A Whole Mess

Someone chokes; you’re pretty sure it’s Iwaizumi. 

A garbled noise leaves Makki’s mouth.

Oikawa is suspiciously silent.

Now it’s your turn to blink. “Excuse me?”

You wonder if Matsukawa can hear it—just how hard your heart is racing. 

He shrugs, putting the lollipop in his own mouth, and something shivers inside of you at the way he briefly rolls it on his tongue. “Show Makki what he’s asking for?”

Nobody asks why Mattsun doesn’t suggest that you spit in Makki’s mouth.

Because the thing is—this is inevitable. It’s always been inevitable. This moment. Every fucking goddamn moment between you and Matsukawa Issei. Every little morsel of maddening sexual tension that’s reached an unstable boiling point over the past seven or so odd years since you were enveloped into this friend group.

As of a month ago, you’re both single at the very same time since the first time that you met. 

And it’s incredibly, painfully obvious—how badly you want to fuck each other. 

The fact that you’ve yet to. 

That you’re still subjecting your friends to whatever this eye fucking thing is that you’re doing right now in public in the middle of a bar. 

“Right in front of my salad?” Iwaizumi deadpans. 

Oikawa looks over at him. “Iwa-chan, I thought you said you were ordering the fries—”

You lose track of their conversation, lose track of everything but the challenge that’s flashing in Mattsun’s hazel eyes. Which is how you find yourself in the throes of an out-of-body experience as you drop yourself into his lap, straddling him.

“Oh you guys are really gonna—”

“Hey Makki?” Mattsun says coolly. 

“Mmm?”

He drags the lollipop out of his mouth, tilts his head to hold your gaze. “Shut the fuck up.”

Matsukawa’s hands are warm as they come up to grasp your hips, and it’s impossible to ignore the fact that you can already feel the outline of his dick through his pants. The golden glow of the light that hangs above your table reflects in his eyes, and a rogue black curl sits across his forehead.

“How should I do this?” you ask him quietly, your heartbeat that of a nervous rabbit.

His thumb briefly strokes your waist. Once, twice. 

“Well,” he muses, eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m going to do this.”

He parts his lips briefly, as if for emphasis, tongue sliding along his bottom lip.

“And then you’re going to spit in my mouth.”

“And then…”

Mattsun’s laugh is low, quiet. Something only for you. The arousal stirring inside of you coalesces in your veins. 

“And then, if I’m lucky, you’ll do it again.”

It feels appropriate—to cup Matsukawa’s jaw. The hand that ends up grasping the dip between his shoulder and neck is a byproduct of you steadying yourself at the feeling of one of his hands slipping beneath your sweater to hold you squarely at the small of your back.

His eyes are half-lidded as his lips come apart, head tipping back just a little further.

But for all that you’ve thought of him, all that you’ve fantasized. All that you’ve touched yourself and moaned his name and imagined his hands and his tongue and his co—

You still couldn’t have anticipated it, this.

The thrill that zips down your spine as you drop your spit into his waiting mouth. 

The way he immediately pulls you further into the cradle of his lap. How his hips twitch the moment your saliva hits his tongue. The feeling of his hard cock pressing into the heat between your thighs. The way his eyes fall shut. The quiet groan you’re not even sure he meant to let slip out. 

The way his lips fall open again after he swallows—

You don’t even hesitate. You spit in his mouth again. And this time, Mattsun’s hand slides up your back, cups the back of your head just as his lips come crashing into yours in a rough, wet, messy kiss. 

“Is this gross?” Oikawa asks.

He yelps as someone—presumably Iwaizumi—smacks him.

Mattsun tastes like beer and cherry candy.

“It’s kind of hot,” Makki says.

Matsukawa’s mouth engulfs yours, tongue stroking the seam of your lips before slipping into your mouth, deepening the kiss in a way that has you gasping into his mouth and unconsciously seeking friction in his lap. Middle finger hooked in the belt loop above the center of your ass, he tugs you against him, lets you feel the thickness of his cock pressing right up against your sensitive cunt. 

It’s only once Iwaizumi clears his throat that you remember you’re making out and dry humping Matsukawa in the middle of a bar, and you clumsily spring backward into your own seat, pussy throbbing through your jeans.

(Mattsun makes it up to you later, when he tugs off your pants and eats you out till you see stars on his couch. 

“Careful—”

His light, concerned tone is ice in your veins. 

“Thanks,” you cut Oikawa off, barely sparing him a glance before shrugging out of his steadying grip and heading for the door, where Mattsun and Makki absorb you between them, arms criss-crossing over your shoulders.

“We were told that we’re rescuing you from a bad date,” Mattsun says conspiratorially.  

Rubbing a hand over your face, you groan, following his lead as he tugs you and Makki through the doorway to the street outside at an odd angle so as not to break their joint hold on you. You immediately feel yourself start to shiver at the sudden drop in temperature. 

“Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Makki snorts, “See, this is what happens when you bail on hanging with us.”

You don’t bother mentioning the real reason you bailed, because he’s back. 

“You’re all brutes,” the last voice you want to hear interrupts as the three of you come to a stop in front of Iwaizumi’s car, tone laced annoyance not directed at you. 

Oikawa steps into your line of sight, holding out his jacket and gesturing to the amount of skin you’ve currently got exposed to the elements (to be fair, it was somewhat warmer out when you left your apartment earlier.)

“We were keeping her warm,” Makki says defensively, but Oikawa just rolls his eyes, hand remaining outstretched.

You take the jacket, if only because you’re well aware Iwaizumi’s not above manhandling each and every one of you into the car if you’re going to have a standoff on the sidewalk. You’re loath to admit that the heavy outer layer, laced with Oikawa’s lingering body heat, feels far better than the cold breeze that’s rustling his soft, brown hair. 

And because Matsukawa’s a fucking traitor, you find yourself squished between Oikawa and Makki in the backseat. You hope he can feel you glaring at the back of his head. 

Iwaizumi’s eyes find yours in the rearview when you look away from Matsukawa, his expression inscrutable, and the engine rumbles to life.

The ride back to your apartment is quiet, save for the occasional sound of a video playing on Makki’s phone and Mattsun toying with the radio dial. That, and the dull roar of blood rushing in your ears as you willingly (though that’s debatable) sit beside Oikawa Tooru for the first time in over a year. 

Oikawa’s thigh sits flush with your own, and despite the fact that you’re in virtually the same position on the other side with Hanamaki, it’s wholly different. 

Different in a way that leaves your throat dry each time his knee jostles yours when the car passes over a pothole.

Different in a way that has your stupid heart rattling insistently against the trellis of your ribcage with every second that passes.

You try to focus on the sharp spearmint of the gum that Iwaizumi’s chewing, or the sweet, artificial strawberry scent of the lollipop Makki’s clicking against his teeth. But all you can smell are the familiar notes of Oikawa’s cologne. 

It used to be your favorite smell, once upon a foolish time. 

Now it just makes you feel sick.  

When Iwaizumi pulls into the parking lot of your apartment building, Oikawa’s quick to pop open his door to let you out before Hanamaki can. Except when the door thuds closed, he’s still standing on the other side of it. 

Iwaizumi’s window rolls down, and he frowns. “What’re you doing, Shittykawa?”

“You live a block away. I’ll walk,” Oikawa waves them off.

You know that if you really wanted him to, Iwaizumi would get out of the car and shove Oikawa into the backseat. When your eyes meet his, the expression on his face asks just that. But you shake your head—because you’ll have to get this over with eventually, after all. 

You’ve been finding reasons to avoid Oikawa ever since he got back to Japan three weeks ago. 

“Thanks for the ride, Iwa.”

Mattsun gives you a salute from the front seat while Makki yelps as Iwaizumi smacks the hand currently snaking its way toward the radio knob. You stand there for a moment watching the red glow of his tail lights disappear down the street.

When you finally turn on your heel to head inside, Oikawa silently falls into step beside you. And if it were a year ago, the foot of space that lingers between your shoulder and his would feel strangely cavernous. 

Right now, it just feels suffocating.

He stands on the opposite side of the elevator when you step inside, looking soft and rumpled in an old Aoba Johsai hoodie with uncharacteristically mussed hair—as if he’s spent the better part of the night running a hand through it. There’s a furrow between his brow, one that reminds you of his look of deep concentration on the court. 

But there are no sleek hardwood floors here, no bright fluorescent lights. No crowd. No ball clutched in his hand.

No winners or losers.

It’s just you and Tooru and the hum of the elevator shaft. 

(You and Tooru and all of the ghosts that still linger between.)

It’s only once your front door slips shut with a resounding click that you finally address him, your eyes trained firmly on the wall as you remain standing in your entryway with your back to him, his jacket tossed on the hook.

“What do you want, Oikawa?”

It’s funny—how you’re not even looking at him, but you can still feel him flinch from your use of his surname.

He inhales slowly, like he’s still not quite sure of the answer himself just yet. 

And in that moment, it’s just past dawn on a late August morning, and you’re reaching out to smooth the wrinkle in your best friend’s brow while he sleeps beside you in your bed, the warmth of his breath curling against your palm. 

His eyes open, dark brown distilled into golden honey in the gentle morning light that seeps through the gauzy curtains fluttering in a light breeze. 

Tooru laces your fingers with his, kisses the inside of your wrist. Your stomach flips.

In that moment, you’re beneath him again. A bird sings. Iwaizumi, Matsukawa, and Hanamaki are fast asleep in the living room. And Oikawa would still be there, too, if whatever it is that the two of you have been skirting around for years didn’t find you pressed up against your fridge in the middle of the night, his palms at your waist, your fingers in his hair. A glass of water forgotten on the countertop. 

(Tooru’s still cupping your face, kissing you breathless, easing a knee between your legs. Still slipping a hand beneath your shirt, his tongue past the seam of your lips. Still tugging your panties aside and easing into you deep and slow—)

It’s rare to find Oikawa Tooru without words, so you continue, fueled by over a year’s worth of anger and hurt rising to the surface inside of you like a cresting wave.

“You’re so fucking selfish, you know that?”

“I know.”

His voice sounds rough, lacking its usual charm. You refuse to turn around and look at him, to give him the satisfaction of seeing the way your face screws up when you say the next part. 

“If you regretted it that much, you could have just talked to me. I would have gotten over it, and we could have still been friends. Instead, you fucked off halfway across the world to some training camp that I had to find out about from Iwaizumi.” Your voice breaks on the last few words.

You don’t bother adding how he decided to continue traveling after that, how he hasn’t been home in over a year. He’s well aware. 

“I didn’t—I never regretted it.”

Your eyes sting with unshed tears. “You never even called—”

The warmth of his body finds yours as he steps closer and leans a palm against the wall in front of your face. His voice wavers when he replies, “Because I didn’t know what to say.”

You stare at his long, thin fingers. “I don’t know, how about, ‘Hey, sorry that I acted like a jealous asshole the entire time you dated your ex boyfriend, fucked you two weeks after he broke up with you, and then ghosted you like we haven’t been friends for half of our lives.’” 

“I—”

“Or ‘Sorry I forgot you don’t do one-night-stands like I do.’”

“That’s not—”

“Or ‘Sorry for the pity fuck, let’s pretend it never—’”

Oikawa’s forehead falls against your shoulder, and his hair tickles your bare skin as he inhales sharply. “It wasn’t a pity fuck.”

“Then what was it, Tooru?” you ask, none of your usual softness curving around the vowels. It’s sharp, venomous. 

His fingers curl against the wall’s dark green paint.

“Everything,” he gasps, quiet and strained. 

Your teeth sink into your cheek, and confusion blooms hot and heavy in your gut. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve spent my entire life feeling like I can figure everything and everyone out. I’ve always known what I need to do in every situation.” His voice quiets, like loose, shifting gravel. “And I’ve never felt less in control than I did that night.”

His hand slips down an inch, and he continues, “You—I’ve never known how to be good enough for you.”

You feel dizzy, unmoored. “What?”

“Being with you feels like—” his voice cracks, and he laughs weakly, “It feels like freefalling. It’s always felt like that. And when we finally…I just wanted you so bad…but after…I was fucking terrified when I realized that for the first time in my life, I had no clue what to do. How to be what you deserved.”

You press your own palm to the wall, if only to steady yourself. “I didn’t think…that you meant for any of it to happen.”

Oikawa looks at you like you’ve been missing the point all along. “It was all I could think about.”

You’re torn somewhere between the knowledge that it all meant something—and the reality that he still left anyway.

“But why didn’t I get to be the one to decide what I deserved?”

He’s quiet for several beats before he replies, “Because Iwa-chan caught me coming out of your room that morning. And I’ve never seen him look so genuinely angry at me before. He reamed me out later, said I was taking advantage of you after your breakup, called me a selfish piece of shit.”

“Are you trying to blame this on him?”

You finally turn around, and you’ve never seen Oikawa Tooru look so stricken. He avoids your gaze, drags a hand through his air, looks up at the ceiling. “No. I just…that conversation made me realize that I was the last thing you needed after getting out of a two-year relationship. I felt like I had some…claim on you. It was wrong.”

He lets his hand fall back to his side. His words leave you feeling hot all over. You think you feel a shiver wrack down your spine. 

“So you thought leaving without a single goddamn word was what I needed?”

Oikawa looks at you then, defeated. “I wasn’t even planning on going to that training camp, that’s why you never knew about it in the first place. But then I panicked. I knew that if we talked about what happened, you’d find some way to make me out to be anything but the bad guy. You’d change my mind. And then I would have probably ended up hurting you. I thought a few months away would clear my head.”

You quietly scoff, “You hurt me anyway. And you were gone for over a year.”

“I know. But you seemed happy after a while.” He wraps one of his hoodie strings around his finger; the coil falls limp as soon as he lets go of it. 

“Not that you’d know. You never texted, never called.”

He cringes. “I asked Iwa-chan.”

“I figured you were off dating models,” you huff.

He laughs, but the sound is more self-deprecating than anything else, and shakes his head, smiling at you sadly. “There was never…no. The coach at my first training camp referred me to some connections he had in other countries. You had just started seeing someone new, and I realized I still wasn’t over you when Iwa told me, so I thought it would be better if I kept travelling a little longer.”

Your nose scrunches up at the memory of that fling. “That guy was awful. It didn’t last long.”

He looks down at his shoes, the corner of his mouth quirking upward. “I heard Mattsun almost punched him.”

“Tooru.”

There’s something earnest in his eyes when he looks up at you. “Yeah?”

“You’re an idiot. And an asshole.”

He inhales slowly, nodding. “I’m well aware.”

“Why did you want to talk to me tonight?”

“Because I wanted to tell you that I left because I was afraid of fucking up, not because I didn’t want you. Not because you did anything wrong. You deserve to hear that from me.”

“And what if I don’t want to forgive you?” You try to sound more confident than you feel. 

He shrugs. “That’s my cross to bear, not yours. I don’t expect you to.”

“Are you over it now? Do you expect us to go back to being friends eventually?”

A laugh escapes his lips, one that’s full of disbelief. “What do you want me to say?”

Fight for this.

“The truth.”

He takes a step closer. “You want me to tell you having you once fucked me up, and I haven’t been able to look at anyone else without thinking of you? That I spent a year trying to dig up every part of myself thousands and thousands of miles away and all I could find were pieces of you scattered in every corner? That I did it all wrong? That I know I will never, ever deserve you—“

“Tooru…”

“That I loved you then, and I still love you now?”

His forehead leans against your own. His hands find your waist. He touches you like he’s waiting for you to shove him away, waiting to catch fire. Waiting for all of this to go up in flames once and for all. “Tell me to leave.”

You should. 

“No.”

But you can’t. 

“Tell me to leave, because all I wanted to do when I saw you when we got to the bar was kiss you. And that’s all I want to do right now. I’m still a selfish bastard.”

Because you know him. And you know he means it, every last word. 

Your fingers catch in the fabric of his sweatshirt. You think of all the times you’ve stolen it from him and worn it yourself. “Maybe I like that you’re a selfish bastard. I’ve known you since we were teenagers, you know.”

“You’re supposed to kick me out and make me grovel. You should be more angry with me.”

The hand that’s been slowly trailing up his chest slides up to cup his cheek before your fingers thread their way into his hair. You watch the way he softens beneath your touch. “Being angry at you when you do dumb shit is Iwa’s job. I’m tired of being angry.” 

He blinks. “I feel like this is a test, and I’m failing horribly.”

You shrug, and there are thousands and thousands of days and minutes and seconds that settle into the weight of your shared gaze. “Because I’ve never known you to be someone to give up, to walk away. I’ve never known you to lose a game that you were made to win, Tooru.”

Because it’s always been Tooru for you. 

And you’re tired of pretending you don’t love him. 

(Tired of pretending anyone else could ever hope to come close.)

In the heavy darkness of your kitchen on sticky, hot, late August night, it was Tooru who kissed you first. 

But this time, it’s your mouth that finds his. 

Tooru’s kiss tastes like the nostalgia of summer afternoons spent laughing on your backs on his living room carpet. Like the velvety petals of the flowers he always handed to you on the walk to school on the first day of spring. 

Like the heat of his eyes meeting yours across the room at a crowded university party, even when you were leaning into someone else. 

Like the way his voice curls around your name over the phone, where even the static seems to bend to the lilting warmth of his will. 

Like brief moments of your fingers tangled together on boardwalks and beaches and rainy days and in the backseats of cars long past. 

Like every golden-spun thread of love that you’ve known in your life. 

Like a home for your heart, once he doesn’t realize he’s already built. 

“I don’t want you to forgive me this easily,” he gasps into the kiss, even as he’s pulling you closer, arms wrapped around you tight. 

You think his arms could swallow you whole, think his lips could devour you. (You think you’d let him.) 

The two of you stumble past the living room, down the hallway toward your bedroom. He collapses backward on your bed, legs buckling at the knee, the mattress groaning in protest. 

“I didn’t say I forgive you yet,” you tell him as you climb atop him.

Tooru’s hands find your hips, and the way his palms curve against them feels like a kiss in and of itself. He smiles at you, and between one breath and the next, gravity tilts as you suddenly find yourself on your back.

He stares down at you, eyes alight with determination as his lips slot over yours in a deep, slow kiss that leaves you arching upward into his touch. Your lips part as his tongue slips over the seam, and he deepens the kiss, one hand tracing the hinge of your jaw. 

When Tooru pulls away, his mouth trails down your neck, along your collarbones, down your chest.

“I’m prepared to grovel,” he murmurs into your navel, fingers teasing the waistband of your skirt. He nips at your hipbone, strokes the inside of your thigh with his thumb.

Your toes curl. 

“Show me.”

—

Tooru takes his time with you. 

With your thighs spread wide and your skirt rucked up and your panties conveniently lost somewhere in the vicinity of one of his pockets, he works you open on his fingers first. 

If it were anyone else, you might feel self-conscious about the slick arousal that’s already dripping onto the sheets between your legs, about how easily he works in the first finger to the last knuckle (about the desperate moan that shivers out of you).

But it’s Tooru.  

Tooru, who inhales sharply as soon as the pads of his fingers make contact with your soaked panties, who groans when he gets them off and runs those same fingers through your glistening slit with something akin to reverence. 

Who leans in and kisses you, hot and wet and messy as he adds a second finger, voice rough while he tells you how pretty you look like this.

He strokes your swollen, aching clit with this thumb and slowly fucks his fingers into you until you’re bucking into his touch, slick coating your inner thighs, his name a broken plea on your lips. 

—and you’ve hardly come down from your climax when his mouth finds purchase against the heat of your cunt next, tongue slipping into your tight hole and stroking and licking and lapping and fucking.  

Tooru grasps your thighs, ruts his own hips down into the mattress, groans into your pussy about how many times he’s thought about this, how many times he’s fucked his own fist to the thought of tasting you. The coil of pleasure in your gut is a maddeningly tight bowstring beneath his grasp as he rocks you back and forth over the ledge of another orgasm, huffing out a laugh when you whine in frustration, burying your fingers in his hair.

You arch your hips into his face, humping the slippery friction of his wet, messy lips, and Tooru hums, stuffing two fingers back inside of you as he sucks on your clit until tears prick at the corners of your eyes as the pleasure building in your veins explodes.

And overstimulation be damned, the sight of Tooru’s erection tented at the front of his pants is too much when he rolls over onto his back, cheeks pink, chest heaving, chin shiny with your release. You bat away the heel of the palm currently pressed down over his shaft, revelling in the way he gasps as you tug down his pants and boxers and wrap your fingers around his bare cock.

The moan that leaves Tooru’s mouth when you ease down onto him leaves you breathless, heart a thrumming frequency in your chest as he easily stretches you right open to the hilt, cock slipping through your soaked, dripping walls.

Running a hand over his face, his hips cant upward as he breathes out, “I’m not going to last long.”

You smile down at him, grinding down into his abdomen, clenching down on his shaft just to see the way he gasps before you start moving up and down. “I thought athletes had stamina,” you tease.

Tooru pulls himself into a sitting position, arms wrapping around you as you find yourself nestled in the cradle of his hips. His mouth slots over yours as he begins to fuck up into you, hips rocking in a steady rhythm. “Stamina isn’t in the room with us right now, sweetheart. Not when the last time I had sex was right here in this bed.”

True to his word, it doesn’t take long for Tooru to spill between your bodies, ropes of cum painting your abdomen and inner things until his cock is left flushed and spent.

And later, when you’re curled up on the couch in his sweatshirt, head pillowed in his lap, his fingers in your hair, his own still damp from the shower, you both laugh when he lifts up his vibrating phone to see Iwaizumi’s name flash across the screen.

“You’re on speaker phone, Iwa-chan,” Tooru tells him, setting the phone down on the couch cushion.

“Do I need to come strangle him?” Iwaizumi asks. 

“Not yet, but you can come bring us food!” you reply.

“Do I look like Uber Eats to you?” he grouses.

“I mean…” Tooru trails off.

Mattsun and Makki start chanting something about pizza in the background. 

“YOU ALL HAVE YOUR OWN GODDAMN CARS!” Iwaizumi growls in exasperation, and the line goes dead as he hangs up.

Your phone lights up with a text from Matsukawa immediately after.

dw he’s already putting on his shoes

Tooru smirks when you show him the message, his fingers trailing beneath his sweatshirt, finding only bare skin beneath the fabric as he makes his way up your chest. 

You can't help it, a chuckle bubbles up your throat and spills helplessly over your lips.

Rocking his head back on his shoulders, Hanta groans. 'I said not to laugh...'

Sucking in air through your teeth, you struggle with party balloon lungs until the wheezing subsides and you can stand a little straighter again. 'Yeah, yep, sorry...' A stray gasp leaks from your lips, forcing you to bite down on the seam to silence it. 'Go on.'

'It gets worse.' He sighs. Squeezing shut his eyes, he licks over his lips before admitting. 'I'm naked in here.'

'I'm sorry, what?' You cough, disguising the tension in your lungs. It's hard not to look then, to really look, given the new information you've just been presented with.

Black spandex, strengthened with some obnoxiously named polymer stretches over the expanse of his shoulders. He's wide there, wider than you'd expect given his slight frame, but there's no denying the muscle that lingers under the material. The black extends, covers the swells of his pecs and then tapers, cutting into odd triangles that frame the ripples of his stomach. He's not as well muscled here as he is in his shoulders. Instead of the rough blocks of abdominal muscles, his are streamlined, forming two long, thick stripes of muscle that are almost totally visible through the pale of his suit.

Letting your eyes sink lower still, your gaze lingers on the thin strips of malleable metal that serves to strengthen his suit, but also inadvertently seems to perfectly highlight the deep creases that mark out his torso. You swallow. Hidden under a black square of material, barely contained by what you have to assume is at least two layers of material is a thick bulge. The swell is obvious, casting darkened shadows onto the twitching muscles of his thighs.

'Naked, me, under here...' Gesturing his crotch, he widens his eyes.

'The fucking zip snapped and I can't ask anyone to fucking help peel me out because whoever does it is going to get an eyeful of, well... Me.'

Blinking repeatedly, you swallow the saliva collecting in your mouth and snap your eyes back up to his. His jaw is tight, his stare worried and wild as he looks at you for an answer to a question you're not sure he's got the balls to ask.

Although, new information could prove you wrong.

It's in that instant that the silliness of the situation hits you right back over the head again. You manage to hold your laughter for a solid three seconds before it's tumbling out of you again. This time, it catches you off guard, rolling through you and almost reducing you to a crouch as Sero winces in front of you. 'Why couldn't you get one of the boys to help? Surely they've seen everything before...'

'And have Denks take the piss forever? No thanks.'

'Oh...' You fold your arms across your chest. 'And you think I won't take the piss? Is that it?'

'No.' He answers too quickly, but manages to trap the rest of his half-baked confession behind his teeth before it drops into the palm of your hands. The truth is, he doesn't think he'd mind you taking the piss – he doesn't think he'd mind you doing anything to him, in all honesty. Maybe that's why instead of slinking back to the agency and hoping that Hatsume was in her workshop, he'd found himself here, almost twenty minutes out of his way. He shrugs. 'But, maybe you'll be nicer about it?'

Locking eyes with him for a moment, you pause to watch him sweat before rubbing your hands together. 'C'mon then...' You smirk. 'Let's see how big that dick is.'

'Can you not?' Sero snaps, shivering when your palm meets the muscle of his shoulder. You slide your touch across him, moving in one solid stroke from his deltoid to the thick muscle of his back. The touch, as innocent as it is, makes his stomach tighten, molten lava churning as he submits to your teasing. A soft giggle slips your lips, sliding into his ear like sweet sherbet, making him half regret his decision to ask you, but then, your fingers are playing at the dips just above his collarbone and stealing coherency from him once more.

The suit is cooler than you'd expected. You can feel it, the tips of your fingers growing colder as you search across his chest, fingertips pressing against him in a search that quickly becomes fruitless.

Scratching, you use your nails to rake down his chest and attempt to ignore the way you can feel him respond. His whole body bristles, muscles tightening as a ripple uses his spine like a fire pole. You lick over your lips and hope he can't hear the shake in your voice. 'Where the fuck is the zip on this thing?'

Stretching back his shoulders, Sero swallows. 'It's, uh, around the back...' Gathering the loose hair

Immediately, you lift your hands as if burnt. Now, your groping feels gratuitous – sexual in a way that it wasn't meant to be. Not really. When you step behind him, twisting your hip to avoid bumping it against his, you don't let your fingers wonder.

It's not hard to find it, not now you're laser focused. There's a small bump. The slightest overlap between the two sides of his suit as it wraps around the base of his neck. A few hours ago there had been a zip, the thin strip of metal poking, just, from the material, but now, there's nothing there: Just the slight bump.

Laying one hand flat against the muscle of his back, you use your index finger to skate up the zip – parting the fabric as you go. At the top, you hook your finger under the suit and begin to work at opening it.

Each touch sends a series of short static shocks up through his body, forcing him to tense the plain of his stomach to keep him from folding over. He can feel it, the delicate slip of your fingers as you manage to shift the zip from the top of his spine to near between his shoulders. Inhaling, he starts to wonder if this was a bad idea after all.

'You want me to just keep going, yeah?' You move slowly now. It's almost obscene. A private strip show. One you're participating in, that wouldn't even be happening without you. The thought has you fighting your own composure, forcing you to lock your knees to keep them from shaking.

'Ye – yeah.' He forces a laugh into his voice, but it catches behind his Adam's apple and slips out of his mouth a rasp. 'It stops like, like,' he coughs. 'Like just above my ass.' The bridge of his nose crinkles, a cringe folding his features as he stops talking.

'Okay.' Your fingers feel like they're burning as your decent reveals more and more skin. The smooth plain of his back is revealed, the muscle underneath rippling as it's loosed from it's material confines.

It's intimate in a way you'd never expected as with the slick of his suit, so too are hidden secrets revealed. There's a mole just under the curve of his right shoulder blade. A scar that runs parallel to his spine, the skin still pink and fresh. The edges of black ink that wraps around the edge of his left hip.

When the zip finally draws to a stop, you can see the cleft of his ass. If you were to slip your hands inside, splaying your fingers across the warm breath of his lower back you'd be able to sink your thumbs into his back dimples. You imagine he'd sigh. Let his head roll back on his shoulders as you press close to him. Maybe you'd let your hands slink further, following along the grooves of his hips; lines that would lead to lower and lower, until...

'All done?' His voice is wound tight when he speaks, locked somewhere in the basin of his throat and released as if thrown out on a breath.

Your reluctant to step back, to recede from the heat of his body, but you manage it. 'Yep.' You pat his back, feeling the muscle relax under your touch. 'All done.'

He turns, already wriggling his shoulders free from the material of his suit. 'Thanks, thought I was going to be trapped forever in this thing. It's so...' Slipping his fingers under the latex clinging to his left shoulder, he stretches it from his skin. 'Difficult to fucking get out of.'

You chuckle and watch him struggle. He twists around himself, peeling the second skin of his suit away only for it to snap back and illicit a hiss from between his teeth. 'C'mere, before you do yourself some serious harm.'

Sero shivers as your hands skate underneath the suit and peel him from it. He'd close his eyes to hide from the intimacy of your slow undressing of him, but all that would do is conjure images of what he wishes would come afterwards. Images of him repaying the favour, slipping you from your oversized hoodie and sinking to his knees then repaying you again in a wholly different way. He can already imagine how easy it would be to have you, and yet... 'Thanks,' he mumbles.

'No worries.' You giggle, catching his eye before you step back: his shoulders and arms freed. 'Tell you what though...' Your eyebrow arcs, a coy smile playing at the edge of your lip. 'That really doesn't hide anything, does it?'

Eyes widening, he swallows hard. The knowledge of your staring, dare he even dream admiring, sends a shock wave of tension directly south. He cock kicks, his ass clenching as if to try and disguise the too obvious bulge against the front of his costume. In an instant, his hands sink, the top-half of his suit bunched in his fist as he plays the move for comfort and hopes you don't notice a thing. 'I...'

'I'm just joking around, Han.' You chuckle around the lump in your throat. There's a notable pulse in your stomach, one that sinks by the second and has your thoughts turning savoury.

'I'll...' Sero hedges. There's an energy in his muscles, one that makes him want to bounce on the balls of his feet and do something silly.

'Do you want a t-shirt?'

The more he looks at you, the more kissable you look. You always look kissable, but right now, with the sun coming in from your living room window and that small curious smile itching at your lip... You look phenomenal. He shakes his head. 'I'll just swing home. I'll be too high and too quick for anyone to notice that I'm semi-shirtless... My place isn't far.'

'Oh, okay.' You try not to let your disappointment show, but there's a notch that forms between his eyebrows that makes you wonder just how successful you'd been at disguising it. Slinking to the door, Sero has one foot over the threshold before he turns.

Fuck it. He thinks.

'Can I tell you something?'

Your eyes shine, head tilting. 'Of course, anything.'

'I really, like, really wanna take you out to dinner.'

Your lips break into a smile, forcing apples into your cheeks as a chuckle slips through your teeth. 'Yeah?'

'Yeah.' His smile matches yours, reaching his eyes and making him glow. 'Next week? That new place down town?'

You nod, chewing at your lip as you try not to feel like an excited school girl. 'It's a date.'

Sero's heart stutters, thudding in his chest. 'It's a date.'