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Kazuma makes the stowaway plan sound so terribly easy.
The special-ordered luggage is more massive than they expect; that or he’s more flexible than they thought. It will be fine, because there are breathing holes, and because there are clothes padding him on all sides, and because there is a Fragile sign plastered on top, and because Ryuunosuke is good at keeping his mouth shut when told. Kazuma will ask to bring his meals back to his room; they’ll each endure only having half-portions. There won’t be intruders; the door will be latched at all times. For the crewman that comes to collect the garbage and replace the sheets: the wardrobe will do for a hiding place, provided Kazuma is there to watch over it.
Because Kazuma says this all with that confident, sunny grin, that billowing headband that lends him such an aura of responsibility. Because Kazuma says so, and so it must be true. Because it has always been like this; Ryuunosuke won’t understand he’s following him into trouble until he’s right in the thick of it.
He’d made it sound like a luxury cruise, honestly. First class, he’d said. But if your entire world is a single room, there’s only so much luxury can help.
Ryuunosuke knocks his head against the bedframe and flips through one of the bookshelf books for approximately the nine-thousandth time.
He is horrifically lonely.
That is something he didn’t expect. While his stomach had gotten accustomed to a lower metabolism over the first week or so, his loneliness has only festered. Ryuunosuke is a classic introvert, and it’s not as if he had many other friends at university; he spends most of his time with Kazuma anyway, he’d reasoned, so why should this be any different? But he misses it. The casual small talk, the boyish skinship of his classmates. The nagging of his mother at the dinner table over holidays. The gruff familiarity of the restaurant owner asking if he’ll have his usual. Even just hearing the idle chatter of the passersby as he studied. He’s gone so long without hearing others’ voices that eavesdropping on the occasional visit from the sailors or Susato through the closet door has become the highlight of his day.
The consequence of this is that he’s become more reliant on Kazuma than ever. Kazuma is his food, his safety, his entertainment. Ryuunosuke piddles away the hours that Kazuma is gone doing who-knows-what, taking naps even when well-rested just to hurry it up to Kazuma’s next homecoming. And he spends the hours Kazuma is there gorging on his presence, distracting him from studies and monopolizing his attention whenever possible.
“You’re clingy nowadays,” Kazuma observed, five-or-some days into the voyage.
Ryuunosuke detached himself from the welcome-back hug he’d sprung on him as soon as he walked in the door. “Am I?”
“Yeah. You used to get all stiff and nervous when I would put my arm around you like that. Now you’re the one doing it.” He patted Ryuunosuke on the back and began to set the spoils of his outing — bone-dry biscuits and currant jam — down on the table. “You’re like a little puppy or something.”
“Wh — I am not a puppy,” Ryuunosuke huffed.
Kazuma just laughed. “I swear I saw your ears perk up just now, Ryuunosuke.”
Looking back on the exchange, he maybe should have taken it as a warning. He’d remained indignant for all of two hours before going back to gluing himself to Kazuma’s shoulder. When the behavior was still new, Kazuma would just chuckle and tousle Ryuunosuke’s hair in response; as the days wore on, he’d started to react less and less to the affection, which had backfired into Ryuunosuke becoming even more incorrigibly touchy.
Ryuunosuke knows he is being more annoying than cute at this point. But Kazuma will just have to deal with it, won’t he; it’s his fault Ryuunosuke is cooped up like this.
This is what he reasons, anyway, as he starts twirling a finger around one of the flowing red ribbons of Kazuma’s hachimaki.
“Hey,” Kazuma says, reproachful.
They’re both seated on the bed, reading material in their laps, although Ryuunosuke’s book has been open to the same page for the past fifteen minutes. He’s bored, you see. And lonely. Kazuma had been gone nearly all day, and still had the nerve to dive right into studying without so much as a how are you. If he’d asked, Ryuunosuke would have told him that he’s bored and lonely — instead, Ryuunosuke will just have to demonstrate it physically.
“Will you leave the hachimaki alone?”
“I’m bored,” Ryuunosuke says. And lonely.
“And I’m trying to focus.”
Ryuunosuke sticks his tongue out at him, but brings his hand down. He reluctantly glances down at his novel again. It’s supposed to be practice for his English, but the author is too flowery. There are long technical terms polluting every sentence that Ryuunosuke does not have the wherewithal to cross-reference with his dictionary right now. The letters muddle on the page until it’s all just alphabet sludge.
Ryuunosuke sighs noisily. It’s not working. And Kazuma is so warm next to him. And Ryuunosuke is —
“Ryuunosuke,” Kazuma grumbles, with no shortage of irritation, and attempts to shoulder Ryuunosuke off of him.
Ryuunosuke just hums in acknowledgement and uses the displacement to find another spot on Kazuma’s bicep to press his forehead against.
But before he can really get comfortable, he’s being roughly shoved aside and pinned down on the bed, pages fluttering as the books are jostled. Ryuunosuke yelps, staring up at Kazuma’s shadowed expression, hands twitching under his iron grip. He seems genuinely angry in a way that makes Ryuunosuke’s heart race with the panic of having unintentionally gone too far.
“Sorry! I’m sorry!”
“You —” Kazuma’s brow furrows, and his eyes dart across Ryuunosuke’s face, like he’s trying to figure something out. “Are you provoking me?”
Ryuunosuke’s eyes go round. “What?”
“Nevermind,” he huffs. He lets go of Ryuunosuke’s wrists and heaves off of the creaking bed, snatching up his book and pen and retreating to his desk. Ryuunosuke stares after him. There’s an ambiguous smattering of pink at the nape of his neck.
“Sorry,” Ryuunosuke mumbles. “I really wasn’t trying to get a rise out of you or anything. Just going a little stir-crazy, I think.”
Kazuma sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “It’s fine. Just don’t bother me while I’m writing.”
“Alright, alright. I won’t.”
It falls silent as Kazuma picks his pen up again and scoots his chair in. Ryuunosuke retrieves his own book from where it was tossed aside. He’s lost his page. It doesn’t matter. He’s only pretending to read as he rubs his still-sore wrists, left to wonder, what was that all about?
—
So in the following days, Ryuunosuke keeps his distance. He picks a new book off the shelf to flip through as Kazuma is scribbling in his diary; rests his back against the closet instead of Kazuma’s flank when they’re chatting; opens and closes his fists at his sides when Kazuma comes back to the cabin for the day to keep himself from reaching out for him. But as he’s busy being a respectful friend, his touch-starvation is evolving into something like touch-malnutrition. The pillows and daruma he hugs to his chest are poor substitutes for a body; don’t have the same warm hum underneath. When he knows he’ll be safely alone for a while yet, he’ll curl up into his closet with a napkin and his slacks pushed down his thighs. Even then, his hand can’t squeeze out a climax half as satisfying as the soreness in his wrists had been after Kazuma had pinned them.
So he makes it a few days — maybe. It’s not as if normal time exists in this cabin, anyway. It’s entirely expected when Kazuma returns with a half-plate of food and a catlike smile, like daybreak. It’s entirely expected, and yet it slices through the last feathering thread of Ryuunosuke’s restraint with unerring accuracy.
“…and so there’s a great incentive for the legal system in our own country to rapidly catch up, so we’d have more ground to stand on when negotiating the consular jurisdiction of the British Empire.”
“Uh huh.”
“I mean, feudalism was a nightmare. We needed to bring the power back to the people at some point. It’s just kind of a shame that this period of huge sweeping reform overlapped with a time where the Brits were — oi. Ryuunosuke.”
“What?”
Kazuma’s voice drops half an octave. “…What do you think you’re doing?”
Ryuunosuke looks up at him, head lolled over his shoulder. So maybe he had migrated towards Kazuma’s side over the course of the conversation. So maybe he had been thinking less about legal precedents, or cross-examinations, or whatever lawyer-nonsense Kazuma had been spouting, and more about how much he could push the envelope in his touchiness before he would get another reaction out of him. So maybe he had gone a step too far when his finger came down to trace circles at the back of Kazuma’s hand, the goosebumps underneath a reward.
Kazuma narrows his eyes back at him. Maybe it’s a warning. Drunk on their closeness, Ryuunosuke chooses to believe it’s a test instead.
“Provoking you?” he suggests lowly.
Like those words are the magic password, Kazuma surges forward to crash their lips together.
It’s so much all at once. The abandoned textbook is kicked to the side, and the only sounds become the sharp inhales between kisses, the rustle of fabric being pushed and pulled, Ryuunosuke’s heartbeat thundering in his ears. Kazuma kisses as Ryuunosuke expects — like it’s a competition, one he’s dead-set on winning. When Ryuunosuke’s hand fumbles for purchase at the straps to his suspenders, Kazuma’s own shoots out to pin it against the bottom frame of the bed, like he’s declaring I decide when you get to touch.
Ryuunosuke decides he doesn’t mind. Not when he’s been so generously allowed so many points of burning contact, practically a feast after how long he’s been touch-abstinent. Anything. Everything. Even if it sends them both careening towards unexplored territory, the point of no return. Burn their friendship down for all he cares.
Kazuma’s hand is fisted in the hair at the back of his neck, now, manhandling him so he can lick deeper into his mouth. Ryuunosuke’s head spins. He thinks at one point he drags his teeth across Kazuma’s lower lip; must have, from the way Kazuma draws slightly back to mutter a low curse. God. Ryuunosuke shifts, already feeling like his clothes are uncomfortably hot.
“Get up on the bed,” Kazuma breathes, wet and heavy against Ryuunosuke’s mouth. “Or are you planning not to take responsibility for your actions?”
There’s an undercurrent of care under the roughness of the statement. Here’s the out if Ryuunosuke needs it. Ryuunosuke shakes his head meekly, lets Kazuma drag him to his feet.
The bed creaks as Ryuunosuke falls back onto it, unused to two people’s weight. In the scant five seconds that Kazuma isn’t touching him, the reality of the situation sinks in with him. He’s suddenly all too aware of his lack of experience, and, if the way Kazuma kisses is any indication, Kazuma’s comparative abundance of it. His fingers fidget nervously in the bedsheets as Kazuma slings one leg across his body, effectively straddling him.
“Fine. You win. I’m provoked,” Kazuma says, shortly. “Tell me what you want.”
“Um,” Ryuunosuke says, sounding decidedly stupid. There are many things he wants, scenarios he’s conjured during his various masturbation sessions, imagination made vivid by the darkness of the closet. The only one that he currently has the courage to voice is, “kiss me again?”
He thinks he sees Kazuma’s lips quirk up in a smirk before he leans down to do just that. This time it’s lost some of the angry fire behind it, but none of the passion, Kazuma tilting himself this way and that, trying to find the angle they fit together best. He tastes ever so slightly of alcohol — Ryuunosuke wonders if that’s what’s emboldened him to this degree. Hopes delusionally that he can get tipsy off of kissing him alone, feels like he already is.
As soon as Ryuunosuke is starting to feel like he understands how to kiss Kazuma, Kazuma’s mouth trails away, pressing to the corner of his mouth, his jaw, the Adam’s apple bobbing at his neck. Almost-ticklish, and without Kazuma’s mouth to muffle him, Ryuunosuke pants softly under his ministrations, pitching into a whimper as Kazuma’s teeth dig sharp into his neck. Lightning-fast, a hand comes up to slap over his mouth.
“If we’re going to do this, you’re going to need to be quiet,” Kazuma mutters against his neck, nodding towards the vent above them connecting to the neighboring room.
Ryuunosuke flushes, nods. His breath sounds, ironically, louder at this distance when it’s blown into the curve of Kazuma’s palm, quickly growing slick from condensation. Kazuma cinches his teeth around the reddening spot at his collarbone and sucks, and it stings like a pinch, Ryuunosuke wriggling underneath him. Ryuunosuke doesn’t understand the appeal until Kazuma draws away, stares at the spot with eyes hooded, having marked a possession.
“Kazuma,” Ryuunosuke warbles helplessly, through the mesh of Kazuma’s fingers.
With his free hand, Kazuma deftly begins working at the buttons of Ryuunosuke’s shirt. He glances up as the first comes undone. “Okay?”
Ryuunosuke nods again, eyes darting to the side in embarrassment as his chest is gradually revealed. It’s not as if Kazuma is unfamiliar with the sight; hot springs, public baths, rotating between shirts in the small first-class cabin. But still it’s – no, there’s no time for nitpicking the details, not as Kazuma continues with teeth and tongue down his chest, painting it red.
His mouth closes over Ryuunosuke’s pebbled nipple, and that alone is somehow more sensation than everything thus far combined. A choked gasp erupts unbidden from Ryuunosuke’s throat, quickly stifled as Kazuma presses his hand down in reminder. The tip of Ryuunosuke’s tongue chances against his palm, offering a salty sample of Kazuma’s skin, and as his mind becomes hazy with pleasure, an idea from its recesses starts to fruit. He closes his hand around Kazuma’s wrist, dragging his hand down just enough to –
“Fuck,” Kazuma grunts, a rumble against Ryuunosuke’s chest, and Ryuunosuke internally preens in satisfaction — “you —”
Ryuunosuke hums against the digits in his mouth. The sensation in itself is honestly not all that nice, rolling his tongue experimentally across the pads of his fingers, but what is nice is the dazed stare Kazuma gives him, zeroed in on his mouth. What is nice is remembering that stupid postulation that got passed around the playground about the correlation between finger length and dick size. What is nice is if — yes, if Kazuma starts pumping his fingers in and out of Ryuunosuke’s mouth, so obscene, like he’s already fucking him.
Breathing heavy and flushed from his neck to his ears, Kazuma spits out another curse under his breath. Ryuunosuke is learning he’s a foul-mouthed lover. He kind of likes it. “God, Ryuunosuke. Where’d this shamelessness come from?”
Ryuunosuke doesn’t answer — not that he’d be able to vocalize one, anyway. Kazuma’s fingers curl into the side of his cheek, press down on his tongue, test how deep they can slide. Eventually they brush the back of Ryuunosuke’s throat, and he gags, pulling off rapidly. Through the light sheen of tears Ryuunosuke can see the gossamer thread of spit connecting Kazuma’s pointer to his mouth, and shudders.
“You’re alright?” Kazuma asks once his coughing fit has subsided.
“Yeah. That was really hot,” Ryuunosuke rasps.
Kazuma chuckles, low in a way that makes the hairs on Ryuunosuke’s nape tingle. He noses against Ryuunosuke’s jaw, smooths a hand over his thigh. “You never cease to surprise me, partner. It’s almost as if you’ve thought about this before.”
Ryuunosuke tenses, and then immediately hates himself for it. It’s obvious that Kazuma only suggested such a thing because he’d be able to deduce immediately whether it was true or not from the reaction.
Kazuma smiles against his neck. “Am I right?”
“I, well,” Ryuunosuke fumbles, “just s-spend so much time alone — ahh —”
“Pent up,” Kazuma supplies sympathetically, kissing the sensitive shell of his ear. His hand is kneading circles into Ryuunosuke’s inner thigh, just shy of where his arousal burns strongest.
“Mm,” Ryuunosuke whimpers, “just thought about it — touching, being touched —”
“With just anyone?”
Ryuunosuke’s cheeks glow as the confessions leak from his mouth. “Used to be — used to be anyone, but recently just — just you —”
“Yeah?” Kazuma murmurs.
“It’s not like I’ve seen anyone else,” Ryuunosuke points out petulantly.
“No, and for what it’s worth, I am sorry about that,” Kazuma says, drawing back to meet his eyes. He at least sounds genuine. “I’ll just have to make it so you won’t need anyone else.”
And there’s a thought — that Ryuunosuke might be holed up in this room for reasons other than the crime of stowing away. That Kazuma might keep him here as some sort of personal entertainment, that he might want him all to himself. That this sickeningly-sweet codependency aggregated across the past two weeks might be, in some part, engineered. Ryuunosuke’s breath goes shallow.
“Why’d you clam up?” Kazuma snaps him back to reality with a hand down his arm. “You haven’t even told me what kinds of things you think about us yet.”
“Kazuma,” Ryuunosuke gripes, fidgeting.
“You’re getting embarrassed on me now?”
“…Are you trying to provoke me?”
Kazuma laughs at that, a bright thing quickly extinguished by his own wrist. It’s kind of sweet. For a moment Ryuunosuke zooms out and remembers they’re only two college boys fooling around on a ship.
“In my defense,” Kazuma purrs, eyes still crinkled up in mirth, “you’re great fun to tease.”
“Ugh.”
“Fine, then. I’ll go first,” he says, fingers skidding across Ryuunosuke’s skin again in the most maddening way.
“Huh?” Ryuunosuke squeaks, because it never crossed his mind even once that Kazuma might think about him like that. The Kazuma he sees now, he’d reasoned, was driven only by annoyance and cabin fever.
“Thought about you under me, like this, with that stupefied expression on your face,” Kazuma murmurs, painstakingly undoing each button on his own shirt. Ryuunosuke swallows. “About the noise your mouth would make as you took me in it. About you sitting on my lap at the desk chair, grinding until we both soiled our trousers. About flipping you onto your stomach and f —”
“Stop, stop,” Ryuunosuke blurts, feeling like he might burst into flames. He waves a hand in front of his face as if to dismiss the lewd images Kazuma conjured away like flies. “I think I get the picture.”
“Do you now?” Kazuma says, amused.
Ryuunosuke reaches a hand across the flushed expanse of chest that Kazuma’s revealed. “Didn’t know you… wanted me like that.”
“I do.” Despite the composure in his voice, Ryuunosuke can feel his pulse betray him. The way his eyes search Ryuunosuke’s face is oddly vulnerable. “I have for a while.”
Ryuunosuke is suddenly overcome with the need to kiss him, and does, pleating his arms across Kazuma’s neck. It’s so warm without the layer of starchy fabric separating their torsos, so easy to feel the shape of every one of Kazuma’s muscles. For all Kazuma says about Ryuunosuke being an open book, he’s not all too hard to read either; the way his fingers twitch around Ryuunosuke’s waist belie the undercurrent of impatience behind the temperate kissing.
“Want you too,” Ryuunosuke confesses between kisses, just a hair above a whisper. “Want… all of those things.”
Kazuma smiles. “Which part?”
“The — last thing you said.” At Kazuma’s encouraging eyebrow raise, he swallows his decency and ekes out a monolexical clarification: “I-inside.”
“You inside me? Or me inside you?”
Oh. It hadn’t occurred to Ryuunosuke that Kazuma, comfortably in the driver’s seat since the first kiss, would be open to being penetrated. And that certainly isn’t without appeal — the top, in Ryuunosuke’s uneducated guess, seems to have the easier of the two jobs — but nonetheless, he’s more curious about the latter option. The visceralness of it, maybe, being pinned like prey under predator, filled to a depth that his own fingers would never achieve.
“You inside me,” Ryuunosuke breathes.
Kazuma’s eyes grow ocean-dark. “Mm. Turn around?”
With anticipation fizzling under his skin, Ryuunosuke obeys, turning onto his stomach. It’s unfair like this, he realizes, feeling the scorch of Kazuma’s gaze over his body as he only gets an eyeful of pillow. But maybe this is the point; it admittedly heightens the thrill when Kazuma’s fingers unexpectedly come to dance down Ryuunosuke’s spine, down to the small of his back. They linger there for a moment, dimpling into his skin, until the weight disappears and the next moment Ryuunosuke is being divested of his trousers and fundonshi in one fell swoop.
God. Ryuunosuke’s face burns. He could definitely feel his erection catch on the fabric, bobbing when it frees itself. And then Kazuma is making some kind of noise of approval, taking hold of Ryuunosuke’s waist to shift his hips up and back —
“W-wait, wait,” Ryuunosuke blurts, feeling emasculated for maybe the first time in his life. “This position feels weird.”
Kazuma hums in acknowledgement, effortlessly pivoting his hands to push and pull Ryuunosuke like putty until he’s laying on his side. He settles himself behind, chest pressed against Ryuunosuke’s shoulders. The direct comparison makes Kazuma seem impossibly broad, enveloping Ryuunosuke entirely, even though it’s definitely more a question of posture than size. “How’s this?”
Still unfair, but: “…Better.”
“Good,” Kazuma murmurs, and Ryuunosuke can feel every vibration. He kisses the back of Ryuunosuke’s shoulder, smoothing a hand up and down his side. It’s close enough to innocent cuddling that Ryuunosuke melts a little into the sheets. It’s clear that Kazuma doesn’t intend for them to waste much more time, though, when the hand travels up his thigh and squeezes his ass. He presses forward until their bodies are flush, forcing them both to endure the dizzying overheat of their proximity.
“We don’t have any oil,” Kazuma comments.
Ryuunosuke tries very hard to remember why that’s a problem.
Kazuma laughs through his nose, clearly reading his mind. “Do you have any experience?”
“Uh… not with other people.” A second later, he winces at the tacit admission.
“Then it’s going to hurt a lot without lubrication, you know.”
“I don’t mind,” Ryuunosuke mumbles. The logistics of everything seems so trifling compared to the scale of his want, the thick press of Kazuma from behind.
“Well, I do.”
“Can’t…” Ryuunosuke squirms as Kazuma mouths at his nape. “Can’t we just use spit or something?”
“You want that?”
“Mm…”
Kazuma’s hand migrates up to press two fingers at the seam of Ryuunosuke’s mouth. “Wet them for me, then?” he asks softly. “Since you were so good at it earlier.”
They slip in easy as anything. Now tasked with the express purpose of making a substitute lubricant, it’s a messier, noisier affair. The steady rock of Kazuma’s digits in and out causes saliva to spill, dribble down Ryuunosuke’s chin. At one point his teeth scrape against the skin, and as if in retaliation, Kazuma shoves deeper, making Ryuunosuke gag again, taking a gasping, desperate inhale afterwards.
It’s honestly gross. Ryuunosuke could not be more turned on if he tried.
“Just like that,” Kazuma breathes, adding a third.
The width of three is strenuous, Ryuunosuke no longer able to close his lips around them in any meaningful way, just drooling around them helplessly. Thankfully Kazuma doesn’t stay there for long, pulling them fully out after a few seconds. He keeps his hand in front of Ryuunosuke’s face, both of them staring at the viscous movement of the saliva when he spreads his fingers slightly and gathers them again.
“You’re surprisingly filthy for someone so polite,” Kazuma says, almost awestruck.
Ryuunosuke could say a lot of things back to that — like how he’s a law student about to commit sodomy with an illegal stowaway — but of course, Kazuma is barreling ahead of him as usual. Ryuunosuke mewls as the dampened hand comes down to press under his legs.
“You’re still going to have to spread your legs a little.”
Ryuunosuke bites his lip in embarrassment, lets Kazuma’s other hand lift his leg up for better access. He’s now more out of his depth than he’s ever been, as Kazuma’s hand explores the most intimate part of him, places no one else has ever touched. The fingers circle around Ryuunosuke’s entrance, cold and slick, and Ryuunosuke nearly whines.
“You’re twitching,” Kazuma chuckles, chin tucked over Ryuunosuke’s shoulder to watch. “You’re so cute.”
“Feels weird,” Ryuunosuke pants, “ah —”
It’s maddening, that Kazuma doesn’t have to do anything special, just massaging him in place, the occasional threat of a push inside, to reduce him to an incoherent puddle. It’s as if every fleeting thought gets squashed like an insect, as if the instinctual pattern of inhaling and exhaling has become an ordeal. He’d thought that sex and masturbation would’ve felt the same, just with more hands, but his own sessions had had some sense of structure, some sense of rising action to accompany the climax. But of course. Others are unpredictable; Kazuma will rely on his own metronome before listening to Ryuunosuke’s.
“Kazuma,” Ryuunosuke hisses. When Kazuma just continues his ministrations, again, with urgency: “Kazuma.”
“Yes?” Kazuma says innocently, a verbal bat of the eyelashes.
It could have been seconds or hours; the time is melting out of Ryuunosuke’s ears. Either way it has been too long. “Stop teasing — and just —”
“Just what?”
“You’re such an asshole,” Ryuunosuke groans. He can feel the hand holding his thigh squeeze, can feel himself slipping from annoyance back into desperation. “Please.”
“Want it that badly?”
“Mm, just — hurry up, aah —”
Kazuma sighs beleagueredly and stops his hand. “Actually, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Ryuunosuke swivels his head to gawk at him. “Are you serious right now?”
“If it’s your first time, you really should have proper oil or seaweed,” Kazuma says casually. “And you’re not relaxed at all. Stretching you out would take ages.” He unceremoniously shoves his pointer in, making Ryuunosuke yelp and clench reflexively, and clicks his tongue. “See? You can barely handle one as it is.”
“Then what was the point,” Ryuunosuke cries.
“Shhh,” Kazuma hisses with a glance at the vent. “Don’t worry, I’m still going to fuck you.”
Ryuunosuke makes a questioning noise, lost and too sexually frustrated to think. He can hear the rustle of fabric and the clink of metal behind him; when he tries to turn his head to look, Kazuma forcibly stops him from doing so. So he intends Ryuunosuke not to see him, then. He surely can’t be embarrassed of his size; bigger than Ryuunosuke, at least, from the way it felt pressed against his backside.
Then Kazuma’s hands are gripping his waist, shifting him back, and as easy as nocking an arrow into place, he slips his cock between Ryuunosuke’s thighs.
“What’s…?”
“Feels good like this too,” Kazuma murmurs, breath drawn tight. He slowly pushes forward until Ryuunosuke can see the flushed head peeking out from between his legs, shiny with precum and saliva. “Okay?”
“Oh,” Ryuunosuke chokes out, dizzy. “Okay.”
Because it’s not really like penetration — there’s no pain, no feeling full enough to burst — but it’s as close as it’s going to get. Ryuunosuke hadn’t been nearly imaginative enough to think of a scenario like this on his own. It’s shameless, the way he can watch each push come through. How Kazuma’s dick slides up against his perineum, jostles his testes at the apex of his thrusts, threatens to catch on his rim on the backswing. How there’s no need for an adjustment period, how Kazuma can ramp and slow his pace spontaneously, following the rhythm of his own lust. How it’s not so much having sex as it is being fucked, like Ryuunosuke is just a substitute for a pillow or a hand, a tool to aid Kazuma in his feverish masturbation.
For the first few minutes they both seem to be out of words, just listening to the wet noises of their friction, the labor of their breaths, the occasional whimper from Ryuunosuke or curse from Kazuma. As they settle into the position, Kazuma’s hands wander from Ryuunosuke’s waist, gripping hungrily at his thighs, stomach, chest. Damned by the angle, Ryuunosuke can’t do much to touch him back besides sliding his hands up his extended arms. He hopes Kazuma is enjoying himself despite Ryuunosuke’s uselessness; seems to be, from the way his breaths feel, stuttered into Ryuunosuke’s neck.
“Make like a good hole and squeeze your legs together for me,” Kazuma grunts.
Ryuunosuke’s eyes go round, in shock at such vulgarity coming from the mouth of Yumei’s star student, but his body registers and obeys the command faster than his brain can comprehend it.
Kazuma moans throatily in his ear in appreciation. “Good boy.”
Ryuunosuke’s trembling now with the overwhelm. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that Kazuma’s abrasive, take-charge attitude has really done something for him, and he’s now painfully aware of how hard he is, dribbling onto the sheets. There’s only the slap of skin, the air of the cabin becoming thick with their body heat, the paradox of being touched everywhere and not being touched at all.
Ryuunosuke reaches out blindly for words, struggles to arrange them in any coherent order. “Please — need you, need —”
“T-tell me,” Kazuma urges.
He gasps at a particularly torturous thrust. “Touch me,” he pleads, convinced that if he does it himself, he’ll irrevocably fuck it up somehow, shatter the tension building in his stomach. “Kazuma —”
“Close?”
“Yes — hah, fuck —”
“Just from this,” Kazuma whispers. “You’re incredible.”
Ryuunosuke thanks every star in the sky that he doesn’t pretend to need clarification this time, just wraps his hand firmly around Ryuunosuke’s member, hardly needing to work at all to bring him to completion. One, two strokes before Ryuunosuke’s climax is hitting him like a train, a ticklish warmth that suddenly explodes into a raging wildfire, consuming him whole. A broken sob makes its way out of his throat, and then Kazuma is grabbing a fistful of his hair, shoving his face down into the mattress to muffle it.
When he blinks back into awareness, the first thing he recognizes is that he’s way too hot. The second thing is that he’s come all over Kazuma’s nice bedsheets. The third is that, body boneless and twitching, he’s no longer being useful to Kazuma, who’s indeed slipped out from between his thighs.
“Sorry,” he pants, tilting his head so his cheek rests against the sheets, “s-sorry —”
But when he glances up, he’s finally rewarded with a view of Kazuma’s face. Glowing from blush and sweat, eyebrows knitted together in effort, hair falling messily into his eyes, lips parted and swollen from biting. All pointing to the impossible truth that, as much as Ryuunosuke wanted Kazuma, Kazuma wanted him back.
He’s taken himself in hand, now, hovering over Ryuunosuke with one elbow propping himself up. “Ryuunosuke,” he gasps, desperation bleeding through the cracks in his voice. “Fuck, you’re so —”
Ryuunosuke doesn’t get to hear the end of that sentence, as Kazuma’s shoulders go taut and he pitches forward to sink his teeth into the already-tender hickey on Ryuunosuke’s neck, stifling his own cry of pleasure. The acute sting of pain nearly drowns out the warm sensation of Kazuma spilling over his ass and thighs. At least Ryuunosuke remembers this time to clap his hand over his mouth.
There isn’t so much an afterglow as there is a post-sex smog. As the final waves of Ryuunosuke’s orgasm peter out, they’re replaced with a dull sense of clarity. He suddenly feels awkward, unsure of what to say, burdened with the knowledge that his relationship with his best friend is now irreversibly altered. By Kazuma’s silence, he may be thinking similarly. There is a small apology in the way he kisses the bruise on Ryuunosuke’s neck.
He eventually peels himself off of Ryuunosuke, probably also overheating. His gaze travels downwards, and he visibly swallows. Ryuunosuke follows it, and it’s not really possible to crane his head in the right way, but he can feel what Kazuma sees nonetheless. Because the image is not any different from what it would have been if Ryuunosuke had been properly sodomized; Kazuma’s spend leaks down his thighs all the same.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Kazuma says at last, voice a little hoarse.
It’s a quiet affair as they tend to the aftermath. Kazuma fetches a rag from who-knows-where and wipes them both down, gathers their clothes from where they’ve been rumpled on the floor. There’s, thankfully, a pitcher of water left over from dinner, which they take turns eagerly gulping from, even though it’s become stale and lukewarm.
Kazuma eventually ushers him off the bed so he can dab at the stains and pull the dressings off.
“Sorry about your sheets,” Ryuunosuke mumbles.
Kazuma shoots a look at him, starts laughing as he continues folding.
“What?”
“Just,” Kazuma says with amusement, “it’s so like you to apologize before saying anything else about what we just did.”
Even as his face grows hot, Ryuunosuke feels a sense of relief, like the surface tension has been broken. “Well, it’s just a pain to do laundry.”
“Not for me,” Kazuma says matter-of-factly. “First-class perks. There’s a room with spare sheets and a place to drop off dirty ones. I’ll go there in a minute.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Kazuma gradually begins re-buttoning his shirt. “…Are you alright?”
“No, I am,” Ryuunosuke insists hastily. “Like I said, I — I wanted this. Liked it. Just,” he hesitates, “don’t want to lose you. As a friend.”
Kazuma softens. “…I know how you feel, but I promise you won’t.” He finishes with his task and turns to look Ryuunosuke in the eye. “I can’t deny now that I’ve wondered what it would be like to be lovers, but I think of us as friends first and foremost.” He flashes a grin at him. “Partners.”
Something light flutters in Ryuunosuke’s chest. Kazuma makes it all sound so terribly easy.
“Alright. Partners,” he agrees.
“Don’t worry too much about it, alright?” Kazuma gets to his feet, picks up the laundry, scuffs Ryuunosuke’s hair affectionately as he walks past. “It only has to mean as much as you want it to. We’ve three weeks left of sea yet to figure it out.”
“…Thanks, Kazuma.”
“No need,” Kazuma says. “I’ll be back in a moment, okay?”
—
The rest of the night is blurry after that. Ryuunosuke thinks he falls asleep on the bed, but he wakes up in the closet nonetheless. He feels, selfishly, a little disappointed that after all they did Kazuma still didn’t want them to sleep in the bed together; then subsequently feels placated by the image of Kazuma carrying his sleeping form to the hiding spot, gentle enough not to wake him. He is, after all, a stowaway. It’s good to be cautious.
“Morning,” Kazuma says when Ryuunosuke opens the wardrobe doors, rubbing at his eyes. He’s already midway through his morning routine, having unsheathed Karuma to do some drills, although without a target it looks as if he’s just swinging it around at random.
“Morning,” Ryuunosuke replies sleepily. He stretches, winces when he feels his shoulder pop. “Ow.”
“Sore?”
“Mhm.”
Kazuma stops his swinging to give him a lofty look over his shoulder.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Ryuunosuke grumbles. “Because of the closet.” Although his neck is admittedly tender.
Kazuma laughs and hoists Karuma up again. “Of course. We didn’t even do it properly, after all.”
“Too bad,” Ryuunosuke says, before his brain can catch up.
“Too bad,” Kazuma agrees breezily.
It’s… nice. That they can maintain an air of casual congeniality, even with this syrupy layer of mutual want on top. That they have one less secret to hide from each other. Ryuunosuke watches as Kazuma finishes his drills, cleans and sheathes the sword, affixes the hachimaki to his forehead, struck by an odd sense of domesticity.
“What time is it?”
“About eight,” Kazuma says with a hazard at his pocketwatch.
So nearly breakfast. Ryuunosuke droops.
“You’re going to miss me that much already?” Kazuma teases.
Ryuunosuke decides to ignore his comment, mostly because it’s accurate. “Can you please remember to put honey in the oatmeal this time?”
“So picky,” Kazuma tuts. “I’ll try.”
On go Kazuma’s boots, one buckle at a time. He gives himself a once-over in the portable desk mirror, checks his pockets for his necessities. With that he makes his way towards the door, unhooking the latch and diligently scanning the hallway for onlookers.
“I’ll try to grab some olive oil for you too,” Kazuma says.
Ryuunosuke blinks. “Why would I want olive oil in my oatmeal?”
Kazuma just smiles at him. “See you later, partner.”