[SMAPfic] standing there in the red light

[hereticpop]

oh god. this parasite sucked as much life out of me as was possible. and then got finished. actually. i thought i'd be writing it forever.

the donation fic for ficofthegoblin. i think i screwed your amazing request, or it got lost somewhere between all the other themes and overflowing words that i managed to squeeze in it. i hope you can still enjoy it and sorry it took so long.

thank you to dictionarysays for being an awesome betareader and saving this fic from alcoholism, prostitution and tragic death. thank you and sorry to all of my f-list that had to put up with my whining while i was writing. :D

standing there in the red light



Goro can tell it’s started to rain from the few wet spots on Takuya’s jacket when he opens the door. The day is the kind of day that is only half switched on, not in full volume, a foggy curtain subduing colours and sounds. Which is why, while they are going to dinner, Goro is still in a bathrobe and no angry face of the man at the door will change it; he asks him to come in and wait.

“Seriously? How long will it take, an hour?” Takuya whines, because Goro’s hair is not done yet and it might be a pointless effort, considering the rain, but Goro won’t give up just like that. He never gives up on his hair.

He brings Takuya a drink and an ashtray and escapes to the bathroom.

He can hear the sound of the TV being turned on; then he feels very surreal because he can hear Nakai’s voice in his living room, but in a minute it’s drowned out by the soothing hum of the hair-dryer (and Takuya changes the channel anyway). Goro watches himself in the mirror, but it doesn’t seem genuine. It seems desaturated, with a drop of blurring finish, like someone is trying to enhance his face even in his own bathroom. He wonders who. There’s a strange, but not quite unfamiliar feeling in his stomach: maybe it’s just the coffee from before that he shouldn’t have drunk once it had gone cold, or it could be anticipation. Sometimes he can’t tell an upset stomach and anticipation apart, they’re so alike.

Takuya appears in the doorway holding a cat.

“Your cat hopped onto my lap and wanted to play with my balls,” he complains.

Goro is amused.

“That’s what cats do.”

The cat is dropped to the floor and it escapes with a discontent meow. Takuya goes to sit at the edge of the bathtub and look at Goro’s back. Goro knows there is no special meaning behind it, but he can feel the stare like a finger trailing down his spine. It’s dangerous.

“I thought maybe you trained it to do that.”

“You can’t really train a cat.”

In the artificial light of the bathroom that seems too white there is something they aren’t saying like they haven’t been saying for days and it threatens to start rotting any moment; it already has a thinly sweet smell of decay about it, crouching low on the tiled floor. Goro can feel it pooling around his ankles, his toes curl. It’s cold.

(“You told Shingo I was a good fuck.”

“Well. You are.”

“Is that all I am?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

This wasn’t a real conversation; they were just throwing lines at each other. Takuya wanted to say something more, about how Shingo had been so curious of the details, but the phone slipped out of his hand and fell into the bath water. He cursed, thinking Goro would assume he did it on purpose.)

Takuya is bored out of his skull and he starts picking up bottles of shampoo and stuff (there are at least five different hair conditioners), smelling them and reading the labels. He spots one interesting object lying abandoned on the side of the bathtub, next to scented candles (chocolate and vanilla; so gay) and he picks it up with a smirk.

“How did this get here?”

“Eh?” Goro glances at him and shrugs. “Someone left it.”

Takuya nods knowingly, in this very you-probably-don’t-even-know-who way that would get on anyone else’s nerves, as he turns the lipstick around in his hand.

Goro realises he’s been running fingers through his hair without any purpose for three minutes. He makes to turn around, but before he does, Takuya is behind him, peeking at the mirror over his shoulder.

He paints his lips thickly red with the lipstick belonging to a girl Goro slept with once. The mockery is sharp-edged. It could be double-edged too.

“Look. Aren’t we pretty?”

They are. Takuya holds Goro’s head right next to his, so that their cheeks are touching and his grip is like steel, Goro barely dares to breathe. Takuya pouts his red lips at the mirror, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He puts his free hand back to undo his sloppy ponytail, but hesitates. In the end he just brushes the loose strands of hair at the front to one side of his face. There is something different in the air now, a mental smell of a performance in a light that seems to have dimmed and Goro feels caught in a black-and-white movie, obscured by a thin film of scratches on the screen. The presence beside him is as glamorously large as the actresses of old times, but different in that it’s real, almost aching. Nothing is paper-cut about him when he seduces his own reflection and Goro can feel the warmth of his body pressing into him. Still he’s an image, one of those that make you realise gender is not an opposition; it’s a scale and he’s stretching all over it - and oh, he can stretch.

The two of them, they’re as pretty as ice.

“What are you doing?” Goro manages to utter.

“Goro-chan. You don’t like me?” His eyelashes may be fluttering too much; and fluttering off them, there’s a challenge and an attack.

“I’ll go get dressed.”

(“Actually, I prefer women,” Goro told him.

Takuya’s hand didn’t withdraw from Goro’s pants.

“What is this then?” he asked, squeezing what was an unmistakably hardening cock. Eeeh, was what Goro wanted to say, but it came out as Aaaahooh. Then he just bit his lip, unashamed.

“You don’t know what this is? Should I explain?”

“...pissing me off,” Takuya hissed as he turned to leave.)

Goro takes his time. It’s not that he wants to make Takuya wait longer on purpose, but he doesn’t like to hurry. And today is the kind of day that doesn’t like to hurry either, that will mock all your efforts if you try to rush. So Goro pulls every article of clothing on calmly and checks his reflection in the mirror twice and then once more. He is content with what he sees, and he smiles a barely visible smile and doesn’t stop when he turns. Takuya has been watching from the doorway, the master of feigned nonchalance (and it’s still not nearly in the top ten of things he excels in; sex and cooking apparently are, but the one thing he excels in the most is excelling in things).

The way he is leaning on the doorframe, as if he is going to make love to it, makes Goro wonder how much of it is a show, a calculation, and how much is just boiling in Takuya’s blood, out of control. Sometimes he can’t tell. He wonders if the waxy touch of red on his lips is actually war paint. But then, it always is. Women put their lipstick on when they’re going to war.

There’s one more thing Goro wonders about, watching him.

"Do you sometimes look in the mirror and think, I'd fuck myself?"

"I bet you do all the time," Takuya almost laughs at him, but not exactly. There is something in his voice that suggests he might be about to give up, or the voice is not exactly his. His high vowels are higher, his rounded vowels are more rounded and Goro realises maybe he’s not the only one thrown off balance.

"Well, do you?"

The window in the bedroom is open and the steady drone of the rain pours in, numbing. Takuya thinks it’s going to be slightly cold, but he likes the sound. So he doesn’t go to close the window, he goes straight to where Goro is in the middle of the room.

“Sometimes,” he says and it takes Goro a moment to remember what the question was. “What do you want me to do?” The way he says it, it’s like an accusation. He must’ve forgotten how he looks, the red distorting the gravity of his expression. It distracts Goro, who only sees the shape of his lips and tries not to smile more.

“What do you want to do?”

Seeing the tiny mole on Takuya’s upper lip makes Goro realise how close they’re standing.

Then Takuya grabs a fistful of Goro’s shirt and pulls him in sharply for a kiss, breaking the red onto Goro’s lips like poison and Goro can feel it, the acid burn. He wants it just as much, but he lets Takuya kiss him, lets him work hard for a moment without responding. He parts his lips only slightly, but when Takuya’s tongue sneaks in, Goro can’t stay still any longer, he rests his hands on Takuya’s arms and kisses him back, returning the intensity even though he’d rather start slower. It feels like it’s been a whole another life-time since they kissed.

When they break apart, Takuya puts a thumb to Goro’s lips and smears the lipstick marks even more.

“You look like a slut,” he tells Goro and not without some satisfaction.

Goro smiles.

“You should see yourself right now.”

Oh, he should. Standing there, breathing, his lips half-open, slightly sticky with the redness exploding beyond the contours, uncharacteristically soft and just as sweet - and just as addicting. If he turns his head, Goro will be paralysed under the heavy strength of his profile. And Goro is seeing in black and white again and he wonders if maybe there is something wrong with his eyesight, maybe it's not an emotion at all, but a disease, innocently deteriorating him on the inside already while he foolishly looks for the source in the unattainable being unravelling right in front of him.

Maybe it’s just that, a defect in his head; not that he’s in love or anything.

A hand holds the back of his neck and another kiss practically knocks the breath out of him. The corners of Takuya’s lips curl up in a mockery of a smile as the only warning, before he allows himself to go even more rough and raw. That’s the only warning Goro needs anyway. This has nothing to do with Takuya’s perfect on-screen kisses. This is impatient, hungry, like he’s trying to break through the skin and taste flesh, on the verge of violence, which it isn’t only because Goro is up for it all. His blazing need is almost soul-sucking and someone else could be overwhelmed, but Goro enjoys every bit of it with a purring self-satisfaction, because he understands.

After all, it’s him that drives Takuya this mad.

(Takuya fell on the mattress, spent, sweaty and it felt so good.

“I’m not sure it was such a good idea,” Goro said after a moment of catching his breath, but still too soon.

It was the first time someone had told him something like this after sex. A part of Takuya was hurt, but the most of him was concerned.

“Was it bad? You didn’t like it?”

“No, I think I liked it too much.”

If they weren’t in bed - if it wasn’t Goro - Takuya would want to punch his face.)

Goro already knows he got dressed unnecessarily, and that they won’t be going to dinner today, but he’s glad he did his hair because he wants to be pretty when they fuck. Even if Takuya doesn’t give a shit about the state of Goro’s hair, particularly when they fuck. If anything, Takuya wants to mess his hair up, to mess all of him up as much as possible, and maybe that’s worth doing his hair for too.

He knows Takuya is holding back right now and Takuya knows that Goro knows, but he is still taking - his - time as he unbuttons Goro’s shirt. He grazes his nipple with a fingernail and it’s anything but accidental. Goro likes it.

“Do you know what I really want to do?” Takuya whispers against his neck, kissing down to his collarbones. Goro thinks he has an idea. (He still remembers when they were young and stupid, how Nakai and Takuya argued once and Nakai kindly suggested Takuya should put cock-sucking as his hobby in his profile. It was just another insult among many that rolled off Nakai’s tongue with the speed of light, but Goro’s been wondering if there was something in it. It seemed just a little bit too spot-on.)

Before he knows it, Takuya is down on the floor and so are Goro’s pants.

“Stand still. Don’t move,” and it might be the hardest order Goro has ever been given, because his knees want to give way as soon as Takuya takes him between his red lips, pressing them hard, disappointed that he’s smeared his lipstick so much already it doesn’t leave any more marks.

He’d lick the marks off anyway.

“Takuya...”

“Just watch me,” swirling his tongue around Goro’s cock and it’s hard to watch, but Goro tries.

Takuya looks good on his knees.

Goro wishes for a wall like he’s never wished before, something to give him balance now that he doesn’t know where up and down is. This sensation of being suspended in a limitless space makes his heart race even faster, but it’s left somewhere in the shadow, it’s nothing compared to the sensation Takuya’s mouth is giving him. He never knows if Takuya really likes sucking him so much or if it’s just a show, when Takuya makes all these noises at the back of his throat that Goro feels rather than hears. He couldn’t hear them, they get lost between Goro’s own, louder moans.

It seems that Takuya has forgotten himself completely somewhere around the tip of Goro’s erection, because he doesn’t react when Goro’s hands sneak to the back of his head. But Goro really needs something to hold on to, or he might just fall. His grip tightens when Takuya licks along. Then Takuya wraps his lips around him again and almost chokes when Goro’s hips thrust forward suddenly.

“Sorry,” Goro says.

“It’s alright,” Takuya mumbles, but takes a hold of Goro’s waist to keep him still. He doesn’t let people fuck his mouth whenever they feel like it.

Goro hopes for Takuya’s fingers to dig deeper into his skin. He wishes Takuya’s nails were longer.

“Please,” he says. Takuya lets him come and sucks everything out of him. Then he gets up and goes to the window. Goro, left where he’s standing with his pants down, watches him light a cigarette.

“I can’t believe you’re still doing this.”

“What? You expect me to snuggle after a blowjob or something?”

But his casualness is desperate; it doesn’t work this time with the ruffled hair and red lips leaving faint red stains on the cigarette and the bulge at the front of his pants that leaves no doubts as to how much he enjoyed himself.

Goro stumbles towards the bed and sits down to get rid of his disarrayed clothes completely.

“I did ask you, didn’t I? What do you want me to do?” It sounds different this time, the way it should have from the beginning. The truth is; Goro has him on the tip of his little finger, like an eyelash that could be blown away with a breath. He throws his cigarette out the window and goes to stand in front of the bed, his leg brushing Goro’s bare knee.

Goro doesn’t answer. Takuya takes his shirt off anyway. Even the most insignificant move of his body is meant to be watched, and admired, and Goro watches. And admires.

“You still think it’s not a good idea?”

“I thought you were playing with me,” Goro admits.

“I am playing with you.”

He descends, almost falls onto Goro with a growl. He pins him down and kisses him and it takes him a moment to realise that Goro’s fingers are digging into his chest, trying to push him away.

“What the fuck now?” he huffs, annoyed.

“Wait, we’ll mess up the covers. Let me takes this off.”

Takuya rolls his eyes, but gets up and before Goro can even settle to taking the cover off the bed, meaning to fold it neatly, Takuya just sweeps it off onto the floor and throws Goro back onto the mattress to resume where they stopped.

Goro enjoys being thrown around a lot.

Takuya thinks he should try being a little nicer, maybe, otherwise Goro might misinterpret again. He’s never quite got the hang of playing the nice boyfriend part (and he’s not even that, yet).

Goro is trying to get Takuya out of his jeans, which is not easy when Takuya doesn’t cooperate, too busy grinding his hips down, swallowing moans. He is sucking on Goro’s neck like he wants to see blood and the marks he leaves will surely be more long-lasting than any lipstick. His teeth graze Goro’s skin.

“You can bite more,” Goro declares. Takuya does.

It’s been a month of circling around each other, which Takuya spent on outbursts of temper and frustrated masturbation, while Goro was wining and dining (occasionally sixty-nining) girls with pretty smiles. These pastimes seemed simpler than talking, because Takuya didn’t know what to say and Goro was afraid of what he would hear. Now, Takuya says, “Oh fuck,” and Goro hears him groan when he rolls off and pulls Goro on top of himself and Goro can finally put his hands on him and this is even simpler.

(Goro didn’t know what time it was. He was unlocking the front door, when Takuya’s chin rested on his shoulder, insidiously demanding attention, his head turned so that he almost brushed Goro’s neck, so close Goro could feel the texture of his lips and the smudge of breath it was leaving behind.

“I know what you’re doing. Takuya.”

He froze.

“You do?”

“Mhm.”

“And?”

“And. Am I stopping you?”

Takuya’s lips latched onto his skin. Goro proceeded to open the door.)

Pushing two fingers into Goro, the way Goro’s back dips and he moans into the pillow, Takuya almost wants to get him off like this, he would if it wasn’t for the sheer lust pooled in his hips aching to be released. Goro is already in his own little world, moaning Takuya’s name and oh so good, a little bit more, oh yes and such and pushing back. Then he pushes back more forcefully, but it seems Takuya’s fingers stopped moving.

“Takuya. Please.”

“I can’t.”

“What?” Goro looks at him over his shoulder.

“I can’t when your cat is looking at me,” Takuya utters through gritted teeth, he’s really at his limits here.

Goro looks around, lost. One of his cats is sitting by the doorway, watching them.

Goro is amused.

“Really?” he tries to get up quickly, wincing when Takuya’s fingers withdraw a little too fast. He lifts the cat gently and takes it out the door, which he then closes so that they won’t get interrupted again. “Taku really likes to watch,” he says.

“What?” It’s Takuya’s turn to stare. “What’s this cat’s name?”

Goro bounces onto the bed with a self-contented smile.

“Do I want to know what the other one’s called?”

“You don’t.”

Goro has the condom and Takuya reaches for it, but Goro doesn’t give it to him. He motions for Takuya to sit back and merely lets him watch as he unrolls it onto him and Takuya already finds this really arousing, but then Goro’s hand slips to his balls. Takuya has to bite his lip and screw his eyes shut and sigh not to lose it here and now. Goro can see it, which is probably why his hand slides so slowly when he is spreading the lube on him next.

The moment he lets go, Takuya shoves him down onto the bed, hovering above and he is all Goro can see, a wild creature (of the feline kind, most probably; it’s in the way his muscles move under his skin, and then Goro always liked cats a little too much).

“I’m gonna fuck you senseless,” a warning.

“Please do.”

When he enters, slowly, slowly - he would like to drink in all the reflections constantly changing on Goro’s face, but he can’t help it, his eyelids shut - lips open, gasping as if he was trying to say something but - there are no words in this universe - that he could say. Goro’s tight grip urges him on. He can’t tell if his memory was distorted or if it’s even better this time, now that he knows what he’s doing, where he is and that it’s where Goro wants him to be too.

With both hands on the side of Goro’s head, he leans down for a kiss. He thinks Goro’s hand that sneaks to the back of his neck is there to pull him down, but all it does is - what he didn’t expect - undo his ponytail, sending all his hair down to his forehead and eyes and face and everywhere. Takuya shakes his head but it doesn’t help.

“Do you not want me to see you or do you not want to see me?”

“I can see you,” Goro says, although all he can see is Takuya’s parted lips, still too red and too full and too distracting and blurred at the edges. “Now...” a thrust of his hips tells Takuya what Goro needs now. Takuya needs it too, so he drives into Goro in a way that makes all of Goro’s body arch under him and from there, it’s only more and more.

Goro makes a mental note to consider hanging the mirror someplace more convenient for the next time. He would really love to catch a glimpse of Takuya’s back now, as it is moving over him, how absolutely mesmerising it must look, and his fine ass too and oh, maybe a glimpse of Goro’s own face as well.

Even though the sweat and the humidity must have destroyed his hair by now.

“I guess we won’t be going, ahh..., anywhere today, after all...”

Takuya drags his fingernails along Goro’s thigh.

“Will you be even able to walk?” he grins.

“Oh, don’t get too cocky, Takuya-ahh, right there, oh god, Takuya!”

“Fuck, uh, so good,” but he quickly recalls the nice boyfriend thing, “I’ll take you somewhere, mhmmm, tomorrow...”

“But I don’t mind...”

When the conversation evolves significantly towards the side of sound effects and obscenities, and the full sentences count closes to zero, Takuya’s hand wraps around Goro and maybe the firmness of his touch, like no one else’s, is what Goro has been longing for the most.

What comes back in the same way is a sign of a fall. Either Takuya knows it, or Takuya doesn’t know many things, but they’re in him and he can feel them in his fingertips when the time is right and acts on them. So he comes back in a different way and Goro feels there might be more times when Takuya will come back to him, always a little bit differently, but for now, he wants to keep him. It seems it’s not going to be so hard to keep him after all.

They come: hard, sharp, trembling into each other. Still buried in him, Takuya kisses Goro slowly.

Suddenly they hear the rattle of the rain outside the window, as if someone turned the sound back on.

(Goro didn’t know what time it was, but it sure was late, with the chill creeping up their unbuttoned jackets and the milky, unclear quality of the air, which had hit them like an ocean wave as soon as they had stepped out to it. Takuya was whistling a melody Goro couldn’t distinguish because it was breaking every few notes, like there was something in his throat blocking his breath.

“I’ll get you a cab-”

“I thought. I would go home with you.”

There was a red light-somewhere, casting red glow on their faces that made them both look unreal in each other’s eyes. There was nothing particular in Takuya’s words that would make Goro think it was any different from all the other times; but he did.

“Alright.”

It was the familiar sway of Takuya’s hips as he walked that reassured Goro. He wasn’t making a mistake.)

xxx