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Suzuki and Sugiki spin around each other as they finish the salsa routine. It’s hot in the studio, and they’re both sweaty, but the heat outside is no match for the fire in Suzuki’s veins. Their performance is not just good. Some might call it great, but Suzuki knows better. It’s utterly outstanding. It’s going to put them both on the map for years to come, and knock down the barriers standing between them and the first international trophy either of them have ever won. For the first time, Suzuki believes – on a gut level – that they’ll win it all.
There’s another reason for the fire, but he sets it aside for the moment as he and Sugiki step apart, their hands separating a touch slower than necessary but still faster than Suzuki would like. For a second it’s just their fingertips in contact, then even that fleeting contact is gone.
He’s quiet and withdrawn on the way home, even though Aki tries to pull him into conversation a few times. She finally drops it, used to his moods by now. He barely notices, too wrapped up in his own problem. They’ve been orbiting each other for months now with no progress. No matter what Suzuki does, there’s a distance between him and Sugiki that he just can’t bridge.
They’re close, and now he’s thinking they’re perhaps too close to build up the momentum that would let them finally collide. Oh, and how he wants to collide with that tender skin and the firm muscle underneath, run his fingers through soft hair, cradle and plant kisses on that pretty face–
“I’m serious,” Aki says, and belatedly Suzuki realises she’s been talking to him again.
“Sorry,” he says, and she stares at him.
“Since when do you apologize?”
He shrugs. “Must have eaten something a little off.”
“Anyway, you need to make up your mind. Either kiss him or stop mooning over him. It’s going to blow up in your face if you just keep it simmering until 10Dance.”
“It’s that obvious?”
She looks at him like he’s stupid, which is probably fair.
“It’s hard, though!”
Aki keeps the same expression pointed at him, and he sighs.
“Well, what do you suggest?”
“You’re a dancer. You know how it works,” she tells him.
Suzuki scoffs, thinking back to late-night conquests in crowded bars. “What, spin him twice, dip him once, go in for the kiss? He’s a dancer himself, he’s not going to be impressed by a quick move or two.”
“When you lead a spin in salsa, you don’t just push the follower the direction you want them to go! You move the opposite way a little first, to set up the proper tension, and then you can lead.” Aki elbows him. “To move him closer to you, first nudge him away.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“You’re a bit of an asshole to everyone you want to sleep with, and it’s succeeded more than it’s failed, right? You’re never going to pull off the nice polite young man act.”
Shit, Suzuki thinks, and then, She’s right.
“Push away to pull closer, huh?” He doesn’t ask for suggestions or more advice. He’s too proud for that; he might as well as her to hold it while he pisses.
The more he dwells on Aki’s words, though, the more true they ring. Suzuki can’t remember the last time he was authentic or vulnerable with someone he wanted to get into bed. He’s in uncharted territory, and maybe that’s why he’s struggling so much.
He wants things with Sugiki to be authentic, and that’s the problem. A quick tumble and then moving on to the next partner? It’s not a thought that feels particularly good. Aki’s right, though. He’ll never hit those notes quite right.
The thoughts stick in Suzuki’s mind all night, and he barely sleeps. Their next training is scheduled for tomorrow, but he cancels it, and the one the day after as well.
Sugiki asks why, and what changes to the schedule this will require. Ten minutes later he sends another message, asking if everything’s okay. Suzuki ignores them both. It feels wrong, and shameful, even if it’s something he’s thoughtlessly done to others in the past. He holds firm.
Instead, he spends his afternoon scrolling through as much Sugiki content as he can find online. Posts, short clips, interviews, newspaper profile pieces, adverts, anything he can find. It’s an odd feeling: in many ways Suzuki feels like a stalker or a creep, but at the same time there’s something warming and calming about seeing Sugiki’s face from so many angles.
Come the evening, Suzuki heads out to take his mind off things. He uploads video after video to his private social media of him tearing up the local street Latin scene. He’s whirling an array of men and women up and down the dance floor, buying drinks, having drinks bought for him, enjoying the delicious sort of car crash of a night that he’s denied himself for months in order to train better. Car crash or crash out, he’s not sure what label would fit better, actually. Sugiki messages him one more time but he doesn’t read it. He’s not sure he would be able to avoid answering.
Bright sunlight breaks through his half-open curtains the next morning and Suzuki groans. He’s too hungover and exhausted to get up and fix them, but too awake to go back to sleep. After an eternity the light is interrupted by a silhouette.
“What kind of a mess have you made?” Sugiki asks as he opens the sliding door and steps over a pile of empty beer cans into Suzuki’s bedroom. “How anyone can live like this, I don’t know.”
Suzuki isn’t feeling too well, but he’s aware enough to know what he needs to do next. It’s just a question of whether he can focus well enough to execute on it. Push… and now pull.
“Jealous?” he jokes.
“Of you?” Sugiki replies, putting as much incredulity into his voice as two words can hold.
It’s a good set-up, and Suzuki makes the most of it. “Of my bed. Because it’s got me in it, and not you.”
“You’re still drunk,” Sugiki says.
Pulling hasn’t worked. Pulling harder might. Suzuki reaches out a hand and Sugiki grabs it, ready to heave him to his feet. Instead, Suzuki pulls him down into the tangle of blankets and yesterday’s clothes.
It would have been nice if it were at all graceful. Instead Sugiki yelps and there’s some definite struggling, including an elbow that plants itself firmly into Suzuki’s side. But after a few moments they’re lying there together, Suzuki flopped half over Sugiki.
“Stay,” he says quietly, through a mouthful of hair. He expects Sugiki to argue, or to try to stand, or at a minimum to get into a more comfortable position. Instead, there’s the sound of calm and steady breathing, and the warmth of another body next to his.
Suzuki doesn’t even notice that he’s falling back asleep.
Wonder of wonders, Sugiki is still there when he wakes up. He’s also still there when Suzuki is sick all over the bed, and carefully cleans it – and him – up.
“Next time you’ve got to get at least as drunk,” Suzuki whispers between dry heaves. “I hate feeling judged.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Sugiki says without any heat to the words. “You are perhaps the most self-absorbed man I have ever met.”
Suzuki gestures to the kitchen. “Go over there. There’s– on the side.” It had seemed smart yesterday, but now his face is burning bright red. Pull, he reminded himself. “The flowers, they’re for you.”
“Asters,” Sugiki says slowly. “My favourite.”
“Are they?” Suzuki asks. He shoots a sideways glance at Sugiki, who isn’t buying the act for even a second. “I guess so.”
“I mentioned it once when I was given a bouquet of them after a performance,” Sugiki adds. “That was three years ago?”
“Two and a half,” Suzuki corrects him, then instantly regrets it.
The casual embarrassment isn’t fun, exactly, but even Suzuki will admit it’s richly deserved after the last few days. It won’t linger, besides, and it feels – better – to be on even footing with Sugiki again. Suzuki got what he wanted, and that’s what matters. He can see it in Sugiki’s eyes, and the way that the bed is still warm from his body.But it lingers on his tongue, under the sharp and acrid aftermath of the vomit; the bittersweet taste of getting almost what he wanted. Maybe, for Suzuki, that’s as good as it can get.