The Escort

Chapter Twenty-Five: Secrets

Hiroki was the kind of man who rarely spoke plainly about his life. And this particular aspect of his history was certainly not something he'd ever intended to share with anyone. It was his deepest secret: the private pain that was lodged in his psyche, an eternal pebble in the shoe of his mind.

Master of language that he was, he had sorted through more than half a dozen words before making his declaration. Violated, ravished, assaulted, attacked, defiled, humiliated, soiled: the list went on in all its possible permutations. However, the word he chose spoke most clearly to the truth of the situation as it had happened. It was a a word he'd never thought he would utter and it felt as ugly in his mouth as the act had to his body, but he did not want to leave any room for question.

Once they'd been released from his throat and into the space, Hiroki was shocked at how his last three words charged the air in the quiet bedroom. As soon as he uttered them, Hiroki felt the heat rise in Nowaki's body behind him and the younger man stiffen.

The event of that fateful day had drastically changed the shape of his life and altered Hiroki in ways that he could not even begin to measure. Despite all he'd endured, however, never had there been a time that he wanted more to curl up into himself then at this moment, but he resisted.

He lay still, unmoving, holding his breath and waiting to see what Nowaki would do.

Part of the reason for his long-held silence was his pride. After all, what did it mean that he had suffered this indignity? Did it impugn his character in some way? Indicate that he was lacking in strength somehow? That underneath his fiery temper and practiced gruffness, he was, by nature, somehow less than truly a man, despite the fact he was still really just a boy when it had happened?

The other reason he'd never told anyone was the relative isolation of his life. In truth, Hiroki had never had anyone that he could trust enough to share this kind of vulnerability with, outside of Akihiko. And yet, he could never mention it to him, as his friend was inextricably tied to the whole terrible series of events.

Hiroki had known, however, that at some point, if he was to ever truly be with Nowaki, he would have to tell the younger man something.

And today, seeing the haunted look in Nowaki's eyes, the careful way the man was moving, Hiroki knew that the time had come. Not just because it was obvious to him that Nowaki would understand what he had been through, but also, because Hiroki didn't want Nowaki to feel alone in his own shame.

He had for years now, and there were times that the weight of it had all but crushed him.

Hiroki was roused from these thoughts as Nowaki shifted subtly behind him. He tried not to tense, but he jumped slightly when a warm hand brushed through his bangs again. Hiroki felt soft lips gently brush the ball of his shoulder where the sleeve of the tee shirt he was wearing had risen revealing his flesh.

Nowaki drew back from this soft kiss and whispered, "Tell me what happened, Hiro-san."

Hiroki felt the tears rising to the surface of his eyes at the tenderness in the younger man's voice. There was no rebuke here, no disgust, just a quiet invitation.

Hiroki drew a deep breath and swallowed hard. He felt panic rise in him when Nowaki's body pulled away, but this only lasted a moment before the taller man pressed up against him again. He was shocked when suddenly he saw Kaze set down in front of him: Nowaki had left off spooning him only to grab the little stuffed dog.

"You can tell Kaze too, Hiro-san. He's very easy to talk to. He's the keeper of all my secrets."

Hiroki wanted to snort at Nowaki for being ridiculous. I'm full grown man, I'm not about to talk to a stuffed toy!

And yet... Nowaki's voice was so earnest Hiroki had a sudden clear vision of a little black-haired boy, whispering into Kaze's tattered ear in the dark of his lonely orphan's bed. Hiroki reached out a slightly shaking hand and pulled the dog closer, regarding Nowaki's glassy-eyed confessional.

It wasn't, however, until Nowaki placed his gauze wrapped hand on top of his that Hiroki was actually able to begin speaking.

"I met Akihiko when I was ten. We were best friends after that first meeting and for the rest of our childhood.

"I suppose I was about fourteen when I fully understood what I felt for him."

Hiroki paused after saying this to see how Nowaki would respond to his mention of Akihiko, but outside of slightly tightening his grip over his hand, the younger man said nothing.

"Akihiko had started changing. He had always been quiet, impassive… unless he got mad. Though there were few things he appeared to care about enough to get angry over.

"I think that's one reason why he liked spending time with me. I was angry enough for both of us." Hiroki drew a deep breath; he could feel Nowaki's slight smile at this behind him, even if he couldn't see it.

"Then one day, as I was on my way to this place that Akihiko and I used to spend time at on the Usami estate, I found Akihiko on the trail. He was just sitting there. Although he wasn't crying, I had never seen him looking so sad.

"When we were younger, Akihiko had kissed me once, to stop me from crying. I don't know what I was thinking that day... I guess I thought I'd return the favor, so I kissed him. He uh… responded… quite fervently.

"I was surprised… pleased too, I guess.

"That was until Haruhiko found us.

"It didn't seem like Haruhiko was mad or even surprised. But then he was even more stone-faced than Akihiko.

"I didn't know him very well. He'd only been living with Akihiko and his parents a year or so then. He was two years older than us, and I hardly ever really saw him.

"As Haruhiko's mother was one of Usami-san's mistresses, Akihiko's mother didn't want him in the home. She had him put into a local boarding school, so he was only at the estate occasionally... weekends and during school vacations.

"Anyway, after he discovered us, Haruhiko told Akihiko he's been looking for him and that he needed to get home. Then he told me I should go home as well, which I did.

"I was frightened that whole night that Haruhiko would say something about what he'd seen. Maybe tell his father or mine, but he didn't. When I saw Akihiko the next day, all he told me was that I should stay away from his brother.

"I didn't think much of this. I knew the two didn't like each other and even though Akihiko was my friend, his brother had never acted against me.

"A few days later, I had an extra swimming practice. I went over to Akihiko's after. We were supposed to study.

"Tanaka, the butler, who usually answered the door, wasn't there. Haruhiko greeted me instead and offered to take me up to Akihiko. He said that his brother had found a new hiding place in the attic where he had been holing up to write.

"Akihiko did stuff like that, so I didn't even question it, I just followed."

Up to this point, Hiroki had managed to keep his voice even. He closed his eyes and felt the tears this motion displaced slip down his cheeks. He cleared his throat and when he started speaking again, he could hear a subtle tremor beneath his soft growl.

Nowaki must have heard it as well, because he suddenly pressed against him more tightly.

"He took me up to the attic and opened the door to this room." Hiroki felt himself grow dizzy as the memories came flooding back.

He ushered me in and I walked forward.

"There was a western style bed in the room and a desk, but little else."

The gravel in Hiroki's voice began to wear through the usual smoothness of his low tones. "I don't really know exactly what happened next, Nowaki.

Haruhiko pushed me. Hard… "All I remember is crashing into the bed... I was completely caught off guard and the next thing I knew..."

Haruhiko was kneeling on my back and all my wind had been knocked out of me.

Hiroki's breathing grew labored at this point. His heart was pounding in his chest and it felt as though his breath had left him once more. A terrible, familiar sense of terror surged through his torso.

"Hiro-san," Nowaki offered the name in a soothing tone. He flexed his bandaged hand over Hiroki's. He placed a soft kiss on the side of Hiroki's neck where the mad flutter of his heart was visible.

"He had planned it," Hiroki whispered, he was caught again in that instant, unsure of what words he was softly saying out loud from what cried out inside his head.

There were scarves tied to the headboard already. He caught my arms and restrained me before I had even gotten my breath back. He didn't gag me. He told me that only women screamed and that I should take it like a man.

Hiroki choked on his next words. "He said, if I was too loud, someone would surely come."

And how would it look for us to be caught like this. What if it was Akihiko?

"Then he did what he wanted."

He stripped off my trousers... hardly prepared me at all. He tore me badly…

"There was blood," Hiroki said this last bit with gasp.

He stopped to regain his composure and was shocked to feel a wet warmth on his neck. It was then that he realized Nowaki was silently crying over him. For some reason, this filled him with a new strength.

"He forced me to keep my eyes open."

I had to watch his awful expressions as he loomed over me.

"When he was done, he took pictures with his phone."

He sent them to his e-mail. He told me that if I wanted these to remain in his private collection, I'd best remain silent.

"Then he untied me and let me dress. He walked me to the door as though nothing had happened."

I could still feel my blood and his cum running down my legs and I could barely stand.

"I thought it would end there, Nowaki."

That I would just go home and never go back to that place. That somehow I would be safe then.

"But Haruhiko insisted on walking me home."

With this Hiroki rolled over so that his body was facing Nowaki. He'd carried Kaze with him and now the little dog was pressed between their chests. Nowaki silently wrapped his arms around Hiroki once again and pulling him into him. Hiroki tucked his head beneath Nowaki's chin, even as the younger man settled this over his wild, dark head.

"Haruhiko told me on my way home that if I didn't continue to submit to him, he would do to Akihiko what he'd just done to me."

Only worse and far more often.

Hiroki's voice was barely audible. "He said, 'I will leave the choice to you..." Whether you want to be your little lover's white knight or not Kamijou-kun... "And left me at my front door."

"I stayed home the next few days from school. I told my mother I was unwell." Hiroki offered a bitter snort at this, despite the tears that were freely falling.

In truth I was terribly sick, but it wasn't the flu as I'd pretended.

"Akihiko stopped by to visit once, while I was out. He asked me if I hadn't come over as we'd planned because I had started feeling ill that day and I said 'yes.' We never spoke of it again.

"I protected him for the next three years, Nowaki.

"Eighteen times Haruhiko called on me and I answered."

Sometimes he offered me to others.

"Every time he fucked me, he made me face him…" Watch him in his outrage... "That's why I never let anyone take me from the front."

I've tried, but his hideous face is the only thing I can see.

Never had Nowaki felt so furious, but he forced his rage aside. There would be a time for anger later. Right now quiet comfort was what was called for. He pulled Hiroki tighter as he tried to quell the tremors shaking his lover's lean frame. He reached out long fingers and tenderly stroked Hiroki's head.

"Oh, Hiro-san…"

Hiroki choked out one more final disclosure.

"The last time Haruhiko took me, my father caught us together and that was when he refused to recognize me any longer as his son." It was only here, after all he'd said, that Hiroki's voice finally broke.

And that was when Haruhiko was sent away for good and it finally stopped.

"I should have stopped it earlier, but I was so messed up then.

"Do you understand now, Nowaki? You and I… we're really not so different."

Nowaki was not a person normally inclined to tears. Actually it had been years since he'd really cried, despite the fact his life had given him a multitude of reasons to.

In truth, before this morning, Nowaki couldn't recall the last time he'd wept. At a certain point in his childhood he'd abandoned his tears, understanding he had no one to share them with, except Kaze, and that in the end tears changed nothing.

Not so today, and the significance of this was epiphanal.

Through humbling himself with the earlier apology and now this disclosure, Hiroki had shown Nowaki his value; he had reconnected him with a sense of humanity that Nowaki, just now, understood he had lost long before the events of the previous evening.

In fact, far beyond the sexual violence he'd so recently endured, what had been so shattering about Jackson's actions and his comment was that it just confirmed what Nowaki had believed at his core from the time of the last tear he'd shed as a child: that he was nothing, a disposable object, something of little or no value.

But here, in the eloquence of his acts, even more than his words, Hiro-san had unequivocally refuted this. Considering this, Nowaki found he could no longer contain the flood that now rose up within him. He was overwhelmed by Hiroki's sacrifice.

It was a curious mixture falling from his eyes. Some of these tears were from rage at the atrocity Haruhiko had visited upon his beloved. There were also tears for Hiro-san himself, for the terrible pain the man had endured; the awful decision he'd been forced to make; for the legacy of loneliness and loss his tragic circumstances had bestowed on him.

Nowaki well understood the cost to someone as proud as Hiro-san in making such a confession. He also guessed the reason Hiroki had had made it. He was astounded to find that because of Hiro-san's incredibly courageous act, despite his anger and his grief, stronger than these, there was yet another type of tear he was shedding: one of profound gratitude.

Never in his life had anyone ever shown him such kindness. Nowaki was filled with an incredibly deep sense of love and an unfamiliar joy.

It left him without words for a moment. So, instead of speaking, he nuzzled the wild mop at Hiroki's brow. Nowaki breathed in, as much as his tear-impaired nose would allow, the comforting scent of Hiro-san's shampoo-fresh hair, and beneath that the more subtle flavor he had come to associate with old books and knowledge.

He pressed a kiss to a furrowed forehead.

Though Hiroki made little noise, Nowaki could feel the front of his tee-shirt growing increasingly damp with his lover's quiet tears.

Nowaki knew implicitly that what Hiro-san needed more than anything right now, was this release, to rid himself of the unshed tears, the shame, the secrecy that he had carried with him for the last ten years. So for the longest time, he did and said nothing in attempt to quell Hiro-san's weeping. He simply continued to hold him.

Nowaki 's own quiet tears continued to flow as he embraced Hiro-san's pain along with the man and let go of his own. As the minutes passed, within his arms Hiroki's trembling began to diminish. Nowaki closed his eyes and felt his grasp of language return to him. He kissed Hiroki again, this time on the man's wild crown.

"Hiro-san… ever the knight," he whispered in a voice barely louder than a breath.

In the safe silence of his lover's arms, Hiroki's spinning mind had finally stilled.

Despite his tears, within the warmth of Nowaki's embrace, Hiroki felt as though he'd entered the eye of the storm that his life had been for so long. Allowing those words out, sharing his secret and not being scorned or rejected, but gathered in… Never, had he in his wildest dreams expected to find this kind of sanctuary.

With his face hidden in Nowaki's broad chest, Hiroki allowed his tears to well up and flow out. He was like a spring in early thaw, his emotions bubbling up, poring forth as all the frozen parts of himself melted.

Memories swirled and spilled forth, not just of what Haruhiko had done to him, but of the bitter pain of his silent endurance, coupled with his unrequited love.

So many times he had wanted to shout at Akihiko, "Do you not know what I'm doing for you? The least you could do is love me back for it just a little!"

As much as this experience should have made him hate Akihiko, it seemed the opposite had happened. He'd had become even more determined to protect him with every debasement. He loved Akihiko more, despite the fact that with each violation he felt even less worthy of his best friend's affection.

That very sense of unworthiness was what had enticed him to make such a bold move that one time he'd asked Akihiko to fuck him, years after his ordeal with Haruhiko had ended.

Started as a drunken dare after an alcoholic spree, Akihiko despondent that the man he loved had yet another new girlfriend, in his own state of mild inebriation, Hiroki had offered himself. Even then, although he didn't believe Akihiko could accept him, he knew could be the stand in for Takahiro, just as he had been Akihiko's for Haruhiko.

He'd told Akihiko that the blindfold would enable him to imagine Takahiro more clearly. Though in reality Hiroki had wanted to see his unrequited's face in the act and could think of no other way to manage this.

It was true that in that moment, Hiroki had hoped that his joining their flesh might possibly, in some way, free him of his aching need or that somehow, even blinded as he was, Akihiko would see the truth of his heart. What happened instead of either of these was a rejection that had all but crushed him, and an extended period of awkwardness between them that had taken some time to surmount.

Now, however, Hiroki was grateful for the rejection. Otherwise, he would have never found Nowaki: Nowaki who had seen him as he was, for who he was… even now, despite his terrible confession, and had still taken him in with love.

For the first time in years, Hiroki felt safe. More than this, though, for the first time in as long as he could remember he felt human.

Nowaki was resting with his eyes closed, when he realized that at long last, Hiro-san had finally stilled.

"Hiro-san," he whispered.

Hiroki cleared the last of his tears from his throat, "Hmmmmm?"

"I always knew you were amazing, but I have to say… never in my life have I met a stronger or better man than you have shown me today."

Nowaki could feel Hiroki blush against him. His words were humble, but he spoke them with truth. It was a small thing to offer in exchange for the pride the older man had relinquished. Still, the affirmation was a soothing balm to Hiroki's raw psyche.

Nowaki gathered Hiroki in tighter and both men jumped when Kaze emitted a squeak of protest between them. Nowaki released Hiroki, chuckling lightly as he drew back and pulled Kaze out from the midst of their embrace.

He rolled over and set the pup on the small night table; as he did this Hiroki rose from the bed.

"Hiro-san?" Nowaki uttered his name with a bit of anxiety.

Hiroki turned back slightly but kept his head bowed, not ready to meet Nowaki's eyes again just yet. "It's okay, Nowaki. I'm just going to wash my face," he assured before he quietly left the room.

Nowaki sat up a bit. He listened to the water being run in the bathroom. Looking down at his damp shirt, after a few moments' consideration he pulled it off. He was using it to wipe his own face when he heard Hiroki re-enter the room.

His face still muffled by the fabric, Nowaki started slightly when he felt a gentle hand on his head. Looking up he saw Hiroki standing beside him. The man's cheeks were pink; his dark eyes still red as he hesitantly met his gaze.

"Here," Hiroki growled holding out a warm, damp cloth. "This might work a little better."

Nowaki accepted it gratefully. "Thank you, Hiro-san."

Hiroki lifted his hand from Nowaki's head after giving it a rough ruffle. He nodded and stepped around to the other side of the bed.

Nowaki washed his face with the cloth. He finished and watched quietly as Hiroki stripped out of his shirt and then unfastened his jeans and pushed them down, his boxers with them. His eyes followed Hiroki as the man clumsily folded these and moved to drape them over the back of the single chair in the room.

Taking his cue from Hiroki, Nowaki silently stripped out of his sweats and slipped somewhat stiffly under the futon's covers. He held them up as Hiroki returned and crawled into the narrow bed with him.

Both men settled down together in a loose embrace, legs entwined, bellies bumping. In the brush of their naked flesh against each other there was heat, but it was a comforting warmth: the simple pleasure of the press of skin against skin, without the friction of sex.

Nowaki disentangled himself only long enough to flip his damp pillow over to its dry side. Their heads soon shared the pillow once more. They lay there face to face, cautiously studying the other, regarding each other with an expression of quiet wonder.

Then Hiroki tentatively leaned in and took Nowaki's lips between his in a way that was infinitely tender. Nowaki raised his hand to gently cup Hiroki's cheek. No sooner had Hiroki pulled back ending the kiss, than Nowaki leaned in seeking another.

After he broke their second kiss, Nowaki studied his lover for a moment again. Then a slight look of concern came over his handsome face. "Hiro-san, don't you have to teach today?" he asked softly.

Hiroki dropped his eyes and light blush crept into his cheeks. "I cancelled my classes.

"I didn't know how long it was going to take for me to find you."

And I wasn't going to stop looking until I did.

Nowaki smiled at this. He brushed a damp brown lock back from the older man's forehead. Then he moved in and once again caught Hiroki's mouth.

The two men opened up to each other. There was no fighting for dominance here; instead there was a shared love, a sweet affection, a communication of a new and profound intimacy.

Though both Hiroki and Nowaki were still broken, healing passed between lips and tongues from one man to the other.

Nowaki paused in the midst of their exchange to whisper, "I'm glad you found me Hiro-san."

Nowaki felt Hiroki's breath on his lips. The warmth permeated all the way into the depths of his chest as Hiroki whispered back.

"I'm glad you found me too, Nowaki."

Dudes, I don't know about you, but these last few chapters have wrung me out. Hope you enjoyed the read and this lull in between storms.