FIC: Appropriation, YanaKiri (Part 2/2)
Title: Appropriation (Part 2/2)
Author: Ociwen
Wordcount: 17000 (oops)
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: After drifting apart over the years, Kirihara moves back into Renji's life.
Author's Notes: Written for Kirihara's 2007 birthday. Happy Birthday, Kirihara! Your senpais love you, you stupid seaweed head, you. &hearts
Thanks to pixxers for all the handholding.
[Part 1] [Part 2]
Christmas Eve was unusual that year because not only did it snow, but some of the snow managed to stick more than an hour or so. Frosty craters in gardens and crunching footsteps on sidewalk pavements, soft blankets of white over still-green trees and the gentle, absorbing power that snow can have to make the world that much spirited during winter- Renji breathed in the season. It hadn’t been since his childhood in Tokyo that he could remember seeing a school campus covered in an inch of snow.
He smiled.
There wasn’t school on Christmas Eve, because it fell on a Saturday, but there was tennis practice. Or, not really. Renji wasn’t obliged to go, the season having ended for the third years in September, but Yukimura and Genichirou were going to play. Genichirou texted him yesterday:
we’re going to rikkai at 2pm. do you want to play too?
The snow made Renji skeptical of just how well it would work out, playing on the outdoor courts. He didn’t bring his own racket, now buried in his closet in favour of textbooks and entrance exams, but he did come. The bus ride was warm and steamy inside, too many bodies packed close for warmth, shopping and dates to be had.
His mind trailed off, thinking about Miyu-chan in his class. She’d walked up to his locker yesterday, face flushed and eyes downcast. She was pretty, and sweet and Renji heard that she was supposed to be a very good baker in home economics. He didn’t know what to say when she had proffered a little package of cookies, wrapped up in red cellophane and curling ribbon.
“Have a good Christmas, Yanagi-san,” she’d said, before rushing off to her waiting friends, probably all eager to hear about Renji’s reaction to the gift.
Now, the cookies sat at the bottom of his bag. She was nice, and she had long, silky hair and plump pink lips, but…Renji didn’t feel anything more for her than admiration for her bravery in approaching him. He wasn’t the most open guy in their year: Jackal was certainly very forward in asking girls out and being friendly with them, and Niou often had girls on his arm until October, when the girls had stopped and he started eating lunch exclusively with Yagyuu.
Renji was certain that the reason Niou and Yagyuu both declined the tennis offer today was that they were on a date. It made him squirm a little, at the thought his former teammates were that way, but at the same time, he couldn’t say he was surprised. Niou had stared at Yagyuu a lot over the years, especially in the locker room. And Yagyuu never said much, but he did put up with Niou, seemingly in a good-natured way. Whatever they saw in each other, it was a private matter between them.
Not that Renji was jealous. Or would admit to being jealous. He sighed and stared out the window. The school was coming into view, a looming red-brick building surrounded by white snow. He rang the bell and grabbed his bag.
Tramping through the snow was more effort than Renji anticipated, so he arrived at the clubhouse flushed and nearly out of breath. Snow caked into the backs of his shoes, making his ankles itch as it melted under his socks. Genichirou and Yukimura were on a court swept of its snow, and slamming tennis balls back and forth. It wasn’t a serious game because Yukimura was laughing and teasing Genichirou.
“Are you going easy on me because it’s Christmas Eve?” he asked.
Genichirou grunted. “No,” he said through his teeth, but he purposely lobbed an easy ball right to Yukimura’s backhand. Yukimura could have made the shot blindfolded.
Other than those two, the courts were empty and the sounds of their game dulled by the quiet winter landscape all around them. The fir trees were covered in fluffy snow, branches hanging heavy under the weight. They only needed strands of lights hung up to look like the Christmas tree in Renji’s home.
Akaya must be going slack on his team and giving them the day off, he thought. Under Yukimura’s captaincy, this would have never happened. Renji accepted that times changed and captaincy styles, too. Shrugging, he wandered off to the clubhouse, noticing the plume of steam rising from it. Someone was inside.
As he walked, he noted the perimeter of the courts was packed with footprints, a circuit path around the inside of the fence. Someone was here earlier doing laps. Knowing Genichirou and Yukimura, who both hated laps, he suspected Kirihara was here, too.
Sure enough, in the club house, was Kirihara. Renji closed the door behind himself as Kirihara turned to him, his eyes widening and the noodles he had been microwaving forgotten. “Senpai,” he said, “you came…”
Renji noticed his voice dropping, softening and the way Kirihara bit his lip, as if he had something more to say. But Kirihara didn’t, he just left his noodles in the open microwave and gave Renji a lop-sided smile.
“I thought I’d play today with you guys, but it’s too cold.” Kirihara forced a shiver and rubbed the arms of his knitted sweater. “Sanada and Yukimura-buchou are crazy! There’s fucking snow out!”
Renji was inclined to agree. His eyes surveyed the room, seeing the small stack of papers Kirihara had laying out across the table. Rosters of players and blank game assignments. “I see you’re getting ahead with your planning,” he said.
Kirihara nodded, but he wasn’t looking at Renji. His gaze was fixed on the window, frost creeping up the edges in delicate lacy patterns. Outside, Genichirou ran to the net and grabbed it, shaking the top of it with a big grin on his face. All of a sudden, a ball, not a tennis ball, but a veritable snowball smacked him straight in the cheek.
Renji chuckled.
Kirihara didn’t make a noise. His fingers fidgeted on the hem of his sweater, picking at lint balls. Then, he rushed across the room, so fast and so directionless that he plowed into a folding chair and tripped over a bench. Oomph!
“Are you all right?” Renji asked.
Kirihara’s laughter was forced and his smile more of a grimace. “I’m…I’m fine,” he mumbled before he turned around. He rummaged around in a bag, grabbing something. Then, he sucked in a breath.
The clubhouse was warm. There was no logical reason for Kirihara’s face to be flushed so pink as he walked up to Renji, hands behind his back and eyes huge, wavering on Renji’s face.
“S-senpai,” Kirihara said. “Um…I wanted…I wanted to give you this. I mean, to give you something. I mean…” Kirihara bowed his head quickly and shoved the something into Renji’s cold hands.
It was a lumpy gift, wrapped in green and red paper that looked more than a little tattered at the edges and seemed to have more tape than wrapping paper. Renji blinked. Kirihara’s chest heaved.
Words caught in his throat for a moment before Renji managed the same answer he’d given Miyu-chan just the day before. “Ah…thank you.”
Before either one of them could say more, the door slammed open with a gust of cold air.
Yukimura stood in the doorframe, grinning from ear to ear. His headband half-covered his eyes and snow was caked through his hair, and all over his uniform too. “I am triumphant!” he said. “Sanada can’t beat me in tennis or in snowball fights!”
They spent the rest of the afternoon in a haze of friendship, hitting an arcade with Kirihara after leaving the clubhouse, then going for hot pot downtown at one of the joints near the main train station. The warm broth and hot meat and mushrooms warmed their bellies as much as the karaoke did afterward. One by one, they went home, wishing each other Merry Christmases and promising to call for more tennis games in the snow.
All except Kirihara, who was suspiciously quiet the entire evening. As he and Renji waited on the platform for separate trains home, Kirihara kept sucking in deep breaths and half-turning, before he’d always shake his head slightly. He was worried about something.
Just as Renji’s train approached the platform, he reached out to pat Kirihara on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine on your tests in January,” he said.
Kirihara’s mouth hung open, but he didn’t contradict Renji.
Alone in his carriage as the train chugged through the snow-dusted fields and rooftops of the suburbs, Renji finally opened the little tattered present from Kirihara. His heart felt almost heavy in his chest, but he ignored the feeling to focus instead on prying the tape off the gift.
Inside, he wasn’t sure what to make of it. It looked like something made with green sequins and pipecleaners, bent into a shape Renji couldn’t recognize. He picked it up to study the object, but then a painted popsicle stick fell to his feet and the present fell apart completely.
The only thing remaining whole was a small piece of patterned paper- tiny Santa Clauses with fat faces smiling up at Renji as he read the scrawled note.
To the best senpai ever
***
He barely sleeps. The experience of having someone sleep beside him, in his bed, like this, keeps Renji awake. It’s new and his heart pounds, throbbing against his ribs. Kirihara isn’t a docile sleeper, the same as he isn’t docile when awake- he snorts and sniffles. He moves his arms. He stretches his legs out, then curls them back up, his body flush with Renji sometimes and elbow poking him hard in the back at other times.
Never have the crickets seemed louder. Never have the swishing trees, either. Renji is aware of every breath Kirihara takes, because they stir the hairs on the back of his neck. He closes his eyes and sleeps intermittently, dozing in and out of consciousness because he can’t slumber, not with his skin so hypersensitive when Kirihara’s sleepy hands drag over his arms, not with his cock swollen so hard he can’t ignore it.
Neither can he jerk himself off in the bathroom. The temptation is there, to ignore the data that says Kirihara would wake up if Renji slipped his hand inside his pajama pants and rubbed his fingers over the head of his cock. It wouldn’t take long to come, not like this, with his body so aroused his thighs have gone numb.
No, he thinks, it wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t do that.
Eventually, he must sleep some, although it’s the sort of sleep that leaves him groggy, his muscles sore and his eyes crusty when he wakes in the soft light of early dawn. Kirihara sighs heavily against his neck and murmurs something unintelligible. Then he makes a satisfied noise, as though he’s won a videogame or maybe a tennis match or eaten something sweet and tasty. The noise vibrates in Renji’s veins, his dick pounding through his pajamas; it makes his head feel ethereal and leaden all at once.
“Mmm…” Kirihara moans and rolls onto his side. Renji can hear his lips smack- he imagines Kirihara’s tongue licking those pink lips, saliva wet and warm and shiny. Kirihara makes another noise, almost a word but one that Renji can’t place, not with his mind having slithered under his waistband along with his fingertips.
No! he thinks, prying his hand out. No!
Kirihara wiggles again and the bed creaks under his movement. A leg flings itself over his own, thumping against his knee; Renji stiffens at the feeling, the sudden thought of what would it be like to have his entire body on top of me? Kirihara sighs, then in a louder voice, as he laughs, he says “Sen…”
And sits straight up, finishing his word off: “…pai”. He rubs his eyes and yawns. Kirihara peers down at Renji, who is huddled on the edge of the bed, curled around his erection like a foetus to hide himself. Bleary-eyed, Kirihara scratches his hair and yawns again. “Senpai?” he asks.
His voice is delicious- there is no qualitative way to describe it other than utterly. delicious. Renji could savour the sound over and over again, if it wasn’t for his discomfort and embarrassment.
“What time’s it?” Kirihara asks. He keeps blinking, turning his head around and squinting, probably looking for a clock.
Renji’s never remembered to buy himself one. Carefully, he reaches for his watch on the little table. “6:34,” he says, keeping his words as smooth and as calm as he can. If he can maintain an aloof, calm appearance as his hormones and conscience rage inside, that’s all the matters.
Kirihara stares out the window at the early morning train rattling by, his eyes shifting along the carriages. Enunciating carefully, he repeats what Renji says. “6:34…6:34…”
“Shit.”
Renji blinks.
Kirihara dives off the bed and lands in a heap on the floor. He scrambles to his feet. “CanIuseyourshower?” he asks, his words too rushed for the hour. It takes Renji a moment to understand him, then he nods slowly and Kirihara stops jumping from foot to foot and instead bolts into the bathroom.
From the other side of the door, Kirihara says, “I got a game early this morning and my coach is gonna kill me cuz I’m supposed to be there at seven and I promise I’ll be real quick, senpai!”
The shower starts. The glass door bangs shut inside. Renji swings his legs over the edge of the bed and rubs his temple. Genichirou used to sometimes mention Zen techniques of breathing that he would use in high school if Kirihara was being a particular pest. Only now, for Renji, it’s not Kirihara who is the pest, it’s his own body, rushing and tingling from touching Kirihara’s skin all night, from having Kirihara’s breath on his neck. Kirihara’s sleep-filled noises echo in his mind, sending fresh shudders through his body.
At least Kirihara will be quick, then out of his apartment before Renji himself needs to leave for class. And then, Renji can sink his hands down his pants and jerk himself off again and again and again until his cock breaks and he can’t come anymore.
***
Two lectures in a row and Renji can’t shake the heat on his face- and not because the lecture hall A/C is broken, either. He sits and sweats with the rest of his classmates, unable to even fan his face because it will distract him even more from the professor’s overhead presentation.
He’s shaking, still, from this morning. Never, ever had he grabbed his dick that hard and pulled himself into coming, Kirihara’s name almost on his lips but not quite because Renji refused. He refused to sink that low. In his fantasy, yes, behind his closed eyes, yes, he saw Kirihara licking his lips, he could hear Kirihara’s little sleepy moans, and he could feel Kirihara’s rough fingertips catch the skin on his arm. He could even see Kirihara’s stomach, pale and flat and soft, and maybe, if Renji had thought harder, he would have imagined Kirihara’s hard nipples and his winks, his round, dark eyes and his voice, whispering “Senpai…” in Renji’s ear.
He’d come twice this morning. Once in the middle of his flat, legs bent as he shuddered and shook and came into his hand without even taking his pajama pants off. Kirihara left, barely minutes before, and then Renji panted and gasped and let himself slip.
He came in the shower, too, still damp and warm from Kirihara’s shower. His dick was on fire, aching and throbbing from his last orgasm, so recent that his legs gave out and he slipped in the shower. Unable to stop thinking about Kirihara in his bed, in his apartment, in his life, Renji jerked himself off with two hands, one cupping his balls, the other curled around his cock. It hurt to come, but it would have hurt just as more to not.
Now, in class, every movement he makes, every shifting he has in his seat brushes his over-sensitized cock against his underpants, a reminder of this morning. So Renji sits and suffers and wishes he hadn’t been so aroused this morning. He acted like a foolish teenager, not the mature, professional student that he is.
As he starts to wonder about Kirihara’s tennis game, something buzzes in his pocket. Renji looks around in the dim hall. Glowing laptop screens and the bright screen with lecture notes light up the room, but the switched off lights give enough darkness that no one notices when he pulls his cellphone out.
yo yo wanna get some lunch in 20mins?? meet in caf, usual place, got something to tell u guys. jackl coming 2!
Renji presses the indiglo button on his wristwatch. His lecture should end in enough time for him to make lunch. His stomach gurgles in agreement. Somehow, as much as a breakfast consisting of jerking himself off was a good idea at the time, after three hours of school, he’s hungry.
After class ends, Renji walks to the cafeteria. The day is beautiful at the moment, the sky bright and cerulean, with barely a cloud in sight, until he walks past the chemistry building and the trees break away to reveal a dark line in the south, towards the ocean. Another storm coming. Renji can’t recall if he has his umbrella in his bag or if Kirihara still has it.
Kirihara…
Renji shakes his head. He won’t let himself think about Kirihara, not at the moment. He wants lunch. He wants to listen to Marui’s gossip and Jackal’s easy laughter. He wants to forget about these unfounded fantasies.
Jackal and Marui are at the usual table, no Genichirou or, although he almost never eats with them, Yukimura. Jackal grins at Renji then tucks his hands under his chin, intently listening to whatever Marui is talking about.
Renji pulls a chair up. He plops down his tray: hamburgers and potato croquettes today. He chose the gravy instead of curry sauce, the way Jackal has. Marui opted for something altogether different: a stack of deep-fried spring rolls. The smell of grease makes Renji’s stomach churn, but he pushes the feeling back down in favour of his own hunger.
Today’s rice is a bit dry, but nothing out of the ordinary. Renji chews it, his chopsticks pointed in the air. “It’s nice to see you,” he tells Jackal.
Jackal waggles his eyebrows. “Well, you guys could eat at the other caf sometimes. The food’s better there.” As if to make a point, he swipes one of Marui’s spring rolls, bites into it, and makes a face.
“Oi!” Marui shouts, food spraying from his mouth. As soon as he swallows, he says, “Desserts are better here, though, dumb-dumb. There’s no cream puffs at the other caf.”
“But there is a Starbucks,” Jackal says. From under the table, he pulls a travel mug and sets it down on the corner of his tray. Bitter, aromatic coffee wafts up from the lid. Renji hates coffee, but the smell makes him breath in deep anyway. “So,” Jackal says, “what’s this news you want to tell us? I’m all ears.”
Renji really shouldn’t be surprised when he sees Jackal wiggle his ears. He raises an eyebrow, rather impressed with Jackal’s skills.
Marui shifts his eyes left, then he shifts them right. Then he leans over his spring rolls and, with his voice conspirationally low, he says, “Guess what I discovered this morning?”
Renji stares, nonplused.
Jackal considers for a moment as Marui pauses for the drama. “The diet section- ow!”
“That’s not funny, Jackal!” Marui snaps.
Jackal rubs his arm where Marui pinched him. “Yeah yeah, Genius, what was it then?”
Marui sniggers. And leers even closer. “Guess who I ran into this morning? Our little kouhai from school!”
“Akaya?” Jackal asks.
Renji stiffens in his seat. His cock pulses, stiffening once more. He clears his throat and, slowly, he says, “Is that so?” as though he hasn’t been thinking about Kirihara all morning, as though he hasn’t seen Kirihara in a year.
A cafeteria worker rolls a cart of dirty trays past them. Marui waits for him to walk past their table, then he goes on. “So, I was at the café, right? Eating a crepe for breakfast, because my stupid brother didn’t wake me up and I missed breakfast…”
Jackal nods.
Renji doesn’t move, except to pick at his pants under the table, trying to pull at the material stretched over his thigh to find extra room for his latest erection without attracting any more attention. With every beat of his heat, more blood rushes between his legs and his erection gets worse, pushing and tenting his pants.
“Anyway,” Marui says, “our dear little Akaya was there getting himself a pastry, or whatever. It was one of those nasty things, like a cheese scone. I figured, man, if he’s got that little taste, that’s his problem, so I didn’t say anything. And he didn’t notice me, right?”
Jackal nods again.
Renji squirms. He can feel a bead of sweat slither down his spine, under his shirt, staining the fabric dark on his back. He breathes through his nose and tries to listen to Marui without reaction.
“You know why he didn’t notice me?” Marui asks. When neither Renji nor Jackal say anything, he tells them: “Because there was a chick talking to him!”
Renji stops breathing. Jackal starts to laugh, but Marui clamps a hand over his mouth.
“It gets even better,” he says. “This chick was hot, hot like Leah Dizon, you know? The kid looked so confused when she smiled at him and said something- I didn’t hear what, but it might have been something about a love hotel.”
All the air is choked from Renji’s throat. He digs his hands into his thigh under the table. Under Marui’s palm, Jackal’s laugh is muffled.
“-I guess she must have heard about him and how he’s some hot shot tennis player now,” Marui tells them. He clicks his tongue, then flashes a toothy grin. “But that’s not all. He had his back to me by then and he’s standing in front of her so I couldn’t really hear all that well, but I did hear him say- get this…”
In a falsetto voice, Marui says, “’Sorry, I’ve got someone else. Sorry.’ Can you believe it? Kid turned down this HOT chick because he’s already got a girlfriend-”
As soon as the words hit Renji’s ears, everything else around him stops: Marui’s voice goes silent, his lips moving but the sound not emerging. The clanging of the cafeteria workers banging pots ceases. The cool A/C blowing over their heads stagnates, going still and the room starts to heat up. Renji’s vision blurs around the edges and before he knows it, he’s standing up, grabbing his bag and walking away.
Maybe he said something to Marui and Jackal, maybe he didn’t. He doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t care about his forgotten lunch, or how now sagging dick in his pants. He doesn’t care that his fingertips feel numb because his chest is even worse.
Not until he’s outside, leaning on the wall with one hand in an alleyway off the main entrance, hidden behind a dumpster does Renji exhale. His breathing is shuddered, sobs shaking his cheat but he refuses to cry. No. He won’t.
He should have seen all the signs before- Kirihara had a date this morning, in addition to tennis, he just didn’t mention that was why he needed the shower. Why Kirihara was late the other night and didn’t show up all that regularly- Renji’s apartment was a place to crash. He came for girl advice: all those times he was staring at Renji, biting his lip as though he was about to ask something and Renji never realized that Kirihara was one breath away from asking advice.
Renji doesn’t know thing about girls, except that whoever Kirihara is dating, she’s lucky. In the moment, Renji hates her. He wants to slam her against the green metal dumpster and see her cry, see her chest heave the way his does, hear her ask why, why are you doing this? the same way Renji asks his mind, his body why, why were you reacting like that to him?
Bile and the potato croquette rise in his throat, chunky and burning but he can’t puke his lunch up, it isn’t coming, the lump in his throat stops the vomit before he has a chance. Renji balls his fist, ready to punch the stone wall.
He stops himself, palm spread out on the cool stone, and tries to breathe.
And then, he goes to his next class. He arrives early, a half hour or more, one of the first students there. The lecture hall doesn’t soothe the shaking anger and shame that floods his limbs, that makes him stumble up the steps into the rows of desks. Renji pulls out his notebook and stares blankly at the page.
He must be staring at the page without looking away until the lecture starts, students milling around him, squeezing behind his chair, papers shuffling and the lights dimming. All Renji can see is a girl, her features unknown, but she’s probably petite and has long hair, she would be plump and have breasts, a vagina, she’d have makeup and be feminine, with a soft voice and easy conversation, entirely unlike him.
She would be perfect for Kirihara.
Entirely unlike him.
Class is eternity. Renji can’t stop thinking about this girl and how he hates her, even though he’s never met her. He hates her for getting there first, for being the one Kirihara wants to be with. He should have known his fantasies would come crashing down- but then, he’s never been a dreamer. Renji roots himself in rational reality and when dreams start to flood his mind, he doesn’t know what to make of them.
He’s the fool. And he hates himself for losing himself in these pathetic thoughts about Kirihara and kissing ceramic cups and using his soap and watching stupid, childish anime marathons together.
There was a reason he didn’t speak with Kirihara much after high school: there was no reason to keep up the pretense of friendship, of a senpai-kouhai relationship. There is nothing there, Renji tells himself.
Class finishes up and Renji feels worse than ever. There is no point in trying to go to the library and study. He’s exhausted: mentally, physically. He’s disheartened and more alone than ever. He stuffs his notebook in his bag- he didn’t write a single word the entire two hours.
The sky has taken on a gloomy mood as he exits the building. The dark clouds have rolled in; although the rain has yet to begin, there is a thickness in the air portending a storm, that heavy smell and the swish of trees, leaves whipping up and his hair, too. The weather hasn’t cooled- if anything, being outside, his sneakers crunching on the flagstone walkway, Renji feels constricted. The air is stifling and he can’t breathe deep enough.
He walks his usual route, but it seems to take longer than ever. The sports building looms to his side. Renji’s heart twists when he sees the doorway and students coming in and out, bags of sports equipment slung over their shoulders. He forces himself to look away- Renji won’t torture himself watching the doors any longer than need be.
He walks. His shoes crunch. His bag is heavy, cutting into his shoulder. The bushes lining the walkways shiver as the wind swirls, carrying plastic bags around like phantoms: sad, alone, forgotten bags that catch under car tires and in tree branches, only to be ripped to shreds.
Crossing the parking lot towards the main road in the direction of home, Renji stops. There, walking side by side and suspiciously close, are Genichirou and Yukimura. Yukimura carries his tennis bag over his shoulder, leaning into Genichirou with the other. They share a smile, a laugh and duck their heads, completely lost in each other’s presence.
Renji clenches his jaw. He was never thrilled when it became obvious earlier in the year that Genichirou had progressed from being only Yukimura’s tennis manager to something more, something less than platonic. Renji wants to smack those soft smiles and smash those gleaming eyes they make at each other. He wants to scream at them to get a fucking love hotel room! He wants to dig his hands in and forcibly separate them, to throw them apart so that maybe for once they could feel what it is like to be alone and watching someone else bloom in love.
“Renji!”
He hears his name being called. He knows Genichirou is waving. And he knows that he is close enough that Genichirou knows he can be heard. For a second time his name clears the air, carried on the angry wind. Renji pauses his step, half-turns his head, but when all he can offer is a glower, he just keeps walking away from them and back in the direction of home.
***
Each step home makes Renji’s heart even heavier, makes it harder and harder to breathe properly because his lungs don’t work. Home is supposed to be a sanctuary, a retreat, but all Renji does is drop his bag in the middle of the floor and stand there, beside his wardrobe closet with his eyes closed, trying to find some sort of peace with what Marui told him.
His sinuses hurt. His stomach flip-flops. He sits down on his bed, searching for an anchor to keep himself up, to keep himself from sinking to the floor and feeling irrationally sorry for himself, but his messy sheets smell like Kirihara. The side of the bed is formed with Kirihara’s body, sheets bunched up like an outline: there, his arm, here, his legs.
Renji stands up and goes into his kitchen. Rain starts, soft at first, pitter-patter like tiny footsteps all over the pavement outside his apartment. The net curtains inside his apartment billow up in the strong wind and wet splatters dot the inside of his open window sill.
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that his remote will get wet and his notes for Chinese Literature, too. He just doesn’t care.
There is no Kirihara here asking him questions and bringing bags of food. His apartment feels dead, lifeless with the realization that Kirihara is off with someone he loves and cares about and Renji is home. Alone. Like a loser.
He stands there long enough for the shadows to become undeniable and the storm to have begun. Cracks of thunder in the distance and lightning, too, shining as bright as the trains rushing by, glowing lights passing through his dark apartment, harsh yellow light revealing the sheen of raindrops inside his window and something equally as wet on the backs of his hands.
Renji wipes his eyes. This is pathetic, he thinks. Get a grip!
His cellphone buzzes in his pocket. He flips it open, but as soon as he reads Sanada Genichirou as the sender, Renji tosses his phone onto the table, determined to ignore the message.
He should make supper. He feels empty inside, hungry for something he can’t quite place. Opening his fridge takes effort, though, and his spirits fall even lower when he sees the contents: a mouldy container of jelly from the last time he and Yagyuu went out together last month, a single beer and half of a wilted head of Chinese lettuce.
The beer tastes of nothing. The crackers and lettuce he eats have no taste, just a saltiness that clings to the back of his throat. Renji sits in the darkness, guzzling his beer and chewing the crackers until he can’t stomach anything more and he throws everything out, dumps the beer down the drain.
The tv has a gameshow on. Pictures flash on the screen, but never make it to Renji’s eyes. He thinks that he could do homework instead of moping, but even the act of opening his bag to get a pencil is too much because he is reminded of all the nights he did the same thing, did the same homework with Kirihara sitting on the same couch watching the same tv.
Alcohol makes him sluggish, but not uncoordinated. A yawn tries to surface, but a shuddering breath smothers it. Sighing heavily, Renji gives up on everything and puts a clean pair of pajamas on, the only clothing he has that doesn’t smell of Kirihara’s sweat, of his woodsy soap and deodorant.
He stares out the window as he lies in bed. There is no escaping Kirihara’s marks in his apartment and his bed, so he stops trying to flee from them. Renji spreads his hands out on the damp, limp sheets on the other side of the bed, focusing on his breathing as the storm rages outside. The wind is warm, but cooler than earlier this afternoon. The atmosphere howls as the rain slices through it, dumping a shower onto the world and making the city even darker. Lights flicker out and another train leaves, driving the lit-up carriages out of sight.
Renji breathes.
Rain slams his walls outside and pounds his windows, a fugue or a symphony at its climax, full of energy and passion and life, so unlike him at the moment…
Rain keeps knocking at his door, taunting him that Kirihara would show up. Renji sighs again, closing his eyes against the storm and just breathing in the smells of the torrent.
The sound of his buzzer breaks the rain’s pelting. Renji blinks. It must have been thunder…but then the buzzer sounds a second time, distinct and mechanical. His watch reads a late hour. Kirihara must be on a date tonight and Genichirou must want to know why Renji ignored him earlier. Renji squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to deal with Genichirou at the moment, but he keeps pressing the buzzer, knowing that Renji will answer.
He pats his cheeks lightly to bring colour back into them. He wipes his eyes with the hems of his pajama sleeves, to remove any trace of his pathetic misery. Renji pads to the doorway, purposely slow, and then he unlocks it and opens the door. “Genichirou, I-”
His voice catches in his throat.
His hand slips from the handle.
Standing in the rain, dripping wet, clothes clinging to his body and dark hair plastered over his eyes, Kirihara holds up a plastic bag with a shaky smile. “Yanagi-senpai?”
***
If Renji couldn’t breathe before, he’s winded when Kirihara ducks his head, eyes wavering and uncertain and asks if it’s okay to come inside, if Renji hasn’t gone to bed yet. He looks around, eyes shining in the dark before Renji blinks and thinks to turn on the lights.
Kirihara closes the door behind himself. He pulls off his drenched sneakers and sets them on the tiny mat. Wet feet pad across the floor and he dumps his plastic bag on the counter. He pulls two plastic containers out, smelling of something fried that makes Renji’s stomach clench. He’s hungry, but his belly is so filled with mucus that he wants to vomit, not least of all because Kirihara’s back is turned to him, t-shirt clinging to his broad muscles.
It more than aches, it’s agony to stand and watch Kirihara set the two containers on the table, smiling at Renji as though nothing has changed from the other night, as thought Kirihara doesn’t have a girlfriend and nothing has come between them.
“There was a new tonkatsu place in the train station,” Kirihara says. He stares at his wooden takeaway chopsticks, then his eyes slowly lift toward Renji, and fall back down. He bites his lip- painful to see- and Renji tries Zen breathing to keep the hurt subsided, but it’s futile and it feels more and more like the metaphorical knife is being twisted between his ribs. “I- sorry. There was a long line. I didn’t know if you might have…eaten already, maybe.”
Renji says nothing. Kirihara takes a few bites, dripping water onto the floor from his perch on the chair, before he stops, realizing that Renji hasn’t moved from the doorway.
“Senpai?”
Renji has to know. It is the most difficult thing he has ever said, besides introducing himself when he was a new student at Rikkai Dai University Attached Elementary. He opens his mouth and forces himself to form the words, to speak calmly and slowly and clearly.
“Shouldn’t you be on your date still?”
Kirihara, never all that bright, scratches the back of his head. He messes up his wet hair even more and has to wipe his hand on his shorts, but they are even wetter. He looks to Renji, eyes wide, although his forehead is scrunched up. “Huh?”
The words keep coming, Renji has no control of them. Everything that he’s been thinking of since Marui’s confession about what he heard, all of it surfaces. “You have a date this evening with your girlfriend,” Renji says. His chest shudders, but he goes on, trying to be the better person, trying to be supportive as best he can, even with his heart shattered. “You…” He swallows, the words are thick, but he wants to say them regardless.
“You can borrow my umbrella, if you’d like.”
“Bunta says you were in love.”
For the longest time, the only sound in the apartment is the rain outside, steadily falling, soothing the world with the tears of the sky, the shameful tears that Renji refuses to let himself shed. He closes his eyes, waiting to hear Kirihara’s answer. His body is empty now. His head aches. Nothing remains in his chest, his heart having slithered to the floor along with all the blood in his body.
The scrape of a chair across the flooring alerts Renji to the fact Kirihara is leaving to meet his girlfriend again. He breathes through his mouth. “Good luck on your date,” he whispers. The rain keeps falling and another train rolls by, light shining through Renji’s pricking eyelids. He can feel the wind touch his body, warm and physical and only when that wind rests a hand on both of his shoulders, does he understand it’s not the wind, but Kirihara. Kirihara who is looking at him, straight in the eyes, his face twisted in confusion and his eyes shining and dark and his mouth parted in a grimace.
“Senpai…” he whispers.
Renji shakes his head. He does wish Kirihara good luck. He does. He wants to, he really does, and yet…
“I am in love,” Kirihara says. His rhythmic breathing, soft on Renji’s face because he is so, so agonizingly close, falls in tune with Renji’s own. Renji bites back a sob, feeling ever more the idiot when he should be the passive, calm senpai here for his kouhai.
“I…I like you,” Kirihara says.
Renji’s eyes go huge.
“I…like…more than friends. I like you more than that.”
Renji stares. Kirihara doesn’t look at his feet, he just keeps staring with his dark eyes that Renji falls forward into. His mind is playing tricks on him, only it isn’t because Kirihara wouldn’t be this close otherwise, with his tongue licking his lips, breathing hot, sweet breathe onto Renji’s mouth and he can taste Kirihara’s unfinished supper. It makes him choke; it makes his stomach shrivel up. The bareness in Kirihara’s eyes, unmoving off his own, almost gives him…
Hope.
He can’t hear the rain when Kirihara murmurs, “I wanted to...to maybe...if you wanted, too, before you got even further from me and I'd never see you again.” Hands twist in Renji’s pajama shirt, bunching up the fabric at his shoulders. Kirihara tilts his head, lips shining and parted as he breathes out, breathes into Renji.
His breath is a ghost over Renji’s mouth, which makes his own eyes flutter shut. He can’t look Kirihara in the eyes anymore. Kirihara’s unflinching gaze, the same one he’s been giving Renji for weeks? He gets it now- there was no girl, there was no date, there was never anything but Kirihara searching him out, with his eyes, with his presence, with his determination. And Renji was too much of an idiot to understand the data before it smacked him hard in the face.
Unlike Kirihara’s lips, which brush softly over his own. Renji stands stiffly- he wants this so much, but he doesn’t know what to do. Hands hanging at his sides, Renji lets Kirihara lead the kiss, he lets Kirihara’s tongue slide over his lips. The foreign touch of that hot, wet tongue trailing patterns over his lips and sending delicious shivers down his spine makes Renji open his mouth carefully. Is this what he’s supposed to do? Lean down and slide his own tongue over Kirihara’s, wet and almost velvety in some ways, tasting someone else’s saliva.
Kirihara moans. The vibrations settle in Renji’s belly, his cock swelling between his legs. If Kirihara notices, he says nothing, just continues his tentative exploration of Renji’s mouth and drags his hands up to Renji’s neck, pulling their mouths closer. The tongue in his mouth, the damp hands in his hair, touching and combing and demanding closeness, all of it makes Renji’s body hum. He can feel his cock straining, stiff and hard against Kirihara’s thigh. He shouldn’t be embarrassed, but he is. He leans back, an attempt to break their kiss and apologize, but Kirihara shoves him hard and throws their bodies down onto the bed.
Stumbling, Renji hits the edge of the mattress and with an oomph and clattered teeth, their kiss is broken when Kirihara’s mouth hits his ear instead, leaving a slimy trail along the side of his face. He pants in Renji’s ear and pushes a knee between Renji’s legs, his leg hard on Renji’s thigh, until Renji realizes, through the haze of Kirihara’s tongue licking the shell of his ear, that the hot length on his thigh isn’t Kirihara’s leg so much as Kirihara’s erection.
“Can I…” Kirihara whispers, sighing into Renji’s hair, “can I turn off your light, senpai?”
He’s still in too much shock- from Kirihara’s confession, from Kirihara’s kissing- to say no. Renji nods and watches Kirihara walk to the switch. He looks older from behind: his childish figure gone, his legs long and lean and his back muscled. Renji thought about what it would be like to run his hands along Kirihara’s shoulders before, and now…now he thinks he may have a chance.
His fingertips tingle with anticipation.
His dick goes numb, so tight against his pajamas, when the darkness overwhelms his apartment again. He can hear Kirihara’s few footsteps and then the low rustle of damp fabric. As his eyes adjust, a train rushes by, light shining onto Kirihara’s naked chest as he settles back down onto the bed beside him.
Renji gasps when those hands creep under his shirt and that mouth kisses his jaw, teeth dragging along his neck and making his hips buck up. Kirihara slings a leg over his thigh and rubs himself on Renji’s hip. Feeling his erection, knowing Kirihara wants this too, only makes Renji harder. He turns his head, tucking his chin to have that mouth back on his own and to stop the little gasps and groans from escaping his lips.
“Senpai,” Kirihara says, his words like kisses on Renji’s collar. Kirihara presses dry, warm kisses as he unbuttons Renji’s pajama shirt. “Senpai, I wanted you to touch me the other night…” His tongue slides over Renji’s collarbone. Those hands, making fast, careful work with his buttons, help Renji peel off his shirt. Chest to chest, they lie, pants and moans and mewls as loud as the rain outside. “I pretend to be asleep, but you didn’t notice…”
For measure, Kirihara grinds his erection down. Renji gasps so loud, the feeling sending shock waves through his lips, that his back arches off the bed. Kirihara’s leg, tight around him, clenches down. Renji’s hands are placed on Kirihara’s sides and Kirihara stares up at him, smiling and saying, “I want you to touch me too.”
Kissing becomes harder when Kirihara refuses his mouth, his tongue instead swirling patterns around Renji’s chest, around his nipples, which stiffen and harden like his dick, so sensitized in that hot mouth that when Kirihara’s teeth take them and chew, just a little, Renji digs his hands into Kirihara’s back, loving the sensations that cause his eyes to roll back, loving the feeling of his warm, buttery skin under his own fingertips.
He can’t think about why he never acted, never realized before. He can think even less when Kirihara’s leg, vice-like over his hip, jerks himself back and Renji rolls on top of him. He should ask if he’s too heavy for Kirihara, but Kirihara’s hands are on his butt, tugging at his pajama pants, his body showing its eagerness for more when their erections finally brush.
Renji sucks in a breath. Kirihara groans through his teeth, then drags them over Renji’s shoulder, pressing sharp into his own muscles. Renji never thought he could be this turned on by Kirihara, biting his shoulder, but when he hears himself whimper Kirihara’s name, at long last, the friction of their rubbing cocks burns his entire body so, so exquisitely.
“You feel so good,” Kirihara says. He moans. Renji moans. His back is cold from the wind and misty rain coming in through the open window, but pressed together, chests slick with sweat and desire, Renji feels feverish. His hair falls down into Kirihara’s eyes as they kiss again and he’s growing more eager, caring less and less about making a fool of himself and more about how good it feels when Kirihara’s fingers dance under his waistband and shove his pajama pants down.
He doesn’t know how they end up naked, writhing like this as the rain rages outside. The flashing storm, the intermittent lights from the trains make their bodies glow, make Kirihara’s eyes shine like the moon in all those poems Renji reads for school. He could drown in the looks Kirihara gives him, the lick of his tongue, the tilt of his head, the line of his jaw when he throws his head back and says, “Fuck me, senpai…god, Renji…”
Renji stops for a moment. Looking down at Kirihara, eyes huge and biting his lip, he never thought they would go this far, this fast. He never thought beyond kissing, but he let his body take over. Even now, his balls tight enough to explode and his cock pounding, heartbeat bleeding through his erection and into Kirihara, both of them panting and moaning and rubbing still, he has to pause. “Akaya…” he says. His voice sounds thick and gravelly, foreign to his ears.
He shivers again, spine curving and hips jutting down into Kirihara’s, their dicks and balls and thigh twisting together into one, trying to keep those waves of shuddering pleasure coming. Renji closes his eyes and sucks in a breath when Kirihara grinds up, his cock sliding along the line of Renji’s hip. Renji sobs his pleasure into the juncture of Kirihara’s neck, his mouth an open kiss against his hot skin.
“Akaya…”
“I know what to do. Don’t worry,” Kirihara says. His legs, entwined with Renji’s, untangle for an instant as he rummages around, opening a drawer of the little table beside Renji’s bed.
Never has the jar of Vaseline his mother gave him for dry skin been more useful.
Kirihara guides Renji’s hands between his legs, to the cleft of his ass. Legs bent, he whines, the noise rushing through Renji’s body and encouraging his fingers to push inside.
“That’s good,” Kirihara says, panting hard. “Senpai, senpai…that…” He groans, head pushing back into the pillow and hips lifting off the bed, making it hard for Renji to attempt a second finger. “That’s so good…” he murmurs.
This new intimacy is scary, having his fingers up Kirihara’s ass, having Kirihara’s dick in his face, hard and dark and swollen. Renji lowers his head, hesitant to act, but then he sticks his tongue out, testing Kirihara’s reaction when he starts to lick the head of his cock. Those hands bunching up the sheets of his bed, clamp down on his shoulders and Kirihara bucks up, pushing his dick deeper into Renji’s mouth. He shakes and Renji can taste the bitterness of his pre-come. It makes him start to gag, having something fill his mouth so much, so he jerks his head back before Kirihara can thrust again.
“You gotta do it!” Kirihara says. He pushes back on Renji’s fingers, gasping and groaning and spreading his knees even wider. His toes curl in the sheets. His belly constricts- he has to be as close as Renji is, rubbing his lonely cock on the damp sheets. “You gotta do it soon senpai, I’m so…nngh…so close!” His ass constricts around Renji’s fingers and even slicked with Vaseline, it’s hard to move them around and make sure Kirihara is ready.
“I’m ready,” he says. “Sen- Renji, I’m okay. I’m ready.”
If his fingers inside Kirihara were one thing, then slowly, almost uncertain that Kirihara’s moans weren’t cries of pain, Renji sinks inside. He can’t breathe, not when it feels like Kirihara, so tight and hot and slick, is not only wrapped around his dick, but around his chest and everywhere. Renji forces himself to breath. Sweat forms on his forehead, dripping down his nose as he pushes inside and Kirihara groans, too.
“Deeper,” he says. He pants, hard and heavy and his fingers are sharp and scratch Renji’s ass, which clenches too, because it feels so… “…fucking good….”. Renji’s breath is shuddered when his body thinks to exhale, and all he can breathe in are Kirihara’s little whines and sighs and his clenched teeth, but he’s smiling and holding Renji so tight that Renji thinks it wouldn’t be illogical to just sink so deep into Kirihara that he would never emerge.
Kirihara clenches himself again as Renji attempts to thrust, ignoring his inexperience in favour of trying to keep this overwhelming pleasure pulsing through his body forever. “Renji….” Kirihara pants. He tightens his ass, jerks his hips up and the slick, burning around Renji’s cock, the addictive ache in his shuddering body is too much. Renji can’t hold on. He can’t hold back and he is thrusting, bucking, pouring himself into Kirihara, rutting and gasping “Akaya!” as the rain smothers the sounds of their frantic slapping bodies.
Post-coital, they curl against each other. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Renji realizes that Kirihara must have come too, since his hand trails along a sticky patch on Kirihara’s thigh and the damp curls at the base of his now-limp cock. Kirihara buries his head into the space of Renji’s neck, murmuring something too low for Renji’s ears to catch.
The rain pounds outside as his fluttering heart slows, his breathing now sighs of completion in perfect tune with Kirihara’s happy moans. “Senpai?” he asks.
Fingers trace unsaid words across his cooling skin. Renji cranes his neck to look at Kirihara, who looks at him, eyes soft around the edges and his smile too. “Senpai, thank you.”
Renji blinks. “For what?”
The leg flung over his thigh moves, sticky skin peeling away as Kirihara half-sits up against a pillow and pulls Renji up with him. They sit, legs spread out long and supine on the messy sheets. Kirihara rests his head against Renji’s chest, allowing Renji to breathe in his scent. He makes a noise, almost like a purr, when Renji’s hands touch the sweaty curls of his hair, and Renji enjoys the sensation of the thick, soft tendrils between his fingers.
“For the best birthday present ever. From the best senpai ever,” Kirihara whispers. He sighs again, humming contentment as he settles his weight against Renji and plays with the hairs on the top of Renji’s thigh.
It would be foolish to admit to Kirihara that he had no idea it was his birthday. It would be even more foolish to admit, now, that Renji understands the Christmas present in high school, the same words said to him and he was too obtuse to realize that, to realize Kirihara’s stares and his constant hanging on to Renji, his eternal questions and demands that Renji help tutor him, that Renji help his swing, that Renji do this or that.
He’s been so blind these past six years. Only now does he think that he can begin to make things right.
“I’ll treat you,” he says. “Tomorrow we’ll go out for cake, Akaya.” The wind blows another cool glaze of fresh rainwater over their bodies from the open window, making the disparity of their hot bodies and the weather even more pronounced. Renji slips an arm around Kirihara’s waist, pulling him tighter and closer and in for a kiss.
Their lips brush, mouths closed and almost chaste, if it wasn’t for the tongue that sneaks out and licks the side of Renji’s mouth. Kirihara grins at him, eyes glowing with devilish delight.
“I know the perfect café,” he says. “They have the best chocolate cake parfaits.”
Author: Ociwen
Wordcount: 17000 (oops)
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: After drifting apart over the years, Kirihara moves back into Renji's life.
Author's Notes: Written for Kirihara's 2007 birthday. Happy Birthday, Kirihara! Your senpais love you, you stupid seaweed head, you. &hearts
Thanks to pixxers for all the handholding.
[Part 1] [Part 2]
Christmas Eve was unusual that year because not only did it snow, but some of the snow managed to stick more than an hour or so. Frosty craters in gardens and crunching footsteps on sidewalk pavements, soft blankets of white over still-green trees and the gentle, absorbing power that snow can have to make the world that much spirited during winter- Renji breathed in the season. It hadn’t been since his childhood in Tokyo that he could remember seeing a school campus covered in an inch of snow.
He smiled.
There wasn’t school on Christmas Eve, because it fell on a Saturday, but there was tennis practice. Or, not really. Renji wasn’t obliged to go, the season having ended for the third years in September, but Yukimura and Genichirou were going to play. Genichirou texted him yesterday:
we’re going to rikkai at 2pm. do you want to play too?
The snow made Renji skeptical of just how well it would work out, playing on the outdoor courts. He didn’t bring his own racket, now buried in his closet in favour of textbooks and entrance exams, but he did come. The bus ride was warm and steamy inside, too many bodies packed close for warmth, shopping and dates to be had.
His mind trailed off, thinking about Miyu-chan in his class. She’d walked up to his locker yesterday, face flushed and eyes downcast. She was pretty, and sweet and Renji heard that she was supposed to be a very good baker in home economics. He didn’t know what to say when she had proffered a little package of cookies, wrapped up in red cellophane and curling ribbon.
“Have a good Christmas, Yanagi-san,” she’d said, before rushing off to her waiting friends, probably all eager to hear about Renji’s reaction to the gift.
Now, the cookies sat at the bottom of his bag. She was nice, and she had long, silky hair and plump pink lips, but…Renji didn’t feel anything more for her than admiration for her bravery in approaching him. He wasn’t the most open guy in their year: Jackal was certainly very forward in asking girls out and being friendly with them, and Niou often had girls on his arm until October, when the girls had stopped and he started eating lunch exclusively with Yagyuu.
Renji was certain that the reason Niou and Yagyuu both declined the tennis offer today was that they were on a date. It made him squirm a little, at the thought his former teammates were that way, but at the same time, he couldn’t say he was surprised. Niou had stared at Yagyuu a lot over the years, especially in the locker room. And Yagyuu never said much, but he did put up with Niou, seemingly in a good-natured way. Whatever they saw in each other, it was a private matter between them.
Not that Renji was jealous. Or would admit to being jealous. He sighed and stared out the window. The school was coming into view, a looming red-brick building surrounded by white snow. He rang the bell and grabbed his bag.
Tramping through the snow was more effort than Renji anticipated, so he arrived at the clubhouse flushed and nearly out of breath. Snow caked into the backs of his shoes, making his ankles itch as it melted under his socks. Genichirou and Yukimura were on a court swept of its snow, and slamming tennis balls back and forth. It wasn’t a serious game because Yukimura was laughing and teasing Genichirou.
“Are you going easy on me because it’s Christmas Eve?” he asked.
Genichirou grunted. “No,” he said through his teeth, but he purposely lobbed an easy ball right to Yukimura’s backhand. Yukimura could have made the shot blindfolded.
Other than those two, the courts were empty and the sounds of their game dulled by the quiet winter landscape all around them. The fir trees were covered in fluffy snow, branches hanging heavy under the weight. They only needed strands of lights hung up to look like the Christmas tree in Renji’s home.
Akaya must be going slack on his team and giving them the day off, he thought. Under Yukimura’s captaincy, this would have never happened. Renji accepted that times changed and captaincy styles, too. Shrugging, he wandered off to the clubhouse, noticing the plume of steam rising from it. Someone was inside.
As he walked, he noted the perimeter of the courts was packed with footprints, a circuit path around the inside of the fence. Someone was here earlier doing laps. Knowing Genichirou and Yukimura, who both hated laps, he suspected Kirihara was here, too.
Sure enough, in the club house, was Kirihara. Renji closed the door behind himself as Kirihara turned to him, his eyes widening and the noodles he had been microwaving forgotten. “Senpai,” he said, “you came…”
Renji noticed his voice dropping, softening and the way Kirihara bit his lip, as if he had something more to say. But Kirihara didn’t, he just left his noodles in the open microwave and gave Renji a lop-sided smile.
“I thought I’d play today with you guys, but it’s too cold.” Kirihara forced a shiver and rubbed the arms of his knitted sweater. “Sanada and Yukimura-buchou are crazy! There’s fucking snow out!”
Renji was inclined to agree. His eyes surveyed the room, seeing the small stack of papers Kirihara had laying out across the table. Rosters of players and blank game assignments. “I see you’re getting ahead with your planning,” he said.
Kirihara nodded, but he wasn’t looking at Renji. His gaze was fixed on the window, frost creeping up the edges in delicate lacy patterns. Outside, Genichirou ran to the net and grabbed it, shaking the top of it with a big grin on his face. All of a sudden, a ball, not a tennis ball, but a veritable snowball smacked him straight in the cheek.
Renji chuckled.
Kirihara didn’t make a noise. His fingers fidgeted on the hem of his sweater, picking at lint balls. Then, he rushed across the room, so fast and so directionless that he plowed into a folding chair and tripped over a bench. Oomph!
“Are you all right?” Renji asked.
Kirihara’s laughter was forced and his smile more of a grimace. “I’m…I’m fine,” he mumbled before he turned around. He rummaged around in a bag, grabbing something. Then, he sucked in a breath.
The clubhouse was warm. There was no logical reason for Kirihara’s face to be flushed so pink as he walked up to Renji, hands behind his back and eyes huge, wavering on Renji’s face.
“S-senpai,” Kirihara said. “Um…I wanted…I wanted to give you this. I mean, to give you something. I mean…” Kirihara bowed his head quickly and shoved the something into Renji’s cold hands.
It was a lumpy gift, wrapped in green and red paper that looked more than a little tattered at the edges and seemed to have more tape than wrapping paper. Renji blinked. Kirihara’s chest heaved.
Words caught in his throat for a moment before Renji managed the same answer he’d given Miyu-chan just the day before. “Ah…thank you.”
Before either one of them could say more, the door slammed open with a gust of cold air.
Yukimura stood in the doorframe, grinning from ear to ear. His headband half-covered his eyes and snow was caked through his hair, and all over his uniform too. “I am triumphant!” he said. “Sanada can’t beat me in tennis or in snowball fights!”
They spent the rest of the afternoon in a haze of friendship, hitting an arcade with Kirihara after leaving the clubhouse, then going for hot pot downtown at one of the joints near the main train station. The warm broth and hot meat and mushrooms warmed their bellies as much as the karaoke did afterward. One by one, they went home, wishing each other Merry Christmases and promising to call for more tennis games in the snow.
All except Kirihara, who was suspiciously quiet the entire evening. As he and Renji waited on the platform for separate trains home, Kirihara kept sucking in deep breaths and half-turning, before he’d always shake his head slightly. He was worried about something.
Just as Renji’s train approached the platform, he reached out to pat Kirihara on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine on your tests in January,” he said.
Kirihara’s mouth hung open, but he didn’t contradict Renji.
Alone in his carriage as the train chugged through the snow-dusted fields and rooftops of the suburbs, Renji finally opened the little tattered present from Kirihara. His heart felt almost heavy in his chest, but he ignored the feeling to focus instead on prying the tape off the gift.
Inside, he wasn’t sure what to make of it. It looked like something made with green sequins and pipecleaners, bent into a shape Renji couldn’t recognize. He picked it up to study the object, but then a painted popsicle stick fell to his feet and the present fell apart completely.
The only thing remaining whole was a small piece of patterned paper- tiny Santa Clauses with fat faces smiling up at Renji as he read the scrawled note.
To the best senpai ever
***
He barely sleeps. The experience of having someone sleep beside him, in his bed, like this, keeps Renji awake. It’s new and his heart pounds, throbbing against his ribs. Kirihara isn’t a docile sleeper, the same as he isn’t docile when awake- he snorts and sniffles. He moves his arms. He stretches his legs out, then curls them back up, his body flush with Renji sometimes and elbow poking him hard in the back at other times.
Never have the crickets seemed louder. Never have the swishing trees, either. Renji is aware of every breath Kirihara takes, because they stir the hairs on the back of his neck. He closes his eyes and sleeps intermittently, dozing in and out of consciousness because he can’t slumber, not with his skin so hypersensitive when Kirihara’s sleepy hands drag over his arms, not with his cock swollen so hard he can’t ignore it.
Neither can he jerk himself off in the bathroom. The temptation is there, to ignore the data that says Kirihara would wake up if Renji slipped his hand inside his pajama pants and rubbed his fingers over the head of his cock. It wouldn’t take long to come, not like this, with his body so aroused his thighs have gone numb.
No, he thinks, it wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t do that.
Eventually, he must sleep some, although it’s the sort of sleep that leaves him groggy, his muscles sore and his eyes crusty when he wakes in the soft light of early dawn. Kirihara sighs heavily against his neck and murmurs something unintelligible. Then he makes a satisfied noise, as though he’s won a videogame or maybe a tennis match or eaten something sweet and tasty. The noise vibrates in Renji’s veins, his dick pounding through his pajamas; it makes his head feel ethereal and leaden all at once.
“Mmm…” Kirihara moans and rolls onto his side. Renji can hear his lips smack- he imagines Kirihara’s tongue licking those pink lips, saliva wet and warm and shiny. Kirihara makes another noise, almost a word but one that Renji can’t place, not with his mind having slithered under his waistband along with his fingertips.
No! he thinks, prying his hand out. No!
Kirihara wiggles again and the bed creaks under his movement. A leg flings itself over his own, thumping against his knee; Renji stiffens at the feeling, the sudden thought of what would it be like to have his entire body on top of me? Kirihara sighs, then in a louder voice, as he laughs, he says “Sen…”
And sits straight up, finishing his word off: “…pai”. He rubs his eyes and yawns. Kirihara peers down at Renji, who is huddled on the edge of the bed, curled around his erection like a foetus to hide himself. Bleary-eyed, Kirihara scratches his hair and yawns again. “Senpai?” he asks.
His voice is delicious- there is no qualitative way to describe it other than utterly. delicious. Renji could savour the sound over and over again, if it wasn’t for his discomfort and embarrassment.
“What time’s it?” Kirihara asks. He keeps blinking, turning his head around and squinting, probably looking for a clock.
Renji’s never remembered to buy himself one. Carefully, he reaches for his watch on the little table. “6:34,” he says, keeping his words as smooth and as calm as he can. If he can maintain an aloof, calm appearance as his hormones and conscience rage inside, that’s all the matters.
Kirihara stares out the window at the early morning train rattling by, his eyes shifting along the carriages. Enunciating carefully, he repeats what Renji says. “6:34…6:34…”
“Shit.”
Renji blinks.
Kirihara dives off the bed and lands in a heap on the floor. He scrambles to his feet. “CanIuseyourshower?” he asks, his words too rushed for the hour. It takes Renji a moment to understand him, then he nods slowly and Kirihara stops jumping from foot to foot and instead bolts into the bathroom.
From the other side of the door, Kirihara says, “I got a game early this morning and my coach is gonna kill me cuz I’m supposed to be there at seven and I promise I’ll be real quick, senpai!”
The shower starts. The glass door bangs shut inside. Renji swings his legs over the edge of the bed and rubs his temple. Genichirou used to sometimes mention Zen techniques of breathing that he would use in high school if Kirihara was being a particular pest. Only now, for Renji, it’s not Kirihara who is the pest, it’s his own body, rushing and tingling from touching Kirihara’s skin all night, from having Kirihara’s breath on his neck. Kirihara’s sleep-filled noises echo in his mind, sending fresh shudders through his body.
At least Kirihara will be quick, then out of his apartment before Renji himself needs to leave for class. And then, Renji can sink his hands down his pants and jerk himself off again and again and again until his cock breaks and he can’t come anymore.
***
Two lectures in a row and Renji can’t shake the heat on his face- and not because the lecture hall A/C is broken, either. He sits and sweats with the rest of his classmates, unable to even fan his face because it will distract him even more from the professor’s overhead presentation.
He’s shaking, still, from this morning. Never, ever had he grabbed his dick that hard and pulled himself into coming, Kirihara’s name almost on his lips but not quite because Renji refused. He refused to sink that low. In his fantasy, yes, behind his closed eyes, yes, he saw Kirihara licking his lips, he could hear Kirihara’s little sleepy moans, and he could feel Kirihara’s rough fingertips catch the skin on his arm. He could even see Kirihara’s stomach, pale and flat and soft, and maybe, if Renji had thought harder, he would have imagined Kirihara’s hard nipples and his winks, his round, dark eyes and his voice, whispering “Senpai…” in Renji’s ear.
He’d come twice this morning. Once in the middle of his flat, legs bent as he shuddered and shook and came into his hand without even taking his pajama pants off. Kirihara left, barely minutes before, and then Renji panted and gasped and let himself slip.
He came in the shower, too, still damp and warm from Kirihara’s shower. His dick was on fire, aching and throbbing from his last orgasm, so recent that his legs gave out and he slipped in the shower. Unable to stop thinking about Kirihara in his bed, in his apartment, in his life, Renji jerked himself off with two hands, one cupping his balls, the other curled around his cock. It hurt to come, but it would have hurt just as more to not.
Now, in class, every movement he makes, every shifting he has in his seat brushes his over-sensitized cock against his underpants, a reminder of this morning. So Renji sits and suffers and wishes he hadn’t been so aroused this morning. He acted like a foolish teenager, not the mature, professional student that he is.
As he starts to wonder about Kirihara’s tennis game, something buzzes in his pocket. Renji looks around in the dim hall. Glowing laptop screens and the bright screen with lecture notes light up the room, but the switched off lights give enough darkness that no one notices when he pulls his cellphone out.
yo yo wanna get some lunch in 20mins?? meet in caf, usual place, got something to tell u guys. jackl coming 2!
Renji presses the indiglo button on his wristwatch. His lecture should end in enough time for him to make lunch. His stomach gurgles in agreement. Somehow, as much as a breakfast consisting of jerking himself off was a good idea at the time, after three hours of school, he’s hungry.
After class ends, Renji walks to the cafeteria. The day is beautiful at the moment, the sky bright and cerulean, with barely a cloud in sight, until he walks past the chemistry building and the trees break away to reveal a dark line in the south, towards the ocean. Another storm coming. Renji can’t recall if he has his umbrella in his bag or if Kirihara still has it.
Kirihara…
Renji shakes his head. He won’t let himself think about Kirihara, not at the moment. He wants lunch. He wants to listen to Marui’s gossip and Jackal’s easy laughter. He wants to forget about these unfounded fantasies.
Jackal and Marui are at the usual table, no Genichirou or, although he almost never eats with them, Yukimura. Jackal grins at Renji then tucks his hands under his chin, intently listening to whatever Marui is talking about.
Renji pulls a chair up. He plops down his tray: hamburgers and potato croquettes today. He chose the gravy instead of curry sauce, the way Jackal has. Marui opted for something altogether different: a stack of deep-fried spring rolls. The smell of grease makes Renji’s stomach churn, but he pushes the feeling back down in favour of his own hunger.
Today’s rice is a bit dry, but nothing out of the ordinary. Renji chews it, his chopsticks pointed in the air. “It’s nice to see you,” he tells Jackal.
Jackal waggles his eyebrows. “Well, you guys could eat at the other caf sometimes. The food’s better there.” As if to make a point, he swipes one of Marui’s spring rolls, bites into it, and makes a face.
“Oi!” Marui shouts, food spraying from his mouth. As soon as he swallows, he says, “Desserts are better here, though, dumb-dumb. There’s no cream puffs at the other caf.”
“But there is a Starbucks,” Jackal says. From under the table, he pulls a travel mug and sets it down on the corner of his tray. Bitter, aromatic coffee wafts up from the lid. Renji hates coffee, but the smell makes him breath in deep anyway. “So,” Jackal says, “what’s this news you want to tell us? I’m all ears.”
Renji really shouldn’t be surprised when he sees Jackal wiggle his ears. He raises an eyebrow, rather impressed with Jackal’s skills.
Marui shifts his eyes left, then he shifts them right. Then he leans over his spring rolls and, with his voice conspirationally low, he says, “Guess what I discovered this morning?”
Renji stares, nonplused.
Jackal considers for a moment as Marui pauses for the drama. “The diet section- ow!”
“That’s not funny, Jackal!” Marui snaps.
Jackal rubs his arm where Marui pinched him. “Yeah yeah, Genius, what was it then?”
Marui sniggers. And leers even closer. “Guess who I ran into this morning? Our little kouhai from school!”
“Akaya?” Jackal asks.
Renji stiffens in his seat. His cock pulses, stiffening once more. He clears his throat and, slowly, he says, “Is that so?” as though he hasn’t been thinking about Kirihara all morning, as though he hasn’t seen Kirihara in a year.
A cafeteria worker rolls a cart of dirty trays past them. Marui waits for him to walk past their table, then he goes on. “So, I was at the café, right? Eating a crepe for breakfast, because my stupid brother didn’t wake me up and I missed breakfast…”
Jackal nods.
Renji doesn’t move, except to pick at his pants under the table, trying to pull at the material stretched over his thigh to find extra room for his latest erection without attracting any more attention. With every beat of his heat, more blood rushes between his legs and his erection gets worse, pushing and tenting his pants.
“Anyway,” Marui says, “our dear little Akaya was there getting himself a pastry, or whatever. It was one of those nasty things, like a cheese scone. I figured, man, if he’s got that little taste, that’s his problem, so I didn’t say anything. And he didn’t notice me, right?”
Jackal nods again.
Renji squirms. He can feel a bead of sweat slither down his spine, under his shirt, staining the fabric dark on his back. He breathes through his nose and tries to listen to Marui without reaction.
“You know why he didn’t notice me?” Marui asks. When neither Renji nor Jackal say anything, he tells them: “Because there was a chick talking to him!”
Renji stops breathing. Jackal starts to laugh, but Marui clamps a hand over his mouth.
“It gets even better,” he says. “This chick was hot, hot like Leah Dizon, you know? The kid looked so confused when she smiled at him and said something- I didn’t hear what, but it might have been something about a love hotel.”
All the air is choked from Renji’s throat. He digs his hands into his thigh under the table. Under Marui’s palm, Jackal’s laugh is muffled.
“-I guess she must have heard about him and how he’s some hot shot tennis player now,” Marui tells them. He clicks his tongue, then flashes a toothy grin. “But that’s not all. He had his back to me by then and he’s standing in front of her so I couldn’t really hear all that well, but I did hear him say- get this…”
In a falsetto voice, Marui says, “’Sorry, I’ve got someone else. Sorry.’ Can you believe it? Kid turned down this HOT chick because he’s already got a girlfriend-”
As soon as the words hit Renji’s ears, everything else around him stops: Marui’s voice goes silent, his lips moving but the sound not emerging. The clanging of the cafeteria workers banging pots ceases. The cool A/C blowing over their heads stagnates, going still and the room starts to heat up. Renji’s vision blurs around the edges and before he knows it, he’s standing up, grabbing his bag and walking away.
Maybe he said something to Marui and Jackal, maybe he didn’t. He doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t care about his forgotten lunch, or how now sagging dick in his pants. He doesn’t care that his fingertips feel numb because his chest is even worse.
Not until he’s outside, leaning on the wall with one hand in an alleyway off the main entrance, hidden behind a dumpster does Renji exhale. His breathing is shuddered, sobs shaking his cheat but he refuses to cry. No. He won’t.
He should have seen all the signs before- Kirihara had a date this morning, in addition to tennis, he just didn’t mention that was why he needed the shower. Why Kirihara was late the other night and didn’t show up all that regularly- Renji’s apartment was a place to crash. He came for girl advice: all those times he was staring at Renji, biting his lip as though he was about to ask something and Renji never realized that Kirihara was one breath away from asking advice.
Renji doesn’t know thing about girls, except that whoever Kirihara is dating, she’s lucky. In the moment, Renji hates her. He wants to slam her against the green metal dumpster and see her cry, see her chest heave the way his does, hear her ask why, why are you doing this? the same way Renji asks his mind, his body why, why were you reacting like that to him?
Bile and the potato croquette rise in his throat, chunky and burning but he can’t puke his lunch up, it isn’t coming, the lump in his throat stops the vomit before he has a chance. Renji balls his fist, ready to punch the stone wall.
He stops himself, palm spread out on the cool stone, and tries to breathe.
And then, he goes to his next class. He arrives early, a half hour or more, one of the first students there. The lecture hall doesn’t soothe the shaking anger and shame that floods his limbs, that makes him stumble up the steps into the rows of desks. Renji pulls out his notebook and stares blankly at the page.
He must be staring at the page without looking away until the lecture starts, students milling around him, squeezing behind his chair, papers shuffling and the lights dimming. All Renji can see is a girl, her features unknown, but she’s probably petite and has long hair, she would be plump and have breasts, a vagina, she’d have makeup and be feminine, with a soft voice and easy conversation, entirely unlike him.
She would be perfect for Kirihara.
Entirely unlike him.
Class is eternity. Renji can’t stop thinking about this girl and how he hates her, even though he’s never met her. He hates her for getting there first, for being the one Kirihara wants to be with. He should have known his fantasies would come crashing down- but then, he’s never been a dreamer. Renji roots himself in rational reality and when dreams start to flood his mind, he doesn’t know what to make of them.
He’s the fool. And he hates himself for losing himself in these pathetic thoughts about Kirihara and kissing ceramic cups and using his soap and watching stupid, childish anime marathons together.
There was a reason he didn’t speak with Kirihara much after high school: there was no reason to keep up the pretense of friendship, of a senpai-kouhai relationship. There is nothing there, Renji tells himself.
Class finishes up and Renji feels worse than ever. There is no point in trying to go to the library and study. He’s exhausted: mentally, physically. He’s disheartened and more alone than ever. He stuffs his notebook in his bag- he didn’t write a single word the entire two hours.
The sky has taken on a gloomy mood as he exits the building. The dark clouds have rolled in; although the rain has yet to begin, there is a thickness in the air portending a storm, that heavy smell and the swish of trees, leaves whipping up and his hair, too. The weather hasn’t cooled- if anything, being outside, his sneakers crunching on the flagstone walkway, Renji feels constricted. The air is stifling and he can’t breathe deep enough.
He walks his usual route, but it seems to take longer than ever. The sports building looms to his side. Renji’s heart twists when he sees the doorway and students coming in and out, bags of sports equipment slung over their shoulders. He forces himself to look away- Renji won’t torture himself watching the doors any longer than need be.
He walks. His shoes crunch. His bag is heavy, cutting into his shoulder. The bushes lining the walkways shiver as the wind swirls, carrying plastic bags around like phantoms: sad, alone, forgotten bags that catch under car tires and in tree branches, only to be ripped to shreds.
Crossing the parking lot towards the main road in the direction of home, Renji stops. There, walking side by side and suspiciously close, are Genichirou and Yukimura. Yukimura carries his tennis bag over his shoulder, leaning into Genichirou with the other. They share a smile, a laugh and duck their heads, completely lost in each other’s presence.
Renji clenches his jaw. He was never thrilled when it became obvious earlier in the year that Genichirou had progressed from being only Yukimura’s tennis manager to something more, something less than platonic. Renji wants to smack those soft smiles and smash those gleaming eyes they make at each other. He wants to scream at them to get a fucking love hotel room! He wants to dig his hands in and forcibly separate them, to throw them apart so that maybe for once they could feel what it is like to be alone and watching someone else bloom in love.
“Renji!”
He hears his name being called. He knows Genichirou is waving. And he knows that he is close enough that Genichirou knows he can be heard. For a second time his name clears the air, carried on the angry wind. Renji pauses his step, half-turns his head, but when all he can offer is a glower, he just keeps walking away from them and back in the direction of home.
***
Each step home makes Renji’s heart even heavier, makes it harder and harder to breathe properly because his lungs don’t work. Home is supposed to be a sanctuary, a retreat, but all Renji does is drop his bag in the middle of the floor and stand there, beside his wardrobe closet with his eyes closed, trying to find some sort of peace with what Marui told him.
His sinuses hurt. His stomach flip-flops. He sits down on his bed, searching for an anchor to keep himself up, to keep himself from sinking to the floor and feeling irrationally sorry for himself, but his messy sheets smell like Kirihara. The side of the bed is formed with Kirihara’s body, sheets bunched up like an outline: there, his arm, here, his legs.
Renji stands up and goes into his kitchen. Rain starts, soft at first, pitter-patter like tiny footsteps all over the pavement outside his apartment. The net curtains inside his apartment billow up in the strong wind and wet splatters dot the inside of his open window sill.
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that his remote will get wet and his notes for Chinese Literature, too. He just doesn’t care.
There is no Kirihara here asking him questions and bringing bags of food. His apartment feels dead, lifeless with the realization that Kirihara is off with someone he loves and cares about and Renji is home. Alone. Like a loser.
He stands there long enough for the shadows to become undeniable and the storm to have begun. Cracks of thunder in the distance and lightning, too, shining as bright as the trains rushing by, glowing lights passing through his dark apartment, harsh yellow light revealing the sheen of raindrops inside his window and something equally as wet on the backs of his hands.
Renji wipes his eyes. This is pathetic, he thinks. Get a grip!
His cellphone buzzes in his pocket. He flips it open, but as soon as he reads Sanada Genichirou as the sender, Renji tosses his phone onto the table, determined to ignore the message.
He should make supper. He feels empty inside, hungry for something he can’t quite place. Opening his fridge takes effort, though, and his spirits fall even lower when he sees the contents: a mouldy container of jelly from the last time he and Yagyuu went out together last month, a single beer and half of a wilted head of Chinese lettuce.
The beer tastes of nothing. The crackers and lettuce he eats have no taste, just a saltiness that clings to the back of his throat. Renji sits in the darkness, guzzling his beer and chewing the crackers until he can’t stomach anything more and he throws everything out, dumps the beer down the drain.
The tv has a gameshow on. Pictures flash on the screen, but never make it to Renji’s eyes. He thinks that he could do homework instead of moping, but even the act of opening his bag to get a pencil is too much because he is reminded of all the nights he did the same thing, did the same homework with Kirihara sitting on the same couch watching the same tv.
Alcohol makes him sluggish, but not uncoordinated. A yawn tries to surface, but a shuddering breath smothers it. Sighing heavily, Renji gives up on everything and puts a clean pair of pajamas on, the only clothing he has that doesn’t smell of Kirihara’s sweat, of his woodsy soap and deodorant.
He stares out the window as he lies in bed. There is no escaping Kirihara’s marks in his apartment and his bed, so he stops trying to flee from them. Renji spreads his hands out on the damp, limp sheets on the other side of the bed, focusing on his breathing as the storm rages outside. The wind is warm, but cooler than earlier this afternoon. The atmosphere howls as the rain slices through it, dumping a shower onto the world and making the city even darker. Lights flicker out and another train leaves, driving the lit-up carriages out of sight.
Renji breathes.
Rain slams his walls outside and pounds his windows, a fugue or a symphony at its climax, full of energy and passion and life, so unlike him at the moment…
Rain keeps knocking at his door, taunting him that Kirihara would show up. Renji sighs again, closing his eyes against the storm and just breathing in the smells of the torrent.
The sound of his buzzer breaks the rain’s pelting. Renji blinks. It must have been thunder…but then the buzzer sounds a second time, distinct and mechanical. His watch reads a late hour. Kirihara must be on a date tonight and Genichirou must want to know why Renji ignored him earlier. Renji squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to deal with Genichirou at the moment, but he keeps pressing the buzzer, knowing that Renji will answer.
He pats his cheeks lightly to bring colour back into them. He wipes his eyes with the hems of his pajama sleeves, to remove any trace of his pathetic misery. Renji pads to the doorway, purposely slow, and then he unlocks it and opens the door. “Genichirou, I-”
His voice catches in his throat.
His hand slips from the handle.
Standing in the rain, dripping wet, clothes clinging to his body and dark hair plastered over his eyes, Kirihara holds up a plastic bag with a shaky smile. “Yanagi-senpai?”
***
If Renji couldn’t breathe before, he’s winded when Kirihara ducks his head, eyes wavering and uncertain and asks if it’s okay to come inside, if Renji hasn’t gone to bed yet. He looks around, eyes shining in the dark before Renji blinks and thinks to turn on the lights.
Kirihara closes the door behind himself. He pulls off his drenched sneakers and sets them on the tiny mat. Wet feet pad across the floor and he dumps his plastic bag on the counter. He pulls two plastic containers out, smelling of something fried that makes Renji’s stomach clench. He’s hungry, but his belly is so filled with mucus that he wants to vomit, not least of all because Kirihara’s back is turned to him, t-shirt clinging to his broad muscles.
It more than aches, it’s agony to stand and watch Kirihara set the two containers on the table, smiling at Renji as though nothing has changed from the other night, as thought Kirihara doesn’t have a girlfriend and nothing has come between them.
“There was a new tonkatsu place in the train station,” Kirihara says. He stares at his wooden takeaway chopsticks, then his eyes slowly lift toward Renji, and fall back down. He bites his lip- painful to see- and Renji tries Zen breathing to keep the hurt subsided, but it’s futile and it feels more and more like the metaphorical knife is being twisted between his ribs. “I- sorry. There was a long line. I didn’t know if you might have…eaten already, maybe.”
Renji says nothing. Kirihara takes a few bites, dripping water onto the floor from his perch on the chair, before he stops, realizing that Renji hasn’t moved from the doorway.
“Senpai?”
Renji has to know. It is the most difficult thing he has ever said, besides introducing himself when he was a new student at Rikkai Dai University Attached Elementary. He opens his mouth and forces himself to form the words, to speak calmly and slowly and clearly.
“Shouldn’t you be on your date still?”
Kirihara, never all that bright, scratches the back of his head. He messes up his wet hair even more and has to wipe his hand on his shorts, but they are even wetter. He looks to Renji, eyes wide, although his forehead is scrunched up. “Huh?”
The words keep coming, Renji has no control of them. Everything that he’s been thinking of since Marui’s confession about what he heard, all of it surfaces. “You have a date this evening with your girlfriend,” Renji says. His chest shudders, but he goes on, trying to be the better person, trying to be supportive as best he can, even with his heart shattered. “You…” He swallows, the words are thick, but he wants to say them regardless.
“You can borrow my umbrella, if you’d like.”
“Bunta says you were in love.”
For the longest time, the only sound in the apartment is the rain outside, steadily falling, soothing the world with the tears of the sky, the shameful tears that Renji refuses to let himself shed. He closes his eyes, waiting to hear Kirihara’s answer. His body is empty now. His head aches. Nothing remains in his chest, his heart having slithered to the floor along with all the blood in his body.
The scrape of a chair across the flooring alerts Renji to the fact Kirihara is leaving to meet his girlfriend again. He breathes through his mouth. “Good luck on your date,” he whispers. The rain keeps falling and another train rolls by, light shining through Renji’s pricking eyelids. He can feel the wind touch his body, warm and physical and only when that wind rests a hand on both of his shoulders, does he understand it’s not the wind, but Kirihara. Kirihara who is looking at him, straight in the eyes, his face twisted in confusion and his eyes shining and dark and his mouth parted in a grimace.
“Senpai…” he whispers.
Renji shakes his head. He does wish Kirihara good luck. He does. He wants to, he really does, and yet…
“I am in love,” Kirihara says. His rhythmic breathing, soft on Renji’s face because he is so, so agonizingly close, falls in tune with Renji’s own. Renji bites back a sob, feeling ever more the idiot when he should be the passive, calm senpai here for his kouhai.
“I…I like you,” Kirihara says.
Renji’s eyes go huge.
“I…like…more than friends. I like you more than that.”
Renji stares. Kirihara doesn’t look at his feet, he just keeps staring with his dark eyes that Renji falls forward into. His mind is playing tricks on him, only it isn’t because Kirihara wouldn’t be this close otherwise, with his tongue licking his lips, breathing hot, sweet breathe onto Renji’s mouth and he can taste Kirihara’s unfinished supper. It makes him choke; it makes his stomach shrivel up. The bareness in Kirihara’s eyes, unmoving off his own, almost gives him…
Hope.
He can’t hear the rain when Kirihara murmurs, “I wanted to...to maybe...if you wanted, too, before you got even further from me and I'd never see you again.” Hands twist in Renji’s pajama shirt, bunching up the fabric at his shoulders. Kirihara tilts his head, lips shining and parted as he breathes out, breathes into Renji.
His breath is a ghost over Renji’s mouth, which makes his own eyes flutter shut. He can’t look Kirihara in the eyes anymore. Kirihara’s unflinching gaze, the same one he’s been giving Renji for weeks? He gets it now- there was no girl, there was no date, there was never anything but Kirihara searching him out, with his eyes, with his presence, with his determination. And Renji was too much of an idiot to understand the data before it smacked him hard in the face.
Unlike Kirihara’s lips, which brush softly over his own. Renji stands stiffly- he wants this so much, but he doesn’t know what to do. Hands hanging at his sides, Renji lets Kirihara lead the kiss, he lets Kirihara’s tongue slide over his lips. The foreign touch of that hot, wet tongue trailing patterns over his lips and sending delicious shivers down his spine makes Renji open his mouth carefully. Is this what he’s supposed to do? Lean down and slide his own tongue over Kirihara’s, wet and almost velvety in some ways, tasting someone else’s saliva.
Kirihara moans. The vibrations settle in Renji’s belly, his cock swelling between his legs. If Kirihara notices, he says nothing, just continues his tentative exploration of Renji’s mouth and drags his hands up to Renji’s neck, pulling their mouths closer. The tongue in his mouth, the damp hands in his hair, touching and combing and demanding closeness, all of it makes Renji’s body hum. He can feel his cock straining, stiff and hard against Kirihara’s thigh. He shouldn’t be embarrassed, but he is. He leans back, an attempt to break their kiss and apologize, but Kirihara shoves him hard and throws their bodies down onto the bed.
Stumbling, Renji hits the edge of the mattress and with an oomph and clattered teeth, their kiss is broken when Kirihara’s mouth hits his ear instead, leaving a slimy trail along the side of his face. He pants in Renji’s ear and pushes a knee between Renji’s legs, his leg hard on Renji’s thigh, until Renji realizes, through the haze of Kirihara’s tongue licking the shell of his ear, that the hot length on his thigh isn’t Kirihara’s leg so much as Kirihara’s erection.
“Can I…” Kirihara whispers, sighing into Renji’s hair, “can I turn off your light, senpai?”
He’s still in too much shock- from Kirihara’s confession, from Kirihara’s kissing- to say no. Renji nods and watches Kirihara walk to the switch. He looks older from behind: his childish figure gone, his legs long and lean and his back muscled. Renji thought about what it would be like to run his hands along Kirihara’s shoulders before, and now…now he thinks he may have a chance.
His fingertips tingle with anticipation.
His dick goes numb, so tight against his pajamas, when the darkness overwhelms his apartment again. He can hear Kirihara’s few footsteps and then the low rustle of damp fabric. As his eyes adjust, a train rushes by, light shining onto Kirihara’s naked chest as he settles back down onto the bed beside him.
Renji gasps when those hands creep under his shirt and that mouth kisses his jaw, teeth dragging along his neck and making his hips buck up. Kirihara slings a leg over his thigh and rubs himself on Renji’s hip. Feeling his erection, knowing Kirihara wants this too, only makes Renji harder. He turns his head, tucking his chin to have that mouth back on his own and to stop the little gasps and groans from escaping his lips.
“Senpai,” Kirihara says, his words like kisses on Renji’s collar. Kirihara presses dry, warm kisses as he unbuttons Renji’s pajama shirt. “Senpai, I wanted you to touch me the other night…” His tongue slides over Renji’s collarbone. Those hands, making fast, careful work with his buttons, help Renji peel off his shirt. Chest to chest, they lie, pants and moans and mewls as loud as the rain outside. “I pretend to be asleep, but you didn’t notice…”
For measure, Kirihara grinds his erection down. Renji gasps so loud, the feeling sending shock waves through his lips, that his back arches off the bed. Kirihara’s leg, tight around him, clenches down. Renji’s hands are placed on Kirihara’s sides and Kirihara stares up at him, smiling and saying, “I want you to touch me too.”
Kissing becomes harder when Kirihara refuses his mouth, his tongue instead swirling patterns around Renji’s chest, around his nipples, which stiffen and harden like his dick, so sensitized in that hot mouth that when Kirihara’s teeth take them and chew, just a little, Renji digs his hands into Kirihara’s back, loving the sensations that cause his eyes to roll back, loving the feeling of his warm, buttery skin under his own fingertips.
He can’t think about why he never acted, never realized before. He can think even less when Kirihara’s leg, vice-like over his hip, jerks himself back and Renji rolls on top of him. He should ask if he’s too heavy for Kirihara, but Kirihara’s hands are on his butt, tugging at his pajama pants, his body showing its eagerness for more when their erections finally brush.
Renji sucks in a breath. Kirihara groans through his teeth, then drags them over Renji’s shoulder, pressing sharp into his own muscles. Renji never thought he could be this turned on by Kirihara, biting his shoulder, but when he hears himself whimper Kirihara’s name, at long last, the friction of their rubbing cocks burns his entire body so, so exquisitely.
“You feel so good,” Kirihara says. He moans. Renji moans. His back is cold from the wind and misty rain coming in through the open window, but pressed together, chests slick with sweat and desire, Renji feels feverish. His hair falls down into Kirihara’s eyes as they kiss again and he’s growing more eager, caring less and less about making a fool of himself and more about how good it feels when Kirihara’s fingers dance under his waistband and shove his pajama pants down.
He doesn’t know how they end up naked, writhing like this as the rain rages outside. The flashing storm, the intermittent lights from the trains make their bodies glow, make Kirihara’s eyes shine like the moon in all those poems Renji reads for school. He could drown in the looks Kirihara gives him, the lick of his tongue, the tilt of his head, the line of his jaw when he throws his head back and says, “Fuck me, senpai…god, Renji…”
Renji stops for a moment. Looking down at Kirihara, eyes huge and biting his lip, he never thought they would go this far, this fast. He never thought beyond kissing, but he let his body take over. Even now, his balls tight enough to explode and his cock pounding, heartbeat bleeding through his erection and into Kirihara, both of them panting and moaning and rubbing still, he has to pause. “Akaya…” he says. His voice sounds thick and gravelly, foreign to his ears.
He shivers again, spine curving and hips jutting down into Kirihara’s, their dicks and balls and thigh twisting together into one, trying to keep those waves of shuddering pleasure coming. Renji closes his eyes and sucks in a breath when Kirihara grinds up, his cock sliding along the line of Renji’s hip. Renji sobs his pleasure into the juncture of Kirihara’s neck, his mouth an open kiss against his hot skin.
“Akaya…”
“I know what to do. Don’t worry,” Kirihara says. His legs, entwined with Renji’s, untangle for an instant as he rummages around, opening a drawer of the little table beside Renji’s bed.
Never has the jar of Vaseline his mother gave him for dry skin been more useful.
Kirihara guides Renji’s hands between his legs, to the cleft of his ass. Legs bent, he whines, the noise rushing through Renji’s body and encouraging his fingers to push inside.
“That’s good,” Kirihara says, panting hard. “Senpai, senpai…that…” He groans, head pushing back into the pillow and hips lifting off the bed, making it hard for Renji to attempt a second finger. “That’s so good…” he murmurs.
This new intimacy is scary, having his fingers up Kirihara’s ass, having Kirihara’s dick in his face, hard and dark and swollen. Renji lowers his head, hesitant to act, but then he sticks his tongue out, testing Kirihara’s reaction when he starts to lick the head of his cock. Those hands bunching up the sheets of his bed, clamp down on his shoulders and Kirihara bucks up, pushing his dick deeper into Renji’s mouth. He shakes and Renji can taste the bitterness of his pre-come. It makes him start to gag, having something fill his mouth so much, so he jerks his head back before Kirihara can thrust again.
“You gotta do it!” Kirihara says. He pushes back on Renji’s fingers, gasping and groaning and spreading his knees even wider. His toes curl in the sheets. His belly constricts- he has to be as close as Renji is, rubbing his lonely cock on the damp sheets. “You gotta do it soon senpai, I’m so…nngh…so close!” His ass constricts around Renji’s fingers and even slicked with Vaseline, it’s hard to move them around and make sure Kirihara is ready.
“I’m ready,” he says. “Sen- Renji, I’m okay. I’m ready.”
If his fingers inside Kirihara were one thing, then slowly, almost uncertain that Kirihara’s moans weren’t cries of pain, Renji sinks inside. He can’t breathe, not when it feels like Kirihara, so tight and hot and slick, is not only wrapped around his dick, but around his chest and everywhere. Renji forces himself to breath. Sweat forms on his forehead, dripping down his nose as he pushes inside and Kirihara groans, too.
“Deeper,” he says. He pants, hard and heavy and his fingers are sharp and scratch Renji’s ass, which clenches too, because it feels so… “…fucking good….”. Renji’s breath is shuddered when his body thinks to exhale, and all he can breathe in are Kirihara’s little whines and sighs and his clenched teeth, but he’s smiling and holding Renji so tight that Renji thinks it wouldn’t be illogical to just sink so deep into Kirihara that he would never emerge.
Kirihara clenches himself again as Renji attempts to thrust, ignoring his inexperience in favour of trying to keep this overwhelming pleasure pulsing through his body forever. “Renji….” Kirihara pants. He tightens his ass, jerks his hips up and the slick, burning around Renji’s cock, the addictive ache in his shuddering body is too much. Renji can’t hold on. He can’t hold back and he is thrusting, bucking, pouring himself into Kirihara, rutting and gasping “Akaya!” as the rain smothers the sounds of their frantic slapping bodies.
Post-coital, they curl against each other. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Renji realizes that Kirihara must have come too, since his hand trails along a sticky patch on Kirihara’s thigh and the damp curls at the base of his now-limp cock. Kirihara buries his head into the space of Renji’s neck, murmuring something too low for Renji’s ears to catch.
The rain pounds outside as his fluttering heart slows, his breathing now sighs of completion in perfect tune with Kirihara’s happy moans. “Senpai?” he asks.
Fingers trace unsaid words across his cooling skin. Renji cranes his neck to look at Kirihara, who looks at him, eyes soft around the edges and his smile too. “Senpai, thank you.”
Renji blinks. “For what?”
The leg flung over his thigh moves, sticky skin peeling away as Kirihara half-sits up against a pillow and pulls Renji up with him. They sit, legs spread out long and supine on the messy sheets. Kirihara rests his head against Renji’s chest, allowing Renji to breathe in his scent. He makes a noise, almost like a purr, when Renji’s hands touch the sweaty curls of his hair, and Renji enjoys the sensation of the thick, soft tendrils between his fingers.
“For the best birthday present ever. From the best senpai ever,” Kirihara whispers. He sighs again, humming contentment as he settles his weight against Renji and plays with the hairs on the top of Renji’s thigh.
It would be foolish to admit to Kirihara that he had no idea it was his birthday. It would be even more foolish to admit, now, that Renji understands the Christmas present in high school, the same words said to him and he was too obtuse to realize that, to realize Kirihara’s stares and his constant hanging on to Renji, his eternal questions and demands that Renji help tutor him, that Renji help his swing, that Renji do this or that.
He’s been so blind these past six years. Only now does he think that he can begin to make things right.
“I’ll treat you,” he says. “Tomorrow we’ll go out for cake, Akaya.” The wind blows another cool glaze of fresh rainwater over their bodies from the open window, making the disparity of their hot bodies and the weather even more pronounced. Renji slips an arm around Kirihara’s waist, pulling him tighter and closer and in for a kiss.
Their lips brush, mouths closed and almost chaste, if it wasn’t for the tongue that sneaks out and licks the side of Renji’s mouth. Kirihara grins at him, eyes glowing with devilish delight.
“I know the perfect café,” he says. “They have the best chocolate cake parfaits.”