Chapter Text
The first thing Yumichika ever becomes really, really good at is sex.
It’s not exactly intentional at first. When he first arrives in District 66, a skinny teenager with long hair and a ragged yukata and nothing else but his name, he’s taken in by the woman who owns the first inn he passes. She tells him he has three weeks to find somewhere else. He asks if there’s any food, and she says that they don’t get hungry here, that rich people keep all the food for themselves but no one needs it, really. Still, halfway through the first week he is weak and lightheaded, and if this isn’t hunger, then he doesn’t know what else to call it.
At the end of the second week, he’s woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of a door locking. He’s learnt enough to be scared, but not enough not to be stupid; he calls out, “Hello?”
The only reply is low laughter, and a candle being lit, then he’s thrown to the floor and blindfolded. He never gets to see the faces of the two men who tear off his clothes and hit him in the stomach until he opens his mouth for them. He gags and chokes, trying not to retch, but they don’t seem to care. Later, he screams in pain and struggles, but he’s weak as a kitten compared to them, and they hold him down and beat him until he stops. It doesn’t take long before he’s too exhausted to even move, to do anything except whimper softly and wait for it to be over, face scraping against the filthy wooden floor and overwhelmed by the smell of damp rot and stale breath.
It’s a long, long time til they’re done with him. One voice says, “It’d be a shame to ruin such a pretty face,” and by the end it’s the only part of him that doesn’t hurt. He’s in too much pain to do anything, and he hears the voice of the woman, and the sound of coins clinking together, before the door closes again.
He leaves the next morning, still in pain and starving. It doesn’t occur to him until later to ask the woman how much they paid for him. He sleeps outside because he has to, and because he can’t, won’t be trapped anywhere. Occasionally he tenses against sudden pain inside, or gags around a phantom feeling in his throat, and it feels entirely real even though he knows otherwise.
By the end of the third week - or maybe it’s halfway through the fourth by now, Yumichika isn’t sure - he’s mostly too weak to move. He sits at the mouth of an alleyway which leads on to a main road, tucked away from annoyed passers-by but still bright and public enough to be reasonably safe. He sleeps there, too; it’s not cold at night at the moment, and though some part of him vaguely dreads the change of seasons, he’s not certain how long it will be until he passes out and doesn’t wake up. At least it hasn’t rained much. The streets are dry and dusty and uniformly the colour of soil, and his throat is dry, but a cold would finish him.
A finger under his jaw tilts his head up, and he flinches at the contact and opens heavy eyes.
“You’re a pretty thing,” the man towering over him says.
Oh god, Yumichika thinks, but it’s a curiously distant thought, without much emotion connected to it. The man is large and strong and covered in Yakuza tattoos, though he’s unexpectedly young. Yumichika doesn’t fight it when the man picks him up as though he weighs barely anything, doesn’t fight when he holds Yumichika’s hair roughly and shoves his cock down his throat. He’s too tired to fight, and finds that this ragdoll lack of tension minimises the choking. There’s nothing in his stomach, not even much water, so he doesn’t retch this time.
Maybe it’s over quickly, or maybe his swimming half-consciousness just makes it seem that way. The man tucks himself away - will there be no bruises this time? - and chucks something onto Yumichika’s lap. “For your trouble, kid,” he says, and walks away.
It takes Yumichika a moment to realise that it’s a bread roll. He devours it, and though it hurts hitting his empty stomach, strength seems to return to his body from the centre all the way out to his fingertips. This has the unfortunate side effect that he can now feel all of the bruises that haven’t really healed yet.
His whole body is aching from sitting in the same position for so long, so he pushes himself upright and walks down the main street with little idea of where he’s going. The street is grimy and well-trafficked, with stalls down either side and grey, raggedy people trudging mechanically along. A stranger crashes into him and he tenses and panics at the contact, shoving reflexively. The man - older and thick-set and laden with bags - careens away and ends up on almost the other side of the street, shouting obscenities.
Yumichika looks down at his small, slim hands and thinks, with great surprise, I am strong. But only, it seems, when there’s food, nomatter what the woman said. She was a liar. So he has to get some more if he wants to survive - and he wants. He wants to go back to that inn where they said, shame to ruin such a pretty face, and slice hers to pieces, demand that she give him the money they paid her to use him. He was the one sold; the money belongs to him.
Two people in a short time have told him he has a pretty face. He doesn’t know what he looks like, so he wanders until he finds the district’s dubiously clean river they use to wash their clothes. It’s too murky to see clearly, but he can see long dark hair and a thin face with large eyes, and he supposes that perhaps it’s true. He’ll be prettier if he’s clean, so he strips and washes his clothes and hair as best he can in the murky river and - well, it’s something of an improvement. The women working along the bank stare at his naked body as though it’s shameful. Being pretty seems to make him a target, but he’s beginning to wonder if it can’t also be an advantage.
He doesn’t know how to go about this, and it’s only a day before the restorative effects of food wear off and the hunger comes back. He can’t let himself become as weak as he did last time; he’d be dead, if not for the man who liked what he saw enough to throw Yumichika a scrap once he took what he wanted.
Every time someone touches him in the street he flinches; every time someone looks at him twice he has to fight the urge to run. There is something on the inside that wants to scream and claw at his own skin, but the rest of him is oddly logical; he needs food and somewhere to sleep, and the only thing he has that people want is this. It’s distasteful, but it won’t kill him. He saw a man kicked to death in an alley a few weeks ago round the corner from one of the water vendors; Yumichika would make a similarly easy target in a place like this.
He swallows around shuddering nausea and ties his robe tightly at the waist, allowing it to fall open a little at the shoulders, then he makes his way around inns and shops. The last time he tried this, he offered labour in exchange for a place to stay, and was turned away everywhere. This time he tries something different; he isn’t sure how to say it - you can have me however you like, if you’ll just let me stay - but it turns out that it’s easy to tell who is likely to agree the moment they open the door to his half-smile. Women look at him with disgust and he doesn’t know why, but none of them want him. It’s always the men, and half of them close the door in his face the moment they realise how they’ve been looking at him.
In the end, Yumichika knows this man will let him in when he doesn’t close the door; he waits for Yumichika to stammer his way through I need a place to stay...I’d be very grateful...I would let you do whatever you liked… as if he knows what Yumichika was offering all along and just wanted to hear him say it. Yumichika can’t look him in the eyes, but the man waves him in.
“That’s real enterprising of you, kid,” he says. When he turns round, gesturing for Yumichika to follow, the beginning of a tattoo is visible at the base of his neck.
Yakuza, Yumichika thinks, swallowing around panic. The run-down inn looked nothing special at all; certainly not the sort of place run by a Yakuza man, and yet - Yumichika has no choice. He follows the man upstairs and into a tiny room - barely a closet - and a blanket is chucked in behind him. “Get some sleep. You’re working tonight.”
Yumichika blinks, trying to get a handle on the situation. “Working?” The man glowers a little more from under thick, black eyebrows.
“Yeah - what’d you expect, for me to bother putting you up just so I could fuck you? Your job is to go downstairs and look pretty and entertain my guests, and if you’re lucky you might get a few bits of appreciation from the customers.” The man shuts the door and lopes off without so much as mentioning his name.
Entertain the guests, right. Who will all be Yakuza too, most likely. Still, it’s not as if a group of Yakuza are any more likely to beat him bloody than any other group of thugs on the street; perhaps less, if the inkeeper were to make them pay for that sort of thing. And likely he wouldn’t want his employee unsuitable for work the next day. It’s not safety, exactly. But appreciation from the customers - what would that be? Money? Scraps of food?
Better, then, than the inn he’d come from, and better than the streets. There’s a window in this upstairs room, large enough for him to wriggle out of, so if he were locked in he could still escape.
He curls up under the blankets and manages to doze for a few hours. When he wakes up it’s dark, and the man - whose name he disconcertingly still does not know - hauls in a bucket of water, a bar of soap, and a green robe that, though plain and obviously too large for Yumichika, looks to be infinitely better than the ragged thing he had been wearing.
Yumichika washes as best he can with the limited water, but it seems to actually be clean, and the soap is an unexpected luxury. Look pretty, he remembers, letting down his hair and combing it through carefully with his fingers till it hangs in a straight black sheet down his back. The robe is far too large, especially around the shoulders. Yumichika opens the top to expose his collarbones and the top of his shoulder and rolls up the sleeves many times, then folds the fabric around his waist strategically before tying the sash. He hopes the draping looks artful, now.
He supposes he’s expected to make himself appealing - “entertain”, the man had said. He wants his customers to be happy, so that means: talk, perhaps flatter, pretend to enjoy any attention he is given. Yumichika can do that. The thought of leaning in to an unwanted touch of his thigh makes him feel ill, but in the relative public of the bar, at least no one will do anything too indiscreet or painful. And if someone wishes to drag him off to some closet and use him, then hopefully they will be too intent on relieving their urges to notice if he lets slip a few pained sounds and just waits for it to be over.
Maybe he will learn to feign enthusiasm even for that. Whore, he thinks, trying the word on for size in his mind. That’s what I am now.
He keeps his chin up when he presents himself downstairs. Business has only just begun, really; the bar is two-thirds empty, but still, men with scarred faces and missing fingertips look at him up and down over their drinks. The inkeeper calls him over with a sharp jerk of his head. “You scrub up well,” he says, and begins filling a wooden mug.
You knew I would, Yumichika thinks, otherwise you would have closed the door in my face. “Thank you,” he says, pulling one lock of hair to the front of his shoulders.
The man pushes the mug across the stained bartop. “Here,” he says. “You’ll need this.”
Alcohol of some kind, by the smell. Will alcohol make this easier? In Yumichika’s observation it seems to make people more inclined to do stupid things; still, it’ll give him something to do with his hands. He accepts with a nod, and takes a sip.
It’s utterly vile. Yumichika smoothes out the expression of revulsion and swallows anyway; it’s not going to be difficult to avoid drinking too much. He’s going to have to join a table in a minute and be entertaining, somehow. What do you even say to a group of drinking Yakuza? Enquiring about work is probably not the best conversation starter.
He leans over the bar to speak to the inkeeper again. “Who’s been here the longest?”
The man’s eyebrows raise, and he examines Yumichika thoughtfully. “That lot over there,” he indicates with a tilt of his head. “They’re on their fourth round.”
“Good.” Yumichika takes a sip of his drink and puts on a half-smile, then heads slowly over to a table in the far corner surrounded by men playing cards with their upper bodies exposed to show off their ink. One or two look up as he approaches; every single man is at least twice Yumichika’s size.
“Looks like the entertainment budget’s gone up, ne?” The most easily differentiable thing about the men is their tattoos, and this particular man has a huge dragon covering his back and shoulders. Yumichika can’t even imagine how many hours that must have taken. The man next to him elbows him and says, “Oi, Roku, it’s your turn.”
“Does that mean I can sit?” Yumichika says, indicating the spare zafu with his drink and taking another sip. He’s beginning to feel...warm, which is an improvement on the constant chill he feels, except for the few short hours after he eats something.
A man with ratty blond hair in a short ponytail grins at him. “That’s onii-san’s place, but you can sit here.” He slaps one massive thigh.
Yumichika perches on it, crosses his legs, and begins to idly play with his hair. He leans close to the man’s ear and says, “Who’s winning?”
He points with one thumb, and Yumichika notices that the tip of his pinky finger is gone, the scar at the top gruesome rather than clean-cut. “Mugara, there. Though his luck’ll probably turn soon; he ain’t all that good at oicho-kabu.”
“Mm. And what’s your name?” Yumichika allows his hair to trail over the man’s shoulder
“Isuke,” the man says, and he wraps an arm possessively around Yumichika’s waist. It looks as if he might be able to put his hands all the way around Yumichika’s waist, if he tried. Yumichika takes a few swallows of his drink; it’s not improving in flavour as he gets further down, but it is becoming easier to bear. The arm trapping him where he is is less easy to bear; the urge to fight his way free is strong, but he stamps on it firmly with more sips of beer and the knowledge that he’ll be kicked out if he tries that.
It’s not so very bad, really. There’s no pain, and he isn’t cold for once, and in between rounds Isuke tells him the rules of oicho-kabu. There’s the constant uncomfortable feeling of being stared at with intent, especially Mugara and a man with an intricate koi fish pattern down either side of his chest, but when the next round is due Isuke indicates another drink for Yumichika, encouraging him to finish the one he has.
I’d rather not is clearly not an option, so he smiles briefly and puts away the drink in one long go, taking care not to spill unattractively and keeping his face impassive. The warmth pooling in his stomach is spreading outwards, and his senses seem to be blurring slightly. He can still feel the arm holding him in place, but it seems less connected to the urge to flee.
“Oi, Isuke, you’re monopolising the pretty thing,” Roku says, and he leans over and grabs Yumichika’s thigh. Yumichika can’t help but tense, and his stomach lurches unpleasantly. He wants to shrink away, to avoid looking at the leer Roku is giving him, but he doesn’t have a choice, and in a minute his behaviour will register as strange.
He makes himself shift round to look at Roku. “Well, you could deal me in. Then I can play with all of you,” he says. This draws a round of guffaws, and he manages to slip off Isuke’s lap and onto a zafu between him and Roku. The next round arrives at the table, and Yumichika accepts his with the best smile he can muster and a thank you, and tries not to make it obvious that he drinks the first third all in one go. The distant, floating feeling makes him more daring, makes up for the vile taste in his mouth and he’s not sure if it’s the swill he’s drinking or disgust.
He hates how easy it is, to say the right things, to pretend to be useless at the game even once he has the hang of it because they laugh and call him cute and put their hands wherever they please. It’s not hard to entertain a bunch of drunken men when you’re drunk yourself - and Yumichika is definitely drunk.
He’s so drunk that it’s not so bad when they carry him off to a back room and strip off his clothes. Everything is blurry and far away, even the part of him that wants to scream, and with countless hands all over him it takes a while to realise that the strange noises, identifiably neither pain nor fear nor pleasure but something a little like all three, are coming from him. They share him equitably, passing him round until he’s dizzy and disoriented. Someone strokes his hair as he tries not to choke on their cock. They’re rough with him but not to the point of injury - well, probably; he’s feeling no pain at all.
He’s mostly together and mostly okay until someone wraps a hand around his cock and says into his ear, give us a show, little slut, and his body does exactly what it is designed to do.
They leave him in an exhausted, sticky heap, though someone bothers to drape the green robe over him. When he’s sure he’s alone the shaking starts, a counterpoint to the slow spin of the room around him.
At length, he falls asleep.
-
Yumichika opens gluey eyelids the next morning, feeling sick. Someone has moved him upstairs to the little spare room with a blanket. He’s...disgusting; so disgusting he would sell his soul for a bath. Alcohol-fogged memories from the previous evening trickle into his consciousness, and he curls up and swallows, arms wrapped around his stomach, until he can stop gagging on nothing.
The door opens with no preamble, and he jumps at the unexpected noise and movement. Stupidly, his heart races even as he can see it’s only Suzuruma. The inkeeper has brought him another bucket of water and his old robe, cleaner than when he last saw it.
“Thank you,” Yumichika says, though he can’t meet the man’s eyes in his current state.
The inkeeper grunts in acknowledgement, then pauses. “You did all right, kid.” Yumichika swallows; to this he cannot reply thank you. “Isuke left you something,” he says, and drops a small silver coin on the floor before leaving.
Yumichika picks the coin up; it’s tarnished and battered, with an image of the Seireitei stamped on it. He doesn’t know how much it’s worth, but he remembers the small bronze-coloured pieces exchanged for beers the previous evening and thinks, enough.
The first thing Yumichika does when he arrives at the market is wander around and watch carefully how much people pay for things. It seems he was roughly right; small bronze bits for drinks, small silvers for more expensive items like clothing and food. There isn’t much of what Yumichika would consider actual sustenance, mostly curiosities like sweets and pastries. At some point, when he finds someone safe, Yumichika will ask why he gets hungry when no one else seems to. Larger silver coins like the one he has in his fist draw several smaller silvers as change, normally.
He can afford food and something else to wear, he thinks. He should make food his priority - and quantity over quality, if he can possibly find someone selling something more sensible than tiny pastries - but a colourful, well-fitting Yukata will make him appear more attractive, probably. He’s not sure that it matters; not sure what men see in him, really, especially since one of the Yakuza from last night held his hair and said, so pretty, almost like a woman. He takes a deep breath, and wonders why, then, they don’t just pay for a woman.
One market stall has a woman selling bronze mirrors, and he looks at the clearest reflection of himself he has ever seen. He does look like a woman to a casual glance, but it’s not quite right - there’s a sharpness to jaw and cheekbones and something around the eyes that differentiates him. Yumichika wonders momentarily what he would look like in a woman’s eye makeup, since his eyes are already so large compared to the rest of his face.
Yumichika bypasses a number of stalls displaying beautiful yukata until he finds a stall selling bread. Presenting the large silver coin gains him only two small silvers back, but there’s more, he reassures himself, where that came from. It’s been two days since he ate, and it’s a struggle not to tear into the bread roll, but he feels almost as if it will be taken away if he reveals that he’s eating because he is hungry.
He stashes the remaining half of the roll in his pocket and shops for a yukata, and though at first he considers which fabrics seem to drape most attractively along the lines of his body and which colours look best against the black of his hair, in the end he selects one with a peacock feather pattern simply because it is beautiful.
-
Yumichika learns about masturbation from putting together various rude jokes that are made in his presence. The men in Suzuruma’s bar seem convinced that they’re supposed to make sexual jokes to him for some reason, as though in some way they still have to persuade him to do his job. He wonders if they treat the people - women? Other men? - they attempt to woo without money the same way.
It had never occurred to him that men with enough money to buy him would ever bother to do it themselves. He doesn’t really know how expensive he is, if there’s a group discount or if you just pay for the time and it’s cheaper to share. He should ask Suzuruma. But it seems that everyone masturbates, and he wonders if it’s odd that the idea had never held much appeal. His body seems to have learned to take care of itself most evenings, whether or not the guests bother trying to get an orgasm out of him, and he has no desire at all to relive it in private moments. The guests like it, anyway. Yumichika supposes it must looks like he wants them.
He has become very good at swallowing around his gag reflex, at leaning into a touch from callused hands, at opening his legs and tipping back his head and making pleasure sounds. Some of the responses have become reflexive instead of conscious: he doesn’t have to fake moans, anymore, when someone slides fingers into his mouth for him to suck. Men call him pretty little whore and filthy slut as they run their hands all over him, and he can’t help but think it’s a little true, that it’s why he’s so good at this job that he can make a man come in minutes with both hands tied behind his back. It’s difficult for even him to tell sometimes, drunk and begging to come, where the performance begins.
There are the bad days, of course - where Suzuruma gets him to run errands and he smells damp rot, or hears the sound of a door locking as he walks down the street, and he spends the whole day looking over his shoulder and tensing at every unexpected touch. Stupid little things like that set him off, like a mouthful of rice getting stuck in his throat, while the man two nights ago who grabbed so hard he left bloody scrapes and finger-shaped purple bruises on Yumichika’s hips was almost routine.
He heals quickly, anyway, when he’s had enough to eat, and the regulars at the bar have got used to the idea that he likes food and often bring him sweets or pastries. Today, the marks are barely visible.
He learns a lot from the regulars at the bar; learns how to cheat at cards and what shinigami are and where to get decent food and how to let people know that you belong to the Yakuza, if you need to. How to handle a knife if that doesn’t work. Where the softest parts to hit are and how to form a fist properly if you don’t have a knife.
No one at all tells him what to do when a newcomer walks into the bar and sits down, and Yumichika’s first thought is, I wonder what you taste like? He stands up from where he’s seated by one of his tables of regulars and says, “Sorry, boys, better say hello to the fresh meat,” then walks over. It’s a good thing his kimono restricts his strides, keeps him from walking too fast and slinging his legs around the man’s hips and finding out why he draws the eye so much more than anyone else here.
The first thing the man does is take out a large box of noodles and eat them in a way Yumichika has never seen anyone eat food before: swiftly, efficiently, as if he needs the food so much he doesn’t even care how it tastes. It could be disgusting, but it isn’t; he eats neatly despite the speed, and the fingers gripping his chopsticks are long and slim and callused in a few places, rather than generally rough, as if he does the same thing over and over. Yumichika takes a moment to wonder what a man so unscarred and absent tattoos is doing in Suzuruma’s bar.
“You’re staring at my food,” the man observes between bites, and his accent is rougher even than you commonly get in the 65th; this man comes from the 70s somewhere. Yumichika’s heard all sorts of stories about the 70s. The urge to ask endless stupid questions ties his tongue.
Yumichika looks away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.” He can feel himself blushing, of all things, and though it’s his job to be funny and make conversation he can’t think of one single thing to say.
“It’s just noodles. Nothing tasty,” he says, scratching his bald head. There’s strange marks at the corners of his eyes; birthmarks, or paint of some kind? Yumichika wonders what they would feel like to touch.
He gathers up his courage. “I get hungry, too,” he says, because though he has no reason to trust this man, at least the fact that they have this in common makes him safer to ask than anyone else. Maybe he’s not thinking too clearly about this, but he’s not sure he cares. He wants this man to know they have something in common, even though everyone says Yumichika is slim and pretty and delicate, and the man looks as though he’s never lost a fight in his life. “Everyone says I shouldn’t, but...if I don’t have food, I start to faint.”
The man stares at him with undisguised incredulity. “You should keep that to yourself.”
Yumichika bristles. “I have,” he says. “You’re the first person I’ve told. And it’s not as if you’re being subtle about it,” he notes.
“Means you’ve got reiryoku,” the man says, after a few minutes of looking at him. “Like those cunts up in the Seireitei.”
Yumichika leans forward. He can’t help it; it’s as if the man is humming or something, because Yumichika can almost feel him in a way he can’t feel anyone else. “Reiryoku?”
“Energy stuff,” he explains. “Some people can do some cool shit with it - balls of energy and stuff - but mostly I’m just stronger and harder to cut.” Which explains the lack of scars; Yumichika had been wondering how from the 70th, at least squares with unscarred.
At least now he has an explanation for the strength that seems to belie his own size. Yumichika takes out a small box of sweets that were a gift from last night; he’s been saving them. He takes one and eats it, then offers the box to the bald man.
“Eh? I don’t wanna take your food, if you need it,” he says, but he’s looking at the offered food in the same way that men normally look at Yumichika’s body.
“It’s all right,” Yumichika says. “I can get more. You can have some.” You can have anything you want; you can have me. “If you’ll tell me your name.”
The man raises an eyebrow, but takes a sweet. “Ikkaku,” he says, then pops it into his mouth, and his expression dissolves into one of ecstasy. It’s an expression Yumichika could stand to see again, maybe leaning over him; he’d even keep his eyes open for that, he thinks. “Where’d you get these?”
“My name is Yumichika,” he says, though Ikkaku didn’t ask; Yumichika just wants him to know. “And people get me things, sometimes.”
Ikkaku seems to look over Yumichika’s body for the first time since he sat down. “You work here, don’t you.”
“Yes,” Yumichika says.
Ikkaku sighs, and picks up his bowl of sake. “Look, I ain’t gonna fuck you. I’m not that sort of guy.”
Yumichika blinks, confused. Not what sort of guy? Not the sort that wants him?
Then something like shame creeps in, and he has to drop his gaze to keep his expression even. Why does Ikkaku not like him? Is he not beautiful enough for someone like Ikkaku, so obviously stronger and more interesting than the men he’s used to?
Is he supposed to feel ashamed of being a whore?
Yumichika presses his lips together. “Do you generally only talk to people if you want to fuck them?” People generally only talk to Yumichika if they want to fuck him, but he’s aware that’s not always the case, that there are a few other motivations for conversation.
Ikkaku shrugs. “Don’t talk to people much, really.” He turns back to his noodles, and Yumichika bites his lip, stung.
It’s horribly rude, but he stands abruptly. If that wasn’t a dismissal, then he doesn’t know what it was. “Well. I’ll leave you in peace, then.” He walks back over to his table of regulars, feeling Ikkaku’s eyes on him but deciding he doesn’t care. It’s more effort than usual to smile, to permit touch, when his hands want to ball into fists so his nails dig in.
It gets bad enough that he has to excuse himself and go outside to get some air, reassure himself that the bar is not that small, that he’s not trapped, that at any moment he could shrug off the hands on his hips and bodies crowding him in place if he wanted to: he chooses not to, for food and water and a roof over his head.
He thinks about Ikkaku, who had looked at his face and kept his hands to himself (and is he supposed to be pleased about that? Yumichika would have leant into his touch willingly), and in that instant that he’s not paying attention, he’s grabbed and shoved up against a wall. The man is tall with awful breath and Yumichika gathers his wits and is about to knee him in the groin when a fist intersects with his temple. He’s out cold before he hits the ground.
Yumichika turns round and Ikkaku’s standing there, grinning. “Not that I don’t appreciate you defending my honour and all,” he says, feeling somewhat vindicated as sarcasm falls out of his mouth, “But I could’ve handled that myself.”
The grin falls away a little. “Didn’t look like it from where I’m standing.”
Yumichika looks him right in the eye and lifts one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “So try me.”
Ikkaku looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “...You’re serious.”
Yumichika just waits. Ikkaku waits long enough to move that Yumichika had almost stopped expecting him to - clever - before his hand thrusts forward to grab Yumichika’s throat. Yumichika has a single instant of total stillness where he thinks only yes, and then he drops abruptly to one knee and slams his knuckles into Ikkaku’s solar plexus. Ikkaku falls forward, and Yumichika grabs his hips, plants one foot in his groin and rolls backwards, throwing Ikkaku over.
Yumichika returns seamlessly to kneeling and leans one shin across Ikkaku’s throat. Ikkaku stares at him blankly, and Yumichika couldn’t wipe the satisfied smile off his face if he tried, panting with adrenaline rather than exertion. An answering grin spreads its way across Ikkaku’s face, and Yumichika lets him up.
“I guess I don’t have to worry about you, then,” he says, as though he would have, otherwise. Then he turns and walks off, and Yumichika needs to go back inside because he’s supposed to be working, and though he’s familiar with not being able to shake the memory of a touch, the feeling that Ikkaku’s hand around his throat drew out of him is entirely new.
Much later, he wakes up to a rising sun after a dream that he can’t quite remember with his hand round his cock. Ikkaku was in the dream, all flashing grin and grasping fingers and the strength that Yumichika felt so strongly even through that brief moment of contact, and he finds himself thrusting up into his hand at the memory.
Yumichika wonders what it would be like with someone whose smile is crooked and infections. With someone so strong, almost humming with coiled strength, and was that the reiryoku that Ikkaku spoke of? Would Ikkaku run fingers through his hair, wrap those long, large hands around his hips, pin him to the wall by his throat and fuck his mouth? All these things that have been done to him and he will never know what Ikkaku does, what Ikkaku tastes like. He finds himself hungry to know those things.
A hundred imagined images of Ikkaku on top of him and around him devolve into a thousand clearly remembered images of other people doing the same things; there is nothing that he can imagine being done to him that has not already been done. There is little difference, he knows, between one man fucking you and another, and he doesn’t understand why it’s different to imagine Ikkaku’s cock in his mouth than anyone else’s. Hunger and nausea coil together unpleasantly in his stomach, like the memory of hundreds of orgasms forced out of his body.
It’s no good at all trying to focus, and in the end he curls up into a ball and swallows around the urge to be sick, waiting for sleep to take him out of the loop of memories that make him shudder.And if, in the morning, there’s a damp patch on the blanket under his head, then that’s no one’s business but his own.
He washes his face more carefully than usual that morning, and his eyes feel a little sore but he can’t tell if they’re red or not. It’s suddenly so, so frustrating, and maybe it’s not all about not being able to see his own face but he snatches up his money pouch and marches out the door.
It's a stupid thing to spend his hard-earned money on, but really, what else is he going to do with it? The mirror is the size of a small table, silver and shiny and depicts him faithfully, black hair and purplish eyes and protuberant collarbones and bony wrists. This is what pretty is? He looks - underfed and weak, compared to Ikkaku, and maybe that's why Ikkaku didn't want him. Yumichika could feel how tough Ikkaku is; maybe he'd want someone who doesn't break.
Maybe the patrons of Suzuruma's bar like how breakable he looks.
He carries the mirror home and props it up against the wall. His eyes are not red, if they ever were. He looks at himself, missing the fat of childhood but still with eyes too big for his face, eats a slice of cake, and remembers what Ikkaku said about being stronger and harder to cut.
I am not fragile, he thinks, and gets ready for the evening's work.
-
Some days, honestly, his job is just dull. An evening full of regulars, and he knows what they want of him so well he falls into an unconscious rhythm. Or there’s no pain at all anywhere to distract him, intentional or otherwise, not even the friction of grabbing hands or inadequate lubricant or his hair catching between bodies.
He allows his mind to wander...and, as usual these days, it wanders to Ikkaku. Yumichika hasn’t seen him since; not surprising, really, given that he’s not from around here. He wonders what Ikkaku is doing now, if it’s in any way similar to what Yumichika’s doing. If Ikkaku has one person to have sex with or sleeps around or just doesn’t bother much, and whether he prefers men or women or both.
He imagines, almost idly, what it would be like if Ikkaku were the one currently kneeling over him, hands on his hips. And that’s...different. It’s imperfect; perhaps it’ll be better if he closes his eyes and -
His orgasm is followed by an overpowering wave of nausea and shame, and it hasn’t taken away much of the grasping hunger for - he doesn’t know what. Isn’t this what the body craves: release? It would almost have been better if there had been pain and tears because after those times he feels empty, spent in a way he can’t seem to achieve any other way.
Later, Yumichika lies awake in bed and tells himself firmly, I will stop thinking of Ikkaku. He doesn’t really expect it to work.
There are a few others of course, eventually. Yumichika does not learn their names, and they do want to fuck him, and they are not memorable, with one exception: a man with white-blonde hair who threw him around roughly and left fingernail scrapes all down his back, and Yumichika came screaming for the first time in his entire life. The man whispered a name into Yumichika’s ear at his own orgasm, but Yumichika doesn’t remember it. He was languid and sated for days afterwards, and though he couldn’t look anyone in the eye for the rest of the evening, it was worth it to know how it feels like to be fucked like a lover.
He still isn’t sure what need was filled, what thing it is that his body craves, sometimes overwhelming his mind’s revulsion and shame and sometimes running in parallel. It’s becoming more difficult, slowly, not to shirk away from casual touch, but he falls easily into conditioned response when someone holds him down and tears into him.
Yumichika begins to wish that Ikkaku had never walked into Suzuruma’s bar, and that he had not wondered what Ikkaku tasted like. He can trace the beginning of this strange sickness to that day, and perhaps he was lost the moment he imagined what it would be like to touch Ikkaku, and perhaps it took as long as that instant of hand against throat. Either way, it seems hopeless to attempt to hold the feeling inside. So he lets it out, lets it take over, and then sometimes it doesn’t even feel like him who kneels and begs and says Please may I come? He’s not even sure where that one started; a sense of politeness at first, to give warning and ask permission all in one, and now he almost needs the growled yes in his ear.
He looks in his mirror one morning, and realises he doesn’t look like a child anymore.
There’s a different atmosphere when Yumichika arrives downstairs that evening. It doesn’t take him very long to ascertain the source: in one corner, there’s an unfamiliar man with dark brown hair in a braid and well-fitting clothes who doesn’t look anything like Yakuza. He doesn’t even look threatening; he’s slim and middle-aged and has a forgettable face. It’s clear he’s important, though. Murmurs of o-nii-sama and Gaaran-dono follow him around.
So Yumichika is wary as he approaches this man; he slips into seiza at a respectful distance and keeps his eyes lowered, mostly. He becomes warier on noting the way Gaaran looks at him: predatory, but like a snake rather than the mammalian lust Yumichika is used to. His eyes are the palest blue and completely empty.
Gaaran looks him up and down once, slowly, avoiding his face until the very last moment. “So you’re this place’s resident whore,” he says.
People don’t normally say so out loud, at least not in the public venue of the bar. Yumichika makes himself look Gaaran in the eye. “Yes.”
“Come here,” Gaaran says softly, as if he’s so used to being obeyed that he doesn’t need a commanding voice anymore. Yumichika does as he’s told, and the humming feeling on the edge of perception becomes more obvious. It’s not much like the energy surrounding Ikkaku - he should not think his name in Gaaran’s presence in case it is stained - but more like the shivering of ice just before it cracks. Yumichika takes deep, controlled breaths. Everyone nearby seems to be watching silently. What are they waiting for?
Gaaran slaps him once, hard, and Yumichika can’t restrain a small, surprised gasp of pain. After a moment, he turns his head back towards Gaaran, eyes down this time because he doesn’t want to see his expression. “Obedient little thing, aren’t you? Pretty, too. Maybe I should cut up your face, see what you do when being pretty doesn’t work for you anymore. See who would want you then.” Something cold and metal rests against the side of his neck, and Yumichika feels every muscle clench with the effort of not moving. The tiny knife lifts to trail just underneath Yumichika’s left eye, stroking softly, and though Yumichika doesn’t know for certain if it’s sharp, Gaaran doesn’t seem like the sort of man to carry a dull knife. “I would still want you, you know. I don’t have much use for a pretty face...and I’d bet that you make lovely sounds when you’re in pain, hmm?”
It takes all of Yumichika’s strength not to shudder and flinch away. The knife descends slowly, and he begins to be able to breathe properly again, though his breathing is too quick, and - he needs to go outside, get some air -
The slap, this time, is so hard that Yumichika is knocked to the floor, and his pained cry is out of him before he can clamp down on it so as not to give Gaaran the satisfaction. “I thought so,” Gaaran says, and rotates his wrist till it gives a sickening crunch. He stands, and nudges Yumichika in the ribs with his foot. “Go flirt with the boys, now. I’ll be back for you later.”
Yumichika does not unclench until the sound of Gaaran’s footsteps fades to nothing. Then he pushes himself gently up into seiza, works his jaw discreetly to assess the damage, and stands. He hurts, but there’s nothing broken.
Everyone stares at him as he walks as fast as he can in his kimono to the door. He tries not to pay attention, just look straight ahead, but he can feel all the eyes in the room on him and when he closes the front door behind him he has to lean against it to remain upright as the edges of his vision go grey and his heartbeat pounds in his ears, far too fast. He’s shaking, but he has to compose himself and go back inside. He undoes the knot of his hair and pulls it all to the front of his right shoulder where it will disguise the right side of his face a little, because there must be a red mark. Yumichika hopes there isn’t a bruise, hopes that he won’t have to smile and flirt and please with a black and blue face.
He digs his nails into his palm over the small scars there, and makes himself stand, turn around, and walk back inside. There’s a table of familiar faces in the corner, and he goes to sit by them and play cards, and compared to Gaaran they’re almost comforting. No one makes any real advances, and Yumichika isn’t sure if it’s pity, or because Gaaran has so clearly staked his claim.
When the next round is fetched, Isuke shoves a large bowl of sake in front of Yumichika. “Drink,” he says. “You’ll need it.”
Yumichika takes a long sip and, it’s true, he could use something stronger than the cheap beer Suzuruma sends his way, writing it off as a necessary expense. He raises one eyebrow, trying for flippant and failing, suddenly. “I’ll need it?”
“Just...trust us, ne? We know Gaaran-dono,” Isuke says, and Yumichika finds it hard to swallow suddenly. He’d managed to forget, for a few moments, that he’s going to have to touch Gaaran later, and from the sounds of things he will not be forgiving.
“Thank you,” Yumichika says, and when he drains the bowl and requests another, Isuke wordlessly refills it.
He manages to get in three bowls, and a much-needed level of calm dissociation, before a hulking man with tattoos all the way up his thick neck grabs Yumichika’s elbow and says, “This way.” It’s redundant, because Yumichika can either follow the man or be dragged, and he’s been humiliated enough tonight.
Yumichika is confused when the man leads him to a different door than usual, begins to feel sick as he’s pulled down dark stairs to the cellar, and is struggling hopelessly when the man shoves him into the cellar and slams the door firmly behind him.
There’s the sound of a lock clicking into place, and Yumichika opens his mouth to scream.
A cold hand around his mouth and nose muffles any sound. “There’s no point,” Gaaran says. “Nothing will change if you scream. In fact, I’m rather hoping you do - but not just yet.”
Yumichika’s eyes are adjusting to the blackness, and the cellar has been cleared; all there is in here is a table at hip height and a bag in the corner. He’s trapped in dark room with Gaaran. Every sense is overwhelming; he can hear Gaaran’s quiet breaths and his own thundering heartbeat, taste the metallic tang of panic in his throat, and his body feels boneless and shaky. There’s no point in trying to keep calm. Someone has cleared out the cellar; someone has decided that whatever Gaaran wants he will get, and the only thing Yumichika can do is hope he’s in one piece when it’s over.
One of Gaaran’s nails digs into his neck at the pulse point. “Undress.”
It takes twice as long as it should. His fingers will not cooperate, and Gaaran tuts in his ear. “And here I thought, after working here for all these years, you’d be tough.”
I thought so, too, Yumichika thinks, as Gaaran leads him by his hair over to the table and pushes him onto it. Gaaran begins to tie him to the table, and it takes all of Yumichika’s strength not to give in to the part of him that is screaming and fight him off and run, because the door is locked and there’s nowhere to run. Suzuruma would not allow anyone to harm him too much, surely: he wouldn’tt be so valuable scarred and broken.
Terror makes his face damp even before the first stinging touch of the whip, and there’s no point at all in trying not to make a sound. Perhaps if he just gives in, this will be over quickly.
He’s wrong, of course. There’s no rhythm, no pattern, and just enough pauses that he can’t seem to acclimatise. Every time he begins to space out into a haze of pain Gaaran lets the leather trail gently across his back, drawing attention to the wounds he’s made, and he’s back to the start, scratching the table leg with his nails for something to hang onto. He’s sober enough to be ashamed when his sounds of pain turn into shouts, turn into a few minutes where he can’t stop talking, can’t stop pleading for it to stop. He’s not even talking to Gaaran anymore, not even sure the man is still there because he makes so little noise, and it’s so dark, and his drunkenness is making everything feel unreal.
Eventually he stops being able to string words together.
By the time Gaaran is finished with him, he’s screaming and struggling uselessly against his bindings. Gaaran has not touched him once except to tie and untie the ropes, and he leaves Yumichika on the desk in total darkness as he unlocks the door and slips out.
Yumichika’s limbs are cramped and sore, and he feels something dripping down his skin that might be sweat and might be blood. He tries to stand, but his legs won’t cooperate. The need to get out of the cellar is powerful, but he can only manage to crawl to the door. His shaking turns into sobs that wrack his whole body, and it’s all he can do to catch his breath between them. His arms wrap tightly around his knees and he begins to rock slightly, and at length he quietens and relaxes, exhausted and spent and in more pain than he can remember ever being.
He still scrambles away from the door, panicked again, at the sound of footsteps, but when the door opens it’s only Suzuruma with a candle and a blanket. Suzuruma approaches, as if to try and get him up, but Yumichika flinches and manages to speak. “D-don’t...t-t-t-touch me,” he says, jaw clenching. “P-please...don’t…”
Suzuruma holds the candle over Yumichika and peers closer. He sighs. “Ah, hell. If he’s scarred you I’ll make him pay extra.”
A slightly hysterical laugh sounds, and Yumichika realises it came from him. He accepts the proffered blanket from Suzuruma and wraps it around himself, noting properly how cold he is. His broken skin hurts where the blanket touches it, but the desire to cover his body is stronger than the pain.
“Can you stand?” Suzuruma looks impatient. The correct answer is clearly yes.
“I...I don’t think so,” Yumichika rasps, and he’s thirsty, horribly thirsty. Upstairs, there is food and water. Perhaps he can crawl. He takes a deep breath, clutches the blanket tightly in one hand, and tries to move, limbs as solid as rubber.
Suzuruma sighs heavily. “I’m gonna have to carry you, I suppose. Pull yourself together.” Then he bends down and picks Yumichika up as if he’s no heavier than a sack of potatoes, walks upstairs, and dumps him unceremoniously on the ratty futon.
Once he’s alone, Yumichika pulls himself to the other corner and lifts a floorboard. Underneath, there’s a covered jug of water and a paper bag of sweets. Eating is the last thing he wants to do, but he manages despite the continuing shivers, knowing that he won’t heal otherwise. He dozes fitfully for the rest of the night, tiredness carrying him to sleep and panic waking him shortly afterwards at every little noise, over and over again. He doesn’t dream about Gaaran, not tonight, but when dawn arrives and he’s barely managed any sleep, he knows that he will.