Athariel: Oh yes, I loved the porn in US QaF too! Don't get me wrong - amazing stuff. Epilogue for R+J ought to be posted in the next few days if there aren't any last minute drastic alterations.

Addicted to SD: You want something to happen in this small room? *whistles innocently*

Boy's Paradise

Chapter 9

"What's it like, kissing a man?" Sendoh asked, draining the last of his beer and feeling the bed tilt slightly, his mind fixed on the memory of Rukawa and Masao's shared kiss. "Is it the same as kissing a woman?"

"How the fuck should I know?"

Sendoh's eyes moved blurredly down to where Yukari was slumped on the floor where he'd slid off Inoue's bed earlier. "You've never kissed a woman before?" he demanded, incredulous.

At Yukari's reprimanding stare he burst into laughter. "Then how do you know you're really gay?"

"Idiot. You've never kissed a man, how do you know you're really straight?"

Sendoh hiccoughed and couldn't hold back his fit of intoxicated giggles. "I don't!" he declared loudly, laughing hopelessly, "I don't have a fucking clue what I am." He tipped drunkenly onto his side, looking at the room rotated ninety degrees. When Yukari didn't reply he decided to continue talking. "When I saw you and Masao together I thought it looked kind of hot." Still no reply, only the creak of springs as Yukari pulled himself unsteadily back onto the bed. "I think you're really hot too" Sendoh explained, and then groaned as the world spun. He tried to piece together what he was drunkenly rambling into some semblance of sense but couldn't. "Does that mean I'm gay?"

"No, it just means you're drunk."

"You're drunk too" Sendoh pointed out and laughed again. He couldn't understand why he felt so content just being in this odd messy dressing room with Rukawa like this. It felt easy. It felt like happiness.

"If I kiss a man, will you kiss a woman?"

"Idiot. Don't make up stupid things. If you want to kiss me, do it."

"But…" Sendoh fell into an odd silence. "What if I like it?"

"Then do it again."

"I don't mean that."

Yukari tutted impatiently and said nothing. The silence that fell between them was suddenly awkward and unhappy. Sendoh shifted about, unable to find a comfortable position to lie on the bed, each angle seeming to give rise to another awkwardness.

Finally he got up and moved to sit on the other bed, next to Yukari, twisting his hands in nervousness.

"Will you hate me?" he asked.

There was no reply so Sendoh sighed and reached out experimentally. He took Yukari's face between his palms, framing it with his hands, feeling the dusting of his silk fringe on his fingertips. He couldn't make much sense of what he was doing, never mind what he was feeling, but still he knew when he did this it didn't feel as if he was touching another man. It didn't feel like he was touching a woman either for that matter. It was as if Rukawa Kaede were of a completely separate gender all together.

There was no reprimand so he moved his face a little closer. He could see more clearly his features; the tiny pores of his skin, the slight discolouration under his eyes following the excessive alcohol consumption. His eyes traced the curl of his lips, the gentle cupid's bow lifting above the serious line of his mouth. Not smiling any more. He noticed the length of his lashes black and gothic against his pale skin. He saw his eyelids flutter uncertainly before closing in enticement. He mourned the loss of those eyes, but he revelled in the temptation of the invitation.

He moved a little closer. He smelt of alcohol. Smoke and alcohol, surprisingly masculine, surprisingly sweet. Like a lilt and curl of old breath, something comforting, something familiar.

Closer still and he was warm, the flush of sorrow and drink, the rising ardour of living breathing heartbeats and pulses. A body that was physical, too physical, too real to be trusted. It betrayed its master. An intricate story of skin and mesh and fibres and protein formed to enclose that blinding soul. To hide it. To kill it. Formed to dance with wassail wildness while Sendoh's own aching self looked and longed. Whether he were placing a ball into a basket, or whether he was arching his back from a pole, didn't make a difference.

The cage of him was glorious. Always. But the self of him, ah.

For that what number of worlds would Sendoh Akira have parted with? For just one glimpse of his searing sea-sky spirit.

Like this, could he touch it? Like this?

Not knowing, not a single one of his past encounters having prepared him for something this intense, he came closer and closer still. Here? Like this? Is it just a lie, a wish? Will I ever really know who you are?

Wrapped in his own liquid illusions he pressed his mouth against Yukari's liquor-sweet lips.

He tasted like he looked, like the wilderness untamed. Like nothing would pin him down. Nothing could ever catch him nor master him nor claim him as their own.

It was lips and breath fogging on heated cheeks and tongues pricking on teeth.

It was wretched and honest and straightforward. There was no art. No tricks and skills and intricacies. No motives or subversivities. There was only heat and promise and the fulfilling of that promise. No more and no less than everything a kiss ought to have been. Nothing special yet greater than anything he'd ever experienced before.

So he held him tighter.

Wetter now, somehow. Yukari's tongue was as flexible as the rest of him, really, it wound and tensed and stroked and gave to him in endless liberating waves. Feeling Yukari's hands in his hair, lifting the strands and making his scalp light with the weightlessness, making him dizzy with flight. It was flight. Air mastering earth-bound limbless flight. It was delicate and perfect. But although Sendoh tried to give back in his own whiskey breaths but couldn't help feeling like he was falling, like he was losing air, like he was ending.

It wasn't enough. His soul roared in him like the wild overthrow of the animal age. Things suddenly welled up more unwelcome and desperate. He felt like a barbarian as he pushed him down against the bed. He felt brutish and uncultured as he sought so desperately to posses him, plundering from him roughly without regard for his pricelessness. But he could no more retract that instinct than he could deny how powerful he felt when he heard Rukawa moan.

In triumph he broke away, lips wet, eyes fire.

Cool eyes stared up at him in bright challenge.

"Again?" Yukari asked breathlessly.

"Again."

This time he fought back. No longer the patient and elegant gymnast, Yukari became the thick tramp of workman's boots, contesting control from Sendoh's mouth. Yukari twisted him into inelegance and pushed him from his throne of dominance effortlessly, like a skilled warrior who had only been humouring the fledgling play of a child, proving that submission was only one of many games for them to play. Sendoh was forced back into timidity reeling.

No woman had ever done this to him. He felt bested. He felt… intensely. Fiercely. He felt like every kiss that had occurred before this one were nothing than a junior attempt. Not real. Not true. Like he had been playing against amateurs when there was a trial by fire right here against Yukari's lips.

At first he disliked it. At first control seemed to be victory, and this was not control, not victory, and he wanted to fight and claim it back but couldn't rise again.

But then victory came in other ways. It came in Yukari's shuddering body, in the intense and pin-point stab of heat in his stomach like a knife of arousal. In came in knowing just how badly Yukari wanted him.

Wanting it, wanting more of it, Sendoh took his slim hips in fierce fists, pulling him tight to him as if demanding to know how much, how much do you desire me?

The pleasure, finally, not of possession, but of his own allure.

This, too, was victory.

Had Sendoh still the semblance about him to remember the purpose of his experimentation he would have realised now that no, this wasn't the same as kissing a woman. But he didn't remember. He didn't realise any of that. He only realised how much more aroused he could feel when he surrendered some of his control.

He only knew what it felt like when Yukari gave to him, what it felt like when Yukari demanded from him.

How grateful he was to be kissing a person who took and gave in equal measures.

The following morning Sendoh awoke with a headache. Something like a split horizontally around his entire skull. He groaned painfully and opened his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling. In head-throbbing curiosity he turned to the side and was met with the sight of Yukari's sleeping face beside him on the pillow.

He leapt out of the bed like a cat exploding from a cardboard box.

He clutched frantically at himself as if he were having a heart attack before realising that he was fully clothed. He tried to relax but the momentarily rush of adrenaline refused him.

What had happened? Why in god's name had he drunk so much? He tried to think back but it was unbelievably hazy.

He remembered having some kind of insight into Rukawa's character; yes that was a definite recollection. To his despair he seemed to remember ending up kissing him - he winced in mental pain at the thought - but as for the details, nothing was catching up with him. This definitely wasn't a good start. What if Rukawa's recollections were different from his own?

As if on cue, Yukari stirred sleepily, reaching out with a gentle hand to clutch at warmth that was no longer there. With a crease of eyebrows and a soft groan he opened his eyes in confusion.

He looked adorable.

Sendoh watched him in amused silence as Yukari went through almost the exact same routine Sendoh had recently performed. Panic set in as he came to focus on Sendoh's face, a crushing set of suggestive memories fell on him and the bed sheets were thrown back in horror only to reveal his fully clothed self. He fell back onto the pillow in relief.

A grin split Sendoh's face.

"Good morning" he greeted.

"Shut up" came the reply, along with a hand to the forehead indicating that Sendoh was not alone in the state of his hangover.

Sendoh sat back down onto the bed beside him and Yukari rolled grumpily onto his side to face the other way.

"It's Saturday today, I don't have to work" Sendoh commented with a smile.

"I'm going back to sleep" Yukari replied testily.

"Why don't we do something together today?"

"Go away."

Sendoh lay back on the bed, wiggling his way closer to the warm body beside him, throwing a casual arm around him in a familiar embrace. Yukari tensed up perceptibly under his touch.

"Let's sleep some more then" Sendoh replied with a secretive smirk. "It's comfortable like this."

The next moment Yukari was out of bed glowering unhappily and clutching his head.

"You're sadistic, you know?"

Sendoh grinned up at him from where he lay. "Let's go get some coffee" he suggested, "and then I want to take you somewhere. How about visiting the Imperial Gardens together? It's beautiful at this time of year."

"I can't…" Yukari wandered over to the broken mirror to examine the night's drinking damage to his complexion, "…I have something to do today."

"Oh" Sendoh's face fell slightly. "Maybe I can go with you? I have nothing to do. I will drive you wherever you need to go."

"I don't want to bother you like that" Yukari muttered.

"No bother" Sendoh smiled, "like I said, I have nothing else to do so… how about it?"

Yukari looked back at him. "Ok" he agreed finally.

~tbc

ANs: Hahahaha. Sorry if it's not the wet, romantic and soppy kiss you were hoping for! That whole section makes no freaking sense but it was lots of fun to write! Never thought I'd describe a senru kiss as "the wild overthrow of the animal age" bwahahahaha. Totally pissed Sendoh narratives for the win!

Again..? AGAIN!