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Midori’s bathroom is cold.
That’s Matsuoka’s only coherent thought for the few seconds it takes him to get from the door to the toilet. It’s the middle of the night and the heating is off but it’s not a cold season and the room should be warmer than it is.
He finishes peeing and washes his hands, gazing blearily at the mirror above the sink. Midori’s bathroom is nice, and it’s bigger than his, and Matsuoka wants to vomit all over the shiny white porcelain. He’s only turned on the light beneath the mirror so as not to wake Midori, who’s still asleep.
Part of him is disgusted by what he sees in the mirror and part of him is fascinated. His own physical form does not quite seem real, lit softly by the gentle light, and the shadows cast over his skin hide some of the bruises left on him.
There are faint red marks around his throat that will be gone by the time the sun spills over the horizon. They are shaped like fingers, lined up in a row and if you didn’t know they were there you couldn’t see them. Matsuoka knows they are there. He can still feel the ghostly imprints of Midori’s hand around his throat, squeezing hard enough to terrify.
There are bite marks just a little lower, low enough that they’ll be hidden by a shirt.
There are lots of bite marks. He thinks Midori does it because he knows it makes him sick but he can’t prove that, and even if he could it wouldn’t stop Midori. They are scattered everywhere, from his collarbones to his ribs and down to his hips. The shorts Midori has given him to sleep in sit low on his hips and he can see the neat curves of teeth in his skin, and he can feel them lower.
He glances into the room that Midori is supposedly still asleep in. The clock says it is 3:24 and Midori is unmoving beneath the sheets. They have never spoken at this time, after sex and after sleeping. Matsuoka wonders sometimes if he’s the only one who couldn’t face that.
Bite marks are more irritating than other marks left; they tingle for too long after they’re left and they take longest to heal. It’s not like he can pretend he fell and got them either.
The glass of the mirror must be so fragile. It would be too easy to put his fist through it, to smash the silvery sheen to glitter and cut his hand to pieces on the edges. For a moment he considers it, but the phantom terror of the repercussions is enough to quicken his heart and he abandons that idea quickly.
Everything in him aches. The bone-deep tiredness that comes with painful physical activity is lingering, despite having slept, and his legs ache even as he stands on them. He thinks he really ought to go and try and sleep but he can’t move from that spot, can’t move from staring into the mirror that he increasingly wants to smash.
There are bruises that aren’t bites too. Midori likes pinching. Midori likes anything that will leave a mark. There are red twists of skin, peppered over his torso and thighs. The fabric of his shorts is thin and silky and it brushes over his delicate skin softly enough that it doesn’t hurt but the memory of the pain is still there.
Lines of pink-white-red scratches and red crescent moons the width of a fingernail and slightly purpled patches of skin and hollow, empty eyes and Matsuoka wonders why he’s there.
The clock reads 3:38 now and Matsuoka is tired enough to sway where he stands but he doesn’t know if he can face lying in a bed next to Midori now. The thought makes him nauseous and dizzy and for a moment he flicks his eyes to the reflection of the toilet in the mirror he’s still staring into.
For a moment he thinks about what he would see if he let the shorts around his waist fall. There would be handprints in his thighs and more teeth marks, more pinching and scratching and bruising.
He wonders what sleeping with someone who didn’t litter infinite numbers of marks on his skin just for the sake of leaving them there would be like. Would that be having a lover?
When playing survival games, Midori likes it when he fights back. He left a bruise on Midori once, his fist sinking into the man’s side and Midori had looked utterly delighted at the pain, or perhaps it had been the wrath in Matsuoka’s eyes.
There are goose-bumps on his arms now, and he thinks he’s shivering. He wonders if Midori turned on the air conditioning to force him to remain under the sheets, if he had given him such flimsy sleepwear to the same effect. He wonders how many of his fears about Midori are justified.
All of them. All of them are rooted in reality, in the teeth in his chest and the hands on his thighs and the fingers around his throat. The reality that he’ll beg for, that he sobs and whines for and Midori won’t ever let him forget that he does.
He stares at the mirror still, unable to move for an indefinite period of time until finally he hears Midori approach the bathroom. The door is open and if he just moved his head or even his eyes he could watch him approach but he doesn’t. They have caught on the purple teeth marks beneath his right ribs, the grotesquely unremarkable mark that is as grotesquely unremarkable as the rest of the marks on him.
Midori lifts his hand and turns Matsuoka’s chin until their eyes meet. Matsuoka doesn’t speak.
“You’ll get sick, Masamune.” Midori’s voice is as kind as it would be to a child and Matsuoka nods dumbly. He’s too cold to try arguing.
Of course he was the only one who couldn’t face it.
It’s almost summer. He lies on the mattress and lets Midori cover him with the sheets and shivers until the sheets have warmed up. Midori is lying three inches away and does not offer another sheet, nor his own body warmth.
He wonders if he’ll have a bruise on his chin where Midori’s feather-light touch had turned his head.