A/N: I have to literally hold myself back from letting this get too dark or gory or filthy.
Kai Hiwatari - Years of Turbulence (III)
Part Four: Late Teens (ii)
Kai's mother regarded him with suspicion when he returned home during the Spring holidays that year. With good cause too because once again, there was a marked change in him akin to the shift in attitude he displayed after his first summer with Boris. But where he had suddenly become withdrawn and serious back then, now he was unreachable.
He'd erected a marble wall around his form that not even his mother could penetrate. He had been hard to read before, always having been a strange child, but now his feelings seemed impossible to discern.
She wondered what happened, where the outward rebellion suddenly disappeared to. The angry child that was adamant to not conform to rules lain by adults around him was nowhere to be seen. Kai had never been reckless or flippant about his parents' feelings. He rebelled but he did it within reason. He brought the rebellion to her and tried to change her mind and her beliefs in different wonderful ways.
Then all of a sudden he'd turned away from her. Most teenagers did but it hurt to lose him like that. Like a line was suddenly cut between them. The umbilical cord that tied them together severed forever. She'd been unwilling to admit it to herself at first. Convinced he'd find his way back to her eventually. But with each summer that passed, he'd simply distanced himself more and more.
But that morning, the first morning after he returned home from school at the end of his freshman year of high school, when he walked into the breakfast room, she did not recognize her son.
When he met her eyes and greeted her, his copper-coloured irises were not just guarded, they were bereft of any real emotion. The polite smile he gave her, the happiness he faked at her presence, scared her.
He scared her.
His fingers were quick on the grapes when he reached out to pick a few from a bowl. His mannerisms had always been polished but they'd never been cold. She couldn't find a better word to describe his demeanour. He wasn't the aloof and withdrawn boy who tried his best to contain all the rage within him anymore. He'd grown up to be glacial. Yet the rage was present. It was present in the way he moved, the way he talked, looming large at their table like a warning, a threat to not provoke him. It was in the set of his jaw, the meanness that lurked in the corners of his lukewarm smiles, the ramrod straightness of his spine.
The rage was palpable and it made every other part of him inaccessible.
She'd been planning to ask him about his studies, the Grand's daughter, whether he met her or not, but he had never seemed more like a live wire than he did that day.
Mera felt pain, she screwed her face in concentration to keep the hurt out of her expression but Soichiro picked up on it.
"Is something the matter, Mera?" he inquired with concern. "Have your stomach troubles returned?"
Soichiro suspected Kai was up to something. He came to her a few days ago and asked about her son. Apparently he had stopped withdrawing funds from his allowance accounts for over a year and when Soichiro had directly confronted Kai about it, he had given him a bullshit response, not even bothering to come up with a believable lie.
"What's wrong with mother's stomach?" Kai paused eating to ask, a neat frown appearing between his eyebrows.
"Acid trouble" Susumu answered. "GERD, the doctors said."
Mera may have caught something in Kai's gaze then, a glint of something sharp when he was looking at his father, but it was quickly gone. He turned back to her, twirling the fork once in his grip.
"I'm fine," she said, holding his clever eyes, wanting a reaction from him. "The acid's not troubling me anymore."
She did get a reaction. More than she expected.
There was a slight tilt to his head. He twirled the fork once more, before leaning forward, elbows on the table, and made sure she could read him as he asked, "Is something else troubling you?"
His eyes blazed at her.
She realized in that moment that he resented her not just for silencing him, but for what happened. For sending him there, for failing to protect him, for being a coward. She knew then what was coming, what was going through her son's head. What he was planning to do.
That he would return home one day and burn her world down. That it was only a matter of time before his rage destroyed their entire family.
Kai developed insomnia soon after Viktor's murder. He went to the school nurse one time and she told him to drink milk and count backwards from a hundred before going to bed. Kai despised milk. The taste never sat right on his tongue.
He'd been hoping she'd take him to a doctor to give him pills, but she said he was too young for them.
What he did instead of drinking milk was tire himself out till he could do little more than collapse on the bed at the end of the day. Even then he woke ridiculously early. The boys knew yet they had no clue of how to help.
What they didn't understand however was why he was unable to sleep. They had a hunch - it had something to do with Viktor's death. He regretted it. He was worried about the Yakuza.
He wasn't worried about the Yakuza. Ironically, they were the least of his concerns till Viktor's friend came along. He was more worried about what lay inside of himself.
He feared incongruently, disproportionately, ridiculously, that if he went to sleep, he'd wake up a different person. He managed to push it to the back of his consciousness most of the time because that fear, like most fears, was completely irrational. It could never happen.
Yet the closer he got to realizing his goals, the harder it became to ignore it.
It shot to the forefront of his mind whenever shock rendered him vulnerable.
The fear was quite simple, which was why it had such a deathly grip on him.
What if tomorrow I am not who I am?
What if tomorrow I wake up without rational thoughts?
What if tomorrow I wake up a cold-blooded killer?
Genius ran dangerously close to madness. He'd carved this path out for himself. This path that was supposed to lead his life away from Soichiro, away from being a thoughtless ruthless puppet, yet relied on skills he'd been taught by Soichiro.
His quest to be a great man, to be a free man, was testing his faith in himself.
The stronger he got, the more he accomplished, the more he feared who he was becoming.
The drugs and the booze numbed out pain, but depressants brought one to their lowest once the high passed. The crash was worse than the previous state of misery that led him to taking it.
His plans were crystal clear and detailed, yet execution was not the same as planning.
Things went wrong. Things got real. People got hurt.
Even the most meticulous of planning and preparation couldn't prepare one for the sound of flesh sliding off walls.
Or for the different ways the human body reacted to trauma.
Kai held his hand above a lighter's flame every now and then to quieten the mess in his head when it got too loud. It worked because the sting was familiar. The sting was manageable. And it made everything else manageable.
Fighting offered a better, healthier release. For his anger, for his frustration. It was his greatest strength but held the potential to also be his greatest weakness. The more hours he spent in an arena, the more cutthroat his techniques grew, the worse his quieter moments alone in a gym with a sandbag became.
It felt a bit like spiraling. When he thought back to the last few years of his high school now, he recalled a feeling of constant weightlessness, like he was flying too fast. Burning too brightly. A star hurtling across the universe towards a giant explosion.
His mornings were hurried, buried in schoolwork, nights hazy, drowned in ecstasy and the in-betweens - the nights on weekdays, the mornings on weekends, and the evenings - he was punching people out and treated like a god for it.
The week leading up to and from the fight Ozuma had arranged for him went by faster and more dizzyingly than any others around that time.
He got little to no sleep because every time he closed his eyes he saw death. His or someone else's.
Someone else's more than his.
It drove him nearly crazy.
He was functioning on caffeine and adrenaline alone.
He sat by himself on a bench in the gym the Monday before the fight, wrapping up his hands, a sandbag hanging in front of him.
How did one prepare for a fight where basically everything was allowed except for the participation of other people?
The boys trusted him to win that five million without offing somebody in the process. Their faith in him was perhaps most reassuring above all. Sergei had wavered, warred with reason, with fear. If he'd walked away Kai would have lost a part of himself, yet he hadn't doubted he would even for a second. And Sergei had come through in the end.
The door thudded shut as someone walked in and leaned against it.
He recognized it was Yuriy from the sound of his movements.
"What's your plan?" he asked Kai after a beat of silence. "How're you going to face a chainsaw?"
Kai couldn't help but snort, tightening the wrap on his right hand, and then moving onto the left. "A chainsaw would make for a great show, but I doubt anyone would use it as a real weapon." He heard Tala crossing the room towards where he sat. "It would be unreliable and heavy, it would get in the way"
"It would be bloody and gory, perfect for hyping up a crowd," said Tala, propping a hand on the side of the bag, a huff escaping him. Unbothered. Nonchalant. But his exhale was a little forced.
He watched Kai loop the cloth leisurely around his palm.
"But he'd probably go for a knife," he spoke a minute later.
Kai raised his gaze to fix him with an amused look. "You've looked into him," he said, a smirk curling on his mouth as he ducked his head again.
Yuriy chose to leave the look he'd shot him unaddressed. "His name is Youya Kaminishi but goes by Moses. He's 6'4 and weighs around 250 pounds. A former UFC fighter who got banned from the championship for gouging out his opponents' eyeballs," he smiled. "Kaminishi is fond of making a mess so a knife would be right up his alley."
He waited a minute for a response from Kai and continued speaking when he got none.
"I suggest you go for a gun. A shot in the foot, and in the shoulder. He'll be in too much pain to go on and declared knocked out. Clean and hassle-free, an easy five million."
"'Clean and hassle-free,'" Kai echoed. "You really think it would be that easy?"
Tala's mouth grew thin. "No" He chewed on the inside of his bottom lip. "But best choose a gun and stay away."
"And if I don't?"
"You'll get minced like beef."
Kai breathed out through his nose, picking up the gloves and rising to his feet. "Do you know what the arena looks like?"
"Of course"
"Of course" Kai murmured, his gaze on black leather.
The chances of Kai getting minced like beef were low but he had no plans. Usually Kai liked to envision an upcoming fight in his head before getting into a ring with his opponent, and he chose to stick to that habit.
Stay in the moment. Stay alert and grounded.
He watched a few MMA fights starring Moses while in bed, up late on that same Monday, before a bizarre thought crept into his head while he was observing Youya on screen that dissolved the rest of the week into chaos for him.
Youya - Moses - was built like Hulk. Meat and muscle bulged off his frame as he prowled around the cage. Oily skin glistening under the harsh lights over the octagon. Bulky and breathing heavily.
A man like that wouldn't stand a chance against Kai.
"He'd probably go for a knife."
That knife wouldn't go through Kai. It would go through Moses, and his flesh would part around the blade like the Red Sea, blood spilling out and flowing over his hands - wrapped around the handle like they were around Viktor's neck, around his friend's gun.
Kai didn't believe in superstitions, but he believed in the darkness that resided in the recesses of the human mind.
He didn't think he could see the future, nor did he follow gut feelings, but he did believe in the haze of red that captured his brain and drove his body to act on autopilot.
The beast-like response he had to danger.
Moses wouldn't live if he approached Kai since he would be doing so with every intention to kill him.
He wouldn't live and Kai would go to hell right on earth.
Amhya was leaving school at the end of the semester as a high school graduate.
The week leading up to the fight was also supposed to be her last hurrah before she had to start seriously prepping for college entrance examinations.
Kai spent almost every night after Monday with her, wrapped in her arms and breathing in her sweet cider shampoo scent.
"Who will you fuck when I'm gone?" she asked while she was lying on his chest during one of those nights, chin on her folded hands, gazing up at him with a devious smile. "Someone from your grade?"
Her silken hair was threaded through his fingers. "I'll tell you if you tell me how you convinced your boyfriend to stay."
Amhya rolled her eyes and exhaled heavily. "It was no difficult feat. He's fucking someone else. He can't get mad at me for cheating on him when he's doing the same to me now, can he?"
"Who's he seeing?"
"Some bitch in 11th grade. She's not even hot."
Kai gave a soft snort.
"He hasn't brought it up yet. We're preferring to turn a blind eye to each other's side fucks. Your turn. What is she like?" She scooted up higher to see his face better, moving halfway off him and sinking an elbow into the mattress beside him. "Tell me about her," she said eagerly.
Kai had a type. From the get go it was obvious he had a type, but he wasn't the one to make this observation about himself. It was Yuriy. He'd thrust porn magazines at him and pointed at conventionally attractive girls and asked him if he thought they were pretty and most of the time he barely spared them a glance.
But when he started seeing Amhya who was arguably the hottest girl in the school, Yuriy had narrowed his eyes.
The catch wasn't ass or boobs or any other physical trait in particular. It was unavailability.
A certain type of personality. Sure he only went for the brunettes with soulful eyes and heart-shaped faces but his cock never got hard till he found someone who wasn't easily swayed by his looks.
If Amhya hadn't already had a boyfriend, Kai wouldn't have looked twice in her direction.
Or so Yuriy believed. Kai liked to think he had a thing for long legs.
"She is from my grade," he confirmed.
"Knew it," Amhya sing-songed happily, on her belly now, legs kicking in the air. "What's her name?"
Kai let his hand wander around her lower back. "Hinami"
"Aww, cute. I bet she's a virgin."
"She's...bookish. A busy person." His fingertips ran across her upper back.
"I see" Amhya hummed. "What do you think about her boobs?"
Kai raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean? That's the last thing on my mind."
"Is it?" she teased before bringing their lips together, laughing against him. "I know you like mine."
Kai never had an academic rival all his life till Julia Drugs-Are-My-Bitches Fernandez Rodriguez came along.
He never expected her to give him a run for his money when he got distracted by his 'extra' extracurricular activities and fell behind schoolwork.
The little marchioness was brainy, especially in Chemistry.
Kai was never the type to call out answers in class. The teachers called upon him for a response when the rest of the class failed to give the correct one. But now, there was no need for that anymore.
Julia never shut up. Her hand was always in the air, bent at the elbow and bored like she was waving to her fans.
She was so present to the point the teachers had to specifically ask, "Does anyone else other than Ms Fernandez know the answer to that question?"
And one of those times, for the first time ever, Kai put up his hand and gave a perfect answer voluntarily, prim and snide because she was pissing him off.
Julia grinned showing all her teeth when he met her eyes after.
"You don't like that I'm stealing your spotlight in Chemistry, bebé?" Julia asked, bumping his shoulder with hers as he made his way to the bathroom.
"What's there to dislike about finally getting to share a classroom with someone with at least half a brain?"
"Oof, I bet they don't like you."
"They like me plenty."
"With an ego like that? You better watch out. I might finally be the one to take that number one spot from you too."
"Marchionesss" Tala hissed in greeting when they walked right into him in the hallway full of students on break. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"Pollito, I told you I am not interested in your stringy dick," Julia replied, her eyes taking stock of Tala. "Neither is he," she said, tilting her head towards Kai. "So if you could please-"
Kai was a little late to disrupt the nasty fight that followed after that comment because he was confused by what she meant with the 'neither is he' line.
"You wanna say that again, Princess?" Tala pushed into her personal space, promising violence.
Julia rolled back her shoulders and tossed her head back, ready to exchange blows. "Which part? The stringy dick part or the 'I'm not interested' part or the- don't you fucking dare touch my mouth," Julia spat, hitting Tala's hand away from her when he tried to clamp it over his lips. "You like silencing girls, asshole? Touch me again and you will die!"
Kai intervened before Tala retaliated, grabbing her by the elbows and pulling her away from him. "Trust me, you do not want to get into a fist fight with him," he murmured into her ear as she struggled against his grip.
"He does not want to get into a fist fight with me!"
Bryan got there and physically put himself between a seething Tala and an enraged Julia.
"I don't know what they tell these little princesses in Spain, but you're way in over your head if you think you can take me, sweetheart."
"Yeah, you wanna try?"
"Cut it out, brats," Bryan chided. "The VP will get here if you don't stop."
"Calm down" Kai said to Julia when she tried to throw his hands off of her with a spirited "Let go of me!"
Kai didn't understand why the two were ready to bite each other's heads off after exchanging a seemingly harmless few words. He didn't understand why Julia who was relatively calm till then suddenly flipped out when Tala tried to seal her mouth. And he didn't understand why Tala even bothered to shut her up in the first place when he'd never made that move with anyone else he'd come to blows with before.
He failed to understand the situation till February 9th.
Blood poured from multiple cuts on his body, some deeper than others. His face, swollen like he'd been stung by bees and throbbing painfully, restricted his vision, black creeping in the corners shrinking it further.
He had been wrong. So very wrong, both about himself and Moses.
Underestimating his opponent was his first mistake, underestimating his own adaptability his second, and the third and final one: hesitation.
He was slowly beginning to lose consciousness, growing weaker with each passing second. The crowd chanted, "Do it! Do it! Finish him off!"
Moses held a serrated knife at Kai's throat, its jagged edge bare moments away from slicing his arteries open and erasing him off the face of the earth.
The only reason Kai was still breathing was because Youya was busy sitting on his chest and hyping the crowd up for the grand finale.
His death.
Kai had been expecting the fight to ultimately go in his favor when he entered the arena - a muddy square-shaped ring enclosed by stone walls and boards along the sides with barbed wires at the top. People leaned over wooden barriers a floor above them to watch the show below. The basement of the VIP club Ozone was fashioned like a cheap underground amphitheater.
Moses had been standing right in the middle of the field, expression blank and non-threatening when he suddenly moved and threw a switchblade at Kai's face. There had been no ceremonial gunshot sounding kick-off or any other form of announcements. It simply began and Kai barely managed to dodge that initial blow.
He knew then that this was going to be tougher than any challenge he'd faced so far.
After that first moment of shock, he recovered quickly and hid for cover behind the obstacles that were placed around the arena purely for the sake of prolonging the fight and drawing out the audience's twisted enjoyment.
Kai brought out the gun he'd stolen from Viktor's friend and braced himself. If Moses was going to throw blades, Kai was going to fire bullets. One into his foot. One into his shoulder.
All he had to do was focus. Kai wasn't the best shot, but he had good reaction time. He could pop around the boulder, quickly find where Moses was, take aim, pull the trigger and duck back down before Moses threw another knife.
The first shot did not meet it's mark. He missed. He missed because he hesitated at the very last moment.
When he stepped around the boulder, and spotted Moses a few feet away who was slowly making his way towards him, Kai was taken aback by the lack of adrenaline in his body.
The last two times he'd been in a life or death situation his mind had been a buzz of static. His body racing and gearing up for action. For blood.
He remained logical. Rational. Oddly so. There was fear but he wasn't consumed by it.
Kai looked at Moses, a man, living and breathing, and he couldn't fucking shoot.
He hesitated for longer than a second, and it cost him greatly.
Moses hurled and this time he hit his target. Under his ribs, on the left.
Pain flashed through him. Kai fired the gun. The bullet went wide, missing him by a whole foot.
He fell back behind the boulder and examined the wound. The blade was thin and about four inches long, halfway inside of him. He touched a shaking hand to the handle and inhaled sharply when it sent a shock of agony through him.
He was scared now.
Moses quietly prowled around the obstacle shielding Kai and suddenly leaped on top of him, knocking his gun away.
The following fight was frantic. Rapid. Kai punched and kicked, techniques out the window. Operating on instinct alone. The knife in his side restricted his attempts to fight back sufficiently. Moses hit him on his jaw, his nose, all the soft parts of him.
At one point he twisted the knife in his gut and Kai wheezed. Having never felt that kind of pain in his life ever before.
He'd been beaten to within an inch of his life.
He had a blade at his windpipe now. Blood seeping from a cut on his eyebrow into his right eye.
He was motionless. His body was screaming in pain. Moses barely paid any attention to him, assuming him almost dead.
Too far gone to pose anymore threats.
Kai turned his head gingerly. The gun lay a few feet away. One last bullet left in the magazine.
He had his arms pinned under Youya's weight. A hand lying still on the mud. The other at the bottom of the blade buried in his side, fingers pinching around it, getting ready to pull it out, inch by torturous inch.
When he woke up much later after the fight, he didn't remember the pain that he had put himself through in those final moments.
It felt like pulling his soul out, bit by bit. His consciousness swimming towards an almost complete darkness each time he managed to draw an inch and hold himself still.
His heart thudded, loud and thunderous in his ears, cutting out the cacophony of the crowd. He kept his attention on the knife at his throat and not on the knife he was prising out of himself.
He wondered, briefly, if the boys were panicking. If Yuriy was scared. Sergei had warned him not to do this after all. He'd been so fucking cruel asking him to choose the way he did. He wondered if they were still watching, if they wanted to jump in and help him. Or if they still trusted him to pull through.
This close to death. His mother would be heartbroken if he gave up. Heartbroken and furious.
This close to death. All of his efforts would have been in vain. All those hours he'd sacrificed.
He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let down the boys, or his mother, or himself. He'd made a promise. He was going to keep it.
Kai stayed as still as he could. To not draw anyone's attention to his hand. Not Moses'. Not the spectators'.
It felt the way it had to have his skin burned off his palm, slow and agonizing, one inch at a time, yet only a hundred times worse. His brain melting with each second that passed.
When the blade finally slipped free and fell to the ground by his hip, Kai felt like he found God. Moses didn't notice.
Someone in the crowd did however. They yelled at him. Youya couldn't hear over the din of the rest of their screams.
Kai raised his blurry eyes to Moses' face even as they stung and his swollen lids protested. His face was huge, red - almost purplish with excitement and exertion, burning with the bright glow of victory.
Kai's hand closed over the handle of the knife.
In for an inch, in for a mile.
Moses didn't see it coming till it was too late. With the last of his strength, Kai reared up with an animalistic snarl and thrust the blade into Youya's back.
Stars burst behind his lids as something snapped in him. Later he would learn that it was a cracked rib breaking further like a twig.
Youya screamed. The blade at his own throat cutting a superficially thin slice into his skin as Moses jerked all of a sudden, trickling blood.
Kai pushed him off of himself, groaning and out of breath. He raised himself up to his hands and knees, scrambling rabidly forward for the gun. Charged with adrenaline and deliriousness and a crazy desire to fucking live.
Moses clamped down on his leg when he was only a few centimeters away.
He fell flat on his stomach and saw black through his open eyes. He threw his hand out, grasping at mud and grains before his fingers curled over the cool metal of the gun.
Moses dragged him. Halfway blind, raw with pain, and feral, Kai twisted around and pulled the trigger.
BOOM! And the lights went out.
He was unconscious for eighteen hours after the fight. Eighteen hours in the dark before he came to with every nerve in his body aching and Yuriy's face swimming into clarity.
"You're a millionaire, baby," he said, straight white teeth gleaming in his mouth, slightly sharp and pointy at the ends.
"What?" asked Kai, struggling to fight the fog in his brain and recall details.
"You won."
Kai stared at him, silence hanging thick between them in the hospital room. He had a barrage of questions on his tongue begging to be asked but the first one he chose was: "Is he dead?"
The time between - the time Yuriy took to process his words and answer them seemed too long though it barely took a fraction of a second.
It stretched. His head felt split.
"No" said Tala, happy, teasing grin in place, all jagged, all familiar. "He's alive."
"He's alive?" Kai echoed, slow to belief.
"He's alive" His grin grew till it ran from ear to ear, looking at him expectantly.
Kai felt a massive burden lift off his chest as those words sunk in. He fell back asleep almost immediately, exhausted and relieved, finally slumbering peacefully after months of restlessness.
They waited till he had nothing more than light bruises and freshly healed scars on his body to celebrate the big win. Kai went all out. Amhya had entrance prep and was busy so he was compelled to choose a new face to kiss. A new person to sleep with. That studious brunette he'd had an eye on for a while now wasn't exactly a partying type, and so she was absent.
He needed to find someone hot and wild because he was feeling hot and wild.
He had been bedridden for days and forced to walk with a limp for weeks. He was finally able to move his body without having to brace for a stab of pain. He wanted to celebrate that more than anything else.
But also, cheating death for the third time made him feel a bit like a king. So why should Kai pick one? When he can have all?
Anyone and everyone that would have him. And he knew they wanted him. It was in the way almost a dozen pair of eyes in the room snagged on him when he took off his shirt. Moving away from conversations and partners to take a peek at his ripped torso.
He did another line because it made his tongue loose and his smiles easy. He slipped in between the dancing bodies in the center of the room, and everyone was dancing. Everyone.
Not a wallflower in sight except for may be Yuriy which was weird. Why was Yuriy being a wallflower when he could get in here with him and press himself against strangers?
Strangers indeed, because most of his class usually gave a wide berth to Kai, either too intimidated by his brains or his fists or his body. He could tell which one scared them most when they met his eyes and looked away almost immediately.
But they weren't afraid of him now. Not when alcohol and coke were in their veins and their hormones were all over the place. Touching and rubbing and kissing whoever they could.
He kissed a bottle of Yamazaki and spun on his axis. The room rotated around him.
The bass was low. The temperature was high. And the energy was fucking feverish.
The beats were on his skin. Thumping in his head, in his chest. Shooting into his hips.
Hands caressed along his sides.
He was catching the last droplets of the beer on his tongue when he saw a girl. Feline brown eyes and dark red perfect bow-shaped lips. Her hair was in her face. Hanging heavy with sweat. Her aura was fucking magnetic. She came up to his eyes. Her head was level with his eyes. He felt drawn. He moved the hair away from her face, away from her ear and spoke into it, "What's your name?"
"Eto" Her voice was melodic. He loved it.
"Eto?"
She bit her bottom lip and grinned up at him when he drew back to look at her.
"That's a fancy name."
"Thanks"
He felt Yuriy watching. His skin prickled. "Wanna dance with me, Eto?" he asked, offering a hand like a gentleman.
She nodded, wicked smile glowing on her face, and slipped her hand into his. He twirled her around and drew her against him. Her back to his front and dropped his mouth to her ear, letting his breath simply graze her.
The executive suite at the Four Seasons was vibrating with untamed teenage hormones.
Yet Yuriy couldn't fucking stop ogling. What the fuck was his problem?
"I'll be right back," Kai left a super high Eto on a couch an hour or four hours later and approached Yuriy who was still standing by the far wall, a drink in his hand now.
Yet one arm crossed over his chest and a pinched expression on his face like he bit into something sour.
"Did somebody piss in your drink?" asked Kai when he reached him. "What's that face?" He touched his thin paper-white cheek.
Tala turned his chin away from his fingers, rolling his eyes. He took a sip of his drink instead of answering.
"Why aren't you celebrating?" Kai had to stand a little close to be heard. Yuriy smelled like sweat. A strong musky odor.
He shook his head, tiny, aborted shakes, meeting Kai's eyes. He was noticeably pale even though he was not sick. "I'm not feeling it," he said at last, his voice husky, his lips twisting.
Kai nodded, understanding, taking the glass from him. "What's this about? Is this about the fight?" He saw the denial on his features. "'Cause I saw you looking. You've been staring at me all night. Are you scared something's going to happen to us? To me?"
"You weren't there," spoke Yuriy, his words low. Muted. His gaze smouldering. "You didn't see yourself. You were almost fucking dead. You looked dead when I got there."
"Whatever happened to 'I trust you', 'we need that five million?'"
Yuriy locked his jaw. A muscle shifting as he did so. He saw him biting back words.
"Hey" Kai tapped his cheek. "I'm here, aren't I? I fucking survived. Focus on that." He thrust the glass back into his hands. "You sound like fucking Sergei."
Tala rolled his eyes at him so hard Kai bet it hurt. He watched him exhale like he was shrugging the weight of the world off his shoulders and knock back his drink. "There, there," Kai patted his shoulder consolingly, condescendingly.
Yuriy pushed his hand off and peeled his shirt off of himself, flinging it across the room like it was the cause of all the trouble in his life. "Let's get this party started, shall we?" he asked, grinning at him.
Kai snorted.
An hour later he was snorting again to keep the buzz going and now he was drenched in sweat.
The crowd in the room was thinning and the suite was trashed. There was trash everywhere. Streamers and toilet paper and plastic cups rolling around.
Some people were falling asleep on the couches and on the cushions on the floor, but most were smashing or making out, the decent ones retreating to other rooms in the hotel for some privacy.
Kai stood back up, sniffing to clear the burn in his nostril. The room was thick with the haze of sweat and sex.
He caught Yuriy watching him across the room for the four hundredth time and a thought tickled in his mind. In his gut.
It sent goosebumps down his skin.
Caused excitement to dance under his ribs.
Kai picked his way across stray limbs and wrappers and smashed glass and made it to Yuriy, who was leaning against the wall. Shirtless. Pink and purple lights gliding across his torso.
His expression was blank first save for the heat in his gaze, then he caught a glimpse of confusion pass his features before he closed the distance between them.
Electricity crackled between them.
Yuriy tasted like the beer they'd both been drinking. His heart raced.
Somewhere in his head he was thinking, "I knew. I knew, I knew, I knew it would feel like this."
Tala made a sound at the back of his throat - something raw and greedy - and Kai pulled away, smiling, smirking, thoughts firing this way and that. He took Yuriy's arm in his hand and pulled.
He looked dazed and puzzled and the slightest bit insecure as he followed him.
Drawing him away from the wall and toward the bedroom in the suite, Kai made sure to stop by the couch and grab Eto on the way as well. She stumbled on her feet as Kai - a different hand in each of his - entered the bedroom and let the door shut close behind the three of them.
"Do you remember anything from last night?" Yuriy was asking.
"No" Yes, he remembered. He remembered being between them both. He remembered Yuriy's lips on his shoulder, his neck, Eto's tongue in his mouth.
He remembered the tightness around his own cock as Eto hovered between the two of them and let them both inside of her at the same time.
He remembered the pleasure, the roiling, mind-numbing pleasure that took over him as he lay on his back on the bed, Eto plastered to his chest, her sighs in his ear, her strangled breath on his neck, and Yuriy's tongue in his mouth as his fingers interlocked with his on the pillows.
"Not a single thing."
"I can recall a few details but most of it's a blur."
"Mm" Kai met Yuriy's eyes over the lip of his coffee mug, sitting across from him on a couch, morning light filtering in through the tall windows.
He had an ice pack held to his forehead, boots up on the sofa like the bastard he was.
He met his eyes and something passed between them and he knew that they both remembered everything but it was hard to face it in the light of day.
So he let it hang, let it wait. That conversation could happen on another day.
That day, however, came sooner than he expected.
A/N: I know it's frustrating but it had to be cut. It was getting fucking long. See you soon! Hope you had a fun time reading. I'm having a fucking blast if you couldn't tell.
