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Kosaku’s body is a tangle of dry veins, hanging clear and collapsed; it is a snarl of strained sinew. It is pale, starved; it is a pathetic, loveless heap.
And yet it does not crumble.
Every morning, it wakes in the sag of a cold mattress, it fumbles unwilling into consciousness. Into the reality that it is Kosaku, and he shrugs away that dread. He drinks his wife’s weak coffee, he dodges the landlord on the way out of the house. He drives himself to work, and his fingers meld to the mechanism of the keyboard.
When Kosaku cannot avoid it, he makes small talk with his coworkers. He pretends like there is something inside of him, something warm and vital that does things on the weekends.
Maybe they believe it. Maybe they pretend, the way his wife does.
When Kosaku cannot avoid it, he makes small talk with Kira. About work, divorced from office gossip. About politics, divorced from opinion.
There’s almost a solace to it. When Kosaku is with Kira, when they are alone in the beige confines of a nameless cubicle, they are a pair. They are two gutted fish, lying together on ice; they are dead to the verve of the market around them.
It is like a lonely lighthouse; it is the first thing in years that has sliced through the empty fog, that Kosaku has known to be good.
Sitting at the desk beside Kira’s, searching for grace in the clatter of his keystrokes. Eating with him in the break room, watching his plastic fork pick at the greying forms of his dour frozen meal. Standing near him in the tiny office kitchen, waiting for the limp dribble of the coffee machine, and idly mentioning that that pothole on his street has not yet been filled, and almost—just barely—feeling warmth.
The dramas that Kosaku’s wife blares in the evenings, the ones that make her snivel—they say that love is the opposite of artifice. That to love someone is to open yourself, to be the strange soft animal that you are.
Kosaku doesn’t think that’s true.
Not for him.
Kosaku thinks—that there is nothing else. That there is only artifice, a clear cheap plastic vessel.
That with Kira, he does not need to pretend that he can fill it.
Maybe that is not love, either. Kosaku is no expert; he does not know anyone who is.
What he knows is that he wants it, that he craves it like nothing else. At the dinner table, when his wife’s mouth makes shapes and sounds as if she cares about how his day went—he wishes it was Kira, across from him. He wishes it was Kira, when he settles stiffly into bed. When he is listless, in the small hours, when he touches himself in the sordid glow of the computer—he wishes it was Kira, bent over on the screen.
And so it goes. Years, like that.
Until the last gasps of quarter two, when the deadline hangs like a fish knife, cold-curved and serrated, when for once Kosaku’s tired system coughs out adrenalin, when for once it tries to wrack.
The numbers must come in. They must come out, spill from where they’ve seeped into Kosaku’s empty spaces. They must find their way to paper, to the boss’ inbox clogged like plaque in a vein, and it falls to Kosaku and Kira.
They work. Silently, with grey settling into their fingertips, below their eyes; they work until everyone else has left. Until the janitor arrives, with his urinal cakes and quiet scorn, and turns off the air-con for the night.
It is a muggy, miserable June. Kosaku’s body knows this, his dessicated throat dampening, his stiff fingers wrenching at his collar.
“Kawajiri-san,” says Kira. “You’re uncomfortable.”
A minute and meaningless twitch of the lips. “I’m fine.”
Kira leaves those words for the janitor to sweep up.
“We’ll finish this at my house,” he says, “It’s cooler, and we’ll be out of the way.”
Kosaku leaves a tinny, stilted voicemail for his wife: do not wait up. And as his car follows Kira’s down the rough town roads, as the suspension judders, Kosaku’s body is juddering too.
Kira’s home is sterile, unmarred as a fresh cutting board. If Kosaku had fingerprints, he would want to keep them off the polished wood.
As it stands, it is comfortable there. Quiet. Nothing but the shushing sounds of paper across tabletop, fingertips on the keys of Kira’s sleek calculator, Kira’s bulky laptop. The occasional drizzle of words.
The worm in Kosaku, curious, wriggling through his flesh like unflavored gelatin.
And then, when it reaches his core, Kosaku’s voice: “no wife?”
Kira smiles in that way of his, filmy and sharp. “No.”
And then, sharper, “why do you ask?”
“It’s quiet here.” No wife, wife’s cat, wife’s landlord, wife’s son. Nothing. The seismograph is a perfect clean line.
Except for Kosaku’s body, tremoring, grinding like a faultline.
“You like that,” says Kira. He is not asking.
Kosaku’s brittle shoulders form a shrug. As much as I like anything.
Kira just tilts his head, acknowledging. Silently, Kosaku acknowledges the angle of his jaw. Pristine.
They return to work. They strip-search the numbers like prisoners, under cold fluorescent lights.
The numbers don’t add up. They never do.
Kira says nothing of this. Kosaku says nothing of this. They never do.
They just smear the ink until things look right.
Kosaku’s body does not add up.
Kosaku’s body is more worm than gelatin than man. Kosaku’s body glows like the screen of his computer, in the small hours, projecting slender, bent not-Kiras on the bare walls.
There is no ink to smear. There is no right to look.
When Kira speaks again, his tone is a salt flat. Same as it always is.
“Kawajiri-san, what do you like?”
Quiet.
Nothing.
You.
Kosaku’s dry mouth, his arid throat are open. Nothing shudders loose.
Kira doesn’t mind. He just goes on speaking, and for the first time the hiss of his voice feels like it’s coming from somewhere.
“I like your hands,” he says, “when you’re working.”
He lays out these words like his own teeth, bloody on the dustless tabletop, and Kosaku—Kosaku has never held anything holy before.
He thinks that he could start. Because holiness is glory in impossibility, and it is impossible that any of Kosaku’s scant substance could ever be so lovable as to make Kira bleed.
Holy, too, is that he speaks again.
“I like the paleness of them,” says Kira. “Their efficiency. They never make unnecessary moves.”
Kosaku’s eyes, stunned open. Kosaku’s veins, dripping the thinnest, pinkest blood.
“Have I offended you?” Kira asks, and there is a pragmatic softness in it, a feather plucked swiftly from a bird.
Kosaku’s body overcomes decades of inertia, just to lift his clammy hand up from his lap. Just to lay it—palm down, fingers spread—on the table.
Kosaku’s body overcomes decades of inertia, just to fumble at the lips, to mumble no and I and please.
“May I kiss you, Kawajiri-san?”
“Y-yes.”
Kosaku parts his dry, dry lips, but Kira comes no closer. He only stretches out his hand, soft at the wrist, only reaches for Kosaku’s. He lifts it, fingers brushing at Kosaku’s palm; he carries it up to his mouth.
He kisses Kosaku’s hand, then—the back of it, bones that Kosaku does not know a name for.
Nameless bones, sallow skin. Between them, a tiny mycelium of veins.
Kosaku cannot make sense of the warmth. Is it the thrum of his own body, waking from torpor, is it the tender skin of Kira’s lips?
His body is not concerned with this. His body, centered all around the back of his left hand, is wracking with life.
A tiny sound breaks from Kosaku’s throat, it falls to Kira’s flawless floor like a chip of porcelain.
Maybe its edges are rough. Maybe it will scratch the hardwood.
Maybe that is what Kosaku wants.
Wants, distantly; what Kosaku wants now is to keep feeling the slow spread of Kira’s lips, the painstaking accretion of his smile. What he wants is the brush of Kira’s brilliant hair against his wrist as he raises his head; Kosaku wants those eyes to look on his with languid pleasure.
He has it, and in that instant Kosaku’s body is aware of its own hollowness, its own gouging, spreading ache.
“You like that,” says Kira. Again, he is not asking.
He is not wrong.
Kosaku can feel his body throbbing; a new sensation like the first tearing of a tendon. Kosaku can feel Kira knowing.
What Kosaku cannot feel is dread.
“Do you want to hear,” says Kira, laced with choking sweetness, “what I’d like?”
Through all the static that fills him, Kosaku nods his head.
Kira bends again, his proud nose nuzzling Kosaku’s hand. His lips, too, when he speaks, when they drag across thin skin; “I want to see you touch yourself, Kawajiri-san.”
Kosaku’s body does not breathe. It arches, curling closer.
“I want you,” Kira whispers, “to wrap your lovely hand around your cock, and I want you to stroke, and spill across your perfect fingers, and I want to see it all.”
Kosaku’s body tremors and jerks, a stagnant breath escapes his lungs.
The first time he has ever known Kira to want anything, and it is him. It is his body, unbinding at the seams; it is his uncharted, artless pleasure.
If anything has ever been holy, impossible, glorious, it is this. It is Kira’s heavy eyes on him, leaking desire as if it is an easy thing to feel, to exhume from the deep of one’s body. It is Kosaku himself, his fumbling lips, the way they speak a stilted yes.
To form the word is almost enough. Kosaku stills, right hand pale and damp and useless like a thing just hatched.
“Go on,” coaxes Kira, with only the slightest angling of his neck. He will not raise his lips from Kosaku’s left hand, he will not break that kiss. His words resonate in Kosaku’s no-name bones, they show his body how to thrum.
“Show me,” Kira says, and Kosaku does, he stumbles for it like a roach caught in the light. His fingers tangle at the button of his cheap slacks, his breath breaks at the accident of knuckles against his clothed cock.
He brings himself out, spasming and shameful, swelling with new blood.
Kosaku is strung up, a moment, in a fresh uncertainty, it winds its tendrils all across the wide apathetic plain.
But Kira—Kira looks at him like a thing worth seeing, and then there is no doubt. There is nothing but the frenzied action of Kosaku’s wrist, the choke of his fingers, there is nothing but the subtle scrape of flesh.
Kosaku touches his own cock as if he sits stiffly in the thrall of his own computer, as if there is no sound but the uneasy settling of his house. As if there is a wad of tissues in his left hand.
But here in his left hand is Kira, his elegant fingers, his exacting lips. The slow vibration of his voice, murmuring “not like that.”
The chastening stings, it spills into Kosaku’s ache. It could be something that he likes. His first tentative indulgence, he could learn to speak of it the way that Kira speaks of his hands.
“Slowly,” says Kira, a new viscosity in his syllables. “Make it feel good, hm?”
“Hm,” echoes Kosaku, dumb and distant. He does not wonder how long it has been since he has done anything without pure pragmatism in between his teeth—Kosaku’s mind is all below his wrist, now, unraveling.
And it does feel good, to hold himself like this. It feels good to watch wide-eyed for Kira’s reaction, it feels good to receive one at all.
It feels more than good that Kira is pleased, that his mouth makes another smile against Kosaku’s skin, that his scalpel eyes go soft.
“Good,” he whispers, a little breath against Kosaku’s skin, warm and wet and vital. “Stroke yourself. Slowly.”
And Kosaku does, he turns his wrist, he gentles at his cock. And it feels, it feels, it feels.
Kosaku’s body shivers as if frozen, as if stoking its own heat; Kosaku’s throat relinquishes a tiny, broken sound.
He can see the pleasure on Kira’s face more than he feels it in his own body, that smile that folds the soft skin at the corner of his eyes. The way Kira shifts, minutely, to kiss each of his knuckles, lips parted, mouth soft.
Kosaku knows it for praise, Kosaku strokes himself again. Again, without experiment, without deviation—with only the knowledge that this is what Kira wants of him, that this is what he wants to give over.
That this is what he wants, down to his marrow.
Weren’t his bones hollow, an hour ago? Kosaku does not know. He does not care. His vision tunnels like panic, like love, all he can know is the slow stream of praise from Kira’s lips.
“Beautiful,” nose nuzzling against the plane of his hand; “good,” spilled with tongue-tip at Kosaku’s fingers. Kira laves over him, he takes the middle finger between his thin lips. Swallows, until the finger-web is stretched against his lips; he holds it there.
He holds Kosaku there, in that shaking, sighing space; wordlessly he twines their veins together.
They open into each other, with Kosaku’s finger in Kira’s soft mouth, with Kira’s eyes gone soft and sanguine against Kosaku’s.
They bleed, and Kosaku’s hand feels like something better than his own, and before he can know what he’s become he is crying out strangled, he is wracking, he is wet over his fingers and his knuckles and his slacks.
Kira’s other hand catches at Kosaku’s thigh, it gentles, it is all the words that Kira’s full mouth cannot make. That’s right, that’s right, that’s good.
That’s beautiful.
And as Kosaku trembles, as Kira tangles their fingers tighter—even when a moment’s passed, when Kira licks the bitter spend from Kosaku’s right hand—it is.
It’s right, and good, and beautiful. It’s holy, and bleeding, and whole.