Work Text:
Jakurai’s nails are always neatly trimmed. They’re carefully maintained to be flawless and sanitary at the best of times, but still just long enough to dig into skin when Jakurai grabs Ramuda’s jaw and holds him by it in a grip that reveals exactly how much strength the man is capable of.
“Haven’t you said enough, Amemura-kun?” Jakurai says, and there’s steel in his voice. It falls across Ramuda like a physical sensation even without the usage of microphones. Jakurai can overwhelm Ramuda’s synapses without a single accessory, and isn’t that the worst part of it all?
Ramuda bares his teeth, but knows better than to open his mouth.
This was a bad idea -- seeking out Jakurai after the announcement of the winners, the feeling of losing still raw acid on Ramuda’s skin -- but Ramuda has never bothered to try and figure out what’s a good idea. Things like good and bad don’t matter in the face of what he wants to do, and right now, he wants to see Jakurai’s face, craves that voice that he wants to destroy more than anything else.
“You’ve said your peace,” Jakurai states, as impassive and calm as ever, an impassible labyrinth wall that Ramuda could never hope to climb but sure could try to knock over. “It wasn’t enough.”
A feeling like bile raises up inside Ramuda’s chest; pure, scathing anger and contempt layered over the top of the emotions that Ramuda doesn’t want to acknowledge he’s feeling -- that he lost; that his carefully selected teammates weren’t strong enough, that he wasn’t strong enough, that Jakurai was.
“I don’t want to hear that from an old man who can’t even attack--” Ramuda starts, but he’s cut off as readily as he knew he would be, Jakurai’s fingers staging a well-played invasion into Ramuda’s mouth, pressing down against his tongue.
Ramuda tries to bite down, but Jakurai’s knuckles press up against his soft palate, and so Ramuda only growls instead, raising his own hands to claw ineffectually at Jakurai’s arm, flesh securely hidden by layers of clothing.
“You’ve said,” Jakurai says, firm and without a single trace of annoyance, “enough, Amemura-kun.”
Ramuda hasn’t. There’s still a million things more that he needs to say, and he knows that there isn’t a single one that would do the slightest bit of good. Jakurai won, as fair and square as anything. Even if he’d cheated, would he have won? Would it have mattered? Short of ripping out Jakurai’s vocal cords, Ramuda did his best, and it’s a loathsome thought, that he could try so hard and still draw up so short.
Ramuda’s options are limited. There’s still too much battle lust within him, and he can see it reflected back at him in Jakurai. They were teammates, once, and Jakurai was always well attuned to Ramuda’s actions. To all of them, to their emotions and their hurts and to what he was capable of healing.
Of course, the one thing that even Jakurai Jinguuji couldn’t heal is currently standing right in front of him, teeth pressed to Jakurai’s hand and nails pressing hard enough into Jakurai’s wrist that Ramuda’s hands are shaking.
Ramuda sets aside the option that involves stabbing his microphone into Jakurai’s stomach largely because he doesn’t want to deal with cleaning blood out of the electronics or out of the hotel carpet, and, instead, relaxes his jaw, carefully and intentionally. Jakurai continues to look at him, an impassive, disapproving frown on his face. Ramuda is nothing but an ill-behaved child in his eyes, and Ramuda can’t stand that, the condescension heavy on his skin like a blanket he’s allergic to.
Ramuda changes the angle of his tongue, presses it up against Jakurai’s fingers and drags it along the surface. Jakurai tastes like antiseptic, like everything clean and sterile, and he doesn’t react in the slightest. Ramuda doesn’t shift his grip, doesn’t loosen it, but he steps closer, forcing Jakurai’s fingers deeper into his mouth.
“So this is how you lose, then,” Jakurai says, like it’s the answer to a long-held scientific theory, like he’s finally had years of research answered, and Ramuda sees blinding red rage that drops over his vision like a photo filter. Ramuda jerks, and Jakurai doesn’t let him move away; he reaches forward with his other hand, drops his long fingertips underneath Ramuda’s hair and pressing his thumb into the hollow of his throat until Ramuda’s breath stutters to a halt. Jakurai waits there until Ramuda’s vision starts to hover black, instead, and then releases, removing both of his hands from Ramuda as Ramuda doubles over, choking on his own inhaled air like it’s smoke in his lungs.
Ramuda’s grip tightens on Jakurai again, grabbing the fingers that are still slick with his own spit. It’s true that he’s said everything already; he put his feelings into his rap and it wasn’t enough. That’s fine. Ramuda takes his words and throws them all away, reaching up until he can get a fistful of Jakurai’s hair and pull on it too hard to be comfortable. Jakurai leans down, obligingly, like he’s doing Ramuda a favor, and Ramuda makes sure that when their lips connect in a kiss that’s more like a punch, he doesn’t loosen his grip in the slightest. Ramuda’s teeth connect with Jakurai’s lips hard enough to bruise, and he’d draw blood if he had enough time for it.
Jakurai doesn’t leave time for much; he pries Ramuda’s hand off of his without seeming like it’s the slightest bit of effort, wraps his arm around Ramuda’s back and lifts him up like Ramuda doesn’t weigh more than a kitten. Ramuda wraps both arms around Jakurai, around his neck, tangling through his hair and making an absolute mess of it.
Ramuda hopes it hurts.
“You’re such a disobedient child,” Jakurai says, kicking his hotel door closed like he doesn’t want the entire world to see he and Ramuda’s less than professional working relationship.
“Don’t pretend you’re just a goody two-shoes,” Ramuda responds, biting the words into Jakurai’s neck and allowing himself to be carried to the bed. “You’re not any cleaner than I am.”
Jakurai’s hesitation is minute, but it’s still present, and it’s enough for Ramuda to latch onto, to smile wide into the pale skin of Jakurai’s skin before he bites down hard enough to make Jakurai to groan, to taste the blossom of iron under his tongue.
“If I thought dirtying myself would help anything,” Jakurai says, dropping Ramuda with little warning onto the bed hard enough that he bounces on the cheap surface, “I’d have let you do it ages ago.”
“You wouldn’t ever lower yourself to my level,” Ramuda says, sitting back up and feeling where he dragged a few strands of Jakurai’s hair loose from his head when he was dropped.
“No,” Jakurai replies, as calm as ever. “I wouldn’t.”
Ramuda knows better than to let Jakurai get under his skin, but Jakurai burrowed inside of Ramuda back when they first met, with his deep voice and his calm words and that look in his eyes. Ramuda isn’t something that needs to be fixed, he isn’t something that’s broken, but he still lost, and maybe that’s why he lets Jakurai get under his skin, the words and the condescension and the judgement all pressing across him like conductive filaments.
Ramuda sits up, closing his mouth hard enough that his teeth clack together, trying to decide if he wants to spit at Jakurai or kick him in the dick. The opportunity to do either is quickly removed, Jakurai stepping backwards and out of range.
He slides his coat down, and Ramuda surges up before he can think the better of it, on his knees and leaning off the edge of the bed. He doesn’t want Jakurai to take off his clothing, he wants to rip it off Jakurai; he doesn’t want Jakurai to make it out of this unscathed and unmarked and looking as put together as ever, like Ramuda hasn’t affected him in the slightest. Ramuda grabs at Jakurai’s shirt, and he feels a seam give way as he pulls with all the strength he can manage.
“There’s no place here for ill-behaved children,” Jakurai says, and he reaches forward with carefully calculated slowness. Ramuda has more than enough time to respond, but he lets Jakurai put a hand on each of Ramuda’s shoulders. There’s a moment where they look at each other, and Ramuda’s vision falls sideways, wind taken out of him as much by the searing memory of the way they used to be superimposed over them now as it is by the way Jakurai shoves him backwards so hard the mattress feels like it’s made of stone.
Ramuda tries to respond, has the words on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t have the air to reply. He tries to roll, scrabbles at the starched fabric of the bedspread, but he only makes it halfway before he can feel the bed shift under Jakurai’s weight. Ramuda slips across the fabric without much resistance at all when Jakurai grabs him by the hips and drags him backwards, letting a hand move up to press down at the back of Ramuda’s neck. Ramuda breathes hard into the bed, forehead pressing down into it even as he moves his hands up to try and force himself upright. It doesn’t do any good, not with Jakurai’s hand holding him down.
“You’re still getting off on it,” Ramuda manages, but the delivery is all off, said into the bedspread instead of spat into Jakurai’s face. Ramuda can feel himself on the edge of hysteria, laughter bubbling up in his chest, ringing in his ears when he finally gives into it. He doesn’t even try to pretend like he isn’t hard in his pants, like this isn’t exactly what Ramuda came here for.
Jakurai leans over him, curving down until his hair falls like a curtain around Ramuda, until his lips are right next to Ramuda’s ear and Ramuda can feel that Jakurai is as hard as Ramuda. It’s another echo of the way things used to be, and Ramuda can’t tell if it’s better or worse now that they both pay lip service to not caring about the other while the ghosts of their shared past surround them.
“So are you,” Jakurai says, and when he moves his hand to press against Ramuda’s dick through his pants, Ramuda can’t help but groan into the bed. Jakurai’s weight is too far forward, too heavy on the hand that he has pressed to Ramuda’s weight, and it’s smothering, too much for Ramuda to be able to to anything but open his mouth and try to drag in oxygen through the bed.
“Is that,” Ramuda manages, when Jakurai allows him to shift his head, to speak to the side instead of straight down into the suffocating fabric of the bed, “the best you can do, sensei?”
Jakurai leans back, straightening up on his knees. Ramuda doesn’t move at all at first, doesn’t try, but when both of Jakurai’s hands leave Ramuda’s body, he pushes himself up. Jakurai is still straddling Ramuda’s legs, so it isn’t like he can go far, but he can curl his upper body enough to look at Jakurai, to watch as the man produces a hair tie out of nowhere and starts pulling his hair back. The bite that Ramuda left on his throat is still a smear of red even above the black fabric of his turtleneck, and Ramuda wants to leave another, wants to leave marks on every inch of Jakurai’s skin until he can feel Ramuda there a week later.
“Do you think I’d let you off so easy?” Jakurai asks, threading his hands through his ponytail to work out all the kinks that Ramuda threw into it. Ramuda’s stomach clenches, and he focuses on the sight of the blood, instead, a semi-permanent mark on Jakurai that he can’t erase so easily.
“Then what are you waiting for,” Ramuda demands, and he can’t quite help the way his voice deepens at the end. There’s a deep-rooted craving inside of himself that he knows he can’t reach himself, but Jakurai can, he’s done it before.
“The delay,” Jakurai says, reaching out to Ramuda’s waist again, tugging that long belt free from his pants, “is part of the punishment.”
Ramuda puts up the appearance of a struggle and not much else. It’s hard to fight against futility, especially when the conclusion is one that Ramuda thinks he’s been careening towards with purposeful self-sabotage ever since the results were announced.
“You’d better hurry,” Ramuda says, even as Jakurai winds the leather around Ramuda’s wrists and binds them together, stretching them up towards the slatted headboard of the bed until Ramuda lets out a hiss of protest. “You don’t want to die of old age before you get to have any fun.”
Jakurai makes a humming noise in response, low and easy and thoughtful. He pulls Ramuda’s pants down in a movement, and Ramuda tries to arch into it, but he’s trapped between his hands at the headboard and his calves underneath Jakurai, so he doesn’t manage to do much more than jerk his hips.
“If you’re going to act like a child, then I’ll treat you as one,” Jakurai says, and there’s a sinking, desperate feeling in Ramuda’s stomach as Jakurai’s weight finally moves off of him. Ramuda surges up, pushing his hands up against the belt where it connects to the headboard like he can undo it quick enough to get away.
The first slap pushes Ramuda so hard that his head makes contact with the wooden slats of the headboard, and he’s still dazed by the time the second one comes, Jakurai’s hand coming down hard on the exposed skin of his ass.
“Stop,” Ramuda says, high-pitched and aching already, but it doesn’t sound like much of a plea at all to his ears. Not a plea for Jakurai to actually stop, at any rate. It’s a bright spark of pain that Ramuda can focus on, that deadens the deafening, careening sound of his failure, of his inability to carry his own division as far as he thought he could.
“Didn’t you want this?” Jakurai asks, but the question is purely rhetorical, and Ramuda can’t begin to answer it. Jakurai’s spare hand moves from Ramuda’s hip to reach up, place itself firmly between Ramuda’s forehead and the headboard. The next impact leaves Ramuda pressed open-mouthed against Jakurai’s hand, groaning even as Jakurai redirects him to press his forehead against the pillows. “Isn’t this what you came here for?”
“Sensei,” Ramuda breathes into the pillowcase. Ramuda doesn’t keep track of how many times Jakurai hits him, doesn’t even try. He raises his ass higher in the air even as he bites down on the leather of his own belt, feeling the way his skin starts to feel like it’s on fire, like it’s finally hot enough to match the burning that’s been growing inside of Ramuda for the past several hours.
“It hurts,” Ramuda says, when the pain starts to overlap his need, when Ramuda is certain that Jakurai’s hand must be hurting, too.
Jakurai pauses for a second, and says: “Good.” Then he continues, landing again in nearly the same spot as before, waiting just long enough between strikes for the pain to blossom out, fully-formed in Ramuda’s consciousness.
“Sensei,” Ramuda says, and his voice catches, and he repeats it, and then repeats it again, the once-mocking nickname turning into a pleading supplication, head bowed and knees still tangled in his own pants. When he blinks, he can feel the moisture gathered on his eyelashes; when he jerks forward with the strikes, he smears them onto the pillow, leaves damp drops across the cotton like a map to all the things that have led him here.
It takes several seconds to register, once Jakurai has finally stopped. Ramuda aches even in places that weren’t hit, and when he opens his eyes he only sees darkness, only feels residual pain and the cool touch of Jakurai’s hand over his eyes.
“Are you repentant?” Jakurai murmurs, dragging his thumb along the curve of Ramuda’s ass, down the outside of his thigh and then back up the inside, deftly avoiding coming in contact with Ramuda’s cock.
Ramuda swallows, licks the saltiness off his lips and tilts his head to the side, Jakurai’s hand moving with the motion like a second skin.
“No,” Ramuda says, voice low. “No.” He isn’t done yet. He can still feel too much, hear too much; Jakurai’s hand might be blocking out the rest of the world, but it will all come flooding back at any second, and Ramuda can’t spare thoughts for Gentarou right now, for all the bets that Dice had on the match, for the way Ichiro’s face fell when he lost--
“It would be more of a punishment if I stopped,” Jakurai says.
“Please,” Ramuda blurts without pretense, hands jerking hard enough at the makeshift restraint that he knows they’ll leave marks.
Jakurai’s hands remove themselves from Ramuda’s body, and Ramuda presses his face down into the pillow, takes in a shaking gasp of air and tries to keep his arms from trembling. Jakurai is only gone for a few seconds, but the thought that he might be done keeps ricocheting around in Ramuda’s head. God knows Ramuda doesn’t deserve anything from Jakurai, not at this point, but what he deserves and what he needs -- what Jakurai is willing to give -- are very different things, and always have been.
Jakurai’s hands return soon enough, lifting Ramuda up like he’s nothing more than a doll to be easily positioned, ridding Ramuda of his pants in a single, easy motion. Ramuda’s shirt and coat are still on, riding halfway up his torso, but he doesn’t care about that right now, can barely process how warm he feels.
There isn’t really much in the way of warning before Jakurai lines himself up and starts to push in. The slow feeling of his cock pressing inside Ramuda without any preparation other than lube is more than enough to short-circuit whatever remained of Ramuda’s higher thinking abilities, and Ramuda makes a keening noise into the pillow before he can stop himself.
It’s been so long. It’s been so long since Ramuda has felt this, but it’s so familiar, just as overwhelming as it always is. Ramuda knows that Jakurai wouldn’t do anything that would really injure him, but the stretch of it still makes his breath stutter in his throat. When his skin is already so electrified, it’s almost more than he thinks he can bear -- no, it is more than he can bear, and that’s why he sought Jakurai out. Jakurai is the only person who can make Ramuda’s mind fall quiet like this, drop to a complete standstill and focus only on the steady press of Jakurai inside of him until Ramuda is completely filled.
Jakurai leans down, once he’s settled, giving Ramuda precious moments to adjust that Ramuda isn’t entirely certain he wants. He presses his hands underneath Ramuda’s shirt, trailing them down his ribs, pressing on each one individually as he goes, and Ramuda only shivers, body already too overstimulated to find the action the slightest bit ticklish.
“Jakurai,” Ramuda says, and the name is even more unusual than the mocking sensei he usually defaults to. His mouth isn’t used to the shape of it, but he feels Jakurai still behind him, beside him. “Jakurai, Jakurai, Jakurai--”
“Hush,” Jakurai says, and the request becomes a sharp command when Jakurai starts to move, pulling back out to start up a rhythm that’s as controlled as it is harsh. Ramuda’s repetitions of Jakurai’s name fall off; he can’t keep up any sort of speech when he’s feeling Jakurai move inside him, when the way Jakurai holds onto his hips is just hard enough to give Ramuda the fingertip bruises he craves.
Ramuda doesn’t take long. He wishes he could, and he would, under any other circumstances, would drag things out as long as he could, try to get in as many digs about Jakurai’s age as possible, but he can’t. All he can manage right now is a boneless moan into the stupid hotel pillows on Jakurai’s bed, coming hard without even being touched. Every point of contact that Jakurai has with Ramuda already feels like electricity charging into his body.
Jakurai doesn’t stop. Ramuda’s orgasm isn’t the kind that involves fireworks and exhaustion -- it’s a momentary release of pent-up energy, a spilling over that leads only into feeling even more than Ramuda thought was possible, every single atom that makes up he and Jakurai something that Ramuda can feel and experience with startling clarity. It’s too much, it’s too much.
It’s exactly what Ramuda wanted, and the borderline hysteric way he can’t stop gasping for air only forces him back harder against Jakurai.
Jakurai presses his lips to Ramuda’s neck when he comes. There’s no savage bites in Jakurai’s repertoire -- not when he’s sober, at any rate -- and the feeling only makes Ramuda’s cheeks feel even damper. He doesn’t want tenderness, not now, not after all of this --
But that’s the cost of Jakurai, and Ramuda knows it.
“Ramuda,” Jakurai says, and reaches up. He detaches the makeshift bondage from the headboard, unwraps the leather from Ramuda’s wrists and presses his fingers into the angry red indents on Ramuda’s skin.
“You can’t fix me,” Ramuda says, but he isn’t sure how well the words come out when he can taste his own tears on his lips, can feel them roll down his cheeks when he blinks and tries to look at Jakurai. His voice doesn’t have the high notes that it should, can’t quite reach the same pitch that he means for it to.
“I know.” Jakurai’s voice is only resigned -- tired -- and Ramuda doesn’t know how much of that he should apply to himself and how much he should assume relates to the fact that they just fucked. “I’m still capable of taking care of you, however.”
Ramuda’s laughter is sharp, bitter in the quiet of the room, but he leans into the comforting expanse of Jakurai’s chest all the same, closing his eyes and inhaling the clean scent of nostalgia and the acrid smell of dried blood. Jakurai’s arms wrap around him, and before Ramuda can really register it, he’s being lifted again, carted towards the bathroom with a doctor’s efficiency.
“No one asked you to,” Ramuda says. “But I guess I’ll let you, for a little longer.”
He can tell that Jakurai is smiling by the way he hums in response, even without opening his eyes.