Lover
Disclaimers: Koyasu Takehito's – not mine.
Author: Avium
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Crawford x Ken
Fic length: 1-shot
Timeline: Indefinite
Author's note: Yes, I am alive. The fic formatting here is getting quite... difficult to use, isn't it?
Thunk.
The first time he heard it, it was not so much a sound as it was a sensation. Always it stung with the chill of the room in the first minute, but soon after the transference of body heat became evident and the sensation turned into something small and warm – with a tendency to nestle itself against meeting points of his shoulder blades.
'Metal', he had told himself the first time he felt it – the burning cool and warmth of room and body encased within that sensation.
Metal was dangerous, he recalled almost involuntarily while fingernails bit firmly into his ribs. He tried bitterly to ignore the whisper against his ear to instead concentrate on pulling up a list of metallic weaponary, an act made harder by the fact that he was currently in a state of severe undress. Knives were made out of metal, but knives not popular for those in his line of work; it would have taken him too close to his victim, too many years to master…
A gun, perhaps? The metal felt dull against his skin – smooth in all the wrong places to penetrate skin, but in all the right places to take the shape of a gun barrel being held casually at the base of his neck. A quick flash of memory – the black gunmetal winking at him as a jacket slipped open.
But when Brad Crawford leaned down to nip at a spot barely an inch away from the metallic touch, he realised he couldn't have cared less what it was.
'Pendant', he had an identity for the object the fourth time he felt it, heard it collide against his skin. It was not so much the visual than the cold trickle of chain laid flat against his neck that allowed him to place the name. That, and the way the chain dragged and splayed itself and the pendant over his shoulders with each reverberating thrust.
He did not have a chance to look afterwards, so he had to wait for his next opportunity to do so.
It came approximately a week later, when he found himself standing before Crawford, with a hand pressed to the man's collarbone before he knew what he was doing. Bunching the stiff fabric under his fingers he was able to close them around something small and box-shaped that hung several inches past the hollow of Crawford's throat. The shape told him nothing of the pendant's design.
A stolen glance at Crawford's eyes told him that his actions were tolerated for now – barely. He swallowed the sudden nervousness that had welled up and lodged itself in his throat, then uncoiled his fingers to trace a line upwards.
Past button and collar, followed by a dipping of fingers downwards. Squeezed between starched cloth and skin he pushed until the familiar chaff of metal met his fingertips. A slight maneuver and when he was certain that he had the chain wound around a finger he began to pull. His movements were minute, but almost too brazen against Crawford's stock silence.
A gleam of thin gold was all he caught sight of before he suddenly became aware of a hand pressed into the small of his back. In surprise he lost his already precarious grasp on the chain – it slid off his finger and disappeared once more under the man's tightly-buttoned collar.
He would have cursed, or at least said something impolite. But it was hard to talk around a touch of lips that was altogether far too firm, far too soft.
'Lock', he realised on the eighteenth time, on the first time they were positioned as thus – face to face. The pendant hung over his face, swaying only slightly – as if in rhythm to its wearer's breathing. He reached up to catch the pendant by its chain, tugging weakly to pull it into his line of vision. Crawford obliged him by pressing closer, but moving nothing else.
He turned the pendant over in his hand – designed to look like a gold household lock and not much else, not even so much as a string of filigree adorning it. Perhaps it was a locket, he thought with mirth, wonderous at who might be inside it. But he found no hinges and nothing to pry open. Brows furrowed he titled it upwards, and he could see that there was a slot for a key just as any old-fashion lock had.
For one incredulous moment he thought that Crawford was indeed wearing a functional lock, but he found his questions stolen when he found his back arching a little more, relaxing, then arching further. Again, and again.
Unlike before there was no place for the pendant to rest on – the chain was too short to extend far enough for such an act. So instead he had to contend with the tickling chill of the pendant as it rocked and tapped against the underside of his chin. Its edges scratched against his skin and he had to fight the urge to rub away the itch. Again, and again.
Hot, hard, and very much aware of that singular instance when the pendant trembled against his skin, then fell on the nape of his neck.
Then, silence.
"Is there a key for that?" He found himself asking, not so much to the steady rising and falling chest of the man beside him, but perhaps more towards the enveloping stillness of the room.
Crawford did not reply.
There was no pendant around Crawford's neck on the nineteenth time.
Somehow, it had appeared inside Ken's jean pocket when he looked the next day.
End
Author's notes: On the only official Schwarz shitajiki released to date, Crawford was depicted as wearing a gold lock-shaped pendant (or was it a functional lock even?) on a gold chain around his neck. Canon or fanon, you decide.