#hatojose

Joseph hands the cigarette to Hatori, and turns away. He exhales, the smoke curling up and up into the crisp air. It stains the space it touches before it’s carried through the sky.

The cold metal of the balcony bites Joseph’s bare arms, but he doesn’t move them, leaning glumly on the railing. He stares across the streetlights, which bloom under the creeping darkness, and wonders what Hatori is thinking.

He guesses that it was a mistake.

Joseph glances down at Hatori sitting in the wicker chair he picked off the side of the road, dress shirt untucked under his sweater, cuff buttons undone. One arm resting on a knee and the other holding the cigarette. He has a silent, contemplative expression, eyes glazed over in thought, flickering over Joseph’s thighs. Ah, he knows where this is going, he thinks, when Hatori, eyes still glossy with thought, reaches for him with one hand.

It’s the wrong hand.

Joseph watches, he doesn’t move - his brain stops at the sight of the cigarette in Hatori’s thin fingers, end still smoking. It turns, and settles itself with slight force against the material of his trousers, cherry first.

It’s hot. It burns. It hurts.

And yet it happens in slow motion, the cigarette butt resting on the skin of his thigh, Joseph thinking without acting, and Hatori acting without thinking.

Then he comes to his senses and jerks his hand away. The cigarette leaves an ash-ringed hole in Joseph’s jeans, encircling red skin that will surely develop into a blister come tomorrow morning. Joseph puts a hand over it and stares at Hatori, who only looks up, stunned, with a slight fluster.

“I,” he holds the weapon in his hands. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see…”

“Don’t do that again.” Joseph’s voice startles himself - flavors of force and offense, with a light undertone of fear.

“I won’t.”

“You owe me a pair of pants.”

“I do.”