There is no light.
There is no sound; not unless you strain to listen.
But pale flesh glows, and how beautiful it looks. His legs are long and lean and they wrap around my waist with such elegance that I wonder where he learns how to arrange himself; he is so young, much younger than he looks or pretends to be. He is also cool and quiet, just how I like him to be, how I want him to be, how I need him to be.
The smell of fresh sweat intersperses with the old; layer upon layer of too-human essence that stales and ferments with time. I inhale, exhale. If I try hard enough, maybe I can even smell…
No, I can't.
I try to concentrate on the body beneath me and how it lights up the darkness of the locker room. Mop, his hair is a mop. Black as everything around us, soft and smooth against the ridge on my cheek and I wonder again how I managed to escape with just a scar. Bandages and rooms that reek of antiseptic and I knew he was there, and I didn't know why, and I didn't care why.
'What are you trying to prove, Mitsui-san?'
Why do you care – I am a has-been.
White cheeks are flushed with colour; breathing, bleeding; and I watch desperately as our muscles move – fused together in a controlled, practiced pattern. So methodical. So precise. So disciplined. So surreal.
The cheekbones painted on the shadowy face below me are high and sharp enough that I wonder if I can cut myself a new scar on them.
'Do you think fighting will solve all your problems, Mitsui-san?'
No, but it'll make you share mine.
Faster now. His voice is a mockery in the back of my mind, but the mouth crushed against mine never speaks. For that, I am glad. It helps me fabricate the illusion that one day, it might be his voice that whispers my name, caresses me with his lips.
The hand that grasps at me is startlingly warm as we move into mindlessness.
'You're destroying the dreams of others, Mitsui.'
Shut up, idiot; I'm freeing you from the handcuffs of ignorant servitude – you think the basketball team needs you?
Thrusts are frantic, like the need to stop his face and voice from colliding with the physical touch of the fair skin underneath me, and maybe I want them to crash, and maybe I want everything to burn, like how I burn for him…
'I'm glad you're back, Hisashi.'
...I never left.
And it burns.
Shuddering, I drive inside that pale, pale flesh with its unruly mop of black hair and inside my mind's eye, I see the face that finally drives me, over the edge and into that final moment of blissful, painful realisation.
I was wrong. We needed you; I needed you, so much more than I thought I would.
And it reminds me…
It is dark.
It is quiet, even as I pull myself out and for a moment, my vision blurs and I see…
No.
Rukawa's eyes are blue.
And I close my own blue eyes and try to pretend they are brown, behind round glasses.