you feel your heart taking root in your body

by persimmonsandcats

Summary:

“Go back to class, ‘kay?” He leans forward, kisses her forehead. “You’re good, Kirara. It's all good—”

“Only if I’m with you," Kirara says. Her forehead burns where his mouth was. She wants him to kiss her again. She wants him to kiss her mouth, see if they fit together like puzzle pieces, if their lips lock as gently as their hands do. “I’m good if I’m with you.”

“Kirara,” he frowns, his hands clench on her waist, “you need to–”

“No," she cuts him off. She settles herself firmly on her feet, keeps her eyes on his face. “Don’t you fucking dare tell me what I need to do, Kin. Not you.”

He looks at her.

She doesn’t lower her gaze. He has been part of teaching her to be brave, yes, but she has taught herself. She relied on herself before she met Kinji and she knows what her gut says. She knows where she needs to be. Where she wants to be. She stands firmly on her own two feet. She looks at him, meets his gaze head on.

“I’m going with you," she says, no room for argument.

Notes:

(kirara is a transwoman, afab and amab language used interchangeably, mostly afab)

Kirara is in her third year in vocational high school when she realizes two things nearly simultaneously: she’s brave enough to be herself even though she’s scared, and she’s in the type of love with Kinji that will live in her soul forever, even if their mouths never touch or their skin never knows each other’s fingerprints.

She looks at his bruised knuckles, running her thumbs over the torn skin. His hand is so big. She cradles it in both of her hands and blinks rapidly, trying to stop the tears that are threatening to fall. She can’t lift her gaze. She can’t look him in the face.

“Kin-chan–” she whispers and then her words fail her. She wipes away the tear that falls on his knuckles, then the next one, smearing wetness over the bruises as she stifles a sob. “What did you do?” she asks, even though she knows what he did, would know even if she hadn't seen the tail end of it. She has tended to his bruises. She knows what his hands look like after they have hurt someone. What she wants to ask, what she can't ask, is why. Why is too big of a question. Why has too big of an answer for how small she feels now, how small they are, the two of them in the shadow of the school, this many eyes pinning them in place, Kinji's body blocking hers from the wind.

He lifts his other hand and cups her jaw, tilts her face up. She finds she can look at him, her eyes drifting to his face as though magnetized. His features are in shadow but his eyes are warm and Kirara never wants to be away from him, not ever again.

“You’re okay,” he tells her softly. “Go back to class, Kirara-chan.”

Kirara feels something well up inside her, slow, sickeningly sweet, a taste like bile in the back of her throat. His voice, his words, him calling her Kirara-chan— it sounds like a goodbye. Kirara will not say goodbye. She won't let Kinji be taken from her. She won't let him think he has to say goodbye.

“Kin-chan," she says, as he slowly works his hand out of hers, pulling it away. “Kin-chan," she repeats. She feels dizzy, watches his fingers fall to his side. He flexes his empty hand. She steps closer to him, into his shadow, his space, peers up at his face. “Are you leaving?” she asks, trying to keep her voice calm. She won’t let him go. She won't let him go alone. Her body feels cold. Kinji's mouth is twisted at the corner, the way it is when he's in pain.

“I don’t really have a choice," he says, bitterness at the edges of his voice. His eyes trace her features. Kirara feels like she is being committed to memory. “But it's fine, Kirara, surprised it didn't happen before. Fuck this shit, you know? They’re always– the school board, the principal, the fucking people– it’s all just–”

He gestures around them uselessly. The school gates bear witness to nothing. Everything.

Kirara stands on her tiptoes and cups his cheek. He takes a ragged breath in through his nose and his body twitches once. A hard movement, a movement aborted, like he stopped himself from grabbing her and running. Like he stopped himself from touching her back. She stares at him for a long time, the way his mouth is pressed into a thin line, the fire that’s thrumming in his eyes, the tightness in his jaw under her hand. She strokes her thumb on his cheek. He tilts into the touch.

She can feel eyes on her. On them. There’s a whispered giggle, a stifled hush that rolls behind her like a wave. The whole school must be watching them. She can imagine the girls leaning out the window the way they do when a friend is confessing, the harsh eyes of her homeroom teacher, the curious eyes of the first years. The swell of energy behind her feels as frantic as Shinjuku station at rush hour despite the quiet.

Kinji's eyes flick off her face, to the people behind her that she can't see. Kirara’s heart thuds in her chest. She thinks maybe Kinji will want her to take a step back. She starts to lower herself from her tiptoes. His hands come up to her waist. He holds her steady, tilted up toward him. His hands are under her jacket, thumbing at her belt, the waistband of her uniform pants. She hates these pants, their shapeless form, the way they fall against her body. They're almost flattering on Kinji— make him seem strong, solid. Accentuate the loveliness of the weight of him. On her she feels they highlight the wrong places and they fall against her skin rough and scratching. She hates seeing them in the mirror. She hates seeing herself in her school uniform.

Kinji’s fingers stroke her waist gently. His hands are so hot through the material of her shirt that she feels like they're burning her skin.

“Go back to class, ‘kay?” He leans forward, kisses her forehead. “You’re good, Kirara. It's all good—”

“Only if I’m with you," Kirara says. Her forehead burns where his mouth was. She wants him to kiss her again. She wants him to kiss her mouth, see if they fit together like puzzle pieces, if their lips lock as gently as their hands do. “I’m good if I’m with you.”

“Kirara,” he frowns, his hands clench on her waist, “you need to–”

“No," she cuts him off. She settles herself firmly on her feet, keeps her eyes on his face. “Don’t you fucking dare tell me what I need to do, Kin. Not you.”

He looks at her.

She doesn’t lower her gaze. He has been part of teaching her to be brave, yes, but she has taught herself. She relied on herself before she met Kinji and she knows what her gut says. She knows where she needs to be. Where she wants to be. She stands firmly on her own two feet. She looks at him, meets his gaze head on.

“I’m going with you," she says, no room for argument.

The late spring breeze is cold against her buzzed head. She had been growing her hair out. It had brushed past the neckline of her uniform. She's not used to the back of her neck being cold. Her skin prickles.

Kinji looks at her. He looks at her like he can see her.

He has always looked at her like he can see her.

“Okay," he says finally. “Okay.”

 

 

 

Kirara doesn’t have much to pack in her house.

Her mother doesn’t speak to her. Her father speaks to her less. Neither of them have spoken to her since the day they tried to shave her head. She’d fought back, hit her father hard, made him bleed. It had shocked all three of them into stillness, for a moment; into a silence that had yet to be broken. She’d had to shave the rest of her head, the damage already done, but still. She had made her point, just as they had made theirs. She'd never raised her hand against her father before, not for any reason, not even when it might have been justified, not even to block a hit.

(She had made her way to Kinji's after, stormed out of the house with her half-shaved head, trying to fight back the tears so hard that she ended up with a migraine, ended up crying anyway. She didn't let Kinji shave her head. She did the rest herself, biting her lower lip so hard it bled. Kinji didn't say anything when she cried, didn't try to tell her it was okay or that she didn't need to cry or that it would grow back. He offered her chocolates that she took even though she knew they were leftover pachinko prizes. He let her sleep, curled up in his bed, in one of his sweatshirts. He put a bandaid on her knuckles even though she hadn't hit her dad that hard, even though the only bruise was the one around her eye.)

In her childhood room, Kirara puts on a pair of jeans Kinji bought for her. A shirt she has only ever worn in the secrecy of late late night, when the house is asleep. It's cropped, tight in a way that pushes up the chest she doesn’t have, creates an illusion she likes. She rubs at her head, her shorn hair, then puts on the jewelry she’s secreted away because she can't wear it out of the house in front of her parents, packs her nail polish stash, the lipsticks she’s never worn. She pauses, opens one, traces it over her lips without touching them. She can’t tell if it will look silly.

She leaves her school uniform in a pile on her floor.

When she leaves, she doesn't look back.

 

 

 

Kinji is waiting outside of her apartment block, leaning against a bike rack. His hand is bandaged. Kirara had bought the gauze at a Family Mart, bandaged it for him at a crosswalk while they waited and people stared. Kinji's looking at his phone, one leg kicked over the other, a bottle of tea in the crook of his elbow. A child is staring at Kinji wide-eyed, his mother tugging his hand and skirting them in a wide circle, like even being close to Kinji could be dangerous. Kinji must see them in his peripheral, but he doesn’t look up.

“Kin," Kirara calls, voice soft. She feels a little scared and she doesn't know why.

Kinji looks up.

“There’s my girl," he says. His girl. The mother and child look at her. Kirara has it in her to look back. Kinji takes her bag when he walks up to her, tosses it over his shoulder. “Ready?” He asks, holding out his hand.

“Ready," she whispers.

His hand is big. It envelopes hers completely.

 

 

 

Kirara and Kinji had met because, fresh out of middle school, Kirara had gotten in a fight. A fight she was losing miserably, until Kinji happened by. He had taken her side because he said three on one wasn't fair, especially when the one was so shit at fighting. Afterwards, Kinji hadn't asked what the fight was about, hadn't really done anything but tell her that she needed to learn how to punch better if she was going to pick fights with guys twice her size. She had said then teach me how, asshole and he had laughed, a look on his face like it startled him, his own laughter a sound he wasn't used to hearing.

He started showing up in her life after that the way a song follows you, showing up in the grocery store, convenience store, a random playlist where you're not expecting it. It might have been there all along and you just never noticed. She fell into step with him naturally, like she was always meant to be by his side.

When they had known each other for a few months, she told him she wanted to read his palm. She kept finding herself drawn to stars and tarot cards, shamans and shrines and astrology, wanted to try it out on someone other than herself. Kinji had snorted and muttered something about girl stuff, but he still held out his hand to her without hesitation. She had felt smaller than usual, cupping his big palm in both of her hands. She had tried to trace the lines with her eyes, ended up using the tip of one finger, tracing the rough of the callouses.

"You moisturize or somethin'?" he had asked, tilted back on the rooftop, staring at the clouds, a line of stitches across his eyebrow, "yer all soft."

Kirara had shrugged and tried to tame the blush on her cheeks. She hadn't been able to stop thinking that this was almost like holding hands, that she wanted to hold his hand for real, that maybe she wanted to hold it forever, actually.

"What time were you born?" Kirara had demanded finally, frowning at him. "Your hand is confusing, I'm going to read your star chart instead." She dropped his hand so she wouldn't tangle their fingers together.

Kinji squinted one eye open to look at her.

"Dunno," he had said.

"Well then ask," Kirara had snapped, feeling flushed and caught out and squirmy and entirely unlike any way she had ever felt before.

"Who the fuck am I gonna ask, dude," Kinji snorted, turning his head away. It was the first time Kirara properly conceptualized how different Kinji's homelife must look from hers, so different that she didn't even have a frame of reference for it. It was also the first time she said to anyone but herself, said it out loud right there on that rooftop without even thinking about the potential repercussions until the words were out of her mouth—

"I'm not a dude. I'm a girl." Her voice echoed against the sky and left a ringing quiet. In the ensuing silence, the sun had seemed too hot and her uniform was scratchy around her throat and her wrists, and she had wanted to run, to scream, to take it back and not take it back all at once. Kinji opened both of his eyes and turned his head to look at her and everything died in her throat and she was just sitting there, looking at him, feeling so small and so scared. "I'm a girl," she had repeated, hated how her voice wavered, rose in inflection like she wasn't sure of what she was saying even though she was, more sure of it than anything else.

"You're in a guy's uniform," Kinji had said slowly, his eyes tracking over his features, "and your school ID says—"

"I'm a girl," Kirara repeated, eyes burning with tears of frustration and humiliation and tiredness. "Fuck you, fuck everyone." She had stood up and run then, crashing down the school staircase even though she could hear Kinji calling for her, nearly knocking over a girl in her pretty little skirt and her neat matching socks. Kirara had run all the way home where she buried herself in her futon for three days, claiming a nausea she truly felt, an illness she thought she must have.

She didn't really expect to see Kinji again.

Two days after she went back to school, two days where Kinji was not at school— two days where Kirara kept telling herself she wasn't looking for him, waiting for him— Kinji came back to school. Kirara was half asleep, slouched over her desk, when she heard their classroom door slide open a little too forcefully. She had glanced up to see Kinji walking into the room, silencing class 1-A in a heartbeat as he scanned the room, then made his way to her. Kirara had braced herself for a punch, or maybe worse. Sat with her eyes locked on her desk, afraid to look up and properly meet his gaze.

He had dropped a paper on her desk. It took a minute, for the kanji to swim into focus and for Kirara to understand. A certificate of acceptance for his birth notification. Date and time and place. She stared at it for so long it had started to blur again. She blinked furiously, hazarded a look up. Kinji was sitting himself backwards on the chair of the kid who sat in front of her, settling into it easily, like he owned the space, like it was his desk.

"Well come on, lucky star," he had drawled, glancing up from the form to her, "you promised me my future."

Kirara had sworn to herself right then and there, in that near silent classroom, that she would never leave his side.

She stood by that and she knows, even now, holding his hand as he walks her away from everything she's ever known, that she's standing on her own two feet and that there is nowhere, not anywhere, in the entire world she would rather be.

She promised him her future, if nothing else.

 

 

 

They spend the first few months after they leave home giddy with freedom in a shitty corner of Shinjuku in a shitty studio apartment just outside of Kabukicho. It's loud and chaotic and full of so many colors it makes Kirara dizzy. She can't stop smiling. Kirara’s parents cut off her phone. Kinji buys her a new one. He makes money in fights, as a bookie, as a bouncer. Kirara works night-shifts at a convenience store. He picks her up. He drops her off. She goes to watch his fights, refuses to miss even one. She spends a lot of time online, reading and reading and reading. When she doesn't have work she goes to the club with Kinji and watches the girls spin on the poles.

She starts to grow her hair back out.

 

 

 

“My fucking lucky star," Kinji crows, spinning her around until she’s dizzy. She can’t stop laughing. He’s bleeding from a cut on his brow and it’s going to take ages to stem the flow. Kirara kicks her feet behind her and giggles, presses their foreheads together, holding onto him. “My good luck charm, my fucking lucky girl,” Kinji says, finally swinging her back down, letting her tiptoes touch solid ground.

Nothing is as solid as Kinji.

“Kin-chan,” Kirara says and then her words fail her. She kicks up her feet again and he holds her, lifts her, lets her settle with her legs wrapped around his waist. She peers down at his face cupped in her hands. “You did it,” she says, not sure if he can hear her over the roar of the crowd, “you did it, I knew you could.”

The brute of a man Kinji was fighting is still unconscious on the ground, his friend or trainer or whoever that is checking on him. Kinji’s cheekbone is purpling from a nasty hit. Kirara doesn’t think it’s fractured, but she runs her fingers over it gently and tries to watch his pupils to see if they dilate or constrict. He’s so adrenaline high she can't tell. So adrenaline high she knows he can't feel it. He’ll crash later, sleep for so long it will worry her. He always does after a fight like that. Even when they were in school, would spend the whole day knocked out on the rooftop, or in class, his fingers holding gently to the back of her jacket. She traces over the slit in his eyebrow, worrying over the blood and bruises. She pauses in her inventory of Kinji's injuries when she realizes he’s stopped moving, talking, is just looking up at her.

“Kin-chan?” She asks, heart rate quickening. He got hit in the head pretty hard. She holds a finger up in front of her nose, watches his eyes focus in on it. “Follow my finger, okay?” She asks, moving it slowly from side to side. He smiles, punch drunk, and slides her down his body until she’s standing on her own two feet, pressed up against him, not a centimeter between them. His hand is firm and hot on the small of her back. He's sweaty and sticky and Kirara wants to bury her face in his chest and breathe him in.

“How did I get so lucky?” He murmurs, like it's something to be amazed by, Kirara standing here, looking up at him. She wants to ask what he means, but he presses a kiss to her forehead before she can. “Let’s fucking drink, baby, we’re full up on cash," he crows, scooping her up to head to the bar.

Kirara thinks that she's the one who is lucky. Kirara thinks he's her lucky charm. He hands her a shot of tequila. She locks eyes with him when she downs it. Reaches up and wipes away a smear of his blood from his lip with her thumb. He catches her hand, kisses her palm, and grins, raises his hand without looking away from her to order them another round.

She takes it, lets the liquor and Kinji whisk her away.

 

 

 

“Is kissing that bad?” Kirara says, gesturing at the screen. They’re half-tipsy on their shitty futon, in their shitty apartment, watching a drama. The kiss looks wooden, the girl tilting away, the boy leaning in. The main lead blinks, hasn’t even closed her eyes. Neither of them move. It looks unbearably uncomfortable.

Kirara doesn't know why she asks Kinji this though. She knows kissing isn't that bad, assumes it at least. She's seen people kiss before, seen videos of people doing more than kissing, videos she ended up clicking out of fast, heart beating too hard and too high in her throat. She supposes it's because she's loose from alcohol and proximity to Kinji. She supposes it's because she's never been kissed and she can't stop thinking about it.

“No," Kinji snorts. “Harsh assessment of the drama though, damn.” He pauses for a second, asks in a rush like he's getting the words out before he thinks better of it, “have you ever kissed anyone?”

“Nah.” Kirara tries to go for nonchalant, but it doesn't come out right. “Who would I have even kissed?" she asks jokingly, trying to cover the longing in her voice, shoving him in the shoulder. "I'm always with you," she adds accusatorily, pointing at him and poking him in the chest with her nail.

Kinji looks at her for just slightly too long, his eyes caught on her mouth, before he looks away, making a sound that could be agreement. He clears his throat, downs his beer, leans forward and grabs another can. It hisses and fizzes when he opens it and he sucks at the foam, pulls away with his mouth wet. Kirara turns back to the laptop and tries to ignore the tight feeling, low in her stomach. She chews at her lower lip.

"We could kiss," Kinji says suddenly, his voice too loud. His sentences cracks across the room, startling Kirara. She makes a scoffing sound, half-confusion, half-want. Kinji doesn't say anything else, so she rolls her head to the side to meet his gaze, her hair prickling against her neck. He's not looking at her. He's staring determinedly at the computer screen, rolling his beer can between his palms. His face is flushed.

"Haha," Kirara manages after a second, her high-ball can sweating in her hands. She pouts at him, watches his eyes flick to her as she juts her lower lip out a little more. It makes her new piercings tug, but she ignores it. "Don't tease—" she starts.

"Not," he mumbles. He looks at her. Looks away. “Wasn't teasing. Although I guess you would, like, mind,” he says, scratching self-consciously at the back of his head, “like, if your first kiss was me.” He looks so serious. Kirara’s brain can’t process. Her lungs feel too small and too big all at once. She looks at him blankly. She needs to say something but she can't figure out what and the quiet is dragging on too long. It's too long, Kinji's going to think she doesn't wa— Kinji shrugs, the set of his jaw tight in a way that Kirara doesn't like to be the cause of. The way he looks when something goes amiss at the club or when that girl had maxed out his credit card and then ghosted him. “Never mind, fuck, drinkin' too much, I just meant–”

“I wouldn’t mind," Kirara says, cuts him off. She wouldn't mind. The only thing that would be bad about Kinji being her first kiss is that she thinks she would never want to kiss anyone else after. Kirara has imagined a kiss with Kinji more times than she thinks she should have. She has wondered what it would be like more times than she can count. "I think it— I trust you—"

Kinji glances at her, glances away. He rubs at the back of his neck, brow furrowed.

"You trust me?" he asks cautiously, like that doesn't seem like something that could be true.

Kirara almost laughs. "Yes," she says. So much, she thinks.

"I was just— I mean, thinking that, you know, you deserve a good first kiss," Kinji says, very softly.

Kirara wants to tease, say something like oh, you’re so good at kissing, are you? or wow, pretty sure of yourself or guess I definitely can’t kiss you then, hm? not if I want it to be good or anything that could break some of the tension sitting heavy in the room, but what comes out is,

"Was yours not good?”

“Mine was–” Kinji frowns, “mine was drunk and she was older, some girl after a fight. I don't even remember her name." He laughs wryly. "I don’t know. Not that things need to be special and dramatic and,” he glances at their laptop screen, “drama worthy all the time, but some things deserve to be nice. And, like, you deserve nice things. You deserve a nice first kiss.”

“Wouldn’t you mind?” Kirara can’t help blurting out.

“Huh?” he says, glancing down at her.

“I just mean–” Kirara gestures at herself, “and, you know, I was a boy when we met, so I know for you, because you’re straight, it’s probably–”

“You’re a girl," Kinji cuts her off, sounding aggravated. “You were dressed as a boy when we met, sure, and your hair is short right now, but girls have short fucking hair too. Besides, doesn’t fucking matter what you were dressed like or whatever. You weren’t ever a boy, not really, were you?”

Kirara remembers kindergarten, the first time she and her classmates were separated into groups, boys and girls, and she was in the wrong group and she tried to tell her teacher and her teacher laughed and sent her back to stand with the boys and told her parents who got so upset and threw out her favorite toys and bought her trucks and Kamen Rider toys and— no. No, Kirara was never a boy. She was dressed up like a boy, but she was never a boy.

“No," she says, so quietly she would be surprised that Kinji hears her, except that Kinji always hears her, no matter how quiet she speaks, no matter if she can't get the words out in the right order at first. He always listens.

He shuffles a little on the couch, swinging his leg up so that he can face her properly.

“You’re my girl," Kinji states, "and you’re a hot girl. It's no skin off my back to kiss you–”

“Shut the fuck up.” Kirara shoves him hard, both hands flat on his chest. He doesn't move. That pisses her off, so she shoves him again harder. He barely rocks, looks at her like she has about the physical prowess of a gnat. He grabs her wrist when she shoves him again, then grabs the other one too, stopping her movements with one big hand which pisses her off and makes something low in her stomach flutter. She kicks him in the leg.

“You are literally so weak," he tells her, like he’s not the one who taught her how to fight, like he hasn’t seen her sock a guy and break his nose. She digs her heel into his thigh muscles and he squints, grabs her ankles with a hand, tugs her legs out and then throws his thigh over her calves. “Oh my god, Kirara, yikes, this is lowkey embarrassing," he says as she squirms, scratching at his wrist as best he can to try to get him to let go.

“You suck, you suck–” she chants, even though she’s definitely not going to be able to wriggle her way free. She doesn’t particularly find she wants to, ends up half in his lap with her ear pressed to his chest. She listens to his heart thud, steady and loud, faster than she would have thought.

“I mean it, you know," Kinji says. His voice rumbles through his chest. His grip on her loosens and he shifts her, settling her more comfortably. She closes her eyes, listens to his heart, chews on a hangnail by her thumb. “If you wanted.”

Kirara listens to his heart for a moment longer before she pulls back to look at him. She's prepared, to look into his eyes. Thinks she's prepared. She's good at reading people, has become so by necessity. Sometimes she feels like she can tell when people are lying, even if they don't realize they are, even when it's subconscious.

Kinji's eyes are the same as they always are, honest and open, deep enough she could drown in them, look into them forever and never need anything else.

He's looking at her and he sees her and she feels her shoulder muscles loosen. Her stomach floods full with want.

“I want to," she manages. "Um, is— could we— like, right now?”

Kinji shifts, bringing their faces closer, one hand coming up to cup her jaw. He scans her face. The bulk of him is comforting and Kirara shifts slightly, closer to him.

“If you want?” He asks. “Is that– right now?”

Kirara’s mouth tastes like lemon highball and her hands are sweaty and her heart is beating fast, up in her throat, like a hummingbird trapped. She licks her lips and Kinji’s eyes flick down and something about the way they do, something about the rough pad of his thumb on her cheekbone, makes her nod.

"Yeah?" he asks, like he needs to confirm again, like he's not sure.

"Yes," she manages to whisper.

Kinji slides his hand to the nape of her neck, runs his finger through the short hairs there, the almost pixie cut she’s grown it back into.

“Close your eyes," he whispers.

Kirara closes her eyes. Her hands clench in his shirt. She can feel him, so close to her, the heat that radiates off of him. When he closes the tiny space between them Kirara’s heart stutters over a beat. She doesn’t think she could have kept her eyes open even if she wanted to. His mouth is warm against hers, his lips dry. It’s not a deep kiss. It’s chaste, gentle. Soft, like she is a precious thing he is holding onto carefully. It’s earth-shattering. Her world tilts on its axis, gravity inside her sending her blood rushing the wrong way, pulled against the tide of the moon of her heart, pulled by his sun. Kinji hesitates when their lips part, hovering so close, like he wants to kiss her again. She wants him to. She can't open her eyes.

She tilts toward him, asking without speaking.

Kinji makes a sound that seems like it was meant to be a word, meant to be her name or a question, but he doesn't, can't, finish it. He kisses her again. He kisses her close-mouthed, tilting her face with his strong hand, until she can’t take it anymore, wants to taste the inside of his mouth and see if it tastes like whiskey and lemons, see how hot his tongue is, wants something she doesn't know how to want or what it would mean if she tries to take it. If he would give it. Each kiss bleeds into the next. Kirara feels like she's floating under his hands. His tongue presses just against her lower lip, just inside her mouth.

She lets him break the next kiss properly with a stuttered gasp, tilts her head toward his, pressing their foreheads together. He strokes the back of her neck. She wants him to keep kissing her, kiss every inch of her skin. She wants to kiss every inch of his, touch all his most secret soft spots, find every scrape and bruise and put her mouth on them.

She wants him to be wanting what she wants.

She can't catch her breath.

“That was–” her head spins, “–not bad," she finally decides on.

Kinji huffs out a laugh, rubs their noses together, pulls her back into his chest.

“No," he agrees, kissing the top of her head, "that was definitely not bad. If he doesn’t kiss you like that, then you don’t want ‘im, okay?”

“Okay," she agrees. Her hands are still clenched in his t-shirt.

Kirara doesn’t think she knows how to want anyone else, not ever.

 

 

 

Kirara sighs as Kinji shifts again, knocking her hands.

“Kin," she scolds. She’s retwisting his hair and he’s been patient but he's tired of sitting still. She knows he doesn't like to, can't, stay in the same place for too long, the same way a puppy or a toddler can't. It caused all sorts of problems in school, his leg jumping, him bolting out of classrooms. Kinji is nearing the edge of his ability to stay still, even for Kirara. He can remain calm and still longer, with her, for her, but even then there are limits. “Nearly finished," she says, "promise, Kin-chan."

Kinji holds the copy of egg he’s flipping through above his head. “You could pull this off," he says, gesturing at a girl in a mini-skirt with huge bleached hair, tan skin, pearlescent white lipstick, and eyelashes that Kirara knows would make her eyes feel too heavy.

“I don’t think I’m quite that much of a gyal," Kirara says with a snort, "although those nails are cute as hell. Which stack did you grab that from?” She'd recycled a bunch of magazines already, has a few stacks marked for tossing, a few for keeping. Kinji used to buy her a different fashion magazine after every shift she had at the convenience store, different styles, aimed at different age ranges, looks, subcultures. Sometimes he would just come home with one completely at random, as though she was suddenly going to dress in pure mori-girl style and start composting their banana peels.

Kinji gestures at a pile near the door and Kirara nods, makes a mental note.

Their place is a mess because they're moving soon. Kinji’s been building up connections in Tochigi and, after his big fight last month, he’s a hot commodity. He's known to be able to bring in people and parties and fights and, above all, money. There’s a guy who Kinji knows, trusts as much as you can trust people in this business, who wants Kinji at his club out by Utsunomiya, probably to manage it once Kinji proves his salt over there.

Kinji’s going to Tochigi on the first, one week away. Kirara can see his eyes light up when he talks about it. She can see the fire in him smolder. Kirara is staying in Tokyo for one more week by herself. She’s horrified. She’s excited. She’s glad Tochigi is less than two hours away. If she can’t stand it, she’ll go to Kinji. If she can’t stand it, she’ll ask him to come back. She knows he won’t judge.

“You could pull it off," he repeats, letting her angle his head to the side. He wraps an arm around her bare calf that’s slung over his shoulder. Rubs his cheek somewhere between her knee and thigh. It makes her shiver. It makes all the muscles in her stomach contract. She studiously ignores this part of her feelings for Kinji except for sometimes, late at night, or alone in the bathtub when he's still at the club. She hoards these tiny confusing thoughts, the memories of kissing him, under her tongue like a konpeito, sweet and secret. There are too many other complicated and confusing things happening to spend too much time wondering about something that will never be real.

"Kin-chan," she mumbles, pulling at her leg. He makes a quiet sound, rubs his stubble on her skin again. “Kin–” she shrieks, pushing at him, "you’re all prickly.”

“You’re all soft," Kinji says. He runs a hand up and down her leg. Nuzzles at her skin again. “You’re so soft, babe.”

Kirara tries to ignore the ache between her legs. She wonders what he would do if she–

Kirara takes three deep breaths, smacks him upside the head, pulls her leg under her primly.

“Kinji," she admonishes, “I am doing something.”

He grunts and goes back to his magazine.

 

 

 

Kinji’s club in Tochigi is more of an abandoned warehouse than anything else. It's a mess of chaos, fights, dancing, sweat, and bare skin. The music is loud, the lights flash, and there’s always glitter and crumpled 1000 yen bills on the floor, sticky with spilled drinks.

It’s a mess of a place.

Kirara loves it.

She loves how Kinji loves it. She likes watching him fight and she likes when he seeks her out, all these pretty girls hanging off his arms and his eyes locked on her. She likes the girls who dance on the stage, likes imitating their movements in the shower by herself or in their main room, when Kinji’s out of the apartment. She likes that no one bats an eye at her, that she can fold herself seamlessly into the flow of sound. She likes arguing with the DJs about music and spinning around the poles with the dancers before opening, even if she can’t do the fancy tricks they can do. She thinks about learning how to do the things they can do. She thinks about getting her bartender’s license or maybe just going for it– not like anyone seems to care. She giggles, as one of the girls drapes streamers over her shoulders, kisses her cheek.

She likes how free it all feels. Is.

It makes her feel like she’s free too.

 

 

 

“I think I want to do something," Kirara says. She knows she wants to do something. She holds her phone out across the table. It’s 3am and she and Kinji are eating a slice of convenience store cake. Kinji has a cut on his forehead that’s still, just barely, bleeding. She watches it trickle. Reaches out with a tissue to catch the drop of sticky blood.

The Itaden clinic is in West Shinjuku. It will take her approximately one hour and 37 minutes to get there.

Kirara went by herself for the first assessment. Just to find out. Just to know. She wanted to have all the information. She lied, for the first time ever, to Kinji. Told him she was going to see her aunt. He probably knew, has an unerring way of knowing when she is not saying something, but he didn’t comment. He seemed to understand that she would tell him when she could. She takes a deep breath as Kinji picks up her phone. She’s afraid. For all Kinji has said, knows, the way he treats her with infinite care, the way he calls her my girl, turns his back when she changes– still.

Still.

Kirara is afraid, but she is used to being afraid.

Kinji scrolls a little with his thumb, reading under his breath.

“Gonna be real, babe.” Kinji slides the phone back across the table. “I didn’t do good in biology, so that’s all pretty much nonsense words to me.”

“It’s gender affirming hormone therapy," Kirara says. She feels dizzy. She crumples up the tissue with the blood on it. “I could get estrogen and–”

Kinji nods. "If you can’t make it, buy it," he says. He points at her with his chopsticks. “Is this place good though? Like, you deserve designer estrogen, you know? If it is, then I’m in.”

“You don’t need to do anything," Kirara says. She feels dizzy. “I’ve been– I’ve been saving.” She doesn’t have enough, exactly, but she has enough to get started and she wants to, has wanted to, with an urgent ache she can't fully explain. She can work extra shifts, she can get a second job, she's planning to start to pick up shifts at Kinji's club for real. She could learn how to dance. She wants to learn how to dance. She wants–

“Birthday present," Kinji says with a shrug, feeds her a bite of cake.

“It’s like– an investment.” Kirara’s voice is shaking. She wipes the cream off her lips. “Not a one and done deal, Kin-chan.”

“I know.” Kinji takes a bite of cake, then tries to feed her another bite. She bats the chopsticks away but he’s persistent. “You gotta do the estrogen and the other one, right? The– anti-andgrogynyis…” He trails off. “The thing. Fuck, I forget." He grabs his phone. “It’s a shot," he says, like he needs to explain to her. “Or usually, I guess.” He frowns at his phone, shows it to her. Kirara watches as the people on screen show how to safely give a shot for GAHT, watches the subtitles, the kanji blurring in her vision. The page is bookmarked. Her ears are ringing. “Kirara?” Kinji asks, when she's been quiet much too long, staring at his now darkened screen.

“You were looking it up?” she manages to ask. He has whipped cream on his mustache. She reaches out and wipes it off, wipes her my finger on the tissue that has his blood in it.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding confused, “you’ve talked about it before. Well, sorta. Did the like 'some people do this thing, have you heard of this thing, Kin-chan'. I figured you would want to someday and,” he shrugs, “you’re my girl. Why wouldn’t I ha– hey," his voice sounds confused, "you okay? Did I do something wrong, babe?" He reaches across the table, touches the top of her head. "Kirakira, look at me," he says softly.

Kirara has her face in her hands and her hands on her knees. She takes three deep breaths. Kirakira, he called her, like he does sometimes when he's drunk, the nickname blending in with his others for her, a string of my lucky star, pretty girl, lucky charm, my girl, my sweet sparkling girl. But he's not drunk and neither is she and she's his girl, said so matter of fact. She can’t look at him or she will cry. She doesn’t want to cry. She's so happy. She chews on her lower lip. The pain of it is grounding.

“I love you," she says when she looks up.

She means in a soul-deep way. She means in a way where she would do something harder than die for him– she would live for him. If he died, she would do everything twice, one of the times for him. She would live his portion of life and then go to the other world and tell him about all the things she did, saw, experienced for him. She means that Kinji can come home smelling like another girl, or sex, or bloody without reason. He can sulk on his phone for hours without speaking to her and she does not care. She does not care. She knows he will tell her, when he can. She knows he always comes home to her. She knows that this man would move worlds for her. Has moved worlds for her.

He never said why he punched the shit out of the school principal. He barely made it without assault charges being pressed, Kirara's still not sure exactly how, some connection he must have had or the one teacher who seemed to believe in him regardless of anything. He never said why he got in that fight with half the school administration, why he had the school principal by the bloody collar, why he was so livid Kirara had to scream at him to stop— but Kirara knows.

One month before that she had asked if she could be allowed to wear a girl’s uniform. They were a co-ed school. She thought maybe it would be okay. She had just wanted to have one thing. One thing, that made her feel right. One thing independent of Kinji that made her feel safe in her body.

The words Kirara had thrown at her, heard said about her, the marker scrawled on her desk, her bookbag in the trash, mop water dumped on her head, her clothes stolen during phys-ed— the principal, looking at her with blank eyes when she reported the bullying. What she had heard the principal say, about her, like it was not about her. Like it was about a thing. The words hadn’t made sense. She walked away, in a daze, feeling unreal, like when she got sick when she was little, had so high a fever she'd had to be hospitalized.

She knows. How could she not know?

“I love you too," Kinji says, and she knows that too. He turns bright red. “Fuck, I’ve never said that to anyone.”

Kirara knocks him over, when she jump hugs him. She gets whipped cream on her knee. The cake crashes into the floor. She doesn’t realize she’s started crying until he’s wiping away her tears, cradling her face in his big warm hands.

“You want me to come with you to your appointment?” he asks.

Kirara chokes out a sob. Nods.

 

 

 

Kirara’s eyeliner frustrates her, the uneven lines and the way she can’t get her wings to look the same, the edges too blurred out. It pisses her off. Her hands are steady enough she’s sewed a gash above Kinji’s eye shut with three neat stitches. She doesn’t understand why this eludes her. She tries and then tries again, frowns at herself.

“Wh’as wrong?” Kinji asks, from where he’s lying on the floor, phone held over his face. They’re supposed to be leaving soon and Kirara is frustrated beyond belief, a pile of crumpled tissues and make-up wipes by her thigh. She throws the eyeliner pencil down on the tea table where she does her make-up.

“I can’t fucking get it to look right," she pouts, crossing her arms over her chest and then quickly uncrossing them. Her chest hurts, is tender to the touch. Her eyes well up with tears of something between frustration and exhaustion. She feels like she has all these new feelings and they frustrate her too. “Ugh, never mind.” She pushes herself to her feet. It doesn’t matter, she just had seen a girl online with the prettiest wing eyeliner, silver on her waterline, and Kirara had wanted.

“I can do it," Kinji says.

“You can do it," Kirara deadpans to him, tossing the tissues in the trash.

"Yeah," he says easily. "Learned."

“What, really?” Kirara asks after a second. "Why?"

“Had a girl at the club teach me," Kinji grunts, sitting up and tossing his phone aside. He crawls over to where she does her make-up and tugs her to sitting, tugs her closer to him by the waist, tilts her face up. The thin eyeliner pencil looks laughable in his hand. “She used liquid but I think I can make it work. We’ll have to get you a liquid liner though.”

Kirara hadn’t gotten liquid because she thought it would be harder when she was learning, easier to mess up. Eyeliner is a relatively new addition to the make-up and skincare routine she’s been building.

“Why did– what did you tell her?” Kirara's throat feels tight. “Your little sister needs help?”

Kinji strokes his thumb by the corner of her eye.

"No,” Kinji answers, “I told her I needed to know for my girl.”

Kirara closes her eyes.

“I’m not your girl, Kin-chan," she says. His hand is so big on her face. It’s so gentle. The eyeliner tugs gently on her eyelid. She can smell him, the salt sweat of him, feel the callouses on his palm as he cups her face, the rough of his thumb, gentle, bear-paw big over her cheekbone.

“Yes, you are, Kirara," he says. She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. She doesn’t do either, her hands clenching and unclenching on her knees. “Open your eyes for me," he says. She blinks them open and watches him swirl into view, so close that he is taking up her whole field of vision. She wants him closer, doesn't know how to want that. “Close them again.” His voice is low. She closes her eyes. His hands are always so gentle on her. She never wants this to end. She needs it to end before she does something like tip forward and lift up and press their lips together. His fingers fall to her chin. She doesn’t open her eyes. He tilts her face one way, than the other. “Open your eyes?” He asks. She blinks them open slowly. He is still so close, looks at her for a long time, tilting her face with a critical expression as he evaluates his work. “All done," he says, just when she can’t stand the quiet.

He releases her face.

Kirara’s cheek feels cold.

 

 

 

Kirara is just over seven months into GAHT when they get a new dancer at the club, with thick blonde chunks in her hair and a septum piercing. Kirara thinks she’s the prettiest thing she’s ever seen. She spins on the pole like her whole body is weightless. Kirara has been wondering more often, if she could learn how to do that for real, feeling more and more like her body is looking how she wants it to, feeling more and more like herself in her skin. She's been practicing, just a little, stretching tutorials she finds on YouTube, hanging out with the girls either before they open or so late it's early.

Kirara is camped out in a corner assessing the flow of the crowd, keeping an eye out for trouble and nursing a ginger ale, when the dancer bounces up to her, plopping down on the stool next to her.

“Hi,” she says effortlessly, her voice like bubbles popping, “I keep seeing you around.” She has to lean in to be heard over the sound of the music and the people. Her eyes scan over Kirara gently, then come to rest on her newest piercings. “I like those!” She says pointing, then waving at the bartender— Maiko, who Kirara works with often— who heads toward them. The dancer leans across the bar to kiss Maiko on the cheek. Kirara sees the girl's bare lower back, a tattoo inked into her skin. “I’m Yuri," Yuri says, when she settles herself back on her stool. “I know Maimai from our before-lives. She told me about this club when I needed to move out of Nanba real quick. The whole sob story can come a few drinks in.”

“Kirara," Kirara offers, as Maiko slides three shots on the bar in front of her.

“We’re drinking together," Yuri says, nudging at Kirara with her shoulder, picking up her glass. “All three of us.”

“Yuri loves drinking with pretty girls," Maiko says. “Always has. It’s how we met.”

“Yuri loves girls," Yuri responds easily. “My parents did a hell of a job naming me.”

“Your parents named you Naoko,” Maiko deadpans, as she cracks open two bottles of beer and places them in front of Kirara and Yuri, “with the characters for obedient child, and they could not have been more wrong. Don’t lie to Kirara-chan.”

Yuri shrugs with a cheerful grin and winks at Kirara.

“Anyway, I know I don’t have a shot, I saw that big ol’ hunk of a man you always come in with. I don’t hit on taken girls, even if they’re pretty, but I do make friends with them.” She seems to notice the half-hesitancy on Kirara’s face, reaches out and tugs the shot glass away from her. “You don’t really have to drink," she half-shouts, leaning in to make sure Kirara can hear her. Her lipgloss is tacky where her mouth brushes against Kirara’s cheek. “Sorry, I’m not trying to freak you out, I just wanted to be friends.”

Yuri is the prettiest thing Kirara thinks she’s ever seen.

Kirara tugs her glass back, smiles.

“Kin-chan and I aren’t dating," she says.

“Kin-chan," Yuri repeats levelly and gives Kirara a look, holding out her glass. Maiko raises hers too. Kirara snorts, lifts the glass, and downs it. The alcohol is bitter and biting going down, but Kirara is used to things that are bitter and barely makes a face. Yuri has her tongue stuck out and is waving her hands at her mouth, making a frantic expression.

“God, this stuff is vile," Maiko says, shaking her head and making a sound. “Okay, I’ve gotta go, be back. Play politely, Yu-chan.” She heads back down the bar to where someone is leaned over the counter shouting for attention.

“Yuck," Yuri says, eyeing the guy, "sometimes you can just tell that someone is not a good guy, no matter how shined up they are." She leans over slightly, knocks Kirara with her shoulder. “So, Kirara, where are you from, how old are you, tell me about your not-man. Or do you want to hear my sob story first?”

“You don’t even know me," Kirara says, grabbing one of the beers Maiko left open in front of them and taking a swig. “Why are we sharing sob stories?”

Yuri looks at her for a second. “I’m a good judge of character,” she says, “and we’re going to be best friends.”

Kirara snorts and is surprised as she finds herself starting to talk. She doesn’t share everything about herself, but conversation is easy, with Yuri. She finds out where Yuri gets her nails done because it was the first thing Yuri did when she got here, tells Yuri she wants to dye her hair too, talks about how she lives with Kin and he’s the most important person to her in the world. Yuri listens and tells her things too– her favorite band, how getting her nipples pierced hurt like hell but looks hot as hell, so Kirara should definitely continue to consider that and Yuri will even go with her, if she wants. That Yuri moved from Namba and, no, she can’t go back anytime soon and, yes, she definitely moved because she wanted to eat dumplings in Utsunomiya. Kirara knows a liar when she sees one. She knows why girls lie. She holds out her phone and Yuri gives Kirara her phone number.

Kirara is on her fifth very-strong drink when she feels Kinji’s eyes on her. She feels them before she sees him, the deep intensity of his gaze that holds her in place when the world spins too fast.

She smiles to herself.

"Why are you smilin'?" Yuri asks her, words slurring a little.

Kirara giggles. She plans to answer, but then she feels the solid bulk of Kinji against her. She leans into him without a thought. He’s sweaty and overly hot and she can feel that he’s tired in the way his arms hold her body.

“Hey, lucky star," he says.

“Kin-chan.” Kirara leans back farther, enough that he has to compensate so she doesn’t fall off the stool and giggles. She tilts up and kisses his cheek, cups his face to look at his eyes as best she can. “Hi, Kin-chan.”

“Hi, Kin-chan," Yuri says sweetly, batting her eyelashes. She catches Kirara’s eye and they dissolve into giggles.

“Hey boss," Maiko says, not drunk.

“Hi,” Kinji says.

Kirara is clinging to Yuri for support as they laugh and Yuri’s hair is in her mouth, the charms on her nails cold against her arm. Kirara rights herself, falling back against Kinji, his arms wrapping around her automatically. She tucks her head under his chin as Yuri cups her face, squeezes her mouth into a pout.

“Kirara-chan is so cute, Kin-chan," she says. “You’re so lucky.”

“Stop calling him Kin-chan,” Kirara pouts, “that’s my thing. My thing for Kinji, not for you.”

“Hakari-san," Yuri says. “Boss man," she adds.

Kirara nods in approval and Yuri cackles.

“Go home now?” Kirara asks, tilting her head up as Kinji leans in so she's speaking into his ear.

“I got you," Kinji says. “Ladies," he adds with a nod.

“Gross," Maiko says. “Hated that, Hakari-san.”

“Get my pretty girl home safe," Yuri says, raising her glass.

“My girl," Kinji says after a beat, his hands tight on Kirara’s waist.

Kirara giggles.

 

 

 

“Yuri’s pretty," Kinji says, as they walk home. The sun is just starting to rise.

“Yeah,” Kirara says, hopping up on the stone wall that lines the road to protect the river, and then, “don’t you dare even try.” Kirara doesn’t quite know all the details of Kinji’s hook-ups, doesn’t want to know all the details, but she knows enough to know Yuri is pretty and Kinji has always liked pretty things.

“Wasn’t sayin’ that," he mutters, "just meant–”

“She is pretty," Kirara informs him, balancing on his shoulder. Her heels are wobbly. “She likes girls though, so too bad for you.”

Kinji and her walk a few steps in silence before he scoops her off the curb. She squeaks as he swings her around to piggyback.

“Gonna hurt yourself messing around on that thing," he tells her. She’s wearing his big leather jacket and it covers her hands. She wraps her arms around his neck and hums. “You like her?” he asks after another soft second, another few steps.

“Like Yuri?” Kirara asks, feeling sleep dragging at the edges of her consciousness. Kinji makes an affirmative sound, shifting Kirara on his back. “Yeah,” she mumbles, burrowing into his neck, “I like Yuri.”

“Cool," Kinji says. His grip on her legs, the warmth of him all up and down her front is soothing, the scent of him is soothing, the dried sweat on the back of his neck that she can taste on the tip of her tongue is soothing. “That’s cool," he says. "She’s pretty.”

“Mmm," Kirara agrees. She feels like she’s missing something but can’t put the pieces together. Her phone buzzes in Kinji’s pocket. She nuzzles into the crook of his neck with a sigh. “M’sleepy, Kin-chan.”

“You sleep, baby," he says. “I’ve got you.”

Kirara wakes up with Kinji a warm mass beside her and it takes her a second to conceptualize that she is in his room, in his bed. Kinji knows she would be pissed to sleep in her own bed in her club clothes. She rolls into him, presses her forehead to his bicep. He took off the leather jacket, her thigh highs, her belt, most of her jewelry. She has a vague memory of him helping her take out her contacts. She fidgets with the snap on her skirt, her twisted tank top. Kinji makes a sound in his sleep, shifting, before he looks down at her.

"'top wrigglin'," he mumbles, sounding half asleep.

“I got mascara on your pillows," Kirara manages around a dry mouth. Her head throbs. “Oh god, I feel gross and I'm in outside clothes and—" She lets the words dissolve into a whine.

Kinji laughs, lifts up his arms.

Kirara curls into them.

 

 

 

Kirara understands there are boundaries to her and Kinji’s relationship. She understands for all the times she wakes up in his warm bed— that for all he is her sun and her stars— that doesn’t mean there aren't certain lines in their relationships, certain things that Kinji does that Kirara is not part of. She understands that and she is usually at peace with it. But, a few weeks later, as Kirara watches Kinji kiss a girl in the club, her whole body stings with a feeling she can't quite name. She would say it's not jealousy, but she's not sure it's not jealousy. The girl crawls onto Kinji's lap. His hands are so big on her body, holding onto her hips, positioning her. Kirara drags her eyes away from before she’s caught staring, cheeks burning.

Yuri is looking at her.

“Don’t," Kirara says futilely.

“We could go out," Yuri says, wiggling her eyebrows. “Find you a pretty boy to make him jealous.”

Kirara wonders if she could. Find a pretty boy. Make Kinji jealous. She doesn’t think she wants a pretty boy. She rolls her eyes.

“Kin’s allowed to date," she says instead. “It’s whatever.”

“He must have not known you were coming," Yuri says, as Kirara turns toward her, takes a few steps over so she can rest her forehead on Yuri’s shoulder. “He doesn’t– do shit like that in front of you.”

It’s not jealousy in her stomach, necessarily. She doesn't think. Maybe it is. She’s seen Kinji kiss other girls before, not purposefully seen it, but she has. He doesn't flaunt it, doesn't bring girls back to his room in their apartment, but— she knows. Sometimes he smells like too sweet perfume or she'll see a bruise on his neck and feel irrationally like digging her nails into it. The thing is, Kinji always comes back to her in the end. When there’s good news or bad news, he seeks Kirara out and not another girl. He depends on her, asks her opinion on things, plans, decisions. Looks for her after fights. Curls up in her bed when he's bruised.

But still.

“Does he usually,” Kirara finds herself asking, “do shit like this?”

“Nah,” Yuri wraps her arms around Kirara’s waist, “just sometimes. Recently, I guess. Since I’ve been here a few times maybe. But not, like, seriously.”

Kirara tries not to watch Kinji kiss the girl out of the corner of her eye. Kirara wants to be kissed like that. She’s never been kissed like that. She wants to be kissed like that by Kinji, his deep focused attention, the fire in him trained right on her. Kirara closes her eyes as Yuri rocks her back and forth.

“Wanna make out?” Yuri offers, like she can hear Kirara’s thoughts. “As a categorical rule, I don’t put on that kind of show for straight guys, but if you need me to I can do it for you, baby.”

“You just wanna make out," Kirara says, pokes her in the stomach. Yuri squeals.

“Guilty as charged.” She lifts Kirara up and fixes her hair for her. “Don't cry over boys, it's the number one rule, bad bitches choose. You look hot. Now, fix your lipstick and let’s go dance.”

Kirara fixes her lipstick. She goes to dance.

 

 

 

“You and that girl dating?” Kirara asks, a week or so later. She's is fresh from the bath, Kinji put in the rose bath salts she likes, and she soaked for so long her skin is wrinkled. She rubs lotion on her arm, cracks her neck.

“What girl?” Kinji asks, not even looking up from his phone.

“That girl from last week or whatever," Kirara says, rolling her eyes, "at the club."

He shifts slightly on the couch, like he’s been caught out, eyes locked on his phone.

“Nah, we’re not dating. She just–” He shrugs. “She was hot," he says.

Kirara tuts her tongue at him, tries not to feel too pleased.

“You shouldn’t lead girls on," she admonishes Kinji, switching the album playing to something that makes her want to sway. She shakes out her dry hair, ponders a face mask, gives up because she feels lazy.

“I don’t lead girls on," he grunts. “We were just messin’ around. Making out feels good, sue me.” He flicks his eyes up to her looking irritated, but it fades quick. His gaze is sticky, drags up and down her body once, then twice. He clears his throat. “You look cute," he says, his eyes on her tits, then her face almost guiltily. Kirara glances down at the silk pajama set she’s wearing, little shorts, lace-edged tank top. She has real tits now, fills it out, goes to the gym with Yuri and Maiko, feels like her body is looking more like the home she wants it to. Feels confident in it even.

“I know," she says, does a little spin.

“What about you?” Kinji asks after a second, his eyes scanning the apartment, travelling back to her, then back to his phone. He stares at it determinedly. Kirara pouts. She wants his attention back. She curls up on the couch next to him, steals his whiskey, watches his eyes drift back to her and catch.

“What about me what?” she asks, tilting her head. Her hair brushes past her shoulders now.

He shrugs. “You know— you and Yuri. How’s it going?”

“Good,” Kirara answers cautiously. “She’s a good friend.”

Kinji looks at her. Kirara looks at him, waits for the follow-up because clearly there’s follow-up and she distinctly needs it because she doesn't understand. She's missing a card. She’s not usually missing a card, when it comes to Kinji. She doesn’t like it.

“You guys make out or anything?” Kinji blurts, then winces. “I mean, like, you like making out with her, she a good kisser?” He pauses. “I think that was fucking worse, fuck me. Forget I said anything.” He takes back his whiskey glass and drains it.

Kirara takes the glass back and refills it without saying a word.

“Hey, Kin," Kirara says after a moment, settling back on the couch, "out of curiosity, what the fuck?”

Kinji scrubs a hand over his face and clears his throat.

“You and Yuri, you know,” he gestures, winces, “you’re dating and all. so I was like– trying to– you know, like how friends talk about— well, guys talk about, I assume girls talk about—”

“Okay," Kirara says, cutting him off, "pause."

“Fuck," Kinji says and makes to stand up, like his fight or flight has kicked in. "Fuckin' forget it—"

Kirara tosses her leg over his thighs and settles herself in his lap.

“Pause," she says severely.

He freezes underneath her, looks up at her with wild eyes. Kirara takes a sizeable gulp of whiskey, feels it settle and buzz through her veins. She licks at her lips, which Kinji's eyes track, flicking away and then back rapidly. She offers the glass to Kinji. He takes it, takes his own sizeable swig and then stares at her.

“Repeat yourself," Kirara says, poking Kinji in the chest. She takes the drink, sets it aside. His hands float without the glass, settle near her hips, hovering, like he’s not sure he should touch.

“You and Yuri are dating," he says slowly.

“No," Kirara says, takes him by the wrists and places his hands on her hips.

There's a pause while Kinji seems to take this in.

“You and Yuri are not dating," Kinji says slowly, eyes scanning her face. "But that first night y'all met, you said you liked her–”

“Like as a friend," Kirara says, like she's talking to a child. “Like how people like their friends.”

Kinji nods slowly.

“You hug a lot," he offers after a second, "and you said she was pretty and–”

“Welcome to female friendship," Kirara says, picking the glass up. She takes a sip before Kinji takes it from her and drains it, puts it to the side again. “Also, I have eyes," she adds.

“I don’t go around saying my guy friends are hot,” Kinji huffs. His breath smells like liquor. "I have eyes too." His eyes are clear. Locked on her.

Kirara shrugs. “Skill issue, you problem, not my business. You thought Yuri and I were dating all this time?"

Kinji nods, absent-mindedly. His hands have settled solidly on her waist again, rubbing at the silk of her pajamas, her hipbone.

“So, you’re not dating anyone,” Kinji says after a second, voice tilting up like it's half a question.

“I'm not dating anyone," Kirara confirms, “and I’m into guys so, respectfully to Yuri, who is very pretty, it’s sort of a no go, for me.”

“You’re straight,” Kinji says, stroking his thumb over the band of her shorts, his fingertip brushing bare skin. Kirara shivers.

“Yeah," she whispers, shifts. She fully conceptualizes how short her shorts are, the rough of Kinji’s sweats on her inner thighs, the insistent heat of his body underneath her. Her furnace of a man. Her sweet sun boy. “Kin,” she pauses, wets her lips, watches him track the movement of her tongue again, “making out feels good?”

“Yeah," he says after a second. “Feels good.” His other thumb rubs under the silk tank top, the bottom of her ribcage. He looks up at her. “You like it?” He whispers.

“Dunno.” Kirara shrugs. “Never made out with anyone.”

“That’s a waste.” Kinji’s voice is low. “Pretty girl like you.”

“Kin-chan,” Kirara lets a bit of a whine slip into her voice, just the edge of a purr. The way the girls talk to the customers at the bar. She doesn’t know why, just to see. Just because she wants. Just because her blood felt heated and sparkly like champagne from the second she heard Kinji say he wasn’t dating that girl, from the second his eyes locked on her body, looked her up and down like she was something he wanted to keep. “Show me how good it feels?”

“Kirara,” Kinji sounds pained. Kirara has a flash of embarrassment, worry, the sudden settling in of the reality of what she’s asking. She teeters on the edge of panic for a half second before he speaks and her worries are doused away, river stream. “Please tell me you mean that–” Kinji's voice is rough, "if you're messing around with me, tell me before I do something really fuckin' stupid." His hands are tight on her waist, the muscles in his forearms and biceps taut, like he’s holding himself back, stopping himself from moving.

“Kin-chan,” Kirara tilts forward, lets their lips brush, “Kin, I’m telling you to show me.”

The first kiss he gives her is slow, hesitant, just as chaste as it was that first time, so long ago. His lips brush hers, linger when she makes a little sound. Kirara lets herself relax into the slowness, the gentle give and take, the slow bleed of kisses like a wound. Kinji's hands travel up her body, down her arms. He plays with her fingers as he kisses her, intertwining them, dragging them with his hands when he returns them to her waist. She gasps into the next kiss as his big hand slides up under the back of her shirt, high enough his fingers brush her shoulderblades.

He's still kissing her so softly, nipping at her lips, sliding the tip of his tongue just inside her mouth. Kirara shivers, bites his lower lip when he pulls back, tugging it, letting her teeth dig in just a little. Kinji’s always liked things that slide just on the knife edge of pain. He groans.

"Please," she whispers, "want you to show me, Kin-chan."

"Fuck," he says, voice tight. "Kirara—"

"I'm not gonna break," Kirara breathes, "come on, kiss me like you mean it.”

She feels the tension in his fingers, the way they dig into her skin, and then with a whispered curse he's hauling her closer on his lap the way he did to that girl in the club, one hand flat against her back, the other biting into her ribcage. Kinji kisses her like a wave. It’s like jumping off a cliff. It’s crashing into the rocks below. It’s overwhelming, overpowering. He kisses her hard, like a hungry thing, licking at the seam of her mouth. She opens to him instantly, doesn't know what she's doing, only that she wants. She can't breathe, doesn't want to if it means his mouth stays on hers. She likes it, tries to mimic what he does, let him take her under. Her hands clench in his shirt, slide up to cup his face, holding him steady, holding herself steady. He kisses insistent, impatient, like he’s drowning in it too, licking over her teeth, the roof of her mouth, forcing her jaw open with a hand gentle on the hinge of it.

It’s like being devoured in the gentlest way possible.

“Feels good, Kin” Kirara manages to gasp, as Kinji pulls back, a dragging kiss across her cheek, tilting her head back to kiss the side of her neck, under her ear. “Am I doin' it right?” Kirara thinks she must be a sloppy kisser, trying to copy what he is doing. He pulls her mouth back to his with a strangled laugh.

“Perfect," he breathes, kissing her, hot and whiskey flavored and underneath that something that must be just Kinji. “God," he says, like it’s the start of a sentence, but then the words just stop and instead of speaking he’s kissing her like he can’t get enough. Kirara bites his tongue, runs a hand down his chest, back up over his pec, to his biceps, scraping with her nails. His hand clenches on the small of her back, his pinky finger sliding under the waistband of her shorts. Kirara makes a small sound, shifts against him. Her belly feels warm and Kinji’s kissing her like she means the whole world. "Shit," Kinji gasps, his hand on the small of her back rocking her body against his gently, "shit, Kirara—"

Kinji slides one hand into her hair, angling her face, lifting up into the kiss. He winds the strands of her hair through his fingers and tugs. Not hard enough it hurts, but hard enough the sting sends a shiver down Kirara’s spine. She makes a sound she didn’t know she could make, rocks her hips without meaning to, trying to ease some of the pretty string-thin tension that’s flooded her whole body, every single part of her buzzing, then does it again, harder, gasping into the kiss and dragging her nails hard down Kinji chest, the bare skin exposed by his t-shirt.

“Fuck,” Kinji grits, hips kicking up into her which, oh, she shivers, tries to bite back a moan, “shit, fuck," he repeats. He lifts up, holding her up with one arm, laying her out on the couch, his body hovering over hers. “Kirara—” Kinji groans, as she slides her arms up, around his neck, pulls their mouths together again, tugging at his lower lip with her teeth. She doesn’t know what she wants, her whole belly is clenching and stinging. She doesn't want him farther away from her than he has to be. "Babe," he pulls back with a gasp, pupils blown like when he's just won a particularly good fight. Kirara chases him, licking over his chin, his teeth, wonders for a half-second if that’s gross, if it’s gross to him that she wants the taste of his skin on her tongue, but his eyes tell her it’s not, the way he nearly growls tells her it’s not.

She lifts her legs without thinking, wrapping them around his waist, and then she has the full weight of him, pressing her down into the couch. His big hand slides down to her hip, rubs up her thigh, pulls her body against his. He grinds down against her and Kirara gasps, back arching.

Kinji’s hard. Hard and hot, and pressed up against her in a place no one has ever touched her, a place that had taken Kirara time to realize could bring her pleasure and not pain. God, he’s so hard. He's hard because of her. It makes her shiver, makes her whine. She's leaking, feels so wet, her whole body trembling, as he grinds down again. She gasps into his mouth, bites his lip hard, lifts her hips up to meet his. She wants him to keep doing this, pressing them together in these ways Kirara hasn’t been touched, and she wants him to stop because it’s too overwhelming, like not being able to breathe, her vision going spotty with it. It feels so good. It’s so much.

Kinji kisses her and she finds her legs tightening around his hips as he picks up a rhythm, like if he was fucking her. Kirara feels herself leak in her shorts, clenches down, doesn’t know what to do with that mental image, with the thought of his muscles working as he fucks her, with the thought that it would be something like this. She makes a sound, tries to say his name, ends up moaning softly. Her whole body twitches as he runs his hand up her side, rucking up the silk of her tanktop. She's not wearing a bra. She keeps making sounds without meaning to, half his name, half something like whimpers. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. His hand cups her tit, he runs his thumb over her nipple and grinds down and Kirara has never been this turned on and she's also never been touched like this, doesn’t know what to do with the evidence of Kinji being turned on, pressed hard and hot and big against her and his hands on her and his mouth on her.

He pinches his nipple with his calloused fingers and she's so sensitive there and it's like he knows, guessed, imagined— and that's too much. He twists her nipple as he thrusts against her and, fuck, it feels so good. She's so overwhelmed.

"Kin-chan—" She begs.

Kinji stops instantly, pulling back and panting, and Kirara didn’t mean for that to happen but she also doesn’t know–

“Fuck," he gasps. Kirara’s can’t drag her gaze away from his mouth, from his spit slick lips, wet from her, red from her, and it takes a second for her to conceptualize he’s pulling back, up, away, his hand dragging out of her top, righting them both on the couch. “Sorry,” he says, panting, “shit, sorry, Kirara, I’m sorry, I got too into it–”

Her face must be doing something for him to be talking like that. She feels dizzy. She feels weightless. She wants him to kiss her again. She wants to cuddle into his chest and try to get her heart to calm down.

“Sorry, fuck. Fuck,” Kinji says, pulling her up to sitting next to him, his hands roaming over her hair like he’s trying to right her back to how she looked before he touched her. His hands are shaking, she realizes. "You okay, I wasn't trying to—"

“Kin.” She grabs his hands, holds them pressed against her cheeks, gets him to look at her. "You weren't doing anything wrong. Hey—"

“Did I hurt you?” he whispers. “Kirara, did I–”

“Kin-chan, no," Kirara shushes him softly, kisses his cheeks, his lips, his nose, until he breathing is steadier. He wraps his arms around her, hauling her close to his body. He runs his fingers up and down her spine, burrows into her collarbones. “Baby," Kirara says, "hey, calm down.” She pulls his face up, makes him look at her. “It was good, just a lot.”

He furrows his brow.

“Do I lie to you?" Kirara asks, pressing their noses together.

“No," Kinji says after a moment. “Not to me.”

“Never to you.” Kirara nods. “I liked it. You’re good. It felt good, like, really good. I just got overwhelmed."

Kinji nods, after a second, then holds her tight to him and doesn’t say a word.

 

 

 

Kinji has a fight three days later, and Kirara is there, of course, pressed up against the ropes of the make-shift arena, wrapped in his fur coat that smells like his cologne and his hair oil and him. She pulls it tighter around herself and watches, the crowd surging around her like an ocean. She feels disaster in the air. A steady sickening thrum that she can’t shake off even though she wants to.

Kinji had said I always win and tapped her on the nose, tried to brush it off. Kirara had snapped at his finger, shoved him in the chest. Something felt wrong and she didn’t like it and she didn’t trust the opponent and his friends, their eyes shifting, unpleasant.

Just watch your back, she had told Kinji.

It wasn’t that there were rules, necessarily, but there were unspoken sort of agreements, ways to fight in the ring that people didn’t go against. No weapons, one on one fights, the goal is not a murder— just a win.

Kirara watches Kinji duck, slide off the side of a punch, and the opponents hand glints in a way that makes Kirara feel sick to her stomach, the world going twisted like film running the wrong through a projector, sounds fading out and then back in doubly loud. The guy hadn't taken off his rings, but then neither had Kinji. It's not strange that there would be something like metal in the ring, but this glint looks a lot like how Kinji told Kirara to keep a razor blade and a roll of medical tape in her purse, tape the blade between her fingers if she needs to, when she needs to make sure her punches have extra teeth. This is a glint like that, one that is not like jewelry, but like violence.

“Kin—” She can barely even hear herself, can only just make out her own voice from the others in the crowd. She digs her nails into her palm without meaning to, hard enough a charm pops off of her acrylic, hard enough she notices the pain as it bends. “Kin-chan—” she screams again.

Kin’s eyes find her, lock with hers, and she thinks he knows and then, almost immediately, he doesn’t care.

The next punch lands and she feels like she can hear the slice of his skin, she feels like her face is the one that is wet and warm. Maybe it is. Blood or tears, it can be hard to tell the diference. Kinji cracks his neck, smiles. She feels anger boil under her skin. He’s already been hit more than once, a knock to the side that Kirara thinks might have cracked a rib, a kick to the ankle that she’s been watching him favor since he stood back up. He’s gotten his hits in too, but this fight has been more blow for blow than Kirara likes. She likes the fights that are difficult for Kinji because Kinji likes them. She likes watching him come alive, the fire in his eyes. She'll push aside the club's cutman to be the one to apply epinephrine to stop a bleed near Kinji’s eye, she'll massage Vaseline into his skin as a pre-fight ritual, taking care to not apply too much so it could get in his eyes, but enough his skin is less likely to rip and tear.

She likes the fights. She likes that Kinji likes to fight, she likes to be the one to lick his wounds and tend to his bruises, likes that he crawls to her after a fight, even when he’s dating someone else. She likes fighting, as much as she's loathe to admit it. She likes seeing Kinji a little bloody. But there’s a line to what Kirara likes that she thinks Kinji doesn’t quite have sometimes.

Kirara will press on his bruises, but he presses on them harder. Kinji will shake, when a fight is over, like there’s something else he needs, like he can’t figure out how to manage when the adrenaline doesn’t have an outlet.

She knows what they used to say about him at school and that his dad used to hit him hard, for misbehaving, talking back, existing in a way he didn't like. Kinji only talks about his mom to say he hopes she’s safe. She left, sometime when Kinji was a baby, maybe a toddler. Kinji assumes because of his dad, especially because the other option is maybe she just didn't want him. But then, Kinji had said once, in a voice that made Kirara sick, why would anyone want me? Kinji's not sure where his mom was from and he doesn't think his parents were married. His dad spoke of her like she was a poisoned evil thing, made Kinji mad because he's half her, maybe more her. Kinji says he's glad she left, even though that means he never got to meet her, because his dad is a fuck-up and Kinji is too and any woman would deserve better than that.

Kirara hit him when he said that, hit him harder than she meant to, on a pretty afternoon with a clear blue sky, when they were on the rooftop during lunch. Kinji had blinked at her, more surprised than hurt. You're not a fuck up, she had hissed, so mad for reasons she didn't know, don't say that kind of shit, asshole, you're always saying shit like that.

He had looked at her and then started to laugh, so hard it surprised her. He ended up wrestling her to the ground, shouting about you wanna fight, let's go, show me what you got, but his punches had been gentle and the touch had been something more like a hug than anything else. Kirara knows Kinji’s dad was cruel, either absent or present and you wished he wasn't. She knows he abused meth and that’s why Kinji will not fuck around with drugs or selling shit or buying anything stronger than weed. She knows Kinji has been told he can't and that he's a fuck up and that he'll never amount to anything and he's going to end up like his father and that he sometimes still believes it.

She knows he believes her, when she holds his face in her hands and tells him it's not true.

And she knows the look in Kinji’s eyes right now, the look that says he can taste the blood dripping into his mouth and now he’s excited, now he’s gonna fucking fight, and not the cutman or Kashimo or his fucking big boss or anyone, not even Kirara, is gonna stop this fight. It won't stop until someone is on the ground and, even then, it might not be over. Even then, it will take awhile to coax Kinji back inside his body.

Kinji swings wild with his left, a haymaker, and stumbles forward, gets a punch to the gut that Kirara thinks shouldn’t make him wince, which means that guy still has the razor out, which means–

“Kinji–” She pulls herself closer to the side of the ring, He’s breathing heavy, back on his feet. He catches her eye and winks at her.

Kirara’s blood boils.

Kinji wins, eventually, but he’s beat up as hell and shaking violently with adrenaline, laughing hard, like there's something funny about getting a razor blade to the face. Kirara wants to hit him, she wants to scream at him, she’s watching someone stitch up a slice on his side and he’s laughing and it pisses her off.

"Baby," he crows when he sees her, "baby—"

She slaps him, light as hell, across the face. He winces, his split lip splitting anew, tries to blink up at her with a swollen eye.

“Gonna beat the shit out of you," Kirara tells him, furious, wishing she could soothe with a touch and heal the ruptured skin and the bright red bruise that is going to turn a nasty shade of purple. “Gonna beat the shit out of you," she repeats, climbing into his lap, shaking, his coat too big and draping over them both. His skin is shiny with sweat and wet and hot and Kirara buries her nose in his collarbones, wants to lick at it, taste him. “Idiot," she tells him, "stupid, awful boy.”

“Yeah,” Kinji agrees, laughing. His arms slide around her waist, her bare skin between her cropped top and her low-cut jeans. He hooks his thumb in the strap of her thong that is high over her hips, hauls her closer to him. He’s shaking so hard, jostling her, eyes wild. She wants to hold him tight in her arms until his blood stops thrumming. She wants them to run away and never have to be violent again. She wants to fight him. She wants to kiss him, wants him to kiss her the way he did the other night and this time she doesn’t want to stop. Wants him to hold her down, wants to tie him down. “Didja bet against me?” he asks, because Kirara’s threatened that even though she’s never done it, never would.

She huffs into his skin, bites down because she can. She’s pissed off and she’s pissed off he looks hot all beat up and she’s pissed off that none of the marks on his skin are from her, for some reason. His thumb twitches, strokes her skin. She sucks his skin between her teeth until she hears him make a low sound, half pained, his body twitching under her.

“No,” she spits, releasing his skin, squeezing him with her knees, “doubled my bets when you were down and it really looked like you were gonna lose, idiot, bleeding all over the place, gross as hell,” he lets her carry on for a little bit, tossing out insults while she rubs the nape of his neck, shifting in his lap so they can finish working on his face. His nose isn’t broken, which she thinks is lucky and she tells him so. He let himself get hit in the fucking face to draw the guy in and she knew he was doing it and it still pissed her the hell off. “You can use half of my winnings at pachinko,” she pulls back, sitting up straight, “get me something nice.”

“You hate my leftover pachinko prizes,” Kinji says. His pupils are still blown wide. He's far from crashing yet. "Threaten to smack me when I give you them."

“You like when I hit you,” Kirara counters, slides her hand to his neck. She rubs her thumb over his Adam's apple, then presses up against his pulse point.

"I like when you do all sorts of things," Kinji says, his voice so low Kirara feels it in her stomach. He adjusts his coat on her shoulders. He's smiling like he can't help it, looking at her like he can't look away. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he adds, trailing eyes down her body, back up to her face. He looks so soft around the edges, despite the swelling and the blood and the cuts, her sweet gentle giant.

Kirara sticks out her tongue at him, hops off his lap, and drags him into the crowd.

 

 

 

That next day, while Kinji sleeps off the adrenaline drop in his room, Kirara slides her hand between her legs and thinks of Kinji and his big hands and his soft mouth and his hard punches.

 

 

 

There are a lot of faces Kirara doesn’t recognize tonight, definitely some people from Osaka if their accents are anything to go by. Kirara’s working the bar, and one guy in particular keeps leaning over to get close when he orders, has claimed a near permanent spot in her corner. He keeps trying to wave her down, even when he doesn't need a drink, and it’s somewhere between flattering and Kirara’s thinking of stealing his wallet if he gets drunk enough. He’s attractive, all things considered, with permed black hair and a crooked tooth that Kirara thinks makes him look sorta sweet. She's not interested, but she's not going to lie and say it's not nice to have someone's attention on her that way.

“What’s yer name?” He asks, when there’s a lull and Kirara is drying off a glass. Yuri from somewhere behind him, gives her a thumbs up with a questioning look. Kirara shrugs, nods. He's vaguely persistent but not worriesome, loaded too, has closed out and tipped her already, opened up his tab again.

“Kirara," she says.

“Pretty,” he says, “just like you.”

Kirara gives him a look. She asks for his ID, Ieda Naoki, and memorizes the kanji and the address, just in case. Just in case. She’s not used to guys hitting on her at the club– most people here know she’s Kinji’s girl, regardless of what they think that means, and they know she has a nasty right hook when she’s pissed and that you’d better hope that’s what you end up with, because the other option, if you fuck with Kirara, is the right hook and then a pissed off Kinji. Yuri had affectionately called Kinji Kirara's guard-dog and then also told Kirara if she ever wanted to get laid she was going to have to start going out with Yuri, maybe all the way in Tokyo, where no one would know them.

“When’s your shift over? he asks. "You can call me Naoki, if you want."

Kirara rolls her eyes. “At close," she tells him sweetly. "Guess you'll have to keep drinking until then."

She keeps an eye out, but he's honestly not too bad. Kirara has seen some real shit guys, working in the clubs with Kinji. This guy is persistent, sure, but he keeps a mostly respectful distance. He leans across the bar a little too close for it to be anything other than what it is, but he also settles back in his stool. He shoots the shit with her but doesn't begrudge when she leaves him hanging to go talk to another customer or make a drink or push the new bartender Choso in his direction.

When his friends come up behind him he gets to his feet, leans in, and says I hope I’ll see you around as he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear for her. She bats his hand away and tries not to think much of it, knows security would kick him out in a heartbeat if she asked. There's nothing he's done objectively that's wrong or even that creepy— only for some reason her skin crawls at the brush of his hand. Only for some reason, his eyes seem to keep finding hers across the club. She rolls out her shoulders, ignores the uncomfortable sensation low in her stomach. She looks back up and he’s laughing with his friends, his back toward her, another girl pushing into their group, looking at him.

Kirara takes a breath and shakes her head.

It’s when she comes out of the bathroom that he corners her, pressing her back against the wall in the hallway. The sound of the club is muted, concrete walls, and it’s colder here. It’s the employee bathroom. This is a back area of the club, not for guests, not even VIP ones.

“You shouldn’t be back here," she tells him, puts her hands on his chest and pushes him back a step. He's not the first drunk person to wander here accidentally. She wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he takes a step back toward her, pushing her against the wall. He’s not touching her exactly, one arm resting on the wall next to her, but everything about his posture sets her body on high alert. He keeps his eyes locked on her face as he presses closer to her, close enough they are touching.

“Come on, pretty girl,” he says and his lips brush her cheekbone, "I have a hotel room—"

Kirara knees him in the dick and he stumbles back, making a loud pained sound. Her heels clack on the concrete as she runs, pushes her way back into the club, calls on the radio for Kashimo and she doesn’t let herself think about it, watches them bundle him and his friends out of the club, him shouting and gesturing. She gives him the finger. Feels a wave of vanilla and cotton candy behind her that means Yuri and the girls are right there.

“Ew," Yuri shouts at the guy. “Bye, freak.” She turns to Kirara. “What’d he do, you look so pissed. You need me to call Kinji?” She’s already getting her phone out.

“No,” Kirara bites out, sharp enough that Yuri startles. “Sorry, fuck.” She takes a breath. “No, it’s fine. Just a jackass. I don’t need Kinji, I can take care of myself. I’m not a baby.”

Yuri pauses, looks at her. “No one said you were, Kira-chan.”

 

 

 

That night Kirara crawls into Kinji's bed and puts her head on his chest, listens to his heartbeat while he sleeps. When he wakes up, realizes she's there, he just pulls her a little closer. He doesn't ask, so Kirara doesn't say.

 

 

 

“Weed is illegal in Japan," Kirara tells Kinji severely before she bursts into giggles.

They don’t smoke much, but they do when they can get it. Kinji is still more likely to break open a bottle of whiskey than anything else, but he's always said he likes how weed makes her giggle, likes how at ease she is when she's high. Kirara likes the floaty feeling, like being wrapped under a weighted blanket and being absolutely weightless all at once.

It’s a rare day off for both of them, after weeks of fights, and Kinji’s finally healing properly, now that he’s had a few days off, swelling going down in his eye, his knuckles less bruised. He doesn’t wince as much when Kirara massages his hand, spreading his fingers out, fitting hers between them, folding them back.

“New music,” Kinji says, when the joint is down to the roach and Kirara is laying on the floor, holding a quartz crystal up to the sunlight sinking below the horizon to watch the light play like warm rainbowed honey.

“Hmmm?” She asks, rolling over to look at him. He’s lounging on the futon, smiling at her, his face relaxed without any of the tension he usually carries. It’s only when she sees him like this that she understands just how on guard he keeps himself for them, just how much he carries.

He’s fiddling with their bluetooth speaker, his phone, rolls his head around to look at her and smiles again.

“Thought you’d like it, heard it the other day," he mumbles, turning up the volume. The beat is sticky, a sound that’s nostalgic and current all at once, makes Kirara want to dance. It sounds like a song the girls at the club would dance to and she finds herself crawling toward Kinji, pressing the quartz crystal into his hand. The lyrics aren’t in Japanese and she only catches words here and there, but it feels sensual. She closes her eyes and sways.

“Again," she says when the song ends, letting her eyes drift open. Kinji is looking at her, lips parted. He seems to come back to himself from far away.

“Yeah," he says, starting the song over. “You like it, ‘rara?”

“Mm,” Kirara agrees, lifting her hair up to let it fall over her shoulders again, the feeling tingly. “Wanna dance.” She pushes to her feet.

Kirara moves like how Yuri-chan taught her at the club, on the stage, giggling and spinning around a pole together. Kirara moves like how Yuri-chan taught her– your body is a weapon. Slow, sinuous, falling into the sound of the music Kinji has put on like ocean water. She realizes, as she drags her fingers up her thigh, and catches Kinji’s gaze on her, that Kinji has never seen her dance before, not like this, all his attention on her, her dancing like it's just for him. It’s a shame, she almost thinks, because she doesn’t have makeup on and her hair is a mess and she’s wearing old lace boy shorts underneath her shirt— actually Kinji’s t-shirt, if the size is anything to go by. It’s not the kind of outfit that the girls in the club wear. It’s not the kind of outfit she would wear out to the club with Kinji, but with his eyes on her she feels pretty.

She feels powerful.

Kinji watches her like melted wax. He watches her like water spilled from a glass. He watches her the way men watch the girls at the club, something dark in his eyes, glinting underneath the slow waves of him.

He watches her like he’s hungry.

Kirara pauses, tilting her head.

“Kin-chan?” She asks.

He moves the way he does that surprises people, so big and solid that they don’t expect the grace he has. He slinks, all muscle, shifting in a quick movement to his hands and knees. He crawls toward her. Kirara’s hands fall from beside her head and she reaches to him, cups his face when he stops at her feet. He looks up at her like he’s asking something. Kirara runs her thumbs over his cheekbones.

Kinji tilts, kisses the heel of her hand, then tilts more, bending forward, his hand on her calf, until he's kissing the jut of her ankle bone under the skin. Kirara sucks in a shaky quick breath. He pauses, then kisses her ankle again. Then his mouth drags, not a kiss but not not one, up the side of her calf, over her knee, her thigh, catching on the hem of her t-shirt. His palms are calloused and they follow the slide of his mouth, running up either side of her body, holding her steady and still. He presses a kiss to her hipbone underneath the fabric. Presses his nose into her stomach. He lifts up, mouth catching on her collarbones, then her jaw, then her ear.

“Kirara.” His voice is low and rough, pulling at her like a rip current. Kirara feels like she’s drowning. It feels good. She shivers. “Kirara, baby–” Kinji’s hand is at the small of her back, spans it, pressing their bodies together. Her arms go up, around him, automatically. She strokes the nape of his neck and feels the way it makes him shiver all up and down, feels it in her entire body from how they're pressed together. “You don’t have to want me,” Kinji mumbles, the words tripping out of him and falling over each other, “but dance with me?” His hand presses on the small of her back, guiding her, moving her hips against him. Kirara is made of liquid. “Fuck,” Kinji mumbles, when she rolls her body against his.

In the cage of his arms, she spins around, presses up against him, rolling her body, long and slow. He makes a sound as she works them together. He holds on to her alternatingly too tight, like he can’t bear the thought of letting her go, like he's drowning; then fingers so gentle they’re barely there, like she’s porcelain, like he’s not sure he can– should– be allowed to touch. She tilts her head back against his chest. His arms are around her waist. His mouth is hot on her temple. He’s hard against her back. Kirara shivers, arches into him.

Kinji makes a pained sound, hands tight on her hips, tight enough they could bruise. He spins her around to face him and she goes easy, lets his thigh slide between her legs. She rocks against him and it’s so much. The hard muscle of him. The look in his eyes. The way his hands are tight on her waist. Kirara is so dizzy. She whimpers.

“Fuck,” he whispers, wraps his arms around her, pulling her close, rocking them both. "Fuck, you're so hot," he mumbles, the words sticky and slow. He might not realize he's saying them aloud.

“Who said I don’t want you?” Kirara can't help but ask, his words from before swimming through her veins. She reaches behind herself to slide his hands down to her ass. He groans, knock their foreheads together, noses into her hair.

“Don’t fuck with me," Kinji says, his mouth warm on her temple, "can’t take it.”

Kirara doesn't understand.

"I'm not fucking with you," Kirara whispers, lifting up on her toes, cupping his face. Their mouths are so close together. "Kin-chan—"

"I'm too high for this," he rasps, "Kirara, I'm—"

"Okay, okay," Kirara strokes his face, tugs him with her, into her room, onto her bed, wraps her limbs around him. She hums softly as he buries his face in her collarbones, strokes up and down his spine. Kirara presses kisses to the top of his head and, at some point, singing to Kinji and tracing his skin and scars, she realizes he's asleep in her arms.

Kirara disentangles herself a little so she can peer down at his sleeping face, relaxed in rest, mouth parted slightly. She knows what he tastes like and she can't unknow it. She never wants to unknow it. She kisses his forehead and he makes a small snuffling sound, burrowing into her chest.

Kirara's going to regret it in the morning, when she wakes up with unbrushed teeth, but instead of pulling away from Kinji, she closes her eyes and lets herself sleep.

 

 

 

Kirara is tired as hell.

Kinji leaves pretty early in his shift, hand skimming her waist as he walks by, giving her a quick kiss to the forehead. He’s with some guys when he leaves, and they all look frustrated, which means it’s work related and not a fun excursion. She blows Kinji a lucky kiss that he catches, pops in his pocket in a way that makes her laugh. He smiles at her, before he leaves.

He’s still not back, when her shift is over. Kirara frowns but she gets it. She walks halfway to the station with her friends, parts ways, promising to text later. She yawns, swinging her bag as she walks. She wants to take the longest bath in the world. She pulls out her phone to see if Kinji’s texted, which he hasn’t. Kirara shoots off a text message to let him know she's headed home. It doesn't even come through as read, which means shit must be going slightly sideways, so she crouches down and drops a hundred yen coin off at the dousojin that's on the way home, cleans off a few leaves, clasps her hands together and asks for protection for Kinji.

She stretches when she stands, checks her phone again as she walks. She turns the next corner and then the next and then, as she's resigning herself to not hearing back from Kinji and sliding her phone into her pocket, she sees, down the road, the flash of a cigarette lighting. It's nothing. It should be nothing. It’s a common enough occurrence around here, there's nothing unusual about someone lighting up on their way home, but for some reason something in her stomach drops.

She stops where she stands and sucks in a breath, then another. She feels frozen. She tries to will her body to move forward. She watches the lit cigarette drop to the ground, get stubbed out as the shadow straightens, seemingly looking her way.

Kirara turns on her heel and walks away. She tries to keep her pace steady. She tries not to break into a frightened run. She doesn’t look to see if he’s following her and she doesn’t look to see who else is around. The club is three blocks away and closed and the last train is gone and that is the path to her home, to her and Kinji’s home, and she is afraid. She turns down an alley, walks another block to a club that’s much rowdier than their’s, more dangerous, a loud and boisterous crowd always. She slips into the mass of people, lets herself get pushed into the dance floor, pushed away from the doors, scanning behind her.

That was nothing, she tries to tell herself, someone smoking in an alley, you’re being insane, you’re being paranoid, there’s nothing to worry about. Her stomach clenches. She calls Kinji, doesn’t even try to see if he picks up the phone, hangs up after it rings three times.

He’ll know.

She stumbles to the side of the dance floor, presses herself back in a corner, a sticky wall. Her eyes sting from the smoke. She does what she hasn’t done in years, not since they walked down those school steps, Kinji’s arm over her shoulders.

She makes herself small.

 

 

 

“I might– I’m making it up–” She stutters out when she sees him. “Sorry, it’s in my head probably, I just–”

“Kirara.” He holds her by the shoulder, scans her up and down. She watches him assess if there are injuries he needs to tend to. She’s surprised, when she’s wrapped up in his arms, pressed against his chest. She listens to his heart beat, so solid and sure, breathes him in. “You’re shaking," he says. She is. She wasn't, until she saw him, like her body understood that it was safe now, that she could let herself fully feel. Her teeth are chattering. He feels so warm. She curls her fingers in his shirt.

“I’m scared," she whispers. It’s not a feeling she’s felt in some time. She buries her nose into his chest and breathes in his comforting familiar scent. Like salt and cigarette smoke and whiskey and sweat. Like Kinji. He curls the palm of his hand protectively against the back of her head, keeps her close, until she stops trembling as hard. “Sorry," she mumbles.

“Never," he says, voice rough. His arms clench around her. “Let’s go home. You can tell me what happened when we get there, if you want, but, fuck," he presses his nose into her hair and breathes, "it doesn't matter, okay? If you don't want to tell me, I mean. As long as you're safe."

Kirara nods. She’s so tired. She stumbles and Kinji's arm is around her shoulders, holding her in place. She manages to take a breath of the sweat-soaked stale air, vision swimming a little as she looks for the exit.

She and Kinji don’t make it all the way to the door before the guy is there, blocking their path.

"Hey man," the guy says. His tooth makes his face look just as sweet as Kirara remembers. It makes her stomach clench. "Sorry, just need to borrow—" he glances Kirara up and down, "her?" he says, voice all mocking. Kirara digs her nails into her palm. Her toes curl in her shoes. She feels her jaw clench, hard enough her teeth squeak. “Heard a rumor about you," the guy says with a sneer, eyes locked on Kirara. Kirara is tired. She’s so fucking tired of this. She wanted it to be in her head. It should be in her head. It shouldn’t be like this. He spits on the ground. It lands on Kinji’s boot. Kirara looks at it, feels something simmering inside her, feels something falling inside her, heavy as a stone. She wants it to stop. Kinji’s hand clenches on her waist. “Is it true?” he asks. Naoki, she remembers, her braining conjuring up the name, the address. She looks at this guy and his cute smile that’s all twisted. “Kinda fucked up to mess with me like–”

Kirara doesn’t think. She punches him. She’s so mad it’s not even a good punch, so mad she thinks she might cry, so fucking angry that she can’t even breathe in properly. He’s bleeding from the nose and it’s not enough and it’s too much and Kirara can hit harder than that. Has hit harder than that. She’s pissed off it wasn’t her best punch. She's pissed off she had to punch someone. She’s so mad she’s shaking, she’s so scared she’s shaking, she’s so so so angry.

The guy touches his face, sees the blood on his fingers.

“Did you just fucking hit me, you fuckin' fa—”

Kinji moves so fast Kirara couldn’t stop him even if she wanted to. She doesn't actually know if she wants to, hasn't decided yet if she wants to deal with it or walk away from it or just wants to put her hands up, give up, let Kinji handle it and disassociate herself to somewhere pretty. She still hasn’t decided, as she watches the guy crumple in front of them, a pained sound escaping his mouth. She still hasn't decided, but it got decided for her and she's pissed about that too, even though she's not angry at Kinji about it.

The guy is not unconscious. Kinji is well capable of knocking a guy out with one punch. Only doesn’t when he wants to make sure the other person hurts first, before they get to slip into unconsciousness. Naoki doesn’t make it fully to the floor, only to his knees. Kinji hunkers down, grabs him by the front of his shirt, pulling him up so their faces are even.

“What the fuck did you just say to my girl?” Kinji’s voice is so cold Kirara shivers. She hasn't heard him sound like that in a long time. It’s deadly. Quiet as hell. She can barely hear him over the music and the people around them, the scattered shrieks and someone saying get security and– “Say it again,” Kinji repeats, just as quiet. The words are pronounced like a threat. “Say any of that shit again. Go on.”

Naoki shakes his head, hands frantic trying to peel Kinji’s hand off the front of his shirt. His nose looks funny. Kirara thinks he might be missing a tooth.

“Fuck,” he spits out, blood bubbling out of the corner of his mouth, “what the fuck, man, who gives a shit about–”

Kinji raises his first again. Hits him.

“Don’t fucking talk about my girl, you piece of shit.” He raises his fist again. Naoki's head lolls on his neck. It snaps to the side when Kinji punches him again. Kinji punches him a third time and Kirara has a flashback of having to physically pull Kinji off of a man, his body going soft under her hands, eyes fading back in. She had grabbed him and ran. She had grabbed him and ran because this country is a country of guilty until proven innocent and everything about Kinji screams guilty to those who hold the power, even though Kinji is the softest kindest man that Kirara knows.

“Kin-chan.” Kirara crouches down next to him. She puts her hands on his forearm, the arm that’s holding Naoki up. Her fingers don’t even touch, wrapping around it. She squeezes once. She hears someone on the phone, the distant sound of sirens.

“Fuck you.” Kinji spits Naoki's unconscious form. He doesn’t even look at Kirara. “Fuck you–” He repeats, raising his arm. Kirara squeezes once, digs her nails into his skin. His eyes track to her.

“It’s fine.” Kirara thinks she might cry. "Let's go." That's all she can manage. If she keeps talking she might scream. If she starts screaming she doesn't think she'll ever stop. She wants to punch a wall. She wants to run away. Kinji’s arm is so warm, when he drapes it over her shoulders, pulling her to her feet. Kirara's legs feel numb. It's one asshole in a line of assholes she's had to deal with and there's no reason for him to matter even the slightest bit and she still has to hold on to Kinji when they leave and she hates it. She hates it.

“It’s not okay," Kinji says softly, so only she can hear, "but we’ll go.”

 

 

 

“I didn’t mean to need for you to come save me,” Kirara says. They've walked in silence up until this point. They can't hear sirens anymore. The night is quiet. They're not walking toward home, but Kinji seems to have a destination in mind and Kirara is happy to follow, to stop thinking, even if only for a moment. “I know how to take care of myself.” Her words sound biting but she’s not mad at Kinji. She’s mad at herself. She’s mad at the concept of what just happened. “Shouldn’t have–”

“You coulda taken him, sure,” Kinji tugs her a little closer as they walk, "but doesn't mean you gotta do it all by yourself."

Kirara keeps stumbling and she doesn’t know why. She’s used to these heels, they’re not even that high, but her body isn’t listening to her right, like it’s pitching a fit, on strike. She’s mad at how helpless she felt, like she used to, in junior high, in childhood, wrong wrong wrong and weak weak weak and–

Kinji grabs her by the arms, comes to a stop in a way that rocks her backwards on her feet.

"Don't," he warns, like he can read her mind. “You don't have to do it all yourself. It's okay to call me, come on."

“Yeah," she manages. Her mouth feels dry. “You’re right, it’s fine. Thanks. My knight in shining armor," she adds, managing a wry smile. Her teeth chatter. It’s a cold night suddenly. It had felt nice earlier, after the heat of the club. She doesn’t understand. She shivers. Kinji puts his jacket around her shoulders. Pulls her into his chest.

“Yeah,” he says, “and you’re my princess.”

Kirara takes a deep breath and lets herself go weightless, just for a moment, against the comforting radiating heat of Kinji.

“Let’s go fuck up some ramen, okay?” he asks.

Kirara walks under his arm. She doesn’t want ramen. It’s heavy and salty. The thought of the thick noodles curling in her stomach like worms makes her want to vomit. She feels like she wants to vomit. She walks without looking where they're going, counting her steps in the cold. Kinji comes to a stop and Kirara stumbles over her feet next to him. The air is fragrant and light, salt and citrus. She blinks at the placard sign. Yuzu-shio broth. Thin noodles. She can smell the green onions. Something light rushes over her in a wave.

Her mouth waters.

They workers call out in welcome as Kinji lifts the noren and ushers her inside.

 

 

 

Kinji pulls her inside their apartment, wipes her makeup off with cold cream, takes off her jewelry with gentle and nimble hands. He turns on the shower, leaves her to it. The water melts her skin, thaws off the frozen feeling that the ramen and presence of Kinji had started to take away. The sweet rose scent of their soap wakes her brain a little. She feels slightly more like a person when she exits. She doesn’t even bother with a bath because Kinji seems warmer than the water would be, like he can take away the chill that is left in her marrow. She pulls on her favorite pajamas, drinks the bottle of water Kinji hands her, blow-dries her hair, does skincare, puts lotion on her legs and arms, moving from each task to the next methodically while Kinji showers. When Kinji comes out of the shower room he’s just wearing sweats, toweling off his face. He pulls his blackout curtains. Wraps his arms around her. Tumbles her into his bed.

His skin is warm, he’s always so warm, her ball of sun, her sweet daylight boy. She loves him so much her ribs ache.

“Sorry,” she manages, trying to bite back the tears, “were you busy? I would have been fine, should have just kept walking. Guys like that are all talk, you know?”

“Never don’t call me,” Kinji says after a moment. “I don’t care that you probably actually could have kicked the shit out of that guy and then some, stabbed ‘em with your stilettos. Never don’t call me. And then call Kashimo and Yuri and Maiko and the fucking police if you feel like it, fuck, why not, call Gojo-sensei too, he was always chill, always liked you.” Kirara laughs, but it turns into a sob. “It doesn't matter what I'm doing," Kinji murmurs, his lips brushing her forehead, "I would leave it, just walk away for you. Always."

"What if you were with your girlfriend?" Kirara asks, like she's trying to hurt herself more. She can't remember the last time Kinji had a girlfriend properly.

"You're my girl, Kirara," Kinji's voice when he speaks is tight. "My best girl. Always.”

“Your girlfriends must hate that.” Kirara chokes out.

Kinji pulls her to sitting, cradles her face in his warm hands.

“Fuck them then," he says, and his voice is calm, sure of itself, like it’s that simple. He gets a girlfriend who doesn’t like that he calls Kirara his girl and she’s gone, he’s not interested anymore. “They don’t fucking– you’re the only one, you know?"

Kirara shakes her head in his hands. It’s all too much.

"How do you not know?" he whispers. Kirara doesn't know what she doesn't know. She doesn't know what she's supposed to understand. She presses her forehead to Kinji's puts her hands over his hands. He shifts them slightly, so her fingers slide between his. “Kirara nobody ever gave me a fucking chance, not at anything, not ever. One fucking look and they made up their minds about me and that was it. You’re the only one who didn't. Who listens to me. Who thinks maybe I have a thought in my goddamn head even when I’m not sure I do. I don’t know why you’re with me, you’re too good for this– for me– but, Kirara,” Kinji pauses, like he’s not sure what he’s trying to say, knocks their foreheads together with a little frustrated grunt. “I don’t think you get it," he says softly, "you're the most important person in my life." His voice cracks. Kirara pulls back a little and looks at him. His thumbs stroke over her cheekbones. "He didn’t touch you, right?” Kinji asks, in a voice that says if he did the police are gonna find the guy on the banks of the Tagawa River with his face so beat in even his dental records won’t be much help. The question is so out of nowhere it takes Kirara a minute to conceptualize it fully.

“Not really,” Kirara says, "I mean, in the bar the first time, but not like a lot.”

“The fuck,” Kinji says, voice way too calm.

Kirara sits up properly, letting Kinji's hands fall from her face. She keeps their fingers intertwined, picks up one of Kinji’s hands and uses it to tuck her hair behind her ear.

“He did this,” she says as she does, "and," she leans forward, up on her knees, brushes her lips barely over Kinji’s cheekbone, “this.”

Kinji waits, eyes locked on hers, until she settles back, letting her legs slide out from under her.

“This,” Kinji repeats softly, brushes her hair behind her ear for her. His fingers are infinitely tender. It’s nothing like what that guy did. “And this.” He leans forward, brushes his lips over her cheekbone. Kirara’s breathing is shaky. She can’t keep her eyes open. Kinji does it again, gentle as anything. “It’s okay, you can cry," he tells her, stroking over her cheekbones, under her eyes.

“I don’t want to cry anymore,” Kirara chokes out, “I’m so tired of crying, Kin.” Her voice is rough and low and her throat is thick. She’s so tired. “I’m so tired of being angry," she manages before she starts to sob.

“Tell me how to fix it.” Kinji wraps his arms around her, pulls her between his legs, up against his chest, wraps her up until all there is is him. “Tell me, babe.”

“You can’t,” Kirara chokes on the words, her sobs fracturing them, "I want you to be able to, but you can't. I don’t want to cry anymore, Kin.”

Kinji holds her, and doesn’t say another word. He rocks her until the tears stop. Until her head hurts and her throat hurts and her eyes are so swollen they feel raw. She presses her face against his bare chest, her cheeks so hot that he feels cool. She draws in a shaky breath, lets it out carefully, draws in another, lets that out as well. Kinji's hand traces a soothing pattern on her back.

"Hold on," he murmurs, pulling away. Kirara is going to protest, but he makes his way over to their fridge, pulls open the freezer, pulls out her face roller that he must have stuck in there while she was showering. She sobs once, feeling a little broken, as he settles back in front of her. She tilts her face up to him, sunflower to sun, as he slowly rolls the tool over her cheeks, her under eyes, her eyelids. She tilts into him, lets the coolness soothe her skin and his touch soothe something even deeper.

"Can you kiss me?" Kirara asks, before she realizes she's going to. Kinji pauses, pulling the roller away from her face. Kirara waits one breath, than two, before she opens her eyes. Kinji is looking at her, eyes gentle but something like sad. He touches their foreheads together.

"You want me to kiss you?" he asks.

"I want to feel something gentle," Kirara manages to whisper, "the way you touch me, you make me feel good, Kin-chan."

There's half a pause and then Kinji tilts his head, is kissing her. His mouth is so hot. She opens hers to him easily, touches the inside of his lip with her tongue. She hears the ice roller clatter onto the ground as he grabs at her and she pushes herself up on her knees, crawling into Kinji's lap, his arms tight around her waist, his sweet face cradled in her hands.

Kinji kisses her and kisses her, deep and soft, and she would call it gentle but there's something underneath the gentleness, something not quite frantic but almost desperate. It makes her stomach swirl in anticipation, her fingertips tingle. She wants Kinji to push her onto the bed again, wants him to make her forget everything that happened tonight or any other night, until all there is, all there will be, is right now, Kinji's big body touching hers. She straddles him, catching at his lips with her teeth, trying to deepen the kiss, but his hands catch her face, slow her down. He kisses her like it means something.

Kinji lifts up onto his knees, a hand firm around her hips, sliding down to support her. Kirara locks her legs around his waist, lets him move them, her, until she's landing on her back on the bed, her hair spread around her on his pillow, looking up at him, breathless.

She goes to lift up as he tilts down to kiss her again, but he presses his lips to the corner of her mouth, pressing her back into the bed.

"Let me kiss you the way I want?" he asks softly, pressing another chaste kiss to her cheekbone, one to her eyelid, her left eyebrow, the tip of her chin. He presses a kiss to her jaw, to a faint freckle by her ear, over each of her piercings, the center of her eyelids, her hairline, underneath her ears, turning her head, tilting it, so he can kiss down her neck, up under her jaw. She can't tell where his mouth is going to touch next, but he's kissing like he has a system, a list of secret soft places he wants to touch, a list of where her scars and freckles are, a constellation he is drawing on her skin with his mouth. The kisses drag, leave burning softness in their wake. He kisses up her neck, the point of her chin, a scar she has from when she fell off the see-saw when she was four years old. He kisses her pulse point, leaves his lips there for a moment, touches it with his tongue.

Kirara shivers.

It feels like he's trying to kiss every inch of her, kissing the jut of her collarbone, over to her shoulder, the bones underneath her skin. He brings their intertwined hands to his mouth, kisses her fingers, her knuckles, the heel of her hand, the soft skin on her inner wrist, kisses up the veins in her forearm. He kisses her bicep, kisses under her arm, his facial hair scratchy on the sensitive skin, ticklish. She squirms and he kisses her again, sucking softly at her skin.

"Kin-chan," she gaps, "what are you— what are you doing?"

"Kissing you," Kinji answers, the words sounding reverent, prayerful, "kissing you, Kirara."

He kisses her elbow, each of her fingertips. Kirara feels like there's not a centimeter of skin he is going to leave unkissed. She doesn't know what do. He doesn't kiss where her skin is covered, though he kisses over her pajamas, the jut of her hipbones, bites softly at her tummy, presses a dry kiss below her bellybutton. Kirara's thighs clench. He makes his way to her thighs, to her kneecaps, he pays special attention to the bruises on them. He kisses behind her knees, her calves, his strong hands stroking her skin, rubbing and kneading at her like he is making sure she is real.

"Please," Kirara manages, when he's at her ankles, when he's kissing the tops of her feet, "Kin-chan, please, please—" She holds out her arms to him, runs her fingers over his eyebrows, his baby hairs. She feels drunk, warm, safe, sated, she doesn't know the word. She needs him closer. She needs his mouth on hers, wants to taste the warm sweet of it, feel his hot tongue run over her teeth, feel his teeth scrape against her lips.

Kinji covers her completely when he lifts up, lets her wrap her arms and legs around him, threads his hands into her hair and kisses her until Kirara is so exhausted she can't think, her mouth numb and mind hazy, body finally warm.

"Kin," she mumbles into his mouth, "Kin-chan."

"My girl," he murmurs, their lips brushing, half a kiss, half not, "I've got you, Kirara. I've got you."

She falls asleep wrapped up in him and wakes up the same way, his fingers drawing lazy lines up and down her back, his bare sleep-warmed skin pressed against her cheek. She rests for a second, against his strong chest, listens to his heart beat and coaches hers to beat the same way, strong, solid, steady.

“Hey baby,” he says when she shifts, rubbing her face on his pec. He presses a kiss to the top of her head and moves his hand to stroke through her hair. "Not to be the guy girls complain about, but I’m starving and I straight up don’t think I know how to make us toast?”

Kirara starts to laugh.

 

 

 

“He doesn’t pull anymore, ya know,” Yuri says, as Kirara watches Kinji brush the girl off again, take a large step back from her. She tries to push into his space again.

“I know," she says.

“Lowkey, it’s sorta embarrassing,” Yuri adds, cracking her gum. “Is he suffering from erectile dysfunction? Poor baby. It happens to all guys, Kirara. You need a vibrator you let me know.”

“Can you fuck off," Kirara snaps a towel playfully at Yuri, who giggles, dancing out of the way, her jeans low on her hips, patches cut out and filled in with white lace. “Those are so cute though, where did you get them.”

“Majestic Legon, last time I was in Shibuya.” Yuri cracks her gum again. “Oh, your not-man is coming.”

“Jesus,” Kinji says, walking over to Kirara and enveloping her in a hug. “Why are you here, baby?” Kirara’s skin is buzzing.

“Yeah, baby,” Yuri repeats, slinging her arms around both of their necks. “Why are you here?”

“I came to see Kin,” Kirara tells her.

Yuri sticks out her tongue.

 

 

 

“Let’s go out tonight,” Kinji says from behind her. “We’re both off.”

“Huh?” Kirara asks after a second. She blinks over her shoulder at him, tries to stifle a yawn. She slides the egg out of the pan and onto the second piece of toast. “Okay?” She shrugs, walking toward him carrying their plates. “Want me to ask Kashimo about that show he was talking about– the underground one with the fortune teller DJ or whatever–”

“I meant like– us,” Kinji says, cutting her off. She flicks her eyes to him, flicks them away. He’s not wearing a shirt and the mid-morning sunlight is making his skin look as sweet as caramel. He’s staring somewhere in the middle distance. She knows he’s not, but it feels like he’s trying very hard not to look at her bare legs, the hem of his shirt, the black of his boxers– both of which she pulled out of the dryer to wear last night, half-asleep after her bath, before she had crawled into his bed and into his arms. She lifts her foot and scratches the back of the calf and his eyes follow the motion.

“You mean just us?” she asks, settling at the table, clasping her hands together. Kinji does the same, murmuring his thanks quietly before he tucks in. Kirara starts with her tomatoes, pops one into her mouth, chews. “Earth to Kinji," she says, when he doesn’t answer.

“Yeah,” his eyes slide over her face, “if you wanted?”

Kirara wants.

She nods.

 

 

 

Kirara smooths her hands over the silk of her mini dress, runs her fingers over the slit, on her thigh, adjusts the garters, the lace edge of her thigh highs. The lace matches her choker, matches the ribbons she's sectioned into her hair, matches the faint glitter she's dusted high on her cheekbones and over the bridge of her nose. It's a different look than she usually goes for, when she and Kinji go out, and it's certainly not something she can fight in, or run in, if she wears the shoes she's thinking of wearing. She spins once and examines herself from the back, the latticed tie of the slip dress, pulled just tight enough to accentuate her hips, just loose enough to cause a silhouette of her body when she's backlit.

She touches up her lipstick and tilts her head, tosses her hair over her shoulder. Kinji is waiting on the couch, staring at his phone. He dressed up a little too, Kirara notes, pulse thrumming high in her throat.

"Kin," she calls, "ready."

He looks up at her and she watches him swallow, watches the way his hand flexes around his phone. He pushes himself to his feet, walks over with steady steps. His gaze makes her feel pinned. He holds out a hand, she takes it, lets him spin her, his eyes a gentle caress on her body.

"You look good," Kinji says. Kirara looks up at him through her lashes.

"I know," she says.

Before they leave, Kinji puts his jacket over her shoulders, then his arm, holds her close to his side, steadies her on the train, pressing her into a corner, his body keeping anyone from getting close enough they might brush against her. He's wearing a cologne that makes Kirara want to bury her face in his chest, crawl into his lap, and nuzzles his neck. He tucks her hair behind her ear for her and she looks up at him, through her lashes.

This is a date, Kirara thinks as Kinji ushers her into a small izakaya. He bends down and undoes the buckle of her shoe for her, lets her step on to the tatami, balancing a hand on his shoulder, as he takes off her other shoe. She settles herself on a floor cushion, pulls the screen toward her to order for them. They get not quite drunk, not quite not drunk, Kinji and his whiskey after he drinks an obligatory beer, Kirara drinking umeshuu soda because Kinji always wrinkles his nose at it, says it's too sour-sweet, like he doesn't drink straight Yamazaki. They talk about everything and nothing. Kirara reads his palm, again, tracing his love line with her fingertip, entranced by the way he shivers.

This is a date, Kirara thinks, as they exit the izakaya into the night, as he slides his hand into hers, smiles at her and tugs her along.

This is a date, Kirara thinks, as Kinji pulls her close in the club, his hand on the back of her neck, pressing their foreheads together as they dance. His thigh is between her legs, his mouth is so close, like he's trying to take in her exhales, like he wants anything she'll give. She pulls the straw of her drink into her mouth, hollows her cheeks as she takes the last sip, opens her mouth like she's showing Kinji it's all gone. His blunt nails dig into the nape of her neck, her hip, wrinkling the material of her dress, dragging it higher up her thigh.

"Buy me another drink, Kin-chan?" she asks, lifting up so she can speak into his ear. He nods, eyes caught on her, walks them toward the bar. Kirara walks backwards, trusting Kinji's arm around her waist, the protective look in his eyes.

"You look really good," Kinji says, his breath hot against her mouth, bullying her backward into the bar, arms around her caging her in, keeping her safe. He raises his hand at the bartender, leans forward to order. Kirara presses her nose into the crook of his neck, smiles at the salt on her tongue where her lips touch his skin.

“Do I?” Kirara sorta purrs, when he pulls back. She crunches on the ice leftover from her drink, watching Kinji watch her mouth, "How good?" She asks, pushing him back a little more with one lacquered nail in the center of his chest.

"Really good," Kinji murmurs, hands tight on her waist, "y'look hot, Kirara."

Kirara hums, pushes herself up on a stool, crosses her legs. His eyes follow the hem of her dress when she lifts her leg up. Her garter is digging into the plush of her thigh and Kinji reaches out, touches it like he doesn't mean to be, dragging a finger across it. She watches him swallow heavily. He flicks his eyes up to her face like he’s been caught out.

"Really hot," he whispers, pressing in. She slides her legs open so he slides between them, pressing in, burying his nose in her hair with a soft sound that's a little bit like a whine. Kirara kisses his temple.

She and Kinji wind up on the dance floor again and Kirara presses her back against his solid chest, tilts her head back, to the side, exposes the column of her throat. She feels him groan even though she can't hear it, watches his hand press against her lower stomach, pull her closer to him, so big it spans across her waist.

"Y'r tiny," he mumbles in her ear, "your waist is so—" He gives up on the sentence, presses his mouth to her neck, scrapes at her with his teeth. Kirara closes her eyes and sinks into the feeling. He slides his other hand down to her thigh, tucks a finger into her garter, makes that sound again, the low sweet one that melts like honey into her veins.

"I wanna go home, Kin-chan," Kirara whispers, lifting up to whisper into his ear, letting her lips catch. She nuzzles at his cheek with her nose. "Take me home?"

“Well, you’re my girl," Kinji mumbles.

Kirara doesn't really remember the train ride home. Not because she's drunk, but because she sits as close to Kinji as she can, throws her legs over his thighs and lets him pull them closer, closes her eyes, buries her nose in his neck with her eyes closed, and breathes him in.

He tugs her into a konbini on the way home, plies her with tea, an onigiri they share as they walk the rest of the way home. Kirara is pleasantly loose and relaxed when they get home, listening to Kinji hum under his breath. The charged atmosphere from the club has faded just slightly, but Kinji is still looking at her like he can't look away, like a fingernail snagged in fabric, his eyes catching on her body.

"Wanna take a shower?" Kinji says, when they're in their apartment, tumbling over each other, his fingers glancing over her skin, her hair. He tilts like he wants to kiss her, rubs his thumb over her lowerlip, smearing her lip gloss just slightly.

"You go first," Kirara urges, pressing a kiss to his thumb. She pulls back and begins untangling her necklaces, her choker, dragging it off her neck, her hair catching in it. Kinji doesn't move, just watches her, for long enough that Kirara raises an eyebrow at him. "Go on, Kin," she whispers. He blinks, like he's coming back to himself, stumbles toward the bathroom, flicking on the lights. Kirara dims the lights in the main room, turns on her pink salt lamp, low music, as she takes off her jewelry, wipes her make-up off carefully.

The shower room is steamy and warm, wet from Kinji using it, and he never rinses the soap off the floor properly and it makes her smile for some reason, the familiarity of it. She showers, dries her hair, puts on her skin care, brushes her hair, brushes her teeth, and wanders into her room where she puts on a tank top, a pair of basketball shorts. The door to Kinji's room is still slid open, across the small shared space, and he's watching her, when she slides her door back open.

She makes her way to where Kinji is lying on his bed.

"Hey," he says when he she's within arms reach, and his eyes do the same thing they did when she was dressed up, in her makeup and her going out outfit, travelling up and down her body, heavy as a touch, intent like she makes him hungry. His fingers twitch. "You have a good night?" he asks softly.

"Uh-huh," Kirara answers and then without saying anything else she climbs on top of his him, straddling his hips, the bulk of him stretching her, pressing against her inner thighs. Kinji hands fly to her waist like he's startled. His eyes are wide. "Was this a date, Kin?" she asks.

"Did you want it to be?" He asks, after a moment. He squeezes her waist once, like he can't help himself.

"Did you want it to be?" Kirara counters.

"I asked you first," Kinji mumbles.

"No," Kirara rolls her eyes at him, settling her body against him fully, "I asked you first, stupid boy." Kinji looks at her, steady and careful. He doesn't say anything. Kirara rolls her eyes again but it's mostly a cover as she summons her courage, curling her toes in Kinji's sheets, her fingers in his t-shirt. "I wanted it to be," Kirara admits.

"Fuck," Kinji breathes, "yes, babe, lucky star, it was, I wanted it to be." He seems unsure what to do with himself, his hands sliding up her sides, back down, his pupils blown as he looks at her. "You— with me?" he asks, a question that is not a question, but that Kirara understands all the same.

"If it was a date, then can it end with a kiss?" Kirara asks, trying to make her voice strong, but it comes out soft and wanting.

"It can end with whatever you want," Kinji murmurs, stroking her skin, the waistband of her shorts.

Kirara wants. She leans down and Kinji opens his mouth to hers easily, instantly, when she leans over and kisses him. He kisses her desperately and a little dirty and she likes it, being on top, feeling like she's in control, feeling the way he melts under her, lifts up into her. It's like he's greedy for her, like he's been thinking about her, about kissing her again, about how he wants to kiss her again. She rolls her hips down and she can feel him, thickening up underneath her as she touches him, massaging at his pecs, his biceps, scraping her teeth over his tongue.

"We don't have to—" Kinji tries to say, threading his hands through her hair, rubbing over her bottom lip when Kirara rolls her hips down again. "Fuck," Kinji gasps, as Kirara works her way down his neck, copying what he's done to her, dragging her teeth, sucking the skin in between them, licking and nipping, the salt of his skin on her tongue. She doesn't know if she's doing it right but his dick kicks against her leg. She feels a little dizzy with it, slides down his body, in between his legs, nuzzling against his abs, his hipbone. She looks up at him, cheek pressed against his inner thigh, feeling it clench, release and tighten. She wants to ask if she can, she wants to ask if it's okay, but she can't find the words. Kinji looks at her wide-eyed, pupils blown, pressed up on his elbows. He opens his mouth like he's going to say something, but nothing comes out. His cheeks are flushed. Kirara drags her mouth up, presses her cheek slowly against his covered dick. She feels Kinji throb. "Oh, fuck," Kinji breathes, sitting up as his hands fly to her face, cupping her jaw, his thumb pressing into her cheekbone, rubbing against it. "Kirara— you don't have to—"

"I want to," Kirara whispers, "if you want me to, I really want to, Kin-chan."

"Holy fuck, you have no idea how much I want—" Kinji's voice breaks when Kirara, feeling reckless and brave and wanting, wriggles her face out of his hands so she can press a open mouthed kiss to his covered dick. It twitches against her tongue. Kinji makes a sound that makes her thighs clench, her whole lower stomach burn with want. "Kirara," he says, like her name is a full sentence. It sounds like a plea. Kinji slides his hands down to her arms, pulls her up, to him, licking into her mouth, kissing her deep, dirty. Kirara whimpers, thighs clenching, fingers scratching at Kinji's abs, half-hooking on the string of his sweats.

He looks at her when the kiss breaks, like he's trying to understand something, nosing at her cheek, her temple.

"Kirara," he says, like it's obvious that he wants, and she supposes it is, because he's hard enough between them that when Kirara reaches between them, presses with her finger, she finds a damp spot, rubs it with her thumb, and Kinji makes a desperate sound. Kirara slides herself off the side of the bed, knees hitting the ground, grateful for the low bedframe, the way Kinji just looks at her like he's awed, doesn't force a conversation that she doesn't know how to have, doesn't want to have. She just wants.

His thumb presses at the corner of her mouth and Kirara feels brave and giddy and turns her head slightly, so that Kinji's thumb slides into her mouth. She wraps her tongue around it, pressing the flat of it against the pad, tasting salt and the rough of his callouses. His eyes are so dark Kirara thinks she's going to drown in them. He pushes his thumb in a little bit more and Kirara takes it, keeping her eyes locked on him, up through her eyelashes.

He groans.

"I've never done this before," Kirara warns, releasing his thumb. Kinji's hands are sort of shaking as he brushes her hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ears, catching on her cartilage piercing.

"I don't think it's gonna be, like, an issue for me," he says, like he doesn't know what he's saying. Kirara hooks her fingers under the waistband of his pants, his boxers, and Kinji lifts his hips, eyes locked on her face, as she tugs his sweatpants halfway down his thighs.

His hard dick bobs up against his stomach, thick and heavy looking, the head a deep dark color. Kirara takes an unsteady breath, can feel Kinji's eyes on her. She drags a finger up his cock, from the base toward the tip, following a thick vein, watching it leak.

"Fuck," Kinji breathes, voice unsteady, his dick twitching under touch. Kirara wraps her fingers around it and Kinji is so warm everywhere else, so hot, her sun boy, that she should expect it but it almost startles her how hot, blood-hot, and heavy his dick is in her hand. Soft and hard at the same time. She noses toward the base of his dick and he smells so like Kinji and the body soap they both use, drags her lips up his shaft. Kinji makes a wheezing sound above her and Kirara glances up at him. Kinji inhales sharp, his cock dribbles precum.

Kirara takes it as a compliment, lifting up on her knees, pooling spit in her mouth, trying to make everything wet. She doesn't have any experience with this, but she read online, has fantasized about it guiltily more than once, knows the way Kinji's pupils darkened when she hollowed her cheeks around her straw tonight, to have a vague idea of what to do. She closes her mouth over the head of his dick, sucking softly, sliding down. She doesn't go very far, not even halfway, wrapping her hand around the base of his dick, short massaging strokes as she goes down as much as she can, until her lips bump her fingers. Her eyes water. She swallows around him, pulls up a little, everything messy and tasting like salt and skin. She does it a few times before she strokes up him with her hand, following her mouth, and sucks in a breath, resting the head of his cock on the flat of her tongue. She glances up at him through her eyelashes, blinking away tears.

"Oh what the fuck, what the fuck," Kinji pants desperately. His hands comb at her hair, catching strands, pulling it away from her face, tucking it into a ponytail he holds on to in a way that makes Kirara feel giddy again, makes her thighs clench, makes her drip between her legs.

"'s good?" Kirara manages to ask, her throat thick.

Kinji makes a strangled laughing sound, nods wildly.

Kirara slides down his cock again, setting up a messy rhythm, unable to take him all the way, wanting to, stroking the part that's not in her mouth. It's messy, spit dripping out of her mouth and down his dick. She pulls off to catch her breath, stroking him with firm strokes, up over the head, playing with his foreskin, rubbing her thumb into the slit, pressing soft sucking kisses as she rolls the tip of his dick in her palm, creating a warm wet suction. Her hand is sticky and wet and she releases his dick, catching it with an open mouth, tonguing at the slit. She sucks on the head, locking eyes with him, and starts to slide down, slow and steady. He hits the roof of her mouth and she lifts a little bit higher on her knees, trying to take him further, her hands on Kinji's thighs. Kinji whimpers, his hips kick up. Kirara pulls off, coughing, eyes stinging.

"Sorry, m'sorry, sorry," Kinji gasps, letting go of her hair and cradling her face, her jaw, stroking at her cheeks. "Fuck, it feels so good, you feel so good, m'sorry, didn't mean to."

Kirara shakes her head, doesn't risk speaking again. She opens her mouth, sticks out her tongue, looks up at Kinji trustingly and blinks, once.

"What the hell, Kirara," Kinji mumbles, "Christ, what the fuck, what the fuck." He rubs the head of his dick on her bottom lip, slowly slides it into her mouth. Kirara lifts a hand and strokes his dick, bumping against his fist until he moves and she can resume stroking, pulling his foreskin up, and dripping spit onto the head of his dick before she sucks it into her mouth again, playing with the slit with her tongue because that makes his hips twitch up, his hand clench in her hair, on the back of her neck, her name a broken thing on his tongue. She keeps the suction hot and tight as she slides down, swallows around him, pulls back off messily. She does that a few times, trying to go further each time, Kinji easing her back up, this stream of gasped, half-cut off words falling from his mouth, you're so good, you feel so good, god, you're so pretty, my girl, kirara, fuck, god baby, that's so good, you don't know how much I wanted this, how much I wanted you, wanted for so long.

Kirara feels like she's floating, she sucks on the head of his dick and taps it on her tongue and slides down the shaft with an open mouth, feels precum drip onto her cheekbone, hears Kinji's groan low, like it's in her guts. She swallows him down again, tries her best to get as low as she can, and it's so much, too much, barely halfway down. She feels spit dripping out the corners of her mouth, down her chin, her eyes water as her throat tightens around him.

"Kirara—" Kinji says like he's begging when she tries to swallow around him.

She pulls off with a gasp, messily, spit dripping down her chin.

"You're so big," she mumbles, and her voice surprises her, how ruined it sounds. She starts stroking him with a tight fist, lifting up so she can suck on just the head, is rewarded with a spurt of bitter salt on her tongue. She squeezes her thighs together, trying to get some pressure. "So big, Kin-chan, can't take it all, s' not gonna fit in me, how's it gonna fit in me," she doesn't know what she's saying, sliding a hand between her legs and grinding against the heel of it, all her senses flooded with Kinji as she plays with the tip of her his cock with her tongue.

"Jesus fuck," Kinji bites out, the words tight. He knocks her hand out of the way and grips his dick tight at the base, like he's about to come, is trying to hold it off. Kirara likes that. She likes it a lot. Feels it low in her stomach. Keeps her mouth open for him. "Where'd you learn to talk like that, baby?" he groans, "are you touching yourself? Ah fuck, Kirara, Kirara, baby—"

"Kin-chan," she whines. He groans, gathers her hair with shaky hands while she sucks on the head of his cock and rubs against her hand. He holds her hair in one hand, feeds his dick into her willing open mouth, hand tight at the base of it to steady it. He doesn't go very deep, but it's enough Kirara's eyes water. Her knees hurt and her throat hurts and her jaw aches and it all feels so good, being on her knees for Kinji, making him make those sounds. She tries to relax her mouth, her tongue and he stumbles over an exhale, wheezes out her name. She holds onto his ankle with one hand, lifts best she can to slide her other hand inside her shorts to touch herself.

"God," Kinji says above her. She flicks her gaze up, trying to see him through her tears and her lashes, her sense of smell and taste all Kinji. "Yeah, God, pretty girl, you're so pretty, touch yourself for me," he mumbles, the words rolling into each other as he pushes her down his cock, pulls her off. "Fuck," he groans, like Kirara's reduced him to one word sentences with just her tongue.

She doesn't know how much time has passed or why it feels so good to be making Kinji feel good, and she feels like she has to drag herself out of her thoughts, Kinji's thighs clenching by her head and his hand in her hair, tugging sweet on the strands.

"M'gonna come, m'gonna— Kirara— doll—" he grits out, voice rough. Kirara whines, best she can, lets him pull her gently off, laps at the head of his cock. He makes a strangled sound as she sucks him back into her mouth and then he's coming. It's bitter and salty and all-consuming, and Kirara likes it, the way his hands are shaking. She wants to see the expression he's making but can't with the angle, the way he's bent over her, around her, the tears in her eyes. She swallows and swallows and he's still coming and she can't anymore, but she tries, pulling back a little, letting it all pool in her mouth. He twitches above her, his dick giving a final little jerk. She pulls off, leaving her mouth open, sticking her tongue out a little, so he can see. Kinji makes a sound Kirara can't identify as a word, shaking hands stroking at her face, rubbing over her bruised lips. "Fuck, you don't have to— did you— let me get you a tissue—"

Kirara closes her mouth and swallows. She feels like she's floating. She wants to come. Her hand is still in her pants and Kinji's taste is strong on her tongue and she can still feel him in her throat.

"Kin," she says, voice wrecked. He pulls her up, pulls her hand out of her pants, kisses her wet fingers, sliding them into his mouth, sliding her over his thigh. She grinds against him as he brings their mouths together, kissing her like he wants to taste himself in her mouth. It's too much in the best way possible, her top is falling off her shoulder and he's got a hand up under it, pinching one of her nipples, helping her move her hips with a hand on the small of her back and sucking her fingers, kissing her with her fingers messily in both of their mouths and she can taste him and herself and him.

She gasps, buries her face in his neck and works her hips. He sucks on her fingers hard, scraping over them with his teeth, winding his tongue between them. He slides his hand into her hair and pulls her head back. She blinks at him through her tears, overstimulated, overwhelmed, right on the edge.

"Wanna see you," he whispers, "come for me, love?"

Kirara comes, her whole body trembling violently, Kinji kissing her through it, licking at her tears, pressing soft kisses to her cheeks, calling her his best girl, prettiest girl, his sweet lucky star. Kirara has to bury her face in his neck as he rubs her back and rocks her through the aftershocks. She can still taste him on her tongue. When she lifts her head he kisses her, soft and sweet, slowly, deep gentle kisses that make her feel precious.

"Kin-chan," she whispers, "Kin-chan," she repeats, and finds she doesn't have any other words. He keeps kissing her, nipping at her lips, before he slowly lifts them up. Kirara wraps her legs around his hips, rubbing against his abs, too much and not enough all at once. Kinji groans into her mouth, hiking her up and closer by the thighs, squeezing at her ass, rubbing the small of her back.

He carries her to the bathroom where he deposits her onto her bathroom slippers, holding her up so she can slide into them, kissing her and then kissing her again. He holds her to his chest and walks them to the bathroom sink, spins her around, nuzzling his cheek over her shoulder, so he can wash their hands together, interlacing their fingers with sudsy rose soap that Kirara likes, kissing at her temple while he does. He rinses their hands, kisses her cheek.

"You want to change your panties?" He asks, stroking her back. Kirara nods, lets him catch her mouth for another soft kiss. "I'll be right here," he murmurs, "go get changed, okay?"

She goes to her room, switches out her ruined wet underwear for a comfy lace boyshorts, running her tongue over her teeth. She's yawning by the time she gets back to the bathroom. Kinji holds out her toothbrush with a smile. He brushes through her hair first, combing it out, before they brush their teeth side by side, Kirara yawns again and he laughs, kisses her forehead, his lips cool from the water.

"Go wait in bed, babe?" His voice is soft. He's holding her hand, keeps holding it until he has to let go.

She makes her way to Kinji's bedroom, Kinji's bed, finding her face heating at the rumpled sheets, at remembering the way Kinji felt, heavy on her tongue. She wants to do it again. She wants Kinji to kiss her again. She crawls into the bed, hears Kinji padding his way into the room behind her, flicking out the hallway light, roughly closing his curtains. He tumbles onto the bed beside her, kisses her, fresh mint. Kirara whines into his mouth.

Kinji pulls her into his chest, presses a kiss to the top of her head. Kirara wants to tell him she loves him. She wants to tell him she thinks she's been in love with him for years, that she wants to do that again, that she wants to be his girl, has always wanted to be his girl, but sleep tugs at her eyelids.

"Love you," she manages, the words slurred. Kinji pulls her closer, presses a kiss than another kiss to the top of her head. Kirara hears him say her name, can't hold on to wakefulness to hear the rest of what he says.

 

 

 

Kirara wakes up before Kinji the next morning, his half closed blinds sending sunbeams across his floor, his strewn laundry. She stretches in his sheets, kisses the corner of his mouth. He makes a snuffling sound in his sleep that makes her grin. She kisses him again just to hear it, heads to the bathroom to pee, brush her teeth, brush out her hair.

She wanders back to his room to find him sitting up in the bed, an agitated look on his face.

"Kin-chan?" Kirara asks, not understanding the anxiety that flits across his face. She doesn't think anyone else would notice it, but she does. Knows him better than anyone, the most minute facial expressions he can make. "What's wrong?" she asks, as she crawls across the bed toward him.

"Sorry," he runs a hand across his face, over his head, "I thought you— like regretted it. Left."

Kirara looks at him for a second, settling over his lap, the rumpled sheets, his strong hands coming to touch her waist, her shoulders, her face, tracing her into the air.

"Regretted it?"

Kinji makes a rueful expression, stroking his fingers over her cheekbone, petting her hair.

"Yeah," he says as he tilts forward, rubbing his nose on her temple. "You, like, can do better than me, babe. I got worried you woke up and left because you were trying to figure out how to tell me that was fun and all but—"

Kirara cuts him off with a quick kiss. She hears him inhale, quick and sharp. His fingers touch her face again, hold her steady.

"Kin-chan," she puts her hands on his face, holds him steady between her palms, "please be serious."

"I am being serious," he complains, leaning forward, nudging their noses together. "You're so— wait, you don't regret it, right? You—"

"Kin-chan," she scolds, like her vocabulary is reduced to just that, just his name. She doesn't know how else to explain everything in her heart. She leans in to kiss him properly and he stops her, sliding a hand over her mouth. Kirara's stomach feels cold. She blinks at him, pulls back, unclear and confused and hurt.

"Wait just let me— let me brush my teeth," he rasps, lifting her up, depositing her on the bed, "I have morning breath, wait, let me—" He tumbles out of the room, stumbling over his own feet, and she hears him bang against the wall. Everything in her body relaxes almost instantly, a giggle falling out of her mouth.

Kinji comes back into the room like a wave, crawling toward her on the bed, caging her in with his body, his elbows by her face, his hands tangling in her hair.

"I thought you didn't wanna kiss me, that you were regretting it," she accuses. "Also, that was the fastest teeth brushing in the history of the world."

"The world, huh?" he questions, rubbing his thumb over the swell of her lower lip, tugging it down a little. "Nah, only thing I regret about last night is that I didn't get to touch you too," he mumbles, "fuck, barely got to— hottest thing I ever seen, you coming in my lap like that, and I didn't even get to touch you—" His voice trails off as he speaks, like he's half talking to himself, eyes locked on her mouth, fingertip running over where her teeth meet her gums. Kirara can feel her cheeks flush, her whole body hot down to her toes. He leans in and kisses her, his finger still half in her mouth, and it's messy and tastes like his skin and spit and their toothpaste. Kirara lifts up into the kiss, into him.

"You wanna touch me?" she mumbles, hands lifting to his back, nails tracing over his shoulder blades, digging in because it makes him exhale hot and heavy into her mouth, the edges tinged with a groan.

"Are you fucking kiddin' me?" Kinji asks, tilting her head, kissing down her neck. He push at her shirt to rub his hands over her skin. Kirara traces a nail between his collar bones, then down. He lifts up a little to help as she explores with her fingers, sliding her hands over his pecs, his nipples, his broad shoulders. He plays with the hem of her shirt and she helps him lift her up, take it off, his eyes roving over her chest. It's bright in the room, Kirara feels exposed but safe, underneath him, the morning sunlight and his dark eyes, warm hands. He presses a kiss to her clavicle, down her chest, mouths at her tit, takes her nipple between his teeth. She gasps, body on fire.

"They're— sensitive—" she manages, as he sucks softly, playing with her nipple with his tongue, scraping ever so lightly with his teeth. "Wanna get them pierced," she adds, as he groans, sucks harder, his other hand squeezing her other tit, toying with the nipple, "was gonna but got nervous, will you go with me?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Kinji mumbles. "Fucking christ, could you get any hotter?"

It makes Kirara giggle and then gasp, as he returns his hot mouth to her tits. She lets herself get lost in the sensation, Kinji kneading and massaging, kisssing and licking, up to her neck, sucking a hickey high under her jaw, scraping his teeth back down to suck on her nipple, playing with the other one, rolling it between his fingers. She rolls her hips underneath him, hard as she gets in her panties, leaking like she does now, from the estrogen, everything wet and hot and a pressure she wants to relieve burning low in her gut, between her thighs. Kinji's hand slides down to her hip, under her ass, encouraging her movements as he plays with her chest. It's only as he kisses down her rib cage, right below her belly button, sucking at the soft of her belly, that she fully conceptualizes what he is doing. He hooks his fingers in the waistline of her panties and starts to tug them down, kisses where her skin is pricked because she's shaved.

"You don't—" she gasps, hands flying down to cup his face, to stop his movements, "you don't have to, Kin-chan."

Kinji looks up at her, confusion crossing his features. "Don't have to go down on my girlfriend?" he asks with a creased brow. "I fucking want to though."

"I— girlfriend?" Kirara's mind is spinning. "We're dating?"

Kinji rests his chin on her stomach. She watches the anxiety flit across his features again, there and gone, a barely there thing. She hates that he is so good at covering it, loves that he lets her see it, that he knows she can read him well enough to understand.

"You don't want to date?" he asks, pressing a kiss softly to her belly. "I wanna, like, get married."

"I want to," she gasps, "Kin-chan, want that so bad, just—" She wriggles underneath him as he presses another soft kiss to her belly. His eyes are serious, fingers grazing over her ribcage.

"Kirara," Kinji says, "can I— is it that you don't want me to touch you here because you don't want to be touched, like it does something bad in your head about your body, or are you worried I don't want to touch you?"

Kirara looks at him, blinks once. She hasn't exactly thought about it, but she knows that— Kin is straight and she's a girl but her—

"My—" the sun feels so bright in the room, Kirara blinks, feels her eyes water. "My parts are probably different than some of the girls you've been with is all." She hates how soft her voice is, how unsure.

"Lucky star," Kinji says quietly. "Do you not want me to or do you think I won't want you?"

She wants him to. It's not that she thinks he doesn't want to touch her, exactly, it's just so many things to untangle she's not sure how to be sure.

"I want you to touch me," Kirara whispers, trying to avert her eyes. She gives up on that quickly, meets Kinji's gaze. He is not someone she needs to look away from. "I want you to touch me, Kin-chan. I'm just— nervous."

Kinji lifts up so that he can kiss her cheekbone, tilts her face, kisses the line of her jaw. He looks down at her for a long moment, eyes soft, smile playing on his lips. He kisses her again, slow and steady, deep, until Kirara's body feels something like urgency again, until her fingers are digging into the small of his back and she's making soft sounds into his mouth.

"Hey lucky star," he asks, pressing a soft kiss to her neck, travelling down her body again, all tongue and teeth, "when do you think I realized I liked you?"

"Huh?" Kirara squirms as he places a nipping kiss up under her jaw, a soft one at the hollow of her throat. His hands are gentle on her body, loving. His mouth is hot like a brand. He'll trail down her body then back up, kissing at the bends of her elbows, the jut of her hipbone. "Um," she gasps a little as he kisses across her breastbone, down to the center of her chest. She doesn't know. Hasn't considered when he might have looked at her and realized he wanted her. She wants to say at the club, but that's last night and it can't be that recent, not the way he was touching her, the things he was saying like he didn't know she could hear them. "I don't know—" she manages to gasp, twisting underneath him as he kisses the waistband of her panties, biting at them with his teeth, "when we got high and I was dancing?" she guesses.

There's a pause, Kinji's mouth hovers above her stomach. He looks up at her like he's confused. When he sees the look on her face, that she is answering in seriousness, he starts to laugh.

"What," Kirara whines. She juts her lower lip out in a pout. Kinji surges up and kisses her, his big hand tilting her head, coaxing her jaw open. He sucks at her tongue, presses their foreheads together with a gasp.

"Sorry, m'sorry," he murmurs, "it's— no, baby, not then, that's not when."

"It was before then?" Kirara questions, lifting up to tug at his lower lip. He groans as she runs the tip of her tongue over it, releases it, licks at his teeth, before she falls back against the pillows. "When—" she casts about in her memory for something that could have stood out to him, made him think he wanted her, wanted to be with her, "when we made out on the couch that time?" she asks, pressing at the top of his head as he kisses her tit again, sucking on her hard nipple. He releases it with a pop when she moans, arching her back.

"Babe," he scoffs, but then pauses, looks at her, "fuck," he mumbles, "you're serious, you think that's when?"

Kirara nods and Kinji lifts up, kisses her once, firmly, covers her with his body, resting on his forearms, his thumbs tenderly tucking her hair back.

"Baby," he says, "no."

"Okay," Kirara doesn't understand, doesn't understand why he's laughing or when it was and she can't help the whine that slips into her voice, "then when? Why are we playing pop quiz—"

"Second year," Kinji answers her, his voice confident and sure.

All the words die in Kirara's throat. Her mouth is so dry she can't make words form, she can't understand what Kinji is saying.

"Second," she gets out, and then she just stares at him.

"Mm," Kinji says, kissing her cheek. He keeps kissing her, the words and touch mixing, his mouth on her cheekbone, hot against her ear, "Kirara, remember when I got in trouble because the private school down the road, their baseball team was hassling those girls?"

Kinji had beat the shit out of their ace, a guy who was too sure of himself, nasty and callous and treated girls like things. She remembers there were rumors of stuff that she tuned out because she felt like she had too, because it was too much, too upsetting. Kinji's friends younger sister got tangled up in it, the way boys will tangle and trip up girls and then blame them, and Kinji had taken matters into his own hands, when the school administration at both schools declined to do anything.

"Yeah," Kirara gasps, tilting her head back into the pillows as he kisses down her stomach, her hipbone. She doesn't understand what he's saying.

"I was so fucking pissed," Kinji says, "I was so fucking irritated, so fucking mad. And there's this— this thing that lives in my chest and it's always so mad, so fucking angry, scratching at my ribs and shit, fucking me up inside. It's so hard to get it to quiet down, make it stop. I spend so much energy just trying to control that shit and I was so mad and I was gonna— I wanted to—" he pauses, presses his head into her stomach.

Kirara strokes his hair. She doesn't understand what this has to do with her. She doesn't understand how this is about him falling for her.

"You got suspended," she says shakily, encouraging him, tilting his face back up to hers. She remembers this vaguely, it sticks out no more than other times Kinji got in trouble for doing the things he thought were right, for standing up for things that he wasn't supposed to, according to the rigid rules of their school, of society.

"I just wanted to see you," Kinji whispers, almost mournfully. "It was stupid as hell, they were threatening to call the cops and I wasn't supposed to be at school and I snuck in because I needed to see you, I knew you would— you were on the roof," Kinji murmurs. He presses a kiss to the left of her bellybutton, then one to her piercing. "I was just, my whole head and chest was just rage, I wanted to fuck shit up and I needed to see you and then I opened the door to the roof and you were sitting there, drinking your almond milk and reading some shoujo manga I got you, hair all fucked up in the wind, and you looked at me." Kinji slides between her thighs, kisses one then the other. "You looked at me," he repeats, sounding helpless, "and it got so quiet inside me. You listened to me, to what I said, and you looked at me and you said do you think you did the right thing, Kin-chan? and when I told you yeah, when I told you I did the right thing, then you said good job, kin. And it wasn't like bam you fixed it, you fixed me, but like— the thing that lives right here," Kinji presses against his chest, "it was so much quieter. Everything was so much quieter. Like I could fucking think."

"Kin-chan." Kirara blinks rapidly, trying to push away the tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. She cups his face, strokes his jaw.

"It's not always easy, it's not always all quiet, but you're the only one who never— you never look at me like I'm stupid, you never call me aggressive like it's some character defect I have, you just— you look at me and—" he looks at her, frustrated, honest, his eyes locked on hers, "it's like you can see me," he finishes. "That day, we sat up there for way too long given the fact they were that angry with me and talked about shit for hours. And you just kept telling me it would be okay and I believed you, I don't even know why, but I did. When you stood up you held your hand out to pull me to my feet, like you could physically help me, were willing to hold it for me, and I thought to myself I don't ever want to be apart from her, not for anything or anyone."

Kirara lets out a shaky sob.

"You're my girl," Kinji says softly, "you've always been my girl."

"Why—" Kirara is not sure what she wants to ask, her mind spinning. "Why didn't you say—"

Kinji laughs, keeps pressing dragging kisses to her thighs, moving up with each one.

"When I left school, I wanted to kiss you, ya know? On the steps. But I didn't want to make things shittier for you at school and me not there. Then you said you were coming with me. I never wanted anything so bad. I felt like my whole body was aching. My fucking teeth were aching, Kirara." He kisses the line of her panties, licking softly at the skin. Kirara twitches. "Baby, I couldn't— what, try to kiss you, when you were dependent on me for housing? When your parents kicked you out? When I was paying for the bills? I didn't want you to think you had to, that if you didn't I was gonna, like, throw you—"

"You wouldn't have," Kirara gasps, as he kisses the edge of her panties again. His stubble scrapes against her skin. It makes her hips kick up, the tender way he's touching her. He slides her legs over his shoulders, presses his face into the crook of her hip and breathes in deeply. His exhale is hot and makes her shiver.

"No," Kinji says, "but there are guys who would and I didn't want you to even think, not even for a second, that it was transactional, or just convenient or— whatever the fuck. Plus you were— dealing with your own stuff. I wanted you to be sure you wanted me. Then I thought you were a lesbian so like."

Kirara laughs, gasps, reaches down for his face. He nuzzles into her hand, kisses the palm of it, kisses her thigh again, kisses high on her panties, right below the bow.

"Can I touch you?" He whispers. "Please, baby, you don't know how bad I want to, how long I've wanted to. You're my fucking everything, Kirara."

Kirara nods. Can't find it in her to speak. She's not sure she remembers Japanese, can't form a sentence, can't think of how to tell him yes, please, I've wanted you for so long, you're my everything too.

“You want me to?” He nuzzles at her. Kirara nods as Kinji presses his cheek to her, over her panties, to where she's half-hard underneath them. He presses a soft kiss to the damp patch and she feels herself leak. He must feel it too because he hums. "You're so wet." He says, pupils blown, locking eyes with her as he kisses her there again, touching with the tip of his tongue.

"Kin-chan," she whispers softly, fingers trembling on his temples.

He licks her over her panties with the flat of his tongue.

“Oh my god–” Kirara gasps, her hands scrambling. He looks up at her from between her legs and raises an eyebrow. Does it again. Kirara scrambles at pillows, the headboard. “Kin–” She manages, voice cracking. Kinji pressses another kiss, licks over her, rubs her with his nose, his cheek. It's so much. It feels so good.

"Tell me what feels good, tell me how to touch you," he murmurs, sucking on her through the silk and lace. Her skin is thinner, more sensitive, and the rough of the lace against her is making her body tremble. Her hips kick and her legs clench. He digs his fingers into her thighs, holds her still. "That feels good, yeah?" he murmurs. He does that, pressing these long sucking kisses, until her panties are soaked with her wetness and his spit, her skin sticky, and she can't breathe right, needs more, wants more, wants him touching her skin.

"Kin," she begs.

“Can I take these off, baby?” He asks, toying with the waistband of her panties. Kirara draws in a shaky breath. She looks at him. He presses a kiss to her inner thigh, drifts up her body, one hand cupping her between the legs, rubbing with the heel of his hand, until his mouth is on hers. She shakes underneath him, hips twitching at the pressure and the motion and the damp material against where she's sensitive. "I wanna see," he whispers, rubbing with his fingers. "Bet you're so pretty, bet your clit's so pretty, pussy so soft, wanna eat you out, look how wet you got for me, wanna feel it on my tongue—"

"Oh my god—" Kirara arches into him, "Kin-chan—"

He presses a kiss to her ear. "Too much?"

"Fuck," Kirara gasps, "no, just—take them off, please."

There's a moment, when he slides down her body and hooks his fingers under the thin waistband of her panties, when he pulls at them with his teeth, where something like ice water splashes down her spine. Not quite scared, because it's Kinji, but scared because it's Kinji and she doesn't know what she'll do if— if he—

Her thighs clench together and she tries to cover herself automatically, the air in the room cool, the sunlight bright, someone looking at her, someone who means more than anything looking at her. Kinji's hands push gently at her thighs and Kirara relaxes almost instantly under his familiar touch, letting her legs fall open, letting him pull her legs back over his shoulders, press a tender kiss to the bend of her knee.

"Fuck," Kinji breathes, looking between her legs. Kirara squirms and his fingers dig into her thighs, his big arms pulling them open, holding her down. "Fuck," he repeats, looking up at her, "you're so pretty." His eyes are blown dark with lust. He doesn't break eye contact as he licks her, right up to her tip, sucking softly when he gets there, scraping just slightly with his teeth before soothing with his tongue.

"Kin-chan," Kirara manages to get out, her hand digging into his, nails digging into his wrist. "Kin—"

"So pretty," Kinji murmurs, rubbing his face against her, rubbing her with his tongue. His other hand snakes between her legs, pressing and rubbing, "does it feel good like that?" He asks. Kirara can't speak. She tries to nod, tries to remember to breathe, her whole body twitching. He untangles their hands so he can slide one up to pinch her nipples, which makes her hips kick into his face. He grunts, and she thinks maybe he didn't like it, but then he does it again, opening up his mouth more, dripping spit onto her, sucking and massaging with his tongue. The hand between her legs works lower, wet with him and her. He presses just the tip of his finger against her entrance, massaging slowly. "You like this?" he asks, voice soft. "Tell me how to make you feel good, baby."

"It feels— think m'gonna—" Kirara slurs out. "Kin-chan, gonna—" She doesn't want it to end but she doesn't know how to hold on, how to stave off the growing feeling in her gut.

"Yeah," he groans against her, keeps repeating the same motion with his tongue, presses harder at her entrance, the tip of his finger sliding inside, "yeah, I want that, baby, come for me."

Kirara comes hard, arching off the bed, her thighs tight around his head, sobbing out his name. It feels like it lasts forever, the aftershocks making her body tremble, Kinji's mouth still wet and hot on her, then his hand, cupping her as her hips kick and her body shakes. She rubs against his hand, pulls his mouth to hers, can't tell if she's breathing or sobbing or laughing. She's trying to say his name, her body shaking, but she can't make her tongue work right.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he chants, pressing kisses all over her face. His face is wet, wet with her. She wants to kiss back, can't get her mouth to work properly, keeps shaking, zings of pleasure up and down her limbs, as she claws at his back. He keeps kissing her though, licking at her skin, massaging her gently with his palm. "God, yeah, look at you, there you go," he mumbles, a stream of words. Kirara trembles and gets her wits about her enough to kiss him back, unsteadily, messily, which makes him groan because she's getting that he likes her a little messy, a little uncoordinated with want.

"Are you hard?" She manages, when she feels him rutting against her thigh, hot and clearly very hard, his pants wet like he's leaking. "Why are you—"

He barks out a laugh, kisses her dirty, spit dripping out the corner of her mouth as he sucks on her tongue. She keeps it stuck out as he pulls back, watches a string of saliva snap between them.

"Are you fucking kiddin'?" He asks, swinging his leg over her, resting on a forearm above her head while he lifts his hips up, gets his hand in his sweats. "Why? That was so hot, Kirara, you're so hot, what kinda guy wouldn't get hard, eating a hot girl out? God," he grunts, hand working furiously, "I could do that for days, babe, can't wait to get my tongue in you. Gonna make you feel so good you cry, can't remember anything but my name,"

Kirara whines, reaching for him with shaky hands. "Wanna touch you— let me, want to suck you off again—"

"Gotta be real, babe," Kinji pants, as she works his sweatpants down over his hips so that his dick is free. It drips on her, a string of precum falling to her belly, "not gonna last that long." He grunts, when she wraps her hands around his, thumbs at the head of his cock.

"I love you," she says, without really meaning to, suddenly not sure if he knows, suddenly desperately important that he knows, "I think I've been in love with you forever, Kin-chan, you're mine, only mine—"

"Oh fuck," Kinji groans and comes, hot all over her hands and her stomach, his hips pumping uselessly in the air. Kirara gets to watch this time, see his face, the almost pained opened mouthed expression, the way he dissolves under her fingers. She watches, entranced, knows she wants to see him make that face again and again and again. His lip quivers and his body shakes. He falls against her panting, his forehead sweaty where he buries it against her temple, his body shaking, hips kicking.

Kirara strokes him through it slowly then keeps going, even when he hisses a little against her, makes a small sound. She rubs up his slit with a firm thumb, playing with the head of his cock. His body quakes against her, hips jerking hard.

"Oh fuck," he mumbles. She does it again, playing with his foreskin and he groans, jerks so hard his head knocks against hers.

"Ow," Kirara complains, tightening her grip in punishment. She strokes him firmly.

"Fuck, babe, shit, I'm into it but you're gonna need to tie me up or something," Kinji gasps, hips moving toward her and away, "can't— ah shit, Kirara, like that—"

Kirara keeps it up, entranced by how his body jerks uncoordinatedly, against his will. His cum is frothy where she's working him and she lets go only because he's making a little panting sound that she associates with too much.

He collapses next to her, grabbing her and wrapping himself around her, pressing their bodies together, his heart thundering in her ear. Kirara rubs her face on his chest, licking at the salt of his skin. Her body still feels like she's orgasming, zings of pleasure up and down her spine. Kinji's been in love with her since second year. Nothing makes sense and everything does, all at the same time.

When Kinji's breathing has steadied somewhat Kirara tilts her head up. He looks down at her, wriggles a little lower, kisses her so soft and sweet it steals her breath.

"Tie you up, huh?" She asks, after a moment, watching dust play in the sunbeams streaming in, feeling Kinji touch her like he wants to touch her again, now, like it's not enough, like it won't ever be enough, like he can't bear the thought of his hands not on her now that they have been.

"Fuck yeah," Kinji says, "if it's you I'd be fucking into it. Never done it before but I love that, you using me as a toy, getting to watch you make yourself feel good. Not being able to touch sounds like hell but— fuck, it would make finally being able to touch all the better."

"Hmm," Kirara ponders this, thinks she'd like it, knows she would. "You could tie me up too, sometime," she offers, thinking of Kinji's big hand holding both of her wrists, thinking of that caged in helpless feeling but, with Kinji, with the way he looks at her, it's like she's the one holding all the power.

"But you're not a toy," Kinji says with a frown, shifting so they're nose to nose, pressing a kiss to her forehead, her cheek, her mouth. "You're my girl. You're a princess."

"Even princesses deserve to get tied up sometimes too," Kirara admonishes him lightly, "by someone who they know they can trust."

Kinji leans in and kisses her, slow and steady, working her mouth open gently, like he's memorizing the taste of her, the shape of her.

"I've gotta be dreaming," he says to her softly, when he pulls back. "I wanted this for so long, I think I'm dreaming, babe."

"That's so fucking cheesy." Kirara kicks him lightly. He kisses her again. It's hard to kiss smiling. Their teeth clack and Kirara likes that too, likes everything so much she doesn't know what to do, doesn't understand what there is to do. She kisses him back, cups his face in her hands.

"I really do love you," he whispers into her mouth, quiet and private, just for her.

"I love you too." Kirara rubs their noses together. She's not sure she knows how to be this happy. He kisses her and she sinks into it, traces her fingers over his skin, touching each of his scars. She doesn't know how long they lay in bed, touching each other softly as they kiss.

"I'm hungry," Kinji mumbles into her mouth. Kirara hums, she thinks she might be hungry too, if she tries to dig past all the rest of the feelings she's having, tumbling around in her stomach and her veins.

She makes a small sound of agreement, looks around the bed.

"I don't even know where my phone is," she mumbles, reaching for his, "is it breakfast or brunch time?"

"Mmm," Kinji says in a not listening voice. "Let me eat you out again?" he asks, sliding a hand between her legs, rubbing with his thumb.

Kirara's body jumps at the touch, a full body twitch she can't control, just like she can't control the little broken sound she makes. Kinji's phone falls from her hand.

"We need to eat real food," she manages, as she pushes at his shoulders, his head, lifting her hips so he can crawl between her legs again. "At some point."

"Yeah, definitely," Kinji says absolutely not listening, stroking her slowly with two fingers, lifting them up, stringing wetness to her tip. He licks it out of the air. "Choke me with your thighs again when you come, that was hot as hell," he tells her.

Kirara laughs and then his mouth is on her again and she can't laugh, can only get in enough air to get out his name, over and over, her voice strangled, everything narrowed down to the way he's touching her, like she's the only thing in the world. She feels like they’re the only people in the world, everything narrowed down to this one sunbeam moment, Kinji's mouth on her and finger in her, and his voice, rushing up her body like a wave, telling her that she's pretty, she's hot, she's his girl, he loves her.

He loves her, he loves her, he loves her.

 

 

 

"Oh my god," Yuri says when she sees them. "My parents are finally together, did you make sweet love?"

"Okay," Kirara says, "first of all, very weird, second of all—"

"Mommy and Daddy are gonna be okay, kiddo," Kinji says.

Yuri high-fives him.

"Ew," Kirara says conversationally, shaking her head at both of them, sticking out her tongue at Yuri. "You're both so weird." 

Kinji laughs then groans, cracking his neck. Kirara tilts her head back to meet his eyes.

"Duty calls?" she asks. 

"Yeah," Kinji rubs his forehead, "I gotta go deal with some bullshit, be back when I can, okay?" He leans down and kisses her forehead gently.

"Baby," Kirara snags his necklace as he starts to walk away. She tugs him in for a proper kiss. He kisses back slowly at first, then deeper, more desperate. She tugs his lower lip with her teeth as she breaks the kiss. “Okay, bye, have fun," she tells him sweetly.

“Fuck me,” Kinji grumbles, pressing their foreheads together. "You're gonna kill me, babe." 

"Aw," Kirara taps his nose, "have fun at work."

He takes a breath, adjusts her shirt and her hair, running his thumbnail under her lower lip to wipe away her smeared gloss.

Kirara ducks behind the bar after he walks away, pulling a hand mirror and her lipliner out of her bag, redrawing her cupid's bow carefully.

"Scale of one to ten," Yuri says, wrapping her arms around Kirara's waist and pouting into the mirror when Kirara angles it at her, "how kinky is he in bed? Something tells me, like, two and he's like a big teddy bear and he cries when he puts it in because he's been in love with you for a thousand years."

Kirara rolls her eyes, purses her lips, presses them together.

"Something like that," she answers.

“Details,” Yuri whines, rocking Kirara back and forth.

Kirara sticks out her tongue so Yuri sticks hers out too. They dissolve into giggles and Yuri gives her a peck on the cheek before dashing off to prepare for her set. Kirara ties her apron low on her waist, taking quick stock of the night, the bar, who’s on security, fiddling with her earpiece as she leans on the bar, tracks Kinji across the club. He’s easy to find– the bulk of him, the way he stands a head taller than anyone around him, the way the crowd parts for him, her bear of a man.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she pulls it out to see a message from Kinji.

[kinji]
save a dance for me after your shift, baby?

[kirara]
idk 🤔

She watches Kinji check his phone, his brow furrow. He glances up at her, looks down at his screen.

[kirara]
u make me smile too much
my cheeks hurt

[kinji]
oh no
let me make it up to u

[kirara]
hmmm
i guess i can let u try😘

 

[kirara]
hey can u tesch me how to give a lap dance before kinji’s birthday

[yuri]
omg
yes
also i volunteer to help u pick out lingerie🍒

[kirara]
i don’t need help tho????
i already know what kin-chan likes????

[yuri]
don’t say it

[kirara]
it’s me
kin-chan likes me

[yuri]
horrible

tysm, Kirara texts, then slides her phone back into her pocket.

She leans across the bar to a girl who has been trying to order for a minute, not quite loud enough over the fuss, not quite sure enough in her movements to attract attention. 

"What can I get you, sweetheart?" Kirara asks, gesturing at her. 

The girl looks at her gratefully, face relaxing. 

Kirara catches Kinji's eye as he makes his way into the backrooms when she's mixing the girl's drink. He smiles, winks at her. It's barely visible in the flashing lights. He's always visible to her.

She winks back.

 

 

♡♡♡

Notes:

hope you all know how loved and important you are ♡♡♡

thank you for reading ♡

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