———
When he opened his eyes, the nearly unchanged height of the taper candles told Nekozawa he had not been asleep for long. Maybe a few minutes. Though it seemed like hours of dreamless sleep had passed, and what came before that, only a passing dream.
He gently turned over to see Tamaki Suou lying on his stomach with his hands folded beneath his chin, like a kitten, tangled in the sheets and breathing peacefully and deep. The flickering candlelight cast his naked back in a warm, golden glow—a kind of sunlight that Nekozawa did not feel any need to shy from, that would not burn nor blind him. The faint beads of perspiration between his shoulder blades, like the dew on the peaches outside the parlor window, had not even dried yet. He was even more beautiful like this than when he affected the posture of the king of hosts—when he let his guard down and dropped the act he played at school. There was something of a childlike innocence in his manner at times such as this, in his face, that got caught up in the whole.
Yet he called Nekozawa guarded: Just yesterday, Suou would have died of shame rather than allow his upperclassman such an unadulterated glimpse of the true vulnerability within himself.
And Nekozawa was not sure if he should feel himself privileged to know that, or . . .
"A Mr Tamaki Suou here to see you, Young Master," the butler had announced to him earlier—or rather, late the evening before.
Announced, that was, rather belatedly, because Nekozawa could see very clearly who it was who stood in the marble foyer of his home, in the school uniform that matched the one he had not yet bothered to change out of.
He had not thought there was any need to wear his cloak in the privacy of his own home, where the heavy shades covered most of the windows already, keeping the house cool and dim even on this warm night in midsummer.
Now, however, as he stood stalk still on the stairs facing Suou, he felt suddenly naked without it, and it was all he could do not to reach up and make sure the dark wig was still on his head.
"Sempai," Suou said in the absence of a welcome, "I hope you'll forgive the intrusion. I would have called you to tell you I was on my way over, but I never got your number."
His way of speaking was bright, amicable—no, downright intimate—something he would never have affected at school, and Nekozawa for the life of him could not return it. If Suou were only playing him, he was making a nuisance of himself; but if these words of his were sincere, that was something Nekozawa could abide even less.
In the absence of his cloak, he turned to sarcasm to shield him.
"If you've come to play big brother to Kirimi, you're a little late in the day. She's already been tucked in."
"Actually, I came here to see you."
"What in the Devil's name for?"
It was the most far-fetched thing Nekozawa could remember being asked to believe in a long time. More far-fetched than the childish logic that Baba Yaga was going to catch him if he didn't eat his vegetables, or the mystery no one seemed capable of explaining of how three individuals could exist in one. What would Suou, who all but hid in a corner each time they crossed paths in the public arena of school—and sometimes literally did hide—like he were crossing paths with a black cat, want with him of all people? Moreover, what could he want enough to compel him to make the trip here himself, rather than find some more neutral location or time?
However, even as Nekozawa asked himself that question, he knew the answer, for the answer was inherent in the question. That he would need to ask why here and now in the first place was precisely why Suou was here, and here now.
Suou's brow furrowed as he tried to read Nekozawa's face, and tried to read through the veneer of polite sarcasm in his words. "Isn't it entirely possible I could have been concerned about you?"
"Possible, I suppose, but not likely. Concerned about what?"
"About what happened the other day. Your exposure to the elements. I feel responsible in a way. After all, when you boil it all down, I was the one who pushed you into the sunlight. Perhaps not physically, but just as well."
Nekozawa found himself unwittingly narrowing his eyes into a glare. He had nearly forgotten that incident, recent though it was, but somehow the reminder sparked something in him he wasn't used to feeling at school: a certain sense of self-righteousness.
It was only that suddenly he could not stand to be confronted with Suou's pity.
"Well, as you can see," he said in a cold manner that even he knew instantly was not in his normal character, gesturing vaguely to his face and his hands, "I'm just fine, but thank you for your inquiry."
To his surprise, he recognized the look on Suou's face as disappointment. There was something else as well, lurking beneath it. Something that left Suou awkwardly searching for words.
Nekozawa wasn't sure he wanted his underclassman to find them. The apology was out before he even realized what he was truly saying.
"Forgive me," he sighed. "In truth, I should be thanking you. Kirimi still fears me, but if not for you. . . ."
He trailed off.
"You would not have a relationship to speak of to mend?" Suou finished.
It was not what Nekozawa had meant to say—in truth, he did not know how he would have ended that sentence—yet it was true enough to strike a chord within him. As well as a niggling sense of shame. Like a struck piano string, it reverberated, and rooted him to the spot. He wanted to turn Suou out more than ever now, but unlike mere moments ago, it was not in irritation but fear. Fear that his underclassman, normally so afraid of him, might have caught a glimpse of something Nekozawa kept deep in his soul. Something he had thought safe from all the world.
His natural reaction was to run, but he refused to give into base instinct in front of Suou.
"The parlor is down that hall on your left," he said grudgingly. "You can make yourself at home. I'll bring some refreshments shortly. Then you can enlighten me as to what this visit is really about."
Again that chord was struck, as Suou smiled in gratitude.
Nekozawa regretted the invitation instantly.
A nebulous doubt that surrounded it refused to leave Nekozawa be as he prepared the tea in the butler's pantry himself. I won't give into that charm of his like some silly schoolgirl, he told himself while waiting for the water to come to boil. Apologetic or whatever the nature of his visit may be, I shall listen to what he has to say with objectivity and indifference, give him the proper time due a guest, and then politely show him the door.
. . . He could not understand, however, why he should need to tell himself this at all. Was it possible that Suou's charm could have an effect on him like it seemed to affect everyone else? He who spent life in the shadows, adored by the few of his peers who were considered by others to be outcasts and—in the classical sense of the word—lunatics, and treated with a respectfully wary berth by the rest of the student population—the same student population that worshiped the ground on which Suou tread?
No. Nekozawa preferred to believe he was stronger than that mob mentality of the superficial. Above it.
And yet, did he not feel a kind of magnetic pull all those times he sneaked into the host club's room just to see what they were up to, to see the look of horror on Suou's face. . . .
A look of horror, Nekozawa now realized, that may not have been as genuine as he long believed. That may even have been to please him from the beginning. If that were the case, it did not come as any great surprise to Nekozawa, though he did wonder why he was not more outraged at the idea that he had been played. Could he perhaps have known on a subconscious level all along, and returned to that room time and again for the camaraderie he had no luck finding anywhere else, all the while hiding his true motives—even from his conscious self—behind the careful guise of cat and mouse?
It took him a moment to notice that the tea kettle was already whistling.
He shook himself back to the present, back out of his conundrum, and took the kettle from its burner.
In sharp contrast, it was the faint sound of piano music that led Nekozawa back to the parlor, rather than the soft glow of light from within. He was enough of a romantic to say—if under other circumstances—that it was as if the music were enticing him toward itself, like a flower's scent attracts the bee. It rolled gently out toward him, intoxicating like a slow, curling stream of incense smoke. Out of this haze, an appropriately unexpected sharp note had the power to make his heart skip a beat with the simple thrill of its subtle subversiveness. The music itself was more brilliant in the still air of the mansion than any shaft of light; the quiet, broken melody striking within him a memory, or at least an impression of one, so that he strained to hear it in full, to string it all together into some whole he could better place.
He was at the parlor's doors before he could do just that; and the light that had warmed the hallway floor outside the room he saw to be the flickering glow of taper candles.
Nekozawa's emotions were at war with themselves. He was at once pleased and outraged, because the suspicion that Suou had lit those candles just for his sake, rather than turn on the lights, was too overwhelming to ignore.
Somehow he managed to swallow the comment that was on the tip of his tongue and set the silver tea tray down on a nearby table.
It was as he was doing so that it came back to him all at once. Nekozawa closed his eyes and, back turned, allowed himself a private grin of triumph.
"Chopin. 'Andante Spianato.'"
He could hear Suou's smile in his voice.
"Very good."
With those words as invitation, Nekozawa turned to watch.
Suou sat at the bench of the grand piano, his eyes downcast so that they almost seemed closed in the lowlight as he played. And he played so easily, as if the chords and trills were all second nature—or better, extensions of himself. Manifestations of his natural grace. Though the two were shrouded in dark, even the evanescent glow of the tapers on the table and the piano's lid could not warm the room half as well as did the melody that sprang to being from beneath Suou's fingers.
And though he had grown up in this house with the familiar presence of that piano, Nekozawa could honestly say he had never heard it sing like it did now. It was as if he did not know the instrument at all.
It filled him with a queer sense of jealousy. Or perhaps shame. In either case, it roused him to close the doors.
"I don't want to wake Kirimi," he said, as though needing an excuse.
"Of course," Suou said, as though that were the most natural reason in the world.
Why, then, did Nekozawa feel like Suou, even facing the keyboard, could see right through him?
He was quick to change the subject.
"I brought us some tea. Will you take a cup?" The sound of the hot water hitting the inside of the Lomonosov cups was a welcome distraction from that delicate music. "It's anise flavored."
"Somehow that only makes sense to me, coming from you. Ouran's resident absinthe-drinker." The joke fell flat, but Suou smiled anyway, as if he had hit one out of the park. "What's it like?"
"Smooth and a little bitter, but with a lingering sweetness that pricks you when you're not expecting it—"
"Can't be any worse than instant coffee, and I've developed a fondness for that lately, so . . ."
The fondness with which Suou said so unnerved Nekozawa, though the third-year could not say why. Not until Suou turned to glance back over his shoulder in gratitude for the cup and saucer placed before him. "Thank you. That was very thoughtful."
That was what it was, Nekozawa decided.
It was that manner of Suou's as if the second-year were belittling everything those around him did. Not in any way meant to be condescending or superior, but as if he found the actions of others quaint, or else worthy of more praise than anyone in their right mind knew they deserved. Or perhaps just more than he deserved. It was difficult to say with a person as difficult to read as Suou. With all the subtle masks he wore, the layers, it was enough to make anyone who was ever stuck in a room alone with him doubt he would ever catch a glimpse of the real, the elusive Tamaki Suou beneath them all. . . .
"Aren't you going to ask if it's poisoned or something?"
To Nekozawa's surprise, Suou laughed at that.
"But we're not at school. Why would I need to ask that?"
"I would only poison you at school?"
"Well, that's not . . ." Suou began, but did not seem to know how to end that thought, and stopped.
The dark locks of Nekozawa's wig fell into his eyes as he bent over his own cup, and the familiar licorice-like scent enveloped him, soothed him. Like the scent of his grandfather's cologne when he was a child, or Springerle at Christmastime.
Even though the music had petered away, he was not aware Suou had done the same as he until he said, as if repeating a personal mantra:
"Enjoy all things of sense and rapture. There is no god that shall deny thee for this."
Nekozawa glanced up, disbelieving.
Suou had the Lomonosov cup cradled in both hands, as though making an extra effort for his host's sake not to spill a drop on the keyboard. It was as much the magnanimity of his words as their source that had sparked Nekozawa's interest, that seemingly false sincerity and endless knowledge without substance that made the host king such a contradiction. Yet it was the intensity in Suou's violet eyes that inevitably held him as the second-year said, as though by way of translation: "It's very good."
Thankfully it was dark enough in the parlor to hide Nekozawa's blush. "I'm pleased that you think so."
He nodded to the piano.
"You quote the likes of Crowley at the drop of a hat, and make Chopin look like a child's play. Is there anything you cannot do?"
"Oh, that." It was Suou's turn to be humble, but he was not as good at humility as his upperclassman. "It's a very well cared-for instrument."
"No. It isn't just that. I've never heard it sound like it does when you're playing. Not that I'm an expert, but correct me if I'm wrong in saying it is a rare thing when a person can evoke such emotion with their hands alone."
The way Suou just stared at him made Nekozawa suddenly self-conscious at his choice of words. He instantly regretted them, as they were not at all in keeping with his persona at school. They were in no ways intimidating, nor subversive, nor in any way dark. They were what slipped out when he allowed himself to speak his uninteresting mind.
As though to make up for this lapse, he found himself amending: "My family has an organ loft as well, you know. Perhaps you would like to have a go? I'd be impressed to hear what kind of resonance you could generate on an instrument of that calibre with your skill."
Suou chuckled. "I don't think so. I much prefer the subtlety of the piano. It's what I'm used to, ever since I started playing for my mother. . . ."
He trailed off. Perhaps that was a piece of information Nekozawa was not meant to hear.
Yet, out of curiosity or sadism—he did not know which—he pressed on, "Did something happen to her?"
"She was often in poor health, is all, and would sometimes say to me that my music was all that got her through the day. So, in a way, I suppose it was only natural that I should learn to channel some of my feelings through my hands and the keys. It was easier than putting them into words. Feelings are so . . . well, you know."
Complicated, Nekozawa thought, but it really did go without saying.
The cup replaced in its saucer, Suou returned those hands that spoke such volumes to the keys, and continued where he left off. He said nothing more of his mother, leaving Nekozawa with no idea as to whether she were even still among the living. If anything, now that Suou was conscious of it, his melody carried more emotion than it had before. A sense of melancholic peace from which something was missing—something the player was not sure he wanted to gain at all, but the longing for it was quiet, blissful agony.
That was the impression with which Nekozawa was left in any case. It was a feeling with which he was all too well acquainted in his practically hermetic life. He tried to distance himself from them, become their objective listener, but the notes fell light and cool and graceful upon his ears like raindrops on a lamp-lit promenade, soaking into him despite all his efforts to the contrary.
Nor could he take his eyes off of Suou, whose peaceful smile belied none of the discipline it must have taken to learn to play so effortlessly as he did now, with such purity of spirit. It was as though Nekozawa had been lulled into a trance by this present-day Orpheus—he was literally staring—but that look on Suou's candlelit face was nothing short of angelic. Like a portrait of one of the heavenly hosts, a slight smile on his lips was the only outward sign of the sublime state in which he existed inside the music. Whether he was thinking of his mother, or some girl from his club, Nekozawa had no way of knowing. Nor did he dare ask. They could not have sat there for very long, Suou playing and Nekozawa listening, perhaps only for a few minutes. Yet as the melody reached out and drew back upon itself again, the third-year could no longer help the feeling that in some way it had all, in fact, been meant for him. From the moment Suou set foot inside this house.
And if there were one thing Nekozawa wished more than anything to avoid, it was being in someone else's debt.
"Why did you really come here?"
Suou blinked, but his fingers tackled their resigned chords uninterrupted. "I don't . . . think I know what you mean."
"If it wasn't for Kirimi . . . If it really was for my sake. . . ."
No. That wasn't right. He fought for the correct words to present themselves, words that decorum had prevented him from saying before: "If this is some sort of game. . . . I don't need your pity, Suou, nor do I want it."
Suou sounded genuinely hurt when he said that. "Who said anything about pity?"
"You said you felt responsible earlier. If this is just your way of smoothing things over between us—placating me like some savage beast with music. . . ."
Nekozawa snorted at that, but it was half-hearted. Against the background of such tender music, it cut the stillness like a slap to the face. Suou did not deserve it; both of them knew that.
The music slowly faded away into nothingness beneath his fingers.
"It had nothing to do with that," Suou said to the keyboard. "I simply realized that all this time you and I have known one another, it turned out I really didn't know you at all. I mean, leaving our club activities aside—they are the crux of the problem, are they not?—the Nekozawa-sempai I thought I knew was not the real Nekozawa-sempai, was he? And the Tamaki whom you gave such a hard time. . . ."
He did not say the rest, just let his words stand where he left them.
Though it seemed like he had been on the cusp of confessing something important.
Nekozawa assumed he knew the gist of what he wanted to say. It was trite really. That until Suou had seen his upperclassman without the disguise he donned in public, both physically and socially, the second-year had not known that, more than Nekozawa himself, what he had to fear most was that private side of his own person, that side he guarded against all but the most worthy with his impenetrable outer defenses of charm and witticisms. That charm, that grace and impeccably polite manner—they were nothing but a one-sided set decoration of a fortress wall held up by 2x4s, made to look so thick and sturdy so that none might go looking for the humble and sincere and intense young man that stood just behind it.
Who played such beautiful music only for those he thought might understand him, the real him, a little better.
Nekozawa hated to admit it, but in that way they really were not very different.
However, he was not about to remove his own mask just because Suou was so eager to do away with his.
"Well . . . Come here."
Nekozawa flinched involuntarily when Suou took one of his hands in both of his own. The third-year's reaction only seemed to humor Suou, who refused to let go until Nekozawa had calmed enough to trust him. "I'm not going to do anything weird," he laughed. "I just want to show you something."
His hands were warm to the touch, not at all like Nekozawa had expected from hands as white as the cool ivory keys in the candlelight. "Put your hand over mine lightly, like it's piggybacking," Suou said as he turned his right hand so Nekozawa's lay over the back of it. "You said you didn't think this instrument had it in it—"
"I didn't mean it like that."
"I just had an idea. Okay, maybe it is a little weird, but just humor me. All right?
"I wanted to show you this," Suou said, as though such cryptic words were any sort of satisfactory explanation for his strange behavior. He dove into the Grande Polonaise that made up the second movement of the piece, charged into it, full-steam ahead; and the weight on the back of his hands did not slow his pace one bit, or make his fingers stagger in their dance across the keys. Like show horses cantering proudly they were off, pulling around and ahead of each other as they swept up and down the keyboard. It made holding on a difficult task, but somehow Nekozawa's effort paid off, though he still could not help wondering what the purpose of his exercise was.
Suou's voice was almost a murmur as Nekozawa bent close to his ear, bracing himself with his free hand on the edge of the cushioned bench: "Feel the muscles pulling and twitching under the skin? Those are the real strings responsible for the music. The ones under the lid are just a reflection of what's inside the player."
The way his hand leaped across the keys from this chord to that, heaping momentum like fuel under the melody, the way he tickled a quick and flashy little trill out of the instrument—Nekozawa could not be sure from whence such subtle nuances sprang, the sinews twitching beneath his fingers or the hammers under the lid. He felt the vibration of Suou's feet working the pedals, rippling up through his body—the accelerated heart rhythm that Nekozawa could sense just as a background tremor in the back of his hand, or the little hitches of breath Suou took that were just barely noticeable beneath the music as he nailed a particularly intricate bar.
And it amazed him perhaps most of all that even with someone leaning over his shoulder and stroking the back of his hand—piggybacking, to use his term for it—Suou did not once miss a note or a beat. At least, not so far as Nekozawa was able to tell. Even with a song that he had heard enough of to have memorized the premise, somehow it rose up from the piano, from beneath Suou's hands as though it were playing for its very first time, so freshly imbued with his own channeled elation was it so as to become something new, something Nekozawa had not heard before.
He glanced at Suou out of the corner of his eye. At the smile on his lips, and the carefree joy that saturated his entire demeanor. That gaze flickered to meet his once during a finale that—though bless Chopin's genius—would not end, those blue-violet eyes shimmering in the dim light of the candles, and Nekozawa could not help himself.
Whatever tenuous wire had been keeping him together and sane snapped beneath Suou's fingers.
As did the music when Nekozawa grabbed his wrist, and both felt something like whiplash from the abruptness of its cessation. Nor was the urgency of that grip lost on the second-year—or either of them, for that matter. Suou's breath came fast as he spun to look at his upperclassman, and Nekozawa half expected to be rebuked for the interruption. Suou's lips parted slightly in a wordless question that Nekozawa answered as only his base instinct knew how: He pressed his own against them.
Suou struggled at first, but it took Nekozawa only a second to realize it was just to free his wrist of his upperclassman's grip, so that he could shift on the bench and hook his arm around the back of Nekozawa's neck. Suou's hand gripped his collar just as he stroked the other boy's jawline with his own freed hand, and the kiss continued as though it had never been interrupted.
Like his hands, Suou's lips against his were soft and warm and completely in command. Under his guidance, Nekozawa tilted his head and closed his eyes. The ghost of a breath passed across his lips as Suou opened his mouth, and tasted the anise in the tea on the tongue that slipped so casually against his. All the while those gripping fingers clenched and unclenched Nekozawa's collar as though keeping time. The interrupted melody still resonated in their minds, with those fingers and their hearts, racing suddenly in harmonic resonance.
They broke away silently, tentatively, as though in mutual agreement of the sanctity of discretion, their lips all but unfolding from one another.
But Suou's hand remained where it was on the back of his collar.
"It's getting late. You must have to be going soon," Nekozawa said out of a sense of duty.
"I told my driver I would call for him when I needed to be picked up. I said it might not be until late."
That last statement, though uttered so casually, between breaths as heavy as his own felt, made Nekozawa's pulse leap.
"That is, of course, if I'm still welcome."
"Most welcome," Nekozawa breathed, unaware that he had done so with the same ominous tone of voice he used at school until Suou laughed at him for it.
He was sheet music spread out half naked across Nekozawa's bed, black tie spilling wrinkled across an open white shirt. There was never a moment when a part of Suou was not expressing some not-so-hidden desire—his soft lips kneading Nekozawa's, fingers making quick work of his upperclassman's tie and shirt, as he himself shifted and wriggled on his back—each subtle movement creating new sensation, each action coaxing another moan or sigh from his gracious host's throat. He could not for the life of him lie still, as if it were against his very nature.
Yet by the way he shifted under Nekozawa's hand at school, a bystander would have thought he loathed it.
The third-year was just beginning to wonder if that were precisely the point. Based on those performances, no one would ever suspect him of writhing so invitingly, so playfully beneath Nekozawa as he was doing now.
Ever-present Beelzenev, forgotten in his room with Suou's arrival, sat on his post on the nightstand, turned modestly toward the wall. Supported on one elbow, Nekozawa let his free hand glide over the smooth plane of Suou's stomach to the waistband of his trousers. The fly was undone some time ago—by whom neither really remembered—the softness of Suou's skin, an alien sensation under his naked fingertips that even then rarely had occasion to touch another human being. He yearned to play Suou like Suou had played the piano—like Suou played his shoulder blades and the xylophone of his spine—tracing the muscles that leaped in harmonic resonance to his touch, caressing the hard ridge of his pelvic bone like the contours of an instrument as he slid the stiff fabric down. Each new inch of skin revealed glowed pale in the candlelight from the bedside, like the petals of a night-blooming cereus unfolding against the black of Nekozawa's sheets and Suou's own uniform trousers.
Suou gasped against his lips. His breath was sweet under Nekozawa's with a fragrance that lingered: tea leaves and licorice. His eyes fluttered closed as he lifted his hips, at once in pleasure and in assistance to Nekozawa's sliding the trousers and the boxers underneath them off his buttocks once and for all. Nekozawa lowered his mouth to the other's ear, feeling the warmth of Suou's breath on his own, the sound of it all he could hear. His underclassman's naked erection pressed against his trouser pocket and those talented fingers tangled in the dark locks of his wig, urgent yet somehow achingly gentle. Careful.
Suou's voice pierced the din of their breathing: "I want to take this off."
Those words made Nekozawa, who had not blinked when Suou returned his kisses with such ardent, who had felt none of the shame he had once suspected he might when Suou undressed him and ran his hands over his thin body and china-white skin, pause. He swallowed. "Do you have to?"
"Why not? I think it's the most innocent thing you could do so far, and I want to see you as you really are." It was difficult to resist that simple smile, even more so when he added, "Besides, you don't have anything under there I haven't seen before."
If that were true—and it was—then why did it embarrass Nekozawa more than baring his body—why did it feel like he was baring his soul to Suou?
But even that was only fair, after Suou had bared his without blinking. And he wasn't about to take no for an answer. He was already sliding his fingers up underneath it, freeing the hair tucked beneath at the same time as he was shedding Nekozawa's wig, his outer shell.
"It's not like I'm going to burn you," he whispered all the while, and the words trickled from his flushed lips like the notes had from the piano's strings—cool, wet, soothing. Unapologetically bold, yet somehow vulnerable at the same time. "What do you have to fear from me?"
And yet irrational fear did seize Nekozawa, so that he did not realize there was in fact nothing to be frightened of, until a pale gold veil of hair obscured his vision of Suou; and Suou ran his fingers through it like it were water, his smile widening in appreciation.
"There," he murmured, "that wasn't so difficult, was it?"
Nekozawa kissed him again rather than answer, but he did have to agree it was something else entirely to have Suou's fingers running through his own hair, his nails gently scraping his own scalp. Yet it was dangerous as well. The last barrier he had set up for himself was gone with that wig. He could not step back now, could not claim it all as a mere diversion, a performance he could step back from as a casual observer. He did not want to be saved, if that was Suou's intention—there was nothing he could see needing to be saved from—yet nor could he simply reject the promise of Suou's urgent breaths that mingled with his, or the insistent rolling of his hips beneath his upperclassman's hand and his very obvious trouble pressing against Nekozawa's through the cloth of his trousers. Or his possessive grip, which made Nekozawa feel coveted, and singular. . . .
Until Suou pulled himself away, breathless. "Do you have something we could use?" He looked away in sudden embarrassment. "You know . . . like Vaseline or—"
"Oh. Sorry." It finally came to Nekozawa as though through a fog what the other was saying. He bolted up and all but vaulted off the bed. "Of course. In the bathroom. Let me just—"
It was only a couple of meters away, but Suou sat up with those lightning reflexes and grabbed his arm.
Nekozawa stopped and looked back at him.
"On second thought . . ."
Don't go anywhere—those eyes, dark indigo in the flickering light, commanded him.
Nor could Nekozawa disobey, as Suou pulled his upperclassman toward him by the waistband of his trousers, and swallowed hard to wet a suddenly dry throat.
Nekozawa opened his eyes again to find, to his surprise, that he had fallen back asleep.
And furthermore, that he was alone in his bed.
The space where Suou had lain seemingly only moments ago was empty, but the second-year's clothes were still strewn about the floor. He could not have gone far; and in fact, as Nekozawa's senses returned to him, he caught the gentle hush of the shower spray coming from the adjoining bathroom.
If he concentrated, he swore he could still trace where Suou's hips and elbows had dipped the mattress, and the scent of him was still fresh in Nekozawa's nostrils. The fresh, somewhat biting scent of dry cleaning fluid that lingered on his skin from his uniform, and under that, the musky sweetness of sex mixing with the slight acridity of sweat, itself carrying a signature that was unique to Suou. It was on his hair and skin when Nekozawa grabbed him from behind in jest at school; it was on his lips and tongue now, like the anise tea, leaving an aftertaste that only improved the fainter it became, the touch of Suou's mouth against his just a phantom pain now that only eluded him more when he touched his own fingers to his lips in disbelief. Had they really done those things?
As if grasping at the tendrils of a fading dream, it came back to him in jolting starts, electrifying pieces of memory. Suou's limbs wrapped around him, his breath hot against Nekozawa's throat and shoulder—then his shoulder was under Nekozawa's lips, soft and moist with perspiration, his dampened hair fragrant. Suou whose warm touch tickled electric music from the neurons beneath the flesh of his thighs, and whose kisses sent his stomach all a-flutter. Whose low groans echoed in Nekozawa's ears, in time with his own breath, as that king of hosts gave of himself so warmly, so fully, almost to the point of selfishness and yet somehow so entirely the opposite, until both were so spent neither could even lift another finger to save himself.
With dead-tired limbs that were still reluctant to work for him, Nekozawa raised himself to a sitting position, then scooted carefully to the edge of the king bed and to his feet. His legs wobbled like he had just run a marathon, or stepped off a rollercoaster. He had to fight not to stumble from this whatever it was—utter exhaustion, supreme satisfaction, hazy disbelief or some combination of all three—as he made his way to the bathrobe hanging on its hook.
When Suou found him again, Nekozawa was in the parlor they had left before, sitting at the grand piano, the lid of the keyboard open and a single candelabra lit before him. He sat hunched at the bench in the robe, having not bothered to even straighten his tousled hair let alone cover it again with the wig—perhaps deeming himself safe within the cover of night—and tapped his fingers silently over the keys. Both hands moved in their own scales, not in nonsense but in what Suou could see was their own, if clumsy, voiceless melody.
He looked up at Suou when he noticed his underclassman's presence. The second-year was already in his school uniform and he toweled his hair dry, a slight look of surprise on his face.
Nekozawa smiled. "I studied music theory on this piano when I was younger," he confessed as he turned back to the keys. "I still remember the songs I learned—or, perhaps I should say my mind does not, but my hands do."
Suou nodded. "By rote."
"I was never any good at it, though, so I quit. I could never quite bring the music to life."
"No one can, if they don't have the courage. It takes a certain amount of fearlessness to throw your emotions out there in the open, naked for everyone to see. But that's what music is, at its crux."
"That's what you believe?"
"That's what I believe," Suou echoed.
Nekozawa stared at the keys at that, as though trying to find a long lost melody beneath his fingers. "I never had anyone to play for, either."
Unseen by Nekozawa, Suou smiled.
"Big brudder? I'm thirsty. Will you get me something to drink?"
Both young men turned to see Kirimi standing in the doorway in her nightgown, rubbing her eyes with one hand and trailing a stuffed cat that was nearly as big as she was in the other. Nekozawa was at her side in an instant, kneeling down to her level to ask, "Did we wake you, Kirimi? I'm sorry your sleep had to be disturbed because of us."
The realization on both siblings' parts that he had left the hand puppet behind seemed to cheer Kirimi up if the sleepy, silly smile that suddenly lit up her face was any indication. For an instant, Nekozawa was struck by the pain of separation, but something about the dual presence of Suou and his little sister, as well as their smiles, chased that ache away. He never knew it was something that could be chased away.
Nekozawa hoisted his little sister into his arms, and was so caught up in her uncharacteristic warmth toward him that it startled him when Kirimi said, "Ah! You're here too, Mr Prince Character."
Neither boy knew quite how to respond.
The faculty of speech returned to Nekozawa first, after he had enjoyed a good chuckle at Suou's expense. "He has a name, Kirimi. This is my—"
When he floundered, Suou filled in quickly for him: "Friend."
Nekozawa had not known until that moment how much more fitting he had wished that designation to be than "underclassman". He had been yearning to say something to the same effect, despite the new complications it now raised for their strange relationship.
He simply smiled as he met Suou's eyes, however, and said, "My friend, Suou."
"Call me Tamaki, Princess," Suou butted in, finding his hostly magnanimity once again and thrilling her with a charming bow. "At your service. Shall we see about getting milady a glass of water, or warm milk perhaps?"
"I wanna hear big brudder play piano!" she exclaimed.
Suou visibly deflated. But then, having no siblings of his own, he could not be expected to remember how easily children her age could be sidetracked. And stick to their guns once they were.
Nekozawa chuckled again at that, but Suou seemed to see the discomfort clear as day on his face. He quickly stepped in: "Would you allow me to play for you instead, Miss Kirimi?"
"Mm . . . but . . ." She was reluctant to agree, her glance between them said.
"He's very good," Nekozawa told her.
"I'll even let you sit beside me on the bench," Suou said, taking only one side of it like the matter was already decided.
It was enough to convince Kirimi. Nekozawa let her down and she bounded to her place beside him at the keyboard, cat doll in tow. Only Suou saw her brother hastily pull his bathrobe tighter around himself, and smile fondly at them as he folded his arms over his chest.
"What shall we play?" Suou asked her. "Do you like the Nutcracker?"
Kirimi nodded vigorously, but at this point she would have agreed to anything. As he played the waltz of the flowers, gaily regardless of the ungodly hour, she sat half absorbed in his hands on the keys and the music they were making, and half mesmerized by him. Even Suou became so absorbed in his own performance he did not seem to notice Nekozawa leave them, until he had brought the song to its close and saw his upperclassman standing there with a glass of warm milk for his baby sister. Should he mention it, Nekozawa was ready with a joke at his own expense about his cat-like stealth; however, even in his mind he was thankful not to have cause to say such a thing, since it now would have seemed too rife with innuendo, given the circumstances between them.
When he had sent Kirimi back to bed (after cleverly sidestepping a truthful answer to Kirimi's dreaded question as to why Suou was there in the first place), the awkward tension he had kept so carefully in check since waking again to an empty bed caught up with Nekozawa.
Perhaps feeling like he had narrowly dodged a bullet—or two—he sighed as he ran a hand through his hair. "Thank you, Suou. You really saved me a minute ago."
"It was nothing. But you know she's still going to want to hear your playing sooner or later."
Nekozawa put the empty milk glass down next to the cup of cold, half-drunk anise tea that had been sitting out for neither of them knew how many hours. He felt as though he could not trust his own eyes, or sense of touch, because surely only one of them could be real, the other no more than a delusion. But he could not say which was which.
"I envy you, you know," Suou said as he gently replaced the lid over the keyboard.
"You, whom everyone loves—who can go into the sunlight without becoming a royal mess—you envy me?"
"It's true. I wish I had your relationship with Kirimi. Hell, I wish I had any sibling to have a relationship with."
Nekozawa did not know what compelled him to do it, but he draped himself over Suou's back, wrapping his arms around his shoulders.
He did not say that he had Suou and his club to thank for that which the second-year envied; he did not put Suou in the awkward situation of having to brush off a compliment that was very well deserved. Nor did he dive into empty platitudes about how alike they two were in their respective brands of solitude.
Instead, he murmured in that devilish voice Suou was so used to hearing at school, "You want a little sister, Suou? I'll give you mine," as his teeth grazed Suou's earlobe.
His underclassman's sharp intake of breath was payment enough, as was the slight shiver that ran up his spine.
"Maybe I should just come over to see her more often," Suou said, unable to keep the grin off his face as he did so.
Nekozawa could hear it in his words; and yet he was loath to respond with any certainty one way or another. He merely leaned his chin on Suou's shoulder and listened to the beat of his heart.
"I should call my driver to come get me now," Suou said after a little while.
"Don't bother to wake him," Nekozawa told him.
Hardly a word passed between them in the back seat of the black town car as Nekozawa's driver drove Suou home. Though the tinted partition was up and they knew by now to count on the man's discretion, somehow the intimacy that had pervaded the parlor with the grand piano, or Nekozawa's bedroom, was afraid to show even a hint of its face here. Instead they spent the trip silently entering their numbers into one another's cell phones.
As Nekozawa entered his own, he could not help scrolling down the long list of names in Suou's phonebook in curiosity, and thinking self-consciously how short his own was in comparison. Perhaps it was there was some validity in saying he guarded his own private life with the same sense of sanctity that one might guard their chastity, but nor could he say that Suou was promiscuous with his friendship.
And yet, why was he left with this feeling that even Suou was as lonely as he was at the end of the day? Was that the reason behind the long list of numbers?
Nekozawa returned the phone in his hands first, saying toward the screen, "This one is my number. I left the name blank, just in case someone should get hold of your cell you don't want to. In case . . ."
"In case I don't want anyone to find out we're on . . . well, friendly terms?"
Suou smiled at him as he said that, but Nekozawa was only ashamed that he had been so transparent.
"I'm not ashamed of any of my friends, Sempai."
Before Nekozawa felt pressured to come up with something to say in response, Suou handed him his own cell back, backing up against the car door as he beamed and said, "Here. Get a picture."
The camera made an imitation of the sound of shutters snapping, and Suou joked, "Now, this is for cell phone use only, no voodoo. I'm not going to be cursed for this, am I?"
Nekozawa grinned at that. "No curses," he promised. "At least not any bad ones."
"Ah. You promise to only use the good curses on me?"
"Only because you only used the good notes for me."
They could jest, but it was late, and awkward silence descended upon them again in no time.
They reached the estate where Suou lived all too soon, nothing more intimate passing between them in that time but a not-so-accidental twining of fingers on the seatbelt clasp. The driver waited in the drive until Suou had slipped inside, and yet they had barely driven a block before Nekozawa was diving back into his phone's sparse list of numbers, and pulling up Suou's. It was a meaningless string of digits that nonetheless meant so much to him. A faint light in the dark, a faint melody in the silence. A temporary respite from his self-imposed loneliness.
The tiny photograph that went with it, captured with the phone's paltry flash, was far from the likes of the composed, decent portraits that filled the Nekozawa house, and doubtless Suou's as well. The young man in it was rumpled and the tired smile in his dark eyes told of things no one else had a right to know, even if they would not have guessed from a casual glance at that photograph.
A smile crept upon Nekozawa's lips as he brushed his thumb over the screen, and its warm glow flickered momentarily in the cab like the fragile flame of a candle. See what a wonderful gift I've been given, he boasted to Beelzenev in his mind. Better than I could have ever asked for.
But then, he never would have asked for it himself, had he even known what to ask.
He was not very surprised at all when the cell phone buzzed beneath his fingers, despite the ungodly hour of morning.
Fear not the flame of my love's candle
Let it be the sun in your world of darkness
—Amy Lee, "Give Unto Me"