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If Kiryu’s being honest with himself, he’s known for a long time. There’s two parts to pretending he didn’t know what kind of man Nishiki was; one was disbelief that Nishiki could do those things, and the other was that Kiryu couldn’t admit to himself that he wanted those things too.
He thinks he’s known for years, since the kiss maybe, fifteen and in that room they shared, that room Kiryu hopes Nishiki loved as much as he did. How Nishiki had covered Kiryu’s body with his, and how Kiryu had gone very, very still. There was a moment where Kiryu thought Nishiki might not stop, and Kiryu, inexperienced and clueless, didn’t want him to. It was easier to lay there, statuesque, and wait for Nishiki to make the next move. He never does.
Kiryu doesn’t yet have the words in his vocabulary to bring it up. That’s his excuse, anyway. The truth of the thing is, he wouldn’t change anything about that night, save for the fact that Nishiki did stop.
These thoughts are uncomfortable and intrusive. It gets worse the older they get, the more Kiryu learns, and by the time they’re leaving the orphanage he isn’t just thinking about Nishiki holding him down and kissing him anymore.
Kazama would be disappointed.
Five years later, he still feels like he’s waiting for Nishiki to make the next move.
--
Nishiki likes to get him drunk. This is not a new fact, but everyone acts like they’re breaking some horrible news to him when they mention it. In fact, everyone’s been telling him to be careful around Nishiki since they were old enough to be on their own, and that’s the thing, Kiryu already knows. He’s left wondering why it is, exactly, that everyone thinks he doesn’t know his own best friend, his own brother.
“Don’t let Nishikiyama talk you into anything,” Kazama had told him, a firm hand on his shoulder, and Kashiwagi had repeated those same words to him just a few months later. They don’t trust Nishiki, or they don’t trust him with Kiryu . No one ever takes into account what it is Kiryu wants, maybe not even Nishiki himself.
Now, it’s Reina’s hand he’s shrugging off.
“Kiryu-san, please...”
It’s not that he doesn’t want to listen to her, it’s just…
“Reina, I promise. Everything is fine.”
She looks like he’s just slapped her across the face, and yes Kiryu understands where she’s coming from, but her concern is annoying and unwarranted. He’s tired of people looking at him like this. It wasn’t… it wasn’t her place to step in anyway. And even if he didn’t know these things about Nishiki already, how was she expecting him to react when she essentially accused his best friend of trying to take advantage of him? Her words are more polite than the ones he would have used.
“Reina,” Kiryu tries again, and it’s the first time he’s told anyone this. He remains steady and calm, relating a truth he should have accepted a long time ago. “There is nothing Nishiki could do to me that I don’t want.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that, and Kiryu is left bitterly wondering why.
--
Kiryu has never had a vivid imagination, but he knows Nishiki well enough to know what he would do. He thinks about that night at Serena a lot, missed opportunities for both of them. He’s… complicit in this, the fantasy of Nishiki pushing him down and holding him down. He feels guilty, sure, feels absolutely filthy, but there’s only so long he can dwell on the bad parts. It’s easier to compartmentalize, guilty thoughts and guilty pleasures are for early morning when there’s nothing to do but lay in his bed alone.
And in those hours where this is safe to think about, he’s so wrapped up in imagining what Nishiki might do if he got his hands on him, if he covered Kiyru’s body with his own like all those years ago, that not once does it occur to Kiryu how Nishiki might feel imagining the same thing. They have this fantasy they share, but only one of them knows it. Kiryu has never been good at putting Nishiki first, and not once does it occur to him that this is precisely why he’s still waiting for some move that won’t come the way Kiryu wants it to.
--
What does he want? Too much. Kiryu will never be satisfied with just a kiss he couldn’t bring himself to return. Nishiki gets drunk and puts his hand under Kiryu’s jacket, halfheartedly gropes him in the karaoke booth. Let’s go somewhere new tonight. Kiryu replays Nishiki’s words in his head, and it’s easy to work out the motive. The promise of being away from Reina’s prying eyes after that last night out sounds good to Kiryu, sounds great , until they’re stumbling through Nishiki’s door and nothing happens. Kiryu goes to bed frustrated and half hard, keeps staring at Nishiki’s bedroom door as if to say what are you waiting for?
--
It doesn’t happen the way he wants. “Hold me down.” Nishiki is crying and Kiryu doesn’t know why. He’s crying and begging and this wasn’t ever how this was supposed to happen. That kiss, their second kiss ever , is bittered with alcohol and now Nishiki is crying.
He thinks he’d do anything Nishiki asked him to, though, so when Nishiki wants to be held down Kiryu does it. He doesn’t understand why and Nishiki doesn’t explain it to him, just grits his teeth and soaks Kiryu’s pillowcase through with tears.
His hair is very soft between Kiryu’s fingers, fine and long, and he feels--so uncomfortable, gingerly holding Nishiki down with a strong hand pressed flat over the unfinished koi tattoo. There’s something wrong with what he’s doing, an uneasiness, a chill that he can’t shake.
Is this what it’s like to be Nishiki, is this what Nishiki wanted? No. Nishiki’s hands would be rougher, his touch less kind. Kiryu doesn’t like this revelation, and when the deed is done he feels sick, feels like he’s done something unforgivable. He never wanted to hurt Nishiki, but there was more than one way to do that.
Kazama would be disappointed. Don’t let Nishikiyama talk you into anything.
“Thank you,” Nishiki whispers into the curve of his neck after Kiryu’s long pretended to drift off to sleep, and he means it, really means it. Kiryu’s stomach twists itself into knots, and he makes a silent promise to himself and to Nishiki, to never want anything again.