Answer: Chapter 5

Mashiba’s long silence came as no surprise but filled him with anxiety all the same, and once again Hatano found himself passing the quiet, lonely nights of six months before. Their trysts had never followed any regular schedule, but Mashiba had never once set a date and failed to show. Ever since that day that Hatano had delivered Mashiba’s documents and bumped into Kamata, however, there hadn’t been so much as a word from him.

Now, nearly two months had passed. His clumsy foray into costumery was finished, and the sweltering blaze of summer had spent itself. Even here in the city, the sky seemed crisper, grander, vaulting an endless autumn blue overhead.

Mashiba’s embrace, and the whisper of, ‘see me again,’ on their last morning together, had sown hope’s faint, painful seeds inside him. The earnestness in Mashiba’s voice, and that first glimpse of bashfulness, had seemed to Hatano heralds of some change to come, and he had no wish to doubt himself. He had seen the wide-eyed shock on Mashiba’s face as Kamata spoke, and Hatano had fully expected that the night would bring him armed with a host of questions to his doorstep. Mashiba may appear complicated, but he was a straightforward man. Hatano had assumed that the curiosity that had shown so plainly upon his face would soon be put into words and posed to him, and Hatano had been prepared to give Mashiba the answers. The instant he had heard Yuuko’s name come out of Kamata’s mouth the pit of his stomach had gone hollow with nervousness, but just as quickly had come the certainty that he wanted to share his past with Mashiba. It was in that moment that Hatano had realized just how deeply he had committed his heart to the man.

But Mashiba had not come.

His own restless tension had been Hatano’s sole company that night, and though he had persuaded himself that Mashiba must have been out visiting a client like Kamata had mentioned,

“…cher?”

he’d thought a single phone call the next day shouldn’t be too much to ask—and then a fact had dawned on him. He had never noticed it until that very moment but, although they had exchanged telephone numbers, neither Mashiba nor Hatano had ever actually dialed the other. They’d never needed to: next engagements had always been scheduled in person, and their nights of intimacy had never been far apart.

“Teacher?”

The telephone was a curious device. It was nothing more than a means of communication, but the longer one waited, the heavier the receiver seemed to become. Hatano had become a textbook case of this phenomenon, today being the latest addition to a string of days spent agonizing in front of the telephone, and nights no longer put him so soundly to sleep.

But, there was one other problem keeping him awake—

“Teeeacher, I hafta go potty.…”

“Huh?!”

An urgent tug on his sleeve broke his train of thought, and he jerked to attention to find a young boy squirming beside his desk chair, on the verge of tears as he pressed his legs together. Reality abruptly reasserted itself: he was in his classroom at the preschool, and it was currently naptime. A glance around the room took in the other children still sprawled fast asleep, the only sound the strong, steady rhythm of their breaths.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! Come on, let’s go to the bathroom,” he said in a soft undertone, stooping to lift the boy, Yuu, into his arms. He was lucky that Yuu was a relatively reasonable child. If he had soiled his pants and started wailing, the other children would have woken at once.

That was a close one, he chastised himself as he straightened, his gaze sweeping up to his colleague in the diagonal corner. The woman’s face crinkled into a grin—were you napping, too?—and Hatano deflected the silent jibe with a tight smile.

“Okay, time to go pee-pee.… There you go, good job.”

Yuu finished using the toilet and Hatano settled him back into bed before returning to his seat. The teacher’s log notebook lay open on the desk, turned to today’s page and still as perfectly blank as it had been when naptime had begun—he consulted the clock—now quite some time ago.

Just how long was I daydreaming for?

His face flushed all the hotter when he recalled the direction his reverie had taken in the seconds before Yuu’s interruption.

I can’t keep going on like this…

Hatano pressed the backs of his hands firmly against the heat in his cheeks. To phrase the matter bluntly, he was suffering from sexual frustration. Mashiba had ignited a flame inside of him that would not be doused, and whether he liked it or not, his body could no longer recapture the composure he had maintained before Mashiba had come into his life.

His imagination strayed, and a mere fantasy became a shiver of electricity that took his breath away. That same instant, the timer to wake the children beeped loudly to life, and he started in his chair.

“Okay everybody, let’s get up now!” chimed the blithe voice of his twenty-something colleague, and with valiant effort Hatano retrieved his pen and turned his scattered attention to his log report.

But neither the monotonous scratch of pen tip on paper, nor the neat columns of ink that appeared in its wake, managed to dispel Mashiba from his mind, and he left the preschool that afternoon with the notebook tucked under his arm, the unfinished report his homework for the evening.

Hatano’s sleepless nights carried on.

For a time he held to his rationalization that Mashiba was just busy. Hatano knew from firsthand experience that the pace at S Commercial was dizzying, and doubly so for any employee posted under Kamata. If anything, it was incredible that Mashiba had ever sustained such frequent visits.

But the same tired reasoning rang ever more hollow with each passing day. His anxiety mounted, fueled by the memory of Ikawa glowering at him that afternoon in naked hostility. The man was a threat in Hatano’s eyes. Ikawa was slim and tall, with the beauty of a model. He had strut about like a man gifted with inborn glamour, a man who enjoyed full confidence that he would always come out on top. Hatano had taken up the gauntlet thrown down by Ikawa despite himself because he had seen clearly in the man’s eyes that he was hung up on Mashiba. Mashiba had met Ikawa’s twisted expression with a show of annoyance and distaste, but Hatano had no assurance that the show had been genuine.

He knew nothing of Mashiba’s changes of heart, and given the way that things had started between them, he could only assume that if Ikawa and Mashiba got back together, he wouldn’t even be an afterthought.

How the tables have turned, he thought with a small, mocking smile. Not so long ago he had wanted nothing else but for Mashiba to tire of him! He squeezed his thighs together to quell the ache between them. The thought of masturbating at his age was too miserable to bear, and with his uncertainty and suspicions about Mashiba on an upward spiral, he could turn nowhere for release.

Had Mashiba finally had enough of him? Or was it Ikawa…? For every awful scenario that he banished from his mind his wicked imagination spun a dozen more, and the knot within his chest pulled tighter every day. Lust gnawed at him from the inside, like stagnant, festering dregs in his gut. Even his working hours brought little distraction, heat simmering constantly under his skin until finally the principal had asked him if he was feeling ill.

Yuuko, I think I’m pretty hopeless.

He let out a glum sigh, and made a silent apology to his deceased wife.

He had certainly not forgotten the despair of forever losing Yuuko and his child, but he had never ruminated on it like this. Quite the opposite, he had fled from the anguish of remembering, going so far as to purge anything and everything with a link to his lost family. Like a man possessed he had filled bag after garbage bag with photographs and belongings while Egi had only looked sadly on, making no move to stop him.

But what neither Egi nor Kamata understood, nor indeed had Hatano himself at the time, was that the ties that had bound Yuuko and Hatano had been largely platonic. Hatano had known by Yuuko’s own admission that she had been in love with her adoptive father, Egi. He had proposed to her anyway, reassuring her that he did not mind.

He had loved Yuuko, without question. He had shared his bed with her, and their child had been most darling to him in the world. But he suspected that fiercer still had been his longing for family, that distant stranger that had deserted both their doorsteps so long ago. The sex itself had been terribly bland. Their pre-marital relations had been perfectly chaste, and the first signs of pregnancy had followed fast on the heels of the ceremony. Once they had discovered the child in her belly, Hatano could not recall even a single kiss between them. Their love had been heartfelt and tender, but closer to that between brother and sister than between lovers.

He had been proud of his beautiful wife. The days spent at her side had been warm and peaceful, and he had hoped for the two of them to share all of their days to come. She had shown him the utmost of kindness, but her manner had never lost its hint of reserve.

“Thank you, Yuki. I’m sorry.”

He had come to expect that on the days when they visited Egi she would become a little distant, and treat him all the more kindly for it. Hatano had felt a pang of pity for her on those days. He had known that she looked at Egi with a love that would never be requited, and he had seen no cause for apologies. He had loved the woman in love with Egi. The fierce fire in her eyes that had never lit for him had struck him as beautiful and passionate, even sensual. He had told her that it was no secret between them, and so she needed neither apologize nor feel uncomfortable for him, and in reply she had called him by the nickname that was hers alone, and held him to the soft pillow of her breast.

“Let’s be happy together, Yuki,” she had repeated, eyes soft and dark with loneliness, and he remembered being at a loss to understand her emotions. He had wondered why she had woven such words with such sorrow. But now, the memory of her wistful voice wrung his heart.

He could not be sure, but ever since meeting Mashiba, Hatano had begun to think that perhaps Yuuko had not wanted him to forgive her love for Egi. Perhaps she had wished that he would steal her heart away, demand that she put Egi out of her mind and love only him. Perhaps she had known all along that his feelings for her were not romantic. If her keen intuition had seen the truth that Hatano himself had not, perhaps that was why she had always been so kind to him.

Otherwise, he had no explanation for his fixation on Mashiba, or the jealousy he now felt of Ikawa. In all the times he had seen Yuuko’s gaze upon Egi, or seen Egi himself, not once had the sight disturbed him. There had been only the helpless tragedy of her unrequited love; he had felt nothing else.

He had lost his parents, then Yuuko and his child had vanished from his side, and it had left him battered and scarred, but he had gathered the pieces of himself and found his footing again. Life had acquainted him with loss, after all, and what he had told Kamata had not been empty bravado; in a way, he truly was used to it.

He had realized that part of him had always expected that it would end like this, sooner or later, and he had despised himself for these black thoughts so bitterly that he’d fallen ill with a psychosomatic disease. It was not until he resigned himself to the facts that he found himself recovering. Family was not in the cards for him, and it never would be.

But Hatano was convinced that to lose Mashiba would be an altogether different thing from those he had lost to the absolute separation of death. Perhaps it was Mashiba’s intensity. No other man or woman had ever become as intimately involved with him as Mashiba, and Mashiba had been the one to teach him that skin against skin brought not only comforting warmth but blazing heat. This overwhelming lust had only caught aflame because Mashiba had been the one to kindle the spark. His eyes, hooded in pain and grief, had cried out in yearning for somebody, and Hatano had answered his call; in this, at least, Mashiba and Yuuko were alike.

But…

The critical difference was this: he had wanted Yuuko to remain as she was, in love with Egi, but with Mashiba…

With Mashiba, he wanted to be the focus of that fierce-eyed gaze.

He wanted his body, and his heart.

“Mashiba,” he sighed, sprawled sleepless across the bed, and the sound of the man’s name triggered a familiar spike of heat between his thighs. The impulse was stronger now than ever before, and tears slowly welled in his eyes.

Did Mashiba feel nothing of this? Could he so easily forget how passionately he’d made love to him?

Or had he already found somebody else?

“Oh…”

Hatano fought to turn his thoughts away from Mashiba’s lovely eyes, or handsome, masculine features, or the deep, sweet timbre of his voice; but the afterimage of his broad shoulders, rocking above him as they had so many times before upon that very bed, flashed across his closed eyelids.

“Mashiba…”

He could curse them both: himself for this lewd and shameful body, and Mashiba for making it so, and his teeth bit harshly into his lip.

“Damn it…”

Still, no matter how bright and sharp his desire burned inside him, the idea of masturbating was so abjectly pathetic that he could not bring himself to lift a hand in relief.

The autumn moon waxed and waned outside his window without a single word from Mashiba, until one day on an impulse Hatano dialed Kamata’s phone number. The persistent silence had eroded what hopes Hatano had preserved, and he no longer dared to contact Mashiba directly.

“So, you finally gave me a call!” Kamata’s delighted voice greeted him through the receiver, and Hatano felt a small twinge of guilt. It was deplorable of him to call just to probe for news about Mashiba, but Kamata was the last resort he had left.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

Kamata had been with Egi when he called, and as the two men traded Kamata’s cell phone back and forth to speak with him their affection for him came loud and clear across the line, and his guilt swelled in his throat.

“Yukio? Damn fool, how’ve you been! Come around and say hello, I’m always at the cafe.”

Egi’s coffee shop was where he had first met Yuuko. Too many memories had kept him away, until he had grown too embarrassed of his absence to show his face, but Egi’s words, as rough-spoken as always, sounded like forgiveness.

“Yes, I will… when I can.”

“You startin’ to move on then?” It was the first time Hatano had actually accepted his invitation, and Egi’s laughter was light and easy. “I know, it’s gotta be hard to be reminded of her, but… being forgotten is hard on us, too, Yukio.”

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say in reply.

As a young man he had been taken under a fatherly wing by both Kamata and Egi, and it seemed that time and distance had not diminished their fondness for him. How foolish he’d been, fancying himself all alone in the world and putting on a bold front for nothing! He swallowed his laughter, but the mood he projected through the phone seemed to have carried the sentiment across.

“You better come by, hear me?” Egi pressed him one last time before relinquishing the phone to Kamata.

“Whose phone does he think this is?… Make it a day I’m there, too, Hatano!”

Hatano chuckled. “I will. I’ll stop by soon.”

Kamata breathed a sigh of content at the sound of Hatano’s laughter. “Oh, by the way,” he began, as if just recalling something, “you’re good friends with Mashiba, aren’t you?” He paused for a heartbeat. “Has he come down with something serious?”

“What?!”

Kamata’s tone was grave, and the words ‘something serious’ sent a stab of cold horror through Hatano’s heart. His former boss was no-nonsense to a fault, and he was not the type of man to crack nasty jokes like this.

“Di-Did something happen to him?”

“You don’t know?”

“I haven’t heard from him at all recently.…”

“I see,” Kamata said, sounding a little surprised by the sudden fluster in Hatano’s voice. “He’s still coming in to work, but he’s lost his drive and he looks like hell.… This was a while ago, but—oh, it was that day you showed up at the office, actually—we went out for drinks later that night, and he got sick and threw up in the bathroom.”

“He did?”

So that’s why he never came. The knowledge brought a tiny measure of relief, but it was small comfort from his mounting dread at the two months that had passed without contact from Mashiba.

What if Kamata was right? Was Mashiba suffering from some serious illness…? Dark fears gripped him, and a chill shivered down his spine.

“Hatano?”

The long pause had become awkward and Kamata called his name suspiciously, jarring Hatano from his thoughts.

“Uh—yes, sorry, I’m here, just worried,” he blurted out, babbling to fill the silence. “It’s Saturday tomorrow, the office will be closed, right? I’ll go check up on… ah, I don’t have his address.”

“Oh, hm… Hang on a second, I should have it in my planner.”

Kamata read off Mashiba’s address, adding directions to the nearest train station, while Hatano jotted down notes with an unsteady hand. The nub of his pen slipped and skidded on the paper, and he realized how badly the news had shaken him.

“Okay, thanks a lot. I’ll call again,” he said abruptly, now in a rush to bring the conversation to an end, and Kamata obliged him without comment.

“Sure. Let me know if he looks okay.”

“I will. Talk to you later.”

Kamata kept his business and personal relationships strictly divorced, and the fact that Mashiba’s address was recorded in his private planner was evidence of a surprising degree of care. Kamata’s concern was gratifying, both for Hatano, who held Kamata in high esteem, and for Mashiba himself… but he could not deny the more primal part of him that had decidedly mixed feelings on the matter.

“I’ve got it bad, don’t I,” he sighed with a hint of derision. His state of mind would spare no one the nettle of his jealousy, not even Kamata.

His gaze lowered to the scrap of paper at his fingertips. He had just told Kamata on the phone that he would go tomorrow, but his mood was not nearly so leisurely. He glanced at the clock: just past nine in the evening. If he left now, he could easily make it back before the trains stopped for the night.

“I am worried, after all,” he murmured to himself, but the silly excuse brought a wry smile to his lips. No, it was not worry. Worry he could allay with a phone call and a polite inquiry—not to mention this uninvited intrusion would likely do an ailing man more trouble than service.

He just wanted to see him.

I’ll just go get a look at his face, then I’m gone.

He quickly grabbed his jacket and keys, and reached one more time for the phone before thinking better of it. For some unknown reason, his gut warned that a phone call would only give Mashiba the out to run away from him.

“Time to go,” he whispered to banish his hesitation, and with his head held high he set out for Mashiba’s door.

* * *

Meanwhile, illness was far from Mashiba’s worries.

It was simply that his resolution to cast Hatano away had consumed his waking hours with such obsessive brooding that waking hours were now the only ones he had left. Even his dedication to his work had deserted him, and his performance had become cause for both concern and annoyance to all around. Luck had afforded him one small mercy: because Kamata had caught him vomiting into the toilet at Idaten, his boss had apparently chalked it all up to poor health. Better to be judged the idiot who couldn’t keep himself healthy than the truth of a lovesick, moping fool.

Mashiba’s apartment was a one-bedroom and not as spacious as Hatano’s. In retrospect, the layout of all those rooms had been meant for Hatano’s departed wife and child, and when the thought revived the stubborn ache in his heart he promptly drowned it in alcohol. He had never held his liquor particularly well, but with Hatano on his mind he couldn’t even get himself drunk. Each glass served only to churn the nausea roiling in his stomach until he retched and exhausted his strength, and then, at last, he could shut his eyes and black out.

Even the prospect of a lover to distract him could rouse no motivation. Whomever he found would not be Hatano, and he could summon no energy for anybody else.

“I’ll be an alcoholic at this rate.”

Black contempt shadowed his eyes and he curled his lip as one hand swirled the contents of his glass, stiffer with every pour.

He had never known that he was such a sorry, cowardly excuse for a man. There wasn’t a shade in him now of the bold and unassailable force he had long believed himself to be. He had been reduced to a thing fit only for disdain, for repulsion. Every day that passed made him more ashamed to ever show his face to Hatano again, and his bleak mood grew bleaker. He was actually rather fragile and prone to depression, a dear lesson learned from his breakup with Ikawa. If nothing else, at least it could never be said he was ignorant of his faults.

He longed to hold Hatano, to capture that infinite gentleness in his arms. He ached for him, and not only to sate some carnal lust; his fingertips remembered the curious softness of the curves on Hatano’s spare frame, and he wanted to bury himself away in their warmth. Just as fierce as his longing, however, was his admittedly selfish dejection at the lack of contact from Hatano. The long silence only seemed to affirm that when all was said and done, it was Mashiba’s coercion that had been the driving force of their ‘relationship’; Hatano had never been anything more than an unwilling passenger.

Several times he had thought he would call him, just to hear the sound of his voice, but not once had he made it to the first ring before fumbling to hang up the phone, for fear that his resolve would crumble.

He felt as if he were experiencing for the first time what it meant, how it felt, to be ‘madly in love.’

It really is just completely irrational, he mused in detached analysis.

If, in the weeks and months that lay ahead, he managed to pick himself back up again, and if, in that time, Hatano had found his happiness… could he bring himself to go see him?

It was a stupid, pointless daydream, and he couldn’t decide whether to cry or to laugh.

“I still can’t let him go,” he muttered, embarrassed even to say the words, and he took another drag from his cigarette. Stabbing pain erupted down the length of his throat, already seared raw from alcohol, and he crumpled forward in a fit of coughing. A surge of vertigo left his head swimming, and he choked out a groan.

He would take anything, even a hallucination of the man would do; he just wanted to see him. He felt an acrid burning at the back of his nose, and his throat wrung out another cough.

Was it his racking coughs that squeezed this vise around his chest, or was it Hatano?

His last coherent thought before the haze of liquor dulled his wits was this scrap of nonsense.

Mashiba awoke to the distant chime of a doorbell.

Neighbor’s, he thought groggily, rolling over. He had passed out on the living room sofa with nothing but the clothes on his back for warmth, and a shiver ripped down his spine.

“Fuck, my head…”

He heaved himself upright, and immediately a bombshell burst behind his eyelids like a slug to the face. This was no cold, however, just a staggering hangover; he was not so delicate that a common cold could lay him quite this low.

The doorbell rang a second time, resonating horribly with the pounding in his skull, and he was alert enough now to realize that the sound was clearly coming from his own front door.

“Seriously, now…?”

The only visitors at this time of night were door-to-door solicitors peddling strange goods and services. He tried to wait them out, but whoever it was seemed determined to press the button until he answered. Finally he lurched sluggishly to his feet and, without even bothering to glance through the peephole, flung the door open with a scowl.

“The hell do you want?!”

“Whoa!” came a soft cry as the door swung outwards, narrowly missing the shadow that leapt back to safety. The timbre of the voice resembled Hatano’s, and for a second the dulled machinery of Mashiba’s mind sharpened to crystal clarity.

…as if.

But the figure, who had scuttled out of sight behind the door, slowly emerged again, and Mashiba’s heart, already harrowed by binge drinking and insomnia, palpitated so hard he couldn’t breathe.

“Um…” There he was, head tipped slightly to the side, wide eyes looking up at him: Hatano. “Hey, um, are you feeling okay?”

“Huh?” He didn’t understand the question, but just the sound of his voice left him dizzy.

“I heard from Kamata that you’d thrown up or something, so… Are you okay?!”

Mashiba took a deep breath and promptly choked on it, dissolving into an ugly paroxysm of coughs, and Hatano scrambled to steady him in his thin arms.

“Sorry, I’m coming in. Were you sleeping? I’m really sorry.”

Hatano pulled the door shut behind them as Mashiba sagged to the floor of the entryway, coughing violently. He crouched beside him, hands gently stroking his back as his worried eyes peered into his.

“—tano…!”

But at that moment Hatano wrinkled his nose, and his brow furrowed over a stern frown.

“Wait… have you been drinking?”

The reek of it must have given him away.

“So your eyes are bloodshot and you can hardly breathe because you’ve been getting drunk,” Hatano snorted in amazement. “Well, whatever. Just go lie down, I’ll pour you some water.”

“No, I’m—I’m fi…”

His tenacious cough left him helpless to decline, and Hatano all but propelled him back into the living room. Hatano’s frown only deepened when he followed a step behind. His nostrils filled with the stagnant air thick with the stench of booze and cigarette smoke, an explicit testament to the downward spiral of the last few days, and without a word he marched to the balcony and opened the sliding door. Then he made a brisk survey of his surroundings, spotted the kitchen, and instructed Mashiba to sit down before his slim legs strode from the room.

Why—?

Mashiba was too bewildered the whole time to react, and when Hatano disappeared through the doorway he only stared dazedly after him. This was no hallucination, no dream—this was flesh-and-blood Hatano, walking back into his living room holding a glass of water, face pinched with a hint of anger. This was reality.

Pain coursed through him like an electric current and he averted his gaze from Hatano with a stiff grimace, hanging his head to stare at the floor.

“Here, water.”

Hatano’s pale, thin fingers appeared in his field of vision, looking exactly as he had remembered them so many times before, and his liquor-burnt throat stung. He accepted the extended glass and drained it in a single toss, carefully avoiding Hatano’s eyes, and his guest silently retraced his steps to the kitchen. The instant Hatano had vanished again, Mashiba slumped against the sofa like a punctured balloon and slid slowly down onto his side. He squeezed his eyes shut.

He had known that Kamata was kind enough to be concerned for him, but he had never imagined that word would reach Hatano. His mood soured with a surge of irritation. Here he was, desperately struggling to forget him, to give him up, and Hatano could just pop in to lend a hand, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world? Did he mean so little to him?—then again, Mashiba caught himself with a jeer, was that any surprise?

Hatano was a kind man. He really, truly was. So much so that it became cruel, even pitiless. Even a man as difficult to please as Kamata had readily described him so. And what plainer proof of Hatano’s kindness than the six months he had obliged the selfish demands of a pissant like himself?

Shit.

Every glass he had poured to drown his misery had only buoyed it closer to the surface, and it would drive him to folly in the end—their first meeting was graphic enough evidence of that. He dragged himself upright, determined to steer Hatano to the door before those black impulses seized him again, but the man chose that moment to reappear, this time bearing a wet towel, and they locked eyes.

“Uh…”

“Headache, right? Keep it on your forehead, you’ll feel better,” Hatano said, sounding as if nothing at all was out of the ordinary, and the words on Mashiba’s lips slunk unspoken to the back of his throat. The cool press of the towel to his brow was indeed a relief, and he trembled when Hatano’s fingertips grazed his skin.

“Too cold?” The wet towel lay across his eyelids, hiding Hatano’s expression from view, but he could hear the smile in his voice. “I can’t believe you, drinking yourself sick like this.… You’re not that good with alcohol.”

Mashiba heard a slight thickness pinch Hatano’s voice the longer he spoke, and unable to resist his curiosity, he nudged the towel aside. His vision abruptly filled with Hatano, startlingly near and gazing at him with his brows knit gently in worry, and the sight of him spit Mashiba’s heart on a pike. He made to ask why Hatano looked so sad, but his lips had scarcely parted when the other man said in a quiet murmur,

“Did… something else happen with Ikawa?”

He had no name for the emotion that came over him then. He knew only that his vision went dark, and a hot, bitter lump surged like bile from the pit of his stomach, contorting his expression into a terrifying mask.

“That’s none of your fucking business!” he roared, lashing out in knee-jerk fury, though it was not so much anger in his breast as disconsolate misery.

Hatano understood nothing. Absolutely nothing. The day would likely never come when Hatano would understand him, and his despair at this was so devastating that he missed the expression Hatano made in the corner of his eye.

“Oh, right…” Hatano whispered, in a voice Mashiba had never heard before, each syllable shaped by a smile and yet falling flat and toneless from his tongue. Mashiba’s head swiveled automatically to face him, and he forgot to breathe.

Hatano’s dark, dewy eyes had always shone bright and clear. Though Mashiba treated him with violence, and frustration, still they had never dulled. When they made love, his hips would leap to meet each powerful thrust and his chest would heave with sobs, cries of naked lust spilling from his lips, and still his tears had looked chaste and pure as they trickled down his cheeks. Even in the most wanton throes of sex, Mashiba would catch occasional glimpses of Hatano’s natural self—his boyish features, the callowness he had retained even as an adult—and he had found that contrast intensely arousing.

These expressions of his, Mashiba was intimately familiar with. That moment, however, was a lesson that Hatano was in fact a man of many more faces than Mashiba knew.

“Sorry I barged in on you like this.” The ghost of a smile curved his lips, deepening his laugh lines and crinkling the corners of his eyes in a pattern Mashiba had never seen before; his smile spread slowly upwards along the creases of his face, like a door drawing gently, inexorably shut. Mashiba’s eyes flew open wide, and when Hatano rose to his feet he scrambled up as if to follow.

“I’ll get going now,” said Hatano, and for all that he looked and sounded serene Mashiba could sense the invisible wall that had been raised between them.

His hands, which had so often wrenched Hatano’s thin shoulders into his arms, and only once gathered him with any tenderness, somehow could not reach for him now.

“Sure,” he gritted out.

The jut of Hatano’s collarbone seemed sharper. He looked like he had lost some weight. Intuition whispered that he had done this to him, and still Mashiba could not bring himself to speak.

Hatano, for his part, saw only the tight lines of Mashiba’s frown, and none of the hesitation churning beneath. It was an established fact of their relationship, but Hatano was reminded once again that in the end their bodies had been the only means of meaningful communication between them. Only through touch did they sense each other’s emotions, recognize what brought peace and comfort, and what brought hurt. Without it, they were lost.

If he could just take the other man’s hand their fingers might do the talking for them, but Mashiba was projecting a bristling aura of obstinacy that deterred any attempt to touch. Hatano gave a small sigh, and clenched his fist as if to squeeze out the ache inside him.

Long silence stretched between them, both of their gazes pinned to their feet. The seconds drifted by, each man longing to meet the other’s eye and each fearing it above all else, and finding that no tick of the clock brought any more courage than the one before it—

“Mashiba.” Hatano was indeed the first to speak. He seemed to expect that Mashiba would not answer even if he called to him, for he did not bother to wait for a reply before he smiled and said, “Take care.”

Mashiba lifted his ashen face, but Hatano was no longer looking at him. The man had lowered his eyes and turned quietly towards the door, and Mashiba knew, do nothing, say nothing—the time had come to watch him go.

And yet.

“I’ll… walk you there.”

In a flash his hand had darted forward and closed fast around Hatano’s slender arm. Hatano’s large eyes opened wide for a moment, bright reflections trembling on their surface, before relaxing into a look of resigned patience.

Mashiba had seen this kindly look several times before, in the days when spring had only just begun to thaw the winter snow. He would appear at Hatano’s doorstep to crush him ruthlessly against the sheets, and afterwards, when he’d snatched his scattered clothes from the floor and stood silhouetted in the doorway, Hatano would always look at him just like that. And whenever he did, Mashiba knew that a moment later, he would be asking on a hoarse sigh, “when’s next time?”

Tonight, however, those same lips replaced their old line with polite refusal.

“It’s fine, you don’t have to do that.”

Mashiba’s breath hitched as he stared at Hatano, but the little smile and downcast gaze revealed nothing of Hatano’s emotions to him. Nor did Hatano have any insight into the change of heart that had stripped Mashiba of his previous aggression.

“I’ll walk you!”

Hatano’s narrow back was turned to him, and Mashiba could not bear to watch it disappear. He worried his lip with his teeth as he trailed Hatano into the hall and tugged on his shoes.

“Really, you don’t have to.” Tired resignation bled through the strained curve of Hatano’s lips, blooming like ink through paper until Mashiba thought Hatano might simply vanish behind its spreading blackness. They shut the door behind them, jaws clenched tight and brows drawn, each unable to disguise his tension and having no time to examine why. Without a word they stepped out into the dark of the night.

The city unfolded in utter silence around them, broken only by the scrape of their shoes on the pavement. Both of their chests were filled to bursting with all the words they longed to say, but the fear of ruining everything was paralyzing, and so if they opened their mouths at all it was only to sigh, heavy puffs of white that lingered in the cold air. Their heads were bowed, and the black, tacky expanse of asphalt beneath their feet could have been the entirety of the world. It rolled on and on with each step, unchanging and endless, carrying them away, away, away.…

Yet it wasn’t long before the banner above the subway entrance bobbed into view out of the darkness, illuminating a flight of stairs that descended down into the station, and suddenly the asphalt had run out. Not yet, they both prayed, but the glaring light of the station had already taken their strange little bubble away, and all that remained was the hopeless tragedy of a relationship that had been broken from the start. They slowed to a halt at the stairhead, and for a moment they stood there, frozen.

“This is far enough,” Hatano said, the short, simple words his first since departing Mashiba’s apartment. He softened them with a smile, but Mashiba only shook his head, wooden expression unmoved.

“Hey, Mashiba?” he called out, but the man had already charged forward down the staircase, and his back did not answer. Hatano’s shoulders sagged in a resigned sigh as he moved to follow.

The interior of the station was dimly lit, and almost entirely empty at this hour; there was only a single drowsy employee manning a desk in the small office beside the turnstile. Hatano’s eyes flicked to the clock as he approached the ticket machine. He only had a few minutes before the last train departed, and he quickly navigated the touchscreen and purchased a ticket to his connecting station.

His fingers curled around the little scrap of paper.

This is the last time.

He turned away from the machine and gazed intently up at Mashiba. His features were still as handsome as they had ever been. So many times those fierce eyes had raked his naked skin like a brand. So many nights he had writhed sobbing in the grip of those long, elegant fingers, driven to madness by the pleasure of them. His palms tingled with the phantom memory of Mashiba’s thick, muscular shoulders clutched in his grasp. His eyes lingered on Mashiba’s lips, so full and yet not without a hint of cruelty, and he thought of a thousand kisses pressed to those lips but never a single conversation worth a damn between them.

Mashiba had fixed his own brooding stare on Hatano, and he studied the whole of him: the slender shape of his body that he would never touch again, and his small face, small enough to fit in the cradle of his hands; he studied all of him with the manic purpose of a man who was searing every last dimple into his retinas.

Mashiba’s long arms were pinned to his sides, the knuckles of his quivering fists bone-white. Hatano noticed this out of the corner of his eye, and he opened his mouth, took a breath:

“See you.”

His final words were little more than a whisper, a brief ripple in the surface of the silent train station, there and gone in a heartbeat. Hatano had already turned away from him, and Mashiba could not have answered him to save his own sorry life.

Small and helpless though it may seem, Hatano’s back showed him no weakness at all. The man held himself straight and tall as he walked steadily farther and farther out of reach. Mashiba needed only to let him go, and the rest of Hatano’s life would no doubt be just as quiet and powerful, just as limpid, as the steps that now carried him away. Perhaps to a new home, one lovingly built hand in hand with a gentle, peaceful woman, a woman like Hatano himself.

What room would there be for the memory of a man he had once given himself to, so long ago, for so short a time?

No…

Mashiba would never—must never—see his reflection in Hatano’s wide, clear eyes again. His existence could be nothing but an ugly smirch on Hatano’s integrity.

No!

His breath hitched inside his lungs, and when he tried to force the pressure down it only burst out of him in a cough. Pain coiled like barbed wire down the length of his throat and he blinked away the tears that sprang to his eyes, desperate to keep Hatano in sight on the other side of the turnstile.

How small he looked—so much smaller than he ever had before.

Another vicious cough bubbled up from his chest, and Mashiba wheezed in agony.

“Mashiba?”

His lungs rasped with each breath and he doubled over, hands clutching weakly at his coat lapels as he convulsed with coughs. The heaving sounds of his attack brought Hatano up short, and he looked back towards the turnstile in concern.

Don’t—

Mashiba mutely begged Hatano to move on, to find his platform and board his train and never look back, but in a few quick strides Hatano had returned to his side and leaned out over the guardrail, large dark eyes peering at him as he clawed at his chest.

“Are you okay? Maybe you really are sick?”

Don’t, don’t look at me like that, Mashiba thought miserably. Even through the sheen of tears he could make out the warmth in Hatano’s gaze, and it punched through him with all the force of a bullet. Please, you can’t—!

He heard a sharp little gasp in his ear and then he was clutching Hatano’s warm body in his arms, so wonderfully close to his heart.

“What…?”

“Don’t go,” he blurted out, contradicting his own desperate internal monologue. His trembling voice burst out of him, high as a boy’s and nasal with tears, and the only person more surprised by it than Mashiba was Hatano.

“Mashiba?”

“I’m sorry, don’t go—please!”

Though his coughing had subsided the heat behind his eyes had not, and when he pressed them to Hatano’s thin shoulder, the fabric of the man’s coat grew damp beneath his cheek.

“I, I love you!” he sobbed hoarsely, voice cracking, and he no longer held Hatano in his arms so much as clung to him. “Ha-Hatano, I love you!”

He had never heard himself fumbling his words like this before, and he blushed hotly at his pitiful stammering. But then, how could he claim to know anything of shame? He had degraded this man in the most savage of ways and now here he was, no better than a petulant child sulking for his love. Who in the world could possibly be more shameless?

“Mashi—”

“Pl-Please,” he cut in, strangled and all but shouting, “go out with me!”

What was this, middle school? He could have choked on his contempt for his own pathetic confession, but the luxury of cleverness was far beyond him now. “I’m… in love with you.”

Hatano jolted in his embrace, and Mashiba felt him go stiff for a moment before the tension eased slowly out of him on a long exhale. Hatano’s arms rose to slide around him, and sweet, aching hope set Mashiba’s heart hammering in his breast.

But Hatano’s reply was not at all as he expected.

“All right, enough out of you,” he groused, clapping him on the back with a patient chuckle. “I knew you were drunk.”

“Huh?”

Hatano’s flippant tone left Mashiba bewildered and his eyes flew open, still rimmed with tears. He pulled back to read his expression, but Hatano quickly brought his lips to his ear and hissed, “Just follow me!”

A sidelong glance revealed the lone station attendant, still manning his window by the turnstile and now eyeing the two hugging men with disapproval.

“Don’t look!” Hatano whispered sharply, and smoothed his crumpled ticket back through the machine, exiting the turnstile he had just entered. “Whatever, I think I missed the last train anyway. I’ll just stay at yours,” he continued, loud enough to carry to their curious audience of one, but his airy smile did not reach his eyes.

It was true that making a spectacle like this in the entrance of his neighborhood station could make Mashiba’s commute very uncomfortable. Hatano had protected him even from his own recklessness, had remained calm and in control, and the knowledge stung Mashiba bitterly.

“Let’s go,” said Hatano softly, one hand coming to rest on Mashiba’s broad back when the other man did not raise his head, and he nudged him forward. Mashiba obeyed in silence, shuffling with heavy feet toward the deserted stairwell. Together they began to climb, moving out of sight of the attendant, and as soon as they had gained the first landing Hatano sagged against the wall behind him.

“For Christ’s sake,” he said, heaving a long sigh. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Mashiba did not miss the quiver in his voice. “Hatano…” He turned around, finding the other man had buried his face in his hands, narrow shoulders shaking, and in an instant Mashiba had gathered him into his arms.

“You come here, you use this station, every day! What if that guy remembers you?”

To Mashiba’s relief Hatano returned his embrace, this time with matching warmth, and Mashiba pressed his cheek to the silken head of hair tucked under his chin.

“Hatano…”

So fiercely did the man cling to him that Hatano’s thin fingers dug into his shoulder blades like claws, but Mashiba reveled in that sweet sting of pain. He answered Hatano’s urgency with countless kisses to the crown of his head and frantic stroking of his hair.

“I thought you got tired of me,” Hatano mumbled into his chest, and Mashiba intuited that this was reproach for the weeks without contact. This meant that at least Mashiba’s love for him did not go entirely unrequited, and close behind that realization came a flush of happiness that suffused him to the very tips of his fingers.

“Why?” he asked, nibbling gently on Hatano’s earlobe, and when Hatano’s lips remained stubbornly shut, he traced the seam of them with his tongue until they parted for him.

“I figured from the start there’s no way a good-looking guy like you would stick around someone like me anyway,” he said finally, eyes glistening. “That guy, your ex—what’s his name… Ikawa? He acted like an asshole but he looked like a model.… If that’s what I’m up against, you really think someone like me’s gonna have a chance?”

“What? I don’t want anything to do with that piece of shit anymore—”

“Well, how the hell would I know!” Hatano snapped at him, bristling with resentment. “The only thing I know about you is your body!”

Mashiba winced, unable to argue.

“You loved him so much that when he broke up with you, you raped a man you’d just bumped into on the street! For all I know of course you might end up getting back together!” Mashiba could only scowl in silence as tears welled fresh in Hatano’s eyes, on the verge of spilling over. “And if you did, well, I thought… I thought, so be it. That’s what I told myself.”

For all his troubled frowns and cold callousness, Mashiba’s lovemaking had always been so tender and passionate. How could he have ever hoped not to fall for him?

“You’re still young, and attractive, you could find somebody new tomorrow if you wanted to, but…”

And now that the weight of him, the smell of him, was ingrained in his skin; now that he had realized that Mashiba’s passion could fill the space that loneliness had hollowed out inside of him—

“If you leave me, then who…” His gaze slipped briefly away, face crumpling into a sad, mocking little smile, “who else is going to take me?”

Mashiba’s heart throbbed in sympathy. He searched desperately for some smart turn of phrase to soothe him, but nothing emerged but the pinched sound of his panting. Instead, he yanked Hatano towards the ascending staircase, and with an iron grip on the smaller man’s shoulders he resumed the climb.

“What the hell!” Hatano cried out in protest, but Mashiba only squeezed him harder, pinning him to his side.

“Let’s get back to my place,” he said, practically dragging him up the stairs in his haste. “I don’t think any of the things I want to tell you are safe to say here.”

“It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it.…”

But as much as Mashiba longed for the privacy of his home, there could be no denying his dizzying hunger for the warmth of Hatano’s body so deliciously tangible against his own, for the high quaver of his voice so close to his ears.

“Mashi—”

On the middle landing, with a flight still to shield them from the street, Mashiba showered Hatano with kisses that were so brazenly erotic, and that continued for so long and so sweetly, that there wouldn’t have been a hope in the world of claiming drunken tomfoolery again, had there been another soul to witness them.

* * *

His front door had been locked for less than an hour before Mashiba was in front of it again, keys jangling in his trembling fingers, and though Hatano noticed his unsteady hand he chose not to comment on it. Mashiba swung open the door and stood aside to admit him, and no sooner had Hatano toed off his shoes than those trembling fingers reached for him, closed around him, and he shut his eyes, surrendering himself in bliss. His lips, which had been stolen in the shadows of the subway station, parted eagerly for Mashiba’s now as the man kissed him over and over again. Despite his rapt expression, however, fat teardrops skidded down his cheeks, salting their kiss with bitterness.

“I’m sorry, Hatano,” Mashiba said, drawing back a hair’s breadth to make a husky apology, tongue heavy with the taste of Hatano’s tears.

“Why…?” Hatano’s eyes fluttered open wide, wounded, face pale and childlike with alarm, and Mashiba ducked his head to lay a kiss at his temple.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you go.”

“Mashi—”

“I love you, I’m sorry!” he interrupted, crushing him to his chest, and whatever Hatano might have said was swallowed by the fervent sweep of his tongue into Hatano’s mouth.

“Do-Don’t apologize,” he answered breathlessly, fingertips tracing the gelled strands of Mashiba’s hair. “If you feel so bad about it, then,” a whisper of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, “just, don’t ever let me go, again.…” The tail of his sentence dissolved into a sob, and Mashiba’s heartbroken expression beckoned him to ease it by angling in for a kiss.

“I love you, Mashiba.”

“Hatano—”

“Don’t… Don’t tell me you’re none of my business.”

“I’m sorry, I won’t, never again!”

“I love you, so much.…” He wanted Mashiba to capture him, bind him, make it so Hatano could never leave his side. What good was freedom if Mashiba wouldn’t be there? “Please…” He welcomed all the greedy tyranny of his love.

He had always so despised being alone.

“If only I could have your kid,” Mashiba said with a grin belied by the earnest yearning in his tone, and a few more of Hatano’s tears trickled free, following the creases of his laugh lines as he chuckled.

“Then I could make you happy in every single way,” Mashiba continued, and a lump rose abruptly in Hatano’s throat. Was it truly the same sleek, polished Mashiba waxing so sentimental to him now?

“You kidding me?” he choked out, face screwing up in tear-streaked furrows.

As if he had room left in his heart for anything else, when it was already bursting at the seams with just those words from him.

“Between the toddlers at school, and you… I’ve already got my hands full with kids.”

Careful not to impede the hands currently working to divest him of his shirt, Hatano rose to his tiptoes and drank in the lush taste of this man who now belonged to him, and him alone.

It was his first time in Mashiba’s bed and the unfamiliar layout of the room gave him pause, but Mashiba smothered his hesitation in a bone-crunching embrace until he relaxed against him. What little remained of his clothing was stripped from him with keen impatience, while his hard nipples proved an irresistible distraction for Mashiba’s mouth. A grunt of pleasure escaped him as Mashiba rolled one of the nubs on his tongue, and his hips jerked forward, chasing elusive relief. He had not permitted himself release in all that long, long time, and the promise of it now thrummed through him like an electric current. He couldn’t have him fast enough, and when Mashiba settled on top of him he snaked one hand down between the man’s legs, tracking every catch in Mashiba’s breath from behind lowered eyelids. His desperation was palpable, and yet Mashiba would do no more than bait him with lazy foreplay; his penis was already wet, clear liquid dribbling from the head, but Mashiba studiously avoided it.

In place of verbal encouragement, Hatano dragged his tongue along Mashiba’s collarbone, collecting the sweat that had beaded there. He felt the shudder that rocked through his lover, and then two fingers were wedged into his mouth. He immediately curled his tongue around the invaders, sucking them like a man starving. The thrust and twist of Mashiba’s fingers in the cavern of his mouth mirrored the movements that Mashiba made to work him open, and he whimpered high in his throat. His thighs rubbed against each other as a spike of hunger set his hole contracting on empty air.

“Mashiba,” he whined when the man withdrew his fingers, but Mashiba only trailed them down to fondle his chest. The gentle caress was a mere droplet of water against the blazing inferno inside, instantly boiled to steam and forgotten.

Mashiba had been the one to cultivate his sexual masochism, and Mashiba was the only man who could satisfy it. How could he slake his body’s ravenous lust without Mashiba? He needed more.

“Mashiba,” he breathed, slowly sliding the ring of his fingers up and down the slippery heat of Mashiba’s jutting erection, and with a flash of a sheepish smile, he lowered his face to meet it.

“Whoa, Hatano—!” Mashiba started in shock, bolting up to tear him away. He had taught Hatano almost everything of sex, but this was the one act he had never demanded of him. Perhaps he had assumed it was a line that Hatano would refuse to cross.

To Hatano, it was these small leniencies that betrayed Mashiba’s pretenses of tyranny.

“Can I… suck you?”

“But, you don’t…” Mashiba stumbled, bewildered, and Hatano let out a snort of laughter.

Had Mashiba forgotten how many times this part of him, now nestled within Hatano’s hands, had already been inside his body?

“This,” he drawled with a devilish smirk, and laved the head with his tongue, “is mine, isn’t it?” Every part of Mashiba belonged to him; there wasn’t even a line left to cross.

“But, whoa, wait—”

Mashiba’s spluttering fell on deaf ears as Hatano eased him into his mouth. He teased him with his tongue, learning the shape of him before he began to bob his head, mimicking the handful of pornographic videos he had seen.

Oh, it moved…

The tongue was second only to fingertips for most sensitive part of the human body, and now every one of those nerve endings sang with delight at the feeling of his lover throbbing and twitching in his mouth like a caged animal. He could just imagine this deep inside of him, forcing open that most hidden, private part of him, ravaging him, and he moaned helplessly, desire pooling between his legs.

Hatano was engrossed in fellating Mashiba, lips and tongue laving and sucking his length, and for a few moments Mashiba could only stare at him, dazed. Soon enough pleasure got the better of him and he tipped his head back, groaning roughly. His hips began to snap off the bed, driving the bulbous head of his penis to the back of Hatano’s throat, but Hatano had no mind to stop. He craved him, would take any part of him, his lovely fingers or the blistering-hot sex that filled his mouth, as long as it could reach the sordid ache inside. He wanted to feel Mashiba impale him, wanted Mashiba to break him, to hear the bed scrape the floorboards with the violence of every thrust, his screams swallowed in a kiss.

Far short of the boldness to ask for his heart’s debauched desire aloud, he gazed up at Mashiba, teary-eyed and lips still stretched around his girth, and whatever mute plea Mashiba saw in him seemed to succeed in conveying his meaning.

“Yeah, I know…” Mashiba murmured, a thin smile crinkling his eyes, and Hatano’s heart twinged at the parade of emotions that flitted across his face: resignation, a surge of passion that bulged beneath his skin, and the indelible scar of something like pain. He took Hatano by the chin, steering him upright, and wiped his thumb tenderly across Hatano’s slick, glossy bottom lip.

“You need it there so bad now,” he whispered with deliberate honey in his voice, “you could never go back to doing it with women, huh?”

Hatano only wrapped his arms around Mashiba’s neck, as if he could strangle the echo of sour regret out of his taunting.

“Do you want me?” Mashiba goaded him. “Want to do it with me?”

“Yes!” he snarled, something awful tightening in his chest like a vise, and he camouflaged it by lunging forward to crush their lips together. His eyes narrowed to slits, still locked on to Mashiba’s even as they gasped into each other’s mouths. Their tongues entwined, smearing a sheen of their shared saliva between them. These kisses were for giving, not for taking, each more desperate than the other to take his lover over the line, to stoke his pleasure past the point of no return.

“Gonna give it to you hard,” Mashiba said, breaking the seal of their kiss with a wet pop. “Gonna make it so good for you, you’ll be out of your mind.” His lips curved into a little smile threaded with filthy promise, and Hatano trembled in anticipation. His fingers were cupped in Mashiba’s and directed to his own chest, and the unexpected frisson of heat at the touch of his own hand shocked him.

“Play with yourself,” Mashiba prompted him softly. He jerked his index finger across one nipple, stiff with embarrassment, but the pleasure that tingled in its wake soon lulled him into a steady rhythm. The dusky pebbles stood at proud attention, still wet from the earlier ministrations of Mashiba’s tongue, and Hatano pinched them up sharply, kneading the nubs of flesh with the pads of his fingers.

“Oh, that’s how you like it?” sounded a teasing voice low and hot in his ear, and he shivered. “I’ll do it like that from now on.”

His penis was half-hard and encased in the tunnel of Mashiba’s long fingers, but the touch was a torment, never straying below to the grasping, hungry core of him. He pumped his hips forward against Mashiba’s hand, lifting his bottom from the bedsheets and inviting his lover to explore the bared curve of skin.

“Ma-Mashiba, Mashiba, Mashiba—!”

But the man only grazed his touch along the crack, rudely spurning his invitation. Hatano’s hips flitted upwards again in miserable supplication, and as if in punishment Mashiba clamped his other hand so hard around him that he wrenched his head back, spine bending like a bow.

“Pl-Please… I, I need it, please—!”

Mashiba’s fingertips flirted with the cleft of his cheeks, nudging them apart only to retreat again. Hatano writhed in sweet agony as he pleaded for mercy, acutely aware of Mashiba’s roving gaze upon him. Mashiba was squinting in satisfaction, and his lips parted in a sensual smile that dripped sex and wickedness. Hatano cringed at the sight of it, all too familiar with that expression on his face, and with the depraved sorts of commands that invariably followed.

“Give me your hands,” he said, and though his cadence remained even and gentle, his clasp around Hatano’s wrists was not; Mashiba pulled his hands away from his nipples and down to his groin with unyielding force.

“Come on, hold them open.”

To Hatano’s mounting horror his legs were spread apart and folded, and as Mashiba tried to guide him to support the backs of his thighs, an obscene vision of himself flashed to the front of his mind: legs splayed, his own hands parting his flesh to expose his puckered entrance, presenting himself…

“What, no—no, I can’t, don’t…!” he gasped, and burst into motion, twisting away to escape his mortifying imagination.

“No buts,” Mashiba spoke over him, his tone velvet on steel. “You need it, don’t you?”

He twined their fingers together and once again ushered him to hold his legs apart. “Let me see. Show me where you want me to play with you.”

Hatano gnawed at his lip, rigid with humiliation, but he had the distinct impression that Mashiba was trying to force him to let go of something. Even now, the man was resorting to maneuvers like this outrageous pose to test whether or not Hatano had truly chosen him.

Stupid bastard, you haven’t learned a thing since I met you. Every time, Mashiba wounded himself with his own insecurities, and every time, he could only assuage them by subjecting Hatano to these games.

All right then. Hatano’s lips quirked in wry surrender. I’ll just have to show him.

If he was not a substitute for another, not merely an outlet for the anguish of old heartbreak; if Mashiba wanted him for the man that he was, then he would not remain a passive recipient. The sins of lust and obsession held both of them in thrall, and he would leave no doubt in Mashiba’s mind just which of them was the guiltier. He gripped his thighs tightly in his shaking hands.

“Here,” he said, unable to steady the quaver in his voice. He had spread his legs as far apart as they would go, and the strain had them twitching in spasms against his fingers.

He was being watched. Mashiba was watching him, those beautiful eyes fixed on the shameless fluttering of the hole between his cheeks. The weight of Mashiba’s attention prickled at his body like a physical caress.

“To-Touch me, here.”

He was so flushed and wet between his legs that even room temperature felt incredibly cool against his exposed skin. Breath caught in someone’s throat, but he could not be sure if he had made the hungry little noise, or Mashiba. He imagined what he must look like, willingly assuming this degrading position, and the imagining of it laced that degradation with a deviant kind of thrill.

He stole a sultry glance up at his partner through tear-studded lashes, only to discover that Mashiba had frozen stock-still, eyes wide in shock. Hatano’s gut went cold with dismay, afraid that Mashiba was disgusted by his forwardness, but all he could do was screw his eyes shut and beg.

“Mashiba,” he called to him, voice high and thin, “come on…!”

“Hatano…” Mashiba sighed, a puff of breath that ghosted across the inside of Hatano’s thigh, and then the flat of his tongue painted a broad stripe over his throbbing entrance.

“Ah, ah…!”

“You really, just… never cease to surprise me.”

Two fingers wormed their way inside and pulled apart, stretching the tight ring of muscle, but before Hatano could even register the chill of the air Mashiba’s mouth had returned to seal the opening. He wedged his hot, slippery tongue into the crevice and then dragged it out again, over and over.

“I just… I can’t get enough.” Mashiba’s saliva had begun to seep inside, soaking his inner walls.

“S-Stop… talk—ah, there!” he cried, fighting to speak through the spasms shuddering through him. He contorted his body in pleasure, but the movement only served to stimulate him from the inside, ripping more breathless cries from his lips. His legs threatened to collapse, still jerking in his hands with irregular convulsions, and he dug his fingers into his flesh in a desperate bid to maintain his hold.

“Want me to lick inside you, too?” came a muffled offer, Mashiba’s lips pressed to his thigh as his fingers plowed the slick, eager heat of him, and Hatano all but screamed in response, grinding himself onto those fingers with what little mobility he had. Mashiba massaged his way deeper, working in to the last knuckle while his tongue snaked around Hatano’s painfully engorged erection. His free hand stretched up across Hatano’s neglected torso to pinch the hard jut of his left nipple. The simultaneous assault on the most erogenous parts of his body was the spark to Hatano’s powder keg, and the blood in his veins ignited red-hot, sending him cowering back in fear. His head thrashed from side to side and his lungs seized in suffocating pleasure, chest heaving shallowly.

“Oh, no, no, I can’t…!” he sobbed, a flood of tears blearing his vision, and his thoughts turned to syrup in his head. The sound of his own voice squealing like a bitch in heat brought him back to himself, but only for an instant before the sinuous motion of Mashiba’s fingers inside of him swept him away again.

Unlike Mashiba himself, for whom arousal ended neatly in ejaculation, Hatano’s torture at his lover’s fine hands could continue indefinitely. Mashiba skirted his orgasm with practiced ease, sharpening Hatano’s need to unbearable agony. Mashiba kept him staggered on the edge of climax, the delicious rub of fingers so deep inside of him fulfilling him more now than any touch to his manhood.

“Ma-Mashiba, Mashiba!” Hatano’s hands had long since fallen away from supporting his legs, and now they clawed at the sheets in mindless delirium. He bucked against Mashiba, his entire body jerking like a fish on a line.

“S-Sto… that’s eno… enough!” he snapped, the intended bite of his words rather undercut by his husky slurring. He narrowed his eyes in a tearful glare, oblivious to their glaze of desire that sent a secret spike of lust through Mashiba.

“Giving up already? I don’t think so.”

“I can’t… can’t take any more!” he rasped, but Mashiba dismissed him with a low chuckle.

“Liar.”

He guided the head of his penis forward to kiss Hatano’s pulsating entrance, and the erotic promise alone nearly brought Hatano to orgasm. He bit down viciously on his own lip to master himself, fresh tears springing to his eyes.

“I’m sorry, don’t cry,” Mashiba soothed him, voice soft with remorse as his tongue dipped to skim the teardrops from his cheeks. Hatano wondered what they tasted like.

“Was that too much? I’m sorry,” Mashiba continued gently, the apology a hiss of hot breath against his ear, and then ever so slowly, he began to ease inside.

“Oh—!”

Every searing inch of him filled Hatano body and soul, left him trembling in both electric pleasure and grateful relief at once. He cried out helplessly into the dark quiet of the bedroom, his voice thick and sweet as honey, and Mashiba’s lips curled into a satisfied smirk.

“I love the sound of your voice.”

“Hm…?”

“It really turns me on,” Mashiba captured an earlobe between his teeth, tongue flicking against it as he whispered, “makes me want to do all kinds of dirty things to you.”

That’s my line, Hatano retorted to himself, but all that escaped his mouth was another aching cry.

Mashiba pushed inside with a care and patience that Hatano had never seen from the man. He sheathed himself inch by painstaking inch, leaning in close to murmur, “don’t ever forget this shape,” and Hatano glowered at the ridiculous request.

“As if I could,” he huffed, and squeezed around him in retaliation. “You’re the one who left me all alone for so long.”

“Uh,” Mashiba groaned at the sudden pressure, and the sound only made Hatano hungrier for the man. “I’m sorry.”

He wound his arms around him, tugging him close. “It’s been a while.… Be a little kinder.”

“Hatano,” Mashiba croaked his name, face crumpling, and Hatano nuzzled his cheek against his, a silent reassurance that he was truly here to stay. It was also a convenient opportunity to hide his tears. His strangled voice had no doubt already given him away, but Mashiba always looked so heartbroken when he cried.

“I really missed you!” he muttered tartly.

Mashiba shifted against him and he could feel the man’s throat working before he repeated, “I’m sorry.”

Those two words pricked Hatano’s breast, and as if to allay the sting his body held tight to the indisputable connection between them, drawing his partner deeper even as his breath grew ragged.

“You can stop making love to me like you can’t believe I’m here,” he said flatly, and after that Mashiba threw himself into reassuring him, caressing every slope and valley of Hatano’s body and swallowing his gasps in his mouth.

“Mm, oh, Mashiba…”

Each powerful thrust hitched his body up the mattress and Hatano clung to Mashiba for dear life, his lips calling a litany of his name and begging kiss after kiss. Mashiba buried himself to the hilt and stilled for a moment, pulling both of them away from the peak, and Hatano’s inner walls quivered in protest. When Mashiba reared back to slam home again Hatano surged forward to meet him, and he lost himself utterly to the slip and burn of skin against skin, and the spiraling ecstasy of their bodies coming together.

“Oh, Mashi—ah, no… no, oh!” Hatano arched up off the bed, slender hips twisting as he moaned in mindless pleasure.

“What’s wrong?” Mashiba crooned to him. “Does it feel good? Bad? Does it hurt?” But the kinder his tone, the more wicked his intent; he began to roll his hips in circles inside of him, grinding out a staccato rhythm that pitched Hatano’s moans to screams.

“Go-Good… it’s—oh, yes, ah!” he wailed, losing himself mid sentence. Mashiba’s penis pumped between his legs with a steady wet squelch, spearing him open and touching the deep, hidden places that made his eyes water and his toes curl. Heat crackled through him with dizzying intensity, leaving fear and willing surrender in equal parts in its wake.

“G-Give it… to me,” he panted, mouth lolling open with every harsh exhale, “bigger, harder—”

Mashiba choked in surprise, but his brazen dirty talk had the desired effect: he’d barely finished speaking before Mashiba’s erection bulged thicker and hotter inside him.

“You’re so…” Mashiba said on a sigh, in a voice that could have been appalled, or impressed, or both, but Hatano was far too close to the edge to care which.

“I’m, I’m coming,” he whimpered, hips writhing furiously, “I’m gonna—!”

“Hold it, just a little longer.”

Hatano’s face was so flushed that his head ached, and his pulse pounded in his temples. He screwed his eyes shut in a grimace, and Mashiba ducked down to whisper in his ear, “If you can hold it, I’ll come inside you.”

Hatano’s penis had been bobbing against the grooves of Mashiba’s abdomen, until fingers wrapped around him and squeezed. Hatano thrashed, keening through his teeth, and his gut clenched with the swooping rush of a phantom climax without ejaculation.

“I know you like it, getting it inside.”

“N-No!” Hatano started in hot embarrassment. It was the one thing he had never begged for, closely guarding what he had believed to be his last dirty little secret. But Mashiba had known, and the blaze of humiliation alone nearly brought him to finish in Mashiba’s fist, his voice gurgling thickly in his throat. His thighs shook as Mashiba pounded through a fresh wave of spasms, and it was all he could do to hold on and rock his hips in clumsy time.

It had been so long, and Mashiba’s lovemaking was so unusually devoted, that Hatano felt his pleasure melting him right down to his bones.

“I’m gonna come—!”

Mashiba was doubled over above him, breathing hard and shoulders heaving. The hand still gripping his penis began to jerk him roughly, and Hatano butted his nose into the side of Mashiba’s neck, the points of his teeth digging gently into his lover’s flesh, and then—

“I love you,” Mashiba whimpered, more sob than speech, and Hatano’s eyes flew open wide.

“Oh…!” His heart swelled with something wild and bright, and suddenly he needed Mashiba deeper, closer. His inner walls milked Mashiba’s pistoning length with greedy contractions, desperate to devour him whole, and in a few thrusts Hatano had Mashiba at his mercy.

“Hngh!”

Mashiba lunged forward, biting into Hatano’s earlobe as his orgasm was ripped out of him, and Hatano savored the blissful warmth that spurted inside even as Mashiba grunted one last time in his ear, a hint of frustration in his voice.

Mashiba hovered over him as they both sucked in long, deep breaths, and then he sagged, his full weight collapsing down onto Hatano’s chest.

“You’re too heavy.”

“Mm, sorry,” Mashiba croaked, and the dull exhaustion in his voice reminded Hatano that Mashiba hadn’t been feeling well. He hastily craned his neck to get a look at the man’s face, only to find that Mashiba’s eyes were open and studying him intently.

“What…?” Hatano tensed on reflex and his pelvic muscles squeezed around the blunt pressure of Mashiba’s penis, still sheathed inside him. He darted up, flustered and wiggling to slide free before Mashiba pinned him back down to the mattress.

“Not yet,” came a murmur in his ear, followed by a feather-light kiss, “let me stay inside you.”

“But… weren’t you sick?”

“I was just drinking anything I could find. Now that I got some exercise I burned it off.”

Mashiba was already hard again, and each pulse of the thick veins that ran along his shaft brought fresh blood to Hatano’s cheeks.

“What, you’re blushing? What’s wrong? All those dirty things we just did, and you’re still shy?”

“B-But,” he stammered, “that was…”

That was in the moment, when passions rode high and momentum swept away his inhibitions. But it was the first time in this position, cradled soft and still in Mashiba’s arms, and now that the fog of lust had dissipated Hatano found it all too intimate to bear.

“There’s nothing going on with me and Ikawa,” Mashiba promised quietly, and Hatano’s gaze, which had been flitting nervously across the ceiling, snapped back to him. “Seriously, that was it, he’s out of my life now.… Please, believe me.”

The beginnings of a sulky pout turned down the corners of his lips, and Hatano couldn’t help the smile that bubbled out of him.

“Mm-hm,” he returned fondly, but the man must have mistaken his amusement for distrust because in the next instant he had pulled himself out in a sullen huff. Goosebumps erupted across Hatano’s skin at the raw drag inside his sensitive channel, and he winced as he rode it out.

“If you can’t believe me, then stay and keep an eye on me.”

No sooner had the head popped free of his entrance than Mashiba was angling it back inside, slowly sinking down again, and Hatano’s legs kicked out on either side of him, feet catching in the rumpled sheets and yanking them heedlessly aside.

“I know, I’ve been the worst bastard to you ever since we met, but… let me take care of you.”

“I-I, I, ah—!” Mashiba was speaking to him more tenderly than ever before and Hatano wanted nothing so badly as to answer, but the words he fought to shape only tumbled out as moans.

“I love you.”

“Don’t—!”

Mashiba had maintained his lazy rocking pace and yet Hatano burst into motion, thrashing like a rabbit in a trap, and his hunter blinked down at him with the ghost of a smirk.

“I noticed it before too, but… does it turn you on, when I say, ‘I love you?’”

“Sto-Stop… talking!”

Mashiba hummed in apparent satisfaction and dipped down to nibble on an earlobe, the nervous boy of a moment ago once again the brazen conqueror.

“Were your ears always this sensitive?” he whispered, each word a warm puff of air. “You’re so cute, seriously…”

“Liar, you’re all lies—ah, no, don’t lick my ear!”

“No, I mean it.” Mashiba’s lips traced a constellation of delicate kisses across his face, rounding the crest of his cheekbones and dotting his eyelids, and his hips bucked even at these chastest of touches. In both word and body Mashiba was cherishing him like a precious treasure, and to be adored so sweetly was more arousing than any wild foreplay.

What is this…?

Physical stimulation was a pale mockery next to this, this leaping ecstasy that he felt in his heart. Mashiba’s dark eyes were fixed on him, and in all the many lewd positions he had been made to assume Hatano had never felt so exposed. He saw no hint of ridicule there, however, only the soft, open gaze of a man in love, and it stabbed into his chest.

Sadness was as far away as it had ever been, his emotions were at peace, and still tears welled in his eyes. Mashiba’s expression turned stiff at the sight of them, and now, Hatano finally understood the reason why.

“Feels good…”

Hatano reached for him and Mashiba obliged by scooping him up off the bed, his large hands splayed across his back. He bounced him gently in his lap, and even as the easy rhythm scattered sparks of pleasure inside him, Hatano felt so cocooned in relief that he could have almost drifted asleep.

“Mashiba, I think… even if you didn’t touch me at all, I could come just from you watching me.…”

“…huh?”

It was likely less the actual content of the sentence, and more the honeyed purr in his voice and the drape of his arms around him, that flushed Mashiba’s cheeks their dark crimson. Hatano stroked his fingers through Mashiba’s slightly coarse hair, and nipped the tip of his nose with his lips.

“Do it,” he breathed, hooded eyes beckoning him closer. “Don’t take your eyes off me, ever.”
The lust in his voice carried an undertone of innocence that pulled Mashiba in like a magnet, and he sealed their mouths with a kiss, chasing the taste of those words with his tongue.

And after that came all the long hours of the night—time enough to discover that the bodies they thought they had memorized were suddenly nothing like before, that every sound and sensation between them was new and wonderful; and love made them bold and shameless when they wrapped themselves in the darkness of the bedroom, and abandoned themselves to all the things that lovers do.