Tempt me if you can (chapter 2)
Title: Tempt me if you can - chapter 2
Previous chapter: >1<
Also available @ Ao3, LJ, DW
**
I love beautiful things.
Once every three years, the area around the Seto Inland Sea becomes a blessed place, whenever the international art fair called Setouchi Triennale takes place through a series of spectacular artworks displayed in the open air on twelve different islands -including the gorgeous Naoshima and Teshima-, and the two sea ports of Takamatsu and Uno.
While people come from all over the world in order to visit these places and admire their works of art, I’m lucky enough to live nearby: the latest summer edition left me frankly speechless, and it was during the very same edition that the all-round artist Yasuda Shota got recently acclaimed for his mixed media compositions. He's a pro at potteries, paintings and even playing the guitar apparently, for he's released a matching song for his huge “Under the Sea” fish artwork, after such individual artwork had been selected for the Setouchi Triennale. It has become so widely popular that it was decided that the blue giant fish made of tiles would become a permanent artwork, located beside the shore at Takamatsu port. A few colleagues of mine have already had some photo shoots right there, and the allure of such a piece of art is undeniable.
Little did I know, back then, about the details Yasuda-san would reveal later on to someone very close to Kame-chan. The thing is, despite his young age Yasuda-san had to undergo some critical surgery; it went well, but apparently the operation was so risky that Yasuda-san ended up confessing in tears the only regret he had about his life to the surgeon who was in charge of the whole thing. And, curious as it might have been, such guy was none other than Kame-chan’s boyfriend, Yamapi. That is why our upcoming target is a tiny glass core bearing the name “Watashi Kagami”, a special mirror hidden within the giant blue fish: while Yasuda’s convalescence will allow him to gain back strength, we’ll take care of the mission we’ve received from him. Even if he’s still pretty oblivious of the fact that his prayer arrived straight at Yamaneko’s ears.
As we reach the Takamatsu port, I feel proud and nervous at the same time. The blue tiled fish is standing there and… what? Wait, what?! Why is there a human figure beside it? And why does it look exactly like that Nishikido guy?!
I turn towards Kame-chan, but he seems unimpressed.
"What the heck is he doing here?!" I whisper, trying to keep my composure.
"Oh… I might have invited him," Kame-chan casually says.
"Youmighthavewhat?!?"
"You said 'I might have kissed him' when you actually kissed him back then, so I told you 'I might have invited him' when I actually invited him to join us here. That's just it," he replies matter-of-factly.
"That's not the point, Kazu!" I shriek. "Are you nuts?!"
"I merely happened to take possession of one of the business cards in his pocket when I visited the Ohara Museum. I can bet it wasn't very gentleman like of you, the way you dumped him last time, so I thought you'd better have a proper chat tonight," he goes on, while I keep staring at him almost sickened.
"Don't make that face, I didn't invite Murakami or Yokoyama, for they're not even remotely as charming as your Ryo-chan is."
"Ryo-chan?"
Kame-chan hands me a calling card out of nowhere; I don't even have to read its details to know who it belongs to, but I do take a glimpse at its kanji symbols anyway. Ryo. It's a beautiful name.
"Please don't lose the precious piece of paper, okay? It might turn up useful sooner or later," he concludes, patting me on the shoulder.
I groan, but follow him anyway, and we walk closer to the giant artifact shielded by Nishikido Ryo’s tiny frame.
"So you really showed up, Yamaneko!” Nishikido shouts in a clear voice.
“It’s not my policy, to be unfaithful to my own plans, you know,” Kame-chan replies, laughing openly.
“Then how about we make a deal today, and today only?"
"How bold of you, newbie!"
"That's what you deserve for inviting me here!"
Kame-chan turns to look at me; despite his cat mask, I can bet he's smirking right now.
"I'll let you steal the mirror if that’s what you aim for, but I want to have a word with you!" Nishikido goes on. We walk closer to the giant fish statue, until we're a couple of steps away from Ryo.
“You’ll let us steal the mirror, uh-uh…. What would dear Inspector Murakami think of you, I wonder,” Kame-chan teases him. Stop it. Please stop it, I’d wanna say. He’s a good guy.
“None of your business, Yamaneko,” Ryo snorts. “I came. That’s all you should worry about,” he replies, to which Kame-chan bursts out laughing quite aloud.
"Mmmh, you’re a cute kitty, boy. And still, you’re just a kitty. How about we refine the so-called deal?" Yamaneko asks him. "While I retrieve the mirror, the two of you will take your time and have a proper, nice conversation. It's him you need, right? My Kobo-chan."
Ryo narrows his eyes, but I turn towards Yamaneko to glare at him. How dare he? I'd yell at him, if only I could. I cannot find the words, but Ryo seems as much at a loss as I am.
"… Fine," Ryo growls then, and he doesn't move a muscle when my fellow companion runs past him to get to the core of the statue. He looks up at me, narrowing his eyes even more.
“I studied your case file, you know,” he starts, “and there’s always something that doesn’t quite match with the whole thief scenario. Let’s talk about the Water Lilies: it's definitely not like Yamaneko to steal a fake painting and brag about it with a message. Unless what you actually meant to do, through such theft, is the ruckus itself. Maybe your real aim is to expose what's behind the fake, right?”
I don’t reply, even if I would like to. Why is he so damn blunt and so damn on point? I don’t want him to be. He needs to despise me. Chase me. Tell us we’re scum for doing what we do.
“I don't think you're as bad as you like to portray yourself, but I guess the two of you have your own reasons as well, right?” he goes on. “Like, I cannot imagine why you would ruin the Yasuda masterpiece, but I didn’t even know there was a retrievable core made of a mirror inside it. Yamaneko mentioned it in the notice he sent me… so I guess that if something like this exists, it must have been Yasuda himself who made it so and thus… there might be reasons for him to have you steal it. Isn’t that so?”
I would like to tell him. So much. He’s just inches from the truth. The only thing he has not guessed right is that such a mirror is a token of love, that we’re meant to retrieve and later deliver to the musician Shibutani Subaru. I didn’t know they admired each other to this extent. But what Yasuda told Yamapi, that day in his hospital bed, was that there was a promise he could not fulfill. The giant fish is the finest art created by Yasuda so far, but it was also supposed to be a temporary exhibition and meant to be dismantled after the summer edition of the Triennale. Yasuda had promised Shibutani, who had been constantly praising his art skills through the years, that once it was over, the mirror core of the blue fish would have been the only part to survive… the only part that could not be destroyed, just like his feelings. But things went differently, and the fish became popular and permanent, and its core and its feelings were unpredictably sealed with it. Until today.
“Hey, are you listening to me?” Ryo asks, and his voice takes me away from my reverie. “Because there’s something else I need to ask,” he murmurs then, almost inaudible. "... Why did you kiss me?"
Eh? Of all possible other questions, this one?
This one?
Well, it does makes sense. I kind of... sexually assaulted him during a theft, now that I think about it. Oh dear, I'm the worst.
"Can you talk? Or maybe you cannot? Are you mute?" he urges me, and his eyes do look worried.
"I am not mute nor deaf. I've heard you quite well," I mumble, voice low.
"Oh. I'm glad," he exhales, opening up in a sudden and pretty gorgeous smile that lights up his hardened expression at once. Needless to say, I'm having a hard time focusing on anything at all right now. Anything but him.
"And a pretty one you have too. Voice, I mean," he says. "Sorry, I'm still leaving you no space for... sorry, please go ahead," he gestures.
Oh my God. Is he stuttering? A security guard who even faced Yamaneko openly is now babbling in front of me? How can he even be like this?!
“But I’d really wanna know… why did you kiss me?” he repeats.
"... Why did you kiss me back?" I venture asking him.
"Mmh, you're a tease," he frowns.
"I'm a thief, actually," I retort, to which he bursts out giggling softly, shaking his head. Such a sound is healing, seriously.
"Okay, I got it. No more questions."
"Sorry to interrupt the flirting here, but I do actually have one," Yamaneko meddles in from nowhere. "I'm done with the mirror I was supposed to take tonight, but it's clear you're not done with whatever kind of conversation you were supposed to have while I was busy. So I was thinking: how about I take my leave and leave you, Ryo-chan, with my little Kobo-chan here? I'm pretty sure you can deal perfectly without me and maybe even better, who know-"
"Shut up!” we both say in sync, Ryo and me. Yamaneko looks as surprised as I am with myself. Ryo looks from me to him and then back again, until Yamaneko speaks again.
“I’ll take care of this,” he briefly tells me, gesturing to a thick wrapping in his hands, “just tell me when you’ll be done taking care of him,” he adds, teasing, just to let me know he’s back to his usual self.
And then, when it’s just Ryo and me and leaning against the tiled fish, Ryo says something very straightforward again.
"I have been married, you know," he confesses, "but I haven't been a good husband."
He lets his words sink in, while my heart starts throbbing in a way I have yet to understand.
"Two years ago I realized I started having feelings for a male colleague at work,” he tells me. “I was confused. The more I denied it to myself, the worse I ended up being around my wife. We started therapy, and failed miserably. I never actually cheated on her, but I couldn't bring myself to cause such strain to my wife, not when the respect itself was to me something quite essential in our life, so I divorced her. In the end, I never dated that guy afterwards, I even resigned from work and applied for a completely different kind of job. It was around that time that I started working at the Ohara Museum.
I’ve tried dating a few other guys, but somehow I’ve always felt more confused than aroused around them. I’ve always felt at fault. Being the wrong one, you know. That is until… until that day. When you kissed me, I was suddenly reminded of who I am... or the one I have become, I don't know.”
He stops talking and brushes the back of his hand against his forehead. He looks mentally exhausted.
“I was so angry at you, you know? I thought I was leading a very peaceful life in Kurashiki… the town is vibrant, plus I had my job, and I could please myself with the sight of the Water Lilies on a daily basis and then… and then you suddenly came and stole everything from me. All my certainties gone, in just one hour’s time, on that fateful night.”
“That means I’m an excellent thief, I guess,” I tell him, making him snort with laughter.
“Indeed, Kobo-chan. And, by the way, I was wondering… Would you keep sending me notices about your next thefts, if you don't mind? Starting next time, Murakami-san and Yokoyama-san will be informed about those messages. As for me, I'd love to chase you in the open. I want to play fair, because I do want to be the one catching you, one day."
My throat aches. He cannot say… cannot say…
I pull him to me by the nape and peck him on the mouth. He pulls back immediately, this time.
"I might get used to this, if you don't cut it out," he murmurs softly.
"You know nothing of me.”
"What if maybe I know enough?”
No, you don’t.
But I don’t tell him, and I press my lips to his once again instead. He moans into my mouth as if wishing to sink in completely. Me too. Me too. I know what lust is and yet, I’ve never been kissed like this so far. His tongue wants to ravage what’s left of my mental sanity. The clean smell of his after-shave is intoxicating. His hands reach up to my nape, caressing my bangs.
His fingers tease the elastic band keeping my mask in place, they play with it back and forth, and yet they refuse to pull it and have me unmasked.
It would be so simple. But he does not dare.
He wants to know who I am, but at the same time he doesn't want to force it. He wants me to do it myself, when it's time.
I need to kiss him more. And more. In places I have yet to think straight at.
I want to -and it's amazing, given how picky I am with people I've shared a bed with- make love to him. To a man I barely know anything about.
One of his hands suddenly pulls my side more against him, and that's enough to make me feel a gush of heat coming right from my insides and press him even harder with my tongue, to which he eagerly replies with rolling his hips in a very, very, and again very dangerous way against my own hips. Oh, god. I want this.
And then, he pulls back from our make out session, panting quite hard.
"I had promised him I would have let you go back unscathed," he murmurs, biting his swollen lip.
"I haven't heard this part, before,” I retort. “Maybe I'm indeed a bit deaf, like you said.”
He laughs again, as carefree as he should not be.
“A promise is a promise,” he insists. “Please make it home safely. I’ll be waiting for your next notice, okay?”
He straightens his clothes. Those very same clothes I'd love to tear apart, to have his nipples bared and make love to him here, on the shore, under the shadow of the blue fish. Who'd care?
He's beautiful. Beautiful.
And that's how I've fallen in love with him, with gentleness and righteousness personified. In a world where people throw those values away in exchange of power, money and mistrust, Ryo-chan is a rarity. He's beauty.
**
I keep my promise to him.
We keep on chasing each other, one theft after another, with him running with all his might and me using my brain to have Yamaneko and me out of the claws of the police. From time to time there’s Ryo and me groping at each other's butt when no one notices, or secretly making out in the darkness of the night, while Inspector Murakami is tailing Yamaneko and me without having the slightest clue of how to properly do it.
Above all there’s me, missing Ryo way too much when there's no new theft on our agenda, when work keeps both me and Kame-chan too busy for anything else.
I do keep his address, of course, that’s where I constantly send him my notices. I could get into his apartment whenever I wanted, but that's not how we want it. Not yet. Even if, more often than not, I fall asleep with his tender smile in my head and my hands in my pants, thinking about him, coming in a few strokes at the mere thought of him sucking me off.
I need him. I miss him. I want him in my life, way more than this.
Because he's a tireless believer in justice, he's gentle and afraid to hurt people anytime, because he believes in people first, and facts afterwards. Because he says I've made him learn that even facts can be counterfeited.
The night we spent handcuffed together, I had told him so. It was a rather first-time freezing night and Inspector Murakami had managed to grab hold of me while I was handing Yamaneko an artifact. It was supposed to go back to its place in a museum after a trade with another exhibition, but we had found out the item once belonged to a family who had been robbed of it a few decades ago, which is to say the commercial trade had never been legal to start with. So there we were, retrieving the piece to hand it back to that family. The thing is, I had lost myself contemplating this beautiful item finally safe in my arms, and after Yamaneko had told me to watch out, I had found myself with a wrist tied to a thick metallic web.
Yamaneko had immediately knocked Murakami out with the snooze spray, and the police had been too busy worrying for their missing Inspector to notice I was hiding in a darkened corner of the building. Kame-chan had also left, warning me not to move until he would be back to rescue me.
Needless to say, Ryo-chan had found me. He had first found Murakami, actually, and then he had spotted me. He had told the police there was no other evidence of the thieves and he let them pick the unconscious Inspector up and bring him to the headquarters.
And then, some fifteen minutes later, he had come back alone.
His hair was a bit messy, even more after he tried to unlock me without success. He had apologized to me with a sweet smile for being a useless dude when it came to rescuing a thief. I couldn't help but burst into open laughter. Next thing I knew, he had handcuffed himself to the very same metallic net and had thrown his key far away.
"So that when Yamaneko will come to rescue you -because I know he's on the way-, he won't start picking up on unfair prerequisites between us," he told me, grinning.
I was speechless.
"Why don't you report me to the police instead? It would be so much simpler. We've had fun, I owe it to you but... that's it, Ryochan. I'm a thief. You're a man of justice. What we do is embarrassing enough, if we are to admit it openly."
"I'm not very sure we're standing on opposite sides anymore, actually. You know that already, even if you won’t ever tell me the truth," he had replied, raising an eyebrow. "Inspector Murakami would never admit it because he's a proud man, but Yokoyama-san actually told me that the rate of solved crimes affiliated to art is higher than others, and coincidentally enough you and Yamaneko are often into it. Right?”
I had said nothing, at first. But then, Yamaneko was late, and I was starting freezing my ass off, actually, right when I'd much preferred having my ass very warm in Ryo-chan's hands if I were honest.
His cheeks were pale, and I needed to have him stay awake, as well. So I started confessing to him a little bit here and there... not the whole frame of course, just some details... to have him even more confused about us. Or maybe, to have him more intrigued by the puzzle I was in his eyes.
When I had become a man whore even during thefts, I did not know. But Nishikido Ryo had such bewitching power over me and somehow, I knew I could perform a very similar charm on him.
That night, we have been so close to losing control.
When I had told him that the very first time I had kissed him was because I liked beautiful things and that I thought he was a beautiful thing himself, he had laughed in embarrassment. But then, he had come closer to me and his hand had run on my thigh to caress it, and a loud moan had escaped my lips when his fingers reached my crotch.
I wanted to come in my pants straight away, I swear.
He had found my eyes and groped my private parts through my thick black outfit, and he had licked his lips when he had seen the effect his fingers had on me. He had locked himself too far away for rubbing himself against me, he had one bare hand only and yet he pulled down the zip of my leather jacket first, and the one of my outfit next. His free hand had found the nipple beside my racing heart. His cold fingertips had squeezed it and he bit his lower lip, mirroring what I was doing with my own lip.
And then, he had pulled at his own handcuffs in order to get closer and I did the same, and our tongues finally met in a particularly heated kiss. I was dying of deprivation and mentally swore at him for being so damn righteous with handcuffing himself too far away, but the sensation of his warm mouth on mine pumped hot blood throughout my veins and I felt like being born again, out of the raw passion I felt for him only, and it was seriously amazing. When he had pulled back, I was out of breath and so was he, but at least none of us was dying of cold anymore, and I guess he had thought the same thing, for he giggled softly right when I pouted at him.
And then we had heard a soft clap and a whistle coming from right above us.
"If I knew you liked being teased like this by our dear Ryo-chan, I would have let the two of you make out the whole night long, I swear," Yamaneko had shown up.
I felt like dying, that night, for more than one reason.
He had set me free and allowed Ryo-chan the same freedom, 'for keeping Kobo-chan good company', he had said.
But back in my apartment, the little sexy show cost me a whole month of the little allowance I was given from Kame-chan for my help. Well, it had been much worth it, given that I had told Kame-chan endless times that I didn’t want him to pay me for helping him out with the thefts. But he never listened, of course.
As for Ryo-chan... maybe he’s not exactly by our side, but that is not what worries me the most anymore.
**
Time has passed since then, and apparently our work behind the scenes finally brought its results. After the uproar we had caused by taking the Water Lilies, and Ryo-chan's appointment at the Police Headquarters, the Ohara Museum in Kurashiki had also brought a team of experts for a further check: the most recent and still secret news mentioned how the real painting had been there for sure up until a couple of years ago, when the whole museum had been renovated inside.
While a company had been chosen to work on the redecorations, another one had to make sure all the valuables inside would not suffer from humidity, scratches or such during the works. Each of the paintings had to be carefully identified before and after the relocation to prevent any attempt of theft, and every one of those had been confirmed as original after the works were done. All but the Water Lilies. The sign on the paper released back then proved to be a very good fake.
While the police is still working on the whereabouts of this paper, given that the company has gone bankrupt in the meantime, Kame-chan and I are anticipating them already, as usual.
And since we've found out where the real painting is now, we're going to rescue it tonight.
**
(chapter 3)