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Above all, Yakumo loved freedom. It was like wings for him, tattoos that spread on his back and collarbone a testament to it. He refused to sell his time, the most valuable thing he had, for financial stability. The fear of being poor narrowed people’s views, and he didn’t blame them, but he didn’t want to sell that strength either, the knowing he was able to survive without the comforts the capitalist society tried to tell everyone they needed. He was fascinated by society, its ins and outs, and he always sought to understand it. But he didn’t want to have generally recognized values forced upon him, and he didn’t feel the need to fit into societal constraints.
It was quite strange then, that he found Yatora so captivating. The man - the boy, perhaps, would be more accurate to say, was one of the most constricted people he knew. Yatora was the type to worry about everything: his future, his career, how people saw him, how he acted. Most of his gestures were tightly monitored by himself – even when he was drunk, he maintained a certain level of self-control. He was a natural people-pleaser, very empathetic but analytical at once.
His delinquent image was a façade to make him more confident and fit his friend group. Additionally, Yatora was incredibly nerdy: had geeky interests, and was very studious, so he balanced it out with blonde hair and cigarettes. His lack of self-confidence gave him a need to be accepted, and he was willing to work for it. Yakumo knew those traits must have started developing in his childhood, and he wated to crack Yatora’s skull open to see it.
Maybe that was why Yakumo liked to see those moments when Yatora’s inner beast triumphed – with art, with words, with his sharp eyes. In the end, Yatora chose a way of living that wasn’t exactly encouraged, and especially in his case, when he hasn’t been directed towards the arts as a child. Yatora chose to break free – despite all this fear. All his bravery, all his weakness, made him into a beautiful paradox.
Yakumo hadn’t been able to take his eyes off him since he saw his painting – the raw emotion of it. Then he was shocked when this guy, who was clearly one of the best artists in the room, seemed to think he was no good, and that he had to catch up to others, flippantly diminishing his own worth. It was so peculiar that Yakumo felt instantly affectionate.
As all of them, Yatora was still discovering himself, so obviously there was a lot of work before him. What he lacked, at times, was not artistic skill. It wasn’t even technique – even if he was unaware of something, Yatora was able to learn quickly. His only deficiency was life experience – the constrictions he enforced on himself showing in certain areas, making him sort of innocent of the world at large. It was also charming to Yakumo, who knew all sorts of people, but no one quite so painfully human as Yatora.
Their third-year professor was an interesting addition to the school. She was obsessed with all things regarding people and relationships, so Yakumo wasn’t very surprised when the theme she gave them was ‘romantic love.’ But he could imagine how Yatora felt about the topic.
As it often happened, they got neighbouring studio space. Yakumo decided to leave Yatora to his musings, but in the end, he couldn’t stop himself from sauntering over to him, throwing his arm across Yatora’s shoulders.
Yatora looked at him with irritation as Yakumo examined his sketchbook.
“I knew you’d struggle with this topic,” Yakumo said. Not to be mean, it was just a statement of a fact.
“Oh, fuck off.”
Yakumo observed the drawings in the sketchbook. All of them were something along the lines of kisses and dramatic embraces – grandiose and empty. He suspected Yatora had never really been in love, but had he not even kissed some crush of his in the past?
“You lack experience. Thinking about how others show love won’t work.”
Yatora looked good with an irritated blush. Really, really good. Yakumo wondered if he would blush all the way to his chest when overheated.
“What is your advice, then?” he asked through gritted teeth.
I could show you, Yakumo wanted to say, but that would probably scare Yatora away. They became closer last year, Yatora not quite seeing him as a thorn in his side anymore. It would be a shame to ruin that now.
“How quickly do you think you can fall in love?” Yakumo said with a grin, which earned him a shove that disconnected him from Yatora’s shoulder.
He laughed loudly and ruffled Yatora’s hair.
“There, there, little tiger on a leash! It’s just a school project, there’s no need to get so into it.”
He knew there was no such thing for Yatora as not trying to make things perfect, but he didn’t quite predict which direction his little comment would spin Yatora into.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - Dans le lit
The time frame for their project was long, very long for a single painting. It could easily be attributed to the wide theme and the fact that their course was generally like that, but it also made Yatora nervous. He was bound to always overthink, and with a topic he knew absolutely nothing about it was even worse.
He tried to tell himself it was a good thing. After all, he was in university to learn and understand new things, not only about art but the world and himself too.
But as he thought of it, he decided not to sit idle. He filled his notebook with drawings of possible ideas. That one thing that Yakumo had taught him had stuck – letting his mind and body become one while drawing, even if it would end up being for nothing, even if it was just for fun. And it was fun. In the end, the hellish assignment they got in second year and the suggestion Yakumo gave him, helped bring back the joy he had while making art.
At the beginning, when he recognized Yakumo as much smarter than he appeared, he often listened to Yakumo just because Yakumo taught Yatora more than the teachers ever did. Yakumo was infuriatingly nonchalant about knowledge, but he was also very good at explaining things in simple terms. There were times when Yatora preferred to listen to him than read the book himself, because it saved him time. But Yakumo wasn’t just sharing knowledge with those who asked, which meant mainly Momo and Yatora. In the past, Yatora thought Yakumo aided him because he liked to lord it over him. It wasn’t true. He cared about Yatora’s distress, and that was what made Yatora trust him at some point.
Yatora was truly surprised how much Yakumo helped him last year, and more than once. He was the one who ended up convincing him not to quit Geidai after all, the one who made Yatora rethink his sudden rebellion. Yakumo, who seemed so nonconformist, had shown him the merit of traditional education. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that Yatora would grow to think of him as an important friend? Not first year Yatora, that was for sure.
Yakumo generally gave good advice, because beneath the noisy, idiotic behaviour he was terrifyingly smart. It irritated Yatora. It meant this time, Yakumo could be right as well.
“Why kissing?” Ryuji asked, splayed on the futon while he browsed Yatora’s sketchbook.
Yatora had tons of free time with how little classes there were, which allowed him to take Ryuji up on his offer when he finally invited Yatora to hang out with him. Yatora had no idea what Ryuji had been up to, or even where he was. He was aware Ryuji was alive, at least, from the texts they sometimes exchanged.
He honestly couldn’t pass up a chance to learn more about Ryuji’s new life. It was somehow less exciting or dramatic that he envisioned. Ryuji managed to get an apprenticeship in a dressmaker’s studio. He said they just let him do the basics for now, but he was learning, and seemed to accept the lack of fanfare with grace. His creative process was being honed in his free time – his room was full of drawings upon drawings of clothing.
Yatora had been worried about his survival. He could always count on his family’s assistance, he didn’t know hunger or how hard it was to live by oneself. But it turned out Ryuji wasn’t quite as desolate as Yatora imagined – even though the money from his apprenticeship wasn’t much, his grandmother was sending him something. His room was small and almost entirely without furniture, but Ryuji could afford all necessities.
This rejection of comfortable life and following one’s dreams reminded him uncomfortably of Yakumo, and by that, also about their recent conversation about Yatora’s lack of experience. It still made him blush because Yakumo was completely right.
“Yatora,” Ryuji waved the sketchbook in front of his face, “come on, don’t ignore me. Why are almost all your sketches of kissing?”
Maybe he shouldn’t have told Ryuji about the assignment or let him see Yatora’s sketchbook.
“I don’t know.”
He snatched the sketchbook from Ryuji. He didn’t know why, that much was true. His mind seemed fixated on the idea, but he didn’t know the reason, and he had no idea how to use it. All his sketches felt empty. They were just emulations, as Yakumo had observed.
“You know that kissing doesn’t have to be about romantic love, right? It’s just a very basic way of connecting. It can be about pleasure, lust, pity, anything.”
Yatora sighed, falling back on the futon.
“I’m guessing you kissed a lot of people?”
Ryuji seemed entertained.
“Some.”
“Boys or girls?”
“One girl. The rest were boys.”
“Was there a difference?”
“There’s a difference between every person. But the basics are always the same.”
There was a beat of silence that made Yatora’s skin crawl.
“Have you never kissed anyone, Yatora?”
“I did. But it was long ago. I scarcely remember it.”
It was a girl in middle school. He remembered the whole ordeal as very brief and things had gotten awkward with her after, even though she had been the one to kiss him first.
He also allegedly kissed Utashima while drunk on coffee once, but because he couldn’t recollect it, and the guys had no actual proof, he decided to keep that one out of his kissing curriculum.
Maybe he was a bit old to be so green. Normally, he didn’t even think about this stuff. In the past, when he was aiming to be a normal person with a normal boring life, he envisioned having a wife someday, maybe even a child, but it was like thinking about things that were far, far away, like dying. He rarely thought about it otherwise, unless confronted with others’ experiences. He liked to listen to Sumida drunkenly gush about his girlfriend, and he wondered if someday he would find someone he would love that much. But he didn’t think so. He didn’t understand what it felt like to love someone in this way, to give so much of your attention to a single person.
Love in general wasn’t hard to understand. He loved his parents, he loved his friends, he loved art. Was that love and romantic love so different? Wasn’t romantic love like any other love, just with additions like desire and intimacy?
Those kinds of divagations led him to think about kisses and embraces and other activities couples did. He wasn’t sure about those.
“Want me to kiss you?” Ryuji joked, hovering over him with a wicked gaze.
Two years ago, Yatora would have been scandalized by the suggestion. He would have pushed Ryuji away and called him disgusting.
But Ryuji had been the one to make him more open-minded. He made Yatora recognize what he already knew, deep inside; that neither gender nor sexuality were rigid. The control on those things was not natural but cultural. After being in art school for some time, one really learned to accept things in a wider perspective.
“Would you?” he asked, satisfied by Ryuji’s surprise. “Kiss me?”
Ryuji searched his face.
“Are you seriously asking?”
Yatora tried to make his nervous swallow inaudible and shrugged.
“Why not? It’s just a kiss.”
Ryuji snorted quietly as he leaned down. His long hair tickled the side of Yatora’s face. He closed his eyes and let this happen.
It wasn’t that Yatora thought Ryuji was unattractive – he was very pleasant to the eye. He was also charismatic, driven, talented, lost, sensitive, mischievous, intelligent, and deep. He was a rule-breaker in Yatora’s eyes, the bravest rule-breaker Yatora knew.
And he loved Ryuji, he realized, in that complicated way one loves friends that constitute something unique for you. But he didn’t love him in a way that would make him want to be with Ryuji, that could be called desire. Yatora didn’t think it was impossible to want him, he just thought that, in that moment as their slightly moist lips met, he didn’t want anything more than that.
He moved his lips a little, experimentally, and Ryuji answered. Yatora didn’t really know how to do it, how to move properly, but Ryuji pursed his lips against him delicately, nipped at them a bit, so Yatora just reacted slowly, trying to match it. It was still kind of awkward, but it wasn’t disagreeable.
Yatora got little touch in every-day life, but he did enjoy it, those little signs of encouragement. His parents weren’t very physical people, and his mother even less than his father – but he was half-awake sometimes when she gave him a forehead kiss. His father was the one that taught him about the ways men liked to interact physically with their friends; throwing an arm around one another when their team won, high fiving when something went well, patting on the back in sympathy. Those were the ways his friends touched him, and Yatora felt embarrassingly pleased when it happened. It did feel like a connection, a grounding of something, a sign of affection and safety at once. Was it some sort of pack instinct?
Yakumo liked to touch him in such ways, though he was way clingier than any of his friends. It wasn’t exactly safety that Yatora felt whenever he had his shoulders under Yakumo’s arm; because Yakumo usually approached him to annoy him and that put Yatora on his toes. But he did recognize Yakumo’s touch as well-meaning.
Perhaps with anyone else kissing him, Yatora would feel embarrassed. He felt awkward almost all the time, and this was out of his experience. But with Ryuji, embarrassment seemed an old concept since the time they showed each other their nude paintings. With Ryuji, kissing just felt like one of those ways friends interacted with each other, a nice touch that placated Yatora’s pack instinct.
“Yatora,” Ryuji said, half-amused, half-exasperated. “I can hear you thinking. That is a bit insulting to my skill.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ryuji snickered.
“So, you found out you aren’t desperately and secretly in love with me then?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well, good.”
Yatora furrowed his brows. Ryuji answered with a wicked smile.
“Wouldn’t want to reject you and make you cry.”
“Fuck off,” Yatora pushed Ryuji away, but Ryuji just giggled and laid down beside him.
“You know,” Ryuji started, settling into a calmer tone, “I’ve gotten in touch with that girl from middle school.”
“Oh?” Yatora slid closer, interested.
“Yeah, we’ve been texting often. We also met twice. On the second meeting she kissed my cheek and … my whole body trembled with it. So, I think maybe you’re not so wrong about kisses. Maybe they make the feeling easier to recognize. I hope that can be of some help in your ‘exploration.”
“For what it’s worth, I do feel more connected to you now.”
“Don’t be sappy,” Ryuji said, sticking out his tongue.
But it was true that Yatora felt like they were allowed to be more in each other’s space now. When they laughed, he drew a bit closer to Ryuji, and he felt safer. He was calm sleeping next to Ryuji.
Francesco Hayez – The Kiss
Maybe Ryuji just wasn’t his type, Yatora thought. Maybe Yatora was indeed strictly into girls, like he believed all his life. And Ryuji wasn’t exactly a guy, but he was not exactly a girl either. He was both, and maybe Yatora just wasn’t into that. Maybe his needs were just more conservative.
Therefore, Yatora thought, maybe he would get the sense of, at least some basic attraction if he kissed a girl.
The problem was: he was not that close with many women. He was on good terms with some female classmates like Miki, Aizawa, Tanashi, or Momo, but he was completely unable to put them in any sort of romantic context. There were only two women he could think of that he would maybe, possibly, like to kiss.
The first one was Mori-senpai, but he would rather drown himself than say that to her. They haven’t seen each other since high school really, but Mori-senpai was something of an inspiration to him. He felt that kissing her would be a bit heretic, actually, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t consider it as something he might have liked to do. But he definitely wouldn’t call up a senpai he had not seen in more than two years for something like this.
The other was Kuwana. Fuck it all, it was Kuwana that came to his mind when he thought of a girl to kiss.
God, he really was art obsessed. All the people he thought to kiss; Ryuji, Mori, Kuwana, were people who he valued as artist and found inspiration from. That train of thought only made him think of other people he found motivating, and he would … rather just leave those thoughts for now.
He sauntered over to see Kuwana in the large sculpture workshop and spoke up before he could chicken-out. Something he desperately wanted to do.
“Kuwana-san, do you have a boyfriend?”
He slouched beneath her surprised gaze.
“…not at the moment.”
Oh god, he wanted to escape so bad. He could just imagine how he looked: sweaty and red from nerves, holding his neck and avoiding Kuwana’s eyes like a fucking loser.
“Would you … like to go on a date with me?”
He tried to withhold her gaze, but he was just about to escape when Kuwana answered.
“Will you be paying?”
“Of course!”
He had never been on a date, but he had some basic recognition that you should be the one paying if you invited someone out.
“Okay, then. I don’t have classes tomorrow.”
It was quite anticlimactic for his first asking a girl out. Not that it made him any less nervous about it.
After looking for a nice date-spot on the Internet, he finally decided on an aquarium – it was an enjoyable past-time for couples and friends alike, and not fancy enough to make either of them uneasy. Both of them were taken with it, as art students. The large window panes with the bluish water and the colourful fish made for compositions prettier and more striking than those in museums. He felt absorbed by the water, almost able to imagine himself with the fish.
They talked little, too taken in with the views. Only a small comment here and there, some pointing to funny or a particularly large fish. He glanced down at Kuwana’s fingers and saw them spasm a little. He smiled. He recognized this – the desire to draw something, to create something. He also wanted to trap this pretty view, make it his.
He didn’t know Kuwana as well as he knew Ryuji, so he expected more awkwardness on their date. It turned out he needn’t have worried. Once they were out of the aquarium and in the fast food joint he chose knowing Kuwana’s partiality to burgers, they started chatting with growing enthusiasm. First, it was about Geidai, about how they’re finding their courses and which teachers are the worst ever. But then the conversation naturally went into a topic that both of them found thrilling – idols.
Kuwana was the one to propose this pastime to him, and she was the only person who he really talked about it with, so he was beyond himself. He enjoyed Kuwana’s enthusiasm greatly, even when they got into a heated debate which one of BlackPink girls was a better singer.
With time passing, he forgot this was even supposed to be a date. He felt very much at ease, perhaps even more so than he did when being out with his friends in a bar. In the end, football was for him a secondary enjoyment, but idol groups were something he liked on his own, even if the interest was prompted by Kuwana.
She was the one that reminded him of the date detail.
“So, what is this about? Do you have a crush on me, Yaguchi?”
She peered at him curiously, nibbling on a fry. Yatora felt stupid.
Was he actually leading her on? He didn’t think he had a crush on her, not really. He liked her a lot, of course, and considered her super cool as an artist and a friend but …
“I’m sorry!” he lowered his head. “I actually … we have to draw a painting with romantic love as a topic. I know nothing about it, and well, I kissed my friend to see what it’s like, but I didn’t feel like it was it, and you were the second person that came to mind. I’m really very sorry.”
He glanced up. Kuwana’s eye was twitching, and she had a sour smile on.
“The ‘second person that came to mind,’ eh?”
Shit. He knew he should have just kept his mouth shut.
Before he managed to apologise again, Kuwana’s hand grabbed his collar, and he was lifted a bit to reach her as she hovered over the table.
It was not a gentle kiss. In fact, the very driving force of it seemed to be irritation. Yatora felt shocked and overpowered as Kuwana clung to his lips, kissed him vigorously. He couldn’t match her, but that didn’t seem to bother her much. He was stunned to feel her tongue touch the seam of his lips, so much that he opened it slightly to let her inside. It felt kind of invasive, in a way that was intriguingly exciting. She tasted like salt from the fries, like the spicy barbecue sauce from her burger.
Kuwana had sharp incisors that he felt on his tongue when he slid it shyly into her mouth. Not quite as sharp as Yakumo’s probably. Either way, there was something carnivorous about her, and Yatora found himself over-powered.
She moved back, their lips disconnecting with a loud smacking sound that reminded Yatora they were in public. He wanted to hide from the curious eyes, but that meant he could only stare at the table or Kuwana.
“Yaguchi,” she said accusingly, “you were thinking about something else.”
“… I’m sorry.”
Another sigh. Kuwana took up her half-eaten burger, biting into it with the same enthusiasm she put into that kiss.
“I don’t think we’d work well together. Even though you are kind of cute.”
He watched her face go through three different levels of mortification.
“I just embarrassed myself, didn’t I?”
He was glad for her nervousness, but it only added to his own.
“If it’s any consolation, I’m on my way to a lot more embarrassment.”
She laughed a bit.
“Good luck.”
Gustav Klimt – The Kiss
“It’s changed,” Yakumo spooked him, speaking up from behind him.
For someone who so often made such a loud entrance, Yakumo sure knew how to sneak up on people. Or maybe Yatora was just too focused on sketching.
“What changed?”
“The way you draw kissing.”
Yatora was careful to make no reaction to the words.
“Though it’s still not quite right. Or rather … something is still lacking.”
It was irritating that Yakumo was right. In both recent kisses too, something was lacking. Yatora couldn’t quite guess what it was.
He looked at Yakumo over his shoulder. What immediately caught the eye were his dangly earrings, this time with a single long feather at both ears. He felt like a magpie following them with his gaze.
Maybe his assumption had been wrong. Maybe he didn’t feel attraction to Ryuji not because Ryuji was too much of a boy. Maybe he was too much of a girl.
He tried to shake the thoughts out of his head. But he was an art student, wasn’t he? He shouldn’t just dismiss possibilities.
“I’ve taken your advice to heart,” Yatora said, a hook to get Yakumo’s interest. Actually though, Yakumo had always been strangely interested in him. It would be a shame not to … use that in his exploration of options.
There it was, the arm around his shoulders. Yatora had been wondering why it wasn’t upon him yet.
“What advice?”
“To gain some experience.”
Yakumo’s body stiffened against him. Realizing his words might have given the wrong idea, he reiterated.
“Ah, I mean kissing! Just kissing. My friend noticed I focus a lot on kissing in my sketches, so she proposed to try it out. Another friend also agreed, and with both something was missing.”
“What was missing?” Yakumo said, with the most neutral expression Yatora had ever seen on him. Yakumo was rarely bothered about being honest how he felt about something. His detachment made Yatora feel like he was being judged.
“I don’t know.”
It was valuable to have had those two kisses. Now he knew, at least, that he was looking for something, something specific, though he didn’t know what it was.
And it helped him discover that he was not entirely uninterested in these matters. If there was something his instincts told him to find, that meant there was something he wanted, or needed, even if it had been subconscious all this time.
Yakumo was about to say something more when Momo and Hacchan interrupted them.
“All over Yatora again, Yakumo?”
“What’s up Momo-chan?” Yakumo answered, detaching himself from Yatora’s body.
She sighed theatrically, her ponytails moving with it.
“I’m so tired thinking about this assignment. Sometimes I think they give us so much time only to torture us with it! Let’s go drinking, you two!”
Yakumo snorted.
“Sounds good, if you’re paying for my drinks. You coming, Yatora?”
“Sure.”
He considered it a good opportunity to take his mind off the project, but his thoughts kept returning to it, to Yakumo saying ‘it wasn’t quite right yet.’ What did Yakumo see in it that Yatora couldn’t? Did Yakumo know what it missed?
Could Yakumo show him, what all those kisses lacked? Or was it as with the others – Yatora thinking he might like to kiss him, just to find out he felt only the platonic kind of attraction in the end. Yakumo was also one of those people who Yatora found inspiring, whose work and words left a huge impact on his life.
“Everything alright, Yaguchi-kun?” Hacchan asked gently.
Yatora felt embarrassed at being caught. He realized he had been staring at Yakumo so much even Hacchan noticed.
“I was just thinking …”
He wanted to ask if Yakumo had someone, a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, but Yatora supposed he didn’t. He spent way too much time with Momo and Hacchan, and with Yatora in increasing frequency. He wanted to ask if Yakumo liked men. There was nothing Yatora based this assumption on, besides the fact Yakumo’s vibe reminded him slightly of Ryuji. He had the air of a bisexual, but was he really? It was just a wild guess.
“Have you ever met any of Yakumo’s … partners?”
He hoped framing it like that would give Hacchan the sign Yatora wanted more information on the subject. He was sure Hacchan could figure that out, so it was deliberate when he answered simply: “No, not really.”
Yatora got irritated about Hacchan’s knowing smile.
Yakumo wasn’t that much older than him and yet seemed leagues beyond him when it came to experience. Yatora was quite sure Yakumo had been with people, slept with people, loved people before.
“Why suddenly interested in Yakumo’s love life?” Hacchan added with faux innocence.
“Because he pisses me off,” Yatora answered without explaining further and started chugging his Irish Coffee Porter.
He normally didn’t touch drinks mixed with coffee, he knew not to from past mistakes. This time, the frustration won with his control.
The thing about drinking was that it gave you courage, yes, but it loosened the self-monitoring that Yatora subjected himself to all the time. It was too late to draw back when his hand already touched Yakumo’s earring, his finger almost skimming Yakumo’s ear.
Yatora was resting on his elbow on the table, one hand frozen at Yakumo’s ear as the man looked down to him with surprise. Yakumo had always been the one that initiated any kind of physical contact between them.
Realizing this, Yatora wanted to hide. But he kept looking, because it was nice to see Yakumo moved by something he did. Not quite so all knowing now, was he?
“I like your earrings,” Yatora said, letting his fingers pass down the feather. He was careful not to pull on Yakumo’s ear. Even though perhaps he wanted to.
“Do you?’
“Did you make them yourself?”
Yatora felt a bit out of himself. Was this flirting? Was he, the disaster that always tried to cloak his shyness with pleasantness, flirting?
“No. My sister likes making jewellery. She makes me new earrings all the time.”
“They’re beautiful.”
It was an embarrassing thing to say so honestly. He felt exposed by the word, like the fact he found Yakumo’s earrings beautiful automatically meant he saw Yakumo as beautiful too.
Yatora could gauge which people were attractive, but attractiveness alone was meaningless. He supposed Yakumo was attractive for many people, just face and body wise. Yatora thought he looked cool more than anything, with a ragged but clean-cut sort of simplicity. A good composition of comfortable clothes and undyed hair with showy earrings and tattoos. He had a lot of presence – due to his love of big art and his loud mouth. Also, he was kind of sexy, but he seemed like he’d be into some freaky shit. The fact Yatora considered it was already plenty strange.
Thinking someone was attractive or cool was different than thinking someone was beautiful. Art was beautiful. Early mornings in Shibuya were beautiful. His mother making him breakfast and making sure his diet was balanced was beautiful.
He thought Ryuji was beautiful, not for the fact he was attractive, but for his bravery, for his passion, for his pain, for his originality. He thought Kuwana was beautiful, able to face her weaknesses and change, find another way, always clever in art and life alike. Those two were beautiful and yet kissing them had not made him feel whatever he was supposed to feel.
Yakumo was irritating but there was beauty in him as well. He was made of layers, as all humans were. It was easy to dismiss him as a talented but egoistic artist, but he was a mountain of knowledge, of individuality, and maturity. Despite all the wise things he said, he was unashamedly silly. And even though he seemed like a useless guy, his encouragement had always managed to reach Yatora. He saw something in Yatora, in Yatora’s art, that was precious, and the thought of it made Yatora pitifully delighted.
So, Yakumo was beautiful. But would kissing him really show Yatora what he felt towards him? He never even thought about Yakumo in such a context before. Maybe only in passing.
In a horrible moment, Yatora almost asked him. Almost told him: ‘I think you’re beautiful. Will you let me kiss you?’
But what came out was just the ‘I-’ before Yakumo interrupted him.
“You look pretty drunk, Yatora,” it was said with the loud voice that was anything but soothing. Yatora retracted his hand, hiding in himself again. “Come on, let’s get you home.” With that, Yakumo started to pull on his shoulders, trying to force him to stand. “I will walk you.”
“You don’t need to –“
“If you fall asleep on the side of the road, whose fault will it be? Hacchan has his hands full with taking care of Momo-chan.”
Yakumo had never walked him home before, but he was also never this drunk with Yakumo present. Still, it was a surprise for Yakumo to do things just out of the goodness of –
“You will just thank me with a meal.”
There it was.
It would probably be better to stay up till morning and wait for the trains to start, but Yatora was sleepy, so he agreed to go. The walk to his house was long though, and he was too tired to talk most of the way. Yakumo chatted from time to time, or hummed. He was rarely silent, unless he slept, or painted, or read.
When they reached the fences of his neighbourhood, Yatora had the sudden, strange urge to make Yakumo stay longer. He couldn’t invite him in, there was little place in his house, and it would be an unannounced inconvenience to his parents. His room was messy, and it would be hard to fit a futon there. And his bed was small.
Catching himself thinking about them in bed together, Yatora admitted he really did have too much to drink. It was mortifying how embarrassed even the thought of intimacy made him. How much of a prude was he? Most famous painters had stories about numerous love affairs and escaping with a lover. How was Yatora supposed to understand that, if his mind was so closed to these things?
He stopped, deliberately a bit away from his house. He had had the courage to ask Ryuji and Kuwana for a kiss, would it be so hard to ask Yakumo too?
When he turned around to face Yakumo, he did it too fast, making his head spin, and needed to catch himself with one hand on the fence. But it did make Yakumo step closer to assist him, which made things easier.
Or not. When Yatora lifted his face towards him, he felt overwhelmed. Yakumo’s eyes were looking straight into his.
Yatora went as far as to move towards him when Yakumo took a step back.
“You should get on home. Go to sleep.”
He could only nod and turn back, making his way quickly towards his house. He knew the sting of being critiqued for his art, but this shame and itch of rejection was new. He could have gone on without ever learning it, thank you very much and fuck you, Yakumo.
Banksy – The Kissing Coppers
Yatora tried to focus on just painting the damn assignment. There was a new level of energy in him, born out of frustration he tried to dismiss. Yakumo wasn’t in the studio because he was already done. Of course he was. Did Yakumo even have any doubts about what he wanted? Did his hand ever hesitate before reaching for a brush, reaching for someone he wanted to touch?
The muscles in his face clenched and he made a conscious effort to relax them again. He looked to Yakumo’s painting, big as always. Yatora couldn’t deny big canvases made an impression. The painting that had made him think about art in the first place, Mori-senpai’s picture of angels, was also big and noticeable right away.
Good paintings interacted with art that came before them, but Yakumo showed this connection in unashamedly direct ways. His picture was of the Muses – but not exactly. They were not the same nine Muses one saw in Greek and Roman art. There were only five women there, and they each represented something, but Yatora didn’t know what exactly. But he did understand how technically amazing the painting was, and its big message; love is art itself.
At some point, he asked about the representations of Yakumo’s Muses, irked by his lack of understanding.
“It’s said that there are five love languages,” Yakumo explained, his brush light and quick. “Words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service, receiving gifts. Those are the Muses keeping love alive.”
Knowing this, Yatora could easily detect which women meant which. And it was such a positive painting, such a delightful representation of love.
How irritating it was to still not understand. He wanted to know now, not only because of this ridiculous assignment. He was suddenly hyper-aware of ignorance that never bothered him before.
And he wanted to kiss a man. He thought Yakumo would be cool with it, and it was so embarrassing to find out he actually wasn’t interested. More than disappointment, Yatora felt shame over the fact he even thought of Yakumo in the first place.
There were other men Yatora thought fascinating though. It didn’t fucking have to be Yakumo.
When he called Hashida, he did it under the pretence of wanting to learn about how painters expressed love. It wasn’t untrue – Hashida knew a lot about art history, and his excitement always ended up influencing Yatora. Even if Hashida wasn’t really interested in him, Yatora would get a lecture at least.
He didn’t expect for Hashida to ask him to go with him to Kochi for and overnight trip, but he accepted readily, only later miserably counting the money in his head.
It was a seven-hour trip that Yatora mostly slept through, due to it starting at five a.m. By the time they got to the museum, all his bones were cracking. He didn’t go inside with the most relaxed of moods, but when they reached the Chagall exhibit, Yatora was instantly swept by Chagall’s colours.
The paintings were complicated. The religious ones, Yatora wouldn’t be able to understand if Hashida didn’t explain them. It was all so full of symbolism on top of being striking art. Chagall’s almost childlike depiction of things and people, clashing with his expert use of colour and contrast, full of reach history and emotions. A timeless master indeed.
Yatora stood before ‘The Lovers’ and was hit by its emotion. The gentle embrace of the woman offered safety, bliss that was visible on the man’s face. The red, the greens, the blues, everything, it shouted about love, so deep that it was essential. Chagall was inviting him to feel it, to feel the happiness he was full of.
“You understand why I took you here, Yatora?” Hashida asked with a contented smile. He was always glad when he could show something new about art.
“There’s love in every one of his paintings. It’s all-pervading.”
Hashida nodded and looked back at ‘The Lovers.’
“This is Chagall’s first wife, Belle. You can see he finds peace in her. When she died, he couldn’t paint for six months, even though art was his life.”
“Love and art are the same for him,” Yatora said, feeling incredibly miserable for some reason.
“The centre theme of Chagall’s works is love. But what is so striking about it?”
“Colour.”
Hashida’s face turned to that unhealthy excitement he got when he was surrounded by wonderful paintings.
“It’s not about art. Art is life. Love is the colour of life.”
Yatora’s heart beat stronger with comprehension. Art wasn’t designed for art itself, just as life wasn’t only for living. There had to be something behind, something bigger.
“Because the meaning of life is colour, love is therefore colour itself,” he said and felt Hashida’s joy at having him on the same wavelength. It pleased Yatora as well, to be able to link their thoughts.
Hashida really always found a way to make him look at art from a different perspective.
“After Matisse was gone, Picasso said that Chagall was the only person left who understood colour. He said he didn’t know how Chagall’s visions came to him. That he must have an angel in his head. It might also interest you that Picasso and Chagall had a peculiar relationship,” Hashida said mirthfully, “They were friends and rivals at once. Doesn’t that remind you of someone?”
“You can’t honestly compare me and Yotasuke to those two geniuses. I mean, maybe you can Yotasuke, but me …”
“As always, you’re too focused on that word, Yatora. Who is a genius and who is not.” Hashida’s smile was comforting, but Yatora knew that Hashida had this same insecurity, deep inside him. “Chagall thought it was no use to create from the head, only what was from the heart could work. He even said that his sole interest was love.”
As they passed to another, darkened room, Yatora was soaked in blue. There were huge window glass paintings that let in the light, but through their blue paint it was a dim, bluish light. Chagall’s paintings were like dreamscapes, but in this glow, Hashida and Yatora were now inside the dream.
“His later wife, Valentina, gave him new energy, that’s visible in his passion for glass painting. You saw how much blue he uses, but it is a different blue than Picasso’s. Before cubism, Picasso’s blue period was caused by his friend’s, Casagemas suicide. His blue is a depressing colour, the colour of death. But for Chagall, blue was the colour of romance that could help heal the broken world.”
Yatora thought about the blue of Shibuya morning that had captured him, taken him prisoner to spin him into art. For him, blue was the colour of life.
“Everyone sees colour individually, is that what you’re trying to say, Hashida?”
“Love is always individual, for every artist,” Hashida answered instead. “For every person.”
All those concepts were so heavy, so life-consuming. Love seemed so big when Yatora didn’t even fully comprehend attraction.
Yatora observed Hashida carefully while the other turned to the artwork with fascination. He knew Hashida would generally be perceived as handsome, even despite his quirky hairstyle. In his case, the braids didn’t make him look feminine. He was too tall and broad to be considered anything but manly. But it was an elegant manliness, not a coarse one. His thin waist and classy posture made him graceful.
Yatora looked and looked, and only averted his gaze when Hashida turned his cat eyes on him. His face was attractive too. Actually, all of Hashida was very appealing and the sudden realization embarrassed Yatora.
He recognized it before but had refused to dwell on it. He remembered how he lost his balance on the ladder once, in the backroom of Saeki-sensei’s art school. Hashida helped him, caught him around the waist and forced his body forward so Yatora would regain his hold. The adrenaline of almost falling was the governing emotion back then, but Yatora didn’t fail to notice how big Hashida’s hands were on his sides, how firmly they held him. Thinking about it now, when he tried to be more open to possibilities, brought heat to his face.
The fact he liked how broad, and tall, and manly Hashida appeared didn’t speak in favour of his diminishing heterosexuality. If ever such a thing existed.
Hashida smiled, tilting his head a bit with puzzlement at Yatora’s reaction. He was full of these cute little mannerisms too, but those didn’t make him seem girly either.
“Something wrong, Yatora?”
“No, sorry I – just got lost in thought.”
Hashida accepted his answer without need of further explanation.
Back in the small, two-bed room they rented, Hashida showed him more artwork on his laptop explaining this and that love affair of the authors. His stories were interesting, but Yatora didn’t find them all that helpful in his situation.
They were sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, resting their backs against it. Hashida had the laptop on his knees so Yatora had to sit close at his side to see properly, and he could feel the warmth seeping from Hashida’s body.
“Say, Hashida,” he started, trying for casual. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
Hashida seemed amused by the question.
“I don’t.”
“But you had girlfriends before?”
“Yes, I did. Well, only one for longer than a couple of days though.”
Yatora made a face which caused Hashida to laugh.
“I’m not a player, I swear! People are just often attracted to me and then they change their mind once they see my intense interest in art.”
Ah. So it was the art fetish that drew people away.
“You never had a girlfriend, Yatora?”
“No.”
“It’s not so uncommon at our age. I think the professor gave a hard assignment for a group of people so young. You will probably find a girl you like later on, Yatora, don’t worry so much about it.”
Yatora curled his knees and looked at the wall.
“What if I don’t … what if it’s not a girl I find?”
He glanced at Hashida to see him watch Yatora intently.
“I wanted to know. So, I asked Yuka to kiss me. I asked Kuwana out on a date and she kissed me too. But it didn’t … it didn’t feel as it’s supposed to. I think. But maybe it’s because of the person and not the gender. I have no way of knowing.”
“There’s quite a simple way of knowing,” Hashida put the laptop away on the bed, his hand straying to rest behind Yatora’s back. “But it’s a dangerous way you’re trying to test things. Someone could take advantage.”
Yatora swallowed, taking his eyes of his own knees and to Hashida’s dark eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you take into account other people’s desires?”
Yatora didn’t know what to answer. He did think about whether a person wanted to kiss him or not. He would never force anybody. In fact, he didn’t even initiate any of those kisses. He didn’t press when Yakumo turned out unwilling.
He looked down at Hashida’s lips and back into his eyes. He knew it must have looked like an invitation. Mostly because it was one.
“Would you like me to kiss you, Yatora?” Hashida asked for verbal confirmation, probably just to be annoying and make Yatora admit it.
“Would you like to kiss me, Hashida?”
Hashida smiled and touched the side of Yatora’s face. This delicate touch burned him.
“Very much,” Hashida said, before leaning down and connecting their lips.
It was different. This time, Yatora felt real intent behind the kiss, not the playful curiosity Ryuji had, nor Kuwana’s testiness. Hashida held him in place, tipped Yatora’s face more towards himself while they kissed. He opened Yatora’s mouth with his own, and through parted lips his tongue went into Yatora’s mouth. It wasn’t as forceful as Kuwana’s, but just as shocking. Yatora’s eyes shot open for a moment when their tongues coiled around each other. The tight heat in his mouth seemed to spread through his body. He clenched his eyes shut again when Hashida pitched forward, effectively pushing Yatora more into the edge of the bed.
Yatora felt him everywhere around and now he really considered how large Hashida was. And Yatora was in no way petite, but he felt overpowered with how Hashida led the kiss, with how he fit himself over Yatora’s body.
Well, this was definitely something else. The kiss with Kuwana had nothing sexual in it. The kiss with Ryuji was on an actual bed, and yet, not a thought of desire that encompassed something more than kissing passed his mind at that time. He never realized how he longed to be touched in this unrestrained way before.
His breaths came out as pants when Hashida separated their lips with a truly urgent expression.
“Don’t compare me to others.”
He only saw glimpses of Hashida being distressed before. To wipe it off his face, Yatora shot forwards, kissed him with fervour.
He understood what was different now. Hashida wanted him. Yatora felt it with every kiss, every opening of their lips against one another, every time Hashida’s tongue made heat settle somewhere in Yatora’s stomach. There was a pleasure he didn’t feel with the other kisses.
‘I’m always earnest,’ Hashida had once said, and it must have been true in this case. His kiss was honest in a very simple way. The hands travelling down Yatora’s shirt showed his need, and Yatora was as much terrified as excited about where this desire led.
This was probably a sign that he was more inclined towards men, damn it. Did that mean … would Yakumo’s kiss feel good too?
He froze at the thought.
‘You were thinking about something else.’ ‘Don’t compare me to others.’‘Did you take into account other people’s desires?’
They all told him. They told him that he could hurt them, and he, who prided himself on noticing things about people, ignored it in favour of his own exploration. Worse, he did it for a Uni project. He was never even interested in trying out these things before.
With Ryuji, with Kuwana, it wasn’t so bad because they didn’t have feelings for him. But Hashida was different and Yatora needed to either commit or resign. Going along with it just to see how things turned out while he was still thinking about others … he couldn’t do it to a friend.
“Hashida,” he pushed on Hashida’s arms, separating them. “Stop.”
Hashida stared at him with surprise that quickly turned into sour understanding.
“I’m sorry.”
The smile Hashida gave him was a mask.
“Nothing to be sorry about, Yatora. We were just trying things out, right?”
“I didn’t mean to –“
“It’s alright.”
After that, Hashida went on to have a bath and when he came back, it was like nothing happened. Well, if you didn’t count the horrible tension that hung about the room when Yatora tried to sleep.
In the morning, they started the day with normal chit-chat. By breakfast, Yatora couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t want it to exist undiscussed between them, to darken their friendship.
“Hashida, I really am sorry about yesterday.”
Hashida smiled, though it was lacking his usual amusement.
“There’s no need to feel sorry. In fact, I’m the one who should apologize for going overboard and making you uncomfortable.”
“That’s not it!” Yatora’s own volume made him ashamed, but it had the desired effect of getting Hashida to look at him without a barrier of politeness.
“No?”
“No, I just – I shouldn’t have asked this of you. I did think about something … someone else. I shouldn’t have been so inconsiderate and treat it so lightly.”
This time, Hashida’s smile had traces of sadness, but it was an honest smile.
“There’s nothing wrong in this, Yatora. It’s natural to want to try our things and understand who you like. People are always bound to get hurt by this process.”
“But I don’t want to hurt you,” Yatora said, desperate for Hashida to understand. “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t think that you might … I was only focusing on myself.”
“Well, that’s good,” Hashida said, surprising him. “You’re often so focused on how to please others. I’m glad you were honest with me. I wouldn’t like for you to go along with things just for my sake.” There’s a sound of a little chuckle that makes Yatora’s heart squeeze. “And how could you have known? I mean, I honestly tried to tell myself when I invited you to go to Europe with me, that I was doing it just because I liked you as a friend.”
Yatora could almost imagine it; going away with Hashida, seeing all the big-shot art. He could imagine becoming close with Hashida. Very, very close. But there was a barrier in his thoughts that didn’t let him enjoy that image in its entirety.
“But my want will not change the fact it’s not what you want.”
“Half of the time, I don’t know what I want.” He was learning a lot about what he didn’t want, lately. He just wasn’t sure he actually liked the direction it was taking him. “But I know I want us to be friends.”
Hashida’s snort added some lightness to this meek and selfish denial. But liking someone, loving someone, Yatora realized, was a bit of an egotistic and unfair ordeal.
“Turns out rejection hurts even when you tried to tell yourself you didn’t hope for anything, huh?”
He knew Hashida was making a joke out of his own situation, but it hit somehow too close home for Yatora. And he really didn’t like realizing it.
Rene Magritte – The Lovers
“What you’re trying to do is useless.”
Yatora’s eye twitched even before he turned to see Yotasuke some distance behind him and observing Yatora’s half-finished canvas with aversion.
“You mean my painting?”
“I mean you trying to find some meaning in this stupid assignment,” Yotasuke said, “And also, yes, your painting. You really think going around kissing people is going to help with that?”
Yatora’s head throbbed with irritation. How did Yotasuke even know about this?
Hashida. Ryuji didn’t know Yotasuke that well and didn’t have contact with him, same with Kuwana. Yakumo could have told him, but they didn’t get along very well either. It had to be Hashida.
“Are you done with your painting, so you have time to judge me?”
“Yes, I’m done.”
Yatora was honestly shocked Yotasuke managed to tackle this topic. He had almost no experience, but Yotasuke didn’t even have friends until recently. Yatora strongly doubted he had any idea what romantic love felt like.
But then, Yotasuke was a fucking genius. He probably didn’t even have to understand the topic to paint it.
“Want to see it?” Yotasuke asked him.
Oh, was Yotasuke suddenly lonely when they weren’t in the same room, and he couldn’t torture Yatora with how much better he was? It would be unlike him to even care. Yatora kind of wanted him to care, even if it was just to be mean to him.
“No, thanks.”
Yotasuke shrugged and backed out with a blank face.
Yatora waited three minutes before he fished out his phone and picked out Hashida’s number.
“Why did you tell him?” He almost shouted when he heard Hashida’s melodic rendering of his name.
“See, Sekai-kun is a little slow with such things, so it’s good to make him curious first. I thought I could get him a little jealous.”
“What are you talking about, Hashida?”
“Ara? Isn’t Sekai-kun the one you’ve been thinking about and comparing everyone to?”
Yatora was almost horrified by the idea. At the same time, he kind of understood why Hashida even got that notion, because Yatora had always been a tiny bit obsessed with Yotasuke.
“No! He’s like … a rival! A pain in my ass! A role model! I don’t fucking know, but he never crossed my mind when we …”
Yotasuke was like Mori-senpai in his mind, even though they were wildly different as people. Yatora wouldn’t dare put his inadequate hands on him.
There was a beat of silence.
“Who then?”
He detected the sudden chill in Hashida’s voice. Damn, was it possible that Hashida was mentally prepared that he got rejected because of Yotasuke and had accepted this competition? Was the sudden change bothering him?
“No one.”
“Yatora.”
“No one you know. Gotta go, bye!”
Yatora gave in and went to see Yotasuke’s painting the next day. Surprisingly, it wasn’t exactly a painting, as there was no actual paint used. It was a canvas filled entirely with cut-outs, and, as per Yotasuke’s genius, the colours and the composition were striking. But it was the clear message that really punched Yatora.
The clippings were of various famous lovers: from Romeo and Juliet to Pretty Woman. The faces of the pairs were switched, mingled, creating discord, layers, a sense of wrongness. Despite not seeing a title, the message was clear for Yatora: ‘Love is a many-faced lie.’ It wasn’t just irritation that the author felt at the topic, it was outright resentment. It was like Yotasuke was saying; ‘I will not even waste paint on something so dull.’
Yatora trembled beneath the greatness of Yotasuke’s individuality. He understood what Yotasuke meant when he said what Yatora was trying to do was useless. The guts Yotasuke had to do this, to go directly against what the teacher was hoping for, and instead of showing what he thought love was, what his experience with it was, displaying what he thought about the teacher’s obsession with the topic itself, and with a certainty he will do it better than anyone else, pissed Yatora off so much. This picture was a challenge to the whole world and anyone who believed in love. God, he really hated Yotasuke sometimes.
“It’s amazing.”
Yotasuke only blinked, like that was obvious.
“You always do this, huh?” Yatora said with a laugh that he hoped didn’t sound as self-derogatory as he felt. “Always make me jealous with how good you are and how much further along you got.”
Hoping for Yotasuke to contradict this was futile, Yatora knew. But still, his anger rose up as soon as Yotasuke answered.
“That’s your own fault.” Yotasuke’s gaze was merciless. “You pride yourself on being a hard worker, but you’re procrastinating.”
“I’m working,” he rebutted through gritted teeth. “You just don’t see it because –“
“Playing around with people is not working. Seeking to understand love is not necessary for your art. You’re using art as an excuse. The things you’re doing … You’re not doing them as an artist.”
His eyes prickled at the corners. Fuck, why did being infuriated by Yotasuke always make him such a cry-baby?
“Is it fun for you, being mean to me?” Yatora’s voice was breaking.
Yotasuke stared, a little surprised, clearly not understanding Yatora at all.
“I wasn’t being mean.”
What Yatora heard was; ‘you’re not worth it to even be mean to.’ Yotasuke wouldn’t waste paint on him either.
He didn’t want to show Yotasuke his tears, so he went out, sprinted to the studio where his painting was. Once there, he looked at his work of kissing people and wailed. It wasn’t good enough. Not emotionally, not even technically. There was no point to this painting. At this stage, he could present a blank canvas, and that would be closer to his understanding of love.
He needed to get rid of it. He wasted a canvas, but it didn’t matter, it wasn’t the first time. He took up the brush and painted red stripes, cancelled it. The childish display didn’t help him all that much.
Kneeling on the floor, dirty with paint and tears, he must have looked like a disaster. He heard someone’s steps entering the room, but the only effort to hide himself he could muster was to look at the ground, let his hair cover his eyes.
There was a hand in his hair, gently going through it. Yatora jolted and saw it was Yakumo, crouched next to him.
He didn’t expect him here. Yakumo was already done, he had no reason to be in the studio. Why did he come? Why did he have to be the one to see Yatora like this?
“Why are you crying, little tiger?” Yakumo said, his smile softer than usual.
Yatora wanted to escape from him. At the same time, he begged in his mind for Yakumo not to take his hand away. Had he been braver, he would have fallen into Yakumo’s arms, became the blissful embraced man in Chagall’s painting. He was sure it would feel safe in Yakumo’s hold.
“I saw Takahashi-kun outside. He looked quite pissy. Did you two have a fight?” He sounded proud at the idea that Yatora could make Yotasuke irritated.
“Yakumo-san,” Yatora’s voice was terribly nasal, but there was little he could do about that. “Do you think love is a lie?”
The hand in Yatora’s hair moved down, fingers skimming Yatora’s skin. It rested below Yatora’s eye, Yakumo’s thumb wiping at the corner. This little touch seemed so intimate something in Yatora came to life, burning him from the inside. He wanted to tell Yakumo not to touch him like this if he didn’t mean anything by it. He wanted to ask Yakumo to touch him more.
“I mean, I don’t know. But I hope it’s real, y’know?” Yakumo’s smile was blinding in its sincerity. “There are some people who say art is pointless too. And maybe it is for them, but it isn’t for those who believe it not to be. So, I guess love and art both depend on the person?”
Yatora sighed, his palm going around Yakumo’s hand to hold it in place when he hung his head in exhaustion.
“Why are you always so sure of things, Yakumo-san? You seem so emotionally balanced. I envy you.”
“Not always,” Yakumo answered, taking his hand away.
Yatora gave him an inquiring stare, but Yakumo was good at avoiding topics if he wanted to.
“Anyway, I’m passing by here because Miki proposed a get-together for everyone.”
“Damn, I forgot!”
Yakumo gave him a critical stare.
“If you’d rather not go I’ll tell them –“
“No, I want to go. Just wait a moment, I’ll clean myself up a bit.”
He would rather drink, and eat, and be with people than wallow before a destroyed painting. And he didn’t want to part from Yakumo now.
There was just one tiny detail he forgot. Over the course of second year, Yotasuke started attending some social gatherings, particularly if Okamoto was going. It was a good thing, usually, but not when the tension between them was so high they could hardly look at each other.
Yatora gave in and went over to Yotasuke to mend the bridges, because he knew that there was small chance Yotasuke would. Despite everything, he didn’t want to lose this friendship that was so hard for him to obtain.
Yotasuke accepted his presence with neutrality, but it wasn’t animosity at least. Trapped between him and Okamoto, he was forced into a discussion about rabbits when Yakumo went by him. He felt fingers skim his shoulder lightly. When he looked up, Yakumo winked at him, and then went on with Momo to do shots and be the general loud disruption.
Yotasuke seemed to notice this exchange and gawked a bit at Yatora, to which he could do nothing but avert his gaze, feeling sweat at the back of his neck. It was almost like getting caught red-handed. Could Yotasuke not observe him closely when Yatora was so foolishly occupied?
The longer Okamoto and Yotasuke talked about this and that, the more Yatora’s eyes strayed, searching for an escape route. His eyes stopped on Aizawa, who had just gone in, late because of her job. Miki immediately stood to greet her, and because she was clearly a little drunk, she tripped a bit and fell right into Aizawa’s hold.
Miki laughed it off, but also leaned more into Aizawa, and the look on Aizawa’s face … Yatora had never seen it on her before. But he had seen this look when Sumida talked about his girlfriend, when his mom dressed for an outing and his dad gave her a compliment. Once Aizawa’s eyes found his, it was not with embarrassment that she met his indelicate gaze. It was with a challenge, with possessiveness.
Yatora saw her piece on this love project recently, and he didn’t understand it then. It was basically a maquette of Geidai. It didn’t make sense as an expression of romantic love, and especially not in the case of Aizawa that hated painting.
He understood now, why Aizawa was at Geidai. He understood what happened at the festival, the depth of emotion that run under the scene. He was taken aback. Was that really it? Could someone really align their life so much to someone else because of love?
“Disgusting.”
Yatora turned his head to Yotasuke, shocked. As he thought, Yotasuke had his eyes on the two women as well. Thankfully, he said it so quietly only Yatora and Okamoto could hear, but Yatora was enraged as much by the word as the bold stare with which Yotasuke met his eyes.
He grabbed Yotasuke’s arm and started lifting him up.
“Go outside with me for a bit,” he proclaimed, more to calm Okamoto than Yotasuke.
Yotasuke didn’t even have time to put down his drink. Yatora didn’t throw him against the alley wall, but it really demanded all of his self-control to only slightly back him into it. The petite man stared up at him, his brows furrowed with some awful spite.
“You can’t say these things about people, Yotasuke-kun,” Yatora’s voice was pained. “You can’t judge them for loving who they love. You may not agree with two girls being together, but it’s none of your business.”
The desperation in his voice was because it hit so close to home. Did he not put Ryuji down for liking boys before? Did he not think of it as something that shouldn’t be done? Was he not, quite recently, terrified of going out of the norms of who could love who? Those could have been words spoken by him, not so long ago.
And now look at him. Oh, how the tables have turned.
“I don’t care if they’re girls. It would be equally disgusting if it was a man and a woman. And the same about you and that loud guy –“
Yatora caught the collar of Yotasuke’s shirt and squeezed in wordless anger. He felt the shameful prickling at the corners of his eyes again. But he was stunned to see Yotasuke’s gaze just as furious as his.
“With everything you do, you just make me see how abnormal I am.”
Yatora’s eyes widened. Was Yotasuke … jealous? Not of Yatora, but rather of the fact Yatora was doing something Yotasuke couldn’t.
“I’m so pissed at this assignment. It’s like listening to my mother say ‘oh, you could find yourself a nice girl someday, if only drawing wasn’t the only thing you were good at,’ with a dumb, patronizing smile. What if I don’t want to? What if I just … can’t do those things?”
“Yotasuke …”
“And there you go, just embracing it, just trying it out. Adapting to it. You can kiss people and you can love people. You can understand. I … can’t imagine myself kissing anyone. I will never be normal. I will never have this.”
Something in Yatora broke at the despairing tone. He grabbed the open soda bottle out of Yotasuke’s hands and brought it to his lips, taking a long gulp. He gave the bottle back to a surprised Yotasuke a moment later.
“Now. You’ve had this. Is it fine?”
“What?” Yotasuke asked, staring at him like he was a madman.
To be honest, he probably was.
“A kiss. An indirect kiss. We’ve had one before, on the exam, right? So, if you think about it, you’ve already kissed someone. Kind of.”
Yotasuke stared.
“Are you an idiot?”
Yatora’s irritation spiked, and he had a strong urge to invade Yotasuke’s space further, because he knew the other boy hated it.
“No, just – Listen, weren’t you the one who told me to look at things differently? What if we coded this as a kiss? As a kiss that doesn’t distress you. You don’t need to be like other people, Yotasuke-kun. And you can have your own kind of love and intimacy too.”
Yotasuke seemed mute with shock. There were reddish spots appearing on his face, but Yatora wasn’t sure if it was out of embarrassment or anger.
“I don’t love you.”
“I do.”
Yotasuke’s eyes widened. Yatora was mortified by how freely those words have left him.
“Everything you tell me, every attention you give me, feels monumental. That must be some kind of love, right? Our own kind?”
He grinned through the anxiety of telling Yotasuke that.
“Gross,” Yotasuke commented scrunching his nose.
Yatora felt his body become heavy with dejection. But his arms lifted again, the hairs on his arms electrified like the fur of an over-excited puppy when Yotasuke took the bottle up and drank from it as well. His smile of joy must have been too bright, because Yotasuke turned his face from the sight, squinting his eyes at the wall.
“You’re a creep, Yaguchi-san.” He said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. And then, much quieter; “Thank you.”
Man Rey – The Kiss
“Jealousy is a cruel emotion,” Yakumo’s grandfather used to say. “We shouldn’t be possessive of living beings. But it’s hard not to feel it when we want to be special to someone.”
A nine-year old Yakumo received that lecture when the stray cat he had befriended had gotten used to other people. At first, the little wild thing didn’t approach him either, just observed him from a distance as he fished.
Being poor in a city was different than being poor in the country, Yakumo would understand in his teens after moving to Tokyo. It was easier to obtain food in the country, for one. His family mainly fished, and farmed on the small piece of garden they owned. They couldn’t afford pigs or cows, but his mother kept chickens, so they exchanged some eggs for milk, some vegetables for rice, and they made do. Yakumo had gotten good at fishing too. His grandfather had taught him that the key was patience, so Yakumo often used the time to do his homework or read books.
He didn’t know how to read before he got sent to school. He remembered it was a scary thought to him then; to enter school already behind everyone whose moms and dads taught them something besides how to grow a vegetable and clean the house. But it wasn’t like that exactly; the school was full of village kids from all over, some from a very similar household to Yakumo’s. Sending children to school was obligatory and the state took care of expenses such as the boat fare that took Yakumo and other island kids an hour of his way to school. Here, having neighbours who had older kids also helped; he received old schoolbooks from them. And once he learned to read, he started using the school library too, so he had something to do while he waited for the fish to take.
He tamed the cat by sharing the fish. There was no better way to befriend animals. Slowly, the cat started to allow Yakumo to pet it, to play with it, and even climbed onto Yakumo’s body to sleep on his lap. The sense of accomplishment was unparalleled.
Yakumo made a mistake when his sister and other village kids saw him. She politely asked if she could pet the cat, and of course, at first it was afraid of her. But Yakumo showed her how to tame it, and after receiving food from her and the other kids, the cat had gained the sense of safety. Weeks went by and it allowed Yakumo’s sister to lift it up, even though Yakumo still had scars from when he tried to do it.
It was a terrible feeling that ended with burning tears as he told his sister to stop bothering him while he fished. He said many mean things to her, stated that if they go hungry it would be her fault. She cried and it made Yakumo feel even worse.
His grandfather was their mitigator. He talked with Yakumo long and with sympathy, but of his words, Yakumo remembered only the sense: the cat’s world had expanded thanks to having more people it wasn’t afraid of. It was not fair of Yakumo to keep the cat from making new friends, and that it didn’t mean the cat would be any less of his friend.
That had to be Yakumo’s first lesson on possessiveness, because up to that point, he had little to be possessive of.
Even though Yatora was obviously not a cat, the same rules applied. Yatora was not his, and Yakumo had no right to limit him because he wanted to be special in his eyes. The thing was, Yakumo knew Yatora needed this trial and error period, needed experience to enrich his life and his art. He needed to be able to live freely and give into little curiosities.
Was that what he was to Yatora now? Was he a curiosity, just one of the people Yatora liked enough to think that maybe he would like to experiment with him?
There was nothing wrong with it. Yakumo just couldn’t take it, couldn’t take being one of them, and not the one. And especially when he looked at Yatora around that boy. Takahashi Yotasuke.
He saw them today, when Takahashi came over while Yatora was painting. One simple world of that kid and Yatora was blooming under the deadpan praise, his energy for work doubling. Whatever power Takahashi had over Yatora, it was helping Yatora improve. Even if it made him cry sometimes. He could tell Takahashi was special to Yatora and it made him feel so, so jealous. He had no right. But he felt it anyway.
Yakumo had no advantage over Takahashi except for the fact that he was less physically distant. He used it, truly, more to be at peace with himself than with any real objective, just touching Yatora in friendly ways.
“Why are you here, Murai? Your painting is already finished.”
Yatora sounded irritated but did nothing to throw Yakumo off his back. Yakumo had hazarded sitting directly behind Yatora on the ground, one of his hands around Yatora’s arm, and chin on Yatora’s shoulder, as Yatora stared critically at his almost finished painting.
“It needs last touches. And don’t call me ‘Murai.’ You haven’t called me that since the very beginning of first year.”
He held in the need to rub his chin into Yatora’s shoulder, to bend a bit and kiss his neck. He knew this closeness was making Yatora sensitive and a bit awkward, and Yatora’s refusal to adhere to it, to push Yakumo away, was a testament to how much he didn’t want to admit it.
Yakumo wondered what Yatora would do if Yakumo did all the things he wanted to him. If he held Yatora against his chest and opened him up to new possibilities, with his hands, and lips, and cock. He wondered if it would be a curiosity then too, a part of Yatora’s learning process.
He wanted to teach it to Yatora. He wanted to enrich him and make him grow. But he wanted to be his sole teacher. More than a teacher. He wanted to take Yatora to the island and show himself, from the beginning. But he seemed to lack the courage that he was so full of all his life.
“I love this painting,” Yakumo told Yatora instead. “You went a long way with it.”
What he loved even more than the painting was Yatora’s look of shy satisfaction; his flushed cheeks, bright eyes, lips bitten to stop a smile.
The painting was quite abstract, but if you looked well enough, you would see it was a greyish creature, one that was not yet sure what shape it should take. And the creature was leaning up as for a kiss – the sense of anticipation strong in its pose. Around it, there were other creatures, colourful, bigger ones. Ones whose shape was surer.
“I’m not wholly satisfied with it.”
“Spoken like a true artist,” Yakumo snickered.
“You’re always so sure of yourself,” Yatora said, turning his head to face him with a wicked smile, “does that mean you’re not a true artist?”
Oh, Yatora was getting cheeky. That deserved some punishment.
“You little –“
His hands went to Yatora’s waist and tickled him. He noticed before, that Yatora’s waist was sensitive, and he used the knowledge well, making Yatora laugh, and wheeze, and try to break out. The problem was that Yatora got very wiggly in his hold and somehow that ended with pushing back more into Yakumo’s chest and getting them very close and very breathless.
When they looked at each other, everything seemed to stop. Yatora’s eyes were wide, his lips slightly open. Innocently expectant. Every instinct told Yakumo to kiss him.
But Yatora was only so willing because he wanted to test it. He needed to test if Yakumo was different than his other friends.
What if he wasn’t? What if he was just a part of Yatora’s growth, a steppingstone? What if the only reason Yatora was making star eyes at him now was because of this experiment he had going on?
Yakumo didn’t like false hopes and he didn’t want to exist solely as a test subject.
He let go of Yatora’s waist, scooting a little back. The look of Yatora’s disappointment wasn’t well-hidden enough. Maybe Yatora was surprised he couldn’t get from Yakumo what others gave so freely?
Yakumo would have given him a thousand kisses if they meant something. If it wasn’t to be as the object of Yatora’s art, his teacher, his helper. If Yatora wanted to kiss him, for the sole act of kissing, and not to prove something.
“I’m gonna step out for a smoke,” he said, unable to look at Yatora’s disappointed confusion any longer.
He needed to calm down. He wanted to have Yatora, even in this marginal way, use the situation to get a taste of him. But what would happen when Yatora said; ‘no, that’s not it? You’re not it?’
Yakumo wasn’t often afraid. Life was a series of things one couldn’t predict, and he was usually able to face them head on. He liked a challenge. But he feared this.
He laughed to himself, letting out puffs of smoke. When was the last time feelings stumped him so much? Ah, Yatora really was something special.
Yatora, who, after a moment, stomped over to him, stole Yakumo’s half-burned cigarette, and put it in his lips with fury. Tiger-eyed, wild, talented, hard-working, lovely Yatora.
Yakumo climbed up the stairs to the studio again and took his big canvas off the wall. No, this painting wouldn’t do. He spent all night making another.
Tsubasa Yamaguchi – Blue Period.
When Ryuji texted him, asking if he could come over and see how critiques in Geidai looked, Yatora didn’t expect he would bring Mori with him. Obviously, that caused both nerves and excitement for him. It has been a long time since he saw her.
His excited chatter was possibly embarrassing, but he was so curious how Musahino was compared to Geidai, and how she was dealing. His excitement must have been visible, because when Aizawa passed him, she was almost cackling. And when Hachiro, Momo, and Yakumo approached them, both Momo and Hachiro were grinning at him.
“Didn’t know you were friends with cute girls, Yatora,” Momo joked, shoving her elbow into his side. “C’mon, introduce me.”
“Ow. Ok, fine! This is Momoyo, Hachiro, and Yakumo.” He turned to motion to his other side. “This is Mori-senpai and Yuka. Hachiro, you already met Yuka, right? You happy now, Momo?”
“Now, now, Yatora,” Ryuji said, locking arms with him. “You didn’t say you knew cute girls in Geidai either.”
Ryuji immediately started flirting with Hacchan and Momo, still hanging off his arm. Yatora’s brow was twitching so hard. Honestly, how did he end up with these kind of people as his friends?
“Yuka-chan,” Mori’s sweet voice interrupted. “Don’t embarrass Yaguchi.”
Mori was a fucking angel.
“Oh?” Ryuji trilled. “Am I embarrassing you, Yaguchi-kun? Tell me.”
Ryuji caught his chin and tried to force it his way, presumably to laugh at Yatora’s blush. In the process, Yatora’s eyes fell on Yakumo. It wasn’t really surprising, they seemed to gravitate to Yakumo all the time recently. What was surprising was the look Yakumo had. Yatora was breathless.
It looked like Yakumo wasn’t happy when Ryuji touched him. But that couldn’t be it, could it? It never happened before, anyway, when someone bothered Yatora in this way.
He observed Yakumo, but for the rest of their short conversation, Yakumo seemed to return to his extroverted self, and he was friendly to both Mori and Ryuji. When he was saying his goodbye though, he gave Yatora a look that seemed to mean something, but Yatora couldn’t decipher it.
“Don’t be late for your critique, Yatora,” he said, and the trio went away.
Yatora ended up almost late for his critique. He completely lost his sense of time talking with Ryuji and Mori. When he entered the room, it was truly at the last moment. Critique of Yakumo’s painting was just ending.
It was too chaotic to notice everything, but Yatora knew there was a big difference in the room. That change was that Yakumo’s large canvas was nowhere to be seen, but Yatora couldn’t take a good look at whatever Yakumo was presenting.
He only heard Yumesaki say they didn’t expect it of Yakumo with his penchant for big, confident pieces, and Hanakage answer that love could make people act unlike themselves. Before he could process the words, it was his turn to present, and Yakumo had slipped out of the room.
His critique went by as it usually did – never quite perfect enough. But the professor who gave the assignment seemed pleased with his work, at least.
Only after that, he finally had time to see Yakumo’s painting. It was an F10, the smallest canvas Yatora had ever seen Yakumo use. Yatora stood before it, gaping wordlessly. It was a tiger. A tiger on a leash, on a street between city buildings. Nobody was holding the leash though, it was dragging on a ground behind the animal. The only colours were black, grey, orange, and the yellow-gold of the tiger’s striking eyes.
“Yatora. Tora.” Ryuji said next to him with a laugh. “It was that guy that we met on the way, right? Yakumo? Is he one of your ‘kissing friends’, Yatora?”
It was all said in a teasing tone, until Ryuji took a good look at his face. Yatora’s body was lowkey vibrating with nerves.
“No, he’s … it’s different.”
“Oh.”
Yatora went closer and saw the painting’s caption.
Murai Yakumo – Confession
Why? Did this mean what Yatora think it meant? Maybe he was misunderstanding, or he was getting too full of himself, or it was some joke on Yakumo’s part. But no. Yakumo’s art was honest, it was always sincere. And Yakumo himself called him ‘little tiger on a leash.’ There was no denying it. This really was a confession.
“Your friend’s picture is exquisite, Yaguchi-kun. So simple and yet so full of emotion.” Mori gave him an encouraging smile. “If you want to go, don’t mind us.”
“Thank you, Mori-senpai.”
He scoured all studios, but as he thought, there was no sign of Yakumo. He encountered Momo, who had no idea where Yakumo was, but she knew where Hacchan was, and once Yatora caught up to him, Hachiro gave him a place where Yakumo could be, without any certainty he would be there.
It was a small, old library. It wasn’t old in the aesthetic, ancient-wood shelves sense, but rather, it looked like a half-abandoned school library. The equally old librarian didn’t spare him a glance when he entered, and when Yatora enquired about Yakumo, the librarian waved an irritated hand towards a corridor, returning to his book a second later. Yatora made his way through the corridor to a slightly bigger, but untidy room, with cheap shelves and stuffy air.
Hachiro said Yakumo had spent part of his winter here as a ronin. It became immediately clear for him why. The room was terribly hot. Yatora, who was already sweating from running here, had to immediately take off his sweater.
Yakumo, seated at the only table amid the shelves, only had a black undershirt on the top of his body. It was revealing quite a bit of him, but then, Yakumo wasn’t one to care much. Yatora tried not to die from over-heating as he stared at the tattoo between Yakumo’s collarbones. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen Yakumo shirtless on many occasions.
“I own a phone, you know, Yatora?” Yakumo was grinning, looking up from his book. That fucker.
“I know you own a phone. But do you have it with you, at the moment?”
Yatora knew from experience that Yakumo often forgot it. His phone was an old thing, that could manage probably a very basic internet search at most. Yakumo didn’t use it like Yatora did, to watch idols and read manga. He easily forgot about it.
“Touché.”
Yatora was so, so irritated at this weird bastard. He didn’t even know what to talk about, he didn’t know how to start. For some reason, he thought about Aizawa and Miki, and that made him think of the festival.
“That time with the mikoshi, did you come to help specially because of me?”
He felt sore saying those words. Could it be that he was so important for Yakumo that he would change the course of his plans for him? Could that be what Yakumo was for him?
He expected a teasing answer, but Yakumo was straight-forward.
“Yes, I did. I mean, it was because Miki-san asked, but the first person I thought about helping was you. I ran to you, y’know?”
Yatora bit his lip and tried to hold in the strange mixture of joy and annoyance. Couldn’t Yakumo have said so? Not then, obviously, but now, when he had every chance to use this assignment, why did he wait to the end, why did he make a painting instead of saying it straight to Yatora’s face?
Yatora didn’t ask. In reality, he understood why. And another thing he understood was that there was a reason he ran here, the same reason Yakumo ran towards him to help with the mikoshi.
“Did you have to be so dramatic?” he asked, lifting his gaze at Yakumo, who had stood up and was now looming over him.
“Well, I’m an artist. We have a penchant for that.”
“You could have given me some sign. I was – disappointed when you seemed indifferent.”
“When was I ever indifferent towards you? And besides, you know I’m not exactly a person that would fit you. You wouldn’t even invite me inside your house and all. I’m not the type your parents would like.”
“That wasn’t -! It wasn’t because I was ashamed or anything. It was late, and after one of my friends made a huge mess once, I promised my parents not to bring people over. And for the record, I’m also not what my parents would have liked. They didn’t want an artist, that’s for sure.”
They did accept it though, didn’t they? He could only hope they would accept his choice of a partner too, when there came a day he invited Yakumo over and introduced him. But he was getting ahead of himself.
Yakumo was smirking. This time, he was teasing. His hand went to Yatora’s cheek, causing his heart to go into overdrive.
“So, what now, little tiger? You’re going to kiss me to figure out how you feel about me?”
He was overtaken by frustration that made him catch Yakumo’s undershirt and push him into the bookshelf. Yakumo’s eyes widened with surprise and anticipation, but then closed when Yatora moved closer, their lips almost touching.
“No,” he said, centimetres between them. “I don’t need to kiss you to know.” With that, he drew back.
Before he could back out completely, Yakumo caught him, one of his hands so low it was practically on Yatora’s ass. The other held the nape of Yatora’s neck. Blood rushed to his head when he felt Yakumo’s breath on his lips.
“I’m not letting you go now.”
He couldn’t think about how different Yakumo’s kiss felt compared to others, because he couldn’t think at all. The world seemed to stop as Yakumo took his lips, as Yatora collided with him. It was incensed, this kiss, desperate on both sides. He wanted to bite into Yakumo. He wanted Yakumo to swallow him whole.
There was something of a tiger in Yakumo too. Maybe Yatora didn’t have to have him all figured out to recognize all the ways they fit. Maybe it was enough that Yakumo wanted him and Yatora wanted him in return. Maybe that meeting of want was the place love was born.
He could scarcely breathe, Yakumo’s tongue doing dirty things to him inside his mouth. He sucked on his tongue and Yatora keened, a sound foreign and almost muted by Yakumo’s lips. His hands were out of control, burying into Yakumo’s hair, forcing him even closer, more into Yatora. He wanted Yakumo inside himself, though his mind was only slightly aware that it meant more than the tongue inside his mouth.
He trembled with the desire to break out of the cage of propriety and shame that had never bothered him before. It scared him, how much he wanted it. And it wasn’t a need to seem desirable to Yakumo. He felt Yakumo’s hunger for him well enough through his lips and hot hands. But Yakumo had never saw Yatora without the barrier of clothes, never saw this pitiful, unexciting body of his. No, it was not a need for Yakumo’s affirmation of want, but Yatora’s own selfish desire that ached to have Yakumo’s hands and lips on naked skin. This craving, that had always stayed obediently hidden, was now rearing its head, and Yatora didn’t know what to do with it.
When they parted, Yatora didn’t waste time. He leaned down and kissed the tattoo between Yakumo’s collarbones. Only after a moment he felt his ears heat up at his bravado.
“I really wanted to do that,” he explained flimsily.
Yakumo’s teeth were all fang and danger.
“Want to kiss the one at my back too?”
He said that into Yatora’s ear, nibbling on it. The hand was firmly on Yatora’s ass now. Yatora couldn’t find it in himself to swat it away. The force of Yakumo’s want, the intensity of his own need, was making him dizzy. Not to mention the shameless image of licking the tattoo on Yakumo’s back.
“Not here. Not today.”
Logically, he knew he wasn’t ready for more than a kiss at the moment. Physically, he was burning to have Yakumo’s hands on him, to explore him in a way nobody ever did before. Making out in a library was one thing. More was out of the question. Yakumo might have been a rule breaker, but Yatora wasn’t that bold.
Besides, he wanted his first time to be in an actual bed. Or in a bath. Or anywhere that seemed comfortable and wasn’t a public place. Call him old-fashioned.
Why was he getting so damn ahead of himself? They just kissed for the first time. Well, as a continuous stream of many kisses, but that wasn’t the point. But Yatora had been like that with art too. Once the road opened, he wanted to have it all at once, wanted to improve and learn immediately.
“Oh, Yatora,” Yakumo seemed mesmerized, high on the taste of Yatora’s lips alone. His hands were travelling down Yatora’s buttocks to his thighs, and Yatora was truly impressed when Yakumo managed to lift him up, Yatora’s hands and legs immediately latching onto him to keep balance. Yakumo turned them around and pushed Yatora into the same bookshelf. Yatora fucking prayed nobody would come in. “We’re going to have so much fun together.”
Yatora was terrified. He was also very excited for the future.
Who would have thought that a stupid assignment would have carried him to this point? University education really had some uses. And Yatora could be a good student.