Chapter 30: The Taste of You
The kiss broke, not with an ending, but a shift. Yamato’s mouth moved from Taichi’s lips to his jaw, a hot trail of possession as he crossed the room and laid him down on the unmade bed. The neon glow from a peeling poster tinted everything a faint, surreal red.
“Yama—” Taichi started, but the name dissolved into a gasp as Yamato settled over him, knees caging his hips, hands pinning his wrists to the pillows. The weight was immediate, total. It should have triggered a flicker of panic, that old, familiar tightness in his chest from a long-ago darkness. Instead, it felt like an anchor. Yamato’s eyes, inches above his, were not the cool, detached eyes of the stage. They were a storm, and Taichi wanted to drown in them.
“You kissed me,” Yamato said, as if stating a miraculous, irrefutable fact.
“You… you said that thing,” Taichi breathed, cheeks heating again at the memory of the living room chaos. “In front of everyone.”
“I did.” Yamato lowered his head, his breath warm against Taichi’s throat. “Were they true? The sounds?”
Taichi squirmed, a helpless, full-body shiver. “You know they are.”
“I know.” Yamato released his wrists, but only to skate his palms down Taichi’s arms, over his ribs, pushing up the soft fabric of his shirt. “But I like hearing you say it.” His mouth found Taichi’s stomach, just above the waistband of his sweats, and Taichi arched off the bed with a sharp inhale.
What followed was a slow, deliberate unraveling. Yamato peeled the clothes from him with a reverence that contradicted the hunger in his touch. The cool dorm air brushed Taichi’s skin, raising goosebumps, immediately chased away by the heat of Yamato’s mouth tracing a path downward. Each kiss, each nip, was a promise and a demand.
When Yamato settled between his thighs, pushing them apart with insistent hands, Taichi’s head fell back. The ceiling swam in his vision. He was exposed, completely, under that intense blue gaze. Yamato watched him for a long moment, just looking, and the vulnerability was more dizzying than any touch.
Then he leaned in.
The first flat stroke of his tongue wrung a broken sound from Taichi’s throat, a syllable that was half surprise, half surrender. Yamato hummed against him, the vibration shooting straight up Taichi’s spine. He’d done this before, of course, but never like this. Never with the weight of four years of silent wanting hanging in the air, now finally given form.
It was not a race. It was an exploration. Yamato used his tongue, his lips, the very edge of his teeth with a focused, artistic precision that had Taichi clutching at the sheets, at his own hair, at anything to keep from flying apart. Every gasp, every shuddering plea, was met with a low, approving sound from Yamato. A finger, slick and careful, pressed inside him, curling just so, and Taichi cried out, his back bowing.
“There?” Yamato murmured, his voice wrecked.
“Yes—god, yes—”
The praise was a drug. “You take it so well,” Yamato whispered against his skin, adding a second finger, stretching him with a slow, burning patience. “So perfect. Always so perfect for me.”
Each word coiled tighter in Taichi’s gut. He was babbling, a stream of half-formed curses and Yamato’s name. The coil snapped, suddenly, a white-hot rupture that left him trembling and blind. Yamato gentled him through it, his movements softening to long, soothing passes until the last tremor subsided.
Before Taichi could even catch his breath, Yamato began again. The sensations were sharper now, more acutely sensitive. Taichi whimpered, oversensitive and yet craving more, his body responding against its own logic. Yamato’s grip on his hips was firm, holding him in place, refusing to let him shy away from the intensity. The world narrowed to this bed, to this relentless, worshipping mouth, to the building pressure, higher and tighter than before.
When he came a second time, it was quieter, a deep, shuddering release that felt less like an explosion and more like a fundamental coming undone. He floated, boneless, aware only of Yamato resting his forehead against his thigh, his own rapid breaths, and the wet, intimate sound of the room.
Yamato finally lifted his head. He looked wrecked, his artfully styled hair falling into his eyes, his lips slick and swollen. A slow, wicked grin spread across his face, utterly devoid of his usual cool detachment. It was the grin of a man who had discovered a treasure he alone could claim.
He crawled up the bed, collapsing beside Taichi, pulling him close so Taichi’s head rested on his chest. The steady thud of Yamato’s heart was the loudest sound in the world.
After a long silence, Yamato spoke, his voice a raw scrape in the dark. “I’m going to write a song about this taste.”
Taichi, spent and hazy, nuzzled closer. “Hmm?”
“Every note,” Yamato whispered into his hair, his tone shifting from satiated to something fiercely, terrifyingly earnest. “Every lyric. The melody in the key of your breathing. The bridge built on the way you say my name when you break. It won’t be for the fans. It won’t be for the label. Every single note will be for you. They’ll scream for it, and they’ll never know it’s just me… remembering this.”
Taichi listened, the words seeping into his pores, settling deeper than bone. He had no answer. He simply turned his face, pressing a silent, open-mouthed kiss over Yamato’s heart, a promise against the skin. Outside, the first grey light of dawn began to bleed around the edges of the blinds, painting their tangled bodies in slow, revealing strokes. The new day was coming, and nothing would be the same.