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There's a special kind of exhaustion that comes from repeatedly throwing yourself at something that won't budge.
Chigiri has lost count of how many times he's cornered him: in hallways after practice, when the facility empties out and the fluorescent lights hum their tuneless vigil overhead. A few short-lived attempts outside the weight room; once, stupidly, in the middle of the dining hall where anyone probably witnessed his humiliation when he received a coarse ‘piss off’ as an answer. Every time he's tried to arm himself differently: with softness, venom, humour, even carefully rehearsed indifference (that crumbled the second those flat amber eyes looked through him like he was made of glass), and every time he's been left in a state of dreariness. Like he's a steady stream of water dripping on granite, except the granite shows no sign of eroding and the stream is thinning out. He isn't sure why he keeps trying and neither do his friends, whose sympathetic looks he's begun avoiding. He has little to no input on the decisions that his primal, reptilian brain makes whenever he sees the orange-haired player within reach.
It's no different today, when he all but bumps into him in one of the auxiliary corridors that connect the main training blocks, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his eyes closed, and for a disorienting moment he almost looks like himself. With the faintest crease between his brows, the same that Chigiri once smoothed out with his thumb. The memory feels so distant, it might as well belong to someone else.
Then Kunigami opens his eyes, hammered copper where there used to be honey-gold, and the illusion shatters cleanly.
“You again.”
If he expected such a callous reaction, and he did, why does it hurt as much as the other dozens of times? Why can’t Chigiri just get used to it and move on?
"Nice to see you too." Chigiri hears how brittle he sounds and hates it. None of the armour he’s carefully built around himself holds up when he's standing in front of the reason he needed it in the first place.
Nothing. Not even the flicker of irritation he’s used to getting. Kunigami shifts his weight against the wall like Chigiri is a draught he's waiting to pass, and it’s his studied blankness, that derisive dismissal of him as mere background noise that finally grinds through the last of his patience.
"You're wasting your time."
“You keep saying that. I'm starting to think it's not me you're trying to convince."
After assessing him for a moment, with the same detachment he'd spare a training dummy, Kunigami's gaze drops to some indeterminate point past Chigiri’s shoulder. “What do you want?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
I want the real you. I want to take back what we had. Chigiri says none of those things, even though he’s rehearsed them a hundred times: alone in his room, lying on the training mat, nuzzled against Reo's friendly shoulder, sprawled over Kaiser’s silk bedsheets.
"Whatever you think you're looking for, it's gone."
Chigiri can handle cruelty –it’s a flaw he’s well acquainted with–, and would have much preferred it over the uninterested flatness of Kunigami’s delivery. He scoffs and even he thinks it’s a horrid, hollow sound.
"You're a terrible liar. You always were."
Kunigami's jaw works once; it’s the only tell he's been unable to train out of himself and one that Chigiri knows all too well. Which is why he keeps pushing.
He steps forward and presses an accusing index finger on Kunigami's chest, right over the sternum, where his heartbeat is supposed to be if he still has one at all.
“Fine. Tell me to leave and mean it, but look me in the eye this time. Say you feel nothing and say it to my face, not to the fucking wall.”
Kunigami's eyes snap back to his, like Chigiri’s yanked him by the leash, and for a fraction of a second something other than animosity moves behind them. His body goes rigid under his touch; the recognition lands in Chigiri's chest like a spark catching in dry grass and he’s spurred into action before the rational part of his brain has time to intervene, before the window of opportunity closes and the mask settles back into place.
He lunges forward and, gripping Kunigami’s jersey for leverage, crushes their lips together, hard and brief. Allowing himself a tentative lick with his tongue before pulling away with the shattering knowledge that Kunigami tastes exactly like he used to.
Forcing his fingers to uncurl from the fabric, he searches those faded copper irises for the verdict, already expecting nothingness to reclaim them, and for a terrible, suspended moment, that's exactly what he gets. Kunigami stares at him impassively and Chigiri's stomach drops through the floor because he's just bet everything on a dead hand. At last, he thinks, he’ll leave with definitive proof that he must move on–
Kunigami's hand closes around his wrist.
It’s sudden enough to shock a gasp out of him, swift and inescapable, and Chigiri’s first animal instinct is to try and break himself free to no avail. Kunigami has grown in height, width and strength, and the latter is the one thing Chigiri hasn’t been able to measure until now that he’s caught in his fist, helpless like a doe-eyed critter. Before he can utter another word, he’s pulled in and their mouths collide again.
It's slow at first, but relentless: a hesitant lick here, a bite down his bottom lip there, and it grows more demanding as he goes, muffling Chigiri’s bewilderment and swallowing whatever protests he was trying to muster, as if Kunigami’s trying to suffocate the want out of both of them, achieving nothing but feeding into it instead. It should feel like kissing a stranger, Chigiri wishes it did, but it doesn’t: beneath this new viciousness his lips and tongue move the same way, there’s the same catch of breath through his nose, and that’s what undoes the last traces of self-control Chigiri was holding onto: knowing it’s all in there somewhere, piloting this rough, ruthless puppet and choosing, over and over, not to reveal itself save for this unfulfilled hunger.
Kunigami's free hand fists into his hair, angling his head back until it almost hurts to have access to his throat for him to graze and bite. Chigiri tastes anger and resentment underneath the old familiar, unbearable sweetness, metallic and scalding, and his back hits the opposite wall before he realizes they’ve moved at all.
“I knew it,” he manages to whisper. “You remember, even if you won't admit it.”
Kunigami lets out a growl. Forces his tongue into Chigiri's mouth in order to stifle those words he surely doesn’t want to hear, and Chigiri lets him, going pliant against the wall he's been shoved into, feeling the concrete cool against his shoulder blades and Kunigami’s body furnace-hot, broader and harder than it ever was in Chigiri's cherished memories, with all its former softness beaten out of it. The damp heat that radiates through the fabric of his clothes is plain obscene and Chigiri's hips stutter forward and the involuntary, gravelly sound Kunigami makes against his neck goes down his body, straight to his groin.
Chigiri's nails find the nape of his neck and drag along once, then again. Kunigami's hips press forward and there's a fractional stutter afterward, a half-second of horrified recalibration that tenses up his whole body, as if debating whether to pull away. He doesn’t, maybe because he can’t: the redhead’s already arched into it, chasing the contact with a shamelessness he'll despise himself for later but right now cannot bring himself to care about.
“Last chance to pretend not to care, fallen hero,” Chigiri murmurs into the corner of his mouth, daring him to try and lie again. Extending to him a lit match to see whether he'll blow it out or use it to set both of them on fire.
Kunigami's answer is to wrench him off the wall by the waist, with enough strength that his feet barely keep under him, and steering them both towards an unassuming door nearby. Soon it's shoved open and they stumble into a small room, cramped with rolled-up training mats, cleaning supplies and a slop sink in the corner, lit in a dim cold light like an autopsy suite.
Chigiri's back hits the door before the rattle of its shutting fades. One hand pins his hip while the other fists into his hair again and keeps him in place with a possessiveness that sends a white-hot current down Chigiri's spine –every finger burns like a brand. He responds by biting on Kunigami's lower lip until he tastes iron on his tongue. The retaliation doesn't make itself wait: the taller striker exposes his collarbone and sinks his teeth in the tender flesh above, sucking after, so hard it's certain to leave a mark.
Chigiri's head falls back against the door with a dull thud, mouth dropping open in a silent gasp. His pulse is roaring so loud in his ears, he almost misses the rough exhale that escapes at the same time through Kunigami's gritted teeth. He must be a freak, being so turned on by the roughness with which he's being handled, but being analytically aware of his own dysfunction does nothing to override it.
Kunigami lifts him –effortlessly, insultingly so– with both hands gripping under his thighs, and Chigiri wraps his legs around him for leverage, locking his ankles at the small of his back. The shift in angle grinds them together through the increasingly annoying layers of clothing and the whimper that scrapes off Chigiri's throat is wretched and undignified. Kunigami swallows it whole, licking into his mouth like he wants to chase the sound back to its source and kill it there.
“Is this what you wanted?” His former, dead-eyed composure is mostly gone, replaced by a ravenous, searing lust, and his words sound unusually resentful.
It is, Chigiri thinks as Kunigami overpowers him, overwhelmed by the full, suffocating weight of his body and a scent so familiar it pricks at the back of his eyes. Is it?
The utility room smells faintly like bleach and stale air, the fluorescent above buzzes gloomily above and the sink he's propped against feels stone cold. This is nothing like Kunigami used to touch him, so careful and reverent it made Chigiri's heart ache.
No. I didn't want it to be like this.
But if this is all I can get, then…
Kunigami's mouth doesn’t grace him enough time to reply. It moves from his lips to his jaw to the hollow of his throat, teeth and tongue mapping the skin obsessively with the same ruthlessness with which he's weaponized Chigiri's desire, reframing the encounter as something he is merely accommodating because Chigiri has begged for it, has been pursuing it for weeks. But his wits are not completely clouded: Chigiri can see the deflection under the guise of dominance.
“You're not fooling anyone. You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't want it too.”
His hips roll forward, once, with a slow and crushing drag and he tightens his strong, runner thighs around Kunigami like a snake would around its prey. He can feel him harden by the second, and the sound he makes next feels strangled and furious, vibrating against Chigiri's pulse point. It goes straight to the base of his spine and that does it.
Keeping his lips sucking and biting at Kunigami's, he yanks at his jersey (his shaky hands make it a bit difficult but he perseveres), dragging it over the hard, taut muscles of his abdomen and torso and making sure to caress and claw at each and every one of them, every bump and crevice. As they roam, fingertips find a couple spots where the skin is smoother and tighter: scars. Scars he doesn’t recognise. A long, pale ridge curving under his ribs and a second one, shorter, at his hip, partially hidden by the waistband. His trailing is promptly stopped by the scars’ owner, who catches his hands forcefully.
What the hell did they do to you?
The fluorescent tube flickers once overhead and Chigiri catches a flash of Kunigami's expression in the stutter of light –a pained frown over wide black pupils–, but he no longer trusts himself to interpret it. Soon they're back to pulling at each other's clothes, which have become a bother, dangerously close to tearing them to shreds. Each touch is greedier, hungrier, rougher –almost punishingly so– and Chigiri wants nothing more than to lose himself in it, to be devoured. If he puts his mind to it, closes his eyes and takes in the familiar scent, he might be able to pretend nothing’s changed.
Kunigami strips him of his shorts in one swift movement, taking everything underneath with them and exposing him bare. Chigiri shivers the moment the cool air hits his flushed skin and Kunigami's gaze drops, already pulling down his own clothes and tossing them into the dark. His mouth hovers close enough that Chigiri can feel the heat of his breath and the smaller player's whole body draws taut as a wire. Then Kunigami’s demanding lips are on him again, lower this time –collarbone, sternum, the ridge of a rib, sharp-toothed and all-consuming. Scalding and graceless. There's nothing of the awed, tentative attention he had in Chigiri's recollections from a lifetime ago, and he really should stop comparing them for the sake of his own sanity.
Two fingers brush over his lips and push. Without thinking, Chigiri opens up and sucks on them until they’re dripping wet and, soon enough, entering him, pressing past his entrance’s tight rim and stretching him out of his mind. He wonders if Kunigami has grown down there just like everywhere else –shoulders, calves, thighs–. He was already so big before, Chigiri’s mouth goes dry remembering. He can feel it drag heavily against him already.
Kunigami’s fingers find the right spot within seconds and they curl into it with a relentless, targeted pressure that reduces Chigiri to a gasping wreck. His thighs fall open wider, trembling, and the sound that tears out of him is so obscene in the bleached silence of the utility room that some distant, still-functioning corner of his brain wants to die of shame.
"You’re so loud." Kunigami's voice is low and rough-edged, nothing like the flat monotone from the corridor. He adds a third finger and scissors them apart, and Chigiri wants to spit something cutting back to remind this arrogant bastard that he's hard too, that his breathing is just as ragged, that the cock leaking against his inner thigh tells a very different story from the indifference he's trying to perform. But Kunigami twists his wrist before he can and all that comes out is a broken, pitiful whine, highlighting just how needy he is.
"And you’re stalling," Chigiri manages to taunt him, although breathless and trembling. Slicked fingers trace the rim in slow, idle circles, and the tip of his cock nudges at the place they've just abandoned, heavy and searing hot, dragging through the wet mess of spit and precome without committing to the entrance yet. It’s only fair he teases back. “So goddamned careful for someone who doesn’t care.”
His hips twitch and change position just enough for the blunt, swollen head to catch there, and it punches a guttural noise out of the orange-haired striker. “It’s you who’s dragged me here, and you hate it because it means–”
It's struck a nerve. Kunigami’s hands grip the backs of his thighs hard enough to leave half-moon imprints from his nails, anchoring himself before he enters him with a harsh, deep thrust, and Chigiri’s spine bows. No foreplay at all, like they used to indulge in.
The first thrust drives the air out of his lungs without preamble, the whole length burying itself into him, and Chigiri’s body tightens around it so hard his own vision sparks. Kunigami doesn't wait for him to settle before he pulls back and slams in again, immediately setting a punishing pace. His deep, grinding thrusts pin Chigiri in place and he takes it, wraps his arms around Kunigami's neck and matches his rhythm with his hips because, if this is the language they're speaking now, he refuses to be the one who breaks first.
Chigiri’s fingers claw at Kunigami's shoulders, his back, rake down the hard shapes of muscle. He wants to leave marks of his own, too: hard evidence that won't wash off in the morning that whatever's happening has been real, that Kunigami is all over him, unrelenting and wanting, no matter what his dull eyes try to claim tomorrow. Chigiri grabs his silver-tinted ginger hair and forces him to meet his gaze. When he does, he stutters.
Kunigami’s eyes are molten and anguished, and nakedly hungry. His half-parted lips have lost their cynical wince and his brows are knotted, giving him an expression unlike he’s ever allowed himself to show since his return. His rhythm falters for a beat and Chigiri knows that he knows.
You're in there somewhere, he thinks, dizzy with it, staring at the water-stained ceiling through half-closed eyes while his body unravels. He tightens around him with a slow, vicious squeeze and drags his lips along the shell of Kunigami's ear, letting his breath ghost over the hot skin. It used to make him shiver.
And Kunigami does shiver, his body responds to the old cue before his mind can censor it and the groan that escapes him is so different from all the others that have preceded it, helpless, candid, that it thaws Chigiri’s heart.
Kunigami's hand slides up from Chigiri’s thigh to the curve of his waist. For a fraction of a second his thumb traces the jut of his hip bone gently but his fingers soon course-correct, clamping down bruisingly hard again.
“You feel the same,” his words come out strained. “You’re still so–”
The groan building in his throat chokes his voice. Chigiri wraps himself even tighter around Kunigami (legs, arms, his whole body) and presses his forehead against his temple, breathing him in. Amber and caramel underneath the sweat. His eyes are stinging again but he blinks the sorrow away.
“Don’t stop. Make me yours again,” he whispers into his ear, straining the words through a drawn-out whimper. “Right there, like you used to.”
Upon hearing him, Kunigami’s pace falters before he goes on to fuck him slower and deeper, his thrusts gaining increasing speed without losing their depth and threatening to push Chigiri over the edge.
Almost like he’s read his mind, Kunigami pulls out in order to flip him and take him from behind. The cold emptiness his absence leaves doesn’t last too long before Chigiri’s delightfully filled up again and his teeth sink into his bottom lip, the new angle allowing Kunigami to tilt Chigiri’s head back and pull him into a messy, insistent kiss again while he picks up his pace again. The sound of wet skin against skin fills the small room, mixed with their heavy panting.
Chigiri's nails rake down Kunigami's back from shoulder to hip again and again, leaving what he hopes are marks that will sting tomorrow and remain there, under his jersey, under the shower. He won't be able to pretend that this didn't happen, that he wasn't buried in his full length inside Chigiri and just as desperate and shameless as him, even though his will to stay quiet might be stronger.
At some point one of them, or maybe both, realize the current angle is not doing enough and so they change position again, with Chigiri's back further arched and pressed against Kunigami's chest and the ginger's mouth huffing against his temple. At times it seems he's about to say his name. H– ha–, he pants, but the Hyouma doesn't arrive.
“Say it,” he dares, but only gets a low snarl as a reply.
Angry, frustrated, dangerously close but not nearly about to climax, he fists into the ginger-and-white hair and wrenches Kunigami's head so he can see his face. His eyes look like molten copper, so anguished and needy underneath his carefully constructed walls, it almost–
He buries his face in Chigiri's neck and drives into him even harder, pulling the filthiest moan out of his parted lips.
I saw that. That tenderness he's trying to smother through brute force. You are there after all.
The deep grinding strokes pick up pace as Chigiri's hips meet them thrust to thrust with more than enough fury of their own.
The tempo builds until it's but an arrhythmic chase, Kunigami's hips snapping forward with a force that shoves Chigiri onto his toes with each move. His iron grip digs into the grooves of his ribs, waist, and the redhead is hauled against the Bastard striker whose face he can now feel pressed into the crook of his neck.
Kunigami comes hard with a shattered moan he can't bite back and the sound is almost enough to push Chigiri over the edge with how painfully familiar it sounds. It's then, when he's thoroughly disassembled, when the real him is allowed to resurface, and his body seizes, hips stuttering through his orgasm and spilling hot inside of him without any warning. Where do you want it, princess? past Kunigami would have asked, teasingly; Chigiri guesses that that sort of treatment will be more difficult to win back. Right now, however, he can't possibly care. His own body is desperate for being awarded release, strung so tight he could snap from a too-sharp breath.
Instead of pulling out straight away, Kunigami handles Chigiri so they’re facing each other again, foreheads and chests pressed together, damp black and red fabric against white and blue, and continues thrusting into him as he rides out the last ripples of his orgasm. The redhead takes the chance to reach back with his hands and thread into the other's coarse ginger hair for leverage, moving his hips up and down trying to chase his own high.
Only when he’s softened enough does Kunigami slide out of him, spattering thick white strands all over his lower belly and running down his thighs, and turns his attention to Chigiri's neglected erection, around which he glides his strong fist to push him over the edge. Shockingly gentle compared to everything else that’s happened in the small, fogged room, Chigiri thinks, mind blank with the euphoric pleasure. Kunigami holds him through it, his free arm locked around his waist. Chigiri’s head drops down on Kunigami's shoulder with a broken sound and his hips buck into the grip helplessly. Kunigami's hand is rough, calloused, tight and slick and absolutely perfect, working him with firm, unforgiving strokes that are nothing like the teasing he used to playfully torment him with.
“I’m– almost there,” he pants into the strands of orange hair covering Kunigami’s ear and, as if enthralled by a spell, Kunigami parts his lips with his tongue one last time. His thumb swipes over the leaking head and his ragged breathing finally shapes itself into the word he's been strangling all night.
"Hyouma," he groans, and follows with a messy kiss, deep and slow.
Chigiri savours the warm fullness of his mouth, softer than he’d ever thought possible for his new hollow shell, and comes completely undone.
The orgasm tears through him in violent, seizing waves that make his knees buckle and the whole time he’s aware, despite the static clouding his senses, that Kunigami's arm around his waist is the only thing keeping him upright.
He holds him throughout all of it and strokes until the aftershocks fade into an almost bearable, twitching oversensitivity. His thighs tremble violently until they settle and he grips at Kunigami’s shoulders for balance until his feet touch the cold ground –an uncomfortable and graceless return to the body and its indignities after the exhilarating blankness, along with the mess cooling on his stomach and thighs that his wrinkled clothes are sticking to as he pulls them on again to regain some semblance of composure. Kunigami’s still holding him tightly though, and when he stumbles backwards, they both end up supporting their weight against the closed door –Kunigami with his back to it, Chigiri indirectly by resting against his chest and with his arms wantonly thrown around the ginger’s neck.
For a while neither of them moves. Kunigami's heartbeat drums against Chigiri's ribcage through the damp layers between them –it almost feels like his own– and his breath is coming in long, measured pulls against him, like he's trying to slow it down by force of will. One of his thumbs is tracing absent-minded circles over Chigiri’s hip bone, time and again. Barely aware of the gesture. The chemical tang of industrial detergent and humid concrete in the small utility room now has to compete with the unmistakable smell of sweat and intercourse.
“This can’t happen again,” Chigiri hears Kunigami say through his steadying huffing. Can’t, not won’t. It’s but a weak trail of thought, an obvious display of wishful thinking, so the redhead nuzzles into his neck before voicing a reply.
“Bullshit,” he exhales. “You can’t keep your hands off me.”
But Kunigami is already pulling away –his warm chest first, his strong arms second, then peeling himself off the door and letting cold air rush into the spaces where he’s just been– and is adjusting his clothes as quickly as his trembling hands allow him. That faint tremor persists when he grips the handle.
"It doesn't change anything."
Chigiri doesn't reach out to touch him again. He's done enough of that and his fingerprints are all over him; although not visible, unlike the scratches and half-moon shapes of his nails, soap and water will never quite wash them off. In return, Chigiri’s left achingly empty, with bite marks on his collarbone, bruises blooming at his hips and the backs of his legs and a forming soreness that's going to make tomorrow's practice a special kind of hell. He couldn’t care less about it.
“I’ll wait,” he says instead, and it’s the last vulnerable spot of himself he’s willing to expose.
Kunigami disappears behind the door and he listens to his footsteps fade in the distance.
Chigiri draws a long breath and slides down against the metal shelving to the cold ground. He’s completely wrecked and it will take him some time to put himself together again. Especially with the lingering traces of amber and caramel still clinging to his skin, clothes and the lining of his lungs, despite the suffocating mix of sex and bleach. The dim fluorescent hums its tuneless vigil over his head and the pipe behind the wall groans and settles.
If he closes his eyes, he can feel the ghost of Kunigami's fingers branding his skin, the catching of his breath when Chigiri's fingers threaded into his hair, all those involuntary surrenders that no amount of denial will be able to erase, and he knows what he heard in those shattered syllables of his own name spilling between gritted teeth. He’ll collect every piece of evidence, every trace of affection that Kunigami allows a glimpse of under the concrete and rebar.
He presses his fingertips to one of the bite marks above his collarbone and holds them there, feeling his own pulse beat against the bruised skin.
I'd rather have you like this than not at all.