Work Text:
He’s making Shimizu laugh; that’s why Higuruma notices him first.
She’d dragged him here, some ridiculous mixer the building their partners rent in is throwing for the generic holidays. He’s never spoken to anyone on any other floor but, as always, she’s persuasive and so he finds himself in very unstimulating conversation with someone he thinks works in insurance.
He glances her way, hoping for an out, and realizes quickly that he’ll have to make his own. She’s got that look in her eye, the one she sometimes turns on him and lights him up from within. She’s interested in what he’s saying, she’s smiling even though he isn’t, and when he finishes his sentence, gesturing a little with the glass in one of his hands, she laughs.
“That your wife?” The probably-insurance man is following Higuruma’s gaze now, looking at Shimizu with an interest he doesn’t like. Men like that shouldn’t even be allowed to become aware of her.
“What an inappropriate question,” Higuruma says, and just like that he has his out.
As he approaches them he can read more detail on the man Shimizu is speaking to — the blond hair, cut to an impersonal trend; the dark circles under hazel eyes; the shadow of frown lines at the corners of his mouth. This is a serious man, he guesses, more life experience than you’d expect with a face that young.
Because he is — young.
He looks Higuruma’s way before Shimizu does, not used to him the way she is. Not expecting him, looming over her like a shadow. “Can I help you?” he asks, just a little chillier than one might anticipate at a mixer where instrumental holiday music is piping low and cheerful to fill the air.
Shimizu smiles again. The martini glass in her hand is half-drained. “Oh, Higuruma-san!” she says, waving like she hasn’t seen him in a week. “Are you tired of mingling already?” He doesn’t need to answer this aloud; she reads it in his face and sighs. The man she’s talking to relaxes a little at their familiarity. “Nanami-san, this is Higuruma Hiromi. He’s an attorney at the office where I work. On the fourth floor, remember?”
“I remember.” Nanami is much kinder to her than his opener with Higuruma, which charms him a little. Makes him want to work for it. Up this close, Nanami is handsome even with the exhausted shine that the working world smears indiscriminately over its denizens. “Is he the one you said scares the prosecution?”
Shimizu’s eyes go wide and her cheeks flush. The laugh she lets out is nervous but Higuruma’s heard worse, can’t even deny her assertion. “Ahaha, that was just—”
“She’s right,” he says. Maybe lets a little more of that weighted exhaustion out.
“Somehow I can see it.” The man extends his free hand; the liquid in his glass is a pallid green just shy of translucent. “Nanami Kento. I’m with the broker on the seventh floor.”
“Oh.” This escapes him before he can stop it, like the friendly and strong grip of Nanami’s hand had somehow squeezed it out of him, but the corners of Nanami’s mouth dig those frown lines out a little shallower.
“Mmm. It’s even more soul-crushing than it sounds.”
“Nanami-san was saying he’s been working there since he graduated,” Shimizu says, sympathetically.
“Where did you graduate from?” asks Higuruma. He knows he’s expected to, and unlike with the insurance man he finds himself more willing suddenly to play along with the kind of societal mores that keep men from running.
“I went to a private school.” Nanami doesn’t explain, no hint of pride in his voice about it — unfamiliar, based on Higuruma’s experience with private school graduates. Bratty witnesses, callous plaintiffs. “Not related to my current field.”
“If you could be doing anything,” Shimizu starts, voice bright, “what would you be doing instead?”
Nanami shrugs. “Probably this still. It pays well enough, and I’d like to retire early.”
“A beach somewhere?” Higuruma can picture it, easier than remote mountains somehow. Nanami looks like someone who used to be an athlete and still takes far too much care of himself for a job sequestered on the sales floor. Stockholders won’t be able to see the physical fruits of that labor on quarterly calls. He should be on display somewhere, not hidden in a cabin half-buried in snow.
Nanami blinks. “I… yes.”
Shimizu’s eyes flick between them. She’s quicker at this than him, part of why he hoards her time in the office. Preternatural social sense, instinct to get when the getting is good. Big-hearted still, the way they need to be — just a little — on their side of the courtroom. “Anywhere in particular?” she asks. She drains her drink, slow, looking for an escape.
“Maybe.” This seems private; Nanami still has that friendly cast in his eyes looking at Shimizu but his tone does not invite probing. She reads him right and turns the conversation elsewhere.
Higuruma tries not to monopolize things, but it’s difficult; it doesn’t take him long to realize he’s not just relieved to be talking to someone familiar, someone he actually likes. It’s Nanami too, his personality coming through more as his glass empties and empties again. At some point Shimizu sees someone she knows from the building front desk and splits off to talk with her; Higuruma recognizes her face but doesn’t even make an attempt to follow.
He doesn’t think it’s vanity making him wonder whether Nanami is interested in him, or at least not put off which, with his face and his job and his personality and his attitude, is enough. When Higuruma speaks Nanami listens intently, when he’s the one talking his hazel eyes fix Higuruma, and on a couple of occasions when the conversation hits a natural breaking point he stays anyway.
It’s suspicious for anyone, particularly someone as young and appealing as Nanami is. Higuruma is sure he sees several people who’d be very interested in tugging him out of the conversation though Nanami doesn’t seem to want to go. “Are you new to this building?” Higuruma asks.
Nanami’s eyebrows pinch; he has a few of the mannerisms of a much older man, like someone grown up too fast. “I said I’ve worked with this company since I graduated.”
“I remember,” Higuruma says, and some of the frown lines in his forehead grow shallower. “I wondered if you’d been based in another location.”
“No. As far as I know none of the junior associates work in the overseas offices.” He cocks his blond head; his hair moves, just a little, his morning routine clearly designed around an end of day that has passed already. “Why do you ask?”
“You’ve been talking with me a while.”
“And?” he asks, slowly.
“And you’re very charming. I thought you’d have a number of other people interested in seeing you if you’ve worked here very long.”
“Charming,” he repeats, admirably deadpan.
“Charming.”
Nanami looks at him for a moment. Higuruma likes what he sees — intensity, a kind of quiet confidence that isn’t particularly common in men of what he suspects is Nanami’s age.
Something else, too. Nerves.
“Well,” he says finally, “you’re interesting. So is Shimizu-san.” It sounds like an afterthought, albeit a genuine one. They’re not having the kind of conversation that brooks mentioning Shimizu though, not anymore.
“Interesting enough to leave with me?” It’s bolder than he’d really meant to be, but something about Nanami’s undivided attention has him getting that feeling, the one from in front of the stand, when someone says something he has to jump on and the hair on the back of his neck stands on end. He’s just a little shorter than Nanami, a handful of centimeters, but something about the surprise in his eyes — hazel, that good honest color — makes Higuruma feel about three meters tall. He hadn’t expected this; in the courtroom Higuruma would be going in for the kill, but this isn’t a job and Nanami is no lying witness. He’s seen nothing yet.
“Where would we be going?” Nanami asks. Lust, caution.
Higuruma shrugs. “A bar, if you’d like. You seem like you can hold your liquor.”
“Spent too much time with—” He cuts himself off; too personal, probably. He’d likely mentioned whomever he’d been about to say to Shimizu earlier. She’s easy to speak to that way. “I don’t need to drink anymore. I have plans in the morning.”
“Boyfriend?” Higuruma asks, pointedly. Christmas Eve is romantic, after all, but Nanami snorts before he can stop himself. It’s charming in its lack of charm.
He clears his throat to cover it, like there’s any way it hadn’t been what it was. “Sorry,” he says, “that’s just so absurd. No, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“But he is a he.”
“He… we’re old friends. Of a sort.”
“The kind that meet up early in the morning?”
“Not that—”
He stops but he knows he’s caught. Higuruma doesn’t have to say a thing.
“It’s all right if I’m not that interesting,” Higuruma says. Let him recover gracefully, let Higuruma save a little face. But Nanami considers him.
“You are,” he decides, swallows down the remainder of his glass with a flattering swiftness. “Maybe another drink won’t hurt.”
❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎
Another drink turns into two, three for Nanami who’s younger and has less of an understanding of just how unpleasant the day after overindulgence can be. He doesn’t need to know yet, Higuruma thinks, watching the darkness under his eyes shadow in the dim light of the bar they’ve found themselves at. Nanami is easy to talk to, at least from Higuruma’s perspective; the way he looks at times when he replies to him makes Higuruma feel as though maybe that’s not something Nanami would pick as one of his own traits. He’s reserved until the first drink, gin and something Higuruma doesn’t need to pay attention to with Nanami’s card behind the bar alongside his own; then he starts to unwind.
He’s been working for this brokerage since he graduated from high school — nearly four years, making him nine years Higuruma’s junior. Usually he’d fall outside his line of sight but Shimizu had been so cheerful talking to him. It makes him more appealing, makes him seem older. Most men Nanami’s age don’t know how to hold a woman’s attention, and certainly not one as bright as Shimizu. He clearly hates the work — if the dark circles don’t indicate that sufficiently the cast in his eyes when they’re not in active conversation seals the deal — but sticks with it. Higuruma asks what’s worth it and he turns vague. I have goals, he says, like that’s explanation. It’s at least as intoxicating as the liquor, the guessing game Higuruma plays with himself as they talk; what could motivate a man like this, so seemingly detached from it all, still waters running deep.
His high school seems to be a sore spot too. When graduation comes up in the conversation by way of his job, Higuruma asks where he’d gone for the second time. Nanami hesitates, but he’s finished his second drink by now.
“It’s a private school, like I said at the party,” he says. “You wouldn’t know it, I don’t think.”
“Well, what kind of school was it?”
“What kind?”
“Sports, academics, what was the focus?”
He considers this, like he’s not sure of the answer — more likely, though, not sure how to tell Higuruma the answer. Stultifying jazz renditions of western Christmas carols score the quiet. “Job preparation,” he answers finally. “I didn’t end up going into the job I prepared for though.”
“So few of us do,” Higuruma says, deciding on the spot to trade off on this revelation, to keep the balance evened between them for now. Shimizu says sometimes that conversations with him can feel like an interrogation if he isn’t careful. “When I was in school I wanted to be an accountant.”
Nanami raises his eyebrows. “You seem so… never mind. I’m not sure what I was going to say.”
“Yes you are.”
Nanami isn’t used to being seen through like this; Higuruma’s guess is that in the group of people he calls friends, a small circle if his suspicion is right, he is the one usually doing the seeing. It sets him off his guard, on his back foot, just where Higuruma wants someone so intriguing. “I… I was going to say you just seem like a born attorney. Shimizu-san was telling me a little about you while we were talking. She respects you a great deal.”
This lights him up on the inside, though he supposes in all egotistical honesty he’d probably known it to be true. Hearing it from a third party is different from seeing it in her face across the courtroom. “What characterizes a born attorney?” he asks. The glow does not permeate his voice, thankfully.
“You like arguing.” This clearly isn’t a planned statement; in cascade it startles a laugh out of Higuruma, shocked. Nanami watches it happen like it’s event television, like it’s a miracle.
“And what else?” He feels, suddenly, every day of the nine years and change between them, seeing Nanami hide his face for a moment, pinkening, in his drink. He really is almost painfully handsome, the kind of man that young women pine for and older men — including Higuruma, apparently — lust over. The type that’s kind to old women and impatient with other young people. The kind that needs a hand to guide them, to hold them down. Halfway through his second drink with Nanami flushing in the dim light of the bar, Higuruma is confident enough to think that hand could be his.
“You… I don’t know.” He’s shy suddenly, youthful and concerned about offending one of his elders. Higuruma peers at him; he knows when to press and when to leave it be, and right now he knows he has Nanami in the palm of his hand. Eventually, he speaks. “You want the truth. More than anything else. And I can tell you want that truth to mean something.”
He is astonishing, this stockbroker, imprisoned on the seventh floor of the building where he, too, is chained to the grind, the relentless uphill struggle against the impossible weight of the justice system. He sees more than anyone working in finance ought to, for their own sakes; Higuruma reaches for him without second-guessing, places a firm hand on his thigh. The suit he’s wearing is dark and well-tailored, a clear indulgence in an otherwise relatively simple life. Maybe he’d worn it to affect anyone worth impressing at the mixer, maybe it had been a holdover from the workday, but somehow although the man in it looks halfway to exhausted the fabric is fresh. Beneath Higuruma’s palm, his muscle tenses, then relaxes, pushing a little against its weight. “What if I asked you to tell me the truth, right now?”
Nanami’s gaze flicks to meet his, hazel and bright with something Higuruma isn’t sure he still has access to. He hasn’t succumbed yet, not to the tyranny of the world around them. He hasn’t snapped. “What could I tell you,” he says, smooth for the amount of liquor in him, low and leant in, the noise around them fading to a blur, “that you don’t already know?”
The breath after a damning question, the contradiction identified; at once like and unlike a witness, Higuruma has him pinned. “I don’t know where I’m taking you next.” He’s done this before, leant on his experience though it’s usually brusquer, less drawn out — the average back alley blowjob or handy under a table doesn’t require, or merit, as much conversation. Still, he knows he’s not unappealing overall. Usually this much talking is what ends up being counterproductive, but Nanami is special.
He doesn’t seem aware of it, blinking up at Higuruma, looking a little stunned like they haven’t been falling together like light into a black hole for the last several hours, like Higuruma hadn’t left Shimizu stranded at the mixer without even a good-bye just in hopes of getting his dick wet with this specific man. He’ll see her Monday, even if she isn’t working the holiday weekend the way he has a feeling he will be. “How about home?” Nanami asks, and Higuruma grins.
❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎
Nanami’s apartment is small, but it’s filled with more of those clear indulgences Higuruma had noticed in his suit. There’s a lingering smell of some very nice cologne — Nanami’s or some male visitor with more fastidious grooming habits than Higuruma — and the lamp he turns on in the no-man’s-land between the doorway and the rest of the apartment glows softer than any overhead light he’s ever seen. Not one to settle for what he’s given, Higuruma thinks, at least not where it counts for him.
Nanami doesn’t dissemble somehow, doesn’t offer him a drink or ask him if he’d like to sit down, nor does he get down immediately to the business they both know they’re here for. His poise is a mystery, its source unclear without the background Higuruma had sought to identify at the bar, the mixer. For the first time, maybe ever, Higuruma finds himself wishing for another time before they’ve even begun.
“You should know,” Nanami says, interrupting some undefined fantastic train of thought Higuruma is half-grateful to be rid of, “most people I bring here have an… expectation of me. Because of…”
Higuruma waits. He thinks he knows the bend of Nanami’s thought but isn’t sure; as usual, he’d like all the evidence. “Because of what, Nanami?” He’s been fooling with the honorifics throughout the night, leaves it off for now in establishment of intimacy. A connection, laid to the ground.
“How I am,” he finishes, finally. It isn’t much but it’s more than nothing. “They want—”
“They want you to take charge,” Higuruma says. He thinks he has the lay of the land now, thinks he’s had it the entire time without a lot of effort. Nanami clearly hasn’t slept with a lot of men older than him; had he he wouldn’t be so uncertain, so hesitant. He’d know what to ask for. Never mind; Higuruma knows to give it to him whether or not it’s requested.
“Yes,” agrees Nanami, gratitude coloring his voice. “Yes, that’s what they want.”
“And you’d rather someone else do the hard work.” Higuruma reaches out, strokes Nanami’s hair back from his forehead where it’s fallen free from discipline at last. Nanami leans into his fingers, lets him do it, reaches for his wrist and takes hold of it. It’s almost too sweet — almost. Makes Higuruma want to be a better man, the kind that gets a call the morning after. “To take care of you.”
“Not necessarily—” Nanami begins, which is far too many syllables at this point of the night, and so Higuruma tightens his fingers still in Nanami’s hair and pulls him to his mouth.
Nanami kisses like he talks, careful, held back. Higuruma has to dig for his tongue, has to encourage him closer. It’s not lack of desire — he pretty quickly feels the excitement of a much younger man pressed against his thigh — it’s an inherent distance, a hand tugging him backwards, apart. Higuruma isn’t the tenderest lover in history, isn’t one for sleeping over or exchanging numbers, but something about Nanami’s reticence makes him all the more desirable, makes Higuruma feel half-unhinged with want. Makes him want to take his time, sliding his fingers between the buttons on his shirt, a touch without sight to whet the stone of his appetite.
“What do you like,” Higuruma’s mouth asks the delicate antihelix, the helix where it curves softly, jutting just a touch beyond the bones of Nanami’s soft inner ear, “in bed?”
Nanami opens his mouth to answer but nothing coherent emerges, just a noise that has Higuruma less sure than ever of his prior experience. At the mixer he’d been so appealing that Higuruma had assumed a relatively long history, even for someone his age — here, in his own home, he’s almost weak with vulnerability, guard down and preeminently desirable.
“Tell me,” he murmurs, nosing the hinge of Nanami’s jaw where it bends behind his ear. He’s tender there where the rest of him is firm. The cologne smell from earlier had been his after all; it’s stronger here, warmed by his skin. “Where did those other men fail you?”
“I… they…”
Higuruma would like to think it’s just his influence leaving Nanami speechless, just his lips along his carotid, but it’s not — he’s holding back, shy or hesitant to throw past lovers on the fire of his interrogation. Higuruma will have to pry, or to guess; no matter. He’s not bad at either.
They’re moving, slowly and without the conscious choice of walking, back through Nanami’s entryway; over his shoulder Higuruma sees his kitchen, tidy and somehow more lived in than anything else he’s seen so far, his living room which is utilitarian almost to the point of austerity. The door to their right, ajar and inviting, opens on his bedroom. Higuruma turns them — and Nanami goes easily despite being both taller and broader, hands clutching at Higuruma’s elbows, hips turning him and brushing against him, hard — toward it, Nanami’s back toward the mattress he plans to lay him out on.
“Maybe they don’t undress you,” Higuruma murmurs, fingers working Nanami’s placket open, each button undone showing a wider expanse of sun-warmed skin. “Maybe they rush it.”
Nanami goes down easily, sliding out of his shirt, falling onto his palms against his bedspread. It’s dark, high thread count, another of those easily justified indulgences. He can almost imagine the debate in Nanami’s head considering the price tag — he’ll use it every day, but something cheaper would work just as well.
Higuruma kisses him again for the sheer, small surprise at not finding an undershirt beneath his button-down. A man this tight-laced, even a young one, a man that needs a minimum of four drinks to go home to his own apartment with someone he’s clearly attracted to, usually has a few more outer layers.
Not so Nanami, and Higuruma can see why. His body is above average, exceptional even. He’s had an active life reflected in the rippling of muscle, the care in his movements. His skin is soft, clearly well cared for the way young people have time for and interest in. His proportions are almost unbelievably satisfying, like a drawing meant to mimic a beautiful man come to life, a nubile Pygmalion.
“And what else?” Higuruma removes his own tie, finally, now that Nanami isn’t trying to use it as a leash to pull him by, now that he’s where he wants him. “What else don’t they do?”
“They don’t want to talk.” He’s clearly loosened up now, watching Higuruma strip his jacket with a cirrus haze in his eyes. Some of the reserve is banished, pushed into a corner by Higuruma’s tongue, by his fingers and by his extra years.
“You like talking, Nanami?” It doesn’t feel right to toss his clothing, though he hadn’t taken the same care with Nanami’s; he drapes jacket and tie on a dresser at the side of the room. They look good there, belonging.
“I like you talking,” admits Nanami. This is surprising, personal. Higuruma returns his gaze to Nanami’s face, sharp and serious, but he just lies there, flushed and certain, pupils blurring out wide. “You must do it a lot.”
He climbs onto the bed, slotting easily in over Nanami’s body. It’s welcoming, born to have someone on top of it, legs spreading to accommodate him though their thighs still press neatly together along the seams that separate them. Nanami’s skin where he kisses it, neck and ear and collarbone, tastes like the remnants of fabric softener, a hint of leftover fluorescents, the ghost of an eau applied in the morning, the glint of salt under bar lights. He’s good, so good all the way through, taste and look and behavior and sound, the sound—
“They pay me to do it,” Higuruma says in his ear, working himself out of his shirt with the debatable help of Nanami’s eager hands. “I’m fairly talented.”
“I’m sure you are.”
He shouldn’t be this coherent; ever since he’d seen that smooth expression turned on Shimizu at the party Higuruma has wanted to wipe it off, and now he’s been handed the tools and the setting to do it. “You’re fit for a money man,” Higuruma murmurs, licking first at Nanami’s earlobe before emphasizing his statement, groping Nanami’s chest. He’s still young enough to be beautiful without effort; it could just be that, the lingering effects of a high school career spent playing sports.
Nanami tenses a little at that — not the physicality, just the words, but relaxes quickly when Higuruma tongues over one nipple, flat and firm against that glowing skin. Up close, Nanami has a number of scars, more in number and in drama than one might expect on someone who spends most of their days on the sales floor, but based on the reaction to his other comment comparing his body with his career Higuruma decides not to bring it up. He wants Nanami tender, helpless and at peace with it, not thinking about anything but his pleasure. It’s not that he’s such a selfless lover; there’s something so appealing about bringing someone obviously strong, personally composed, to his knees. Maybe further. Because it makes Nanami sigh, Higuruma mouths at his other nipple, just a little suction to raise it, to match its twin.
Loosely, inattentive — good — Nanami grabs for the parts of Higuruma he can reach: arm, shoulder, back, settles one hand in his hair and tugs him back to meet his mouth. Like this, in the security of his bedroom, Nanami’s kisses are turned more open, less withholding. He doesn’t shy away from Higuruma licking along the sides of his tongue, feeling the sharp of his canines and the slick of his soft palate. And so Higuruma takes his time. He so rarely does; it’s not an opportunity he wants to pass up.
“Are you going to fuck me?” Nanami asks, half-begging, eyes lidded and bouncing back and forth across Higuruma’s face, down to his hips and back. It turns him on to have this kind of attention from this kind of man, makes his cock start filling. Nanami’s, younger and less tiresome, is more than hard already. Higuruma’s felt it rubbing on his thigh, in the cleft of his groin, since they started kissing. It must be torture, he’s sure, waiting this long. And he’s asking so nicely.
“Do you have lube?” he asks, which is maybe ridiculous. There’s a condom in his wallet, against all odds; Higuruma licks the hollow between Nanami’s collar bones before he pulls away to dig in his jacket pocket for it. Behind him, Nanami is rooting about in what sounds like a drawer for a moment. Then there’s the sound of a zipper pulling and Higuruma is turning back around as quickly as he thinks he can without losing face.
Nanami’s thighs alone, emerging from the dropping waistband of his uninspiring workwear, are maybe better than the impossible rest of him, thick and firm, healthy padding acquired from a desk job moving just a little in the low light, bringing out the sheen in his skin. Higuruma almost forgets to get a glimpse of his cock in all his dry-mouthed attention, but when Nanami moves to toss the rest of his clothes — socks exempted, which is strangely charming — he’s more than reminded. Nanami is thick there too, uncut, only a desirable length and no more.
Maybe the building they share for work is actually a lab, where some genetic designer with impeccable taste had created Nanami. Higuruma’s spent too much time wishing for discovery phase miracles to look a gift horse in the mouth; he undoes the button on his own slacks.
“Come here,” Nanami says, sounding a bit more self-assured, but then Higuruma tugs his underwear off and his jaw falls open. This part doesn’t really get old, he has to admit.
Nanami doesn’t speak again until Higuruma is back between his legs, skin on skin, reaching for the transparent bottle in Nanami’s still hand. “You’re big,” he says, finally, when Higuruma has uncapped the lube.
“Yes.” No point arguing; he knows a loss when he sees it. “Spread your legs.”
Nanami does, obediently. So he hadn’t been exaggerating earlier; he wants someone else to take over, to control the situation. Higuruma slicks his fingers up and leans over Nanami, coy, cock brushing along the line of his stomach, to set the bottle back on his nightstand.
“Really big,” says Nanami. His voice is a little thick.
“Mmm.” Higuruma settles, tracing all four of his fingers around Nanami’s hole, giving him something to work with, a smooth surface, leeway. “You want this?” Nanami levels him with a flat little glare that’s terribly charming; when Higuruma just keeps following his own map, though, he finally nods, that blond hair moving with him like a field of wheat in the wind.
He starts with two fingers, smooth slide that gets him harder for the heat that clutches velvet around him. Nanami looks like he can take a little pain, almost like he might want it that way, so Higuruma doesn’t take it slow. He starts a tempo that’s just a little faster than he likes to fuck, gets him breathing just a little hard while he talks half to himself in Nanami’s ear. You like that, let me hear you, one more, good boy. He loves the last one, that wet mouth moaning with it, third finger sliding home. Nanami doesn’t need any help staying hard, drips and leaks on himself the entire time, precome that looks thicker than anything Higuruma’s shot in a while. Healthy, Higuruma has to assume. Less existential despair accumulated to weaken anything good and living in Nanami. Stockbroker lifestyle, though, he’ll get there someday and sooner than he’d like. Better make the most of this.
“Ready for me?” Higuruma asks, not particularly caring about the answer — he knows it already, maybe just wants to hear it for his own ego.
Nanami doesn’t make him wait this time, admits it as freely and as pretty as you please. Higuruma humps against him a couple of times, slicking his cock up with all the lube dripping around Nanami’s hole, catching the head of his cock on the rim just to tease himself. The condom doesn’t dull the sensation much; soon Nanami is begging with his hips, and Higuruma doesn’t hesitate to push in, to hit home, buried somewhere beneath Nanami’s navel.
His pain tolerance, pain interest, is higher than Higuruma had thought; he can tell by the squeeze around his cock he hadn’t been thorough enough in his prep but Nanami doesn’t clench, doesn’t even tense up. His teeth grit but he sighs as Higuruma shifts a little, luxuriating in that tight drag enveloping him.
“You’ve been working three floors above me this whole time?” He pushes back in, pelvis to Nanami’s ass, and he flexes to meet him, to pull him impossibly just a little deeper.
“At least since I graduated,” Nanami replies, and he has a lustful little grin on his face as he says it that makes Higuruma feel like swallowing him whole.
He kisses him instead, mostly open mouth and hunting tongue, and then they start fucking in earnest.
Nanami is an active participant, hungry for Higuruma to talk to him, to listen to the sounds Nanami makes in return and follow them down the rabbit hole of mutual pleasure. When noises start pouring in one continuous, dribbling stream from his throat Higuruma finally, finally, touches his cock, feels Nanami’s hands tighten in his hair at just the glance of his hand.
“Harder,” he manages, through clenched teeth, and Higuruma listens, inches forward to split Nanami’s legs even farther, to impel himself deeper, to rub the head of his cock with force and purpose over the spot that makes Nanami’s steady eyes roll back in his skull, makes his fingers and hole tighten their grips on him, makes his cock — impossibly still hard, unreleased — splutter precome onto his stomach.
Working himself to orgasm gives Higuruma the freedom, the spare time, to admire an entirely different man beneath him than the one he’d met at the party earlier. Nanami now is pulled apart, still trying to hold his dignity but chasing his gratification takes precedence, makes him loose and dangerous. His skin gleams in the lamplight, impossible with all its scars, barely concealing a physique that looks misplaced away from the magazine stands Higuruma passes on his way from the train station every day. His eyes like this are hot with arousal, hazel shifting so he’s never quite sure if they’re green or brown or grey. His body moves with Higuruma, in confluence like he’s used to working with a partner, in or out of bed. Maybe he was a dancer in high school, Higuruma wonders. Maybe a skater.
“Tighter,” Nanami orders, the whine in his voice turning his command petulant, which somehow makes Higuruma want to follow it all the more. He firms up his grip, strokes Nanami like he likes himself, rubbing over the exposed slit of his head until he’s moaning, arms shifting to grip Higuruma by the neck, to pull their foreheads together and bend their bodies into synchronicity.
Nanami comes like this, up his own chest; the surprising part is that Higuruma does too, orgasm rushing through him like wake that’s just a little stronger than you thought it looked, facing it bravely. He fills the condom, head hanging, feels Nanami fall back against the mattress and hears for a moment nothing but their panting.
It’s absurd, the way Higuruma doesn’t want to leave. It’s being tired, yes, it’s the party and the after-party and the sex all piled on top of a day of corporate drudgery. But it’s something else too, the connection — the way Shimizu had been so entertained talking with Nanami.
He doesn’t usually get invited to stay the night, though. He thinks he remembers something about Nanami having a commitment in the morning as well. Hopefully not with a partner. Higuruma sets about the business of pulling out.
“Don’t yet,” Nanami mutters, flexing his legs somehow to get his ankles tucked behind Higuruma. This is almost shocking; Higuruma freezes rather than listens, but it’s enough for Nanami to relax again. He’s not shy, looks right into Higuruma’s eyes while he plants his palms against the crooks of Higuruma’s locked elbows and pushes. Higuruma goes; before he knows what’s happening he’s being held, still inside the sweet heat of Nanami, softening. Only a little uncomfortable with the come filling and leaking from the condom. The leakage is mostly Nanami’s problem at this point.
“You’re very good,” says Nanami. It sounds almost like a performance review from where Higuruma is listening, ear to his chest to catch the vibration of his voice as well as the sound, the movements of his lungs, the slowly steadying rhythm of his heartbeat. It’s painfully intimate. His skin itches. “I don’t suppose you want to stay the night and talk me out of a bad decision in the morning.”
This is interesting. Higuruma’s had worse pillow talk. “What kind of decision?”
Nanami’s chin moves against the top of his head; the smile he’s forming is evident in his voice. “You’re not saying no,” he says, then his tone turns more serious. “I’m meeting a friend from high school tomorrow. The man I mentioned earlier, at the party.”
Not really, Higuruma thinks, he’d been more cagey than that. But he lets it slide; maybe he should have pulled out before this conversation. The feeling of Nanami’s body slowly keeping itself alive around him is irresistible. “For most people that would be a good thing.”
There’s quiet for a moment. “I haven’t seen him since I graduated. The high school I went to…”
This mystery. Higuruma doesn’t think he’ll solve it tonight, but some part of him wants for more time to unravel it, to find the answer for himself, to pull it out of Nanami with whatever tools are at his disposal. It’s his nature, he supposes.
“Anyway,” Nanami’s saying, sobering up from the dopamine flooding his system, “he’s quite an annoying senior. I was thinking if I had a very logical attorney in my bed in the morning I might make more of an effort.”
“To?” Higuruma’s cock has softened enough that it’s precarious, but neither of them seem bothered, even with the insides of their thighs slicking from everything seeping between them.
“Talk myself out of it.” Nanami sighs. “He’s very persuasive.”
“What would he be persuading you to do?”
“You’re good at this too,” says Nanami. “Talking me into saying more than I want to.”
Higuruma doesn’t smile, but he does run a finger up the curve representing Nanami’s waist. Sometimes silence is more effective than speech, no matter how convincing.
“He wants me to go back to my old career,” he continues, like Higuruma had known he would. “What I studied in high school. He still works in that field.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” says Higuruma, knowing he likely will, “why did you leave?”
Nanami shrugs. Higuruma doesn’t see him do it because he’s about eyeline with Nanami’s armpit, but he feels the stretch it gives the skin over his sternum under his cheek. “It’s risky, this field. Money is safer.”
“You don’t seem like a particularly safe man.”
Nanami laughs. “You’d be the first to say that,” he says. His arms around Higuruma tighten just a bit. This is all too tender; wanting to stay had been a mistake. But the favor Nanami is asking… It would be an excuse. “I don’t know. I was the one to ask to see him.”
“Then some part of you must miss it,” Higuruma hypothesizes. “What you were learning to do in school.”
“Do you?” asks Nanami. “Ever miss things.”
Higuruma doesn’t answer. Nanami won’t want to hear it, not if he’s the one who’d started this looming conversation.
“Regardless of how the visit goes tomorrow,” Nanami says, after this pointed speechless interval, “you can still stay. I don’t even know if the trains are still running.”
“We were at it for a while,” agrees Higuruma, and he does smile a little at that, Nanami’s dry and properly embarrassed chuckle in response. “Maybe point me to your bathroom first.”
Nanami does; Higuruma considers it a win that he only considers escaping out the window once, when he’s looking at himself in the mirror shucking the condom, tying it off and tossing it into Nanami’s neat little garbage can. Tonight he’ll bathe in a strange man’s shower, sleep in a strange man’s bed; tomorrow morning they might not be strangers anymore. And it’s worth staying for that.