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Everything with Takumi has always been so sickeningly, excruciatingly easy. He’s easy, with soft eyes that look at Yugamu like he’s something special—someone worth caring about—and a face that lights up with a smile the moment he enters a room. He’s easy to kiss with soft lips and gentle hands that hold Yugamu tightly but non-invasively, and when Yugamu guides him back into the pillows bundled at the head of the bed, he goes easily. When Yugamu pushes his jacket from his shoulders, he adjusts to let it slide clean off. When Yugamu creeps fingers under the lower hem of his sweatshirt, he tilts into the touch with a sigh and stares up at Yugamu through half-lidded eyes, thick lashes.
So easy. Nothing in Yugamu’s life has ever been this easy. Back during the Invader Hunt, when Yugamu befriended Takumi under false pretenses and tried to turn him into the worst version of himself… when Takumi learned the truth, his only concern was whether Yugamu ever actually liked him at all. He didn’t want an apology for the deception or hold Yugamu at arm’s length for the days that followed. He just… took Yugamu at face value, when he said that his feelings had changed.
Nothing in Yugamu’s life should be this easy. His memories of killing from before he joined Second To Last Defence Academy were all fabricated; Yugamu knows that much now. The day that he woke up there, he was no more a killer than Nozomi, than Takumi himself… and yet the filth that he’s always imagined covering his hands from wrist to fingertip has never quite gone away.
During the Invader Hunt, Takumi dirtied his own hands to keep Yugamu alive… He asked Yugamu to look away while he was doing it, as if Yugamu’s eyes were worthy of protection, as if someone like Sumino Takumi could ever be disgusting enough to turn Yugamu’s stomach. And still, Takumi glows like the sun. He melts so easily into Yugamu’s touches. When Yugamu gathers a fistful of Takumi’s hair Takumi strains forward into the kiss, encouraging him to tug. He hooks a leg around Yugamu’s hip, drawing him nearer, participating rather than merely allowing Yugamu to take what he wants… He’s easy, but he isn’t here out of sympathy or compliance. Takumi wants Yugamu and it burns so obviously in his deep indigo irises, Yugamu almost feels sick to his stomach for the sight of it.
Disrobing for his own part doesn’t pose an issue. Yugamu sleeps in the nude, and even if that weren’t the case, there’s nothing going on either on top or bottom that Takumi hasn’t seen before, more than once even. (Though this is admittedly the first time a makeout session for them has ever gone as far as articles of clothing being removed… Takumi’s shy about these things, romantic to boot, and Yugamu knows that he’s always thinking about doing it, so he’s tried not to come on too strong about making it happen… All things occur at their own pace and other similar turns of phrase.) Takumi helps him, pulling the tie on his hakama, folding Yugami’s haori neatly before he sets it on the nightstand, which is so considerate and cute that Yugamu bites down on his own lower lip so he won’t end up biting Takumi instead.
His heart starts to race when Takumi reaches to remove his own tank top. He has a soft stomach, his pectorals and the line between his ribs decorated with faded scars that Yugamu himself left on him. His shoulders, elbows, and forearms are dotted with the same pale freckles that are scattered over his cheeks and clavicle. Yugamu is sure that the feeling is excitement—his palms are sweating with how eager he is for this—but when Takumi’s hands go to pop the buckle on his belt, the clench in Yugamu’s chest becomes almost painful.
He thinks he’s struggling to breathe, actually. Yugamu swallows thickly and grabs for Takumi’s wrist on instinct, drawing in a haggard inhalation and trying to find the words. What he wants to say is I still want this, or sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong but in light of the way that Takumi freezes, always so compassionate and good and easy, when Yugamu’s words finally grind out they’re not what he wants to say at all.
“T—Takumi, are you sure about this?”
“Bwuh?” is Takumi’s response. He blinks once, then smiles, that charming lopsided smile that Yugamu usually only sees out of him when they’re alone like this. The one he gives when Yugamu says something that’s just a bit too much, too odd, too revealing, and Takumi’s bewildered by his own endearment toward it—even now, Yugamu’s stomach does flips at the sight of it, but in the context he only ends up feeling more nauseous. “Am I acting like I’m not?”
“You,” Yugamu swallows and shakes his head, because no. Because he wouldn’t have allowed things to progress this far had Takumi shown an ounce of hesitation, because Takumi is such an awful liar, his feelings written across his face at every turn, Yugamu would have known in intimate detail if he didn’t know how he wanted this to go. The uncertainty that’s carved into his expression now had only just appeared as a result of Yugamu’s own hesitation. That, too, makes his stomach clench with that unbearable thing, but Yugamu can only hug himself to self-soothe as he tries to articulate his feelings. “No. No, I just, are you sure that…”
His vision loses focus. Takumi might speak again, but if he does, Yugamu doesn’t hear it. It’s been a challenge since they returned to the Artificial Satellite differentiating between fact and fiction when it comes to their implanted backstories. At first Yugamu had been under the impression that everything he remembered was a falsehood… but having come face to face with the scientists who oversaw much of their care during that period, Yugamu knows now that that isn’t exactly the case.
After all, he had to have lost an eye somehow—had his arms replaced—had a reason for each of the scars that mark his body like a topographic map, even if they aren’t the ones he remembers. What is wrong with Yugamu, as well, what is so disgusting and dirty about him and has been since the first day he was conscious, that has to have had a source as well. They wouldn’t have programmed it into him. There wouldn’t be a point.
Takumi’s hands are warm when they trail along Yugamu’s bare shoulders, sliding down his biceps and meeting at the small of his back. It should be a comforting, grounding touch, but instead Yugamu whines and curls in on himself, tears beading at the corners of his eyes. When Takumi winces and pulls back, Yugamu can’t help but start to cry for real.
“Hey, woah,” Takumi says, and must be about to say something else, but the words are spilling now between hitching breaths as Yugamu digs his nails painfully into his own inner arms.
“I just, are you really sure that—somebody like you—somebody like me—” Yugamu’s voice trembles violently. The revulsion is bone-deep—intrinsic, really, to the core of Yugamu’s being, but he’s used to working around it because he is a selfish person at the end of the day and willing to take what he wants and needs even if it’s at the expense of those around him. Takumi looks at him with so much kindness though—not just kindness, but affection, adoration and trust that he would posit was earned by Yugamu’s own loyalty and Yugamu doesn’t know how to handle that because he can hardly argue but none of that cancels out his hideous nature. “I-I just don’t know if you should really be touching me, Takumi.”
Takumi stares at him with wide eyes—clearly so far from the same page as Yugamu that all he can do is drop his jaw. It’s charming, at least, Yugamu thinks it ought to be objectively, except that he knew Takumi wouldn’t agree. Takumi is also very bad at making selfish choices, not like Yugamu. He stared into the faces of living people, beings with souls and dreams and consciousnesses and he chose to tear them down singlehandedly only because Tsubasa and Yugamu needed him to in order to survive. Had the game continued, he may have done worse—that’s just the kind of person Takumi is, when he loves you.
He wouldn’t see it as the disgusting thing that it is, then, to be with Yugamu—to love Yugamu. To see Yugamu in all of his hideousness and greed, mismatched parts and twisted desires and to care for him despite them, because of them. Nothing Takumi does could ever be gross. But couldn’t it hurt him all the same?
“That’s—bullshit,” Takumi eventually says.
Yugamu lets out a laugh, hysterical to his own ears. “You would say that.”
“C-Come on, I’m being serious,” Takumi protests. His hands go back around Yugamu, drawing him closer this time even as he curls inwards at the touch. It burns against his skin, Takumi’s hands are too warm, but Yugamu would crumple if Takumi pulled away from him again, he knows that he would. Takumi must have a sense of this, because he moves a hand to cup the back of Yugamu’s head, fingers carding through the hair above his nape, which is short enough that it effectively feels like Takumi’s palming his bare skin. Yugamu shivers at that too, and allows Takumi to bring him nearer, head cradled against his freckled collarbone.
He smells familiar, like their shared laundry detergent and that stupid 3-in-1 he’s been using lately, justifying it by point out that it’s more cost effective than buying three different washes for the shower. (Which like, yes, but it would be even more cost effective if Takumi just used Tsubasa’s like the rest of them.) Yugamu’s crying all over him and because Takumi had taken off his shirt, the tears just streak down his abdomen. The thought of Takumi getting his tears all over his nipple makes Yugamu giggle, still frankly unhinged, and he feels the way Takumi’s chest deflates when he sighs.
“Do I wanna ask?”
“It’s nothing important,” Yugamu admits.
Takumi’s hand does another pass through his hair. “...There’s nothing about you that’s… gross, you know that? You’re kind of one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Yugamu giggles again. “Which isn’t particularly what I was upset about.”
“Well, no, but I just thought I’d remind you,” Takumi says, giving Yugamu one of those dumb grins of his. “...I’d be nothing without you. You know that too, right?”
When Takumi says things like that… Yugamu closes his eyes. Back then, Takumi had been isolated—and he would have died if Yugamu hadn’t stepped in to help him. That is objective reality, and Yugamu had been raised (well, remembers being raised) not to deny it, even if his feelings are telling him otherwise. It can often mean life or death when you’re staring a target in the face, after all. It is also true, however, that Yugamu had only reached out to Takumi for his own selfish reasons… had not been intending to help him in the way that he apparently had. Takumi only came out on the other side of that alright due to his own personal resolve, not due to any machinations on Yugamu’s part. Perhaps, from the very beginning, it wouldn’t have been possible for Yugamu to corrupt him anyway.
Still, Yugamu would be obtuse to deny his gratitude. Would be self-depreciating to the point of cruelty if he tried to deny Takumi’s love for him… that Takumi wants him just as badly as Yugamu wants him. And it makes him feel nauseous even to consider what the answer must be with all of that in mind. Yugamu bites his lip against a second wave of tears.
“I don’t want to say no to you,” Yugamu whispers.
“It’s fine if you’re not ready,” Takumi answers at once, perfect gentleman that he is. Yugamu lets out a frustrated noise and buries his face in Takumi’s neck.
“I am ready,” he insists, voice so congested and whiny that he’s sure it’s obvious how very much that isn’t the case. “I’ve—I’ve wanted you for years, Takumi, even before—I don’t—if I can’t do this with you, if I can’t give this to you—”
“Give it to me?” Takumi repeats, as if unable to stop himself. Yugamu stops and bites his tongue, but it isn’t like he can inhale the words back into his mouth. His heart hammers furiously against his ribs and he holds his breath, waiting for his senses to get out of hyperdrive, to relax again into Takumi’s embrace as he’d begun to do before they started talking again.
Even if not for his upbringing, the hundred days they spent as hunters and soldiers have left Yugamu with a survival instinct that does not shut off for all of his urging. Even if they live in a city now, with two incredibly powerful women sleeping in the room next door, neither of them especially shabby at protecting themselves in the first place. Maybe Yugamu wasn’t made to feel safe, or to be safe, in the first place. He certainly doesn’t know what to do with himself when the label applies, or how to convince himself that it does.
Yugamu chews a piece of skin off his lower lip and then sighs. “...If I expand upon that thought, you have to promise that you won’t call it stupid.”
“I literally cannot promise that.”
Yugamu sighs. Well, it is Takumi, after all. They all have their flaws and uncontrollable habits. Yugamu drinks poisons when he’s agitated. Takumi’s mouth often moves faster than his brain. It happens.
“At least not until I’m done, then.”
Takumi’s lips move up and down, but he nods. “Deal.”
It’s easier to speak without looking at Takumi’s face at all, so Yugamu closes his eyes and breathes him in. He could be leaning on a heated, comfortably scented Takumi-sized pillow for all he can see right now. A pillow that has arms and a hand petting sweetly through Yugamu’s hair and legs that he’s propped on in a way that’ll probably leave him sore and uncomfortable later. A… highly specialised pillow that probably cost at least five hundred dollars to commission.
“It’s such a wonderful thing to give to somebody, isn’t it?” Yugamu murmurs. “When I was younger… it was the only touch I knew that wasn’t violent.” Even then, often it was violent… but there was a layer of softness beneath that which Yugamu found himself yearning for even when his body rejected it strongly, even when he woke up after mere hours of sleep and couldn’t stop throwing up, over and over again, not just for disgust at the acts themselves but at his treacherous body for yearning for them so powerfully. “It may have been the only thing I was ever able to give that wasn’t entirely self-serving. That wasn’t… killing for a job, I guess.”
As he promised, Takumi says nothing, but laid this close Yugamu can feel his abdomen tense like he really badly wants to interject. It makes him smile, a small laugh shaking out of his throat. Somehow Takumi’s restraint eases some of the tension from his shoulders.
“This isn’t something I’ve rationalised very much,” Yugamu murmurs. “I don’t know if I can properly explain it. I want to have sex with you. I want to have sex with you pretty much… all the time.”
“You can want something and not be ready for it,” Takumi points out. “Like—like riding a roller coaster, or diving off the diving board.”
“You make it sound so normal,” Yugamu laughs bitterly. As if anything about him has ever been normal. As if he could ever hope to relate to someone whose world is so small and simple, they’re able to fear things like roller coasters or diving boards, girls rejecting them or failing math tests, slamming-door fights with their parents or getting ghosted by friends of several years. Takumi, of all people, isn’t someone to resent—he grew up in a pod just the same as Yugamu did—and Yugamu couldn’t find himself in his heart to do so, would probably hate himself completely if he ever did, but even still…
Takumi’s nails scratch at Yugamu’s scalp a bit. “I take it back by the way. None of that’s stupid.”
“You’re very kind to me.”
“Hey, you know I’d never lie about that,” Takumi huffs. “I—I mean, Yugamu, I swear a second ago I was so hard I couldn’t think straight because none of the blood in my body was rushing upwards, but if you seriously think the only good thing you could possibly offer me is sex, you’re kind of… missing a lot of the picture, don’t you think?”
Yugamu opens his mouth to say obviously, but the tears that well in his eyes stop him short. He shivers and adjusts, finally looking up at Takumi’s face for how ugly and messy he must look right now, nose red and running, mascara smeared and lips cracked. If this is the face that got Takumi aroused, maybe Takumi has bad taste… but even that thought makes Yugamu start to tremble violently, the lump in his throat suddenly insurmountably big, large enough to prohibit speech, worse than even the hysterical tears he’d shed before. Takumi’s arms tighten on him. Yugamu breaks and wraps his arms around Takumi in turn, digs his nails into his bare back and hooks himself closer.
He’s such a filthy, desperate little thing. In his happiest childhood memories, his father or one of his brothers is there and they’re—and Yugamu knows the reality is that someone was there, a scientist who Yugamu has seen and stabbed in the chest, and still, it was the closest thing to tender touch that he knew. He yearned for it so powerfully that the first time Takumi caressed his cheek and smiled at him like he was precious, Yugamu nearly passed out. He never knew it was possible to feel that way—that somebody like him was capable of being loved in such a pretty and easy way.
“Takumi,” Yugamu chokes out, “Takumi, what if it’s never? What if I never—”
“That’s okay,” comes Takumi’s immediate response. His hands flatten against Yugamu’s back and pull him even closer. “I don’t need anything from you, Yugamu. Just you.”
What if that is what I am? Yugamu nearly asks, but he knows what Takumi would say. Each horrible self-deprecating question that comes to mind, Yugamu can instantly supply Takumi’s reassurance, not because Takumi is simple and predictable (although he is) but because he knows Takumi better than he knows himself. Loves him the way one ought to love a part of themself—would have lost half of his soul if Takumi should ever leave his life, willingly or otherwise. Somewhere along the line Takumi became something irrevocable, a fundamental part of who Yugamu is and what he wants and what he believes, and the thought sends cold rushing from Yugamu’s chest to his extremities as the rest of the weight finally leaves his shoulders.
Of course, he should never have questioned it. Of course, Takumi loves all that he is, loves his ugly. And of course it hurts—the pain is part of being alive. Takumi loves the pain, too, because Yugamu is the pain… because Takumi was never under any delusions to start with, about the kind of person Yugamu is.
Yugamu rides the high of that catharsis until he’s all out of tears, then cries for a while after that, dry-eyed, merely because it feels good. And because he knows Takumi will hold him through it no matter what. When he does settle, the last of his hitching breaths settling into their normal rhythm, the lung spasms finally abating, he breathes out. He’s all congested and he frankly does feel very gross after having a meltdown fully in his birthday suit, but more prominently than all of that…
“I still want you,” Yugamu admits. Takumi barks a startled laugh right in his ear.
“S-Seriously? After all of that?”
“Especially after all of that,” Yugamu whines, and shudders, pressing his forehead into Takumi’s neck like a cat seeking attention. “Takumi, you’re so nice to me, it makes me want to take you apart and sew you back together again…”
“Th-There’s no way I’m letting you perform surgery on me after everything just now,” Takumi stammers, but he sounds adorably flustered, so Yugamu pulls back to kiss him. Takumi is at least smiling dopily when Yugamu gets a full look at him. “...How about some water and a bite to eat, then we can see how we’re feeling?”
“You’re not opposed?” Yugamu smiles. “If you weren’t in the mood anymore—”
“When did I say that?” Takumi suddenly interjects, face flushing. He disentangles himself from Yugamu and stands, offering him a hand up like a gentleman. “Come on, the sooner we eat the sooner we can keep talking about this.”
Yugamu starts giggling as he shifts to take Takumi’s hand, and finds that he can’t quite stop. Residual nerves, he’s sure. Or maybe endorphins from all the crying. Still, Takumi stays so perfectly kind and easy, giving Yugamu a knowing smile without calling him out on it, merely lacing their fingers together before tugging him out into the kitchen. There are decent odds that they walk out there while Tsubasa or Darumi is trying to eat and have to explain why they’re both mostly naked and haven’t had any sex whatsoever, but well, Yugamu’s hardly ashamed of having to do that.
He squeezes Takumi’s hand tightly while he follows, smiling so hard it burns on the sides of his face. He really has gotten… unfathomably lucky, in these last few years.