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solongsun 'You're confused again,' Uruha's father said slowly, leaning across the table to attempt to look his son in the eye, though Uruha was staring fixedly down at his discarded watch. It seemed to wink innocently in the glow of the ceiling lights.
'Uruha? Uruha, son, you're confused again. You've been listening to other people, but you know what other people are like. You know how they confuse you. You have to trust me; trust your mother and I. We're the ones who love you.'
Ruki watched Uruha's throat go up and down as he swallowed, but he didn't say anything. His hand was still clutching tightly onto Aoi's, his grip so tight that his bitten fingernails were digging lopsided little crescents into Aoi's palm.
'Uruha.'
Silence.
'Uruha.'
Toshiya lolled back in his chair, his arms folded over his chest, his gaze directed squarely towards Uruha's father. The expression on his face was hard to understand; it wasn't triumphant – not exactly – it wasn't even really happy. It was simply thoughtful, grim in a way that should have made him look older but actually made him look younger, as if he was barely formed.
Uruha's father did something Ruki had never seen him do before: he pulled a silver cigarette case out of his pocket and lit up a cigarette. The case was monogrammed in tiny, sparkling stones, each holding a dazzling point of light that seemed to attract Ruki's eye; he stared until they blurred into rainbows and blinked abruptly.
'Well,' Uruha's father said seriously, 'I hope you're happy. All of you – you sick men. I thought this would be the best place for my son, but you've disturbed him as well. You've made him as unbalanced as yourselves.'
The Adam's apple in Uruha's throat juddered as he swallowed heavily.
'I don't have any illusions,' Uruha's father said, still in that strangely toneless voice, and Ruki saw that he was pointing his smouldering cigarette at Aoi, 'I know this is your doing. Just look at him; look what you've done to him. Playing with his head. Confusing him just because you can. Muddling him into thinking—'
'I am not confused,' Uruha said, his voice very quiet and clear. He laid both his hands flat on the tabletop, his eyes fixed upon his slightly spread fingers.
'Uruha—'
'I am not confused,' he repeated. He did another big swallow; it seemed to be difficult. 'I'm going to be a cartographer,' he said, 'And you can't do that if you're confused. Your mind has to be organised. You always have to know exactly where you are.'
'Uruha, you're talking nonsense. I'm telling you, you've got mixed up again.'
'Aoi isn't unbalanced,' Uruha mumbled as if his father hadn't spoken, his eyes glassy with effort and his pulse visibly thrashing in his neck, his whole body like a coiled up spring, 'He's – he's normal. And...I think I'm normal, too.'
'Uruha.' His father's voice was soft, 'Uruha, look at me. I know it's confusing. You are sick. You know you're sick, deep down inside. That's why you have to live here for the time being, remember? Can you try to calm down for me, a little? Try taking a few deep, slow breaths.'
Ruki gripped the edge of the table hard as Uruha closed his eyes and did so. Aoi made a small sound, of surprise or protest Ruki couldn't tell; the tensely uneven line of Uruha's shoulders seemed to sink and soften slightly, and his full lips trembled a little as he exhaled through them.
'That's better,' his father said gently. 'Doesn't it feel better to be calm?'
Minutely, Uruha nodded.
'Bastard,' Aoi said, his voice shaking, but Uruha's father just smiled blandly.
'Quiet, Aoi.'
'You filthy fucking bastard—'
'You know, Aoi, the hostility you've been showing recently has been something of a worry to the staff here. I can quite see what they mean. If you're not very, very careful about what you do and say, you might find yourself upstairs.'
Aoi was quiet, but the look he gave Mr Takashima was jagged with hate. Uruha was still breathing slowly and steadily, and though his eyes were closed the skin around them was reddening slightly, and as Ruki watched Uruha lifted his palms to his face and pressed them against his eyes firmly. He splayed the fingers, and then brought them together again, and then splayed them again, and then brought them together again, twelve times in a row. It was as if he was peeking, but his eyes remained shut.
'You've upset him,' Uruha's father said softly, getting up from his chair and going to his son; he laid a heavy hand on Uruha's shoulder and Aoi flinched. 'You've got him worked up.'
He stood there, as if daring any of the men around the table to contradict him: none of them did. Aoi's gaze was as hard and hateful as ever, but he remained silent; Ruki looked around dully and found Shinya looking miserably at his plate, a thoughtful expression on Kyo's face, Toshiya staring down at the tabletop pensively.
'Mr Takashima?'
It must have been a weird sight, Ruki thought vaguely; all the men in the room jumping at once, turning towards the door – the nurse standing there frowned a little, lifting one hand to pat her neat bun of hair uncertainly.
'Yes, nurse?' Uruha's father was the first to recover himself, answering her politely; his fingers pressed hard into his son's shoulder.
'It's only – Mr Takashima, it's started to snow again. I thought I should let you know...for the drive. You don't want to get stuck here.'
'Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Thank you, nurse. I should be heading off.'
He smiled at all of them, and Ruki hated him.
'Goodbye, boys.'
He leant down and kissed his son neatly on top of his head.
The snow got thicker over the course of the afternoon, hiding the surrounding hills from view; everything outside of the window was white. Uruha had gone into his bedroom and shut the door firmly behind him, and when Aoi tentatively knocked there was no answer. Everything was quiet, but Aoi stood out in the hallway for a long time.
It seemed that nobody really wanted to be around anybody else. Looking tired and shivery, Toshiya curled himself up on a sofa in the TV room and stared past a talk show; Shinya holed himself up in the music room, playing the piano. Only Ruki and Kyo were together, sitting on Kyo's bed in his cramped dorm, but they hardly spoke. Kyo scribbled away in his notebook, an abstracted look on his face, and Ruki stared at the wasteland outside the window and tried to draw it in as few lines as possible, which was easy. With the snow coming in so thickly, everything grew featureless, all the sharp corners dulled; he quickly gave up. Idly, he started a self-portrait, not looking in a mirror but instead going by feel, moving his fingers methodically over the shapes made by his lips and nose and eyes. He measured his cheekbones against his thumb; brushed his fingertips over his chin. He tried as best as he could to not remember; to try and believe his own sense of touch.
The resulting portrait was an odd one, and Ruki frowned at it, trying to find the collection of lines that might be his true self.
'My lips aren't that big,' he mumbled to himself, and from the corner of his eye he caught a brief smile cross Kyo's face.
'They're sensitive,' he said, and Ruki blinked.
'Excuse me?'
'You drew them larger because they're more sensitive.' Kyo hesitated, apparently searching for the right words. 'If you drew right down to your feet, you'd see it more. All your more sensitive parts feel bigger.'
'My sensitive parts?' Ruki asked innocently, a little thrill rushing through his stomach when Kyo flushed slightly and turned back to his notebook. Smirking, he turned to a fresh page and started where he had left off, at his neck. Going by touch, it felt small to him; so did the one shoulder he was able to fit on the page, bony beneath his sleeve. He tried for his collarbone, found it long-feeling. His sternum was hard and uneven, criss-crossed by small ridges of bone. His nipple did feel large to him, strangely so; he drew it as he felt it anyway, enjoying the weirdly florid look it gave the image.
The tips of Kyo's ears were bright red, Ruki noticed, and the smirk pulled harder at his lips. He had to flip to another page to draw his other shoulder and this time he started with it at the top, feeling carefully down his arm as he drew, keeping his eyes closed so he wouldn't be tempted to look; he could feel his muscles and tendons, the pulse in the crook of his elbows and in his wrist, the way his fingers bent around his pencil. Their tips were the most sensitive part; they felt huge to him. On a fresh page he started with his belly, sort of scrunched into unpretty lines from the hunched way he was sitting; he drew in his navel and went down to his hips, feeling as the skin got more and more responsive to his touch the lower he went. His fingers brushed hair and he paused, sliding Kyo a sideways look; the other man appeared absorbed in his notebook but there was something artificial about the set of his shoulders and the way the skin of his neck and cheeks looked warm.
Smiling, Ruki pulled his hand out from where it had crept beneath the waist of his pants, and he couldn't help but give Kyo a small kiss on the cheek.
'Can I try with you?' he asked, and Kyo eyed him nervously.
'Sure you want to do that?'
'Pretty sure. Only...' Ruki tugged lightly at the hem of his T-shirt, 'It'd help if you'd take this off.'
There was a pause, and then Kyo obeyed, pulling his T-shirt over his head and dropping it to the side. Carefully, Ruki gestured for him to stand up and then steered him until he was standing before him, almost between his knees where he sat on the bed. He adjusted his sketchbook in his lap, turned to a fresh page, and smoothed it reverently.
This was a time he loved, when the paper in front of him felt fresh and clean full of potential.
Gripping his pencil between his teeth, he picked up Kyo's discarded T-shirt and folded it twice lengthwise, tucking the sleeves in and smoothing it over. Folded like that, it looked more like a short scarf, and Kyo gave Ruki a quizzical look: that look was the last thing Ruki saw before he picked the folded T-shirt up and placed it deliberately over his eyes, tying it tight at the back of his head. He removed the pencil from his mouth.
'I don't want to cheat,' he said, and took a deep breath, trying to get his shoulders to relax and his heart to stop thudding quite so hard; he had the stupid idea that it would jog his drawing. He flexed his fingers around the pencil and ran his free hand across the paper in his lap, trying to find the middle. When he was certain he'd located it, he reached up and touched hesitantly at Kyo's face.
Funny, how different it felt from his own. He could feel the other man's breath against his fingers; he hadn't been aware of that when he was feeling his own skin. He could feel the tension in Kyo's cheek and jaw and forehead, and he smiled.
'Relax.'
'We've discussed this. I don't know how.'
Kyo's voice was flat and sarcastic, but some of the stiffness did go out of his face. Ruki felt him take a deep, slow breath and stroked along his cheek soothingly, pretending he was just feeling for the line of the bone. It was there, sharp against his thumb: as good a place to start as any.
'This way,' Ruki said, his voice quiet over the scratching of his pencil, 'It's not so much like drawing like a portrait.'
'No?'
'It's more like making a map. A globe, or something.' Ruki's fingers traced the outline of the other man's lips, lingered there. 'The only features you get are the ones in relief. Mountains, and valleys.'
'Every portrait you draw is a map,' Kyo said, his words direct against Ruki's fingertips.
'What makes you say that?'
'I've seen them.'
Ruki faltered a little at that, but couldn't seem to keep himself from smiling. 'Keep still, please,' he said lightly.
Mouth, nose, eyes. That little central notch between the points of his upper lip; the way the corners of his mouth seemed to cut deeper than most people's. No smile lines; it was not a mouth accustomed to smiling. He tested the length of Kyo's eyelashes against his fingertip and felt the eyes close beneath his gentle touches, and on the sketchpad before him he assembled a man. Ears, neck, collarbones. He felt the pulse in his throat and the ripple of a swallow; tried to discern where the scars were carved into the skin, white as threads.
New page.
Shoulder, arm, all out of scale with the face he'd drawn. Muscle here, powerful; he felt how it stood out against the bone like a coiled rope. The defenceless skin of the inside of a wrist, and the force that leapt beneath it; he drew fingers, rubbing conscientiously over the wrinkles in the knuckles.
'I feel like a piece of meat you're buying.'
Ruki brought his hand back up to Kyo's face briefly and felt the smile.
'Meat can't talk.'
New page. The longest scar he could feel ran from the centre of his chest directly over Kyo's heart and then under his pectoral muscle, ending in a scrabble around the side of his ribs. The bones were clearer to his fingers than they were to his eyes. The muscles in his abdomen were firm, flanked by his thin hips, and between them he felt the V-shaped lines that seemed to dissect his torso from his lower half; he trailed his fingers along them and then stopped, his breathing a little shallow.
New page. He placed the tip of his pencil in the centre of it and hesitated, his fingers spanning gently above the waist of Kyo's pants. Carefully, he felt along the edge where the fabric began, and his tentative hand met another, larger, and cooler, the fingers hooked just a little beneath the hem.
'You can continue,' Kyo said quietly, not sounding exactly like himself, 'If you want to.'
Ruki's thumb outlined a hip, followed it down. 'Are you sure?'
His answer was a short hesitation, and then the sound of clothing being pulled over skin. Ruki's hands lost contact with the body in front of him as Kyo stepped out of his pants and pulled off his underwear, and he bit his lower lip to try to calm himself. Even though he couldn't see anything, the sounds were painting a vivid picture in his imagination, and he swallowed a little dryly.
Ruki felt Kyo's hand close over his and guide it back to his body so his fingers met warm skin again, his palm flattening out cautiously against Kyo's lower belly. He traced a line down from the navel, as if measuring, and stopped when he felt hair, moving his thumb against it experimentally.
'Your pencil isn't on the paper.' The voice from above him was amused but also breathless, and Ruki felt himself flushing.
'Sorry,' he said, quickly readjusting his grip on his pencil and finding the paper. Thighs: that was the best place to start. There was firm muscle here, like in his arms, and Ruki stroked over it carefully, trying to find the angles and the intersections; he drew in the hips again just because they felt right, so delicately hinged on such a powerful body. He stretched his hand as far as he could around the thighs, trying to measure them, and when he couldn't possibly avoid it any longer he allowed his hand to slip between them.
An intake of breath, and then silence. He could feel it, he thought: the vibration in Kyo's skin as his heart pounded in his chest, like a kind of hum; like something more alive than normal. He curled his fingers cautiously around the older man's cock, finding it not all the way hard but certainly not soft; there was a heat to the skin, a silkiness that threatened to undo him; he ran his fingers along the length of it gently, feeling for the shape of it and the size with one hand whilst he drew with the other. His fingers wanted to shake; he forced them not to. Kyo was hardening in his hand, and Ruki grinned a little self-consciously.
'How am I supposed to draw it if it's changing shape?' he asked, surprised by the deeper tone he heard in his own voice. He'd meant it as a joke but he kept his fingers moving slowly, exploring; he heard a soft laugh that turned into a hiss above him as he trailed his fingernail over the head. There was a pulse that beat; he followed it. With his thumb he navigated the peculiar bit of skin that ran between the head and the shaft, the bit that always felt so good when he touched it on his own body.
He wanted to taste it. He leant forward, resting his forehead gently against Kyo's hip as if asking permission; he felt the other man's hand come up and cup the back of his neck. He kissed the top of the older man's thigh reverently, his hand still moving gently, and when Kyo didn't object he shifted a little closer and let his lips brush the base of his cock. Short hairs tickled his nose, and he smiled, feeling how warm the skin was against his.
He licked him, and thought how strange it was to not see him. He thought how strange it was how he could be blindfolded but not feel vulnerable; how it made him feel powerful, instead, feeling his way.
Ruki dropped his pencil; he thought he heard it roll away over the floor. His hands slipped up around Kyo's hips, holding him, relishing the feel of him; he drew his head back slightly and lapped at the tip of the older man's cock; opened his mouth and tasted it; sucked on it and felt Kyo's hand shake on the back of his neck. Closing his eyes against the blindfold, Ruki bobbed his head, a kind of elation in his chest to not be pushed away; to feel the tremor go through Kyo's body and feel it as the other man leant towards him; to hear him breathe his name and imagine him with his head back, his hand moving up to tentatively wind itself in Ruki's hair.
Breathless, he fell back and pulled Kyo with him, his hands still locked tight around his hips; boosting himself up on his elbows he sucked him earnestly, the two of them foundering a little on the bed as the mattress dipped and swayed beneath them; as Kyo tried to support himself with a hand on the sloping wall; as he straddled Ruki's body—
There was a pounding at the door, and they froze.
From the outside, Ruki thought grimly, it might have looked comical; the way the two of them jumped so fearfully and violently into action; the two of them tearing apart and Ruki ripping the makeshift blindfold from his face, scrambling to flick to a more innocent drawing in his sketchbook; the way Kyo yanked his clothing quickly back on and flattened his hair down, blushing furiously, the movements of his hands flustered.
'Yes?' he said, his voice clipped but uneven, and when there was no reply he jerked the door open.
The tension left his shoulders, and Ruki sat up straighter to see who it was.
Aoi hung in the doorway as pale as a wraith, and instinctively Ruki hugged his sketchbook to his chest. There was something weird about his face, he thought; something vacant. He brought with him the smell of stale cigarette smoke and a body that had perhaps gone unwashed for a little too long; his hair was greasy and tousled, as if he'd been running his hands through it over and over. For once, he wasn't holding a cigarette, and his arms hung limply by his sides.
'Aoi,' Ruki said, stumbling a little over the word, but the dark-haired man didn't look at him; his gaze was fixed on the floor at his feet.
'Sorry,' he said tonelessly, 'to interrupt.'
'We were just—' Ruki started nervously, but Aoi gave a weary shake of his head.
'I don't really care,' he said, still in that same flat voice. 'I just came to say goodbye.'
'Goodbye?' Ruki repeated, and Aoi shot him a strange sort of smile – ghostly and somehow grimacing; a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
'Au revoir, but not adieu,' he said dryly, speaking without really moving his lips, 'Uruha's dad made good on his threat. I'm going upstairs for a while.'
'To – the disturbed ward?'
Aoi gave a nod that was more like a twitch.
'That's where they put the real crazies,' he intoned, trying for a smile that didn't quite work. 'You know, the ones that couldn't help it.'
With his face so stiff and his hair lank and the stubble on his cheeks, Ruki thought, he looked like somebody else entirely. Less than that, even – like a shadow, or an impression, or the negative of a photograph of somebody Ruki had never seen before in his life.
'But – the disturbed ward – what does that mean? What do they do?' he asked, and there was that skull-like smile again as Aoi looked towards Kyo.
'He knows what it means,' he said, and Ruki turned towards the older man anxiously. Kyo was looking directly back at Aoi, and he wasn't smiling.
'Shocks,' he said.
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Poor Kyo finally about to get some only to be interrupted. At least he's finally opening up to Ruki in that aspect. It's a really beautiful idea, Ruki learning Kyo with his hands rather than his eyes. Although, he probably shouldn't share those sketches with anyone else.
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