Somewhat dark! & possessive! Keigo character study and Ryoma willing to ride the whole possessive shit out.
Or just an overall break from everything because I don't feel like writing these days (flail).
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"You watch me too much," the boy blurts out one day.
Keigo's hands twitch, but he gives no indication that Ryoma had spoken something out of the ordinary. They were finishing up a match and he was sticky and sweaty under the late afternoon sun. There is a ball and a net between them. Ryoma studies him across the net, his wide, golden eyes narrowed, his mouth gaping at his last words, uncertain whether he had spoken those words out loud. He licks his lips.
"Pardon?" He is going to play dumb, preferably watching Ryoma's wrists flick and his fingers clutching his racket. His gaze skitters to the boy's knobby knees. The boy is having his growth spurt this year and he is now too thin and lanky. He is not gaining any muscle, no matter how many push ups he may grunt out in Keigo's personal gym. His stomach is still taut and lean, the last time Keigo's fingers lingered over them.
"You," and Ryoma hesitates, and shakes his head. He dismisses the notion inside his head. "Whatever. Never mind."
Keigo tilts his head. He could pretend that he had heard Ryoma the first time around. He could drawl out: don't be ridiculous, Echizen, you are not that very fascinating to look at. Don't flatter yourself, some of my glorious self must be rubbing off you, I daresay.
But his eyes are too hungry and imploring for such lies, he knows. Ryoma is many things, has many lacking qualities, but foolishness has never been one of them.
He retains his silence and offers him instead a small, benign smile. "We should go eat," he says, and walks away. He likes to hear the soft footsteps behind him, knowing that the boy would follow at his heels. That he may suddenly whirl around and see the boy trotting at the wake of his footsteps. How they are only a few steps apart, a distance Keigo could mend with a reach of an arm and a pull.
His walk is controlled and precise.
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I would like to devour you.
Keigo does not say such things, words that whirl inside his head. He observes the boy and how he eats, dabbles in meat and devours fish, flecks of white meat splattering near his mouth. His thin fingers holding chopsticks the wrong way. The way his collarbones jut out and his neck is thin and long when he stretches out. How his arms are bony with their rippling, tiny muscles, how angled his elbows are when he bends them.
He peels a bone out of the fish and hands the boneless meat to Ryoma. He meets confused golden eyes.
"You should eat more," he says, and motions to the dish. "You can have mine."
Ryoma's lips curve, and his mouth jests, "Are you trying to fatten me up?"
Keigo gives him a blank look. "You're growing," he points out, and Ryoma takes the dish offered. The smirk does not disappear though, and Ryoma cocks his head. He mimics Keigo's gaze.
"I think I'm imagining things," he announces, mock-serious, "But you're ogling me too much, monkey king. Something I should know?"
He manages this time: he rolls his eyes, he puts on an air of disdain, "Don't be ridiculous, brat. My chef's lamb pie would provide better company than you," he sniffs, and he tries to take his gaze off the boy.
But the words inside his head do not give up so easily.
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He likes the boy helpless under him, how eyes can go impossibly wide and open and vulnerable. He would someday like to tie the boy up, those arms taut and white, his back arching in a feline movement. But it is not that night, not when the boy is curled up next to him, his breathing even and deep. Keigo watches him then, sees those hands round in a fist, eyelashes fluttering. He might even compose an ode.
Impossibly small hands, he thinks. They hold a racket and win many matches and they are calloused. He reaches out to stroke a knuckle.
Today was interesting. Before Keigo waited for him at the school gates to have an impromptu match at his house and dinner, he has watched Ryoma sling his tennis bag over his narrow shoulders. The sun was setting in the late afternoon and the boy was clad in his tennis uniform.
Momoshiro was slinging an arm around what was his.
Keigo watched from inside his car, his arms crossed. His eyes went hot before he realized: a scathing glare that he wished could pierce through his tinted windows. He envisioned that innocent arm torn. He imagined himself with his very cold smile and slinging his own arm around Ryoma's neck and curling his fingers to feel the boy's heartbeat around his hands. Momoshiro spotted his car, however, parked neatly in front of the school gates, and stopped. He squinted, and Keigo saw his mouth moving.
He reads Momoshiro's lips: Eh, Echizen, is that Atobe-san's car?
Ryoma stopped too, and his eyes narrowed, and their eyes met and Keigo envisioned Ryoma seeing through him, through the windows and through his very black soul, but the next moment the gaze was gone and Ryoma shrugged off Momoshiro's weight off.
Clever boy, Keigo thought then.
He wondered sometimes, as he wonders now, in this dark night, whether Ryoma sometimes knows.
Fin?