Archive of Our Own

Maybe it’s Ittetsu’s pulse he hears, cheek at rest against that tender thigh, and maybe it’s his own. Maybe it’s both of theirs, twined like Ittetsu’s fingers in his hair, like his lips parted against Ittetsu’s cock.

He’d like to think it’s both of theirs, and so it must be. The gentle insistent thrum of it, the draw of pencil over paper that sounds so far away but is only just up the bed--it’s all there is. The traffic outside is nothing, the TV blasting in the next apartment over is nothing, nothing, nothing.

All there is is this: the sound of them together, the sharp earthen taste that spreads across his tongue. The feel of stretch-marked skin, of cellulite against his face, coarse hair rasping at his nose. The duvet underneath him, downy. The sight, when Keishin can convince his eyes to open, of Ittetsu’s soft belly, the twist in him where he leans over his lap desk, his print-out sudoku puzzle.

The provenance of this: Keishin liked it, laying his head on Ittetsu’s plush lap while he marked his students’ papers. Liked the peace of it, that it required from him nothing but his calm, his day’s-end daze. It was Ittetsu’s brainchild that they bring it to their bed, but there was no way he’d be able to, no way he would want to work proper with Keishin’s mouth on him like that. And thus, a new evening vocation. He was up to intermediate puzzles, now, and Keishin never quite knew how he did it.

Another sound--the shush of fingertips through dried-straw hair, the warm-bathwater calm of Ittetsu’s voice.

“Good boy,” he calls him, and it’s no less firm for its gentleness, no less true than anything else he’s ever said. Keishin thrills with it, hips stuttering against the duvet, against the towel Ittetsu’s put down over it.

He stills himself, sighs a muffled, muddled breath. That’s not what this is about. This is about the way Ittetsu’s hip cradles Keishin’s forehead, about the warm dark, the fingers in his hair. It’s about the afghan Ittetsu laid over his bare back, and Ittetsu’s calf over that. The softness of it rests heavy just below Keishin’s shoulder blade, over the place where a tiny tattooed crow soars, a little half-sober secret of theirs.

Ittetsu has one too, in the same place, and that more than anything makes Keishin feel moored, held. Makes him want, makes him huff and shift and drip into the bedclothes.

And then Ittetsu’s hushing him, gentle and delighted--Keishin can’t see the smile, but he knows, knows it’s there like he knows the way Ittetsu’s handwriting looks on the page, like he knows his little laugh in the instant before it comes.

“Keishin,” he lilts, familiar, drawing out that first soft syllable. “Wait for your reward.”

There’s no heat to it, nothing in the area of stern. He never has to be, never wants to be. Their little games aren’t about punishment, not about toeing some line. It’s just tenderness, surrender, a ritual to end their grueling days. It is a reward unto itself, and Keishin--Keishin is learning to let himself be spoiled.

Ittetsu’s little palm forms to the back of his head, fingers curling, and Keishin sighs into his skin, parts his lips, lists his temple more into that thigh. Wonders what Ittetsu’s planned for him--he doesn’t say, sometimes. Just smiles, soft and birdlike as he does, mischief sparkling behind his lenses.

Unbidden he thinks of times they’ve been like this, times Ittetsu’s had him. Of Ittetsu’s thighs, yes, the plane of them or the searing slick between, the yielding crease of his hip. His soft hedonist’s palms, thick fingers, the part of his lips--the soft sole of his foot, one time, and the thought makes Keishin quiver.

Makes his hips jump, canting up against the bed, and he must stop, must be good the way Ittetsu wants him but even just lying against it, forming to the sag in their old mattress--it’s too much, and Keishin sighs, breathless in that warm wet space.

His jaw shifts, his lips drag over slick-soft folds--he can feel the hitch in Ittetsu’s thigh, in his abdomen, his breath.

“Now, now,” he says, and before they ever laid together Keishin had wondered what it’d be like to hear his teacher’s tone, but this is--different. It’s gentler, warmer like the space between sheets, unyielding as the bedstead. Those fingers curl in his dry hair, blunt fingernails grazing his nape, and he pulls and Keishin wants to look at him, to see the faint fey satisfaction on his face, but his eyes roll back with the sting of it, and he shivers, and he--

He can’t stand it, the taste in his mouth, the voice in his ear, the way he’s so carefully cradled and caged--he winces, spills helplessly against the towel, mouths a crumpled curse into Ittetsu’s skin.

Ittetsu only croons to him, flattens his palm to stroke the hot curve of his neck. “Oh,” he murmurs, “Oh Keishin, that was lovely, did you need it so badly?”

And yes, he did, he always does when it’s Ittetsu. It’s never been anyone else, as curmudgeonly as Keishin is, he’s defenseless against that sweet smile, the way he strives and strives and strives for what he wants.

Keishin--with what energy he can dredge at the end of the day--will always give it to him. Even if he moans about it, even if he kvetches, it’s really all he can do.

But Ittetsu asked him to hold still, be good, to wait, and--

”’M sorry,” Keishin mouths, mumbling, knitting his brows.

“Oh no,” says Ittetsu, “you’re perfect, you could have told me that you needed--sweet boy, do you want to keep going? This puzzle’s pretty tricky, but I think I’ll have it soon, and then we can play or I can just take care of you, oh you’re doing so well.”

He must mean it, for the way his little cock twitches against Keishin’s lip. The way he turns to look at him, propped on one elbow, smiling slack-mouthed with glasses askew.

Spent as he is, Keishin twitches. He’s beautiful.

He tells Ittetsu so with a new-springing blush, a tiny kiss against his cock. Ittetsu giggles.

“You have to say it, Keishin.”

“Mmngph,” Keishin grumbles, but it’s an effort in good faith. His head lists, falls against Ittetsu’s thigh, which makes his little love laugh again. “Y-yeah,” he tries, “no, I want--I wanna.”

Want to be good to you, be good for you, want to work at it. Get the job done.

Ittetsu gives a little nod, petting the last of the sting from his scalp. “Good boy,” he says, dulcet, and it falls over Keishin like the afghan, like the blunted scent that rolls through him.

More than just the words, even, it’s that he knows Ittetsu would say them either way. He settles, fitting bitten lips around Ittetsu’s cock again, nestling his head into that thigh. One hand shifts up, wide palm forming to the crest of his love’s plush hip.

The blanket slips, a little, with the move. Ittetsu just drifts his hand down to adjust, to tuck it in the crook of Keishin’s shoulder, to stroke sunburnt skin on the way back up. Just lays those fingers back down in his hair, settles them in it.

“Won’t be long,” he whispers, and Keishin ought to nod, acknowledge somehow, but he’s just--too loose in the limbs, too comfortable.

He waits, soft and safe and bleary, thick lashes drifting open and shut against Ittetsu’s skin. Drifts on the sound of their pulses, just barely out of sync, on the gentle scritch of pencil-paper. On the heat of him--Ittetsu runs warm, always. Incandescent man, relentless, relentlessly beloved.

His fingers scrunch in Keishin’s hair, the tips of them circling, bearing out aimless rhythms. He hems a little, on occasion, and Keishin makes out his mannerism, the dull tap of eraser against paper.

Twitches, sometimes, too, if Keishin shifts or sighs or swallows. Just gentle, barely there against his tongue-tip.

“Good,” Ittetsu calls him, blithe and absent-minded, and it comes over him like a rippling bath. How is it, he wonders, how is it this easy to be good? It aches in the best way, like well-exerted muscle, like a hard day’s night.

He waits, holds his soft-slack position. Is good.

Eventually, the scribbling stops. “There!” declares Ittetsu, bright and satisfied, the way he sounds when everything on Earth is to his liking. His small hand guides Keishin’s head, leads him to look up his lush body, to meet his glinting eye.

Ittetsu stops, a second, as if he was going to say one thing and then decided it was vitally important that he say another. His fingertips dart in, drag over the swell of Keishin’s lower lip, the mess on his face. Keishin lists for them, a soft subconscious thing, and with a delighted little noise Ittetsu nods, slips two plump fingers between Keishin’s lips.

“If I wasn’t too tired--and too worked up!--to remember,” he murmurs, petting at his love’s tongue, “I’d quote Sappho to you right now, you’re astonishing.”

There is a thing that lives in Keishin, that will always live in Keishin, that wants to shake his head. That wants to brush it off like an off-key set, to go on being--oh, he doesn’t know what.

Whatever the thing is, it’s a man, and he is a man, and that means something.

It means something different to Ittetsu.

He’s beginning to like Ittetsu’s way better.

He keeps mum about it, though, closing his lips gently around Ittetsu’s fingers, earning a pleased little hum.

“You burn me,” Ittetsu says, “that one’s easy. Oh, if I could remember the way the one about the apples went, Keishin, I would--you’re so sweet, so red for me.”

Keishin sighs, the soft weight of it settling on Ittetsu’s knuckles. It earns him a smile, a gentle ruffling of his hair.

Ittetsu takes a moment just to look down at him, to hold him, before he speaks again. “Anyway, dear,” he murmurs, “I don’t think that puzzle was actually supposed to be that hard, but you were so good to me I could barely think straight about it! I’m sure there’s a mistake in there somewhere, too many sevens or something.”

A little laugh, then, around Ittetsu’s fingers, a flutter of wilting eyelids, a flaring somewhere deep. Silly as it is, it’s…

Ittetsu is precious to him.

He must know it, too, with the way he blinks slow at him, the way those fingertips press gentle on his tongue. The new-moon smile on his face, adoring.

“Now, Keishin,” he says, and those fingers press just slightly further into his mouth--Keishin swallows around them, eager, something close to overwhelmed. “Would you like to keep going as we’d planned? It’s okay, you’re still perfect if you’re tired, you’ve already made me quite happy.”

It sends a shiver through him, that inflection, the way it falls from those soft lips. Keishin draws a wincing breath, rocking ‘til his mouth meets with Ittetsu’s knuckles--it’s not the yes his exacting lover needs, but it’s enough to earn a dreamy sigh, a thumbpad soft along his jaw.

“Keishin,” Ittetsu murmurs, without manifest purpose. Just to hear it, just to see the way it falls on Keishin’s brow. He draws his fingers out, gentle and languid and easy, and smiles.

“Tell me what you want,” he says.

Keishin blinks slow, dazed, changes warm gestures for words. Fuck, he says, on the first try, and ’Tetsu on the second, and it earns him that sated laugh, the one that sounds as if the whole world is brand-new. Wet fingers thread in his hair again, tousling, and Ittetsu’s hand steadies him so well he doesn’t mind the slick on them.

“Wanna,” he tries, half-hoarse, “wanna suck you off. Please.”

And those fingers curl--not pulling, just for the fettering feeling of a firm hand at his nape, and Ittetsu grins as bright and sweet, as innocent as the fizz in melon soda.

“Very good,” he lilts, half-giggling, “Keishin. Go on, dear heart, go ahead.” He shifts easy, parts his thighs that last little bit, and the smell of him--gentle, like the afghan it’s been on Keishin’s back all night, but the immediacy of it… He shivers.

Nuzzles down to the place he’s needed, wastes no time in laving with the flat of his tongue. Ittetsu twitches, a bone-deep thing that gets him in the hips and the hand, that holds Keishin fast between them.

It’s just--Keishin quivers--he’s so soft, there, red-swollen and wet where Keishin held him, and the taste spreads once again across his tongue, edged and heady.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, muffled, and it’s the vibration or the movement of his mouth that makes Ittetsu’s little cock jump, makes him hum captivation and approval. Makes him whisper a gentle good boy when Keishin’s lips come to wrap around it, suckling soft.

“There you go, there you go,” Ittetsu coaxes, like it’s the first time, like Keishin’s never pled for this before. “So sweet, Keishin, so--!”

He cries out, then, a little shard of sound when Keishin does the right thing with his tongue--something he’s practiced, taken to his heart. And then again, because Keishin reckons he oughtn’t fix what isn’t broken, what makes Ittetsu’s hips cant up against him, makes pale gorgeous thighs tense around his ears. The heel on his back drags up, a point of pressure just off from his spine, and it presses him in tighter.

Closer, until he can blessedly barely breathe, until his browbone meets Ittetsu’s mons, until their pulses mix deafening, spasming, and above it all the sound of Ittetsu’s ragged breath, spilt praises.

Yes, he hears, off in the distance, and good boy, sweet boy, darling, aren’t you talented?

Oh, he tries to be. He tries to be, with everything in him, everything that Ittetsu’s tended. He tries to be better for him, truly does, and if he’s rewarded like this--oh, it’s more than worth it.

Keishin surges to it, desperate, wide-mouthed and wanting--his fingers come to grasp at Ittetsu’s hips, drag until they’re as close as they can be, until the world is only soft and slick and shivering. Until Ittetsu spills over, thighs and fingers and voice all clenching, until he yelps out Keishin’s name.

Until then, and for the moments after--until Ittetsu’s settled, boneless on the bed, pulse thrumming languid in the both of them. His hand goes slack in Keishin’s hair, strokes the crown of his head, the sweat from his brow when Keishin falls against his hip.

His voice breaks, when he calls Keishin wonderful.

They remain like that a while, gathering up the remnants of their breath. Ittetsu croons, and for once Keishin doesn’t color, doesn’t grumble--just lets it fall on him like the heat of an overdue shower, like an end to the longest working day, the best drunken eve of his life.

In the morning, though, there’ll be no hangover--just perhaps a kink in his neck, a distant aching in his jaw. For sure, Ittetsu’s arms curled tight around his waist, palms flat and claiming at his chest.

For the moment, one cups his sticky cheek, wipes at his lips. He reaches for a cloth to do it proper, cool and clean and smelling like all Ittetsu’s linens, that same homey soap-smell that does nothing so well as it soothes.

“There you are,” he murmurs, “there you go. Come up here, now, Keishin.”

Keishin grumbles soft protest, if only to see the look Ittetsu gives him. He knows what it’ll be--that gentle glare, radiating affectionate command--he just... Just wants to see it, just wants to hold it for one second.

He sits up, blanket pooling about his hips, and drinks from the cup Ittetsu holds for him. Clears his throat, draws his hands up Ittetsu’s waist, fingertips spreading over the scars on his chest.

“Love you,” he says, tiny and bashful, and Ittetsu jumps to kiss him, to throw arms around his shoulders and hold him hard.

“I think you might be the most precious thing there is,” Ittetsu says, as if it’s some great secret. “However shall I reward you for that?”

Keishin falters, spluttering quietly against Ittetsu’s neck. “I--uh.”

“If you want me to,” Ittetsu murmurs, so close that Keishin can feel the drag of lips on skin, “I won’t give up until you come again.”

He starts, hands scrabbling aimless on Keishin’s back--“It’s alright if you’re too tired, though!” And it is, Keishin knows it is. It’s been drilled into him by now, by the unstoppable force of Ittetsu’s chipper love, that here of all places in the world it is okay to be too tired.

Still. He’s young yet--well, for a certain definition of the term, and Ittetsu is so warm against him, so sweet, and heaven help him but if it’s even possible he wants it.

“Alright,” he sighs, “if you can, ‘Tetsu, I’m game but I wanna know how.”

He can feel the curling of Ittetsu’s smile against his shoulder, can feel him shifting eager, mouthing at the pierced shell of his ear.

Ittetsu tells him, on a dusky, self-satisfied whisper that makes him twitch, makes something somewhere deep start aching. And then he pulls back, smiling all obliging and expectant, and it’s all Keishin can do to nod, to shiver his hands away, move so he can take Ittetsu’s place on his back.

He settles up against the pillows, lays Ittetsu’s glasses on the nightstand when they’re handed to him. Throws his thighs apart, lets Ittetsu kneel between his knees. Lets himself be kissed, lets little palms drag down across his chest, the strain of his abdomen, the mess that’s settled there. Ittetsu ducks down, laps at it with a quick tongue, and Keishin has a hard time believing it’s for any reason other than making him squirm.

“You,” Ittetsu declares all hushed, his breath warm on the crown of Keishin’s cock, “are adorable like this.” As if it’s news, as if he’s never said anything like it.

He looks up, brief and bright-eyed, just to append that he is this adorable all the time, and this, of all the things that’ve happened tonight, is the thing to make Keishin blush.

“Y’re a menace,” he volleys back, and Ittetsu is laughing, laughing, cheery as a bell, muffling the sound of it in Keishin’s shoulder.

It turns into a kiss, into a wide-mouthed suckling thing, and for a moment their only concern is the mark that’ll shine there in the morning, that Ittetsu will press his thumbprint into the next time they make love.

“Oh,” he says lightly, and mouths his way back down, kissing Keishin’s nipple, his navel, the crest of his hip, “thank you for noticing!”

Keishin barks a laugh, then, ruffles Ittetsu’s silk-soft hair--and then stops short, because Ittetsu’s mouth is on him, lips closing around the soft head of his cock and it’s a crackling feeling, live. He half-shouts with it, claps that hand across his mouth.

Ittetsu only reaches up, with the hand that’s not petting Keishin’s inner thigh, and pulls it down, away. Arranges that, too, over the back of his head, and goes on kissing him, laving with his clever tongue as his hand dives down, reaches for the cold thing that Keishin barely registered against his leg--it must be the lube, but Keishin’s no idea when Ittetsu got it from the nightstand.

He laughs a little, a tiny thunderroll of a thing, because every day the evidence that Ittetsu’s magic mounts up just a little higher.

He’d never say so, but he’s pretty sure Ittetsu already knows.

And then he isn’t thinking anything, because Ittetsu is humming around his cockhead, making him spasm and hitch and adore.

Distantly, Keishin understands that they’re waiting for the slick to warm on Ittetsu’s soft little fingers, but it wouldn’t feel like waiting for the world. Ittetsu’s other hand pets at his thigh, at his thinnest, most sensitive skin, and Keishin won’t wax hard but he aches, tightens, leaks against Ittetsu’s tongue.

Makes a little sound, breaking off high in his throat, and it’s then that Ittetsu’s nosing his thighs apart even wider, slipping one finger between to brush at his entrance, just circling, just soft.

“Hah,” he tries, with what breath is left to him, “‘Tetsu, don’t tease--!”

Ittetsu just looks up at him, eyes heavy-lidded and glinting, and bids him remember your manners, Keishin.

He does, just can’t get out the please around his swallow, around the feel of Ittetsu’s soft fingertip, warm breath against his skin--he whimpers with it, but Ittetsu won’t relent. Will never relent, and it’s with that tender insistence that his fingertip slips inside, testing, making him sigh.

One little palm comes up to lay on the plane of Keishin’s thigh, to massage the soft-covered muscle there, to say there you are, isn’t that nice? And it is, it is, and Keishin tells him on a whine, a wracking little tremor.

And that makes Ittetsu laugh, inasmuch as he can, and Keishin jackknifes with the vibration of it, with the throat-burning sweetness. With the way that fingertip presses in him, searching.

He watches the flex of his fingers, having just enough presence to determine that he won’t pull Ittetsu’s hair, that he’ll be good, oh how he wants to be good. How he wants to be told that he’s good--and Ittetsu does, occupied as his mouth is, by the pleased little hum in his throat, the soft squeeze of his palm.

The way he sucks at him, gentle and easy and rhythmic, overwhelming even though it’s barely just the head of his cock between Ittetsu’s lips. The finger in him, finding that sweet spot and pressing, massaging until Keishin swears he can feel himself drip again in the slick space of Ittetsu’s mouth.

And the way it hurts, oh how it hurts, a deep soreness like pushing too far, and he revels in it, in the thought that Ittetsu knows he can take it, that Ittetsu is sweet and greedy enough to want everything Keishin has to give him.

It’s a muzzy-headed thing, bleary, all couched in the heat of Ittetsu between his legs, his little close-mouthed coos--Keishin doesn’t know how long it takes, but it takes and it takes and it takes until he’s spasming, shaking, spilling weak and helpless into Ittetsu’s mouth. Keening, sobbing just a little.

His Ittetsu gentles him through it, stroking at his skin, milking him dry until he’s more than more than spent, sprawling breathless back against the bed.

It’s only then that Ittetsu looks up, wipes his mouth coquettish on his wrist, fixes Keishin with the sweetest, most innocent of smiles. “There you go,” he says, with that same deep exhilaration, and falls on him, gathering him up, nestling his head into the cradle of Keishin’s shoulder.

“There you go, Keishin, oh, you were lovely--I really do wish I could remember that Sappho,” he spills giddy from his slick lips, and though Keishin can’t see his face he knows Ittetsu’s smiling, smiling.

And help him, he is too, though he’s never been a creature of Sappho, though he’s never sure he’s all Ittetsu deems him--here, in these long-lingering seconds, with his face nuzzled deep in Ittetsu’s soft sweet-smelling hair, here, for a moment, he can be.