Chapter 12: Steam and Skin
The water was a second skin, hotter than seemed possible, needling into sore muscles and washing the evidence of what they’d done in murky rivulets down the drain. Yamato guided him under the spray, his hands firm on Taichi’s shoulders. For a minute, they just stood there, steam thickening the air between them into something tangible, the world beyond the curtain reduced to a vague, blurred outline.
Yamato reached for the soap, working it into a lather between his palms. His movements were methodical, almost clinical. He started with Taichi’s shoulders, his thumbs digging into the knots of tension there, then down his arms. The suds were slick, his touch thorough. It wasn't sensual. It was necessary. It was an act of care so quiet it made Taichi’s throat tighten.
He rinsed, the foam swirling away. Then Yamato’s soapy hands slid over Taichi’s chest, across his stomach. Taichi stared at the water beading on Yamato’s collarbone, at the faint red marks—his own nail marks—standing out against pale skin. His own breathing seemed too loud.
Yamato’s hands slowed. They drifted lower, over his hips. Then behind. The touch changed. The clinical focus dissolved. One soap-slick finger, gentle and insistent, pressed against him, circling the tender rim. Taichi jerked, a full-body flinch, his hand flying out to brace against the wet tile.
“Still sore?” Yamato’s voice was low, barely audible over the water.
Taichi swallowed. “A little.” It was an understatement. The ache was a deep, persistent throb, a reminder printed on his nerves.
Yamato hummed, a soft sound. He didn’t withdraw. Instead, he turned Taichi slowly, pressing his back against the cool, damp tiles. The contrast was shocking—the scalding water on his front, the chill seeping into his shoulder blades. Yamato caged him in, arms on either side of his head, his body not touching Taichi’s but radiating heat.
“Look at me,” Yamato said.
Taichi dragged his eyes up. Water streamed over Yamato’s sharp features, plastering his blond hair dark to his forehead. His gaze was intense, searching.
“Tell me to stop,” Yamato said, his voice rough. “Right now. And I stop. I clean you up and we go to bed. Just sleep.”
The offer hung in the steam. It was a door, swinging open onto a path of sanity. A return to boundaries. Taichi could take it. He knew he could. Yamato would mean it.
He looked at Yamato’s mouth. He remembered the feel of it swallowing his cries in the hallway. He remembered the growled command, again. The emptiness inside him wasn’t just physical now; it was a yawning hole where all his old certainties had been. This, the heat, the pressure, the unbearable closeness, was the only thing that seemed to fill it.
“Don’t stop,” Taichi heard himself say. The words were raw, stripped bare.
Something fractured in Yamato’s composed expression. A hunger, long leashed, broke free. He closed the distance, capturing Taichi’s mouth in a kiss that was all possession. No tenderness, just a raw, claiming heat. Taichi kissed him back just as desperately, fingers tangling in the wet hair at Yamato’s nape.
Yamato’s hands found his thighs, hiking one up around his own hip. The position was awkward, precarious, the tile slick under Taichi’s other foot. It didn’t matter. Yamato’s cock, hard and insistent, pressed against him. There was no spit, no preparation beyond the soap and water and the lingering, messy slickness from before. Yamato aligned himself and pushed.
It was a slow, burning stretch. The water helped and hindered, washing away natural friction, making the slide feel unreal, a phantom pressure that deepened into a solid, burning fullness. Taichi cried out, the sound lost against Yamato’s mouth. He was pinned, utterly, between the unyielding tile and the relentless advance of Yamato’s body.
When he was fully sheathed, Yamato broke the kiss, breathing ragged. He rested his forehead against Taichi’s, his eyes screwed shut. “Taichi,” he gritted out, just that, his name a plea and a curse.
Then he moved.
It was different from the hallway. There was no brutal pace, no driven frenzy. The water cascaded over them, and Yamato fucked him with a deep, rolling rhythm that was almost languid. Each slow thrust was a deliberate act of penetration, a testing of limits. Taichi could feel every inch, the maddening drag, the fleeting emptiness before the next deep, filling push. His leg ached from holding the position, his fingers clutching at Yamato’s slippery shoulders.
“Yama,” he gasped, the nickname he never used slipping out unbidden.
Yamato’s eyes flew open at that. The blue was almost black, dilated with something more than lust. He drove in harder, changing the angle, and Taichi saw stars.
“Say it again,” Yamato demanded, his voice ragged.
“Yama,” Taichi sobbed, the rhythm breaking him apart. “Yama, please.”
It was the ‘please’ that did it. Yamato’s control shattered. His hands gripped Taichi’s hips hard enough to bruise, his thrusts losing their measured pace, turning fast and urgent. The slap of wet skin echoed off the tiles, mingling with their ragged breaths and the drumming water. Taichi was unraveling, the pleasure a tight coil in his gut, pulled taut with every slam of Yamato’s body into his.
He came untouched, a shockwave of sensation that tore through him silently, his mouth open in a soundless cry, his body clamping down in rhythmic pulses. Yamato followed him over the edge moments later, a choked, broken groan hot against Taichi’s ear, his own release a warm flood lost in the rushing water.
They collapsed together, a shuddering heap under the spray. Yamato’s arms tightened around him, holding him up as Taichi’s leg slid down, both of them boneless. The water began to run cool.
Yamato reached behind him and shut it off.
The sudden silence was deafening. Dripping. Their synced, heavy breathing. The distant hum of the building.
Yamato didn’t let go. He kept Taichi pressed against him, his face buried in the crook of Taichi’s neck. His breath was hot on Taichi’s skin.
“I’ve waited,” Yamato whispered, the words so quiet Taichi felt them more than heard them. “For years. Just to hear you say my name like that.”
The confession hung in the moist, cooling air. It was too big, too immense to process. Taichi couldn’t speak. He lifted a trembling hand and curled it into the hair at the back of Yamato’s head, holding on.
They stood there in the dripping dark until the last of the warmth faded from their skin and the chill began to seep in.