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The first thing Murai tells him: “You talk too much.” The second: “Your roots are showing.” And the third: “Want me to help you bleach them?”
Murai speaks as though every word out of his mouth is scripture, a threat, or both. Yatora squints up at him. Murai is smiling obnoxiously widely, eyebrows raised. Expectant. Waiting for Yatora to back down.
“I don’t want your hands anywhere near my hair,” Yatora growls, turning back to his lunch.
“Oh, c’mon. This is a really generous offer, you know.” Murai leans down, bracing his hands against Yatora’s lunch table. The tassels at the ends of his earrings brush Yatora’s cheek when he whispers, “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, you know.”
This is, broadly speaking, false. Murai does not keep to himself. He is loud and vain and self-assured like a cut-and-paste supervillain who never made it anywhere besides Saturday morning children’s cartoons. But even when he’s living out of other people’s pockets, pressing himself into spaces he’s made for himself and himself only, he makes sure to let you know of the price of freedom. He lives with cathedrals in his head and salt under his fingernails. He is everything and nothing all at once.
“Do you even know how to bleach hair,” Yatora says, poking at his udon.
“You ask the dumbest questions.”
“I’m not letting you sleep over.”
Murai pulls away. His face is unfortunately still as infuriating as it is pretty; surely there are ways around this, ways to discount him until Yatora stops wanting to touch his face and just wants to kick him. Remember: Murai is only attractive because of his haircut and piercings. Yatora also has hair and piercings. If he does something to his hair, perhaps he, too, will become as infuriatingly beautiful as the rest of the world. He and Murai would be evenly matched in a fight to the death.
“Come home with me, then,” Murai says, tapping the corner of the table. He’s all teeth when he grins. “C’mon, pretty boy. I don’t mind if you stay.”
The first time Murai touches him: under the flickering fluorescents in his dingy bathroom, Yatora sitting on the counter and Murai standing between his legs. His hands are in Yatora’s hair. Yatora wants to kiss him more than he wants to punch him.
“This is nice,” Murai says. He’s wearing a thin tank top with a ridiculously low neckline; Yatora has been staring at the bird tattooed on his sternum since Murai first slipped his gloved, bleach-heavy fingers into his hair and murmured something about devotion. “You do this often?”
Yatora considers the bird. “Not with other people.”
“So I’m your first?”
“Shut the hell up.”
Murai’s smirking. He always does this—holds his tongue between his teeth as he stares people down, looking for a fight. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You—I— ugh. You’re impossible.”
“You like it.”
Yatora reaches out to press gently at Murai’s tattoo. Murai actually pauses at this, fingers stalling in Yatora’s hair as he looks from his own chest to Yatora, who refuses to give him the satisfaction of prolonged eye contact.
“What’s this mean?” Yatora asks instead. His voice comes out low, almost a whisper. There are two of them in this room fit for half of a person; no windows, no sunlight, no sky-tall ceiling. Yatora’s left foot rests against the closed door. He feels brave like this, he realizes, staring down the crown of Murai’s head like the barrel of a gun. What does the gun want? To kiss him, or drown him, or to pull them both out of their bodies and let them re-examine why they are here. Here in this room. Here in this city. Here in this life.
Murai moves a half-step closer. He’s almost pressed up against him now, Yatora’s arm caught between them. “It’s a fucking bird, Yatora. What do you think?”
What does he think? Simple: he doesn’t. “I like it.”
Yatora traces carefully over the sharp border of the beak, where ink touches skin and pulls carefully away. He can feel Murai shiver beneath him, goosebumps spreading across his shoulders, and hears him sigh almost imperceptibly softly. His eyes slip half-closed, fingers tangling in Yatora’s hair. He wonders if Murai is used to being touched like this.
“Can I see the other one?” He asks, spreading his palm out against Murai’s chest.
Murai’s eyes snap back open. And he pulls that cat-and-mouse smile back onto the battlefield, leaning in until his forehead almost, almost touches Yatora’s. He looks down at Yatora’s lips, long and drawn-out, and when he finally looks Yatora in the eye, the sky may as well come tumbling down. “Can I bleach the rest of your fucking hair first?”
Murai bleaches the rest of his fucking hair. Washes it out, too. Runs his fingers through his hair even though Yatora didn’t ask for it. For any of this. But he is reminded once again of who this body belongs to as he stands with Murai in front of the mirror, watching their reflections as Murai dries his hair with a towel that smells like laundry detergent and cigarette smoke.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know,” Yatora whispers, swallowing down something that feels suspiciously like longing.
“I know.” Murai tucks a piece of hair behind Yatora’s ear, smiling fondly at him in the mirror. “But it worked, didn’t it?”
“What?”
Murai settles the towel around Yatora’s shoulders, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “You don’t hate me anymore.”
Murai’s bedroom has two windows. There are clothes on the ground and paint bottles strewn across his desk and glossy photos pinned messily to the walls like they were done by someone who was in too much of a hurry to make sure they were all lined up properly. Yatora sits at the foot of Murai’s bed—the desk chair is piled high with laundry, and he has no desire to touch it. Is it clean? Who knows. Probably not Murai, who changes his earrings more frequently than he does the clothes on his actual fucking back.
“Didn’t you wanna see my other tattoo?”
Murai leans over him. The neck of his shirt falls open. Yatora can see the hard plane of his stomach without even trying.
“Yeah,” he croaks out, scratching at the back of his neck.
“Alright.” Murai shrugs, sitting down next to him. The bed dips. Murai’s leg presses into his. “Go ahead.”
“You’re not gonna…”
“Gonna what?”
Murai is a stone-cold asshole. He probably gets off on this, on making people squirm in the face of his false modesty. Behind that thin veneer of coyness is his all-knowing stare, eyebrows raised as he stares you down. And you are helpless to him because he looks gorgeous in the afternoon, kissing the left cheek of immortality under the golden light. You will stand there and watch his edges bleed out until he’s golden all the way through. What do you want? What are you asking for?
“Just—take your shirt off,” Yatora grumbles, running a hand through his hair. He can’t— won’t —look Murai in the eye.
“You do it.”
“God, I hate you.”
“Of course you do.” Murai beams. “The world won’t end if you touch me, Yatora.”
Maybe this was what he really wanted all along. This was the point of his tattoos, of his shamelessness, of his glass-blown smile. He is deadly and beautiful all at once. Yatora slips his fingertips under the hem of Murai’s shirt and it feels like spitting on the infinite feet of the universe.
“You’re so gentle,” Murai murmurs, looping an arm around Yatora’s waist. He pulls Yatora closer, pressing into his touch. “It’s sweet. I don’t know why I didn’t expect this from you.”
Murai. Shadowless, infinite Murai. Murai with black nails and dangling earrings and hair halfway to a mullet. He is too confident, grinning lazily up at Yatora like he’s already won this little contest and, by extension, the rest of Yatora’s sanity. His stomach is warm beneath Yatora’s palms.
“I don’t know what I expected from you,” he sighs, and yanks Murai’s shirt over his head. Murai blinks at him, disoriented, and he chews at his bottom lip. “C’mon, I actually wanna see it.”
“Of course you want to see it,” Murai says, turning obediently around. “What do you think we’re doing, Yatora?”
“I—”
He can hear the smile in Murai’s voice. What are they doing? Yatora’s scalp is burning and every time he thinks about Murai’s hands in his hair he feels like running away. At least Murai’s turned around now—looking him in the eye is half the battle. But everything from the uneven slope of his shoulders to the low hem of his jeans feels suggestive now.
Okay, he tells himself. Okay as in: you are this kind of person now. You are the sort of guy you would’ve shit on in high school for being emotional and pathetic and passionate. You are in a boy’s room and it smells indescribably like him; you look at him and think he might have teaspoons in his eye sockets, but you’re here anyway. You are here with someone you say you hate. Do you really? Who the fuck knows. Who the fuck cares.
Murai’s skin is warmer than Yatora’s. The tattoo feels exactly the same as the rest of his skin. When Yatora touches the border of the wing on his left shoulder, though, Murai lets out a soft sigh, almost a whine.
“What?” He says defensively when Yatora starts, pulling his hand away. “I just—you surprised me!”
“Does it hurt?”
“Nah, it’s a couple of years old. I had some detailing done, like, nine months ago, but that’s it.” He tilts his head accusingly, hair falling into his eyes. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Yatora says, grinning.
“Right. Of course you—”
Yatora presses both palms flat against Murai’s shoulder blades. That shuts him up. Good, Yatora thinks. Maybe he’s psychic. Maybe his powers are transferable through touch. Murai’s prettier when he doesn’t talk, anyhow.
“Bullshit,” he hears Murai mutter. “I’m pretty all the time. You’d look nicer if you acted a little less formal. Let loose a little.”
Yatora fits his fingers into the narrow arches of the feathers against Murai’s spine. Murai’s breath hitches. “You think I look nice?”
“I— ah— dunno, maybe a little bit. Twice a week, tops.”
“And the rest?”
“It’s literally just—stop wearing grandpa sweaters. I swear to god, sometimes I’ll see you out of the corner of my eye and I’ll think to myself, why is there an old man wandering around Geidai, but no, it’s just you.”
“I don’t wander.”
“You look like a lost puppy. It’s almost pathetic.”
Yatora laughs. “Almost?”
“It’s—whatever.”
Yatora wonders, tracing over the eyes of the owl, how many people have seen it. How many people have touched it. How many people have watched Murai arch up against the palm of their hand when they press against the claws on his lower back. The number is almost certainly non-zero. Yatora wonders if he’s even allowed to feel jealous as he runs his hands slowly up and down the length of the tattoo. He couldn’t blame them, really—it is beautiful and relentlessly grandiose, everything he’s come to expect from Murai. Flight is nothing if not a spectacle, after all. Almost unconsciously, he presses his lips to the tip of the owl’s beak; he expects him to pull away, but Murai moans like it’s been punched out of him.
“Murai,” he whispers, hands stalling on his shoulders.
“Fuck, don’t call me that now, are you kidding?” Murai turns around, his hands coming up around Yatora’s wrists. He’s blushing all the way to his chest; it’s startlingly adorable, watching him devolve like this. “It’s Yakumo here, okay?”
“Okay,” he whispers. He can still see the tips of the owl’s wings curling around Murai’s arm. “Yakumo.”
Murai grins, startlingly foxlike. “Yes?”
Yatora runs his tongue over his bottom lip, trying to think of something to say. Something that isn’t: I wanted to call you by your name when you were around to hear it. I think you’re beautiful all the time. I think the universe might be ending and I kind of don’t care, because a room without you in it may as well not be a room at all.
But he is in a room, and in this room is a beautiful boy who maybe has a death wish but mostly just watches the sun set over Tokyo’s skyline and thinks about increasingly grandiose plans upon which he will never deliver. This boy does not care about the heat-death of the universe or whether or not factory farming is detrimental to society in the same way that he cares about the simple joys of self-expression. It is wondrous and refreshingly unhinged. Yatora had never thought he’d get to know people like him before he’d gotten into art school.
“Ever kissed someone before?” Murai asks. He’s fallen gracefully into the center of the mattress, running his thumb idly over where the mattress meets his bed frame. He smells like cheap cologne.
“No,” Yatora says.
“Do you want to?”
Yatora considers him. A first kiss is, after all, supposed to be a big deal. It is stretched out in dramas, pulled away at the last second for optimal tension; it is a thing discussed in whispers across grade school and through the arch of an eyebrow in high school, something everyone either desperately wants or has already achieved. Back then he had never thought much beyond the narrow curve of a faceless girl’s waist, her laughter echoing high and pretty in his ears as he leaned in, the handsome knight in a disarmingly stylish trench coat and high turtleneck. Murai is very much a boy, with a voice lower than Yatora’s and an obnoxious laugh that sounds vaguely like shredding cardboard with a cheese grater. Yatora tries to imagine himself kissing a girl and comes up empty. He stares down at Murai Yakumo and wonders if the hole in his chest has a name.
“Yeah,” he says. “I do, actually.”
Murai is softer in bed. He doesn’t even say anything, just looks up at Yatora with heavy-lidded eyes and wraps his fingers around the back of Yatora’s neck. He kisses languidly like they’ve got all the time in the world, trapped together in a bubble outside the normal realms of time and space. Maybe they do; this whole afternoon feels like a fever dream.
“Yatora,” Murai sighs against the corner of his mouth, “Yatora, god, you’re gorgeous. Always thought you were pretty, y’know?” He nips at Yatora’s bottom lip. “You’re just so…”
He’s soft like this, too. He handles Yatora like he’s made of glass, cradling his face gently between his hands when he kisses him. Everything is warm and calm and gentle, and Yatora wonders if everyone’s first kiss devolves as this one has: Murai beneath him, both of them shirtless, Yatora’s tongue between his teeth.
“Fast learner,” Murai breathes when he pulls away. And he looks dazzling, lips slick and red and pupils blown wide. Yatora kisses the bird on his sternum to keep himself from smiling.
Murai is not a gentle person. But maybe he is, what with how he touches Yatora like he’s more than just a body. This is what his hands say: you are something special. Something sacred. Something whole. Yatora’s never been held like this before; now that he’s here, lying next to someone who is willing to kiss him like he means it, he doesn’t know if he has it in him to leave. He traces over the steady lines of Murai’s owl again, committing to memory which points make Murai shiver beneath him.
“I really love your tattoo,” he tells Murai. It comes out sounding altogether too earnest, like he should’ve waited until the sun went down to say it. But Murai just smiles, face half-hidden by his pillow.
“Thanks,” he mumbles. “So do I. Makes me feel like I can really do shit, y’know?”
No. No, he doesn’t know. But Murai sounds equally, if not more, earnest. And he really is beautiful in every way, from the earrings tangled in his hair to the ink covering his back. Yatora doesn’t know him—his goals, his fears, who he wants to be tomorrow—but lying beside him like this, legs tangled between each other, he thinks he wants to. He wants to hear the grandiose ideas Murai files away because they’re too big even for him. It might take a while to learn about who and where and what made him the way he is, but he is warm and solid and real against Yatora, a promise that as long as they are both here, there will be stories to tell. He leans in to kiss Murai again. And for now, for the first evening of a new universe, it’s enough.