A short while after the guitarist finished their set, Kazuo and Shuya left the little music bar and, with surprisingly little complaining on Nanahara's part, began the arduous trek back to their side of the city.

Kazuo could barely feel his feet against the pavement; it was only the slow progression of the street that surrounded them, and Nanahara's gentle bobbing as he walked alongside him, that let him know he was moving at all. In his peripheral he watched Nanahara carefully, and with a kind of anticipation with which he was unfamiliar.

Frustratingly, Nanahara walked cooly, almost dispassionately, and looked ahead in the direction he was going, never once straying to capture a glance of the man next to him.

It bothered Kazuo, Nanahara's indifference. He wasn't allowed to be indifferent. He wasn't capable of indifference. That was Kazuo's department - and yet, in spite of the offensive instance of blatant copycat syndrome, Kazuo himself was far more concerned about the way Nanahara's skin was devoid of the awkward redness it displayed whenever Kazuo was around.

Nanahara can't not care, he decided.

'So?' he asked eventually, ashamed of his own breathlessness - though he still couldn't feel the pressure on his muscles that he expected, so it can't have been down to the exercise. 'What did you think?'

Nanahara turned to look at him, and looked surprised, almost, that he was not alone.

Kazuo panicked. You can't have forgotten me, he thought weakly.

'You needn't think so little of yourself,' said Nanahara flatly. 'I had not forgotten you were there.'

Kazuo's eyes widened. I said that?

'To say that you are behaving rather strangely is something of an understatement, Kiriyama.'

He coughed uncomfortably. 'I- I am?'

Nanahara gave him a pitying, exasperated look. 'Obviously,' he said, articulating every syllable with a harshness that did not match with the Nanahara that he had been getting to know.

In fact - now that he looked closer - the Nanahara before him was not like the Nanahara he had taken to a secret little music hall, whose blush had been dark red and endlessly visible even in the dim light, who had audibly exclaimed at the matchless voice of Kaoru Watanabe, and who had even hugged him - Kazuo stopped walking - or did he imagine that?

'You imagined nothing, Kiriyama,' said Nanahara from several feet ahead. Kazuo hurried to catch up with him. 'I embraced you in a moment of ill-judgement and lowered inhibitions.' He glanced sideways, down at Kazuo's crushed, innocent expression. 'I apologise if I offended.'

'No!' Kazuo blurted, reaching out instinctively and seizing hold of Nanahara's upper arm, forcing him to face him. 'I'm not offended. I promise I'm not. But Shuya-'

'On first name terms, are we?' interrupted Nanahara archly.

Kazuo felt lost. Whatever reign he had over Shuya Nanahara was dissipating faster than he could ever imagine it would.

'I would go so far as to say that it is turning the other way, somewhat.'

'Huh?'

Nanahara rolled his eyes. 'At least try to make yourself worthy of conversation, Kiriyama,' he said cruelly. 'Inarticulate noises hardly constitute intelligent contribution.'

He didn't understand.

'Apparently not,' Nanahara commented, eyeing him as one might eye a hideous beetle, and he jerked his arm out of his grasp and briskly walked away.

Once more Kazuo hurried to catch up, and as he left his pride completely behind, his eyes began to water. He blinked rebellious tears away before Nanahara could see the state he was in.

'Shuya,' he said desperately, reaching out for him again. 'Shuya, please-'

'You are tiresome,' interrupted Nanahara, without turning. 'You expressed romantic interest, of which I was aware-'

'You knew about that?' wailed Kazuo.

'-and yet, you do not offer to make yourself useful. In fact, short of being a novel distraction, you have not made yourself good for anything at all.' He paused. 'Except putting a drain on my time,' he added, 'where the opportunity for you to offer yourself as a valuable tool of research was ample - but you did not.' He shrugged, and pushed Kazuo's beseeching hands away from his arm. 'You have, as they say, outlived your usefulness and outstayed your welcome. Go home, Kiriyama.'

Amid his shattered self-esteem and broken heart, Kazuo seized his arm once more.

Nanahara seemed to pick up on his determination, for he stopped walking, and allowed himself to be pulled back to face him.

Rain began to fall, but Kazuo did not feel the wetness penetrate his thin clothing.

'Take me, Shuya,' he said hollowly. He let go, and lifted his heavy arms from his side as far as his depleted energy would allow. 'Please. Take me. Do your research - use me - I don't care, Shuya - but please-' He sobbed once, and rain spotted his cheeks. '-please, don't go without me.'

Nanahara spared him a withering glance. 'You are behaving like a child, Kiriy-'

'I know!' he shouted, and the rain grew heavier. 'Please - please - tell me what to do.' He stopped, breathing heavily, and looked up to meet Nanahara's unreadable expression. 'Tell me what you want me to do. I'll do it.' He lifted the three middle fingers of his right hand in a halfhearted salute. 'Scout's honour,' he said, with a weak, unconvincing laugh.

Nanahara's eyes adopted a glint that Kazuo had not seen before. His lips curved, and he bared his teeth dangerously.

'Come with me,' he said, in a low voice that reverberated throughout the fragile corners of Kazuo's confused mind. Kazuo went - and then they were in an unfamiliar, neutral bedroom, and Nanahara shed his jacket and shoes matter-of-factly as Kazuo watched unblinkingly, with no recollection of how they got there.

Nanahara turned, and looked him up and down indifferently before spreading his arms.

'Well?' he said expectantly. 'Make yourself useful.'

Kazuo scrambled to reach him quickly enough; his fingers scrabbled hopelessly at Nanahara's shirt buttons, and at his zipper, and at his vest, and though he didn't know how, Nanahara was suddenly clad in nothing but black underwear.

He looked up at him, seeking approval, and Nanahara nodded.

'Good start,' he said condescendingly.

Kazuo hesitated, and slowly raised his hands to his own shirt buttons. He looked up at Nanahara again. He nodded.

His own clothes gone, he lifted a hand unsurely, anticipating rejection with every second, to brush Nanahara's cheek.

Nanahara closed his eyes, and with the very softest of moans, leaned into his hand.

Kazuo's fingers splayed to maintain a firmer grasp; and quickly, so he couldn't be mocked for his uncertainty, he stood on his tiptoes and kissed his cold lips.

It was so quick, and so light, that when he opened his eyes again, he wondered if it had really happened. Indeed, if Nanahara's smirk was anything to go by, he was having similar thoughts. Kazuo dispelled them quickly as he reached up again, and smashed his mouth to Nanahara's with enough force that it should have hurt. That it didn't, did not concern him as much as the almost-ghostly feel of Nanahara's hard, firm lips moulding to his own; that his own skin felt as dead as glass was disregarded over the realisation that they had inexplicably fallen onto the bed, seemingly without either of them noticing any sort of impact.

Kazuo crawled above Nanahara, lying still underneath his body, and he lowered his mouth to the other man's torso, taking between his lips and perusing with his tongue various parts of Nanahara's upper body; his hard, bony sternum, the firm muscles of his stomach, the two small, brown nubs on either side of his chest - Kazuo sucked and licked, small noises of gratification pouring from his own full mouth, but not from Nanahara's.

He stopped, and raised his head to meet his eye, afraid he was doing something wrong.

Nanahara raised an eyebrow.

'Continue,' he said flatly.

Kazuo's chest rose and fell with such irregularity that he wondered if he was okay. Quelling the thought, he launched himself at Nanahara and, with an intense, desperate, longing kind of fury, stole his cruel lips with a kiss that allowed no room for cold remarks. His hands ran nervous, repetitive circles on the planes of Nanahara's chest, and from between his legs, he pressed their cores together as closely as he could, and he rocked erratically against Nanahara's body-

With a low grunt from deep within his throat, Kazuo Kiriyama opened his eyes.

While he waited for his heartbeat to slow, still racing from the energy of his dream, he ran a quick self-scan: sweating. Shaking legs. Dry mouth. Raging erection.

His mouth tightened. Not good.

He glanced at his bedside clock; six forty-five. About time he awoke anyway. Before he could get out of bed, he waited for his - ah - heat to cool down, as he considered the dream he had just had.

It quickly became apparent - just as he recalled the imaginary feeling of Nanahara's body trapped under his own - that "dispassionately considering" the vision of his sleep was doing nothing to help him - ahem - cool off. Which was ridiculous - how should a silly dream - nothing more than a mental experience - be able to affect him so?

He lifted the sheets and glanced down to where he throbbed almost painfully.

Not an entirely mental experience, then, he thought wryly, and hesitated.

Had he bothered to confess to anyone that he had never once indulged in self-pleasure, he would not have been lying. Like sex, it was merely an unnecessary venture into the caverns of one's own sexuality - and unlike real sex, there seemed something mildly pitiful about climaxing by one's own hand. Hirono briefly crossed his mind, before he remembered that she was no longer available to him. He cursed himself for letting her off so quickly. He was sure that he could have restrained himself until she was able to deal with it - but what was he supposed to do now?

He tapped the fingers of his left hand against his chest, focusing on the rhythm as his other hand clenched and unclenched in frustration. He didn't want to have to address the enormous problem that resided between his legs - but he was effectively trapped to the confines of his bedroom until it went away again.

He shut his eyes and reluctantly shoved a hand down his pants, gritting his teeth as he determined to get the ordeal over with as soon as humanly possible.

Several minutes later, he lay on top of his covers, pink-cheeked and panting, and as the physical high began to ebb, he came to the mature decision to abort Mission Nanahara.

He wiped his hand delicately with a tissue.

'He is not worth it,' he muttered. 'He is not worth the trouble.'

Trouble meant a great deal of things. In relation to Nanahara - fucking Nanahara, he thought viciously - trouble was akin to an emotional investment that Kazuo was unwilling to make. Not that he was unwilling to invest anything at all; time, yes; money, of course; but dreams? Feeling? Kazuo did not dream. Kazuo did not feel. He laughed shortly.

'Fucking Nanahara,' he said bitterly.

That he was even preoccupied with anything other than his own wellbeing was down to Nanahara. He did not have the time nor the patience to accommodate another human being, with their human thoughts and feelings and worries and bouts of paranoia. He hated Nanahara, for taking his place, even if only in his dream; he resented the lingering fear of rejection that had been so prevalent in his dream, but he resented far more the stirrings of something that felt horribly like guilt that ghosted in a knot around the base of his gut.

He resented how dream-Nanahara had treated him - as if he was worthless. Insignificant.

'Is that how he feels around me?' he wondered. The knot tightened and his frown momentarily deepened before giving way to a small, empty smile. He did not have to concern himself with controlling his Nanahara-inspired humanity anymore.

Here endeth the experiment, he thought, forcing himself to be relieved.


Imma gon' bump this up to an M sometime soon. Just so ya'll know what's going on in this twisted, kinky world of mine.