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Lieutenant-Yefreitor Kim Kitsuragi has logged enough hours into perfecting the art of holding himself deliberately, radiating a tightly controlled tension that means he means business, to recognize tension in someone else. It comes in handy on the job, giving him precious milliseconds of reaction time before a situation goes very bad--though he does try not to bring work home with him.
Especially not to bed, but here they are.
One particular part of work has been coming home with him, or vice-versa, for so long that he effectively has two homes now. But what is it they say about doing something (or, he admits dangerously, someone) you love? Never work a day in your life?
Well, they lied, but he won't hold it against them. Not while he's much more interested in holding someone else against him.
Yes, sensing tension in a body comes naturally. Particularly when it's someone else's body he knows so intimately.
He's behind Harry, gloves off, not inside him just yet, that part of the evening will come later (after he retrieves his auxiliary dick from the drawer he's taken over in Harry's nightstand, like the toothbrush in the bathroom--and after Harry's middle-aged body catches up with his wild electrochemical brain-ride)... though not much later.
But Kim's a patient man. Now he's just enjoying the feel of their bodies pressed together, relishing his partner's warm, reassuring bulk in his arms, both softer and stronger than he was--Harry's made of hard gym-teacher muscle underneath, plush on top, and at his core the warmest heart Kim's ever known. Solid strength wrapped in pillowy fat, a healthy body showing that he's off drugs and booze, he's eating properly instead of drinking his meals.
He's changed so much since he woke up in a strange hostel room, while still so blazingly himself, and Kim's so proud of him he simply can't stop touching. Harry is safe and alive, and his. All of him, every bit of both of them, belong right here.
Kim pulls him closer, Harry's back to his chest, sitting up higher on the couch so he has a chance of resting his chin on Harry's broad shoulder, both hands wrapped around his chest, stroking and kneading and working their way up to nipple-pinching. That'll happen soon too, but Kim's enjoying the journey as much as the destination.
From the sounds he's teasing out, he's fairly certain Harry is too.
This isn't the tense part. This part, Harry's melted under his hands, head leaned back exposing a now neatly-shaved throat (chops intact, but also neater, and regularly washed), somehow trying to press his back tighter against Kim's chest, and his own chest further into Kim's hands. Its like flipping a switch that never fully turns off; once Harry's had a taste of skin-to-skin, he's so endearingly desperate, he'll whine and groan-huff like a bereft sea lion and beg if a solitary inch separates him from Kim's hands.
It's very fun to make him whine, but Kim loves the contact every bit as much, he's just quieter about it. Kim leans down to press a kiss against the side of Harry's furry face. He'd be singing his worship like Innocentric hymns if his lungs made their true feelings known.
The only trouble comes when his hands inch lower, down Harry's pecs to the region where lower chest meets and becomes upper belly. Harry's always so adorable when Kim gets here, ticklish, loving the closeness, reveling in affection, anticipating pleasure--and how obvious it must be that Kim loves his body, wants it, wants him, wants to devour him whole and will in his own sweet time, but first his trousers need to be unbuttoned, fly down, shirt untucked, Kim's hands slipping eagerly underneath to--
Harry sucks in a breath, and his belly recedes like waterline in a choking drought. Then practically freezes over, every muscle locked where before they were warm goo, and Kim stops as well.
There's a beat of surprised silence and stillness, as if the playback of their lives has been paused by an unseen hand.
"Hey," Kim says, and gives Harry's painfully tense and suspiciously-smaller waist a gentle, careful squeeze. "Are you all right? Does this hurt?"
"It's fine..." Harry's not facing him, of course, but if he was, Kim knows he'd be averting his eyes like a guilty dog. His whiskers practically droop.
Harry's never been the most subtle of partners (in conversation, in work, in sex, in love), and this transparent attempt might have made Kim laugh, were it not for the cold sliver of worry he felt instead. This was unlike any reaction Harry had given him yet, even in their more adventurous moments.
Kim paused, a silence that spoke louder than most yells. Still, his tone when he spoke was conversational. "Really?"
"Really!" Harry blurted, voice higher than usual. For someone so preternaturally good at can-opening the truth out of liars, he had no poker-face himself at all when he wasn't in that specific mode. At least around Kim. "It's all good, baby! Totally disco!"
"It is not disco, I've told you not to call me 'baby,' and you're deflecting," Kim said, letting to long enough to adjust his glasses, already irked three-fold. "Hoping I'll get annoyed at your disco-speak and disobedience, so I'll forget my original question. Which is..."
Another experimental squeeze, a full-hand grasp at the softness, still there of course, but noticeably diminished. One last chance, Harry.
"What's going on here? You need to tell me if something's wrong."
"I said it's nothing, Kim! Really, it's fine. I'm fine! Just keep going like before, you were doing such great stuff to my pecs just now, can we go back to that?"
"Lying to me?" Kim extricates himself, unwrapping and moving from behind Harry so fast that Harry nearly plops onto the floor--and then he's up, on his feet and standing before Harry can react. "You think I don't know you? When your body changes? Harry, I know the shape of you, inside and out. I know what your body feels like... I know when you're in pain."
"Nothing hurts," Harry lies of omission.
"Not that kind of pain. You can't just change your whole shape, and expect me not to notice."
Harry gives him a sidelong, brow-furrowed look, his own version of the Eyebrow. "You'd really get that pissed if I lose weight? Good to know, I guess."
"No, that's not it, it's..."
He struggles for words that won't come. A healthy body should change gradually, like the seasons, not an abrupt absence. Is that why Kim's so bothered? Not that Harry's body had shifted at all, but the suddenness? The idea that one day he'd wake up to find less of Harry du Bois in the world? What if it was more one day? And more, until he simply disappeared?
Kim loves Revachol. That hasn't changed, will never change. Knows he could never live anywhere else. But he doesn't know if he could live in her without Harry.
"Hey," Harry says, voice dropping into a low rumble, the one that does things to Kim's insides, thoroughly embarrassing, hard-to-hide things. "I'm not going anywhere."
"You're doing it again," Kim says, fondly resigned instead of surprised by this point. "Answering something I haven't said. Voices tell you?"
"Didn't have to. I know you too, remember?"
Kim gives a little sigh. He likes--needs--to think of himself as someone with great self-control, who lives his life by choice and determination, exactly as he means to, and reveals only what others absolutely must know to get the job done. To do anything else invites scrutiny, potentially exposes weaknesses, supplies ready ammunition--but it isn't like that here. Things he says won't be held against him, he won't be found guilty or punished, that's what makes Harry different from the rest of the world.
"Kim," Harry says in that quiet, gravely tone very different from his usual speaking voice, and dares to reach out, touch two fingertips against the back of one bare hand. Compared to their usual activities, the touch is chaste, and yet it's startlingly intimate. "I'm okay. I'm not going anywhere. Promise."
"You never used to have trouble here," Kim observed with a frown. "Even yesterday..."
Yesterday, he'd so much as rested his hand near Harry's midsection and Harry had yawned and stretched, arching his back like a pleased cat, pressing his stomach firmly against Kim's hand without the slightest hint of worry or self-consciousness, only secure happiness, only requesting more touch, more. Kim's heart had ached, lungs gold and expansive as the last rays of sun across a clear sky.
"So what changed? Did somebody say something?" Kim's eyes narrow instinctually as he jumps to a conclusion so logical it's really more of a step. "Was it Vicquemare?"
"Jean? No! No, he's a dick, but not like that. He's never said anything--that I remember, anyway. No one at work has, actually."
"Then who?" Kim's keeping his cool with a valiant effort, knows this flare of protective fury is excessive, but he's still mentally shaking, arresting, and booking an imaginary heckler for daring to--
"Nobody. Really, I swear, nobody!" He hurries to say, when Kim's eyebrows knit together even more. "There's nobody to fight here. You don't have to protect me from..."
He trails off, gray-green eyes slipping away, until Kim gently catches his chin and tilts his face back up where it belongs, facing him. Asks again without asking, and Harry sighs, but doesn't break their held gaze.
"It's stupid," he mumbles. "You'll think it's stupid."
"Kindly do not put words in my mouth. I'll decide what I think is stupid or not, just as I decide how and where to spend my time, thank you."
Kim leaves the reassurance unspoken: I decide to spend time with you, because I want to. If I am with you, it means there is nowhere else I would rather be.
But Harry's face doesn't lighten, leaving Kim unsure if he's internalized the point, or heard it at all.
"You know the corner about five minutes away, between here and the water? With the store, it's got a weird metal sign with a bird on it, and they throw out perfectly good clothes with only like, a button missing?"
Kim nods, artfully hiding a smile. Harry has regained most of his familiarity with the area, but his sense of direction still tends to make sense only to himself, and he operates much better with physical landmarks than street names or units of distance. His Jamrock-shuffling skills, however, have only sharpened with recovery.
"Yeah, so, there I was, checking the waste receptacles, as is my duty to the city, looking for uh... drugs." Kim's eyebrows rise, as does the pitch of Harry's voice. "That I would lawfully dispose of! Because I am an upstanding and responsible citizen. And a good boy?" he finishes hopefully.
Kim successfully stifled a laugh, but couldn't keep his shoulders from jumping. Finally he stopped fighting it and let the smile crack. He extended one hand, stroking Harry's whiskery cheek, chest feeling lighter as Harry sighed and pressed his face closer against Kim's palm.
"Yes, a very good boy. Go on."
"Okay, so, I'd just found this really snazzy little magenta paisley number," Harry said, actually sounding excited now, and Kim was certain he had a questionable fashion show in his future. "And I swear, they're way too picky, it's only got like one big stain you can't even see really--but it'll clean up great. And I was just turning around to come home and show you, when I happen to look across the street. And I see this ad. With a guy on it who's pretty thick in the middle, you know."
He pauses, takes in a deep breath, and makes himself keep holding eye contact with Kim. Doing so good. Even as Kim feels the tension creep back in; he thinks he knows where this is going, and for once doesn't want to be right.
"And I think, hey wow, I haven't ever seen someone's body that looks like mine, on an ad for anything before! So I go up to it, wanting to see what it was, and..." His cheeks redden not with excitement but obvious shame. Kim hates it. "And over that guy's body, who looked like me, was the word 'Before.' And then there was an 'After.' Which... Didn't look like me at all. So that's what it was selling!" He barks out an entirely false-ringing laugh. "The chance to not look like me! I'm sure anyone would line up to buy that, huh?"
Kim's hands had balled into fists, and he forces them to loosen, his suddenly steaming head to cool.
Kim didn't just know where this advertisement was, but knew exactly the one, now that he thought about it--and realized that he hadn't thought about it. He must have walked or driven by it a thousand times and thought nothing of it. It didn't apply to him, so it may as well not have existed.
He briefly wondered if he could get the damned thing torn down on some technicality, perhaps an unfortunate victim of vandalism, an inappropriate drawing necessitating its removal. Considered exactly how petty he wanted to be about this. But was it petty to protect one's partner?
This had hurt Harry. Hurt him, made him feel the kind of deep shame Kim had sworn to never let him feel, not here, not together.
He feels his own face darken, brow and corners of his mouth etch into a frown, but Harry's not done, and Kim forces himself to pay attention, instead of imagining ripping paper from walls and stomping on it until it never hurts anyone again.
"And this is where it gets ridiculous--I forgot. Everything, but that specifically, until today. I didn't have any idea that was--a thing! And I started thinking--this is a whole new thing wrong with me I didn't even know about, on top of all the other things. And that stuff wasn't cheap! Somebody would pay a lot of money to not look like me. Like not just my face, I get that, but all of me. And then I came home, and I saw you, and... I forgot about all that. You make me forget, Kim."
Kim wanted to smile at that. Wanted to luxuriate in it like a warm bath, making his partner forget pain just by existing. But he couldn't rest yet. "But then..."
Harry sighed. "Yeah. Then you touched me, around exactly where that ad said should disappear, and it all came back. Real fast. And I thought, you deserve better."
"Harry--"
"No, listen! I know I say you're cool a lot, but I mean it, you're the best person I know, and that's not putting you on a pedestal or anything, it's just true."
"It's not saying that much. Look where we live."
"I just want to be good for you."
Kim opens his mouth to reassure, to retort, to something, but the anguish in Harry's face gives him pause. This won't be waved away with anything casual. Anything less than his best, what they both deserve.
Kim straightens his back and squares his shoulders, looking down at his partner - in every sense - with the steady confidence and glint of steel he knows for a fact turns Harry's knees to rubber and stomach to butterflies.
"Who am I to you?" he asks, voice dropping into a low, resonant register Harry can surely feel vibrate in his chest.
"You're Kim," Harry says breathlessly, pupils enlarging at the mere words. "You're Sir. You're... Dei, you're everything."
"And whose are you?" Kim places one ungloved hand on Harry's throat, circling it gently but not squeezing, feeling the jerk of its inner workings as he swallows.
"Yours," Harry sighed, the word floating on a sea of relief.
"That's right. You want to give yourself to me, yes? Then give it to me. Trust me with all of you, even the parts you hate. Especially those. I can handle them." A slight smile, a little belly pat, appreciatively watching the movement under his fingers. "But you shouldn't hate this. I certainly don't."
"Guilty pleasure, huh?" Harry smiles weakly, but Kim wasn't amused.
"Don't insult either of us. You weren't a guilty pleasure then and you aren't now. I do not waste time on those; if I enjoy something, I enjoy it fully, without hesitation or regret. Nothing else makes sense. And I enjoy... Almost all of you."
"Almost?" Harry takes the bait as Kim knew he would.
"You could Jamrock-shuffle a bit less when we're out and about. I haven't been able to invest in good running shoes yet."
Harry laughs, and it feels like many voices, maybe the city itself, laughs at the same time. "Okay! Okay, I'll try. But no promises."
It's almost surreal, how he could possibly not know how beautiful he was.
It wasn't love or lust at first sight when Kim first saw him. More like distaste and concern, and a desire to never find out what composed all those stains. But not too long after that--still in Martinaise, for Dei's sake--that he came to the measured, logical (and definitely not at all fueled by inconvenient dreams, night sweats, and skin-hungry burning) conclusion: he wanted to climb the Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor from Precinct 41 like the kind of big, study tree Jamrock hadn't seen in decades.
Kim dreamed of many things, now including forests. But mostly of times like the one he knew was coming.
Slowly, Harry let out a long exhale. Just as slowly, his belly rounded out, softly spilling over his waistband, and into Kim's waiting hands. Ready to catch him, as he'd always be, never leave him falling.
"Good," Kim whispers, stroking the warm skin with his thumbs, holding this sensitive and precious part of Harry's body like the treasure he'll always swear it is. Reverently, he bends down to kiss it, see how Harry likes being treated like a divine personage for a change. It just feels right. "Next time you have any doubt... Just give it to me."
"I'll try. But it's hard."
"I know." Kim sighs, then gives a single, self-directed eye-roll. "You think you're the only one with that instinct? Holding yourself so tensely until it hurts?"
"What?" Harry's thick eyebrows come together. "But, you don't have anything to suck in. You're perf-"
"Ahhh." One bare finger comes up. "Pedestals."
"You're... a flawed and fallible human being, and a ridiculously attractive individual?"
Kim has to smile. "Harry, I'm only one year younger than you, and a half-Seolite binoclard, as many have so eloquently put it. And homo-sexual, and trans-gender. In the RCM. So, you must have noticed I'm not exactly relaxed when I'm out in the world, yes? It may not be for the same reasons, but I realize that me telling you to relax is the pot and kettle." Kim patted his own slight middle-aged paunch. "But when it's just the two of us? No. Never. And I'd hope you'd do me the same courtesy."
"I'd do you every courtesy in the world," Harry answers with wide sea-glass eyes, the kind fit for gazing upon a saint, which Kim will remind him not to do. Later, when it won't confuse the issue. Right now they're so big, so luminous, so adorably hopeful. "So... Maybe you could do me the one of... Doing? Me?"
Kim's snorting laugh surprises himself. "Yes. I believe that could be arranged."