l'appel du vide

for a second—one vicious, suspended second—he is only a silhouette carved into the doorway. too tall. too broad. shoulders catching the dim hall light. the shape of him burned so deep into your body that even after months of absence, months of an untouched side of the bed and meals gone cold and nights stretched thin as old cloth, you know him instantly. your body knows him before your pride can intervene. your pulse knows him. your lungs do too, because they forget, briefly, how to work.

and then the door shuts behind him.

the apartment goes still in that terrible way only homes can. not peaceful. never peaceful. the kind of stillness that listens. that holds its breath. that waits to see if it is about to witness tenderness or disaster.

he looks wrecked.

that is the second thing you feel. not before the anger. never before the anger. but there it is all the same, sliding in under your ribs with quiet cruelty. because you want him whole enough to blame. you want him bright and infuriating and impossible, with that lazy grin and the careless beauty of someone who has never had to earn the room he takes up. you want to look at him and be able to hate him cleanly.

instead, he looks like he has been dragged back from the bottom of something black and endless.

his coat hangs heavier than it should, damp at the hem. his hair is a little too long, a little unkempt, pale strands falling over eyes ringed in sleepless shadows. there is dried blood at the collar—not his, maybe. maybe his. you cannot tell. his mouth, that beautiful, reckless mouth that has smiled at you like mischief and devotion were the same thing, is set too tight. his hands are empty except for the bag slipping from numb fingers, hanging low at his side like even that small weight is too much.

he looks at you the way starving men look at miracles. like he does not know whether to fall to his knees or run.

your jaw locks.

good.

let him feel it.

let him stand there and feel the full, silent shape of what he has done to this place. to you. let him see the brittle order of the apartment he left behind: the dishes put away too neatly, the blanket folded into a cruel little square on the couch, the plant by the window still alive only because you were too stubborn to let one more thing die on your watch. let him see the life you kept moving with furious hands while he was gone long enough for the air to forget the sound of his breathing.

months and months.

too long for promises to remain soft. too long for worry to stay noble. after enough time, love stops being a hymn and starts curdling into something meaner. something with teeth.

you have hated him in pieces.

hated the silence of his side of the bed. hated every unanswered night. hated the toothbrush still leaning against yours in the cup by the sink like it had any right to stay. hated the way his hoodies kept his shape even on the back of a chair, shoulders implied in cotton and memory. hated the door every evening for not opening. hated yourself most of all for listening for him anyway.

and now he is here.

here.

like he can step back into the apartment and make the months between this moment and the last time you saw him collapse into nothing. like time is something that only ever obeys him.

your eyes sting.

you hate that too.

you refuse to cry first.

so you make yourself very still. colder than him. colder than the rain he carried in. colder than the missions that took him. your throat tightens around everything unsaid until it becomes something almost holy in its violence. because what could words even do here? what sentence would be big enough? what language survives this much absence?

he shifts his weight.

you hear it—the tiny scrape of his shoe against the floorboards. the restrained, careful movement of a man who knows he is approaching something wounded. something with every right to bite.

his gaze drags over you with painful slowness, as if he is relearning you piece by piece. your face. your shoulders. your hands flattened to the counter. the shirt you stole from him months ago and never gave back, because anger is still anger even when it wears the shape of longing. something in his expression breaks further when he notices that, some minute fracture at the edges of his eyes.

good.

let him choke on it.

you want him to suffer exactly enough. enough to match the nights you sat on the bathroom floor because the bed felt too large. enough to match the mornings you woke up reaching, hand finding only cold sheets and the stale ghost of his cologne. enough to match the humiliating, animal terror of loving someone who belongs just a little too much to death, to danger, to a world that keeps trying to drag him out of yours.

his bag slips from his hand and lands against the floor with a dull, final thud.

the sound goes through you like a bullet.

because it is so human. so tired. no theatrics. no easy grin. no cocky tilt of the head as if he can charm his way back into your good graces. just a bag dropping from a hand that could not hold on any longer.

your vision blurs.

no.

no.

you blink hard, furious at the wetness burning behind your eyes, furious that your body is already betraying you, that after all this time and all this ache, the first thing it wants to do is grieve into him. you swallow it back so violently it hurts. your chest feels like it has been wired shut. everything inside you rattles.

satoru sees.

of course he sees.

his whole face changes—not dramatically. not enough for anyone else to notice. but you do. you always do. a minute collapse. a small devastation. the look of a man realizing he has finally reached the point where your pain is visible, undeniable, no longer something he can lovingly imagine away from a distance. it is here. it is on your face. it is because of him.

he takes one step forward.

you almost step back.

almost.

the apartment narrows around the space between you until it feels impossible that it ever held furniture, walls, ordinary things. all of it falls away. there is only the distance. only the unbearable fact of him existing on one side of it and you on the other.

you realize, with the strange clarity of someone about to break, that anger has a limit.

not because it weakens. because it burns too hot to last in a human body forever.

something has to give.

it happens when his mouth trembles.

barely.

a tiny, traitorous hitch in that stubborn line of a mouth, like he is fighting the same collapse with everything he has left. and maybe it is unfair, maybe it is pathetic, but you have always been ruined by the moments he stops looking like the strongest man alive and starts looking like just your satoru—too tall for the doorway, too soft in the places no one else gets to see, carrying more of the world than any one person should.

the tears hit before you can stop them.

hot. humiliating. sudden.

you turn your face sharply, as if denial can become dignity if you do it fast enough.

it cannot.

because he is moving at the exact same time you are.

one second you are across the room, choking on hurt so old it has gone metallic. the next, the distance is gone in a violent blur of footsteps and breath and desperate inevitability. neither of you hesitates. neither of you pretends. you crash into each other with enough force to hurt, enough force to mean it, your bodies colliding like two waves after a storm—ugly, loud, helpless in their return.

it is not graceful.

it is not soft.

it is the kind of embrace born from almosts.

almost funerals. almost endings. almost learning how to live without this.

his arms slam around you so tight your feet stumble. your hands fist in the back of his coat with a desperation that has nothing pretty in it. your face hits the hard line of his shoulder, then his throat, then his mouth finds yours with all the starving ruin of someone breaking the surface after too long underwater.

that is what it feels like.

not romance. not even kissing, at first.

air.

a first, violent lungful after drowning.

his mouth on yours is frantic enough to border on painful, and you meet him there, there, exactly there, because tenderness would be unbearable right now. tenderness would kill you. what you need is impact. proof. something bruising enough to convince your body this is real. his mouth is cold from outside, then warm, then shaking. yours opens on a breath that sounds too much like a sob, and he swallows it greedily, like he has been dying for the taste of your grief because at least grief is something you are giving him.

you kiss him angry.

you kiss him like punishment.

you kiss him like you could claw the months back out of his skin if you bit hard enough.

his hands are everywhere and nowhere useful, too desperate to settle, spanning your waist, your ribs, your face, the back of your neck, as if he cannot decide which part of you to hold first, which absence to repair. he cradles your jaw one second and clutches you to his chest the next. his fingers shake so badly when they slide into your hair that it nearly undoes you all over again.

you taste salt.

yours. his. both.

the kiss breaks only because breathing is a cruel biological necessity. not because either of you wants it to. your foreheads knock together. his breath fans over your mouth in ragged bursts. yours catches on the shape of him. you drag him back down by the collar before sense can intervene, and he comes willingly, helplessly, with the low, wrecked sound of a man whose whole body has become one giant exposed nerve.

you back him into the wall.

or maybe he backs you into it.

it barely matters. the apartment has lost all allegiance to logic. there is only heat and impact and the wet, desperate press of mouths. your fingers are clumsy at his coat, shoving it off his shoulders in furious, stumbling jerks. he helps without breaking the kiss, wrenching one arm free, then the other, the dark fabric falling to the floor with a heavy slap. underneath, his shirt clings to him slightly, damp with rain and sweat and whatever remained of the outside world after it chewed on him for months.

you need it off.

you need all of it off.

not for hunger alone—though there is hunger, god, there is hunger, mean and ravenous and sharpened by deprivation—but because his clothes offend you suddenly. they are evidence of where he has been. of all the places that had him when you did not. they smell like distance. like weather. like work. like everything that kept him away.

your fingers find the buttons at his collar. miss them. try again.

he catches your wrists.

not to stop you.

never that.

just to steady them.

his forehead drops briefly to yours, eyes closed, his breath shuddering through him like something torn loose. when he opens them again, those impossible blue eyes look blown wide and raw, grief-bright, and you understand in one clean, devastating instant that he is not holding your hands to restrain you.

he is making sure you know he is here.

that this is mutual. that this is yours too.

you wrench free only to resume the work with more purpose. one button. another. another. your knuckles brush warm skin. he inhales sharply against your mouth, and then his hands are at the hem of your shirt, slipping beneath, palms hot and trembling against your waist. you arch on instinct, or memory, or something older than either. the contact nearly burns. months without him and your body still opens around his touch like a flower stupid enough to trust spring.

he pushes the fabric up slowly at first, almost reverently, and then you get impatient and help, dragging it over your head with him, tossing it somewhere behind you without looking. the cold apartment air skates over your skin for a single startled second before he covers the distance again, mouth dropping to your shoulder, your collarbone, the place beneath your ear where your pulse is frantic and unforgiving.

his lips there feel like an apology too intimate for language.

you clutch at his shirt and peel it from him with desperate hands.

the sight of him nearly stops your heart.

not because he is beautiful, though he is, cruelly so. always. even half-dead, even shaking, even with exhaustion pulled beneath his skin like bruised watercolor. but because he is marked. there are fading cuts crossing his torso, a smear of old bandage shadowing one side, yellowing bruises at his ribs, a livid scrape near his shoulder blade. proof. proof. proof. the outside world written all over the body you love most.

your anger mutates on the spot, becoming something heavier, wetter, harder to survive.

your hands move over the damage before you can think better of it.

featherlight.

the lightest you have touched him all night.

satoru goes still beneath your palms. completely, shockingly still. like even now, after all of that, after everything he has endured, this is the contact capable of undoing him fastest—not your teeth at his lip, not your desperate hands stripping him bare, but your fingertips tracing the wounds with unbearable care.

his eyes close.

his face folds inward.

the next breath he takes is so ragged it sounds almost like pain.

and suddenly you are crying for real. not neatly. not beautifully. tears spill hot and stupid down your face while your thumbs brush the edges of bruises you wish you could have prevented. the sight of him bare-chested and battered in your kitchen feels too intimate, too sacred, too obscene in its honesty. this is what waiting was for. this. not a heroic return, not a triumphant reunion, not anything clean. just your lover in pieces and your hands trying, helplessly, to count them all.

he kisses the tears from your cheeks before they can fall too far.

one side. then the other. then the corner of your mouth.

and then you are on him again, because if you let the tenderness sit any longer, you will drown in it.

you shove at his shoulders, urging him backward, and he follows instantly, blindly, as if there is nowhere on earth he would rather be led than wherever your anger decides to take him. down the hall. bumping into walls. hands dragging over skin. mouths clashing between steps. it is messy and breathless and half-feral, the kind of urgency that makes furniture irrelevant and time obscene.

by the time you reach the bedroom, his belt is half-undone.

your jeans are already open.

there is something almost violent in the way clothing accumulates behind you—his shirt inside-out near the hallway, your bra abandoned at the bedroom door, his belt coiled on the floor like a shed skin, one of your socks somehow stranded by the bed. months reduced to fabric and friction. absence translated into small wreckages.

you push him onto the mattress.

the bed groans under his weight, under the suddenness of him there, silver hair tousled against your pillow, chest rising and falling too fast. for one dizzy second he looks at you from below with such naked devastation that you nearly buckle. he has always known how to look beautiful; that was never special. what ruins you is this—the lack of defense. the way home has stripped him cleaner than any battle ever could.

you climb over him.

your hands frame his face.

his own settle at your hips with a reverence that does not match the hunger in them, thumbs stroking the jut of your bones as if he is cataloguing proof of your existence. his gaze moves over you like prayer and punishment at once. your skin. your mouth swollen from kissing. the track of tears drying at your temples. the chest heaving under his stare. all of it received with the silent awe of a man who did not let himself assume he would ever see this again.

you lean down and kiss him slower.

not gentle. not yet. but slower.

the desperation is still there, yes, still flashing hot between your bodies, but it has changed shape. it is no longer the drowning. it is what comes after—shaking at the shore, coughing up seawater, clutching the person beside you because neither of you can quite believe you made it back.

his hands travel up your sides. over your ribs. your waist. your back. pausing every few inches like he is relearning the map from memory alone. you do the same. down his throat. over the powerful line of his shoulders. across the planes of his chest. lower, where his stomach tightens under your touch, where the scars and bruises give way to familiar heat. every inch of skin uncovered feels like some private miracle. every gasp he breathes into your mouth feels earned.

you are the one who reaches for the fastening of his pants.

he is the one who guides your hand only because your fingers are shaking again.

together, then.

that is how it has to be.

together.

he lifts his hips. you tug fabric down. he sits up long enough to strip the rest away, and then he is reaching for your jeans with equal urgency, palms skimming your thighs as he peels them down your legs, gaze darkening not with conquest but with hunger so grateful it almost hurts to witness. when he presses his face briefly to your stomach, just above the waistband of your underwear, something inside you gives way completely.

because it is not theatrical. not seduction. not an act.

it is grief.

it is him putting his mouth to the place closest to your center like he needs to be forgiven there first.

your fingers dive into his hair. hold. not pushing. just holding.

he closes his eyes.

the room fills with the sound of your breathing.

his. yours. mingling. stumbling. catching.

when he stands again to help you out of the last of your clothes, his movements are almost unbearably careful. not hesitant. never hesitant. just aware. aware of your body like it matters. like it has always mattered. he undresses you the way one might unwrap something returned after being lost at sea: reverent, disbelieving, a little afraid that roughness might make it vanish again. you do the same for him, dragging the last barriers away until there is finally, finally nothing between your skin and his but heat.

bare.

both of you.

the sight should feel erotic first. maybe it does, a little. there is want in it, immediate and liquid and undeniable, curling low in your belly with all the force of deprivation. but stronger than want is the terrible tenderness of recognition. this body. this man. this home you have been grieving while it was still alive.

you push him back onto the bed and follow, skin meeting skin in a collision so intimate it borders on holy. his hands spread over your back, pulling you down until your chests align, until the frantic beat of his heart knocks against yours like it is trying to relearn the rhythm by echo. your thighs tangle. your mouths meet again, and this time the kiss is deep enough to feel endless, slow enough to feel like surrender.

no words.

none needed.

there are too many things lodged in the space between you for language to survive it. the anger is still there, yes, a live coal glowing beneath everything else. forgiveness has not arrived. tomorrow will be brutal in its own way. there will be explanations, maybe. there will be tears you can actually name. there will be days spent picking through the wreckage with more precision than passion allows.

but tonight is not for any of that.

tonight is for the animal fact of return.

for mouths and hands and the silent exchange of i thought i lost you, i thought i lost you too.

his palm cups the back of your neck. yours presses flat over his heart. he kisses you until your lips ache, until the anger inside you softens from blade to bruise, until the grief that had been sitting in your chest like broken glass begins, at last, to melt around the edges. not disappear. never that. just become something you can survive inside his arms.

when he rolls you gently onto your back, it is with both urgency and care, like he cannot decide whether to devour or worship you and is suffering beautifully from the impossibility of choosing. you open for him without shame. not because everything is fixed. because it is not. because maybe that is exactly why. because after months of living with half your breath caught in your throat, there is something almost sacred in choosing to be fully seen.

he lowers himself over you, all long limbs and shaking devotion, silver hair falling around your faces like a curtain drawn around something private and bruised and precious. his nose brushes yours. your fingers trace the slope of his cheekbone. his eyes search yours one last time—not for permission alone, but for reality, for certainty, for the impossible reassurance that this is not some mercy-dream his exhausted body invented on the way home.

you answer by pulling him down.

mouth to mouth. chest to chest. skin to skin.

and as his hands slide beneath your thighs, as your legs open around his waist, as the room fills with the harsh, uneven music of two people trying not to break from the relief of each other, you realize that this is what it means to be loved by someone who belongs too often to catastrophe:

when he returns, he returns like a storm-battered thing crawling back to shore.

and you meet him there.

angry. trembling. ruined.

still his.

still.

“worse,” you say, pulling at a loose thread on your sweatpants. “i mean i'm romantically defective, the only ‘thing’ i ever had lasted two days. two. days. that's—” the words tangle. you make yourself say them anyway. “i haven’t even… like, had a real kiss.”

his hand, still caught around your rings, slows. something minute flicks behind his eyes—something sharp you can’t read—then he smooths it into a drawl that’s all bite without teeth. “weird. i can’t imagine why.”

you shoot him a look.

“what?” he chuckles quietly.

“say it. i know you’re dying to.”

he goes still the way he gets still before he says something he can’t unsay. then his mouth curves—careful, teasing on the surface, protective underneath. “plenty of people make it through their twenties without letting an idiot put his mouth on them,” he says lightly, but his eyes do the real talking. his eyes say don’t you dare call this a flaw.

“but why am i single?” you press, because you never learned how to leave a bruise alone. “is it the personality? the face? what the hell is wrong? do i smell? be honest.” he’s the worst person to ask this; his honesty would ruin you. he’s addicted to your scent—your hoodie’s afterscent, the shampoo on your pillow, the skin-warm sweetness you carry like a secret.

satoru’s grin breaks out, automatic. “honesty you want, honesty you get. you're too loud, too stubborn, so stupid, so—”

your fist lands, muted, in his ribs. it’s a soft punch; he performs a dramatic death. “ow,” he wheezes, delighted. “violent too.”

“cry about it.” you lean back on your palms. he’s still rolling your ring, thumb warm against the web of your hand, so you tug lightly. he resists just enough to annoy you. “you’re the idiot here.”

he mutters, almost to himself, a pantomimed stage-whisper like he forgot the volume knob exists. “right, i’m the real idiot for arguing with you… for sticking around this long.”

sticky words. they catch like honey in your chest. you ignore them. you’re practiced at that.

“i’m not holding you hostage,” you say, sharper than intended. “if anything, you clinging to me is why i can't get a boyfriend. you scare them away.”

“oh, so your tragic love life is my fault now?” he deadpans, but he looks delighted.

“yes, totally.” you mutter, your cheeks are hot. it’s the heat of being seen too well, not the bad kind. he keeps rolling your ring; you’re going to be left with a ghost of silver on your skin.

“you’re complicated,” he says, gentle now, like he’s listing symptoms he’s grateful for. “and you hate small talk unless it’s with old women. and if you think someone’s lying, your face breaks into itty-bitty pieces because you haven’t learned how to pretend. and—” he pauses, something catching in his throat, “yeah, you’re not easy.”

your eyebrows hike. “wow, cool. thanks. truly uplifting.”

“not like that.” he scoots a little closer until your knees are really touching, his hoodie sleeve brushing your arm. “i mean you’re not easy to… manage. you’re not easy to contain. you’re not easy to put in a box and slap a label on. you’re the complicated puzzle with pieces from a different set and i think that’s—” he shuts up, teeth catching his bottom lip.

you stare at the paused movie because looking at him directly feels like touching an exposed wire. “so... not easy to love,” you whisper, and it comes out softer than you wanted. you try to make it flippant. it fails. “good to know.”

his hand, still wrapped around your finger, squeezes like he’s catching a falling glass before it hits tile. “i didn’t say that,” he answers, voice low, careful, like you’re on a thin ice lake and he’s trying not to crack anything. “don’t twist my words.”

“how is ‘not easy to deal with’ different from ‘not easy to love’?” you ask, obstinate because it’s safer to be stubborn than to be hopeful.

he huffs, small and frustrated and fond. his thumb sketches circles into your palm, tiny galaxies. “because dealing is a choice and love isn’t,” he mutters finally. “you can treat someone right even when they’re difficult. you can want someone even when they drive you insane. you can love someone without them making sense.”

“so love isn’t a choice,” you say, and you aim for a joke but miss and hit the soft meat of it, “and i’m still not chosen.”

the tiny flinch in his eyes would be invisible if you didn’t know every version of him—toddler with a scraped knee, twelve-year-old with a bad haircut, sixteen-year-old pretending he didn’t cry at that movie. “shut up,” he groans, not unkind. “you know that’s not true.”

“do i?” you poke, because you can’t stop yourself. “who would bother? i’m so difficult and—”

“so difficult to understand,” he murmurs, the words cutting through your noise with an ease that’s unfair. his voice flips a switch you didn’t know was in the room. “which is exactly why the right people can’t look away.”

your chest does a weird, painful balloon thing.

“also difficult to have,” he goes on, a crooked smile tugging, “which is exactly why idiots line up anyway, because they think they can be the exception.”

“and?” you whisper, because you want him to keep talking forever, because your mouth tastes like sugar and static.

“and difficult to forget,” he says, and that one lands like a hand on the back of your neck, grounding. his smile is gone. something else is in its place. “i’ve tried, trust me. it’s impossible.”

silence pools under the coffee table, heavy and bright.

you blink at him. your body forgets how to do simple things like breathe and play it cool and be your own worst critic. your mouth opens. nothing comes out.

he’s still talking, like he broke a dam and is trying to build it back with words. “difficult to be mad at for more than five minutes. difficult to keep my hands off when you laugh. difficult to watch other guys text you because i want to break their damn phones. difficult to pretend we’re just—” the words lurch, then steady, “just best friends.”

“are you high, satoru?” you ask, almost not a voice.

he looks at your mouth like he wants to put his hand over it to stop you from ruining yourself with words, then laughs softly, wrecked. “nah,” he says, a whisper, and leans in to do something stupider than finishing a sentence.

the kiss is tiny. barely a tap. a press so quick it might be a misfire, a little mistake people pretend didn’t happen. except your entire body rings like he just struck crystal with the softest part of his knuckle.

you stare at him, eyes wide and pupils probably too dilated. he’s closer than he should be. he stares back like he’s halfway through a long fall and only just realized the ground exists.

you don’t think. what a relief. your hand’s already in his hair and his is already tightening around your fingers, and you’re meeting him again, mouths making a new shape, sweet and tentative and ridiculous because he tastes like soda and a memory of the strawberry candies he refuses to admit he steals only because they somehow hold the taste of his childhood with you.

he feels you fumble, not the kiss itself—your mouth picks it up too fast, as if your heart’s had the choreography forever—but your hands, not knowing where to go like they’ve forgotten anatomy. his fingers glide along your wrist, your forearm, guiding you because he knows this is your first, settling you behind his neck like it’s a cradle built for you. there, he tells you without words. anchor there.

“okay?” he breathes into the space between your lips, his nose bumping yours.

“yeah,” you say back, a little stunned, a little laughing, because somehow the room has stayed exactly the same while every single thing in it has tilted five degrees.

he kisses you like he’s trying to teach you a soft language through your mouth—slow vowels, patient consonants. he pulls back half an inch to see if you’ll chase and you do, you do without thinking, the sound he makes shouldn't be so soft. your rings clicks off his collarbone; later you’ll find a tiny half-moon on his skin and feel smug.

his mouth is gentler than you expected and more demanding in flashes—like he’s toeing a line and the line keeps moving. when he breaks for air, he doesn’t go far. he presses a peck to the corner of your mouth. then another. then one to your jaw, a little smile in it because he knows it drives you nuts, these almost-kisses. his fingers flex around your hand, squeezing—there, good, breathe—then releasing like waves.

“stop it,” you giggle, mortified by the sound of it; but you don’t really care. “you’re so annoying.”

he hums against your skin, pleased. “mm, i know.” another tiny peck, to your cheekbone. you grab both sides of his face on instinct—cheeks, smooth and warm under your palms—so you can direct him like you’re done playing this game. he blushes. actual color, high on the cheekbones, faintly stunned. you try to act like you don’t notice as you pull him down to kiss you properly.

it snowballs. of course it does. of course it’s messy. there’s laughter in it, and breathlessness, and the familiar cadence of two people who’ve been talking forever—only now you speak like this.

his hands bracket your waist and you think, absurdly, about the way his palms are bigger than you remember, how he used to stick stickers on your notebook and write his name like it was shorthand for comfort. when he noses your cheek and you tilt your head, his mouth slots deeper, the kind of kiss that steals time and makes it manageable, as if it softens just for you.

“full disclosure,” you mumble, clinging to humor like a ledge, “this is my first kiss. like actual first, so if i’m doing anything weird just—”

“you’re doing perfect,” he says, immediate, fervent in a way that breaks your knees from the inside. “you’re doing so perfect i’m—”

he doesn’t finish that thought either because your sleep shirt is suddenly the most annoying shirt in the world. you find yourself tugging at your shirt, dragging it up your ribs in a way that feels both graceless and necessary. when the cotton gets stuck around your head, arms trapped up like a caught sweater puppet, you flail, mortified heat stinging your ears.

“oh my god,” you squeak into fabric, trying to wriggle free. you squirm. the hem rides up, exposing a stomach that registers cold air and his gaze at the same time. “help me—”

he’s laughing, the bastard, but it’s so fond it makes something fizzy go off in your chest. “hold on, hold on.” deft, careful, he unhooks you from your own clothing, peeling it off like a skin, stealing a kiss to your forehead as your face emerges, like he’s unwrapping a present he’s been pretending wasn’t under the tree for years. “hey,” he says, eyes taking you in with a slow awe that scrapes your lungs. “there you are.”

air hits your skin; embarrassment hits your face. getting stuck when taking off your shirt is such a good way to ruin the moment, right? “i swear i’m not trying to ruin this,” you mutter from inside the shirt before it pops free of your ears, “but the shirt was fighting for its life—”

his fingers are careful at your wrists, guiding the cotton up and over like you’re something precious—and then it’s off, tossed somewhere near the couch graveyard, and you’re just sitting there in your bra with your face hot enough to heat the kettle back up.

“you’re not ruining anything,” he repeats, and then he looks, really looks.

you’re in your bra. you’re in your bra in satoru’s lap. satoru who you once threw up on in second grade after a bad juice box. satoru whose house you’ve been climbing into since before you were allowed to be out past sunset. satoru whose palm is still holding your hand like it’s a habit no one taught him how to break.

you watch his throat move. you watch his ears go a tiny bit pink. he tries to be normal about it and fails miserably.

he can’t stop. he keeps pressing small soft pecks to your lips like he’s taste-testing, smiling into them, teasing. it’s stupidly sweet. it’s also absolutely annoying. “give me the full thing,” you complain, breathless. “commit to the bit.”

“oh? full thing?” his voice drops as if that’s a switch. “okay, princess.”

you mean to flip him off for that. you don’t get the chance. he guides you when he needs to, little murmurs that don’t need words: here, less, there. you accommodate. he watches you get it right and looks proud. he opens your mouth with his mouth and you forget how to do anything except cling.

you forget until your tongue tastes iron.

you go cold, it's the bitter taste of blood—oh god. you did that. did you bite him? did your teeth do something terrible? are you the world’s worst kisser with documented evidence now? your mind sprints: you’re so bad at this, you ruin everything, you’re about to apologize for the rest of your life—you pull back to assess damages and see it: not your lip, not his. his nose. bleeding. spectacularly.

panic flares dumb and immediate. you jerk back, wide-eyed, touching your lip, convinced you bit him. “oh god—i didn’t—did i—” you start spiraling out loud, the way you do when you stub your toe and narrate your own demise.

a slow, warm spread of red starts under his nose like a sunrise that decided to be brave. he blinks once, twice, goes faintly cross-eyed in a way you will bully him for until you’re both ninety because of veins of red already blooming under his nose. you both watch the first drop form with the concern of two people witnessing a catastrophe unfold in slow motion.

“no way,” you whisper, reverent, and the sight is objectively hilarious. his nose starts bleeding in earnest. you stare at his face, then down at your bra, then back.

“okay,” he says around a laugh that’s trying not to be a laugh, pinching the bridge of his nose, tipping his head forward like he’s done this enough to know the drill. “i’m good.. i think.”

there is a beat of absurd silence. then you snort. then he tries not to laugh. but you absolutely lose it, doubling over, forehead bumping his shoulder, cackling like a witch at a bonfire.

“it’s not—” he gestures with the arrogance of a person trying to maintain dignity while pinching his own nose, “it’s a dry air thing.”

you’re still wheezing. you reach blindly for the tissue box on the coffee table and nearly throw it at him. “uh-huh. totally the humidity. not because you saw boobs for the first time in your entire life.”

“wow,” he says, absolutely wounded. “as if i haven’t seen you—” he cuts himself off, eyes flicking anywhere but your chest like he’s trying to prove a point that’s already bleeding down his face. the tissue soaks through instantly. he fumbles another.

“pinch the soft part,” you instruct, which is what you remember from the times he’s come home from basketball with a busted nose and you’ve played nurse. “lean slightly forward, not back.”

he obeys. you sit cross-legged in front of him and try to stop laughing. you fail. “i’m sorry,” you gasp, not sorry at all. “it’s just—you’re bleeding because of me.”

"shut up, don’t be dramatic about it," he huffs, “and don’t make me laugh right now,” he begs around his own laugh, pinching the bridge of his nose, head tipped forward like a pro. “i will bleed to death on your rug.”

“it's already so dirty,” you chuckle, scrambling for tissues again. “and if you die on it i can finally throw it away with a clear conscience.”

he muffles a grin behind the tissue wad, eyes squeezed shut. he looks stupidly happy for a man hemorrhaging from the face. “not my most dignified moment.”

“you got a nosebleed because you saw me in a bra,” you say, still halfway to feral with laughter. “that’s… that’s cute.”

“correction,” he says smugly, voice all stuffed cotton, “you in a bra on my lap.”

you try to look offended and end up pink. he watches it happen like it’s sunrise number two. you press fresh tissues into his hand; he takes them without letting go of your fingers. the room is bright with ridiculousness, everything edged in this giddy light. the candy bowl watches you like it knows you’re both doomed.

“don’t look at me like that,” he mumbles once the bleeding slows, eyes soft, tissue still clamped, and you hate that your pulse can hear what his voice won’t say.

“but you look good,” you whisper, he groans. you wipe a red smear off his upper lip with exaggerated care and then catch yourself staring. it’s awful how pretty he is under bad lighting with blood on his face. unfair. he’s flushed, a ridiculous soft pink across cheekbones and ears. the curve of his mouth is bitten-wet.

the word hangs in the air and opens a door you’ve both been pretending isn’t in this apartment.

you toss the tissues in the trash, wash your hands, come back, sit the same as before—backs to the couch, knees up, shoulders touching—and somehow everything inside the shape has been re-labeled: familiar, familiar, familiar, new.

“satoru,” you say, and he swallows hard like his name in your mouth is the first drink of water after a long run.

“yeah?”

“you sure?” you ask, trying to sound normal and failing, because normal flew out the window with your shirt.

he nods. the kind that starts in his chest. “i’ve been sure since second grade,” he says, very quiet, like he’s confessing to stealing a holy book. then he catches himself, rolls his shoulders, puts a grin on like a mask, snaps the elastic at the back of it. “obviously,” he adds, cocky, “i have exquisite taste.”

you smack his thigh. his fingers catch your wrist and draw little circles on your pulse like he’s coaxing your heart to stop sprinting.

“the boyfriend thing,” you say, because the argument fluttered away from you but you want it back on the table where it belongs, like a cat dragging a toy back to your feet. “do you… do you scare them off?”

“no,” he says, without hesitation, still playing with your ring, “they scare themselves off. they realize they’re out of their depth. they realize they’d have to learn you like a language and keep learning forever.”

“you just said i was difficult to deal with,” you pout.

“yeah but i'm not complaining,” his smile tips. he leans in, barely there, hovering. “you stay difficult to live without.” he whispers, and that’s the one that breaks you.

you pull him in.

he meets you like he’s been rehearsing this hit his whole life—gentle, greedy, careful in the way that makes greedy feel like a prayer. he kisses you until you’re stupid and your hands get bold and then clumsy again because apparently elbow articulation is advanced physics. you end up half in his lap without remembering how, knees outside his hips, ribs brushing his hoodie’s hem each time you breathe.

“tell me if it’s too fast,” he whispers, and maps you patient as low tide, mouth skimming your cheek, your jaw, the corner of your smile, the small hollow by your ear where your pulse hides. he collects places like seashells and keeps them gentle in his palms. “tell me anything and i’ll listen.”

“okay,” you whisper, and for once you mean it, and something in his chest unclenches so audibly you feel it against your ribs, a little door unlatching

he gets obnoxiously gentle for a while, and you get obnoxiously soft about it. he kisses you like he’s pressing stickers into a memory book. every peck makes you giggle, which makes him grin like a spring day, which makes you drag him in by the cheeks, and it makes him pink all the way to the tips of his ears. you try to act normal about it but you absolutely do not manage it. it’s stupidly sweet. it’s wrecking you clean.

“we don’t have to—” he begins, pauses. his voice is velvet with caution. “we can just make out and call it a spiritual experience.”

“are you chickening out?” you murmur, rolling your eyes because it’s easier than saying please don’t stop.

“oh, suddenly you’re brave?” he grumbles, but it’s fond, and he nips your cheek like a warning that’s really a kiss-in-disguise. you laugh into his mouth, the sound wobbling between you like a loose bead of light.

it takes him half a second to fish a foil wrapper from his wallet—sleight of hand neat as a magician palming a coin, eyes flicking up to yours for permission like a question tucked inside a trick. “i come prepared,” he says, sheepish, a little proud and a lot pink. then, softer still, thumb tracing tiny circles on your wrist, “guess i gotta make you bleed, now.” he whispers, cocky, giving you a stupid little brow wiggle.

you pinch his cheek but he's right, yeah—you want your first time to be with satoru, don’t you?