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[mistleto-3]

I’m a terrible fandom-using human, and my mental health has been kind of shaky for like a billion years lmao but recently it’s affected my ability to write, and to keep up with fandom in general, hence the quietness on this blog. 

I’m attempting to get back into writing again, but just in case this blog gets deleted or smth because of the Tumblr Purge, y’all can find all my writing on AO3, and you can find my fandom ramblings on my new twitter @deathbymikotata

[mikototsu-trash]

I rly wanna write a short fic for Rikio’s bday but I have no ideas so if anyone has any Kamamoto-centric/yatamoto prompts pls! send them to me asap!

[mistleto-3]

so I’m currently Dying™ because my coursework deadlines are all within the next week, and my mental illnesses have been kicking my ass, but I’m not abandoning this blog lmao I’ve just not had the mental energy to write recently, but I’m hoping that once I’m done with my university work for this academic year and your bitch gets back into therapy, I’ll have the time and energy to write again. So I’m back at it again with some tentative fic plans

I’m not dropping Awakening, and I wanna get back onto updating it weekly as soon as I’m able

I have plans to finish a munatotsu oneshot I had intended to write for rarepair week

I also want to finish an izurei fic I started writing for rarepair week. 

I’ve got plans to write a mikototsu oneshot for mermay because I really miss writing mikototsu

I have three requests in my inbox I do plan to get around to eventually once I’ve finished my rarepair week stuff: one sarufem!mi prompt, one misaru nsfw prompt, and one izuseri prompt. 

thank u for not unfollowing me even tho I’ve been too depressed to write recently lmao

[mistleto-3]

Awakening: Part 11

When another crisis looms, Mikoto has to learn to navigate a world of Kings as a regular man.

AU in which Mikoto and Tatara survived the Colourless King incident.

Pairing: Mikoto/Tatara

1,639 words. CW for canon-typical violence, mentions of depression and other mental health issues. 

Previous part | All parts | Next part to be added

AO3 | Ko-Fi

Later that day, Tatara had perked up somewhat after his panic attack once Anna had reassured him that she understood and didn’t feel let down by the way he’d reacted, though the hot mug of tea that Rikio had pressed into his palms and hovered around him until he’d finished drinking it had also helped. Once Tatara felt a bit more stable, Mikoto and Tatara headed out once more, and shortly after found themselves outside the front gates of Sceptre 4’s headquarters just as another guest was leaving.

“Yatogami-san, are you well?” Tatara asked.

Kuroh was kneeling just outside the gate, petting a black cat, and he looked up at the sound of his name. “I’m okay thank you. Yourselves?” he asked, fidgeting slightly. It seemed he still wasn’t quite sure what to make of the old Red King after the turbulence of their first meeting a year ago.

“Okay, thanks,” Tatara replied, kneeling down to scratch the cat under the chin, but before any more pleasantries could be exchanged, a deep voice from inside the courtyard caught their attention.

“Kuroh!”

Kuroh’s head snapped around at the voice. “Yes?”

The speaker, a tall man wearing Sceptre 4’s uniform and red glasses with an ageing scar across the bridge of his nose, seemed abashed at the mistake. His left arm appeared to be missing.

“Oh, sorry, I was calling at the cat…”

“Ah, Kuroh as in ‘black cat’,” Kuroh said, picking up the creature and handing it to the Blue clansman, and then bowing and taking his leave.

It was then that the tall man acknowledged the other two men present. “Am I correct in assuming you are Suoh Mikoto and Totsuka Tatara?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with your name,” Tatara replied.

“Zenjou Gouki. I work in the documents office.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Do you have business here?”

Before Tatara could respond, Seri called from behind: “Zenjou-san… Oh, apologies, I didn’t see you there,” she said, acknowledging the visitors. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No. We came to speak to Munakata,” Mikoto said.

“He left not long ago to visit Mihashira Tower… Did you by any chance come to speak to him about his Sword of Damocles?” Seri asked.

“Yeah,” Mikoto said.

“…I’m worried,” she admitted. “It’s worth you trying to talk some sense into him. He only left a few minutes ago; you should be able to catch up to him.”

“Okay. Thank you,” Tatara said, bowing politely before he and Mikoto turned back to follow Reisi, leaving Seri and Gouki talking in a quiet, serious tone among themselves.

An odd sensation of cold nostalgia fell over Tatara as they stood in the shadow of Mihashira Tower – he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about being back here. It was a place that held a lot of mixed memories, but he supposed if he could go back to the Hirasaka building, then this place wasn’t so bad. Still, he distracted himself reading his messages as the pair ascended in the elevator.

“Kusanagi-san says that Neko is at Homra with Anna right now. Apparently Neko asked if Anna would be okay, and that Yatogami-san mentioned something about the Red power being dangerous, but Anna told the story of one time she was with me as I came to calm you down after a fight. It was before we got together, I think, and you said something like ‘destruction is destruction, there is no meaning,’ and I said something like ‘power is a monster, but if you have something nearby you to protect, then it can become your friend.’ I think she’s taken that to heart, you know.” Tatara paused. “I feel like, even if we can’t be fighters, we’ve protected her, and now we’ve become one of the things she wants to protect. I guess that makes me feel better about earlier. She said the pretty red is her friend, because she has everyone at Homra she wants to protect.”

A flicker of a smile twitched the corner of Mikoto’s lips. As gruff as his exterior was, if you were adept at reading him, it was easy to tell he was proud of Anna.

“And apparently Misaki made this big speech about how he wants to be someone Anna can rely on, too. Anna offered Neko a safe place to stay at Homra, but she declined. I’m glad Anna has a friend who’s a girl and around her own age – there’s a bit of a gap, but it’s closer than she’s had before. Makes a nice change from a group of miscreant young men…” It was at that point Tatara realised he was babbling.

“You nervous?” Mikoto raised an eyebrow.

“I dunno how I feel about being here. I imagine it’s weirder for you than it is for me.”

Mikoto merely shrugged. “More concerned about Munakata doing something stupid.”

The gentle ping of a bell announced that they’d arrived at the top floor, and the pair stepped out of the elevator and towards the Slates’ chamber. When the doors slid open, Reisi was standing in the centre of the room with his hands folded neatly behind their back, as though expecting their arrival.

“Suoh, Totsuka, this is an unusual place to find the two of you.”

“We came looking for you,” Mikoto said.

“Is there something I can help you with?”

“Your Sword’s cracking.” Mikoto’s reply was blunt.

“Surely you have not come to lecture me? That certainly would be a turn of the tables.”

“We consider you our friend. We’re worried about you – we just want to know what’s causing all this,” Tatara said gently. “Your clan is worrying too.”

“My personal affairs do not concern you.”

“With all due respect, if your Weissman level is failing just as all this trouble is starting to kick up, it could affect our clan, so in this case it does concern us.” When Reisi didn’t reply, Tatara hazarded: “You seem stressed. And you come here a lot – you’re worried about the extra burden of protecting the Slates, aren’t you?”

Reisi maintained his cool demeanour, but Tatara noticed him shift his weight slightly, as though he was uncomfortable with how near to the mark Tatara had gotten just from reading his expression.

“Ya say I can’t lecture you, but seein’ as I’ve been there and I know how much it sucks, I can tell ya sometimes I wish I’d’a listened to you all that time,” Mikoto said.

“I never thought you would admit to that.”

“Feels a bit shit when your 12 year old kid has more power than you,” Mikoto said lightly.

“I know this must all be overwhelming, all the responsibility of the extra trouble, and taking care of the Slates, but remember nobody expects you to be able to deal with this perfectly, or to become the Gold King – he had more resources and more manpower and his fingers in a lot more pies than you, so just because your best might not be the same as his, it’s not a fair contest so there’s no worth in comparing yourself to him,” Tatara said confidently.

“Ya’d do well to follow your own advice, rather than follow in my footsteps. Reckless doesn’t suit you.”

Reisi’s brows twitched, seeming somewhat vexed at being ganged up on. “I am cognisant of my own ability, but regardless of my mindfulness and delegation and prioritising, there are simply not enough hours in the day. It is normal under this high-stress scenario for one to show a small amount of strain, and it is not worth becoming concerned over. I assure you you have no cause for concern, and your meddling is unnecessary.”

“We ain’t judging. I’m not exactly in a position to,” Mikoto reminded.

“Sometimes delegating isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to ask for help, or accept it when it’s offered, so if there’s anything you need…” Tatara began.

“The Red Clan has nothing of use to offer to me.” Reisi interrupted.

“Well, if that changes, you know where to find us. I always say power is meant to protect, and sometimes the best way to protect is to know when it isn’t possible to go it alone,” Tatara said.

“Or to know when to say when,” Mikoto added.

“No offence intended, but the two of you do not have any experience in the kind of work I am undertaking, and you are oversimplifying and underestimating the situation. Besides, I already have help; the Gold Rabbits are currently working under my command in this area to help safeguard the Slates until such time the Gold King is able to return to his duties.”

“I know what it’s like to have my Sword fall apart. I know you would’a killed me last year if you needed to. That’s gotta be a burden.”

“It is somewhat late to be considering that. Whilst I appreciate your concern, your intervention is not necessary. I have the situation in control.”

“Well, if you need to let off steam, come for a drink or something. You know where to find us,” Tatara offered.

Reisi merely bowed respectfully, and the other two took that as their signal to leave. As they stepped back into the elevator, Tatara let out a sigh.

“Well that could have gone better.”

“Didn’t expect much else from him,” Mikoto shrugged.

“Well, at least he knows people are onto him now, and he can’t keep pretending things are fine. And the offer of help is open should he choose to take it. That’s all we can do.”

“Mm,” Mikoto agreed, sliding his hand into Tatara’s back pocket as he did so, but he still seemed somewhat unsettled. Their friend’s irritation at their intervention seemed to have hit a nerve, and there seemed to be more cause for concern about Reisi than they’d first anticipated.

[mistleto-3]

Unpuzzled

Something about Reisi’s enigmatic new clansman has him fascinated in the most frustrating of ways. 

Pairing: Munakata Reisi/Sceptre 4!Totsuka Tatara

6,126 words. Smut, NSFW. 

Originally intended as a submission for @k-rarepair-week day 5, Colours/Clans but depression is a bitch.

Thank you to @saruhiko-bb and @shtsupan who gave me much inspiration and many ideas for these two!!

AO3 | Ko-Fi

Tatara wasn’t the kind of person Reisi expected to have on his Special Forces Squad. If he was totally honest, Reisi quickly came to regret giving in to the boy’s pestering to be recruited, but he supposed he hadn’t had much choice in the matter. Since Reisi had rescued Tatara from a strain attack, he had been fascinated with clans and Kings, but especially with Reisi. And once he had his heart set on joining that world, it seemed nothing would deter him. At first, Reisi believed the Blue Clan didn’t have much use for him – perhaps as a member of the administrative department, but not as a clansman, so he’d tried to direct him elsewhere. He regretted that no new Red King had been crowned yet after the demise of Kagutsu Genji, or the boy might have made a good fit amongst that kind of crowd, but at the end of the day, there were only three clans recruiting: Gold, Green, and Blue, and Tatara had no interest in the other two.

Eventually, in the face of Tatara’s unending persistence, Reisi had no other option but to give in. If nothing else, there was something intriguing about the boy – Reisi was normally so adept at reading people, but there seemed to be something about Tatara that Reisi simply couldn’t place. If anything, Tatara seemed better at reading Reisi than Reisi was at reading him, and it was disconcerting; Reisi had never met someone who made him so quietly uncomfortable, but it made him oddly fascinating, like some specimen Reisi had never come across before.

However, Reisi quickly began to regret his pet project in bringing this boy into his clan when it became clear he had no apparent combat skills. He wasn’t a fighter in the slightest – that much was clear from the get-go, and unlike others who hadn’t joined the clan with natural ability, people like Takeru for instance, he’d had no joy in trying to learn through practice, no matter how much time he spent practicing with the other clansmen, or how many nights he stayed late in the dojo. There came a point when Reisi began to fear for Tatara’s safety should he ever get involved in a fight. His aura, for whatever reason, was just so much weaker than everyone else’s.

But then his true talent began to emerge when he ended up in a combat situation completely by accident – there was something about his presence that made enemies let their guard down and made them much easier for the other clansmen to subdue, and whilst he wasn’t very adept at using his powers for fighting, he had a sort of precision in their use that surpassed anyone else Reisi had known, and he was soon put to excellent use gathering intel.

But he was also personable in a way that Reisi had never encountered before – he got on exceptionally well with everybody else across all departments of the clan, and even Saruhiko, who usually reacted to friendly advances from his fellow clansmen the way a cat reacted to a dog, seemed to tolerate him. Especially unusual was Tatara’s desire to befriend Reisi. Most of the rest of the clan only reluctantly indulged Reisi’s interest in games, and if they engaged in his wild team building activities at all, they would only do so begrudgingly, but Tatara seemed just as enthusiastic about them as Reisi. It was more than refreshing, to say the least, to have someone actually seem to care for once, and it came with the added bonus that his enthusiasm just about whipped the rest of the special forces into mustering some meek amount of interest in the activities Reisi organised.

Reisi had expected that getting to know Tatara and getting used to having him around would have lessened his intrigue in him, and he over time would simply become another of his many clansmen, but if anything, being in close proximity to him so often simply made him more fascinating. Reisi always loved a good puzzle, and Tatara certainly was a puzzle. He never got any easier to read, and it was frustrating beyond belief to try and figure out what it was he was thinking. What made it worse was that Tatara seemed to know somehow the effect he had on Reisi, and he had this air of smugness about him whenever he picked Reisi’s emotions up off his face as easily as picking a stray bit of lint off his sleeve, knowing that Reisi couldn’t do the same to him. Nobody could, but then again, nobody else was as absorbed by it as Reisi.

Reisi ended up developing a sort of captivation with his newest clansman. He was determined to leave no puzzle unsolved, and finding out what it was that made Tatara tick seemed to be the ultimate puzzle. The best way of doing that had seemed to be simply spending time around him, creating an opportunity to study his mannerisms. They already spent a fair amount of time alone together, seeing as most of the rest of the clansmen would avoid their King when they were able to, but Tatara seemed to genuinely enjoy his company. But no matter how much time they were in one another’s presence, Reisi never seemed to get any closer to uncovering the things that went on behind that perpetually sunshiny smile. If anything, his thoughts only became more of a mystery. Still, it came with the added benefit of spending time with him, which Reisi had to admit he enjoyed more than he had anticipated, even if Tatara occasionally came out with things that seemed to hit a little too close to the mark, as though he was reading Reisi’s thoughts straight out of his head. Like one evening, the two of them were alone in the bath house – Tatara was the only clansman who seemed comfortable bathing with his King, and out of the blue as they soaked in the hot water, Tatara piped up:

“You know, I get this impression that you get lonely, but I know the other clansmen care about you, even if they aren’t quite as enthusiastic about it as I am. They care, but not in a play board games they aren’t super interested in way. It’s more of an… ‘I’d follow you into battle and lay down my life for you no matter what’ sort of way. But I’m glad you let me join Sceptre 4 after all so that I could keep you company. You seem happier now that you’ve let me in a little, like… you needed someone who cared about you in a ‘genuinely enjoys playing board games with you’ sort of way.”

Reisi blinked in surprise at the impromptu psychoanalysis, and Tatara merely smiled his little satisfied smile, and then climbed out of the bath. Reisi watched him as he got up, just about managing to keep his expression smooth rather than gawping in shock as he had nearly done initially. He wasn’t fully aware of the fact he was staring first; he was too dumbfounded, not only by how out of the blue Tatara’s little hypothesis was, but also by how infuriatingly accurate it was.

Reisi only realised too late that whilst he was staring, his co-worker was climbing out of the water naked as the day he was born, and he caught the full view of his bare body. Reisi had always been peripherally aware that Tatara was quite pretty and looked good in his uniform, but then again the same applied to pretty much everybody in Sceptre 4. But seeing him like this was completely different – the water droplets glistening against the slight tan of his skin, his slender, almost effeminate figure, long legs and narrow waist, the grace in the way he moved as he climbed out of the water, the curve of his hips and backside, the dark gold of his damp hair sticking to the skin of his neck, the beauty mark at the top of his thigh…

Reisi almost couldn’t drink the sight in fast enough as Tatara padded over to where he’d left his towel, bending down in the most delicious way to pick it up and wrap himself up in it. Reisi had never so quickly gone from being mostly unaware of how attractive someone was to being completely cognisant of it with every scrap of grey matter he had, but now he’d noticed, it was all he could think about. He just about managed to avert his eyes before Tatara turned around so it wasn't completely obvious he'd been ogling his employee. Maybe this was why his other clansmen didn't like to bathe with him, but it wasn't like he'd ever done this before...

"You okay?" Tatara hummed, interrupting Reisi's fretting.

"I am fine, why do you ask?"

"You seem a little flushed, maybe you should get out of the water if it's getting too hot." There was a look, a subtle mischievousness in Tatara's caring smile that suggested he knew more than he was letting on, and if Reisi refuted him, he would only be adding further evidence to his suspicions. It was already humiliating enough that Reisi had actually blushed at the sight of his naked body, as if the Fourth and Blue King was the type to get bashful or flustered at such an inopportune moment, as if he didn't have enough self-control, but God only knew what Tatara would think if Reisi turned down this perfectly reasonable explanation.

Reisi was almost ashamed to have been played in this way, but he couldn't back down now lest he arouse even more suspicion, so he got to his feet and climbed out of the water, watching Tatara's reaction. Of course, it was somewhat difficult to concentrate on the subtle tells of his body language when he had that innocent look on his face, his slender form wrapped up adorably in a fluffy white towel, but at the same time, so much of his chest and arms and legs were still visible that Reisi couldn't keep his imagination from wandering.

One thing, Reisi was certain about, though, and that was the fact that Tatara's eyes dropped from Reisi's face as he climbed the steps out of the water, dropped very distinctly to look him up and down approvingly. It sort of made Reisi feel better and sort of made him even more confused all at once.

 And so, they began to dance around one another. Everything Tatara did and said around Reisi for the next few weeks seemed to be imbued with some hidden meaning that Reisi couldn't quite place no matter how many times he played the moment over and over again in his mind as he fell asleep. Every glance, every smile, every ever-so-slightly prolonged moment of eye contact, every flutter of his eyelashes and musical giggle and knowing smirk. It was like some practical joke was being played and Reisi was the only person not in on it. It was frustrating and fascinating and magnetising all at once, like there was something invisible drawing Tatara toward him, and Reisi was torn between resisting for the sake of his pride, or giving in and seeing what exactly it was leading him toward.

Reisi had to admit, he was somewhat embarrassed by all this. As someone who prided himself in his unflappable demeanour and his ability to coolly read and assess any situation, feeling like he was being toyed with was foreign to him. But even more so was his odd attraction to his clansman. Reisi had never really had crushes before - he had never had the time, and yet there was something about that pretty, delicate face and all the mystery in the mind behind it that made him care. It was almost an obsession, and no matter how much he didn't want to get drawn into this, no matter how much he believed his enchantment with Tatara was an irrational waste of time, he also couldn't quite quash the compulsion to get to the bottom of whatever it was that was making him feel like this.

At first, he attributed its cause as purely sexual - after all, it was triggered by seeing the man naked, and yes, Tatara was almost objectively sexually attractive, but it didn't take long for Reisi to pick holes in the entire flimsy line of argument. It was true he would have been kidding if he said he wasn't aware that Tatara was heartbreakingly pretty, almost swanlike in his slender grace, captivating and angelic, but also supple and sexy in the most irritating of ways. And yes, Reisi was very very aware at all times of how good his legs looked in the slim-fitting trousers of his uniform, how his coat accentuated the curve of his waist. But even outside of the more animalistic attraction that Reisi couldn't deny, there was again, even stronger, that emotional magnetism, the intellectual desire to pick him apart like a puzzle, to figure him out, to solve him.

But of course, neither of them would acknowledge all this was taking place beneath the surface, so the dance continued in playful, searching glances and brushes of the backs of their hands in hallways, until the quiet effervescent tension between them finally bubbled over.

One of the issues with Tatara from a professional standpoint was that he was reckless, and he would often disregard his own safety for the sake of a successful outcome, or to protect a comrade, or sometimes because he seemingly forgot all about the concept of caution, and then he would dismiss the concern of others with the wave of a hand and a "don't sweat it, it all worked out okay."

Reisi definitely did 'sweat it', however, and he found himself lecturing his clansman in his office for what must have been the sixth or seventh time since he joined Sceptre 4 about showing more regard for his personal safety.

Reisi was vaguely cognisant that he had some social habits that people found abnormal, and he struggled to comprehend concepts like personal space - it was just never something that bothered him, and he didn't quite understand why it bothered other people. Especially in moments of high tension, he would often creep too close to whoever he was talking to, and needless to say Reisi was rather tense after the man he cared about more than he’d like to admit had just had yet another brush with death. His face was barely a few inches from Tatara's as he spoke, close enough that he could feel his clansman's breath on his lips, but he didn’t pay it any mind; he was too busy being irritated by Tatara’s recklessness.

"It is imperative that you start to place a higher priority on your own safety and well-being. Not only could you injure yourself permanently, or even get yourself killed, you could also put your colleagues in danger as they endeavour to rescue you. You of all people should be aware of the limitations to your power and the fact that they likely will not be enough to save you should you find yourself in another situation such as this with no backup. If there are any more repeats of you getting yourself into these predicaments again, I will have to take disciplinary action. Am I understood?"

Tatara nodded with an innocent smile, but beneath the expression was a glimmer of… something. Whatever it was, it was devious, but Reisi couldn’t place it. Yes, he was annoyed that his lecture didn’t at all seem to have impressed upon Tatara the seriousness of the situation, but more annoying was the impenetrability of that saccharine, almost flirty smile. Reisi almost wondered if Tatara was putting himself in danger on purpose to get Reisi worked up so he could do this, whatever ‘this’ was.

Partly out of a professional desire not to put any pressure on his employees whom he had a position of power over, Reisi had resolved not to make any advances on Tatara, but Tatara, of course, had made no such commitment, and Reisi had been seeing these glimmers more and more often in recent weeks: suggestive smiles, covert and tantalising, a sparkle of mischief in his gaze as he met Reisi’s. But nothing had ever come of it…

Before Reisi had a chance to finish the thought, Tatara had risen onto his tiptoes and brushed his lips against his King’s, so briefly it was over in barely a heartbeat, and then he sank back down again with a smile.

"I'm sorry to make you worry about me, Captain."

Reisi’s anger evaporated instantly, and he found himself devoid of any ability to reply. The quick, chaste kiss had stolen his ability to string so much as two syllables together. Munakata Reisi was never speechless. Except when Tatara did things like this. And then all the composure and decorum of a King would crumble to dust in his palms without Reisi being able to do a single thing to prevent it.

Tatara simply skipped from the room after that, with a cheerful call of "see you later!" as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred.

In the following days, the kiss plagued Reisi. Every time he glanced at his colleague, every time they were even in the same room, Reisi's pulse would quicken perceptibly, and he found himself distracted, less coherent than usual, absorbed by the vivid recollection of the sensation. As surprised as he'd been, Reisi still managed to emblazon every bit of the moment into his memory, from the feather-light brush of Tatara's soft, plush lips against his own, to the gentle touch of Tatara's hand on his waist to steady himself as he tiptoed, the brilliance of that playful smile, the whisper of his breath, the floral scent of his cologne. The moment consumed him, until he'd overthought it so much that he was barely even sure it really happened. He dreamed about Tatara and daydreamed about Tatara and he was infuriated by Tatara and it seemed he couldn't go five minutes without thinking about him. It was only through sheer resoluteness of will that he didn't allow it to affect his work because for fuck's sake he was the Fourth and Blue King Munakata Reisi and he wasn't about to mess that up over a boy.

In a way, he resented how much of an effect Tatara had on him. He wasn’t used to feeling this way; he’d never had anything like this before. It was maddening, and yet he found himself craving Tatara’s company, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the infernal boy knew the effect he had on him, and he was teasing him on purpose to draw this out, to gloat.

At the epiphany that that may be his motive, Reisi concluded that he needed to launch a counterattack. At the present time, Tatara was the one making all the moves and therefore he had the upper hand, so he needed to be unseated, to be taken down a peg and have that smug little smirk wiped off his face. Reisi resolved immediately that he needed to reassert himself, and allow this game to go on no longer. So at the end of the working day a few days after the kiss (that had felt like a few weeks), he summoned Tatara to his office, and waited patiently for the door to open, his fingertips pressed together patiently as he rested his elbows on his desk.

After a few minutes, there was a knock, and Reisi invited him in. He got to his feet and walked around his desk to stand in front of it as his clansman entered the room. “Lock it,” he said, emulating the way he spoke when he was giving orders as a King. He thought he saw Tatara smirk a little at the command as he obeyed.

“What is it, Captain?”

“I believe you know,” he replied, holding out his hand and gesturing Tatara to come closer, narrowing his eyes at the sultry faux virtue in his clansman’s tone.

Tatara crossed the room slowly, laying his hand into Reisi’s outstretched one and letting out an adorable gasp of surprise as Reisi yanked him into his arms, pulling him in and pressing him firmly against his chest as he lay his hands on his waist. There was a brief pause as Tatara stared up at him through his lashes – for a moment, just a moment, his shock wiped the smug playfulness off his face. Reisi took that chance to strike, crushing his lips against Tatara’s with a heated fervency as all the simmering tension from the last few weeks ignited at once. Tatara’s lips felt exactly as he remembered them, except this time the kiss wasn’t a mere brush of skin on skin; Tatara was melting into him, moving his lips in time with his own with a barely-concealed eagerness, longing burning in the way his shaking hands fisted in Reisi’s jacket. Their breath came in ragged half gasps.

The kiss seemed to last an age and not quite be long enough all at once, and when they finally broke apart, Tatara’s cheeks were flushed and he was grinning.

“My my~,” he said, the playfulness in his tone dampened slightly by how breathless he was. “Captain, I didn’t expect to be able to make you lose your composure like this~.”

Reisi, indeed, was just as flushed and breathless as his partner, and he didn’t know if he was more vexed by Tatara’s teasing, or by the fact that his teasing had him so vexed in the first place. He hated and loved the power Tatara had over him, the way he could make him crumble under his fingertips, even after Reisi had just had the upper hand. He wasn’t used to it; it felt foreign and vulnerable, but at the same time strangely exhilarating.

At the little suggestive grin playing across Tatara’s lips, Reisi lost the will to hold onto the last of his dignity. Within seconds, he’d swept the pile of papers haphazardly off his desk, sending them fluttering across the room as he picked Tatara up by his hips and set him down atop the newly cleared space. Their lips crashed together once more, the kiss burning with hunger as Tatara wrapped his legs around Reisi’s waist, pressing their bodies close until he was pushed urgently down onto his back and with a single swift motion, Reisi tore his shirt open. Tatara gasped as his buttons skittered across the floor.

“Captain…~” he groaned encouragingly as Reisi leaned down to kiss his throat, whilst Tatara pawed at Reisi’s own buttons with trembling fingers. It felt good to have him shaking, to force him to relinquish some of the sly deviousness he had lorded over Reisi for the past few weeks. The gasps that issued from his throat as Reisi nipped at his skin, kissing and nibbling down over his collarbone and chest to his nipple before continuing down his tummy, were delicious.

Reisi wasted no more time on teasing after that; he had waited too long. It was only moments before Tatara’s trousers and underwear were around his ankles and Reisi was on his knees, his head between his legs and his tongue and lips moving deftly up and down as Tatara squirmed beneath him, his fingers tangled encouragingly in his lover’s hair. Every high-pitched whimper of enjoyment, every buck of his hips towards Reisi’s mouth sent a shiver down his spine.

“Nnn… Don’t make me cum yet…~,” he protested, and Reisi lifted his head to see Tatara reaching into the pocket of his jacket, which hung open around him, to retrieve a bottle of lubricant.

“How long have you been planning this for?” Reisi narrowed his eyes.

“A while… do you know how difficult it was not to get caught with this? You held out longer than I expected…” His voice was breathy and high pitched as Reisi traced patterns on the head of Tatara’s cock with the tip of his tongue between speaking.

“I am your superior; it would be improper of me to make sexual advances on my employee,” Reisi reasoned, taking the bottle from him with a smirk of irony.

“I wish you’d been improper sooner.”

“As do I.” As he spoke, Reisi slicked his fingers with the lubricant.

“Well then hurry up; have we not waited long enough?”

Needing no more encouragement, Reisi leaned forward to resume his task, closing his lips once more around Tatara’s cock as he pressed a finger inside him, shortly followed by another as Tatara twitched around him, rocking his hips back and forth between Reisi’s hand and his lips, his movements jerky as though he couldn’t tell which he wanted more. He gripped the edge of the desk with his nails as moans flooded freely from his lips, only just quiet enough that he shouldn’t be heard in the corridor outside.

“Captain… h-haa…”

Every little whimper sent jolts that felt like static shocks down Reisi’s spine.

“I have you half-undressed, call me by my name.”

“Reisi~…”

Reisi wasn’t at all expecting him to groan his first name like that, the desperate arousal dripping from his voice, but the sound of it made the heat building behind his groin throb uncomfortably, and he found himself letting out the tiniest groan around Tatara’s cock.

“H-hurry up…” Tatara hissed.

Reisi lifted his head with a satisfying pop, his fingers still working inside his lover. “You wouldn’t happen to have a condom in that pocket of yours would you?”

Before Reisi had even finished speaking, Tatara had half-thrown the foil packet at him. Reisi felt a wave of smugness at the sight of him, his cheeks flushed with arousal and a thin sheen of sweat glinting on his forehead, his tousled hair spread around his head like a halo. His shirt and jacket hung open around him, framing the soft, tan skin of his tummy. Tatara had always looked good in his uniform, but he looked decidedly better wearing it like this, the fabric creased and torn in places, dishevelled in a way that showed just how much the normally neat and proper young man was coming apart beneath Reisi’s hands. God he’s gorgeous… was the only coherent thing Reisi was able to think as his gaze wandered across the points of Tatara’s hips and down the soft, paler skin of his slender thighs, and then back up to the erection twitching between his thighs and the bead of precum crowning it. It felt good to be back in control, replace that self-satisfied glimmer in his eyes with flushed desperation.

“Hurry up!” Tatara repeated, more impatiently this time, and the sound of his voice snapped Reisi from his fascination. As he pulled down his trousers, Tatara kicked off his own, along with his underwear and his boots, and Reisi once again nearly got distracted by the sight of his legs, but by now his arousal was demanding too much of his attention for that to last long, especially as Tatara once again wound those legs around Reisi’s hips.

His breath coming in shallow gasps, Reisi freed his erection with shaking hands and tore open the condom packet to roll it onto himself, all the while keenly aware of the way Tatara was staring at him, his half-lidded eyes raking across every inch of bared flesh with a kind of intoxicated captivation that made Reisi lightheaded, and it was difficult to steady his hands long enough to slick more of the lubricant onto himself as Tatara whined softly in anticipation with every ragged exhalation.

Finally, Reisi eased himself inside his lover, hissing through his teeth as Tatara let out a wavering groan of ecstasy at the sensation. Immediately, he was aware only of how good he felt around him, the deliciousness of the tight heat of his body and the way he rolled his hips eagerly towards Reisi’s own, any sense of shame and self-control he might once have had seeming to have crumbled to ashes in his fingers. In half-coherent thoughts, Reisi couldn’t help but be smug that this man who had so easily and so completely gotten under his skin and made him forget himself was now on the other side of it, his sly and conniving smirks disappearing in favour of his lips forming a perfect o of exultation. It felt good to get his revenge, and Reisi couldn’t think of a way he’d rather take it than this.

Tatara was impatient at first, bucking his hips eagerly toward Reisi’s as Reisi gave his first few experimental thrusts, allowing Tatara to adjust to the sensation. But it wasn’t long before Reisi gave into his commands – despite seeming not quite able to force coherent words out, Tatara communicated in no uncertain terms what he wanted with every twitch of his body, the way he reached up to throw his arms around Reisi’s shoulders, pull him down on top of him and claw at his back from beneath his shirt. For once, Tatara’s thoughts were written across his face, after all the time that Reisi had been infuriated by not being able to read him. The harder and faster were as clear as though Tatara had screamed them, and as soon as Reisi obliged him, Tatara almost did scream. Reisi leaned forward over him to crush their lips together to muffle the loud groan that tried to escape him as Reisi pressed deeper inside him, and Tatara dug his nails harder into Reisi’s back, moving in sync with his movements to push him deeper, angle his thrusts towards the spots that made him groan louder still into Reisi’s mouth. They thrusted in tandem with one another, absorbed in the sensation so thoroughly that Reisi was only just aware of the need to keep quiet so nobody passing in the corridor would hear them. The sight of Tatara squirming and arching his back beneath him was mesmerising, and the wanton gleam in his eyes, the way his lips were swollen from the pressure of their heated kisses had Reisi so captivated that he barely remembered his own name, save for when Tatara was whining it. They were swept up by the passion, in the sensation of one another’s bodies, and the heat and pleasure felt so wickedly good after all this time craving it that Reisi almost didn’t dare believe it was all really happening.

It wasn’t long before Tatara was driven over the edge. The bucking of his hips suddenly became erratic and jerky, his cries cutting off in his throat as his eyes widened in anticipation. Reisi just about had time to kiss him once more to silence him before he climaxed, half-screaming against Reisi’s mouth as the force of the sensation made him shudder and tremble. With another desperate whine, he came across both their stomachs, and every detail about the way he moved made Reisi see stars; every judder of his body and every twitch of his entrance around Reisi’s cock dragged him towards the edge, but he held off as long as he could handle to savour the sound and sight of his lover climaxing almost violently underneath him until the pleasure and arousal got the better of him. With a low groan he released into his partner.

As the aftershocks subsided, they paused there for a moment, panting heavily from the exertion of the brief but impassioned encounter. It took a little while for Reisi to muster the strength to move, but when he did he pulled out gently and scooped Tatara into his arms. His legs almost gave out as he picked his lover up, only to sit heavily in his desk chair, and sitting Tatara in his lap, cradling him against his body. Tatara let out a soft contented sigh and snuggled up to the warmth, nestling his head in the crook of Reisi’s neck.

“Wow…” it clearly took a while for Tatara to muster the ability to form even that simple word. “That was worth the wait…”

“Indeed,” Reisi agreed, unable to keep the faint smile off his lips. Tatara seemed to fit so perfectly against him. “Though I almost wish we had waited a moment longer and gotten ourselves to a dorm so that we could have somewhere more comfortable for this.”

“Doing it on a desk is hot though. If slightly uncomfy.” There was a sleepy contentment to Tatara’s voice that Reisi couldn’t help but find adorable. “A bed would be nice though. Next time we should do it on a bed.”

“There will be a next time?” Reisi asked.

Tatara suddenly took on a sort of sweet, bashful expression, as though he hadn’t quite realised what he’d said. “…I want there to be a next time if you do. How could I not want a repeat performance of that?”

Reisi chuckled softly. “I feel the same way. It was nice to see you letting your guard down for once,” he teased.

“The same goes for you.” And then there was a moment of quiet before Tatara spoke again, though this time he was quieter and less playful, sighing to steady himself before he spoke. “…I only want there to be a next time if this is more than sex, though. As much as I liked the sex, it’d kind of be a tease to only get to be with you like that, and not get all the other stuff I want.”

He looked up at Reisi as he spoke with a sort of shy hopefulness that made Reisi’s heart melt. Or at least, that was the best way he could think of to describe the sensation – it was completely foreign to him. He’d never really had real crushes before, and it was completely outside his realm of experience.

“And what would that be?” Reisi asked, amazed at his own ability to keep cool. Not out of any great level of self-control, though – it was more that he just hadn’t quite dared to process what he was hearing.

Tatara still seemed shy as he spoke, mostly avoiding Reisi’s eye, but glancing up at him through his lashes every so often. “The whole package. If I’m totally honest with you, I’ve had feelings for you since we met; I didn’t know whether you just didn’t feel the same, or if you hadn’t gotten the hints,” he continued. To say he’d been so forward and so openly teasing and flirtatious over the past few weeks, seeing him shy was almost disconcerting in a sweet sort of way.

“I wasn’t quite sure whether to believe them or whether I was reading too much into them. You are naturally a very personable character; I wasn’t sure if you were simply being friendly at first.” That, and he hadn’t quite dared to believe what he was seeing.

Tatara nodded, and then gave him that hopeful look again. “Do you feel the same way?”

It only then occurred to Reisi that he hadn’t agreed to Tatara’s statement. “Of course.”

Tatara’s lips broke into a wide, elated grin, and without another word, he threw his arms around Reisi’s shoulders and hugged him tightly, pulling back only to kiss him. This kiss was different to the others they’d shared – it was warm and sweet, rather than heated and passionate or brief and teasing, and their lips remained locked together for a drawn out moment, until they broke apart gasping for air, apparently both having forgotten to breathe. Tatara was still wearing that heart-breaking, molten sunlight smile, his eyes shining beneath his still-tousled fringe and his cheeks flushed deep pink. All Reisi could think about was how beautiful he was, and how sappy that seemed but he couldn’t bring himself to care – nobody had ever made him feel this way before, but he liked it. He’d always sort of thought the way people talked about love was exaggerated, distorted into some Hallmark cliché that wasn’t really attainable, but with Tatara in his arms like this and the knowledge he would be able to be around him, hold him, kiss him whenever he wanted after all that time of being so preoccupied with him but never allowing himself to give into his fascination… he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this happy. Realising he had all the time in the world to unpuzzle that heart-stopping smile seemed too good to be true. And as much as he hated surrendering his composure the way he had, for Tatara, he almost didn’t mind.

Yes, Reisi was glad he had recruited him after all.

[k-ot3-week]

Prompts

(I know I said that voting ends Tuesday but I think we got all the votes we’re gonna get so yay, we get the prompts sooner!)

Thank you to everyone who has voted!

Day 1: Fluff All relationships have sweet, fluffy moments! What are some fluffy moments that happen with your OT3?

Day 2: Alternate Universe What if your OT3 (and maybe other characters) were in an alternate universe? Maybe something simple like a Coffee Shop AU or maybe they’re in the world of another show, you get to choose!

Day 3: Genderbent The members in your OT3 are now the opposite gender! What do they look like? Is it an alternate universe or did a strain switch them? Whatever you want!

Day 4: Clan Swap What if everyone in your OT3 ended up in a different clan? Or maybe they had to switch clans for a day or some reason?

Day 5: Good Morning/Goodnight What are mornings like for your OT3? Or what’s their nightly routine? It’s always fun dealing with a sleepy OT3!

Day 6: Firsts What’s a first for your OT3? From the first date with all of them to the first time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) you can choose whatever couple firsts that come to mind!

Day 7: Free Day Simple, do whatever the heck ya want!

[mistleto-3]

I do have other fics I was going to post for rarepair week but I have major writer’s block at the minute secondary to an ongoing depressive spiral so apologies for slow updates. I’m not abandoning Awakening and I am going to post the IzuRei and two MunaTotsu fics eventually I just can’t finish them right now, and I haven’t been able to start working on any recent requests. 

Apologies for the inactivity. 

[mistleto-3]

After All This Time

When Misaki realises one of the members of the clan he’s just joined is an old childhood friend from before he came out as a trans man, he expects things to very badly. 

Pairing: Kamamoto Rikio/(trans male!)Yata Misaki

9,207 words. Fluff, angst, smut. CW: mentions of internalised homophobia and mild transphobia. Mentions of past unrequited saru/mi, and of miko/totsu. 

For @k-rarepair-week 2018, Day 2: Alternate Universe. 

AO3 | Ko-Fi

Ah, shit.

As Tatara introduced Misaki and Saruhiko to their new clan, it finally clicked in Misaki’s head why that blond guy looked so familiar.

“I’m Kamamoto Rikio, nice to meet you.”

His best friend when he was about 7 years old had been called Kamamoto, too. Except back then he’d been chubby and meek, and now he was tall and lithe, his hair reaching down to his collar, and a welcoming smile spreading across his handsome face. Then again, Misaki had looked very different when they were kids too. He greeted the two new members with kind confidence. Misaki hadn’t seen the spark of recognition he was dreading in his eyes yet, but maybe Rikio just had a good poker face.

Still, Rikio didn’t say anything aside from that, so the brief jolt of fear that Rikio would out him to his new clan slowly subsided as the rest of the members introduced themselves.

Or at least, it subsided until Rikio approached him later on in the day. Misaki was by himself – Saruhiko had left not long before, saying his PDA battery was nearly dead so he wanted to head out to get his charger (though Misaki thought it was likely someone would have a compatible charger handy, but Saruhiko had left before Misaki had a chance to suggest he ask around). The moment Rikio sat down beside him, out of earshot of the rest of the patrons of the bar and a conspicuously short while after Misaki had been left alone, suspicion flared in Misaki’s gut.

“So… I thought you looked familiar earlier but I couldn’t quite put my finger on where I knew you from…” Rikio began, and Misaki felt himself tense, like a dog raising its hackles. “And it clicked a little while later but it seemed like something that should be discussed privately. We were friends when we were kids, weren’t we?”

“What’s it to you?” Misaki wondered in the back of his mind if maybe he shouldn’t be so snippy towards his new clan members if he was supposed to be making friends, but it had just sort of slipped out that way. The alarm he’d thought had vanished had flared up again with a vengeance, and he quickly found himself on the defensive. Panic was beginning to constrict his chest; Homra was supposed to be his new start where nobody knew, where he could just be himself without having to worry about the looks he’d get behind his back. To have it ruined so soon…

“Well, I remember you as, well, a girl, but Totsuka-san referred to you with masculine pronouns, and I just wanted to make sure…”

“Yeah, I’m a dude now, so what?” Misaki hissed. “You lost a bunch of weight but I ain’t gonna go around telling everyone you used to be fat when you were a kid, and if you know what’s best for you…”

Looking somewhat taken aback by Misaki’s aggression, Rikio interrupted: “Oh, no no, I won’t tell anyone, don’t worry. I just wanted to make sure I really had gotten the right person, and so I knew how to refer to you – you still use the same name, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t like people calling me by my first name…” Admittedly, Misaki was a little caught off guard by how Rikio was handling this – he didn’t have much experience with people just accepting that he was transgender like it was no big deal.

“I can’t say I know much about this kind of stuff, but we were friends, so you can trust me. I won’t tell the others. Can’t say I ever really saw you as a girl anyway… you were always different to Ayumi and everyone else I knew. But like I said, I’m not super educated on all this stuff…”

“Ask away,” Misaki grumbled. He wasn’t sure what possessed him to be so accommodating; he supposed he felt bad for snapping at Rikio pre-emptively, and part of him was just… weirded out by how nice he was being. “But not about any weird stuff!”

“Does anyone else know?”

“Just Fushimi. We went to the same middle school before I was out. I don’t figure anyone else needs to.”

“And… pardon me if I phrase this wrong… how do you look so much… well, like a guy?”

“I get a shot of testosterone in my ass every few weeks.”

“Ahh, I didn’t know that was a thing people could do… I almost didn’t recognise you, it was only when Totsuka-san said your name that I realised who you were. I won’t ask you too much about the details, just… is there anything you don’t want me to say or call you, or anything you don’t want me to do…?”

“Just don’t say girly shit about me, and call me by my family name and not my first name, and obviously don’t tell anyone, otherwise it’s fine.”

Rikio nodded, seeming satisfied, and then to Misaki’s relief he changed the subject. “I always wondered what became of you after I moved away, you know. I missed you, and I’m glad you’re at Homra; it’s good to see you after all this time. We should catch up some time – I just bought a bunch of new games in the sales, do you still like playing video games?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You could come over some time and we could hang out… Maybe not exactly like old times ‘cause we’re grown up and stuff now.”

“You mean you’re thin and I’m a guy?”

Rikio chuckled. “I’m not always, you know. I just lose my appetite in the warmer months, but as soon as autumn rolls around, I put it all back on again.”

“That’s weird.”

“Says you,” Rikio poked back, but his tone was gentle and he was smiling. It was a bit like the playful but harmless banter he’d seen the other clan members exchanging all day. He seemed genuinely happy to see his old friend, and for the most part unperturbed by how different he looked now. He just spoke to him the way he spoke to everyone else.

It was then that Misaki realised that, for the first time, he was really one of the guys. And it felt good.

Maybe it was that feeling that made Misaki leave Saruhiko on the backburner, but he was just so quiet and gloomy all the time, and it was difficult to include him when he sat off in some corner of the bar on his PDA, while Misaki wanted to hang out with his new guy friends, and with Rikio. It was refreshing to reconnect with his old friend again, especially when Rikio had seemingly taken it upon himself to be as supportive as humanly possible. He had obviously done hours of research after learning that Misaki was a trans man, and started doing things like reminding Misaki to take his binder off when he’d been wearing it too long, offering to teach him how to shave his facial hair when pubescent stubble started to sprout across his jawline, and yelling at the other clansmen whenever they made jokes in poor taste, even though they were never directed a Misaki.

Misaki even eventually started to feel comfortable talking about that sort of stuff with him – asking Rikio if his voice seemed lower, going to him to celebrate the little bits of progress, like the muscle gain he’d been noticing, and the trail of wiry hairs leading down from his belly button. Rikio always greeted the announcements with enthusiasm and support. He had even offered to travel with Misaki to Thailand for top surgery out of his own pocket when Misaki could afford the procedure, and he’d gently advised Misaki to speak to Izumo about helping to fund it, but hadn’t pressed the matter when Misaki had refused.

As worried as Misaki had been when he joined Homra, Rikio’s kindness had eased his fears as he got settled in the clan and got to know everyone, and nobody gave him odd looks or snickered behind his back. He was one of the guys – nobody treated him like he was fragile, or offered to carry heavy things for him, nobody pulled their punches because they were worried he couldn’t hold his own, and it was a dream come true. It wasn’t long before Misaki started to feel like he belonged, rather than feeling like some imposter who everyone just saw as a girl. For the first time in a really long time, he was truly happy.

And then Saruhiko betrayed him.

It took Misaki a long time to finally wander out of the dark alleyway where his old friend had left him; he had stood there for ten minutes in shock after he’d walked away, so numb he could barely move, barely even think.

When his limbs finally started cooperating again, the first place he thought to go to was Rikio’s. When he arrived, his shock had given way to rage, and he was pissed, ranting and raving and pacing around the living room as he yelled about the nerve of him, how dare he disrespect Homra that way. It was only when he’d shouted himself hoarse that he finally collapsed onto the couch beside his friend, and suddenly hot tears were pricking in his eyes and there was nothing he could do to stop them spilling over. Rikio put his arm around him and pulled him in to weep against his shoulder.

Misaki didn’t know how long he cried for, but nothing he did would stop the flood of tears, stop the ragged breaths tearing up his throat. Every sob mortified him a little more.

“Y-you better not tell anyone about this,” he warned weakly, when he’d finally cried himself out, his voice still thick with tears.

“Your secrets are safe with me,” Rikio reassured. “But being upset doesn’t make you any less of a man, you know. Men are allowed to feel emotions too, you’re allowed to be sad and cry, especially in a situation like this. Don’t bottle it up. If you need to cry, cry – even through tears, you could still beat up anyone who dared to make fun of you.”

Misaki felt a little better after that.

Slowly, he started to heal, but feeling better only came with a lot of help from Rikio. Misaki spent a lot of nights at his friend’s place in those first few weeks, ranting or drinking or crying or distracting himself, doing whatever he could think of to try and take the edge off as Rikio listened without complaint. And when Misaki had shown up on his doorstep one day, teary-eyed with a sharps container and a vial, mumbling about how Saruhiko had always given him his T shots before and Misaki was no good at it, Rikio agreed without hesitation to take over the duty.

Eventually, all the yelling and crying and not thinking about it kind of worked. Missing his friend didn’t hurt all the time anymore, and the keen pang of the knowledge that he was gone, which sometimes had hurt so much that Saruhiko might as well have burned off Misaki’s insignia as well as his own, slowly faded into an intermittent ache. Eventually, it subsided to the point that sometimes, it didn’t bother him at all, like a broken bone that had healed up, but when you moved just so the scarring would twinge, reminding him impatiently not to forget about the pain all together. Some days it hurt worse than others. Some days it really stung to remember that the first person who had known about him and supported him for who he was, the person who he’d thought would be by his side forever, was gone now.

But no matter what, Rikio was always there for him, even on the worst days. And Misaki was sure he wouldn’t have healed as fast if it wasn’t for him.

And then all of a sudden Rikio started acting… weird. It was a few months after Saruhiko had left when his personality seemed to morph completely in the space of a few days. He became oddly quiet, he didn’t ask Misaki to hang out so much anymore, he seemed distracted, almost nervous, and whilst he was unfailingly there for Misaki when the rage or the sadness bubbled back to the surface, the rest of the time he seemed weirdly distant. Like he was uncomfortable or something. Misaki immediately jumped to the worst conclusions – maybe he was embarrassed by Misaki getting upset, or he was uncomfortable or didn’t want to help him anymore, maybe he was weirded out by giving Misaki his T shots, weirded out by Misaki being trans in general, maybe now he’d had some time to think about it he wasn’t cool with it after all, maybe he still saw Misaki as a girl and was uncomfortable around him because of it, maybe, maybe, maybe…

It was a while before Misaki snapped – as much as the worries about why his friend was acting like this chased each other around in his head, equally, he was almost embarrassed to say something about it. After a couple of weeks or so, he reluctantly came to the conclusion that he was scared of losing Rikio too, of him leaving just like Saruhiko had left, and confronting him would make all of this real. It might even be the last straw in making Rikio abandon him too.

Since Misaki joined Homra, Rikio had slowly become his best friend, the person he trusted the most, the person he always thought of first to talk to about stuff, and now he was withdrawing and Misaki was terrified to admit he was terrified. Confronting Rikio about his weird behaviour would mean acknowledging he really was pulling away, and Misaki was growing more and more petrified of losing him, because he was coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that he cared about Rikio more than anyone else in the world. Rikio was like his safe place, his comrade in arms, the person who always had his back no matter what. It was sort of scary to care about him this much, after the last person who he’d gotten this close to had abandoned him…

Was he as close as he’d been to Saruhiko?

That was kind of an alarming thought.

Because, if Misaki was completely honest with himself, he had sort of had a crush on his old best friend. And by ‘sort of’ he meant he was almost definitely in love with him, which was why it had broken him so much when he left.

Of course, Misaki was never honest with himself, partly because he had this idea in his head that being in love with a man was a girly thing, and that being gay meant being effeminate and having a lisp and all of these things that made Misaki really uncomfortable. Manly guys went out and picked up hot girls, right? (Not that Misaki could do that seeing as women mildly terrified him – he had never been good at relating to them before he came out, and the other girls had always picked on him for being tomboyish, and now he just felt awkward around them because he knew he was supposed to think they were hot, but the feelings just wouldn’t come no matter how hard he willed them to.) Besides, guys also didn’t talk about their feelings with their guy friends, so he resolved not to talk to Rikio about how he felt about his behaviour, no matter how much it stung.

But as stubbornly as he pretended not to feel the feelings, no amount of pretending they didn’t exist would stop them gnawing at him, and as summer rolled around, he found himself sitting grumpily by himself in the corner of the bar as pretty girl after pretty girl flirted with Rikio, and Misaki found himself resenting every flutter of their eyelashes and every flirty giggle. He practically exuded irritability as he seethed quietly by himself, the aura of malice warning away anyone who might have dared come near.

When Rikio finally seemed to notice his sour mood, he disentangled himself from the girls keeping him company and came over to sit beside his friend, Misaki was almost taken aback that he even bothered.

“You alright?” Rikio asked softly, and something about his caring tone made Misaki bristle.

“Yeah,” Misaki grumbled unconvincingly.

“What’s bothering you?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Is it about Fushimi?”

“No,” Misaki hissed.

“Would you feel better if we got out of here?”

“I wouldn’t wanna pull you away from your friends over there.” He couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of his tone.

“I’m not really interested, Kusanagi-san just likes me to chat the female patrons up a bit, then they buy more drinks.”

Misaki clicked his tongue.

“There’s no harm in it.”

There was a moment of quiet.

“Are you jealous…?” Rikio hazarded.

Misaki panicked for a moment before realising that Rikio was probably asking if Misaki was jealous that Rikio was getting all this attention and he wasn’t, and not if Misaki was jealous over Rikio being flirted with.

“N-no!”

“Because you’re a handsome guy, you’re just a little more intimidating, it isn’t that girls don’t like you, they’re just a little nervous talking to you.”

“I don’t care if girls don’t wanna talk to me.” The words escaped before Misaki intended them to, but thankfully Rikio didn’t look too far into it.

“Shall we go back to mine and play video games or something? It’s kinda stuffy in here anyway,” Rikio asked again, seemingly ignoring the implications of what Misaki had just said.

“…Fine,” he conceded, giving in to his sudden desire for Rikio to be as far away from the flirtatious patrons as possible. But for the rest of the way back to Rikio’s, Misaki was deathly silent, almost suspicious of his friend’s kindness, and Rikio made no further attempt to pester him for an explanation.

Indeed, they barely spoke at all the rest of the afternoon, besides Rikio offering him a drink and asking if there was a game he preferred to play, and the silence grew more and more unbearable until Misaki finally tossed his controller down onto the couch in frustration.

“Yata-san, are you okay? You’ve been acting weird all day…”

“Well you’ve been acting weird for weeks!” Misaki countered hotly. He hadn’t meant to bring it up, not in that moment, or indeed ever, but the words bubbled up in his throat like bile before he could swallow them back. “What is it that’s bugging you? Why are you avoiding me? Do you think I’m pathetic for being hung up over that asshole, do you think I’m weak for being upset? Do you want me to just get the fuck over it already? Or did you finally figure out you’re weird about me being trans after all, and you just didn’t know how to say it?! Why are you treading on eggshells around me?!”

Rikio simply looked shocked by the outburst and he said softly: “No… It’s nothing like any of that…”

“Then what is it?!”

“I’m just… nervous…” the quiet sadness in Rikio’s voice almost made Misaki feel bad – he’d never seen Rikio subdued like this before, but his vision was still tinted a little too crimson for the guilt to break through.

“About what?” he snapped.

Rikio seemed hesitant for a second, and in that moment, dozens of awful possibilities of what he might say thundered into Misaki’s consciousness all at once.

Rikio inhaled deeply, then released it in a shaky exhale before finally saying: “Since Fushimi left, we’ve been spending so much time together, and at first I didn’t really realise what it was… When we were kids, I sort of had this puppy crush on you, but obviously nothing ever came of it because I was too shy to say anything… We were kids anyway, it’s not like anything could have happened… Anyway, being with you all the time I sort of felt like that again, except it was stronger, a lot stronger. I didn’t even know I was really into guys that much but it’s kind of… I don’t know, I’ve had crushes and girlfriends before but this felt… different. More intense. And I had a lot of figuring stuff out to do – like I said, being into a guy was kind of a shock, and I needed some time to think over it all, but I didn’t want to leave you alone if you were still having a rough time of it so I just didn’t say anything…” His pauses between phrases were lengthy and uncertain, as though he was having difficulty stringing the words together and directing them out of his mouth, and he didn’t make eye contact as he spoke. “S-so yeah… now you know…”

Misaki stared at his friend, dumbfounded. Even if he had the slightest idea what to say, he couldn’t have mustered the ability to form coherent speech if he tried. His anger had evaporated, leaving behind nothing but astonishment. Of all the things Misaki had worried his friend was going to say, he hadn’t even considered this.

At his friend’s silence, Rikio seemed to wilt, taking it as a bad sign. “S-sorry…” he began.

At the expression on Rikio’s face and the kicked puppy look about him, Misaki’s ability to speak rematerialized all at once, and he interrupted: “N-no! Don’t be…” He paused. “Sorry for being a dick.”

“You had a right to be upset with me, I shouldn’t have let it affect my behaviour.”

“I get it…”

“I don’t even know if you’re into guys…”

“N-...” Misaki opened his mouth to deny it, but even the first sound rang false, as much as he didn’t want to believe it. “…I dunno. Aren’t most gay guys like… really into Lady Gaga and girly shit and they talk like this,” Misaki said, putting on an exaggerated impression of the stereotypical gay lisp.

“Not necessarily. There are some men like that, but you don’t have to be like that to be gay, or to be interested in men at all. And you don’t have to be gay to be into guys, you could be bisexual or pansexual or something like that.”

Misaki pursed his lips. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember ever having a crush on a girl. Even when he was figuring out his gender and toyed with the idea that his disconnect with his own identity might be because he was a lesbian, even then he had never really been attracted to girls. But still…

“I’m into guys, apparently, and I’m not effeminate…”

“Are you sure, though?”

“Yata-san, since you first joined Homra I haven’t seen you as anything but a guy, okay? Besides, I’m not the only guy in Homra who’s into men and isn’t all those stereotypical things you mentioned - so is Mikoto-san,” Rikio pointed out.

“Mikoto-san is gay?!” Now that was a revelation.

“I don’t know if he’s gay or something else, but he does like guys. You didn’t know that? Have you not seen the way he looks at Totsuka-san?”

Misaki looked at him blankly.

“I guess you aren’t all that experienced with that stuff, so you might not have noticed...”

“J-just looking at a guy doesn’t make someone gay…” Misaki grumbled.

“I’ve walked in on them making out more than once.”

“…Okay yeah I guess that does.”

“If you are into guys, you don’t have to change anything about yourself, you can still just be you how you are now. There are lots of masculine gay men. And liking men doesn’t make you just a straight girl masquerading as a guy or fetishizing gay men or anything, I know there are people that say that but they’re talking out of their asses.”

Misaki nodded slowly, chewing over what Rikio had said.

“Obviously, there’s no pressure to give an answer on what I’ve said right away, or to say yes… If you’re still figuring yourself out it’s okay not to want a relationship or anything,” Rikio said quietly. There was an air of nervousness about him.

Misaki let out a long sigh, looking at his friend. Knowing that Mikoto had a boyfriend but was still strong and cool and didn’t do girly stuff had completely altered his perspective. Whenever his crushes on Saruhiko and then Rikio had flared past the point of idle fantasy and wandered into the territory of actively daydreaming about what it’d be like to be with them, it had always sort of stoked his dysphoria. He supposed it had something to do with the idea that he hated the idea of being the “girl” in any relationship, or needing to be effeminate in order to be with a man. If that wasn’t the case…

Now, when he let himself imagine kissing his friend or holding his hand, the twinge of discomfort kept quiet.

After a long moment, Misaki finally piped up quietly: “D-do you wanna go for coffee together…?”

Rikio blinked in surprise. “Like a date?”

“Y-yeah…”

A small, genuine smile crossed Rikio’s lips. “I’d like that.”

They met the next day (after Misaki had spent far longer than he intended fretting over what to wear) outside a café not far from Homra, big enough that they’d have some privacy beneath the chatter of the other patrons, but still cosy. Rikio ordered some fruity iced coffee frappé thing that Misaki didn’t understand the appeal of, and Misaki just got an ice tea. They sat together in a booth near the back of the shop as Misaki teased Rikio gently about his weird girly drink.

“It’s good, I promise. Here, you shouldn’t knock it until you try it,” Rikio said, pushing the cup across the table for Misaki to take a sip.

“Fine, fine,” Misaki said, lifting the cup to his mouth, but it was only when he wrapped his lips around the straw that Rikio had just been drinking from that he realised this counted as an indirect kiss. A blush blossomed across his cheeks and he took the quickest sip he could before setting the drink back down.

“You did that on purpose, d-didn’t you?”

Rikio tilted his head. “Did what?”

“The indirect kiss!”

“O-oh… I didn’t even think of that…” Rikio confessed, a faint blush colouring his cheeks.

Misaki clicked his tongue bashfully, and he noticed Rikio smiling. “What?”

“Just think it’s… I dunno, I like it when you do that tongue click thing. It’s kind of cute.”

“S-shut up…” Misaki had always hated being called cute when he was younger, but when Rikio said it it was oddly flattering. Mostly mortifying, though.

“Anyway, what do you think of the drink?” Rikio asked, still smiling.

“It’s… not as bad as I thought, I guess,” he confessed.

Rikio smiled. "You shouldn't knock things until you try them."

Misaki rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine, the girly drink is okay."

After that, they changed the subject, mostly chatting about idle stuff as they sipped their drinks. Misaki found himself unreasonably anxious the entire time, even though he'd gotten a drink with his friend countless times before and chattered away with him exactly like this, putting the label of "date" on it suddenly made him very self-aware, and very aware of Rikio, every time he tucked his hair behind his ear, his every little smile, the way the glimpse of his collarbone above the neckline of his tank top made Misaki's heartbeat flutter... He tried to put it out of his mind, but he couldn't quite stop himself from staring, and he knew Rikio had noticed by the way he was blushing and shifting under his gaze.

The topic of conversation drifted after a little while onto Misaki's irritability yesterday, as Rikio tried to make sure he had really been okay, and Misaki was forced to admit (in a grumble) that Rikio had been more correct than Misaki had let on in his assessment that Misaki was jealous. Just wrong about what he'd been jealous over.

"It really bothers you that they act like that?" Rikio still didn’t seem to have caught on.

"W-well yeah, I hate how girls fawn over you in the summer and then pretend you don't even exist in the winter as if you're any less attractive." It was the truth, but it wasn't the entirety of the reason.

"I am though..."

"H-hey! You're still hot in the winter, alright?! Anyone who says you aren't just 'cause you put on a few extra pounds doesn't deserve to be able to ogle at you in the summer!" Misaki hadn't intended to be quite so vehement about it.

"You really think so?"

"I know so," he replied sternly.

A small, genuine smile flickered across Rikio's lips that made Misaki's chest feel funny, and suddenly he felt obligated to admit the truth - Rikio had been honest about how he felt for Misaki yesterday, but Misaki hadn't actually said he felt the same in so many words yet, and he wanted his friend to know that he cared about him, that he didn't have to feel self-conscious because Misaki felt that way all the time... for longer than he'd really admitted to himself, in fact.

"M-most of the reason I was jealous was because... I-I didn't want you to be flirting with anyone else...!" The confession had taken physical effort to force past his lips.

"Are you saying...?"

"I-I like you, idiot. And it pissed me off that they were all goo-goo eyes over you."

Their hands were resting on the table, and Rikio moved his own ever so slightly so that his fingertips were loosely tangled with Misaki's. "I’m glad…”

"S-so... what, are we like b-boyfriends now or something?"

"If you want to be." A glimmer of hopefulness that made Misaki's heart feel like it was melting crossed Rikio's face.

Misaki couldn't quite summon the strength to say the word yes - his head was spinning too quickly with the shock of all this, of his first real relationship, of admitting he cared about his best friend and his best friend cared about him the same way, so he just nodded, and Rikio's grasp on his hand tightened as a look of joy crossed his face.

"I want that too."

Despite how anxious and how embarrassed Misaki was to be in this position, where everything was so foreign to him and he had no practice or experience to guide him, he found himself smiling. Yeah, he didn't really know what he was doing, or how relationships worked or what one was supposed to do when they were dating someone of their own gender and how to navigate coming to terms with his sexuality or how his gender identity would fit within all this, but he found himself excited to figure it out along the way if he could have Rikio by his side.

By then, their drinks were empty, and the pair made a move to leave, though as they wandered out of the café, Misaki found Rikio once again twining their fingers, and when he looked up at his friend - boyfriend in surprise, Rikio merely smiled, and moved to loosen the grip in case Misaki was uncomfortable, but Misaki squeezed his hand tighter. Holding his hand felt good; his fingers were warm and soft and seemed to fit perfectly between Misaki's own, and Misaki found he enjoyed the sensation more than he ever expected to. The realisation that they were together, that he could do this whenever he wanted, took caught Misaki off guard. It had all happened in such an understated way that he could barely even process that it was real. Suddenly his head was filled with a whirlpool of fantasies that he hadn't dared think about before - what it would be like to cuddle with him, not just a friendly hug or an embrace when one of them was upset, but proper romantic cuddling, and then there was kissing, which Misaki couldn't even think about without turning red.

"I d-don't wanna go home yet," Misaki blurted out suddenly.

"Me neither. Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere…"

Rikio gave this little affectionate smile, obviously able to tell Misaki was a little overwhelmed, so he took the lead and guided Misaki to a park not far away, where the two of them took a seat on a bench in the shade of a tree.

They were quiet for a moment, and then Rikio spoke up tentatively. "I don't wanna make this a focal point of our relationship or anything, but I want to ask now, just so I don't mess up or hurt you or make you uncomfortable... Is there anything... like, are there any ground rules you wanna set in regards to you being trans? Anything you want me to do or don't want me to do?"

"Not that you aren't already doing. Just... don't treat me different than you would any other guy, and don't talk about me the way you'd talk about a girl; don't call me pretty or anything like that. And don't like... look at my chest when I don't have my binder on. O-obviously if we're spending a lot of time together I won't be able to wear it all the time..."

"That's fine. I can do that. If I do anything that you don't like, don't be afraid to let me know."

"Okay, thanks."

Rikio gave him that comforting smile again, then slid his arm gently around his shoulders. There was an air of shyness about the way he moved that somehow made Misaki feel better - at least he wasn't the only one who was embarrassed about all this. Rikio had more experience than him, though, and he found himself incredibly self-conscious as he worried for far too long over where he should put his hand, before finally settling on wrapping it around Rikio's waist.

"You know... there's something people generally do on dates that we haven't done yet..."

"Like what?"

"Kiss..."

Misaki spluttered in surprise. As much as it was an obvious first step, and he had at least considered it as a possibility, he wasn't emotionally prepared in the slightest, and the mention of the word made his heartbeat stutter.

"We don't have to..." Rikio reassured immediately,

"N-no... I just... n-never kissed anyone before..." Misaki admitted.

"Really?"

"W-why the tone of surprise?!" Misaki found himself more defensive than he'd intended.

"Well, you're a nice guy, and you're handsome, I thought somebody would have by now..."

"I was never interested in dating, I guess, too much other shit going on, and then by the time I had that stuff sorted I didn't really have any friends or anything."

Rikio nodded. "That makes sense."

"I-I'm kind of glad you'll be my first though..."

Rikio met his eyes with a genuine warmth in his smile that made that funny feeling in Misaki's chest resurge with a vengeance, and without him really even noticing, he found that the two of them were leaning in towards one another; it caught him by surprise when he felt the whisper of Rikio's breath on his lips. There was a drawn out pause, and then the space between them seemed to close without either of them really deciding to make it so. Rikio's lips were softer than Misaki expected, warm, gentle as they moved against Misaki's. His whole body tingled at the sensation, like static on a television, and he lost himself in the shock that he was really kissing his best friend. There was none of the stereotypical fireworks or a sense that everything was suddenly okay with the world or a feeling that he was seeing in colour for the first time, but in a way Misaki hadn't really expected that; it sounded like romance novel crap. In a way, this was better. The warm surrealness of the contact, the care in the way Rikio's lips guided Misaki's own, the way Rikio's grip on Misaki's shirt was just a little too tight, as though he was trying to make sure this was really happening... it felt good, safe. As much as Misaki's heartbeat was thundering in his ears from anxiety and how new and dreamlike this all seemed, Rikio made him feel grounded.

When they finally broke apart, Misaki's cheeks were flushed, but he could feel himself grinning.

"I could get used to that," Rikio concluded, and Misaki nodded in eager agreement.

When they eventually, after many more tentative kisses and a very drawn out goodbye (and the insistence from Rikio that Misaki text him when he got back home safe), parted ways and headed back home, Misaki couldn't stop smiling the whole way.

And then the flash of familiar royal blue fabric showed up to ruin a perfect day. He saw it rounding the corner as he headed down a shortcut through an alleyway, and froze in his tracks as his ex-friend came into view.

"What the fuck are you doing in this part of town, monkey?!"

"Clan business. I wouldn't expect you to understand, just don't get in my way."

"Are you calling me stupid?!" Misaki fumed.

"Mi-sa-ki, if I was going to insult you, I would be more overt about it so I could be sure you'd get the hint."

"Get the fuck out of here before I beat your ass to a pulp. And I told you not to use that name!"

"I'd like to see you try, Mi~Sa~Ki~! What's got you so happy today, anyway? Having fun being Mikoto's pet?"

"None of your fucking business."

"Finally gotten yourself a girlfriend?"

"What if I have?!" Misaki spat.

"Please, you're a terrible liar." Saruhiko stood with his arms folded in Misaki's path, drumming his fingers against his elbow with a sly grin.

"I am dating someone, asshole. What, you think nobody would want me? You should take a look in the mirror!" A part of Misaki felt a twinge of guilt using his relationship as ammunition, but the red mist had descended over him once more, and he felt himself coiling up to strike, tensing as his aura sparked around his hands. Bloodlust rose in his throat.

Saruhiko clicked his tongue. "I didn't want to waste my time on you, Mi~Sa~Ki, but you haven't left me much choice," he hissed, reaching for the hilt of his sword and drawing it with a flourish. "Fushimi, ready for emergency battle."

"Fuck your excuses!" Misaki's aura burned in earnest around his palms now, and he leaped forward to swipe at his old friend, his attacks fierce and brutal. If anything, what pissed him off the most was that Saruhiko had dared to show up to ruin this day, after they hadn't even spoken in months. It wasn't fair; just when he was finally really happy, that this happened.

The battle was intense and fiery, their auras clashing with brilliant flashes as they dodged through the narrow alleyway, attempting to avoid one another's attacks. More than once, both of them came very near to inflicting serious wounds, but Misaki was too hyped up on the adrenaline to feel the ache of the bruises.

It was only the sound of a shout echoing from the other end of the passage that drew their attention away from one another long enough for them to break apart.

"Yata-san?!"

Saruhiko clicked his tongue in irritation as Misaki whirled around to see his boyfriend, looking concerned.

"Stay out of this," Saruhiko spat.

"You're the one in Red Clan territory. If this gets escalated, it's you who'll get the short end of the stick. You should get out of here before Awashima-san or someone hears about this."

Saruhiko paused for a moment, narrowing his eyes and examining the proximity between the two Red clansmen, the way Rikio lay his hand protectively on Misaki's shoulder.

"...Oh my god, is it really Kamamoto that you're dating?" Saruhiko burst into peals of mocking laughter.

"Shut the fuck up, Monkey, just because nobody wants you," Misaki bristled, and Rikio tightened his grip on him to stop him leaping forward and attacking him again.

"You should get out of here," Rikio warned again.

Still in fits of hysterical cackling, Saruhiko turned on his heel and headed back the way he came.

"What the fuck is his problem?" Misaki muttered.

"Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine. How'd you find me?"

"You hadn't let me know you were home safe and you weren't replying... I panicked, I know I shouldn't, I just worry about you, and now I have a duty to take care of you."

"I don't need protecting."

"I know you don’t, but I also know how you get around Fushimi, if someone doesn't break you apart, you won't stop fighting until one of you has done the other serious damage. I don't want you to get hurt, or to have to live with hurting someone you once cared about that badly."

"Fine, fine..."

Rikio kissed Misaki on the forehead, then the pair of them started walking back to Misaki's place together.

"It's okay to be pissed at him," Rikio murmured.

"I'm fucking beyond pissed. How dare he make fun of you? His beef is with me and he doesn't have the right to drag you into it."

"I think maybe he's just jealous."

"What the hell of?"

"He seemed upset about 'losing' you to Homra, and I guess you dating someone in Homra is the ultimate symbol of that."

"Still doesn't give him the right."

"No, you're right, it doesn't."

"It gives me the fucking creeps the way he says my name as well. He has a lot of fucking nerve, and one day it's going to come back and bite him in the ass."

When they  arrived at Misaki's apartment, Rikio set about making both of them a cup of tea in the hopes it might calm Misaki down a little, and the two of them sat down together to watch a movie. As they relaxed together on the couch, sitting much closer together than they normally would have dared to, Misaki’s fury slowly began to subside, and he allowed himself to sink into Rikio's embrace as the frustration faded. Rikio wrapped his arm around his shoulder just like earlier, and Misaki relaxed into the touch, letting his irritation out in a long, slow sigh. The gentle affection calmed him much faster than usual.

By the time the movie had gotten into the meat of the action, Misaki felt noticeably better, and he secretly attributed a fair amount of it to Rikio's patient affection. Normally, it took him much longer to simmer down after he was pissed off.

Once the last of his irritation had dwindled, Misaki finally got to process that he, once again, was in a much more intimate, much more romantic position with Rikio than he had ever really been in before, and his rage was quickly replaced by the same bashfulness as earlier. As the movie progressed, they ended up snuggling in closer to one another, almost unconsciously, but at the same time Misaki was incredibly aware of every inch that closed between them, every stroke of Rikio's fingers running through his hair absentmindedly. If anything, this felt better than the kissing - the closeness and the contentment, the almost calming effect that Rikio's gentle attention had, were all wonderfully new and electrifying. Misaki hoped he never got used to this.

Rikio, meanwhile, was distracted. He did his best not to show it, and he didn't think Misaki had caught on, and don't get him wrong, he was relishing in the casual intimacy he'd craved and dreamed of for he didn't know how long, but he was... disquieted by the interaction he'd seen between Misaki and Saruhiko earlier. Saruhiko had really gotten under Misaki's skin, and yes Misaki had said some things that were below the belt too, but there was something about the look in Misaki's eyes when Saruhiko had drawled his given name, something like a spark of pain.

Technically it wasn't Misaki's dead name - he had kept his birth name despite its feminine connotations, but it was no secret that it being used without his permission bugged him. Not that most people knew why, but Rikio would have been very surprised if Saruhiko didn't at least have an inkling about the reason. In which case, Rikio didn't know how he could in good conscience continue to use it as ammunition. He knew Saruhiko still cared about Misaki, maybe more than he'd care to admit - if he didn't, he wouldn't go to the trouble of pissing him off so much.

Without really meaning to, Rikio found himself resolving to confront Saruhiko at the nearest opportunity about his use of Misaki's name. He had no idea how it would go and whether it would be effective, but he had to at least try, for his partner's sake.

For now though, he was more than content to enjoy being settled in with the person he cared about, only half-able to concentrate on the movie playing because he was so absorbed in savouring the affection.

The next day, Rikio found himself outside the imposing gates of Sceptre 4's headquarters, sweating slightly as he rehearsed what he'd planned to say in his head. He didn't intend to tell Misaki about this little visit, per se - he knew dishonesty was a bad start to their relationship, but he knew Misaki would just resist and pretend it didn't bother him, but it wasn't like Misaki was going to have this conversation with Saruhiko himself, so something had to be done.

Rikio took a deep breath to steady himself as he rang the bell on the intercom.

"State your business."

"I'm Kamamoto Rikio of the Third and Red Clan, Homra. I've come to see Fushimi Saruhiko."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

There was a pause, and then: "Someone will be with you shortly."

The intercom went dead, and another long moment passed. Rikio tapped his foot, trying not to overthink what he was about to do. It was too late to turn back now. Eventually, he spotted someone crossing the courtyard - a red-haired figure in the traditional Sceptre 4 uniform. As he approached, the gate swung open, and the Blue Clansman offered a polite smile. "Kamamoto, right?"

"That's right."

"Come on through. I'm Domyoji Andy," he said with a bow. "It feels weird to meet a Red clansman and not be fighting with them."

Rikio returned the smile. "I know what you mean."

"I'll take you up to Fushimi-san's office - may I ask what business this is on? Normally our number twos coordinate stuff between clans if there's anything that needs doing..."

"It's... a personal matter, I guess."

"Ah, that's fine. I didn't think you and Fushimi were exactly friends, though? Especially not seeing as you and Yatagarasu are so close."

"No, not really... I don't think he's particularly friends with anyone in Homra."

"Yeah, none of us really know what the whole deal is with that. He doesn't talk much about it."

"Not much of a change from when he was in Homra then." Rikio couldn't help but be a little intimidated as he was led through the towering double doors into the ornate foyer of Tsubaki-Mon, across the marble tiled floor and up the stairs. Everything was gold leaf and elegant colonial architecture, it felt a world away from the homely cosiness of Bar Homra. Thankfully, Andy seemed fairly friendly, so it could have been much worse.

When they arrived at the door of the office Saruhiko was working in, Rikio took another steadying breath as Andy knocked and announced his arrival.

The "come in," that issued from behind the mahogany door couldn't have sounded any less enthusiastic if Andy had announced that someone with a highly contagious illness was popping by for a visit.

"Good luck," Andy whispered with a sympathetic smile as he opened the door for Rikio and took his leave. Rikio grimaced in return.

The office was dim as Rikio entered - the blind was still half-drawn, and Saruhiko's face was lit with an eerie blue glow by the screen of his laptop.

"What." The single blunt syllable dripped with as much disinterested animosity as Rikio thought any one person could imbue into such a short utterance.

"I came to talk to you about Yata."

"You wasted your time."

"Look, you can bullshit me all you like, but I know you care about him. He was your closest friend for a long time, and even if you hate him and hate me, there are some lines you just... shouldn't cross, because it makes you kind of a dick, even if you have a valid reason for disliking him."

"What are you talking about?" Saruhiko hissed.

"You know his first name bothers him, and if you don't know why, then you're an idiot. I know you've known him long enough to know he's trans, and I know I'm probably overstepping and being that dumb cis guy, but I don't think it's right, as much as you hate him, for you to knowingly trigger his dysphoria just to get under his skin. I think you're getting into the territory of being transphobic there, and I know that isn't you, so you should cut it out."

Saruhiko was quiet for a moment, like a stubborn child scolded.

"I'm not asking you not to hate him or not to fight with him or not to hate me for being his boyfriend and having the audacity to come here and confront you, just... there's a line, okay?"

"Whatever." As much as Saruhiko tried to play it off as though he didn't care, Rikio could tell by the flicker of what could have been shame on his lips that he got the message.

"Thank you. I'll leave you to your work."

Saruhiko merely clicked his tongue as Rikio left the room, satisfied that his old clanmate had listened to reason.

When Rikio arrived back at the bar from Sceptre 4, he immediately took a seat beside Misaki, who was chatting with Tatara – Tatara was talking animatedly as he held his new camera, and as Rikio sat down, his face lit up.

“Can I have a picture of you two together? I’m trying to take photos of everyone.”

A flicker of alarm crossed Misaki’s expression until he realised Tatara was talking about the two of them as friends, rather than as a couple, and he nodded his assent. Tatara bounced to his feet and took a couple of photos, handing one of the polaroid printouts to the pair of them before heading over to Shouhei and Saburouta to continue his quest of taking pictures of everyone.

“You alright?” Rikio asked.

“Yeah… For a second there I thought he knew about us or something…”

“Well, do you want people to know?”

Misaki looked thoughtful. “I mean, if the monkey has figured it out then it’s not exactly a secret anymore… not like he has any friends to gossip about it with or anything…”

“We don’t have to tell anyone if you don’t want to.”

“No, I think I want to… Fuck anyone who has anything bad to say about it. I don’t think anyone at Homra would have an issue with us both being guys… Besides, maybe if those girls who always flirt with you know you’re taken then maybe they’ll lay off.” There was a bitterness in Misaki’s tone as he tried his hardest not to say anything disrespectful, and Rikio smiled, finding his jealousy endearing.

“I want people to know too. I’m proud that you’re mine.”

“Jeez, don’t say embarrassing stuff like that…” Misaki’s face flushed red at the cheesiness of Rikio’s sentiment, but he was smiling ever so slightly.

“Besides, I don’t want to have to not be affectionate with you at the bar. Obviously if you aren’t comfortable being public about that kind of stuff that’s fine, but if I wanted to hold your hand or something..”

“T-that’s fine with me.”

Rikio grinned again, and wordlessly, he lay his hand on top of Misaki’s.

A moment later, Tatara flitted back over to the pair of them. “Can I see how that picture came out?”

Misaki handed him the photo to look at.

“You really like your new camera, huh?” Rikio said.

“It’s nice to be able to have a record of all the memories we make here,” Tatara replied cheerfully, handing the photo back, but before he could turn to leave again, Misaki called out:

“W-wait.”

“Hmm?”

“We, uh, wanted to tell you…” was as far as Misaki got before the embarrassment of talking about this kind of thing stopped up his throat, and he couldn’t force any more words out. He looked at Rikio meekly for assistance.

“Yata-san and I are a couple. We got together yesterday.”

Tatara beamed. “That’s so wonderful! I’m so happy for you! You two were childhood friends too, weren’t you? That’s such a sweet story, I’m glad Homra could bring you two together again after all this time. You make a cute couple.” He seemed so overjoyed by the revelation that he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. “You know, I had an inkling you two had something going on between you… Sorry, I’m making a fuss, aren’t I?” He said sheepishly, noticing the way Misaki had turned bright red. “Well, congratulations!”  

“Thank you,” Rikio said.

“Y-yeah, thanks,” Misaki mumbled bashfully as Tatara flashed them another smile before heading off. He turned the photograph Tatara had given them in his fingers, then looked up at Rikio, letting out a bashful sigh. As jittery as he’d felt, it was a relief to start getting out in the open. It made it feel more… real. The last few days had passed in a blur, and Misaki found himself pinching his arm more than once just to make sure he hadn’t imagined the whole thing. Not that he’d really dared to fantasise about this sort of thing before. The two of them actually being an item had never really occurred to him as a possibility; he never expected Rikio to feel the same way, and there was no way Misaki could have confessed to him first.

Rikio shifted his hand to interlock his fingers with Misaki’s, and Misaki found himself smiling against his will. Around the bar, a few people had noticed the gesture of affection and were giving them curious looks, whispering, but to Misaki’s surprise, he didn’t care. As surreal as it all seemed, and as much as he really hadn’t gotten used to the idea that this guy, this amazing guy who had never judged him and who cared about him no matter what, was his, he was glad things had played out this way. When he’d joined Homra, he’d gotten a feeling in his gut that he’d found the place he belonged, and the people he belonged with. He only wished he’d realised sooner how right he’d been.  

[mistleto-3]

Would you ever write Izuseri?

Yeah definitely, I really like them as a ship. I’ve written them as a side pairing in other fics, but I guess I’ve just never had an idea for a fic focusing on those two. If I had an idea, or got a prompt I liked for them, I’d definitely consider it ^^

[mistleto-3]

please never stop writing, your Mikoto/Totsuka stories are golden

thank you so much!!!💖

[mistleto-3]

Rarepair week plans:

Day 2, AU: trans male!Misaki Yatamoto AU

Day 4, Angst/Unlikely Love: IzuRei post-Mikoto’s death bonding

Day 5, Colours/Clans: (tentative): Sceptre 4!Totsuka Munatotsu AU.

Day 7, Free day: Munatotsu 

[mistleto-3]

Awakening: Part 10

When another crisis looms, Mikoto has to learn to navigate a world of Kings as a regular man.

AU in which Mikoto and Tatara survived the Colourless King incident.

Pairing: Mikoto/Tatara

3,255 words. CW for canon-typical violence, mentions of depression and other mental health issues. CW especially for anxiety attacks/PTSD in this chapter.

Apologies for the delay in updating - I was busy with Mikototsu week, and then busy over Christmas, and then January deadline season was kicking my ass.

Previous part  | All parts | Next part 

AO3 | Ko-Fi

It hadn’t been long since Anna’s birthday, but it felt like all of a sudden, the lull after the opposition to Homra reforming had shattered, and it seemed there was some new commotion every few hours. Rumours were that the Blue clan had it worse, but the change of pace had still been somewhat jarring. At the moment, though, there was a brief period of calm, and the Red clansmen had gathered to chill out in the bar as they had done so often before Homra had dissolved. Being busy was kind of nice, though - things almost felt like they were getting back to how they’d been before Homra dissolved.

“Hey, Yata-san… Looks like Anna and Tatara fell asleep,” Rikio pointed out. The two of were curled up together on one of the couches in the bar, with Anna’s head resting on Tatara’s arm.

“Guys, don’t just stand there, put a blanket on the little lady,” Yō interjected, picking one up to drape it over the sleeping pair.

“Yeah, it is getting pretty chilly these days,” Masaomi agreed.

“Chitose… I heard you and Dewa had a scuffle with the Blues last night,” Misaki asked.

Yō rested his arm on his friend’s shoulder, clasping a cigarette between his lips as Masaomi pulled out a lighter to ignite it for him.

“Oh, that was just a run-in with the pretty Lieutenant,” Yō explained.

“I guess they wanted to save face. But they were on our turf so we couldn’t back down. In the end, Kusanagi-san stepped in to bring things under control,” Masaomi added.

“I see.”

“Eric and I also came close to clashing with the Blues,” Kosuke interjected from the other side of the room. “At least it didn’t blow up into something bigger.”

“Those Blues had been on constant alert lately and keep poking around,” Eric said.

“You guys too?!” Misaki cried, exasperated.

Meanwhile, Shouhei turned to Saburouta, leaning over him and resting his hand on his shoulder to peer at the screen of the laptop he appeared to be concentrating intently on. “Hey, San-chan, what’re you up to?”

“Hmm? I’ve been noticing a lot of activity on the net…” Before he could elaborate on what exactly he meant, something appeared to catch Saburouta’s attention, and his brow furrowed. “Hey, what’s this?!”

Shouhei leaned forward, staring at the screen as he made a noise of apparent shock.

“What is it, Shouhei?” Misaki asked.

Whatever it was, it seemed to have him deeply perturbed. “Take a look…” he said, and the rest of the clan gathered around the screen of the laptop, muttering. They fell silent at the sight of the video on the screen, though.

Pixelated text reading “Homra is over” unravelled across the screen, then vanished, replaced by a Homra insignia, once again in a pixelated style, as though it was from some retro games console. It was accompanied by almost eerily cheerful-sounding chiptune music. Over the top, brightly coloured writing reading “the end of Homra” rose from the bottom of the screen, and then the screen turned briefly black once more. Immediately after, a short, video-game style animation played, showing the sprite of Tatara on the roof of a building, being shot by another sprite who was clearly supposed to be the Colourless King. Misaki glanced back over his shoulder at Tatara, who was blessedly still asleep.

“The weakest clansman really was the weakest…” the text appeared across the top of the video, and then the image changed once more to a sprite of Mikoto wearing a crown, approached once more by the Colourless King’s sprite. There was a flash and the Colourless King vanished, and Mikoto’s sprite flickered and got smaller like a character in a game who’d lost a life. The crown was gone from atop his head.

More text reading: “…But the foolish King became even weaker!”

The screen went black again, and large blue lettering reading: “KING HAS FALLEN, HOMRA IS DEAD” appeared, followed by the text: “GAME OVER.” The video finished on that screen.

There was a moment of quiet after the clip ended as the clan collectively seethed, almost too angry to speak.

Rikio was the first to break the silence, pulling out his phone and dialling Izumo. “Someone should go tell Mikoto-san,” he said as the phone rang.

When Izumo picked up, Rikio put him on speaker. “Kusanagi-san, we came across something…”

“Was it the video?” Izumo cut in.

“How did you know?”

“It was just broadcast across the city.”

“It was what?!” Misaki cried.

“Yata-san, you’ll wake…” Rikio started chiding, but as he turned to face the pair napping on the couch, he saw Tatara was already sitting up, and Anna’s eyes were open.

“Why does everyone have such serious expressions?” Tatara asked, still drowsy.

“Come see…” Rikio said gravely, and the two of them got to their feet and headed over to the screen of the laptop that Rikio was gesturing at. Saburouta hit play once more.

“I’m on my way back now, get Bandou on trying to track where the signal is being broadcast from,” Izumo said.

“On it,” Saburouta replied, waiting for Anna and Tatara to finish watching the video.

“Don’t do anything until I get back; we need to work out how to respond to this.”

The video’s end screen flashed up on the monitor as the clip finished its second playthrough, and Tatara sighed lightly, as though it was nothing more than a minor annoyance. “It seems like they’re just trying to get under our skin, like they want to provoke us. I agree, we should figure out how to deal with this in a measured way, otherwise we’re just playing into their hands. Does Mikoto know?”

As if on cue, the door that led upstairs to the apartment above the bar opened, and Mikoto stepped through. “Know what?” His hair was somewhat fluffy, like it’d just been blow dried, and it hadn’t yet been styled.

“Have you seen the video?” Tatara asked.

“It came on the TV.” There was a tension in his posture that betrayed his irritation with the situation.

Misaki, who appeared to have been stewing in his anger, finally reached bursting point and blurted: “We can’t just let them walk all over us! People have tried to make us mad before, and we’ve shown them that it’s a mistake, because when we get mad it ends badly for them, not for us!”

“It could be a trap,” Rikio pointed out.

“Our actions are up to Anna,” Tatara said gently.

She nodded, having remained in pensive silence since the video ended. “They want to provoke us, and we shouldn’t do what they want. We’ll pay them back for their disrespect, but we should wait for Izumo and decide what to do. We shouldn’t play into their hands.”

“I have the location,” Saburouta cut in. “It was really easy to find.”

“Isn’t that a bad sign? Do you think they’re trying to lure us into a trap?” Kosuke asked.

“It could be,” Akagi replied.

At that moment, Izumo opened the door, looking slightly harried, obviously having rushed to get there. “What’s the situation?”

“We’ve located the source of the feed, but it was suspiciously easy,” Tatara said.

“Depending on who it’s comin’ from, it’s either a trap or they’re just sloppy. My instinct’s the former,” Izumo said. “I doubt it’s from any o’ the smaller scale resistance we got when we first started reforming. They don’t have the resources for this kinda thing, and they’ve quietened down since we taught ‘em a lesson.”

“Who else could it be?” Eric asked.

“Jungle, maybe. Sceptre 4’s Lieutenant says they’ve been having issues with the Greens. If it’s them, it’s almost certainly a trap.”

“Well, it’s the only lead we have…” Tatara pointed out.

“Anna, what do you want to do?” Izumo asked.

“We can’t ignore the lead. We should send a scout ahead,” she said, looking at Misaki. “But the rest of us shouldn’t be far behind, so we have the manpower to fight if it is a trap. Show them we’re too strong to be messed with, and if they provoke us, it will only end up burning them.”

“I can do that,” Misaki replied enthusiastically.

Anna nodded her consent, and he rushed to grab his skateboard as Saburouta sent him the address, and then she glanced up at Mikoto, as though to ask if he approved of her actions. He gave her a small nod of endorsement, and the clan prepared to leave.

As they headed through the doors of the bar, Mikoto said quietly to Anna: “Ya don’t need my approval for everything. You’re your own King. Even if you do things differently, maybe that’s better.”

“Okay.”

“…You’re doin’ a good job,” he added.

Anna smiled faintly. “Thank you.” She paused, then added. “You aren’t weak.”

He lay his hand on her shoulder affectionately, and what could have been the ghost of a smile flickered over his lips.

When the clan arrived at the location, it seemed Saruhiko had also been sent ahead of Sceptre 4, and predictably, he and Misaki were already locked in a heated scuffle.

“Yata, that’s enough!” Izumo called as they entered the building, and at almost the same time, Seri’s voice rang from the opposite side of the foyer as Sceptre 4’s special forces squad arrived.

“Fushimi! Stand down!”

The two disengaged with discontented grumbles, and re-joined their respective clans. As they did so, Tatara noticed Mikoto looking around out of the corner of his eye.

“What?”

“We’ve been here before. While you were in hospital,” he explained.

“My my, you all seem quite upset, aren’t you, Homra?” Reisi said from the other side of the room, adjusting his glasses.

“Damn right!” Misaki shouted. “Mikoto-san and Totsuka-san were slandered. We’ll make ‘em pay!”

“Kusanagi Izumo, we want you to back down,” Seri said. “We will deal with the Green Clan.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant Awashima, but Yata’s right. Those idiots have to find out the hard way that messing with any of us means getting burned. And I mean literally,” he replied, pulling his lighter out of his pocket and toying with it between his fingers. “That’s the only way Homra will be satisfied.”

“If you put it that way, we’ve been taken for fools too,” Reisi reasoned. “This choice of place is no coincidence, don’t you think?”

Mikoto chuckled humourlessly.

Suddenly, Anna tensed. “They’re here!”

Reisi rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Don’t watch from behind the lines; show yourself.”

As he spoke dozens of figures stepped forward, looming from the balconies higher in the building – the upper floors were teeming with men in black and green masks, who seemed to outnumber Homra and Sceptre 4 put together 4 to 1. Most of them held PDAs in their hands.

“The bait was so obvious, and you took it!” an electronic-sounding voice called down to them.

The ambush began muttering excitedly amongst themselves, something about points, and the names of Red and Blue clansmen drifted down to them. The two clans in the foyer prickled with mistrust, anticipating a fight.

Another distorted voice broke through the mumbling with a gleeful shout: "So anyway, we have nothing against you guys, but it's all for the points! So die for us, will ya?"

The masked men were laughing, almost jubilant, as they pulled what looked like green parrot plushies from their pockets. It was eerie how eager they seemed to try to kill dozens of complete strangers, all for the sake of points on some phone game? The realisation of just how twisted Jungle's philosophy was settled uneasily over the two clans in the foyer as the Greens threw the parrot toys down onto them. As they hit the ground, they swelled as though they were about to burst, but before any harm could be done, the Blue aura swept outwards to envelop the members of both clans, knocking the toys away and forming a protective cocoon around the clansmen. Dozens of ear-splitting bangs echoed through the room as the toys exploded, seeming to shake the very air in the building, and clouds of thick, grey smoke obscured everything outside of the protective bubble of the Blue aura.

The smoke cleared with a rush of air, and the Greens looked down in shock to see the two groups of clansmen standing unharmed.

"What's going on?"

"Why aren't they dead?!"

"Such a vile and disgusting sedition," Reisi said gravely. "Our lock-up is not what you would call comfortable. I hope you're prepared."

"I can vouch for that," Mikoto added.

"You said Homra is dead? Don't you know? We have a new King. A strong King who rivals Mikoto," Izumo announced as Anna stepped forward, holding her head high.

"You disrespected and laughed at my family." As she spoke, her aura blazed around her, filling the room with crimson light. Her Sword of Damocles rose into the sky above the glass roof of the building, just as Mikoto's had all that time ago. "I won't forgive you."

The sight of her gave Tatara chills.

"Shall we begin then? For our cause is pure!" Reisi announced, and behind him, Seri cried out:

"Men, draw your swords!"

As each of the Blue clansmen raised their blades with a flourish and their aura sparked upwards from their feet, Izumo said: "Time for us too."

"Don't let those Blues get all the credit!" Misaki cried.

The rest of Homra didn't need telling twice. As the Red aura swirling around them burned hotter still, they raised their fists and stomped their feet against the tiles.

"No blood! No bone! No ash! No blood! No bone! No ash!" The chorus of shouts echoed preternaturally through the building.

Mikoto normally didn't take part in the chant as King, but Tatara noticed this time, he was joining in - he didn't stamp and punch the air like the others, but he murmured the words along with them. Something about the gesture was heartening.

"Do not let the Red clan outshine us!" Seri cried, directing her men forwards. The sound shook Tatara from his thoughts.

"Leave this to me!" Misaki shouted, running forwards to initiate the counterattack.

Meanwhile, the Greens had recovered from their initial shock and were preparing their plan B, pulling sub-machine guns from their backpacks and taking aim at the clans below.

Tatara had just enough time to freeze up at the sight of the weapons before the deafening chatter of gunfire began. After a second, he felt Mikoto’s arms wrap around him, pulling him in tightly against his chest, but the sensation was hazy, like Tatara had been out in the cold and his skin was beginning to go numb. He felt cold; the terror that the sound, so loud and so close, instilled in him was like ice water dumped over him, seeping into his veins. His legs crumpled beneath him, until Mikoto’s strength was all that was keeping him from slumping onto the floor. He was vaguely aware of an aura surrounding the two of them, but not whose or even what colour, and its presence brought him no comfort. The scar on his ribcage ached, and the fear was suffocating him, and he was hyperventilating and felt like he couldn’t breathe all at the same time. He was more afraid than he’d been that night on the rooftop when he thought he was dying, because then he’d been resigned to it, but now…

I don’t want to die I don’t want to leave them there’s so much I still want to do I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die

The panicked, half-coherent thoughts were almost drowned out by the gunfire.

Tatara only barely registered the fact that he was suddenly outside, evidently having been ushered out of the building by Mikoto. He was only alerted to the change of scenery by the way the wind made the tears on his cheeks feel cold.

“You’re safe. You’re safe,” he vaguely heard Mikoto reassuring him, but it didn’t quite register beneath the clatter of the bullets that Tatara barely even noticed subsiding as, one by one, the Greens abandoned their mission as a lost cause, spooked by the way the auras of the other clans rendered their weapons ineffective. It wasn’t until the echo of the shots ringing in his ears finally subsided completely that Tatara really understood what was being said to him.

“Breathe,” Mikoto said.

It took a while, but Tatara slowly forced his aching lungs to inhale and exhale in time with Mikoto.

“I’m… s-sorry…” was the first thing he managed to say.

“It’s okay.”

“I e-embarrassed… Anna…” Tatara’s voice hitched on his tears every other syllable. “They th-think Homra’s weak… I proved them r-right…”

“They’re running scared in there. They don’t think Homra’s weak.”

Tatara sniffled, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. His hands trembled as he did so.

“Do you want me to stop carrying a gun?” Mikoto asked softly.

“I can’t ask you to…”

“Yes you can.”

Reluctantly, Tatara nodded.

“I f-feel… stupid…”

“It’s not your fault.” As Mikoto spoke, he rubbed Tatara’s arm comfortingly. Somehow, the tenderness of his voice and his touch was helping to soothe Tatara’s racing heartbeat now that the gunfire had ceased. There was something about the way someone normally so gruff and frightening as Mikoto handled him with such gentleness that was deeply comforting. Still, Tatara didn’t know if he quite believed what Mikoto said about him not embarrassing his clan. He was embarrassed with himself, at least – it was rare the rest of Homra ever saw him upset. He was so careful to keep up appearances as a cheerful and carefree person, but it seemed like he’d broken down in front of everyone more times in the last few weeks than he had in all the years since the clan formed put together. It was endlessly frustrating, and Tatara didn’t know why he was struggling so much to keep it all in.

After a moment, the door opened and Izumo emerged.

“Totsuka, you okay?” To Tatara’s relief, Izumo only sounded concerned – there was no disappointment or anger in his voice.

Tatara managed a shaky nod.

“How did it go?” Mikoto asked.

“They turned tail ‘n’ ran as soon as they realised their weapons didn’t work against auras, didn’t even get a chance to fight ‘em. They disappeared with their tails between their legs before we could even get up to the higher floors of the building. Couple o’ the clansmen are giving chase to see if we can catch any of ‘em and interrogate them, and I think the Blues managed to round up a handful.” As Izumo spoke, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Tatara. “No one blames you, ya know. I figure I’d’a reacted the same if I’d been through what you had.”

Tatara nodded slowly, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose. Somehow, hearing the confirmation come from someone other than Mikoto was more reassuring – after all, Mikoto was biased.

“Mikoto, there’s somethin’ else you should know,” Izumo continued.

“What?”

Izumo gestured upwards at the two Swords of Damocles circling above the building, and the debris slowly crumbling away from Reisi’s. Mikoto’s brow furrowed.

“I figure you should talk to him about that,” Izumo said.

Mikoto grunted in agreement, a troubled look on his face as he watched the dust float down from the cracks in the blue Sword.

[mistleto-3]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

The first chapter of Beginnings: When He Realises part 1, has been kindly translated into Chinese by Ao3 user Mikoto_Tatara.

[mistleto-3]

Composure: Part 7- Finale

The tension between the two Kings finally builds to breaking point, but at first, it doesn’t seem mean the same to Mikoto as it does to Reisi.

Pairing: Mikoto/Reisi/Tatara

6,107 words. NSFW- Smut.

(Apologies for the delay!! writer’s block and other deadlines are a bitch)

Previous part | All parts

AO3 | Ko-Fi

Tatara didn't quite dare believe he'd actually woken up the next morning; when he found himself lying with his head on Mikoto's bare chest, the warmth of his body and the smell of his skin certainly felt far too good to be anything other than a dream. But they were far too vivid to be anything but reality. He let out a contented sigh; he could get used to this.

The three of them had stayed together the previous night, ordered takeout, talked, cuddled on the couch (it had taken a little while to work out the logistics of cuddling with two rather tall men on Tatara's tiny couch, but eventually they got it down), watched movies, and just... hung out. There had also been a lot of kissing involved, mostly initiated by Tatara, who was still in disbelief that the two tall, attractive Kings folded up together with him on his sofa were now his boyfriends.

It had reached the small hours of the morning before they realised how late it had gotten, Tatara's offer of a sleepover was promptly accepted. Once again, it had been a tight squeeze fitting all three of them in Tatara's modestly-sized double bed, but nobody had objected to cuddling up to save space (albeit with the air conditioning turned right up- it had been no surprise that sleeping with the Red King was like sharing a duvet with a space heater.)

At the thought, Tatara’s reminiscing about the night before was interrupted by the realisation that the bed was slightly less cramped than he remembered it, and he rolled over to find the other side of the bed was empty, and Reisi was missing. The question of his whereabouts, however, was promptly answered by the smell of cooking omelette drifting in from the kitchen.

Of course he's the kind of guy to cook you breakfast in the morning.

Tatara rolled over to stretch and take a moment to bask in the glow of just how lucky he'd gotten, but his basking was promptly soured by the tent in the sheets he noticed at hip height. He had still been reeling somewhat from his encounter with Reisi yesterday as he’d fallen asleep, and combined with his disbelief about getting to fall asleep between two beautiful men, his subconscious had taken his blissful mood and... run with it. It was only now he remembered what he'd dreamt about the previous night, and apparently it had been quite dramatically not safe for work. He shifted positions so the quilt would cover his predicament.

A few minutes later, Reisi came into the room, carrying three mugs of coffee. He kissed Tatara on the forehead and set the cups on the bedside table, then left the room again to bring through the plates of omelettes he'd made. Whilst he was out of the room, Tatara attempted to rouse Mikoto, though he only woke up properly when the smell of breakfast intensified as Reisi returned with the plates.

The three of them sat and ate together in comfortable silence- Mikoto was clearly far too sleepy for any sort of chit-chat. It was sort of sweet, really; there was something about the way Mikoto, shovelled his food into his mouth that was vaguely reminiscent of a sleepy house cat, and it was oddly cute, if the Red King could ever truly be cute.

Cuter though was the look in Reisi's eyes as he watched Mikoto eat; Tatara recognised it as the bliss he’d felt himself when he woke up. It was nice, seeing them together after all the time Reisi had obviously been longing for it. They really were an odd couple- Red and Blue, order and chaos, emotion and reason, late sleeper and early bird. They seemed to complement each other surprisingly well, though.

When they'd finished eating, Reisi took the plates to return them to the kitchen, and Tatara realised slightly too late that he'd been using his own as a shield to disguise the predicament in his pyjama bottoms, and now the bulge it left in the sheets was visible for all to see.

Mikoto snorted, and Reisi raised an eyebrow.

"Well good morning," Reisi said.

Tatara huffed. "Look, in my defence, you're both very handsome and you both slept in your underwear. The effect my two hot semi-naked King boyfriends have on me is not my responsibility; I can't help it if you're too pretty for your own good. Besides, I haven't had a chance to... have my way with King yet. You can't blame me for having that on my mind." Tatara paused, interrupting his nervous babbling. “…Calling one of my two King boyfriends “King” is gonna get confusing, but calling you by your name is weird.”

Mikoto shrugged lazily. “’S fine.”

"It doesn't help that all the things Reisi told me about you are chasing each other around in my head." Tatara said, looking at Mikoto.

The two Kings smirked, and Tatara sighed emphatically. "You're too attractive, both of you. It's not fair," he grumbled, then got to his feet and shuffled into the bathroom to splash his face with water and clean himself up.

"What exactly did you tell him?" Mikoto asked once Tatara had left the room, raising an eyebrow.

"That I half-expected you would have taken me right there in that alley if we had had lubricant to hand. That you were rather rough with me, both whilst you were in my mouth and elsewhere."

"You wanted it."

"Well I can't deny that."

"Bet you didn't tell him how you begged for it."

"...I may have omitted that part."

"And about how much of a masochist you are?"

Reisi adjusted his glasses with a disgruntled look.

Mikoto smirked. "Apparently you two gossip about me; how about you tell me what you got up to yesterday?"

"To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure how it started. One moment, I was rescuing him from an incident with a strain, and the next, I found him in my lap grinding on me. I believe there was some conversation in between the two, but there's something about that boy that makes me forget what time of day it is."

"I know what you mean," Mikoto said, but he was still giving Reisi an expectant look, waiting for the rest of the story.

Reisi cleared his throat. "I ate his ass whilst he sucked me off. And then he rode me. He's very vocal."

As Reisi spoke, Mikoto leaned in to kiss his jaw, then trail his lips down his throat.

Reisi closed his eyes to compose himself. "He is very different to you in the bedroom. You're an animal; he was very gentle, very sensual. I would like to see how the two of you are together."

"He's so breakable. I can't exactly be an animal with him."

"I believe you would be surprised; he is quite capable of holding his own, though I would suggest being gentle with him until his wound heals. By the way, I meant what I said about 'I would like to see how the two of you are together'; I have had the opportunity to be with both of you, but you haven't had a chance to be with him yet. If you wish to have some time to yourselves, I am more than content to watch. It is only fair."

"How considerate..." Mikoto's breath ghosted across Reisi's collarbone.

"You know, if we are putting on a show for Totsuka when he returns, the least we could do is take off our underwear."

Mikoto smirked and removed the garment from himself, but when Reisi reached to pull off his own boxers, Mikoto stopped his hand, then pushed him down onto his back and started kissing down his chest, pausing just above his nipple to suck on the skin, worrying at it with his teeth until Reisi was gasping and arching his back and a sizeable red mark stained his skin. Whilst they waited for Tatara, Mikoto continued leaving the marks, until half a dozen of them peppered his rib cage.

When Tatara finally emerged, he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of the two of them, Mikoto's lips working their way down Reisi's abdomen as Reisi's fingers twisted in his hair. He stood in the doorway for a moment, trying frantically to compose himself as Mikoto's mouth reached Reisi's waistband, and he closed his teeth around the fabric and slowly pulled the garment down.

"What took you so long?" The strain in Reisi's voice was already beginning to show through.

"I overheard you two talking and I figured I knew where this was headed. Had to make sure I was, you know, prepped..." Tatara’s voice was slightly higher pitched than he’d intended.

"And are you?" Reisi asked.

Tatara couldn't nod fast enough, and Reisi beckoned him, resting his hands on his hips and guiding him into Mikoto's lap, who was now sitting up, having discarded Reisi's underwear onto the ground. Mikoto’s arms immediately closed around Tatara’s waist, pulling him in close, and their lips crushed together. The kiss burned with suppressed hunger; all the time the two of them had spent quietly longing for one another, longing to be able to do this, smouldered in their every movement - in the way they clung to one another, pressing their bodies tightly together; in the way their lips moved roughly together, tongues sliding forward to curl around the other's; in the way Tatara's hips bucked involuntarily towards Mikoto's...

Reisi watched them avidly; the sight of their passion sent heat immediately pooling into the pit of his stomach, and it didn't take long before his groin almost ached with arousal. It struck him all of a sudden as he reached down to wrap his fingers around his own cock how surreal this seemed. A few weeks ago, the idea of Mikoto being with Tatara like this would have made his stomach turn, rather than turning him on.

And now, he was touching himself as he watched Mikoto's lips break from Tatara's to kiss down his throat before biting down on his collarbone. There was something about knowing the bruises on Tatara's chest would match the ones on his own that made the hair on Reisi's arms stand on end. Just watching them was incredibly erotic; seeing how feral Mikoto could get as he ravaged his lover's body from an outside perspective was captivating, especially with Tatara looking so pretty, tipping his head back as he arched his spine, his perfect pink lips falling open as a soft moan escaped them. Mikoto's rough hands only seemed even bigger as they gripped Tatara's slender waist, then slid down over his hips, worshipping his soft skin as his fingertips made their way down to grope his ass.

In a way, it almost felt like a privilege to get to watch them, especially when, every so often, one of them would open their eyes and glance sideways at Reisi, lust smouldering in their eyes. They had obviously both wanted this for so long, whether or not they were aware of it, and now they had finally gotten their hands on one another, they couldn't drag them away.

And then Mikoto stopped- his lips had been closed around one of Tatara's nipples before he pulled away, and Tatara let out a delicious little whimper as the sensation ceased. Almost in perfect synchronisation, the two of them turned to look at Reisi, and a smirk played across Mikoto's lips that made the arousal burning in Reisi's abdomen flare uncomfortably.

"You should suck his cock before he gets too lonely over there," Mikoto suggested, and Tatara grinned playfully, climbing out of Mikoto's lap. Mikoto pushed Reisi gently, gesturing for him to move up the bed, and he sat obediently against the headboard as Tatara crawled in between his thighs, licking his lips. He looked as though he was just about to set to work when Mikoto interrupted him:

"Totsuka."

He looked up at the sound of his name.

"Do you wanna be fucked?"

Tatara paused, his gaze dropping from Mikoto's face to his erection and lingering there for a long moment before he said: "If you're asking if I want that thing inside me, the answer is emphatically yes. You know, I always had my suspicions about how you'd look naked; you wear a lot of very tight jeans, and apparently I was more right than I thought. That thing is a size queen's wet dream and I'm sort of a size queen." Once again, Tatara found himself babbling, and he pressed his fingertips to his lips to quiet himself.

Mikoto smirked, and a smug look crossed Reisi's face, almost as though to tease Tatara that he'd already gotten the chance to have that thing inside him. Tatara pouted briefly, then pushed Reisi's hand away from his cock to wrap his own around it and flicked his tongue across the tip. The sensation immediately wiped the smugness off Reisi's face, and his eyes closed as he savoured the feeling. Tatara then set about teasing his partner, wrapping his lips around the head of Reisi's cock and bobbing his head, his motions almost achingly slow. His tongue never wandered any further down than the tip, and as he pumped the base, his fingers only gently trailed across the skin. Reisi hissed quietly, but kept his cool, watching Tatara raptly.

Meanwhile, Mikoto kissed down Tatara’s spine, counting each ridge of bone until his lips reached the small of his back, just above his waistband, where he sunk his teeth in once more to leave another bruise on his soft skin. Tatara let out a whimper around Reisi’s cock at the sweet pain.

“Aren’t you being a little rough, Suoh?” Reisi’s tone was light-hearted.

“I was rougher with you.”

“I don’t mind,” Tatara piped up. “I like it. Just ‘cause I’m not a King doesn’t mean I’m going to break.”

“You are still injured. We will be able to man-handle you as you said you wished much sooner if you don’t make it worse by moving too fast.”

Tatara gave an exaggerated huff. “Fine, but love bites aren’t exactly any extra exertion.”

“What’s this about man-handling?” Mikoto asked, hooking his fingers under the waistband of Tatara’s underwear.

“Reisi told me about how you manhandled him, and I said it sounded like fun.”

Mikoto gave a gruff chuckle. “When you’re healed.”

“Reisi is rubbing off on you.”

“If I’m gonna hurt you, I want it to be the kinda hurt you enjoy.”

Tatara sighed again. “I’m holding you to this manhandling thing. Seriously. I don’t want my feet to touch the ground the whole time. Pick me up between you and don’t put me down until my legs are too shaky to hold me up anyway.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Reisi said.

Mikoto merely grunted in agreement, then nipped the just-bared flesh of Tatara’s ass, and Tatara let out a pleasured yelp. Meanwhile, Reisi slid down the bed so he was lying flat on his back and lifted Tatara to lie on top of him, his knees either side of Reisi’s hips­, and Tatara whined in protest as his cock slid out of reach of his mouth.

Reisi kissed his jaw. “Watching you and Suoh will be more than enough of a tease for now, thank you very much.”

“I took your underwear off with my teeth; call me by my first name,” Mikoto piped up.

“I’m sure you will give me plenty of reason to say your name.”

Mikoto chuckled, then set his hands once more on Tatara’s hips, lifting them so his ass was in the air, and kissed and nipped at the soft flesh of his inner thigh, trailing his mouth slowly upwards. Tatara tensed expectantly as Mikoto lay his hands on his ass cheeks, spreading them gently, then let out a shaky sigh as Mikoto’s tongue swept across his entrance. He was slow, experimental at first, but the little whimpers and moans and twitches of Tatara’s hips spurred him on, and it wasn’t long before he had his face buried between his thighs, lapping at him eagerly. Reisi held Tatara up as Mikoto set to work on him, peppering kisses over the love bites Mikoto had left across his chest.

“Nn… A-aren’t you going to use your fingers? Not that you aren’t really good at that, but… the sooner you prep me, the sooner you can start screwing me,” Tatara said impatiently, his voice wavering from the pleasure, and then he paused and addressed Reisi: “The lube is in the top drawer…”

Reisi smirked and reached for it, handing it to Mikoto, and Mikoto popped the cap off and slicked his fingers with it. It was only then that he lifted his mouth away from its task, biting his lip as he reached down to massage Tatara’s entrance with his fingertip, rubbing in gentle circles and savouring the way he twitched impatiently before he finally gave in and slid a digit inside.

“Nn… King…”

As Mikoto slowly began to thrust the finger inside him, Reisi stroked Tatara’s hair, running the fingers of his other hand up and down his back as he kissed across his jaw and throat. The sounds that poured past his lips as Mikoto fingered him made the hair on the back of Reisi’s neck stand on end.

“More…” Tatara breathed the word into Reisi’s ear, but Mikoto seemed to hear him just fine, as he pressed another finger into him. Tatara’s lips found Reisi’s, muffling his groans in a heated kiss as he rolled his hips towards Mikoto’s fingers, grinding his groin against Reisi’s at he did so. The whimpers issuing from his lips became more and more impatient, but as desperate as he became, Mikoto’s ministrations remained slow and thorough. Tatara seemed about ready to beg when Mikoto pressed a third finger inside him, and he broke the kiss to bury his face in Reisi’s shoulder, biting down on the skin gently to muffle his groan of pleasure. His lips closed on the skin, and he sucked on it between moans, leaving a faint bruise to match the ones Mikoto had made before him.

“You weren’t kidding about him being vocal,” Mikoto remarked.

“King~…”

“I think he wants something,” Reisi said.

“F-fuck… fuck me…”

“I dunno if I’ve ever heard him swear,” Mikoto said with a smirk.

“Please!”

“Don’t tease him, Suoh.”

Obediently, Mikoto withdrew his fingers, and Reisi lifted Tatara off him to lay him on his back on the mattress, then he sat back against the headboard again, leaving Mikoto and Tatara to have their moment together. Mikoto crawled on top of him as Tatara grabbed for a pillow to stuff under his hips, and Mikoto kissed him deeply, reaching as he did so into the top drawer to fumble around for a condom. Once he’d found one, he rolled it on in a hurry and coated it with more of the lubricant. Meanwhile, the little whiny gasps Tatara was letting out were getting increasingly desperate, until Mikoto finally pressed the head of his cock against him and Tatara rolled his hips towards him, pressing him inside.

“Oh my god…” he breathed, throwing his arms around Mikoto’s shoulders and clawing at his back.

They moved slowly at first, Mikoto easing himself in with measured, steady thrusts, pressing ever so slightly deeper with each one. His gaze was fixed on Tatara’s face, watching his expression attentively for the slightest hint of discomfort. Reisi didn’t think he’d ever seen him be so gentle with anything.

Slowly, his movements sped up, prompted by the way Tatara wrapped his legs around his hips to pull him in deeper, and the flood of high, breathy whimpers issuing from his throat. Their bodies seemed to fit so perfectly together as they savoured the sensation, clinging to each other as though nothing else in the world mattered. Their lips caught one another’s between the moans and grunts of pleasure as they rocked their hips in tandem. It was a side of Mikoto Reisi had never seen before, the way his hands roamed up and down Tatara’s sides, almost reverently, the way he hold him close against his chest as they made love. Reisi wouldn’t have pegged Mikoto as much of a romantic, but it was obvious to see the care in the way he moved. They seemed to savour the sensation, trying to keep their eyes open as best they could to watch each other’s faces, as though trying to process that they were really together like that. The months, years, they must have wanted each other burned in every gentle touch, every time Tatara’s back arched and his toes curled.

But Reisi was surprised to find that he wasn’t jealous, because he had seen Mikoto long for him too, seen the way he’d kissed him in his office a few weeks ago as though he didn’t have the power to stop himself. And he’d seen Tatara blush as he avoided eye contact with him, the sweet little crush blossoming in him written all over his mannerisms. And he was here to watch their passion. Every whine that escaped Tatara’s lips sent a fresh wave of goosebumps down Reisi’s back. His eyes were transfixed on the way Mikoto’s body moved, the way his hips rolled and his back tensed, and the look of ecstasy on Tatara’s face as his head rolled back.

“K-King… you’re gonna make me…”

The sound snapped Reisi from his thoughts as he watched Tatara convulse under Mikoto, clinging to his shoulders as though for dear life as his back arched.

“K-King!” he repeated, but the second half of the word dissolved into a cry of pleasure as his orgasm overwhelmed him. A long moment passed before his groans gave way to exhausted gasps for breath, and he slumped back against the mattress. Mikoto sat up and pulled out of him, admiring the sight of Tatara’s cum splattered up his chest with a smirk as he removed the condom.

“G-gimme like, ten, fifteen minutes and I can go again, don’t worry…” he said breathlessly, glancing up at Reisi. “Enjoy the show?”

“Very much so. Seeing that side of Suoh is interesting.”

“What d’ya mean?” Mikoto asked.

“In the bedroom, I have only ever seen him…”

“Kinky?” Tatara suggested.

“I was going to say rough, but yes.”

“I coulda been gentle if you’d asked,” Mikoto pointed out.

“I didn’t want you to be gentle at the time.”

“But you want to try it now you’ve seen him screw me like that?” Tatara offered.

Reisi pushed his glasses up his nose. “Perhaps.”

“Can I make a request?” Tatara said.

“Oh?” Reisi asked.

“Can I be the one to… you know, prep you? I’m very content being a bottom, but it means I don’t exactly get to do certain things very often…”

“Eat ass?” Mikoto piped up bluntly.

“Yes.”

“I have no objections,” Reisi said with a smirk, and Mikoto nodded in agreement.

Tatara grinned expectantly as Reisi lay down on his front, lifting his hips into the air slightly and parting his thighs, and Tatara crawled between them, chewing his lip at the view in front of him. He took a moment to stare at him, savouring the sight of someone who was normally so professional so… exposed. Of course, he’d already seen him exposed yesterday, but this seemed more intimate somehow. He took a deep breath to steady himself, then leaned down to lick small circles around Reisi’s entrance, trying to copy the things he’d enjoyed when Mikoto and Reisi had done them to him, and he was rewarded by an appreciative moan, one from Reisi and one from Mikoto, who was stroking himself at the sight.

“C-come here and let me do that for you…” Reisi prompted, and Mikoto shuffled across the bed to sit in front of him obediently, running his fingers through Reisi’s hair as Reisi promptly set about pleasuring him with his mouth.

Tatara quickly understood why his two lovers had been so eager to do this for him – there was something deliciously erotic about the taboo and the intimacy of an act like this, especially combined with the way Reisi was moaning at his ministrations around Mikoto’s cock. He quickly found himself getting hard again, resisting the urge to reach between his own thighs and stroke himself. Instead, he decided to occupy his hands with something else, and made a grab for the lube that lay discarded on the mattress to coat his fingers in it. His hands shook slightly in nervous anticipation as he positioned one of them between Reisi’s parted thighs, and he took a deep breath to steady himself. As he did so, he glanced up to see Mikoto staring at him intently over Reisi’s hips. He was smirking, seemingly intrigued, and Tatara poked his tongue out playfully, as though to tease that he was capable of doing this – although he was the type who normally preferred to be on his back whining and whimpering during sex, getting a little control like this made an interesting change of pace.

With a steady movement, Tatara inserted the first finger, trying his best once again to copy the things that had been done to him, but also doing his best not to overthink it. He was reassured by Reisi’s groan of pleasure, and let out a shuddering sigh of arousal. It was becoming difficult to ignore the needy aching between his own thighs – he’d never recovered from an orgasm this quickly before, but seeing the two men in front of him deliciously naked and playing with each other, hearing their groans, had him almost painfully hard already. He missed the sensation of having Mikoto inside him, missed it so much that it was getting difficult to think clearly.

“K-King… do you wanna finish up here? N-not that this isn’t really fun, but I… I can barely stop my hands shaking…”

Mikoto smirked almost smugly, as though he was teasing Tatara for his meek attempt at something vaguely similar to topping, and he got up to take Tatara’s place.

However, as he did, Tatara whispered: “I just really need something inside me right now…” and the tremble in his voice wiped the smirk from Mikoto’s lips. Tatara saw his cock twitch between his legs.

“W-what did you have in mind?” Reisi’s voice was breathy with pleasure.

“I have a toy…” he reached into the drawer the lubricant had been taken from and produced a slender, curved dildo made of blue silicon, and he took the lube from Mikoto (who had just coated his own fingers to slip two of them into Reisi and continue where Tatara had left off) and poured it onto the toy. He then knelt at the end of the bed in front of his two lovers and set the base of the toy against the mattress, then lowered himself onto it, barely able to disguise his haste.

Both of his lovers watched, enraptured, as he rode the toy, his groans almost disproportionately loud, until Reisi finally hissed: “Suoh… For god’s sake, that’s enough...” His hips were rolling back a little too enthusiastically onto Mikoto’s fingers, and Mikoto didn’t need telling twice. He hastened to roll a fresh condom onto himself, then pressed into Reisi from behind, slow and deep. It seemed their desire to make love had been forgotten in the light of what Tatara was doing to himself – as soon as Reisi had adjusted to the sensation of Mikoto inside him, their movements rapidly became quick and rough, Mikoto’s nails digging into Reisi’s hips. As Tatara sped up the rolling of his hips, he noticed Mikoto’s thrusts accelerating to keep pace as the sounds coming from the pair of them only spurred him on.

But it was only so long before Tatara felt himself getting a little jealous, and he whined: “I-is there any way for me to get fucked too…?” Admittedly the logistics seemed like they’d be a little complex, but right now, Tatara was past caring about having to contort himself a little – after what he’d just been doing with Mikoto, the toy just didn’t cut it, and seeing the look on Reisi’s face as Mikoto pounded him into the mattress was driving him crazy.

“I believe there is… Suoh…” Reisi began, then glanced back over his shoulder at the man fucking him.

Mikoto pulled out obediently to let him think a little clearer.

“You kneel beside the bed…” Reisi directed breathlessly.

Mikoto moved to do so, and Reisi turned over to lay on his back, his thighs dangling off the edge of the mattress either side of Mikoto’s hips. Tatara didn’t need telling where he was supposed to go – he crawled gratefully into Reisi’s lap as Mikoto grabbed another condom. Reisi reached out to take it from him, but Mikoto never handed it to him. Instead, he smirked, tearing the packaging open himself and leaning down to roll it onto Reisi’s erection with his mouth. Reisi groaned in surprise, gripping Tatara’s hips as Mikoto’s lips slid all the way down to the base of his cock, then he lifted his head off again to grab the lubricant and coat the outside of the condom with it. Reisi’s hips twitched into his hand, and Tatara tried his best to watch what Mikoto was doing over his own shoulder.

After spending ever so slightly too long stroking the lube onto Reisi’s cock, Mikoto pulled Tatara’s hips down a little so he could press the head of Reisi’s erection against his entrance. Immediately, Tatara sank downwards, easing him inside with a whimper of desperate satisfaction. As he began to ride Reisi slowly, Mikoto slid back into their lover, and the sound that escaped Reisi’s throat was almost inhuman as Mikoto pushed hilt deep into him at exactly the moment that Tatara took his full length inside him.

Neither of Reisi’s partners showed any mercy after that – as soon as Tatara was settled in his lap, he began riding him hurriedly, fuelled by the burning hunger of his hormones and the way Mikoto was breathing heavily in his ear from behind him as he pounded Reisi. And poor Reisi seemed almost catatonic with the sensation of it, unable to do much more than claw at the sheets as he was overwhelmed on two fronts. Even his cries began to catch in his throat until his voice gave out completely.

“He wasn’t even like this when I had him on his back the first time…” Mikoto grunted against Tatara’s shoulder.

“C-can you blame him~?”

Mikoto chuckled, the sound husky with pleasure.

It was thrilling to once again see Reisi come apart like this, someone normally so collected completely falling to pieces beneath the ministrations of his lovers, to the point he couldn’t even form words. Neither of his partners would ever truly get used to the sight of the Blue King squirming with ecstasy, naked and red-faced. His thighs were shaking, wrapped around Mikoto’s waist, and his hips twitched powerlessly, as though he was unable to decide whether to thrust back onto Mikoto’s cock, or up into Tatara.

He still managed to last an impressive while, though, before the pleasure built to breaking point. As he reached his limit, he began to shudder almost violently, the half-strangled noises beginning to emerge from his throat once more, and then he convulsed under Tatara, his back arching clear of the mattress as Mikoto fucked his sweet spot and Tatara took him as deep as he could inside him.

“Fuck…” was the only coherent word he could muster as his orgasm overwhelmed him, and after a long moment, he finally collapsed back onto the sheets, limp and whimpering from overstimulation as the two others, swept up in their pleasure, continued their ministrations. Mercifully, Mikoto pulled out as soon as he noticed, then lifted Tatara up by the hips to slide him off Reisi’s cock before immediately replacing it with his own.

Tatara cried out in pleasure as Mikoto filled him, tipping forward to lay his head on Reisi’s shoulder, and Reisi mischievously slid his shaking hand between Tatara’s thighs to stroke his cock in time with Mikoto’s thrusts, panting in his ear. Tatara just about had the strength to lift himself up enough to see the look on Reisi’s face, his cheeks flushed red with pleasure and what looked like embarrassment from how thoroughly his self-control had evaporated under their touch. Still, his gaze flickered between Mikoto’s expression and Tatara’s, enthralled by their pleasure as he recovered from his own.

Tatara held out against the dual assault for much less time than Reisi had, and it wasn’t long before he was muffling his exultant screams in Reisi’s shoulder as his orgasm spilled across his stomach. Almost inaudible beneath the sounds issuing from Tatara were Mikoto’s grunts of pleasure as the way his lover twitched and tightened around him drew him too over the edge.  

Tatara just about collapsed forward onto Reisi, and all three of them stayed there panting for a moment until Mikoto finally leaned back and pulled out. Reisi just about saw his arms shaking as he picked himself up and helped Tatara roll onto the mattress and off his lover. Then Mikoto fell down onto the mattress beside his partners, and the three of them snuggled in close to one another, gasping for their breath.

Tatara was the first to break the silence: “That… was the best sex of my life…”

“I can’t say I’m not enthusiastic about being able to do that whenever we desire…” Reisi concurred.

Mikoto merely grunted in agreement as Tatara, who had ended up in the middle of the tangle of limbs, kissed each of his partners on the cheek.

They lapsed into a contented silence again after that as Mikoto and Reisi mustered the willpower to remove their condoms and discard them before they fell back onto the bed once more, simply revelling in the warmth of their afterglow and the embrace of their lovers. It wasn’t difficult to tell that all of them were trying to process the events of the past 24 hours, the unexpectedness of the way they’d managed to make… this, this hope for a future together, this happiness, from the pain of the past few weeks. But now, as they exchanged lazy kisses and cuddled in against one another, the realisation was sinking in that this was really happening. They really got to be with the people they cared about without anyone getting hurt.

It was at that point Mikoto realised that he wasn’t so afraid of hurting them anymore either – he had been terrified before that giving in to his feelings for Tatara would just end up putting him in danger. But now he knew Reisi was there, his other stopper, the two of his lovers together were more than a match for the times when Mikoto’s powers burned a little too close to the surface. Tatara could calm them, and when he couldn’t, Reisi could beat them back. It had been a long time since Mikoto had felt this unafraid of himself, but the two men beside him balanced him in different but equally important ways.

And he had been so fearful of how different he and Reisi were, but now he saw that in a way, they complemented each other. Maybe Reisi could teach him how to have a little more self-control; maybe he could teach Reisi to let loose. Before, he would have just worried their polar opposite priorities would clash, and they would end up frustrating one another, but Tatara could almost mediate them, help them to find that common ground when they couldn’t always do it themselves. And he supposed Tatara would be good for Reisi, too – it was impossible not to open up to Tatara, and having someone like that around could help him learn to lean on others, talk about his feelings, share some of the burden he always carried alone…

It took Mikoto a moment to catch himself spiralling into the thoughts that were normally far too cheesy for him to ever entertain. But as much as he chastised himself internally, he had to admit he could never have imagined something so good could have come out of all of this. Lying with these two by his side, with all the happiness they’d have together laid out in front of him, was more than he ever could have hoped for.

[mikototsu-trash]

okay so now I’m done with Mikototsu Week, I’m gonna start taking requests for rarepair week fics. The only ships I want to do are MunaTotsu and YataMoto. I also have plans for an IzuRei fic, but I already have an idea for that so I don’t need prompts. So if any of y’all have any (not smut-centric - I struggle to motivate myself to write smut atm) ideas, just for MunaTotsu or YataMoto, please let me have them! I don’t think I’ll have the time to write any other ships for rarepair week, so please don’t send me any prompts for ships other than those - I’ll just delete them. Thank you in advance!!!

[mistleto-3]

Beginnings: Part 12

When they Celebrate

The first time Mikoto and Tatara celebrate Valentine’s Day and Tatara’s birthday together. 

Pairing: Mikoto/Tatara

3,859 words. Fluff, smut. NSFW- Porn. 

For Mikototsu Week 2017, day 10: NSFW/Sensual.  Based on @espyraeh‘s request on ao3 (A REALLY LONG TIME AGO I’M SORRY), thank you <3

This is the last fic I have planned for this series at the moment, so I’m provisionally going to call it finished, but if ever I get an idea/prompt/request that fits the theme of the series, I’ll write it as a continuation of this. Thank you for everyone who’s supported me whilst I’ve written this series (especially with the massive delay between chapters ^^; orz)

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AO3 | Ko-Fi

“Happy Valentine’s day!”

The cry that woke Mikoto was far too energetic for the early hour, and he opened his eyes blearily to see his boyfriend climbing onto the bed with a wide, goofy grin on his face, clutching a heart-shaped red box.

“It’s your birthday,” Mikoto pointed out, his voice still gruff with sleep. “Ain’t that more important?”

“I’ve never had a boyfriend to celebrate Valentine’s day with before, but I’ve had a lot of birthdays.” As he spoke, Tatara clambered across the mattress to sit cross-legged beside Mikoto on top of the covers. Over the top of Tatara’s head, Mikoto noticed the chest of drawers had been adorned with a bouquet of red roses in a vase, fastened to which was a large, heart-shaped helium balloon.

“You never been given chocolates before?” Mikoto asked sceptically, deciding to ignore the decorations.

“Well, yeah, I have, but not from anyone I was actually interested in. Besides, I wanna be the one giving them out for once.”

“You’re a guy; you give yours out on white day.”

“Well, seeing as we’re both guys here I figured I could bend the rules and give you mine today. I love Valentine’s day, it’s so romantic and it feels so festive, I’ve been looking forward to celebrating it with you ever since we got together. It’s a whole holiday dedicated to the celebration of love, I don’t know why you expected me to be anything other than completely infatuated with the idea of it.”

Mikoto merely rolled his eyes, but accepted the box that Tatara thrust into his hands.

“Go on, open them then.”

With a sigh, Mikoto untied the ribbon holding it closed and lifted the lid to reveal dozens of strawberries, cut into the shapes of roses and dipped in dark chocolate.

“I made them myself,” Tatara said, puffing out his chest in pride. “Well, Anna helped as well, but she was making giri choco with me to give out to everyone.”

“Is this breakfast then?” Mikoto joked, though his tone was as deadpan as ever.

“No, silly. I made breakfast in bed for you.”

“It’s your birthday,” he pointed out again.

“And for my birthday, I would like to enjoy my first not-single Valentine’s day and spoil my handsome boyfriend, okay?”

“Fine.” Mikoto sighed once more, and Tatara let out a giggle of joy before kissing him on the forehead and hurrying off downstairs to retrieve the tray of breakfast he’d made. As Mikoto watched him leave, he popped a strawberry into his mouth, rolling his eyes at his boyfriend’s overabundance of enthusiasm.

When Tatara returned with Mikoto’s breakfast on a tray, he found Mikoto had fallen back to sleep, though it appeared he’d gotten up briefly while Tatara had been out of the room, as a shiny red gift bag now lay on the mattress beside him.

“Wake up, sleepy lion,” Tatara said gently, and Mikoto stirred once more, sitting up slowly to take the cup of black coffee that Tatara was pressing into his hands.

He took a sip, then glanced down at the bag beside him. “Are you going to open it?”

“Let me have like five more minutes of Valentine’s day before you turn this into my birthday. Eat your breakfast.”

Mikoto made a gruff noise of protest, but picked up the tray and set it on his lap obediently, listening to Tatara’s excited babble as he ate the omelette and bowl of miso soup and rice that he’d been given.

Once he’d finished, he placed the tray back on the bedside table, and raised an eyebrow. “Can you open your present now?”

“Fine, fine~,” Tatara said with and exaggerated sigh, and he shuffled across the bed over to Mikoto to pick up the gift bag. The first thing he retrieved from it was a small box, which he opened to reveal a guitar pick, carved from red jasper and emblazoned with the Homra insignia.

“It’s beautiful…” Tatara threw his arms around him gratefully, then sat back to turn the pick in the light. “I take it this is because I was complaining about playing the guitar making my fingers calloused?”

“Mm.”

Tatara reached into the bag once more, and this time pulled out a bottle of expensive hand cream. He chuckled, removing the lid to take a sniff of the floral moisturiser. “This too?”

“Mm. Anna helped pick it.”

“Thank you~.” Tatara kissed Mikoto on the cheek. As much as Mikoto didn’t seem like he paid much attention to anything, it was moments like this, when he remembered passing comments made weeks ago, that proved he was more attentive than he seemed at first glance.

The final item in the bag was an envelope, though it didn’t feel as though it contained a card. Tatara raised an eyebrow in curiosity as he picked open the seal and tipped out the contents- a pair of tickets. Tatara turned them in his hand, and his eyes widened.

“No way, how did you know I even liked her?”

The tickets were to a gig- a small independent musician that Mikoto had never heard of before Tatara started listening to her music, and playing it constantly both on his MP3 player and on his guitar.

“Guitar tabs with her name on. Kusanagi said you’d mentioned a gig.”

Tatara threw his arms around him. “Thank you…”

“It’s your birthday, so you can pick whatever you wanna do.”

When Tatara’s eyes lit up, Mikoto worried that offering had been a mistake.

Thankfully, Tatara’s plans weren’t too sinister – the pair went to a small European-style café in the afternoon for lunch, and then Tatara dragged Mikoto around the shopping centre, picking out things to buy with money he’d gotten for his birthday. Mikoto followed him around with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, carrying bags of shopping without complaining and offering when prompted some noncommittal opinions on items of clothing Tatara held up as Tatara complained in jest about how useless he was.

When they arrived home, Mikoto set about attempting to make dinner, which Tatara was a little suspicious about until Misaki, who had been sitting in the bar and overheard their conversation, piped up to offer his assistance. Misaki’s surprising aptitude for cooking made Tatara feel a little better about the whole thing, so he agreed to let them cook together, under the condition that they were intermittently supervised by either himself or Izumo. To Tatara’s surprise, the meal turned out better than expected – another of Misaki’s fried rice dishes that he seemed to have invented entirely off the cuff, but it tasted good all the same. He’d made rather a colossal amount of the stuff, however, so a small group of clansmen gathered around the table: Tatara, Mikoto, Anna, Izumo, Misaki, and Rikio, and ate together. In a way, it was sort of the sweetest gift Tatara had gotten that day – it wasn’t often he got to sit together and have a meal with his friends and family like this, and it filled Tatara with joy to have all of them in one place, chattering over the food in front of them. Family meals weren’t something he’d ever had a chance to grow up with.

Once dessert had been eaten and the plates had been cleared and the crowd began to disperse, Mikoto and Tatara headed upstairs with Anna to their apartment above the bar to cuddle on the couch and watch bad b-list horror movies together (normally Tatara wouldn’t have condoned letting a 9 year old watch gory horror, Anna liked the gratuitous fake blood for the colour, and the poorly-acted violence wasn’t exactly scary). Of course, there was no way Tatara was going to let anyone get away without having a big party for his birthday, but that had been planned for the weekend when people didn’t have work to get to in the morning – for tonight, he was more than content to have a quiet night in with his family.

Eventually, Anna drifted off against Mikoto’s shoulder about half-way through the third of the increasingly terrible sequels, and Mikoto carried her through to her bedroom to put her to bed. When he returned, he locked the door to his and Tatara’s bedroom behind him, smirking.

“What’s that look for?” Tatara asked.

“Isn’t birthday sex a cliché thing that people do?”

Tatara recognised his words as the same as the ones he’d said on Mikoto’s birthday. He grinned. “Yes, it is~…”

“I have another gift for you.”

“Oh?”

Mikoto opened his underwear drawer and pulled out another package, wrapped haphazardly in red paper – Mikoto had obviously wrapped this one himself. And when Tatara opened it, he saw why: inside it was a bullet vibrator and the batteries to go with it.

“King~ How scandalous.”

“Didn’t ya say ya used to like using toys?”

“I had a couple of dildos, but I didn’t really use them much after we started having sex. But I guess I never thought of you using them on me… I never had a vibrator either.”

“I can use toys on you.”

“I have some here; they’re in a box under the bed. Just in case you weren’t home or something. I didn’t think you’d be into that sort of thing.”

“It’s your birthday. I’ll do anything you want.”

Tatara shivered, and Mikoto smirked at the flush of arousal creeping across his cheeks.

“I never really had you pegged (no pun intended) as the type who’s into kink and stuff.”

“Depends what kind of kink?” Mikoto sat back down beside Tatara, watching him as he kept his gaze fixed bashfully on the toy in his hands to avoid looking at Mikoto’s face.

“I mean, you know I’m into a little bit of masochism and stuff… biting, scratching, hair pulling, rough sex, love bites, that sort of thing…”

“Go on.”

“I guess… my submissive streak in that sense goes pretty far.”

“Mhm?” Mikoto encouraged.

“Like, I really wouldn’t be opposed to you tying me up. I like the idea of wearing lacy lingerie… I have a praise kink…”

“Praise kink?”

“Like, being called a good boy and stuff…” It was sort of adorable seeing Tatara so bashful – it had been a long time since he’d been embarrassed in the bedroom, and even though he listed kink after kink in complete certainty, he said them quietly, as though he’d never admitted all this in so many words.

“I can do that. Anything else?”

“Overstimulation, general submissive stuff like begging and being teased, cum play…”

“What’s that?”

“Playing with cum? Like, cumming on each other, licking it off, I guess creampies count…”

Mikoto nodded in understanding. “Anything else?”

“Having sex in front of a mirror, maybe wearing toys out in public, like a butt plug or something… I guess those are all the main ones, but sometimes I get the urge to do other stuff, kind of like the way my hobbies come and go. There were a couple of weeks a while back where I was really into the idea of wearing women’s clothes… I bought this sexy silky chemise thing and some lace panties and spent a lot of time in my bedroom.”

The mental image sent a jolt of static down Mikoto’s spine. “Do you still have those?”

“Somewhere, why?”

“You should wear them some time.”

Tatara giggled bashfully. “I’ve had times when I’ve been into… I guess exhibitionism but not really? I didn’t actually want anyone to see me doing stuff, but the idea of it was hot, so I filmed myself. I never posted them anywhere, but I still have the videos. I’ll show you them one day.”

“I’d like that.” As Mikoto spoke, he leaned in to kiss just under Tatara’s ear, and he felt a shiver go down Tatara’s body. “What do you want tonight?”

“I’m spoilt for choice…” Tatara said softly, tilting his head to give Mikoto better access to his neck.

“It’s your birthday. Anything you want.”

“I think… I’d like to try being tied up. And then you can just ravish me or something.”

“Sounds good.” Mikoto punctuated the sentence with a nip at the soft skin of Tatara’s throat, and Tatara groaned at the sensation, reaching immediately for the hem of Mikoto’s t-shirt to pull it off. As soon as the garment was over Mikoto’s head, he leaned in to kiss Tatara deeply, their lips moving against each other roughly and heatedly. Tatara’s arms found their way around Mikoto’s shoulders to roam across his back, but Mikoto shook them off him, then gathered his partner’s wrists into his palm and pinned them to the pillow above his head. Tatara shuddered with arousal.

“What do you have I can tie you up with?” Mikoto said gruffly into his ear, and Tatara bit his lip.

“In the cupboard there’s a bag of wrapping paper and stuff, and in that there’s a spool of ribbon.”

Mikoto gave Tatara another quick kiss before getting to his feet to find the item. It only took a moment to find the bag, and he quickly retrieved the ribbon from it, then turned around to find that in the intervening time, Tatara had stripped naked and was sitting up on the mattress looking expectantly at his partner. Smirking, Mikoto crossed the room towards him, unravelling a length of the ribbon and tearing it off the spool before crawling on top of his boyfriend. He wound it loosely around Tatara’s wrists and tied it in a bow to the headboard as Tatara grinned eagerly.

Then, Mikoto began kissing downwards from his earlobe, torturously slowly letting his mouth venture down across Tatara’s jaw and down his neck until he reached his shoulder, where he bit down sharply, sucking on the skin. Tatara gasped at the sensation, tipping his head to the side to give Mikoto better access. As soon as Mikoto was satisfied with the mark that would be left behind, he moved on to leave another on his collarbone, and then on the other side of his neck, and then on his chest. He continued in that manner until little needy whimpers flowed from Tatara’s lips, and his upper body was littered with blossoming bruises, and only then did he deign to move his lips downwards, peppering kisses over his stomach to his hips, and down towards his thighs, which Tatara gladly parted to allow Mikoto better access.

And then Mikoto stopped, and Tatara huffed in frustration as he watched his lover pick up the vibrator, remove it from its packaging and insert the battery, all whilst Tatara squirmed, his arousal twitching between his legs. When Mikoto finally got the thing assembled and pressed the on button, he saw Tatara lick his lips at the sight of the toy buzzing to life.

Mikoto wasted no more time – almost immediately, the tip of the vibrator was pressed to Tatara’s inner thigh, trailing upwards to trace lazy circles around all the sensitive spots until Mikoto was satisfied he’d teased his lover to his limit. Only then did he finally press the toy against Tatara’s entrance. Tatara let out a cry, disproportionately loud for the gentle touch and the low speed setting of the toy, and bucked his hips towards it eagerly. Mikoto smirked, continuing to move the toy slowly against him, until Tatara was tugging on his restraints, panting hard.

Then, in one swift movement, Mikoto lifted Tatara’s hips, moved the tip of the toy to the base of his cock, and buried his face between Tatara’s thighs to lap at his entrance. Tatara buried his face in his own upper arm to bite back a cry, melting into Mikoto’s touch. Mikoto had never seen him this needy before; he seemed to have almost entirely lost control of his own faculties, and his hips bucked without restraint against Mikoto’s mouth as his tongue worked at him, and the vibrator trailed up and down the underside of his cock.

“Nnn… Get on with it, or you’ll make me cum…” Tatara whined, and Mikoto chuckled as he pulled his lips away and reached for the lubricant to slick his fingers.

He prepared his lover quickly, as Tatara yelped and whimpered and rolled towards the digits pressing inside him, eagerly accepting a second and a third finger and seeming near begging for more, twitching and clenching around them as Mikoto thrust them inside him, grinding his fingertips against Tatara’s sweet spot. Normally, Mikoto would have preferred to take a little more time and care over his preparations, but Tatara didn’t seem willing to wait that long – barely a minute after Mikoto had slid a third finger into him, Tatara was already begging:

“M-Mikoto… Please!”

It wasn’t often Mikoto heard Tatara use his given name, and the sound of it, the desperation in his voice, made him shudder with arousal. He withdrew his fingers, then hurried to shed the last of his clothes and reached for the drawer once more.

“D-do we have to bother with condoms…?” Tatara said shyly. “If we’re both clean…”

“I am,” Mikoto replied, raising an eyebrow.

“I-is a guy not allowed to like the idea of his boyfriend cumming inside him?” Tatara huffed.

Mikoto smirked. “You really want that?”

He nodded eagerly.

Mikoto closed the drawer he had just half-opened and picked up the bottle of lubricant that he’d discarded onto the bed, then slicked it onto his bare cock, watching the way Tatara’s eyes fixed on him touching himself, enraptured. The moment he was done, Mikoto knelt between Tatara’s thighs, lifting his partner’s hips up to his own and taking a moment to drink in the sight of him: trembling in anticipation, with a blush creeping down from his neck onto his chest and shoulders, his cock stiff between his thighs and crowned with a bead of precum.

“P-please…” Tatara whimpered impatiently once more, and Mikoto finally slid inside him, coaxing groans from both of them.

Tatara wasted no time, immediately rocking his hips against Mikoto’s in encouragement, and Mikoto could do nothing but indulge him, thrusting slowly and gently inside him as he grew accustomed to the stretching sensation. Not that Tatara seemed to want to grow accustomed to anything – he was already writhing and twitching in Mikoto’s grip, trying to push him deeper, and Mikoto once again obliged, continuing the steady pace, but pressing hilt deep with each measured thrust. Yelps of desperate ecstasy already flooded past Tatara’s lips, and they only grew higher pitched and more eager as the pair settled into a rhythm, rough and desperate. Mikoto’s instinct to be gentle was gradually eroded by Tatara’s whimpers in his ear, the way his gasps ghosted across Mikoto’s skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake, and it wasn’t long until he was indulging Tatara’s wish to simply be ravished, held up by Mikoto’s fingers digging into his slender thighs as Mikoto surrendered himself to his hormones, and to his lover’s whimpered demands:

“H-harder…! Yes, right there! D-don’t stop, god, Mikoto~! Faster!”

All the while, Mikoto kept nipping and kissing at what he could reach of Tatara’s chest and throat, letting out low, satisfied groans that he didn’t really want to hold back – Tatara seemed to relish in the expression of Mikoto’s enjoyment, and he shivered with each grunt that escaped Mikoto’s lips.

It took a while for Mikoto to remember the vibrator that had fallen discarded onto the sheets, and he grabbed for it once more, turning it back on and once again tracing lines up and down Tatara’s cock, eliciting a cry of ecstasy from his lover. The way Tatara rolled his hips, desperate and voracious as he threw his body towards the sensation, sent shocks of heat spiralling down Mikoto’s spine. Tatara’s cries were exultant now; he looked as though he barely even remembered his own name, and could only just summon the language to express his pleasure in the form of semi-coherent shrieks. He buried his face in his own arm once more, muffling his voice in his shoulder to stop it carrying through the walls, and his hands twisted desperately in their bindings, as though aching to cling to Mikoto’s shoulders.

The smell of smoke caught Mikoto’s attention, and he looked up to see Tatara singeing through the ribbon with his aura. As soon as his wrists were free, he threw his arms around Mikoto’s back, digging his nails into his skin as though his life depended on it.

Their synchronised motions only grew more erratic, rough and jerky and haphazard with pleasure as Tatara threw his body towards Mikoto’s, savouring the sensation of him thrusting into him, as though still craving more, losing himself in the ecstasy. The bucking of his hips was impatient and greedy and exultant; his body seemed to be moving of its own volition, and Tatara looked as though he was long past the point of self-consciousness, or even self-awareness. The only coherent word he was able to form was his lover’s name, whispered with each exhale as his voice gave out, and then his head tipped back onto the pillow as his whole body shuddered violently, his mouth tipping open in a silent scream as he reached his climax, releasing across his own abdomen as Mikoto rocked slowly in and out of him, trying to emblazon the sight into his memory. But there was only so long he could keep his vision from blurring before the sensation of his lover tightening and trembling around him drew him over the edge to his own orgasm, and with a low groan, he came inside his partner.

They were still for a long moment, their breathing ragged from exertion as Mikoto turned off the vibrator with shaky fingers and dropped it onto the mattress. It was a while before Tatara finally seemed to gather enough of his senses to be able to utter: “T-that… was amazing…”

“Happy birthday,” Mikoto said with a smirk, pulling out of his lover and leaning down to lap his release off his tummy. Tatara shuddered at the sight, biting his lip playfully as Mikoto lay down beside him once every drop had been licked clean and kissed his lover softly.

“Happy Valentine’s,” Tatara countered, rolling onto his side to kiss his lover slowly, basking in their afterglow. “That little toy is really powerful for how small it is… we should use it more often…”

“We can get more toys if you want,” Mikoto offered, picking up a crumpled box of cigarettes from his bedside table and lighting one.

“Don’t tempt me~.”

Mikoto chuckled, then changed the subject before his boyfriend could get any more ideas. “So how was your first Valentine’s as a not-single person?”

“Like I always hoped it would be. Then again I always hoped it would be with you, so…”

“That’s cheesy,” Mikoto teased, sliding his arm around his partner’s shoulders.

“You wouldn’t have me any other way~.”

Mikoto couldn’t help but smile at the grin on his lover’s lips, and he exhaled a ribbon of smoke before leaning down to kiss him once more.

“I love you,” he murmured.

“I love you more~.”

“Not possible.”

[mistleto-3]

More than a Match for Heaven

A stray fallen angel came across a boy with beautiful eyes. At the moment their eyes met, the pathetic angel fell for him.

Mikototsu Alluring Secret Black Vow (Fallen Angel) AU. 

Pairing: Mikoto/Tatara

8,394 words. ANGST. CW for suicidal ideation, graphic depictions of violence and death. Brief NSFW hints. 

For Mikototsu Week 2017, day 9: Alternate Universe. Based on the song ~Alluring Secret~ Black Vow by Hitoshizuku-P. Thank you @augustgreatsword for helping me brainstorm this!!

AO3 | Ko-Fi

Mikoto had seen a lot of angels in his time. But this one was different – this was the first person he’d looked at and thought: an angel. A human boy, slight and delicate looking, as though a strong gust of wind would knock his feet out from under him, but it wasn’t that that took Mikoto aback. The boy’s dark gold hair fell just shy of his collar, framing the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. Faintly tanned skin, with cheeks flushed pink from the late autumn chill, but even as the biting wind whistled through the bare branches, it didn’t dampen the warm, genuine smile on his lips. And his eyes – the smile came more from his eyes than his lips, a fan of long lashes lining light brown irises, like liquid bronze. Out of all the angels Mikoto had seen before, he had never seen eyes like that.

The boy stopped at the sight of Mikoto at the side of the street, in clothes far too thin to keep the cold at bay.

“Aren’t you chilly?

Mikoto shrugged. “Nothin’ I can do about it.”

The boy removed his scarf and wrapped it around Mikoto’s neck. “I’m Totsuka Tatara, what’s your name?”

“Suoh Mikoto.”

“You should come with me in from the cold,” he said, offering a hand to help Mikoto to his feet.

“How do I know you aren’t a murderer?” Mikoto asked light-heartedly – it was a stupid question. There was no way a boy like this would ever hurt a fly.

“All I can do is promise I want to help you.”

“Why?”

“You seem like someone who doesn’t deserve to be out in the cold on a night like this,” he said simply.

So Mikoto took his hand.

 Tatara’s house was modest, but cosy. The first thing he did was hurry straight from the front door over to the fireplace to light it, and Mikoto hadn’t realised how cold he had been until the heat seeped into his skin, thawing him out.  Immediately, Tatara directed Mikoto to a seat right in front of the hearth, where he brought him warm clothes and food and drink at a pace that left him bemused. It was a foreign feeling, being offered help like this, and it was difficult not to feel like he owed this boy something in return. Not that he had anything to give him. Except perhaps the truth.  

“If you’re gonna take me in, there’s something you should probably know…” Mikoto began.

Tatara quirked his head, seeming not in the least bit suspicious. “What is it?”

Mikoto set the food and drink on the side, then got to his feet, shrugging off the shirt he’d been given. He thought he saw Tatara’s cheeks flush faintly at the sight of his bare chest, but he brushed it off as a mere trick of the light. Then Mikoto opened his wings behind his back, the immense limbs appearing as though from thin air and stretching almost from one side of the room to the other, clad in iridescent black feathers, like a crow’s.

Tatara didn’t even look surprised. He simply smiled that same sunshine-y smile, and said: “You’re an angel?”

“I s’pose.”

“I knew there was something special about you. But…” His face fell.

“What?”

“Why aren’t you in heaven?”

“I fell.”

Tatara seemed to understand that he didn’t want to elaborate, and he didn’t press the subject. “They’re beautiful…” he said, reaching out almost instinctively to touch the plumage, but he stopped himself, hesitating and glancing at Mikoto as though to ask permission. Mikoto inclined his head slightly, and Tatara ran his fingers over the soft, downy feathers on the underside of his wing. The contact sent tingles of static through every nerve in Mikoto’s body. But it was the pure joy in Tatara’s smile that had the greatest effect on him – the look on his face made parts of Mikoto’s chest he didn’t know could feel anything feel… warm.

I think I’m in love with him.

 Over the next few days, the two of them talked and got to know each other, or rather, Tatara talked and Mikoto listened.

“Do you live alone?” Mikoto asked.

“Not technically – this is my father’s house, but he’s out of town a lot for work. I don’t expect him to be back for a while; he’s away on some business engagement.” Tatara’s tone as he spoke suggested that wasn’t quite the whole truth.

Mikoto raised an eyebrow.

“He tends to get… invited away by the wind sometimes, and I never really know when he’ll get back. He goes away for one thing, and then he’ll get distracted by his vices and spend too much on drink and women and gambling. But it’s no big deal; we get by.” Despite the admission, Tatara didn’t seem perturbed by his father’s behaviour.

“Mhm…”

“Besides, it won’t be like this for much longer anyway…” This time he did sound a little off.

“Why not?”

“I’ll move out when I get married.”

Mikoto felt his stomach drop like a stone. “Is that soon?”

“Fairly… My father arranged the match, the daughter of a business partner of his. My father calls her the Colourless King – he’s always coming up with nonsense nicknames for people; her family name is ‘King,’ and she has hair so pale it’s almost white, and really light coloured eyes too. I haven’t met with her more than a few times – I know the church we’re supposed to marry in, St Mary’s, better than I know her. But she seems nice.” The final phrase was noncommittal – Tatara sounded like he was merely being polite about a stranger.

A small, guilty part of Mikoto was relieved Tatara wasn’t already in love with someone else, but the prospect of him getting married twisted like a blade. It was foolish of him to feel this strongly about a boy he barely knew.

“And you want to get married?”

“I’m not opposed, if it will make my father happy. I’m a bit of a romantic, and I’d prefer to fall in love first, but I’ll make it work. It’ll all turn out okay...” Tatara trailed off, then changed the subject. “What about you, do you have a sweetheart?”

Mikoto shook his head. “Angels aren’t allowed to fall in love.”

Tatara pouted. “That sounds boring…”

Mikoto chuckled. “Yeah, kinda.”

As they conversed, the peace that grew between them seemed almost eerily natural, as easy as breathing. They seemed to click, and despite barely knowing each other, and being such different people, they got along as though they’d known each other their entire lives. The silences were never uncomfortable, and Tatara had an uncanny way of picking all of the meaning out of even the shortest of Mikoto's utterances. They seemed to resonate at the same frequency, like their souls were created from the same substance. It was so painfully impossible to resist falling for this boy, knowing their stars were crossed. Not that Mikoto wanted to fall into a hopeless love, but he'd never been good at self-restraint, and he'd already fallen once - how much more harm could it do to fall again? That brilliant smile was more than a match for heaven - Mikoto had already seen paradise and thought the ache of being tossed out of it would never subside, and yet so quickly he had found heaven in the music of this man's smile, and the sunlight in his laughter. He was worth the ashes of any hope Mikoto might have had of returning to heaven; Mikoto could feel it in his bones. There was something about him that just made Mikoto... certain, more certain than he'd ever been about anything before. It seemed unjust that forbidden fruit could look so tempting, and every day that passed, it was harder to resist reaching for a taste.

 And so he did just that. Perhaps a week or so had passed since he and Tatara had first met, Mikoto once again found himself enraptured by the shape of his lips, and the sweetness of every word that flowed from them. He was almost addictive; the calm that came with his mere presence was like a drug. Mikoto almost didn't recognise himself under the spell of this boy. He had never been one to form attachments to people, never been one to care what others thought, but it was like Tatara was reeling him in, coaxing down his guard with the sense of security he instilled in Mikoto. It was uncanny and terrifying and wonderful and Mikoto was finding it difficult to quiet the intrusive thoughts about what those delicate fingers would feel like tangled with his own.

They were walking together, just walking, with Tatara laughing melodically at something Mikoto had just said as Mikoto followed him into the kitchen, lagging only a few paces behind. And then suddenly he found himself reaching for Tatara's arm, wrapping his hand all the way around the slender limb. The warmth of his touch and the soft innocence in Tatara's gasp of surprise only urged him on. Mikoto felt like his body was moving of its own accord, turning the beautiful man in his arms to face him and pressing a soft, chaste kiss to those irresistible lips, those lips that tasted like recklessness and paradise.

For an exultant moment, Tatara yielded to the kiss, seeming to sink into it, and Mikoto decided fuck heaven, because he could find all the heaven he needed right here, in this.

But then Tatara seemed to freeze, and Mikoto pulled away immediately at the sense that something wasn't right. For the first time in over a week, Tatara didn't seem to have anything to say. He stammered, and a crease appeared between his brows as conflict flickered across his expression.

“I-I’m sorry…” he said finally.

“No, I am…” Mikoto replied. He kicked himself internally for even considering that it might have been a good idea – Tatara was engaged, and there was every chance he wasn’t even interested in men, wasn’t interested in Mikoto.

“N-no…” Tatara’s expression softened immediately at the guilt on Mikoto’s face. “It’s not that I didn’t want it; I’ve never… Nobody has ever made me feel grounded the way you have before, and I wish we could…” He took Mikoto’s hands in his own and took a deep breath, as though trying to gather his thoughts.

“I get it. You’re engaged.”

“It isn’t that. I barely know her; I feel no obligation to her.”

“Then what?”

“You said it was forbidden for an angel to fall in love. I don’t pretend to be a man of faith and know that much about it, but I’m pretty sure the punishment for a sin like that is an eternity in hell, especially if you’ve already been kicked out of heaven.”

Mikoto’s instinct was to tell him it was worth it, but he bit his tongue, feeling it would be inappropriate.

“Besides, even if there were no consequences for you, there’s still my father. He would never understand if I fell in love with a man. It would be easier to explain to him that you were an angel…” Tatara obviously saw the flicker of anger cross Mikoto’s face at the insinuation that Tatara’s father might take issue to his son’s identity, and Tatara quickly rectified his statement. “Not that he’s closed-minded or intolerant or hateful or anything of that sort; he would never hurt me for liking a man, but… he gets disappointed easily, and he’s had this idea of how I was going to be all my life, and that idea revolves around me carrying on the family name. Obviously I can’t do that if I can’t have any children, and I can’t have children if I’m with a man.”

“Why do you care so much about what he thinks if he treats you badly?”

“It’s… hard to explain. It’s easier to think of him as a bad friend than a father, but I know he doesn’t do it out of malice. He just doesn’t really have any direction in life after my mother left, and I know how it feels to be drifting without anything to really cling to. I feel like I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s family.”

“That’s more important than being happy?”

“I don’t know what he would do if he found out – like I said: he’s easily disappointed, and if he’s been drinking or something he could overreact and I could lose everything and end up on the streets.”

Mikoto sighed. That reason, at least, he could understand. If it came to that, it wasn’t like he could provide for Tatara, and he couldn’t ask him to risk everything for his sake.

“I understand.”

“I’m sorry…” Tatara began, squeezing Mikoto’s hands. His voice faltered, as though he was trying to bite back tears.

“It’s not your fault,” Mikoto murmured, pulling him into his arms. “But I can’t stay.” As he said it, he realised it was true – he couldn’t linger knowing Tatara felt the same way, but he could never have him. It would be torture, falling from heaven all over again. He would miss the warmth of him, the boy made of sunlight.

Tatara sniffled, but he nodded, his face buried in Mikoto’s chest. “I understand.” His voice was thick with tears.

“Thank you for everything.”

“It was a joy.”

They drew out the moments standing in each other’s embrace until long after the tears on Tatara’s cheeks had dried, and then finally, they untangled themselves from each other.

“Don’t worry. Everything will turn out okay,” Tatara said softly, but it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself. “I’m glad I met you.”

“Me too,” Mikoto said, then unfolded his wings in preparation to leave, knowing that if he didn’t do it now, if he dragged out their goodbye any longer, he would never be able to make himself go.

Tatara ran his hands across the wings one final time, and Mikoto felt his fingers rustle a loose feather. Mikoto reached over to where he’d felt it and eased the long flight feather out, then pressed it into Tatara’s hand, and Tatara gave him a weak smile in response. Then he tiptoed to wrap his arms around Mikoto’s neck and press their lips softly together one final time. After a drawn out moment, they broke apart, and wordlessly, Mikoto left.

A month passed, but the ache never lessened. Mikoto’s chest felt like something had been gouged out of it, like some deep, unclosing wound had been savaged inside him, and it only festered and stung more with every passing day. No matter what Mikoto tried to pile on top of the pain, no matter what he did or how many cigarettes he smoked or how much he drank, nothing deadened the throbbing. He almost found himself wishing he could die. Not planning it actively per se, but he sometimes wondered idly how much he would have to drink before it poisoned him, or if it would hurt if he stepped out into the train tracks.

He felt pathetic for thinking this way over someone he had barely known for a week. But it was like he’d spent his entire life sleepwalking; he couldn’t even muster the energy to care terribly when he fell from heaven. He’d felt happiness, but it was always meek and transient, like the weak glimmers of sun between the clouds of a grey winter day. And then he’d met Tatara, who had burned so brilliantly that without him, it seemed like the world had fallen into darkness, and now he’d had a taste of what true contentment felt like, of what it meant to really be wanted by someone, to fall back into the bland, lifeless existence he’d had before they met felt like torture.

He’d never thought much about the dark arts before. But he supposed there was nothing to lose now. At first it had just been a passing inkling, and then a thought, and then a plan, and then a need, a need to do something, anything, to make the pain go away.

So he stood before a mirror, took a blade to his palm, and painted the circle on the glass. And then, a whispered incantation was all it took, in a language Mikoto didn’t quite understand. When he opened his eyes, the image in the mirror was not his reflection, but a shadowy figure.

“What is it you would have me do?”

“How much would it cost to be with him?”

“Love between a human and an angel is forbidden,” the spectre said, its tone almost teasing.

“So make me human. You can do that?”

“I can, I can. How long for? The rest of his life?”

“Yes. How much would it cost?” he repeated.

The demon considered for a moment. “One wing.”

“Take it.”

A hand, like congealed smoke, reached out through the glass and grasped Mikoto’s own bloody fingers and shook them, then retracted, dissipating into the air with the smell of something charring.

And then Mikoto felt as though he was falling, like the ground had disappeared out from beneath his feet, and agony erupted between his shoulder blades as his wing was torn from his body, blood pulsing down his back as the bones broke and sinew tore. It almost, almost, hurt as much as losing the only love he’d ever known.

Tatara had taken to walking the churchyard a lot, wandering between the marble seraphs guarding the graves and trying not to be too forlorn, but as much as he told himself it would all turn out okay, it rang hollow. The thought of the fast approaching wedding filled him with a cold, constricting anxiety, and he felt like there was a… space in his chest, like his ribcage had been deflated and sunken in on himself. So he tried to keep his mind off it. It was easier to cope with the pain when he wasn’t thinking about it.

Before, he’d been okay with the wedding – he’d figured, well, these are things that happen, and he might as well make the best of it. But the truce he’d reached with the concept had been shaken irreparably by his meeting with the angel. He could barely even think about Mikoto – he tried to bury the thoughts, in fear they’d strike him off guard and he would crumble into tears. He hadn’t cried over him yet, not since he’d left. The whole week they’d spent together felt like a vivid fever dream; it almost seemed too intense to be real. Tatara almost would have thought he’d made the whole thing up if it weren’t for the feather he kept under his pillow, and the constant hollow aching between his ribs.

The church wasn’t busy between sermons, and apart from the occasional mourner, who Tatara always kept a respectful distance from, the churchyard was usually empty whenever he went for walks there. He wasn’t really religious, so he wasn’t sure what drew him to that spot, except that he didn’t want to be at home with his father, and this was the only place he could think of to go, even when it rained or when the grass was blanketed in snow.

Except one day, Tatara found he wasn’t alone in the grounds – he was joined by a woman standing in the shade of an apple tree with long, waist length hair, such a vivid and dark auburn that it was almost blood red. She was tall and almost intimidating, but beautiful in a fierce and leonine way. Even her almond shaped eyes were dark yellow, like a cat’s. But they weren’t predatory, if anything, they were almost mournful. But she wasn’t dressed funeralgoer’s black, and there were no burials that Tatara knew of arranged for that day.

And then she caught his gaze and started heading towards him, and Tatara felt a twinge of embarrassment; he hadn’t realised until it was too late that he hadn’t taken his eyes off her in a while, and she had noticed him staring. There was just something captivating about her appearance, like recognising a face but not being able to put your finger on where you remember it from.

As the girl approached, Tatara bowed his head apologetically. “I’m sorry for staring… I didn’t even realise, I apologise if I made you uncomfortable. But if you don’t mind me saying, you’re very pretty.” He looked up at her and offered her a sheepish smile, and to his relief, the corner of the girl’s lip was quirked in a smirk.

“You too.”

“My name’s Totsuka Tatara, what’s yours?”

She paused for a fraction of a second, and Tatara worried he’d been too forward, until she said: “Makoto.”

“What a beautiful name.”

Their eyes met for a moment, and it was like opium. That little wry smile almost seemed to smooth over the pain of the past month, like footprints in the sand washed away by the waves. For the first time in weeks, Tatara forgot about it all; his mantra that everything would all turn out okay finally seemed to hold a glimmer of truth.

He never used to believe in love at first sight, and yet here he was, suspecting he was beginning to fall for the second time.

“What’re you doing out here?” she asked.

“The grounds are a nice place to go for a walk, to think about things.”

“What things?”

Tatara could feel his own eyes creasing at the corners into the same mournful expression mirrored in hers. “I’m supposed to come here in a while to do something, but I’m not sure I want to.”

“Can you get out of it?”

“Not really. Not unless I run away…” he said, half-joking.

“Then why not?”

Tatara paused for a moment. The thought quickly took root within him, almost like a weed, and as absurd as it sounded, as reckless as it would be, it was tempting. The idea was almost seductive, sweeter every moment he mulled over it.

Why not?

It wasn't like he had anything to cling to in this place - his father was never around, and when he was, all Tatara could think at the sight of his face was everything he might have cost him. He held no resentment towards him, but equally, he no longer had the same urgency not to disappoint him. He simply didn't have the energy to care anymore.

Why not?

It was awfully rash, and quite frankly dangerous, to run away at the suggestion of some strange, siren-like woman, but the things she said were the only things that had made sense to him in months, the only things that struck a chord.

He didn't want to get married to his betrothed, that much he was certain of. It was too permanent and too limiting; the prospect of a ring seemed more like a shackle. And now he'd had this brief and breath taking whirlwind romance, and the prospect of settling down seemed almost like numbing himself, and as much as the pain of everything that had happened was crushing him, he decided it was better to hurt for a little while than be numb forever.

Why not...

"I suppose... there's nothing really holding me here... There's my father, but...” I don’t care anymore was the genuine continuation to the rest of the sentence, but he couldn’t make himself say it out loud. “But where would we stay?" He wasn't quite sure what possessed him to assume this strange woman would be coming with him, but she didn't object.

"Hotel, I guess."

"Where would we go?"

"Anywhere."

That did sound appealing. To just climb on a train and follow it wherever it went. It was tantalising, thrilling. To flee, to shed the weight of his worries and liberate himself from the anxiety that was congealing into a weight inside his chest. He only wished he'd thought of this sooner, but he wasn't sure he would have had the courage to do this even a few weeks ago. It was only now he didn't really feel like he had anything to lose that he couldn't shake the grip of the wanderlust. He had been existing okay before the angel showed up, but when he disappeared, it felt like he took a piece of Tatara with him, like after seeing in brilliant technicolour for a few days, he realised how monotonous his life really was, how little he had to cling onto. His father had called him cold-hearted because of how uninterested in anything he was, and Tatara sort of agreed with him.

Tatara smiled. “Why not?” he concurred, offering out his hand, and the girl took it.

 Once they’d decided, Tatara moved quickly so he wouldn’t lose his resolve. He returned for a short while to his home to pack some things and leave a note for his father. It was only brief:

I can’t go through with the wedding. I’m sorry, but I need to get away from this place and find something to cling on to that I truly care about. I can’t be cold-hearted anymore.

Love Tatara.

He left it on the table, then gathered some clothes and money and a few other essential things, and placed the feather at the bottom of his bag.

An hour later, they were on the train. They didn’t go far, just a few cities over, but Tatara already felt reinvigorated. On the train, they talked, getting to know each other. The girl was just as enigmatic as she had been when Tatara had met her that morning – she didn’t seem to have much to say about herself, except that she’d been kicked out of her home by her father for being sinful and unrepentant.

“What sin, if I may ask?”

“Fell in love with someone I shouldn’t have.”

“That doesn’t sound like a sin.”

“’S what I did about it.”

“O-oh…” Tatara felt his cheeks flush at the lewd hint, and he tried to suppress the wave of indecent thoughts. “Are you still with the person?”

“No.”

Tatara almost felt relieved, and he didn’t know why.

As quiet as this girl was, she was easy to talk to. It was almost as it had been with the angel; they seemed to be on the same wavelength. He couldn’t blame her for being quiet, though; he understood why she didn’t seem eager to talk much about herself, and he related to the urge to discard everything that tied her to her past and look forward. Tatara recognised the mournful look she still had in her eyes – that was the look of someone whose memories were mostly painful, but she seemed to have brightened a little now they’d taken this leap together.

Tatara only wished he could have taken it sooner and fled with his angel, but there was no point lamenting over could-have-beens. He too wanted to cut ties with history and make himself anew, away from the things that had held him back in the past. And this time he wasn’t going to waste another opportunity to love – the whole time they’d been on the train, his fingers were twined with the girl’s, and the warmth of her hand imbued him with strength. He felt like he had known her all his life, and he got this intangible feeling about her like he was meant to meet her, like she would be the turning point in his life, she would be indescribably important. Like she could even be the thing he wanted to cling to.

They found the first inn they came across when they got off the train, but as Tatara approached the reception, he hesitated.

“What?” Makoto asked.

“I don’t really have the money for two rooms…”

“I don’t mind sharing.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded, and Tatara stepped forward to speak to the woman behind the front desk.

Once they had been shown up to their room, the evening was beginning to wear on. Tatara allowed Makoto to bathe first, and then took a bath himself. It almost felt like the act of it washed away his old life, but he was surprised to find he didn’t really feel sentimental about it.

Once Tatara was clean and dry, he emerged from the bathroom to find Makoto lying on the bed reading a book in nothing but her underwear, her hair still slightly damp and fanning out around her head on the sheets like a fiery halo.

“S-sorry, I didn’t realise you weren’t decent yet, I should have knocked before I came out…” he stammered.

“It’s okay. I don’t have pyjamas or a night gown or anything like that.”

“I’m sure something of mine would fit you if you need something.”

“Nah. I’d just be too warm. Unless there’s an issue…”

“N-not at all!” Tatara blurted out, trying to keep his eyes averted from her body, but it was extraordinarily difficult. She was stunningly beautiful, shapely and elegant, but not soft like most women; he could see the shadow of her abdominal muscles on her tummy, and her arms and thighs looked powerful enough to just about crush him. As much as he felt like he’d known her for years, or like they’d been soulmates in some past life, he was acutely aware that she was essentially a stranger, and he felt rude for being so aware of her body.

“You don’t have to avert your eyes like some puritan,” she said, her tone slightly mocking but in a gentle way. She closed the book and set it on the bedside table.

“It would be improper…” he began, but if he was completely honest, her beauty made him nervous. It was almost frightening how much he wanted her, the magnetism he felt drawing him towards her, body and soul. “We barely know each other…”

“But you ran away with me. Isn’t that more improper?” She sat up as she spoke.

“I suppose…” Tatara sat down beside her on the mattress, and she rested her hand on top of his. “I just feel like… it’s hard to explain. Like you aren’t a stranger, like I was meant to meet you. I feel like everything makes sense now that I know you.”

Makoto nodded in understanding.

“Do you feel the same way?”

She nodded, and then the next thing Tatara knew, they were kissing, their arms around each other’s waists, clinging to one another like a lifeline. He felt like he was coming up for air as they tumbled back onto the mattress together, and the last of his inhibitions evaporated. He craved her, craved to know her as well as he already felt he did. He wanted to see her face without that mourning look in her eyes.

So he gave himself to her, surrendering as she crawled on top of him and their kisses burned with desire that neither of them wanted to reign in. Her body under his hands felt like paradise, her kisses like liberation, and suddenly he was resolved to replace that melancholy expression with ecstasy. Everything else in the world fell away except the two of them, skin-to-skin, as he held on to her for dear life, worshipping her body, kissing every inch of feverish flesh within reach, roaming downwards and giving no thought to the consequences. She was smirking, and he wanted more of that smile, wanted to coax more of her voice out of her throat, lose himself in her, drown in her. And she seemed to want the same; the movement of her hands was imperative, encouraging, eager. It was the most expressive he’d seen her, and he wanted to keep breaking through the walls she’d built around herself. So he kept going, exploring the contours of her body, peppering kisses in trails down her stomach to taste the heat between her thighs, spurred on by the soft noises in her throat and the way her fingers tangled in his hair…

Tatara lost track of time after that, but by the time they collapsed onto the mattress, spent and exhausted, it was the early hours of the morning, but Tatara didn’t care. The glow on Makoto’s face as she lay beside him, tangled in his arms, was like seeing heaven.

They soon settled in the city they’d drifted to; Tatara found a job as a cook in a pub not far from the hotel they’d stayed their first night at. The landlord was a relaxed, friendly fellow who wore glasses with coloured lenses, and he was kind enough to offer out the unoccupied apartment above the bar for them to rent. Makoto wasn’t much of the housewife type, and found herself bored and restless staying in all day, so she ended up working at the bar as well. Initially, her job was as a bar maid, but it wasn’t exactly her forte and she resented the patrons who got a little too drunk and tried their luck with her. At one point, she’d bodily thrown a man who’d had too much to drink and was getting aggressive out of the establishment with her own two hands, and after that she changed roles to doorwoman, which she liked much better.

The life she and Tatara had built was a modest one, but they were happy – they didn’t have to worry about anyone else but themselves; there were no obligations or expectations or thoughts of the future. Tatara seemed much less listless than he had before, and he spent the time he wasn’t at work experimenting with different hobbies to pass the time – he bought instruments and practiced on them, tried his hand at painting, and all sorts of other things. He finally seemed truly content – when they’d first met and Makoto went by another name, Tatara had seemed cheerful enough on the outside, but she could sense a sort of… discontentment about him, like he wasn’t quite satisfied, or didn’t really know where his place in the world was. But that air of dissatisfaction had vanished since they ran away, and his happiness seemed like more than just a façade now.

Makoto supposed the same was the case for her – looking back, there had never been a phase in her life that she could truly consider happy. Before she’d fallen, she wasn’t sad per se, but she was never really content. And then of course it went without saying that the short time she’d been on earth in her original form hadn’t been happy, with the exception of that first week with Tatara. But now, the little life they’d built together held more happiness than heaven ever had. With the exception of the flicker of guilt that she wasn’t telling Tatara the whole truth. By now, she didn’t know how to tell him they had met before, but she wasn’t sure how much it mattered. It wasn’t as though she was falsifying her personality, and she wasn’t exactly uncomfortable in the body she was in – she had never been particularly connected to masculinity anyway; it hadn’t been something she ever cared deeply about. Tatara seemed happy enough with the way she looked as things stood, and it wasn’t as though she could do anything to change back anyway – it would cost her her other wing, and if she lost them both, that would be the end of her. Besides, she didn’t want Tatara to feel guilty about what she’d done for him; it was more than worth it. If she had remained an angel, their love would continue to be forbidden. There seemed no benefit in the truth, and even though it would bother her from time to time, it wasn’t enough for her to consider telling him. It wasn’t like she had lied, anyway – Tatara had never brought up the mysterious angel he had met not long before her; he seemed to have buried it in an attempt to forget the agony of the encounter. Or perhaps he’d simply convinced himself it had all been a dream. Either way, she didn’t blame him.

As time went on, it became something of a tradition for the two of them to go for walks in the grounds of the local church whenever they needed to get away from the building they spent most of their time in, as a sort of homage to the place they’d ‘first met’. They never went inside the church itself – if Makoto was honest, she wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if she did, but they were content out in the yard, wandering between the trees and lichen-covered headstones, as though the earth were growing up to claim not only the person given back to it, but their memorial too.

“I don’t think I’d like to be buried,” Tatara had said one day out of the blue as they walked through the graveyard. “I’d want to be cremated, and I’d want my ashes to be buried with a seed, so I would live again as a tree.”

“What kind of tree?”

“An apple tree.”

It seemed appropriate for Tatara to want to be reborn as the tree that bore fruit so often demonised as the one Eve picked from the tree of knowledge. Makoto’s own personal forbidden fruit.

“What about you?” Tatara asked.

Makoto shrugged. “Never thought about it. Aren’t you a bit young to be thinking about stuff like that?”

Tatara smiled. “I suppose I should be more focused on how I’m going to live, right?”

“Mm.”

“Well, that’s easy,” he said, tangling his fingers with Makoto’s. “I want to spend my life with you.”

“Are you proposing?” she joked.

A serene smile crossed Tatara’s face, and he released her hand, bending down to pick a daisy from amongst the grass. With great concentration, he poked a hole through the top of the stem with his fingernail, then curled the bottom around and threaded it through the hole to create a ring. And he knelt down.  

“Even though I haven’t known you very long, the time I’ve spent with you has been the happiest of my life. I’ve never felt as free or as joyful as I do with you; I finally have something in my life that I want to hold onto, something to cherish and love and live for, and I want to do that for the rest of my life.” The words obviously weren’t rehearsed, but they flowed straight from his soul like poetry, without a single stutter or pause. Like this was the only thing he’d ever been sure about. “So I would be honoured and privileged if you would marry me,” he concluded, holding out the flower.

Makoto offered him her hand for him to slide the makeshift ring onto her finger. “Yes,” she said simply.

Tatara leapt to his feet and flung his arms around her, and Makoto thought she felt a teardrop fall from his jaw onto her shoulder. “I love you so much.”

The pair didn’t really get married, as such – they still never entered the church, and the only other person present at their ‘wedding’ was their landlord, Izumo. They bought proper rings, simple and inexpensive, and exchanged them along with their vows beneath an old, gnarled apple tree, its boughs heavy with spring blossoms. Tatara’s were lengthy and poetic, of course, whilst Makoto’s were simple and straight to the point, but in them she expressed emotions she had never spoken aloud – that she had never truly been happy before, but now that she had him, she was honestly content for the first time, and for that, she would give all her life to him. It had been a struggle for her to put it into words, but after several scratched out drafts and a little help from Izumo, she finally ended up with a set of short vows written on a small notecard to read out. At the ‘ceremony’, she looked up from the card at the end of the speech to see tears of joy spilling down Tatara’s cheeks.

Makoto felt at peace as she lay in their marriage bed that night, with Tatara’s head on her shoulder as he dreamed. Even in a body and a name and a gender that weren’t her own, it didn’t really bother her. Here, it felt like all of the pain of her past was just a distant memory, faded and bleached by sunlight and time. It almost felt as though it was all a different lifetime, disconnected from the one she was living now. She remembered that it had happened, but she could no longer recall the way that biting, constant ache had felt. Her life now almost seemed too good, too perfect to be real, like she had dreamed it up to escape the past, but the warm weight of Tatara’s body slotted so perfectly beneath her arm, and the tickle of his breath over her bare collarbone were too wonderful for her to ever have made them up – she wasn’t optimistic enough to ever dream something like this was possible.

With the marriage, Tatara started musing about the future – he talked about it as if he’d been thinking about it for a while, but had been too nervous to say it aloud in fear of scaring her away (as if he could have scared away the person who he ran away with five minutes after meeting her). He started discussing changing jobs, finding something with better pay so they could afford a home of their own. Makoto had never been bothered by any of this stuff – she had always been happy just to do whatever made Tatara happy, so she agreed that if that was what he wanted, then they would do it. And then Tatara paused, shyly, and Makoto prompted him to say whatever it was he was thinking.

“Have you ever… thought about starting a family?”

“No,” she said, truthfully. It had never really occurred to her as something to consider, but now that Tatara brought it up, she supposed that seeing as she was human now, and female, then it would technically be possible. There had always been rules against angels having children, so it had never crossed her mind before now. “Have you?”

“I thought about it before. I always wanted children in theory, I suppose; I love kids, and I wanted to give them all the things my parents never gave me. But then I was betrothed and I stopped thinking about it because I couldn’t really picture a life with my old fiancée. But now I’m married to a woman I really love… Obviously there’s no pressure, but if it’s something you think would be a possibility, even if it would be far, far in the future, then we could think about it…”

“I guess I don’t not want them.” She shrugged. “Never really considered it before.”

Tentative hope lit up Tatara’s face.

“It’s worth thinking about, one day,” she finally concluded, and Tatara squeezed her hand. She could practically see the dreams of their future materialising in his eyes. It was sort of adorable.

They had been walking as they spoke, back to that churchyard. A meteor shower had been forecast, and Tatara was determined to go and watch the shooting stars, so he made a picnic and rolled up a blanket to bring with them and set up in the grounds. When they arrived, there was around an hour or so before the shower itself was supposed to begin, and they laid everything out and settled in together, while Tatara poured them each a glass of wine from the bottle he’d brought along. They picked at the selection of food in comfortable silence. The sky was blessedly clear with the exception of a few small wisps of cloud, and every so often, Tatara would point out the unusual shape of a cloud, or a constellation he had either recognised or entirely made up himself, but apart from that, they simply absorbed the beauty of the evening, cuddled up to one another.

They had just about finished eating when the first light streaked across the sky, and Tatara gasped, laying back to rest his head in Makoto’s lap and watch the display, as Makoto watched the reflection of the glimmering stars in his eyes. She could have drowned in those eyes, in the joy in his expression every time another glittering meteor darted across the constellations. Their fingers twined loosely as they nestled together for warmth in the midnight chill. Makoto didn’t once look up – she was content to watch her lover’s face.

“Isn’t it a nice night out?” Tatara said, the casual understatement just like him.

“A nice night, you say? Indeed it is.” The mirthful voice sounded from behind them, and Tatara sat up with a start, turning to face the speaker.

A woman with white hair and unnervingly gleeful, pale eyes stood a short distance away from them, her face twisted by a grin. Makoto felt Tatara freeze beside her, and immediately recognised the woman from the description Tatara had given all that time ago. The ‘Colourless King’; the fiancée that Tatara had run from.

Makoto tensed, preparing for a fight. There was a sort of crazed, preternatural quality to her smile, an unpredictability in the giddy way she swayed that sent a chill through Makoto’s body. The pallor of the woman’s skin almost glowed in the light of the full moon as though she were a ghost. Makoto opened her mouth to ask the woman how she had found them, but she never got the chance.

The woman’s hand twitched from her pocket, and the cold grey metal of the barrel of a gun glinted in the starlight. The peace of the evening was shattered by the deafening crack of a gunshot, echoing off the buildings nearby.

An expression of mild surprise crossed Tatara’s face as he looked down at the scarlet bloodstain blossoming down the front of his shirt, and then up at Makoto’s face before tumbling back into her arms. She clutched him in disbelief, cradling his limp form as he reached up to cup her cheek with a weak and shaking hand, his skin splattered with blood.

He saw the panic in her eyes and simply smiled at her reassuringly, the same serene smile he’d worn when they were stargazing just a moment ago.

“I was happy…” he told her. He didn’t seem afraid, or even shocked after the first moment of surprise. He barely even seemed to be in pain. He had simply accepted his fate.

“No, Tatara…”

“Don’t worry, it’ll all turn out alright,” his voice was full of conviction, despite how the strength of it wavered. The blood continued to spread across his torso, an impossible amount of it, brilliant crimson even under the moonlight that seemed to bleach everything it touched shades of silver. With every beat of his heart, a fresh pulse of scarlet trickled down his stomach.

“Tatara…”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Tatara, don’t die.”

He smiled at her. “Sorry…” The word escaped on a long exhale, like a sigh of relief, and his hand dropped. The reflection of the stars still glittered across his irises, but the light from within them had faded, like the brief shooting stars they had watched.

The shooter had vanished by the time Makoto could finally lift her head to look up, her eyes stinging and her vision blurred.

This must be judgement.

But it seemed agonisingly, infuriatingly unfair that Tatara should pay for Makoto’s act of treachery. Surely if anyone should die for her sins, it should be her.

Makoto didn’t recite any incantations this time; the figure simply appeared, a subtle, near-formless shape within the shadows that seemed slightly denser than the rest of the darkness, as though drawn to her pain like a shark to all the blood. It stood beneath the apple tree, now drooping under the weight of unripe fruit, and Makoto could almost sense that it was smiling.

“Remember the vow you made under this tree? ‘I will give all my life to you’?”

Makoto didn’t say anything.

“He’s not gone yet. You can save him.”

“How much would it cost?” Makoto felt she knew the answer before she spoke.

“One wing.”

“Take it.”

The wing immediately unfurled behind her back, and for a brief moment, it felt good to stretch out the limb, kept concealed for so long. And then it was over, and she once again felt the flesh ripping apart, but this time it barely stung more than a mere scratch, dwarfed by the suffocating weight of the lifeless body in her arms.

And then she felt her body shift once more, like fluid moving beneath her skin.

For the rest of his life. The demon had done her this one kindness now that her first contract had come to its conclusion, and Mikoto felt his clothes tear as he resumed his original shape.

The bloodstain across Tatara’s torso shrunk, retracting towards the wound until it disappeared. And then his lashes fluttered, and he sucked in a gasp of air, his eyes wide with shock as he sat bolt upright. He stared at Mikoto in amazement, and his gaze dropped briefly to the ring on his finger as he made the connection. The last thing Mikoto saw was the smile on his face before his vision blurred and he faded out, leaving nothing but a single feather fluttering down to the earth, and the ring Tatara had given him, the symbol of the promises that irrevocably intertwined them.

If to die for him was Mikoto’s fate, he could make peace with that – there was no doubt in his mind that it was better to die in his stead than live without him. And if Tatara was sure it would work out okay, then Mikoto held onto his certainty. In his death, he felt his transgression was paid for and the slate was wiped clean, so when they met again, there would be no reason that they couldn’t be together. And Mikoto had to believe they would meet again someday, because that would be the only possible happy ending.