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Seven days since Asougi let Ryuunosuke into his bed, no more and no less, and Ryuunosuke has to tell himself it’s not ungrateful, only human, that he still spends his time pouting at the ceiling and bemoaning the ache in his back. He misses his futon. The mattress is too soft, too big during the day when he’s lying on it alone. Too small when, times like now, he watches Asougi claim it without him.
He’s leaning against the wardrobe, arms crossed, watching Asougi. The evening is burning itself into the dwindling strip of light striking over the bed from their measly window. It wavers gold over the top of Asougi’s bowed head as he yanks at the clasps of his gaiters.
“Yes, a testament to our nations’ blossoming friendship!” Asougi scoffs. A particularly violent tug. “I’ve had no less than two Brits demand to know how I got out of steerage today alone.”
It is unfortunate, not entirely unexpected, how common this conversation has been. Ryuunosuke sighs, nods sympathetically. “Really Asougi, they don’t know anything.”
“No, certainly not.” Asougi lifts his face to look back at Ryuunosuke and the way the fight drains from his features is a relief just as sharp as the jerk of his chin. “Maybe their regard would be a greater insult,” he grumbles, the surly frown returning when Ryuunosuke laughs at his tone.
Ryuunosuke stoops to collect Asougi’s boots, feels fingers catch his shoulder. When he looks up, it forces his breath. Really, he’ll turn his eyes for a single moment and Asougi is always changing; smiling now, tiny and sure, in that particular way of his when he’s just come up with a plan either very good or very terrible, somehow entirely logical in the clear-cut workings of his brain.
“What is it?” Slowly, somewhat wary, Ryuunosuke asks him.
Asougi’s smile broadens; Ryuunosuke hadn’t realised the sight was rare until a classmate had huddled close to him last year and hissed, in a whisper, “He’s laughing. Naruhodou, are you going to be okay?” Well, there’d have been scarce reason for fear if his classmate had seen Asougi now, leaning close, and drawing his hand into his cloak.
Cat’s cream grin, Asougi dangles a flask in front of Ryuunosuke’s face. “Share a drink with me, will you? I have felt bad for that time last week, Partner…”
Ryuunosuke thinks his brows might have just disappeared into his hairline, the disbelieving chuckle sounds nervous to his own ears. “Asougi, is that…it’s not…”
But the flask, though alarming in size next to any ordinary flask as it is, surely isn’t enough to get them foxed. And it does leave Ryuunosuke struck aware of how long it’s been since he felt the warm, happy buzz of a few drinks. He has half a mind to ask if this is such a good idea. Only half. So he deposits Asougi’s gaiters and boots in a neat line by the wardrobe, takes the flask from Asougi’s hand and moves for the table, eyeballing the shot as he pours into their single too-big glass. And if his grip on the glass tightens when Asougi’s low, knowing laugh rasps at the pit of Ryuunosuke’s gut, well Asougi has no way to tell…
“Your decorum is admirable,” Asougi deadpans, inclining his head at the offered glass, eyes lit like he’s laughing at Ryuunosuke. His fingers close delicately around the glass, brushing Ryuunosuke’s as they go. And it’s then, at that, Ryuunosuke having to shift his gaze, that he notices Asougi’s other hand, held flat out in turn, covered now by the drape of a cream cloth. It’s a fruit, presumably, though looking more like something straight out of a fairytale with the way the pieces of it are fanned out in a circle, the light fitting under the pale yellow skin, slightly translucent, set aglow in the centre of Asougi’s palm.
“A drinking snack, even,” Asougi says. When Ryuunosuke continues to stare, transfixed, at the fruit: “I’m told they’re brined apples.”
But the apples are not the reason why Ryuunosuke keeps his eyes off Asougi when he hears him knock back the shot—it’s the punched out groan that accompanies it, never permitted to escape in front of their other batchmates. Cheeks hot, Ryuunosuke doesn’t move until Asougi leans over to set the apple on the nightstand, grabbing the flask back in turn. He passes the empty glass to Ryuunosuke, slaps his hand when he tries to take the flask, and pours the shot for him.
Experimentally, Ryuunosuke sniffs it, wincing immediately. Honestly, what was he expecting? One thing he and Asougi have in common, not ones to go for spirits if given the choice.
“About what you’d expect, isn’t it?” Asougi laughs again, God, he’s already going easy. Another thing only for Ryuunosuke—the miracle that is their batchmates having no clue what a lightweight Asougi Kazuma is. Because, somehow, he’s aware enough of being a useless drunk that he becomes a bastion of the virtue of shutting the fuck up when they’re out. That is, until he’s alone with Ryuunosuke. And then every giggle, every gleefully terrible joke, told and doubled down upon, spills from him at once. About as advanced as a starfish, certainly just as clingy as one as he drags Ryuunosuke into dragging him back to his boarding house. Well, he’ll likely not get to that point tonight, at least. Ryuunosuke sighs.
“Why do we do this, again? For that matter, why’d you get roped into this last week?”
“Not-so-elaborate elaborate cock-measuring competition, unfortunately,” says Asougi. A beat, and then: “We do this because it’s a fine thing to be a near quarter of the way to a new land with a dear friend.”
Ryuunosuke wants to hold his ears, undoubtedly gone red.
“And I think my eyes will cross if I read another word on the Judicature Acts today.” Asougi is stoic under Ryuunosuke’s gaze. As if it’s only polite—to raise the flask up to his own mouth as Ryuunosuke sets to gulp down his shot.
In it goes. Asougi hisses. Ryuunosuke swears—yes, exactly as you’d expect—and they both scramble for a wedge of apple.
He’s relieved that it’s only faintly sweet. Mostly fizzing tart and salty. It’s fittingly bright on his tongue. There’s that taste that he’s found ever present in all the food on this ship. Herbaceous, vaguely like lemon rind, clean and bitter in its dull sweetness, lingering at the back of his palate. Dill.
It does the job, dulls the burn and leaves the warmth tickling across Ryuunosuke’s shoulders, lightening his chest. In the glow, he catches on an errant thought with an odd strike of clarity. Asougi is still in his day clothes. While Ryuunosuke has it in him, he moves to fish Asougi’s nemaki out the closet, tossing it onto the bed.
“You’d best get changed first, this time at least,” Ryuunosuke says.
He hears Asougi hum in the affirmative.
Pliant. Dear, no. Ryuunosuke hides his blush behind a cough and turns his back to Asougi, resisting the urge to knock his forehead against the rosewood of the wardrobe.
The man is made of buckles. Ryuunosuke hears each square, clasp, catch of metal hit the floor. It’s not as if he hasn’t heard it all before, not like he hasn’t seen Asougi undress in front of him. But it’s like he’s underwater, no, like he’s pressed flat to the floor and each clatter vibrates into him—he jumps—not at the buckles, no. At the rustle of cotton…slipping off shoulders? The whisper of Asougi’s trousers, shimmied past his thighs? The decisive tug of an obi?
This time, Ryuunosuke does press his face to the closet, releasing a harsh breath. Mortified. He’s half-mast, hard. Like a boy. And the relief of realising it’s indiscernible under the loose cloth of his nightclothes is its own sort of shame.
“There’s no cause for clean-up in how exactly you procured the vodka, right, Asougi?” Ryuunosuke asks the door, slightly hysterical, willing his dick to go down.
Asougi has it in him to let loose an affronted gasp before he starts nattering. “What do you take me for? Perfectly upstanding means, thank you, Naruhodou.” He mutters something Ryuunosuke can’t catch before continuing. “One of the stewards, scrap of a boy…owed me a favour and apparently vodka is its own sort of currency. Don’t get me wrong, the Russians have been plenty rude as well but there’s less pretence to it, at least. I didn’t consider him in my debt, of course, but well….” Ryuunosuke thinks he hears him shifting to grasp the flask, the telltale sound of pouring. He can imagine the smile returning to pull at one side of Asougi’s mouth, a touch roguish. A gulp followed by a grunt. Certainly not helping Ryuunosuke’s predicament. Once more, the clink of the flask against the glass. He’s pouring again.
“A favour?” Ryuunosuke grits out, clinging to the words.
“Mm.” Asougi’s voice has taken on a darkness when he continues. “Top hat in the smoking room making an arse out of himself. Drank himself stupid, didn’t realise he’d left his watch at the table and rounded on the steward for stealing.”
Really, really, Ryuunosuke would feel for the steward if he wasn’t reckoning with the wish to die on the spot right now. “And you?” Please keep talking.
“Well, I saw the watch and sought to return it. Dropped it in the gentleman’s ashtray.”
That does the trick, at least. Ryuunosuke feels like he’s been plunged into an icebath. “You what?!” He sputters.
“Oh please, a perfect accident.” The derisive snort Ryuunosuke hears says otherwise.
He’s halfway to rounding on Asougi when he remembers the matter of his undress and stiffens in his tracks. A breath in. A breath out. Ryuunosuke swallows. “Asougi, just…just a modicum of fear. Please.”
Asougi, the bastard, he laughs. “You flatter me, Naruhodou. Don’t worry, it shut him up well enough when he realised Karuma wasn’t mere decoration.”
“Oh God,” Ryuunosuke groans. “You didn’t, Asougi, please tell me you didn’t...”
He does whirl around to face Asougi this time, regrets it immediately when he finds Asougi, sat back on the bed and peering up at him, nemaki rumpled up around his knees as he rubs at the prints his sock garters have impressed into his calves, a shadow at the junction where cloth crosses over his chest. “Are you alright, Naruhodou?”
Asougi’s clothes, folded in a perfect pile, have been laid atop the single chair in their room. Ryuunosuke feels like the scum of the Earth. In a shaky impression of the version of himself that is a nice man, good enough at least, Ryuunosuke walks to the nightstand. It’s probably less convincing, the way he snatches the refilled glass and sinks it. More regret. He sucks on the apple in his mouth, somewhat aggressively, and pours himself another shot. Desperate times.
Asougi laughs at him, smooths the fabric back down to his ankles, and straightens only to lean back, still looking up at Ryuunosuke. “The room was too small for any sort of demonstration, trust.” And his smile…indeed…roguish. Guileless in its self-satisfaction. More worrying is the flush high on his cheeks, three drinks in.
That’s an Asougi four-and-a-half. But Ryuunosuke thinks he’s the one spinning, he really is, in the grasp of Asougi’s giggles at his own sad joke. The ends of his hachimaki—he’s left it on—fluttering with the shake of his shoulders.
Ryuunosuke sighs. “You’ve left your hachimaki on,” he says. All in the undertow—the way his stomach knots itself uneasy at how soft his own voice falls.
Asougi slaps his hands together, his gaze flashes, strikes intense. “Naruhodou! I won’t remove it, not until I honour the final test!”
Ryuunosuke raises a brow, but he knows to play along. “Asougi, you know it’s hardly a fair test if—”
Asougi takes Ryuunosuke’s wrists, grip bruising, and barrels through the words.
“Red hachimaki, blue hachimaki, lellow blmachihaki!”
Ryuunosuke blinks. “Asougi…”
Asougi blinks back at him, blank-faced. The quiet devastation of his hubris before the outbreak bursts from the wreckage. And Ryuunosuke moves with a swiftness he thinks he’ll remember proudly if he makes it to see tomorrow. Asougi has just as soon begun to open his mouth as Ryuunosuke reaches to cover it, gentled at the last fraction of a second, his other hand closing to cradle the back of Asougi’s skull.
He watches Asougi’s eyes dart, away and back to him, shocked, affronted, then…in a dizzy rush…lax and yielding in Ryuunosuke’s grasp. He can feel as Asougi’s face grows hot under his touch, feel him shut his mouth, a slight shift as he swallows. Dazed, not quite sure if he’s imagining or doing, Ryuunosuke scratches through the short hair at the back of Asougi’s head, tests the line of Asougi’s chin with the thumb of the hand covering his mouth. Asougi—he wasn’t this red a moment ago—it’s not from the alcohol alone. Scalded, Ryuunosuke draws his touch back.
Asougi’s voice, rough now. “Never,” he says. “I’ll never remove it. Leave me, Naruhodou.”
“I’m not sure there’s much elsewhere for me to go,” Ryuunosuke levels, tingling from top to toe as he curls his fingers experimentally, perhaps to trap the shadow.
“Until my tongue bleeds,” Asougi mutters, eyes far off, face pinched like—
Bursting from Ryuunosuke in a wave, it’s a fit of a thing against the thick tension, the laughter that overtakes him.
Asougi’s mouth drops, aghast. The flush of his face has deepened again. “You’re laughing?! Is this a joke to you, Naruhodou?”
“It’s just—your face just now—reminded me of that time that—” Ryuunosuke makes the mistake of looking at Asougi again, dissolves into another bout of laughter.
The time he’d squinted and found Asougi on their university grounds, unmistakable even from the distance, his back to Ryuunosuke…because who else would be slashing at the air with a katana, impervious to the people recoiling as they passed him by? Ryuunosuke had approached him, speechless as he watched his body, tall and taut as a bow, the sweat on the back of his neck….a mound of ginkgo leaves, how were there even any left to keep falling from the tree?! Ryuunosuke had ventured a soft “Asougi?” and Asougi had responded with a garbled scream as he rounded on Ryuunosuke. Stowing his katana, the cleared throat, the shutter drawn indecipherable over Asougi’s face—incriminating in itself.
“You looked just like that time I caught you training, knee-deep in the leaves.”
“I don’t appreciate the implication of your use of the word ‘caught’ here, Naruhodou.” Asougi huffs. But at the way the horror downturns the sides of his mouth, that beautiful high blush, Ryuunosuke has to hold himself, doubling over.
Just like this, he’d laughed a stitch into his side that day. Asougi’s protests no match for him, all hope lost for Ryuunosuke the moment Asougi had, instead, only caught the laughter from him.
Just like now, Asougi. A chuckle, splintering bright before they’d both broken down, howling, sinking into a heap in the leaves, a cave as they'd clutched at each other, no doubt looking perfectly insane to everyone in the vicinity.
“You were very…precise,” Ryuunosuke tries, near impossible around the sharp pang in his stomach.
“Oh, fuck off,” Asougi says, but his voice, too, has gone reedy with laughter, the aftershocks of his giggles sending a waver through the words.
“You’re ridiculous, you know?” Ryuunosuke says, nothing if not fond.
And without the drink, Asougi might take offence. Pot and kettle. As is, he only smiles. “Well, I dare say you like it.”
That, that cuts a touch too close to the heart of it all.
How heady the air had been that day, like Ryuunosuke could drink it in and drown in it. His heart might be seizing with the weight of the wish that this moment, now at least, could be everything forever. There’s levity enough for him to lift his hands, as if floating, to Asougi’s brow. Enough grounding force upon him that it’s like the inevitability of falling, how his fingers run the line of the hachimaki, catching at the fabric at the back of Asougi’s head, tucked under the ticklish strands of his hair.
Asougi’s eyes widen, though he only stays in place. Ryuunosuke swallows—it’s dangerous to be watched like that. So he tugs the hachimaki down, not up, past the faint lines the band has left on Asougi’s forehead. Realises when Asougi, eyes covered, takes a sharp intake of breath and says nothing more, that this idea was far, far worse. Ryuunosuke’s throat goes bone-dry, each quiet word spoken a tremor in the pin-drop space between them, more bold than his voice belies.
“You didn’t say I couldn’t take it off for you.”
Asougi’s laugh, light and cool, strained as a dew drop on the edge of Ryuunosuke’s nerves. “No, my dear friend, I suppose I didn’t.”
Ryuunosuke sets to work. Glancing down, he sees Asougi’s knuckles are white where he’s clenching at the sheets. For a moment, the tense lines of his arms are no more or less than flesh and bone, formidable as they are fragile. Ryuunosuke feels he’s seen something illicit, wonders what Asougi is seeing of him behind the red blind of the hachimaki—does he know Ryuunosuke is shaking? Picking at the knot with his left hand.
He’s so focused on the loosening that he’s not prepared for the fall, the silken brush of the fabric when it drops away from Asougi to ribbon over Ryuunosuke’s palm. At once, all of Asougi: the divot the fabric has pressed into his skin, the steel of his eyes. This should be Ryuunosuke’s cue to run, and yet—
Who were they both? Those men built by each other’s laughter only a moment ago? What have they made themselves into this past week? When did Ryuunosuke become a creature, miserable with missing, lying in a bed each night and pushing his face between Asougi’s shoulder blades, waking to untangle and holding his body so far away, skirting around Asougi for the duration of the day…
“I think,” Ryuunosuke bites the inside of his cheek. “Last week…I think we made quite a mess of things, Asougi.”
Asougi flushes to his hairline. Ryuunosuke watches the way his gaze drops in an instant, the movement frantic, whatever room he can make while Ryuunosuke holds to where he is, the cage of this space.
“If I’ve done anything…” Asougi starts. Ryuunosuke makes to stop him—“Anything at all, that makes you uncomfortable…please, the only discomfort I ask you endure is to tell me.” Said fiercely, the measured uncertainty. He sounds desperate.
Ryuunosuke releases a ragged breath, wants to scream. That’s not it, that’s not at all it. What comes out is very simple, entirely nonsensical: “Asougi, I only miss you.”
Asougi’s eyes are back on him, brought forth like a heartbeat, like he was never gone. Careful—Ryuunosuke has made him so careful—he says, “I’m right here.”
Yes, yes he is. Yes, he always has been. Suspension, too, can be a home. The home that is the stone footbridge, the train, this ship. The giddy height of it, where the joy of crossing meets the fear of departure. Ryuunosuke takes his shoulders—here, where his thumbs meet the connection of Asougi’s shoulders to his neck, lies the anxiety of absence.
“I’m unsure how much is me and how much is you,” Ryuunosuke says, enough drinks in to warm the words out his throat, not enough to keep him from cringing at the abstract shape of them.
Asougi nods. “I see,” he says, staring unblinking up at Ryuunosuke. And then, the flicker of an idea across his face. He tries, he always does. The best man Ryuunosuke knows. Asougi asks him: “Did I will you to follow me to England?”
Ryuunosuke arches a brow. “I wanted to follow you.”
Asougi hums, seems to measure the next words. “Did I will you to stowaway in my suitcase?”
At that, Ryuunosuke breathes out a laugh, lets it fall slightly aggrieved, lets himself focus on the way Asougi’s mouth slants in the tenuous beginnings of his own smile at the sound. “That’s a lot of credit you’re giving yourself there, Partner,” he mutters. “Goodness, do you have me on cross?”
“Well, in lieu of the opposing counsel…” The smile takes root, digs its heels at Asougi’s cheeks. If not for that, Ryuunosuke would not notice the waver that follows. “That night…did I will you to kiss me?”
The breath that leaves Ryuunosuke scrapes his ribs ragged. He sees the skip in Asougi’s chest, the jump of his throat. How is it that he can taste the hurt in turn? The seed lodged. That feeling again, like he’s exposed a nerve with little more than the brush of a thumb. Like right now, he could be very cruel. But ultimately his fear, too, can only falter—a flightless bird under Asougi’s eyes, wading through the warm thick of three drinks. Ryuunosuke meets his gaze. On the exhale, he shakes his head.
“Then do as you’d like.” And the dip forward of Asougi’s chin, the gentle hold of his eyes, even in a drunken daze, is the same as it was when he’d told Ryuunosuke he believed in him. “I’ll take responsibility, if you need.”
“As I’d like?” Ryuunosuke doesn’t know. There’s only the thrash of his heart in the calm quiet, the relentless thrum under his skin—how he’d touched Asougi’s face—the absence of touch. He presses his nails into his palms. When Ryuunosuke speaks, he feels the accusation he’d intended fumble, finding that, as he shapes the words, he’s uncertain of both the answer and his own response. “Asougi, when you said you could forget—”
The sooty lines of Asougi’s eyelashes sweep downwards. “How careful. You’re learning.”
“Asougi…”
That it works, that it sparks Asougi’s sight back to him. Does he know that when Ryuunosuke’s knees knock to his, hands pressing to grasp at his shoulders again, it’s only because Ryuunosuke might collapse in a heap otherwise?
Asougi sighs. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t what?”
“Forget.”
Ryuunosuke’s eyes are prickling. He digs his fingers. “Would you have wanted to?”
Asougi swears then, looks away again. “Irrelevant.”
One doesn’t attain best friend status without learning to wheedle, even if the two of them are particularly artless about it. Ryuunosuke allows himself to bear his weight down a fraction. “Asougi, please.”
And Asougi says, “Would you have wanted me to?”
“That’s not fair.” Ryuunosuke exhales, loosens his grasp.
“Well, that’s that.” And the sulky pinch between Asougi’s brows doesn’t soften until the errant touch of Ryuunosuke’s fingers whispers along it, smooths across the bared frown in his forehead. “Naruhodou, it could be simple, you know?”
It couldn’t be. No, it’s not fair. But Ryuunosuke wants. And action, at least, might uncover him in the same breath he may tuck himself into and hide.
Ryuunosuke’s fingers tremble as he draws them away from Asougi’s face, to take the flask in hand, holding it forward in offer to Asougi.
At Asougi’s raised brow, Ryuunosuke shrugs, manages a sheepish smile. The tremors don’t stop when Asougi takes the flask again, this time Ryuunosuke watches him knock it back. The swathe of skin. Asougi hissing, once more, at the taste and reaching for the relief of the apple arranged in a sun on the nightstand. He plucks a slice, leads it to his mouth. His movements elegant, slowed by the alcohol but, somehow, sure as his sword. Ryuunosuke snatches the flask, takes a healthily caustic swig of his own.
He sets the flask down.
“Cap it,” demands Asougi, hoarse as he swallows down the sliver of fruit. Ryuunosuke says nothing. The sear through his throat and into the hearth of his chest.
“No, really. Cap it—”
He returns to Asougi, pushes both fists into the mattress on either side of him and chases his mouth.
And that—the way Asougi’s grip comes fierce at his collar, the way Asougi melts and gravity is no more than the distance Ryuunosuke tears through…the shiver of their bodies when their mouths open, slipping on the taste of the apple, its salty-sweet effervescence, seeking the whisper of honey and sucking in the cutting breath of mint, searching for the closeness under it all…that they could have been doing this all week…
That’s all very simple.
The rustle of fabric on fabric is perhaps more deafening than the creak of the bed when Ryuunosuke pushes himself all the way onto it, helped as much as he is hindered by Asougi arching up into him, bracing on one elbow, the other fitted around Ryuunosuke. It’s a wonder how even contained in the space Ryuunosuke grants him, the wholeness of Asougi’s faith feels such a stern thing. A tether, even through a kiss that unshapes them, formless as the ocean clasping their hulking steamship, the universe of their tiny cabin.
“No further questions,” Asougi grits out.
And Ryuunosuke would roll his eyes if it weren’t for the way he has no answers, anyway. If it weren’t for how whatever it is, well, it might just be. If it weren’t for the fact that Asougi is panting—the coarse gasp for breath, his worn voice a brand at Ryuunosuke’s jaw. The keen way his fingers delve into the base of Ryuunosuke’s skull. Only liquid.
At the touch, Ryuunosuke goes. Presses down, down.
Of course he does. Asougi follows.