A Eurostar from London to Paris is two hours and more and the tickets are ridiculously priced but he buys them anyway. He sits back and watches London submerge out of view and soon enough he is in the English Channel and he wonders if the tunnel will break due to water pressure and they will all drown and die.
A look out the glass: black, save for his face, and his face is hollow and gaunt and tired. He is always so tired these days. He stares out at the blackness some more and the last thing he sees is his face as he falls asleep.
His last book that he translated was two months ago. He shouldn't be translating, not at this age, not when he is barely out of university, but for this he has Keigo and his connections to thank. If everything fails and he leaves and dies rotten and bitter, he can't be bitter about the fact that Keigo had accepted his change of careers with grace and subjected him to highbrow publishing companies.
In his dream, they are in a forest and they are walking. Next moment: he is overturned and his hands are tied, his mouth is gagged and they are fucking. He cannot see Keigo's face, but knows that it would be Keigo, because the way they fit so perfectly, and he tries to touch him but realize, looking down, his hands are tied. He tries to speak to untie him, but realize too, that his mouth is stuffed with a tasteless cloth. He makes a gagging sound, or, what he presumes is a sound. All dreams he have are silent.
Keigo looks up. It is a younger Keigo, Ryoma realizes instantly, because of his eyes. His eyes look so young and violent, his lips soft, and they curve into a smirk. A hand reaches out to him to caress him, but the caress turns to a grip, as Keigo grips his hair and drive into him further, deeper, and he thinks he is about to die. He is so hollow, even when he has Keigo inside him, and he tries to look down, but the hand prevents that. In the end, all he can see are those eyes, never leaving him, and they are surrounded by nothing but leaves and leaves of forestry.
He wakes up and looks out. The sky is blue again and he is in Paris. He thinks about the dream for a minute and concludes that he is just tired and needs sex. He does not think about those eyes and as soon as he gets off the train, he forgets about the dream.
000
Wakashi calls him on his phone, but he does not answer. He gets a dingy hotel near the Marais and looks down at the cobblestones that were old and paved and imperfect.
Fuck it, he thinks. He's in Paris and he should walk around. So he walks and ignores a second call from Keigo, and a third one from an unknown number he knows to be Jiroh's. He walks along the Seine and lights up a smoke, exhaling while looking at the illuminating lights of Notre Dame. The first smoke runs out and he lights up another one. The people pass him by: he is leaning against a bench and watching, waiting.
Finally, his phone rings again, and this time he picks up. It is Wakashi again.
"Where are you?" There is no hellos, no hi, how are you, I'm fine, and you.
"Hi." At least he should be cordial, if anything, in a relationship he wants to treasure.
"Fuck hellos. Where the hell are you?"
Ryoma stares at the church and the bridge he is standing on. He doesn't answer before he takes a long drag and blows out. "Don't curse, Wakashi. It's not like you."
"What else am I supposed to do?" Wakashi is angry, he knows, from the clipped tone he uses. This is the first time he hears it though: Wakashi is never mad at him, because Wakashi is good and solid, but Ryoma sometimes forget Wakashi is human who has human needs and a heart. "What the hell am I going to do, then? First you come over after two weeks, and then you call me up on my phone when I'm out of town. You never call. And now I try to reach you and they tell me your line is international. How am I supposed to react?"
It is a ramble, words, commitments. His eyes blur and haze. "Paris," he says, giving the only answer he is capable of giving. "I'm in Paris, I told you."
"You didn't tell me. You said you wanted to go together."
"You were in Brighton."
"Fuck, Ryoma," Wakashi snaps, and his name sounds bitter, "Do I need to throw away my life for your whims?"
Don't be a child, he hears a hallucination, from a different voice with the same intonations. He swallows bile. The church is yellow and ghastly.
"No," he says, tired. He isn't even going to start. "If you want, we can end this. That's not what I want at all."
When he goes back to London, he resolves to end everything. Wakashi will be only the first step. He will end writing, Keigo, Jiroh, London. He will fly back to New York or Tokyo and mope around his mother's house, feeling like a failure.
There is silence on the other line and a sharp intake of breath, then a dial. Wakashi had hung up.
Ryoma stores the phone away inside his pocket after he turns it off. There are no more calls he wants to take.
000
The next day, he sets off towards the church again, but steers towards the other direction across the street and enters a small bookshop.
Wakashi is there.
Ryoma thinks he is imagining things, but there is Wakashi, looking as if he hadn't slept all night, with his dark eyes and pale face and light hair. Wakashi, looking haggled as he flips through a book near the counter, where he has a good lookout for the customers coming in.
Their eyes meet and Ryoma can only stare.
Wakashi grimaces, then offers a drained smile. "There's not a lot of places a writer can roam around in this city," he says.
"Translator," Ryoma corrects him, automatic, but his feet are already heading to Wakashi and his weary figure. They stand closely together for a second before Ryoma lets his body enwrap the other, his arms tightening around Wakashi and his London air.
It is a good thing that it was a weekday, he thinks, so that people do not drown them.
"You're not a whim," he says against a solid shoulder, and Wakashi's arms come around him and tighten in response.
000
Ryoma is at first embarrassed by the state where his hotel is, then realizes that Wakashi is not Keigo, and that their hands are still intertwined.
"When did you come?" he asks.
"Last night, as soon as you turned off your phone," Wakashi says, no rebuke in his voice, "I had to beg the bookstore to take me up their attic."
Ryoma laughs. He feels giddy, almost. Wakashi looks at him and gives him a small smile, and after a moment's pause, leans over to give him a small kiss near his lips. Ryoma leans back and gives him a proper one, on the lips without tongue. Wakashi turns a faint red and Ryoma rolls his eyes and laughs again.
"I hardly ever hear you laugh." Wakashi does not let his hand go even when they cross the streets, even when their palms become sweaty. "You should do it more often."
Ryoma does not quip back that London is not a city for laughing, that he cannot even smile in London. Instead he says, "We should buy a French cookbook. I could cook something there."
Wakashi frowns. He looks worried and Ryoma bites back another smile and looks away.
This is almost normal.
They walk along the Seine again, this time he does not feel so empty and probing. They wander around and out the gardens, sit alongside the banks and share a baguette and Ryoma has black coffee, which he drinks and he watches the other boy. Wakashi is carefully tearing out half of his baguette and chewing thoughtfully. His own baguette is poorly neglected. Wakashi swallows his mouthful and tears another piece, but this time offers it to Ryoma.
He smirks and does not take it by hand but opens his mouth, and after a sigh, Wakashi obliges.
They sit by the river until the sun sets, and then they head back to the hotel again, their cheeks red and Wakashi's arm wrapped around him.
000
Wakashi's touchs are light.
He tries to think why they might be light, but then he soon, he can't think. They are kissing: Wakashi's tongue is warm and melting as they probe gently inside his mouth, carefully snaking in and sliding across the roof of his mouth and around his gums. He thinks he must reek of smoke and it would be disgusting, but Wakashi lets his tongue twist and adjoin with his own and soon their tongues are mingled together, lazy. Wakashi tastes of coffee and bread. He tastes of null.
"I should give up smoking," he says, the moment they part. Wakashi gives him another small peck for that, this time, not embarrassed to give it on the lips.
"Hm?"
"Smoking." He gives a shrug. "I must taste revolting."
Wakashi mocks his shrug and smirks. A smirk on Wakashi is normal; or, it should be normal. He looks younger now, because he is carefree and light. He is able to crack jokes instead of staying silent and passing him a spoon.
He feels happy that they will never be Kabaji and Keigo.
"I don't it'll change anything," he says, "You can't get rid of that."
"The smoke?" Ryoma can't help asking.
Wakashi kisses him again and this time Ryoma opens his mouth and laughs.
"Yes, the smoke," Wakashi says, when they part.
Ryoma rolls his eyes. "That's stupid."
Wakashi pushes him back in reply, and Ryoma gives out a small yelp as he falls back. He lands on the small bed, a bed that is barely fit for two, and he falls ungracefully, his arms spread wide across the mattress. Wakashi climbs on top of him and lets his legs trap him. Above, looming, Wakashi still does not look threatening. But his face is dimmed because the light counter reflects him, and all he can see is a shadow of the pale face.
Wakashi's hand comes and rests on his cheek. It strokes his skin, and Ryoma thinks at how rough that hand is, a hand that had weathered through tennis and judo and Hyotei. Thinking this, he feels tired.
"We're not going to fuck," Wakashi says, "If you don't want to."
His voice is serious and low, and the stroking doesn't stop. Ryoma bites back, of course I want to, I always wanted to, and looks up at him, Wakashi with sharp eyes and light hair and a straight mouth. He looks at the ceiling beyond Wakashi and thinks how ugly the white is in the room. Keigo would have been appalled. He knows that he wants to but at the same time, he knows that he does not. He doesn't want the feel of entanglements and the complications following this, but even thinking upon that trail of thoughts, he knows that there will always be complications and it would have nothing to do with fucking. So he stands by his original answer.
He replies quietly, "I want to."
Wakashi takes off his shirt first; his jeans are gone, and Ryoma sits up, tries too doff off his own clothes, but Wakashi's hand prevents him; it stays on his chest and makes him lie down again, and with a wry smile Wakashi, everything gone save his underwear, doffs off his shirt and jeans for him. Ryoma stays docile, silent, as his buckle unclasps, his jeans rolling down, and soon he is cold in the legs. Wakashi climbs over him warms them up.
They kiss again and Ryoma wonders what Wakashi likes: if he likes a docile partner, or a raging one, and wonders which role he should play. He feels uncomfortable.
"What do you want me to do?" he asks, and those words suddenly give him a deja-vu, they scare him; he had said those same words, a long time ago.
Wakashi buries his face at the crook of his neck and licks his neck, kisses it in small steps and a small bite. "Anything you want," he says, and the answer is different from the one he had once been given, so he relaxes.
Wakashi's fingers are longer than Keigo's. When they enter him, they probe deep, and they hurt at first. He closed his eyes and shifts, but they still feel uncomfortable. He is stuck and he opens his mouth and gasps.
"Alright?" Wakashi murmurs from above.
"Hurts," he manages, and shifts, but it does him no good. Wakashi leans over again and Ryoma feels more kisses on the side of his neck; Wakashi's other hand comes to play with his bud and they move towards his cock.
"We need more lotion," he tries to laugh it off, but winces instead. Wakashi's hand strokes him with firm, repeated strokes, and the fingers do there best to open him up and find the spot.
When they do find it, he opens his eyes and arches, his hand grappling blindly in the air, and Wakashi holds it down, they fingers intertwining, and soon Wakashi is inside him, moving above him, slowly at first and then later, his tranquil face red and grunting, gasping; their hands rub together. Wakashi's hand grinds his own down.
He meets Wakashi's eyes. Wakashi's face contorts when he is fucking and his eyes narrow but they do not sharpen. Wakashi offers him a small smile that must cost him everything and he moves, and Ryoma in turn matches with a rhythm that is good for the both of them.
Wakashi comes first, and he comes soon after, and Wakashi collapses onto him, grimaces. He mutters an apology and rolls over, but not quite; the bed is too small. He lies sideways and lets his arm enclose Ryoma's back for a moment before he stands up and walks towards the bin. Ryoma sees him unroll the condom and trash it neatly, where it should belong. It brings out a laugh out of him.
Wakashi gives him a quizzical look when he comes back to the bed. "What?"
Ryoma shakes his head. "Nothing," he says. He has never seen a condom thrown away where it should have been trashed.
For the rest of the night, they stay enwrapped together, and sleep comes to him easily.
000
Keigo is inside the apartment when he enters, but he does not see Jiroh.
The moment he sees him, Ryoma knows that Keigo is angry. Keigo's eyes are hard and his lips are white. He is also holding a cup of coffee that must taste terrible, because Keigo does not know how to make coffee. Keigo, in fact, does not know how to do a lot of things.
Keigo does not speak at first. His eyes that roam Ryoma are hostile. They scan him for weaknesses and he feels like an enemy.
"I was in Paris," he says, before Keigo can ask anything. He does not give Keigo the time to hone attacks.
"Indeed," Keigo answers back, clipped.
Ryoma walks over to the counter and boils water. He needs tea, and he needs sleep. He is sore and tired, something that he mistook for contentment before he entered this house and saw Keigo.
"Is that all?" Keigo says, when he does not expand on his initiative. "You were gone for the weekend with no note and your phone was off. And all you have to say is that you were in Paris?"
He rubs his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says, and a moment later he thinks, that is such a useless word because he does not mean it at all.
"I'm sure." There is another edge to Keigo's voice, and he hates the sound. Keigo's voice is clean and crisp that lacks warmth. He misses soft whispers and murmurs, and he cannot get them here. He thinks, I should leave. But he needs tea first, and he needs sleep so he can forget about useless hopes.
"Yeah, I am." He turns around to face Keigo after he made his tea. He had taken his time and how appraises Keigo as Keigo is glaring at him: Keigo is clad in his white shirt and black robe, and his silhouette is sharp where the sunrays do not hit him. He sighs. "I don't know what you want me to say."
He wishes Keigo was a villain. He wishes that, Keigo would narrow his eyes and hit Ryoma or throw him against the counter and plunder him. He wishes that Keigo would not be composed and say hurtful things, so that he may have a justification to hate Keigo, to make himself believe that yes, he deserved better than the games that Keigo played and the rules that he brought upon this house. The absence of Keigo made him contort Keigo into a monster, with references to Keigo at his worst, with his sneers and mockery. But that is not Keigo, because there must be a reason why he is still there.
Keigo looks at him and his gaze is not hostile anymore, they just look empty.
"I was worried," he says quietly.
"Well, I'm not dead," Ryoma quips, shrugging. "So."
Keigo looks at him, almost sad now, and he feels a tinge of something. It is not guilt, because he does not need guilt, but it is something more complicated. He will not delve into complications.
"We went out for dinner to a nice place in Kensington," Keigo says, "When you weren't here. Did you eat anything yet?"
Before Ryoma could answer Keigo goes on, "You look tired. We can go out later, if you want."
He should say, I'm not hungry, you go on with Jiroh, who is we. In the end he only asks the last part of his thoughts. "Is Jiroh coming?"
Keigo looks at him again. This time it is an explicit tiredness. It is a look of defeat and it does not suit Keigo.
"No," he says, "No. Jiroh isn't. He's visiting his grandmother."
000
Togetherness comes in a long time. It comes off awkward, when he does not go with Jiroh and Keigo in public, and when they do, he opts to follow behind while Jiroh snakes arms around Keigo and Keigo discreetly tries to fend the blond man off, muttering, "Not in public Jiroh," with a smile so that Jiroh would know it to be a joke. Thinking such thoughts makes him morbid again and he wonders if Keigo is also thinking of Jiroh and a hollow entity. He is wondering if he is only a half or even less of Keigo's thoughts when Keigo takes his hand and they walk together, hand in hand, across Hyde Park.
He throws Keigo a sharp look. Keigo is careful about public etiquette: he had always tolerated Jiroh's hands and hugs with a wince and a sigh and a laugh in public, but all his lust and leers were reserved for the bedroom.
Keigo meets his eyes and offers him a wry smile. "You look disgusted," he says.
"No," Ryoma says, after a beat, "Just…surprised."
"We don't have to."
He wonders if Keigo is implying something more than the hand. He turns away. "It's fine," he says. Keigo's fingers curl around his tightly once, then softens again.
He goes back to the wry smile and realizes that yes, it was a smile and not a sharp smirk.
Damn you, he curses Keigo.
The restaurant they enter is not elegant but it is warm and cozy, and Keigo draws out his chair for him and he does not snipe out that he is not a girl but accepts it quietly. They order steak and salad and salmon, and with a moment's hesitation Keigo also orders wine and two glasses.
Keigo's tastes have changed with Jiroh, he thinks, because looking around, this is not a place he would have imagined Keigo to enter. He would have gone to Gordon Ramsay or Four Seasons, not some nameless restaurant in the middle of a well-respected but quiet neighborhood.
"I never hear you talk about your work nowadays," Keigo says, before the food arrives.
They never talk, nowadays, but Ryoma doesn't point that out. He rolls his eyes. "It's boring," he dismisses, then adds, "We never talk about your work."
"Boring," Keigo counters dryly and raises an eyebrow. "I thought you liked your work."
"Tolerate," Ryoma corrects, "I would rather if I didn't do anything."
"And become a parasite?"
"Yeah, that. You could afford it." He expects Keigo to add, like Jiroh, and the spell would be broken between the two of them, but Keigo does not mention Jiroh's name. Instead Keigo rolls his eyes and that gesture makes him look younger.
"I don't appreciate being taken advantage of," he says.
Ryome gives him a sweet smile. "I'd make up for it," he says, "in other ways."
Keigo shakes his head and the food arrives.
They eat and they seldom talk, but when the do it is cordial and almost like the old times. Ryoma flinches away a piece of steak and Keigo sighs and cut up a slice for him, a more generous slice, and Ryoma offers him salmon which Keigo declines. They have cold wine and it tastes sweet and good, even though he doesn't drink. He doesn't feel an urge to stand up and go out for a smoke, and feels happy. Keigo looks softer in the light and at this angle, and after, when the meal is over and there is nothing but Keigo's eyes to look at, he feels awful and horrible and judges this explicit glumness to be guilt. Yes, this was guilt because it was so blatant.
"I hope that might have fattened you up some," Keigo remarks after the bill.
Ryoma hums and after Keigo pays for the bill, leads the way out of the exit and opens the door for Keigo with a mock-bow, which Keigo accepts with a roll of his eyes, and they head out into the streets. They have walked along the streets and had not taken Keigo's car, and he only comes upon this fact when he looks up at the sky after the first drops of rain.
"Oh," Keigo says, "I didn't think it would rain."
"I didn't think we would walk," Ryoma says. Keigo shoots him a puzzled look, but he doesn't expand upon his thoughts.
"Well, I suppose we should take a bath once we get inside." Keigo is already resigned to this fact, the act of walking in the rain, instead of throwing a fuss about how his hair would get wet. There are no cabs running past this particular street, it is true, but Keigo would have made more of a hassle in walking. Instead he walks quietly, hands in his pockets, and Ryoma follows, alongside, food and something else weighed upon him.
Jiroh had changed Keigo too much. He was not like this, and Ryoma does not know which one he prefers, the Keigo that would not change despite his best intentions, or the Keigo that had changed under the softer hands of Jiroh. He wonders what he is doing wrong, if he is only good for mockery and sex, and these days, not even that.
His hands come up to brush away the rain.
"Jiroh wants to go to Madrid one weekend," Keigo says. He breaks the silence and their exclusiveness. "Once my project is done. Sometime this month."
"Have fun," Ryoma says. His current thoughts suddenly make him brusque. Keigo gives him a look: not the soft look or the amused look, but again, back to the sharp look.
"You'll be coming, of course."
"No," he says, "Of course I'm not going."
"You went to Paris," Keigo points out.
"And?"
"So I'm assuming you're not averse to traveling."
"I'm not," Ryoma confirms.
"Jiroh wants to go."
"With you."
"With the both of us." Keigo's voice is sharp and a snap. He stops in his tracks but Ryoma doesn't, so Keigo grabs his wrist and makes him face Keigo with a yank. Ryoma suppresses a wince.
"The both of us," Keigo repeats with a snap, "What is wrong with you?"
Ryoma stares. What is wrong with him? He thinks everything is fine with him. He thinks that he is the normal one, that he is entitled to be normal, if not anything, He thinks that being normal means having an affair when life gets tiring and when people don't make sense, he thinks that normal means trying to understand people. He doesn't think normal means sharing a person whom he thought he was entitled to monopolize. But he does not articulate abstract grievances. He glares.
"Nothing," he says, "I'm just tired. I don't really like traveling."
"You liked it enough to go to Paris," Keigo sneers.
Ryoma deflates inside. "Can we not make a scene?" he says, "Let go of my arm."
Keigo stares at him, looking as if he wants to say something. And Ryoma understands: that Keigo knows, perhaps not Wakashi, but he knows enough, and Ryoma knows that Keigo knows, and with their eyes holding each other steadily, each will not budge until one of them breaks. Another mind game, and that thought makes him weary; he is tired of mind games and secrecy and signals. He wants explosion and closure.
Keigo lets go of his arm and his eyes drop to the ground. They resume their walking in silence and their distance is further apart.