Anesthesia - Chapter 5
I'm sure that I've only dozed off for a few moments, but when I open my eyes again, the sheets have been changed. More than that, the room has been changed. I slide my hand down my side, and realize my bandages have been changed too. I'm the only thing that's still the same.
Maybe that's not quite true.
There's a little rustle of movement beside the futon I'm laying on. "Aki?" I murmur. There is no one else who would have been watching over me while I slept… How humiliating that sounds.
"No, Nanjo-san. He's gone to rest. You only just missed him."
Muraki sets down his book, and leans closer. He picks up my glasses from the little table next to the bed and slips them on for me.
"You…?" I'd sound surprised if my voice was anything more than a harsh whisper. "What do you want?"
He sits on the bed beside me. He's careful about it, but the movement of the mattress makes me wince.
"You asked me to stay," he says. "And if you change your mind now, I'm not refunding your overtime pay."
"How long has it been?"
"Almost a full day. I'm glad you're awake, actually. Akihito wouldn't stop pestering me. He's very fond of you, that boy. What a faithful brother—"
"Shut up, Muraki!" That came out sharp, and I regret it at once. It makes me cough, makes my dry throat burn.
"Calm yourself." He slides an arm behind my shoulders, lifting me from the pillows. There's something hesitant about the way he moves – indeed, almost wary - and that's when I realize… I set him on edge. I have to laugh at that, even though it comes out as a harsh gasp for breath.
"Calm down," he says again, and lifts a bottle of water to my lips.
"I can—" The touch of water on my lips washes away all my words. He says it's only been a day, but it might as well have been years. It seems I can feel that first drink in every cell of my body.
Muraki tilts the water bottle back, and I reach up, snatching it out of his hand. Sitting up, it turns out, isn't as difficult as I thought it would be. It's staying there that gives me a little trouble. A low growl of pain flares in my side, but if I put the wall at my back I can bear it.
"That's not necessary." I raise the water to my lips, just to prove that I can.
Muraki doesn't seem impressed. "As you wish, Nanjo-san."
He returns to his chair, crossing his legs delicately at the knee, and retrieving his book. "Try to get some more rest."
As though I could sleep, with him sitting there sulking like that. It's undignified.
Lying back down seems like it might be more trouble than it's worth at the moment, so I just slump against the wall. I can't see the spine of his book from here, but he didn't get it from my library. I don't have any cheap paperbacks like that. I don't much care for people who bring books wherever they go…
"What are you reading?"
He glances at me over the top of the novel; his glasses slip down his nose, just a little. "It's Joyce. Ulysses. Have you read it?"
"No." The last time I read a piece of fiction was when I was eight. "Is it good?"
"Mm." He closes the book, and sets it aside. Almost too eager for a distraction. "Do you want the truth? Or the answer I've prepared for people who ask me if it's good?"
"Why don't you start with the truth."
"It's dreadful." And the way he laughs when he says that, I can't help but laugh a little myself. "Absolutely dreadful."
My hand moves over the sheets, clawing them up into little ranges and canyons. And it's just like him to assume I meant it as an invitation.
He puts the book aside, and returns to sit next to me once more.
"Thank you," I say, without looking at him. "For attending to me."
He leans in, and my lips part beneath his kiss.
I suppose he means for that to be an answer. His hand moves to cup the back of my neck, and I turn to face him. Shifting into a deeper kiss, the hot velvet of his mouth.
If my wound would only start to throb again, I would have an excuse to push him away. But he's… perhaps gentle is the wrong word. He's careful, as he sets a hand on my knee, draws it up my thigh. He's cautious, as he slides around to kneel across my lap.
"What do you think?" he murmurs between kisses so deep I can feel the sharp ivory of his teeth cutting into my lips. "Have you given in yet?"
"Not a chance."
And I mean it, even as I tilt my chin up to give Muraki access to my throat; even as my hands slide under his coat and up his shapely back.
"I didn't think so." His mouth closes around the side of my neck like a predator; his tongue traces the path of a vein beneath my skin. His hands do something insufferably clever down between my legs, and my cock twitches eagerly in response.
It's hard not to have a little grudging respect for someone who can still do this, in spite of all the setbacks. I really have been a stubborn tease. But after the last few days, I'm finding it suddenly difficult to keep up a pace like that. I'm finding it difficult to keep up a great many pretenses, too.
Izumi would have been perfect, you know. Perfect, if not for his sobs.
I take Muraki's hands between mine, guiding them to the top button of my pants.
"I am curious…" My voice comes as a soft, hot breath, spilled against the damp skin of his temple. "As to whether or not you have been worth waiting for."
He hesitates a moment, leaning back on his knees so our eyes meet. Cold gray upon cold gray.
"As I understand it," he says at last, as those long delicate fingers tug at buttons and zipper, laying the front of my pants open, "It would be very bad for my health, to disappoint you."
A hand, cool as latex, closes around my cock, stroking it to hardness.
He sways forward, until his forehead is pressed against mine. It seems a ridiculously intimate gesture, even with his hands already twined around me. I struggle to remember the last time I let someone rest against me like that.
Akihito is the name that comes to mind, but it's not the one I want to think about right now.
Muraki's mouth tastes coppery metallic like blood, and that makes him hard to ignore. Easy to let distract me. Only when he's certain that I am completely enmeshed within him does he pull back, slip away from me to kneel beside the bed.
His hands draw me forward. "Come here. You can lean against me."
I wouldn't lean against him if I only had one goddamn leg left. But I do move closer, to the edge of the bed; I rest my weight back on my palms. His eyes meet mine over the rise of my body, and he doesn't look away as he leans in, as his tongue flicks out to slide along the underside of my cock.
No one has ever done that before. Held my gaze so I had nowhere to look, save at what is being done to me. Suddenly, there are no crisp bills or eight cylinder engines to think about. No matter how good my hair looks, it's not good enough.
There's nothing, but the lingering warmth of his mouth and the cool air he breathes over the dampness he's just created on my skin. The silk sheets knotted beneath my fingers as my hands curl into fists. My mind wrings new words – adjectives and adverbs - out of the syllables of his name, because it's the only way I have to describe the Muraki-ness of the situation. How Muraki-esque things have become.
His lips part, and he tears his eyes away with what I've surely mistaken for a hint of hesitation, to slip his mouth over me. I can see the muscles at the sides of his throat relax as he takes me in with one quick breath.
For a moment, I'm afraid nothing will ever break the silence.
Finally, something does. A quiet, wordless cry in a voice that, at first, I don't even recognize as my own. My voice doesn't waver around the edges like that. My voice doesn't pitch strangely at every silly little thing someone does with their mouth. My voice does not have to be stifled with one hand pressed to my lips, teeth digging into the second knuckle of my index finger.
I'm helpless to look away.
The muscles at the back of his throat work around me in a slow rhythm. He coils around me, constricting and relaxing, winding and unwinding to match the steady pulse of blood at my temples. He doesn't move much; doesn't bob his head or thrash around. He doesn't need to. Everything happens just under the surface.
I don't know him well enough to say whether or not that's just like him.
One of his hands slips away from my thigh and flutters downward like a leaf cut loose from a tree. If he knows that I'm still watching him, then he's not very subtle about it; perhaps he doesn't know. Hasn't figured out yet that I can't tear my eyes away from him anymore than I could my body.
And even as he coaxes a strangled little moan from me, he's reaching down to brush two fingertips over himself through the front of his pants. He seems to hesitate a moment, then his hand wavers and he slides it between his thighs. I catch the little shiver that runs through him only because I know what I'm looking for.
I realize then that he's not the only one with power here. He's as captivated as I am.
Maybe that is a bit too ambitious. He may be turned on, but my own arousal is reaching critical mass, ground zero. A white-hot molten core deep in my body.
But he is fascinating, and I'm still watching him while I try to choke back a moan, as my body convulses once with release and then I shudder. Tremble, as my arms give out and I lean forward to rest against his shoulder, just like I swore I wouldn't.
"Muraki…"
He drags his mouth over me slowly as he pulls back, taking most of the mess with him. His jaw tightens a little, and he swallows.
No one has ever swallowed my come before.
"That was, perhaps, not the best thing for your condition." His lips quirk into a little smile, and he reaches to push my glasses back up my nose. It's not like any expression I've ever seen on him before.
"I'm fine. It doesn't hurt."
He pushes to his feet, and I find my eyes drawn to the place where he teased himself with his fingertips. Through his clothes, I can't tell if he's still hard. When he reaches out to take my shoulders and steady me, I brush a hand up the inside of his left thigh. Just to satisfy my curiosity.
The next breath he draws is sharp and startled. I slide the backs of my fingers over him, and his hips move, just slightly.
"What about you? Does this hurt?"
"It's agony, Nanjo-san."
As he pushes me back to the bed, I curl my fingers around his tie. He doesn't resist much, but he's very careful as he crawls over me. He edges around my stitches like he would a sleeping dog.
I can't help but laugh, as I reach up to remove his glasses for him. "How delicate do you think I am?"
"I would not wish to injure my most esteemed patient."
"Nor would I wish to displease any man I allow near me while I sleep."
I crook one leg, pushing my thigh up between his. Wiry muscle flexes against me as he coils back, breathing a little sigh.
When he wraps his arms around my shoulders, I can smell the musk of his aftershave, the same as always, but beneath it I catch a faint whiff sweat and anticipation on his skin. He presses himself against my hipbone, grinding down. His body reverberates with a little moan, like a cat's purr.
He's still dressed, and I am mostly not. But the fabrics he wears are as warm and soft and slippery as skin. His lips meet mine, and I can still taste myself on the inside of his mouth.
It's not as bad as you might think.
For what feels like a long time, he's the only thing that moves. His hips against mine, beneath my hands. His mouth, sucking kisses from mine until we're both out of breath.
There's something damp under my hand, and it takes me a moment to realize that I've torn my wound open again, and blood has soaked through my bandages.
That probably means I ought to stop him, but his breath is already coming in soft sighs. His movements are less controlled than they were when we began. I'm still debating the best way to broach the subject, when he turns his face against my shoulder and cries out sharply.
He shifts a few times, restlessly, and then all the strength seems to rush out of him.
He murmurs wordlessly, and lifts a hand to inspect the blood staining his fingertips. "How careless of me."
His voice is a little rougher than normal, but other than that there's nothing different about him. Strange, when I feel that I'm changed enough for both of us.
He leans back, calmly replacing his glasses, and begins to unwind my bandages. From a bag beside the bed, he pulls fresh gauze and begins to tape up my side. The stitches are holding. Just be still, and the bleeding will stop soon."
"Muraki…"
"Mm?" He glances up from his work, tilting his head slightly so that his hair falls not quite away from his face. He leans in; I think at first that he means to kiss me, and so I tilt my chin back a little.
But he presses his lips to my ear. "I know a secret about you, Nanjo-san."
"And what might that be?"
His voice is soft, a hot breath of air against my cheek. "You like boys better than girls."
"That's…" I push him back. "That's disgraceful. What nonsense."
And he laughs. Which should serve only to make me angry, but instead I feel heat building behind my cheeks. I'll never forgive him for making me blush.
"What an odd reaction. Really, Nanjo-san. A worldly, educated man like you? I shouldn't have to tell you this." He slides the backs of his fingers over my cheek. "It's all right. There's no reason to be ashamed."
"But I'm not—"
"You are. But I promised you discretion when I came to work for you, didn't I?" He touches my cheek again, so I have no choice but to turn back to face him.
"Perhaps," he says. "I could match your secret with one of my own."
"I don't know what about you could possibly interest me."
He arches his back, and stretches out on the bed beside me. "It's something you will never guess, I assure you."
Carelessly, one of his hands slips into mine. And, like when he swallowed earlier, I realize that no one has ever held my hand before, either. His voice is quiet, but not so quiet that I cannot tell that he's lucid.
"You see," he says. "I'm not entirely human. Don't say anything yet. Allow me to explain. In recent years, I have found certain latent abilities within myself beginning to awaken. I am able to absorb stray energies and redirect them as I see fit. I won't bore you with the details; however, I believe this talent was passed down to me genetically. Along with certain other traits. This hair, these eyes, colors like this don't occur naturally."
His hand tightens around mine, convulsively. "Do you understand what I am saying to you, Nanjo-san?"
I don't know what to do, so I tell him what he wants to hear. "You think that I'm like you. One of this… supernatural bloodline."
"Yes." He moves suddenly, rolling over on top of me and pinning my shoulders to the mattress. There is a feral gleam in his eyes. He's quite obviously mad - dangerous and deluded – but it never occurs to me to push him away. "It makes sense. You feel it, don't you? Sometimes, it seems as though your senses are heightened. As though you perceive things that other people do not. Sometimes, it's so strong that you feel your mind is going to give way beneath it…"
And what happens next, I will never tell anyone. What happens next, I will, for my own sake, have to force myself to forget. Because what happens next is, for just a moment, what he says seems to ring true. It tears through all the logic and the rationality, and it make sense to me. It's like he's looking through me just then, like I'm not there at all.
I raise one hand towards him. I think, for an instant, that it's going to be to throw my arm around his neck, to pull him down and embrace him, as they say, like a brother.
Instead, my hand snaps around his throat.
His eyes widen. I sit up, forcing him back to his knees. I must be squeezing very hard, because he lifts two fingers to rest against the inside of my wrist.
I find myself wondering if he will make a beautiful corpse.
"You need to get out of my bed."
He nods, swinging one leg over so his foot brushes the carpet. I let him go, and he pushes to his feet. "Nanjo-san…"
"You're mad, aren't you? I'm embarrassed for you."
He rubs at his throat. "And if I can give you proof of what I've said?"
"Then I still won't believe it, because it's nonsense."
He lowers his gaze. At first I think he regrets what he's said, but then I realize… No, he's only laughing at me. "As you wish, Nanjo-san. Perhaps it would be best if I took my leave of you for the time being. You have had a trying day."
He gathers his bag of medical supplies, sets his book inside it on top. I watch him closely, to make sure he leaves nothing of himself behind.