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The first time he sees him is on a Kabuki stage, light blue kimono, hair tied into a bun, cherry blossom kanzashi fitted in his hair. He performs, wooden geta tapping against the stage, the shortness of his kimono revealing his role of a wakashu onnagata . His legs, long and thin, carry him like fluttering snow.
He sits on a stool, body angled to the side, legs spread. A man comes up on stage; the light blue of the boy’s sleeve covering his mouth.
The performance continues.
Kentarou eyes don’t tear away.
White pale neck catches his attention on his way out, throat thick with wait and you’re beautiful , but he’s already through the door before Kentarou can form the words.
--
It’s two months later, on a meeting for drinks at a teahouse with his nenja that Kentarou sees the beautiful boy again. He’s pouring drinks for other customers, wealthy and of high-ranks based on their attire. They stare at him, at his flesh that peak out of his kimono hem, though Kentarou doesn’t fare much better.
Eyes flick up, skin ignites ablaze when Kentarou realizes he’s been caught staring, and the beautiful boy gives him a knowing look before disappearing.
Kentarou downs a few more drinks. He doesn’t see the beautiful boy again.
It’s not until Iwaizumi-san leaves for the toilet that young boy comes back, sliding into the seat next to Kentarou.
Kentarou fights the burn on his neck, a sudden rush of desire as the boy lies on the counter top, the top of his kimono falling low, the white of his chest exposed.
“Shy?” the boy probes, grin slightly cheeky as he gracefully sits back up, chin coming up to rest against an open palm.
His dark blue kimono suits him; his skin is shining stars against the vast expanse of space.
“I want to know you,” he says. “Do you not want to know me?”
“You want to know me?” Kentarou asks. He isn’t like the group of nobles. He hasn’t much money.
“I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t,” the boy supplies. “What's your name?”
“Kyoutani,” and after a pause, “...Kentarou.”
The boy smiles, lopsided with boyish charm.
“Mine is Yumeiko.”
A girlish name, Kentarou registers, the boy’s stage name, for sure. Before Kentarou can reply, warm, hot breath ghosts over his neck.
“I think I want to get to know you much better,” he whispers, and Kentarou’s belly pricks with heat, with desire.
--
Somehow, they end up in a room upstairs. Silk sheets, hair dishevelled, clothes astrew. The first kiss has Kyoutani dizzy, mind blank, lungs tight and constricted, begging for oxygen. He loves it, though— the boy moans— he loves it. It’s passionate, the way lovers might do it, bordering on needy and desperate, as if they had been waiting for this from another lifetime.
The boy bites. Kentarou grunts, tilts his head for more.
It’s perfect like that— how their likes match, the intensity they meet each other at, how it’s the first night and they’re already bed-bound.
Kentarou swallows a wanton moan, his quietness in bed pissing the boy off.
“Trying to pretend you’re unaffected by this?” he asks from beneath Kentarou, the ankle not on Kentarou’s shoulder digging into the cleft of his ass.
A gyration of hips, a low whine.
“Maybe you’re the only one affected,” Kentarou, not one to be challenged, bites back.
The boy laughs, and they continue.
The kabuki performance from where Kentarou sat: the boy’s quivering voice, widespread legs, the arc of his back.
They weren’t as beautiful, as compared to the real thing, the undone expression of the boy’s face, pure euphoria.
Kentarou finishes inside him.
--
The boy’s hair tickles his chest, a constant pressure where he’s laying at, Kentarou nearly lulled to sleep because of it. His hands card at the hair nearest to the nape of the boy’s neck, an affection he used to receive from his nenja .
Long fingers draw lines across his chest.
A gentle whisper, “You have a scar."
Long, white streaks across his chest, colorless, muted marks along his ribs.
“Yes,” he answers, gazing upon his scars to the boy’s face. “I am a Samurai.”
“Samurai,” the boy mouths, the plush of his lips stirring a monster in Kentarou he’s never known.
“Have you known another Samurai?”
“My father,” the boy replies. “He died in battle. My mother is ill.”
“Is that how you became a kagema ?”
“Yes,” and Kentarou felt an ugly stir in his heart for this beautiful boy.
“How old are you?”
“18.”
A grunt, then Kentarou fell silent. He lets his mind wander, of how he had turned of age years before.
When the boy sleeps, Kentarou leaves.
--
“Do you do kabuki a lot?” The boy’s eyes widen.
“It helps me stay popular,” he explains. “I didn’t know you’ve seen me perform.”
“It was the first time I saw you. At the theatre.”
“You looked beautiful.”
--
“Cake,” he supplies to the questioning look he receives the next time he visits the boy, another period of two months passing before they see each other again.
The boy laughs, sound full of mockery.
“You brought a kagema cake ?”
Kentarou doesn’t laugh, sitting down by the low-table, taking the cake out.
Later, when the cake is finished and they’ve fucked, the boy kisses him on the lips once.
Kentarou wills himself to believe it’s out of thanks.
--
“How come you never moan?” The boy asks on one occasion, voice impatient, irked, laced with a tremor as Kentarou pushes deeper inside.
Kentarou pauses, the slow circular motion of his hips eliciting a sound from the younger. He gets a glare, teeth clenched in a show of defiance. He reaches up to latch on to Kentarou’s neck, biting purple-blue, fancying the taste of metal.
Kentarou moves.
“I only moan my lover’s name,” Kentarou says as he and the boy dresses.
“You have a lover?” and Kentarou resists the urge to say I wish and If you want to be. Instead he says, “No, but I used to. My Samurai mentor, my nenja . The one I was with the first time I came here.”
The boy hums. Kentarou checks for his belongings. He can’t stay today, can’t linger on to spend more time with the boy.
He gets up and leaves.
There’s a mumble, soft at first so he doesn’t catch it, then Kentarou is turning around. This time he hears the boy loud and clear.
“My name is Shigeru.”
--
They don’t see each other for long afterwards. It’s hard for them to meet. A low-ranking samurai Kentarou didn’t have the luxury of buying Shigeru every other night. Sometimes, Kentarou finds time to turn up at the teahouse only for Shigeru to be missing. Another performance, another customer. Shigeru isn’t his, after all.
A lowly Samurai and a popular kagema. Two tangents, closing in, intersecting, drifting apart, never to cross paths again.
Would you?
Maybe that’s how they were.
--
“If I could buy you,” Kentarou starts, tentative, the upward motion of his hands stop, lightly resting on the boy’s nape. “If I could buy you, would you leave with me?”
“You can’t,” Shigeru replies, head shifting until Kentarou can feel the poke of his chin in the middle of his chest.
“Regardless,” Kentarou presses, because he wants to know.
Maybe—
they could—
if only he—
“I would.”
--
Almost a year passes before Kentarou appears at the teahouse again. It’s before opening time, Shigeru needing to be called upon before he arrives at the main house, retrieved from his quarters.
He sees that Kentarou is accompanied by another man. He vaguely pieces together that this is Kentarou’s nenja , Iwaizumi.
Shigeru looks at him questioningly, Kentarou’s cue to step forward. He takes Shigeru’s hand, kisses it, whispers, “Let’s go.”
Shigeru doesn’t mask his mix of confusion and surprise. “Where to?”
“Away from here. We paid enough to get you out of this place, Shigeru. Come home with me.” and the gasp Shigeru makes is audible.
There’s a second’s worth of hesistance, as if Shigeru’s waiting for this to be all part of a dream, but he doesn’t wake up and he’s not dreaming.
He runs into Kentarou’s arms, jumps for the last part, and Kentarou catches him. He meets Shigeru where he ends, before he falls.
Kentarou enters him, slow until his buried to the hilt. The boy writhes under him, hips lifting up the bed and pushing back on him. Kentarou leans down, wet kisses, open-mouthed, along the boy’s neck. “Shigeru,” a whisper, before a searing kiss.
He’s already fallen a long time ago.