This crazy thing we call love
The monotone sound of the clock ticking melted off the walls. Fresh spring sunshine stumbled through the closed windows only to trip again on the sticky bluegrey sheen of cigarette smoke. The heater was cranked up to the maximum, the room was humid to the point of being suffocating, a sheen of sweat on every surface. Stuck in the dark messy warmth he sat, cigarette almost burned to the stub bitten between his teeth, his silver head dropped leisurely against the backrest of the black leather couch.
Gin waited. The open laptop before him droned on patiently, the white electric paper always expecting to be stained with black words of madness, sorrow and confessions. It sat like a machine queen on a tumble of printed manuscripts, the chaos of them only understood by their master, the author. His cleanly lover had once tried to organize them… then had learned it the hard way that he must not meddle in Gin's flurry of thoughts. Next to the laptop sat an ashtray chocked full of cigarette butts, a collection of sins burning in redemption, or some such metaphor, he always finds the fitting one.
Time floated on. Cigarette after cigarette he went, the trembling of his hands worsening with each hour that dragged on. He didn't consciously realize he was using his lighter or moving to get the next stick. There was a terrible slowness to every second, like every blurry tick-tock dragged the dead weight of futility with itself. Still, Gin waited, waited faithfully, waited impatiently.
His doctor dear had been so busy these days. It began as him staying a little longer in the evening. Then he had left a little earlier in the morning. Then he stayed hours longer, left hours earlier, then he wasn't home at all for some days. But he was a busy man, a working man, the head surgeon. This was nothing to be surprised over. Nothing to be confused over. Nothing to be mad about. So he sat, smoked and waited.
His lungs were burning as though cancer was on its way already, but the rest of his body was numb to the very bones. His mouth was parched, his cold blue and blood red eyes watered. He sucked in smoke, breathed out smoke. He sweated in fever from the heat in the room but really felt none of that. None of that just the painful ache in his chest and the quicklessness of time passing.
His mind though, his mind was bustling as always. No coherence in his thoughts now, but no pause either. Always working, always wondering, always doubting.
…...perhaps i should eat… lasagne wouldn't be bad, oh i'm thirsty. what was that song the other day? ...oh cold fire in the ivory tower… something like that, will it rain this weekend? Ryuuken. Ryuuken, Ryuuken, has he had dinner? he never eats at work that's why he's so skinny now. oh those hips. I love him. god I want to FUCK him. i haven't seen him in so long, maybe he's grown stubbly, he's so funny when he's stubbly in the mornings, but i love kissing him anyways… the crows dance as the winter eve grows darker… did Ryuuken meet someone else? no no no he's faithful, he's MINE, he is, i know, i can't know, but he promised… chronic loveitis, Ichimaru-san, you're a jealous creep, why don't you go die? can't die, no i have a duty to fulfill, clean the world until someone cleans it of me. Ryuuken, did you think of me today? do you still love sucking my cock you slut? can we still watch Tangled together? your hand brushed against mine and the world shattered around us. the pines were roaring… mother, why did you have to get drunk so often? did you love your booze? why didn't you love me? the White the White is near, no, save me, stop me, stop this, don't allow it, don't restrain, don't stop, do it, kill it, TAKE IT… Ryuuken, which tie are you wearing today? Ryuuken, do you want to see Macbeth next month? we could play pool afterwards. i want to hold you close, skin pressed against me tight… you should have let him go years ago, you shouldn't have started this at all, he's not for you. he's not for me? but he promised, he said he loved me loved me, me this monster, oh he loves me, how i love him for it, how i want him, i'm HUNGRY, i want to have him kiss him love him FUCK him hold him please him scare him love him, Ryuuken come home come home soon, i don't want to hurt you but i will i know i'm scared of me, do you still love me? do you still? do you? you? who? me? what a wonderful world… we fall like angels to our knees because love is the only way, the only honest way, did you know that doctor? can i still love if i'm mad? don't listen to the whisperings of the forest, the trolls come hunting at night… i haven't written anything in so long, i wonder if i'm still an author? Ryuuken said i have a silver author tongue, i want to put that tongue between your legs doctor, kill you with my words, love you with my murder, oh i'm THIRSTY, can i speak? where's the light, it's growing dark inside… mother? where are you? i'm scared and alone and hungry and SCARED, mother, please don't hurt me, i'm scared of you, why don't you love me? why am i so ugly? what is the meaning of living? Ryuuken! come flying into my arms, come come come home now, now now… my angel on the cross, my blood-soaked seraph, my beloved whore of a cherub… how i love you, how i want you… this madness! the White! don't make me, no don't make me do this, oh i LOVE this, the fear, the silence, the gore, i really do love this. please don't make me, i don't want to, someone save me help me i'm scared! Ryuuken? Ryuuken are you still MINE? i'll rip you APART-
The front door clicked open.
HOME-!
Gin's eyes flicked to the window.
Oh. Night has fallen… But which night? The first? Second or third? Odd how time can confuse you. But it is for the best. With the town asleep, the demons can rise… so come, sweet swan of mine. Come home to me unsuspecting and I will-
"Gah… God, Gin… what is this? Did the heater break?" Reprimanding. The voice drifted towards him, but Gin was deaf to its frosty, practical utterings. Ryuuken hung his coat and slipped out of his shoes, muttering to himself in a tone what was increasingly annoyed, laced with small coughs. "Gh, and this smoke… how many have you… God! Kah-! Are you crazy?!"
Crazy? Crazy. CRAZY! Oh yes yes yes Ryuuken, your voice, your perfect mouth, your perfect tongue i want to kill it all have it all love it all, love you love you love you love you love you-
Gin rose from his seat. Like a wind intensifying he straightened to his full height and turned his mismatched eyes towards the doctor. Through the mist of smoke, he saw him in full white, pure White, only the eyes darker than midnight blue.
Beautiful. Oh my heart…
"Gin, answer m- oh God… Gin…?"
Fear.
"Quiet." Gin whispered, his youthful, lilting tone crushed into a hoarse drone. Anger scraped its nails up and down along his proud spine, bringing goosebumps to his skin beneath his sweat and smoke soaked clothes. He smelled and looked disgusting now, but the two of them, they lived a life of gore and crime… the way he looked now didn't even come close to how he looked after done with one of his nightly rendezvous. Exception perhaps only his eyes. His eyes looked the same: a pair of jewels in the smoke, bright and cold and blazing and dark. Ryuuken was gazing at him, and he was the abyss gazing back.
Oh I love you-
"What- I… no, I've said I'm sorry, it's been so busy for me… all the surgeries, the paperwork, meetings and-"
Fear.
"I… said quiet… Ryuuken." A minute pause, a glint of the overhead light on a sliver of polished metal. His shaky hand grew steady as his fingers clasped the switchblade. He saw his doctor's midnight eyes dance scared to the knife, a weapon he knew so well, and he saw the tendons tense in that swanlike neck as his body grew taut with terror. Ryuuken knew the man before him, knew what the knife did. As Gin's careful words penetrated his icy shell, he felt his soul shake, felt his body begin to physically ache with guilt. Defiance would still get there first, but not for too long and deep down he was aware Gin knew that. "I think you've… forgotten a couple of things."
-love you love you love you love you-
"No… no, I'm… I don't have to listen to this… I don't have to… Gin, Gin please… Ginplease, no…"
Heaven knows where he found the guts and strength to, but he turned, dashed for the door. A sudden flush of adrenaline pumped through his veins as he felt Gin move behind him, heard him breathe out, saw his shadow looming overhead, huge and terrifying.
Ohplease, get there, reach it, open it, run run RUN!
-love you love you love you love you-
A hand. Grabbing the back of his suit jacket. Yank, stumble, fall back.
Scream!
"AHH! NO! Gin no, no, I didn't- I couldn't- I-"
-love you hurt you love you love you-
"Stop… denying it…" Gin looked at him. Ryuuken looked back. Blue and red locked into sinning midnight blue and as Ryuuken's lips trembled and his brow began glistening either from fear or from the smoky, suffocating heat in the room, Gin slowly knelt before him where he lay in a mess on the floor. "You've... hurt me." The knife loomed steady as a scalpel between them. Ryuuken didn't dare look at it, but he still saw it from the corner of his eye. Gin smiled, or he tried, but the expression always twitched off of his thin lips as though afraid to stay on his pallid, sharply angled face, that mouth that said the most lovely, most terrifying things. "Oh, doctor, you've hurt me so bad…" He shushed on that grating, aching tone and Ryuuken shuddered away from the words. This was it, this was judgement, proper judgement, what was he thinking challenging this man, what was he thinking?
"Ohjesus I'm sorry, I said I'm sorry…" His arrogant, perfect Cupid's bow lips mumbled, his teeth chattered softly. He oozed it in waves, the fear, the guilt. He knew he had wronged, he felt it in Gin's penetrating eyes, saw it in the glint of light on the knifeblade. He had sinned and now he would get his due, now God would bring him proper judgement.
-love you hurt you scare you love you love you-
"It's alright." Generous, Gin touched his empty left hand to Ryuuken's white cheek, rubbed his thumb against the pale plush pink of his beautiful shaky mouth. A heat simmered just beneath the surface. Lust was rearing its ugly head, opening all crevices to coax out decadent passions. That mouth had beautiful talents beyond spouting Latin expressions like a language of professional sex; it was a mouth worth worshipping, but there was no time to indulge. Not now.
"I'll punish you and I'll forgive you."
-hurt you scare you hurt you hurt you love you-
"N-No-oh...nno…" Moaning now, moaning, that handsome adult voice, cold and curt and condescending always, now a horrified beg. Gin smiled for it, a twitchy mad thing that barely clung to his mouth. It hung off like a rotten fruit from a tree too laden to bear one more. That voice could sing odes of pleasure when offered the right role. It could rise to beautiful pitches only to tumble down into deep, shuddery groans. Gin knew all that, knew it very well as he had been the only conductor to coax that handsome voice into those playful concertos.
"Because you've forgotten." He said, pushing his hand into Ryuuken's swanfeather hair, yanking him to his knees before himself as he stood. The weight of him in his hand felt wonderful, elevating. The feeling of Ryuuken's scalp under his fingers began opening the dams of his mind. "You've forgotten, Ryuuken… you've forgotten that you belong to me. That you have NO RIGHT to go and fuck me up this bad…" The grating whisper was now a grating growl. Lust and madness entwining, birthing the demon within.
-you little fuck, you bastard, you sick fucking sod, now you've done it, done it, you fuck, you little fuck how i love you-
The steel of his knife pressed forebodingly to Ryuuken's skin, but it was not the edge of it. It always threatened, but never harmed. Still the closeness of it sent shocks of fresh fear through the doctor's figure as it grazed his skin, touched his neck, followed the shape of his spine.
As the blade kept ripping the fabric, Gin hummed on a baffling, merry tune, breaking out into a whistle every now and then. Ryuuken jerked and sobbed under his hands as he tore the expensive white suit and the clean white shirt under it to bits and pieces. The material screamed as it broke.
RRRIIIIP!
RRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP!
RIIIP! RRRRRRRRRRIIIP!
RIP! RIIIP!
-there now you're getting it, what you deserve, deserve, undeserving… fabric falls from his skin like innocence fell the night he's opened his legs for me… oh Ryuuken you are so beautiful, i am in awe of you… won't you kiss me now, can't we kiss and embrace? you're finally back and i have missed you so bad my love! why did you have to hurt me again…?
It seemed like an hour has passed. Time appeared stuck, only repeating the sickening noises of damp sobs and fabric tearing.
Fragments of white pooled around Ryuuken's legs where he knelt. Gin stood behind him, his steady hand hovering the knife around the doctor's throat. He saw the tremble in his body, the shake of shame and fearful anger.
Beautiful…
The throb of arousal was not unexpected. Gin smiled for it, in his head an orchestra of snakes as he slipped the knife back into the pocket whence it came, placing his black fingers carefully on that seductive swanlike neck. He felt little through the leather of his gloves, but that little was enough to draw a hum of lust from his throat. When it came to Ryuuken, so very little was enough for him to lose all sense of humanity and be rendered into a thoughtless animal. He wondered sometimes if his doctor was aware of the power he had over him...
Look at his proud spine curving now with the humiliation. Look at his impeccable hair falling in tousled wisps around his face. Look at his steady hands shaking like leaves in a breeze in his lap. Look at him look at him, beautiful mine, wronged and pained and painted black and blue on the surface of his soul. Won't you turn your head towards me, doctor dear? Look my way and see the Devil you've created… the God you've once worshipped now turned to madness…
His fingertips grazed across Ryuuken's throat. They danced around the shape of his Adam's apple as he swallowed, pitter-pattered patiently against his pulse, dipped into the seductive hollow of his neck sensually.
...oh fuck Ryuuken, Ryuuken, ohgod I want to fuck you...
Just as Ryuuken opened his lips to suck in fresh air, his fingers clamped gently around his windpipe. Slowly, slowly he added pressure, knew just how to touch to bring blissful airlessness, a daze of being caught between the living and the dead. Ryuuken's mouth hung open, squeezed little noises passing between the pale lips, wheezing, sucking, hacking, begging. His body locked up in fright, his hands snapped in panic to those tyrannic hands and his eyes opened wide as though beholding a miracle for the very first time.
...want your life, your love, your hate, your death...
Ryuuken tilted his head back, caught Gin's mismatched eyes while his elegant fingers hooked like claws into the man's gloved hands. Hooked, pulled, but only once. Once and then only held them, those hands that kept his life secure and Gin saw it all crumbling, saw it all falling to ruin, the careful pretenses, the high walls, the adopted roles. And he saw it all rushing back, the awe, the love, the obsession, saw it in his doctor's midnight eyes as they flushed with tears, overflowed in a high, airless sob and rolled back to look inside and see the love once again. The perfect Cupid's bow lips turned blue as they parted wider uselessly, rows of healthy white teeth peeking out and the tip of the most sensual tongue in the world.
...i should end this right here, ruin it, close it down, kill us both, shut the book, shut all doors, paint it black, drench it red, erase your eyes, erase your hands, erase all we've had, but doctor, doctor, it would be suicide and that is never an option, not once, because our lives are precious and even if we're both in Hell, we're not alone and i love you love you love you...
He was slipping.
…not yet.
Gin's fingers fell away, touched his bare shoulders softly as Ryuuken coughed, gasped and gobbled down air, shook and massaged his chest and throat in a daze. He traced the shape of those shoulders once, then drew his hands away and stepped back. Fury flooded him and he swore he could feel his arm swinging in a blow, but nothing happened. Instead, his mind focused on the insane throb of heat pooling in his loins and he raised a hand to his twitchy mouth to stifle a groan.
"G'n…"
He flicked his gaze to where Ryuuken cowered before him on the floor, naked and shameful and obscene. He didn't dare speak. The low hum of his voice would give him away.
...you've hurt me so bad and I am so mad with you, doctor, I am so mad, but I love you so much I can barely stand it, goodness it scares me to death...
"Ginnn…" Ryuuken's bruised voice rose in both volume and pitch as he scrambled around, a hasty, clumsy quality to his motions, so unlike the polished doctor. When he looked up at the man his eyes were strangely wide and young, as though he had been reborn a mere second ago. And perhaps it was exactly what had happened.
"Gin, ah, Gin…" He raised his trembling bare arms and wrapped them around the man's thighs, leaning his cheek obnoxiously against his crotch, nuzzling the hardness he found there with a murmur of moans. "Gin, my God, my Devil… my brother… ah, my lover…" He raised his eyes to him again and licked his perfect Cupid's bow lips. "I'm sorry… I really am, I forgot, I did, but remind me… keep reminding me…" He sobbed even as he buried his face against Gin's groin, drowned in the scent and feel of his arousal. Obscenely, he mouthed the shape of it for a couple moments, soaking Gin's slacks in his scorching hot saliva.
It took him some time to draw away again, but even then he was pressing his flushed, shaken face against the shaft. His breathing was heavy, quick and laced with soft coughs, when he spoke his voice was nervous and begging. "I've missed this, I've missed you… I've been so miserable even at the work I love, I didn't dare show my face to you, God… I've been such a fool… such a fool… only you can make me happy, only you…" He sobbed, reaching up to wipe his tears shakily, smearing them on his face. His eyes were wet and praying for his forgiveness when he gazed up at Gin's face again.
Gin moved his hand from his mouth. He lowered it slowly, hovered it indecisively for a moment then slipped his fingers into Ryuuken's swanfeather hair, stroking slowly… slowly. The gentleness in the touch coaxed another sob from the doctor's beautiful mouth and finally a groan tumbled helplessly past Gin's thin lips.
...you have me in the palm of your hand, doctor dear…
"Gin…?" Ryuuken mumbled, worrying his lower lip with his pearly white teeth softly. Amazingly, his pupils dilated at once, grew huge and hungry, his eyes lighting up with desire and guilt. When he whispered again, his voice was dripping unbridled lust, a longing that was near disgusting with how desperate it sounded. "...can we make love…?"
With a smile that was nowhere near pure or smooth, Gin reached under his arms and hoisted him up effortlessly. As Ryuuken whimpered at the easy display of superior strength, he put his lips at his ear and his silver author tongue rolled gently with his words, "Are you sure you want to make it, doctor…? This crazy thing we call love…"
His laugh was mocking, but he was already moving them towards the couch.