Chapter Text
Imaizumi Shunsuke is startlingly soft, despite the sharpness of his dark eyes and the heavy, world-weary set to his shoulders.
He was the one, after all, who approached Ishigaki and asked if they knew each other from somewhere, even after Ishigaki had been staring hard at him for at least half a minute trying to decide whether or not that really was Imaizumi Shunsuke wandering about the old streets of Kyoto by himself, looking like a lost little stray in the last rays of daylight. Ishigaki introduced himself, said that he was a fan (only the vaguest truth in all honesty), and Imaizumi had cocked his head a little in response and asked if he happened to attend Kyoto Fushimi back in the day.
That had caught Ishigaki off-guard enough that when Imaizumi followed up with the sudden request to catch up over drinks, he immediately acquiesced and led him on autopilot to his favorite neighborhood pub, asking all the while what Imaizumi was doing in Kyoto at this time of year and where he was staying and when he was leaving, but he hadn’t actually heard Imaizumi’s responses to any of those questions over the bewildered pounding in his chest.
After a couple of bottles of warm sake and hesitant glances from underneath long eyelashes, Ishigaki begins to think about what it would be like to kiss him. Imaizumi’s distinctively diamond-shaped face, with its strong cheekbones and pointy chin, are softened in the gentle light of the washi paper lamps, and the hard clench of his jaw loosens along with his speech. By the time they leave the bar, he has gotten Imaizumi to call him just “Ishi-san” without sounding self-conscious, and the name sounds particularly sweet coming from such an elegant mouth.
He’s sure Imaizumi has somewhere to be by tomorrow, but Imaizumi follows him down the street and into the winding back alleys of his neighborhood like it was the most natural decision in the world. Imaizumi isn’t so drunk that he stumbles on his feet, but Ishigaki takes his chance to lay a protective hand on the small of his back whenever the street is wide enough for him to do so, and Imaizumi never says a word otherwise and even, on occasion, leans ever so slightly into Ishigaki’s shoulder.
It takes very little to encourage Imaizumi to come inside for a bit, to take off his shoes and to have a seat and some water. Ishigaki hasn’t had a proper guest over in ages, but bustling around and social politeness is second nature to him now, and it isn’t long until they’re both situated on the one worn-in sofa in the living area with untouched glasses on the coffee table before them.
Ishigaki digs his toes into the rug and stares hard at Imaizumi’s profile. He wonders how he tastes.
Imaizumi, at that moment, sitting there curled up on the corner of his couch like a small housecat, with the faint flush of alcohol still coloring his face, looks much younger than he is. He’s almost like a teenager again, one of the high schoolers Kyoto Fushimi raced against and ultimately lost to in Ishigaki’s third year, and certainly not the elite cyclist that he is now, posing in ads for helmets and colognes like any old sundry, airbrushed model.
It is because he seems so much softer and approachable in the comfort of Ishigaki’s own home that he takes a calculated risk and leans over, closing his mouth over Imaizumi’s, and after the initial freeze of surprise, Imaizumi presses back with the softest exhale of relief.
“Sorry,” Ishigaki mumbles as he sits back after a moment, and he has to cover his stupidly giddy smile with his hand before it spreads out all over his face. “I’ve just... I’ve been thinking about doing that for a while now, and I guess I couldn’t endure it any longer.”
Imaizumi blinks at him, frowning, and his lips appear so plush especially when they’re pouting. “For a while? Since when?”
Ishigaki stares at Imaizumi, looks at the way his bangs fall in his eyes and shadow his lovely face, and shakes his head. His smile turns rueful as he lowers his hand, letting it fall to his knee. “Since we were having drinks. I guess after a few rounds you stopped being this fancy pro cyclist in my eyes and you became just... just a normal guy, like me.”
The couch cushions shift and creak a little as Imaizumi hunches forward, and when Ishigaki turns toward him, he sees his frown deepen. “But I am a normal guy,” he insists, the faintest strain of irritation filtering into his voice, and when Ishigaki doesn’t respond, Imaizumi’s surprisingly cold fingers latch onto his wrist. “Ishi-san, really.”
After a moment of hesitation, Ishigaki draws his other hand around Imaizumi’s and feels the chill of the digits disperse into the warmth of his palm. He glances up at Imaizumi and offers a gentler smile in return. “I believe that, Imaizumi, but it’s hard to forget who you are, sometimes.”
The hand around his wrist squeezes once as if in warning, and then Imaizumi scoots closer, fumbling his way awkwardly over the couch cushions on his knees. His face bobs close, then closer, to Ishigaki’s, his eyelashes painting fine, inky strands against his skin, and again Ishigaki is seized with a terrible, achy want to kiss him. Thankfully Imaizumi does that much for the both of them, their lips brushing tentatively at first, and then he presses forward a little more firmly, more insistently, and Ishigaki shudders when a hand slides into his hair to tug him even closer against a soft mouth and hot tongue.
Imaizumi slips into his lap at some point, and his chest fits seamlessly against Ishigaki’s except for when they break apart to breathe, their ribcages nestling snug into each other’s heaving gasps for air. Between urgent exchanges of their mouths, Imaizumi whispers, “Call me Shunsuke, then.”
That is the name that Ishigaki uses when he half-carries Imaizumi to his bed and undresses him with quickness tempered by a habitually careful hand. From under long sleeves and snug pant legs emerge muscled arms and legs built like slender, solid trees, demarcated with surgical precision into areas of bronzed tan and milky whiteness, and if Ishigaki himself hadn’t known the pain of looking like a victim of a terrible tanning session for much of his formative cycling years, he would have thought the dramatic difference too ridiculous to be real, especially on a body this beautiful.
The soft lines of Imaizumi’s deep tan provide good starting points for him to lick his way along, leisurely lapping a trail around the swell of his powerful, thick thighs, all corded, taut muscle, toned and unyielding to the touch but covered with a layer of smooth, soft skin that indents easily with a light press of teeth. He finds that Imaizumi makes the most terrible of sounds when he nips at the sensitive inner portion of his thigh, whining and keening and pleading with half-formed words for more, Ishi-san, more.
There are only very particular things Ishigaki is willing to put himself through the agony of enduring nowadays, and Imaizumi Shunsuke is not about to be one of them.
He plies open Imaizumi’s body with his fingers while he bites at the rounded jut of his hip, and by the time he’s up to three fingers he has Imaizumi sobbing into the pillow, arching into the heat of the mouth as he lavishes wet kisses all over the head of his cock.
Imaizumi takes it, takes everything—when Ishigaki fucks him hard, he moans and cries; when Ishigaki moves against him slow and soft, he only gets louder and more clamorous; when Ishigaki kisses him, he responds desperately in kind as if Ishigaki is his only source for air. He doesn’t say a word in protest when Ishigaki dips his chin and bites into his neck, marking him with bruises that will last well beyond this one night; if anything, Imaizumi encourages it with the way he tosses his head, unabashedly displaying the proud column of his throat with the single lewdest lip bite Ishigaki thinks he’s ever seen.
Imaizumi comes first with a wordless, breathless whimper, spilling his seed over his own stomach as Ishigaki pumps his length with firm strokes, but he clings to him afterward with those insanely strong legs, begging Ishigaki to fuck him harder still, to come inside of him. Ishigaki gives him all he has, pushing in as deep as he can go when he finally climaxes and sinking his teeth into a porcelain-white shoulder, and Imaizumi whispers his name brokenly on repeat and strokes his back until the last of the pulses inside of him fades away to nothing.
After the headiness of the afterglow passes, he more than expects Imaizumi to take his leave, but to his sleepy wonderment Imaizumi shows no signs of departing. In fact, he petulantly refuses to get up and shower, complaining of compounded exhaustion from sex, traveling, and cycling, so Ishigaki hauls himself up and brings back a wet cloth to wipe Imaizumi down like an unruly child. As soon as that is taken care of, Imaizumi latches onto him from behind, and Ishigaki realizes as he is falling asleep in Imaizumi’s embrace that he is the little spoon.
Ishigaki wakes up once, maybe around six or so, still enveloped in the pleasant warmth of Imaizumi’s body curled tightly around him and a hand clasped over his own. By the time he fully comes to a couple of hours later, though, Imaizumi is gone.
The bathroom mirror is still slightly fogged, and there is cool water on the tile. In the kitchen awaits a cup and a half of freshly-made coffee in the pot, and on the table is a memo pad, scrounged from one of the drawers, marked with a phone number and email address in straight, neat handwriting. Ishigaki drowsily enters both into his phone while sipping at a cup and silently resolves not to make contact right away, but not thirty minutes later he sends a polite text saying Thank you for coming over.
Imaizumi responds within the hour. Thank you for having me.
The next few days are quiet. Ishigaki goes about his repair work without sparing much time to think about the slightly out-of-the-ordinary events that had transpired recently, and when the older employees ask him about anything wild he got up to over the weekend, all he says is that he had a few drinks with an old friend from his high school days and leaves it at that. Any bruises and scratches Imaizumi might have left on him are safely hidden under layers of clothing, so nobody is none the wiser.
Then one day during his lunch break, Imaizumi sends him a message out of the blue—with a photo attachment, no less, and it is with great care that Ishigaki scans the area to make sure nobody is looking over his shoulder when he clicks the download link. He isn’t sure what he expects, given that Imaizumi didn’t seem like the type to send unsolicited dick pics during a weekday afternoon, and the possibility of receiving explicit pictures at work both thrills and terrifies him, but he certainly isn’t expecting a picture of a cat.
A fluffy calico cat draped across the drops of a handlebar, in fact.
Is this his cat, Ishigaki wonders, and then he gets a follow-up message: I found my cat sleeping on one of my old bikes today.
He looks at the photo for a little while and wonders what he’s supposed to say in response to this kind of communication. Nice cat, what’s its name? Boy kitty, girl kitty? Shouldn’t you be training or at some kind of photoshoot? Why are you texting me pictures of your cat?
As he is still contemplating what to type back, Imaizumi sends yet another message. How is your day?
Ishigaki looks at that message, looks at the work he has set aside for after lunch, and puts his phone down. He’s not desperate enough to answer right away, so he saves it for later.
Imaizumi must think he had forgotten about replying, as towards the evening he gets another cat photo. This time it sits regally on a very plump cushion, gazing straight at the camera like a stately queen posing for a portrait, and Imaizumi has even gone to the trouble of adding at least a couple of filters to the picture, turning the shadows a deep purple and the lighting a watery blue.
Am I his personal Instagram, Ishigaki thinks with a confused frown as he thumbs back to their messages and ponders what to write in reply. After a moment of silence doesn’t bring anything else from Imaizumi, Ishigaki taps out, Cute kitty! Work was as usual. How about you?
He gets an instant “read” notification on the message he sent, but Imaizumi doesn’t say anything for a full two minutes, and when he does, it is a very awkward and abrupt Doing fine.
Well, all right then, Ishigaki thinks with a raised eyebrow. Something about Imaizumi kind of reminded him a little of Midousuji—almost like he needed a certain kind of coddling to accommodate his slightly skewed personality, but he knows better than to bring that up now. How’s training going?
Again, Imaizumi seems to immediately see his message, and the reply comes back a little faster than the last one did, and it’s also longer: Picking up again. There’s a world tour race coming up next week.
World tour race? He knows Imaizumi is a pro, and that there had been a bit of a fuss when he’d appeared as a starting member in the Giro d’Italia for his America-based team some years ago, but his name hadn’t been showing up in headlines as much as it used to in recent times. He plugs the kanji for his name into the search bar, curious now about what Imaizumi’s been up to, and his jaw drops at what he discovers.
Imaizumi hadn’t appeared in any of the Grand Tours within the past couple years because he was now acting captain of a Japan-based professional team backed by Scott. According to the team website, their aim was to take their many accomplishments as individuals—riders who had ridden with the best abroad and claimed flat stage, mountain stage, and young rider classifications at numerous prestigious races—to gain access as a team into the Grand Tours. Among their greats were names like...
Midousuji? Ishigaki wonders, eyes widening as he scans the names of the 30 man-odd roster. Onoda Sakamichi was still riding? And Naruko Shoukichi, Manami Sangaku, all with a string of accolades tacked on to their names—weren’t they all those kids from his last Inter-High?
He returns to his messages and types without thinking. You’re riding with Midousuji Akira nowadays?!
Oh, writes Imaizumi a few seconds later, he’s kind of difficult, but he’s a good cyclist. He handles a lot of the PR for the team.
Before he can help himself, he asks, How is he doing?
The response comes back right away, but he can feel the stiffness through his words. Ishigaki can tell instantly that he’s touched a nerve, however small. About as well as Midousuji can be. You can Google him to see what he’s been up to.
Their conversation goes quiet after that, and Ishigaki musingly feeds his turtle some leftover mustard greens and a slice of apple as he peruses various websites detailing Midousuji’s history, beginning from his “meteoric ascent as an aspiring high schooler in Kyoto” to his “breakthrough onto the grand stage of Paris,” now several years ago, which he had heard about in passing back when he still made an effort to keep track of the people he used to ride with. It also includes his various associations with off-beat fashion designers, commentary on his ever-changing hairstyles and piercings, and dead links to questionably obscene photos on his Instagram.
What a strange, small world this is, he thinks as he absent-mindedly strokes Gaman’s shell, flicking through race shots from a Tour de France from a few years ago with his other hand. He pauses on a photo of Imaizumi, wearing expensive-looking sunglasses that obscure his eyes and with a face drenched with sweat, his mouth open with labored breathing.
Next to him is a long, lean, hulking figure, clad in the jersey of a different team. The clenched square teeth and distinctive, hunched-over riding style could only indicate one possible person.
He sets his phone down to charge, turns off the lights, and goes to bed with thoughts of Paris in his head.
Imaizumi texts him on and off through the upcoming days, mostly pictures of his extremely spoiled cat that lead Ishigaki to believe that perhaps this guy had more time on his hands than he was initially led to believe, and at some point they start coming in at strange hours (and the cat photos stop). It’s not until Imaizumi mentions in passing that he’s in Canada that it belatedly clicks, and from then on Ishigaki makes sure to check the calendar of the UCI World Tour regularly and sure enough, there are two races that week, one in Quebec and the other in Montreal, just a few days apart.
As expected, Imaizumi goes completely silent several hours before the first race is set to begin, and Ishigaki spends all of his free time at work calculating the time difference between Japan and Canada, counting down to the start of his race. The thirteen-hour gap between them means he is asleep for a good chunk of the time that Imaizumi is racing, and as soon as he wakes up the morning after, he checks his phone for updates about the leaderboard.
Midousuji Akira, Onoda Sakamichi, and a third name from the same team have all placed within the top ten. He scrolls down the list and finds Imaizumi Shunsuke down toward the thirties, with Naruko Shoukichi a ways behind, clustered with a few other members of their team. Manami Sangaku is... nowhere to be found, apparently. Interesting.
Though he wants to hear from Imaizumi about what happened in the rankings, he leaves him be to focus on his racing and busies himself with details of his next project at work. He has roughly chiseled out the design of a replacement crest going over the entryway of an old family estate when a message with a photo attachment comes in from Imaizumi.
For some reason or other he thinks it’s just yet another cat picture despite Imaizumi being overseas (he assumes that Imaizumi has a long lineup of photos queued up to slowly send him over time), so he opens it without much thought or concern. What loads up on the screen is a long stretch of finely-toned body from chest to hips, completely nude save for a slip of a towel and glistening all over with droplets of water.
With a choked swear and a clatter of tools, Ishigaki drops his phone onto the floor. It bounces and skitters away over old newspapers and wood shavings, flopping over facedown (thankfully) on a scrap of tarp.
“Ishigaki-kun, you okay?” One of his seniors, who is cleaning up the floor with a broom, asks with a frown as he bends down to retrieve the device.
Ishigaki yells something along the lines of “No no no no” as he launches himself across the room to snatch his phone out of his puzzled coworker’s hand, crushing the screen flat against his body. Apologizing profusely for the trouble, he scuttles hastily back to his workspace and practically chucks his phone into a drawer, trying to ignore the heat wrapped tight around his neck like a vise grip. It takes him a good five minutes before he has calmed down enough to resume his work on the crest without his hands shaking around the chisel.
Later, in the privacy of his own home, he opens up the last message sent to him again and sees for the first time the attached line of text: Resting up for Montreal.
Resting up for Montreal? Like that? And then sending it to him? Yeah, okay, Imaizumi. Don’t send me photos like that when I’m at work, he admonishes even though he knows that with the time difference, Imaizumi has to be sleeping. My coworker almost saw!
By the time he eats and gets out of the bath an hour or two later, Imaizumi has sent a reply. You’re at home now, though, aren’t you?
Another photo attachment. Ishigaki glares at the thumbnail with suspicion, checks over his shoulder to make sure that Gaman is entirely engrossed in his strawberry treat, and then downloads the file.
Bright morning light heightens the paleness of Imaizumi’s bare chest and abdomen and starkly outlines the low waist of his black sweats, which have been tugged down so far that they barely cling to his sharp hipbones. One hand has been placed rather strategically over the area of his crotch, and when Ishigaki looks a little closer, that bulge has definitely got to be...
Is that what I think it is, Ishigaki types with fingers that definitely do not tremble. Have some shame, Imaizumi Shunsuke!
Sorry... says Imaizumi, and a few seconds later another photo comes in. Ishigaki sucks at his lower lip as he hesitantly clicks the link, and now Imaizumi’s hand is inside his pants.
How old is Imaizumi to be flirting so aggressively like this via text, Ishigaki wonders, his eyes flicking between one dusty brown nipple and the lewd suggestion of a bent wrist dipping under a waistband. Did he expect Ishigaki to... reciprocate in kind?
He turns to look contemplatively at Gaman, who continues to chew contentedly at his piece of fruit. Ishigaki had never thought himself the type to send sexy photos to anyone, especially not to someone he’d slept with once and hadn’t ever thought he would really stay in touch with, but on the other hand...
A little part of him feels rather intensely flattered that somebody like Imaizumi Shunsuke would have more than just a passing interest in him, because no matter what Imaizumi himself thought, he was on a different level from someone like Ishigaki, who spent his days fixing temples and decaying wooden bridges in sleepy parts of Kyoto.
So maybe snapping a photo of his abs—with his own pajama bottoms pulled as far down as he could manage without embarrassing himself with his own audaciousness—and sending it to someone overseas may not have been the most solid of decisions he’s made as an adult, but he thinks he can trust Imaizumi. Somebody who took cringingly hipster photos of his own cat probably wasn’t the type to try and blackmail him later over one shot of his stomach, or so he reasons with himself as he watches the “sending” bar load up all the way.
Seconds after he sends the photo he sees the “read” label appear, and Imaizumi doesn’t say anything in response. Could he be... jacking off? A little curl of heat twists in Ishigaki’s belly and begins to smugly travel downwards, and he bites the inside of his cheek while he stares unblinkingly at his phone.
His brain doesn’t register the incoming call screen for the first few seconds, not until the vibrations kick in and his arm up to his elbow rattles with its buzzing.
“Imaizumi,” he says as soon as he manages to accept the call, his voice wavering slightly at the end, “what are—”
Imaizumi stills the words in Ishigaki’s throat with the tiniest of dreamy sighs. “Ishi-san,” he murmurs, his voice scratchy and low, and Ishigaki wishes he knew if that was just the overseas call quality or if Imaizumi always sounded like this shortly after waking up. Imaizumi swallows audibly, and that sends an instantaneous throb of heat down to Ishigaki’s cock. He continues in a sultry whisper, “Ishi-san, I... want to hear your voice.”
“M...My voice?” Ishigaki repeats faintly, and Imaizumi confirms this with a soft gasp. He licks his lips and braces his elbows on his desk, and he involuntarily glances sideways at Gaman yet again. “What do you want me to say... Imaizumi? Um, Shunsuke?”
Something about Imaizumi’s given name seems to thrill him, and the pitch of his voice deepens with the next moan that comes shivering its way across the line to Ishigaki’s ear. Ishigaki feels like some kind of pervert listening in on Imaizumi whimpering and groaning with complete abandon, and he thinks he even hears the bed squeaking ever so slightly in the background.
He clears his throat and tries again. “Sh-Shunsuke, um...”
A series of sharp, staccato breaths cut him off, and Ishigaki feels himself being set on fire with the way Imaizumi keens out “Ishi-san” in the midst of his feverish tossing and turning. The next groan gets choked off, and Imaizumi goes intensely quiet afterward.
Ishigaki looks down at his half-hard cock beginning to push outward against his pajama pants and rubs tiredly at his eyes. “Hey, ah, did you—”
There is a sharp click sound, and then complete silence. Ishigaki frowns and pulls the phone away from his ear, and when the screen lights up again, he sees Call Ended.
Did—Did Imaizumi just...
He looks over at Gaman, who has finished his strawberry and now stares resolutely back at Ishigaki, judging him with his wise, beady eyes. Ishigaki bites his lip, looks down at his unwelcome erection, and with a sigh gets up and wobbles over to the bathroom.
How does one breach the subject of “Why did you hang up so suddenly after getting off?” with the offending party, Ishigaki wonders as he heads yawning into work the next day and sits down at his station to finish detailing the family crest. Had the mortification that came along with calling someone for masturbatory material kicked in and made him cut the call? Common sense did sometimes return to you like the drop of a guillotine after orgasm. Maybe Imaizumi regretted calling someone he had slept with once just to get off...
Ishigaki Koutarou, the long-distance booty call, he thinks to himself with flippant resignation as he sands down a few last rough spots and then inspects and weighs the crest one last time. Who would have ever thought?
“Maeda-san,” he calls as he heaves himself up with the large wooden circle cradled in his arms, “I’ve finished the base, so you can start—”
He steps into the path of their secretary, who happens to be scurrying by with an armload of files and magazines, and with a yelp she tries to weave around him but, as per her usual klutziness, she trips and drops most of the stack instead. With an aggravated sigh she bends to collect her things, and after he sets down the wooden crest at his coworker’s station, Ishigaki stoops to help her against her very vocal protests.
“Yoshiko-san, you need to be more careful around here when... Oh? What’s this?” He turns over one glossy-backed magazine and is greeted with the very stoic stare of Imaizumi, posed artfully over the saddle and handlebars of some generic-looking bike with his jersey completely unzipped, exposing his glorious, rippling abs to all of the watching world.
Someone from over Ishigaki’s shoulder clucks their tongue disapprovingly. “Yoshiko-san, smuggling in softcore to work now? What if your dad hears about this?”
“She reads it for the articles,” Ishigaki offers jokingly, flipping through it and raising his eyebrows at the contents. There is an interview with Imaizumi in here that looks sort of interesting, if the bolded, large-font quote that reads “I’m not one to look for love” smack dab in the center is anything to go by.
“Ishigaki-san, please give that back,” Yoshiko hisses, blushing profusely as she shuffles toward him, but Ishigaki pulls it out of her reach.
“I’m confiscating this,” he announces cheerily, standing up and heading back to his desk. Yoshiko screeches pleadingly at him, but there’s nothing she can really do when everybody in the warehouse knows about her particular choices in leisurely reading material now. He tosses it in a corner of his workbench not covered in dust and crumpled notes and turns on his laptop to check emails from their clients.
What am I doing, Ishigaki thinks later once he gets home and has placed Imaizumi’s half-hearted foray into artistic nudity on his kitchen table. Just about everyone had forgotten about the incident at work already, so sneaking it back home had been laughably easy, and now here he is, thumbing through it while his take-away dinner starts to cool next to its glossy pages. He absently reads through the article—which has very little actual substance, no matter the occasional witty one-liners the writer manages to throw in at least once every other paragraph to make Imaizumi’s very deadpan responses slightly more appealing—but finds himself lingering on the section titled “Romance and Relationships.”
YP: Anybody in your life right now?
IS: Not really.
YP: Is it that you just don’t have time with your busy schedule, or...?
IS: That’s a major part of it. Right now, with how often I’m out of the country for races and how much time I have to dedicate every week to training and managing a team, even my friends and family get upset with me when I can’t meet up with them for weeks at a time. I can’t imagine someone who would be OK with that in a romantic relationship.
YP: So you’re not looking, either, then.
IS: I’m not one to look for love in general. I’ve learned the hard way that trying to make it work when the circumstances of your life simply don’t allow for it only strains things even more. So if it happens, it happens—but I’m busy enough as it is that I don’t ever have the time to feel alone, anyway.
Almost reflexively he glances down at his phone, half-expecting another text from a certain someone to be patiently waiting for him to notice it, but there is nothing there. He flips to the front of the magazine and sees that it was published just last month, so Imaizumi was presumably still single. And not looking, if the magazine were anything to go by.
He flips back over the two-page spread of Imaizumi laid out like a presumptuous feline over a jet-black rococo-style chaise lounge. They have dressed him in long sleeves and long pants to hide his tanlines but popped enough buttons and tugged down hems just enough to make him appear slightly disheveled, and combined with the mussed hair and puckered lips (did they honestly have to put lipgloss on him) he looks...
Ishigaki swallows and turns the page, where his eyes fall upon the stretch of bare, pale back directed at the camera. The shirt barely clings to Imaizumi’s crooked elbows now, dipping away in a sensual arc that offsets the sharp angles of his shoulder blades arching out of his perfect, airbrush-smooth skin.
The very close-up photo taking up the next page showcases his chest and sculpted abs, complete with perky nipples; the next one highlights the curves of his back and affords a teasing peek of his rear from a side-on angle. And then the last one makes Ishigaki pause mid-reach for his beer.
It’s a surprisingly artful shot, almost abstract at first glance: sharply-defined, smoothly arcing diagonal lines emerge from the upper corners, drawing the gaze downward toward a fine trail of hairs that are cut off by long, articulate fingers, held loosely over a smooth, bare bulge of flesh.
Ishigaki’s outstretched hand drops to the table, then slowly reels itself back to his side.
This is unfair, he thinks ruefully to himself as he traces the ridge of Imaizumi’s hips while his other hand creeps almost preemptively into his pants. He knew firsthand just how hot Imaizumi’s body was, having slept with him and all, but he had been drunk then, and the experience remains a little fuzzy at the corners—and then this brings everything back into painfully sharp focus, rendering those dim memories with breathtakingly clean, clear edges that make his throat go dry.
He grips his still-soft cock in one palm and lowers the magazine flat to the tabletop, smoothing out the page with a shaking hand. He rubs the pad of his thumb along the skin of Imaizumi’s abdomen in unison with a slow, easy jerk of his cock, and with a stuttering breath and rough swallow he remembers the way those muscles rippled underneath him with every ragged breath and trembling moan that carried his name, the shudder of his muscled thighs and the burning heat of his body.
Then Imaizumi’s voice bubbles up in his memory, along with the flush of all-over warmth that came with his soft, trembling moans of Ishi-san, Ishi-san, blurring together with the whispering shift of skin on sheets. Ishigaki bites his lip as he feels himself harden, his cock pulsing in his hand, and his eyes fall shut as he plays back the sounds of Imaizumi touching himself, imagining him writhing on the bed with one hand wrapped around his prick and the other skating up his abdomen, shamelessly shoving the hem of his shirt up his chest. His legs would splay open farther and farther apart with every slick pull until they were practically flat against the mattress, every taut piano string of muscle and tendon drawing the eye straight to the achy throb of his cock, slippery with his own pre-come...
A loud exhale escapes Ishigaki as he pumps himself in earnest, squeezing his eyes shut as his mind raced with images of Imaizumi’s dark, lidded eyes and the slick pink pucker of his hole. He bites his lip hard and tries to fight it, but he can’t help the first needy little “Shunsuke,” which only throws open the gates to all sorts of embarrassing groans and pleas as he fondles himself roughly, grinding the pad of his thumb hard against the head of his leaking cock.
“You’re so unfair,” Ishigaki wheezes as he forces himself back upright, slamming a forearm down on the table to brace himself over the photo of Imaizumi’s hips. He hungrily drinks in the coy peek of Imaizumi’s cock again and again as he strokes furiously, grunting and panting around the hard clench of his teeth until the first tremor takes root, arcing outward and spreading in fanning waves with a sharp clench of his stomach.
He shuts his eyes as the come splatters over the back of his hand. Something about it feels half-hearted almost, not nearly as intense—because he’s fucked the real thing once before, obviously, he reminds himself with an exhausted groan while he slaps the magazine shut and shoves it away in self-disgust. He wipes the come off on his pants, strips himself of them, and tosses them in his bathroom hamper. After washing his hands, he returns to his dinner in just his underwear and sighs heavily with every other bite.
He takes the magazine back to work the next morning, discreetly slipping it back into his desk drawer when nobody is paying attention, and when he returns in the evening after a long day making repairs to a local temple, he pulls the issue of YP back out and leaves it on Yoshiko’s desk.
Yoshiko, despite being a very good secretary for her father’s business, isn’t exactly the most organized and tidy of them, and Ishigaki can’t help but notice a similarly-glossy magazine sticking just a bit out of a stack of folders stuffed with photos of their recent work. He eases it out and is greeted with a leering face and long, lanky body cast in dramatic shadow and swathed in black clothing. In silvery letters at the bottom it reads Tour de Force: Midousuji Akira.
He flips through it with a raised eyebrow, glancing over smooth, pale torsos and legs as sinuous as snakes, but he pauses on a black-and-white profile shot of Midousuji’s ears and neck and nose littered with chains and spikes and black feathers. From his long, belt-like tongue emerges an arrow-shaped stud at the junction of its bifurcation into two sharp, small points, and wide, kohl-lined eyes with reptilian pupils gaze with unflinching focus at the reader.
Ishigaki is still soaking in everything, wondering when and where on earth Midousuji went down this particular route in life, when a hand falls on his shoulder, and with a jump he slams the magazine shut.
“Don’t tell me you’re interested in those magazines too, Ishigaki-kun,” his boss says with a weary sigh, mopping at his brow with a handkerchief. “Yoshiko is enough trouble as it is, buying that kind of stuff and leaving it all over the house.”
“I, uh,” Ishigaki stammers and then pauses to clear his throat, “I went to high school with this guy, actually. I was just... curious to see what he was doing in a magazine like this. N-Not your everyday stuff for a professional cyclist, you know?”
His boss makes a thoughtful sound. “Oh, one of those guys you went to school with? Well,” he snorts, retracting his hand from Ishigaki with a fatherly shoulder pat, “don’t let Yoshiko know, she might want to ask you for an autograph or something.”
The thought of asking Midousuji for an autograph seems so bizarre and cringe-inducing after having seen him through his years as an awkward, screechy high schooler, and with a soft huff of amusement Ishigaki replaces the magazine and heads out of the shop and into the waning light of dusk.
He bikes to his usual convenience store, picks up some necessities, hovers in the magazine aisle for a good minute when he sees that they have Midousuji’s issue of YP (plastic-wrapped, of course) stocked on the racks, and then forces himself away. He’s not about to spend another lonely, miserable night jerking off to Midousuji of all people—he can practically feel the venomous gross! following him like the chill of an early winter wind and does his best to banish the thought as he pedals his way home through the side streets of sleepy suburbia.
When he gets home, he checks the time again and determines that it is early morning on the day of the second race, this time in Montreal. He wavers back and forth about saying anything but decides to go ahead with sending a bland, straightforward Do your best today! message to Imaizumi. He watches it load up on the screen, waits for several seconds afterward to see if Imaizumi has seen it, and when he gets no “read” notification he sets his phone down and forces himself to eat.
His phone buzzes while he’s in the middle of cleaning Gaman’s tank an hour later, and he tries his best not to sprint to the kitchen table where it’s vibrating, but he still manages to catch the name on the lit screen before it cuts to black again—Imaizumi Shunsuke. With a mixture of apprehension and excitement welling in his chest, he taps the message notification.
Thank you very much for your support, and I apologize for before, says Imaizumi, and that’s it.
So Imaizumi slingshotted from the one extreme of incredibly forward and horny to the other end of the spectrum, to stiffly formal and polite. He had slipped into using abbreviations and more informal language just a few messages before, but this one is all no-nonsense kanji and excessive wordiness that tells him that they’ve taken a few steps backward in this weird friendship (with benefits) that they have going so far.
Ishigaki scowls at the words, but to be polite—and to save Imaizumi any sort of mental anguish before an international race—he types back, It’s okay. Ride well!
Imaizumi sees it, and then, predictably, doesn’t answer. Ishigaki sets down his phone, calculates yet again the start time of the race, and then goes back to scrubbing.
Later, while he makes every attempt to go to bed early because he has another off-site project the next day, he still finds himself checking his phone at odd intervals and drowsily figuring out the time difference. He’s barely awake at midnight, when it’s 11 in the morning in Montreal and when the race is set to begin, and he drifts off to sleep with his phone in his hand.
He jolts awake two hours later, and after blearily making out the time on his phone he immediately refreshes the sports news page on cycling he already has open in his browser. Three names from the Scott team, including Imaizumi, are in the lead pack, and reassured of their progress, he falls back asleep and dreams of the days of his Inter-high now over ten years ago.
When he wakes up several hours later at his actual alarm, he discovers his phone shoved under his pillow and overheating badly from being suffocated overnight. Despite that, he hurriedly loads up the results, and when he sees Imaizumi Shunsuke at the very top, finishing first, with Naruko Shoukichi close behind in third place, he breathes a sigh (more like a yawn) of relief.
He thumbs out Congrats on first place! while he’s brushing his teeth at the sink. Imaizumi doesn’t see it, but he can’t help smiling anyway, oddly buoyant with the thought that Imaizumi claimed first in an international race. The future of Japanese cycling, he thinks, remembering a headline he saw from an article from around the time of Imaizumi’s debut in the Giro d’Italia, and he barely feels his fatigue as he makes himself a quick breakfast, feeds Gaman, and goes pedaling on his way to the office to meet up with the others before they head out to the temple they are scheduled to repair.
Thank you! writes Imaizumi in a message sent sometime before lunch, though Ishigaki doesn’t see it until he’s already back at home after a hard day of work. Things worked out much better this time compared to Quebec.
What happened in Quebec, exactly? Ishigaki asks back as he wolfs down his dinner, not really expecting Imaizumi to answer right away, but it seems that despite the early hour in Canada, Imaizumi is already awake.
Manami... says Imaizumi, and the venom in his voice is so readily apparent through just one written word that Ishigaki chokes on his miso soup.
After wiping the surface of his phone down, he types back, Well, you did great at Montreal regardless of Quebec. Rest up and get home safe.
Imaizumi thanks him again, tells him he’ll be flying out soon so he has to go, and then goes quiet. Ishigaki eats the rest of his meal in silence as he thumbs through the few clips of race footage that he can locate and some news articles, mostly short and to the point, and he finds himself coming back to the last five hundred-meter sprint to the finish line. Naruko comes veering out from the side of the pack, Imaizumi in hot pursuit as they serve around the bulk of riders careening headlong towards the goal, and in the last few seconds Imaizumi propels himself forward with an incredible burst of speed, his body swaying rhythmically over his handlebars as he just barely edges out a Spanish competitor to claim first place.
One Japanese blog hails him as “Japan’s Hope” after this win in Montreal, and Ishigaki feels a little prickle of pride, entirely undeserved, well up in his own chest.
On a strange impulse, he looks up the team website and tracks down an address for inquiries and fanmail. In a separate window he pulls up a flower delivery service, spends ten minutes trying to decide if red roses were too gaudy, and then settles on a more subdued blue-and-white floral arrangement that goes with the team’s colors. He schedules them to be sent out late the morning after Imaizumi returns to Japan, and though his wallet hurts from the exorbitant shipping and handling fee, he goes to bed feeling successful and productive with his day.
A couple of days later, he gets no word back from Imaizumi about the flowers, but he writes it off as fatigue from the past week or being busy with team-related business (or perhaps some manager of theirs simply placed the flowers with all the others congratulatory gifts they must have received, and Imaizumi was none the wiser) and consoles himself with the “delivery successful” confirmation email he receives from the flower shop. He gets a photo of Imaizumi’s cat lounging around with his trophy from his Montreal victory, clearly pulled from his Instagram account judging by the color filters, but he hears nothing else the rest of the day until the evening.
Somebody rings his doorbell rather late at night when he has just gotten out of the shower, and he opens the door while pushing a towel through his wet hair, figuring it’s his weird beatnik landlord if anything. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees who it is. “Imaizumi?!”
Imaizumi looks, for a brief moment, about as flustered as Ishigaki, and then he schools his face back into his hard-eyed, stoic calm. “Can I come in,” he states rather than asks, but politely all the same.
“W-What are you doing here?” Ishigaki asks in a tone closer to hysterical than he’d like, because he is definitely not prepared to see Imaizumi, either in body or in mind, and remembering how he is dressed, he yanks at the sinking waistband of his pajama bottoms while still keeping his towel on his head. “Do you know what time it is?”
With a mild blink and then the faint suggestion of a smile, Imaizumi teases in a dry monotone, “Are you some kind of old man, Ishi-san? Do you have a bedtime you need to abide by?”
Of all things Imaizumi might say, he was not expecting a jab at his age. With a very adult frown, Ishigaki throws open the door and gestures Imaizumi inside with a brusque wave of his hand. Imaizumi floats on in, and Ishigaki shuts the door with a mutter about having respect for your seniors.
A hand falls on his shoulder, and Imaizumi is suddenly very, very close, the heat of his body dangerously warm next to the planes of Ishigaki’s. “Ishi-san,” Imaizumi says quietly, his breath tickling the shell of Ishigaki’s ear, “I wanted to thank you for the flowers.”
Ishigaki squeezes the door handle tightly for a long second before releasing it, letting his hand fall back to his side. “So you took the bullet train all the way down here just to say that in person?” he asks, glancing sideways at Imaizumi—and then he is spinning on his own feet, his back hitting the door as Imaizumi lunges in, closing their mouths together roughly and fearlessly.
Imaizumi tastes like mints, and the thought that he might have considered it proper to pop a breath freshener before knocking on Ishigaki’s door somehow makes him feel warm and tingly inside as their tongues press and wind against each other fiercely. Almost without meaning to he lifts his arms and slides them around Imaizumi’s neck, drawing them even closer together, and he feels a thick pulse hammer under the sensitive skin of his forearm.
They break apart with a shared gasp, and Imaizumi leans back in to peck him on the mouth. He murmurs, lashes fluttering over his warmly-tanned face, “I flew down, actually.”
Ishigaki resists the urge to roll his eyes at the clarification. “Well, okay, but just to say thanks? You could have just sent a message—”
“I wanted to see you,” Imaizumi interrupts, and the throaty, deep pitch of his voice makes Ishigaki immediately fall silent while his stomach squeezes with unexpected arousal. Lips are on his again, and Imaizumi’s broad hands are running all over his chest, tweaking his nipples, skirting the waistband of his sweats.
A hand snakes down into his pants and palms his cock, and Ishigaki surges up into Imaizumi’s hungry mouth, moaning shamelessly as he juts his hips forward into soft skin and excruciating heat. So Imaizumi wanted sex, did he—so much so that he flew all the way down and must have taken a train or a taxi for at least an hour to get it, apparently.
Ishigaki could appreciate that kind of effort, if he were honest. Especially when Imaizumi drops to his knees in front of him, pulling urgently at his sweats, and he begins to lick shamelessly at the head of Ishigaki’s cock, swirling his tongue around the slit as he slowly jerks the shaft, and the way he looks up and meets Ishigaki’s clouded eyes almost makes his legs give out from underneath the weight of his own body.
The back of his head thuds against the door as his eyes fall shut, stuttering breaths escaping his mouth. Imaizumi is good at giving head—did he practice a lot, Ishigaki finds himself wondering in some small, still-functioning part of his brain as he moans into the back of his hand, trying his best to muffle the sound as Imaizumi sucks eagerly around him, easing more and more of Ishigaki’s length into his unbelievably hot, wet mouth.
From underneath hooded eyes, Ishigaki watches Imaizumi’s throat shift up and down with every swallow and pass of his tongue along the underside of his length. Imaizumi is very stolidly not touching himself despite the obvious bulge in the front of his pants, delegating the use of both his hands to fondling Ishigaki’s balls and stroking the remainder of his cock.
“Imai...zumi,” he pants hoarsely, biting the skin of his knuckle in between choked groans, “Imaizu—shit—”
Just as the suction between the roof of Imaizumi’s mouth and his tongue is about to do him in, Imaizumi pulls off, squeezing him firmly at the base of his cock as he rocks back up onto his feet and stands.
“It’s ‘Shunsuke,’ remember,” Imaizumi chides gently as he trails his fingertips over Ishigaki’s exposed hipbones, and he leans down to press a kiss to his collarbone. “Turn around,” he murmurs, and Ishigaki slowly does as he is told, wobbling all the while and scrambling for breath.
For some reason he doesn’t anticipate the cold press of inquisitive fingers slicked with lube, and he makes an absolutely mortifying sound and jerks along the door even as Imaizumi shushes him and holds his hip down with his free hand.
Imaizumi has one finger inside of him when he finally has the presence of mind to hesitantly ask, “Are you okay with this?”
Ishigaki sort of wants to say something along the lines of You’re a little slow on the uptake sometimes, aren’t you, but it seems like too much trouble to form the words. Instead he bites his tongue, manages a short nod, and takes a deep breath as Imaizumi draws his finger out and adds a second, and as he sinks in, Imaizumi bites and laves at his neck while he languidly grinds his clothed erection against Ishigaki’s hip.
“You’re really tight,” Imaizumi whispers almost reverently as he slowly, carefully scissors his fingers apart, and Ishigaki bites down a low keen as a fingertip brushes dangerously close to his prostate.
“W... Where did that lube come from,” Ishigaki says with difficulty, bracing himself as best he can against the doorframe as Imaizumi resumes pumping his fingers in and out of him.
There is a brief pause, and then a third finger is introduced, and Ishigaki feels himself trembling as Imaizumi reaches around him to stroke his cock while easing himself in to the knuckle. When Ishigaki’s breathing steadies again, Imaizumi replies quite calmly, “From the corner store; why?”
“That’s not what I... ngh,” Ishigaki groans, his forehead dropping to the door with a smack as he gives up. Did Imaizumi really buy a bottle of lube from that mom and pop shop down the street from his apartment? They... They had lube stocked there? He was never going to be able to look Mr. and Mrs. Ishida in the eye again after this, knowing they sold Imaizumi a bottle of lube of all things—
The fingers draw out of him, and the sounds of a zipper unzipping and pants being pulled down, followed by the tear of foil, alert him to the real deal about to beset him, and within the span of only a few heartbeats Imaizumi is pressing the tip of his cock to Ishigaki’s slick hole and slowly easing himself in.
Ishigaki makes an incredibly embarrassing, high-pitched and watery sound as Imaizumi slides in all the way. For his swiftness in preparing him, he was still very thorough, and there is no real pain; Imaizumi is still much larger than the circumference of three fingers, though, and his body has long gone unused to the strange sensations of penetration.
“Ishi-san,” Imaizumi purrs open-mouthed against the faint sheen of sweat gathering on his shoulder, and with one delicious roll of his hips he’s completely inside of Ishigaki’s trembling body. “Ishi-san, you’re—mmh...”
Ishigaki reaches out blindly with one hand, swatting at the fronds of a barely-alive plant in the corner of the entryway as he cranes his arm backward to snag Imaizumi by the hair, curling his fingertips against his scalp. “Come on,” he chokes out, gritting his teeth when Imaizumi’s strong hands squeeze tight into the flare of his hips, “d... do it, Shunsuke.”
A sharp exhale of breath rushes past his ear, and Imaizumi takes only a moment to steady himself before drawing out and carefully pushing back in, drawing forth another scrambled groan from Ishigaki. With Ishigaki’s encouragement he sets a steady, if slow, pace, one that tears Ishigaki between appreciating Imaizumi’s consideration for him and a hungriness in the pit of his stomach that wants Imaizumi to fuck him into the door until neither of them can stand.
No matter how slow the pace is, though, Ishigaki can’t help the breathy, high-pitched noises that filter out with every thrust that sends Imaizumi deep inside of him. Imaizumi curls tight over the arch of Ishigaki’s back, biting sharply into his shoulder and breathing heavily with controlled restraint, and it’s only when Ishigaki utters a thoughtless “Shunsuke, harder” that whatever cord binding Imaizumi’s saintly patience finally snaps and sets him loose.
The blanket of heat coming from Imaizumi’s chest on his back disappears as he draws away suddenly and yanks Ishigaki’s lower half away from the support of the door, making him stick his rear out at a coquettish angle. Ishigaki barely gets the chance to kick his legs out for balance before Imaizumi pounds into him with none of his previous restraint, his cock driving in deep and rough, and this time Ishigaki actually does scream into the knuckles he has wedged between his teeth.
Every thrust now shears him open deliciously wide and full, and stars go spinning across his vision with every heady press against his prostate. Imaizumi repeats his name like a broken record as he fucks him with relentless abandon, his voice pitching high and certainly much louder than it needs to be, but Ishigaki can barely hear him over the noisy slap of their bodies coupled together with the squelch of lube.
When Imaizumi’s hand creeps over his skin and grasps his cock, it only takes a few good strokes before Ishigaki finds himself coming with a violent full-body shudder. The staggering cry emerges from somewhere low in his throat, and he chokes more than once at the sight of his come spilling in fat streaks across the pebbled floor coupled together with the forceful, heavy press of Imaizumi’s cock, throbbing hot and thick inside of him.
Imaizumi wraps himself close again as he sheathes himself one last time, coming with only a shuddering grunt with lips pressed to the back of Ishigaki’s neck. The hand not still holding Ishigaki’s cock slips its way upwards, coming to a stop over the part of his chest containing his still-fluttering, racing heart, and with a last heave of effort Ishigaki covers the back of Imaizumi’s hand in his.
He doesn’t know how long they stand there in the entryway by his front door, tied up in one another while the sweat and come dries on their flushed skin and their breaths start to steady—it feels like a short eternity of ponderous, heavy silence until Imaizumi pulls out and coaxes him to turn back around, one hand skating the curve of Ishigaki’s jaw. Imaizumi meets his eyes for a long second, black lashes flickering before gray eyes that are darkened to shadow, and then he melts into him with the most natural motion in the world, nestling his mouth against Ishigaki’s with a surety and finality that honestly kind of scares Ishigaki to the quick, because he welcomes him instinctively with open arms.
Imaizumi spends the night again—and for the second time Ishigaki is subjected to being the little spoon, but he finds he actually doesn’t really mind—and stays for as long as breakfast, which is altogether not as awkward as Ishigaki anticipated it being. Neither of them can put much together aside from toast and eggs and sausage, something Ishigaki is not terribly surprised by (because why should a professional sports athlete be bothered with cooking his own meals?), but Imaizumi does prove his ability to make a decent cup of coffee again. They sit and eat in companionable silence for a bit, and then Ishigaki makes the mistake of asking about Imaizumi’s cat.
He could never have prepared for the almost maniacal gleam to suddenly take over Imaizumi’s eyes, or how Imaizumi whips his phone out (from his boxers? Where had it come from?), the screen already full of rows of calico-colored thumbnails.
“His name is Arimaru-kun, he’s two years and seven months old,” recites Imaizumi, selecting one thumbnail to blow up the image, which is simply of a fluffy tail laid out in a square patch of sunlight. Artistic, Ishigaki sort of wants to comment, one eyebrow slowly creeping up his forehead, but Imaizumi barrels onward, swiping to the next photo, this time a close-up shot of a fluffy little paw.
“Cute,” Ishigaki manages to get in before Imaizumi continues chattering away.
“They say only one out of about every three thousand calico cats is male, so he’s kind of a rarity,” Imaizumi gushes, glowing and puffing with pride, and Ishigaki hides his smile in his cup of coffee. In the many interviews he’s watched of Imaizumi (he’s been watching some old ones here and there on Youtube, which is kind of embarrassing and maybe creepy to admit), he’s never once seen him this excited about anything, not even cycling. It’s honestly kind of stupidly adorable, the way Imaizumi’s eyes light up like a kid’s at Christmas the longer he prattles on about Arimaru’s little jelly bean toes and thick fur coat and darling ears.
It’s so cute, in fact, that Ishigaki puts down his mug and leans over while Imaizumi is still mid-sentence about how Arimaru loves to steal his toast, shutting him up with a firm kiss to the mouth that takes him entirely off guard judging by the way he makes a garbled sound into Ishigaki’s mouth like he is offended at the interruption.
Ishigaki pulls away, smiling at Imaizumi’s dumbstruck expression, and picks up his coffee again. “Go on,” he says encouragingly, nodding at Imaizumi’s phone.
It takes Imaizumi a moment to put his thoughts back in order again, and the first thing he mumbles after a careful swallow of some eggs is, “Sorry, I got kind of carried away, didn’t I?”
Imaizumi blushes bright red in the apples of his cheeks as he fidgets with his phone, and Ishigaki bites his lip to smother the painful wideness of his smile. “Don’t worry, it’s okay,” he assures him, reaching over and placing his hand on Imaizumi’s slender wrist. He means it to be a friendly, comforting touch, but his fingers linger on the ridge of vein and tendon under the delicate skin, long enough to feel the blip-blip-blip of a heartbeat racing much faster than it should at rest.
Underneath his fingertips he senses Imaizumi tremble minutely, and when he glances up at him, he sees that the entirety of Imaizumi’s bare arm, divided into sections of tan and pale, has pebbled with gooseflesh.
He removes his hand, and it flits from the handle of his coffee cup to the table and then to his lap. Finally, he stands and says with forced brightness, “Do you want to meet my turtle?”
Imaizumi leaves after breakfast (once he has met Gaman’s acquaintance and has fed him a strawberry) to attend to some interviews and a post-race team conference back in Chiba, and he promises as he pulls on his jacket and shoes at the entryway that he’ll be back soon. Neither of them moves in for a goodbye kiss, even though a part of Ishigaki really wants to and hopes Imaizumi might take the initiative, but all he gets is an awkwardly long, lingering look and an assurance that they’ll be in touch. He watches Imaizumi’s back until he’s out the gate and down the street, heading in the direction of the nearest station, and then he turns and closes the door and lets out a heavy sigh.
The first text he gets from Imaizumi some hours later is, naturally, of Arimaru-kun, curled up in a weird topsy-turvy bundle on Imaizumi’s lap, captioned with the line, He’s very cathletic.
(Ishigaki, for the record, has absolutely no idea how or what to feel about Imaizumi progressing to dropping puns on him, and the rest of the afternoon devolves into them hurling terrible cat and turtle jokes at each other.)
Ishigaki figures he ought to have known that “being in touch” would mean pictures of Arimaru-kun, and lots of them. He gets them at an average rate of one per day, though some days he gets an influx of half a dozen or more all within several minutes. To spite Imaizumi for spamming him, Ishigaki attempts to recreate some of his cat photos with Gaman, which inevitably results in Imaizumi not talking to him for a few hours afterward at least, especially when Ishigaki goes so far as to finagle little cat ears onto Gaman’s shell and captions his snaps with lines like So cute, nyan!
But in between the back-and-forth cat and turtle photos are stretches of days, sometimes as long as a week, where Imaizumi’s correspondence is spotty as he travels outside the country. Ishigaki is surprised at first at just how much Imaizumi seems to shuttle around—but it is well into fall now, and the only places still warm enough for cycling are mostly limited to Asia Continental races, which are within closer reach for Imaizumi’s team. They frequently fly out to China and occasionally as far west as the UAE, and with time Ishigaki accumulates photos of local tourist traps and cuisine, as well as inexplicable images of a magical girl figurine being posed cutely in strange locations.
Imaizumi is always the one to call him, mostly because Ishigaki never knows where Imaizumi might be at any given time. Most of their conversations are straightforward and informational, in which Imaizumi unloads a lot of cycling-specific talk on Ishigaki, asking his opinion on the strategies they employed in a race (if Ishigaki had told him in advance that he would be watching the footage) and complaining about Midousuji’s uncooperativeness every once in a while. When Imaizumi has exhausted their discussion on current point totals and training regimens, he will finally ask Ishigaki about what he has been up to since the last time they caught up.
Ishigaki honestly fears how boring his life and work is—he detailed another crest the other day, will install it on an aging temple tomorrow, fixed up a local bridge that was slowly easing into the river it spanned—and after the first time he finds that Imaizumi has fallen asleep on him, he is a mixture of offended and endeared, especially when Imaizumi texts him back in the morning, local time, with an apology for being so tired (but Ishigaki’s Kyoto dialect was honestly so soothing and easy to fall asleep to). Maybe it is all really humdrum, uninteresting stuff that isn’t really worth talking about, but every time Imaizumi knocks out on his end of the line, Ishigaki finds himself listening to Imaizumi breathe, heavy and soft, for minutes at a time until he finally whispers a goodnight and hangs up.
Aside from those more normal calls, there is the odd booty call every so often, occurring maybe only once every month or so and usually preceding an impromptu visit right after Imaizumi wraps up overseas. Imaizumi seems to try his best to time those calls so that Ishigaki is at home after work, and Ishigaki always knows with the first low, husky “Ishi-san” that greets him when he picks up that Imaizumi has very particular intentions that night.
Despite his forwardness in calling for a quick jerk, though, Imaizumi always seems rather awkward and shy about the whole thing, and so Ishigaki makes it a point to tease him, asking jokingly about his day while dropping a “Shunsuke” nearly every other word to make Imaizumi whimper. Trying to get any kind of dirty talk out of Imaizumi is rather pointless and impossible once he gets reduced to little noises and moans, so Ishigaki ends up taking the reins, drawing on a hidden side of himself in order to command Imaizumi to pinch and pull at his own nipples, to finger his hole and to imagine Ishigaki fucking him into the mattress, to stroke himself to completion while thinking of Ishigaki’s mouth around him.
He barely touches himself in the meanwhile, only fisting his cock in earnest once Imaizumi approaches orgasm, his voice pitching rough and urgent, choking on his own spit as he comes, and Ishigaki pumps himself fast and hard listening to the sounds of Imaizumi frantically whispering “Ishi-san” as the bed squeaks underneath him. With the blood pounding like a frantic drumbeat in his head, he’ll come with a low groan of Shunsuke that never fails to make Imaizumi cry out with a mangled sob in response.
Imaizumi always follows up with a visit within a day or two, riding in on the momentum of his latest victory and their recent exchange over the phone. They’ll have sex at least once if not twice—sometimes a quickie in the morning if Ishigaki isn’t in too much of a rush, or if it’s a weekend without work—and then Imaizumi will flit away again back to Chiba to take care of things with his team and his sponsors and to make sure Midousuji wasn’t planning on setting fire to anyone’s house again (because apparently that had once been a thing of some kind).
It is already December, somehow, by the time Ishigaki realizes they’ve spent about three months whiling the time away together through cat-turtle pictures, cycling discussions, wanking over the phone, and the rare in-person visit. The team is on break until after the New Year’s holidays, and he and Imaizumi have been tossing around dates for another short visit down in Kyoto, trying to work around the hectic last-minute renovations and repairs that temples and shrines always came in with right before the influx of visitors at the stroke of the new year.
His schedule, for once, seems packed to the brim until well after the first week of January, while Imaizumi’s is wide open save for the occasional holiday promo photoshoot and modeling gig and the like. Imaizumi sounds disappointed when he tells him that he honestly can’t spare much time until after the holidays have passed—really he means he’ll be too exhausted to move after every day of work, to the point that not even Imaizumi’s ass could entice him—and he feels rather bad about it, because Imaizumi had mentioned wanting to actually look around Kyoto now that he had the time to do so.
He studies his scrawled-over calendar for the nth time, covered in arrows and circles of every color pen he has at his disposal, and feels his eyes begin to throb in their sockets again. “I’m sorry, I really don’t think this is going to work,” he half-groans, half-mumbles over the phone to Imaizumi, rubbing a hand over his face as he forcibly turns himself away from his schedule. “If you come over you’ll just end up being left alone most of the time; I’m just way too busy until after the holidays.”
“Oh,” says Imaizumi, sounding crestfallen, and then he falls thoughtfully silent as he mulls over the news. “So... sometime in January, then.”
“At the earliest,” Ishigaki replies, rubbing a thumb over his brow as he glances through his work email. One new request from a tiny shrine on the other side of the tracks about peeling paint; he wants to slam his head through his laptop screen. He sighs tersely and tries to withhold the frustration from his voice. “I’m sorry, Shunsuke. I really do want to see you, but at the rate things are going...”
“No, Ishi-san, don’t worry about it, I understand,” replies Imaizumi, quickly and firmly, with all the grace of someone used to deflecting his own disappointment from behind the veneer of social etiquette, and Ishigaki feels an uncomfortable knot twist itself into his stomach at the empty politeness of his words. “Maybe once things have settled down after the new year—”
“Why don’t I come see you, for a change?” Ishigaki interrupts quickly before he’s thought the implications of what he’s saying all the way through. “You’re always coming down to see me, spending all your time and money traveling; isn’t it only right that I make the trip up at least once, too?”
He hears Imaizumi inhale sharply, swallow, and pause to consider. “Come see me up in Chiba?” Imaizumi murmurs low and soft, and Ishigaki can imagine the way he’s probably stroking Arimaru-kun’s fluffy body as he turns the proposal over in his head. “In January?”
Ishigaki turns back to his calendar and flips over to the next month, glancing down the rows and boxing four day-weekends to consider in lines of pencil. “Yes, in January. I’ll ask for a few days off, it really shouldn’t be a problem once we finish up all these projects and things get quiet again—I haven’t been up to Kanto in a long time, and it’d be... It’d be nice,” he finishes lamely, biting the well-worn eraser nib as he is suddenly overtaken with doubt and uncertainty. Would it be nice? Would things just get awkward if their roles as host and visitor were reversed for a change, especially over a period longer than an overnight stay?
Ever so faintly, he hears a distant meow and then the thump of little paws hitting the floor. Imaizumi makes a disgruntled sound at Arimaru-kun’s departure but then says congenially to Ishigaki, “I wouldn’t mind having you over, if you’re fine with staying with me.”
The bubble of concern inside of him deflates just a little. He grabs a memo pad and a pen and begins to scribble down the dates from before. “Okay, great! When would be better for you, towards the first half of the month, or later on?”
They settle on a weekend in early January, right after the rush of holiday travel following New Year’s celebrations. Imaizumi wishes Ishigaki well on his endeavors and tells him he looks forward to January, and after he hangs up Ishigaki draws loopy blue circles around the Friday he plans on leaving for Chiba, feeling a little lighter than he did before.