Chapter Text
Seiji was furious. Humiliated. Humbled and brought down to earth. He’d only faced such defeat once before and he’d gotten better. He’d worked and improved and become the best. It should have been enough. It was almost enough. It wasn’t enough.
He didn’t want to be here, in this school, in these dorms, in this room. Not right now. But there was nothing for it. Kings Row was closer, more convenient, more practical. And he wouldn’t go running home for this. Wouldn’t cry to his mother and hide from the world at his defeat. But it wasn’t really the world he wanted to hide from.
It was late already. He’d stayed out with Coach Dmytro after the final match. He’d delayed as long as possible. But it couldn’t be avoided forever. After weeks of traveling for national tournaments, it was strange to be back in this small room. Stranger still because of its tidiness but for the dust. Nicholas’s things weren’t spread all over the room for once. A testament to the fact that he, like Seiji, had not been here recently.
Seiji showered, unpacked, tried to will himself to sleep it off. But the anger wouldn’t leave him. He tore out of bed and pulled on clothes—he’d be getting no sleep tonight. No point in pretending. He grabbed whatever he found first. Jeans. A pressed, white button-down. With his jacket bunched in a fist, he was about to step into his shoes and leave.
The door opened.
“Seiji!” Nicholas’s face was flushed with joy and his smile was stupidly sincere. “I couldn’t find you after the match—you were amazing! I mean, obviously, you’re always amazing but I wanted to tell you that, anyway.” Seiji thought he remembered this from his first bout against Nicholas. His irritating sense of good sportsmanship. He didn’t return the sentiment. Nicholas finally seemed to notice the mood spilling from Seiji and into the room, making it dark and hostile. His eyes flew up and down Seiji, taking in the hastily donned outfit with a frown. “You…going somewhere?” He asked.
“Yes,” Seiji answered, and even the single word cost him a great effort to say so evenly.
“Where are you off to? Can I come? It’s been ages since we’ve got to spend any time together.” He wasn’t very bright. Or, perhaps, he was terribly optimistic.
“No,” Seiji said, ignoring the way this made Nicholas’s face crumple. No, he didn’t ignore it. He relished it.
“Oh, okay. I just thought…”
“You’ve never been good at that. Thinking.” Seiji leaned down, intending to put on his shoes so that he could leave, could get the fresh air he badly needed. The endless, wandering walk he wanted, to get as far away from everything—from him as it was possible to get on foot. Seiji didn’t get so far even as his shoes. Nicholas caught him by the arm, held him firm. Fine, Seiji thought. If this was how Nicholas wanted to do this, so be it.
“You’re upset.”
“You’re a nuisance.”
“Are you mad at me?” Nicholas asked. He looked so worried, so concerned. Seiji sneered. “You are, aren’t you? You’re mad that I beat you.”
“I’m mad that you exist,” Seiji snarled it with such animosity that Nicholas flinched. Actually flinched. That gave him pleasure too, fierce and ugly.
“I’m sorry. I got so carried away with my own success that I forgot that you—I’ve been insensitive. You were amazing, really. Number two isn’t so bad.” Number two. Seiji was sick of that rank, had been trying to shed it for so long. “But it sucks losing. I’m sorry. I hope this doesn’t change anything—I mean, I hope we can still be friends?” Nicholas looked so dejected, like it had finally gotten through his thick skull that Seiji would never be friends with him. Not now. Not anymore. He liked being the best, wouldn’t tolerate being second best. Least of all to Nicholas Cox, the upstart nobody that had taken the fencing world by storm.
“Let go of me,” Seiji said, trying to yank his arm from Nicholas’s grasp. But he didn’t let go.
“Please, we can get over this,” he knew he was doomed, so why did he keep trying? Seiji thought of a hundred terrible, cruel things he could say. Things that would make Nicholas let go of him, stumble away as if hit, possibly, he thought with malicious glee, he could make Nicholas cry. It would be so easy to hurt him. He’d made it so easy for Seiji.
The fool had gone and fallen in love with him. No one with any sense would love someone so fundamentally hateful and mean. And he hadn’t ever tried to hide it, either. He’d never said anything on the matter, but it was obvious to anyone with a brain. The way his eyes always trailed on Seiji, the way he smiled for him, the way he talked and joked at him as if he were actually any fun to be around. Seiji had never understood it, and now he resented it. That Nicholas had thought he could ruin Seiji’s plans and get anything more from him than tolerance. Nicholas had made a mistake in loving Seiji. And he’d live to regret it. Seiji would make sure of it.
Seiji pulled free of Nicholas with violent force, but he didn’t storm away. Instead, he grabbed Nicholas’s face and smashed it to his, kissing him with every ill emotion he had. Nicholas couldn’t help but to respond. His arms were around Seiji’s waist, pulling his body forward to close the gap Seiji had ignored in favor of the kiss. And Nicholas kissed back, too. Like he’d been waiting eons for this. It had been months at the most. But Nicholas made up for lost time and then some.
Seiji wrapped arms around Nicholas’s neck, had one hand still holding his head, making sure it didn’t slip away from his. He was not gentle, was not even nice about it. Harsh, ragged breaths and hard, purposeful kisses. Nicholas’s fingers bunched into the fabric of his shirt, wrinkling it horribly. Seiji didn’t care. Kissed harder. He didn’t care about much of anything right now but for his burning hatred for the boy he was kissing.
“Seiji—,” Nicholas tried to pull away. Seiji didn’t let him.
“Hush.” This time, Nicholas seemed to put up the tiniest struggle against his lips, resisting the movement, still trying to say something. Seiji didn’t care to hear it, so he bit, hard, on Nicholas’s bottom lip. That garnered a reaction. Nicholas growled and gave up on fighting it. In retaliation for Seiji’s teeth, Nicholas responded with a vicious sort of resolve, wrestling the kiss from Seiji’s control. Seiji let him have it, let him take his mouth with deep, devastating maneuvers of tongue and lips. And teeth, too. Tugging relentlessly at his raw lips. Never so painfully as Seiji had used his. Seiji hated that. Hated that even in retribution of a hurt, Nicholas didn’t—wouldn’t—return it in kind, giving pleasing sensations instead of painful ones. He was a fool of the worst kind.
Seiji might have lost to him, but he’d still ruin him. It was fair, in a way. If Nicholas had only kept his ambitions within constraints befitting of someone like him, if he’d only stayed away from Kings Row and proper training and Coach Williams and the team to help him, if he’d only stayed away from Seiji—
Seiji raked fingernails across Nicholas’s scalp, closing his hand and taking a fistful of hair tightly, painfully, in it. His blood boiled, not sated even by Nicholas’s reaction of slight discomfort to the grip. Now do you see? He thought, If you’d only stayed away, it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Seiji would be at the top, in his rightful place. He’d beaten Jesse. Jesse was supposed to be his final obstacle, his last opponent to defeat. The thing standing between him and what he wanted most. All he wanted.
But Nicholas had usurped them both. Beating Jesse held almost no sense of accomplishment, despite it being the thing he’d worked for all this year. Because it had never occurred to him that beating Jesse and winning nationals were not one and the same. His own pride had blinded him to Nicholas’s threat. And now…Nicholas would pay for it.
Seiji released Nicholas’s hair, let go of his face, drew both hands down his body as he stepped away. Just slightly. Enough to see Nicholas’s face clearly. Swollen lips, slightly parted in question. Eyebrows drawn low in puzzlement. Eyes full of a dozen emotions. Concern. Confusion. Hurt. Hope. Lust. Seiji could work with that. Deliberately, he brought his hands to his collar, pushed the button there through its hole. He saw something new on Nicholas’s face, seeming innocent and small and ignorable—angry red crescent moons across his cheek, where Seiji’s nails had bit into skin. Good. Let every hurt be painted clearly across his skin. Seiji met Nicholas’s eye, smirked, popped open another button, just below the last one.
Nicholas’s eyes widened, darting between Seiji’s eyes and his hands, deftly undoing his shirt. His breathing was heavy, like he was unable to recover at all from the kissing. Seiji’s own chest heaved, but it was under control. Nicholas opened his mouth, about to speak. Seiji narrowed his eyes dangerously, and he must have looked fierce and wild, because Nicholas closed his mouth again. But worry was overtaking his countenance now. Damned buttons, he couldn’t get them out fast enough. He was losing Nicholas’s attention—the kind of attention that would distract him from his worrying and questions.
Exasperated, reckless, mad, Seiji growled and tore at his shirt, pulling even more buttons free. Not all of them, but it would do. Close enough. Nicholas stared at him in alarm for the single moment it took him to step back into a kiss. Lust was winning, it had to be; Nicholas gave no objections. He grabbed Seiji roughly, with desperate, wanting hands.
When Seiji broke from the kiss next, it was to tilt his head back, partly for air, partly to offer a transition for Nicholas to take to what would come next. Nicholas took the hint easily enough. There was so much skin available for him to choose from—more than Seiji ever allowed anyone to see. Not out of modesty, per se, but a sense of disdain and intolerance for people looking on him. Nicholas, who had long coveted him, would be distracted by this offering of skin. Skin he could see, and touch, and kiss. He did all these things now, but too slowly.
Seiji didn’t want to draw this out. He wanted it over and done with. He wanted to see the look on Nicholas’s face when he laughed and coldly told him that he didn’t love him. That he never would. It would crush Nicholas, he knew. The boy was a fool. He’d take this cruel gift of skin and pleasure and derive from it hope. Seiji would take that from him, and any disillusions also of continued relations between them. He’d make it as unbearable for Nicholas to see him as it was for Seiji to see Nicholas.
Impatiently, Seiji maneuvered his hands up Nicholas’s shirt, intent on getting things moving faster. He’d have pulled the shirt off if Nicholas were in any position to allow that right now. Nicholas made a noise of approval, kissing a hickey into Seiji’s chest, already littered with bruises from épées. But then Nicholas pulled away. No, more than that, he pushed Seiji away. Eyes downcast, Nicholas’s panting breath slowly evened out. Seiji touched the hickey, which Nicholas had just abandoned. It throbbed oddly. In no way was it like the marks left by a blade.
“Seiji,” Nicholas said, not looking to him. As if there was something shameful in looking. “What are you doing?”
“Look at me,” Seiji demanded. Nicholas did not. “Look at me when you’re talking to me,” he said again, voice so steely and commanding that Nicholas, finally, did. Seiji trailed his fingers from the sensitive skin they’d been examining on his chest, up to his collarbone, across his shoulder. Never losing eye contact with Nicholas, he pushed the fabric of his shirt off his shoulder, let his hand drop. Then, in one fluid motion, Seiji shrugged off his mostly opened shirt to let it settle and pool at his elbows and hips. Nicholas’s eyes were all pupil. All lust. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”
“I—,” Nicholas looked at Seiji’s bared shoulders and chest, at the erotic bunching of fabric low on his waist. Looked back up to his face. It seemed to take every ounce of strength Nicholas had to choke it out: “No.” Seiji would have stung from the rejection if he either cared or believed it. He did neither, and so his pride took no damage.
“Don’t lie,” Seiji said, advancing on him. “I know you do. You want this,” he gestured to himself, messy and exposed. Nicholas’s eye twitched, but he took a step back for every step Seiji took forward. He backed himself right into the wall and had nowhere to go as Seiji pressed into him.
“Seiji—,” he gasped, lost track of whatever it was he’d intended to say as Seiji took his wrist, pressed his hand to his chest and leaned into it. Nicholas was almost to breaking point.
“I know you want me,” he whispered against Nicholas’s ear. “So take me.”
Nicholas broke, just as Seiji had known he would. With a guttural snarl, Nicholas grabbed him, flipped them around so that Seiji was the one pressed against the hard wall. Seiji smiled, self-satisfied. Nicholas pinned one of his hands to the wall, up by his head. Held the other wrist tightly, locked into place near his thigh. Seiji’s heart beat fast. Faster than it ever had before. He knew this was a bad idea. This was no way to treat people—himself or Nicholas. He recognized it was a twisted thing to do.
He didn’t care.
“Seiji, please,” Nicholas rasped, looking strained and desperate. “Stop it.”