When Kyojuro steps into the threshold of his home, the air is stirred. It’s glaringly obvious, an alarm to his basest instincts; the shift in temperature, the hollow of the hallways. It’s too dark, too quiet. The corridors yawn into maws of blackness before him.
He does not switch on the lights.
Kyojuro fingers the revolver at his hip. He is thankful he did not change at the station; too weary from his twelve-hour shift to do anything but head straight home, barely awake enough to keep his eyes peeled open to the road. Kyojuro notes the baton at his other hip, a secure weight. He closes the door behind him with a silent click.
Toeing his boots off, he allows his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. The soft pad of his socked-feet against the carpet keeps his footsteps muted. This is his turf, his home. He has the advantage here; knows which floorboards to steer clear of, which walls not to lean against so as not to alert an intruder to his presence.
He mulls it over in his head - how would the intruder have even entered? His apartment is on the fifth floor. It is possible that somebody could scale the building, but then, from there--? With held breath, Kyojuro paces toward the open-plan living room-kitchen space crouched low. He can see from the corner he shadows himself in that the windows are as he left them - locked tight. Then, the front door? But there were no signs of resistance; he would have noticed. It’s deadbolted too. It would be impossible.
He dares not step out into the washed light of the open room. It is a clear night. The shine of the moon streams in through the windows, casting the furniture in sheens of silver and navy. He will be seen if the intruder is hiding there somewhere, so he retreats to the west wing of the home.
The feeling grows; the unease. There is perspiration collecting across his forehead now, beading into pearls at his temples. Kyojuro considers the trap house he and Inspectors Shinazugawa and Tokito raided two weeks ago. It’d been a success; the last stragglers of the Kakushi group finally routed. It would make sense were it one of them, but their most dangerous and prolific members are now behind bars, and any low-lying remnants would be too unskilled or junior-grade to seek revenge and break into his home, of all places.
As he crouches and crawls past the bathroom - the door thankfully left ajar - his mind whirs through names and faces and groups, gangs and raids and files and trials. His line of work makes him and his colleagues vulnerable to the prospect of many enemies, and there has been no shortage of retaliation attacks in his department from the gangsters they deal with. Kyojuro peers in and lets out a silent exhale as the bathroom, flooded with moonlight, proves decidedly empty. Yet, Kyojuro does not allow himself to dither; he keeps his breaths measured, his eyes straining in the dark as he moves on.
He checks the spare room then, risky - because the door is shut and it groans slightly on opening. The air in there breathes the same as it usually does, untouched.
He continues on.
The main bedroom is next, and Kyojuro feels a roil of violation at the concept of a stranger or adversary being in that private space. He shuffles quickly, his belt squeezing at his abdomen, the gun weighing heavy at his hip. He taps the door - half gaping - fully open.
The curtains are drawn in here, the room shrouded in pitch-blackness. Kyojuro’s pulse is rapid in his chest, and as he crawls inside he holds his breath in anticipation. His eyes are frantic in their flitting about the room. They feel sore and raw from his over-tiredness and their exertion in the dim lighting. The shadow of one of his shirts hung on the back of the closet makes him pause in a moment of silent apprehension, before realising it’s the inanimate object that it is.
Several minutes of this pass by - this dread-laden perusal of his bedroom in eerie quiet, until at last Kyojuro grows suitably frustrated. He rises from his haunches in one immediate movement, slamming his hand against the light switch on the wall and flooding the room with fluorescent white.
He pulls open the wardrobe, the cupboards, ransacks the room, checks beneath the bed. His breathing becomes laboured, his heavy pants heard distantly through the rush of his head. His footfalls thud conspicuously against the carpet as he paces out of his bedroom with no more thought of concealing himself, and proceeds to slam at all the light switches in every corner of the house, yanking open doors and sweeping across the entire floor plan in calm hysteria.
He finds nothing. Nothing is out of its usual place.
Kyojuro stands in the middle of the living room, staccato heart-rate slowly mellowing out. His breathing ultimately settles, the warring hum in his mind steadying to a dull, faint headache. There is no intruder in the home.
The stress of the job must at last be getting to him, what with report deadlines and all the turmoil the Kakushi, the Kizuki and other groups have brought to him and his division over the years.
He needs a shower, two ibuprofens, and sleep.
-
Beneath the spray of boiling water, the tension leaks out of Kyojuro’s body in ebbs and flows. The tight coil of his muscles softly unwinds beneath the water’s satisfying pressure, and he allows himself to stand there, listening to the splashes of the shower against his body and the tiles with his head bent and eyes shut for what feels like hours.
The mirror is all fogged up when he begins to brush his teeth, and he tiredly draws a small smiley face into the condensation with a free finger, thinking to himself how grateful he is that it’s now the weekend and he has two consecutive days off work to look forward to. He will visit his father and brother on Sunday night, and for now he has kept his Saturday blissfully empty to enjoy the long lie-in he has planned for himself.
Exiting the bathroom in his pyjamas, he slings his towel around his shoulders to soak up the residual dampness of his hair. He hums to himself, heading to the kitchen for a glass of water, and considers whether he should bring Senjuro his favourite pastries from the bakery across the street, or show up to the family home on Sunday with pizzas from their favourite Italian. Perhaps both.
“You changed your number.”
Kyojuro freezes.
The living room is half-hidden in the moonlight, the lights switched off again. Obscured by shadow, a figure sits upon the couch.
“And stopped coming to the safehouse.”
A pair of amber eyes glow at him through the dark; utterly feline, predatory.
Anger boils in Kyojuro’s stomach. “You cannot be here.” He spits, forcing his feet to work quickly and move him towards the fridge. He thrusts it open and the artificial light spills out across the floor and counters. He clangs as he goes; takes out the jug of water, retrieves a glass from the dishrack. He slams it against the granite, fills his cup up to the brim.
He hears the tell-tale shuffle of a body getting up off the couch and walking over to the kitchen area. Kyojuro flinches, but keeps his eyes trained to the sink and drinks the water down in five gulps. There is a high-pitched ringing resounding in his head, bouncing between his ears. He pours himself another, aiming to appear unaffected as he drinks when he hears footsteps padding closer and daunt begins to pool in his stomach, mixing with the ice-cold water. It’s a bitter taste.
He eventually turns around when the footsteps stop and he can feel the buzz of unbridled energy from just a hair’s breadth behind him. With his back pressed tight against the counter, Kyojuro turns around to face Akaza, whose eyes slowly appraise him, flitting over his face and landing at the white-grip Kyojuro now has on the glass. There is the suggestion of a smirk on Akaza’s lips, made pale and muted in the moonlight, and Kyojuro hates him. Loathes him for it.
“How did you find this place?” He demands, and holds his glare.
Those yellow eyes seem to mock him, piercing him right to his core and keeping him pinned against the counter. “How rude, Kyojuro. An old friend drops by to pay you a visit, and this is how you welcome him?”
“You are not my friend.” He shoulders past. There is ferocious panic bubbling up in his chest - threatening to choke him - which he tries to quell, because panicking will not help. He needs to strategise. Akaza cannot be talked down, or out. Kyojuro’s tried that before many times. Akaza only responds to the language and persuasion of fists and flesh. This may only be settled by an all-out brawl, and Kyojuro curses himself for leaving the revolver in his bedroom.
“You’re right, not friends -” Akaza is on his tail, breathing hot down his neck. “What would you call us then, Ky~”
Kyojuro lurches away, sets himself down on the couch to stop his legs from trembling. It’s a welcome weight beneath him, an anchor in the midst of a storm. He hardens his frame, his stare. He refuses to be intimidated in his own home. “There’s no us, Akaza. I thought it’d be clear when I barred you from my life. Most people would get the hint, and you still haven’t answered my question. How did you find my home? And how on earth did you get in?” He knows Akaza feels his anger, it must be palpable, but still, Kyojuro aims to sound cold and clipped; to sound above it all, as if Akaza’s whims are simply juvenile, minor inconveniences in his life, and not the gargantuan nightmares of the seventh circle that they consistently prove to be. He must grasp back control, because Akaza has always enjoyed toying with him like food, and to be food for a devil is a dire place to be. “You need to leave.” He sips again from his cup with trembling fingers, and flicks his gaze to meet Akaza’s. He hopes it reads detached and full of ire.
But Akaza’s rolling his eyes. “So dramatic, Kyojuro. Though, I always did like that fire in you. You burn so hot-'' He sinks to his knees then, right at Kyojuro’s feet. “And are you really so surprised I managed to find this place? Being Third rank in the Kizuki syndicate comes with a lot of perks, my dear.”
Irritation blooms at Kyojuros’ brow. The glass creaks beneath his fingers. “I said. Get out.”
“Not so fast. I think we need to talk about a few things.” Akaza rests a finger on Kyojuro’s thigh. His tone glints with something dangerous, a live-wire. “It hurt my feelings when I realised I was blocked. And I’d wait hours for you every night at the safehouse, like I was a scorned Juliet or something. You should warn somebody if you decide to pretend they never existed.” His eyes meet Kyojuro’s. A crack of electricity. It’s not much, but Kyojuro can taste it on the man’s words. Akaza is furious too. The pale light filtering in from outside sets his pink hair into a faint shade of blush and rose. It’s so demure, so delicate; unbefitting for the lethal man that he is.
Kyojuro sighs and leans his head back against the headrest of the couch. “I’m done, Akaza. This is sick.” He’s tired. The man in front of him is the pestilence he can’t break, an enduring malady draining the life out of him. He’s sure that Akaza will be his death, and that if he could Akaza would even follow him to the depths of hell to continue his torment of him. Outside the windows, the city flickers with the changing colours of neon tungsten from billboards, traffic lights and skyscrapers. It’s a world entirely removed from the hellhole he finds himself in now.
“Sorry, but you can’t be ‘done’.” Akaza says it quietly, with a quirk of disdain, before shuffling closer on his haunches, stomach pressed against Kyojuro’s knees. And then suddenly, he’s switching his tone, “Didn’t you miss me, Kyojuro? I missed you,” he purrs; presses his finger a little harder into Kyojuro’s thigh, rubs at the cotton tracksuit pants sitting over it.
The headache gnawing at Kyojuro’s temples grows stronger, more insistent, an alarm blaring in the dark. He sets down the glass, rubs at the bridge of his nose, trying to dispel the pain. “Akaza, please, listen to me.”
“What is it?” He barks.
The room sparks with current; static reverberating and bouncing off the walls. Kyojuro’s chest feels tight - it’s as though the air fills with thick battery liquid and weighs down with heavy lead all at once.
Kyojuro looks up from behind the jail of his own hands. “You have to leave. This has to stop.”
And as golden irises survey him through the dim, Kyojuro is reminded of snake eyes. They’re cold-blooded, watching Kyojuro as though he were prey. It’s the exact same way Akaza looked at him for the first time all those months ago. Kyojuro casts his mind back to the day he met the Third rank; the night a year ago this entire ordeal began. If he’d known the devastation Akaza was going to wreck upon his life… well, Kyojuro cannot even be sure he’d stop then. He’d known Akaza was trouble incarnate, knew exactly who the Third in the Kizuki was when he first stood before him, and still, he entered into this madness almost willingly, practically begging for it; throwing his life into poison-laden waters as though he had no care for self preservation at all.
The Kizuki were, and remain, the largest crime syndicate in Japan. The Police Corps had been working on dismantling them long before Kyojuro ever joined the ranks. Through blood, sweat and tears, Kyojuro worked his way up in the Force, excelling in all areas and eventually being promoted to Inspector in a span of just five short years. And with Kyojuro worked several other invaluable members to the team, and together, their division gave the elusive Kizuki something to be worried about for the first time in over a decade of domination of the city.
Then one night, a year ago, in a stroke of miraculous luck, the Corps had the Kizuki somewhat cornered following months of ingenious detective work led by Superintendent Himejima. A location was disclosed: a large warehouse at the docks of the city. Kyojuro had been graciously selected to lead his small platoon consisting of Sergeants Kamado, Agatsuma and Hashibira as well as several other officers to raid the location. And they did well. Kyojuro still remembers the swell of pride he felt as his subordinates apprehended tens of Kizuki and confiscated hordes of controlled substances and military-grade weapons. It’d been almost dawn by the time they’d overrun the storehouse, the low sun peeking through bullet-shattered windows. As more of the criminals were hauled off into police vans and back to the station, the long fight for the Kizuki’s main base was nearly over.
Kyojuro had found himself alone in the basem*nt of the warehouse, taking stock of the damage done before the clean-up team arrived. He was pleased that despite a heavy shoot-out, his team had taken zero casualties, and as he perused empty and raided artillery rooms and basked in the glory of hard-earned triumph, he heard the heavy clip of footsteps and the door of the room he was in click shut behind him. Alarm seized Kyojuro’s body, and before he even had time to lift his revolver and fire at the incomer, his gun was shot right out of his hands.
“I thought I smelled a rat,” came the voice from behind him. It was smooth, masculine, flickering with playfulness and what sounded like a knife-edge smirk. “Shame about your gun. It was a nice one.”
Slowly turning around with hands raised, Kyojuro came to see the person that would, unbeknownst to him, become far too familiar for a man of his high position.
The recognition was immediate, “I know you. Akaza, rank Three of the Kizuki.” He said, at last, seeing a face that so often dominated the Corps’ evidence boards. “You’re cornered, Akaza. I would stand down now, if I were you. Resistance is futile.” He spoke. Secretly, he stowed away his quiet surprise at the man’s disarmingly boyish features. He appeared more mellowed in person, soft, yet devastatingly confident in his own skin.
But there was a ferality there. The man’s lips pulled into a wide grin. “I don’t think you’re in any position to be making demands,” his gaze flicked down to Kyojuro’s shoulder knot, “Inspector.” He co*cked his gun again as if to punctuate his point, laughing arrogantly at Kyojuro from across the boxed room.
“Reinforcements will be here soon. If you surrender, I will not have to use force upon you.”
“Force, huh?” The man raised his eyebrows, giving Kyojuro a once-over. “I don’t think I’d mind force… if it was coming from you.” Kyojuro blinked, thrown off by the comment. “What’s your name, Inspector? The cat got lucky, finding a cute rat like you in its trap.”
Kyojuro cleared his throat, taking stock of his position in the room. Akaza was blocking the only escape, so he swiftly turned his thoughts over to ways of talking down this gangster until the clean-up team arrived and his Sergeants returned back from delivering those arrested to the station. He decided to play along. “I’m Inspector Rengoku Kyojuro of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Corps.”
“You fight, Kyojuro?” The man lowered his gun, eyes dancing over Kyojuro’s form. “You look like you can... I think I’d like to sink my claws into you.”
Ah. So, the criminal was a flirt. Kyojuro could handle that. At least he didn't have a machine gun pointed at his forehead any more. “We are suitably trained for combat in the Force.”
“Fantastic.”
And before he knew it, Akaza was scattering his machine gun to the floor and attacking him. A strong fist connected with his jaw, and that was all the wake-up call he needed before Kyojuro switched into his battle system. And as an indefinite amount of time passed, their fight became that of a dance; Kyojuro’s nose streamed with blood, his right eye was sealed shut from swelling. His assailant was in similar condition; broken fingers and a bruised throat from the ring of Kyojuro’s hands tight around his neck.
Kyojuro found himself straddling the man’s body, Akaza’s limbs thrashing against the weight of him and his face slowly purpling from restricted access to air. The position of submission had come all too easily, and Kyojuro could not help but think that the Third rank was not using his full strength against him. Still, he did not want to kill the man, so he hissed at Akaza with blood pooling at his lips, “Stop thrashing -”
Kyojuro’s veins turned to ice, and he blinked incredulously down at the man beneath him. His fingers released his neck as if singed, and Kyojuro watched silently as colour flooded back into Akaza’s face, his chest heaving and spluttering over its newfound oxygen supply.
Kyojuro did not move, could not. The shock was blanketing him like an avalanche, threatening to bury him alive as he felt unmistakable hardness meeting him through the thin fabric of Akaza’s slacks. The realisation was dizzying, and he almost did not hear it when his attacker spoke next, seeing only the infinitesimal movement of his lips beneath the heavy load of his confusion and roaring heartbeat. “You could do that again, if you like,” the man’s lips read. His voice was hoarse, barely audible, but Akaza’s cheeks were flushed with psychotic fervour, his eyes moist and glinting up at Kyojuro beneath heavy lashes.
“Y-you… You’re. You’re sick.” Kyojuro accused, whispering, but his eyes were glued to Akaza’s lips - the sharp, slicing smile he found there as he felt his own blood heating up as though held over a naked flame.
And the man whispered back, eyes locked onto Kyojuro’s own trembling mouth. “Unbearably so.”
He remembers now that it felt as natural as hail, as floodwaters and snowstorms midwinter. Kyojuro’s body crushed down, treacherous, closer toward the tumultuous blizzard of a man trapped between his thighs; a moth drawn to a flame, inexplicable, and he wished Akaza would stop him. He wished that he’d reach for his gun and shoot him dead; anything but this. Anything but the invisible line connecting their two mouths, the co*cky grin held at the other end. Akaza’s golden eyes slipped shut, and Kyojuro was the one who sealed their fate.
Now, Akaza is the thorn in his side, the shame and sweet humiliation Kyojuro wears as a faux badge upon his uniform. It is not enough that only he and Akaza know. It’s not enough that Akaza gives him the odd piece of information on the Top Ranks’ and Kibutsuji’s movements in exchange for Kyojuro keeping their whole thing a continued secret. He thinks of the Corps, his team-members and family; the danger he’s putting them in by keeping close to such a man. He remembers the shame that threatened to swallow him whole as he hid Akaza with his machine gun in a storage box when the clean-up team arrived twenty minutes later, having almost found Kyojuro and his new inamorato in nought but their skins on the concrete floor. He remembers lying about his injuries to Ubuyashiki-sama - his black eye, broken nose, the bite marks decorating his neck - citing it as from a fist-fight with one of the more violent mobsters at the warehouse, who was now assuredly safe behind bars. The deception and guilt had tasted like bile in his throat, but he’d be lying if he said that the feelings were accompanied by regret.
He’d kidded himself that it was for the greater good, that he was in control, that he had the upper hand. That illusion has now tumbled down like a stack of cards. Kyojuro had tried to end their tryst numerous times in the past, but was met only with threats of exposure of his deeds to the Corps, threats of abduction or danger to his team-members. Kyojuro realised it all too late, how lethal this man truly was, how tangled up he’d become. He seeks now to claim back the uprightness and simplicity he so staunchly held himself to before Akaza entered his life.
Akaza breaks him out of his reverie.
“We can’t stop. It’s too late.” He says. Both of his hands rest on Kyojuro’s thighs now, whispering up and squeezing at the swell of them. Akaza lays the side of his head flush to Kyojuro’s hip, smirking his wicked smirk as he glances up at Kyojuro.
Oh, how Kyojuro is weak to this.
His friends, his boss; they all speak of his strength. They salute him and promote him for it. His brother sings his praises, and the Third rank of the most brutal crime syndicate in Japan also claims he’s drawn to it.
But Kyojuro is a weak, weak man. He looks at the eyelashes fluttering around burning eyes and tries to hide the clenching of his fists. He could push him away. He could kick Akaza off. He wants to.
He won't.
He can’t.
He can feel the puff of Akaza’s breaths against his leg, and he desperately hopes to hide his twitching as Akaza’s fingers dig deeper into his muscles.
“Leave.” He says through gritted teeth. He means it, grasping at the last threads of his reason. He knows Akaza knows he means it too, because his hands still in their movements, and his eyes glaze over with violence.
But then, “Make me.” He collects himself quickly. Akaza is good at that; adapting. Evolving. The leer is back, Akaza’s voice low, warm and humming like cooked sugar, like life stirring beneath the surface of a deep well. He rubs his cheek against Kyojuro’s hip, mouths at the cotton there, eyelids hovering. He’s mocking him, playing with him like food. “Make me, Kyojuro.”
Kyojuro hates him. He despises the rush of shivers that shoot through his legs, up his ribs, his spine and to his skull. It catapults him higher, weightless - this treasonous desire, his brain swimming, full of wool.
His body stays rooted to the couch. Kyojuro ensures his expression does not waver. This is his one victory. He grips on to images of Senjuro, of Ubuyashiki-sama, of his friends. He grips on to images of bloodshed and shots fired by the Kizuki; the smell of shrapnel and opiates in drug dens and warehouses. Akaza’s eyes wink golden at him in the smog of it.
“Let go.”
Kyojuro sees a flash of real irritation then. It cracks across Akaza’s face like lightning. It is gone in a millisecond.
He turns his face deeper into Kyojuro’s thigh, wets the fabric there beneath his teeth. The cotton turns dark from the spit of his mouth, the dart of his tongue. Kyojuro sees the peak of pointed canines, white as ivory. Akaza sighs into him, warms his skin with words. He sounds exhausted, “What is it, Kyojuro? You want to be in charge again?”
Kyojuro snarls. Of course, it is a game of power to Akaza. “I should’ve arrested you when I had the chance. It is my mistake. One I have to live with.” He cannot help the shaking of his voice, “Accept my decision that enough’s enough.”
“So, do it, then. Arrest me. Your handcuffs are in your room, right? I’ll make it worth your while.” Akaza bites him then, a small show of strength. The skin of Kyojuro’s thigh beneath the sweatpants pinches with the light pressure. The sensation fizzes up to his belly, stirs and sits there. Akaza smiles, looking hungry. “Better yet, put the uniform back on too. We haven't played like this yet, have we? You’ve got me hot for it, now - putting that idea in my head.” He’s gnawing and kipping, his hands squeezing again, and Kyojuro’s own hands tremble with the effort it takes to stifle his reactions. “Arrest me, Officer Kyojuro.”
He’s at his tether. Akaza’s words cling to his ears like smoke, fill his sinuses and nostrils with the tendrils. He’s stirring in his sweatpants but holding earnestly to his last shreds of morality. He’d changed his number to be free of this. He’d stopped going to Akaza’s safehouse for their meetups to be free of this - had gone cold turkey with it, realising that his past attempts to reason with the man would always be futile. Yet, now, the walls are caving in all too easily.
Akaza is still on his knees. He looks pale like this, ephemeral in the night-washed room. Kyojuro wants to throttle him, to crush him, to squeeze his throat again and watch the acquiescence leech into his features.
His head is still ringing when Akaza continues, the tide of his voice an incessant pitch at his ears, “You want me to be the dog from now on? Hmm? Is that it, Kyo?” The tease is back, but there’s something deeper behind it this time. Something swelling and stewing. He shuffles on his knees and turns his back. “I can do that. I can be your bitch. I’ll get on all fours, and promise to whine real sweet for you.” Akaza drops onto his hands too, looks over his shoulder back at Kyojuro coquettishly. He lowers his chest to the carpet and wriggles his hips, his back arching sinuously.
Kyojuro feels sick.
He gets up. It’s so quick he feels woozy with it, but the room is sweltering and cavernous, the apartment altogether too small. He needs to get away from Akaza’s posturing, his words like toxic gas. “Why can’t you find someone else? Why must it be me?!” He shouts, and for a flash he worries about the neighbours.
But Kyojuro knows the answer. Akaza likes stripping him like this. He relishes in the slow torture of it all. Likes to see a man like Kyojuro - a detective, Inspector, a protector of the peace - brought low by a thug, an enemy - and willingly at that. It’s why he and the Kizuki are so good at what they do; shades in the darkness. It’s why despite his words of slippery affection, Akaza has never once told Kyojuro where Kibutsuji Muzan actually is, why the Corps are no closer to shutting down the syndicate as a whole than they were twelve months ago. He’ll keep Kyojuro on the cusp of it forever, feeding the disparity between them, sucking him dry and crushing him beneath his claws, draining the lifeblood out of him, all the while looking up through hooded eyes and feeding him with lover’s moans; making him believe he’s humbled himself for Kyojuro, like any of this is fair, like Kyojuro has a choice.
He’s a man-eating demon, and he’s got his jaws sunk deep into Kyojuro. And Kyojuro should’ve known better, should’ve known that if he pulled away, parts of him would be torn off in the process… and that, he just might ask Akaza to do it all over again.
He’s addicted. He’s ill. Kyojuro will cut the head off and have it strewn across the grass if he has to. He’ll speak to Akaza in his own language of blood and fists. “Get out this instant. Unless you’d really like me to make you.”
“Stop this now, Kyojuro. You’re being ridiculous.” Akaza chides, wincing at Kyojuro’s boomed command, still all splayed out and presented on the floor.
Kyojuro’s lip curls. He stills his beating heart, swallows around the nausea and the arousal; the concoction intoxicating and deadly. “I’m finished with you, Akaza. Get up, or I will force you to.”
The words simmer in the room. Taut, fit to snap. Kyojuro sees them settle on Akaza, and he watches as, with profound fluidity, Akaza rights himself onto his feet. His movements are always graceful; like a fox or feline. The axis shifts, and Kyojuro feels the full weight of those yellowed eyes on him.
“I don’t think you’re in any position to be making demands, Inspector.”
Kyojuro hates him. They’re the exact same words Akaza spoke to him in the basem*nt all those months ago, and as Akaza stalks closer, Kyojuro hates how this criminal, this maniac, becomes the centre of his world - how he seems to draw all light and matter and substance to himself as he nears. Each step closer sucks his breath away, pulls gravity. Kyojuro’s terrified that he’ll sink and fall in. He’s sure he already has.
Akaza’s in front of him, a few inches shorter but still towering over him somehow. He’s rippling with something - some energy, a lust for destruction, or perhaps he simply wants to split Kyojuro’s face in two. He can never tell, could never tell. All the way back in the warehouse, he couldn’t tell. When bruised fists and bloody noses had turned into thrusts and bites of claimed flesh on the concrete. “You want this.” He tells Kyojuro, so brazenly, eyes flashing and burning. “I can see it in you. You can’t be rid of me.”
Kyojuro could do something now, while they stare at each other. He could change the tide, break the chains. He thinks of the front door, not ten paces away. He thinks of how he could bruise Akaza’s flesh with his fists, how he could clamour and shout so that the neighbours would eventually dial 110 and end this all. He could be the indomitable wall for Akaza’s overwhelming tirade and best him at last, end it all.
But he’s always felt the less powerful of the two, always felt a head below, out of his depth. He inhales, accepting the truth of Akaza’s words, and the air around him goes cold.
Akaza kisses him. And he welcomes it.
He all but plunges into Kyojuro, padded by lips crushed against lips - soft and rounded and spilling nectar. They share it between throats, this thing, this thrumming dynamism. Kyojuro pushes him off with all his might and Akaza stumbles, but then he claws right back - eyes closed, mouth parted and searching for Kyojuro and Kyojuro relishes it. The fiend’s fingers dig into Kyojuro’s arms, searing him with himself.
They grapple like that, but soon it becomes the skeleton of the thing. The fight is gone. Kyojuro judders with the aftershocks; a turn of his head to break the kiss, a protestation on the tip of his lips, but Akaza gives no room. He swoops in like a predator, like a pack of lions, biting at his swollen mouth and stealing the breath right out of him, taking all that he can give.
Kyojuro’s angry. He hates him. Hates himself. Hates how Akaza’s hair feels in his grasp, how it feels like silk, like the skin of a peach, how he hums in the back of his throat as if he’s thankful for Kyojuro. He channels his anger into the tangle of their mouths; bulldozes Akaza ‘til he’s crushed against the living room wall.
It grows manic. Pulsating, a life of its own in the pitch black - a disease growing and festering in the dank. Kyojuro drinks the venom off him, fills his lungs with it and groans. Akaza’s nails are in his scalp, scratching there - drawing shudders out of him, long and stretched out and perfect.
Through the furore, Kyojuro wishes to punish him, to steal back control, somehow. He wants to pour the lava of his hatred into Akaza’s flesh, to mar and alter him with it. His grip on Akaza is iron-tight, and they bang into the hallway walls as he shoves and pushes all the way to his bedroom. There are flames left in their wake; scorching the whole way down the hallway.
“Kyojuro-”, Akaza gasps into him as he deposits him on the dresser. It’s fresh and desperate, a colour of sound he’s never heard from Akaza before. It’s a lie. Akaza only knows lies, even if the body pressed against Kyojuro’s chest feels like truth. Kyojuro won’t believe him. “Come on,” he begs. And that’s new too.
Kyojuro breaks the connection of their mouths; hoists Akaza higher up onto his dresser, battering against the mirror above. It swings precariously but he doesn’t see it - his mouth has landed onto Akaza’s throat, leaves a hot trail with his tongue and the little demon bends into him like a crossbow.
Akaza’s salty, skin soft beneath his lips. He strips him, wrangles with his shirt and jeans. He’s blemishless, a contradiction to the atrocities Kyojuro knows he’s capable of. His skin is like milk, like frost on a winter’s morning. It clears Kyojuro’s mind, and he’s ascending--
Descending.
He’s descending onto the mattress, Akaza flush beneath him, and they’re descending onto the mattress. Kyojuro’s t-shirt is lost in the fray, his sweatpants hauled over his legs and feet. They’re caught in the crossfire and they taste every new bit of flesh exposed, like an oasis in the dry heat. It’s been weeks since their last moment together, and Kyojuro admits now to himself that the time apart has been an agony, even more so an agony than when they are together.
“I need you,” Akaza confesses into his lips, moving Kyojuro’s fingers to the cleft of his ass, and Kyojuro stops short, wanting to believe him. But he knows this is only a Kizuki in power again; Akaza who endures making himself debased for Kyojuro in order to keep his dog on its leash, his rat obedient and docile.
The shame floods him at once. He will always lose to this man.
Kyojuro breaks away, heart ricocheting in his chest. He hates this. He has to end it.
Akaza’s eyebrows crumple together, “No, no, no, no, no -” he’s scratching at Kyojuro’s chest, trying to drag him back, drag him deeper into the next dark circle. But Kyojuro moves away to the edge of the bed, the cold seeping into his bones. His eyes scan Akaza’s naked form; his co*ck is heavy between his legs. It’s leaking, red and swollen at the tip.
“I can’t -”
“You can,” Akaza practically growls, and he’s crawling after him like he’s possessed with it. “f*ck me.” He demands, “f*ck me -” groaned into the air, and it sounds like truth, sounds like prayer.
He’s never done this. Akaza has never done this. He takes and takes, has levelled Kyojuro to within inches of his sanity with that thick co*ck, has scalded and branded Kyojuro’s very soul. He has never asked for Kyojuro to do the same.
“Akaza -”
Akaza is on top of him now, body moulded against Kyojuro’s own. There’s a slickness between them, the slide of sweat-ridden bodies morphed together. It sends zings of pleasure all throughout Kyojuro’s flesh; the press of nipples, the rub of Akaza’s co*ck against his own.
There are teeth caught on the shell of his ear, “Take me,” Akaza breathes. “Take me, dammit.”
The ghost of hot breath against his nape has Kyojuro’s eyes rolling back into his head, shuddering beneath the insistent weight of Akaza’s body. His hands fly up to grasp at the globes of his ass, digging in tight, catching him and grinding Akaza against himself.
“Yes-” He mewls against him, collapsing his full weight atop Kyojuro. His nails find Kyojuro’s shoulders, scratching in deep welts across his muscles.
The puckered hole that rubs its way up Kyojuro’s co*ck is like a pool of promising, delicious heat, and Kyojuro bucks up involuntarily against it before the floodgates open and he’s overtaken by the deluge. He flips Akaza over onto his back, who gasps up from the surprise of Kyojuro’s force, before smirking with delight.
Kyojuro ignores his shimmering look of hope and says dangerously, “You’ll take it.”
He spits onto his fingers, Akaza’s hooded eyes tracking the movement. Akaza looks like a man starved then satisfied. Perhaps he wants Kyojuro more than Kyojuro realised. Perhaps he’s just as addicted.
It’s not dainty and it’s far less courteous than Akaza has ever been, but Kyojuro’s stomach is roiling, he’s fit to spill out over the edges. Kyojuro moves his fingers southward, trailing over Akaza’s muscled stomach and then his groin, to come to a press against his hole, rubbing over the rim. He watches Akaza’s face, chronicling every move and flicker. There is a high, fevered flush sitting on his cheekbones, and all Akaza has to demand is “Quick -” and Kyojuro is forcing his way in; intruding into Akaza with spit-soaked fingers, intruding onto his being just as Akaza has intruded onto him, and the warmth is all-pervading, sacred.
Kyojuro’s free hand supports his weight from above Akaza’s head, and he watches a drop of sweat falling from his neck onto Akaza’s lips. Akaza’s mouth is a small, round ‘o’, his eyes glazed over and flickering with heat. Kyojuro pushes deeper, deeper until there is no more to give, and then begins to grind in hot, f*cking Akaza like how he personally likes to be f*cked; slow and hard.
Akaza, head strewn to the side and throat straining, lifts his arms to clamp around the back of Kyojuro’s neck and pulls him down close. He can feel his pants against his cheeks, wet and distilled. “f*ck, f*ck-” he chants.
Kyojuro can only say, “Akaza,” revelling in the pervading heat and squeeze around his fingers, the way Akaza clings to him.
“Quicker.” Akaza urges, “In me. I need you in me.”
“It’ll hurt.” Kyojuro finds himself protesting, and manages to find enough lucidity in himself to wonder why he cares.
Akaza only shakes his head, eyelids fluttering. “It won’t. Please, now.”
Please, he says. It does something to Kyojuro.
He withdraws his fingers, and when Kyojuro presses against Akaza, sparks of pleasure so sun-bright flash behind his eyes he thinks he sees god. He sinks the head of his co*ck in, and Akaza breaks forth into a refrain of moaned curses, “sh*t! f*ckf*ckf*ckf*ck-” nails claw into Kyojuro’s back, deep and painful as Akaza throws his head back and his brow crumples and contorts. He starts to move his hips frantically, trying to take Kyojuro in further and dominate the flow.
"Ho-holy. sh*t." Kyojuro gasps, and he feels like he's coming undone, unwinding at the base of his spine and spiraling across every nerve ending in his system. It's otherworldly, and Kyojuro is certain he could become devoted to this feeling; to Akaza in this unearthly moment.
Their coupling together always brings a strange rhythm, but this is novel - hotter, branding and all-consuming. Kyojuro breaches Akaza further and shuts his eyes, and all he can feel is Akaza’s heat, his panted breaths, this thrumming vibrancy that rocks them together. Kyojuro dusts him with wet kisses on his neck, his forehead, his cheeks. He pins Akaza’s greedy hips to the bed, and reminds him, “You’ll take it,” whispered into his ear, “you’ll take what I give you.”
Akaza’s resulting moan is long and drawn out as Kyojuro sheathes himself fully inside. He can feel the hot burn of welled blood from the scratches on his back, and it’s so good, so achingly good. And he stays like that; he doesn’t move for a minute, maybe more, allowing Akaza to feel him, allowing himself to feel Akaza.
It’s a foreign sensation, the rapture rising and building even though they remain perfectly still, and Akaza lies obedient and pliant beneath him. Kyojuro can feel the flutter of his ass clenching around him, the way Akaza’s body ripples with pleasure.
“Kyojuro~” Akaza whines when he continues to not move, sinking his teeth into the muscle above Kyojuro’s collarbone. But Kyojuro doesn’t withdraw, only shifts to grind in deeper, feeling the cram of his hips against Akaza’s ass. Akaza shouts.
“You feel so good, ‘kaza. So tight.”
“Ah- ah,” Akaza’s waist twists beneath him, and Kyojuro keeps his eyes shut.
It’s all stirring feeling and emotion, all liquid molten magma welling up within him, and eventually, Kyojuro sets to f*cking in and out of his Akaza, keeping his frame pinned beneath the crush of his body. “That’s right,” he encourages as Akaza’s sounds grow more and more strained, desperate and heaved, “you just lie there and take it.”
Akaza groans so deeply it rumbles the bed, and his legs fall wide open, parted and yielding, and Kyojuro snaps with the force of what it means.
He’ll make Akaza give up control. He’ll steal it from right out under him. And this is how he’ll do it. Akaza’s so beautiful like this, eyes shut and body thrumming with need, tame and mild and wild all at once beneath the pressure of Kyojuro’s larger body. He doesn't talk anymore, doesn't give Kyojuro instructions on how fast to go, how hard to do it. He’s good like this, exactly where Kyojuro always wanted him, and there’s a triumph in it, the ecstasy of conquest and the friction of his tight walls against his overworked and throbbing length, but more than that, Kyojuro seeks to punish him. Seeks to shatter him. The thought of it alone has him in near-white bliss.
He discerns Akaza’s neglected, swollen co*ck; hard and purpling against his stomach, and his mouth waters. Kyojuro wants to mangle him, to splinter and macerate him. There is such violence in him that it makes him take pause and gather his thoughts to ask where this came from, whether it’s the influence and toxin of the Kizuki mobster beneath him or something that has always lain dormant in him.
He crushes his body tighter and closer against Akaza, ensuring he cannot move, until he’s unsure where he himself ends and where Akaza starts, and takes Akaza’s engorged dick in hand. Akaza’s responding keen bounces off the walls, high and vital and pained, and Kyojuro sets a frantic pace of hips and hand, grip tight on Akaza’s co*ck as his back arches right off the bed, drawn taut and tight as to near-snapping. Kyojuro watches with twisted delight as the golden, once-haughty eyes roll back into his head, and it feels like mastery, like defeat when Akaza chokes on a breath and splatters steaming white all across Kyojuro’s fist, across his stomach and all the way up to his chest, and it feels like conquering a nation when he does not let go, when he rubs Akaza’s co*ck past what is kind and into what is cruel, sending Akaza’s body into a twitching, writhing chaos for what feels like aeons.
Akaza’s org*sm has him clenching vice-tight around Kyojuro’s length, and as Akaza begs Kyojuro for pity, begs with a, “Nngh- Kyojuro, please~”, all at once he’s hurtled off the precipice, blinking into stark sunlight as he jerks hard into Akaza and comes deep inside, splattering him with himself, branding his Akaza.
The storm passes.
It leaves drizzle in its wake; the steady, slow come down of things. The ruination and then the sudden rest, the harmony and healing.
Kyojuro’s room is filled with the brassy sounds of rasped breaths, the sweet and strong aroma of sweat and sex like overripe fruit left in the sun to bake. He’s not sure how long they stay like that, entangled, catching their breaths, but Akaza’s the first one to break silence, coiling his hands into Kyojuro’s still-damp hair and breathing the scent in deep. “Don’t make me beg for you, Kyojuro,” he whispers into the space that hovers over them, the static silence between. “Don’t run from me.” And Kyojuro almost doesn’t hear it, “Please.”
And it lands on Kyojuro all of a sudden. The realisation hits him with the force of a tsunami.
He presses himself up off of Akaza to get a good reading on his face, to behold his features in the light of confession. Akaza’s eyes are wet and shining, his cheeks stained crimson. And Kyojuro knows it, the knowledge comes as naturally as wildfires in arid summers, as ice-frozen lakes melting in spring. His fury, the rage breaks. It’s battered into pieces, and Kyojuro stays where he is, deep in Akaza, watching the moisture in his eyes spill over.
He kisses Akaza, softly, apologetically. He has been a brute, he has not understood him, not once - ever.
“I won't leave, Akaza.” He says, and nestles into the other man’s love-bitten neck, placing kisses there, kisses down his chest and across his collarbones. At the hiccuping sob it brings out from Akaza, he says it again. “I’m sorry, I won't leave.” He understands.
“I love you.” Akaza whispers at last, tears falling freely.
The words shake something in his core, but it’s right. It feels true. Kyojuro shushes him, cups Akaza’s blotchy face with his hands, presses a kiss to his lips again. “I know. Shh, I know.”
He sees it all clearly now; the goads, the blackmail, the threats that Akaza levied at him over the past year, the way Akaza sunk his claws so deeply into Kyojuro that he almost became a part of him. They were Akaza’s own twisted, broken ways of ensuring Kyojuro would not leave, that he’d remain Akaza’s forever. A twist of pity catches at his gut, and he finds himself crooning over Akaza’s prone and shaking form, smoothing the bright shock of his hair away from his forehead.
Akaza runs his fingers through Kyojuro’s hair, tangling themselves in the knots they find there. There’s a fragile smile at his lips, and it’s the most raw Kyojuro has ever seen him. It’s stunning. He murmurs, “You’ll let me stay? You won't leave?”
Kyojuro chuckles softly, then winces at the jolt of pain-pleasure it sends through him when it shuffles his softening length still deep inside Akaza. He wheezes through the feeling, “Well, you’ve proven to me I couldn’t, even if I tried. You managed to break into my government protected, deadbolted apartment.”
Akaza frowns at this, unpacified, and brings his legs up to circle tight around Kyojuro’s waist.
Kyojuro laughs again, running his hand up the side of Akaza’s torso, soothing him. “I won't leave, Akaza,” he promises. “I admit that I’m rather partial to you, too. But you’ll have to lead me to Kibutsuji before I can introduce you to my family.”
It’s odd; the way tenderness steals in and replaces the high walls of reservation and misunderstanding that stood there before. Kyojuro realises that he always wanted this, in some hidden, locked part of himself. He always wanted this, with his Akaza.
He bends down to kiss him. “I love you too.”
When they part, there is that characteristic salacious grin pulling wide at Akaza’s features again. He sighs happily, wrapping his arms tighter around Kyojuro’s neck. “Ah, Kyo. I didn’t know you could be so good at pillowtalk.”
Maybe life in the seventh circle isn’t so bad.
