[Kaoru, Kyo] All of Me
Notes: Ebizo scurries out of Kaoru's apartment after some hasty afternoon kink, in not-quite-enough time for Kaoru to finish cleaning up. Love and chaos ensues.
Like putting on a pair of flip flops, sliding key into hole, sliding dick into mouth, sliding fingers between smaller fingers and toes around plastic thong of that flip flop and kyo turned the knob.
"Hello?" blond stuck out in many directions, thrust between wood and night sky. Kaoru's apartment was bright, lights on hasty and uneven. kyo shut the door to their home behind him. One of their many homes. Stepping out of his tactlessly red flip flops, he strolled in. He slid the strap of his bag off his shoulder, lifted it over his head and just as he was going to drop it on the couch, he saw It.
Lacey, black, trashy, shiny. A Cup.
"Kaoru?" A little louder now.
"In the shower!"
Kaoru spat out the water that pooled in his mouth when he shouted, and with the relief of having just beaten Kyo's arrival, watched the last of his cum wash down the drain. His muscles twitched with the lingering strain; shudder traced down spine and he exhaled.
"I'll be out in a minute, sorry!"
He coughed, and pushed his hair back off his face, swept wet and black, and reached out to turn the shower off.
Long and pale, even in the height of summer, his middle finger stretched out to hook under the material webbing one cup to the other. He lifted it up carefully, hesitated, then continued. kyo wasn't sure what he was looking for. What woman wrote their name in a bra anyway?
He dropped it, watched it splat wide open across a black leather couch cushion.
Wet, damp and marked by Ebizo in black and blue crescent moons down throat to collar. Kaoru's bare feet left the shape of him wet on the floor, padding toweled and hidden down the hallway. His voice slid out of the shadows before he ducked into his room.
"Be out in a sec. Just gonna get dressed."
The towel was dropped to soak damp on his bedroom floor, and Kaoru bent to shuffle through his dresser, denim sliding on sans underwear in a nice, manly transition from the white panties shoved deep in his laundry bin when he realized the time.
"Wanna order something to eat?" drifted out of his bedroom, on a lilt of a voice. "I'm starving. We can get a pizza or chinese, what are you feeling?"
"Pizza," muttered and kyo's feet were cold and bare on the floor. He ran a hand through his hair, pushed it back like mowing a lawn and he shook it free again. His scalp was still sore in places from a man with the same amount of syllables to his name.
Something heavy throbbed in the pit of his chest. He looked back down at the bra. That goddamn bra.
Kneeling down, hands flat to either side, a flesh frame, he lowered his nose carefully. It didn't smell like perfume. Didn't smell like anything but Kaoru's laundry detergent.
He did the bitch's laundry too?
"Hm?"
Kaoru fingers tugged his shirt the last inch over his head, pushed still damp hair back and he was open, naked on display with how the wet kept it a solid black sweep out of his face. Padding out of the room, he slid from shadows into the living room, to Kyo's back, crouching down over his couch.
His lips twitched, quirked in puzzlement.
"What?"
"Pizza," rising declarative, kyo turned on his heels to peer over a tshirt slathered shoulder. His eyes were as naked as Kaoru's and unusually direct. He looked at Kaoru with narrowed slits. "Who is she?"
Kyo's eyes were sharp, unexpectedly hard and Kaoru, startled, paused where he stood mid-motion.
"What?"" he said dumbly, blinking twice as a furrowed brow transitioned into a puzzled pull on his lips. "Who?"
When he stood, the bra came up in his right fist. kyo held it out between them, two small breast cups danglin like a crushed butterfly's wings on either side of his knuckles. Black lace hung half wilted, wrinkled. Then he noticed the rising bruises.
Frowning faintly, kyo found a couple knots in the wood flooring to stare at. "The woman this belongs to. If you were busy, you could have just told me, I wouldn't have interrupted."
Kaoru stared.
Shit. He blinked, struggled to think, past shit, again, and a ridiculous urge to let out something bordering dangerously on a hysterical giggle.
This isn't funny. He blinked.
Shit.
"It's not," he said finally, lips struggling around coherency, "It's not what you're thinking."
It hung deflowered by his side, clutched in a loose fist. That frown wasn't going away.
"What do you mean? You... wait..." kyo looked up, startled into meeting eyes again for a brief second. "You had a threesome?"
"What?"
Kaoru was so startled, for a moment, he laughed out loud. Knew Kyo well enough to know better and still it bubbled up, before Kaoru bit it down and stared at him. He shook his head, and shook it again emphatically, helpless.
"No. No. It's not like that. There-- isn't someone, don't worry."
Wrong answer.
He hated the goosebumps as they came, as they crept up his skin and into his muscles. He hated the cold they brought, the twinges of sting they bloomed in his stomach. He hated it as much as everyone else who knew him hated it, but he couldn't shut it off completely.
kyo shrugged. "Well... whose, then? How'd this get on your couch?" quiet, defeated.
Aw damn.
Kaoru struggled, vainly gnawed on his lower lip and shrugged, helpless and defeated, but he took a step closer. Another, close enough, reach out and hook his fingers in one of the bra's satiny straps and leant forward, kissing Kyo's opposite cheek in a light, what he hoped was reassuring peck.
"I--" he paused, and pulled his own lower lip deep into his mouth for a tormented section as his shoulders rose and fell.
"It's complicated," he offered weakly, struggled, and he looked at Kyo in vague desparation. "-- Complicated, but-- not."
They were a band known for many things.
"Why can't you just tell me?"
Being direct was one of them.
At a faint tug on the bra, he let it loose. Kaoru's lips were warm and dry. Like this, Kaoru's ink spilled onto his chest right in front of him. He touched it with two fingerpads, drifted the circle's curve up and away, on pink skin that was spotted with teeth marked crescents. He had some on his thighs.
Kyo's fingers touched, traced, and Kaoru felt the soft sting of bruises aching deep, resonating through his skin in a way that had always made him shudder. He took a deep breath, rested empty hand on Kyo's arm and let it slide, fall.
Close your eyes for bravery and take a deep breath.
"It's mine."
Searching for Kaoru's eyes, now he was the only one making contact.
Numb. "What?"
"Mine," Kaoru said quickly, and the paleness of his cheeks seemed to be at war for victory with a rising flush. The result was whitewashed, Kaoru stone cold but for two hot flares on his cheeks and he took a step back, crumpling the bra in his hand and worrying it with suddenly-unnerved fingers. "Just-- it's nothing, for fun, stupid, never mind it."
"Wait-" kyo grabbed that small wrist, circled it tight. Frown crackled, bubbled into a tiny, crooked smile. Fierce love burned hard, wildfire in his chest and he almost gave into the impulse to yank him close again to hold him tight. Instead, kyo, held onto his wrist and shoulder, skin clinging to skin as he looked for those eyes.
Jealousy and affection fought a war. In the midst of it, he said softly, "Wait. It's not stupid. It's... cute. I wanna know."
He had been starting to turn, the wire twisting slightly and resistantly as he worried the bra in his hands; anxiety whorled the muscles in his digits and made him twitch. Nervousness ran up his arms, and his stomach flipped an uncomfortable hot-cold somersault and Kaoru's backward motion was stopped by that hand. He hesitated. Stared down, at the fabric, over at the hand wrapped around him.
Kaoru hesitated, glancing up at him, and the wet hair was starting to fall free from its wet tangles and back into his face. "Cute?" he said incredulously, and the flush was winning.
Russian fingers brushed that hair back, slid through it's damp thickness to brush nails on scalp. Gently.
Now it was his turn to kiss a cheek, then a chin, then jaw and try to stop. His smile was runny like eggs, but honest. "Yeah. It's definitely not stupid. I had no idea you'd be into that."
Kisses still loved him and he hoped to fucking god still respected him; wouldn't every time Kaoru bent over a guitar or tried to talk work visualize him in bra and panties, bent over a desk-- and Kaoru exhaled his struggle and groaned faintly out loud as he leant back into Kyo. His forehead thudded heavily on Kyo's.
"It's not--- like--- I dunno-- I'm not into it, I mean-- it just-- fuck, Kyo," and he laughed, exasperated, strained, and his head slipped to his shoulder.
"Thought I put it away," he mumbled, and his shoulders hitched in faint, embarassed laughter.
He laughed too, short and thin cloud wisps. They hit Kaoru's naked chest and he let go of Kaoru's wrist to lay his palm down where his pulse started. He listened to the man pound against the center of his palm and closed his eyes.
"I know you're not secretly a tranny. If you don't like it, then don't let him talk you into it. And if you do like it, then... I'm glad you found a bra that fits."
Relief poured out of Kaoru's mouth in hysteria, hiccuping and sweet. He shook his head, hair tumbling loose and damp and hitting the skin of Kyo's throat. He laughed out loud again, and his arms fell and bled around Kyo's waist, bra still clutched forgotten in one fist.
"Okay. Okay. Good. I thought-- I didn't want you to think I, you know, snuck out every Saturday or something dressed-- but anyway-- no, it-- I like it. Like it fine. I mean. I didn't plan on anyone knowing but thank you for not laughing."
kyo slipped around Kaoru, pressed his fingers into Kaoru's back and tugged closer. He meshed them together, turned his face a little so their noses could brush intimate, deform each other. He sucked Kaoru's laughter in through parted lips, drank him and pressed closer.
"No," smile, "we've already done that anyway, remember? You know me, Kaoru. I'd never laugh at you. Never."
Hiccup, laughter and a shivery swallow of his promises. Kaoru's lips grazed him, lingered, lovingly, for a few seconds bare of any compulsion or feeling other than relief, and the comfort hand in hand with it. Thoughtless and borderless, he pecked him sweet on his lower lip and opened his eyes again, sinking back those few inches to smile apologetically.
"Thanks, Kyo."
Beauty was a breeze on his lips, a soft touch of lips to his. It was brief and vicious in its angelic qualities - gone so soon, just a tactile memory that faded too fast from his nerves, from his skin. He licked his lips for the remnants of it and brushed eyelashes on Kaoru's cheek as he blinked closer.
"Anytime," mumbled.
It was sweet, lingering and comfort. Grazing his cheek in a tingle, that dragged down and whispered on him. Kaoru's hands bunched at Kyo's waist, and the brush of silky bra material on his palm and at the other's waist, whereshirt bared enough as he moved his hands that it grazed, warm in his hand.
"I'll," he paused, and laughed, loosening the embrace to pull the bra back to himself, hold it bunched against himself. He grinned. "I'll put this away. Okay?"
Scraggle teeth bit into a plump lowered lip, skewered it as kyo leaned back, gave him room despite the lock his arms still had around Kaoru. Blond fell in wicked shards on his forehead, over his eyes in parts. "Why put it away when you can put it on?"
Kaoru snorted out loud, vague laugh pulling at the shape of his lips. He shook his head. The hair was starting to dry, loose and damp-tangled, curling where it hit his neck, leaving more bare than usual.
"It doesn't go with this outfit," he smirked, and held it up briefly to hide his chest before dropping it quickly.
Nipples covered briefly in bra was the closest he was going to get.
kyo's mouth was a soft smile, amused and adoring but he didn't meet Kaoru's eyes. He struggled, gave in and let go of one hand's lock at the small of Kaoru's back in order to place it wide on Kaoru's chest. Feel where the bra had been, the gateway to all the things he'd never know.
"Mm, guess not." Tiny fingerstrokes and longing nails a crescendo quiet, so quiet on pale skin. Kaoru was so close and so fucking far away.
Kyo didn't look up at him, didn't come out from under the border of blonde that filtered soft age from view. Kaoru was free to watch him, free to pause and drink, feel the flexing of fingertips and the chill-thrill of nails as they dragged soft over his chest, skin marked and unmarked, naked. Kyo's place in his heart spilled out over the skin, grazed in a distant touch. It reached out over him, tried to get in. Kaoru's body clung to the ink's permanence as his hands dropped again, rested at Kyo's waist and held him.
"Sorry."
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the new black in Kaoru's skin, the permanence of kyo's decision and Kaoru's acceptance of it. That, he told himself, would always be close to Kaoru's heart.
kyo crawled up to it, touched it like it was glass on the edge of a table, liable to fall if pressed to hard. It was kyo, penned into Kaoru like a cancer - dark and tender.
"Don't be. I want things I can't have. That's the way things always are."
Under fine fingers and through the organs kept from being pierced by a cage of bone and muscle, Kaoru felt the ache. It spread chest-to-stomach and back, reverberated in the bones it wrapped around. A way his body could never bend, something it could never give.
Kaoru was quiet, held him as he watched his fingers spider-crawl and move, and his hair was too short to hide them both beneath it anymore. Instead, as he bowed his head, it frisk-curtained against their cheeks, left a burlesque view of their lips as they shaped gifts to each other.
"How are you doing?" he mumbled, voice soft and hold close.
His lips made the shape of a smile. Shoulders rose, fell. Kaoru's voice tickled his fingers, morose code. kyo closed his eyes, took him in one breath at a time. Black spilled through blonde, left a damp weight on the very tops of his cheeks. His skin drank it like petals took dew.
If only he could be something beautiful and desired.
"Fine. Ok. Not great and not bad."
Kyo had more muscles to his name. His body was shaped like a cat; something more feral and muscle. Kaoru could slip an arm around him, like this, and feel the shape of his body, how it was put together, how careful muscles held him taut in his arms. Kaoru held him with one hand, fit the base of his spine into the hollow of his palm, and the other played its way up, to thumb a bowed chin and rest there, fuzz tickling his fingertips.
"Does anything make more sense to you?" he mumbled, in the same slow-soft tone, and breathed in his space. their hair wrapped around each others, ends defiant after years of torture coaxed into submission with freshly-sharp, wet black. "Yet?"
His thumbnail dragged on skin, left a faint pink streak as it turn down, hooked into the waistband of Kaoru's pants. Kaoru crushed what little of his goattee grew back from his last casual swipe at it. In some world, he was kissing that thumb. In this moment, his lips cracked open and the air stung his gums cold to bone.
Yet Kaoru kept breathing under his hand. They blended together and Kaoru soaked them both. Kaoru spread to his hair, thickened it, bloated it, darkened it to a dead bumblebee shade. He could feel stray eyebrow hairs yet unplucked trapped between his forehead and Kaoru's and if he concentrated, he believed he could take them with his teeth.
"Yes and no. I love you. I'm not in love with you, but I am. There's never going to be someone else like you in my life ever. I hate that I can't have all of you. It's not that I want to fuck you, it's that I don't want to be kept out of anything that is you. Shit, Kaoru, it's... you don't have to worry about it being more than friendship like that. But it is. But not the way I thought it was, it's not as simple as that. I'm just... I want what I can't have or ask of you and it's completely unfair of me. But that's the... truth. I'm sorry."
There were points of relief in that, movements of tongue and whispers in a known voice that Kaoru held to, breathed in and let soak. The ache grew numb under the messy smear of Kyo's tongue.
Kaoru's lower lip was held between his teeth, and he moved his head, not a no or a nod; only a slow twist, back and forth, and they pressed firmly against each other and sank in under the skin.
"I understand." he murmured, and fingers curled under Kyo's chin, twisted in remnants of blonde-brown, as if Kyo's body fell for the bleached lie he'd been painting over it for ten years. "Don't be sorry. I-- get it."
"But I am sorry. I hate hurting you but I can't stop. I'm sorry, Kaoru."
He didn't need eyes to see Kaoru, to know his cheekbones in their sway, to know the blurr of his eyelashes this close and the way their chocolate blob came together and then spread apart like an indecisive sexpot. Or the confusion of a kitten. A God, brillance that couldn't be seen clearly by mortals. A blurr, a watercolor of a face mapped by his lips, his thumbs.
kyo slid his fingers all flat on his part of Kaoru's skin. His flat nose pressed to Kaoru's hard tip. "I'm sorry."
The hollows of Kyo's cheeks, home found for lost fingertips, dip into those shadows and trace the fine ridge of a bone.
Their mouths were a pathetic distance away. Kyo's eyes were shades of lavendar sleep, fine and dark skin under the filter of their hair. Kaoru watched them lay still, leant into him where given and still their mouths died centimeters short.
"It's okay," he whispered. "It's okay. I love you. I love you, too."
Kaoru's gravity molded his, formed his, pressed into his. Blind he could feel him, pressure resolving itself in the layers of air between them. Kaoru hesitated. When he spoke, his breath bounced off kyo's mouth with every syllable.
Kaoru hesitated. Was afraid of him.
Swallow down the needles whole. He deserved the consequences of honesty and the consequences of deformity.
"Thank you."
Kaoru's shoulders hitched. His lips broke, spread into a wet and fresh-shaped smile small and his, uniquely Kyo's to own. This moment, this shape, this bleeding of ink over his chest. The bridge of his noise pressed briefly against Kyo's, a lover's silhouette and he breathed out soft.
"You don't have to thank me. Not for that. Not between us. I love you."
"I love you too." Say it again keep saying it, "I love you too."
Skin to skin, trembling like virgins. His mouth ached; wet muscle raw, slick bone broken. Cracked. Seeping blood, seeping marrow all acidic down his throat. Kaoru's words kissed him, but Kaoru did not.
Elastic coated in flannel grew wet in his fist and his thumbnail dug long into his palm, but was harmless and wrapped in Kaoru's sweetness. Kaoru wasn't wearing anything beneath.
kyo didn't open his eyes. "Kaoru," and the taste of his name was exquisite in the way it buried porcupine in the center of his tongue.
He breathed in Kyo's breath out. Names slid from one tongue to another without touching. Kaoru's stomach clenched, tightly.
"Mm?" he mumbled, and his arm wound around him, caught close. Absent fingers ran down a cheek he had watched go from babyround to jaguar.
The corner of Kyo's mouth touched his thumb and he let it linger there without thinking, faint wet from speaking and he watched him not look at him, silently enraptured.
Naked or blindfolded, one and the same, he felt Kaoru's thumb print intimate into his lip. Tongue wound round the trigger, pulled and the shot rang out in his chest. kyo kissed that thumb, turning his head so slow to finally find Kaoru with the center of his lips. Kissed that thumb, drank down Kaoru's identity in fine lines.
Wet and almost-open, love dragged along his thumb. His throat ached from Ebizo's mouth, from teeth pulling cries out from it, and as he watched, he became acutely aware of the ache. The hoarseness scraped down it, that hadn't yet bled into his voice but threatened, promised, whispered inside him.
Rationalize. Shiver, pause to close eyes and lick lips and let Kyo keep his fingers to bless, and try to put into words what was easy to understand on a level that had no patience for logic or the men that came before.
"You're my best friend," Kaoru murmured, voice catching on a whisper, lean close in intimacy and watch Kyo as his eyes slid back open with a heartbeat. "I love you." and he leant in and let his lips rest on Kyo's cheek, the kissd thumb becoming an instrument to tilt kyo's cheek up, into him. "I love you."
The ball rolled farther and he with it, the touch of Kaoru's mouth so familiar, so beloved. It stung and he had to fight harder to breathe. Cheek to cheek and he continued further, nuzzled bone to Kaoru's, swept his own lips across Kaoru's warm skin and brought them closer.
"Kaoru," sigh, noses finding each other, Kaoru's breath swept up into his tongue, tasted. His fist pressed down on Kaoru's back, brought him closer.
The shape of a hand, of knuckles and arches, slim long fingers and the hollows of his curves, pressed into Kaoru's back, down and into it, and pulled him in. His head ducked, nosed against and his breath out wasn't quite even.
Kyo's body pulling, shaping him was automatic and something he had grown into giving to. Kaoru nudged the bridge of his nose against his cheek, shifted on bare feet. His chest, naked and thin and exposed, hitched in-out.
His toes went over Kaoru's. His other foot lined up with the inside of Kaoru's, parallel connection. kyo rode Kaoru's chest before gliding away from ink and rubbing his thumb lightly on Kaoru's neck. The rest of his hand cupped around it, felt powerful throat like a lead pipe and loved it. Nothing but clothes and skin keeping them apart.
They rolled like waves against each other, kyo's cheek and nose bumping affectionate with every rub. He strained head back, brought lips to temple.
A sigh and, "It'll never be right like this with anyone else."
Breath into him. Slide down his spine and keep Kaoru's insides warm.
His shoulders were thin, had lost tour weight and found bones again. They hitched. In a thick, strong neck, his pulse pounded.
Kaoru kept his eyes shut now, shook his head softly.
"Never," whispered, "no one else could be like us."
"No one," a hum of sounds, vibration like a shark's skin to the tip of his tongue, "no one, Kaoru."
Life beat wild against his palm and his blood was the same. They were the same. kyo's toes curled then spread, kneaded Kaoru's foot like a cat.
The brush of skin, of detail loved under feet and fingers. Kaoru's brow grazed, butted against Kyo's and he felt the long pale depth and rub of toes on his small feel and Kaoru's lips breathed into a smile on Kyo's cheek.
Slide up to his temple, and his hands finished their circle around him, pulled flush to chest and buried in the ends of his hair.
"I love you," he murmured, barechested honesty pressing itself against Kyo in an embrace, and his lips were spread now, dark sincerity showing at the corners.
Gasp and grunt, smothered in such a beautiful way. kyo's hand pressed flat and bare to Kaoru's lower back, the curve of which he molded himself to and the band of his pants snapped over his hand. They ground themselves together, squeezed chests and stomachs together in panting clarity, held together as one.
There was nothing comparable to being held by Kaoru. Being loved by Kaoru.
Choked whisper, the singer to the minstral, an ancient bond, "I love you too. So, so much."
There were only so many parts of Kaoru's body Kyo hadn't memorized, hadn't touched. His feet were pressed on; their toes grazed, kneaded; their chests rose and fell discordant, beats off by height and Kaoru fit his cheek to the top of Kyo's head, let the hair tickle and graze and he breathed out the shudder in.
Nothing between them but space. The space his breath traveled through before it hit Kaoru's neck, the space seperating their collarbones.
Eyelashes twitched, ruffled like feathers. "What should we do?"
Between their bodies a slim channel formed; between breastbones and fabric, ink and shoulders. Kyo's breath poured into the hollow of his throat and spilled down, like a waterfall overflowing, generous drops of warmth over Kaoru's pale stomach. He held him still, arms steady, and was proud of himself for their even embrace.
He laughed, a hitch of noise and his shoulders jerked up a little as he held Kyo close to him.
"I think we were planning on watching a movie."
"No," soft, drifting. kyo's nose and mouth sunk and found Kaoru's shoulder. "Didn't mean that." Sweet skin between rugged teeth to be loved by tender kiss. Red to be loved back to pink.
Teeth, the pull and wet warmth. It dragged over him, black-painted.
Kaoru didn't need to look to know what design was under his mouth. Kaoru's lashes hovered just short of open. They grazed cheek, the softness of Kyo's hair.
"Oh," he mumbled, and sucked on his tongue as he tried to think, to remember what he was even saying.
He pressed mouth against the wet spot, sighed against it. "Could you really fight this for the rest of your life?"
Kyo's breath slid into him, coiled warm and low in his abdomen and left damp mist between his lips and Kaoru's tattoos.
"Fight it?" he mumbled, breath short and hitching, and he turned his head. Kyo's hair grazed against his cheek. "Fuck, Kyo-- it's not--I mean-- just-- fuckin' scared, it's not-- something people-- understand..."
"Fuck other people," Kaoru's weight on his head, Kaoru's hands on his back. Together, they were together, so close and too far away. kyo's fingers made small, round indents in Kaoru's flesh. "Fuck them. They aren't us. They don't matter when it comes to this. This is us. This is just us."
A slow back and forth of cheek, smearing in the evidence before he bit again. Muffled, "I don't know if I can. I don't know if I should."
His mouth dragged on blonde, swallowed dry as it clung to his lips.
"It's not as easy as it is with us. There are other people. We can't pretend there aren't other people, even if-- even if they're-- I mean, what's just us, it-- fuck, Kyo--"
He rested there, skin stuck together and wet.
"So what then? What about other people? What do you really want, Kaoru? Everyone to be comfortable or to be who we are? ...If it's the same for you too."
"Fuck."
And Kaoru's hands stopped short of letting go. Instinct warred with sanity, with thirty-odd years of learning restraint.
He pressed his face into Kyo's hair, fell down into the layers and his mouth was on his ear.
"I'm not ready."
Brow buried into ink. Heave one. Swallow two.
Open your eyes.
"Okay."
His hands slid down like water on glass until finally dangling at his sides. kyo leaned away, began to match insides with outsides.
Naked by him. Kyo's hands pulled away. Kaoru's skin bared, the ink coming off in streaks. Kaoru closed his eyes and his lips pulled hard at the corners.
"Sorry," he mumbled. The surface of his skin tingled numb. "I'm sorry."
"The hell are you sorry for," kyo muttered. He shook his head and his hands dove deep into pockets to hide. He had just climbed out of the tub, soaked and freezing. "There's no nothing to..." vision a smear of gold and kyo's feet knew the way, knew the floor like a lover. He had shoes but he didn't bend down to tie the laces.
Away from him. Cold and numb and away from him.
Kaoru's stomach lurched.
"What" he said, and his tongue was numb, fumbled. The air was like ice between them, skin hot and pressed together empty again, "No, Kyo-- what--"
He saw enough of his room to make out the shape of Kyo at the door and Kaoru's voice broke in the air.
"You're going to leave?" Lost and helpless. "You're leaving? How can you-- just--"
There were bright lights and people with hands, hands like claws and hands like opium. There were dark rooms and broken breath, the bated lingerings of teeth and sulfur. There was pain. A solvent, a burning house, a plague. There was pain out there, in the smear of fake humanity and hordes of sweaty bodies.
There was pain out there, pain that could momentarily override the pain from the hole in his chest.
He was such a foolish thing.
Though his arms pulled out of their caves, wrapped around himself to dig into the burning skin of his armpits and crush knuckled with arms, he couldn't see. He didn't touch the door.
He'd been stupid to think things were even between them. Stupid.
Kyo's forward motion stopped, and Kaoru wrapped his arms around himself. He was suddenly naked.
Fold around himself, arms pressing tight against his ribcage and he took a step back from Kyo's hard shoulders.
"You're leaving? What-- fuck--why would you leave? What did I do?" Shake. "What did I do this time besides fucking-- tell you-- I love, want-- you?"
He turned, the best part of him small and muffled in the back of his brain watching it all. "You don't want me, you want them to be comfortable! Damnit Kaoru, why are you scared of me?" The rest of him was doing this, the rest of him was taking this out of his hands, out of their hands.
"Why do I..." his back found the door and he slid with it, elbows in his hips and his hands newly buried in hair. He couldn't see the floor.
"I'm not scared of you!" Kaoru's voice rose, incredulity, temper and hurt and he shrank again, back two paces. "I'm not fucking scared of you! Don't you know me enough to tell that by now?"
He was freezing. Nudity hurt. Kaoru turned and groped at his bedroom door, let into dark and he groped in the black for a shirt, something to pull on.
And Kaoru was gone.
He wanted to be gone. Drowning was easier. Hadn't he become more than this?
His shoulder fell into the door as his knees pitched to the left, his ankles crumbling under him. "I can't help it... you don't know what it's like... when it's not the same," cracked lips. Too pathetic to carry himself out. Loss outweighed hate for the moment.
Overcompensation.
Kaoru slid out of the shadows, buried like he was 22 in a band shirt to midthigh. Arms around himself, as much distance between them as the length of the hallway, Kaoru closed the door behind him and slid down it opposite.
Kyo was curled, looked too broken for hisinsides to take and Kaoru squeezed his eyes shut, braced the back of his wrist to them and breathed in through his mouth.
"Who the fuck decided it wasn't the same? Because I said I'm not ready? Because no matter what I do, it isn't enough? Because I let myself be fucking scared, for once, in front of you and you fucking leave?"
"No, NO! FUCK. Fuck..." volume fell, crawled into the cracks in the floor. The door was hot against his forehead. Granular. Bits and pieces came off of him every time he moved. "Damnit Kaoru... I don't want to pressure you to do shit, I don't want to fucking-... fuck. It hurts. It hurts and I just didn't understand you, I didn't. I don't know what's important to you, but I know what's important to me and I'm stupid and it took me too long to understand."
He couldn't see the floor. "I'm sorry I'm not..."
Small, useless hands and skinny wrists that he couldn't even completely hide in; Kaoru's shoulders hitched up and his head turned, shook side to side in a slow swing of damp black hair. The sound of it moving against his cheeks didn't go far to drowning out the layers of ache in his voice.
"I love you. You know I love you; you know I need you; please don't-- don't try and measure it, make sure I measure up, because I just-- I just want-- want you to fucking trust me, and believe me, and know I just-- I can't, right now, okay? And it's not-- caring what other people think, though-- he's-- part of it, they're all part of it, but give me more credit than that and know we deserve better than it to get-- tangled up in-- shit and everything-- confusing and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, baby, but I fucking love you and I just need time, it's not the time. It's not--the time."
Oh.
Oh.
Was Ebizo between them or was kyo between them?
Eyelids grew pale, then red, then burned. His hair made his breath stick to his face, stick to the door. Was that what he had been asking? Was that what he wanted Kaoru to say in the first place? A small, cowardly spine broken halfway down. What Kaoru meant was there will never be a time and that's what he had wanted to know.
The tiger rebelled, strained away from his skin.
Silence.
"What," Kaoru's voice finally broke, painted in messy and injured dark strokes on his white walls, the long and empty stretch of floor between them. His baritone broke. "What did I do? What did I say? I hate breaking things. I--hate hurting you."
Teeth were sticky and sharp. His tongue dragged along their shards, back and forth back and forth.
Kaoru's sweet pepsi-bottle voice shattered and slivers wound themselves syllabically under his fingernails. His eyes were closed.
"S'not you. It's me." I'm the problem. I'm always the root of the problem.
His shoulders hitched. Kaoru kept his eyes pressed into the hollow of a palm, knees drawn up to his chest, rocking slightly in his corner of a long hallfway. Too much space, too much clutter, floorboards and still-unpacked suitcases and guitars in the way.
"You sound like you're breaking up with me."
He didn't know if it was meant to be funny but his breath hitched uncomfortably and Kaoru's shoulders rode up into his hair, and the cup of his palm burnt against the backs fo his eyelids. His voice shook finely, low.
"I don't understand. I don't understand what went wrong."
"I'm not." He was too weak to make this the last time.
The palm of his hand fit on the width of his forehead. "If no one else in this fucking world existed, Kaoru, how would we be? No people to judge, no boyfriend to fill in the holes - just us. Are we really the same or would you compromise yourself to humor me? I can't," grind skin to skull, "It hurts when you sacrifice yourself for me. You don't understand that."
His hand fell to the floor. Too little weight was behind it to make the noise any more than a soft, dull thud. Kaoru looked straight down at his own knees, hidden under layers of denim.
"None of this," he said, voice tired, "is me compromising myself. It never is. That's what you don't understand."
"Then why can't you just tell me? Give me a straight answer. Please, Kaoru." What was left of his tenor slid apart, splattered on the floor.
Helplessness aged him like Kyo aged him, drew tiredness in fingerstreaks through his inked arms and over a weak chest, down his sallow and scarred cheeks. Kaoru's lips split in something too hurting to be a smile.
"I need you to tell me the question."
kyo's lungs shook inside of him with that breath, rattled his heart and intestines. They were like bits of burned paper stapled over a vent.
Nails tasted hairline copper.
"Before we die, woul... would you want to know everything I am?"
Before we die.
How many mouths over his skin, how many half-moons of Kyo's bite left in him? Swell of old shirts with his spit, the pull of teeth left grooves in them and him. Bury himself, lips in hair and tongue in mouth. Before we die.
Grooves given permanence across Kyo's chest were something, spoke to something he didn't, couldn't, think about. Acknowledge. Easier to read, meant so many more different things than just a burning poisonous sliver dug deep into his brain, a piercing shuddering spilling reminder of mortality. The words before we die could bring to his knees a man who made his life in the immortality of moments. The lights go out and the stage goes dark. Kaoru sank back, slid shielded, clothed back against the door and looped his armsa round his knees. He pressed his face into his forearms and rubbed himself against the identity, the immortality emblazoned there.
"Yes."
His lips dragged against fine, barely-blonde arm hair and Kaoru's eyes felt welded shut with finality, absolution.
"Yes, yes, I already told you yes."
Whispered thin streaks of splintering ice, "That's all I wanted to know."
His chin dug into his chest, into the scars there. Down into the meat of him. Drooping shoulders envious of wings, the failure of a man who tried so hard. Effort didn't count for anything.
A pillow made out of his own, boney forearms, uncultured lengths of profane fingertips curling and digging into his baggy sleeves. Kaoru ground the bridge of his nose against his skin.
"Is that okay?" he said, and it was soft, sweet and uncertain. His lower lip was pulled into his mouth, gnawed on, where kisses should have laid all night. "I don't know what I did wrong. I don't know what I said. But my answer is yes, Kyo."
Right and wrong. It was always right and wrong with Kaoru. How could he be honest if Kaoru was always calling himself either right or wrong? They were more than that. They were so much more than that.
kyo's face was a mess of wetness layered thick. It buried his skin deep, covered the grief. His nails pulled out of from his hair, slid down to clutch his chest in privacy.
He shook his head, ground more of himself out against Kaoru's door. "That's ok. That's all i needed to know."
Their voices fell, the hallway grew longer. But the hoarseness of volume was falling out of Kaoru's voice and left them both weak and collapsed across the breadth of his apartment.
Kaoru let his arms fall and his face was hit with the cool air of the room, no respect for the tension that heated them and made their skin shudder with the chill contrast. His head fell back, eyes opened only after several long moments of silence, as his pulled-up legs went weak and bowed to the floor.
Kyo curled across from him and his chest hurt. Kaoru curled his hands against his heart, and watched.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. "Are you okay?"
The sniffles were reflexes. Were despised.
"Don't be sorry." Through his shirt, he punctured the first layer of skin, 5 blind. "I'm not okay. You aren't either."
Kaoru made a noise in his throat; deep and uncertain. Kyo's curl was vulnerable and too far away.
"Baby." he said, and he sucked in air, licked lips and rocked in place a little. Kaoru shook his head softly. "I'm okay. I'll be okay. I just-- I want things to-- I want to be okay with you, have you-- be okay, too, and I'm always-- messing up."
His breath hitched a bit, and he shook his head, a ltitle more urgently. Distress pulled back the tired streaks under his eyes.
"Do we have to stay this far apart?"
"I'm okay with you, Kaoru," sniffle, "just not with, aah, myself." Swallowing chunks of stray heart, kyo bite down his upper lip. He dragged it in, soaked it until it began to chap.
When he shook his head, he made soft thuds into the door and rocked it's lock metal clack clack. "It's not you. You don't mess up. I just ...that you didn't feel the same, maybe, it... it's my own fault. If I, aah... if I could look at you, I couldn't-... You don't mess anything up."
Too many broken sentences, half-spilled thoughts and Kaoru slid his knees down out of his crouch, aching elder bones cold on the floor. Kaoru rubbed his palms on his denim, back and forth, and watched him down the hall.
"Kyo." he said, voice faltering, and he caught it, sucked it back and nursed it in his throat for a moment before he spoke again. "Kyo..."
Clumsy progression to knees, but the hallway was miles long and Kaoru's progress down it was slow. Made it to his feet by halfway, began the descent down again as his hand reached out and grazed Kyo's kneecap.
"How would it-- be your fault?"
By allowing it to take over his face, he could keep it out of his throat. Now his eyelids chapped, sanded down to the sticky and brittle bits, the drenched and over exposed stretch of skin.
With his forehead still to the door, his hair created a canopy over the gargoyle muscles in his cheeks, mouth. He twitched like the amputated tail of a lizard when Kaoru touched him from across the hall. kyo's back halved, dragged him down. He left a falling, wet half moon behind on the door.
Embedding cotton in skin with five blind mice, he coughed and said, "I didn't aah... didn't wait for you. Assumed you meant.. and I just wanted, uhm, you meant something else because you," choke on the strain to keep it down, keep steady, keep private, "I'm sorry. I wanted to run into the pain. I didn't wait long enough."
It was painful to watch him. Painful, to see how he gave, bent and broke. Kaoru's chest, still short, still reeling from the last ten minutes, seized. He felt Kyo jerk beneath his touch, shudder through, and his fingers flexed and then held fast.
"It's okay." he mumbled, and bowed his head. His mouth rested wet on the surface. "It's okay. I told you now. You know now. I'm sorry."
He would try to keep this from Kaoru. Try so fucking hard.
Stomach muscles spasmes quiet riots, shook him in tiny earthquakes, but he was quiet.
Until he could say, "Yeah. Don't apologize. Please don't. Not y-you."
"Okay." Kyo was quivering. Kaoru felt it through his hand, up through lips and teeth. He raised his eyes through mess of dark hair, watched and the hurt was bleeding into fear, concern. Kyo didn't sooth under his hand.
"Okay," he mumbled again, and rubbed Kyo's knee firmly before kissing him soft there once more. "It's okay. I'm here, baby. I'm here."
"I'm fine." Tear talons from chest and he rubbed his wrist hard against his face, drew it further away from the door to reach stained skin. "I'm sorry," one shaky gasp in, "I'm ok. I'm sorry. Thank you, Kaoru."
"You..." Kyo's cheeks, through slivers of blonde, was red and wet. Kaoru licked his lips, rested his cheek on his knee and turned his head up. "Shh," he mumbled, voice low, and his hand stroked carefully, back and forth along a bent knee, "It's okay, baby. It's okay. You don't need to say you're sorry, either;" a small hiccup on the lingering upset, on sincerity , and Kaoru raised his head and leant in, lips to temple. "Shh. You know? It's okay. It's okay."
Long, hard sniffs and he would have turned his face away if he had his eyes open. Instead, he was there, was blessing kyo gentle and weak himself. He held Kaoru's cheeks, kept him close so Kaoru wouldn't see when he let go, so Kaoru's voice stayed close.
"We were happy and I ruined it, I fucking- aah, I, just, I don't want to go." I fuck up everything. I make you miserable.
Long fingers slid over him, over the remnants of hurt-and-love flush on his skin. Kaoru felt the grief off of them and he reached over, wrapped his hands past the jumble of pain and limbs and touched him, pulled him in close.
"It's okay." His lips moved along his cheek. "You didn't ruin it, baby, you didn't. You don't have to go. I'm sitll here. Shh-- Kyo..."
They were back to one. kyo was the lesser half.
Thumbs on cheekbones, tasting the underbelly of those eyes. He whispered and Kaoru forgave him. "Just hate how unfair it is to you. I love you so much, but I hurt you so much. S-so I'm sorry Kaoru, believe me. I'm trying so hard to be better."
Against Kyo's brow, Kaoru's strained and furrowed. Distress aged him to thirty-four. His thumbs slid along Kyo's cheeks and into the wet clumping his lashes.
"I'm okay." Dew on his lashes, saline down his thumbprints. Kaoru bit his lower lip, leant in hard and close and their hair got stuck between them again.
"I'm okay. Don't beat yourself up because of me, please--?" Unsteady, he licked his lips and swallowed, and fingers on lashes bled into smoothing of small hands through the mess of hair Kyo left him with. "It's all right. Baby..."
"I," swallow down the gasp,"I just uhm just want you to know I'm sorry for it. That's it, that's it." They were magnetized to each other and hair reached for the other like electric currents. Negative and Positive.
"You love me. You love me. And I will always love you. I won't leave you, ever. I won't. I swear." A hand dropped to Kaoru's throat, to his chest, to lay there and grip unwelcome shirt. "That's it... that's it."
"Okay."
Kyo's fingers searched, found and held fast to Kaoru-as-anchor and he knew this role, could bear this role. Was steadyness when they quaked and he needed them as much as they needed him and Kaoru swallowed hard, leant in and nosed against him.
"Okay. I know. I love you and I know you love me, won't-- won't leave me. I know it. So it's okay." Pull him in and hold him tight.
"It's okay," he murmured. "It's okay. That's it. We're together now."
kyo teetered, fell into those arms and he was sincere. He wrapped around Kaoru's waist, pressed his damp palms on Kaoru's lower back. This time Kaoru was hidden from him. And it was kyo's fault.
Burying his face in Kaoru's neck, he breathed Kaoru in to the full and then sighed him slowly out. Mumbling, "Ok. Baby, please tell me I'm forgiven. Say it for me, please."
"You're forgiven."
Kaoru's arms hitched tight around him, ink sliding along Kyo's as he crushed him against his chest and he turned his head, mouth dragged down his cheekbone.
The ripcord snapped, lost tension. He didn't smile, but the lines smoothed back from wrinkles to white streaks that would fade. kyo rubbed his forehead against Kaoru's neck, tilted his head back to drag nose up and kiss his pulse. The rest of him was either asleep or mashed whole into Kaoru. He pulled tighter still, squeezed out the last unwelcome breaths between them.
"Thank you."
Let the pain soak between them, dissolve slow and sticky between them. Their skin melded, the fabric messed and tugged between them; Kaoru turned his head in as Kyo loved his throat, and he breathed out on his cheek, lips broken dragged down his cheek and along his jawline and rest there, breath in stubble.
"You don't-- have to. Thank me, I mean. It's okay. We're okay. Shh, baby," he closed his lips and it was a wet kiss-on-skin for a few seconds, before he nudged against him and murmured softly, "I love you. I love you."
From their chests up to Kaoru's cheek, kyo's fingers laid gentle on him. Sniffling came more now, but easier, relaxed. kyo followed him, blunt bumping noses. "I love you too," lips to lips, "love you." They were one again, though battered and cracked. kyo tasted him, loved him and the same blooming sweetness pushed through his chest as always.
Lips to lips. Promises breathed out of one, swallowed by the other and returned in sweet breath, cigarettes and exhaustion.
Kaoru kissed him, sweet soft press as their profiles fit together, and then he let them fall to corners and his eyes were shut.
"I know."
Why would he ever trust you again?
kyo swept up what of Kaoru lingered on his mouth and cradled it in the heart of his tongue. Nudging gently nose against nose, he sniffled.
"Baby, let me rub your back and shoulders. Gotta be sore, recording and writing and everything."
Kaoru's shoulders hitched beneath an embrace. Half-a-smile, through damp cheeks and warm mouths. He was breathless, pressed into him through their matched brows and tried not to show it as he caught the air back in his lips, swallowed down to his lungs.
"I'm okay," he murmured, but it was distracted and fractured with hesitance, the shadow of knowing Kyo might need to. His lips hesitated, open, on the edge of a kiss and let it rest soft at the corners of his mouth.