by Kelsey
Disclaimer: You wish CLAMP drew S&S smut. XD
Warnings: Lemony fresh!
Notes: The sequel to this drabble by Xyn. Read it first or this will not make any sort of sense at all. Also, beware of falling commas and other somewhat unusual (AKA confusing) uses of punctuation. Semicolons are my friends but may not be yours. A gigantic THANK YOU to Xyn, Allison, and C, who are super-fantastic beta readers. :3
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When he comes home only to find a scorched and rather unsavory meal waiting for him, he immediately thinks of Seishirou; the man has a gift for taking simple things and ruining them in some indefinably wonderful way. Love, a burnt meal--aren't those things the same to the Sakurazukamori, anyway? So the only surprising thing about finding Seishirou asleep on his bed is that the man has been caught by one of the sleep spells he set up for protection, and Subaru sits down heavily on the bed and lets his desires war until the inevitable happens and he reaches out a hand to touch Seishirou.
He is too busy being quietly amazed with his own boldness to be embarrassed when Seishirou wakes and finds his head on Subaru's lap, Subaru's fingers in his hair and sleepy contentment pours over both of them, cats at rest or perhaps drowsy play. Idle games for predator and prey, for the child and his toy; except the lines are blurred and confused and altogether too complicated to sort out when there are much better things to be done. Seishirou really does resemble some sort of great feline, eyes half-lidded. His hair is softer than Subaru expected.
Time trickles past in dreamy, moonbright moments and Seishirou is making a sort of low, contented noise in his throat almost like purring, and Subaru smiles and hurts inside to love someone so much. He bears the ache with his own peculiar grace of long elegant lines and sweet monochrome, and then a short while later Seishirou's hands close around Subaru's hands going through his hair. The starmarks glow ghost white in the dark of the room, and the moonlight catches a sense of amber mischief in Seishirou's seeing eye.
"It's my turn," he purrs--that is a purr, and the words are sinuous and liquid and deadly.
Subaru finds himself draped across Seishirou's lap, head pillowed against one thigh, and--oh--hands in his hair, and he's had such a long day and such an exhausting week and such a long string of tiring years--he is weary with them, weighed like Atlas of old. His eyes drift shut and it is all he can do not to succumb to sleep immediately. Briefly he wonders whether Seishirou has attempted a sleeping spell before he bends all of his concentration upon staying awake long enough to enjoy his first soothing touch in a long time, too long a time, more of the interminable stretch of gray dry years from the happy Then to the dimly lit Now. He feels alive to the tips of his toes and when Seishirou's fingers trace a line down his jaw not sleepy at all anymore.
Little light touches up and down his face, and tension undercuts the pleasant drowsiness previously lingering in the air. Electricity dances, sakura petals caught up in a hum of static and drifting over his face with touches demonic in their softness. Seishirou's fingers do not have much in the way of calluses, and they roam freely the expanse of his face, lingering over the softness of cheek and then sliding down to his chin and then slowly over his lower lip and Subaru's eyes open, bewildered green staring up into eyes of deep dark and intense interest. Seishirou smiles at him, the curve of his lips wonderful yet almost too slow like the motion of fingers over lips, and his teeth are white in the dark, catching the pale wash of moonlight drifting in from the only window.
Subaru's lips part.
It takes much longer for Seishirou to explore the small area of his mouth than it did for his fingers to traverse the whole of Subaru's face; somehow, he does not find this odd. The tip of the other man's index finger grazes his upper lip just enough to make chills run up and down his spine and his pulse speeds in a fever racing ahead of the slow slow movement of that finger--too slow, too slow, or maybe time is just running faster for him now, and then more firmly comes the pressure of a thumb against his lower lip, the very tip faintly wet with Subaru's saliva after one long caress, almost inside his mouth but not quite, and there is the impulse to tilt upwards and over and bite but even that thought scatters like petals, swept away by another thumb caress. It's too much and Subaru closes his eyes to peer at the dancing sparks beneath his eyelids, pulsing and crescendoing like the Northern Lights, and the tension is terrifying and exciting and he is taut with it.
A single index finger to find the pulse beating frantically in his neck, and then the whole of Seishirou's palm and not just mere fingertips presses against his collarbone, over a fluttering heart. Subaru bites the inside of his cheek and tastes blood and wonders at this string of touch--yes, he wants to cry, yes, I'm alive, I'm here. The hand drifts further down, over the prominent lines of ribs and then flat across his stomach, then in a quick startling movement sliding under his shirt in an exploratory effort so violent it causes the garment to ride up and he is not shivering from the cold air over recently bared skin. He leans back and back and up and into warmth and heat is rising, most prominently in cheeks and groin. Seishirou digs his fingers into the soft flesh of Subaru's stomach, just enough to leave faint echoes of a bruise. He likes to mark his territory.
And now Subaru's own hands are twitching with the need to reciprocate, because after all this was all borne of his own desire to touch, to draw his own death and life (death-in-life) close to him and to cast off chill loneliness and to affirm that he is not the only person in his universe... always, there is room for one other, this other. He seizes fistfuls of Seishirou's shirt and pulls himself up and with singleminded determination finds the other's mouth and the kiss is messy and difficult on both their necks and perfect. Perfect. Seishirou pulls him onto his lap, in the act yanking the shirt over Subaru's head; it is tossed carelessly aside and the kiss resumes as if there had never been an interruption, hands hot against Subaru's back and nails biting into Seishirou's shoulders. Subaru is saying something, but it is not in any intelligible language; still Seishirou understands it and kisses him with still more ferocity. He is not gentle. They are not gentle with each other.
Layers of kisses and bites and subtle flickings of tongue. Subaru feels he is being constructed anew, built from the simple flesh and blood of his old self into something transcendental and beyond understanding; the glass palaces of what he once believed are shattering in tender violence. Feelings spill forth, an excess and an ecstasy, and he moans and cries out and manages to pop off not one but two buttons in his efforts to divest Seishirou of his shirt. This is no time for shyness or distance and so Subaru gives himself over to the reality of being and his lips feel bruised; somehow he knows that one thing in his haze. He also knows he doesn't mind.
Wanting almost tangible in its fervor. Subaru cannot breathe for inhaling in sharp, uneven little gasps and Seishirou's face is buried in his neck, teeth grazing the hollow of his throat, and the hands at his hips, unzipping his pants, long fingers curling around him and he jerks forward so suddenly that now they're both off-balance and he lands on his back on the mattress, Seishirou poised above him, the natural position of the predator except he looks a little startled, too, startled and hot-eyed and just looking makes Subaru's mouth go dry. Unconsciously he lifts his legs so that Seishirou can finish taking off his clothes, the other man sitting up to do so, and air over exposed skin is free and aching and he looks up and up at Seishirou and he looks back, looks him up and down with the air of a man surveying his most prized possession. Subaru raises himself up on his elbows and lifts his chin and gives him stare for stare, obeying an impulse he does not quite understand but knows to be truth.
The moment slows to a syrupy trickle of time, the agonizingly slow wait before the final grain of sand tips over from edge to the bottom of the hourglass. They are frozen in a black-and-white portrait, and Subaru can only wonder what Seishirou sees; he himself sees the man above him, ready to strike and so unnecessarily beautiful. He would love him regardless of appearance. Subaru does not know whether love has any real place here, and the seconds slide by.
"Wait here," Seishirou says at last, after a barely perceptible pause to swallow, and then he is walking into the bathroom and Subaru is confused and alone on the bed. Awkwardness coats his thoughts like a dull paint; if he has done something wrong, he is certain he will go mad. But he said to wait, so he will.
Seconds pass, endless spinning seconds of alone and he bites his lip only to realize his mistake; bruised lips are painful. He feels as though he is trapped in the moment before a particularly difficult exorcism goes all wrong and it is only through some miracle that he survives to see another day. It will be a miracle if he survives this encounter without falling to the Sakurazukamori and he has already fallen for the Sakurazukamori so really what else is there left to do? And if Seishirou kills him at last, will he be able to leave him or will he haunt the man as touch-memories haunt him now? Questions. Seishirou is back, sliding into bed and onto him, biting his shoulder hard enough to make his eyes water. I know you're here. Subaru pulls him into a kiss and half-wraps his legs around him to press closer and his breath is coming hard, so hard.
There is definite amusement on Seishirou's face, though it does not soften the other emotions present in his countenance. "You know," he remarks casually (far too casually), squeezing out a dollop of the hand lotion Subaru vaguely remembers buying a few weeks ago (he went in to get that? why? ...then: comprehension) into his palm, "they say good things come to those who wait." He does not wait for a response but presses finger inside of Subaru and Subaru voices a strangled cry and half-buries his face against the mattress. Something in him is suffocating, or at least it feels that way. The last of his security lines breached. His body is his temple and he has come to worship at the altar. Subaru is not making sense and cannot find it in himself to care.
Subaru is accustomed to adjusting himself to pain, and pain of the physical variety pales in contrast to the other types. He is shuddering and his loosened tongue spills forward almost-meaningless sounds. Seishirou's name has too many syllables for him to get it out in one stilted breath, so his name emerges in pieces, hanging in the air until the rest of the name emerges from his lips to complete it. Seishirou's other hand finds the inside of one of his thighs and he writhes in half-pleasured torment. So close to where he wants, too far from where he wants, and then he registers a shifting of motion, Seishirou positioned above him and giving him a curiously gentle kiss as hands move Subaru into position and then a rocking forward and an instinctive response and Subaru comes to the dizzy, ridiculously obvious conclusion: He's making love to me.
That hurts, too, but love always hurts and Subaru has accepted this for a long time now.
Rhyme and rhythm and reason--right. This is right. Subaru's logic is fuzzy and he is overwhelmed, watching Seishirou's face, the naked hunger and the something else, the something else raw and exposed yet still half-hidden by shadow. He wishes briefly that the light were on and then Seishirou's hand is wrapped around him again, an up-down tempo with flourishes of variations, and he is abandoned to his own body, too far gone even to name a name, yes, yes, yes the cries issuing from his lips--
And then at last the final collapse of self, the loss of his mind to a bright inner storm second cousin to insanity, a death-in-life, the price and the reward for his romancing of death. His thoughts float abstract and translucent towards the ceiling, where he cannot grasp them; yet still he can see them over Seishirou's shoulder.
In his lassitude he finds himself watching Seishirou once more, rocking back and forth and forth and back with him, urging him closer and closer, no longer driven by purely carnal desires (I want you to be happy, Seishirou-san) and he has always loved him but this renewal of realization is different somehow, and it is only when Seishirou breathes a final broken and jumbled Subaru-kun in his ear that the last of the tension leaves him and he is drifting, so easily surrendering himself to sleep. A long day and a long night, and dawn is just barely breaking and the room is now gray with prelight. He wraps his arms around the other man and hopes against hope this will be some sort of incentive for him to stay.
Seishirou nuzzles at Subaru's face, and he would have smiled were he not so suddenly terrified of him leaving. He really is like a cat, and just as frustrating, never staying anywhere unless he wants to. And then in a carefully off-hand sort of way, Seishirou says, "I'll have to make you breakfast to make up for dinner."
"I'd like that," Subaru murmurs, closing his eyes.