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Taki was always clumsy in the bathhouse. He dropped the shower hose constantly, spraying water all over the mirror and stools. He got shampoo in his eyes, he dropped his cloth on the floor. K was used to it.
But today, Taki was especially squirmy, rocking on his stool until the entire chair flipped and he slid off with a wet thwap.
K turns to him incredulously.
“What’s going on with you today?”
“Nothing!” Taki shouts, too loud and too obstinate for it to be nothing.
“Taki…”
Taki looks around, eyes wide, before he leans in close to K.
“I have to pee!” he hisses.
“So go to the bathroom? I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t…I don’t think I can make it. I don’t think I can make it all the way there.”
K stares at him. Oh. He’s serious.
“Are you a child?” It’s a rhetorical question. Taki is and he isn’t. He’s perpetually K’s dependent. He’s a newly blossomed adult. He’s an apple tree that K nurtured from a seedling. Soon, he might even bear fruit.
“K-hyung, don’t tease me, please, I’d have to grab my robe and dry off and…I really don’t think I’ll make it.”
K turns back to the mirror, shaking his head.
“Go here then. There’s no one else in here.”
Taki whimpers and presses between his legs. K watches him squeeze himself. His own bladder clenches in what might be empathy. He’s unsure.
“But we can’t pee in here! It’s dirty!”
K laughs. Nothing about Taki could ever be dirty.
“Taki, this whole room is filled with soap, and there’s a drain right next to you. Just…point at the drain, and go. Here, I’ll move to your other side so you’re blocked, in case someone comes in right this very second.” K slides off his stool and makes his way around Taki, boxing him in. Shielding him from anything that might make him ashamed.
Still pushing his groin and cupping himself, Taki seems to be considering. Weighing his options. K knows what he's thinking. He could just go right into the drain. And it’s better than potentially peeing himself in the dressing room. That would be way messier. That might actually be dirty.
“Taki…it’s fine. I’m sure more people pee in here than you think. Go. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.” K wants Taki to feel good, all the time. Nothing is more important.
“Okay, K-hyung”, he breathes, holding his penis and pointing it at the drain, “If you think it’s okay…”
“It’s okay, Taki. No one’s gonna know but me.”
They both look down, watching, waiting.
Nothing happens.
“Taki…”
“I- I can’t! I can’t go”, Taki whines. His penis is flushed with the heat of the room. K stares at the tip, wanting to see it drip.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, I- ‘cause we’re not supposed to, in here-”
Taki’s blushing, pink spreading out from his ears.
“Do you need help? I could hold it for you, if you’d like?”
“K-hyung!”
Taki’s cheeks go as red as his tip, and K grins, still staring at Taki’s groin. Wanting to see Taki let go. Wanting to see the relief on his face.
“Stop looking! Turn around! And cover your ears!”
“Oh please, the baths are so loud and-”
“K-hyung!”
"I wanna see-"
"K-hyung!"
K sighs, shaking his head, both amused and perturbed by the places where Taki chooses shame, when no shame needs to exist at all. Taki is a journal that K has been keeping for 7 years. And he wants to fill up every page, wants to scribe and publish a book about everything Taki is, was, will be. He wants to know everything that makes Taki Taki. He wants to know every part of Taki that is K. He wants an itemized list of every part of Taki that he had a hand in creating. He wants to be part of every new facet of identity he takes on.
He feels a light brush on his lower back. He opens his eyes and pulls his hands off his ears and turns around. Taki looks sheepish, but relieved.
“Did you go?” he asks softly, and his heart melts a little at the soft nod Taki gives him.
"Did you really want to see?" Taki asks, averting his eyes. K doesn't answer. K wants all of Taki open to him, but it’s special that K still gets to see him be shy.
~~~~
In the large bath, Taki is not shy. He spreads his arms across the wooden edge of the tub and opens his thighs wide. He leans his head back and breathes in deep. His leg is against K’s, bump-bump-bumping. Every time they bump, it feels hotter. It feels like their legs might melt together, and they’ll be fused. If that were to happen, then K would have to stay with him all the time. When he ate, when he slept, when he used the bathroom. K would see Taki’s everything. There would be no shyness between them. There would be nothing between them at all.
K reaches down to touch around the space where their thighs touch, to see if maybe there’s a growth forming that will keep them locked. They’d have to learn how to walk three-legged. It would be hard with their height difference. Taki has grown, but he’ll always be smaller than K. He’ll always be able to lean on K’s shoulder, to tuck his face into the pit of K’s neck. He likes the way that sometimes, Taki still crouches down a little, so his cheek is pressed right up against K’s chest, like he hasn’t grown that much at all. Like he’s still the perfect height to always hear K’s heartbeat thrum against his ear drum.
Lately, K’s heartbeat is fast when he looks at Taki, because Taki is so wonderful, and K is giddy with pride. Taki is the age he was when they met, when he was trying to redo his life and make himself into someone entirely new. Taki is doing that a little bit too, but Taki doesn’t need to remold himself, because he’s been molded already, so carefully and so lovingly. He’s already perfect.
They soak for a long time. Both of Taki’s legs end up over K’s. He’s practically sitting in K’s lap, and it’s almost unbearably hot. K rests his hand over Taki’s groin, pushing lightly into his belly, over his now empty bladder, and Taki hums softly.
“What do you want to eat after this?” K whispers. He pokes and prods Taki’s stomach. They haven’t eaten since breakfast, and he wants to watch Taki consume something. He wants to see the way Taki’s face lights up when he likes his food. He likes watching him stuff his cheeks while he chews. He wants to make Taki full and sated.
“Can we get sushi?” Taki places his hand over K’s, gently, moving with him as K moves across the skin of his stomach. With Taki’s hand on his hand, K thinks about the way scorpions carry their newborns on their back. Where K’s hand goes, Taki’s will follow. Are there any places that K’s hand couldn’t go?
“K-hyung”, Taki murmurs, and K looks up from the surface of the water. Taki’s eyes are red-rimmed, irritated from his contacts.
“Do you have eye drops in your bag?” K asks, brushing his fingertips over Taki’s eyelashes. Taki doesn’t even close his eyes. He lets K’s finger get close, so impossibly close. He’d let K touch his eye, he knows. He’d probably let K kiss it. What would it be like to run his tongue over it? Maybe Taki doesn’t need any eyedrops. Maybe K can soothe it, all on his own. Saliva is a healing salve, isn’t it?
“Yea, I do”, Taki murmurs. K pulls his hand back, threads it through Taki’s hair. Taki’s eyes are half-lidded, unabashedly adoring. He looks sleepy. He looks drunk. He looks like he’s in love. “Will you put them in for me?”
Taki needs him, still, always, and K’s heart goes bumpbumpbump and he needs to kiss him. He leans forward and presses his lips to the bridge of Taki’s nose, right between his eyes. Taki shivers, and stills, and sighs, and K doesn’t pull back for a long, long time. Their skin prunes and wrinkles. K imagines them aging together, hobbling along down streets, teetering into each other on their little, shrunken feet.
~~~~
In the sauna, Taki’s scorpion hands are around his shoulders, his cheek pressed against K’s naked sternum. Bump, bump, bump. Now Taki is a koala. K could feed him eucalyptus and carry him around. Taki is dripping sweat, and K wipes at it with his fingers. Taki looks like he’s covered in dew, like fresh grass in the morning. K remembers playing soccer at dawn, the way his shoes would be wet and slippery when he was finished. The way they’d smell clean and earthy. Taki smells clean and earthy too. He’s started wearing perfume, different kinds, not just the ones K bought him, so sometimes Taki doesn’t smell as familiar as he should. But sweaty Taki, naked in the sauna, baking in the rich hinoki wood, smells like the deepest kind of nostalgia, the kind you can feel like a needle in the base of your spine.
Taki is opening and closing his mouth against K’s collarbones, like he’s hungry. Like he’s getting ready to take a bite. Does Taki ever wonder what K would taste like? Taki kisses his neck and his tongue pokes out. Ah, so then he does.
“Your tongue is too hot, Taki. You’re probably overheating. You didn’t drink any water after you peed”, K murmurs, but he makes no move to have them emerge from their hot private cavern. The stickiness of it almost makes it into a cocoon. When Taki met K, he was a caterpillar, bright green, impossibly cute and small. K was privileged enough to observe every part of Taki’s metamorphosis. Taki met him when K already had wings, but they were wet and stuck to his back. He couldn’t fly without Taki. He had to wait for him. Together. It had to be together. While Taki mouths at his neck, K imagines butterfly Taki drinking up his sweat like nectar with his long, thin butterfly tongue. One drop at a time, slurp, slurp, slurp. Would it be sweet enough for him? Could he subsist on the liquid from K’s eccrine glands?
“Can we get sushi, K-hyung?” Ah. K never answered him, and human Taki needs protein and carbs. Human Taki likes delicacies. Human Taki likes when K feeds him.
“Of course we can”, K whispers. “We can get whatever you want.”
Taki unsticks and unwraps himself from K’s body and leaves the sauna. In Taki’s presence, he expands into weightlessness, and K feels his absence like a solid mass, like an increase in gravity that wants to compress him.
When K finds him again, Taki is in the changing area. No one else is around, and he’s not wearing his robe. Taki is stunning. K made sure he would be. It’s impossible to pour that much love into something without it becoming beautiful. Taki is staring at him, rocking back and forth on his heels.
“I have to pee again”, Taki announces. He clears his throat. He’s still rocking, back and forth. K looks at his penis. It twitches a little.
“Go”, K murmurs, “I’ll wait for you. I’ll dry your hair after.”
Taki is still rocking. Back and forth and back and forth. K’s heart beats with the rhythm of it. K’s heart is connected to everything Taki does.
“Come with me.” Taki clears his throat again. He stills. He presses his thumbs together in front of his chest. He’s shy again. K wordlessly steps towards him, reaching a hand out, turning him around and gently pushing him into the adjoining bathroom. He pushes Taki towards the farthest stall. He shuts the door behind them. He stands behind Taki, chin on his shoulder.
“Go.”
“H-” Taki starts, coughs, squirms. His penis twitches again. K realizes that he’s never seen Taki erect. There are still pieces he’s never seen of Taki, that he might never will. Will those pages in Taki’s book be blank?
“Hold it for me”, he whispers, and his body is shaking like a leaf. Now Taki is the eucalyptus, and K is the koala, as he wraps his arms around Taki’s waist and settles his hands on Taki’s hips. Taki takes a deep breath in, and K makes a solid fist around the base of Taki’s penis, aiming it at the toilet.
K tries to steady his breath against Taki’s neck. He wants to feel the way it tenses when the liquid starts to come through. He is going to get to feel one metamorphosis of Taki’s body, when his bladder goes from full to empty. K holds his breath when he feels Taki’s penis grow slightly heavy in his hold, and then the stream is coming out. Taki watches himself pee in K’s secure hand and sighs long.
When he’s done, K touches the urethral hole to feel the final drop on the tip of his finger. It’s so warm. What temperature is Taki inside? Is he hotter, with K behind him, holding him? Has anyone held him like this before? Will anyone hold him like this again? One day, will someone other than K touch Taki the way he’s touching him now? The thought of it makes him want to rub against Taki’s neck and scent mark him, like the wolves they pretend to be.
K is still holding him. K will hold him until Taki tells him to let go. Taki isn’t telling him to let go. Taki is breathing shakily and K squeezes at his cheeks and his jaw and his neck with the other hand.
“Do you feel better now?” he asks. His voice is soft. Taki has shown him something new, and now K feels shy. His heart is beating like a butterfly's wings. It feels like it’s flitting all over the place inside him. His butterfly heart feels like it could defy gravity, and pull him up into the air. He feels like he could fly. Taki reaches down and gently uncurls K’s hand from around his penis. He interlaces their fingers.
“Yes”, Taki murmurs. “I feel a lot lighter now. Like, really light. It almost feels like I could fly.”