Work Text:
You can have my isolation
You can have the hate that it brings
You can have my absence of faith
You can have my everything
-Nine Inch Nails, Closer
The summer after they graduate is warmer than any in recent memory. The sakura trees bloom early, and by mid-May the heat has leached the color from the plants, rendering them a sickly yellow-green.
Tamaki spends most of his days at Kyouya’s house. They play a strange waiting game; each carefully goes about his routine, making gestures of normality, refusing to acknowledge the other’s circling presence. Kyouya reads the stock reports in the morning; Tamaki watches him from the couch on which he fell asleep the night before. Tamaki rehearses his way through the Rachmaninoff piano concertos; Kyouya drags his laptop into the piano room to listen while he works. Neither of them points out the increasingly obvious truth: this is not the behavior of mere friends.
Kyouya’s sister Fuyumi broaches the subject one morning, entering Kyouya’s room with an armful of laundry. “Tamaki, I didn’t know you slept over last night.”
“Yes,” says Kyouya. “I invited him,” and that settles the matter.
Two days later, a futon mattress appears on the floor of Kyouya’s room, covered in a pile of blankets. No one mentions it, but Tamaki sleeps in Kyouya’s room from then on, instead of on the couch.
***
Tamaki is quickly aware that something has changed, but it takes a while to figure out what. Kyouya has always been opaque to a fault, except when he isn’t.
Tamaki observes him carefully: the tilt to his head when he drinks coffee, half awake and without sugar. The press of his hands against his trousers when they play go in the evenings. The shape of his feet when he strips off his socks in preparation for bed.
They sit side-by-side as the sun sets, and Kyouya points carelessly at his laptop screen as he explains the day’s efforts. He is building Tamaki a portfolio, shaping his investments carefully to pressure his grandmother’s weak points. He buys a voting share in a French textile company in Tamaki’s name, then convinces the board to compete with a Suou interest and undermine it. Today a Tokyo-based shipping firm went bankrupt, and Tamaki now owns it for very little money.
The shipping company is safe, so the employees are grateful to their mysterious benefactor. The company also controls the distribution routes for a third of the Suou family’s Japanese manufacturing.
Tamaki grasped the strategy weeks ago, and was in fact the one to suggest the shipping firm as a target. He knows that this pleases Kyouya, pulling the strings to secure Tamaki’s future prosperity. What he does not yet know is why.
Tamaki leans back in a casual sprawl -- one arm across the back of the couch, legs wide and feet flexed loosely downward. Kyouya glances over and something about the flare of his nose, the set of his jaw catches Tamaki’s eye. Kyouya has always been opaque to a fault, except when he’s not, and Tamaki feels the events of the past few weeks clarify with the wonder of glass cooling into a perfect pane.
What he does not know is his own feelings on the matter. The next few days are occupied less by watching Kyouya, and more by examining himself. Fuyumi comments that his piano has become more emotional, and Tamaki blushes. Kyouya is staring at his laptop, and folds his legs beneath himself on the couch. The heat of the afternoon sun through the floor-length windows presses down against his back and Tamaki thinks that again they are waiting, something still and fragile revolving between them, unresolved.
***
Tamaki lies on the floor in front of the couch, sprawled out to take up as much space as he can. Kyouya is outside swimming, and Tamaki grasps a cup of cold sake to himself, holding it with the tips of his fingers so that he does not warm it any more than the sun will. He sips delicately, careful not to spill since he’s laying down. When the sake is gone, he stretches his legs and fetches a bottle of pop from the kitchens. He has the house to himself: Kyouya is swimming, and the rest of the family has escaped to the mountains in Nagano for cooler air.
Tamaki returns and seats himself in front of the couch, propping himself up with his back against it. He stretches his neck so that his head leans back to rest against the couch cushions and look at the ceiling. He holds the neck of the bottle carelessly by two fingers, and listens to the sounds of Kyouya coming inside. The ceiling provides no explanation for how to end their mutual détente, and the tension stretches out awkwardly between them. Tamaki raises his head and stares openly at Kyouya while he towels his hair. Kyouya smells like chlorine and sunshine -- like summer.
“I want you to look at me,” says Tamaki, and the words sound silly and juvenile out loud, but he has been thinking about this for days and no better plan has presented itself.
Kyouya raises an eyebrow in his direction. “I am looking at you,” he says mildly.
“No,” says Tamaki, because this deliberate evasiveness is not acceptable. He leans forward, emphasizes his words. “I want you to look at me.” The bottle of pop seesaws idly between his fingers, back and forth. The carbonation hisses softly.
Not a muscle on his face moves to indicate the change, but Kyouya’s expression suddenly goes completely shuttered. “You don’t really want me to see you that way. Not like that.”
Tamaki relaxes, leans back again, spreads his legs into a wide V on the floor. There are two conversations in the room, one held in words and another skulking around the silences -- communicated in edges and the shadows of things they don’t do. By answering, Kyouya has allowed himself to be baited, and hasn’t walked away.
Tamaki lifts a hand deliberately and takes a swallow of the pop, letting his eyes drift closed then flutter open. The corner of Kyouya’s eye twitches. The truth is, Tamaki has no idea what he’s doing here. In some ways Kyouya will always be a mystery. Negotiating the spaces between them is like playing go blindfolded, with an opponent who randomly removes your pieces from the board. But Tamaki has not spent three years cultivating the ability to charm anyone without learning to recognize when someone desires him.
“I think I’ve always wanted you to watch me. Since the day that I met you,” Tamaki says, and Kyouya gives no facial sign of whether he understands, but his next breath is a little shorter, a little more deliberately even.
Tamaki takes another sip from the bottle, then sets it on the table. This is an endurance strategy: too fast or too many flowery phrases and Kyouya will brush the whole thing off as a tease, a practiced game. The truth is, Tamaki has never tried vulnerability as a way to win hearts before. Kyouya is always a first for him.
He lets his fingers drop back into his lap, between his legs. He’s impatient -- he's always impatient -- but there’s no reason Kyouya should know that. The sweat from the side of the bottle lingers still on his hand and turns his fingers slippery and damp. His trousers cling clammy against his leg when he touches them. Dark streaks against the grey show the moisture in the shape of a smeared handprint.
Kyouya drops the towel to his bare shoulders. “Okay. You’ve got my attention,” he says, his voice still mild. “What did you want to show me?”
Tamaki can almost hear the stumble: the sound of their uneasy dance around each other falling out of step and into unknown territory. It’s not irreversible, not yet, but change twangs like a vibrating string in the air between them.
“That depends on what you’re willing to see,” says Tamaki after a pause. He rolls his thumb back and forth on his thigh, inching ever closer to his crotch. He has made the overture, but the last step, the acknowledgment, must come from Kyouya. He can’t go forward without knowing that they’re on the same page. The sun is desperately hot against his back.
“Oh,” says Kyouya, and the word is balanced between sarcastic and scornful. “Playing the prince again? Another role?”
“No,” says Tamaki simply. “I’ve never played roles here.”
Kyouya once more raises an eyebrow. Oh, really? The towel slides in a heap to the floor, and Kyouya takes a seat on the other couch, across the room but with a clear view to Tamaki. Though he doesn’t say it, Haruhi’s name is on both their minds. The prince and the commoner, stock parts in a fairy tale.
“Not with you,” clarifies Tamaki. His hand drifts still further back, and he presses the heel of his palm against his dick before moving it up to scratch the side of his nose. It feels nice, subtle pressure in good places and cooler in the heat of the day. Kyouya stills, like a frightened bird or a predator ready to pounce, but Tamaki can’t tell which. He feels like power and prey -- both at the same time and all of it uncertain.
“You were going to show me something?” says Kyouya.
“Yeah.” Tamaki leans forward towards the table and takes one last sip of the pop to wet his nervously dry mouth. When he leans back again, he settles lower, all careful, casual sprawl and wide legs. Tamaki has always been aware of how beautiful he is; in many ways this is advertising, enticement.
The truth is, he’s glad of the sake just now. He’d never have the courage for this without it, but as it is, he tilts his head back to look at the ceiling and runs a hand from his knee all the way to his crotch, touching himself openly. A line, he thinks. That was a line, and I’m crossing it.
Kyouya isn’t making any noise, and Tamaki has no idea what he’s thinking. “I can stop, you know.” He is careful to keep his voice non-threatening. “Tell me if you want to --"
“If you do something I dislike, you’ll be the first to know,” says Kyouya. There’s no tremor there, no sign of arousal. He might as well be ordering a servant to straighten a painting or adding a few thousand to Haruhi’s endless debt. Kyouya always has such casual control, and something so ordinary shouldn’t be a turn-on, but it is.
Tamaki works his hand slowly up the fly of his pants, carefully keeping the edges of the buttons from digging in. Now that he’s completely hard, the pants are a little uncomfortable, too tight in the wrong spots. The stroke of his hand feels good -- squeezing a little -- learning the way the fabric shifts over his dick, figuring out how to make it better.
A few moments and he lets his breathing go soft and deep. Nothing on Kyouya’s face betrays any sort of arousal, but Tamaki gains confidence from Kyouya’s lack of response. After all, it’s not like Kyouya’s saying no, and Tamaki is confident that Kyouya would say no if this were at all unwelcome.
Tamaki shifts his hand further down to cup his balls then strokes up, and watching Kyouya becomes harder. His eyes want to close, as though his brain is too lazy to process visual stimulus and sensory pleasure at the same time. He blinks, blinks again.
“What's going through your head,” says Kyouya suddenly, and shifts his weight on the couch. Any other situation and it would be an innocent gesture, meaningless, but Tamaki recognizes it for what it is: Kyouya isn’t as unaffected as he’d like to pretend.
“I’m wondering if you’re going to run away,” Tamaki says. Brutal honesty hasn’t failed him yet today.
Kyouya chuffs out a laugh. “I’d say that’s a pretty bad bet. If it were business I wouldn’t buy.”
“Good,” Tamaki says, pleased as a cat in cream. “What would be a better bet?”
“The Nagano microchip industry,” says Kyouya without a moment’s hesitation, voice cold and detached. “One of the fisheries on Okinawa. That Ootori Industries will have the US contract for military health care by year’s end. That you’ll unbutton those pants in the next two minutes.” It’s the same mild voice that Kyouya uses to tear apart the business world, and Tamaki really shouldn’t find it so sexy. Yesterday he’d overheard Kyouya eviscerating a vice-president in that exact tone, and now all that veiled intensity is focused solely on him. There isn’t a high in the world to match.
Tamaki figures that’s an invitation, or as near as he’s likely to get to one, so he obeys the implied suggestion. The buttons catch a little, awkward as his wet fingers fumble to pull them apart, and oh, that’s relief. He won’t watch Kyouya’s face while he does this. He’s afraid that he might reveal too much, that Kyouya will be shocked or disappointed, and that’s a hurt that is easier to bear without eye contact. Instead he fixes his gaze on a spot on the wall.
He doesn’t dare ask Kyouya to touch him, so instead he imagines what it might be like. Would Kyouya’s hand be like this, slow strokes and lots of attention at the head, where Tamaki’s almost over-sensitive? Or would he be faster, fingers tight and lots of thumb pressure over the spots on the underside that make Tamaki’s hips shift up in minute little thrusts? Tamaki varies his strokes, and when he hears no disapproval after a few minutes, he shifts to watch what makes Kyouya’s pupils widen, what sends his fingers clutching into the knees of his pants as though he’s trying hard not to touch. Tamaki wants this to last, so he settles on a teasing play of light fingers, tracing little zigzags up and down his shaft, with feathery brushes of thumb across his favorite spot. It won’t get him off, not yet, but it’s enough to rip a helpless little noise out of him before he can stifle it in his throat.
If anything Kyouya’s gone more still as he watches, more focused and concentrated. His breathing almost hitches when he hears Tamaki, though, and that’s enough validation to make Tamaki overly confident.
“Like what you see?” It’s a misstep; Tamaki realizes it as soon as the words leave his mouth.
Kyouya rolls his eyes. “Don’t play coy, it doesn’t suit you. I’ve known you too long.” At least he doesn’t say I’ve sat here and watched you jerk off for me, it's a little late for false modesty. The line between sarcastic and degrading is an important one.
Tamaki’s brain is nowhere near able to keep up with Kyouya’s convolutions by this point. It’s too occupied with the feel of his fist around his dick. It takes a moment for him to come up with a reply that might repair the situation. He stills his hand for a moment, leans fractionally forward. “I asked because it matters. If it’s you, it matters to me.”
“As if you ever imagined that someone would resist you if you set your mind to it,” Kyouya says, and oh, that’s something. There’s bitterness buried there, long-standing resentment of Tamaki’s effortless charm, but Tamaki chooses to ignore it for the time being in favor of more pressing issues.
“You were never so predictable,” he says, and strokes himself slowly; dick hard, body and eyes soft. “If you wanted this earlier, you should have just asked.”
Kyouya inhales a sharp breath and jerks his hand abortively back towards his lap; oh bull’s-eye, he’s struck a chord there. Tamaki presses the advantage.
“There’s not much I wouldn’t do if you’d just ask.”
It’s as bare as he’s going to get, clothing notwithstanding, and they both know it. Tamaki breaks the moment, allows his head to fall against the couch cushion behind him to bare his throat and look at the ceiling. Just before his eyes close, he catches a movement from Kyouya’s direction. He doesn’t look; instead he imagines Kyouya giving in a little and touching himself, just resting his hand along the curve of his dick. Maybe playing a little with his fingertips, some sort of distraction from watching Tamaki.
The idea of Kyouya’s eyes on him sensitizes his skin, makes him hyper-aware of every sensation. He wonders what he looks like: seated on the floor almost fully dressed, head thrown back, breath ragged. Maybe a little absurd, maybe appealing. It’s easier to make noise when he doesn’t have eye contact with Kyouya, but he still muffles it deep in his throat, wanting to hear Kyouya, taking in little nuances from sound.
It feels good, it feels incredible, and Tamaki’s chest stutters when he hears a surreptitious shift of fabric across the room. God. His mind supplies a picture of Kyouya touching himself through his pants, gripping hard, then mimicking Tamaki’s own movements. It’s so hot, the idea of Kyouya jerking off to his rhythm, watching him and getting off on the shape and flutter of his hands. He exaggerates the flicker of his fingers for effect, but it comes back to bite him when the pleasure nearly sends him over the edge. If he strains hard enough, he can almost hear sounds, soft cloth-slip just fractions off his own tempo. He’s not even sure if it’s an actual sound, or just in his imagination, but the truth is he’s too far gone to care.
In his mind’s eye, Kyouya is watching him through half-closed eyes, breath shallow and fast, one knee pulled up and back a little to make the access easier. He reaches up to drag his fingers across his own lips -- soft skin catching a little on his piano calluses -- and imagines Kyouya doing the same thing: touching his lips, his nipples, arching his hips into the rhythm of his strokes.
Tamaki comes at the thought of Kyouya touching his cock bare instead of through pants, the slip of the wet head through those careful fingers. He loves the thought of Kyouya’s eyes glued to his body, the idea that wherever they go from here they can never go back, the deep-down knowledge that Kyouya is the only one who’s seen him so open, so completely peeled back and fragile.
For a long minute -- two, five maybe -- he just leans back against the couch and breathes. His hands are a little sticky, but he doesn’t think the floor nearby is, which will save cleanup. He’s going to have to launder these pants. He wonders with a sort of detached curiosity what Kyouya is doing.
When he finally opens his eyes, the rest of the room looks surprisingly normal for what they’ve just done. The drab grey walls are still drab grey, the sun is still hot and prickles in the sweat on the back of his neck.
The couch across the room is empty, and for a moment there’s only the sick sinking sensation of having ruined something utterly precious.
Then Kyouya coughs from the stairway. He’s fully dressed now, and Tamaki wonders briefly if he really did just imagine the sounds he’d heard a few minutes earlier. But Kyouya seems indefinably ruffled, something subtle but real changed about his demeanor, the way he stands.
It hits Tamaki suddenly: he’s standing like he’s a little too sensitive where his dick rubs against the fabric of his trousers. He's still hard. Tamaki restrains a victorious smirk. Oddly, Kyouya is wearing his glasses again. Tamaki likes the idea that he'd put them on earlier, desperate to see more clearly.
“Well?” says Kyouya, and heads up the stairs without looking to see if Tamaki follows. Tamaki speculates on whether he’s headed to the bedroom or the bath. He consults his body, and discovers that he’s still a little unsteady. Kyouya was still hard, and that last question had sounded almost like an invitation. He’ll take Kyouya up on it -- as soon as his legs can climb stairs.