Fracture (Pin, NC-17) [1/2]
Nov. 5th, 2011 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maayacolabackupTitle: Fracture
Rating: NC-17 for sex, blood, violence, and possibly rock and roll. (Perhaps just the first three.)
Pairing: Yamashita Tomohisa/ Akanishi Jin
Summary: He doesn’t know when he starts noticing the missing chunks of time.
Warnings:Obsession, Possessiveness,A couple of vaginas appear, Violence, DSM-IV 300.14, Control issues, Blood and blood-play, Delusions of harm. No cute and fluffy animals are harmed in the progression of this fic… probably.
Notes: This was written for my darling Lee,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elizajet, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
je_squickfic! Make sure you read all the warnings, and note that there isn’t one for character death. <3 If you’re sensitive at all. Originally posted here.
*
It starts in the dark of night.
The air is chilly, nipping at Yamapi's skin even through his jacket, and even though he's only four blocks from home, Yamapi considers flagging down a cab. But for some reason, the streets are eerily vacant, and there are no cabs even passing by, and so Yamapi sucks it up and keeps walking.
Jin is waiting at home, probably watching low-budget lesbian pornography on his too-expensive MacBook Pro and eating ice-cream out of the tub. It makes Yamapi smile just thinking about it.
His best friend is probably not even worried, Yamapi thinks, because he knows the life of a Johnny as well as Yamapi does. That it's two in the morning doesn't mean much, not really. That Yamapi had asked his manager to drop him off at the convenience store and he'd walk the rest of the way home wasn't unusual, either. That it's a little cool for a summer night...well, it's out of the ordinary, but not enough to raise an eyebrow over.
He doesn't think anything of it when the light up the street fizzles out, leaving the sidewalk in only shadow. He's walked home late along this same route before without any trouble-- it's a safe neighborhood, and Yamapi is a pretty tough guy, despite his perfectly manicured nails and carefully sculpted hair. He's like Kamenashi in that; the pretty face disguising a great number of toned muscles.
But strength cannot defeat the element of surprise. The blow to the back of his head hurts-- he feels tendrils of pain creep across the back of his skull and they reach all the way to his spine. Then everything fades to black.
*
His neck is stiff. Something is itching around the crown of his head-- gauze, he thinks, as his fingertips brush across it searchingly. It's badly wrapped, clearly not done by a professional. Yamapi wonders if he's being held hostage.
"You're awake," says a voice, and Yamapi feels himself relax as Jin's soft tenor washes over him. He cracks open his eyes, and it's blurry. "Your glasses were broken, when I found you. They're in my jacket pocket," Jin says, and Yamapi tries to nod but it hurts.
Now, of course, that the disorientation is fading, Yamapi recognizes the familiar fabric of their couch underneath of him, scratching against the skin of his back where his shirt has ridden up, and hot from the warmth of his body.
Jin lays a cool cloth on his head. "When you didn't come home by three, I called your manager."
"You were worried? I could have been at rehearsal."
"Yeah, but you always text," Jin replies, and then he pushes Yamapi's hair back from his brow. "And today nothing. When I called your manager, he said he had dropped you off at the convenience store over an hour ago."
"Ah," Yamapi says, and frowns. "And then?"
"I started walking to the Family Mart." Jin is still fuzzy- Yamapi's vision is horrendous without his glasses. But Yamapi can see him perched on the small sliver of sofa left beside Yamapi's hip, arms wrapped around himself. He looks shaken up, and it's only then that Yamapi notices that Jin's voice isn't exactly steady. "I saw you, lying on the ground. You were so still. It was so dark."
"Jin," Yamapi whispers, and he reaches up with a heavy arm to brush a piece of hair from Jin's face. "I'm okay." Jin is quivering, when Yamapi touches his skin, and Jin feels hot to the touch.
"Your wallet is gone. And you've got a nasty cut on the back of your head, and probably the whole area is bruised. And there's a weird...thing on your neck."
"Thing?" Yamapi asks, and then lets his hand fall from Jin's tangled hair, and brings his fingers up to explore the sore spot on his neck. "What's it look like?"
"Well, I don't know," Jin says. "I'm not a doctor, and nobody wants me to be, either. I'd be halfway through a surgery or something, and I'd start thinking about guacamole, and then we'd all be fucked." Jin tugs on a lock of hair, nervously, and then tucks it behind his ear. Even though he’s joking, his voice is tremulous, like he’s trying to hold in his panic.
"Why am I not seeing a doctor, by the way?" Yamapi queries, swallowing. His throat feels a little dry...like he's thirsty. There's a glass of water on the table, but it doesn't appeal to him, for some reason.
"Your manager and I both decided- well, he decided, I was too busy hyperventilating- that since you looked okay it wasn't worth the press of taking you to the hospital. Like, the news-leaks, and the inevitable worry and all that jazz."
"Ah," Yamapi says, and then he closes his eyes. The backs of his eyelids offer relief from the light. Everything seems brighter, or too bright. "Okay."
"The point is, I found you unconscious in the street. What were you thinking, walking home by yourself?" Jin's voice is higher than usual, and it hurts Yamapi's ears a little. "I would have come and met you. Two people are a more intimidating target than one person. Even if I don't look particularly intimidating."
"I was thinking that I have a few too many muscles to get mugged in my own neighborhood," Yamapi replies, and he feels a flush of chagrin climb up his neck all the way to his cheeks. "Clearly it's time to go back to the gym."
"Oh god no," Jin says. "You already weigh like five billion pounds in sheer solid muscle. I wasn't sure I was going to manage to get you home." Jin winces, and Yamapi's eyes struggle to focus in on his face. "I don't think you CAN get much more built, Pi." Jin’s hand trails along Yamapi’s bicep, and the touch is like fire.
"Evidently I'm not strong enough to protect myself," Yamapi says, and he feels...defeated, and anxious. You’re too weak. says a voice in the back of his head, and it makes Yamapi want to curl deep inside himself, where no one can see him.
"You were attacked from behind," Jin responds frankly. "There's not much you can do about something like that." Jin's hand returns to Yamapi's face, fingers skirting across the bones of his brow and the ridge of his nose before sliding down his cheek and cradling his jaw. "No one is perfect, Yamapi." Jin pauses. "Well, except for me," Jin says, and then lets out a shuddering breath of relief. Jin's fingers tingle pleasantly where they meet his skin, and Yamapi leans into the comforting touch—Jin makes him feel at ease, somehow, even when things are crazy. "I am absolutely flawless."
"Whatever," Yamapi says with a tiny chuckle, but it sounds hollow even in his own ears. It helps unravel the knot in his gut a little, but... It's scary, to think that someone as capable as he is can be so completely overwhelmed, with not even a glimpse of his attacker. "You'd still be unconscious if it was you, Bakanishi."
"No way," Jin protests, as he stands from the couch. "My hair is way bigger than yours. I have natural protection." They both chuckle then, and maybe it’s that they’re both realizing that Yamapi is home, that Yamapi is safe; Yamapi's eyes attempt to focus on the way Jin's mouth opens wide when he laughs. It’s like Jin is moving in slow motion.
Jin reaches down and wraps his hands around Yamapi's forearms. "Can you stand? I couldn't put you in bed. Maybe it's me who should be going to the gym."
Yamapi nods, but it hurts both his head and his neck. "Yeah, I can stand," he says, and Jin is quiet, like he's watching him. He tugs though, and Yamapi lets Jin yank him upright and then off the couch. "What time is it?"
"Probably around five thirty," Jin says. He glances down at his watch- the ostentatious gold one, of course, and Yamapi can see it even without his glasses because it's so damn ugly. "Five twenty-seven. I'm so awesome." Jin’s voice is purposefully light, like by being cheerful and bubbly it’ll make Yamapi less afraid.
It’s working, but Yamapi cringes at the time. "I have to be back at the recording studio in four hours," Yamapi says.
"Then we'd better put you to bed," Jin says, and hands Yamapi the glass of water from the table and two ibuprofens that were apparently lying next to it. "Bottoms up."
Yamapi swallows the pills, and the water hurts his throat. His esophagus is tight and uncomfortable, and the water burns going down, like fire. "I can put myself to bed, mom."
"Humor me," Jin says, and Yamapi does. He always does.
Jin makes Yamapi strip down to his briefs and tucks him into the covers in a way Yamapi hasn't been tucked in since he was about seven. Jin lies down next to him, over the covers, and Yamapi can feel his heat even with a sheet, a blanket, and a foot of space between them. Jin is so warm, and Yamapi is so cold.
"Thank you," Yamapi whispers. "You're an amazing friend."
"I'm your best friend," Jin says, and Yamapi is drifting to sleep.
"Mine," he agrees. "My best friend." Yamapi should be used to his unrequited love by now, but it still makes him ache.
*
When Yamapi wakes up in the morning to the dreadful and soul-crushing ring of his alarm, his whole body is painfully stiff. His neck throbs, and his head feels like there's been an earthquake inside of it, everything knocked loose and overturned. "Ugh," he says, and there's a muffled groan from next to him as Jin buried his head into his bunched up sweatshirt, which he's using as a pillow.
"Turn it off," Jin mumbles, and Yamapi takes a moment to admire the smooth lines of Jin's back, blurred by sleep and his lack of glasses. He fumbles on his bedside table for his mobile phone, mercifully not stolen, and hits the end call button, which halts the shriek of his alarm. He reaches into the bedside drawer and grabs his extra glasses, and the world comes into focus as he slides them on his face. He rolls his eyes at Jin's attempt to avoid morning, and gently slides his pillow under Jin's sweatshirt and arms, and Jin snuggles into the new softness.
As he showers, the hot water eases the tension in Yamapi's muscles, but the ache in his neck continues, pulsing beneath the surface of his skin. It's moving, the pain, extending and spreading like vines of tight discomfort down his neck and across his shoulder and back. You’re so weak.
He examines it in the mirror and it looks almost raw, two tiny pinpricks swollen and bubbled with a fierce red color and raised skin, and there is an underlying purple bruise too. It looks awful, and Yamapi has never seen anything quite like it.
He probes it with questing fingers, and hisses at the jolt of pain he receives in response, snatching his hand away with a frown. He'll get it looked at if it doesn't go away on it's own, he thinks, and just continues his morning ablutions, brushing his teeth and hastily putting a headband on to push his hair out of his eyes.
He doesn't actually look any worse for wear, except for his neck. He throws on a long scarf over his t-shirt and jeans- no one will say anything, he always wears them anyway. He spares a last glance at a still-slumbering Jin and heads to work.
*
Yamapi feels a little bit dizzy all day. He's hungry, definitely, but nothing looks remotely appetizing. Ryo keeps sending him sidelong, worried glances, but whenever Yamapi turns to meet his gaze, Ryo quickly looks away and feigns nonchalance. Massu happily eats Yamapi’s portion as Tegoshi and Koyama bicker half-heartedly over whether or not Tegoshi looks better in a cheerleader costume than Koyama does. (He does, but Yamapi doesn't want to get involved in that particular cat-fight.) Shige is watching them all, and his eyes linger a little on Yamapi too, but Yamapi just ignores it and moves food around on his plate in between Massu's thefts.
Later, in the bathroom, as Yamapi splashes water in his face and tries to make the waves of dizziness and nausea pass, Tegoshi walks in. Tegoshi gasps, and Yamapi realizes his scarf is on the edge of the sink, where he'd set it so the silk wouldn't get wet. "Yamapi, what happened to your neck?"
Tegoshi quickly invades his personal space, and Yamapi is used to that, but he still jerks back when Tegoshi reaches out to touch it. "Don't," he says, and Tegoshi pouts at him.
"Is that from a particularly feisty hook-up, or did you get tasered?"
"Tasered?" Yamapi asks, and dodges the question.
"Yeah that's what it looks like when you get tasered, sort of," Tegoshi says, and then he flips his hair out of his eyes. "What weird kinky sex games do you and Jin play at night at your place?"
"Tegoshi!" Yamapi shouts, feeling unexpectedly uncomfortable. "First of all, you know better about me and Jin," he says, and then Tegoshi rolls his eyes. "Secondly, how do you know what getting tasered looks like?"
"You're not the only one playing kinky sex games," Tegoshi says with a wink. "You might want to rub some cocoa butter on that mark, so it doesn't scar," He adds, as he flutters his eyelashes in the mirror and adjusts his bangs.
Yamapi mumbles assent, or acknowledgement at least, and Tegoshi flounces out of the bathroom. Yamapi winds the scarf back around his neck.
On the way home, he picks up cocoa butter, just in case Tegoshi knows what he's talking about.
Dinner is more looking at the food and feeling uncomfortably hungry, but the soup tastes like ash in his mouth. Jin is sitting across from him, though, and for some reason, watching Jin swallow the soup makes saliva gather in his mouth far more than what’s in the bowl right in front of him.
*
Stick a hand into his chest, pull out his heart. Watch it bleed, pumping with it's last bursts of sputtering life in the palm of his hands, shuddering anxiously against his cold fingertips. Rivulets of red running down his wrist and forearm.
Lick it up.
It tastes of rusted metal, of a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean. The Titanic. A tragedy.
He's not really dead, though. This all feels like a dream, or another world, so watching his eyes go dark and empty isn't sad, and the blood starts to taste surprisingly sweet on his lips and tongue.
*
Yamapi is shuddering and gasping when he wakes. He goes to the bathroom and puts his head in the shower, turning the spray on at maximum heat. It slashes on his neck and back, too, and he probably gets the floor soaked too, but he doesn't care.
His heart is beating so fast, and as he looks down at his hands, white-palmed and free of blood, he quivers. You’re shaking. Pathetic.
He walks past Jin's room on his way back to his bed, and he freezes. The dream lingers in his thoughts, and a cacophonous trepidation claws its way to the forefront of his mind. He stops in front of the door, and can't resist peeking inside. The doorknob is warm in his hand, and Yamapi wonders when his hands became so cold.
The lump on the bed rises and falls with every slightly wheezing breath, and Yamapi releases a sigh of relief that Jin is still mercifully alive.
Getting back to sleep is difficult, because Yamapi doesn't know what he'll imagine when he closes his eyes.
The voice in his head is getting louder.
*
“So I think you should go to the doctor,” Jin says, shoving a spoonful of olive halves into mouth as he holds a peanut butter sandwich in his left hand.
“Are you pregnant, or what?” Yamapi says, face scrunched up in disgust. “That is disgusting.”
“See, this is the kind of thing I’m worried about. You haven’t eaten in days. You look like you’re going to pass out.”
Yamapi is tired. He wants to eat, it’s just that food seems so incredibly unappetizing. He’s hungry but looking at food makes him nauseous, and Jin isn’t helping at all. “How am I supposed to be hungry when you’re eating shit like that?”
“It never bothered you before,” Jin says, and he swallows, and then his tongue darts out to lick his lips.
Pretty. It darts across the surface of his mind, but he pushes it back. ”I’m fine.”
“Humor me,” Jin says, and Yamapi sighs. He always does.
“Okay,” Yamapi says, and Jin smiles softly at him.
“Thank you,” Jin says, and reaches out to rest his palm on Pi’s shoulder. “I just…I worry about you. You’re my…well, most important person.”
“Mine too,” Yamapi replies. “You’re mine, too.”
*
“These marks on your neck,” the doctor tells him, “look a lot like needle tracks.” There’s a disapproving set to his mouth. “See how they’re uneven?” He holds up a picture in front of Yamapi’s face, and the marks look even more unforgiving in the harsh light of flash. His skin is looking paler, too, almost sallow. “You should have come in sooner.”
“He doesn’t use drugs,” Jin says harshly. “He was mugged.”
“I assumed something like that must be the case, Mr. Akanishi. You can put your hackles down,” the doctor says, and Jin huffs and crosses his arms defensively.
“I’m just making sure,” Jin says, eyes sliding sideways to watch the door.
“The problem is, it’s been so long that we might not be able to figure out what it is. I want to run some blood tests and make sure you didn’t get anything else from those needles, but I’m pretty sure it was something to knock you out, or to make you a weaker target.”
“Why’d they hit me on the back of the head then?” Yamapi asks, and the doctor frowns.
“You really should have been brought in,” the doctor says, and narrows his eyes at Jin. “You could have had a concussion, and those drugs could have been anything.”
“I know, okay?” Jin says. “I know. We weren’t thinking straight.” Jin swallows harshly and frowns even more deeply. “Anyway, I made him come in because he hasn’t been eating.”
“Not eating? That could be side effects of whatever he was injected with…” The doctor scribbles note down on his pad, and then look up and into Yamapi’s eyes. “Any other strange symptoms? Anything out of the ordinary, at all?”
Yamapi thinks about the voice he hears, sometimes, whispering dark suggestions across the canvass of his thoughts.
Normal people don’t hear voices, it whispers, and the sound is sharp. It’s spreads across his mind like a lingering spider’s web. You can’t be a pop star if they lock you up for being crazy.
“No, sir,” Yamapi says. “Nothing strange at all.”
*
Jin stretches, extending fingertips to the ceiling, and his black v-neck rides up, exposing a sliver of smooth pale skin that Yamapi can’t help but follow with his eyes.
Lately, Yamapi can’t seem to do anything but follow Jin with his eyes. Something about Jin has always attracted him, but wanting to throw him on the floor, climb astride him and…
There are some things Yamapi won’t allow himself to feel, and this is one of those things. He feels helpless to stop the want, though. Helpless to stop the itching of his fingers to slide along Jin’s smooth back. Helpless to ignore the silky skin stretched across Jin’s neck, looking ripe for Yamapi to bite his way down it.
His mouth waters simply imagining it.
You could just give in to it, flickers across his mind, and Yamapi bites his lip and clenches his eyes shut, and tries to make that voice go away. You could make him yours.
Stop it, Yamapi thinks. Just leave me alone.
He feels so very, very cold, and his skin is like ice to the touch.
Jin always looks so very warm.
*
“We received your test results, Mr. Yamashita,” says the clinic rep into the phone. “Your iron count is very low, and we found traces of amphetamines in your blood.”
“Amphetamines?” Yamapi asks.
“Yes,” the rep says. “Probably whatever they used to knock you out. It shouldn’t be this broken down already, though…” the clinic rep sighs. “It’s probably due to your incredibly high metabolism. It reads off the charts…Probably so high because you’re constantly exercising.” She laughs. “I’m a little jealous. You can probably eat whatever you want.”
“Thank you,” Yamapi says into the phone, but honestly, they haven’t told him anything he doesn’t already know.
*
He doesn’t know when he starts noticing the missing chunks of time.
Sometimes it’s just a couple of minutes, but sometimes it’s hours, and Yamapi opens his eyes and he’s in a completely different place, wearing different clothes, and his limbs feel heavy, like he’s been running through quicksand.
But it starts happening more often than Yamapi can stand. It makes him afraid, because it’s like he can’t control his own body, or his own mind. One minute, he’s brushing his teeth, and the next, he’s in a cab on the way to work, thirty minutes having disappeared into eternity, with no idea what he’s done in the blank.
One time, Yamapi ‘comes back’ while he’s in the shower, hot water pounding against his back. He’s still wearing his clothes, and they cling to his body, rubbing uncomfortably against his skin. The water is too hot, and it’s scalding his neck. His hand absently comes up to rub the fading mark by his jugular, and he leans his forehead against the wall of he shower. It’s cool in contrast.
What’s happening to me? he thinks, clenching his hands into balled fists. What is happening to me?
It’s nothing, his mind seems to whisper back. It’s nothing at all.
Yamapi stays in the shower until the water runs cold.
On a Wednesday, Yamapi is just watching TV, and he feels things start to get fuzzy.
When he returns to… awareness, he’s sitting at the kitchen table. In front of him sits an empty cellophane and styrofoam package. The steaks that had been inside of the package, that Jin had brought home in an attempt to feed him, are gone, and sit like lead in his stomach.
His taste buds tingle, and he’s pretty sure he’s eaten them raw.
The problem is that Yamapi doesn’t know what else he’s doing when everything is black.
It’s terrifying.
*
It becomes even more terrifying when he keeps having these dreams, dreams slick with blood and even slicker with fear.
He watches what happens like he’s looking through a curtain of water. The image ripples, and his body moves but he’s not the one calling any of the shots.
*
Yamapi wakes up, but he doesn’t remember going to sleep. His room smells of air freshener and he smells of Old Spice, and nothing seems out of the ordinary at all.
Except he feels strangely full, like he’s eaten a three-course meal, and for some reason it feels like he’s falling apart, piece by piece.
He can hear Jin’s gentle breathing in the room next door, even through the walls, and it comforts him enough that he can close his eyes and drift back to sleep.
*
"What happened to your sheets?" Jin asks, as they play 'War' with a deck of KAT-TUN playing cards on Yamapi's bed.
"What are you talking about?" Yamapi replies as his Joker, Koki, triumphs over Jin's Queen, Kamenashi. "There’s nothing wrong with my sheets."
"There’s like…blood on them," Jin says, setting his deck down on the bed and leaning forward to run his fingers over the soft white cotton. “Or something. Do you have nosebleeds now, or what?”
"I don’t know," Yamapi says vaguely, as his deck slowly becomes double the size of Jin's. Say it’s nothing, a voice whispers in his head, and Yamapi licks his lips. "It’s nothing. I probably cut myself shaving."
"Were you shaving with a switch blade? How old are you again? How have you not figured out how to shave yet?" Jin’s smirking, and when he looks up, Yamapi is raising an eyebrow at him. Yamapi reaches out toward Jin’s face, and runs his thumb over Jin’s upper lip.
"What?" Jin says, his face flushing. Yamapi likes the way the flush looks across his cheeks. It burns in his belly, and Yamapi really wants to get closer. Yamapi really wants to taste. Not yet, says the voice again, and Yamapi doesn’t trust the voice, but for some reason he listens. The voice sounds sure, which is more than Yamapi can say for himself, lately.
“At least I manage to shave,” Yamapi says, and Jin swats his hand away, face flaming a bright red.
“Shut up,” Jin mumbles, looking embarrassed and…and something else Yamapi can’t put his finger on, but his mind is telling him that the smell is confusion. That Jin smells like fear, and like confusion and like... Jin’s eyes steadily avoid his own now, and then he slams down a Nakamaru on top of Yamapi’s ‘Johnny’s junior’ card.
Out of the corner of his eye, Yamapi sees the splatter of blood, maybe the size of a 100-yen coin, and the sight makes him feel nauseous, because he doesn’t know where it came from, and he has this…sinking feeling that maybe the eerie echo in the back of his mind does.
Instead of thinking about it though, he just looks at Jin, who is biting his lip with concentration as he attempts to make up Yamapi’s lead.
“Earth to Yamapi,” Jin says, and Yamapi shakes himself to attention. “Geez, you must have had too much fun with that girl you brought home last night.”
“What girl?” Yamapi asks, and Jin looks at him blankly.
“I thought…? You left early with her so I just assumed…”
“Jin, what are you talking about?” Yamapi says, and his heartbeat quickens. Another blackout?
It’s nothing, whispers the voice in his mind. There was no girl, right? You would know if there was a girl, wouldn’t you? Yamapi can feel bile rise in his throat and he forces it down.
“I didn’t bring a girl home,” Yamapi says, and Jin shrugs his shoulders, a confused look crossing his face.
“Oh, I guess…I must have misunderstood,” Jin says, and then he awkwardly clears his throat. “Are you going to play?”
Yamapi wins the game.
*
The bass is thumping loudly in his ears, rippling through his limbs and quivering in his belly. He likes it, tonight. Maybe he loves it. Alcohol makes him feel limber and loose, moving to the beat easily. His fingers press tightly into the hipbones of the girl in front of him, pulling her tightly back against him and enjoying the friction of her against his burgeoning erection.
He sees Jin at the bar talking a girl up, lazily sipping from his beer, and his eyes follow the swooping curve of Jin’s back, the way it gently sways to his hips, and it makes him bring the girl even closer.
The song changes, to something low and a little sultry, and he takes the moment to drop a fluttering kiss against her throat, and she sighs, almost too softly to hear over the pulsing music in the club, but he hears it. Her hips keep pushing back, steady and rhythmically, and it’s driving him insane, he wants her so badly.
“Do you want to get out of here?” he whispers into her ear, and she responds by turning her head over her shoulder and pressing a hot mouth to his, open and wet and delicious. His tongue flicks out to wrap around hers, and he sucks it into his own mouth, swallowing her soft moans as his hands slide up and down her sides. She pulls away from him, slowly, releasing his mouth and looking at him with smoldering eyes.
“Yes,” she says, and then she’s lacing their fingers together and leading him through the throngs of people on the dance floor, expertly weaving left and right and making sure he follows her. Her hand feels small in his own, and warm. He holds it a little tighter. He thinks he feels Jin’s eyes on him s they leave the club. He’s no sure how he knows it’s Jin, only that he does, and the feeling makes him shiver.
She’s on him before he can even manage to pull the cab door shut, straddling him in the backseat, her muscular thighs pressing in on either side of his hips, her heat pressing down on him as she seals their mouths together again.
She leaves steamy handprints on the window, and he gives the driver a large tip as they stumble out of the car and into the street in front of his and Jin’s apartment building. She’s a giggling mess in his arms, and her every hiccup smells of champagne.
He guides her to the elevator, and as soon as the doors slide closed she’s on him again, tiny nimble fingers unbuttoning his shirt and leaving trails of heat in their wake. His mouth finds the pulse in her neck, nibbling along the vein and sucking until there’s a dark bruise.
And then the elevator chimes, and it’s a short walk to his and Jin’s place, thirteen steps at most, although it takes them twenty because she’s yanking and tugging on his shirt and he’s chuckling as his hands glide down to cup her ass. They hastily take their shoes off at the door, and he chuckles as she unzips her little black dress right there in the hallway.
“What’s your name?” she asks, as he picks her up and carries her through the apartment, throwing her on his bed as he turns around and locks his door.
“Does it matter?” he replies, as he finally pulls his shirt off, and follows it with his dress pants, dropping them to the floor too.
“I suppose not,” she says, and then he’s hovering over her, running his hands through her long black hair, enjoying the way it lays across the pillow. He lavishes attention on her breasts, enjoying the way she sighs, the way she lets her legs fall apart so he can slide between them. He scrapes his teeth along her nipple and down her abdomen, leaving marks deep enough to bleed. The first touch of her blood on his lips makes him want her more.
Soon enough he’s entering her, swallowing her moan with an eager mouth.
It’s easy, as she tightens around him, to reach into his bedside table and pull out his pocket knife. One small cut, right across the large vein in her neck, and then he seals his lips over the wound, spilling inside her as she spills into him.
Her blood tastes smooth on his lips, an ambrosia of unparalleled sweetness that lingers on his tongue, mingling with the taste of her juices in his mouth as he swallows her life in aching gulps. She’s quivering around him, but she can’t make a sound.
Her hands claw at the sheets, tangling in them as he remains affixed to her neck, relishing every last drop as she grows colder and colder in his arms.
*
Yamapi wakes up in cold sweats now. He’s starting to have weird dreams, flashes of hot skin beneath his fingertips and hands gripping his biceps tight enough to bruise. It’s something that feels like memory, but can’t be, since they are things Yamapi has never done.
You can’t have memories of things you haven’t done, he rationalizes.
Or did you do those things? asks the voice. How do you know you didn’t do it?
The voice caresses him softly, but its edges are sharp, and he feels the words cutting into him as his stomach drops.
He doesn’t know what he does when everything is black. He doesn’t know, and an aching part of him doesn’t ever want to know.
He’s scared. He’s so scared. I’m just giving you what you want.
What I want? Yamapi thinks, and the voice seems wickedly amused.
What you need.
*
He likes that he feels in control. He likes that they like that. That they come to him willingly, that they beg for more until the last gasp of air leaves their lungs as he slits their throats.
None of the girls tell him their names, or if they do, he doesn't remember them. None of the girls say anything when he doesn't take off his gloves. None of them say whether they recognize him or not, but he assumes they do. They all do.
So he doesn't feel anything but the warm heat of them around his cock through the latex as he slides in and out, and the spill of their blood as they fall eternally silent. He doesn't feel anything as he laps up their offerings, as their cold dead eyes stare up at the ceiling. He doesn't feel anything when he puts them in the trunk of his car and drops them in Tokyo Bay, either. He doesn't feel a damn thing.
No one will catch him, either. Not even Jin, who he sometimes hears through the wall as he's slamming into the girl of the week. Jin never asks about where the girl he fucked last night is, because Jin always wakes up late, walking into the kitchen long after he has disposed of the evidence, sleep in his eyes and mouth pulled into a lazy, drowsy smile that makes him look beautiful, even though he's a total mess.
He is usually already sitting at the table in fresh clothes by then, sipping a cup of joe and reading the newspaper, and Jin doesn't suspect a thing. Jin just sits across from him and grins, and he doesn't even think about the girl anymore, because why should he when Jin is right in front of him.
*
For some reason, the dreams start to feel less distant.
When he comes to, his hands encircling a cup of coffee, the first thing he sees is Jin, and his hands are trembling.
*
Hearing voices can be a sign of loneliness.
At least that’s what Yamapi reads on the internet, as he frantically searches for reasons that aren’t, you know, absolute insanity, that he could be hearing voices.
That’s why he goes to the animal shelter and gets Blossom. Dogs, he thinks, make people less lonely.
She’s a total mutt—a strange mix of breeds that leaves her with legs too short and hair too long, and her ears are two different lengths. “She’s been abused,” the vet at the shelter tells him. “She might not take to you immediately.”
Blossom is shy and flinching, but after a couple of days she warms to him, following him around the house.
“Why did you get a dog?” Jin asks, point blank, as Yamapi feeds Blossom little pieces of fish as he slices it thin for sashimi.
“Because I was lonely,” Yamapi replies, and Jin’s hand slides down his back and settles at the small of it. He sets his chin on Yamapi’s shoulder and Yamapi can’t see him, but he feels his breath blowing lightly against the shell of his ear.
“I’m not enough?” Jin asks, and he sounds…hurt, but Yamapi isn’t quite sure.
He could be, the voice slyly murmurs, and it teases just as much as the whisper of Jin’s breath on his face.
“You’re not always home,” Yamapi manages, and Blossom nibbles on his fingertips, and licks at the remains of fish there.
“Oh,” Jin says, and he takes a step back. “I didn’t know you were lonely.”
Yamapi turns to look at him, and Jin is biting his lip and looking at him, eyes wide and seeming to ask for something, and Yamapi doesn’t know what it is.
Yamapi wants to tell Jin about the voice, but he can’t. “I’m not. Not really. Not how you’re thinking.”
Jin nods, and then hesitates. “I could be… home more?”
Yes, he could, the voice says, and Yamapi shudders with revulsion at how pleased it sounds. “No,” Yamapi mumbles, and then realizes he’s spoken aloud when Jin flinches. “I mean, you’re home enough, I promise. Don’t worry about me.”
He could so easily be yours. He is yours. Just reach out and…
“I always worry,” Jin tells him, and Yamapi lets himself enjoy Jin’s fleeting touch against his forehead. “Let me worry.”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
“Humor me,” Jin says, and his fingers trace Yamapi’s eyebrows slowly. Yamapi does. He always does.
He just wants Jin to be safe. He’s not sure from what, but he just wants him to be safe.
*
Hyperaware of every brush of skin, his thoughts and the voice’s tangle together, all centered around Jin.
Jin is like the light, because when everything goes to black, when he comes back, there is always Jin, illuminating the world in brilliant brightness.
*
“You got a dog!” Ryo says gleefully, and immediately drops to his knees to play with Blossom, who lathes affection all over Ryo’s face.
Yamapi feels this weird, sickening jealousy at how little hesitance Blossom has with regard to Ryo. His scowl must be easy to read, on his face.
“Don’t be envious that your dog likes me better, Yamapi,” Ryo jibes. “I am infinitely more loveable.”
“Shut up,” Yamapi says, and his voice comes out sharp and harsh and it doesn’t sound like him at all.
It sounds like the voice he hears in his head.
“Woah, dude, I was just kidding. No need to get your sparkly, solo-career panties into a twist.” Ryo eyes him oddly, so Yamapi shakes his head in an effort to clear the strange haze in his head.
“Sorry,” he says, and he tries to smile.
Blossom curls up into Ryo’s lap as they talk in the kitchen, and Yamapi feels even more lonely.
*
The voice doesn’t go away.
It doesn’t stop whispering. Taunting.
Even worse is, sometimes Yamapi mixes that voice up with his own thoughts.
It makes him confused. Anxious. Angry.
Sometimes he finds himself accidentally listening to it.
*
Blossom is nuzzling at Yamapi's hand as he watches television, Jin pensive in thought beside him.
"What's on your mind?" Yamapi asks, and Jin exhales, blowing too long bangs out of his face.
"My mom thinks I should settle down," Jin tells him with a dry chuckle. "What do you think?"
"I think you should cut your goddamn hair," Yamapi tells him, even though he enjoys, aesthetically, the way the hair clings to Jin's shoulders and neck when it's wet from the shower. "Learn to take care of yourself before you add to that with a relationship."
Jin frowns at him, pouting like a child. "There's nothing wrong with my hair," he whines. "It's better long, because then I can put it in a ponytail."
Yamapi likes the ponytail even better, because it exposes the long smooth column of Jin's neck. Yamapi doesn't allow himself to look for too long, though, because Jin…makes the voice come. Jin makes the voice louder, and more insistent. He doesn’t know why, but he feels like he’s far too dangerous to let himself touch Jin, when he can hear the voice.
Plus you don’t have to claim Jin. Jin is already yours. the voice says viciously. You’re just a coward.
He reaches a hand out, and Jin nuzzles into it, just like Blossom, and Yamapi wonders if maybe, just maybe, the voice is right.
“If you settle down with someone else, that would mean leaving me,” Yamapi says, and Jin opens wide honest eyes to him. “I would be all alone.” Yamapi trembles at the thought of being all alone; only him and the voice inside his head that tries to make him disappear.
“I could never…” Jin’s voice catches, like it always does when he’s saying something too honest and it embarrasses him. “I could never leave you alone.”
Jin’s skin is too warm. Jin is too warm. Maybe that’s why Yamapi, who always feels cold now, can’t stop himself from getting closer.
*
“Yamapi,” Koyama says, sidling up to Yamapi as Yamapi leans back against the wall, watching Massu and Tegoshi bicker over Tegoshi’s excessive touching. Tegoshi is smiling at the camera as Massu grimaces, and Yamapi wonders where all the member-ai is.
“Hmmm?” Yamapi says, and turns toward Koyama slowly. He feels a bit light-headed, and wonders why it’s so hard to just eat. Everything tastes, though, like sawdust in his mouth.
“Are you…Are you okay?” Koyama’s voice is tentative, and Yamapi feels strangely irritated by a gesture that once would have sent a trickling of pleasure down his chest.
“I’m fine,” Yamapi snaps, and closes his eyes when Koyama recoils. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’ve…lost a lot of weight,” Koyama says, even more quietly. “And you’ve been really…you seem on edge.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Yamapi says, more calmly this time. The voice is there, of course, chuckling ominously, and Yamapi is on edge—he’s standing on the edge of a knife-blade, waiting to fall. Yamapi takes a deep breath and puts his hand on Koyama’s shoulder, and…
His left hand comes up and rests on Koyama’s other shoulder, and then both hands are sliding in toward Koyama’s throat.
“Yamapi, what are you doing?” Koyama says, and Koyama’s voice is so trusting, and it makes him smile.
“Making it so you never have to worry again,” he says, and then his hands wrap around Koyama’s throat and squeeze. Koyama’s arms surge up and claw and Yamapi’s hands but Yamapi’s hands are strong and capable, and Koyama looks at him in horror as he struggles for breath. Yamapi digs his nails into Koyama’s throat when the light leaves his eyes, and then licks up the blood that runs across his hands and down his arms from the tiny arced cuts.
Yamapi blinks, and his hand is still on Koyama’s shoulder, and he takes another deep shuddering breath. It could be that easy, the voice whispers. “Yamapi. Yamapi!” Koyama says, and suddenly the rest of the world surges back into existence.
“I’m here,” Yamapi says, and Koyama looks at him long and hard.
“I’m really worried about you,” he says, and Yamapi lets his hand fall from Koyama’s shoulder, and carefully moves a little further away from him.
“So am I, sometimes,” Yamapi admits. “But it’ll be okay.”
He hopes.
*
“Can I come over and play with your dog?” Ryo asks, and Yamapi can feel the envy tearing at his stomach again.
“Not today,” he says, and Ryo looks slightly put out.
“You always say that,” Ryo says, and then crosses his arms. “I have a day off next week. Make time for me to come over and hang out.”
“What do you mean, ‘you always say that,’” Yamapi says with an empty chuckle. “You act like you ask all the time.”
Ryo looks at him, blinking slowly, and then he frowns. “I asked you at least twice this week,” Ryo says then, and Yamapi feels the dread creep up on him, covering him like a shadow in the setting sun. “Yesterday when I asked, you looked like you were going to eat me.”
“Yesterday?” Yamapi says hollowly, as his brain scrambles for any memory of seeing Ryo at all yesterday.
“Yeah, when we were shooting that commercial,” Ryo says slowly, and Yamapi doesn’t answer, he just looks down at his hands and wonders when he had cut his nails, because they looks shorter. They’re too short, now, cut jagged and rough, and they should hurt, but they don’t.
“Oh, right,” Yamapi says, and the fear enfolds his lungs in molasses, and he struggles to breathe.
“You need to get it together, man,” Ryo says, and slaps him on the back, and the voice is there, waiting when he goes looking. I can be you whenever I want, it says.
*
Jin’s sleeping when he turns the doorknob and enters the room. Jin doesn’t stir, just continues to breathe evenly in and out as Yamapi’s form approaches the bed.
He sits down gently at Jin’s side, admiring Jin’s sleeping face, and the way Jin’s got one arm curled up around his head as he lies there on his back, displayed like he has been waiting for Yamapi’s eyes to look at him just like this.
“Lovely,” Yamapi’s mouth forms into a whisper, and then Yamapi’s hand is reaching out and brushing the hair away from Jin’s face and shoulder. He leans closer, pushing his face into the crook of Jin’s neck, inhaling the sweet scent of Jin’s soap, and underneath that, the scent of Jin himself.
He nibbles at the soft skin, and Jin shifts and sighs, turning his head to the side, even in sleep, to offer more access, and it makes Yamapi’s lips twist into a dangerous smile.
He bites down, hard, into the skin there, piercing the skin with his teeth and drawing blood, and Jin hisses and then groans and the bite is followed with a gentle licking motion as he soothes the skin. Jin whimpers, and hovers on the edge of wakefulness, but Yamapi’s hand finds its way into Jin’s hair and tenderly brushes through it, and though Jin’s lashes flutter, he doesn’t awaken.
The mark is harsh and raw on Jin’s neck, and it’s beautiful.
*
“Jin, is everything okay today?” Yamapi asks, and Jin swallows and shifts.
“Yeah,” he says. He’s wearing a sweatshirt, even though it’s still moderately warm outside. “I just…I need to go for a walk.”
“Okay,” Yamapi says, and he wonders why Jin won’t meet his eyes.
Part Two
Rating: NC-17 for sex, blood, violence, and possibly rock and roll. (Perhaps just the first three.)
Pairing: Yamashita Tomohisa/ Akanishi Jin
Summary: He doesn’t know when he starts noticing the missing chunks of time.
Warnings:Obsession, Possessiveness,
Notes: This was written for my darling Lee,
elizajet, for je_squickfic! Make sure you read all the warnings, and note that there isn’t one for character death. <3 If you’re sensitive at all. Originally posted here.*
It starts in the dark of night.
The air is chilly, nipping at Yamapi's skin even through his jacket, and even though he's only four blocks from home, Yamapi considers flagging down a cab. But for some reason, the streets are eerily vacant, and there are no cabs even passing by, and so Yamapi sucks it up and keeps walking.
Jin is waiting at home, probably watching low-budget lesbian pornography on his too-expensive MacBook Pro and eating ice-cream out of the tub. It makes Yamapi smile just thinking about it.
His best friend is probably not even worried, Yamapi thinks, because he knows the life of a Johnny as well as Yamapi does. That it's two in the morning doesn't mean much, not really. That Yamapi had asked his manager to drop him off at the convenience store and he'd walk the rest of the way home wasn't unusual, either. That it's a little cool for a summer night...well, it's out of the ordinary, but not enough to raise an eyebrow over.
He doesn't think anything of it when the light up the street fizzles out, leaving the sidewalk in only shadow. He's walked home late along this same route before without any trouble-- it's a safe neighborhood, and Yamapi is a pretty tough guy, despite his perfectly manicured nails and carefully sculpted hair. He's like Kamenashi in that; the pretty face disguising a great number of toned muscles.
But strength cannot defeat the element of surprise. The blow to the back of his head hurts-- he feels tendrils of pain creep across the back of his skull and they reach all the way to his spine. Then everything fades to black.
*
His neck is stiff. Something is itching around the crown of his head-- gauze, he thinks, as his fingertips brush across it searchingly. It's badly wrapped, clearly not done by a professional. Yamapi wonders if he's being held hostage.
"You're awake," says a voice, and Yamapi feels himself relax as Jin's soft tenor washes over him. He cracks open his eyes, and it's blurry. "Your glasses were broken, when I found you. They're in my jacket pocket," Jin says, and Yamapi tries to nod but it hurts.
Now, of course, that the disorientation is fading, Yamapi recognizes the familiar fabric of their couch underneath of him, scratching against the skin of his back where his shirt has ridden up, and hot from the warmth of his body.
Jin lays a cool cloth on his head. "When you didn't come home by three, I called your manager."
"You were worried? I could have been at rehearsal."
"Yeah, but you always text," Jin replies, and then he pushes Yamapi's hair back from his brow. "And today nothing. When I called your manager, he said he had dropped you off at the convenience store over an hour ago."
"Ah," Yamapi says, and frowns. "And then?"
"I started walking to the Family Mart." Jin is still fuzzy- Yamapi's vision is horrendous without his glasses. But Yamapi can see him perched on the small sliver of sofa left beside Yamapi's hip, arms wrapped around himself. He looks shaken up, and it's only then that Yamapi notices that Jin's voice isn't exactly steady. "I saw you, lying on the ground. You were so still. It was so dark."
"Jin," Yamapi whispers, and he reaches up with a heavy arm to brush a piece of hair from Jin's face. "I'm okay." Jin is quivering, when Yamapi touches his skin, and Jin feels hot to the touch.
"Your wallet is gone. And you've got a nasty cut on the back of your head, and probably the whole area is bruised. And there's a weird...thing on your neck."
"Thing?" Yamapi asks, and then lets his hand fall from Jin's tangled hair, and brings his fingers up to explore the sore spot on his neck. "What's it look like?"
"Well, I don't know," Jin says. "I'm not a doctor, and nobody wants me to be, either. I'd be halfway through a surgery or something, and I'd start thinking about guacamole, and then we'd all be fucked." Jin tugs on a lock of hair, nervously, and then tucks it behind his ear. Even though he’s joking, his voice is tremulous, like he’s trying to hold in his panic.
"Why am I not seeing a doctor, by the way?" Yamapi queries, swallowing. His throat feels a little dry...like he's thirsty. There's a glass of water on the table, but it doesn't appeal to him, for some reason.
"Your manager and I both decided- well, he decided, I was too busy hyperventilating- that since you looked okay it wasn't worth the press of taking you to the hospital. Like, the news-leaks, and the inevitable worry and all that jazz."
"Ah," Yamapi says, and then he closes his eyes. The backs of his eyelids offer relief from the light. Everything seems brighter, or too bright. "Okay."
"The point is, I found you unconscious in the street. What were you thinking, walking home by yourself?" Jin's voice is higher than usual, and it hurts Yamapi's ears a little. "I would have come and met you. Two people are a more intimidating target than one person. Even if I don't look particularly intimidating."
"I was thinking that I have a few too many muscles to get mugged in my own neighborhood," Yamapi replies, and he feels a flush of chagrin climb up his neck all the way to his cheeks. "Clearly it's time to go back to the gym."
"Oh god no," Jin says. "You already weigh like five billion pounds in sheer solid muscle. I wasn't sure I was going to manage to get you home." Jin winces, and Yamapi's eyes struggle to focus in on his face. "I don't think you CAN get much more built, Pi." Jin’s hand trails along Yamapi’s bicep, and the touch is like fire.
"Evidently I'm not strong enough to protect myself," Yamapi says, and he feels...defeated, and anxious. You’re too weak. says a voice in the back of his head, and it makes Yamapi want to curl deep inside himself, where no one can see him.
"You were attacked from behind," Jin responds frankly. "There's not much you can do about something like that." Jin's hand returns to Yamapi's face, fingers skirting across the bones of his brow and the ridge of his nose before sliding down his cheek and cradling his jaw. "No one is perfect, Yamapi." Jin pauses. "Well, except for me," Jin says, and then lets out a shuddering breath of relief. Jin's fingers tingle pleasantly where they meet his skin, and Yamapi leans into the comforting touch—Jin makes him feel at ease, somehow, even when things are crazy. "I am absolutely flawless."
"Whatever," Yamapi says with a tiny chuckle, but it sounds hollow even in his own ears. It helps unravel the knot in his gut a little, but... It's scary, to think that someone as capable as he is can be so completely overwhelmed, with not even a glimpse of his attacker. "You'd still be unconscious if it was you, Bakanishi."
"No way," Jin protests, as he stands from the couch. "My hair is way bigger than yours. I have natural protection." They both chuckle then, and maybe it’s that they’re both realizing that Yamapi is home, that Yamapi is safe; Yamapi's eyes attempt to focus on the way Jin's mouth opens wide when he laughs. It’s like Jin is moving in slow motion.
Jin reaches down and wraps his hands around Yamapi's forearms. "Can you stand? I couldn't put you in bed. Maybe it's me who should be going to the gym."
Yamapi nods, but it hurts both his head and his neck. "Yeah, I can stand," he says, and Jin is quiet, like he's watching him. He tugs though, and Yamapi lets Jin yank him upright and then off the couch. "What time is it?"
"Probably around five thirty," Jin says. He glances down at his watch- the ostentatious gold one, of course, and Yamapi can see it even without his glasses because it's so damn ugly. "Five twenty-seven. I'm so awesome." Jin’s voice is purposefully light, like by being cheerful and bubbly it’ll make Yamapi less afraid.
It’s working, but Yamapi cringes at the time. "I have to be back at the recording studio in four hours," Yamapi says.
"Then we'd better put you to bed," Jin says, and hands Yamapi the glass of water from the table and two ibuprofens that were apparently lying next to it. "Bottoms up."
Yamapi swallows the pills, and the water hurts his throat. His esophagus is tight and uncomfortable, and the water burns going down, like fire. "I can put myself to bed, mom."
"Humor me," Jin says, and Yamapi does. He always does.
Jin makes Yamapi strip down to his briefs and tucks him into the covers in a way Yamapi hasn't been tucked in since he was about seven. Jin lies down next to him, over the covers, and Yamapi can feel his heat even with a sheet, a blanket, and a foot of space between them. Jin is so warm, and Yamapi is so cold.
"Thank you," Yamapi whispers. "You're an amazing friend."
"I'm your best friend," Jin says, and Yamapi is drifting to sleep.
"Mine," he agrees. "My best friend." Yamapi should be used to his unrequited love by now, but it still makes him ache.
*
When Yamapi wakes up in the morning to the dreadful and soul-crushing ring of his alarm, his whole body is painfully stiff. His neck throbs, and his head feels like there's been an earthquake inside of it, everything knocked loose and overturned. "Ugh," he says, and there's a muffled groan from next to him as Jin buried his head into his bunched up sweatshirt, which he's using as a pillow.
"Turn it off," Jin mumbles, and Yamapi takes a moment to admire the smooth lines of Jin's back, blurred by sleep and his lack of glasses. He fumbles on his bedside table for his mobile phone, mercifully not stolen, and hits the end call button, which halts the shriek of his alarm. He reaches into the bedside drawer and grabs his extra glasses, and the world comes into focus as he slides them on his face. He rolls his eyes at Jin's attempt to avoid morning, and gently slides his pillow under Jin's sweatshirt and arms, and Jin snuggles into the new softness.
As he showers, the hot water eases the tension in Yamapi's muscles, but the ache in his neck continues, pulsing beneath the surface of his skin. It's moving, the pain, extending and spreading like vines of tight discomfort down his neck and across his shoulder and back. You’re so weak.
He examines it in the mirror and it looks almost raw, two tiny pinpricks swollen and bubbled with a fierce red color and raised skin, and there is an underlying purple bruise too. It looks awful, and Yamapi has never seen anything quite like it.
He probes it with questing fingers, and hisses at the jolt of pain he receives in response, snatching his hand away with a frown. He'll get it looked at if it doesn't go away on it's own, he thinks, and just continues his morning ablutions, brushing his teeth and hastily putting a headband on to push his hair out of his eyes.
He doesn't actually look any worse for wear, except for his neck. He throws on a long scarf over his t-shirt and jeans- no one will say anything, he always wears them anyway. He spares a last glance at a still-slumbering Jin and heads to work.
*
Yamapi feels a little bit dizzy all day. He's hungry, definitely, but nothing looks remotely appetizing. Ryo keeps sending him sidelong, worried glances, but whenever Yamapi turns to meet his gaze, Ryo quickly looks away and feigns nonchalance. Massu happily eats Yamapi’s portion as Tegoshi and Koyama bicker half-heartedly over whether or not Tegoshi looks better in a cheerleader costume than Koyama does. (He does, but Yamapi doesn't want to get involved in that particular cat-fight.) Shige is watching them all, and his eyes linger a little on Yamapi too, but Yamapi just ignores it and moves food around on his plate in between Massu's thefts.
Later, in the bathroom, as Yamapi splashes water in his face and tries to make the waves of dizziness and nausea pass, Tegoshi walks in. Tegoshi gasps, and Yamapi realizes his scarf is on the edge of the sink, where he'd set it so the silk wouldn't get wet. "Yamapi, what happened to your neck?"
Tegoshi quickly invades his personal space, and Yamapi is used to that, but he still jerks back when Tegoshi reaches out to touch it. "Don't," he says, and Tegoshi pouts at him.
"Is that from a particularly feisty hook-up, or did you get tasered?"
"Tasered?" Yamapi asks, and dodges the question.
"Yeah that's what it looks like when you get tasered, sort of," Tegoshi says, and then he flips his hair out of his eyes. "What weird kinky sex games do you and Jin play at night at your place?"
"Tegoshi!" Yamapi shouts, feeling unexpectedly uncomfortable. "First of all, you know better about me and Jin," he says, and then Tegoshi rolls his eyes. "Secondly, how do you know what getting tasered looks like?"
"You're not the only one playing kinky sex games," Tegoshi says with a wink. "You might want to rub some cocoa butter on that mark, so it doesn't scar," He adds, as he flutters his eyelashes in the mirror and adjusts his bangs.
Yamapi mumbles assent, or acknowledgement at least, and Tegoshi flounces out of the bathroom. Yamapi winds the scarf back around his neck.
On the way home, he picks up cocoa butter, just in case Tegoshi knows what he's talking about.
Dinner is more looking at the food and feeling uncomfortably hungry, but the soup tastes like ash in his mouth. Jin is sitting across from him, though, and for some reason, watching Jin swallow the soup makes saliva gather in his mouth far more than what’s in the bowl right in front of him.
*
Stick a hand into his chest, pull out his heart. Watch it bleed, pumping with it's last bursts of sputtering life in the palm of his hands, shuddering anxiously against his cold fingertips. Rivulets of red running down his wrist and forearm.
Lick it up.
It tastes of rusted metal, of a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean. The Titanic. A tragedy.
He's not really dead, though. This all feels like a dream, or another world, so watching his eyes go dark and empty isn't sad, and the blood starts to taste surprisingly sweet on his lips and tongue.
*
Yamapi is shuddering and gasping when he wakes. He goes to the bathroom and puts his head in the shower, turning the spray on at maximum heat. It slashes on his neck and back, too, and he probably gets the floor soaked too, but he doesn't care.
His heart is beating so fast, and as he looks down at his hands, white-palmed and free of blood, he quivers. You’re shaking. Pathetic.
He walks past Jin's room on his way back to his bed, and he freezes. The dream lingers in his thoughts, and a cacophonous trepidation claws its way to the forefront of his mind. He stops in front of the door, and can't resist peeking inside. The doorknob is warm in his hand, and Yamapi wonders when his hands became so cold.
The lump on the bed rises and falls with every slightly wheezing breath, and Yamapi releases a sigh of relief that Jin is still mercifully alive.
Getting back to sleep is difficult, because Yamapi doesn't know what he'll imagine when he closes his eyes.
The voice in his head is getting louder.
*
“So I think you should go to the doctor,” Jin says, shoving a spoonful of olive halves into mouth as he holds a peanut butter sandwich in his left hand.
“Are you pregnant, or what?” Yamapi says, face scrunched up in disgust. “That is disgusting.”
“See, this is the kind of thing I’m worried about. You haven’t eaten in days. You look like you’re going to pass out.”
Yamapi is tired. He wants to eat, it’s just that food seems so incredibly unappetizing. He’s hungry but looking at food makes him nauseous, and Jin isn’t helping at all. “How am I supposed to be hungry when you’re eating shit like that?”
“It never bothered you before,” Jin says, and he swallows, and then his tongue darts out to lick his lips.
Pretty. It darts across the surface of his mind, but he pushes it back. ”I’m fine.”
“Humor me,” Jin says, and Yamapi sighs. He always does.
“Okay,” Yamapi says, and Jin smiles softly at him.
“Thank you,” Jin says, and reaches out to rest his palm on Pi’s shoulder. “I just…I worry about you. You’re my…well, most important person.”
“Mine too,” Yamapi replies. “You’re mine, too.”
*
“These marks on your neck,” the doctor tells him, “look a lot like needle tracks.” There’s a disapproving set to his mouth. “See how they’re uneven?” He holds up a picture in front of Yamapi’s face, and the marks look even more unforgiving in the harsh light of flash. His skin is looking paler, too, almost sallow. “You should have come in sooner.”
“He doesn’t use drugs,” Jin says harshly. “He was mugged.”
“I assumed something like that must be the case, Mr. Akanishi. You can put your hackles down,” the doctor says, and Jin huffs and crosses his arms defensively.
“I’m just making sure,” Jin says, eyes sliding sideways to watch the door.
“The problem is, it’s been so long that we might not be able to figure out what it is. I want to run some blood tests and make sure you didn’t get anything else from those needles, but I’m pretty sure it was something to knock you out, or to make you a weaker target.”
“Why’d they hit me on the back of the head then?” Yamapi asks, and the doctor frowns.
“You really should have been brought in,” the doctor says, and narrows his eyes at Jin. “You could have had a concussion, and those drugs could have been anything.”
“I know, okay?” Jin says. “I know. We weren’t thinking straight.” Jin swallows harshly and frowns even more deeply. “Anyway, I made him come in because he hasn’t been eating.”
“Not eating? That could be side effects of whatever he was injected with…” The doctor scribbles note down on his pad, and then look up and into Yamapi’s eyes. “Any other strange symptoms? Anything out of the ordinary, at all?”
Yamapi thinks about the voice he hears, sometimes, whispering dark suggestions across the canvass of his thoughts.
Normal people don’t hear voices, it whispers, and the sound is sharp. It’s spreads across his mind like a lingering spider’s web. You can’t be a pop star if they lock you up for being crazy.
“No, sir,” Yamapi says. “Nothing strange at all.”
*
Jin stretches, extending fingertips to the ceiling, and his black v-neck rides up, exposing a sliver of smooth pale skin that Yamapi can’t help but follow with his eyes.
Lately, Yamapi can’t seem to do anything but follow Jin with his eyes. Something about Jin has always attracted him, but wanting to throw him on the floor, climb astride him and…
There are some things Yamapi won’t allow himself to feel, and this is one of those things. He feels helpless to stop the want, though. Helpless to stop the itching of his fingers to slide along Jin’s smooth back. Helpless to ignore the silky skin stretched across Jin’s neck, looking ripe for Yamapi to bite his way down it.
His mouth waters simply imagining it.
You could just give in to it, flickers across his mind, and Yamapi bites his lip and clenches his eyes shut, and tries to make that voice go away. You could make him yours.
Stop it, Yamapi thinks. Just leave me alone.
He feels so very, very cold, and his skin is like ice to the touch.
Jin always looks so very warm.
*
“We received your test results, Mr. Yamashita,” says the clinic rep into the phone. “Your iron count is very low, and we found traces of amphetamines in your blood.”
“Amphetamines?” Yamapi asks.
“Yes,” the rep says. “Probably whatever they used to knock you out. It shouldn’t be this broken down already, though…” the clinic rep sighs. “It’s probably due to your incredibly high metabolism. It reads off the charts…Probably so high because you’re constantly exercising.” She laughs. “I’m a little jealous. You can probably eat whatever you want.”
“Thank you,” Yamapi says into the phone, but honestly, they haven’t told him anything he doesn’t already know.
*
He doesn’t know when he starts noticing the missing chunks of time.
Sometimes it’s just a couple of minutes, but sometimes it’s hours, and Yamapi opens his eyes and he’s in a completely different place, wearing different clothes, and his limbs feel heavy, like he’s been running through quicksand.
But it starts happening more often than Yamapi can stand. It makes him afraid, because it’s like he can’t control his own body, or his own mind. One minute, he’s brushing his teeth, and the next, he’s in a cab on the way to work, thirty minutes having disappeared into eternity, with no idea what he’s done in the blank.
One time, Yamapi ‘comes back’ while he’s in the shower, hot water pounding against his back. He’s still wearing his clothes, and they cling to his body, rubbing uncomfortably against his skin. The water is too hot, and it’s scalding his neck. His hand absently comes up to rub the fading mark by his jugular, and he leans his forehead against the wall of he shower. It’s cool in contrast.
What’s happening to me? he thinks, clenching his hands into balled fists. What is happening to me?
It’s nothing, his mind seems to whisper back. It’s nothing at all.
Yamapi stays in the shower until the water runs cold.
On a Wednesday, Yamapi is just watching TV, and he feels things start to get fuzzy.
When he returns to… awareness, he’s sitting at the kitchen table. In front of him sits an empty cellophane and styrofoam package. The steaks that had been inside of the package, that Jin had brought home in an attempt to feed him, are gone, and sit like lead in his stomach.
His taste buds tingle, and he’s pretty sure he’s eaten them raw.
The problem is that Yamapi doesn’t know what else he’s doing when everything is black.
It’s terrifying.
*
It becomes even more terrifying when he keeps having these dreams, dreams slick with blood and even slicker with fear.
He watches what happens like he’s looking through a curtain of water. The image ripples, and his body moves but he’s not the one calling any of the shots.
*
Yamapi wakes up, but he doesn’t remember going to sleep. His room smells of air freshener and he smells of Old Spice, and nothing seems out of the ordinary at all.
Except he feels strangely full, like he’s eaten a three-course meal, and for some reason it feels like he’s falling apart, piece by piece.
He can hear Jin’s gentle breathing in the room next door, even through the walls, and it comforts him enough that he can close his eyes and drift back to sleep.
*
"What happened to your sheets?" Jin asks, as they play 'War' with a deck of KAT-TUN playing cards on Yamapi's bed.
"What are you talking about?" Yamapi replies as his Joker, Koki, triumphs over Jin's Queen, Kamenashi. "There’s nothing wrong with my sheets."
"There’s like…blood on them," Jin says, setting his deck down on the bed and leaning forward to run his fingers over the soft white cotton. “Or something. Do you have nosebleeds now, or what?”
"I don’t know," Yamapi says vaguely, as his deck slowly becomes double the size of Jin's. Say it’s nothing, a voice whispers in his head, and Yamapi licks his lips. "It’s nothing. I probably cut myself shaving."
"Were you shaving with a switch blade? How old are you again? How have you not figured out how to shave yet?" Jin’s smirking, and when he looks up, Yamapi is raising an eyebrow at him. Yamapi reaches out toward Jin’s face, and runs his thumb over Jin’s upper lip.
"What?" Jin says, his face flushing. Yamapi likes the way the flush looks across his cheeks. It burns in his belly, and Yamapi really wants to get closer. Yamapi really wants to taste. Not yet, says the voice again, and Yamapi doesn’t trust the voice, but for some reason he listens. The voice sounds sure, which is more than Yamapi can say for himself, lately.
“At least I manage to shave,” Yamapi says, and Jin swats his hand away, face flaming a bright red.
“Shut up,” Jin mumbles, looking embarrassed and…and something else Yamapi can’t put his finger on, but his mind is telling him that the smell is confusion. That Jin smells like fear, and like confusion and like... Jin’s eyes steadily avoid his own now, and then he slams down a Nakamaru on top of Yamapi’s ‘Johnny’s junior’ card.
Out of the corner of his eye, Yamapi sees the splatter of blood, maybe the size of a 100-yen coin, and the sight makes him feel nauseous, because he doesn’t know where it came from, and he has this…sinking feeling that maybe the eerie echo in the back of his mind does.
Instead of thinking about it though, he just looks at Jin, who is biting his lip with concentration as he attempts to make up Yamapi’s lead.
“Earth to Yamapi,” Jin says, and Yamapi shakes himself to attention. “Geez, you must have had too much fun with that girl you brought home last night.”
“What girl?” Yamapi asks, and Jin looks at him blankly.
“I thought…? You left early with her so I just assumed…”
“Jin, what are you talking about?” Yamapi says, and his heartbeat quickens. Another blackout?
It’s nothing, whispers the voice in his mind. There was no girl, right? You would know if there was a girl, wouldn’t you? Yamapi can feel bile rise in his throat and he forces it down.
“I didn’t bring a girl home,” Yamapi says, and Jin shrugs his shoulders, a confused look crossing his face.
“Oh, I guess…I must have misunderstood,” Jin says, and then he awkwardly clears his throat. “Are you going to play?”
Yamapi wins the game.
*
The bass is thumping loudly in his ears, rippling through his limbs and quivering in his belly. He likes it, tonight. Maybe he loves it. Alcohol makes him feel limber and loose, moving to the beat easily. His fingers press tightly into the hipbones of the girl in front of him, pulling her tightly back against him and enjoying the friction of her against his burgeoning erection.
He sees Jin at the bar talking a girl up, lazily sipping from his beer, and his eyes follow the swooping curve of Jin’s back, the way it gently sways to his hips, and it makes him bring the girl even closer.
The song changes, to something low and a little sultry, and he takes the moment to drop a fluttering kiss against her throat, and she sighs, almost too softly to hear over the pulsing music in the club, but he hears it. Her hips keep pushing back, steady and rhythmically, and it’s driving him insane, he wants her so badly.
“Do you want to get out of here?” he whispers into her ear, and she responds by turning her head over her shoulder and pressing a hot mouth to his, open and wet and delicious. His tongue flicks out to wrap around hers, and he sucks it into his own mouth, swallowing her soft moans as his hands slide up and down her sides. She pulls away from him, slowly, releasing his mouth and looking at him with smoldering eyes.
“Yes,” she says, and then she’s lacing their fingers together and leading him through the throngs of people on the dance floor, expertly weaving left and right and making sure he follows her. Her hand feels small in his own, and warm. He holds it a little tighter. He thinks he feels Jin’s eyes on him s they leave the club. He’s no sure how he knows it’s Jin, only that he does, and the feeling makes him shiver.
She’s on him before he can even manage to pull the cab door shut, straddling him in the backseat, her muscular thighs pressing in on either side of his hips, her heat pressing down on him as she seals their mouths together again.
She leaves steamy handprints on the window, and he gives the driver a large tip as they stumble out of the car and into the street in front of his and Jin’s apartment building. She’s a giggling mess in his arms, and her every hiccup smells of champagne.
He guides her to the elevator, and as soon as the doors slide closed she’s on him again, tiny nimble fingers unbuttoning his shirt and leaving trails of heat in their wake. His mouth finds the pulse in her neck, nibbling along the vein and sucking until there’s a dark bruise.
And then the elevator chimes, and it’s a short walk to his and Jin’s place, thirteen steps at most, although it takes them twenty because she’s yanking and tugging on his shirt and he’s chuckling as his hands glide down to cup her ass. They hastily take their shoes off at the door, and he chuckles as she unzips her little black dress right there in the hallway.
“What’s your name?” she asks, as he picks her up and carries her through the apartment, throwing her on his bed as he turns around and locks his door.
“Does it matter?” he replies, as he finally pulls his shirt off, and follows it with his dress pants, dropping them to the floor too.
“I suppose not,” she says, and then he’s hovering over her, running his hands through her long black hair, enjoying the way it lays across the pillow. He lavishes attention on her breasts, enjoying the way she sighs, the way she lets her legs fall apart so he can slide between them. He scrapes his teeth along her nipple and down her abdomen, leaving marks deep enough to bleed. The first touch of her blood on his lips makes him want her more.
Soon enough he’s entering her, swallowing her moan with an eager mouth.
It’s easy, as she tightens around him, to reach into his bedside table and pull out his pocket knife. One small cut, right across the large vein in her neck, and then he seals his lips over the wound, spilling inside her as she spills into him.
Her blood tastes smooth on his lips, an ambrosia of unparalleled sweetness that lingers on his tongue, mingling with the taste of her juices in his mouth as he swallows her life in aching gulps. She’s quivering around him, but she can’t make a sound.
Her hands claw at the sheets, tangling in them as he remains affixed to her neck, relishing every last drop as she grows colder and colder in his arms.
*
Yamapi wakes up in cold sweats now. He’s starting to have weird dreams, flashes of hot skin beneath his fingertips and hands gripping his biceps tight enough to bruise. It’s something that feels like memory, but can’t be, since they are things Yamapi has never done.
You can’t have memories of things you haven’t done, he rationalizes.
Or did you do those things? asks the voice. How do you know you didn’t do it?
The voice caresses him softly, but its edges are sharp, and he feels the words cutting into him as his stomach drops.
He doesn’t know what he does when everything is black. He doesn’t know, and an aching part of him doesn’t ever want to know.
He’s scared. He’s so scared. I’m just giving you what you want.
What I want? Yamapi thinks, and the voice seems wickedly amused.
What you need.
*
He likes that he feels in control. He likes that they like that. That they come to him willingly, that they beg for more until the last gasp of air leaves their lungs as he slits their throats.
None of the girls tell him their names, or if they do, he doesn't remember them. None of the girls say anything when he doesn't take off his gloves. None of them say whether they recognize him or not, but he assumes they do. They all do.
So he doesn't feel anything but the warm heat of them around his cock through the latex as he slides in and out, and the spill of their blood as they fall eternally silent. He doesn't feel anything as he laps up their offerings, as their cold dead eyes stare up at the ceiling. He doesn't feel anything when he puts them in the trunk of his car and drops them in Tokyo Bay, either. He doesn't feel a damn thing.
No one will catch him, either. Not even Jin, who he sometimes hears through the wall as he's slamming into the girl of the week. Jin never asks about where the girl he fucked last night is, because Jin always wakes up late, walking into the kitchen long after he has disposed of the evidence, sleep in his eyes and mouth pulled into a lazy, drowsy smile that makes him look beautiful, even though he's a total mess.
He is usually already sitting at the table in fresh clothes by then, sipping a cup of joe and reading the newspaper, and Jin doesn't suspect a thing. Jin just sits across from him and grins, and he doesn't even think about the girl anymore, because why should he when Jin is right in front of him.
*
For some reason, the dreams start to feel less distant.
When he comes to, his hands encircling a cup of coffee, the first thing he sees is Jin, and his hands are trembling.
*
Hearing voices can be a sign of loneliness.
At least that’s what Yamapi reads on the internet, as he frantically searches for reasons that aren’t, you know, absolute insanity, that he could be hearing voices.
That’s why he goes to the animal shelter and gets Blossom. Dogs, he thinks, make people less lonely.
She’s a total mutt—a strange mix of breeds that leaves her with legs too short and hair too long, and her ears are two different lengths. “She’s been abused,” the vet at the shelter tells him. “She might not take to you immediately.”
Blossom is shy and flinching, but after a couple of days she warms to him, following him around the house.
“Why did you get a dog?” Jin asks, point blank, as Yamapi feeds Blossom little pieces of fish as he slices it thin for sashimi.
“Because I was lonely,” Yamapi replies, and Jin’s hand slides down his back and settles at the small of it. He sets his chin on Yamapi’s shoulder and Yamapi can’t see him, but he feels his breath blowing lightly against the shell of his ear.
“I’m not enough?” Jin asks, and he sounds…hurt, but Yamapi isn’t quite sure.
He could be, the voice slyly murmurs, and it teases just as much as the whisper of Jin’s breath on his face.
“You’re not always home,” Yamapi manages, and Blossom nibbles on his fingertips, and licks at the remains of fish there.
“Oh,” Jin says, and he takes a step back. “I didn’t know you were lonely.”
Yamapi turns to look at him, and Jin is biting his lip and looking at him, eyes wide and seeming to ask for something, and Yamapi doesn’t know what it is.
Yamapi wants to tell Jin about the voice, but he can’t. “I’m not. Not really. Not how you’re thinking.”
Jin nods, and then hesitates. “I could be… home more?”
Yes, he could, the voice says, and Yamapi shudders with revulsion at how pleased it sounds. “No,” Yamapi mumbles, and then realizes he’s spoken aloud when Jin flinches. “I mean, you’re home enough, I promise. Don’t worry about me.”
He could so easily be yours. He is yours. Just reach out and…
“I always worry,” Jin tells him, and Yamapi lets himself enjoy Jin’s fleeting touch against his forehead. “Let me worry.”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
“Humor me,” Jin says, and his fingers trace Yamapi’s eyebrows slowly. Yamapi does. He always does.
He just wants Jin to be safe. He’s not sure from what, but he just wants him to be safe.
*
Hyperaware of every brush of skin, his thoughts and the voice’s tangle together, all centered around Jin.
Jin is like the light, because when everything goes to black, when he comes back, there is always Jin, illuminating the world in brilliant brightness.
*
“You got a dog!” Ryo says gleefully, and immediately drops to his knees to play with Blossom, who lathes affection all over Ryo’s face.
Yamapi feels this weird, sickening jealousy at how little hesitance Blossom has with regard to Ryo. His scowl must be easy to read, on his face.
“Don’t be envious that your dog likes me better, Yamapi,” Ryo jibes. “I am infinitely more loveable.”
“Shut up,” Yamapi says, and his voice comes out sharp and harsh and it doesn’t sound like him at all.
It sounds like the voice he hears in his head.
“Woah, dude, I was just kidding. No need to get your sparkly, solo-career panties into a twist.” Ryo eyes him oddly, so Yamapi shakes his head in an effort to clear the strange haze in his head.
“Sorry,” he says, and he tries to smile.
Blossom curls up into Ryo’s lap as they talk in the kitchen, and Yamapi feels even more lonely.
*
The voice doesn’t go away.
It doesn’t stop whispering. Taunting.
Even worse is, sometimes Yamapi mixes that voice up with his own thoughts.
It makes him confused. Anxious. Angry.
Sometimes he finds himself accidentally listening to it.
*
Blossom is nuzzling at Yamapi's hand as he watches television, Jin pensive in thought beside him.
"What's on your mind?" Yamapi asks, and Jin exhales, blowing too long bangs out of his face.
"My mom thinks I should settle down," Jin tells him with a dry chuckle. "What do you think?"
"I think you should cut your goddamn hair," Yamapi tells him, even though he enjoys, aesthetically, the way the hair clings to Jin's shoulders and neck when it's wet from the shower. "Learn to take care of yourself before you add to that with a relationship."
Jin frowns at him, pouting like a child. "There's nothing wrong with my hair," he whines. "It's better long, because then I can put it in a ponytail."
Yamapi likes the ponytail even better, because it exposes the long smooth column of Jin's neck. Yamapi doesn't allow himself to look for too long, though, because Jin…makes the voice come. Jin makes the voice louder, and more insistent. He doesn’t know why, but he feels like he’s far too dangerous to let himself touch Jin, when he can hear the voice.
Plus you don’t have to claim Jin. Jin is already yours. the voice says viciously. You’re just a coward.
He reaches a hand out, and Jin nuzzles into it, just like Blossom, and Yamapi wonders if maybe, just maybe, the voice is right.
“If you settle down with someone else, that would mean leaving me,” Yamapi says, and Jin opens wide honest eyes to him. “I would be all alone.” Yamapi trembles at the thought of being all alone; only him and the voice inside his head that tries to make him disappear.
“I could never…” Jin’s voice catches, like it always does when he’s saying something too honest and it embarrasses him. “I could never leave you alone.”
Jin’s skin is too warm. Jin is too warm. Maybe that’s why Yamapi, who always feels cold now, can’t stop himself from getting closer.
*
“Yamapi,” Koyama says, sidling up to Yamapi as Yamapi leans back against the wall, watching Massu and Tegoshi bicker over Tegoshi’s excessive touching. Tegoshi is smiling at the camera as Massu grimaces, and Yamapi wonders where all the member-ai is.
“Hmmm?” Yamapi says, and turns toward Koyama slowly. He feels a bit light-headed, and wonders why it’s so hard to just eat. Everything tastes, though, like sawdust in his mouth.
“Are you…Are you okay?” Koyama’s voice is tentative, and Yamapi feels strangely irritated by a gesture that once would have sent a trickling of pleasure down his chest.
“I’m fine,” Yamapi snaps, and closes his eyes when Koyama recoils. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’ve…lost a lot of weight,” Koyama says, even more quietly. “And you’ve been really…you seem on edge.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Yamapi says, more calmly this time. The voice is there, of course, chuckling ominously, and Yamapi is on edge—he’s standing on the edge of a knife-blade, waiting to fall. Yamapi takes a deep breath and puts his hand on Koyama’s shoulder, and…
His left hand comes up and rests on Koyama’s other shoulder, and then both hands are sliding in toward Koyama’s throat.
“Yamapi, what are you doing?” Koyama says, and Koyama’s voice is so trusting, and it makes him smile.
“Making it so you never have to worry again,” he says, and then his hands wrap around Koyama’s throat and squeeze. Koyama’s arms surge up and claw and Yamapi’s hands but Yamapi’s hands are strong and capable, and Koyama looks at him in horror as he struggles for breath. Yamapi digs his nails into Koyama’s throat when the light leaves his eyes, and then licks up the blood that runs across his hands and down his arms from the tiny arced cuts.
Yamapi blinks, and his hand is still on Koyama’s shoulder, and he takes another deep shuddering breath. It could be that easy, the voice whispers. “Yamapi. Yamapi!” Koyama says, and suddenly the rest of the world surges back into existence.
“I’m here,” Yamapi says, and Koyama looks at him long and hard.
“I’m really worried about you,” he says, and Yamapi lets his hand fall from Koyama’s shoulder, and carefully moves a little further away from him.
“So am I, sometimes,” Yamapi admits. “But it’ll be okay.”
He hopes.
*
“Can I come over and play with your dog?” Ryo asks, and Yamapi can feel the envy tearing at his stomach again.
“Not today,” he says, and Ryo looks slightly put out.
“You always say that,” Ryo says, and then crosses his arms. “I have a day off next week. Make time for me to come over and hang out.”
“What do you mean, ‘you always say that,’” Yamapi says with an empty chuckle. “You act like you ask all the time.”
Ryo looks at him, blinking slowly, and then he frowns. “I asked you at least twice this week,” Ryo says then, and Yamapi feels the dread creep up on him, covering him like a shadow in the setting sun. “Yesterday when I asked, you looked like you were going to eat me.”
“Yesterday?” Yamapi says hollowly, as his brain scrambles for any memory of seeing Ryo at all yesterday.
“Yeah, when we were shooting that commercial,” Ryo says slowly, and Yamapi doesn’t answer, he just looks down at his hands and wonders when he had cut his nails, because they looks shorter. They’re too short, now, cut jagged and rough, and they should hurt, but they don’t.
“Oh, right,” Yamapi says, and the fear enfolds his lungs in molasses, and he struggles to breathe.
“You need to get it together, man,” Ryo says, and slaps him on the back, and the voice is there, waiting when he goes looking. I can be you whenever I want, it says.
*
Jin’s sleeping when he turns the doorknob and enters the room. Jin doesn’t stir, just continues to breathe evenly in and out as Yamapi’s form approaches the bed.
He sits down gently at Jin’s side, admiring Jin’s sleeping face, and the way Jin’s got one arm curled up around his head as he lies there on his back, displayed like he has been waiting for Yamapi’s eyes to look at him just like this.
“Lovely,” Yamapi’s mouth forms into a whisper, and then Yamapi’s hand is reaching out and brushing the hair away from Jin’s face and shoulder. He leans closer, pushing his face into the crook of Jin’s neck, inhaling the sweet scent of Jin’s soap, and underneath that, the scent of Jin himself.
He nibbles at the soft skin, and Jin shifts and sighs, turning his head to the side, even in sleep, to offer more access, and it makes Yamapi’s lips twist into a dangerous smile.
He bites down, hard, into the skin there, piercing the skin with his teeth and drawing blood, and Jin hisses and then groans and the bite is followed with a gentle licking motion as he soothes the skin. Jin whimpers, and hovers on the edge of wakefulness, but Yamapi’s hand finds its way into Jin’s hair and tenderly brushes through it, and though Jin’s lashes flutter, he doesn’t awaken.
The mark is harsh and raw on Jin’s neck, and it’s beautiful.
*
“Jin, is everything okay today?” Yamapi asks, and Jin swallows and shifts.
“Yeah,” he says. He’s wearing a sweatshirt, even though it’s still moderately warm outside. “I just…I need to go for a walk.”
“Okay,” Yamapi says, and he wonders why Jin won’t meet his eyes.
Part Two
