One foot, then another slid across the polished wooden boards. A shift of weight to the balls of the feet--a lift of the sword hilt, elbows out, the blade snapping to a precise level, angled parallel to the floor. Slow stride and stride, block and slash, cross and thrust, each one stopping on its mark, perfectly controlled. Pivoting at the far end of the studio, he reversed the form, returning to center; he repeated it in the opposite direction, then again along the crossing line, just as he'd done over and over during the last hour. He struck and held the final stance, sword raised motionless before his face. The late afternoon sunlight lay golden in the air, a long slant finding its way in between the buildings.

"That's great, Aya-kun!" He maintained position for another beat, then lowered the sword to his side, turning toward the door. Omi stood with one hand on the knob, eyes bright, smiling. "When you do it like that, it's beautiful, isn't it?"

Aya shrugged, moving to the bench next to Omi where the sword's black lacquer sheath lay, a white towel folded beside it. "It's the same thing," he said. "Nothing's different but the result." He was feeling as he sometimes did after his practice: as though the form continued on in him, every move locked to inescapable patterns, the whole world closing into stark inevitability. Frowning, he slung the towel over one shoulder, used its end to wipe a fine slick of sweat from his face and neck.

"Even so," Omi returned equably, "when we're working, I never really get a chance to see it. There's always too much going on and too much at stake. There's no way to stand back and appreciate it for itself." Surprised, Aya glanced the teenager leaning against the doorjamb, and something about the thought or the moment pierced him with clarity that was almost like pain. Not the words themselves, not Omi studying his own red sneakers as he scuffed one foot along the floor's wood grain, but something tangential, flashing up from places that were kept always just out of reach. Omi looked up again, that brief pensiveness flickering back into native good humor.

"You must've had to work hard for a long time," he said cheerfully, shoving hands into the pockets of his jeans. "To have that kind of skill."

Aya reversed his grip on the sword. He thrust the hilt toward Omi.

Laughter swept out of the big blue eyes, replaced by a widening of shock. "Aya-kun!" Aya fought the impulse to snatch the sword back; Omi stared at his face, swallowed, and didn't ask if he meant it. Easing forward, the youngest member of Weiss took cautious hold of the the twined leather grip while Aya forced himself to be still--wrong, deeply wrong to let someone else handle his katana, soul and symbol of the way he'd chosen, and yet that resistance was matched by an instinct that said he /must,/ now or not ever. Those two scarcely understood forces threatened to crush him in between them, like pieces of an armor that had grown too tight.

"Like this," he said shortly, correcting Omi's grip on the hilt. "Feet further apart." A hand beneath one elbow, he pulled the teenager's arms into place, aware with acute lucidity of the sunlight hazing the room, the precise space between the two of them, Omi's white tee-shirt sleeve brushing his wrist. Omi stared forward intently as Aya guided him into the most basic stroke, the sword held straight in front of him, raised and then brought down--the motion unsteady, the blade dropping a little too far, past the starting point.

"Again," Aya said.

The lift and fall of the katana, its clumsiness in the hands of a stranger.

"You've been standing there for a long time, Aya-kun."

Aya jerked his head up and stared at the teenager's back-to-front baseball cap. Omi didn't turn from the Underworld's computer as he added, "I'm only following up some old leads. It's not that exciting." Scowling, Aya shifted his shoulders against the dividing wall he was leaning against. He'd been looking at the chair back and the bright plaid of Omi's flannel shirt without really seeing them, his mind drifting to that afternoon in the studio above Koneko Sumu-Ie. Omi had surrendered the katana after a short time, smiling, saying that it was harder than it looked and that he surely wouldn't ever make a swordsman. He probably /could/ be made into one, his eye and balance were both reasonably good, but that wasn't the point. In the end, it hadn't been what Aya had been after.

Not to teach after all.

Then--what?

"Did you want to use the computer?"

Aya made a dismissive sound and watched Omi's hand slide the mouse across the desk, the slender cord coiling in front of it. He'd learned the essentials of computers because it was necessary, but he regarded them as stubborn and obtuse machines and approached them no more than he had to. A tool should be shaped to accord to the human hand and mind, not the other way round. He thought of the simplicity of his katana, the form's careful precision, long-practiced step, turn, and strike: sharp steel like an extension of his own arm, sealed to him by the perfection of its design and by his training.

The person and the sword as one.

"Well, if Youji-kun had you come down here to police me, he needn't have bothered. If I were going to do something like /that,/ I'd've used the computer in my own room." Omi's petulance sounded less than serious, but Aya couldn't be certain of it--and that tension was rising in him again as if it had been gathering itself since earlier: the feeling of alienation, of an innate separateness that grew greater as the years went by, taking him further and further away from other people. The unwieldiness he'd always felt in himself, never gifted in that way; the more recent chains binding him to what he'd made out of this life. The burden of too many things that held him changeless, unable to go back to who he'd been, unable to--

"Aya-kun--what is it?"

Startled, he met Omi's gaze. Omi had pushed his chair back from the desk and sat sideways on it, expression gently anxious and questioning. Aya could feel his own face on the verge of betraying him: a dull ache behind the eyes, a sensation as though all its muscles were going numb.

He knew what it would be like to clamp down on the emotions that were trying to shatter inside him. It was exactly what he'd always done--the way he got through his days. Yet he found himself transfixed between what he knew and the despair of it, as if on the points of spears. He faltered, looking into Omi's perfectly clear, guileless eyes. Then something inside him gave. It fractured without falling, like safety glass splintering but still holding shape. Shoving himself from the wall, he turned toward the stairs.

"Let's go."

He paused just long enough to glance over his shoulder and see Omi looking thoughtful before the teenager reached to shut down the Underworld's computer. Another beat of hesitation let him hear Omi on the steps behind him, then feel a faint vibration as the other started to climb. He picked up his pace, deliberately not looking at what they were heading toward, trying just for once not to think at all. He made it to the front door of the empty flower shop and rattled up the shutter before Omi asked him quietly, "Where are we going?"

"/Anywhere./" He stopped, looking at his reflection in the shop's long windows, its outlines vague and blurred against the dark street beyond. The only light in the room came from the lamps in the flower cases; his shirt caught most of it, a pale blue splash beneath the smudge of his face and hair. There was movement behind him, an indistinct wash of color--he glanced back, and a twist in his gut told him he probably shouldn't have. Coming around the table, Omi paused to return his stare, ranks of flowers behind the boy luminous and soft: pastel lilies drifting like clouds, remote on the other side of the glass. Omi lifted his head, tilting it slightly, questions in those blue, blue eyes, and all Aya could do was stand there, numb and obscurely panicked, the image of his younger partner in Weiss and those extravagant flowers fusing into one thing that consumed all thought, blinding him to almost everything else.

Then Omi started forward again, sliding a chair out of his way. His gaze never left Aya's as he moved past a changing haze of flowers: fringed spider mums and carnations, ghostly freesia, a tangle of baby's breath. The shop's twin doors were an untrustworthy opening at Aya's back, offering him no feeling of security. Omi walked to just out of reach and studied him--then eased nearer, crossing into "too close" so precisely that the movement could only be intentional. Reaching up, he touched the back of one hand to Aya's cheek. His fingers shifted, pressed Aya's lips, and Aya shut his eyes fast on all the things that were trying to fight their way from inside him.

"Okay," Omi said.

* * * * *

In the end, they went up to Aya's apartment, because he needed his driver's license if they were going to go anywhere else. Once they got there and he felt its false safety around him, he was reluctant to leave. While the teenager kicked off shoes in the doorway, he dug into a cupboard after a bottle of the sweet wine he liked to drink. He sloshed some into a glass and held it out.

"You could get into trouble," Omi teased.

"/I don't care./" The words came out harsher than he meant them to, but Omi smiled and took the glass with murmured thanks. Aya poured one for himself, then put the bottle back. He watched Omi wander off to stand by the foot of the bed, gazing at the window's black, reflective pane, and he tried to get his thoughts into some semblance of order.

Omi might have been talking about giving alcohol to a minor, or he might have been talking about something else entirely.

What /was/ all of this leading toward, that Omi at least seemed to understand?

He prowled around the room until he could see the other's profile. Restlessly he stared at the familiar, boyish face, the lift of one arm, the wrist's angle as Omi brought the glass to his lips.

"It's good."

"Ah."

The words were meaningless; cold slid along his spine. Omi took off the cap and tossed it onto a nearby chair. Running a hand through his hair, he rumpled it where it had been pressed flat--and Aya felt again those fingers on his mouth, felt the inside of his chest contract: the memory of those flowers and of Omi poised in front of them, the image as perfect and still as a photograph, that pale light suffusing everything. He groped after some way to put meaning to that hyperawareness; he thought of facing an opponent in the dojo, intense attunement to each other's move and response, but though close it wasn't quite the same. Reaching after similar echoes, his mind went back to things that he hadn't thought much of before. A similarly heightened attentiveness he'd observed somewhat vaguely in others, one that seemed to resonate with what he felt--things connected suddenly into a flash of a wider picture. His stomach jittered up and almost immediately sank.

"You.../like/ Ken. Don't you."

If there was a prize for being at cross-purposes, Aya thought, he absolutely had to be a contender. He watched Omi start, then duck and smile, coloring slightly. "I guess." That uncertainty seemed not as much like doubt as a reluctance to say anything more definite. Omi lifted the glass again, and Aya tracked the glint of light on it, the movement along the line of the throat as Omi swallowed, lingered at the shadows there. "But--" Omi had turned to stare at him, eyes wide and artless, and Aya jerked his gaze aside, glowering at the floor. Omi didn't have to make excuses--he was the one who should say something and get them out of an increasingly awkward situation. But his words tangled up into silence; there was no grace in him that hadn't been learned behind the steel length of a sword blade. Aya set his jaw, then looked up, almost in alarm, catching motion at the edge of sight. His chest got tighter as Omi approached him; the room seemed to grow too small, then went away. Steady eyes met his as Omi stopped in front of him, placing one hand on the arm that was crossed over his chest, holding his drink. Omi leaned forward, going up onto his toes, and from there Aya caught only chaotic flashes of things: a tumble of unruly hair, one cheek's curve as long eyelashes lowered to it, the slim body swaying closer, and then Omi's lips on his....

What should he do? How should he react? Aya tensed, struggling to grasp those sensations: Omi's clean scent, like soap and rain, the smell of wine on the other's breath, the warm fingers clasping his wrist, Omi pressed against him. Omi's mouth shifted, then drew back, and something surged inside him as though to follow that unhurried retreat. He stared down at the boy, who held his gaze frankly before giving him a faint smile.

"You're not cold," Omi murmured.

And it stunned him, that Omi saw glimpses of the things he couldn't even say--and that Omi was so relaxed with him, alone like this. But Omi was seventeen and out in the world with no one to keep an eye on him, only the other members of Weiss and the more remote attention of Kritiker's agents. Manx and Birman weren't around every day. No one was going to stop Omi from doing anything he felt like doing; there was only his generally responsible nature to control whatever adventures he might get into. Yet in spite of that, or maybe because of it, he was as steady as anyone. And Omi had an easy way with people, a gentleness that made something catch in Aya just thinking about it--he could /trust/ Omi, as far as he could trust at all, and against the constraint that had come to define him he felt a winged leap of yearning to let go.

"What do you want to do?" Omi asked, and he made his decision.

"Anything," he said.

Surprise and thoughtfulness crossed Omi's face, then dissolved into another, wider smile, one that was almost mischievous. He moved backward, pulling Aya with him, and Aya let himself be led. After a few steps, Omi stopped, plucking the glass from his fingers--the other drink had been set down on the bookshelf at some point before--and placed one hand on his chest, giving him a little push. He backed up and almost sat down when his legs hit the mattress; he caught himself, then, wondering if he'd been supposed to sit after all, sank uneasily onto the foot of the bed. Omi turned away, stealing a sip from the glass before setting it next to the first one, brushed the side of one hand lightly across his lips.

Then he turned back, shrugging the flannel shirt off his shoulders. Arching his body, he let the shirt slide down his arms. It fell into a heap on the floor. Omi caught at his tee-shirt and pulled it up, clearing flat stomach, lightly muscled chest--it came up over his head, releasing tawny hair around his face as he raised his crossed arms, his torso one taut stretch. Aya snapped his eyes aside, knowing that he was supposed to be looking, yet feeling too aware of things, in an odd fever of wanting and embarrassment. He ducked his head, then thought that he ought to be doing something also and fumbled at his first shirt button, feeling a heat rise into his face. Try as he might, he couldn't explain to himself exactly how he'd slid into this, though he'd felt its momentum building, a tide he didn't really know how to resist--

Fingers closed around his and stilled them. He caught his breath. Omi's hands eased between his, parting them, undoing that button for him, and then the next one, without haste. He was staring at Omi's shoulder, Omi was leaning closer to him--another button, the shirt starting to gape wider over his chest. Omi's breathing was a slow, rhythmic warmth against his neck; hair brushed his cheek as Omi bent forward, tugging on the shirt to loosen it. Those hands finished the buttons and slid inside the cloth, fingers gliding over his stomach--his muscles contracted beneath them, hollowing him away from their ticklish but not unpleasant caress. Flattening both palms against his sides, Omi drew them upward, lips grazing over his skin. Omi's mouth was on his throat, moving to where the blue shirt fell open, suckling at him, once or twice a suggestion of teeth, and Omi's hands were at his chest, thumbs rubbing in circles over his nipples--an icy spark jolted through him, and he stiffened, clenching his jaw against a sudden gasp. Still aching with that feeling, he arched into Omi's hands and leaned his head to the side, mutely offering his neck. Omi nuzzled him obligingly before shifting once more to kiss just below his ear.

"Close your eyes," Omi murmured then, a hint of laughter in the teenager's voice, "and keep them closed."

Still caught by that mindless flare of pleasure, Aya obeyed, and was a little bit shocked at himself on both counts. Omi lingered against him, cheek to his, then pulled back, arms slithering out of his shirt. As he felt Omi withdraw, the impulse to open his eyes was strong, but some other force kept him from doing so. He could sense self-discipline shading toward something else in him, a shift in the dynamics of control. Tense, he strained to follow what Omi was doing as the teenager stepped away, barefoot and near-silent. A faint click--/light switch/--the creak of the medicine cabinet's door in the bathroom, Omi /hmming,/ and the sound of small things being moved around: none of it made any sense. He sat taut and motionless until the noises in the other room stopped, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.

A quiet tap, closer, as though something was being put on the nightstand, an impression of movement nearby--

And Omi's hand settled onto his closed eyes.

He flinched, might have jerked aside, but somehow that gentle pressure steadied him. It held him there for a minute or two, then tipped his head backward. His earring brushed alongside his neck. Something touched his mouth, and he shivered once, almost despite himself--a fingertip, tracing the shape of his upper lip, pressing into the curve of the lower. The hand covering his eyes lifted, and he opened them hesitantly, not quite sure he was supposed to. He blinked up at Omi, bewildered, but an inexplicable flush spreading through him as the teenager smiled in what seemed like honest warmth, even tenderness, the hand that had blindfolded him shifting to stroke his hair. Omi's finger left his mouth to trail down his neck, coming to rest at the collar of his shirt.

"Take it off," Omi instructed.

He faltered, only for a beat, then pushed the shirt off his shoulders, letting it slide bit by bit down his body. He held himself as rigidly upright as possible, intensely aware of Omi's nearness--if he leaned forward at all, his head was going to come into contact with the other's chest. Part of him wanted it; part almost feared that it might happen. Awkwardly he worked his arms out of their sleeves, and then Omi reached around him and drew the shirt away, letting it spill off the corner of the bed and onto the floor. Cupping his face in both hands, Omi tilted it upward again and moved closer still, one leg nudging the inside of his thigh. Aya looked up into that half-lidded, unexpectedly intent and questioning blue gaze, and then shut his own eyes once more, his heart drumming wildly. Omi's lips left their light caresses on his forehead, on his eyelids, like fire, like the presence of rain, and he could feel himself letting go, yielding totally to Omi's hands, to the touch of Omi's mouth on his, tasting of wine, his own beginning to part for the other's kiss: a descent, deeper and deeper into this territory of self-surrender.

To be so completely in the power of another's certainty, to be seen and to be seen through by another's eyes....

He trembled, then gave himself over to it, the barriers that he'd built all his life cracking to the core--pieces of a shell separating, opening a way through to the person inside.

Aya was...really beautiful, Omi thought, coaxing the man to hitch backward and then following him up onto the bed. He'd never seen such pale skin on an actual living person before, only on actors or geisha. But on Aya it wasn't make up--it was real. At his urging, Aya slid further along the mattress; then, a hand on one shoulder, he pressed Aya back onto the yellow coverlet. On hands and knees, he stretched to kiss the hollow of that white throat again. He'd placed one knee carefully between Aya's thighs, and as he worked his slow way upward he rocked his leg against Aya's crotch, trying to make it seem unthought-out. He felt Aya's hips lift--a faint catch of breath--an arching of Aya's neck beneath his lips. Sliding his other knee up next to Aya and reaching as far as he could, he was just able to recapture Aya's mouth with his.

He really was looking forward to getting the rest of his growth.

But at least Aya wasn't taking him for a child; like the other members of Weiss, Aya had known him long enough and in dark enough circumstances to trust that he could be considered a man. He was awfully surprised, though, that Aya's trust would extend /this/ far--actually, that Aya would permit this kind of intimacy with anyone, child or adult. Aya could seem so forbidding, all sunset fire and glacial frost. But he'd wondered from time to time whether there wasn't another level to the curt swordsman. Sometimes it seemed like Aya was a blank wall, impassive and grim, and sometimes it seemed like he was the person face to face with that wall, trying to figure out how to get beyond it.

Exploring the other's lips, Omi ran just the tip of his tongue along them--felt the start, then the release as he teased at them again. Aya's mouth softened to let him probe it further, a hesitant tongue answering his, almost shy. Discovery and amazement quickened his growing excitement: a fiery, silken ripple, a stirring like leaves fluttering inside his body. His mouth and Aya's went on having their way with each other, their rhythms shifting and changing, unpredictable and a little wild, like animals with their own needs--and while he delighted in those sensations, catching his breath as he could, his pulse starting to hammer in his throat, in his chest, deep in his stomach and groin, a corner of his mind was still turning over Aya's reactions: the strange tentativeness, the capitulations.

He wasn't the snoop the others sometimes seemed to think he was, but he certainly wasn't naive either. He had a good idea of how Youji spent days off and evenings, and Ken also came home rather pleased with himself on occasion. With Aya, there was never even the smallest sign of anything like that--could it really be that Aya hadn't done it before? Or maybe...maybe he had, but not like this, Omi thought, fingers kneading the smooth, hard muscles of Aya's shoulder and then sliding along the arm, pinning its wrist to the pillow next to Aya's head. A little shiver went through him at what he was doing--at what Aya was letting him do. His own encounters weren't enough to do a realistic statistical analysis, but still he'd seen enough to know that sex could come in an amazing variety of shades and flavors: awkward, fumbling catastrophe; explosively quick and memorable moments, as incendiary as meteors entering the atmosphere; the familiar, almost careless casualness of just fooling around, touching and kissing. He could picture Aya having had coldly perfunctory sex, the way the Abyssinian did a lot of other things. But there were different sides to people too, and maybe something in Aya wanted to set what was known on its head so that the gentler, more subtle heat Omi thought he'd glimpsed a few times could be set free, if only for a while. Maybe Aya was as turned on by skirting the edges of vulnerability as he was by playing at control--and in the back of his mind that thrill of hunger had its shadow, the whisper that always haunted him, questioning every motive: what he wanted, what it might lead him to become.

Was it that dark blood, this desire waking--the power lust of the family he'd been born to somehow finding life again in him?

Pulling back, he sank onto Aya's chest, waiting for his breathing and heart rate to slow. After a moment, he pushed himself up on his arms once more. He stared into Aya's face--the closed eyes, brows slightly furrowed under autumnal hair; the lips still parted, almost imperceptibly. He looked at the pale rise of Aya's cheek, and smiled, finding nothing in himself but what he knew: faith in rightness and justice, the boundless feelings he had for his friends. Ducking his head, he closed his eyes on a luminous inward tremor of gratitude. He'd passed the test. He could do this without betraying Aya's astounding trust in him or cheapening what really mattered to them both.

And Aya had been right: he /did/ like Ken, in a want-to know-this-person-even-better, growing-gradually-closer kind of way. Ken drove him to distraction sometimes, Ken looked out for him with constant, unthinking warmth and affection, and the thought of the guy put a rich, confusing glow into both body and soul. He really wanted to give their friendship a long, long time to deepen and evolve, so that when he went ahead someday and asked after more than that there'd be layers of understanding between them--because he suspected Ken might be the type who'd panic at that kind of interest from him. But that was far in the future, and he was with Aya, whose needs were immediate and deserved attention. Lifting his head, he focused on the man beneath him, certain in himself again. He could feel Aya's stomach move with steady and controlled breaths, the habit of a martial artist. Aya's neck tensed as the man swallowed faintly, then shifted a little against the pillow.

Opening, Aya's eyes flickered from side to side until they found and held his. Those eyes were satin, the sheen of a tulip petal fallen from the stem. Still looking dumbfounded, Aya lifted one arm, the one that wasn't captured by his, and touched spread, almost flinching fingertips to his hair and face. Smiling at Aya, he turned to meet that square, strong hand, rubbing his cheek against it, feeling the fingers and the mounds of the palm ridged with sword callouses. He nipped at the smallest finger, then curled his tongue around it before taking it into his mouth and sucking on it, slow, deep, and wet. Swinging one leg over, he straddled Aya and sat up, starting a gentle but insidious grind against the other's crotch, his hips' motions synched to the rhythms of suction as he went on to the next finger, then the next.

The look on Aya's face was almost hysterically funny. If he burst out laughing, though, it really was going to wreck the mood. Omi closed his eyes and concentrated on Aya's fingers instead, on the pulse of wanton movement and the growing pleasure buzzing through him as he rocked himself against Aya's lap.

It wasn't long at all before the stiffness rising to answer him suggested Aya's jeans had started to get uncomfortable. His own certainly were. Swiping a last lick across Aya's fingers, he splayed them on the other's chest and bent to nuzzle briefly between the pale peach nipples before lifting himself off Aya. He undid the button of those ordinary and conservative jeans, so unlike Youji's ride-so-low-that-if-they-weren't-skin-tight-they'd-fall-off variety. He smiled privately, then unzipped them and pushed them and the underwear both down, drawing Aya's length, impressive in his somewhat limited experience, into his hand. He stroked it, and Aya moaned, a deep, resonant sound that made him feel as though all his blood had just turned to liquid silver. Suddenly urgent, he clawed Aya's jeans and briefs the rest of the way down, Aya's hips lifting instinctively from the bed to help him get past. Stripping the clothes from Aya's legs, he tossed them onto the floor, already groping for his own waistband--honestly, of all days to have /not/ worn shorts! He rolled onto his back next to Aya, arching as he squirmed and kicked his jeans off, then scrambled around again, pressing against Aya's thigh. Catching himself abruptly--not so fast, not so frantic--he made himself stop there before he crossed the line into mindless need. He had to be the one to stay in control of the situation, for himself and especially for Aya. He sat up, breathing deeply and resting one hand on the point of Aya's hip to steady himself, and let his gaze travel the swordsman's body, regaining a sense of distance. Aya turned to look at him, eyes half-closed and abstracted, and Omi blinked, registering a flash of gold next to Aya's neck.

"Aya-kun," he murmured, "take off your earring."

Those eyes snapped into focus, widening in shock and a flash of what almost seemed like terror. Startled, Omi wondered what personal trigger he'd just tripped. He thought about backing off from it, but something in the way Aya'd frozen warned him that they were in dangerous territory where he could do just as much damage by being unsure as by cruelty. Aya's submission was the man's need, not a gift to him, he sensed, and if he broke their encounter's implicit rules the whole thing could fracture around them. What that might do to Aya he couldn't guess, but he was afraid it might be irreparable. On top of which, his own small loop wasn't likely to be a problem, but he was concerned that Aya's much-longer earring might catch on something and rip free. Staring into Aya's eyes, he held out his hand with authority, and after a moment Aya's gaze began to falter, its resistance crumbling away like sand. Aya put a hand in front of his ear, then ducked his head and fumbled at the earring's hook. Working it loose, he reached out and pressed it into Omi's fingers without looking. Omi swallowed a sigh of relief. "Good," he said.

Twisting around, he set the earring on the nightstand carefully, taking that opportunity to palm the small jar of skin cream he'd borrowed from the bathroom. It had been that or the sunscreen; Aya's medicine cabinet was pretty minimalist, but with such fair skin he probably had to be unusually careful about sun damage. Omi glanced back at Aya, who'd rolled to one side and lay facing away, arms wrapped around himself, white-knuckled hands knotted at shoulders. Pausing, he gravely studied what he could see of the man--the backs of Aya's legs, a deep crease of shadow between them; the tight, well-defined curve of his rear, his back's taut muscularity; the corner of one shut eye, just visible between a long side lock and the painterly streaks of his bangs--then nudged closer again, stashing the jar between two wrinkles of the bed cover. Leaning against Aya, he reached over the man and touched the backs of his fingers to the other's stomach. He began to stroke up and down in a deliberate rhythm, pressing his knuckles against Aya's abs, kneading into them, then sliding down further, twining his fingers into the coarse red curls that grew up onto Aya's lower belly. Aya's eyes opened, Aya's head came off the pillow to glance sidelong at him, and he returned that tense look quietly, his slow caresses never ceasing. Bending forward, he kissed Aya's side, the hollow just above the hip. Aya drew in a breath--then, as Omi lingered there, released it, uncoiling just a little, his arms loosening their clench across his chest.

Pushing with one knee, Omi coaxed Aya's upper leg to flex; he worked his own leg between the other's, tangling their bodies together, the continuing throb of fire in his crotch returning to sharp focus as he leaned against the back of Aya's thigh. He took Aya's cock in his hand, letting it slide, hard and blood-hot, through his fingers, then folded them around it and began learning its secrets: the most sensitive places, the cadences and qualities of touch that made Aya respond. As he continued to kiss along Aya's side, Aya twisted toward him, that torsion throwing all the man's muscles into acute relief. He traced their offered lines with lips and tongue, feeling them tense and then soften as he passed over them, little spasms as Aya reacted to the movements of his hand and mouth, to their bodies pressing against each other with growing electricity. Stretching further, he claimed the peak of one of Aya's nipples and sucked at it--applied teeth, just enough to demand attention--and Aya gasped, voice catching, arms lifting in an X before the man's face. As Aya jerked beneath him, Omi moaned, the movement somehow communicating itself into his own body, his hips bucking against Aya, his need and Aya's shading together into bright confusion--no, almost, but not yet, and he made himself draw back, containing the desire that wanted to drive toward immediate, blinding release. Soon, he told the burning in his groin, /soon,/ and he sat up, still astride Aya's lower leg, his hand coming to a halt on Aya's cock. With the other hand, he tugged at the man's arm, rolling him back up onto his side, and Aya moved pliantly, a naked obedience that made something twist in Omi, a knife of desire deep inside him, confirming what, against all imaginings, he was about to do. He fumbled for the jar of cream, his hand shaking a little, and was glad he'd thought to loosen the lid before. Delving up a two-fingered scoop, he reached beneath Aya's leg, stroking the tender, exquisitely sensitive flesh behind the scrotum's soft weight. He brushed fingertips back and forth over the pucker of Aya's anus, a bare ghost of touch, sliding up into the narrowing cleft of Aya's rear and then down again, and he watched what he could see of the man's expression, still half-hidden in the other's arms. Reading wariness but no firm resistance, he began to push his fingers slowly into Aya, and Aya stiffened at the penetration. "Okay?" he whispered.

"/Eh,/" which wasn't a /no,/ so he continued to work his way inward. He crooked his fingers, searching, and Aya convulsed when he finally found the sweet spot inside. He knew that much at least from his own experience --exactly how those bright stars of pleasure would feel inside his own body, scintillating like shuriken in the back of the brain--and he massaged more deeply until Aya was breathing in faint gulps, one hand clenched in the coverlet, his top leg drawn up of its own accord, its knee bending sharply. Withdrawing those probing fingers, Omi reached for the skin cream again. He smeared it around his erection, trembling with near-panic and an almost feverish excitement as Aya's shudders and the thought of being inside that close heat he'd just been exploring raised his long-restrained need to an intense pitch. Placing himself against Aya's opening, he pressed forward steadily, settling into its embrace...oh, /oh,/ the feeling of enclosure, the tight grip of Aya's muscles an unbearable ecstasy as he sheathed himself deep into Aya's body. Distantly he heard himself moan again, a hiccuping sob that sounded like someone else's voice. He leaned onto Aya, pushing the man almost onto his face on the mattress, one hand reaching to tangle in the fervent glory of Aya's red hair--and then there was just the animal urge that rocked his body, driving him into Aya again and again. /Faster,/ straining for the fulfillment of those flowering, expansive sensations, aware only of Aya's heat and solidity beneath him and their bodies moving, moving as one--and that white bliss unfurled in him, a flash against the darkness, its sheet lightning crawling through every part of his being. He arched into Aya, shuddering as the release of orgasm slammed into him, breathless, jerking with the pleasure, lost to everything else. He rode it as long as he could, through the peak and eventual fade, and then collapsed, slipping out of Aya and expelling his breath in a long, luxuriant exhale of deliverance. Spent, he rested a moment, draped over Aya's hip, enjoying the sweaty, floating lightness of aftermath.

Then he pushed himself upright, shaking his head and spitting out a lock of his own hair, which he'd somehow almost managed to swallow. Skimming some lube from his softened penis, just enough to slick his fingers, he reached over Aya's leg again. He took Aya's cock in his hand, the force of its arousal somewhat diminished from the shock of the body's invasion--he caressed it, coaxing it to harden once more. Before long it was rigid and urgent, and his hand was riding its length in fast, sharp strokes, a pumping rhythm attuned to Aya's ragged breathing and to his intent observation of what made Aya quiver and arch more desperately into his grasp. Aya came at last, violent and helpless in his hand, and that abandonment kindled a surprising flicker of warmth inside him: a completion more subtle than the ecstasy of sex, but strangely complementary to it. Omi gazed down at Aya, crumpled and seemingly oblivious beneath him, and smiled, a little bit wistfully. He hoped Aya hadn't found that extraordinary trust in him misplaced. No matter what, he wanted to do right by his teammate--no, his friend.

He wanted to have been able to give whatever Aya had been seeking.

Drained, he slumped then, sinking down against the man's back. Wrapping his arms around Aya, he pulled the other's limp body toward himself, out of the wet spot, and settled his cheek onto Aya's hair--with a twinge of chagrin as he found it was sticky where his hand had been in it. Oh, well--no harm done, he supposed. Wiping his other hand on his hip, he cupped it around Aya's forehead, threading fingers through those incredibly silky bangs as he drew Aya's head back against himself, Aya still acquiescent, still surrendering to his direction. "Was it what you wanted?" he whispered, wondering if Aya'd felt anything like what he had, if that give-and-take of intimacy and surrender had touched Aya too. Aya's breaths slowed, then slowed further as Omi waited, the contractions of his chest evening out beneath Omi's arm, and his answer, when it finally came, was so soft that even listening closely Omi could scarcely hear it: an affirmative murmur no stronger than a sigh.

"Yes...."

Lying there, a light sweat already cooling on his skin but his back still warmed where Omi was folded against it, he touched the sensations inside himself with quiet wonder.

This feeling of /space/....

His self-awareness broken open, a stillness outside of anything he knew--a transfiguration not so much in what had happened as in the acceptance of it, as though a clenched fist had uncurled itself to reveal an empty palm.

His body both light and languorous from the pleasure, a little bit sore but even that seeming right, he drifted gratefully within that vast inner spaciousness. He didn't even know, he was discovering, who this person was that lived inside his skin. No less than ever, he was a stranger to himself. But in the gap between "Aya" and "Ran," between the self he wore and the one he'd never really had the chance to make his own, there was freedom at last to see what he /could/ be.

Maybe he could tread the narrow road between hardness and redemption.

Maybe he could be this humanly yielding without sacrificing strength....

And as Omi stirred, one hand running hesitantly through his hair before slipping away from him, the mattress shifting as the teenager began to sit up slowly, he lay motionless in the rest that followed movement: a center from which any possible form might emerge.

All those patterns of potential, seen as if for the first time....

/Beautiful./

* * * * *

Author's Note: I'm the world's most psychotical OmiKen fangirl. So why am I writing Omi x Aya? Let's just say that Aya and I have something in common, and it's not a sister in a coma. Nor is it a hidden urge to be uke to a masterful seventeen-year-old. Go deeper, grasshopper. ^_^

Thanks go to my prereaders, K-chan, Jess, Kristin O. and !SuperCat. (Look! I fixed the ellipses!) And now I'm going to run away very, very fast before Aya finds me and makes me pay for this....

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