Work Text:
The bed is cold when he wakes.
The first time Yu Narukami visits Inaba — after moving away, that is — Tohru is caught mid-argument with Nanako. The argument doesn’t matter; he teases her for the mere joy of it, which isn’t something he ever thought would be allowed. He’s in the middle of tripping Nanako up in her logic when Yu opens the front door. He doesn’t announce himself. No ‘pardon the intrusion’ or ‘I’m home’. Just the clatter of the sliding door and the soft subdued shuffle of his feet.
“Big bro!” Nanako cries out, loud enough for all three of them. She launches herself and entangles her arms around his legs.
Yu is silent as he leans down and pats her head. Silent as he picks her up and they bump foreheads, disgustingly sweet and achingly familiar even after a year’s absence. Only when they’re nestled into their comfortable embrace does Yu exhale a near-silent, “I’m home.”
Then his eyes flit up to Tohru, and his lips fall into a downward line.
“Welcome back, kid,” Tohru greets with as plastic a smile he can summon up. Pure silicone. Yu sets Nanako down, though she remains adoringly in his orbit, and smiles with his face without meeting Tohru’s gaze.
“Adachi-san. Is my uncle home?”
“Not yet. He’s bringing dinner. Something fancy.”
“To celebrate!” Nanako interjects helpfully. She peeks out from her cousin’s legs to grace Tohru with those pleading eyes. “You’ll be staying, right?”
“Of course, Nanako-chan,” he says as he sidles up to Yu. He brushes the young man’s arm as he reaches to ruffle Nanako’s hair. “Unless your ‘big bro’ doesn’t want me to.”
“Of course I want you to. I would be happy if you had dinner with us,” Yu says in that unemotional deadpan. Tohru twists up, enough to obscure his face from the child between them, and can’t help the twist of his lips.
Dojima brings back way too much food and way too much booze. He’s inebriated within an hour of getting home. Tohru doesn’t indulge as much. One of the adults should be sober. And Yu can’t drink, yet. Not while Dojima is watching, anyway.
Nanako passes out with her head in Yu’s lap. She clutches desperately hard onto the hem of his shirt, and even his fingers brushing through her hair, consistent and soothing, doesn’t loosen her grip. None of them, the people he abandoned in Inaba, were sure he would return. Nanako never said anything, never expressed her fear, but now that he has returned, it will be a fight to let him go. In sleep, she burrows her face against him.
Tohru catches sight of a tremble in the brat’s hands, so brief as to be a trick of the light. The flutter of his eyelashes and sloped shoulders confirms every suspicion.
They work together to bring Nanako and Dojima to their respective bedrooms. And then it’s the two of them in that upstairs hallway Tohru hates. Yu idles near the door to his old room. Tohru idles two meters away. Nowhere near close enough he could glimpse inside.
He knows, already, that the room is exactly as Yu left it years back. Intact and ready for him to crash for the few days he’s visiting. His vacation will be short, but he’s lucky he gets one at all. Who knows what kind of time off he’ll get when he starts his career, whatever that ends up being.
Tohru’s plastic grin hardens. “Welp! Goodnight.” He twirls on his heels and beelines for the stairs.
“It was good to see you again, Adachi-san,” Yu says quietly.
Tohru marches down the stairs and out the door without a word.
Two days into Yu’s vacation, he shows up at Tohru’s apartment. His demure little knock is as recognizable as ever. Tohru wants to throw a beer bottle at the door, but he doesn’t have any. He stopped drinking at home. He stopped day-drinking. He only drinks with Dojima, and only half the time.
“Yu-kun. What can I do for you?” he asks as he hovers in the door. He barely opens it. This isn’t an invitation. This isn’t an opportunity.
Yu holds up a pot wrapped in fabric. “I brought oden,” he states plainly. He tips his head down toward a pack of beer at his feet. “And drinks.”
The beer is a good quality brand. One not easily obtainable here in Inaba. Tohru feels his eye twitch as he looks at it. And before he can do better, he yanks open the door and invites the idiot inside.
Yu sets up a stove burner on the table — prepared as always — and reheats the oden as Tohru pops open two bottles. He almost knocks over Yu’s bottle as he sets it down; considers it, but he decides against it. Can’t ruin Yu’s fancy little stove, after all. He flops onto the seat opposite Yu and drinks without any attempt at a toast.
“How’s school?”
“Boring,” Yu answers as he turns some of the fishcakes. He turns the flame off and begins plating up all of Tohru’s favorites before handing them over in supplication. The octopus is a stunning red, and Tohru nearly moans as he bites into it. “How are you doing?”
Tohru is lost in the gooey mochi pouches for a moment. The store-bought broth never compares to Yu’s homemade. “Bored,” he tosses back.
Before Tohru can ask anything more, Yu chugs half his beer in one go. His throat bobs. Not a single drop of liquid escapes. Which is a shame.
“Learning a lot at university, huh?” Tohru jokes. As if Yu didn’t learn that years before, right in this very living room. Tohru shovels more food into his mouth.
“There’s a lot of parties,” Yu concedes. He swirls his bottle, the liquid sloshing, and doesn’t look up at all. His plate, laden with half the portion size that he served Tohru, is untouched. He downs the rest of his drink just as easily and fetches another before taking a nibble of a fish cake. Tohru keeps pace with his own drink, not wanting to be shown up by a kid. Not wanting to be sober for this conversation.
“Did you like college?” Yu asks after his second drink.
Tohru is halfway into his third beer, which is the only reason he answers honestly. “I went straight into the academy.”
That catches Yu off guard, and he sets his empty drink down with a heavy thunk. The oden — a small portion, really, clearly meant more for Tohru than the both of them, just enough that Yu could excuse it as a shared meal — has been demolished. A heartwarming dinner. Blissfully domestic. Tohru wants to take the donabe and smash it over Yu’s head.
“You didn’t want to —?”
“College is a waste,” Tohru spits. He sips his drink to hide his discomfort. “It would have been a waste for me. I knew what I wanted to do.”
“And you like being a cop.”
“I love it,” Tohru lies with a smile. The carbonation of the beer hits his face and warps his features, makes his nose wrinkle and his eyebrows pinch. “Being your uncle’s lacky is my favorite fucking thing.”
Yu is quiet until he brings out their next set of beers. How many were in the pack? Twelve? Six per person seems excessive, right?
Yu takes the seat next to Tohru, and Tohru’s too drunk to care.
“Do you hate it that much?” he asks.
His voice is low and level and unflinching. Unabated in the face of the world’s awfulness and ugliness. Yu accepts it all unconditionally, as a mere fact of living. Tohru falls for it like he always does, like he always did.
“There was a car accident last month,” he says hollowly, speaking more to the blank television screen than toward Yu. “Dojima doesn’t — I try to make sure he doesn’t go to those. You know. And it was bad.” He inhales as the memory seeps back in like poison. Like a budding fruit just waiting to be bit into. “This car was crushed by a semi, and the driver — her head was destroyed. Just...squished, like mochi. You could still see that she had a face, that she was a person, but she was squished down so her eyes were in the wrong spots, and they were popped into jelly, and her nose and mouth were split open, her teeth were — her brain was everywhere over her seat.” He glances up at Yu. “Fuck. Sorry. You don’t need to hear this.”
“No, it’s okay,” Yu assures. Their fingers brush, pinkie to pinkie, as he leans close. “You need to get it off your chest.”
Like vomit, he spills everything.
He’s finished his sixth beer by the time he’s done. Alcohol courses through him in bubbling domination, and when he’s able to hold onto a thought he recognizes his body pressed up against Yu. Yu isn’t embracing him, quite. Only offering up his arm and torso in a warm platter of flesh. Tohru is practically melted onto the younger man. His chin hooks and slides off of Yu’s shoulder in drunken discombobulation.
“Fuck,” he exhales. He squawks as Yu heaves him up — the world spins and Tohru loses function of his feet — and then groans as he falls into Yu’s arms. “Fuck.”
“It’s okay, Adachi-san. Let’s get you to bed.”
He collapses onto the bed. Tries to hide his flushed face. But Yu tugs his hand away and brushes his own palm, soft and uncalloused, the skin of a pampered brat, against Tohru’s forehead. He drags his fingers in a lingering touch as he brushes back Tohru’s short hair.
“Sorry,” Tohru manages to say.
“Don’t apologize,” Yu says, his eyes crinkling. Tohru relaxes into the sound. It feels, almost, as if Yu leans down and nuzzles him, but it’s drunken delusion. Tohru’s out of it. His alcohol tolerance is shit, now.
Yu squeezes his hand with blistering strength.
There’s no one — no trace of anyone — when Tohru wakes.
According to plan, Tohru sees Yu the day before he goes back to Tokyo. Before he goes back to better things. Fucking good for him. Tohru sits at the Dojima’s chabudai and makes nice. He eats the fancy sushi and steals the sea urchin and it’s all fucking great, isn’t it.
Not according to plan, Yu shows up — again — at his door in the late morning on the day he’s scheduled to return to Tokyo.
“Don’t you have a train to catch?” Tohru jokes as he lets the kid in.
“Not until the evening,” Yu explains. And then before Tohru can say anything else, he yanks and pins Tohru to the wall. All of Yu’s strength comes to bear. All of his weight. His thigh inches up between Tohru’s legs.
He has half a mind to protest before Yu kisses him.
It’s all over from there.
(God fucking damnit.)
Tohru parts his lips and spreads his legs. He whimpers. He gives in again and again.
Yu’s just so strong. So dominating. What else can he do? Yu threads his fingers into Tohru’s hair, gentle for a moment, then tugs hard. And Tohru just whimpers more, because of course he fucking does.
“Yu, Yu,” he pants.
His lips against Tohru’s throat, teeth centimeters from flesh, Yu asks, “Do you want this?”
Tohru whines and bucks. “Yes. You stupid —”
He’s silenced with a blistering kiss that knocks their teeth together. Yu entwines their fingers, soft and affectionate for all of a millisecond before slamming their hands above Tohru’s head. Tohru arches up. He doesn’t have any other option. Yu bites and licks and strips Tohru bare of any remaining scraps of dignity.
Their shirts are discarded haphazardly on the floor. Tohru trips as he stumbles toward the bedroom. That’s all it takes for Yu to decide to carry him. Tohru wraps his legs around Yu’s available hips as he’s lifted up. Enjoys the hard pressure he grinds down on. Enjoys it enough to laugh into Yu’s hungry mouth.
“Missed me that much?”
“Shut up,” Yu orders, and then he throws Tohru on the bed. Tohru scrambles to take his pants off, to toss off his boxers and socks, to get rid of all pretense before Yu can prowl back atop him. The brat is naked too. Tohru flushes harder at the sight of the dripping red erection confronting him.
“You did miss me —”
Yu flips him onto his stomach. “I told you to shut up.” And Tohru obeys. He obeys as best he can as he’s manhandled. As Yu grinds his cock against Tohru’s ass, teasing and threatening in equal measure. He obeys right until Yu wraps a hand around Tohru’s cock and tugs, but the needy moan that breaks his lips doesn’t earn another demand of silence. He tangles his fingers in the bedsheets and lets his desperation fill the air.
“Lube?” Yu asks, voice like gravel. Tohru fumbles in the direction of his bedside cabinet. Yu — taller and longer and stronger and — easily snags the new container of lubricant and pops it open. Tohru squirms unhappily the entire time. Tries to adjust his position for easier access, to hurry it along, to show Yu that he’s ready, he’s been ready, damnit.
Finally, Yu brushes slick fingers against his entrance. And hesitates.
“In me!” Tohru snaps. “Moron!”
A harsh exhale; Yu pushes him down by the shoulders and pins him in place. “Behave,” he says as he presses a finger inside. Face buried in the pillows, Tohru can’t even moan properly. He can’t do anything properly.
Every muscle in his body is twitching by the time Yu is done, or is ready — whichever, both, who knows. He replaces his fingers with something hot, and blunt, and wet, and huge.
He grabs Tohru by the hips, getting a better angle, and Tohru leverages up on his elbows. Spittle trails from where his mouth was pressed down; a thick wet spot marks the sheets.
Yu presses inside, for real.
Big. So big. So big Tohru can’t breathe. There’s no space for air. For thought. Yu carves himself into Tohru’s body and burns away anything else. Anything that could ever exist in him.
A gentle touch brushes his sternum.
“Tohru,” Yu pleads.
Shuddering, he gives in. And as Yu sweeps his hand lower, wraps around Tohru’s aching cock, the pleasure turns blinding. Destructive. He can’t control his body, the sounds he’s making, can’t do anything except take it, take every thrust and stroke, and his mind scatters, everything he is falls apart, and all he can do, all he can hear over the crest of pleasure and despair and longing fulfilled, all he can hold onto is Yu sobbing out, “Tohru!” like a prayer.
That’s the last thing that Tohru remembers clearly. The sensation of being held and being fucked, of Yu using his body again and again, remains, but the details transmute into a coalesced mass of sexual intoxication.
When he wakes, the bed is cold. There isn’t a letter or note. No scribbled phone number. The trash is empty; Yu dutifully cleaned up any mess.
The only trace of him is the soreness, barely present, in Tohru’s hips and shoulders.
He kicks the front door before stomping back to bed.
The inevitable slog of work resumes the next morning. He oh so attentively listens to Dojima’s endless berating and slips out of the squadron when the man has his back turned. On days like this, overcast and gloomy, Junes makes the best hideaway. Don’t worry, Dojima-san; Tohru is hard at work interviewing the housewives for the latest gossip.
The error in his plan makes itself evident as soon as he steps into the lobby. He turns on his heel, hoping to slink out, but he must have burned his luck evading Dojima because Yosuke Hanamura calls out, “Adachi-san!” right before Tohru reaches the exit.
Plastering his face on, he spins back. His skin is taut. Doesn’t fit right. “He-ey, Yosuke-kun.”
Yosuke is on the clock, evidenced by the apron wrapped around his lithe frame, but he always makes time for Tohru. (Except for the few months when Tohru managed to piss the kid off, and Tohru prefers to avoid a repeat of that. Yosuke is able to squeeze out info from the housewives that no one else in town can.) The small smile he graces Tohru with is more honest than a hollow customer service mask, but it doesn’t meet his eyes. Not even close.
Of course it doesn’t.
Damnit. Tohru shouldn’t have come. Better to visit on a day when Yosuke won’t want to spend time licking each other’s wounds. Now he wants to commiserate and act as if the sore Yu left behind on their psyches stem from the same source.
Maybe; maybe the two brats sleep together, maybe Yosuke is enraptured and enthralled too. But Tohru doubts Yu acts the same. He can’t picture Yu slamming his partner into the wall or speaking filth into his ears, not like he does with Tohru. He can’t imagine it. He doesn’t want to.
“Slacking off?” Yosuke inquires.
“Oh, no, I’m on the clock.” Tohru gives an uncomfortable laugh as he rubs his neck. There’s one other person in the lobby, a gardener who is always loitering. Really, it’s just the two of them trapped here in this hellhole right now. Tohru wants to die. “Working hard, huh?” he shoots back.
“About to start my break,” Yosuke banters. He leans forward. “Want to get lunch?”
“Eh...”
“My treat.”
“Okay.”
Tohru considers stabbing his femoral artery with a chopstick as they eat. What an awful thing to make Yosuke see, though. So awful. Tohru wouldn’t mind seeing that sort of death. A simple bloodbath wouldn’t be bad.
“Do you know when he’s coming back?” Yosuke asks when they’re halfway through their food and it’s gone cold. The ice in their drinks is unmelted only by the grace of the cold weather.
Tohru shrugs. Shakes his head. Can’t decide what emotion his face should wear, which means he’s — way too exposed, is what that means. He rubs an obscuring hand over his mouth and hunches down. “I don’t have his number,” he says truthfully.
Yosuke frowns, eyebrows pinching in a quaint childish confusion. “Oh. I — uh, well. You saw him when he was here, right?”
“Uh huh.” Tohru pokes at his steak. He should have appreciated it when it was hot. “Don’t you talk to him? He’s your partner, right?”
Yosuke flushes. “Ah, yeah, he is... We talk. We do.” It’s his turn to poke his neglected meal. “When I call, I always end up...” He hunches his shoulders. Everything about Yosuke Hanamura strikes Tohru as childlike, immature, so much younger and less experienced. This is why he hates being around the kid. It’s a reminder, a thousand prickling vines, that Yu is younger, inexperienced, immature. Tohru has a decade on them. Tohru is here sitting across from Yosuke in the courtyard of Junes as if they’re friends. As if the mere association isn’t damning enough. And he can tell himself that Yu doesn’t ‘act his age’ to hell and back but being around Yu’s friends always thunders in Tohru’s mind the awful truth, the wretchedness, of his desire for Yu Narukami. Yu who is, after all, as much of an immature brat as the rest of his friends.
“I spill my guts even when I don’t mean to,” Yosuke whispers. He crosses his arms, grips himself in shame, and keeps talking. Tohru considers how quickly he would bleed out if he did stab himself. Not quick enough. “And he just...just listens, like he always does. And says something that makes it all make sense. You know? It’s like...” Yosuke blows out hard enough one of his bangs flicks up. “He’s amazing. But I can never tell what he’s really thinking.”
Tohru swallows the memory of Yu’s mouth on his. “Yeah.”
“I end up telling him everything, even when I wish he would say something instead. That he would...open up to me. That’s how I feel.”
The sky is grey. Clouds blanket Inaba. Flakes of snow break through and flutter down on their noses.
“Don’t you?” Yosuke asks.
Tohru freezes. Caught and called out. A painful hope blossoms in Yosuke’s gaze that someone else feels Yu’s intense energy. That it simply cannot be helped that everyone and anyone wants to pour their soul out to Yu fucking Narukami in hopes of receiving benediction. Or salvation. Whichever. Whatever.
“Yeah, I do,” Tohru stammers.
He checks his watch because otherwise he’ll puke.
“I should head back. Pretty sure your break's over, kid.”
“Ah! Crap.” Yosuke hurries back into the store with a wave. “See you, Adachi-san!”
Tohru is greeted by another lecture when he returns to the squadron.
Dojima fails to get Golden Week off — thus, Tohru fails to get Golden Week off — but Yu visits in May anyway. He can entertain Nanako and see his friends, right? Right. He doesn’t need to see Tohru. Tohru doesn’t need to see him.
Dojima orders Tohru to follow him home the night that Yu arrives in Inaba. ‘Order’ might be a bit harsh, may be an exaggeration, and it’s possible that all Dojima said was, “Want to swing by for dinner?”, but if that is all Dojima said, well, that’s between Tohru and all the gods he doesn’t worship, isn’t it. That’s nobody’s damn business.
Nanako is already in bed by the time he and Dojima make it to the homestead. Tohru lets Dojima take the lead in interrogating Yu in that familial, familiar way Tohru never experienced. How’s college going, join any clubs, attend any mixers, on and on the questions go. Tohru doesn’t speak.
But as Dojima heads to bed sober, for once, he says, “I’ll let the two of you catch up,” and Tohru realizes he has fucked up. He doesn’t have a chance to bolt toward the door as Yu bids goodnight to his uncle and turns that obnoxiously piercing gaze onto Tohru’s thin skin.
“Adachi-san.”
“Yu-kun. University’s been treating you good, huh — ah!”
Without an ounce of ceremony or respect, Yu shoves him down. He covers Tohru’s mouth with a muffling hand. But Dojima doesn’t react to the noise. No one comes down the stairs to check on them.
Tohru bitches wordlessly against Yu’s restraining palm.
Yu stares, resolute, as commanding as a deity, at the stairway. And assured of their privacy, he releases Tohru. He peels off his stupid obnoxious vest. Tohru recognizes the high-quality fabric even before Yu stuffs it between Tohru’s teeth.
“Oi!”
“Do you want them to hear you?” Yu asks clinically. Tohru grits his teeth, hopefully tears this expensive stupid vest apart between his molars, and digs his fingers into the tatami mats. “Behave.”
His attempt to say, ‘fuck you’ is pathetically muffled and ends in a squeak as Yu whips off his slacks and boxers in one skilled motion. Brat’s been getting experience while at university, huh.
Tohru bites down harder on the improvised gag until his eyes burn.
They don’t fuck, not that night. Yu blows him and then ekes another orgasm out of Tohru’s body before patching him back up, wrapping him in his worn work-clothes like a second-hand gift. He fetches blankets and comforts Tohru to sleep on the Dojimas' incredibly uncomfortable couch.
Yu is gone when Tohru wakes. Spending Golden Week at the Amagi Inn, according to Nanako.
Yeah. Of course. Tohru narrowly avoids crushing his coffee mug in his hands.
(His molars hurt for a week afterward.)
That’s how it goes.
Yu visits every few months. He graces the whole feeble village of Inaba with his glorious golden presence. Everyone is thrilled when he appears. Everyone mourns when he leaves.
Tohru ends up in Yu’s bed every time.
Tohru wakes up to a cold bed, a cold room — wakes up to abandonment, to loneliness, every time.
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all. It’s better, this way. This way, Yu can’t spill Tohru’s disgusting perversion into the shark-infested waters of Inaba’s rumor mill. Yu never stays long enough.
This, Tohru thinks, is how it should be. Exactly how it should be. Like this, he fits right in with the rest of Yu’s abandoned harem.
This, he thinks, is exactly what he deserves.
Yu graduates, top of his class. What else did anyone expect?
No one except Nanako — who hoards any and all information on her ‘brother’ like a vicious, petulant dragon, who refuses to share even a smidgen, who has grown into a very sweet but rather spoiled teenager — knows what Yu plans until he announces it.
To all of them. All of his friends, and Dojima, and Nanako, and Tohru, in a group chat:
“I’m coming home.”
(Tohru stares at his phone for an hour after he gets the text.
He has everyone else’s phone numbers — every single other person in that group message — except one. Except for Yu’s.
Work conversations with Ryotaro Dojima.
Routine ‘I’ll be there in five minutes’ and ‘okay’ back-and-forths with Nanako Dojima.
He has a thread of banter with Yosuke Hanamura.
Snide comments on the cops with Chie Satonaka.
Dumb, low-brow jokes with Yukiko Amagi.
‘Can you please stop terrorizing the locals’ turned ‘please harass this asshole, thanks’ exchanges with Kanji Tatsumi.
All the best social gossip, confirmed and verified via Rise Kujikawa.
Weird, once-in-a-decade solved cases with Naoto Shirogane.
Bad, truly awful, absolutely revolting puns with Teddie Hanamura.
And nothing, not one single exchange, with Yu Narukami.)
The Dojima household is abuzz with Yu’s upcoming return. Not just the Dojimas; Yu’s little friends run like headless chickens as they try to prepare themselves. Tohru has been roped in to at least three party plans and has effectively sabotaged all of them. He has not, he suspects, been included in the latest planning effort. The team has learned their lesson, for once.
Every time his phone pings, he checks the thread. The only number he hasn’t saved in his phone glares out like a beacon.
Yu will be in town in a week.
Yu will be in town in five days.
Yu will return to Inaba — forever, for as long as he can, as permanent as anyone dares wish — tomorrow.
The evening Yu returns to live his perfect, adored life in his small hellish ‘hometown’, Tohru begs off the party with a complaint of illness. Really, he can’t imagine surviving the night without shoving the cake — a very pretty but assuredly poorly baked concoction the girls made with frosting spelling out, ‘Welcome home!’ — into Yu’s face. Maybe down his throat until he chokes.
Nanako doesn’t need to see another attempted homicide.
Around midnight, a demure knock disturbs Tohru from where he sits, irate and unfortunately sober (like he has been for the past year), on the couch.
He ignores it.
Another gentle, incessant knock.
Tohru almost pulls the door off its hinges.
Yu Narukami stands outside his apartment looking — looking like he did seven months earlier. He wears a shirt that was probably a smidge too small back then; now, it clings to his pecs and trim waist obscenely. Tohru wants to peel it off and lick the familiar skin hiding underneath. Tohru wants to slam the door and die.
“Adachi-san,” Yu greets.
“Yu-kun,” he returns.
He falters and slides back at the mere incline of Yu’s head.
Trained; Yu has him trained.
Every day, every morning waking up alone. Every moment after they meet becoming an aching bruise that fades from his body but not from whatever stupid, awful, weak, pathetic part of his soul that craves Yu’s touch. More than touch, more than sex, more than pleasure, more than any of it: hoping and longing and praying for Yu to return but never, ever strong enough to voice that desire.
He stumbles on a rug as he steps backward, and Yu catches him.
That’s all it takes before the lust overtakes them.
Lips and teeth, their kiss blisters harsh enough he tastes blood. Yu can lift him easily now. Tohru can’t even fight back, overwhelmed, weakened in the presence of this obnoxious man, but when his body fails his voice rises to the challenge.
“You bastard,” he snarls as Yu rips off his shirt. Buttons pop and snap.
“Shut up,” Yu rumbles in a familiar demand. He strips Tohru of his pants with far too comfortable motions. Tohru kicks out at him. Yu catches and redirects his foot with ease.
“Asshole,” Tohru continues, “dumbass, you —”
“I told you to stop talking,” Yu says icily as he claps a hand over Tohru’s mouth. And Tohru’s cock reacts, of course. Yu snorts derisively. Tohru thrusts up anyway. The younger man has not once left Tohru sexually unsatisfied, for all that he has left the rest of Tohru open and gaping and wounded.
(Fair. It's fair. It's more than fair.)
He can already feel the chill of the morning sheets creeping in when Yu distracts him with an unexpected blowjob. He cries out and slaps a hand over his mouth, trying to obey Yu’s earlier command.
Yu violently pulls his muffling hand away. Fishes out a pair of padded handcuffs from Tohru’s bedside. They’ve done this so much. They've done this too much. He pins Tohru’s hand to the headboard.
“Do you want me to shut up or not?” Tohru whines.
Yu finishes strapping the other hand down. “I want you,” he intones, “to submit.”
Tohru barks out a laugh. And laughs harder at the steely glint in Yu’s eyes. He mocks the younger man even as he slithers down Tohru’s body and laps up his cock. He snaps and snarls until pleasure stifles him in devastating waves.
But Yu isn’t done with him. It takes a while — Tohru’s refractory period has been growing longer as age catches up to him — but Yu strokes another orgasm out of him. Keeps him tied to the bed. It must be done then, Tohru assumes.
Again, Yu builds up the pleasure until Tohru crashes over the edge with a wail.
Again. Tohru pulls so hard on the handcuffs bruises blossom along his wrists.
And again. His vocal chords are shredded. Something is wrong with his spine; it burns. And still Yu tries to force another orgasm from his body.
“I can’t,” he groans. He jolts away from Yu’s exploratory hand. No more. He can’t take anymore sensation. He feels strung out. The thought of another orgasm being teased out of him is dreadful. “I can’t. Don’t.”
Yu pulls away. And leans back, the weight of the bed shifting, the springs creaking, and Tohru realizes with a nausea-inducing revelation that Yu is about to leave. About to untie Tohru and abandon him again. Like always.
Tohru hooks his legs around Yu’s hips and drags him back.
“Tohru!” he exclaims unhappily.
“Please, I’m not — please, I just —”
Yu gentles him with a comforting hand on his ribs, but Tohru bucks when he reaches again for Tohru’s useless dick. A stifled sound vibrates through Yu’s throat as he jerks away.
“Tell me what you want!”
“You!” Tohru sobs. “You, you, I want you, fuck, fuck fuck fuck, please. Please.”
“You have me! What more do you want?”
Delirious, Tohru admits, “Inside me. Don’t leave, please, not like this. You, you dumbass, you ruined me, you need to fix me.”
Yu growls, almost, and grits a vicious, “Fuck,” through his teeth. But he obeys, he complies, and that’s all that Tohru cares about; he strips out of his clothes — moron, wearing the damn things still — and the erection that he presses against Tohru’s sloppy entrance is scorching. Harder, bigger than normal. Or Tohru’s just out of his mind. Probably. Oh he is so fucked up. He’s fucking up.
“Please,” he says, and he feels his lips trembling.
Yu slumps, as if defeated, and pushes inside with a miserable whimper.
The pleasure that slams into Tohru is liquefying. Too much of it all night, and now, embraced by Yu, those strong arms wrapped around him, the brat’s breath hot on his neck, he melts. His brain melts. He dissolves. There is only sensation and impression. Yu, kissing his face. Trailing his fingertips over Tohru’s cheeks, and neck, and back up to hold him like a porcelain doll. Hot wet drops falling on his skin. The distant awareness of being split open again and again until warmth spills inside of him.
Trembling lips brushing his own mouth. Wetness cascading down his face and neck. And Yu muttering, like a mantra, words Tohru can’t comprehend.
(“I love you. I love you. I love you.”)
When Tohru wakes in the morning, as alone as ever, he’s clean. Scrubbed down, like always. Yu leaves no traces. He sits up in his cold bed and runs his hands down his face, his neck, remembering the sensation of tears. But it must have been a dream.
He brushes his fingers over a rough patch of skin in the hollow of his collarbone. He scratches.
Salt.
Miniscule flecks of white — dried tears — catch under his nail.
The room Yu used to inhabit in the Dojima’s is empty. Stripped barren. Tohru stares at the empty shell with a blank refusal to accept what he sees.
Nanako’s voice knocks him from his reverie. “Adachi! I — oh. What’s wrong?”
He points at the hollowed-out space. Memory threatens to well up and drown him. The only thing he recognizes is the couch. (As if he could ever forget.) The futon is gone. The desk; the bookshelf stuffed to bursting with an odd assortment of texts, the top overburdened with photo frames; the glass display intricately and attentively set up to show off the well-crafted gunpla: all of it's gone.
“Big bro’s stuff?” Nanako infers. Tohru snaps his head in a nod, because he can’t speak. “He took it to his new apartment. I don’t remember the address... Dad knows! Or Yosuke, if you don’t want to ask dad.”
Tohru knows his smile is all wrong as he says, “Haha, yeah.”
Nanako snuggles up beside him and peers inside the room. She leans her head, heavy and warm and real, domestic, familial, as they look at the space.
“...it’ll be different now,” she murmurs. Tohru nods. But then she peeks up at him, all smiles. “Big bro’s here to stay, not just to visit. It’ll be great.” She heaves a happy sigh. “I’m so glad he came home.”
“Uh huh.”
“Say hi when you see him!” she commands as Tohru takes his leave.
Yosuke does, indeed, have Yu’s new address. He hands the information over only after subjecting Tohru to a traumatic and humiliating conference with the entire group of Yu’s friends.
(“Is this a shovel talk?” he asks.
“Shovel talk?” Yukiko inquires innocently.)
By sundown, he manages to arrive at Yu’s apartment. His hand shakes as he lifts it. He crushes his traitorous fingers into a fist and pounds on the door.
He almost hits Yu, when the asshole finally opens the door. Or maybe Tohru wasn’t expecting him to actually answer. The brat is clad in a thread-bare v-neck and spandex and Tohru’s brain almost short-circuits.
(All the orders Yu has given flash through his mind:
“Stop talking.”
“Spread your legs.”
“Beg for it.”
“Say my name.”
“Tell me you want it.”
“Tell me you want me.”
“Tell me you want me.”)
“Let me in,” he orders instead, wrestling control back out from under the spell Yu casts simply by existing. Yu hesitates for only a moment before stepping back and waving in invitation.
There’s a half-eaten container of instant ramen on the kitchen counter. The apartment is absolutely impersonal and unadorned.
Tohru beelines for the bedroom.
And there he finds it, all the miscellany of Yu’s errant life in Inaba. The display case. The plastic models. The picture frames. The letters and memorabilia of all his friends. The books, the collection doubled in size since Tohru last saw. The desk, lovingly maintained.
In the center of it all, of all these trinkets Tohru remembers, that Tohru can picture perfectly if he closes his eyes, is a new bed. New sheets. A comforter in colors Tohru hasn’t seen.
Yu grips him by the elbow, readying to pull them into that plush, heady habit.
“Don’t touch me,” Tohru says.
Yu immediately relents.
His expression is stoic and shielded when Tohru faces him.
He has never, not from the beginning, known what goes through Yu’s head.
“You had my number.” Tohru tries to keep his breathing level. Even. Unnoticeable. But the tempo picks up. Blood flushes his cheeks. His chest heaves. “You’ve had my number. You could have called anytime. You could have —”
“You left,” Yu interrupts. A vein in his jaw jumps; he’s clenching his teeth so hard a tooth must be cracked. “The morning after, you left. Without saying anything. I woke up alone.”
Tohru gapes.
“Are you kidding me?” he says, shrill, when Yu fails to elaborate, fails to give any better of an explanation, fails to — to — “I was drunk, Yu!”
“You haven’t been!” Yu snaps like a whip. “You’ve been sober every time since. I’ve made sure!”
“Oh, you’ve made sure. Thanks for that.”
“What did you want me to do?” he yells.
“I wanted you to tell me!” Tohru yells back. “To my face!”
They’re close. Too close. Tohru’s backed up against the bed. Yu towers over him. Tohru wants to rip his own arteries out. Wants to rip the pulsing vein out of Yu’s neck.
“I did! I did! And you left, you left in the morning, you left me alone, and I knew what that meant!”
Tohru wails. “I was drunk! I didn’t remember anything! I thought I took advantage of you!” Something cracks in his chest, in his gut. His knees give out. The bed catches him. “I thought...”
The thundering aura Yu gathered is gone. He kneels down, his soft hands gentle as he reaches out, but Tohru can’t see. His vision’s all wonky. Bile rises up and down his throat like a rollercoaster.
“I thought...” he stammers.
“Tohru.”
“I wanted you to hate me.”
“Tohru,” Yu says commandingly. Tohru jolts, and his vision snaps into focus. For the first time in years, Yu’s expression is open. Vulnerable and painfully, patiently available. He turns his hands, palms up, inviting Tohru to — to reach out.
Shaking so hard he might puke, Tohru reaches out and grabs. Hard enough Yu flinches.
“That wasn’t... I wanted it,” Yu whispers. He brings their entwined hands up to his forehead, bowed in apparent penitence. “When you weren’t there in the morning, I assumed I...scared you off. That you just wanted to be...”
“Whatever the fuck we were?” Tohru jokes, choking on — spit. Definitely spit. Not tears or anything pathetic like that.
Yu exhales heavily and nods. He peeks up, shame-faced.
“Did you only agree to...it because you wanted me to punish you?”
Tohru laughs wetly. “...no. I liked it.” He rolls his eyes and slips down onto the floor to join Yu in contrition. “I like you pushing me around.”
“...I like pushing you around,” Yu admits. They laugh, like idiots.
Tohru’s knees are aching by the time he summons up the courage to speak again. He won’t be able to stand, not on his own.
“...I like you too,” he says, barely more than mouthing the words.
“Just ‘like’, huh?”
“Don’t press your luck.”
They knock their heads together, a kind of hurt that Tohru could…maybe get used to.
The bed is warm when he wakes.