Anesthesia - Chapter 7
The next time I'm in Kyoto, I spend the night at Kokakurou. I don't want to, but there really aren't any other options for a man like me.
For a Nanjo.
After dinner, I slip away without taking a girl. Maybe that means I'm neglecting my duties. I hope young Master Oriya doesn't find out. He'd take it personally.
But the strangest thing has happened over the past few weeks: My interest in women is nonexistent. My interest in anyone, besides Muraki Kazutaka.
It's ridiculous. I've abandoned handsomer and more mysterious people than him in the past.
Alone in one of Kokakurou's traditional rooms, I light a cigarette and try to forget silken hands, a hot mouth pressed over mine, mad talk of demons and curses and James Joyce. And I am starting to forget, truly, when I hear footsteps in the hall. I'm forgetting when they stop in front of the door to my room and there's a light knock on the edge of the panel.
It must be Kurauchi, but he never lets himself in without a word from me.
And by now the panel is sliding back.
And everything I've been forgetting comes back all at once, like the ground rushing toward you in the moments between when you jump and when you hit bottom.
"Good evening," Muraki says as though he has every right to be there in my doorway, his tie and collar loose, the moonlight silver upon the silver of his hair.
"Nanjo-san…" He hesitates a moment. It's not like him, and that makes it more pronounced. I can almost hear the muscles at the back of his throat working helplessly as he searches for words.
It's even less like him to have come without a speech already prepared.
Whether he means to or not, he gives me time to collect my thoughts. "What the hell are you doing here, Muraki?"
"Visiting you in exile." He comes inside, sliding the door closed behind him. He's smirking, but there's no force behind the expression. He has just adopted it out of routine, like a nervous habit.
He kneels opposite me on the tatami, very near, and he says, "Are you not enjoying the accommodations?"
"I'm enjoying them very much." I mean to punctuate the next words with a sharp glare, but I can't bring myself to look at him. "I like the solitude."
"Of course." He reaches out, touching the back of my hand so tenderly that I know he must be planning something horrible. "Nanjo-san, listen… Do you remember what we spoke about before?"
"Muraki, stop. I like you much better when I can imagine that you're not a raving lunatic."
He stiffens a little. I can feel it because his hand still rests over mine, right where I've let it remain. "I was wrong, you know. I ran a DNA test, and I was mistaken about you. About your blood."
"What a surprise," I say. "Muraki…"
Then I only sigh, and shake my head, because I don't really know what to say to him. "How did you know I was here?"
"I have an anonymous source."
"Oriya?"
He smiles, just a little. "Perhaps. Don't worry, Nanjo-san, he isn't bothered that you didn't take a girl after dinner."
He's turned so I can't see anything but a little triangle of throat beneath the hair that falls over his face. Not for the first time, I wonder what he's so desperate to hide. I'm quiet a while, waiting for him to look at me, which he never does. The silence goes on long enough to become uncomfortable.
"Are you really that disappointed?" I say at a last.
"Disappointed that you didn't fuck one of Oriya's girls?" He laughs. "I can't say that I am disappointed. Though I'm not really the jealous type, either."
"You know what I meant, Muraki. I haven't seen you in two months."
"I know. But I'm searching for something, Nanjo-san. And you may be many things, but you're not what I'm looking for."
I've never been dumped before, but even without much experience I'm confident that what I'm hearing is pretty high on the list of worst lines to preface a break-up. Still, I have the presence of mind to remember that I am Nanjo Hirose. No one dumps me.
"Then it's just as well," I say. "It saves me the trouble."
He glances up at me for the first time. "What?"
"If you aren't going to do the job for which I hired you, then I'll have to terminate your contract. That's just good business, Doctor."
His eye narrows a little, and then he laughs. "Are you firing me as your boyfriend?"
What I want to say next and what I do say are very different things. "Don't try to toy with me, Muraki. What the hell do you think this is?"
His lips twitch, and for a moment he almost looks hurt. As though, without even trying, I've found my way past all his defenses, past his impenetrable borders.
"The end," he murmurs. I watch him push away, and I watch him get to his feet. And I watch him turn away from me. "I think… it's the end, now."
It seems to take him hours to cross the floor. It was like that the first time, too, I think, when he crossed my little brother's hospital room to stand next to me. To kiss me.
That was almost eight months ago.
And in the back of my mind, softly, I hear my brother's voice. Koji's voice, rough with that ugly, mocking laugh he has.
Did you know you loved him then? my brother's voice asks me. Have you figured it out at all? What kind of education were they giving you at your fancy American schools?
Koji never did let me do anything the easy way.
By now, Muraki's at the door. I stand up quick, toss my cigarette in the ashtray and take a step after him. "Wait."
There's a moment when I think he's not going to look back, and I don't blame him. But then he turns, just a little, showing me the curve of his throat, the fall of his silver hair. "Now who is toying with whom, Nanjo-san?"
His hesitation encourages me, and I come forward, taking his arm. "Don't be so melodramatic. Come back inside."
"Why?"
As I draw him away, he slides the panel shut again. "Because…"
He turns back, leaning against me like he's anticipating a kiss.
I don't disappoint him.
As he leans away again to catch his breath, I sigh. "This is so fucking stupid."
"I know." He leans in again, giving me a kiss that pushes the rest into the background. "It isn't like you at all."
"Nor you." I wrap a hand around his tie, drawing him back inside. His hands flutter over the buttons of my suit coat. "What are we doing here?"
He laughs as he draws his hands down my chest, twin highways of heat over my bare skin. "I thought that was obvious, Nanjo-san."
"Call me Hirose."
The words were out before I knew they would be, and though Muraki looks surprised by them, I'm sure he's not nearly as shocked as I am.
"Why?" he asks.
"I don't know." Maybe it's because I hardly know him, but he's still closer to me than anyone else. "If you're only going to be here for tonight, it doesn't really matter, does it? Call me Hirose."
"Very well." He seems to think a moment, as though sounding out the syllables of the name. "Hirose. Is that more to your liking?"
"Yes."
I slip his glasses off his nose for him, fold them and put them away in the breast pocket of his coat. Without them, he looks younger. Pretty, instead of handsome, and I can see why he persists in wearing them. He lets me tug him over to the futon, and we slide down to it, a tangle of loosened suit coats and silk shirts and sensible solid-color ties. When I slip my hands beneath his clothing, I can feel sleek muscle, winding and unwinding, tensing and relaxing in a familiar rhythm of arousal.
I flick open his pants, and his erection presses into the hollow of my hand. For a moment, I can only stare and try to come up with the disgust my father would want me to feel. Then Muraki reaches down between our bodies, touching my wrist lightly with two fingers. When I look up, his expression is tight, anticipatory. "Hirose…"
This is all his fault. I know, because I would never have come up with something like this on my own. I'm an innocent victim in all this, a prisoner of war.
He's on top of me now, kneeling astride me with one leg on either side of my hips, and I catch his wrists before he can slither away and turn him over. He gasps as I flip him onto his stomach, shifting my weight over him to grind him down into the bedding.
"Oriya was right about you," he says, breathless.
"What did Oriya-san say about me?" I slide his pants down, far enough to reveal the tops of his shapely thighs.
"He called you unpredictable. At first I thought he just lacked imagination…"
I hold a hand to his mouth, and he slips his lips over one finger, drawing it into the hot dampness of his mouth.
"Now you know better." My voice doesn't sound the way I want it to; the roll of his tongue over my skin saps the will right out of me.
My finger slides from between his lips, wet and slick.
"I don't know," he confesses.
Everything he's ever told me up to this point might be a lie, but that I can be sure is the truth.
I trail the heel of my hand down his spine, and slip that single wet finger into him. He gasps, jerking back against me so I have to press my other hand to his shoulder to hold him still.
"Bastard…" he pants.
"Shut up."
For the first time all evening, I'm glad I'm staying here, in Kokakurou, where everything is provided for you. I shift my weight forward, pinning him, and with one hand I reach out and slide open the discreet little carved wooden box beside the futon. Inside, there's a little vial of oil; I make enough of a show of retrieving it, that I'm sure Muraki gets a good look.
I can't see his face; I think he just barely manages to keep from smiling.
I make myself slick with one hand, and keep the other pressed to the back of Muraki's neck. He struggles a little, not enough to break away from me, but if I relax my grip it will be. And I know he'll pull away if I give him the chance. But when I shift forward, pushing up against him, he stops squirming all at once.
"What have you done to me?" I say.
"I don't know." His hips shift subtly, just a little ripple of feverishly hot skin. "But after tonight, you won't have to worry about it anymore. I'll be gone."
"You shouldn't even be here now."
Then I arch forward, pushing into him, and he's the only hot pliant living thing left in the world.
He gasps my name. One of his hands claws at the outside of my thigh, the other arm is crooked against the futon and he uses it to leverage himself back against me.
It's no use trying to tell myself that he's not the best I've ever had. That anything will ever be as good as he is again. Even I can only make a lie stretch so far. All I can do is convince myself that it's his fault. It's him, not what he does to me. It's the way he seizes upon something fundamental in me that I always took for granted. The way he melts and re-forges, purges and purifies.
I slip my arm around his waist, pulling him up, back to lean against my shoulder. His hair almost parts around his face then
"Hirose…" One hand moves up to up my cheek, and the other falls over my wrist, guiding my arm down. He closes his fingers around mine, urging me to wrap my hand around his cock. I half stroke him, half let him thrust up against me with tight efficient jerks of his hips, until he twists his face against the side of my throat and breathes a soft moan.
There's a rush of heat over the back of my hand and my wrist, then the pulse of internal muscles draws my own climax from me a moment later. I fall back bracing myself on my palms; Muraki reaches back, winding his arms lazily around my neck and pooling his weight on my chest.
We wait a moment in silence, but it isn't long enough for me to decide what I want to do next.
"Muraki. I…"
He laughs softly, turning slowly to kiss me. "You are a remarkable man, Hirose. Your brother is nothing compared to you."
It takes me a moment to realize that the heat flooding my face means I'm blushing. How strange. But not half as strange as what I do next: I don't turn away from him to hide it.
I reach out instead, and slip a hand beneath the wing of silver hair that falls over his right eye. He flinches, so subtly that I can't see it, but I can feel the slight tremor that slides along his skin in the places we're still touching.
"What are you doing?" he murmurs.
"How bad can it be?"
He lets me slide his hair aside, tuck it behind his ear.
It's rather gauche to answer a rhetorical question, but I can feel my lips tilt up into the hint of a smile. "Not so bad at all."
He looks away, and I run my fingertips over the faint scar beneath his eye. "How did you lose it?"
"A fire. Many years ago."
"Oh? You didn't sell it to a demon? Have it purged by some arcane magic?"
He laughs, a soft breath of amusement and relief. "I am sorry to disappoint you. It was nothing so glamorous."
"A shame." I kiss him again, one more to remember, and then I pull away. We dress in silence, and I turn back to face him just as he finishes buttoning his coat.
"Goodbye, Muraki."
"Good night." He smiles, and flicks his hair back over his eye.
He goes to the door and lets himself out.