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Suguru wakes to the sound of breath he has always recognized, even in sleep.
The air is thin. The floor beneath him is cold. His knees ache against rough wooden boards. His arms are drawn forward, wrists locked in reinforced cuffs—equal parts safety precaution and insult. The position is humiliating, but he holds himself still. He refuses to believe anything in him has softened into helplessness.
It has been ten years since he has looked at Satoru properly. Ten long years of still-rotting guilt, forced revival, negotiations whispered in the dark like confessions, conditions placed on his continued existence. Ten years—and now the first thing he sees is bandages. Layer upon layer of white linen wrapped carelessly, haphazardly, hiding away the one part of Satoru he used to trust more than his own sight.
“Suu–gu–ru,” Satoru sings, stretching the syllables until they curl in the air, syrup-slow and pleased with himself, "aww, what's with that face? You look all gloomy and lost, hm? Don't tell me you're not happy to see me."
He taps his own chin with exaggerated contemplation, standing just inside the threshold, backlit by the narrow stairwell light. “Is it the cuffs? Mmm—no, no, that’s too obvious.” A step closer, wood groaning faintly beneath his weight. “Or maybe… you just missed me?”
Suguru’s jaw tightens, only barely. He keeps his eyes lowered, because there is no point meeting a gaze hidden under cloth, because Satoru can read his reactions through the shape of a breath, the stiffness of shoulders, the rhythm of silence. He has always been impossible to hide from.
“Was that supposed to be an insult?” Suguru murmurs, voice hoarse with sleep, though the rasp is also born from weeks of underuse.
“Mm?” Satoru drifts forward, the air bending with him, that familiar shimmering hum of power softened but never gone. “Nooo,” he says, bright and airy, as if the very idea delights him, “it was supposed to be a greeting. You know—the thing friends do.”
He crouches before Suguru, close enough that the hem of his sweater brushes Suguru’s knee. One hand lifts, not touching, merely hovering, faint warmth ghosting over Suguru’s cheekbone. “You look sad,” he says softly, childingly, “and I’ve only been gone two hours. Isn’t that cute? You’re already pining like that. So devoted, Suguru~”
A pulse shivers down Suguru’s spine, indignation braided with the strange, trembling anticipation that has been eating at him since Satoru first announced his new “arrangement,” spoken in that breezy, unstoppable tone that brooked no refusal because refusal would’ve meant obliteration, disappearance, some final unmaking of self. And Suguru had already tasted that once; it had not been kind. Trying to kill Yuta had left him standing in that awful corridor of indecision, raw and shaking, his chest a hollowed space where conviction used to live and for one blessed instant he had felt the soft promise of cessation brushing against him—only for Satoru to seize him by the scruff of his fate and pull him back into the world with hands that had never known how to let go of anything they decided belonged to them.
He had wanted to die. But Satoru had always been a selfish, selfish man, and Satoru had refused to allow Suguru’s last wish to be the one thing he did without Satoru’s permission.
“Ne, Suguru,” Satoru complains, and the pout in his voice is unmistakable even through the lazy amusement laced into it, “you’re thinking again. You haven’t answered me.”
Suguru swallows. The chain creaks when he shifts, a subtle movement that betrays too much—and the shift presses his thighs together, compresses the ache in his gut, sends a hot wave of urgency rolling through his pelvis that he has to clamp down on with every scrap of muscle he has. A bead of sweat traces his temple. "I didn't hear the question."
“You did,” Satoru counters instantly, the words sharp, airy, almost playful. “You always hear me. You just drifted off into that gloomy little cave in your head.” He stands, hands on his knees, leaning forward enough that Suguru can see the faint motion of breath under the sweater’s neckline. “What were you thinking about? Something depressing? Something stubborn? Something stupid?”
“Satoru.” Suguru exhales the name carefully. “It’s nothing.”
“Mm,” Satoru hums, unimpressed. “You know I can practically feel it when you start spiraling, right? It’s like you set off some pathetic internal alarm. Beep-beep. Suguru’s sulking again.” His smile is wide. “Come on. Tell me.”
Suguru lowers his gaze, lashes casting long shadows across his cheek. “You wouldn’t want the answer.”
Satoru lets out a thoughtful hum, a sound that vibrates through the floorboards. “Try me.”
A beat. Two.
Suguru’s voice surfaces. “I was thinking,” he murmurs slowly, “that I shouldn’t be here.”
Satoru’s breath shifts, a small intake of air, but his tone stays maddeningly light. “Aw, Suguru. We’ve been through this.” He leans forward until Suguru feels the faint brush of bandages against his forehead. “You tried to disappear once. I said no…Simple math”
“That’s not math,” Suguru says quietly.
“It is to me.” Satoru straightens, stretching his arms overhead in a loose, graceful motion that puts the faintest strain across his sweater before he lets them drop again. “Besides, you’re terrible at dying. I’m helping you. You should be grateful.”
Suguru gives him a look—small, sharp, weary—and Satoru grins as if he’s pleased to have earned it.
“That’s better,” Satoru says brightly. “Gloomy suits you, but silence doesn’t. Now—” he flicks Suguru’s forehead with a fingertip, a soft tap that still feels invasive, “I asked you something earlier.”
“Did you.”
“Mmhm.” Satoru crouches again, balancing on the balls of his feet, hands dangling loosely between his knees, posture careless in a way only he can manage.
“I asked,” Satoru purrs, head tilting in that exaggerated, needling way of his, “if you want me to—”
Whatever the end of the sentence is meant to be, Suguru doesn’t hear it. Because Satoru lifts one foot—slow, unhurried, unbearably deliberate—and sets it down on his cock. A thin, involuntary breath hisses between Suguru’s teeth. His whole body stiffens, muscles tightening against the instinct to jerk away, the chain at his collar giving a soft metallic complaint as his shoulders draw back in an attempt—futile—to stay still.
Control, control, control—
Satoru’s smile is unmistakable in the shift of his voice. “Oh? That got your attention.”
Suguru’s glare is automatic, carved from the remnants of an old spine he is not sure he possesses anymore. “Satoru.”
“Yes?” Light, innocent. Cruel. He presses harder, sinking his weight slowly through the arch of his foot right over the thickest part of Suguru’s cock, forcing him to absorb it, to withstand it, to feel every ounce of Satoru’s intention settle through bone and breath.
Suguru inhales through his mouth, sharp, unsteady. “Move.”
“Mm… no,” Satoru decides, airy, almost thoughtful. “You were drifting. I hate when you drift.” His foot rolls slightly, toe to heel, a subtle adjustment that sends another shiver racing down Suguru’s spine. “Stay here. With me.”
Suguru chokes on the noise that tries to rise in his throat. The friction is maddening, too much and not enough, a taunt layered under silk. His hips twitch before he can stop them, a shudder running through the tension of his thighs, his chest, the line of his back.
“Satoru.” Suguru forces the name through clenched teeth, forces his back straight, forces the tremor out of his breath. “You will remove your foot.”
“Will I?” he murmurs, tone warm, almost affectionate in its mockery, head tilting under the bandages that cover what should never have been covered. “You sound very sure of yourself for someone in your position.”
He pushes again, slowly, cruelly measured, as though testing how much weight the chains around Suguru’s wrists can take before he pulls them apart.
A drop of pre leaks through the thin fabric stretched obscenely around Suguru’s cock, warm enough that Satoru feels it through the leather.
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Satoru sighs, voice dropping to a low, wicked murmur. “Because that’s the one thing you don’t get to give right now.” His foot shifts, sole rubbing up the length of Suguru’s erection with a lazy cruelty he absolutely calculated. “You can make requests, sure. Beg even. But you don’t get orders.”
Suguru exhales through his nose, long and shuddering, an involuntary motion betraying him far more than any noise could. He tries to pull his hips back—tries to reclaim even a fraction of distance—only for Satoru to follow him, pinning him deeper into the wall behind him, shoe still pressed to the aching bulge between his legs. He has always tried to keep his calm in every situation, let composure smooth itself over discomfort until it resembled something stoic. That same brittle half-smile he perfected in adolescence threatens to surface now—an old habit, second nature, a quiet provocation Satoru has always hated.
Satoru clicks his tongue under his breath, a small, irritated tch. “You’re such a little bitch, y’know that, Suguru,” he says, and the foot presses a fraction harder, the leather creaking faintly around the bend of his arch.
Suguru lets the smirk grow, a curl of his mouth that shows teeth and disregard, something that says is that all, something that Satoru has always reacted to. A soft huff of air, the faint tremor of breath behind the bandages. Irritation, interest, something stewing beneath the practiced ease. Satoru crouches without warning, the movement smooth and eerily unhurried, his foot leaving Suguru’s cock, granting a thin sliver of relief.
Suguru barely manages a breath before Satoru’s weight replaces it.
He lowers himself, settles, sinks down onto Suguru’s lap with a deliberate heaviness that forces a broken sound into Suguru’s throat before he smothers it. The impact drives the trapped heat of Suguru’s arousal upward, crushed between his abdomen and Satoru’s solid weight, and Satoru exhales a pleased little hum as though the act were nothing more than finding a comfortable seat in a too-small room.
“Satoru,” Suguru mutters, trying to steady his breath, trying not to flex against the cuffs as they bite faintly into his wrists with the instinct to touch, to hold, to shove, to reclaim. “Get off.”
Satoru laughs, bright, dismissive. “Mm, no. You’re in no position to give instructions. You forgot the rules again? Should I be worried? I’d hate to think you’re not paying attention.”
Suguru lifts his chin, jaw tightened. “I told you—”
“You told me nothing useful,” Satoru interrupts lightly, tilting his head, shoulders rocking slightly with each small shift of weight that grinds him down into Suguru’s lap. “You smirked at me instead. You always smirk when you want to provoke me. And then you pretend you’re above it all. It’s very transparent, you know.”
He trails a hand down Suguru’s neck, palm warm, fingers slow, sliding with a gentleness that’s infinitely more dangerous than force. His grip closes when he reaches the soft hollow above the collarbone, thumb pressing into the edge of tendon, not enough to bruise but enough to remind Suguru precisely who holds the reins.
Suguru coughs, soft, involuntary, his spine arching against the instinct to pull away. He knows Satoru could crush his windpipe without thinking. He knows Satoru holds every advantage. He knows Satoru always has, always will. He hates the truth of it—except for the terrible way it eases something deep inside him, the way surrender feels clean when it’s Satoru, the way inhibition dissolves into heat and obedience when it’s Satoru, when it’s always been Satoru—
“What did you expect? That you get to provoke me and then tell me to stop?” Satoru hums soft, coaxing, intimate. “You should know better.”
Suguru tightens his jaw, that razor-edged fragment of pride flaring for one brief second, even with Satoru’s weight pinning him. “I wasn’t provoking you.”
Satoru laughs. “Suguru. You breathe to provoke me.”
He rocks his hips again, slower this time, dragging friction along the length of Suguru’s cock until Suguru has to swallow hard to keep the sound down. Satoru’s hand slides to the back of his neck, fingers threading into the base of his hair, gripping, not hard but firm, anchoring him there, refusing him the option of retreat.
“Answer the question,” Satoru says, voice dipping honey-dark. “What were you smirking at? What brilliant thought were you having that you didn’t want to share?”
Suguru’s breath hitches. He knows where this is going; Satoru only uses this voice when he wants to pry, to peel him apart, to see inside him.
Suguru does what he always does: tries to deflect. “It wasn’t important.”
Satoru tightens his grip in Suguru’s hair, enough to make the breath leave Suguru’s chest in one thin, shaky line. “Wrong answer.” He leans in, bandages brushing Suguru’s cheek, mouth close enough that the shape of the next words is felt before it’s heard. “Try again.”
Suguru shakes his head once, slow, stubborn. “No.”
“Don’t make me ask a third time.”
Suguru swallows, rough, the chain at his wrists clinking softly as he resettles, the metal cold on his skin. “You’ll be irritated,” he murmurs. “You always are.”
Satoru exhales a quiet laugh through his nose, soft but sharp. “I’m already irritated.”
Suguru’s mouth twitches. “Exactly.”
“Irritated Satoru is still Satoru,” he singsongs, “Thinking Suguru, though…” Satoru trails off, tipping his head. “That’s a problem.” His torso bends, the sweater stretching over muscle that didn’t exist in this volume when they were teenagers, and then Suguru feels the faint drag of bandaged cloth at his temple, the almost-touch of a face he cannot see.
“If we opened you up right now, we’d find the same three thoughts you always have up there.”
He lifts his free hand, counts off on his fingers, the motion so close Suguru can feel the shift of air at his brow. “One: I should be dead. Two: Satoru made a mistake. Three…” he pauses for dramatic effect. “Three: I don’t deserve this.”
Suguru’s hands flex helplessly against his chest, nails digging into his own skin through the cloth. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Satoru replies simply, all trace of teasing momentarily stripped from his voice. “I watched you think it, remember? When you were still bleeding out and trying very hard to be noble about it.”
His hand closes over Suguru’s cock harshly, knuckles digging, heel of his palm grinding down with merciless precision.
Suguru’s breath ruptures out of him in a crushed, involuntary sound—half-groan, half something far uglier—his head tipping back against the wall hard enough to rattle the boards. Something unspools inside him at a dangerous, dissolving pace; everything is dizzy, horrifically buoyant, the floor rolling under him, his nerves singing with cold panic and molten gut-clenching want. Satoru’s cursed energy hums through the narrow space in a low, steady throb, brushing skin and bone, tugging at the empty places inside him where conviction used to sit. Too much, too warm, too close, too Satoru, like staring into a mirror warped beyond repair, shattered and held together only by Satoru’s insistence that he is still something worth keeping.
“See?” Satoru breathes, delighted, irritated, hungry all at once, “you still respond perfectly. Even after ten years. Even after everything. You’re so stubborn, but your body remembers me faster than your damn mouth ever did.”
“Satoru—”
A hand covers his mouth before the sound can fully form, palm warm, fingers sinking into the line of his cheek with terrible gentleness.
“Mm-mm,” Satoru murmurs “I didn’t ask you to speak.”
Suguru can’t answer. He can’t even bow his head. He is sinking, sinking, sinking—the attic spinning in slow, viscous arcs at the edge of his sight, his limbs draining of sensation until he can no longer feel his toes, his fingers, his throat, only the tremendous pressure in his lap where Satoru’s hand has worked his pants halfway down and now curls around his cock thumb gliding through the leaking slick at the tip, slow, almost tender.
“Fuck,” Satoru sighs, “you’re bigger than I remembered.”
His hips roll again, Satoru’s weight rocking down onto him with the same slow pressure as the hand working him, stroking him, dragging him out of himself. Suguru’s throat clicks around a dry swallow. The hand over his mouth is warm, slightly damp, palm sealed against his lips so tightly he can feel the callused ridge. He breathes in through his nose and gets nothing but Satoru—soap and skin and that faint metallic sweetness that always clings to him, cursed energy crystallized into scent.
He tries to speak. A sound vibrates against Satoru’s palm, muffled and shapeless, and Satoru’s fingers press harder in response, thumb digging into the hollow beneath his cheekbone.
“Mm-mm,” Satoru hums, bright, almost singsongy, “I said I didn’t ask you to speak. Did that sound like an invitation? You’re hearing things, Suguru.”
A slow, grinding roll of his hips. Suguru’s cock throbs in Satoru’s grip, precome slicking the slide of those long fingers, and the chain at his wrists clinks once, twice, as his shoulders jerk forward on instinct. Wanting to grab. Wanting to pull Satoru down onto him properly, sheathe himself inside that insufferable warmth and watch the composure crack. But his wrists are locked and Satoru’s hand is too firm on his face and the only thing he can do is breathe, breathe, breathe through his nose while the room tips sideways.
Satoru’s thumb drags across the leaking slit. Lazy. Exploratory. As if cataloguing every twitch it earns him.
“You’re so hard it’s actually kind of flattering,” Satoru says, conversational, like they’re discussing weather. “Ten years, and your cock still gets this stupid over me. I should be more generous, hm? But I’m not feeling generous.”
His grip tightens, and Suguru’s hips cant upward before he can stop them—a shameful, involuntary buck that earns a delighted laugh.
“Oh? Was that a request?”
Suguru stares up at him through the haze. Satoru’s mouth is a curved, wicked thing, lips parted around the shape of amusement, his jaw lit warm by the stairwell light that catches the edge of those bandages. Everything about his posture reads relaxed. Loose shoulders, easy weight distribution, free hand dangling at his side. But the hand on Suguru’s cock hasn’t stopped moving, and Suguru has known this man long enough to read the tension running beneath the performance—the slight quickening of breath, the way his thighs press together, the faintest rock of his hips as he works Suguru over.
Satoru is affected. He’s pretending he isn’t.
And that—that is useful information.
Suguru lets his body go slack. Deliberate. A controlled release of tension in his shoulders, his back, the rigid line of his spine. He stops fighting the cuffs. Stops straining. Lets the weight of his own surrender settle visibly into his frame, chin dipping, lashes lowering, the picture of submission.
His eyes, though. His eyes stay sharp beneath the curtain of dark hair.
He exhales through his nose, and the breath ghosts warm against Satoru’s palm, and he watches the way Satoru’s hand falters. Barely. A half-second stutter in the rhythm of his stroke. Good.
Suguru turns his head, just slightly, into Satoru’s palm. Presses his lips against the center of it. The kiss is soft, barely there, a ghost of contact that shouldn’t register through skin and yet—
Satoru’s breath catches.
Suguru does it again. A third time. Each press deliberate and gentle and so carefully tender that it aches, his mouth shaping something wordless against the heat of Satoru’s hand, and he can feel the precise moment Satoru’s grip loosens. The fingers ease. The pad of Satoru’s thumb slips from the bone of his cheek to rest at the corner of his mouth, almost cradling.
The hand lifts. Just enough. A centimeter of space between palm and lips.
Suguru speaks immediately, and his voice is the one he has always known how to wield—low, warm, something that moves through the air the way smoke moves through a room. “Satoru.” Quiet. Yielding. “You’re right. You’re always right. I shouldn’t have tried to give you orders.”
His tongue touches the tip of Satoru’s finger where it rests at the seam of his lips. Feather-light.
“Let me make it up to you.”
Satoru’s hand stills entirely on his cock.
Suguru watches him from beneath his lashes, reads the micro-shift of muscle under bandage, the slight parting of his lips, the faintest lean of his torso as if gravity has rearranged itself around the sound of Suguru’s voice. He has always been able to do this. Always. Since they were sixteen and Suguru learned that a certain cadence, a certain softness, a certain way of shaping Satoru’s name could make the strongest sorcerer alive hesitate mid-sentence. Satoru is immune to everything in the world except the particular frequency of Suguru’s surrender.
A weapon. Has always been a weapon.
“I’ll be good,” Suguru murmurs, and the words taste rotten and sweet on his tongue, because they are a lie and a truth braided together so tightly he can’t pull them apart. He shifts his hips, a slow upward press of his cock into Satoru’s loosened fist, and lets his eyes fall shut. “Just let me—”
Satoru’s hand slams back over his mouth.
Hard. The impact rattles his teeth against the inside of his cheek. Suguru’s eyes fly open.
“You,” Satoru says, and his voice has dropped all pretense of play, gone flat and bright in that particular way it only goes when he’s genuinely pissed, “are such a manipulative little shit.”
His hand grinds down against Suguru’s mouth, fingers curling into the hinge of his jaw, forcing his head against the wall. The angle hurts. Suguru’s pulse kicks hard beneath his skin, once, twice, adrenaline spiking through the haze of arousal.
“You think I can’t feel it?” Satoru leans in until the bandages brush Suguru’s forehead, until his breath is all Suguru can taste. “The second you go all soft and sweet and say my name like that—I know exactly what you’re doing. You’ve been pulling that shit since high school, Suguru. Did you really think it’d work now?”
Suguru smirks behind Satoru’s hand.
He can’t help it. Involuntary, a reflex as old as their history—that curl of the mouth that says I almost had you, that says I was closer than you want to admit, that says you hesitated and we both know it. His lips press wide against Satoru’s palm and he can feel the shape of his own grin against skin and Satoru can feel it too because—
Satoru hits him.
Open palm. Cheek. The crack is loud in the narrow attic, sharp enough to echo off the wooden beams. Suguru’s head snaps to the side, hair whipping across his face, and the sting blooms hot and immediate across the entire left half of his jaw. His vision whites out for a fraction of a second. When it returns, the room is tilted, his ears ringing faintly, and his cock is so hard it hurts.
A grunt rips from his chest—guttural, low, dragged out of some deep place he wasn’t prepared to access. It bleeds into a moan before he can swallow it, a thick, broken sound that fills the attic and makes his own face burn with how obviously it communicates want.
“There it is,” Satoru breathes, and the anger hasn’t left his voice but there’s something else layered beneath it now, something hot and coiled and hungry. “There’s honest Suguru.”
His hand returns to Suguru’s cock, and the stroke is brutal. Tight fist, fast rhythm, thumb pressing mercilessly into the underside of the head on every upstroke. Suguru chokes—abs contracting, chains jerking, thighs trembling against Satoru’s weight.
“You wanna manipulate me?” Satoru asks, and his other hand fists in Suguru’s hair, wrenching his head back to center, forcing him to face forward. “You wanna play the soft voice and the pretty eyes and the let me make it up to you? Hm?” He twists his wrist on the downstroke, and Suguru’s spine arches off the wall. “Fine. Try. I’ll just hit you again.”
Suguru’s breath comes in ragged pulls through his teeth. His cheek throbs, hot and swelling, and every pulse of pain sends a secondary jolt straight to his groin, a feedback loop his body has decided to interpret as pleasure regardless of what his pride has to say about it. He hates that it works. He hates how well Satoru reads him—how every careful construction of tone and expression gets stripped apart in seconds, reduced to base components: want, need, the embarrassing machinery of desire that Suguru has spent a lifetime dressing up in prettier language.
His tongue pushes against the inside of his cheek, testing the ache. Tastes copper where his teeth caught flesh. Swallows it.
“Satoru,” he rasps, and this time the softness is involuntary, his voice wrecked thin by arousal and the aftertaste of being hit, “—harder.”
Satoru’s hand stops.
Dead stop. His whole body goes still, perched on Suguru’s lap, the weight of him a furnace against Suguru’s aching cock. A beat. Two.
“…Hah?”
Suguru lifts his chin, meets the blank expanse of bandage where Satoru’s eyes should be, and holds. He knows what his face looks like right now—flushed, bruising, hair stuck to his temples with sweat, lips swollen and split at the corner. He knows his expression is something between defiance and offering. He knows exactly what it does to Satoru.
“You heard me.”
Silence. Satoru’s breathing has gone shallow, his chest rising and falling in quick, visible motions under the knit of his sweater. His fingers flex once around Suguru’s cock, an involuntary squeeze, and Suguru feels the twitch of Satoru’s own arousal where it presses against his abdomen through fabric. Hard. Straining.
Satoru exhales. A long, slow, controlled breath that shakes at the tail end.
“You’re doing it again,” he says, quieter, almost to himself. “You’re giving me what I want so I’ll give you what you want. You’re disgusting, Suguru. You know that?”
His free hand rises. Suguru watches it—the deliberate lift, the flex of fingers, the slow curl into a half-open palm. Anticipation hooks behind his ribs and pulls.
The second slap is harder than the first.
It connects with the already-bruised cheek, and the sound is meaty, dense, followed by the sharp crack of Suguru’s head hitting the wall behind him. His vision scatters. White sparks, a high ringing, and then the pain catches up—blooming deep, a throb that synchronizes with his heartbeat and sends heat flooding down through his chest, his stomach, pooling molten in his pelvis.
The moan that leaves him is wrecked. Ugly. He barely recognizes it as his own, this ragged torn-open sound that crests and breaks on the exhale, his hips bucking hard into Satoru’s hand, precome dripping over those long fingers.
“Fuck,” Satoru says, and his voice has cracked, gone breathy, composure shredding at the seams. His hips grind down—once, hard—and the friction of his clothed cock against Suguru’s bare skin is agonizing. “Fuck, Suguru, you—”
His hand wraps around Suguru’s cock again, and the pace is vicious. His grip too tight, his rhythm too fast, his whole arm working into the motion, shoulder rolling, jerking Suguru off with a ferocity that borders on violence. Suguru’s hips stutter and jerk, thighs shaking, the chains above him singing with every involuntary pull.
“You want harder?” Satoru’s voice is low, stripped raw, his usual airy lilt gone entirely. “You want me to hurt you? That’s what gets you off? Being smacked around by the person keeping you alive?”
Suguru can’t answer. His throat has closed around something—a sob, maybe, or a laugh, or some hybrid noise that has no name. His head lolls against the wall, cheek throbbing, the copper taste still bright on his tongue. Everything is narrowing. The cold floor, the cuffs, the dull ache in his knees—all of it receding until the only thing that exists is Satoru’s hand and Satoru’s weight and Satoru’s voice fraying at the edges.
Because Satoru is fraying. Suguru can hear it. Can feel it in the unsteadiness of his hips, the way his strokes keep losing rhythm and catching it again, the ragged quality of each exhale. Satoru’s hand can’t fully close around him—his fingers stretch and stretch and the tips still don’t meet around the girth, a gap where his grip runs out, and Suguru can feel it, the inadequacy of Satoru’s reach trying to encompass what it physically can’t. Satoru compensates by twisting on the upstroke, palm dragging wet over the head, and the slick sound it makes echoes off the close walls, filthy, obscene.
“Suguru,” Satoru says, and his name sounds like it’s been dragged over gravel, all the music stripped from it, “you’re going to come when I tell you to come. You don’t get to do it on your own. You don’t get to decide.”
He punctuates the last word by grinding his full weight down into Suguru’s lap, and the pressure—Satoru’s entire body bearing down on him, the impossible agonizing crush of it—whites out every thought in Suguru’s skull.
His mind empties. Goes silent. For the first time in months, maybe years, the constant hum of calculation and counter-calculation and self-recrimination and guilt and strategy ceases entirely, replaced by a roar of static so loud it becomes its own kind of quiet.
Suguru’s mouth falls open. His eyes sting, wet at the corners. The muscles in his stomach clench and release in rapid succession, his cock leaking steadily, and pressure builds at the base of his spine, behind his ribs, in his throat—
“Not yet,” Satoru says, and squeezes the base. Hard.
Suguru’s whole body convulses. A strangled, airless sound punches out of him, his back slamming against the wall, chains snapping taut. The orgasm crests and stalls, held in suspension, trembling at the very edge.
“You can beg,” Satoru offers, and there’s the smile again, audible, sharp, devastatingly controlled even though his thighs are shaking where they bracket Suguru’s hips. “That’s allowed. That’s always been allowed.”
Suguru glares at him.
Satoru's smile widens—splits—becomes something insufferable. "D'aww, don't look at me like that, Su~gu~ru," he croons, tilting his head, syllables dripping slow as honey off his tongue. "I know, I know. You hate giving up control, ne?”
Suguru's jaw tightens. He opens his mouth to say something cutting, something that'll slice that grin right off—
Satoru's hips drop.
His clothed ass grinds down directly onto Suguru's cock, full weight, and the friction of fabric against the slick, oversensitive head is so sudden and so deliberate that Suguru's vision tunnels. His mouth stays open but nothing comes out. The sound dies somewhere between his chest and his throat, strangled by the sheer volume of sensation—Satoru's weight, Satoru's heat, the shift of muscle through thin cotton as he settles himself more firmly, more completely, into the cradle of Suguru's hips.
Control slipping. Going under. Under. The floor opening up beneath him, swallowing him whole, and he had control, he had it, he had it—
Satoru slaps him.
Third time. Softer. Almost tender in comparison, a sharp tap across his already-bruised cheek that stings bright and hot and snaps Suguru's awareness back into his skull like a rubber band. His head turns with the impact, hair swinging across his face, and he sucks a breath through his teeth.
"Stay with me," Satoru murmurs, close, bandages brushing Suguru's temple. "I told you. No drifting."
Suguru blinks. The room reassembles—wooden beams, lamplight, the chain between his wrists clicking softly as his chest heaves. He swallows. Copper and spit and the ghost of Satoru's palm. His cheek throbs in triple time with his heartbeat and his cock.
"I'm here," Suguru manages, hoarse.
"Mmhm." Satoru rolls his hips, slow, grinding, a long drag of pressure that pulls a tremor through Suguru's entire abdomen. "Prove it."
"How."
Satoru laughs, quiet and pleased. His hands settle on Suguru's shoulders, thumbs pressing into the muscle above his collarbones. He rises on his knees—just enough—and Suguru feels the loss of contact like a physical wound, cool air rushing over the wet, aching length of his cock. His hips chase the warmth before he can stop them. Pathetic. Satoru sees it, of course. Satoru sees everything.
"Patience," Satoru hums, that singsong cadence threading through the word, and his fingers trail down Suguru's chest, nails catching on the fabric of his robe, dragging it up, bunching it beneath his armpits. Cool air hits Suguru's stomach. His muscles twitch involuntarily, abs contracting, and Satoru traces the line of them with one fingertip—sternum to navel—feather-light and unbearably slow. "Y'know... I've been thinking."
"Dangerous," Suguru rasps.
"Rude." Satoru flicks his nipple, sharp, and Suguru hisses. "I've been thinking," he repeats, louder, as if Suguru hadn't spoken at all, "about what I want to do with this." His hand drops, wraps loosely around Suguru's cock, gives one lazy stroke that spreads precome down the shaft. Suguru's spine locks. "Because you keep trying to give orders and manipulate me and be all—" he waves his free hand vaguely "—Suguru about it. And that's very cute but also very annoying."
His grip tightens on the upstroke. Suguru's breath shreds.
"So here's what's gonna happen." Satoru's voice drops, loses its playful lilt, settles into something lower and smoother that Suguru feels in his molars. "You're going to sit there, and you're going to watch me take what I want, and you're not going to do a single thing about it. You're not going to thrust. You're not going to give instructions. You're going to be a good, quiet, well-behaved little toy." His thumb rubs the slit, presses into it, and Suguru's whole body jerks against the chains. "And if you're very, very good—maybe I'll let you finish inside me."
The sound that leaves Suguru's mouth is completely involuntary. A groan, thick, punched-out, dragged from somewhere behind his ribs. His cock throbs so hard in Satoru's grip that he can feel his own pulse in it, heavy and insistent, and Satoru makes a small, satisfied noise—a pleased little hum that vibrates through his chest and into the narrow air between them.
"See? Your body's already agreeing." Satoru releases him, and Suguru watches through heavy-lidded eyes as Satoru's hands move to his own waistband. He hooks his thumbs beneath the elastic and pushes, shifting his weight from knee to knee as he works the fabric down, casual as anything, like he's undressing for a bath. The cotton catches on his thighs—pale, smooth, absurdly pretty thighs that Suguru has dreamed about in ways he'll take to his second grave—and Satoru kicks the pants off one ankle, then the other, tossing them somewhere behind him.
Nothing underneath.
Suguru stares. He can't—he stares. Satoru's cock is hard, flushed pink, curved slightly upward against his stomach, and the sight of it sends a wave of heat rolling through Suguru's abdomen that makes his vision swim. Lower—his hole, already slick. Glistening. Suguru's mouth goes dry.
"Oh?" Satoru tilts his head, and even without seeing his eyes Suguru can feel the weight of that gaze, sharp as a scalpel. "Suguru's staring. Suguru noticed something, hmm?"
Suguru swallows. "You prepared."
"Mmhm!" Satoru chirps, bright, shameless, settling his weight back into Suguru's lap, bare now, the heat of his skin pressing directly against Suguru's cock. The contact is electric. Suguru's teeth slam together. "Earlier. While you were sleeping. I sat right next to you and fingered myself open and you didn't even wake up." He leans in, breath warm on Suguru's ear. "I came twice, by the way. You slept through both."
Suguru's cock jerks so hard his vision swims. His mind supplies the image in fragments—Satoru beside him, fingers slick, mouth bitten shut—and his hips buck before he can stop them. That earns him another laugh.
"You like that?" Satoru pulls back, grinning. "Pervert."
"You're calling me a pervert," Suguru says flatly, and his voice sounds wrecked, nothing flat about it at all.
"Mmhm! Because you are one. A big, stubborn, pretty pervert with a nice cock who can't admit he wants me to ride him until he cries." Satoru's fingers walk up Suguru's chest—index, middle, index, middle—and stop at his throat. Rest there. Suguru can feel his own pulse hammering against the pads of Satoru's fingers. "Am I wrong?"
Suguru holds his gaze. The blank expanse of bandage, the curve of his jaw beneath it, the loose strands of white hair that catch the lamplight. His throat works around a swallow. The answer is obvious and they both know it.
"No," Suguru says.
Satoru's smile softens. Just a fraction. A brief, flickering thing that's there and gone, replaced immediately by the sharp, performative grin. "Good boy."
The praise hits Suguru directly in the chest. His face burns. His cock throbs. He looks away—tries to—but Satoru's hand is already on his jaw, thumb digging into the joint, turning his face back.
"Don't look away," Satoru says, and the teasing lilt is still there but the undercurrent is steel. "I want you to watch."
Satoru reaches behind himself. Suguru can't see what he's doing but he can hear it—the wet sound of fingers pressing into slick skin, a soft hitch in Satoru's breathing, the faintest tremor in the thighs bracketing his hips. Satoru's free hand braces on Suguru's shoulder, fingers curling into the muscle.
"You're so tense," Satoru murmurs, rocking forward, "I can feel it. Your whole body is wound up. You wanna grab me, yeah? Wanna hold my hips down and fuck up into me?" He rises on his knees, and his hand drops between them, wrapping around Suguru's cock, positioning it. The head nudges against his hole and Suguru's mind goes white—pure static—just from the contact, just from the heat of him, the give of slick muscle against the tip. "Too bad."
He sinks.
Slowly. So slowly it's cruel. Suguru feels every fraction of an inch—the initial resistance, the stretch, the moment the head breaches and Satoru's body opens around him, hot and tight and so impossibly, devastatingly wet. Suguru's jaw drops. His hands spasm in the cuffs, wrists straining against metal, tendons standing sharp beneath the skin of his forearms. A noise grinds out of his chest, low, animal, born from somewhere preverbal.
Satoru doesn't stop. Doesn't pause to adjust. Just keeps sinking, thighs trembling, abs clenching visibly beneath the rucked-up hem of his sweater, taking Suguru deeper and deeper and deeper until—
He bottoms out.
The sound Satoru makes is quiet. A breath. An exhale pushed through parted lips, shaky at the edges, and for one raw, unguarded second, his composure fractures. His head drops forward, forehead pressing against Suguru's, bandages rough against the sweat on Suguru's skin. His body clenches—tight, involuntary—and the squeeze around Suguru's cock pulls a ragged moan from somewhere Suguru didn't know he had left.
"Fuck," Satoru whispers, and the word cracks in the middle. "Fuck, you're—hah—" His fingers dig into Suguru's shoulder hard enough to bruise. "You fill me up so much, Suguru. So deep. I can feel you everywhere."
Suguru's hips twitch. Instinct. He can't help it, the urge to thrust is screaming through every nerve in his body, his cock buried to the hilt inside Satoru's impossible heat, walls fluttering and clenching around him in small involuntary spasms. He wants to fuck up into that tightness so badly his teeth ache. But Satoru's hand is already on his hip, pressing down, pinning him.
"What did I say?" Satoru breathes, lips grazing his cheekbone. "Stay still. Be good."
Suguru groans, rough, frustrated. "Satoru—"
"Shh." Satoru lifts his hips. One inch. Two. The drag of his walls along Suguru's shaft is agonizing in its precision, every ridge and fold of him working over the head, the sensitive underside. Suguru's vision blurs. Then Satoru drops—hard—and his ass slaps against Suguru's thighs with a sound that cracks through the attic.
They both moan.
Satoru's is high, breathy, bitten off at the end. Suguru's is guttural, dragged through gravel. The contrast hangs in the air between them, filthy and intimate.
"Oh," Satoru breathes, lifting again, establishing a rhythm, "oh, that's—mmh—" His hand slides from Suguru's shoulder to the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair, gripping. He rises, drops, rises, drops. Each descent forces Suguru's cock deeper, angling it against his front wall, and Suguru can tell the exact moment he finds the right spot because Satoru's rhythm stutters—his whole body seizes, thighs clamping, and a sound punches out of him that's almost surprised.
"There—" Satoru gasps, and his hips snap down again, chasing it, "—god, there, right there—"
He grinds. Circles his hips, pressing Suguru's cock against that spot inside him with a focused, single-minded intensity that borders on obscene. His head tips back, throat bared, the bandages catching the warm lamplight. The sweater has ridden up past his ribs, and Suguru can see the flex of his stomach, the faint sheen of sweat, the muscles working beneath pale skin as he rides. His cock bounces between them with every motion, leaking steadily, a thin strand of precome stretching from the tip to Suguru's stomach.
Suguru watches. His mouth is dry. His cock aches. The inside of Satoru is molten, slick, clenching rhythmically around him as Satoru works himself on it—using Suguru's body with the same casual mastery he applies to everything else, chasing his own pleasure with a selfish precision that shouldn't be this hot. Every roll of his hips punches the air from Suguru's lungs. The wet sound of their connection fills the attic, accompanied by the creak of wooden boards and the clink of Suguru's chains.
"Suguru," Satoru groans, and his voice has lost its playfulness entirely, gone thick with arousal, his pace quickening, "Suguru, your cock feels—hah—so good, you're so big, I can't—" His nails rake down Suguru's chest, leaving white lines that bloom pink in their wake. "You're stretching me out, I can feel you so deep—"
A full-body shudder rips through Satoru's frame. His rhythm goes messy—frantic—hips slamming down with a force that rocks them both, the chains rattling, the floor groaning. He's using Suguru. Completely. Riding him hard and fast, taking exactly what he wants, and the obscenity of it, the vulgarity, the raw abandon—Suguru's brain is dissolving. The careful architecture of his thoughts is melting into white noise.
"Tell me," Satoru pants, one hand fisted in Suguru's hair, the other braced on his chest, "tell me how I feel. Tell me, Suguru."
Suguru's voice scrapes through his throat like it's being dragged over stone. "Hot," he rasps, "tight—you're so tight, Satoru—every time you move I can feel all of you—"
"More." Satoru's grip tightens in his hair. His hips don't slow.
"You're clenching," Suguru grits out, "every time you take me deep, you squeeze so hard I can barely—I can feel you pulling me in—"
Satoru moans, high and desperate and unashamed, and the sound alone nearly sends Suguru over the edge. His balls tighten, heat coiling dense and urgent at the base of his spine. He plants his feet against the floor and his hips buck before he can stop them—one sharp, involuntary thrust upward that drives his cock so deep that Satoru chokes.
Satoru's hand slams against his hip. Pins him. "I said," he gasps, voice shaking, "don't—move—"
"Then stop—" Suguru's breath hitches, a groan splitting his sentence, "—stop being so—"
"So what?" Satoru grinds down, rotating his hips in a slow, devastating circle. "So hot? So tight? You wanna say pretty? You're thinking it." He laughs, breathless, almost drunk on it, and the laugh vibrates through his body and Suguru feels it around his cock and his vision sparks. "Say it."
"Pretty," Suguru chokes out, and the word tastes like surrender. "You're—god—you're so pretty, Satoru—"
"Mm, and?" Satoru's pace increases, each drop punctuated by a wet slap of skin. His cock is dripping, neglected and swollen, bouncing against his stomach with every motion, and his hole is so wet around Suguru that lube and precome have made a mess of their thighs, the slick slide audible in the tight space. "And what else?"
"You're insane," Suguru groans, "you're insane and gorgeous and I want—" His wrists strain against the cuffs, metal biting skin. "I want to touch you. Let me touch you. Please—"
"Please?" Satoru's rhythm falters. A full-body tremor runs through him, his abs clenching hard enough that Suguru can count the ridges, and when he speaks his voice is wrecked, cracked open, barely held together. "Say that again."
"Please." Suguru doesn't hesitate. Pride has left the building. Pride packed its bags three slaps ago. "Satoru. Please. Let me—"
Satoru's hand finds the back of Suguru's skull. He pulls him forward, crushing their mouths together—and the kiss is messy, open, wet, all teeth and tongue, Satoru moaning into his mouth while his hips keep moving, keep slamming down. Suguru tastes salt and copper and that faint sweetness of whatever Satoru drank earlier, and he licks into his mouth and swallows every sound.
Satoru pulls back, a string of spit connecting their lips, breaking. His thumb brushes Suguru's bruised cheek—gentle now, so gentle it makes Suguru's chest constrict.
"No," Satoru breathes, and the smile is back, trembling at the edges but back. "No, I don't think I will. You look so good like this. All desperate and begging and flushed. Mine."
His hand drops to his own cock. He wraps his fingers around himself and starts stroking, fast, rough, matching the brutal rhythm of his hips. The dual sensation—Suguru's cock inside him and his own hand on his shaft—tears a sound from his throat that's close to a sob.
"Suguru, Suguru, Suguru—" His name spills from Satoru's mouth in a chant, mindless, each repetition hitching higher. His walls clench hard, rhythmic, milking Suguru's cock with every downstroke. "I'm close—fuck—I'm—"
"Come," Suguru growls, and the word rips out of him raw and commanding despite every instruction he's been given, despite the cuffs, despite the bruises, despite all of it. He strains forward, chains screaming, forehead pressing against Satoru's collarbone. "Satoru. Come."
Satoru's whole body locks. His spine arches, throat baring, head thrown back, and for one suspended second he's frozen—thighs clamped around Suguru's hips, hand stilled on his cock, lips parted around a breath he can't release. Then the orgasm hits, and Satoru shakes apart.
He comes in thick, pulsing ropes across Suguru's stomach, his chest, the underside of his chin. His ass clenches so violently around Suguru's cock that Suguru sees white—genuinely sees white, his vision blanking out, everything reduced to the crushing tightness and the heat and the sound Satoru makes, god, the sound—high and broken and hitching on each wave, a noise ripped straight from his lungs, unperformed, uncontrolled, so open it makes Suguru's chest ache.
Satoru's hips keep moving through it. Slower, shaking, each roll smearing come between their stomachs. His hand falls from his cock and lands on Suguru's shoulder, gripping hard, holding on. His breathing is ragged, shuddering, and when his head finally drops forward, bandages pressing against Suguru's temple, his whole body is trembling.
"Hah," Satoru breathes, voice demolished, "hah... hah... okay. Okay." A laugh, high and thin and wrecked. "That was—mm—"
He clenches around Suguru again—intentional, this time, a slow, deliberate squeeze—and Suguru's composure dissolves. His cock is still buried inside Satoru, painfully hard, right at the edge, every nerve in his body screaming for release, and Satoru just came around him and is still hot and tight and fluttering with aftershocks and Suguru—
"Satoru." His voice doesn't sound like his voice. It sounds like someone drowning. "I need—"
"Hmm?" Satoru lifts his head, tips it. The smile curling his lips is lazy, fucked-out, absolutely devastating. "Need what?"
"You know what."
"I do," Satoru agrees, thumb dragging through the come smeared on Suguru's chest, bringing it to his own mouth, licking it clean. "But I wanna hear you say it."
Suguru's cock throbs inside him. His hips strain against Satoru's weight, against the pin of his hand, against the chains. "Let me come."
"Mm... let you?" Satoru shifts, rising just slightly on his knees, and the motion drags Suguru's cock halfway out—fleshy walls clinging, wet, agonizingly slow. "I dunno. You did break the rules. You thrusted. You gave me an order." He pauses, clenches again, watches Suguru's face contort. "Bad behavior."
"Satoru—"
"But," Satoru interrupts, sinking back down, inch by torturous inch, "you did say please. And you called me pretty. And you told me how good I feel." He bottoms out, and they both shudder. "So... I guess I can be generous. Just this once."
He starts moving again. A languid roll of his hips that grinds Suguru's cock against his walls with excruciating precision. His ass is looser now, wetter—his own come slicking the inside, mixing with lube, and the slide is filthy, liquid, each thrust producing an obscene squelch that echoes in the narrow attic.
"Come inside me," Satoru says, and his voice is quiet, stripped bare, all performance abandoned. His hand cups the unbruised side of Suguru's face, thumb resting at the corner of his mouth. "Fill me up, Suguru."
Suguru breaks.
The orgasm tears through him from the base of his spine, detonates behind his ribs, rips up through his throat and out in a sound that's barely human—a raw, cracked, sobbing moan that racks his shoulders and bows his spine. He comes hard, so hard his vision goes, his hearing goes, everything goes except Satoru's heat around him and Satoru's hand on his face and the pulsing, throbbing release of it, cock jerking, flooding Satoru's insides in thick, heavy waves.
Satoru rides him through it. Every spasm, every aftershock. His hips rolling gently, coaxing every last drop, and the wet warmth of Suguru's come filling him makes a sound—liquid, intimate—that Suguru hears from very far away.
"Good," Satoru murmurs, and his thumb traces the line of Suguru's cheekbone, so gentle Suguru's eyes sting. "Good, Suguru. So good."
Suguru's head falls forward against Satoru's chest. His breathing comes in shattered pulls, chest heaving, sweat cooling on his skin. The chains hang slack above him, wrists aching, raw where metal pressed too hard. His cheek throbs. His whole body is trembling—fine, uncontrollable tremors running through his arms, his thighs, the muscles of his stomach.
Satoru's arms wrap around him. Careful. His hand settles on the back of Suguru's head, cradling, fingers threading through damp hair. Suguru feels his heartbeat through the thin fabric of his sweater—fast, still, rabbit-quick. Satoru's cock, softening, presses warm against Suguru's stomach between them.
They stay like that.
The attic settles. Lamplight flickers against the wooden beams. Suguru's breathing slows in increments, each exhale longer than the last, his body sinking into the heavy, syrupy aftermath. Satoru is still full of him, still warm around him, Suguru's softening cock held inside by gravity and the press of Satoru's thighs. He doesn't pull off.
Satoru's lips brush the crown of Suguru's head. "Your cheek is swelling," he says, voice back to something resembling its usual lightness, though the edges are frayed. "You bruise so easy. It's annoying."
"You hit me," Suguru mumbles into his chest.
"You asked me to."
"Once."
"You liked all three." Satoru tilts Suguru's face up by the chin, inspects the damage. Suguru can feel the scrutiny even through the bandages. Satoru's thumb ghosts over the swollen skin, barely touching. "...I'll get ice."
"Later."
"Suguru."
"Later." Suguru presses his face back into Satoru's chest. The fabric is damp with sweat, clinging to Satoru's skin, and it smells like soap and exertion and that faint metallic sweetness. Suguru breathes it in. "Stay."
A pause. Satoru's fingers resume their motion through Suguru's hair, scratching lightly at his scalp.
"...Fine," Satoru says, softly, and his arms tighten around him. "Fine, fine. You're so demanding after you come. It's always like this. You get all clingy and bossy." A huff of breath that could be a laugh. "Cute."
Suguru doesn't answer. His eyes are closed. The trembling has mostly subsided, replaced by a bone-deep heaviness that pins him to the floor, to Satoru in his lap, to this exact moment. His cock slips free, and the trickle of come that follows—warm, sliding down the inside of Satoru's thigh—makes Satoru shiver.
"Gross," Satoru announces, without moving away at all. His hand keeps stroking Suguru's hair. "You came so much. What are you, a teenager? Gross and flattering. Mostly gross."
"Shut up."
"Make me." Satoru's smile presses into his hair. "Oh wait. You can't."
The chains clink when Suguru tugs his wrists, halfhearted. A reminder. He exhales, long and slow, and lets his weight fall fully into Satoru's body, lets himself be held.
Satoru hums—tuneless, content—and the sound vibrates through his chest and into Suguru's skull, settling there, warm. The attic is quiet. The lamplight burns steady. Somewhere below them, the old house creaks in its joints, wood settling against wood.
"Ne, Suguru," Satoru murmurs, chin resting on the top of his head. "You alive in there?"
"Unfortunately."
Satoru snorts. "Wow. Rude. I just gave you the orgasm of your life."
"Bold claim."
"I felt your legs shaking. Your voice cracked. You called me pretty." Satoru ticks each item off with a tap of his finger against Suguru's nape. "Evidence doesn't lie."
Suguru opens his mouth to argue. Closes it. He presses his face deeper into the sweater and says nothing, and Satoru laughs above him—bright, easy, the sound of someone who knows they've won and is gracious enough to let it go.
His hand stays in Suguru's hair. The other rests warm on his back, tracing idle patterns over the knobs of his spine. Suguru breathes, and breathes, and breathes, and—
Can't catch it. The air snags in his throat halfway down, hitches, comes back up wrong. His lungs won't expand. Something is sitting on his chest, heavy and shapeless and growing heavier, and his fingers are tingling and his vision is doing something strange at the edges, going bright then dim then bright, and SatoruSatoruSatoru—everything is Satoru, the smell of him and the heat of him and the weight of him and it's so much, it's so much, his ribs are shrinking around his lungs and the attic is getting smaller and the walls are—
"Suguru."
He can hear it. The name reaches him from somewhere far away, muffled, like sound traveling through water. His chest heaves. Another breath that won't complete. His hands are shaking in the cuffs, a fine rapid tremor that rattles the chain against itself, metallic chatter filling the narrow space.
"Suguru. Hey. Breathe with me."
He shakes his head. Can't. His throat has closed around something solid and immovable, a stone lodged behind his sternum, and if he dies here it will be fine because he's with Satoru, he's with him, but he can't see his eyes—the bandages, the bandages, white and opaque and giving nothing back—and his chest is being crushed, crushed, crushed, a vise tightening with every failed inhale.
Something warm touches his face. Wet. A droplet slides down his temple and catches at the corner of his mouth—salt. He's crying? He's crying. When did that start? Water dripping onto the floor where his head hangs forward, small dark spots on the wood, and his vision is swimming and his ears are ringing and—
"Shh, shh, hey, I'm here, I'm right here—" Satoru's voice is different. Stripped of play, stripped of teasing, something raw and immediate running through it. His hands cup Suguru's face, thumbs sweeping tears from beneath his eyes. "Suguru, listen to me. Listen to my voice, okay? Can you feel my hands?"
He can. Warm palms, long fingers, the faint press of calluses. He nods, barely, a jerky motion.
"Good. Okay. Feel this." Satoru's thumb traces the line of his jaw, slow, deliberate, pressing firmly enough that the sensation cuts through the static. Down his neck. Over his pulse point, where his heart is hammering so hard it's visible, the skin jumping. Satoru's fingers rest there, steady against the chaos. "Your heart's going so fast. That's okay. It's gonna slow down. Feel my thumb? Follow that, yeah?"
Satoru strokes his pulse point in a slow rhythm. Once. Twice. A measured, even tempo that has nothing to do with Suguru's frantic heartbeat and everything to do with the pace Satoru wants him at. Suguru's chest shudders. A fraction of air slips through, thin, insufficient, but there.
"There you go," Satoru murmurs. "Again."
Another breath. Deeper by a centimeter. His lungs burn with the effort of accepting it. The stone behind his sternum hasn't moved, but there's a crack in it now, a hairline fracture where Satoru's voice is seeping through.
And then—
Pressure. Below. A shift of Satoru's weight in his lap, the subtle grind of his hips, so gentle Suguru almost doesn't register it. Almost. His body registers it before his mind does—a ripple of warmth spreading up from his pelvis, his cock twitching with residual sensitivity, nerve endings lighting up despite the panic still clawing at his rib cage.
Satoru's hand stays on his throat, thumb still stroking that slow, patient rhythm. His other hand drops to Suguru's shoulder, steadying. His hips roll again. Slow. So slow. A long, deliberate press downward, Suguru's soft cock trapped between their bodies, and the friction—the warm drag of Satoru's bare skin against him—sends a pulse of heat that reaches his chest, loosens something.
"Feel that?" Satoru asks, quiet, mouth close to his ear. His breath ghosts over the shell of it, warm. "Focus here. Right here."
Another roll. Suguru's hands flex in the cuffs, his body responding to the sensation even while his lungs still struggle. Satoru's thigh muscles tighten around his hips as he shifts, changing the angle, pressing Suguru's cock more firmly against the crease of his pelvis. The movement is unhurried, rhythmic, tidal. A slow wave that crests and pulls back and crests again.
"That's it." Satoru's lips brush his temple. "Breathe."
And this time—Suguru does. A full breath. It fills his chest, expands his ribs, pushes against the crushing weight and finds room. The exhale leaves him in a shudder that racks his whole frame, tears sliding hot down his cheeks, and his cock stirs against Satoru's warmth, blood beginning to redirect, his body choosing the more immediate signal.
Satoru hums. Satisfied. His hips keep that same measured pace—slow rocking, a steady friction—and his hand slides from Suguru's throat to the back of his neck, pulling Suguru's face into the curve of his shoulder. Suguru goes. Presses his wet face into the damp fabric, breathes Satoru's skin through the knit, soap and salt and that metallic sweetness, and the next breath comes easier. The one after that, easier still.
"Good," Satoru murmurs into his hair, "good, you're doing good, just stay with me—" and his hips shift, rise slightly, and Suguru feels the wet heat of Satoru's hole press against the head of his half-hard cock. Light. Barely there. A question shaped in skin.
Suguru's breath hitches—for a different reason, this time.
Satoru doesn't push down. He hovers, balanced on his knees, the slick opening just barely kissing the tip of Suguru's cock, a point of heat so focused it burns through the remaining fog like a match held to gauze. Come from earlier—Suguru's come, still warm—leaks from Satoru's hole and slides down the length of his shaft, and the sensation is filthy and grounding and pulls a sound from Suguru's throat that he barely recognizes. Low, ragged, desperate.
"There he is," Satoru breathes. "Hi."
Suguru chokes on something between a laugh and a sob. "'Hi'?"
"Mm. Hi." Satoru's thumb strokes the nape of his neck. "You back?"
Suguru's chest still aches. His face is wet, his hands are trembling, the residual adrenaline hasn't fully drained. But the vise has loosened. The walls aren't closing in anymore. There is Satoru's body, warm and solid and real, and the obscene tease of contact where they almost meet, and his heartbeat is still fast but it's fast for a different reason now.
"Yeah," he rasps. "I'm back."
"'Kay." Satoru nuzzles the top of his head, idle, affectionate. "I'm gonna go slow. You just breathe. That's all you have to do."
He sinks.
The descent is different from before. Before was performance, spectacle, Satoru riding him with the precision of someone proving a point. This is something else. Satoru takes him in one long, unbroken slide, and the pace is glacial—every inch measured, every fraction of depth given time to register. Suguru feels his cock push past the loosened rim, slip into the slick, fucked-open heat, and the ease of it makes his stomach clench. Satoru took him barely five minutes ago. The evidence of it is everywhere—the wet sounds, the give, the way Suguru's cock slides in without resistance, surrounded by his own come.
Suguru groans. It comes from somewhere deep, his diaphragm, his gut. His forehead presses harder into Satoru's shoulder.
"Yeah?" Satoru exhales, and there's a catch in it, a small involuntary sound, his body still sensitive from his own orgasm. His walls flutter once around Suguru's cock—a reflex—and Suguru feels it in his teeth. "Feel good?"
"Mm."
"Words, Suguru."
"...Good." His voice is wrecked. Thin and cracked and still wet from crying. "Feels good."
Satoru bottoms out. Holds there. The fullness of it presses Suguru's cock against his front wall, and Satoru's thighs tighten, his whole body shifting to adjust to the depth. A breath hisses through his teeth—quiet, controlled—and his nails dig crescents into Suguru's shoulders.
He stays like that. Doesn't move. The heat is extraordinary, a molten sleeve around Suguru's cock, slick and swollen and clenching in tiny, rhythmic pulses that Suguru suspects Satoru is doing on purpose. Each one sends a spark up through his pelvis, his lower back, pooling warm at the base of his spine. His breathing steadies around the sensation. In. Out. In. Out. Each exhale synchronized with a slow, involuntary throb of his cock inside Satoru's body.
"Your heart's slowing down," Satoru observes, fingers resting at Suguru's carotid, monitoring. Clinical and intimate at once. "See? Told you I'd take care of it."
Suguru huffs a weak breath against his neck. "This is your idea of medical intervention?"
"It worked, didn't it?" Satoru's smile presses into his hair. He shifts his hips—a centimeter, barely anything—and Suguru's cock drags against his walls and they both shudder. "Mm. You're getting harder."
He is. Blood filling the remaining distance, his cock swelling inside Satoru's body, stretching him further, and Satoru makes a small noise at the change—a bitten-off sound, caught between his teeth, his jaw flexing against the top of Suguru's head.
"Satoru." Suguru's voice is quiet, rough. "The bandages."
A pause. Satoru's hand stills on his neck.
"...Hm?"
"Take them off." Suguru swallows, tastes salt. "I want to see your eyes."
Silence. Satoru's body goes very still around him—muscles tensing, thighs tightening—and for a stretched, elastic moment, neither of them moves. The attic creaks. The lamplight flickers once. Suguru can feel Satoru's heartbeat through the walls of his body, a second pulse around his cock, rapid and telling.
"...That's a request," Satoru says, carefully. "You don't get to make requests."
"Please."
The word hangs in the narrow air between them. Suguru hears Satoru's breathing change—shorter, shallower—and his grip on Suguru's neck tightens a fraction.
"You know why I keep them on," Satoru murmurs.
"I know."
"It's easier."
"I know."
Another silence. Satoru's hips rock, once, a small aborted motion that grinds Suguru's cock against his prostate and makes his breath stutter. His hand lifts from Suguru's neck. Suguru hears the whisper of fabric, the careful unwinding of linen.
The bandages fall.
Suguru lifts his head from Satoru's shoulder, and—
Blue. Blinding, impossible blue. Every shade compressed into two irises that hold too much light for the dim attic, refracting the lampglow into something sharper, brighter. The six eyes ability renders them prismatic, wet, almost luminous. They're looking at him. All of him. Seeing through him the way they've always seen through him, through skin and bone and every careful construction he has ever built to keep people out.
Satoru's expression is open. Bare. His lips are parted, slightly swollen, and his cheeks are flushed pink, and his lashes are damp at the roots—from exertion, from the closeness, from something Suguru can't name. He looks wrecked. He looks beautiful. He looks exactly like the boy who stood next to Suguru at sixteen and declared he'd change the world, and exactly like the man who killed him, and exactly like the person who refused to let him stay dead.
Suguru's chest cracks open.
"There," he whispers, and his voice breaks on the word. "There you are."
Satoru's eyes go wide—a fractional widening, the kind only Suguru would notice—and his lower lip trembles once before he bites it hard. His walls clench around Suguru's cock, involuntary, a full-body response to being seen, and the squeeze is so tight Suguru's vision whites at the edges.
"...Shut up," Satoru says, and his voice is thick. "Don't say shit like that while you're inside me."
"Why?"
"Because I'll—" Satoru's hips jerk, a sharp grind that punches air from both their lungs. "Because I'll do something stupid, Suguru, I'll—"
He moves.
The pace is slow, still, but the quality changes. Satoru rises and falls with a fluidity that borders on hypnotic, his body a long, graceful line—abs tensing, thighs flexing, his cock swaying between them, hardening again. His eyes stay locked on Suguru's. Unblinking. The intensity of that gaze is searing, a physical pressure against Suguru's skin, and Suguru can't look away, can't even blink, pinned by the full devastating weight of Satoru's attention.
"You're crying again," Satoru whispers, thumbing a tear from Suguru's cheek without breaking rhythm.
Is he? He is. The tears are silent this time, steady, slipping from the corners of his eyes without any of the choking panic from before. These are warm. These are easy. His chest doesn't hurt.
"It's fine," Suguru manages.
"Mm." Satoru's hips drop, taking Suguru deep, and his breath fractures. "Me—ah—me too."
Suguru blinks. Focuses. Satoru's eyes are glassy, bright, a thin sheen of moisture catching the light. A single tear tracks the curve of his cheekbone, disappears into the line of his jaw.
Something in Suguru's chest goes very, very quiet.
He leans forward. The chains pull taut, his wrists straining, and he can only reach so far—his mouth lands at the edge of Satoru's jaw, lips pressing into the wet trail of that tear. He tastes salt. Satoru's breath catches, a small, wounded sound.
"Suguru—"
"Keep going," Suguru murmurs against his skin. "Don't stop."
Satoru's rhythm picks up. His hips snap with more force, each downstroke driving Suguru's cock against his prostate, and the sounds he makes are different now—raw, unperformed, little hitching breaths and bitten moans that crack in the middle. His hand finds Suguru's jaw, tilts his face up, and their mouths meet in a kiss that tastes like tears and copper and the fading ghost of come.
The kiss is slow. Thorough. Satoru licks into his mouth with the same deliberate rhythm as his hips, tongue stroking the roof of Suguru's mouth, the back of his teeth. Suguru drinks every sound directly from his throat, swallows the moans before they fully form. Satoru's free hand wraps around his own cock, strokes in time with his riding, and the dual stimulation makes his walls clamp down in rhythmic, pulsing squeezes that are dragging Suguru toward the edge with terrifying speed.
"I'm—" Suguru gasps into his mouth, "—Satoru, I'm close—"
"Mm—" Satoru bites his lower lip, tugs. "Me too, me too, don't you dare finish before me—"
His pace turns frantic. The wet slap of skin on skin fills the attic, obscene, percussive, underscored by the rattle of chains and Satoru's ragged breathing and the creak of old wood beneath them. Satoru's thighs shake violently where they grip Suguru's hips, his hand blurring on his own cock, and his eyes are still locked on Suguru's—bright, wet, desperate, blazing with something that has no name, something older than either of them.
"Together," Satoru breathes, "Suguru—together—"
The orgasm breaks over both of them like a tide.
Satoru comes first—by a second, maybe less. His back arches, mouth falling open on a silent cry, his body locking tight around Suguru's cock as come pulses across Suguru's stomach in hot, rhythmic streaks. The clench of him is staggering, a full-body seizure of muscle that drags Suguru over the edge immediately after—his hips bucking upward against every instruction, every rule, his cock pulsing deep inside Satoru's body as the orgasm tears through him in slow, devastating waves.
It lasts. Longer than either of the previous ones. Suguru's vision goes dark at the edges, then bright, then dark again. Every nerve in his body fires at once and then quiets, fires and quiets, a receding tide that leaves him hollowed and trembling and gasping and so full of something enormous and shapeless he can't breathe again—but differently this time, differently, his chest expanding instead of contracting, filling instead of emptying.
Satoru collapses against him. His full weight, boneless and heavy, his forehead dropping to Suguru's shoulder. They're both shaking. The chains clink softly as Suguru's arms hang slack, his wrists raw and burning, and Satoru's breath comes in shattered pulls against his neck, hot and damp.
"Hah... hah..."
Suguru closes his eyes. Leans his cheek against the top of Satoru's head. White hair, sweaty and disheveled, tickles his nose. He breathes in. Soap, sweat, cacao, salt. His heartbeat is slow. Steady. The panic is so far away now it belongs to a different person, a different hour. All that remains is the warm weight of Satoru in his lap and the syrupy heat of afterglow and the quiet, quiet, quiet of a mind that has finally stopped screaming.
"Ne," Satoru mumbles into his neck, voice destroyed, "you okay?"
"Yeah."
"Your breathing?"
"Fine."
"Your heart?"
"Slow."
A pause. Satoru shifts, just barely, and Suguru's softening cock slips free. The trickle that follows is warm, pooling between them, and Satoru wrinkles his nose against Suguru's shoulder.
"We're so gross," he says.
"Your fault."
"Rude. Ungrateful. I just cured your panic attack with my ass."
Suguru's mouth twitches. The laugh that escapes is quiet, hoarse, barely there. It hurts his chest in a good way. "Is that what happened?"
"Mmhm. Revolutionary medical technique. Patent pending." Satoru's fingers trace lazy circles on his collarbone. "Satoru Gojo's Ass-isted Breathing Method. Peer reviewed."
"That's the worst thing you've ever said."
"You're smiling."
He is. He can feel it, the ache of it in his bruised cheek, the pull of muscles he hasn't used in what feels like days. Satoru lifts his head, just enough, and those eyes—still bare, still uncovered, still impossibly, painfully blue—meet his. Satoru is smiling too. Small and crooked and real.
"Hi," Satoru says again.
"Hi," Suguru says back.
"Let's start over Suguru"