In this chapter: More unsexy sex, intercrural, something unexpected happening.

They don't enter the room together. Gau has stated his intention, and Raikou leaves him to it, perhaps sensing that Gau needs to make a ritual of it to calm himself. The teenager walks into his partner's room with steady steps, begins to undress slowly, the door closed and his attention solely on what he's doing.

He's already thinking about how uncomfortable he was last time, during and afterward. How much it had hurt when he'd finished before Raikou had, when the pressure inside him became overwhelming in the aftermath of his orgasm.

The thoughts don't cause any change in his actual actions, of course. He's already made his decision. So by the time the door opens, Gau is positioned on the bed just as he had been before, exposed and vulnerable, on his knees.

At least this way, they won't have the awkward battle over Raikou's hesitation, he thinks.

It works well enough. When his partner enters the room, Gau hears nothing but a slight rustling of clothing, no speech at all, the steps nearly silent against the floor.

Raikou doesn't speak until he is bending over Gau, and Gau can feel bare flesh against his back. His partner must have been undressing as he walked across the room, and Gau hadn't been able to pick out the sounds through his own nervousness. He flushes at the thought, the image of Raikou so close against him, incredibly intimately. In another situation, it might be... but no, that doesn't bear thinking about either.

"Are you sure, Gau?" comes the quiet voice, and now there was something different in the tone. The last bits of Raikou's control, his restraint, are faltering. Yet still he asks.

"I'm sure," Gau says, and his own voice comes out very different. Not wavering, but firm. Affectionate. Devoted.

The only answer he receives is a soft kiss against his ear, before the same hands that had savaged him so last time begin to work.

Since the last time he was in this position, Gau has analyzed the experience quite thoroughly. He's thought about the fact that the scratches and bites are showy, drawing blood without causing much real damage. How they're all on the surface, and any actual blows - the slight slap of an open hand against his flesh - were carefully away from anything that could really be damaged by such. They're designed to let out Raikou's aggression without being dangerous, but... less controlled than what is necessary for Wakachi work.

It's all a very careful unleashing of energy, in the end.

Gau lets himself mull these things over even as Raikou is touching him, detaches himself from the sensations and focuses on thinking about the reasons why Raikou does it, the dark desires that life in the Nabari world has instilled in his partner. He thinks about how if Raikou were a different type of person, he could cause real harm with those desires, but he chooses instead of carry them out in muted ways with willing partners.

This is why I follow him.

He's distracted out of his thoughts, finally, by a rather strange sensation: slick wetness being rubbed onto the inside of his thighs, Raikou's hands warm and almost gentle with the movement. He had been gentle like this the last time when he'd prepared Gau to be entered, but that's not what he's doing now, and the suddenness of the kinder touch is almost jarring.

Gau isn't supposed to speak, he knows that. For Raikou, this is easier if he doesn't have to think about the fact that it's his young partner under him, doesn't have to face what he's given into accepting from Gau.

Still, the teen can't quite stop himself from peeking back over his shoulder, making a quiet questioning noise. What he sees is something that he never fully looked at last time: Raikou, resting on his knees nearly at the edge of the bed, eyes blazing with lust and something quite a bit darker, slight hints of blood on his skin from the scratches on Gau's.

Gau can't bring himself to look fully on Raikou's nudity, to give more than a scant glance toward his erection. It would make this - for him - too much like real sex, like the kind of sex he imagines with Raikou, and that would complicate things too much. So he darts his eyes back up to Raikou's face, silently asking for an explanation about the awkward sensation between his legs, the hand stroking there just as if the inside of his thigh were a regular erogenous zone.

"Don't look," Raikou reminds him, and his voice is cool and firm enough that Gau automatically follows the command, turning his head and lowering it so that he's staring down at the sheets again. He wiggles a little, feeling awkward and like the spell is broken somehow, like he can't get back the blankness from before that made him able to handle this. Now he's just overheated and in minor discomfort from Raikou's rough touches.

He wants to apologize, doesn't allow himself to do so. He wants to ask questions, but that too... it's not about himself, he says firmly, in his own mind. But it doesn't matter, because the cool voice continues anyway, explaining.

"Trying something that won't hurt you. Press your legs together and move with me when I move, and if it doesn't work, I'll take care of the rest."

Gau's stomach has butterflies. He's always thought that was a stupid phrase, really, but his mind seems determined to use it in this moment. Raikou's voice is still impersonal, but his touch feels much more personal, and Gau has to force himself to stay silent, to simply give a little wag of his head in acknowledgement, to be still and let Raikou work.

When, a moment later, he feels Raikou leaning back over him again, his partner's erection pressing between his legs, he tightens his thighs against each other as he was instructed. Raikou slides one of his own hands down - there's a flash of ink in Gau's vision as he peeks backward at the motion - to rest on the outside of Gau's leg and press inward as well, forcing even more contact.

Then, Raikou begins to move, and Gau's calm has to be built up again from the beginning, one piece at a time, mental building blocks of rationality placed between himself and the almost pleasant sensation of Raikou rutting against him, the slick slide that brings no pain with it at all, the little jolt as the back of his balls are brushed by a slight upward thrust.

This isn't for me, isn't for me, isn't for me.

But he does something now that he didn't dare to do before: he slides one hand down over his own body, still bracing himself with the other, and wraps it around his now-hardening dick.

He half-expects Raikou to slap his hand away, or protest, or stop and tell him this isn't working. He almost wants that, really. He almost regrets ever starting this, now, when he is reminded all over again just how much Raikou cares for him, just how much he desires for Gau to be comfortable and happy and never ever hurt by anyone.

But there's no word at all from the man behind him. It's become that same silence again, that same slap of flesh on flesh, the strange muted tone of what ragged gasps escape the two bodies moving together on the bed. At least this time, they are moving together, more so than before: Gau obediently rocks with Raikou's movements rather than simply trying not to fall over like last time.

This time, touching himself, Gau fully experiences the orgasm, crying out in pleasure and losing the rhythm, biting at his lip and shuddering and trying his best to get started moving again, so that the hard flesh still pressing between his thighs doesn't ever fully pull away. His senses ramp up a little just like before, but without Raikou actually inside him, it's almost a pleasant feeling too, a tingling that washes over his skin and causes realmoans of pleasure.

When a slender hand reaches up to cover his mouth, he doesn't protest. And when he's pulled up and back so that he's basically sitting in Raikou's lap, he says nothing at all about that either. He simply lets it happen, until there's trembling and a sticky splash across his skin, and then...

Nothing. It's like they're frozen in place, Gau's mouth parted slightly behind Raikou's restraining hand, his slender form resting on Raikou's thighs, the older partner's wilting cock sliding out from between youthful pale thighs. Silence, nothing but breath and a tensing of muscles, a feeling of wrongness that neither can articulate.