Yami no Matsuei (Tatsumi/Tsuzuki)
Title: pin your dreams on me
Author: reversedhymnal
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: hurt/comfort, angst with a soppily uplifting ending, introspective, and, er, blindness. Of the not permenant sort.
Word count: 2,650
Prompt: Yami no Matsuei, Tatsumi/Tsuzuki: Blindness - "why has darkness fallen"
Summary: Sometimes it’s about balance, and sometimes- well, sometimes it’s just about living, and about letting enough be enough.
A/N: *grumbles* Tatsumi wouldn’t let me half ass this one. And for some reason I have this thing about kicking Tsuzuki where it hurts and then making it up to him in epic proportions. GAH. This is very late, and I apologize. The only thing I say in my defense is this: it was a very, very good book. XD; ALSO. If you catch any thing messy, like misspelled words or grammer, etc., feel free to point it out, and I’ll fix it, :] I listened to My Immortal on repeat while writing this, if that tells you anything, XD
The scotch in his glass was refracted beautifully, in glowing arrays that spread dappled designs over his hands, dripped down his long, pale fingers, curled loosely around the fine crystal tumbler, and crafted even deeper shadows there between them, where the amber light could not reach.
His study was a place of shadows, rich and sweeping, silent and sullen and waiting. He had three lamps in this room, and only two were on; one was a soft, pale yellow light beside him, and the other sat across the room, on his desk. It streaked light across the cold metal of his pen, where he’d left it atop his accounting ledgers.
He was done for the night, and yet his mind would not rest. It was good scotch - if Tatsumi was going to pay money on a petty convenience, then he was going to get his money’s worth - but that mattered little when he was lost inside his wonderings.
Tatsumi sat in his armchair, and merely observed the play of light and dark in his hands for long moments. It made such a very delicate dance; a swaying to and fro of some complicated balance that Tatsumi tried very hard to comprehend. It was necessary, as a shadow master; Tatsumi did not dally in but one. Rather, he walked through both worlds.
In many ways, Tsuzuki was exactly the same.
*
Tsuzuki liked living in the real world. The human one, where people lived and died, grew old and gray and sad and tired and sometimes, if they were very lucky, stayed mostly happy, as well. He liked to immerse himself in that constant struggle, the struggle of a moment, of a lifetime, where people did their best to find who they were and become what they wanted to be, and make it worth it, in the end.
They succeeded, on occasion. On others, they did not.
But that was good, too, that uncertainty, that possibility of failure. It helped throw it all into perspective, bring the joy into a sharper, brighter focus. It didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt, of course.
Sometimes Tsuzuki cried: he’d cried for the couple next door at his old apartment; the walls had been thin and he could hear them screaming, yelling, falling apart, and Tsuzuki had placed his hand tenderly on the wall, like he could reach out and give them a helping hand, or, at the very least, a comforting touch. Tsuzuki had stood on the other side of the wall, bowed his head, and cried the tears that their hearts must have been shedding.
That was all he was capable of doing. Tsuzuki was a shinigami. He helped the dead, not the living. The living could only help themselves, in the end.
It didn’t always stop him from trying, though. That next morning, when he found the girlfriend empty eyed on her porch, smoking like it was the end of the world with a bitter twist to her mouth, nothing could have stopped him from giving her his secret stash of chocolate with a sad smile, and sorrowful eyes.
And that- that was the point. The point of living in the human world, instead of the always-pleasant Meifu. Tsuzuki liked sakura trees fine, but what he really, truly liked, even more than being able to get to the office on time, was his humanity. He had little enough of it, after all. And it was the humans, their sadness and their joy, their short lives and their passions and their big dreams, that saved him, again and again, when he had no one else to remind him.
*
Tsuzuki was the same, and yet he was not the same. Tatsumi was both the darkness and the light, and yet he was neither. Tatsumi was of the shadows, something that Tsuzuki would never be. It was because he was both, so brilliantly, so harshly, so strongly, that there could be no middle ground between the two, that it hurt, sometimes, for Tatsumi to face him.
At times, it was like a single smile from Tsuzuki could heal the world, could wrap up your soul in a gentle embrace, and fill you to brimming with warmth and light and good. And, sometimes, Tsuzuki was so dark and deep with despair, nightmares in his eyes and an endless sorrow softening his mouth, that it broke and terrified Tatsumi in a single, stark instance, and Tatsumi had to run, rather than face it.
Tatsumi rejected Tsuzuki’s partnership not because he didn’t love the purple-eyed boy, not because Tsuzuki wasn’t competent or charming or gloriously sweet; he didn’t reject him because of Tsuzuki’s issues, or because Tsuzuki sometimes woke up screaming, and sometimes wore sunglasses on cloudy days.
Tatsumi rejected Tsuzuki because Tsuzuki was too strong for him. Tatsumi could never be enough, not consistently. He would have gone mad with his own inferiority, there, always by Tsuzuki’s side. Tsuzuki needed to be loved and held and owned with a possessive care that was staggering, and Tatsumi…
Tatsumi had been afraid - no, certain - that he wouldn’t be enough.
*
The real world wasn’t always enough, though. And just because it helped him keep his humanity didn’t mean it offered him any peace. At night, Tsuzuki still curled up on his sofa with the television on and junk food at his side, and did his best to keep his eyes open as long as he could, until he inevitably fell asleep.
More often than not, the nightmares waited for him there, with their haunting embrace, whispering words and playing images across his mind in a blood-drenched loop. It wasn’t always gore and carnage, though, and sometimes that was even worse.
When he woke, he turned on all the lights; he turned on the television, and filled him mind with different images, different sounds. He tried his best to tempt his soul from the darkness that waited in the back of his mind, with its ragged mouth and insane eyes.
Sometimes, it even worked a little bit.
Mostly, though, it took something else. On very bad nights, he picked up his phone, and dialed a number with shaking hands.
*
The phone was ringing. Tatsumi didn’t move for several rings, and then he placed down his tumbler very carefully, so that the scotch didn’t slosh up and over the crystal walls of its confinement. The phone was a simple curve of plastic in his hand, against his ear; it stopped ringing as he pressed the answer button. Someone was breathing very carefully on the other end.
Very distinctly, he said, “I am off the clock.”
Very quietly, the voice said, “Please.”
Tatsumi had known, since the beginning, that he wouldn’t be enough. He had been devastatingly certain; so certain that it may have broken his heart, if he’d allowed it. Now, Tatsumi stared blindly into the shadows, fingers tight around his cheap phone, and pushed his glasses back up his nose steadily with his other hand.
“Go to bed, Tsuzuki,” he said gently. “I’ll be there shortly.”
There was a sigh of relief, and Tsuzuki said, “Thank you,” and hung up.
The strange thing about Tsuzuki was that he didn’t care. Not really. Enough could be anything: small, infinitesimal, or so colossal it stretched the mind to its mortal limits. Tatsumi had been certain that he wouldn’t be enough, that he wouldn’t be strong enough to stand solid at Tsuzuki’s side as his partner, and keep him going, keep him smiling that brilliantly; hadn’t known if he would be able to keep a firm hold on his hand, and his heart, through the darkness.
Maybe he wouldn’t have been enough, and then again, maybe he would have been. That choice was over, done with, and could not be taken back. What had not changed, though, was Tatsumi’s heart, and Tsuzuki’s place in it.
Tatsumi had only so much to give, and even if, maybe, it wasn’t enough, it was good enough for Tsuzuki. He could do this for him, at the very least, and gladly so.
*
Sometimes, when Tsuzuki’s world was falling to pieces around him, and his sanity was fractured and throbbing in painful images before his eyes, Tsuzuki’s world fell to darkness. Sometimes, Tsuzuki screamed.
“Shhh,” said a voice, low and smooth and perfectly controlled. Tsuzuki cut his scream off on a whimper, sitting stiff in the middle of his bed, his eyes wide. There was nothing to see here, nothing save the dark of velvety shadows, all light extinguished, and- how was that even possible?
Tsuzuki wasn’t really certain, except that he was pretty sure it had something to do with Tatsumi and Tatsumi’s light and Tatsumi’s will and Tatsumi’s soul. Tsuzuki shivered, and wondered if his whole room was in darkness, or if it was just an aura of living shadows surrounding him. Maybe it was just one shadow stretched across his eyes, and that was why he couldn’t see.
Maybe-
“Tsuzuki.”
Maybe he should stop thinking about it.
“Ta-Tatsumi,” he whispered, his fingers flexing in the darkness at his blankets. “Where are you?”
His senses were already sharpening; he could hear Tatsumi’s feet padding against his carpet, the shift of his cotton sheets and the creak of his old mattress as it took Tatsumi’s weight. Tsuzuki could hear him, even if he couldn’t see him, but he still jumped when his fellow shinigami touched him.
“Calm yourself,” Tatsumi said easily, one strong, capable hand pressing against Tsuzuki’s chest, over his rapidly beating heart. “I’m right here.”
“R-right.”
And then, even though he knew the answer to this question, intimately, Tsuzuki could not help but ask, like always. He sounded like he was lost, like he was lost and frightened and wanted somebody, anybody to take his hand and draw him back into the light.
He asked: “Why has darkness fallen?”
And Tatsumi said: “So that you can see the light.”
*
There was a trick to darkness, Tatsumi had found. It was the same one that Tatsumi had found to be true to light, in fact.
It was not always as it seemed. It was not purely good, or evil. It was merely a force, and sometimes, one could be the lock and one could be the key. In this instance, darkness was the key.
“Tsuzuki,” he said quietly, sliding out of his clothes, but at all times touching Tsuzuki, through quick brushes from his fingertips, or sweeps of his palms, a gentle press of his thigh or his mouth. Anywhere, so long as it kept a link with Tsuzuki, kept Tsuzuki grounded in the dark, shivering and uncertain but willing.
“Tsuzuki,” he said, asking the most terrifying question Tatsumi knew he had ever, and would ever, ask: “Do you trust me?”
Tsuzuki responded without thought, his eyes wide and unseeing. Tatsumi’s shadows hid nothing from him, and Tatsumi saw the faith in large purple eyes, and his heart fluttered and tripped and broke, before pulling itself stubbornly back together again. “Yes,” Tsuzuki said. “Yes, of course.”
“Good,” he leaned forward, pressed his lips to Tsuzuki’s forehead. Tsuzuki’s eyes fluttered closed on a trembling sigh, and Tatsumi cupped his face tenderly, kissed his eyelids very carefully. “Then just feel, Tsuzuki. Don’t think of anything, don’t imagine anything, don’t even try to picture what I’m doing. Just feel.”
“Okay,” Tsuzuki said, his body slowly loosening, slowly going malleable with surrender. Tatsumi gathered him close and laid him down under the cover of his shadowy darkness.
*
It was an interesting experience, being made love to by someone you couldn’t see. Tsuzuki’s entire world was gone, gone save for touches that he clung to, drowned himself on. The loss of one of his senses sent shivers up and down his spine; that helplessness, the reliability, had his heart racing and his chest tight in a matter of seconds.
Tsuzuki panted, and clung blindly to Tatsumi’s broad shoulders, and already the heightened sensations were overpowering. Tatsumi’s fingers left blazing trails on his skin as they pushed his shirt up, hitched it around his armpits. Tsuzuki couldn’t stop his moan, and it reverberated in his ears as he felt Tatsumi’s tongue lap against his nipples, the moist heat of Tatsumi’s mouth a fierce contrast to the cold of the air.
Tsuzuki shifted, and the sound of his body against the sheets was loud and suggestive, and he shifted again, a wanton move against Tatsumi, so that he could feel the softness of the bed beneath him and the hard, unrelenting length of Tatsumi above. He sighed, and Tatsumi made a sound in the back of his throat that was all over rich hunger, and it struck Tsuzuki, right to the core.
Tatsumi said, “You’re beautiful,” in a very quiet voice, but Tsuzuki heard it like an imprint on his soul. It rolled across his hearing, across his mind; it branded itself in Tatsumi’s low, serious voice, right across his body, over every square inch.
Tsuzuki was almost surprised to realize he was crying, but it didn’t matter, because Tatsumi was carefully licking the tears away with playful kisses, his hands caressing everywhere until Tsuzuki was a naked mess in a world of darkness, and Tatsumi was his god, and his god loved him.
His god said he was beautiful, and laying there, in the darkness, Tsuzuki felt like he was beautiful.
Maybe Tatsumi could see him, and maybe not. What mattered was that Tsuzuki was lost in a comforting darkness, blind and trusting and dependent, and he was spread bare beneath solid, strong, intimidating Tatsumi, and Tatsumi pressed back against him, pressed kisses and love forward, into him, that held him together when nothing else could, and said, “You’re beautiful.”
“Tatsumi,” he said, like a prayer, and threw his head back on a gasp as an iron hard thigh slid between his legs and rocked against him. Tsuzuki’s need was overpowering, and it pushed everything else back, all the nightmares and the self-hate and the fear and the despair. It made it all obsolete, and Tsuzuki arched and spread and begged into the darkness, “Please, please.”
He had no idea where Tatsumi got the lubricant from, but he was glad that he had it, glad that Tatsumi was always prepared. When Tatsumi’s fingers teased him open, Tsuzuki sighed and moaned and laughed, a light, bubbling sound, to match the feeling growing and expanding and threatening to pop in his chest. It was a pressure that hurt, that pressed against the darkness inside, pressed into his mind and made the slavering beast of his own insecurities and faults and insanity cower, at least for a little longer.
Tatsumi slid in, smooth and perfect, a heavy, throbbing heat that split him open and held him together. Tsuzuki wrapped his arms around Tatsumi’s neck, and clung there, riding out the darkness, welcoming Tatsumi in. Tatsumi rocked, and rolled his hips, until Tsuzuki was whining in the back of his throat, his arms pried from Tatsumi’s neck so that he could grip blindly at the headboard for leverage instead, a leg thrown over Tatsumi’s shoulder, sweat rolling down him from the sensations.
Gasping, furiously, tenderly demanding, Tatsumi’s voice came out of the darkness. He said, “Come back into the light, Tsuzuki. You’re stronger than this.”
When Tsuzuki came, there were tears in his eyes and a peace inside of him; he drew Tatsumi down after him, holding and touching. His eyes were closed, so he didn’t know if Tatsumi had recalled his shadows or not. He didn’t need to know. “Thank you,” he whispered against Tatsumi’s neck, pressing his smile there.
He didn’t know how long it would last - not forever, it never did. But while it did last, Tsuzuki was grateful for it. When he fell asleep, he had no dreams; he woke to warmth, and a steady, calm peace inside his heart. And it was enough.
Author: reversedhymnal
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: hurt/comfort, angst with a soppily uplifting ending, introspective, and, er, blindness. Of the not permenant sort.
Word count: 2,650
Prompt: Yami no Matsuei, Tatsumi/Tsuzuki: Blindness - "why has darkness fallen"
Summary: Sometimes it’s about balance, and sometimes- well, sometimes it’s just about living, and about letting enough be enough.
A/N: *grumbles* Tatsumi wouldn’t let me half ass this one. And for some reason I have this thing about kicking Tsuzuki where it hurts and then making it up to him in epic proportions. GAH. This is very late, and I apologize. The only thing I say in my defense is this: it was a very, very good book. XD; ALSO. If you catch any thing messy, like misspelled words or grammer, etc., feel free to point it out, and I’ll fix it, :] I listened to My Immortal on repeat while writing this, if that tells you anything, XD
The scotch in his glass was refracted beautifully, in glowing arrays that spread dappled designs over his hands, dripped down his long, pale fingers, curled loosely around the fine crystal tumbler, and crafted even deeper shadows there between them, where the amber light could not reach.
His study was a place of shadows, rich and sweeping, silent and sullen and waiting. He had three lamps in this room, and only two were on; one was a soft, pale yellow light beside him, and the other sat across the room, on his desk. It streaked light across the cold metal of his pen, where he’d left it atop his accounting ledgers.
He was done for the night, and yet his mind would not rest. It was good scotch - if Tatsumi was going to pay money on a petty convenience, then he was going to get his money’s worth - but that mattered little when he was lost inside his wonderings.
Tatsumi sat in his armchair, and merely observed the play of light and dark in his hands for long moments. It made such a very delicate dance; a swaying to and fro of some complicated balance that Tatsumi tried very hard to comprehend. It was necessary, as a shadow master; Tatsumi did not dally in but one. Rather, he walked through both worlds.
In many ways, Tsuzuki was exactly the same.
*
Tsuzuki liked living in the real world. The human one, where people lived and died, grew old and gray and sad and tired and sometimes, if they were very lucky, stayed mostly happy, as well. He liked to immerse himself in that constant struggle, the struggle of a moment, of a lifetime, where people did their best to find who they were and become what they wanted to be, and make it worth it, in the end.
They succeeded, on occasion. On others, they did not.
But that was good, too, that uncertainty, that possibility of failure. It helped throw it all into perspective, bring the joy into a sharper, brighter focus. It didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt, of course.
Sometimes Tsuzuki cried: he’d cried for the couple next door at his old apartment; the walls had been thin and he could hear them screaming, yelling, falling apart, and Tsuzuki had placed his hand tenderly on the wall, like he could reach out and give them a helping hand, or, at the very least, a comforting touch. Tsuzuki had stood on the other side of the wall, bowed his head, and cried the tears that their hearts must have been shedding.
That was all he was capable of doing. Tsuzuki was a shinigami. He helped the dead, not the living. The living could only help themselves, in the end.
It didn’t always stop him from trying, though. That next morning, when he found the girlfriend empty eyed on her porch, smoking like it was the end of the world with a bitter twist to her mouth, nothing could have stopped him from giving her his secret stash of chocolate with a sad smile, and sorrowful eyes.
And that- that was the point. The point of living in the human world, instead of the always-pleasant Meifu. Tsuzuki liked sakura trees fine, but what he really, truly liked, even more than being able to get to the office on time, was his humanity. He had little enough of it, after all. And it was the humans, their sadness and their joy, their short lives and their passions and their big dreams, that saved him, again and again, when he had no one else to remind him.
*
Tsuzuki was the same, and yet he was not the same. Tatsumi was both the darkness and the light, and yet he was neither. Tatsumi was of the shadows, something that Tsuzuki would never be. It was because he was both, so brilliantly, so harshly, so strongly, that there could be no middle ground between the two, that it hurt, sometimes, for Tatsumi to face him.
At times, it was like a single smile from Tsuzuki could heal the world, could wrap up your soul in a gentle embrace, and fill you to brimming with warmth and light and good. And, sometimes, Tsuzuki was so dark and deep with despair, nightmares in his eyes and an endless sorrow softening his mouth, that it broke and terrified Tatsumi in a single, stark instance, and Tatsumi had to run, rather than face it.
Tatsumi rejected Tsuzuki’s partnership not because he didn’t love the purple-eyed boy, not because Tsuzuki wasn’t competent or charming or gloriously sweet; he didn’t reject him because of Tsuzuki’s issues, or because Tsuzuki sometimes woke up screaming, and sometimes wore sunglasses on cloudy days.
Tatsumi rejected Tsuzuki because Tsuzuki was too strong for him. Tatsumi could never be enough, not consistently. He would have gone mad with his own inferiority, there, always by Tsuzuki’s side. Tsuzuki needed to be loved and held and owned with a possessive care that was staggering, and Tatsumi…
Tatsumi had been afraid - no, certain - that he wouldn’t be enough.
*
The real world wasn’t always enough, though. And just because it helped him keep his humanity didn’t mean it offered him any peace. At night, Tsuzuki still curled up on his sofa with the television on and junk food at his side, and did his best to keep his eyes open as long as he could, until he inevitably fell asleep.
More often than not, the nightmares waited for him there, with their haunting embrace, whispering words and playing images across his mind in a blood-drenched loop. It wasn’t always gore and carnage, though, and sometimes that was even worse.
When he woke, he turned on all the lights; he turned on the television, and filled him mind with different images, different sounds. He tried his best to tempt his soul from the darkness that waited in the back of his mind, with its ragged mouth and insane eyes.
Sometimes, it even worked a little bit.
Mostly, though, it took something else. On very bad nights, he picked up his phone, and dialed a number with shaking hands.
*
The phone was ringing. Tatsumi didn’t move for several rings, and then he placed down his tumbler very carefully, so that the scotch didn’t slosh up and over the crystal walls of its confinement. The phone was a simple curve of plastic in his hand, against his ear; it stopped ringing as he pressed the answer button. Someone was breathing very carefully on the other end.
Very distinctly, he said, “I am off the clock.”
Very quietly, the voice said, “Please.”
Tatsumi had known, since the beginning, that he wouldn’t be enough. He had been devastatingly certain; so certain that it may have broken his heart, if he’d allowed it. Now, Tatsumi stared blindly into the shadows, fingers tight around his cheap phone, and pushed his glasses back up his nose steadily with his other hand.
“Go to bed, Tsuzuki,” he said gently. “I’ll be there shortly.”
There was a sigh of relief, and Tsuzuki said, “Thank you,” and hung up.
The strange thing about Tsuzuki was that he didn’t care. Not really. Enough could be anything: small, infinitesimal, or so colossal it stretched the mind to its mortal limits. Tatsumi had been certain that he wouldn’t be enough, that he wouldn’t be strong enough to stand solid at Tsuzuki’s side as his partner, and keep him going, keep him smiling that brilliantly; hadn’t known if he would be able to keep a firm hold on his hand, and his heart, through the darkness.
Maybe he wouldn’t have been enough, and then again, maybe he would have been. That choice was over, done with, and could not be taken back. What had not changed, though, was Tatsumi’s heart, and Tsuzuki’s place in it.
Tatsumi had only so much to give, and even if, maybe, it wasn’t enough, it was good enough for Tsuzuki. He could do this for him, at the very least, and gladly so.
*
Sometimes, when Tsuzuki’s world was falling to pieces around him, and his sanity was fractured and throbbing in painful images before his eyes, Tsuzuki’s world fell to darkness. Sometimes, Tsuzuki screamed.
“Shhh,” said a voice, low and smooth and perfectly controlled. Tsuzuki cut his scream off on a whimper, sitting stiff in the middle of his bed, his eyes wide. There was nothing to see here, nothing save the dark of velvety shadows, all light extinguished, and- how was that even possible?
Tsuzuki wasn’t really certain, except that he was pretty sure it had something to do with Tatsumi and Tatsumi’s light and Tatsumi’s will and Tatsumi’s soul. Tsuzuki shivered, and wondered if his whole room was in darkness, or if it was just an aura of living shadows surrounding him. Maybe it was just one shadow stretched across his eyes, and that was why he couldn’t see.
Maybe-
“Tsuzuki.”
Maybe he should stop thinking about it.
“Ta-Tatsumi,” he whispered, his fingers flexing in the darkness at his blankets. “Where are you?”
His senses were already sharpening; he could hear Tatsumi’s feet padding against his carpet, the shift of his cotton sheets and the creak of his old mattress as it took Tatsumi’s weight. Tsuzuki could hear him, even if he couldn’t see him, but he still jumped when his fellow shinigami touched him.
“Calm yourself,” Tatsumi said easily, one strong, capable hand pressing against Tsuzuki’s chest, over his rapidly beating heart. “I’m right here.”
“R-right.”
And then, even though he knew the answer to this question, intimately, Tsuzuki could not help but ask, like always. He sounded like he was lost, like he was lost and frightened and wanted somebody, anybody to take his hand and draw him back into the light.
He asked: “Why has darkness fallen?”
And Tatsumi said: “So that you can see the light.”
*
There was a trick to darkness, Tatsumi had found. It was the same one that Tatsumi had found to be true to light, in fact.
It was not always as it seemed. It was not purely good, or evil. It was merely a force, and sometimes, one could be the lock and one could be the key. In this instance, darkness was the key.
“Tsuzuki,” he said quietly, sliding out of his clothes, but at all times touching Tsuzuki, through quick brushes from his fingertips, or sweeps of his palms, a gentle press of his thigh or his mouth. Anywhere, so long as it kept a link with Tsuzuki, kept Tsuzuki grounded in the dark, shivering and uncertain but willing.
“Tsuzuki,” he said, asking the most terrifying question Tatsumi knew he had ever, and would ever, ask: “Do you trust me?”
Tsuzuki responded without thought, his eyes wide and unseeing. Tatsumi’s shadows hid nothing from him, and Tatsumi saw the faith in large purple eyes, and his heart fluttered and tripped and broke, before pulling itself stubbornly back together again. “Yes,” Tsuzuki said. “Yes, of course.”
“Good,” he leaned forward, pressed his lips to Tsuzuki’s forehead. Tsuzuki’s eyes fluttered closed on a trembling sigh, and Tatsumi cupped his face tenderly, kissed his eyelids very carefully. “Then just feel, Tsuzuki. Don’t think of anything, don’t imagine anything, don’t even try to picture what I’m doing. Just feel.”
“Okay,” Tsuzuki said, his body slowly loosening, slowly going malleable with surrender. Tatsumi gathered him close and laid him down under the cover of his shadowy darkness.
*
It was an interesting experience, being made love to by someone you couldn’t see. Tsuzuki’s entire world was gone, gone save for touches that he clung to, drowned himself on. The loss of one of his senses sent shivers up and down his spine; that helplessness, the reliability, had his heart racing and his chest tight in a matter of seconds.
Tsuzuki panted, and clung blindly to Tatsumi’s broad shoulders, and already the heightened sensations were overpowering. Tatsumi’s fingers left blazing trails on his skin as they pushed his shirt up, hitched it around his armpits. Tsuzuki couldn’t stop his moan, and it reverberated in his ears as he felt Tatsumi’s tongue lap against his nipples, the moist heat of Tatsumi’s mouth a fierce contrast to the cold of the air.
Tsuzuki shifted, and the sound of his body against the sheets was loud and suggestive, and he shifted again, a wanton move against Tatsumi, so that he could feel the softness of the bed beneath him and the hard, unrelenting length of Tatsumi above. He sighed, and Tatsumi made a sound in the back of his throat that was all over rich hunger, and it struck Tsuzuki, right to the core.
Tatsumi said, “You’re beautiful,” in a very quiet voice, but Tsuzuki heard it like an imprint on his soul. It rolled across his hearing, across his mind; it branded itself in Tatsumi’s low, serious voice, right across his body, over every square inch.
Tsuzuki was almost surprised to realize he was crying, but it didn’t matter, because Tatsumi was carefully licking the tears away with playful kisses, his hands caressing everywhere until Tsuzuki was a naked mess in a world of darkness, and Tatsumi was his god, and his god loved him.
His god said he was beautiful, and laying there, in the darkness, Tsuzuki felt like he was beautiful.
Maybe Tatsumi could see him, and maybe not. What mattered was that Tsuzuki was lost in a comforting darkness, blind and trusting and dependent, and he was spread bare beneath solid, strong, intimidating Tatsumi, and Tatsumi pressed back against him, pressed kisses and love forward, into him, that held him together when nothing else could, and said, “You’re beautiful.”
“Tatsumi,” he said, like a prayer, and threw his head back on a gasp as an iron hard thigh slid between his legs and rocked against him. Tsuzuki’s need was overpowering, and it pushed everything else back, all the nightmares and the self-hate and the fear and the despair. It made it all obsolete, and Tsuzuki arched and spread and begged into the darkness, “Please, please.”
He had no idea where Tatsumi got the lubricant from, but he was glad that he had it, glad that Tatsumi was always prepared. When Tatsumi’s fingers teased him open, Tsuzuki sighed and moaned and laughed, a light, bubbling sound, to match the feeling growing and expanding and threatening to pop in his chest. It was a pressure that hurt, that pressed against the darkness inside, pressed into his mind and made the slavering beast of his own insecurities and faults and insanity cower, at least for a little longer.
Tatsumi slid in, smooth and perfect, a heavy, throbbing heat that split him open and held him together. Tsuzuki wrapped his arms around Tatsumi’s neck, and clung there, riding out the darkness, welcoming Tatsumi in. Tatsumi rocked, and rolled his hips, until Tsuzuki was whining in the back of his throat, his arms pried from Tatsumi’s neck so that he could grip blindly at the headboard for leverage instead, a leg thrown over Tatsumi’s shoulder, sweat rolling down him from the sensations.
Gasping, furiously, tenderly demanding, Tatsumi’s voice came out of the darkness. He said, “Come back into the light, Tsuzuki. You’re stronger than this.”
When Tsuzuki came, there were tears in his eyes and a peace inside of him; he drew Tatsumi down after him, holding and touching. His eyes were closed, so he didn’t know if Tatsumi had recalled his shadows or not. He didn’t need to know. “Thank you,” he whispered against Tatsumi’s neck, pressing his smile there.
He didn’t know how long it would last - not forever, it never did. But while it did last, Tsuzuki was grateful for it. When he fell asleep, he had no dreams; he woke to warmth, and a steady, calm peace inside his heart. And it was enough.