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The foyer smells of verbena.
This is the first thing Yuma notices besides the sprawling floors of dark walnut and delicate shoji screens that greet him as he enters the stranger's apartment.
It's more or less what he expected. High ceilings, open concept and entirely devoid of any personal touches from the man allegedly living here. It's clean—clearly styled by someone else—maybe the wife of a wealthy colleague that thought interior design was her calling, until she realized her real dream was being deliberately unemployed. It's a beautiful apartment, but it's cold. Sterile, with a spiritless sort of quality like a centerfold in Architectural Digest.
Yuma really shouldn't be here.
The first, and perhaps only, legitimate rule of sugaring is to never, under any circumstance, meet for the first time in private. He feels like he's breaking the law or something. God. Kei would kill him if he knew Yuma were here right now, the sanctity of that unspoken rule bearing down, knowing all too well it exists for a reason.
Sometimes though, Yuma just does things. He tells himself he'll think about them later, and last week when a friend of a friend of a friend passed him an embossed business card with a wink and asked if he was still "in the game", Yuma kissed her cheek, slicked with sweat and glitter and winked back, just drunk enough to be cocky. Under the neon lights of a club in Shinjuku, Yuma proudly proclaimed that not only was he still "in the game", but that he "was the game".
"He's older than you," said this friend of a friend of a friend.
"Aren't they all?" he replied with a laugh, lips curled around the edge of a fluted glass, sloshing something double poured and sickeningly sweet over the vinyl floor.
"A lot older, sweetie. But the guy's a whale—in finance or something. I heard from one of my other clients that he's looking for someone and if I wasn't over committed already, I'd jump at the chance. I thought of you first."
It was kind of her—three degrees or more of separation between them—to have handed him an opportunity like that. Sugaring circles are a lot smaller and less competitive than people think. They look out for each other. In solidarity, if nothing else. Yuma wishes he could remember her name, but all he can recall is the hot press of bodies from their tryst on the dance floor and the drunk cigarette they shared in an alley behind the club after.
Never one to back down, he only chuckled sweetly before slipping the business card into his waistband.
Standing in the foyer of this stranger's apartment, that night feels like a lifetime ago and without the armor of a buzz and all the glitter, Yuma feels almost nervous. There's no point to dwelling, though. He's here now—train fare already expended—resolved to do the damn thing and think about it later.
On the entryway table there is watch in the trinket bowl so indelibly expensive it makes his head spin.
Breguet. Double tourbillon. Worth nothing short of three hundred thousand.
If he makes it out of this first meeting without being ax-murdered, he'll have to search out that friend of a friend of a friend to thank her. Or kiss her. Or both.
There is a man on the couch in the living room. Presumably the same enigmatic man Yuma's exchanged no more than a few vague texts and a door code with. The stranger sports a starched white button up, tie loose and his sleeves rolled. Late forties, give or take a few years. He's slouched over a laptop with a series of precariously balanced file folders stacked in front of him.
From a distance, the stranger looks stern, built solidly with broad shoulders and sturdy hands. But the closer Yuma looks, he sees the juxtaposition in the man's statuesque appeal. He's handsome—exceedingly so—furls of dark hair wisped across his forehead, sparsely grayed. The hard lines of his body in contrast to the soft slope of his jawline and mild features. In profile, even with his brow furrowed, Yuma can see he has kind eyes.
The stranger doesn't look up when the door clicks shut behind Yuma. Nor when Yuma pads through the foyer or descends the set of stairs into the conversation pit or slinks up directly in front of him. The man only looks up when Yuma carefully sweeps a stack of manila envelopes to the side to make room for himself to sit at the edge of the coffee table.
The man pushes wire rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. Thick lenses—consequence of a career spent pouring over thousands of pages chock full tiny numbers.
"You made it," the stranger says.
His voice is honeyed. Attractive. It surprises Yuma, a man with a voice like that, settled into the chill of this frigid apartment.
The sun dips low outside and Yuma watches it sink out of the corner of his eye. The reds and oranges and pinks of dusk bleeding through the darkening sky, framed in the neat rectangles of floor to ceiling windows.
Yuma schools his expression into something affecting. "I did." He pauses, coquettish, blinking up through his lashes. "It wasn't exactly difficult to find the tallest building in Roppongi and press a button in your elevator. The hardest part was getting past your doorman. He didn't seem receptive to the fact that I only knew your last name and the code to your front door."
Murata.
It's a nice name. It looked good on the embossed business card and even better on the expensive letter box Yuma caught a glimpse of on his way in. Brass, polished bright enough to look gold.
Yuma wonders what his first name is. He tries to imagine it, but nothing fits right.
Mr. Murata huffs a short puff of air through his nose. Half a laugh with the corners of his mouth tipped up into something like a smile.
It's a good start. Yuma's always been good at this part. Quite the charmer, or so he's been told.
For the first time since he arrived, Mr. Murata sets down the stack of papers in his hand to really look, gaze shifting over Yuma's body. All one hundred and seventy-four centimeters of young and blonde and gorgeous. Eyes, gentle but discerning, roving over the soft creases in the silk shirt Yuma's wearing, following the cascade of his silver jewelry straight down to the glass shine of the shoes he hadn't bothered toeing off in the genkan. The man's appraisal lasts just shy of too long and by the end of it, Yuma feels the shift of his gaze like a tangible thing. Corporeal, like hands reaching out to touch him.
It's validating to be wanted like that. Desired so openly, it feels like drowning.
Yuma knows what he looks like. Pilates every Wednesday, facials bi-weekly and root touch ups on the third Saturday of each month are all manifestations of a strict and necessary regiment. He knows it pays to be beautiful—pays to be twenty-four and clear skinned and bleached so close to the root it looks natural.
Mr. Murata sits back, recessed into the couch cushions, looking at Yuma with the top two buttons of his dress shirt undone, silver tie looped loosely around his neck and his thighs straining against the worsted wool of his trousers. He looks like sin, wearing all that want on his face like a mask.
"What's your name?" the man asks.
Yuma purses his lips and fixes Mr. Murata with a barrage of torrid eye contact. He feels jittery—wrought with the adrenaline of being somewhere he shouldn't and crosses one of his legs over the other.
"What do you want it to be?"
A real crowd pleaser, that line. As a teenager, Yuma had watched Pretty Woman so many times he'd worn the VHS out. He'd thought it was glamorous at the time. It's funny—his life now—all the parallels.
The stranger laughs, full and bright and high timbred. "Clever, " he says, "How old were you when that movie came out?"
"You want the real answer to that?"
"I'm a slave to the truth, I suppose. Try me."
Yuma just smirks and recrosses his legs the other direction. "I wasn't born yet."
"Jesus." Mr. Murata swipes a disbelieving hand down his face while Yuma stares at the veins running under the skin of his forearms. He maps the tendrils, green and blue like sea glass.
The stranger leans forward, elbows braced against his knees and asks again. "What's your name? Really."
Mr. Murata pushes his bangs off his forehead and Yuma catches a glint of something in his eye—a weighted sort of gleam. He asks with such genuine openness in his expression that Yuma hesitates. Suddenly, he itches to lie, feeling protective of the moniker all of sudden. Everyone else he sees prefers to build the fantasy from the start. Husband. Boyfriend. Lover. Yuma isn't really Yuma. Not like this. Always someone else.
Though, that fiction doesn't seem to interest Mr. Murata. His sincerity is almost unsettling.
At twenty, when Yuma started this, naive and desperate to make ends meet for his last few terms at university, he had no idea there would come a time where he'd answer to baby or sweetheart or kitten, faster than his own name.
Yuma tastes foreign in the presence of a man paying for his company.
Sensing reluctance, Mr. Murata rephrases the question, countenance stamped with something close to sympathy. "Or would you prefer I call you something else?"
Yuma's mouth feels dry. He swallows, craving a foothold—something familiar enough to navigate, so he narrows his eyes, sultry and deliberate.
"Just call me baby."
It's Mr. Murata's turn to swallow. Yuma follows the lurch of his Adam's apple and the rhythm of his hands wringing over each other.
"Baby, then," Mr. Murata concedes, low and measured, mouthing around the syllables. A pensive line settles between his eyebrows and when he meets Yuma's eyes again, the gleam is gone. "If you say so."
Yuma floods with relief. Steadier with the armor of the pet name, he slips back into the safety of that skin. A character, brazen and witty, weighted like an extra limb he's grown comfortable dragging around. He pins the older man with a look so suggestive; he feels the ache behind his eyes.
Mr. Murata coughs, voice close to hoarse and throat bobbing around nothing. "Have you eaten yet?" he asks.
"Is that a euphemism or something?"
The man clears his throat, recovering with a small smile. "Not quite," he sighs. "Dinner. I meant, have you had dinner yet?"
Yuma shakes his head. He had breakfast a lifetime ago but was too preoccupied with the notion of being ax-murdered to remember lunch.
With that, Mr. Murata rises. He rakes his palms over his thighs as he stands and brushes past Yuma to ascend the stairs of the conversation pit. There's a charge in the air, leaden with expectation. Two layers between them as the man passes by—the lightest skim of their shins through worsted wool and linen.
Mr. Murata veers off to the left, presumably to the kitchen, without looking back as Yuma sits dumbfounded on the coffee table, mouth slack with astonishment at the dispassion of the man, eyes dripping with want and close enough to touch only moments ago, having fled the room.
Thirty seconds pass before Yuma hears the tell-tale thunk of a record player being set and the first few notes of a jazz album scratch to life. Only then does the stranger double back and call out.
"You're hungry, surely. Aren't you coming?"
Yuma chews the corner of his lip and laughs under his breath. It's such a profound deviation from the predictable way these meetings usually go, that he can do nothing but follow the man wordlessly into his kitchen to be fed. Or ax murdered. Or both.
He spends the next forty minutes lulled by Coltrane's saxophone, perched on an expensive bar stool, elbows resting on an even more expensive quartz countertop, watching the man cook and making idle small talk as the kitchen warms with the heat of meat searing and mingling aromatics.
Over a low simmering beef broth, Yuma learns that Mr. Murata is an investment banker for a conglomerate that owns nearly a third of Japan's retail real estate and has its claws in telecommunications. He asks all the right questions about stock options and ferrets out information on Mr. Murata's second home in Zurich, his wintering on the Amalfi coast and that the man speaks no less than four languages on account of the business he conducts.
Through a thick layer of charm, Yuma tells white lies and fields any questions thrown his way with pouted lips and puppy eyes and after several more minutes of polite conversation with Yuma draped over the counter plucking the tines on his fork, Mr. Murata unties the apron around his waist, switches the music to a Miles Davis record and mercifully slides a steaming plate of short rib risotto in the younger's direction. He leans across the counter from Yuma with his own plate, but makes no move to sit down, keeping a respectful distance.
"Best we eat it hot," he says, "It must be exhausting—dodging questions like you're in witness protection. You should really satiate yourself enough to keep it up."
Yuma barks out a laugh, then quiets, stunned into muteness at the jab. He takes note of how pleased the man looks with himself, eyes drawn up into half-moons, crinkling at the corners and his mouth quirked around a fork dimpling the pout of his lip.
They eat in as much silence as Yuma can stand, the mellow trumpet of "Blue in Green" punctuating the clink of silverware. He accepts the hefty pour of red wine Mr. Murata offers, thanking him and extending a smorgasbord of compliments about the food.
It's wonderful. Where'd you learn to cook like that? One of your many talents, I'm sure.
And, in theory, Mr. Murata responds exactly the right way.
That's far too generous. In another life before I realized culinary school made me insufferable. Only if those talents involve pencil pushing.
Mr. Murata is every inch of accommodating. He's gracious, attentive and—quiet—most of the time. He doesn't say anything creepy or have politics that make Yuma want to slap him. He doesn't try to touch Yuma's leg under the table or make comments about his appearance. In fact, he maintains a perfectly reasonable amount of eye contact and laughs at all of Yuma's jokes. By almost every measure, he's greenest flag Yuma's had as a client in a long time.
That's disconcerting in its own way. In this line of work, kindness is too often a caution sign that reads "tread carefully."
It takes Yuma fifteen minutes to clear his plate and, in that time, a canyon sized pit settles in his stomach. He speed runs the five stages of grief as he comes to the realization that this man is nothing like the other men he sees.
If he were, by now, Yuma would be waist deep in complaints about an ex-wife, tongue sticky with praise about a newly acquired sports car or an incredibly tacky yacht parked in a marina somewhere, but instead, he's stuck vibrating like a caged bird, wings humming with frustration at thought that he's spent over an hour with this elusive man and still doesn't have the faintest idea what he's committing to, much less what he'll be paid for it. All the while, Mr. Murata stands across from him, content to hum Jazz and let the lull in conversation asphyxiate them both.
By the time Mr. Murata clears their plates and starts hand washing dishes at the sink, Yuma can't stand it any longer. If he hears one more note of improvised trumpet, he thinks he'll scream.
"Look," Yuma starts, as gently as his impatience allows, "I can appreciate the whole domestic seduction thing—the apron—the dish washing, but we really need to talk about a few things first—set some ground rules or something. What exactly are you looking for from me?"
Mr. Murata leaves the tap running but stops washing to meet Yuma's eyes over the pans and plates in the sink. "Company," he says, matter of fact like it means something, when, to Yuma, it means nothing at all.
"Company in what way?"
Yuma's talking about sex. He doesn't tiptoe because it doesn't serve him to. As fanciful as it is to believe that what he does for a living is all about gifts and lavish vacations and being arm candy, sugaring, at its core, is always about sex. He wishes people would stop pretending it's something it's not. It's nothing like the movies and Yuma's been in the game long enough to know it never will be.
He stares at Mr. Murata with his lips pressed into a line and watches the older man's face melt back into that same mask of want from an hour ago.
Finally. Some candor. They're getting to the heart of it now.
"I've never done something like this before," the man says, switching off the running water and abandoning the dishes. Yuma can see the salt and pepper of Mr. Murata’s hair better in this lighting. Shiny black with flashes of incandescent silver at his temples.
"How much company is too much to ask of you?"
It's the one question Yuma answers honestly. Maybe the only thing the movies get right. Elbows to the quartz, he props his chin against his knuckles.
"I don't kiss on the mouth."
"And everything else?"
"Everything else."
Mr. Murata walks around the counter to meet Yuma where he's still perched on the bar stool. He leans down, reaching for the stem of the empty wine glass. It's closest they been. Yuma can feel the heat of the man's body through their clothes and the rush of breath Mr. Murata sighs over his shoulder.
Mr. Murata wraps his fingers around the glass and retreats just far enough to meet Yuma's eyes. "Baby—" he drawls. "Can I get you another drink?"
The beat lasts too long. There's spit pooling in Yuma's mouth as he opens it to answer, but before the words materialize, the man is gone again, back at the sink switching on the tap. A frigid rush of air fills the space he just occupied, and it reminds Yuma how cold this apartment is.
Another drink might be nice to cut the chill.
Yuma gnaws the inside of his cheek and nods, eyeing the older man. Mr. Murata only quirks an eyebrow, dries his hands and pours another glass for each of them.
Mr. Murata's forearms flex and relax while he stows away the dishes. Yuma watches his tendons jump under the skin, sipping sporadically and trying to focus on drafting the details of an arrangement between them. He has a script for it. Quick and dirty. When, where, how often, how much, but Mr. Murata wades through the conversation like mud, waist deep and unbearably slow. Cautious, like extracting a molar. Yuma taps his fingers to the counter, cool quartz beneath them and tries to ignore the throb of his knuckles, sore from prying into this man with his bare hands.
At last, they settle on Thursdays. Yuma agrees to public dinner accompaniments and the private car Mr. Murata insists on sending him, so he won't have to take the train. Mr. Murata says he'll talk to his doorman—tell him to stand down—and Yuma not so subtly suggests something more lyrical for background music next time. Mr. Murata just laughs and they compromise with Billy Holiday.
By the time their second glasses are drained, they have a blueprint flexible enough to accommodate Mr. Murata's workload, but strict enough for Yuma to plan his Pilates class around and the two days a week he works his "busy job" part time.
The man refills his glass once more, then offers the final pour to Yuma. The bottle's almost empty. Only a half serving left. Not much at all. At least that's what Yuma tells himself, knowing he shouldn't but agreeing anyway.
After the commitment settles, Yuma follows Mr. Murata back into the living room with a final glug of red wine sloshing in his glass, a pleasant buzz and his cortisol lowered. He figures if Mr. Murata were going to ax-murder him, he surely would've by now.
There's a piano in the corner Yuma hadn't noticed before. A beautiful black lacquered grand with the fall board shut. He gets the feeling it hasn't been played in years, if it's ever been played at all.
"You play?" Yuma asks, lifting his glass in the instrument's direction.
Mr. Murata shakes his head. Far less stoic after half a bottle, he lets his glasses fall down the bridge of his nose and doesn't move to push them up again. "Not at all. Might as well be another piece of furniture." There's a humility in his tone that Yuma doesn't expect.
"Bit of waste don't you think? That's a Bechstein you know."
The stranger's mouth twitches. He hums curiously.
"See the wood grain there?" Yuma continues, "The ribs are spruce—makes it sound warmer than most grands—more resonant."
Yuma realizes a beat too late that he's given up something honest. His tongue is loose on account of the wine, and he has to take another sip just to shut himself up.
Mr. Murata gets this look on his face Yuma can't place. He doesn't smile, but his eyes go soft. "And you? Do you play?"
A courtesy. The answer is obvious.
If Yuma were sober, he thinks he could lie again—make up some story about a music major roommate from university and play it off—but he isn't as sober as he'd like to be, so he only nods.
What's the harm, really? One honest answer. Minuscule in the grand scheme of things.
Mr. Murata relaxes back into the sofa. A costly thing. Designer textile and down stuffed cushions enveloping him. He tips his chin toward the piano.
"Will you play something for me?"
An entirely expected request, considering, but Yuma falters. He tucks a fallen strand of hair behind his ear. "It's been a long time. I just—I don't know."
Another morsel of truth. It's been years since he's played properly. A passion turned party trick. But he still creeps closer to the instrument anyway, called like siren song. He's never played one so expensive. If he could just take a peek at the keys, maybe it would be enough.
The moment he lifts the fall board, it's over. Yuma's fingers skim the ivories, and he can't help but peck out a scale. He glances up at Mr. Murata across the room to see the corner of the man's mouth lifted.
Mr. Murata doesn't say anything, but he doesn't have to. It's written all over his face.
Go on. You know you want to.
In the end, it's the wine that makes Yuma pull out the bench. The wine, that makes him roll his shoulders and posture his hands—makes him close his eyes and tap out the first Chopin prelude he can recall. It's a short piece, far from perfectly played, but when Yuma flutters his eyes open and lifts his hands off the keys, Mr. Murata is looking at him with that same wide-open expression from earlier, hair pushed off his face and his bottom lip bitten red.
The eye contact after Yuma snaps the fall board shut feels like torture. He bites his tongue bloody to keep from squirming under the strain while he zips himself back into character, trying not to think about how odd the mask feels as he buries himself beneath it. No longer flush enough to the skin to hide he's wearing one.
"That was beautiful."
Yuma can tell Mr. Murata means it. He exhales sharply, still grasping for the essence of himself. "Most people don't busk for free," he chides, feigning bravado. "I'll expect a tip before the night ends."
His facade fades back slowly, a developing Polaroid. For good measure, Yuma throws a coy glance over his shoulder as he stands to tuck the bench away.
Mr. Murata laughs, full and melodic, looser than before. He looks flushed, a mild grin stretched across his face. "That seems fair enough. I think you've earned it. Name it and it's yours."
Yuma creeps back toward the couch. He stares at the third button of the older man's shirt, dangerously close to coming undone. If he weren't so cynical, he could mistake the look in Mr. Murata's eyes for something fond.
"Anything I want?"
"Anything."
Ah. A foothold.
Mr. Murata isn't so different after all. These men are all the same. They promise anything, everything, whatever you like, but never mean it. Yuma thinks he should ask for something asinine just to prove a point. He recalls the Breguet in the trinket bowl and smug as ever, stalks closer, lowering himself onto the coffee table again. He doesn't even bother to push the files aside this time.
The proximity is electric and the eye contact comes easily, because this man, wine or no wine, enamored by his piano playing or not, could never give that up.
"I want that watch on your entryway table."
Mr. Murata lets out an incredulous sigh.
It's a relief, really. To be right. Yuma's always right in the end.
The older man leans forward—the glint in his eye reappeared. "It's yours."
The assent feels like a slap. Yuma's brow furrows as he jolts into recoil, the buzz sobered out of him and his visible shock, impossible to conceal. Mr. Murata's Adam's apple bobs around his last sip of wine as he adjusts his glasses and meets Yuma's gaze. He looks amused. Charmed at Yuma's astonishment.
Yuma scoffs abrasively. "Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how expensive that thing is? How much it's worth?"
"Of course I do. I bought it."
"And you're just gonna give it to me? Just like that?"
The man shrugs, usurped smugness blanketing his expression. "Just like that."
A long silence ensues and Yuma does nothing to fill it. He picks at his nail beds and drops his gaze, resolved to look anywhere but the man's eyes. He finds an anomaly in the wood grain of the floor to stare at and as he blinks away, notices the third button of Mr. Murata's dress shirt has finally given up. The exhaust fan still whirs in the kitchen and just like before, the man stands and brushes past Yuma to ascend the stairs of the sunken living room, the same two layers between them, though the air is charged with something different now.
Anything. Everything. Whatever you like.
"Come on, " Mr. Murata says, "It's getting late. I'll call a car for you."
On the way out, Yuma escapes to the bathroom, splashing his face with sheet of icy water to cool the blush climbing his cheeks. He presses cold palms over his ears gone rosy and wonders when exactly this apartment stopped being freezing and started feeling like a sauna.
The walk to the front door stretches infinitely, Mr. Murata leading and Yuma trailing just behind, posture rigid with anticipation. The trinket bowl looms and when they reach it, the man dips his hand inside to pull out the Breguet—platinum face and complex components left to tick away in his palm.
"Give me your hand," the stranger says.
And Yuma does. His wrist looks small in Mr. Murata's grip. His hands are warm. Tanned fingers, calloused and strong, in contrast to Yuma's fair complexion. The smooth leather of the band nests against his pulse point where Mr. Murata slides it into place and starts fiddling with the buckle.
Yuma realizes with doomed sort of clarity that this is the first time they've touched all evening. Skin to skin. The stamp of the man's fingers lingering long after Mr. Murata drops his wrist and lets Yuma's arm sink back to his side, far heavier than before.
The man stays close, voice dropped low and the heat of his breath fanned over the side of Yuma's face. "It looks good on you."
It does. Almost like it belongs there.
"Thank you."
Mr. Murata takes Yuma's newly weighted hand and leads them out into the hall. He calls the elevator and when it arrives, untangles their fingers and gestures the younger inside with a polite nod.
There's a flutter in Yuma's stomach when Mr. Murata lets go. It's odd. Not bad exactly, just cautiously giddy, stunned and elated by the ticking thump of three hundred thousand new reasons to be curious about this man. If Yuma weren't so cynical, he could mistake it for butterflies.
Surely, it's just the wine.
The man takes off his glasses and tucks them into the pocket of his dress shirt. A flash of flushed skin at his chest where the weight of his spectacles drags the collar open. "I'll see you Thursday—baby."
Yuma's mouth is wet. He licks his lips, shuddering as the pet name washes over him— driven mad from the cocktail of sticker shock and red wine—several year’s worth of rent now dangling from his wrist and a burning question on the tip of his tongue as the doors start to glide shut. They snap back open when his arm shoots out with a stifling urgency.
"What's your name?" Yuma's never gone this long without a proper introduction. For god's sake, he's going home wearing this man's quarter million dollar watch but still doesn't know his first name.
Mr. Murata steps forward and slots his own arm out, resting it over Yuma's to hold the elevator open. He leans down until their eyes are level. A staring contest. Worse, even—the limbo of an un-executed dare.
"What do you want it be?"
Yuma swallows, then rolls his eyes. "Original."
Mr. Murata's face contorts with a smile. "Fuma," he says. "Murata Fuma."
Yuma's never bought into fate much. It's hard to trust what you can't see. But with the warmth of Fuma's forearm bleeding over his and what feels like an ocean of stupefaction to bridge, he figures he ought to start swimming.
What's the harm, really? That one letter difference between them. Minuscule in the grand scheme of things.
Sometimes, Yuma just does things. Even when he knows he'll regret them. He tells himself he'll think about it later.
The elevator complains, sounding a small chime and Fuma drops his arm away. He looks softer without his glasses. Long, dark lashes framing the mahogany suns fanned out around his pupils.
Yuma coughs awkwardly and retracts his arm too, the elevator's mouth set to close again. "I changed my mind," he rushes, just as the doors narrow to separate them.
"Yuma. Call me Yuma."
He catches the triumphant gleam in Fuma's eyes—the tilt of his mouth one last time as the doors slide closed.
Yuma stops to stare at the letter box on his way out. M.U.R.A.T.A spelled out in plain font and his own reflection gawking back at him in the polished brass. His wrist aches all of a sudden and when he lifts his arm to check the time, the watch weighs like lead.
Fuck.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
The sun rises as it always does.
It beams through the chiffon curtains of Yuma's apartment as he wakes the next morning to a pounding red wine headache and the chirp of a notification from his bank app.
It's still early, eight maybe, and when he checks his phone, he has to scrub the sleep from his eyes to make sure he's seeing things right.
He gapes at the transfer statement—twice what Mr. Murata agreed to—seemingly discounted of the watch entirely and waits for the other shoe to drop, but after fifteen minutes of blinking at the screen, there's still no accompanying message. No good morning baby or I can't wait to see you again or the incessant song of phone calls he has to reject. It's the type of "morning after" most people dream of.
He wants to laugh. He thinks he would if his head weren't throbbing.
The watch ticks away on his bedside table, tourbillons spinning, and he stares at the mechanisms until his eyes burn, then crawls out of bed to choke down half a mug of black coffee just to feel the sting of something besides the acrid taste of his own name.
Call me Yuma.
Jesus. He's such a fucking idiot.
Later that afternoon as he sits cross legged on the couch across from Harua pointing out the extra zero in the transfer, he decides to leave that part out. He relays most of the other details from the previous evening while Harua chews his bottom lip, knees tucked up and gently turning the Breguet over in his hands.
When Yuma finishes, Harua tuts. He narrows his eyes to slits, running his thumb over the velvety leather of the watch band and says, "So—all he did was cook for you?"
Yuma nods.
"He didn't want anything else?"
Another nod. "I mean, he asked me to play the piano."
"That's it? Oh my god. How old is he again? Like—hypothetically—how quick would you be widowed if you married the guy?"
Yuma stretches across the cushions to smack the younger's arm. Harua just sets the watch on the coffee table and scoots closer. "Ow. Sorry—sorry. Wow. Holy shit." His smile falters. It's so quick that Yuma almost misses the way his lips twitch down.
Their knees are touching. It's nice. The central air in Yuma's apartment runs much too cold for late September and Harua radiates like a furnace.
The atmosphere mellows with their proximity and Harua reaches out to prod gently at Yuma with his pointer finger. The lightheartedness of the last thirty seconds bleeds out when a look of hesitant concern flickers across his face. Harua sighs, pressing the tip of his finger down to dimple the skin of Yuma's thigh. "You know Kei's gonna flip if he finds out you went to this guy's place without vetting him first."
Yuma hears what Harua doesn't say.
You were being reckless. You're lucky, but what if something happened to you?
The TV chatters idly in the silence that follows. News. Something about the stock market.
Yuma's pulse kicks and he can't help but feel a little sorry as he drops his gaze away. The fact that he sugars isn't a secret and his friends are supportive—they love him—but they worry.
"He was nice to you right?" Harua presses, "You’re, okay?"
Yuma meets his eyes again. He scrunches his nose and pokes Harua back, a reassuring tap to the younger boy's ankle. "Of course I'm okay. You know me, Rua. I'm careful and look at this—" he shakes his phone around, bank app still open, "Come on—please. You're right. Kei's gonna kill me if he finds out and I really like being alive in case you haven't noticed." He plucks Harua's Achilles tendon. "Forgive me, okay? Just this once. If I bribe you with lunch, will you promise not to say anything?"
Harua makes a face. He pinches Yuma's thigh, leaving an angry red spot, but the mood lightens regardless.
"Only if we can order from the good curry place."
Yuma chuckles fondly. He smiles, grateful for a lot of things, but especially this. Harua isn't usually so agreeable. "Anything you want."
Harua rolls his eyes, expression thawing an inch further. "And here I thought you were the sugar baby," he says, expectedly sarcastic. "If you keep spoiling me like this, I won't say a word."
"That's blackmail." Yuma reaches out to pull one of Harua's ears, but the younger only giggles and bats his arm away. Harua leans forward, chin cupped in one of his hands, then nudges Yuma's shoulder. "So—the guy—" he starts, pursing his lips. "Is he hot?"
Yuma's elbow shoots out reflexively and Harua doubles over. He whines about his sore ribs until the curry arrives.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
Yuma flinches when Fuma's doorman greets him by name the following Thursday.
He steps into the elevator with gritted teeth and a polite wave, willing the doors shut with so much effort he gives himself a headache.
There are mirrored wall panels on either side of the lift that shimmer in the harsh down lighting when Yuma presses his forehead to one. The mirror is cool against his skin. This close, he barely recognizes himself, face distorted in a haze of fog when he breathes out.
As a child, he used to sit for hours at his bedroom window, huffing out air and drawing shapes in the condensation. He does this now. Four hot breaths over the mirror and his index finger lifted to write.
Y. U. M. A, he scrawls and beneath it, the code to Fuma's apartment.
By the time the doors glide open at the penthouse, the characters are evaporated and Yuma steps out into the hall with a final exhale.
It's just a name. It doesn't change anything. Four measly little letters.
The mask slips on as it always does and when he pushes into the apartment, he glances down at the empty trinket bowl and waits to hear it again.
His name comes as an echo in Fuma's voice through the foyer.
It's strange. Yuma hardly flinches at all.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
Mr. Murata has a staring habit.
There's nothing inherently weird about it. Nothing uncouth or uncomfortable. It's not even particularly obvious—just persistent. Over the wire rim of his glasses, Fuma observes so thoughtfully that Yuma often finds his ears gone pink before he can tamp it down. Fuma's gaze is a weighted thing. Flush worthy and traveling, flitting over Yuma—eyes to lips to wrist—where the watch sits. Affected, then shifting again. A mask of desire, worn so plainly it feels unfair. A man that looks but never touches.
Yuma doesn't know why that bothers him so much. A sentiment, equally relieving and burdensome. He's used to men being selfish. To the predictability and hostile comfort of wandering hands and too much, too fast, too soon.
Fuma isn't like that at all.
Sometimes, he'll get so close. Reaching for the stem of Yuma's wine glass or passing him a record to put on. Close enough to feel the air thicken. To bask in the heat of him. The breath on his neck and the rumble of his name in Fuma's timbre through the sliver space between them. Then, nothing. Even when Yuma anticipates it. Almost like he wants—
Almost.
Yuma doesn't think about it. He just lets the weeks pass.
He savors what Fuma cooks and fumbles his way through conversations about corporate buyouts, sipping the perfect wine pairing. He pretends to understand what IPO means and laughs when Fuma over explains. They listen to Billy Holiday and even though Yuma always stops himself after two glasses, he still plays the piano when Fuma asks. He's almost started to look forward to it. Playing to an audience of one, flipping through crisp pages of music and the pads of his fingers lingering over keys no one else has ever touched.
Fuma lets him play whatever he likes, and Yuma hardly knows what to do with all the agency. By the end of their fifth week together, he's so sick of Chopin, he hardly knows what to do with himself.
"You really don't have any song requests?"
Fuma looks up from where he's hunched over a stack of files on the coffee table. A spitting image of the first night they met right down to the third button of his dress shirt wobbling. "Even if I did, I wouldn't ask. I want you to play what you like."
Yuma thrums his fingers against his thigh, a skeptical chuckle slipping past his lips.
"What?" Fuma takes his glasses off and the third button succumbs when he tucks them into the pocket of his shirt.
"It's nothing—it's just weird, I guess. People usually pay me to do what they want, not the other way around."
Fuma hums. "You wish I were more like them? The other people you see?"
His frankness takes Yuma by surprise. "No. I just—" He catches himself. "I don't see other people. Not since I met you." It doesn't sound nearly as convincing as he hoped it would, feigned sincerity swallowed up by the buzz of the air con.
Fuma's mouth quirks at the lie, amused. His habit kicks up. Those big, brown eyes, discerning as ever. "Do they pay you to tell them that too?"
Yuma rolls his tongue along the inside of his cheek. Outmaneuvered, he scoffs—a candid thing—eyes sparkling.
"Sometimes."
It's too honest, but Fuma breaks into a smile. He looks pleased—laughs like he's won something and before Yuma can think better of it, he's laughing too. They dissolve into cachinnation until their throats are sore and when their sides are done aching, Yuma plays Beethoven, then Satie, just because he can.
Fuma calls the car like clockwork. Eleven on the dot.
The only time he ever touches Yuma is on their walk to the elevator. A gentle tug at his wrist and interlocked fingers followed swiftly by a whispered goodbye and see you next time. His habit is especially persistent when the night ends.
He has kind eyes. That much Yuma was right about.
Yuma always leaves feeling thoroughly regarded. Seen. Almost like—
Almost.
He doesn't think about it.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
Two months into their arrangement, Yuma finally says the quiet part out loud.
Stretched across Fuma's expensive couch, he's close enough that he could touch the man if he wanted to, less than a meter away, fussing with files and pecking at his keyboard like usual. Fuma's half rid of his office clothes, clad in regular uniform. A dress shirt with the top buttons undone, glasses slipping down his nose and dark bangs falling over his forehead. He isn't wearing his tie today. The lightly patterned silk lays puddled on coffee table.
Yuma doesn't touch him even though he could. He just grazes his socked foot along the edge of the cushion Fuma's sitting on, disturbing the peace.
The older man doesn't look up from his computer screen, but he pushes his tongue against the side of his cheek like he's fighting a smile. There's a rhythm to the intimacy they've cultivated over the last few weeks. Domestic. Easy.
"You're kind of boring," Yuma says, snatching the discarded tie from the table to play with.
Fuma stops resisting. He exhales through his nose and lets the smile take root. He's an earnest man—far too serious most of the time. When he isn't looking at Yuma, he rarely expresses at all. He likes the teasing, though. Likes to bask in their verbal sparring and Yuma's perpetual chatter, working hunched over his laptop just out of reach.
There's a bizarre kind of solace to Thursdays now. The perpetual sameness of dinner, wine and Fuma working. Or at the very least, showcasing his remarkable talent for looking busy while Yuma plays the piano or prattles on about something random. He talks about his part time job mostly. Regales Fuma with stories about the cafe's regulars and his co-workers. About his friends—pseudonyms only, of course. It's nice. Fuma laughs where he should—nods at all the right times. He listens. Really listens. And Yuma tries not to dwell on the warmth that balloons in his chest as they banter.
"Boring?" Fuma counters, tabbing down to the next page of his document.
"Exceedingly boring. All you ever do is work. You barely leave this apartment."
"That's not true. We went out last week."
Two weeks ago, actually. He took Yuma to speakeasy in Chiyoda where the bartender made eyes for three hours, then slipped her number into Fuma's suit pocket. They both watched it happen—she wasn't even trying to be subtle—and on the drive back, Yuma had to bite his tongue to keep from bringing it up.
The next week, when Fuma stepped out to take a call and left Yuma to raid his closet, he spied the suit jacket on its hanger and slid his hand into the silk lined pocket to find the napkin still there, untouched.
Yuma wasn't thinking when he slipped the number up his shirt sleeve before Fuma came back. He doesn't know why he did that. Doesn't know why he felt guilty about it or why he still feels guilty, even now. He took a black Prada belt from one of the hanging wracks, tossed the napkin as soon as he could and resolved to stop thinking about it altogether.
Yuma keeps the older man's tie fisted in one hand and fiddles with the buckle of that same Prada belt, nestled at his waist, with the other. Fuma said it looked better on him anyway—offered the shoes to match—and how could Yuma say no?
"I hate to break it to you but leaving the house once a month to nurse a cocktail doesn't exactly disqualify you from being boring."
Fuma straightens his glasses and fixes Yuma with a sarcastic glare. "So, you're the chief authority on that then?"
"Obviously," Yuma says. And just then, he gets a horrible idea. "We could go out again…"
"Right now?"
Yuma nods.
"It's Thursday."
"So?"
"So—some of us have work tomorrow."
"And some of us are working right now. Just call out."
"These are billion-dollar accounts, Yuma. I can't just call out."
Yuma props up on his elbows and groans, prodding at the couch cushion with one of his toes. "Oh, spare me. You love pencil pushing so much it can't wait until Monday?"
Fuma softens at the jab and scoffs around a smile. His nice one. The one Yuma likes.
Yuma doesn't have to beg, but he does, just to drive it home. "Please." It's breathy. He still has Fuma's tie wound around his hand, pulled up close to his mouth, lips grazing the silk.
The gaiety of the mood falls away and something heavier settles. Fuma's throat bobs. His eyes, dark and stormy, when they meet Yuma's, hands twitching in his lap.
He never touches. Not even when he dying to.
Yuma hums, annoyance bristling. "Come on. You're paying me to show you a good time, aren't you?" He swings his legs off the couch, then slinks up, knocking Fuma's knees open and coming to stand between them. He could crawl into Fuma's lap like this. He even waits for the hands at his hips, but they don't come.
"You know, before I met you, I thought you'd be another high-strung pervert doing cocaine off your desk and cheating on your wife." Yuma nods toward the files stacked neatly at the edge of the table. "But it turns out you're just a dull salary man after all." A smile. His mean one. The one Fuma likes. "I'm sure those spreadsheets are thrilling, but they're hardly an upper."
He touches Fuma then, a warm hand at his forearm, and on contact, the man shivers. Fuma taps his foot against the floor and when he looks up at Yuma hovering over him, his eyes are huge. "That's really what you want?" he asks reluctantly.
Yuma feels a tug beneath his navel and wets his lips to spite it. "It's what I want."
Fuma doesn't break eye contact. He just swallows, fidgeting at their proximity, expression pulled taught like he's fighting the urge to reach out. "If you say so," he says, then finally, "Where are we going?"
Yuma's rabbiting pulse drowns out his voice of reason. He wonders when his heart started beating so fast.
"It's a surprise."
✴︎✴︎✴︎
The club is crowded tonight.
The music is overbearing—too loud like it always is. A bone-shaking remix of house and something radio popular. The place smells like sweat. Like glitter body spray and vodka and the burnt plastic of an over worked fog machine.
The vinyl floor sticks to Yuma's shoes, peeling up where he steps on it, dragging Fuma by the hand to a table at the back, fingers threaded together. A role reversal, just like Fuma does on their walks to the elevator. The older man's pinky finger hooked around the edge of his Breguet—Yuma's Breguet—sparkling at his wrist.
Once they're tucked away, Yuma flees to the bar, laughing at Fuma's forlorn expression when he untangles their fingers, then returns with Fuma's black card between his teeth, a smudge of red lip stick on his cheek and two double poured highballs.
The black light sets Fuma's dress shirt aglow. He's pushed his sleeves up and unconsciously slicked his hair back from nervously running his fingers through it waiting for Yuma come back. All things considered, he doesn't even look that out of place. A bit stiff, a little over dressed, but under the strobe lights he could pass for any other patron despite the two decades he has on most of the demographic. Even with the frame of his glasses riding the bridge of his nose, he looks handsome. Desirable. The pout of his lip bitten red and his stern profile, awash in colored light.
Yuma clacks their drinks on the table, then playfully spits Fuma's card back into the older man's lap. "I closed the tab since you only promised me one drink," he complains. "I left a big tip, though. Hope you don't mind."
Fuma fixes him with a flat sort of look then gestures to the lipstick smudged on Yuma's cheek. "So, is that how they thank you here? For tipping well?"
Yuma beams. He could've taken them anywhere. He didn't have bring Fuma here. He shouldn't have, really. But it sends a thrill up his spine to have the home court advantage for once. He's high on the leverage. Feeling brave. Stupid. Something else. "Why? Are you jealous?"
Fuma blinks at him.
"Lighten up," Yuma teases. "I know the bartender. She's—friendly."
"Yuma—"
"Cheers." Yuma cuts him off, perching himself on the bar stool next to the older man. He lifts his glass, ice clinking, and nods toward Fuma to do the same. The man obeys and with the formalities exchanged, knocks back his drink in record time, practically white knuckling the edge of the table.
Yuma whistles. "I'd slow down if I were you. I really don't think people your age should be pounding drinks like that."
It earns him an eye roll. A fond one. Fuma, easing up just enough for the blood to rush back to knuckles and yell over the music: "You said one drink! I'm holding up my end so I can go back to being boring. I miss being boring!"
Yuma laughs, real and unrestrained. He feels crazy. Maybe he is. "See, that was funny! You're already so much more fun without the spreadsheets!"
He watches Fuma fight a smile and keeps nursing his own drink, casting sideways glances only to find Fuma already looking at him.
They people watch for a while. A skeezy guy hitting on girls at the bar. A bachelorette party screaming over the music. A couple on the dance floor fighting, then kissing, then fighting again. It's endless. Overstimulating in the best way.
Fuma starts to flush, chest first, like always. Either from the drink or the effort of bearing the ambiance. His eyes look different—the light, maybe—half lidded and fierce. His calculated expression worn away and written over with the smoke and mirrors of fascination. He looks affected—inclined to want something.
The song changes again. R&B. Slower, but no less intense and before Yuma realizes what he's doing, he's leaning across the table, crowding the older man, the heat of their bodies radiating through layers of silk and linen. He justifies it vaguely. Quid pro quo. The commodity of his attention traded for an inevitable reward.
"What are you doing?" Fuma asks. His mouth, quirked properly now, perilously close to a real smile.
Yuma tugs his sleeve, possessed by something. "What you're paying me for." His lips brush Fuma's ear. "Dance with me," he purrs.
He isn't drunk. Not even close, high on the atmosphere at best. He could've taken them anywhere. He didn't have to bring Fuma here. He shouldn't have, really. But now Fuma is looking at him, and he is looking back and Yuma wants—he wants something too.
Fuma is smiling when Yuma pulls away. All teeth. "Absolutely not." He shakes his head, Yuma's hand still resting at his shoulder, hot through the fabric. "I shouldn't even be here."
Yuma prickles at the denial. Fuma hasn't refused him anything the last two months and he's grown spoiled to it. Clothes, jewelry, imported wine—the humanity of being treated well. He thinks that should please him but is shocked to find it doesn't.
Exasperated, he slides off the bar stool, loose limbed and drink in hand, making his way to the dance floor anyway. He knows he's hard to ignore like this. Neon lights ablaze, bouncing off his porcelain skin and blonde hair. Strangers reaching out, calling him "angel," putting their hands on him and asking how he could possibly be real. The light has always loved him, so Yuma closes his eyes and lets himself be swayed—moves with the sea of bodies and knows he looks beautiful. He can feel everyone staring, lungs burning with the inhalation of artificial fog and his shirt sticking to his skin. His drink disappears somewhere. Stolen or swallowed, he doesn't know and it doesn't matter, because someone is touching him. Hands dragging his chest and crawling up his neck. The brand of initiated contact after weeks of anticipating, only to be met with wringing hands and a repressed expression.
Time stretches and blurs and eventually Yuma sucks in a breath, lips parted, but when his eyes blink open again, there is Fuma, right where he was. Minutes ago? Hours? Yuma doesn't know. But there he is—watching. And god—it matters.
Yuma gets angry all of sudden. Furious enough to grimace.
He's always believed that there's power in being exploited if one knows how to leverage it. To bottle up his attention and dole it out at will. A vessel that spits back out shallow desire, turned gold with his effort and rewarded for it.
That's control, in a way—dominion of the superficial—and he craves it.
In the end, these men are all the same. They want and he provides. They give and he takes. They parade him around, but eventually the ego boost wanes. The pedestal stops being enough and they want more. Fingers tapping the glass, hands reaching out to touch, and after the dues are paid Yuma basks in the twisted sense of relief that comes with the transaction.
The blinding simplicity of something that means nothing.
Fuma's benevolence robs him of that, and Yuma can't understand why he's dragging this out. It's gone on for too long already, has him thinking too much and bestowing meaning where there isn't any. What does that say about him? So used to being used that a little compassion has him reeling.
Yuma's wrist aches. There people pressing in on all sides, packed together so tightly he can't even check the time. It's so hot in here and the lights are too bright, and his chest is heaving, overstimulated in the worst way.
But there is Fuma—looking. Just looking, maddeningly humane like always.
Yuma can't stop thinking about his hands. About the taught veins running under Fuma's skin. About his sturdy palms and the peaks of knuckles, kissed red. The thought alone winds him up and Yuma wants—he just wants—
There's a snap of energy when he rips himself from the dance floor, storming back into the vacant section of tables, eyes narrowed as the crowd falls away. Fuma has the nerve to look surprised, flinching at Yuma's seething, hand still wrapped around his empty glass, condensation sweating onto the table.
"I want to go home," Yuma demands.
Fuma swallows. Nods. "Okay," he says. That same wide-open expression. "I'll call the car."
✴︎✴︎✴︎
Yuma said home and Fuma takes them back to his apartment.
Suddenly, they're in the elevator, then the genkan, then padding through the living room, walnut floors creaking under their weight, and Yuma doesn’t want to think about why they both assumed this what he meant by home, so he doesn’t.
It’s past eleven.
Yuma’s never been here this late. He thought it would feel different than it does.
Neither of them says anything. They orbit each other, exchanging glances and making their way to the kitchen where Fuma pulls out a bar stool and gestures for Yuma to sit. He pours a glass of water for each of them, but just to be contrary, Yuma loiters in the doorway, watching the light bounce off the streaks of silver tucked behind Fuma's ears, hair still slicked away from his temples.
"You're upset," Fuma says eventually. Definitive and serious. The voice he uses on corporate calls that Yuma sometimes overhears.
"Why would I be upset?"
Fuma takes a sip and adjusts his glasses. "I don’t know Yuma, that’s why I’m asking you."
Yuma's teeth hurt from grinding them. He has a headache—annoyed at Fuma's composure. The kitchen tile is so cold that he's shivering and every breath he takes feels wrong in his lungs. He's still fixated on Fuma's hands—can't stop imagining the relief he'll feel when, at last, there's nothing to anticipate.
He just needs to get this over with. Everything will be easier after.
“Touch me.” It comes out tight like an accusation, dripping past his lips like venom.
Fuma's eyes change again, widening into glassy black pools. He pales but doesn't look away. “Yuma—"
It's too late, though. Yuma's already crossing the room. Five steps and he's right there, close enough to feel the exhale Fuma breathes at the end of his name.
"Touch me." Quieter now. "I want you to."
Beyond material things, wanting is not a habit Yuma's developed. A foreign feeling, unwelcome and sore like a pulled muscle, but fear is a good motivator and Yuma is afraid that this pit in his stomach won't close.
He wants Fuma to selfish. He needs Fuma to prove him right.
“Yuma—I just—"
“Stop saying my name.”
It's too personal, even now. Especially now.
Fuma swallows around the echo of it. A shock of heat when he exhales into the space between them. “I just don’t want to get carried away,” he says. Stiflingly honest, fingers flexing at his sides. Fuma's pulse jumps close to his carotid, neck flushed red, though he's barely had anything to drink.
Yuma laughs, vicious and strained, watching the man's resolve crumble in real time as he takes a step toward him.
"Isn't that what you're paying me for? To get carried away?"
Fuma sighs, hands hovering just shy of Yuma's hips. "You think that's why I'm paying you?"
Yes. Maybe. I don't know.
"Isn't it?"
"Yuma, I—"
"Don't."
There's an agonizing few seconds of eye contact and a blistering beat of silence before Fuma drops his gaze away. "Baby—" he coaxes. "Just tell me what you want." A hint of whiskey on his breath, honey sweet and cinnamon. "It's yours already."
Yuma's eyes burn. He thinks he knows why and shoves it down. "Just touch me," he says, a plea despite itself.
Fuma is taller than he is. Not by much, but this close, it's enough to cast him in shadow.
"You're sure?"
Yuma only nods for fear his voice will crack. Yes. Please. Hurry.
One second his feet are on the ground, the next he's weightless, lifted easily, the quartz countertop cool against the back of his thighs. He doesn't even have time to react before Fuma's hands are searing down his legs then raking up again to find his waist, pressing in just under the swell of his ribs.
Fuma leans in, lips grazing the sensitive skin below Yuma's ear. "Like this?"
Finally, Yuma thinks, suppressing a moan, hands flying out for Fuma's chest to steady himself. They're at the heart of it now.
Everything happens fast after that. The buttons of Fuma's dress shirt give way as soon as Yuma starts to fuss with them and in the heartbeats after, there's nothing but bare skin to cling to. Starched linen pooled on the kitchen floor.
Fuma mouths at the side of his neck, hands trembling where they're twisted in the silk of Yuma's shirt left clinging to the small of his back. Yuma hears him mumbling something, and through the deafening peel of tinnitus, he can only make out a string of huffed curses and something that sounds like I'm sorry.
The sentiment flips his stomach. The sick thrill of a trump card in hand—mouth wet—and when Yuma licks his lips, he tastes gold.
They shed their clothes in puddles across the apartment. Denim, silk, linen. And now that Fuma's started to touch, he can't stop. His hands don't leave Yuma's body. Neck. Waist. Thighs—wrapped around him, carrying him to the bedroom. The last shreds of his resolve abandoned with the water glasses on the counter.
They don't kiss.
Yuma turns his head to the side like a warning and Fuma only pants hotly against his cheek. A miserable subversion. Humid and alarmingly submissive. He doesn't skirt the rule, he exploits it, and after everything, Yuma decides that's worse. A directive compelled and obeyed, far more intimate in than a kiss could ever be.
Fuma's lips are hot and insistent at his throat, tongue dragging his clavicle, and by the time the back of Yuma's knees knock against the mattress, he feels exsanguinate from the intensity— can hardly hold himself up—standing at the foot of Fuma's bed, trading breaths as he starts to slip out of his jewelry. Necklaces first. Silver chains falling away into Fuma's palm where he sets them gently on the mahogany dresser. Rings next. Two at a time. The solid clink of stainless steel and gold plating against the lacquered wood. The caress of Fuma's fingers over his ears, slipping off the platinum cuffs and gently tugging the dangling embellishments away.
Fuma has no jewelry of his own. Not even the hint of a tan line from a wedding band. An only child. Both parents gone. No wife or husband or kids he's neglecting. Yuma tells himself there has to be a reason for that. That surely, there must be something wrong. Something behind that smile—that soft thing that lights his eyes when Yuma makes him laugh.
Yuma grits his teeth and wishes he weren't thinking of anything at all. His hands fall away from Fuma's chest to fiddle with the buckle of the watch band, but Fuma clasps both of the younger's hands in his, reaching out to stop him.
"Please, leave it on."
Yuma can't say anything. Left speechless, spit pooling and tongue heavy in his mouth. He can only lie back into the plush bedding, a halo of blonde hair fanned out around him, and swallow uselessly.
Fuma to spoils him like this too.
A warm palm splayed over Yuma's ribs in a steadying hold while he squirms under the pleasure of the older man's mouth between his legs. Winding his fingers through the silver hair at Fuma's temples, lips parted obscenely while Fuma opens him up. A tortuously gentle affair. Afflicting and endless. The blunt nip of teeth at Yuma's abdomen and the eager press of Fuma's lips to the tattooed skin at his hip—a white lily, petals grown through chain link—ink flexing with every curl of Fuma's fingers.
Fuma licks another kiss to the skin and looks up, willing Yuma to meet his eyes. "Looks pretty on you," he murmurs, blowing lightly over the patch he'd been lapping at, thick fingers still working.
Yuma tries to blink his eyes clear, goosebumps erupting across the smooth expanse of his chest and a high whine spilling past his lips. He writhes, humming to spite another moan. "I always wanted one," he pants. "I just thought—ah—just thought it looked—fuck—"
Fuma smiles. His nice one. A blush on his cheeks, crooking his fingers just right and Yuma keens, cursing as his head slams back into the cradle of sheets.
"It's beautiful," Fuma says, eyes dark and bottomless. "You're so beautiful."
He means it. Yuma can tell. His own weeping arousal leaking over his stomach at the praise and his molars gnawing the inside of his cheeks to shreds.
"Fuma—I'm—come on—" He gropes at what he can reach of Fuma's back, bled of what little composure he'd been holding onto as Fuma drags his fingers out, catching that perfect, toe-curling spot again.
Wanting is not a habit Yuma's developed. Not like this. That unfamiliar longing, tucked deep in the void of this vessel he's created, tamped down and crowded out by the hunger only strangers can spare. Why want for himself when others yield their desire so freely? Why lay himself bare, when they can't help but want enough for him too?
This feels different. What does that say about him? That a little compassion has worn him thin enough to beg for it. To want to—just to know how he sounds. He's made a career of the opposite, but the mask slips all the same and it feels like severing a limb.
"Please. Please—I can take it."
Fuma curses, trailing wet kisses up Yuma's belly. A lingering one pressed to the center of his chest. "Okay—okay," he soothes, like he's talking himself through it. He sounds half drunk, slurring his words against Yuma's skin. "Turn over for me, baby."
Yuma is sick with relief at the pet name. He doesn't think he could handle hearing his own right now. Whimpering around Fuma's is already too much, reverence in the haven of that one letter difference.
He adjusts himself, buzzy and warm all over, folding into a comfortable position while Fuma slicks himself up. Yuma feels the heat of him before anything else and at the first blunt press forward, he's clawing the sheets. It's just as good as he thought it would be. Better. The stinging stretch of Fuma's size, rocking in slow and his strokes turned unrelenting when Yuma begs for it. More. Harder. Just like that. Hands everywhere. A blinding sort of pleasure that feels glutinous. Too much and not enough.
He goes where Fuma guides him. Up on his knees, weight bolstered by the man behind him. One of Fuma's big hands bracketing his chest and the other gripping his hip, the pads of his fingers digging in while gravity presses down, sinking Fuma further inside, so deep it's maddening.
Yuma can't remember the last time sex felt like this. So dulcet his vision whites out, legs trembling uselessly while Fuma holds him.
Open your eyes baby. Let me hear you. Sweet. Pretty. Perfect.
He comes untouched with Fuma chanting praise in his ear—the first time that night, but far from the last—and Fuma follows moments later, fucking them both through the aftershocks, then settling into the sheets to pet over Yuma's sweat slicked skin.
They don't talk, but Fuma doesn't stop touching and Yuma burns with it, mouthing at the older man's neck until the air is thick enough to swim in and they're both worked up so fervently that Fuma's reaching for the lube again, pinning Yuma's arms over his head, pinky hooked around the edge of the Breguet, heart hammering faster than the seconds can tick.
It goes on like that. A fog of heady pleasure that Yuma slips in and out of until blue streaks of dawn start to blur the skyline and he can't hold his eyes open any longer. The last thing he remembers is the feather light touch of fingers skimming the line of his ribs and the curl of Fuma's body behind his.
Yuma wakes up the next morning to the dull tick of his expensive watch and the tinny chime of a bank app notification.
It's mid-morning. The late November sun streaming in through the blinds and the left side of the mattress gone cold for the sake of managing billion-dollar accounts that couldn't wait until Monday.
He extricates himself from the down feather bedding slowly, then strips the sheets as a courtesy, balling up the mess they made and tossing it at the foot of the bed. He takes his time in the shower, flexing his muscles beneath a stream of hot water to soothe the ache at the base of his spine, then slips back into his jewelry before raiding Fuma's closet for something reasonable to wear home.
On his way out, Yuma pads into the kitchen for his abandoned glass of water and freezes.
There's a bouquet of white lilies on the counter. No note. Though what need would there be for one with the memory of last night, cloying and half obscured, still seared to the back of his eyelids?
Fuma's mouth on him. Throat ragged and calling him beautiful.
The lustrous sheen of the petals knocks the air out of Yuma's lungs and he's hit with the sobering realization that they'll wilt soon. It's better to get rid of them. The practical thing—cut flowers with a short shelf life, half dead already. He should toss them on his way out or better yet, leave them to whither on the counter until Fuma gets back to see the shriveled evidence of their transaction. Something that means nothing.
Yuma lifts his weighted wrist to check the time, then does something stupid. He tucks the lilies into the crook of his elbow and takes them home.
There's no solace in that. No relief at all.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
Before Yuma even keys in the code to his apartment, he can tell that someone's there. A white strip of light spilling out into the hall from under the door and the shadow of shoes in the genkan.
His suspicions are confirmed when the door swings open to Kei sprawled across his couch, barefoot with a paperback romance novel hanging loosely in his grip, half draped in a fluffy blanket.
Yuma doesn't even greet him. He just sets the lilies down on the counter and steels himself, dragging into the living room for his inevitable scolding. He shoves Kei's legs around to make room and sinks into the cushions at his feet.
"Go on," Yuma deadpans. "Do your worst."
Kei doesn't even sit up. Just dog ears his page and fixes Yuma with a glare. “You know, you're lucky I waited this long to say anything. If I hadn't been out of the country, I would have killed you," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What the fuck were you thinking? Alone in a stranger's apartment? Are you stupid? Something could've happened to you."
"But it didn't."
"This time."
A beat. The heater kicks on near the window, rustling the chiffon curtains.
"This time," Yuma concedes, stripped of his typical sarcasm, feeling too thin to argue.
Kei's eyes soften. He's always had a particular talent for reading people and now is no different. Sufficiently satisfied with his reprimand, he fixes Yuma with a pitying look, brows knitting together at his lack of retaliation.
"Even though you insist on worrying me—" he starts. Still stern, but quieter, like approaching a cat left out in the rain, "—unfortunately, I still love you." He extends his arms, lean and inviting, beckoning Yuma into them. "Come here."
Yuma feels like a bruise being pressed on. The pit in his stomach, pulsing and unresolved. He's tired. Homesick. He hasn't visited in ages and he misses his mother's cooking—his sister's teasing. He misses the snack cart around the corner from the train station and the walking path along the river. He's always found it odd that Kei, for all his admonishment and being Tokyo born, manages to remind him of that familiar city on the outskirts of Osaka—wraps him in the comfort of perfume that smells like clean laundry left hanging on a neighbor's clothesline and the floral green of Nishimuko park.
Yuma rolls his eyes, but goes without protest, folding himself into the older's embrace. He noses into Kei's neck, breathes him in and lets himself reminisce. "I'm sorry," he mutters. "Really. I never want any of you to worry about me. "
In lieu of a reply, Kei just squeezes him tighter and Yuma knows that despite the verbal lashing, all is forgiven. Another beat passes and the quiet grows expectant between them.
"You smell expensive," Kei says, breaking the silence, words muffled in Yuma's hair.
"Thank you?"
He fiddles with the sleeve of Yuma's shirt, soft linen wrinkling at the cuff. "Are these his clothes?"
Yuma nods, nose still buried in the Kei's collarbone.
"Well, he's got good taste at least," Kei huffs. "That cologne doesn't suit you, though. Gourmands are better on you."
"Since when?"
"Since always," he breathes. "I don't know why I try though. You never listen to me."
Another jab at Yuma's recklessness, but Kei keeps him pulled close, tracing concentric circles over the blade of Yuma's shoulder. He fidgets in Kei's hold. The couch, not nearly large enough to accommodate the both of them.
"When did Harua tattle on me?" Yuma asks petulantly, feeling one of his legs start to slip off the edge.
"Immediately. He called right after he left your place."
Yuma wrenches himself out of Kei's grip and sits up with a sour expression. "That brat."
Kei laughs. Familiar and wonderful. The kind of fierce cackle that tricks Yuma into feeling absolved. He rises, stretching his limbs and plops his novel on the coffee table, eyes flickering to the watch still buckled at Yuma's wrist.
"He's good to you then?" Kei asks.
A leading question that Yuma promptly kills with an affirmative nod and no further details, stalking over to the kitchen instead. He puts the kettle on and pulls two mugs from the cabinet.
Kei lets him off, but Yuma stiffens when the older leans across the counter to regard the lilies. He runs his fingers over the velvet petals and Yuma starts to panic, wrought with anticipation at the sobering string of questions, sure to follow.
"So, how's the sex?"
The tension splints in an instant and Yuma chokes on an astounded laugh, so relieved he could cry. "Really? That's your follow up question?" Another deranged laugh bubbling up at the humor of Kei's perpetual mercy. "Five minutes ago, you were on my case about getting ax murdered and now you wanna know if he's good in bed?"
Kei cackles, tone benevolently light. White teeth on display as he rounds the counter to pinch Yuma's cheek. "Sue me for being curious! Harua said he was hot and the Venn diagram of "sexy" and "old" isn't exactly one I ponder often."
"Older," Yuma qualifies, swatting Kei's hand away. "You make him sound like he's got one foot in the grave."
"Middle aged, then."
Yuma tuts, but Kei pecks a kiss to the top of head anyway. He bears Yuma a contrite smile, before launching into an apology. "I'm sorry. I really wish I could stay, but I've got a red eye into New York tonight for another work thing."
"So, you really did come all the way here just to yell at me," Yuma pouts, opening the cabinet again to return the second mug. "What's the point of having a friend if all they do is berate you then flee the country after?"
Kei doesn't rise to the bait. He never does. Just scoffs fondly and moves for the door, busying himself with his shoelaces. He stands just as the kettle starts to sing, loitering in the genkan.
"You should get a vase for those," he says cryptically, tipping his chin toward the bouquet.
There's something else Kei isn't saying. Something Yuma wishes he wouldn't, but invites anyway, because he's a glutton for punishment and selfishly wants to keep Kei in his orbit, if only for a minute longer.
The kettle whistles louder, a wisp of steam escaping the spout. "Kei, just spit it out," Yuma says, meeting the older's prudent gaze.
"Nothing. You just seem invested, that's all."
"Invested?"
Kei shrugs and swipes his coat off the rack, reaching for the doorknob. "Be careful, okay?"
Yuma swallows around nothing. The kettle, screaming now. "I don't know what you mean."
Kei only hums. "I've never seen you bring flowers home, Yuma. Not once."
Then he's gone.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
That bruised feeling doesn't dissipate the way Yuma hoped it would.
It settles like veil, softly blurring the weeks as they pass. November into December. December into January and as the winter turns colder, Fuma grows strangely warm. He hesitates less. Touches more, blooming despite the glacial temperature.
Yuma lies with his head lolled in the man's lap while Fuma talks about his parents and what they used to be like. The house he grew up in and the jagged shapes of a once familiar mountain-scape, far off now, like a dream slipping at the edge of his memory. Fuma still cooks every week—always something new—and when Yuma launches into an anecdote while he helps chop the vegetables, Fuma trades him back stories from culinary school, voice soft and a nostalgic smile curling his lip.
Yuma starts staying overnight more. He carves out space for himself on Fuma's expensive couch, files pushed aside, propping his socked feet on the coffee table. He leaves the fall board of the piano open— exhausts his entire repertoire of Beethoven and fusses with Einaudi before circling back to Chopin again. Though, Fuma doesn't seem to mind. He says he likes the repetition.
The night Yuma painstakingly tries to teach him the four handed version of "Chopsticks" they laugh themselves to tears at Fuma's lack of musical inclination, only to end up with Yuma lifted onto the closed lid of the Bechstein, lips and the blunt edge of teeth at his throat, spine pressed flat, reclined against the lacquered wood with Fuma's mouth between his legs, sweet mewls, harmonized to the cacophony of his heels knocking the keys.
Pliant in the seconds after his orgasm, Yuma reckons with the idea that the moment felt stolen.
They talk a lot about nothing. About the view from Fuma's balcony and Yuma's new Pilates instructor. About how bad the traffic gets when it rains and how they long for the trill of cicadas in summer. Pointless conversation that goes nowhere, but at times, feels so stiflingly intimate that Yuma has to pick a harmless fight just to stop the pit widening his stomach.
On a particularly frigid evening, buzzed on champagne from a New Year's party at Fuma's office, they retreat back to the apartment to leech the cold from their bones with a bath Fuma draws. Steam filling the room as he slips in behind Yuma, back to chest in the near boiling water, oils poured and bubbles spilling over the edge of the tub. He runs his hands over Yuma's body. The silken glide of fingers up the back of his neck, tangling in the hair at the base of Yuma's skull.
A jazz record whispers faintly from the other room, but pressed against Fuma's rumbling chest like this, Yuma can only make out the piano pulling through. He has his eyes closed, lips parted, melting into the fingers still working at his scalp.
"Why haven't you ever been married?"
It slips out, tongue loose and sticking to the roof of his mouth. Yuma regrets it immediately. He keeps his eyes snapped shut in a lame attempt to skirt the consequence of having asked.
Fuma stays quiet for a long time, water swirling when he drops his hand away and returns to tracing shapes along the flat plane of Yuma's abdomen. He bends forward, mouthing up the length of Yuma's bicep, lingering over the mole on his right shoulder. "I'm don't think I'm the marrying kind," he says. Diffident. Not brazen at all. "It's less burdensome—being alone. I've gotten good at it."
Yuma makes a wounded sort of sound, sympathetic as he flutters his eyes open. "If you're so good at being lonely, why'd you hire me?" He wishes it sounded more like the joke he intended it to be, but it comes out a note too serious.
Fuma laughs anyway. "On a whim, I suppose. A moment of weakness." He pauses. Takes one of Yuma's hands in his, kneading the space between each knuckle. "I guess I got tired of waiting," he mumbles.
Yuma's eyes fall closed again, fingers threading in and out of the Fuma's under the water. "For what?"
An exhale. "Something I want so much I can't help myself."
It happens fast as it always does—their plunge into intimacy—muscles already warm and nothing but bare skin between them. Fuma braces Yuma against him, teeth scraping the column of his throat and his big, warm hands, unrelenting while he strokes Yuma through it.
He calls him baby.
baby baby baby. So pretty. Let me make you feel good.
Fuma never uses his name during sex. A habit he's developed. A blessed modicum of distance from the heavy praise he pants wetly into Yuma's neck or chest or the porcelain skin of his thighs.
By the time they're through, the floor is drenched with lukewarm bath water, and all the steam has wafted out of the room. Yuma can still hear the record playing. Drums and bass and the twinkling chime of piano, rendered clear now. He recognizes the song.
Bill Evans. "My Foolish Heart."
He's afraid he's starting to like the repetition.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
Around mid-January, he stops seeing his other clients.
It's easy enough to break the news and even easier to fabricate some semblance of reason. He tells himself it's to streamline things. To avoid stretching himself too thin. That Fuma pays him well enough and that there's little more appealing about the arrangement than the consistency of the deposits.
Yuma tells himself a lot of things, but believes very few of them and tries to not think about why that is.
"Can I ask you something?" Fuma says, standing at the sink cleaning up after dinner, elbow deep in bubbles while Yuma sits perched in his usual spot across the counter.
The younger narrows his eyes skeptically, but nods, thrumming his fingers against the quartz and watching the wine in his glass ripple at the disturbance.
"Why do you do this?" Fuma asks. He's being sincere, even switches off the running water to lean in and listen.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, besides the money, why do you do this? See me. See other people."
Fuma's jaw is set. He's fishing for a thoughtful answer, but Yuma doesn’t give him one. He just slips the mask into place and laughs, high and thin. "What's not to like about getting paid to have great sex for a living?"
Fuma returns a chuckle, drying his hands. "Surely, not all the sex is that good," he says, adjusting his glasses. "I'm being serious."
Obviously. Fuma's always serious.
Yuma scoffs and sips his wine, bone dry and earthy, tacking up his mouth with the aftertaste. It's not lost on him that the version of himself that existed four months ago would've never entertained a conversation like this. He takes another sip, before remembering he needs to pace himself. This is always the part where he says too much.
"It's not like this was my childhood dream," he starts, stiffening his posture. His skin feels too tight all of a sudden. "I really needed the money when I started and then— well, it just snowballed. I don't know, I guess I didn't know what I wanted back then. I just knew that I liked being liked. It's validating—being whatever people want me to be—being liked so much I get paid for it."
Fuma's brows knit together thoughtfully. He pushes his hair off his face, wearing that same wide-open expression, eyes dark and shiny like pools of oil catching the light. "Isn't that tiring?"
Yuma's stomach churns. He laughs again, but it's mean. Defensive. "Jesus. What are you, my therapist?"
The exhaust fan whirs, too loud, in the stretched silence. Fuma just holds eye contact and shakes his head, walking around the counter. "Seems like a bad business model for a therapist," he says. "Aren't I the one paying you?"
Fuma's wearing a different cologne. Yuma can smell it now that he's gotten closer and he can't help but feel—homesick. Fuma smells like the pine planks of the fishing dock Yuma and his sister used to swim at. Like the walking path along the river after a spring storm, petrichor and bruised sakura. He smells familiar—like home—and it's disarming in a way that makes Yuma's eyes burn. He feels the pit in his stomach swelling, venom waning with the proximity, thinking of nothing and everything, mouth moving before his head can catch up. The next thing he knows, he's confessing.
"Maybe I just—I just don't know who I am without this. Maybe that's why." An admission shattered like glass and ground to sand between his teeth. Too much, just like he knew it would be.
Fuma sighs, the force of his exhale pushing his glasses down his nose. "You’re twenty-four, Yuma. You have your whole life to figure that out." Fuma reaches for him, but stops short, opening his mouth, then pressing his lips thin like he wants to say something else.
"What?"
"It’s nothing."
"What?" Yuma presses, salting his own wound.
"I just don't think you give yourself enough credit," Fuma says, reaching out again. He sets his hand over Yuma's on the counter. "You make it sound like this is all you'll ever be, but you're so young. Everything else—all rest of you—it'll come with time."
They’re talking about too many things at once. Weighing subtleties that make Yuma's head throb, and suddenly, he feels like crying.
At the first prick behind his eyes, he recoils as he's always done, slipping back into the safety of that skin, brazen and witty, receded so far from where the tears are welling that he feels like a third person. He anguishes in a final lungful of perfume that reeks of his old life, then drops to his knees and starts fussing with Fuma's belt buckle before the man can say anything else.
"What are you doing?"
Yuma makes quick work of Fuma's belt and pops the button of his trousers for good measure. "What you’re paying me for," he rasps, desperation marring his tone and hot hands running over Fuma's thighs.
"Yuma—you don’t have to." Fuma reaches out to still his hands, but Yuma bats his arm away. "Why are you—"
Yuma cuts him off. "Like you said, you’re not my therapist." He smiles, chest aching. A deceitful thing, swallowing around the lump in his throat that won’t budge. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. I just want you—like this."
He drags Fuma's zipper open with his teeth, the metallic burst of nickel blooming on his tongue, mixed with the copper tang of blood from biting the inside of his cheek.
It's vile. It tastes like an oasis.
"Please," Yuma purrs, lips brushing the waistband of his briefs. "Let me."
And Fuma does. He lets Yuma win, eyes stormy and jaw jumping under the pressure of his molars grinding, reaching to sweep a wisp of hair away from Yuma's face. A solemn, relenting gesture as he nods—granting permission.
Joints to the tile, Yuma puts his mouth on him right there in the kitchen. He gags and chokes and whines, eyes wet, losing himself in the rhythm of it. It feels good. So good his gut bloats with it, heat roiling at his core, feeling unburdened as his jaw loosens.
Just before Fuma comes, he looks down, one of his big, warm hands cradling Yuma's face and wipes the younger's wanton tears away. Yuma blinks back up at him, exacting and obscene. He bats his lashes the way Fuma likes—moans, high and pretty—does that trick with his tongue and in an instant, Fuma falls apart above him, crying out with his thumb pressed to the dimple of Yuma's chin and his free hand twisted in locks freshly bleached hair.
“Oh fuck—Yuma.”
Yuma swallows everything that Fuma gives him. He swallows the sensation of calloused fingers dancing at his jaw and the watery shine in Fuma’s eyes. He swallows the notion that this is the first time Fuma’s called him anything but baby during sex—that he called him by name—almost like he knew Yuma wanted to hear it. Almost like he couldn’t help himself.
He doesn’t spend the night. He meets Fuma's eyes, clouded with the essence of concern and insists on taking the car home.
They don't talk. Fuma only walks him to elevator, fingers tangled together and his grip a fraction tighter than usual. The tiniest observation, that leaves Yuma burning while the lift sinks to the lobby.
When the car finds him at curb, he lies. He tells the driver he’s decided to stay, waits for Cadillac to disappear down the block, then steps out into the blackness of a clear January night and starts to walk. He doesn't know where he's going, only that he's afraid to stop moving.
He tugs his coat tighter, wandering through empty parking lots. Through parks with barren trees dripping icicles and shuffling past closed storefronts with un-shoveled sidewalks. He walks all night with the taste of Fuma still lingering on his tongue, until the sky bleeds black into indigo and the trains start running again.
Just after five in the morning, he finds the nearest station on the dawn dusted streets of Tokyo and stumbles inside. He can't feel his hands—basks in the prickling numbness, wishing it were contagious. Wishing it would crawl up his arms and nest in his brain and leave him thinking of nothing at all.
Inevitably though, his hands thaw, and when they do, Yuma takes the Inari line home and doesn’t sleep.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
Yuma turns twenty-five on Nicholas' beat up leather couch.
There are cheap streamers tacked up with cello-tape hanging everywhere and a cake in front of him with too many candles, icing sliding off, "Happy Birthday Yuma" written in Euijoo's signature scrawl, half melted onto the coffee table.
Like this, he feels so thoroughly adored his heart could burst; Harua's chap stick smudged all over his face from the twenty six kisses he's received, one for each year and the last for good luck—extra pecks from Maki feeling affectionate and Taki's penchant for playful biting that Jo tempers with a scruff to the back of the younger boy's neck.
Apart from Kei, who just flew in this morning, everyone is plastered. Yuma's probably had more drinks tonight then the last six months combined, vision swimming with streaks of color and a terrible case of the giggles.
Somewhere around two in the morning, Harua crawls into Yuma's lap, the scent of floral sake dripping off his tongue and bestows him two more kisses, one on each cheek.
Yuma's face hurts from smiling. "Gross. It's like you're in love with me or something."
Harua ignores him, scrunching his nose and cuddling up to Yuma's side. "You wish."
Now that the commotion has subsided, it's gotten quiet, the pizza and beer and the ache of growing older left to settle in Yuma's belly. Nicholas and Maki are passed out on the carpet nearby and the brief glance Yuma spares them is enough to have his eyelids weighing, pliant with exhaustion, chest warmed in that sacred sort of way that only comes from succumbing to the gravity of the people he loves most.
"So, what did your sugar daddy get you?" Harua mumbles, slurring his words into Yuma's sweater. "Aren't birthdays kind of a big deal in your business?"
Yuma laughs, something strained behind it, thankful that Harua's too drunk to notice. He lolls his head back against the top of the couch to stare at the ceiling.
"We'll be in Italy next weekend," he says. "Fuma has a house there."
Harua squishes his nose to the side of Yuma's neck. "Oooooh—first name basis. When's the wedding?"
Yuma kicks him off the couch in lieu of a reply and leaves Harua on the floor wheezing with laughter, loud enough to stir Maki when he collapses next to him.
Yuma throws back the last sip of his lukewarm drink and stands, feeling dizzy, wobbling across the room to Kei engrossed in quiet conversation with Euijoo. Kei catches him by the waist, holding him at arm’s length and poking fun at his floppy mannerisms.
"Mom, can you take me home now?" Yuma jokes, feeling silly. Small, like child when Kei smiles at him. Twenty-five going on thirteen.
Kei's good driver. He lets Yuma pick the music and doesn't even complain when he rolls the passenger window down, flooding the car with the freezing air of early February. When they get to Yuma's apartment, Kei unbuckles his seatbelt—walks him all the way up to the fifth floor and even squeezes the tube of toothpaste when he realizes that Yuma's too drunk to manage alone.
Kei leaves him tucked into bed with a chaste kiss tapped to his forehead. "Love you," he whispers. A final gift as the door clicks shut behind him.
It's cold in Yuma's bedroom. The curtains are open, streetlights glowing yellow casting his walls in the dreamy haze of artificial light. He lies awake in the half-darkness wondering vaguely if he looks as incorporeal as he feels. tick tick tick. The Breguet sits on his nightstand as it always does and, in his stupor, he can't ignore how loud it sounds, fidgeting with the hem of his sheets, palms itching to distract himself from the noise of it.
He reaches for his phone, thinking about Italy. About the beach and the ocean and how he still hasn't packed anything—how he ought to make a list, so he doesn't forget. He opens his notes to start one, but it isn't his notes at all, it's his contacts, thumb hovering over Fuma's number.
It's three in the morning, and Yuma's eyes are weighing. It's three in the morning, and Fuma is almost certainly asleep. It's three in the morning, but Yuma's drunk and it's his birthday and sometimes he just does things. He wants to think about it later.
Fuma answers on the third ring, voice like molten sugar, dripping through the speaker. “Happy birthday, baby.”
“Hi."
Fuma breathes, the line blurring with static. “Have you been drinking?”
“It’s my birthday,” Yuma says, like it answers the question.
He should hang up, but he doesn't.
“Are you home safe?”
“You’re always so serious Fuma." Yuma says, slurring now. "Duh—Kei dropped me off. Obviously, I'm home."
But it isn't obvious at all. Why would it be? Yuma doesn't tell Fuma things like that. He doesn't tell Fuma where he's going, or how long he'll be out, or if he'll be drinking because that's not what this is. Fuma doesn't know his friends’ names. He doesn't know that Kei is always the designated driver or that Harua gets clingy when he drinks or that Jo painted him the most beautiful landscape as a present and Yuma can't wait to frame it.
That's not what Fuma pays for. That isn't the kind of relationship they have. Yuma doesn't know why that makes him sad. Or maybe he does. Maybe that's worse.
He should hang up, but he doesn't.
Even from the other side of the city, Fuma's sleep leaden laugh is warm and full and heart aching. He hums and Yuma can hear his smile. "If you say so, Yuma."
His eyelids are so heavy now. He closes them, ear still pressed to the receiver feeling tired and drunk and completely out of his mind.
He should hang up, but he doesn't. He can't.
“Say my name again,” Yuma whispers, soft like a secret.
“What?”
“My name. Please—say my name again."
The last thing he remembers is Fuma's voice crackling through the line. The sound of sheets shifting, soft exhales and two syllables intoned like a prayer, over and over.
“Yuma, Yuma, Yuma.”
The next morning, his phone is dead.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
The beach looks different in February.
The sand is darker—cool under Yuma's feet. The shore devoid of people in the absence of the sun and endless blue stretched for miles where the sea foam drops off, clouds swirling over the horizon, gray and warning.
He has a sweater on, sleeves pulled down over the heels of his palms. The temperature, on the wrong side of tepid, toes starting to curl from the cold and the soles of his feet stamped red from walking at the water’s edge.
It's easy to see Fuma's house from here. White limestone and red brick. Arched doorways to wrought iron balconies overlooking a terraced yard full of lemon trees. Implausibly beautiful and so fundamentally opposed to the sharp angles and dark wood of Fuma's Tokyo apartment that it seems impossible both places could exist at once and belong to the same man.
Maybe that's why Fuma seems different here. Brighter. He wears his shirts untucked and his glasses low on the bridge of his nose. He guides them through the cobbled streets like a local, tasting lemon cakes and slipping into tiny storefronts for artisanal produce to cook with. Here, he waves to his neighbors and sips wine straight from the bottle. He puts the fire on at night, dissolving into the sofa to watch old movies, thawing the February chill with his laughter. His glowing smile, white and loud, so brilliant that Yuma can't look for too long without squinting his eyes.
Fuma spoils him with breakfast in the mornings, coaching him through the headlines of the paper, read aloud in Italian, chuckling at his poor pronunciation and praising him anyway. Indulged in cut flowers on the counter before noon. In clothes and wine and glittered embellishments, left breathless with Fuma's black card between his teeth.
The days rise and recede like the tide. Time, stretched and blurred by the overcast weather and as the sun sinks on their final day, all Yuma knows for sure is that his feet have gone numb from walking in the water and that, undoubtedly, it's going to rain.
Just after six, he makes his way up the beach to slip his shoes back on, scaling the stone stairs and sheltering under the front stoop just as the drizzle begins. The house swells with the trumpets of a jazz record when he walks in. Fuma, pacing the kitchen, greeting him with a lit-eyed smile that Yuma can't bear admiring for more than a few seconds before he has to look away.
Despite the rain, the sunset is gorgeous. The gilded hour of dusk casting the living room gold as they sit on the floor with a chess set between them, idly shifting the pieces.
"I think I changed my mind," Yuma says. "You really don't have to do this."
Fuma sets his drained glass on the coffee table, limbs clumsy as he reaches for the neck of the bottle again. The cork of their third, split between them, rolled off somewhere across the room. "Split," a relative term in the present situation, since for every glass Yuma's finished, Fuma's had three.
"A promise is a promise," he slurs. "It only seems fair."
When Fuma asked him what else he wanted for his birthday, Yuma said an eye for an eye, a harmless joke in the moment that's escalated to their current predicament. Fuma, too drunk, primed to say things he'll regret just as Yuma had the night of the party.
Fuma takes another sip straight from the bottle, knocking over his Rook when he goes to move it. He's playing white. Losing. He looks like the sun tried to swallow him. Flushed all over—blushed a darling shade of pink down his neck and hair falling handsomely over his eyes. He sets the bottle down on the table, profile contoured with the last glimmers of daylight and meets the younger's gaze, half lidded and gleaming.
"Happy birthday, Yuma."
It's the way he says it. A crackle of energy between them. Pulled taught like a rubber band, stinging as it snaps to welt the skin. The perfect shape of Fuma's lips when he says Yuma's name like it means something.
Yuma stares at him. A line of disbelief wrinkling between his eyebrows. He watches Fuma's mouth twitch around the advent of a smile—watches it spread, pearly and radiant across his face. His nice one. The one Yuma likes. The one that Fuma saves for just for him, because unless he's looking at Yuma, he rarely expresses at all.
Like this, Yuma doesn't feel the years between them. Just the weight of that one letter difference. How alike they are, deep down, too guarded to deserve it— burdened with the belief that the kind of relationship you pay for is the only kind you could ever be capable of, then blinded by the dawn of a reality where you realize that isn't true. A name. His name, uttered and upending, fallen from Fuma's lips, like the last piece of a puzzle clicking in.
The air thickens oppressively and Yuma, finally unmoored, can't stop himself. He reaches out to tuck a wisp of silver hair behind Fuma's ear. A tender gesture, compelled by something he fears naming. Yuma doesn't drop his arm away. Just stays there, fingers grazing the side of Fuma's face as the man leans into his touch, eyes closed and cheek pressed flat to the expanse of his palm.
"Tell me a secret," he says, thumb ghosting the older man's cheek bone.
Fuma blinks his eyes open, pupils blown black and infinite. "I think I should stop seeing you."
Yuma knows, but asks anyway. He needs to hear it.
"Why?"
It's dark outside now, the last of the sky’s color bled away. Thunder rolling and rain beating sideways against the shuttered windows.
"I like you too much," Fuma whispers. So quiet, it's hard to hear over the storm. "I like you too much—" he repeats, like he's looking for the words and can't find them. "—but I can't have you the way I want."
Yuma inhales the breath Fuma lets out, miserably sincere when he savors the taste of it. Wanting is not a habit he's developed, but Fuma is looking at him, and he is looking back and—oh—Yuma wants him. So much, he breaks his own rule.
It happens slow. The air in the room evaporates when he leans in, nothing left to fill his lungs, but the tepid humidity swirling between them. Fuma's lips are hot, flushed like every other part of him. Pink and red like the sunset. Warm and full like the sound of his laugh.
It's a chaste thing at first. Yuma pulls back a hairsbreadth to breathe and doesn't dare open his eyes. He hovers so close that the wire rim of Fuma's glasses indents the flesh of his cheek. So close, that the tiniest inhale they breathe at the same time is enough to draw their mouths together again.
Fuma tastes like red wine and spearmint. Like lemon cake and cut lilies and the salt of the ocean—and when Yuma licks over his teeth, white and loud, he tastes gold in the gaps between them. Yuma climbs over the chess set, pawns clattering across the floor, sinking himself into Fuma's lap, legs on either side of his thighs and slides his hands up the column of the man's throat to feel his pulse rattle.
Fuma kisses him back. Mouth wet, softly licking into the hollow of Yuma's parted lips and a warm hand set at his jaw to steady them. He's unbearably gentle. Slows the pace. Languid passes over the palette of Yuma's mouth, tongue heavy with longing and the blunt edge of his teeth nipping at the sensitive skin.
They kiss until their lips are chapped. Until Fuma walks them both to bed and they lie there, fit together, kissing more. Mutual resuscitation. Idling in a sanctuary of shared breath until exhaustion takes root and sleep pulls them under.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
The sheets are still warm the next morning. Sun, casting bars of light across the floor through the blinds. The overcast gray of the previous day exchanged for the mild glow of tempered dawn.
Yuma's lips are swollen. He stretches feline, linen rustling beneath him and limbs colliding with the solid weight of a body pressed close. When he rolls over and opens his eyes, Fuma is already looking at him, mouth stern with twin splits in his bottom lip bitten there by the points of Yuma's canines.
Fuma isn't wearing his glasses. He looks soft like this. Sad.
"I'm sorry," he says, chest rumbling.
Yuma reaches for him, brow furrowed, fingers brushing the swell of Fuma's lips. "What are you talking about?"
It's early. The only noise, a series of crashing waves and calling sea birds.
"This," Fuma starts. "Us, this way. It isn't reasonable, Yuma." He shakes his head and the younger's hand falls. "I just got carried away."
The air is palpable. No noise. Only the Breguet ticking softly at Yuma's wrist like a bomb. He gets angry all of a sudden. The hot flare of frustration scorching the tips of his ears while he fights the desperation clawing up the back of his throat.
"You're so stupid," he says. An exasperated laugh breaking through, reedy and splintered.
He feels crazy. Maybe he is—driven mad at the sight of Fuma's mouth bruised crimson and the ache of a confession, sinking like stone to the pit of his stomach.
"I want you." Yuma reaches out again and Fuma lets his hand linger, eyelids fluttering.
"I pay you to say things like that," Fuma replies, voice breaking. Something pained in the gleam of his eyes, kind and dark and disbelieving.
Yuma moves all at once. Their distance bridged in an instant, fingers twisted and trembling in the cotton of Fuma's shirt.
"Then stop paying me."
Still no noise. Just a bated breath that screams, finally—and a kiss, free of charge.
✴︎✴︎✴︎
Despite the cluttered state of their apartment, the foyer still smells of verbena.
Yuma regards the mess of shoes kicked off in the genkan and the mail piled haphazardly on the entry way table, consequence of his new job at the music academy having left him too lazy to clean. The kids love him, though—quick learners that put Fuma's butchered version of "Chopsticks" to shame.
The charming scratch of a record trailing greets him as he enters to the familiar silhouette of Fuma sitting hunched over the coffee table, dark bangs falling over his eyes and the top two buttons of his dress shirt undone, the third wobbling dangerously, beckoning Yuma like a dare. He doesn't bother with the pleasantries. Just slinks over and straddles Fuma's lap, nipping at his earlobe and nosing at the juncture of his jaw to breathe in clean skin and the essence of cologne that smells like home.
A laugh vibrates the older's chest. "Tough day?"
Yuma smiles. "The worst. If I hear one more note of Fur Elise, I might cry."
Fuma laughs again, skimming down his sides. Sturdy hands hovering near Yuma's belt buckle and thumbs grazing the milky skin of his abdomen. "Why don't I take the edge off then—" he murmurs, honeyed and suggestive.
Yuma's already worked three more of Fuma's buttons open, index finger tracing the contours of his clavicle and one palm pressed to the space above his heart. He recedes from the crook of Fuma's neck just far enough to slip his glasses off and soon enough, they're folded in on each other. Foreheads tipped together and lost in a haze breathless mumbling.
Fuma gives him everything he asks for. Hands here, lips there, touch me touch me touch me; hips rocking just right and gently coaxing Yuma's chin up to lick into his mouth, searing praise into the hollow. Yuma can only cling to him, nails carving lines into the skin of his back, half out of his mind and panting something dangerously close to I love you. If Fuma hears, he doesn't say. Just pulls Yuma's weighted wrist down to kiss the tendons below the velvet leather of the watch band and slot their fingers together.
Right at the edge, Fuma leans in with a gasped breath, mouth hot against the shell of Yuma's ear, and spoils him with one more gift.
A perfect, reverent whisper: "Yuma, Yuma, Yuma."
That's all it takes.