Festival
Tsuzuki began the embrace, first taking his hand and then throwing his arms around Tatsumi’s neck. It was so utterly unexpected, and all Tatsumi could think was that Tsuzuki was warm. A living body that he had never thought to touch again.
It crossed his mind that he should not be allowing this. But Tsuzuki had instigated it, and that made it sacred. His hands twitched together in his lap, thwarting each other.
Tsuzuki must have felt the movement. “Tatsumi...” he said gently, with the faintest hint of a smile in his voice.
Tatsumi focused for a moment on the black yukata lying in folds just before his eyes. He stretched his arms out to return the embrace and, with the last of his composure, placed his dignity aside in a safe corner of his mind.
Holding and held, he allowed himself to cry, for the horror of losing Tsuzuki and the guilt of bringing him back. Not the dry, jarring sobs of before, but a steady stream of tears, flowing down his face and seeping into Tsuzuki’s hair.
“I do apologise,” he managed to say eventually, his voice stilted and squeaky.
At his words, Tsuzuki pulled away, and Tatsumi thought for a moment he might say he wanted to sleep now. But Tsuzuki said nothing, only lying back on the bed, arranging himself neatly to one side and looking silently at Tatsumi - who knew then what he wanted.
In the Kyoto hotel room and a thousand times before, it had seemed impossible. Now that reasoning, whatever it had been, seemed part of another world. Tatsumi felt very calm; for a moment he pondered dispassionately the concept of festival, the celebration of life after peril and death had passed.
“May I join you, Tsuzuki-san?” he asked quietly, and the smile he received in reply seemed to travel through him, warming every part. As he removed his outer clothes and glasses he felt light-headed, as if he was succumbing to a fever, but there was no fire now, just the steady warmth of an arm that snaked across his chest as he lay down on the bed. Then, as shadows shot the bolt on the infirmary door, Tsuzuki whispered, breath hot against his ear -
“Tatsumi... stop thinking so much.”
Their lovemaking was heated, almost violent, and Tatsumi had never known a greater pleasure. Tsuzuki pinned him against the bed, pulling at his shirt, popping buttons and half-laughing, “Oh gods, I’m greedy, Tatsumi! Ever since I woke up, I’ve been greedy!” until Tatsumi caught him off guard, throwing him onto his back and sinking hungry teeth into his shoulder while Tsuzuki squirmed and moaned, fisting his hands in Tatsumi’s hair.
“Burn me!” Tsuzuki cried, and Tatsumi grabbed his lover’s straining cock, massaging it roughly, his other hand pinioning Tsuzuki’s wrists as he thrashed on the bed. If a tiny part of him hesitated at what he had heard, all doubt melted away at the sight of Tsuzuki so consumed. Decades of gentle protection, and the shadows in Tsuzuki’s mind had only lengthened. But Tatsumi would no longer let them rule him.
They came with mess, and noise, and joy. Tsuzuki shot upwards, a fountain that Tatsumi tried to catch in his mouth because it was so beautiful, too beautiful to waste. Then Tatsumi was pushed onto his back again, sharing a sticky kiss, a hand and thigh squeezing him to incoherent climax. “Mmm, burn,” he heard himself moaning... he could not find the word shrive.
When it was over, they returned to themselves slowly, cooling and untangling and exchanging newly shy smiles, as if to say, this happened, are we still whole? But a flare of blue light from the lab across the courtyard reminded them that Watari's absence would not last forever, and Tatsumi rose from the bed, cleaning himself with tissues as best he could and donning his suit while Tsuzuki rearranged his sheets to hide the wet spots.
Tsuzuki settled onto the pillows, grinning up with a cheeky innocence. Almost instinctively, Tatsumi fussed with the sloppy corners of the bedding, tucking Tsuzuki in - as, he suddenly realised, he had done only a few nights before, in the Kyoto hotel room.
"I'm alive, Tatsumi," said Tsuzuki simply.
Tatsumi knelt down to kiss him, and run a quick lascivious hand over the top of the bedclothes, marvelling at himself and knowing that it was Tsuzuki who had released this in him. As he straightened up to go, he could feel Tsuzuki watching him, perhaps wondering the same things he himself had begun to consider: when he left this room, how would he feel? How would it be when they met again?
Before he passed through the door, he turned around. A speech was welling up inside him, about what a fool he was, and how precious Tsuzuki was to him, how indebted he felt to Kurosaki and Watari, and how he was still afraid of many things, but profoundly glad that he had lifted Tsuzuki out of the fire.
Tatsumi sat down on the end bed. "And now…" he started portentously. But the words would not assemble themselves. They were too many, and they blurred together as Tsuzuki looked expectantly at him, rising on his elbow.
"… I am alive too." Tatsumi finished simply.
He waited for a thunderbolt to strike, but all he got was Tsuzuki's radiant smile.
~*~