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Riki sinks his teeth on the dip of Jay’s waist.
He would go for the hip, spilling tentatively out of the cotton sheet but it’s too bony. He nips at it with blunt teeth, to make a point.
“Don’t.” Jay admonishes, voice rough and beaten.
It threatens to make Riki’s stomach growl, the weeks of leaving his hunger unattended almost – almost – tying a suffocating knot in his guts. An itch he can not scratch and an infected raw skin wound he can not cleanse.
The youth pointedly doesn’t wonder about the possibility of his insides starting to feed on themselves.
“I like you in my mouth.” Riki shrugs.
He can’t quite compel his brain to accept it as only sexually.
His limbs are sore and abused but Jay lays bare in his bed, spread upon freshly washed sheets, sweaty hair under the saturated light of the dark bedroom.
Riki wouldn't eat him, despite everything, but he feels drawn to.
The youth’s chest heaves and his posture falters at the thought of letting go of his reins when he mouths at the body sprawled on the bed with a little more intent, a little more neglect. What would happen if he gives in or simply forgets about it. A slip of mind and he would have a mouthful of torn, bloody skin and maybe meat if he digs in for more.
He pictures the smell, putrid blood as it stains the bed and fills his mouth, then the engulfing taste on his tongue.
He has to shake the image of a willing and ever kindhearted Jay, who lets him gnaw at the muscles between his ribcage while he gets all lovey-dovey — like he usually does once Riki has grown soft inside of him — and scratches his hair, sniffs on his limbs, off his head. He is hungrier now.
Riki reaches one hand lazily to play with the thick jizz droplets on Jay’s chest. The touch gets him a hiss and a weak kick when Jay’s knee spasms and hits his side.
“Quit it.” Jay murmurs. Riki shushes him and resumes playing with his come. “You are really thickskulled, God.” He laments but lets Riki brush his fingernails at his chest.
Usually Jay would ask for a towel or a handkerchief, sometimes he would be the one to get up and let Riki scummy and sweaty get down from his high to fetch them something.
The showers were also great, there were a few days — when Jay had time or was in Tokyo for more than the normal two-three days — that he would let Riki slip in the bathtub behind him without throwing a fit or talking his ears off. Today it feels unusual, Jay sits still and relaxed on the bed, no mention of standing up or cursing the younger one for dirtying him further.
Riki pushes, an open palm over his stomach. He massages it with the heel of his hand, watching the slow up and down as he breathes.
Jay moves a hand around his wrist, barely there. He doesn’t stop him.
“What?” The young man practically purrs.
“You are making it so much dirtier for no reason.”
“Do I need a reason to?” He pulls his hand back — the torso he was holding trembles — and licks his palm clean.
“Gross.”
Riki chuckles, “Tastes good, hyungnim…”
It’s getting more and more difficult to creep any of his obscenities into their rendezvous. Jay is slowly but surely adapting well to whatever Riki willingly takes and offers but, sometimes, he can get a cute reaction out of the other man.
Jay pulls away to put his glasses on. He looks sharper with it, his jaw sits handsomely in his face and Riki can peek at his legs too, below the sheet that covers his crotch in fake modesty.
Riki’s mind helpfully provides the sensation of his hips faltering when Jay would lick at his jaw and say his name into his open mouth.
His hyung could be really shy, they have really come a long way together. Now he is all breathy moans in his ear, bitten nails prodding at his sides and teeth in his shoulder when he lazes around and lets his cock snug inside before they get too worked up and quit messing around.
His dick twitches but Riki is irrevocably too hungry and his limbs feel too lethargic, too heavy. Otherwise he could go for another bite. He can see his own mouth licking at the soft swell of his pec but the idea becomes blurry when he thinks about how hungry he is and how Jay’s insides would taste like. How sated he would be after eating his fill.
The idea of it alone, gets his stomach growling. The premise of tender flesh.
But it’s Jay and Jay is not someone he can hunt down and butcher. The testimony to his fondness being discarded on the trash can near the window and sticking to Jay’s stomach.
“Don’t smoke in the bedroom.” Jay complains and startles a laughter out of Riki. He sits the pack of cigarettes he had fished from his discarded jeans pockets on his folded leg. His other one swings outside of the bed and he raises both his hands in surrender, a cigarette already sitting between his lips. “Go to the balcony, if you want.”
“Yes, hyungnim.” He couldn’t put up a fight even if he wanted, right now his head is marinating. His sweaty skin is still drying and his tongue feels anesthetized in his mouth.
He stands and stretches his arms over his head, rolls his shoulders back and opens the drawer at Jay’s bedside to get himself a lighter.
His arms rest over the dresser and once it’s lit he pulls at it, watches the tobacco burn, on and off.
And as he, dejected, drags himself to the balcony he hears the woosh of fabric and then something hits the back of his leg.
“Put it on.” Jay gestures to the briefs by his feet and he looks back, smoke slips through his mouth as he speaks.
“It’s too hot to put clothes on, Jay hyung.” He says in his whiniest timbre.
“Bullshit.” Jay gets a book — What is it? Dostoevsky? — out of a pile next to the bed and pulls at the bookmark to have it open right at the middle. “I don’t want someone to look at my window and see a naked man.”
“If it wasn’t me it would be you.”
“Wrong. I don’t walk around naked.”
“That’s a shame…”
“Hush, quick.” Now he is — naked — on the balcony, and can exhale the smoke andRiki feels his brain crevices growing less functional each and every second.
He needs to excuse himself. Although he lingers and fights it since he can’t feed on Jay — can’t slaughter him, can’t tear his torso open with his hands and lay it bare and open for Riki to eat for days.
Not if he intends to split him open on his cock again after he eats.
He tries to recall a recent day where they had sex and his fingers weren’t tingling but feels his mouth sours when he ultimately can’t.
He ruminates over the tortuous couple of days he has had and the nonexistent issue he has claimed as his and it shouldn’t feel as big as it does to him; he knows it’s dumb and much like biting at his own tail or barking at his own shadow.
Not being born a ghoul hasn’t stopped him finding kinship within his small circle of peers, who he has grown used to in Okayama – where the accident happened –, in Himeji – where he found more of them and later in Seoul, after running away from his family.
Those were arduous, scarred days burned in his retina, the days where he ate thanks to the much older ghouls who would hunt and share a limb or two with him.
Most days he would eat only fingers or carrion. That, at least, until he met a small dance academy at the suburbs of the Korean city. He doesn’t remember much about it, though. Everything gets scarce and painful if he thinks too much about it.
Later on he would go back to Japan and see his mother’s wrinkly eyes when she cried, see his sister grow a lot taller and look at his greying father.
A lump gets tight in his throat and he has the impetus to turn around and bury himself in Jay’s pliant, very soft body.
That being said, he likes to feel full and enjoys having his reflexes sharp, not having a prickle on his body, his vision not blacking out or, at worst cases, finding himself following someone until he can rip open them with his teeth.
Eating comes as muscle memory when he fasts. But recently he has grown all too aware of the eating, and it’s not shame, nor remorse or guilt, but he has been eating less frequently.
Which leads him to be starving at the very nice apartment of his lover who is human in a way he isn’t. Who could be eaten by the man who rumples his sheets every now and then, who he has welcomed in his house and who he has offered the mercy of care and warmth.
“Are you taking a shower?” Riki asks.
Jay doesn’t answer him right away but flips a page. Is he actually reading with cum sticking to his skin? His hyung would be such a pain sometimes about being proper and clean.
“Not now.” He says slowly, mouthing every syllable before letting the sound out to match it, “You can have it first.” He helpfully provides a minute later.
There is not much fun if he can’t suck on his neck and massage his back and legs in the bathtub. He sort of feels like getting his body below a cold, cold shower, but he should talk himself into eating something first.
He looks down the balcony and on the busy avenue and streetlights, he imagines letting his kagune out of his back and getting down very furtively until he can drag one person to an alley where he can eat to his heart’s content. That would also mean freaking Jay out and never having his caresses or confidence again.
Riki peeks behind his shoulder from where he leaned on the balcony and Jay is laid down, basking in the graceful light, he looks like he just got out of a honeycomb. It would be a pity to not lay a finger on him again.
He moves back into the bedroom and presses the cigar butt on the ivory ashtray Jay has come to keep on his dresser, too.
Beside all the vinyls and the one singular withered rose on a tall glass pot. Once it dries completely he can get Jay a new, more beautiful one.
He feels his cock fill up again little by little and gets so dizzy he gets the odd pocket calendar near the ashtray and takes a look at it. Jay has never brought a calendar to his Himeji apartment before.
“I should get going.” Riki gulps down and licks his lips, deep in thought. Hunger is stopping him from getting a whole boner and it’s such a stupid predicament he feels like going out the door and eating anyone on sight. Nevermind the blood gushing over and soaking him, nevermind the agonizing or the crying and kicking before they stop. He can come back inside and — even if Jay does freak out — beg at least for a one last embrace. “When are you leaving?”
“I don’t know. Once the editorial gets ready, I suppose.”
Riki hums, “What is it about?”
“The new sponsors for the Commission of Counter Ghoul.” Riki tries not to puke. It would be only bile, now. “Tokyo seems to be getting very hazardous if they have idols funding the operations, too.”
The younger one luckily doesn’t succumb to the shock nor the empty stomach but this is probably the first time Jay has ever mentioned ghouls to him. He surely would've known, it’s a global problem by now but it used to be just static noise in their interactions, Jay doesn’t even write about news he writes about music. Shit. He did say something about idols now.
His hand itches to pull him by the jaw and kiss him to wash his mouth clean and the whim is so alien it gets Riki chuckling. How can one being, polluted by nature and meant for carnage, have something clean after they’ve mouthed at it? After they’ve touched and felt it?
“Why are you laughing?”
“Nothing.” Then he props his elbows on the bed after kneeling down on the carpet, he sits on his own heels to stare reverently at the man before him. “It’s been bad for a while, you might as well just move in.”
“Put your clothes on, don’t kneel on the floor.”
Jay noses at Jay's bellybutton and dives in the milky skin until he has his face pressed in in Jay’s sternum, deep in thought he considers how much he likes Jay’s scente. Musky and heady, the sweat is almost palpable on the roof of his mouth and still not fruit or flower-like, it's not hunger indulcing, so it doesn't gross him out. Even then the best smell on him is surely after Riki has him worn out and content, he smells much like Jay. Like his good hyung.
The older man lets him nose at his skin and has an arm up, probably holding the book so he can continue reading.
“You are needy today.” Jay whispers like it’s a secret. “Are you alright?”
Riki inhales then brushes his lips over Jay’s neck pulse.
He stands on one knee and places his hands on Jay’s beautiful face to nip from collarbone to his mouth, he hears the sharp intake before he kisses him on the mouth again and Jay feels restless pressed tight against his hands. His arm falls down and Riki tries not to smile as he pecks the man before him, content in getting the attention on himself but mindful to not deepen the kiss.
He feels trapped in a vicious cycle. He can’t indulge, can’t suck this plump lip into his mouth and can’t feel Jay up even though the older one is willing to let him. He wants to swallow every gasp and every tantrum.
It's crawling in his skin now, he needs to eat.
Although he knows all of this, he only stops once Jay places a hand on his neck to push him lightly. Only enough to look at his good eye and Jay's chest moves quickly, catching his breath.
“Did something happen?” Before he can make something up or brush the question aside to seek the hot yielding tongue and bitten-red lips again, Jay snaps. “Look at me. Are you alright?” He asks again, making sure Riki gets every word.
He holds him by the nape now, calloused fingers threatening to fist his hair in a merciless grip if his gaze sways.
It would get him hot and ready to go if he wasn’t so deprived and so— frail.
“I’m fine, hyung.” Riki grins, “Why wouldn’t I be?” He purrs.
“You look sick.”
“Thank you–”
“I’m serious.” Jay makes more space between them. He looks at his eye, searching for something. His fingers twitch where he holds Riki and one hand coils so his fingers can ghost over his eyepatch, not really touching but contemplaining it.
The young man tries not to shrink too much over it, his autoresponse to feel bare for others, nailed on the wall for people to prod and point at is to take more space — not let himself wilt under someone’s watchfulness.
It doesn’t work on Jay that often, though. The older one usually would pick him open and watch his gears turning.
“Have you eaten?”
At that Riki’s vision dims.
“No.” He whispers a secret right back at him.
Jay settles his head back on the pillow. “Why not?”
The youth shrugs, discontent in his own honesty. It spills past his lips like Jay has him under a spell. “Didn’t feel like eating.”
“Didn’t have time?” Jay tries to poke, studying what Riki is saying through tight eyes.
“I’m not that hungry these days.”
Jay just looks at him. Riki has the feeling he is trying not to roll his eyes at him by how tense his jaw gets under his thumb.
“Let’s have dinner, we can eat something.” He then pushes his torso up. Riki pushes him by the cleavage and before Jay can retaliate he stands to swing a leg over Jay’s, lays down his weight on him mindful of the bony knees and elbows moving. Jay looks much smaller for a man of his size, Riki can envelope him whole underneath himself. “Move, c’mon.”
“I will eat something later.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Mind you, I’ve been feeling just fine. I just haven’t been in the mood for eating, lately.”
“That’s not normal, baby.”
“Who says?”
“Everyone.”
“Sunghoon hyung–”
“Everyone with half a mind.”
“Mean.” Riki mewls, it has a low quality to it but he relays on the shivering thigh wrapped around his own. “You are so mean, hyungnim…” He says, hands busy touching and grabbing at every centimeter of skin at his disposal. Then he continues, not caring about how faint he feels. “Maybe I want to have something else.”
Jay has a crease on his forehead and the skin is soft to the touch when Riki moves to relax it with his thumb.
“Don’t play with me,” He is interrupted with a delighted croon that Jay seems annoyed to have let out. Still he doesn’t cease the small grind of their hips. “Stop. I’m serious, let’s eat.”
“Yeah, I can eat something else, right?”
“You are so shameless, why are you like that?”
“You like it, hyung. You like how much I want you, right?” Now his eyes are half lidded and he pecks at Jay’s upper lip, happy to have the velvety touch on his.
“If you pass out on me I will kill you.” Jay has his eyes comically wide open to stress the threat but that just draws a passionate giggle out of Riki whose movements slow down even more to look at Jay.
To look at Jay and to take him in. He wishes he could look at him with both of his eyes. This is probably the first time he wishes he was a normal human man in his twenties in— awhile. He wants to share something with Jay and humanity would be so nice to.
Jay pinches him on the neck. “Eat.”
“Right now.” Riki abides. He surprisingly still has enough strength to kneel on his legs on the mattress and push Jay’s legs up. There is a yelp and then Riki holds both ankles tight together with one hand. They dissolve in laughter and Jay squirms and struggles in between his own low chuckling. Riki taps his hyung’s thigh as a reflex and Jay is smiling so wide, mumbling the sweetest ‘stop’, ‘quit it’ and ‘no’s. Looking at him this way, Riki is sure he will have a heartburn.
Between his peers he can acknowledge his own inherent damnation and can be sober, familiar to the distinguished feeling of being wanton and a gutted version of the kid he was — the man he would turn out to be. No longer a man but something else, a twisted devoid of soul and heart fiend.
But alone with Jay, back into their small little bubble where nothing seems to change but him, he feels naked. Clean and pliant, Jay moves him. He can’t fathom looking away or beyond him.
His feelings mingle together and he feels much like a wolf in a sheep’s skin. Jay doesn’t notice the foul smell of rotting flesh, his eyes melting out of the skull or the blood — thick and continuously dripping from his brand new, inhabitable skin; he befriends him and invites him inside where is cozy and he can warm himself with his wool.
He doesn’t want it to end.
Riki puts the ankles back down and lets Jay attempt to kick him with no might or intent. His body topples back and they smile at each other, he grasps the sheets until he can caress the other’s calf and bring it to his mouth to kiss it.
The next minute Riki jumps out of bed and sees Jay sitting at the corner of his eye. “We can order something in.”
Riki sniffs, “Yes, we can.” He goes around the room putting his worn clothes on and zipping up his jean. He doesn't mind wearing his briefs, too.
“What do you want to eat?”
“Uh, taiyaki.”
“That’s not food.” He couldn’t care less about it. The smell and the taste would be like a hot bullet down his throat anyway but he can play the long game today.
“You can pick then.”
“But–” Riki supports himself on one hand at headboard to catch Jay’s moving lips again.
When an easy peck doesn’t seem to shut him, he slides his tongue in and sucks at the other’s, it mimics — and is — much like devouring than actual kissing.
Riki minds his teeth. Watches out a little closer.
Once Jay is quieter and whinier, jittery hands pulling on Riki’s hair, he breaks the kiss with a small glistening string of saliva hanging through Jay’s laboured breath.
He slides his wallet on the back pocket of his jeans to free it and teases Jay’s mouth open to feed it one finger that is reluctantly licked. Jay looks at him through his thick beautiful lashes and Riki can sense himself walking on a dangerous edge once he imagines seeing his hyung's eyes watering.
“I’ve gotta grab something. When I come back we can eat. Does that sound ok?”
“Where are you going?”
Riki quickens his thoughts to grasp for something to say, “You said you’re staying for— I don’t know how much time. I want to have more than one pair of underwear while I’m here, you know?”
He tries not to cringe at how shameful he finally feels as he invites himself to stay over. He needed an out of these eager hands holding him but the fear of bothering catches up with him and he hopes Jay won't see his flush. Or adress it.
He can apologize later, say how sorry he is between the sinful slump of Jay’s ass to his thighs.
“Ok.”
“Yeah?”
“Uhum.”
“Alright,” He kisses Jay’s forehead and stands up. He dresses Jay’s jacket and moves around the room to light another cigarette and get his shoes in a hand. He doesn’t get near the bed again, afraid to feel it’s inviting warmth and listen to Jay’s wobbly breath. “I will come back in a minute.”
“Yes.” And Jay leans again against the pillows, he has his book back in hand and his glasses reflect the way his eyes are zeroed in the writing.
“Don’t miss me too much.”
“I won’t.”
Riki clicks the door shut and stalks out at two or three swift strides. He doesn’t enjoy starving himself.