is probably the least erotic sex scene I've written. Intentionally so, mind. Go me?
Also, this is COMPLETELY Mith's fault, but a lot of things I write are. *snuuug*
Initiation Rites. X, Fuuma/Yuuto/Kanoe/Subaru. (Yes, you heard me correctly.) 3620 words, so very NC-17. Warnings for consent issues and spoilers for what happens after volume 16 of the manga.
Subaru wonders if he'll ever feel anything again.
Seishirou had been with all three of them. At this point, the hurt is barely worth remarking on.
The Twin Star pets the back of Subaru’s neck. He’s been doing it all night and Subaru doesn’t see a point in asking him to stop, as he’ll claim he’s only doing what Subaru wants him to even though Subaru doesn’t want anything. He might be acting on behalf of someone else’s desires; Subaru wouldn’t put it past Kanoe or Yuuto to envision something like this. But the Twin Star doesn’t have to indulge every wish (or Wish) he sees-if he did, Subaru would be dead-so perhaps he wants this, too, perhaps the games he plays with wishes and Wishes are a way of asserting himself, a way of making himself fate’s wielder instead of its tool. Or perhaps he does whatever interests him most at the time, secure in the knowledge that everything he does supports his, or fate’s, goals.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. He’ll never know what’s in the Twin Star’s heart, and he doesn’t want to.
The Twin Star’s hand creeps to the front of his throat, splays across it. His hand looks like his own, like Fuuma’s must have. The length of his fingers, the width of his palm, the points of his nails remind Subaru of nothing, of no one.
“Is this what you really look like?” he asks.
He feels the Twin Star-Fuuma-shrug against his back. “As much as anyone really looks like anything. Perception shades so much of what we see, after all.” Fuuma presses further forward, smirks against Subaru’s neck. “This is how I look to people who have no Wish to see me as anyone else. They’re rare.”
Is this what Kamui sees when he looks at you? Subaru thinks, but doesn’t say. Instead he asks, “Is this how you see yourself?”
Fuuma hums, considers. “If you want.”
“I don’t.”
“I know.” His thumbnail scrapes down Subaru’s jugular. Subaru shivers from the physical sensation, it’s difficult not to, but if there’s any pain it’s blunted, muted. Sweat doesn’t bead at the nape of his neck; his breath doesn’t quicken.
“Will it ever stop?” he asks, but lacks the concern to make it an actual question. He communicates in flat wooden phrases now, dull and dry and dead.
“Will it ever stop,” Fuuma replies, “or will it ever change? Which do you want to know?”
“Does it matter?”
“The answer’s the same,” Fuuma says. “And your little habit of speaking in questions is getting even more pervasive.”
“Is it?”
“It directs attention away from you and towards the other speaker.” Fuuma dips his finger into the hollow of Subaru’s throat, presses down with the pads; a dull pain throbs there, fogs his nerves. “Which suits you.”
Subaru can still talk with Fuuma’s hand positioned where it is. “It doesn’t seem to be working now.”
“No.” Fuuma’s lips press against the back of Subaru’s neck: dry, almost chaste if not for the insinuation of teeth. “It isn’t.”
The sigh starts below Subaru’s lungs, somewhere closer to his feet, and rises up through the rest of him. “Why are you doing this?”
Fuuma’s hand slackens and draws back slowly. “Because I can.”
“But I don’t want you to.”
“Other people want me to.”
Subaru doesn’t bother to ask who other people are.
“And maybe I want to,” Fuuma continues.
“Do you want things?” Subaru asks, though he should have phrased it differently. Are you capable of wanting things?
Fuuma’s fingers slink up through his hair, knots in the roots. “Yes,” he says. “And it doesn’t matter if they were others’ desires first. I still want them. You’re an interesting person to talk to, Sakurazukamori.”
Subaru stares at his right hand: clean and white, no blood caked in the cracks in his knuckles or on the beds of his nails.
“Very interesting.” Kanoe stands silhouetted in the doorway, her hand braced against the frame. Strands of her hair wind around her neck and tumble down the broad V of exposed skin on her chest. “We do enjoy your company,” she adds, curving her lips up and rolling her head back; he’s not naïve enough to miss the implications and hasn’t been naïve enough to for a long time, though he chooses to ignore them now.
“And we’d like to get to know you better,” Yuuto says, stepping out from behind her.
“Well?” Fuuma’s breath brushes his earlobe. “What do you think, Sakurazukamori?”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
Subaru feels rather than sees Fuuma smile. “It’s who you are. It’s what you wanted.”
Kanoe’s palm splays across his chest, the tips of her fingers stroking his sternum. Yuuto picks up Subaru’s wrist and traces the vein with his thumb. “This wasn’t my wish.”
“Wishing isn’t the same as wanting,” Fuuma says. “How much of him do you want to become?”
Subaru bites down until his jaw aches, teeth scraping against each other. Three sets of hands touch him now, caress, intrude. “You know the answer to that.”
“Then let us help you,” Yuuto says. He kisses Subaru’s palm unchastely, traces his lifeline with his tongue.
Subaru squeezes his eyes shut and blacks out the world. “You can’t give me what I want.”
“We can give you an approximation.” Fuuma’s nails bite into his skin; he rakes his fingers down Subaru’s neck and leaves red furrows behind. The sensation barely alters Subaru’s breathing. “And you can make us happy.”
“Besides,” Kanoe says, tapping his cheek with two long fingers, “people so rarely get what they want.”
“And usually not in the way they want,” Fuuma concludes.
Subaru silently concedes the point, his fists curling at his sides. Lack of dissent isn’t consent but Fuuma takes it as that, twists Subaru’s head around for a kiss. Even with Subaru’s eyes knotted shut, he can’t replace Fuuma’s mouth with Seishirou’s, can’t turn one kind of kiss into another. Fuuma’s lips sear his; he doesn’t wait for Subaru’s lips to part, just forces his tongue in when he feels like it, scrapes it across Subaru’s teeth. The heat from his mouth is blistering, raw, unyielding. He twists his teeth into Subaru’s lip and laps up the blood-he wanted the blood, Subaru realizes, he wanted it for its own sake and that’s different but the contrast isn’t enough to make it mean something.
Could-no. Could he kiss like Seishirou?
He tries it, threads his free hand through Fuuma’s hair and licks his lip slowly, explores the contours of Fuuma’s mouth. He should pay attention to Fuuma now, see what he does, make him react-Fuuma bites him again, hard on the corner of his mouth, and Subaru winces. Did he provoke that? Is there any point in provoking the Twin Star? His stomach curdles and drops to somewhere around his knees. He steels himself; Seishirou would play along. Seishirou did play along, he remembers. What next? He could bite back, nothing’s preventing him from doing it, his teeth are close enough to Fuuma’s lips, he could if he wanted-
Fuuma breaks the kiss and cedes his position to Kanoe. Before Subaru can speak, she slides her nails down his chest, past his navel, lower…he flinches away, collides with Fuuma’s chest, and all three of them smile indulgently. Fuuma snakes his arms under Subaru’s and pins them in place, and Kanoe leans forward and-it’s the first time he’s kissed a woman, it’s the only time he’s kissed a woman, and her lips are softer than he thought they’d be, softer and fuller.
(Seishirou must have kissed women, he realizes. How many of them?)
She pulls away to let Yuuto take his turn. Yuuto kisses as well as Kanoe does, sensual and slow. He hums softly, his lips vibrating against Subaru’s. His mouth tastes like green tea and ginger; Kanoe tasted like cinnamon, and Fuuma didn’t taste like anything at all. Subaru observes all of this, notes it, but can’t find anything to connect it to. Should he treat them differently, appreciate them differently, because they don’t taste the same? But he doesn’t appreciate this, wants it about as much as he wants anything anymore, which is to say he doesn’t. Yuuto cups Subaru’s palm in his cheek, oddly gentle, traces circles with his thumb behind Subaru’s ear. It’s-tenderness? A parody of it? Subaru can’t distinguish between the two, if he ever could, but either way he tries to turn his head and finds Fuuma’s hand gripping his neck, restricting his motion.
Yuuto steps back and leaves Subaru slouched against Fuuma’s chest, staring at nothing at all. The three of them engage in some form of silent negotiation and pet him while they do it, stroke his cheekbones and wrists and sternum. They don’t touch him the same way: Fuuma is deliberately careless (a contradiction, but that’s the Twin Star’s nature), finding the places where it hurts most-it hurts all over but that’s a dull ache, a low throbbing, nothing sharp or fresh-where he feels most and exploiting them with feigned inadvertence; Kanoe is decadent and sharp and favors her nails; Yuuto is sensual if not entirely serious and mimics affection well enough.
“You’re very beautiful, Sakurazukamori,” Fuuma murmurs in his ear.
“So sensitive.” Kanoe slides her teeth down Subaru’s index finger and hums, nips his knuckle.
“And warm,” Yuuto adds, his lips brushing Subaru’s other palm.
They descend on him, kissing and caressing. He closes his eyes.
If he-if he could detach for this, remove himself from his body and observe from that vantage point, what would he see? He pictures it: Fuuma’s hand tangled in his hair, pulling his head back and baring his throat to Yuuto’s mouth leaving wet marks on his collarbone and Kanoe’s nails tracing the patterns his kisses set down, sharpening them. His skin flushed, not swollen yet but approaching it, blood prickling to the surface. Breath passing through his lips in shallow starts; he takes only the air he needs to remain conscious and little else.
He tries for curiosity at the sight, amusement, anger, anything, but the emotions are pale reflections of what they should be, colorless flimsy illusions. Disgust, yes, that he can summon, but he’s been resigned to impurity-his impurity-for so long that even that’s an echo at best, a semblance of the feeling and not the feeling itself.
Subaru opens his eyes as Yuuto and Fuuma tug his shirt over his head. He lifts his arms to help them, he must have, he must be doing that now even if he doesn’t notice the strain on his shoulders, the expansion and contraction of his muscles. The fabric of the turtleneck bunches around his ears and muffles the sound, traps his breath, and then Fuuma and Yuuto lift it free and there’s nothing in his way any longer.
Yuuto catches the shirt before it crumples to the floor. “Do you mind if it gets wrinkled?” he asks.
“Leave it,” Subaru says. “I don’t care.” He looks around as much as he’s able, takes them in. “You’re all still dressed.”
Fuuma waves his free hand in the air. “We’ve seen each other,” he says. “We haven’t seen you. Why, would you like us to strip?”
Subaru’s lips contract at the word. He could have said undress, but no, he wouldn’t. “No. I don’t think it matters.”
“You’re right,” Fuuma says, sliding his hand through Subaru’s hair again, “it doesn’t.” He wrenches Subaru’s head back; the vertebrae in his neck grind and shift and collide, bone scraping. He plants-
He plants a kiss over Subaru’s right eye, his lips curved in what must be a smirk. The kiss is almost chaste, lips and no hint of teeth or tongue. Is it meant for him?
All the air leaves at once and rushes out of him but he doesn’t need to breathe because he’s not even sure if he’s animated by oxygen anymore so it doesn’t matter, what they do to him doesn’t matter, none of it matters. If they’re happy, that’s fine, he won’t stop them, it can’t hurt more than living, it can’t hurt more than the wrong kind of hole in his chest does.
“Exquisite,” Kanoe breathes, slips her hand down the waist of his pants. He flinches and screws his eyes shut. He’d wondered who would try that first. It makes sense that it’s her, he supposes-she’s many things, but subtle isn’t among them, at least not in how she presents herself to them. She might act differently at work, he doesn’t know and he doesn’t know why he’s thinking about this, how she acts then has no bearing on how she acts now, on what she’s doing with her hand. She cups him through his boxers, runs a finger down the length of his crotch. He mentally steps back again, thinks about what it means-another person is touching him there and his hands hang inert at his sides, not burning, not anything-and feels…
Feels like a hand reached inside him and curled around his innards and pulled everything out, ripped him open and sewed him shut and the scars should be visible but they aren’t; he’s held upright by will and not bones, all of those splintered long ago, will and a silent command to live, or if he can’t live then to exist.
Kanoe withdraws her hand and trails it up his stomach, travels to his collarbones and splays her fingers across them. She tsks. “You’re far too thin.”
“We have to take care not to break him, then.” Fuuma says. He runs his thumbnail along Subaru’s cheek. “Unless that’s what you want.”
He laughs, hollow and perhaps a little bitter but mostly hollow. It comes out as a strangled croak. “What more can you possibly do to me?”
“Don’t think of it like that, Sakurazukamori.” Yuuto unfastens his pants, flicks the catch open with one thumb like he’s done this thousands of times (and he probably has), and jerks the fabric down Subaru’s hips, slips his pants down his thighs and calves and covers them with kisses instead of cloth. “We want to have a good time, and we’d like it if you did, too.”
“There’s no way for everyone to be happy,” Subaru says. Laughter bubbles up inside him again, because what else can he do? Is that why Seishirou laughed? No, he sounded-things amused him, Subaru amused him, but nothing amuses Subaru unless it’s the sheer absurdity of it all, of standing under the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and fucking (he hates the word, but what other word is there for it?) the agents of the end of the world. When he phrases it like that, when he looks at it from outside himself, it’s almost funny.
Fuuma’s nails rake furrows down his back, press into the base of his spine. He doesn’t feel blood beading, but he imagines the swollen red lines stark against his skin. Is that what Seishirou called beauty, the contrast-or no, the physical evidence, the reality? The reality-Fuuma’s nails embedded in his skin, Kanoe’s teeth grazing his chest, Yuuto’s tongue wet on his thighs-crashes around him, forces him back into himself, and any impulse he might have had to laugh dies.
“On your hands and knees, Sakurazukamori,” Fuuma says, not unkindly. “That’s the easiest way to do it.”
The others step away as he sinks to the ground, arranges himself, and fixes his eyes on the ground. The cold sends a shock through his arms at first, but not a large enough one to matter. He hears cloth rustling, the click of clasps being undone, the grating of zippers coming loose. Subaru doesn’t need to look. He knows what’s happening, knows what it means when fingers-Fuuma’s-trail up the backs of his legs and spread them and Fuuma asks, “Yuuto, would you do the honors?”
“Certainly,” Yuuto says. Subaru lifts his chin enough to stare straight ahead-Kanoe’s hand, it must be hers, nails, circles him, closes around him and draws him out, starts to stroke-as something slick and cold worms its way inside him, coats and stretches him. Watermaster. Of course. He doesn’t have much of a reaction to it other than that, the acknowledgment. It is what it is.
Kanoe palms the underside of his shaft, hard. She knows the technique to use with him. He stirs slightly in her hand; it’s an involuntary response, he doesn’t have any control over it, he knows that. Fuuma pushes his-pushes his fingers inside, crooks them, hits there and knows it because he withdraws immediately after, keeps coming close each time after but never quite touches Subaru where he’d need to be touched if he wanted to enjoy this.
“Please get it, ah, please get it over with,” he says.
“If you want,” Fuuma says. Deliberately. Yuuto steps in front of Subaru, runs his hand down Subaru’s scalp and curls a loose fist in his hair and tilts his chin back. Fuuma asks, “Did your predecessor teach you how to do this?”
I hate you, he thinks, but even that’s muffled.
“I’m sure he’ll do well,” Yuuto half-laughs, slips a finger inside Subaru’s mouth and parts his lips. Subaru follows the suggestion even after Yuuto’s finger withdraws and brushes across his mouth. It eases the situation when Yuuto slides all the way in, almost to the hilt; salt stings the back of Subaru’s throat and he opens it up, he remembers how to, he might as well, there’s nothing else for it. Yuuto syncs his rhythm with Kanoe’s, or close enough to it. Subaru’s hips propel him far enough forward to take in more of Yuuto each time, which Yuuto appreciates if his tightened grip on the back of Subaru’s head is any indication, if the way his fingers knot in Subaru’s hair means anything.
Fuuma’s tongue flicks against him from behind, dips-dips in, he toys with Subaru and teases him and hums softly while he does it, like he’s savoring this. The warmth of his mouth serves as a counterpoint to the cold liquid still stirring inside him and from an aesthetic perspective Subaru can appreciate the contrast but he wishes, not Wishes, that Fuuma would get on with it, though he can’t say as much with Yuuto in his mouth. Kanoe brushes the flats of her nails along his length. He seizes, and Fuuma takes that as a signal, grips his hips hard enough to bruise and aligns himself and-
It, it hurts, he’s stretched open everywhere, stretched open and invaded and the pain echoes in the spaces inside him, all the empty places, echoes but doesn’t take root, there’s nothing there for it to attach itself to. Fuuma pushes him forward and Yuuto nudges him back and Kanoe brings him into contact with both of them, every time he moves he rubs against one of them and he imagines that’s the point. Fractured impressions filter back to him. Kanoe’s hand disappears under her skirt. Yuuto’s breathing sharpens. Fuuma moves as fast as he wants and the others adjust to compensate, Subaru burns all over but only in the places that don’t matter, Fuuma takes what he wants (or what the wants of others compel him to want, the end result’s the same either way) and leans forward and spears Subaru’s shoulder with his teeth and blood mingles with his sweat and drips down, splashes to the ground.
His fingers dig in, scramble for more traction. The backs of his hands chill. He doesn’t think he’s hard anymore.
Fuuma drives Subaru forward into Yuuto and he chokes, Kanoe’s nails skid down the length of him and he gasps and gags when that admits Yuuto even more, lets him thrust deeper and clench Subaru’s hair in his fist and inhale sharply and tighten and still. Subaru stops himself from spitting, barely. Swallowing is more like choking down, he knows the taste but he doesn’t, and he’s too exhausted and too weak and too pathetic to pick out the differences. Semen drips down his chin. He disgusts himself, but he’s disgusted himself since he was seventeen, if not earlier. It hurts as much as it should.
Kanoe’s fist tightens around him when she comes; her nails cut into his skin, not deep enough to draw blood but enough to make him hiss. He supposes that was his first time with a woman. He doesn’t think he’ll do it again.
Subaru closes his eyes and waits for Fuuma to stop, braces himself against the thrusts and grits his teeth now that he can and ignores the spasms shuddering down his legs, trembling through his arms. Fuuma leans forward and nips open the scab starting to congeal on Subaru’s shoulder and finishes, drives into Subaru with a low cracked moan. Subaru waits for Fuuma to pull out before he collapses, sprawls forward on the ground. His chin scrapes along the surface.
“Do you need help getting up, Sakurazukamori?” Fuuma asks.
Subaru ignores the insinuation. “No,” he says, his voice muffled by the floorboards.
“I hope you enjoyed that,” Yuuto says, voice dripping with casual insincerity-not malicious, but not terribly concerned. “We’ll see you again soon, I’m sure.”
“Take as much time as you need,” Kanoe adds. Subaru doesn’t see her smirk, but he hears it.
Fuuma prods Subaru’s chin with his toe and kneels down next to him after the other two leave. “It’s only until the end of the world,” he says.
Subaru closes his eyes and listens to Fuuma’s footsteps fade.
He wonders if he’ll ever feel anything again.
Now time to kick Subaru some more, but in different ways.
Also, this is COMPLETELY Mith's fault, but a lot of things I write are. *snuuug*
Initiation Rites. X, Fuuma/Yuuto/Kanoe/Subaru. (Yes, you heard me correctly.) 3620 words, so very NC-17. Warnings for consent issues and spoilers for what happens after volume 16 of the manga.
Subaru wonders if he'll ever feel anything again.
Seishirou had been with all three of them. At this point, the hurt is barely worth remarking on.
The Twin Star pets the back of Subaru’s neck. He’s been doing it all night and Subaru doesn’t see a point in asking him to stop, as he’ll claim he’s only doing what Subaru wants him to even though Subaru doesn’t want anything. He might be acting on behalf of someone else’s desires; Subaru wouldn’t put it past Kanoe or Yuuto to envision something like this. But the Twin Star doesn’t have to indulge every wish (or Wish) he sees-if he did, Subaru would be dead-so perhaps he wants this, too, perhaps the games he plays with wishes and Wishes are a way of asserting himself, a way of making himself fate’s wielder instead of its tool. Or perhaps he does whatever interests him most at the time, secure in the knowledge that everything he does supports his, or fate’s, goals.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. He’ll never know what’s in the Twin Star’s heart, and he doesn’t want to.
The Twin Star’s hand creeps to the front of his throat, splays across it. His hand looks like his own, like Fuuma’s must have. The length of his fingers, the width of his palm, the points of his nails remind Subaru of nothing, of no one.
“Is this what you really look like?” he asks.
He feels the Twin Star-Fuuma-shrug against his back. “As much as anyone really looks like anything. Perception shades so much of what we see, after all.” Fuuma presses further forward, smirks against Subaru’s neck. “This is how I look to people who have no Wish to see me as anyone else. They’re rare.”
Is this what Kamui sees when he looks at you? Subaru thinks, but doesn’t say. Instead he asks, “Is this how you see yourself?”
Fuuma hums, considers. “If you want.”
“I don’t.”
“I know.” His thumbnail scrapes down Subaru’s jugular. Subaru shivers from the physical sensation, it’s difficult not to, but if there’s any pain it’s blunted, muted. Sweat doesn’t bead at the nape of his neck; his breath doesn’t quicken.
“Will it ever stop?” he asks, but lacks the concern to make it an actual question. He communicates in flat wooden phrases now, dull and dry and dead.
“Will it ever stop,” Fuuma replies, “or will it ever change? Which do you want to know?”
“Does it matter?”
“The answer’s the same,” Fuuma says. “And your little habit of speaking in questions is getting even more pervasive.”
“Is it?”
“It directs attention away from you and towards the other speaker.” Fuuma dips his finger into the hollow of Subaru’s throat, presses down with the pads; a dull pain throbs there, fogs his nerves. “Which suits you.”
Subaru can still talk with Fuuma’s hand positioned where it is. “It doesn’t seem to be working now.”
“No.” Fuuma’s lips press against the back of Subaru’s neck: dry, almost chaste if not for the insinuation of teeth. “It isn’t.”
The sigh starts below Subaru’s lungs, somewhere closer to his feet, and rises up through the rest of him. “Why are you doing this?”
Fuuma’s hand slackens and draws back slowly. “Because I can.”
“But I don’t want you to.”
“Other people want me to.”
Subaru doesn’t bother to ask who other people are.
“And maybe I want to,” Fuuma continues.
“Do you want things?” Subaru asks, though he should have phrased it differently. Are you capable of wanting things?
Fuuma’s fingers slink up through his hair, knots in the roots. “Yes,” he says. “And it doesn’t matter if they were others’ desires first. I still want them. You’re an interesting person to talk to, Sakurazukamori.”
Subaru stares at his right hand: clean and white, no blood caked in the cracks in his knuckles or on the beds of his nails.
“Very interesting.” Kanoe stands silhouetted in the doorway, her hand braced against the frame. Strands of her hair wind around her neck and tumble down the broad V of exposed skin on her chest. “We do enjoy your company,” she adds, curving her lips up and rolling her head back; he’s not naïve enough to miss the implications and hasn’t been naïve enough to for a long time, though he chooses to ignore them now.
“And we’d like to get to know you better,” Yuuto says, stepping out from behind her.
“Well?” Fuuma’s breath brushes his earlobe. “What do you think, Sakurazukamori?”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
Subaru feels rather than sees Fuuma smile. “It’s who you are. It’s what you wanted.”
Kanoe’s palm splays across his chest, the tips of her fingers stroking his sternum. Yuuto picks up Subaru’s wrist and traces the vein with his thumb. “This wasn’t my wish.”
“Wishing isn’t the same as wanting,” Fuuma says. “How much of him do you want to become?”
Subaru bites down until his jaw aches, teeth scraping against each other. Three sets of hands touch him now, caress, intrude. “You know the answer to that.”
“Then let us help you,” Yuuto says. He kisses Subaru’s palm unchastely, traces his lifeline with his tongue.
Subaru squeezes his eyes shut and blacks out the world. “You can’t give me what I want.”
“We can give you an approximation.” Fuuma’s nails bite into his skin; he rakes his fingers down Subaru’s neck and leaves red furrows behind. The sensation barely alters Subaru’s breathing. “And you can make us happy.”
“Besides,” Kanoe says, tapping his cheek with two long fingers, “people so rarely get what they want.”
“And usually not in the way they want,” Fuuma concludes.
Subaru silently concedes the point, his fists curling at his sides. Lack of dissent isn’t consent but Fuuma takes it as that, twists Subaru’s head around for a kiss. Even with Subaru’s eyes knotted shut, he can’t replace Fuuma’s mouth with Seishirou’s, can’t turn one kind of kiss into another. Fuuma’s lips sear his; he doesn’t wait for Subaru’s lips to part, just forces his tongue in when he feels like it, scrapes it across Subaru’s teeth. The heat from his mouth is blistering, raw, unyielding. He twists his teeth into Subaru’s lip and laps up the blood-he wanted the blood, Subaru realizes, he wanted it for its own sake and that’s different but the contrast isn’t enough to make it mean something.
Could-no. Could he kiss like Seishirou?
He tries it, threads his free hand through Fuuma’s hair and licks his lip slowly, explores the contours of Fuuma’s mouth. He should pay attention to Fuuma now, see what he does, make him react-Fuuma bites him again, hard on the corner of his mouth, and Subaru winces. Did he provoke that? Is there any point in provoking the Twin Star? His stomach curdles and drops to somewhere around his knees. He steels himself; Seishirou would play along. Seishirou did play along, he remembers. What next? He could bite back, nothing’s preventing him from doing it, his teeth are close enough to Fuuma’s lips, he could if he wanted-
Fuuma breaks the kiss and cedes his position to Kanoe. Before Subaru can speak, she slides her nails down his chest, past his navel, lower…he flinches away, collides with Fuuma’s chest, and all three of them smile indulgently. Fuuma snakes his arms under Subaru’s and pins them in place, and Kanoe leans forward and-it’s the first time he’s kissed a woman, it’s the only time he’s kissed a woman, and her lips are softer than he thought they’d be, softer and fuller.
(Seishirou must have kissed women, he realizes. How many of them?)
She pulls away to let Yuuto take his turn. Yuuto kisses as well as Kanoe does, sensual and slow. He hums softly, his lips vibrating against Subaru’s. His mouth tastes like green tea and ginger; Kanoe tasted like cinnamon, and Fuuma didn’t taste like anything at all. Subaru observes all of this, notes it, but can’t find anything to connect it to. Should he treat them differently, appreciate them differently, because they don’t taste the same? But he doesn’t appreciate this, wants it about as much as he wants anything anymore, which is to say he doesn’t. Yuuto cups Subaru’s palm in his cheek, oddly gentle, traces circles with his thumb behind Subaru’s ear. It’s-tenderness? A parody of it? Subaru can’t distinguish between the two, if he ever could, but either way he tries to turn his head and finds Fuuma’s hand gripping his neck, restricting his motion.
Yuuto steps back and leaves Subaru slouched against Fuuma’s chest, staring at nothing at all. The three of them engage in some form of silent negotiation and pet him while they do it, stroke his cheekbones and wrists and sternum. They don’t touch him the same way: Fuuma is deliberately careless (a contradiction, but that’s the Twin Star’s nature), finding the places where it hurts most-it hurts all over but that’s a dull ache, a low throbbing, nothing sharp or fresh-where he feels most and exploiting them with feigned inadvertence; Kanoe is decadent and sharp and favors her nails; Yuuto is sensual if not entirely serious and mimics affection well enough.
“You’re very beautiful, Sakurazukamori,” Fuuma murmurs in his ear.
“So sensitive.” Kanoe slides her teeth down Subaru’s index finger and hums, nips his knuckle.
“And warm,” Yuuto adds, his lips brushing Subaru’s other palm.
They descend on him, kissing and caressing. He closes his eyes.
If he-if he could detach for this, remove himself from his body and observe from that vantage point, what would he see? He pictures it: Fuuma’s hand tangled in his hair, pulling his head back and baring his throat to Yuuto’s mouth leaving wet marks on his collarbone and Kanoe’s nails tracing the patterns his kisses set down, sharpening them. His skin flushed, not swollen yet but approaching it, blood prickling to the surface. Breath passing through his lips in shallow starts; he takes only the air he needs to remain conscious and little else.
He tries for curiosity at the sight, amusement, anger, anything, but the emotions are pale reflections of what they should be, colorless flimsy illusions. Disgust, yes, that he can summon, but he’s been resigned to impurity-his impurity-for so long that even that’s an echo at best, a semblance of the feeling and not the feeling itself.
Subaru opens his eyes as Yuuto and Fuuma tug his shirt over his head. He lifts his arms to help them, he must have, he must be doing that now even if he doesn’t notice the strain on his shoulders, the expansion and contraction of his muscles. The fabric of the turtleneck bunches around his ears and muffles the sound, traps his breath, and then Fuuma and Yuuto lift it free and there’s nothing in his way any longer.
Yuuto catches the shirt before it crumples to the floor. “Do you mind if it gets wrinkled?” he asks.
“Leave it,” Subaru says. “I don’t care.” He looks around as much as he’s able, takes them in. “You’re all still dressed.”
Fuuma waves his free hand in the air. “We’ve seen each other,” he says. “We haven’t seen you. Why, would you like us to strip?”
Subaru’s lips contract at the word. He could have said undress, but no, he wouldn’t. “No. I don’t think it matters.”
“You’re right,” Fuuma says, sliding his hand through Subaru’s hair again, “it doesn’t.” He wrenches Subaru’s head back; the vertebrae in his neck grind and shift and collide, bone scraping. He plants-
He plants a kiss over Subaru’s right eye, his lips curved in what must be a smirk. The kiss is almost chaste, lips and no hint of teeth or tongue. Is it meant for him?
All the air leaves at once and rushes out of him but he doesn’t need to breathe because he’s not even sure if he’s animated by oxygen anymore so it doesn’t matter, what they do to him doesn’t matter, none of it matters. If they’re happy, that’s fine, he won’t stop them, it can’t hurt more than living, it can’t hurt more than the wrong kind of hole in his chest does.
“Exquisite,” Kanoe breathes, slips her hand down the waist of his pants. He flinches and screws his eyes shut. He’d wondered who would try that first. It makes sense that it’s her, he supposes-she’s many things, but subtle isn’t among them, at least not in how she presents herself to them. She might act differently at work, he doesn’t know and he doesn’t know why he’s thinking about this, how she acts then has no bearing on how she acts now, on what she’s doing with her hand. She cups him through his boxers, runs a finger down the length of his crotch. He mentally steps back again, thinks about what it means-another person is touching him there and his hands hang inert at his sides, not burning, not anything-and feels…
Feels like a hand reached inside him and curled around his innards and pulled everything out, ripped him open and sewed him shut and the scars should be visible but they aren’t; he’s held upright by will and not bones, all of those splintered long ago, will and a silent command to live, or if he can’t live then to exist.
Kanoe withdraws her hand and trails it up his stomach, travels to his collarbones and splays her fingers across them. She tsks. “You’re far too thin.”
“We have to take care not to break him, then.” Fuuma says. He runs his thumbnail along Subaru’s cheek. “Unless that’s what you want.”
He laughs, hollow and perhaps a little bitter but mostly hollow. It comes out as a strangled croak. “What more can you possibly do to me?”
“Don’t think of it like that, Sakurazukamori.” Yuuto unfastens his pants, flicks the catch open with one thumb like he’s done this thousands of times (and he probably has), and jerks the fabric down Subaru’s hips, slips his pants down his thighs and calves and covers them with kisses instead of cloth. “We want to have a good time, and we’d like it if you did, too.”
“There’s no way for everyone to be happy,” Subaru says. Laughter bubbles up inside him again, because what else can he do? Is that why Seishirou laughed? No, he sounded-things amused him, Subaru amused him, but nothing amuses Subaru unless it’s the sheer absurdity of it all, of standing under the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and fucking (he hates the word, but what other word is there for it?) the agents of the end of the world. When he phrases it like that, when he looks at it from outside himself, it’s almost funny.
Fuuma’s nails rake furrows down his back, press into the base of his spine. He doesn’t feel blood beading, but he imagines the swollen red lines stark against his skin. Is that what Seishirou called beauty, the contrast-or no, the physical evidence, the reality? The reality-Fuuma’s nails embedded in his skin, Kanoe’s teeth grazing his chest, Yuuto’s tongue wet on his thighs-crashes around him, forces him back into himself, and any impulse he might have had to laugh dies.
“On your hands and knees, Sakurazukamori,” Fuuma says, not unkindly. “That’s the easiest way to do it.”
The others step away as he sinks to the ground, arranges himself, and fixes his eyes on the ground. The cold sends a shock through his arms at first, but not a large enough one to matter. He hears cloth rustling, the click of clasps being undone, the grating of zippers coming loose. Subaru doesn’t need to look. He knows what’s happening, knows what it means when fingers-Fuuma’s-trail up the backs of his legs and spread them and Fuuma asks, “Yuuto, would you do the honors?”
“Certainly,” Yuuto says. Subaru lifts his chin enough to stare straight ahead-Kanoe’s hand, it must be hers, nails, circles him, closes around him and draws him out, starts to stroke-as something slick and cold worms its way inside him, coats and stretches him. Watermaster. Of course. He doesn’t have much of a reaction to it other than that, the acknowledgment. It is what it is.
Kanoe palms the underside of his shaft, hard. She knows the technique to use with him. He stirs slightly in her hand; it’s an involuntary response, he doesn’t have any control over it, he knows that. Fuuma pushes his-pushes his fingers inside, crooks them, hits there and knows it because he withdraws immediately after, keeps coming close each time after but never quite touches Subaru where he’d need to be touched if he wanted to enjoy this.
“Please get it, ah, please get it over with,” he says.
“If you want,” Fuuma says. Deliberately. Yuuto steps in front of Subaru, runs his hand down Subaru’s scalp and curls a loose fist in his hair and tilts his chin back. Fuuma asks, “Did your predecessor teach you how to do this?”
I hate you, he thinks, but even that’s muffled.
“I’m sure he’ll do well,” Yuuto half-laughs, slips a finger inside Subaru’s mouth and parts his lips. Subaru follows the suggestion even after Yuuto’s finger withdraws and brushes across his mouth. It eases the situation when Yuuto slides all the way in, almost to the hilt; salt stings the back of Subaru’s throat and he opens it up, he remembers how to, he might as well, there’s nothing else for it. Yuuto syncs his rhythm with Kanoe’s, or close enough to it. Subaru’s hips propel him far enough forward to take in more of Yuuto each time, which Yuuto appreciates if his tightened grip on the back of Subaru’s head is any indication, if the way his fingers knot in Subaru’s hair means anything.
Fuuma’s tongue flicks against him from behind, dips-dips in, he toys with Subaru and teases him and hums softly while he does it, like he’s savoring this. The warmth of his mouth serves as a counterpoint to the cold liquid still stirring inside him and from an aesthetic perspective Subaru can appreciate the contrast but he wishes, not Wishes, that Fuuma would get on with it, though he can’t say as much with Yuuto in his mouth. Kanoe brushes the flats of her nails along his length. He seizes, and Fuuma takes that as a signal, grips his hips hard enough to bruise and aligns himself and-
It, it hurts, he’s stretched open everywhere, stretched open and invaded and the pain echoes in the spaces inside him, all the empty places, echoes but doesn’t take root, there’s nothing there for it to attach itself to. Fuuma pushes him forward and Yuuto nudges him back and Kanoe brings him into contact with both of them, every time he moves he rubs against one of them and he imagines that’s the point. Fractured impressions filter back to him. Kanoe’s hand disappears under her skirt. Yuuto’s breathing sharpens. Fuuma moves as fast as he wants and the others adjust to compensate, Subaru burns all over but only in the places that don’t matter, Fuuma takes what he wants (or what the wants of others compel him to want, the end result’s the same either way) and leans forward and spears Subaru’s shoulder with his teeth and blood mingles with his sweat and drips down, splashes to the ground.
His fingers dig in, scramble for more traction. The backs of his hands chill. He doesn’t think he’s hard anymore.
Fuuma drives Subaru forward into Yuuto and he chokes, Kanoe’s nails skid down the length of him and he gasps and gags when that admits Yuuto even more, lets him thrust deeper and clench Subaru’s hair in his fist and inhale sharply and tighten and still. Subaru stops himself from spitting, barely. Swallowing is more like choking down, he knows the taste but he doesn’t, and he’s too exhausted and too weak and too pathetic to pick out the differences. Semen drips down his chin. He disgusts himself, but he’s disgusted himself since he was seventeen, if not earlier. It hurts as much as it should.
Kanoe’s fist tightens around him when she comes; her nails cut into his skin, not deep enough to draw blood but enough to make him hiss. He supposes that was his first time with a woman. He doesn’t think he’ll do it again.
Subaru closes his eyes and waits for Fuuma to stop, braces himself against the thrusts and grits his teeth now that he can and ignores the spasms shuddering down his legs, trembling through his arms. Fuuma leans forward and nips open the scab starting to congeal on Subaru’s shoulder and finishes, drives into Subaru with a low cracked moan. Subaru waits for Fuuma to pull out before he collapses, sprawls forward on the ground. His chin scrapes along the surface.
“Do you need help getting up, Sakurazukamori?” Fuuma asks.
Subaru ignores the insinuation. “No,” he says, his voice muffled by the floorboards.
“I hope you enjoyed that,” Yuuto says, voice dripping with casual insincerity-not malicious, but not terribly concerned. “We’ll see you again soon, I’m sure.”
“Take as much time as you need,” Kanoe adds. Subaru doesn’t see her smirk, but he hears it.
Fuuma prods Subaru’s chin with his toe and kneels down next to him after the other two leave. “It’s only until the end of the world,” he says.
Subaru closes his eyes and listens to Fuuma’s footsteps fade.
He wonders if he’ll ever feel anything again.
Now time to kick Subaru some more, but in different ways.