Work Text:
SHEPHERD: It's hopeless for me to fall in love. No one will love someone like me and I will just end up hurt.
SHEEP: You have to take the risk. If Pandora can keep her hope, so can we.
SHEEP: Be careful, though. Young men finds infatuation so easily, and falls in love just as often.
The first time Bokuto Koutarou laid his eyes on him, he thought, he has a clear skin.
He always pass by the shop that Bokuto frequents to visit the bookstore, clad in blue yukata, face beautiful and refined. Sometimes he's wearing a yukata of a different color, sometimes a fancy kimono, but Bokuto will always know if it's him that's passing by. He's captivated, he knows, always recognizing that face framed by black hair. He tried calling him out a few times, but all that did was to draw a blank stare, a slight glance or sometimes nothing at all.
He sighed loudly, stretching up. He took off his blazer and slung it over his shoulder, fiddling with his suspenders a bit before moving to the next door bookstore. He poked his head in and saw Hanamaki, the storeowner, sitting by the corner and reading the paper.
"He-llo, excuse me, do you know who he is and where he's from?"
Hanamaki raised up an eyebrow at him. "Who?"
"The one with the clear skin that just left the store," Bokuto said, pointing a finger to the way the man went off to.
"Ah, Akaashi, you mean."
And so Hanamaki pointed him to a direction with the instruction that if he finds himself standing in front of a huge, common japanese style building, he's already there. He blew a fuse and tried to ask a more specific details, but Hanamaki ended up kicking him out of the store, so he just sighed and went out to his way.
His mouth formed into a straight line when he stopped in front of a big building, the huge wooden gates painted with a symbol. A Kagemajaya--a male brothel, and he sniffed.
He hesitated, then he remembered a clear skin, pale face and black hair.
He entered.
"Akaashi, a client."
Akaashi looked up, before sighing and getting ready.
He pulled on his kimono, before tying his obi. Taking a simple headdress that consists of flowers and a few strings with beads hanging down, he donned it on his hair, before smoothing out his kimono and taking a coat, that loosely looks like the karaginu on the empresses that wore a junihitoe, before setting down and sitting on his heels, the karaginu on him and spreading out across the floor.
He smoothed out his kimono once last time and stares at the door. The manager already laid out the sake and the cups, sliding the door closed as she exit.
He waited.
"Ah, so Akaashi, eh?"
He was greeted by the man with the ridiculous hair, dyed differently in obnoxious stripes. And yet, it suited him. He entered the room and closed the sliding door, tossing the blazer on his shoulder to the ground, before settling down on Akaashi's side, grinning. Akaashi pours out the sake, and glances at Bokuto, who's practically shining.
"So you really were here! ...Why are you in a place like this?"
Akaashi's face twitched, but he looked at Bokuto as the latter downed his cup. "I'm here because of...reasons."
"Ah, I see, I see," Bokuto poured himself another, but ceased and leaned forward. "but someone like you here..."
"You really have a beautiful face and a clear skin, Akaashi. But I think you are empty."
"Do you feel empty?"
Akaashi just looked back down at him, with Bokuto smiling up, hands holding his wrist.
"I don't know if that's true, but right now I really want to know how it's like to kiss a man."
It's like art, how Akaashi was a disheveled, moaning mess under Bokuto, slender and perfect and beautiful, and he could see the fading freckles on his shoulders and thought, not so clear after all, but looks beautiful just the same. His moans and groans and Bokuto's pants echoes off the room, and they're all over each other, and Akaashi remembered thinking, if you could fall in love in under an hour, this is probably what it's like.
You could and it was. More than what Akaashi could ever ask for.
"Do you like Castellas?"
Akaashi struggled to keep his eyes open, and stared at Bokuto. "I've never had those before."
Bokuto just smiled at him, put out his cigarette.
"How old are you?"
"23."
Ah, he's younger than me.
They talked talked idly for a minute or so, but really, nothing registered to both of them, not when everything is just so damn luminous and warm, and the sky outside the room from Akaashi's window was starting to darken and Bokuto didn't even notice. The room reeked of them and cigarette smoke, but neither of them minded.
Akaashi fell asleep.
Bokuto kissed his cheek before dressing up, leaving.
"What are these?" Akaashi stared at the sponge cake in front of him, brought in by Bokuto. The said man just grinned--he's always grinning and it's making Akaashi become more attached to him, dammit--and rested his head on Akaashi's shoulder while pouring a cup of sake for them.
"You said you've never tasted them before, right? So go ahead, eat 'em."
Akaashi looked at him, uncertain, but he urged him with a nudge as he drank his sake. Akaashi took a few nibbles first--as if testing the waters, and then started to take bigger bites, making Bokuto chuckle and ask, "So, is it any good?"
Akaashi pouted at him, but Bokuto just laughed harder and took him by the chin, kissing him.
This time, he took his time undressing Akaashi, drinking in every sight and mapping out every inch of skin. Memorized every freckle and loved every moment of it, loved every noise coming out of Akaashi's mouth. It should be lewd, he thought, and what they're doing should be lewd, but doing it with Akaashi makes it seem so beautiful and sacred, as if they're not fucking in a brothel, as if Akaashi's not a kagema and he's not a client. They're making love, he realized, in a run down brothel room, and that should make him cringe, but it's with someone like Akaashi.
Akaashi, with a clear skin despite the fading freckles on his shoulder spreading on his back. Akaashi, with his soft fingers and bright eyes. Akaashi who blushes and stutters and liked Castella for the first two seconds that he tried it out. And he's so in love and he's so, so fucked, Bokuto thought, laughing internally.
But as Akaashi calls out his name and grips his hair, he realized that he doesn't really mind.
"Bokuto-san," Akaashi called out, sitting under the window while Bokuto laid on his lap. His coat was draped over his shoulders, hands going running through Bokuto's hair. "I was just wondering.
"Hm?"
"Why did you follow me here?" He flushed a bit at his question, but continued on nonetheless. "Why do you continue to come here? Is it because of pity? Am I really entertaining? I never performed the shamisen and I have no idea how Kabuki works."
Bokuto just hummed, looking at him for a while before taking the hand running through his hair and kissing his wrist, smiling up.
Akaashi doesn't know why, but that was enough.
Silence envelops them.
"Bokuto-san asked to be the only client that could ever reserve you," The manager said, once, while brushing out Akaashi's hair as he fiddled with his hair ornaments.
Akaashi looked up, eyes wide, blinking. It's been months, and he just now noticed that the only client he's been receiving was Bokuto. Not that he minded; It made his heart swell, and for some reason, he's actually ridiculously reassured. He kept his head down, but the change didn't go unnoticed by his manager.
"Ah, what's this? Are you falling in love, Akaashi?"
Akaashi wants to say yes, because he's human, after all, and anyone who's human will appreciate Bokuto's grin and his touches and the way it warms the skin. But.
"No."
He's a Kagema, after all.
"Do you always look out from this window?"
Akaashi held his coat tighter, as he watched Bokuto put on his suspenders while looking out the window. It's already dark and the the lanterns from outside, differently colored yet still able to appropriately illuminate the room, made Akaashi smile. Bokuto looked like a painting; A still-life made by Nagasaki's greatest painter, reds and greens and yellows dancing in his eyes and face perpetually rejuvenating. Akaashi wanted to keep him forever.
"Yeah."
Bokuto leaned down, whispering, I won't be back tomorrow, you know.
A tighter grip on the coat, but an indifferent face. The smile already slipped off, and Akaashi was already half-way saying Bokuto-san, I love you, when Bokuto kissed him and swallowed all his words. His warm hands held his trembling ones that had a strong grip on the coat, warm, but Akaashi still felt cold, empty, no, please, don't go.
Bokuto left.
He didn't come back for a long time.
The succeeding nights were very cold.
An old conversation:
"How much would it be if I buy you? All of you? Every touch and every night and every moan?"
"A hundred million yen, Bokuto-san."
(He doesn't see him anymore whenever he passes by that shop on the way to the bookstore.)
When he came back to the Kagemajaya after buying a book, he's greeted with Bokuto, two suitcases that he recognized as his, and his manager smiling at him.
Bokuto laughed when he cried, and he punched his shoulder in return.
"Stop gawking, Akaashi, and go in."
"You have a mansion, Bokuto-san. You never told me that."
And it was true. Standing in front of them was a huge American styled mansion, and Bokuto had the gall to laugh at his expression. He just blinked.
"Bokuto-san, are you sure about this?" He asked, suddenly feeling very shy and queasy and warm, like how he always feels when he's with Bokuto. "I mean, I'm just a Kagem--"
"You were a Kagema, Keiji," Bokuto firmly said, holding his hands and kissing them. Something in Akaashi's stomach flipped, and suddenly the name--his name--that he hated so much sounded so good and right when Bokuto's the one saying it. "Were. I love you, and that's why I spent a hundred million yen to be able to be with you for the rest of my life."
Akaashi literally can't say anything to that, and just opted to bask in Bokuto's radiance as he bumped their foreheads together, grinning.
"Hey, Keiji."
"...Yes, Koutarou?"
"You don't feel empty anymore, right?"
Widened eyes. Tightened grip. Softening. A smile.
"No."
HE: What's the most powerful thing in the world? I could hear the distant ring of the bell and the stomp of the soldiers.
SHE: That is not the stomp of the soldiers. That's the sound of a million men fighting for love.