[The first he could have possibly guessed; the second lingers, less known, less sure. Feeling understood is like a trip of rope at the ankles, not the same as being understood in the way he has come to treat the puppetry of enemies on the battleground. Swept into still silence for a moment, he considers leaving. He has done what he promised: a demonstration, delivering the threat even if it does go foolishly unheeded.
The temptation passes as a cool cloud overhead, and then he's sinking down near those long legs, knees folded in the sand, posture straight, just beyond reach without a strain. Guanshan is half in shadow, half in light at this spot—from this angle—like an eerie, alluring hallucination of his own, one watched closely.]
I've observed your behavior for some time now. [Adrenaline-hunting, impulsive, desirous, stubborn, risky behavior though it may be. But observation is one measure. Perhaps it would help him predict and kill an opponent; Guanshan isn't that category currently.] What does it take for you to feel understood?
[ half-shadow splits his tones evenly into something brown and bluish, cold, eyes of earth, and the firelight crackle into saturation, summer warmth in that cheek, hair violent auburn, eyes glittering orange like an ember that refuses to stop burning. meanwhile, Itachi is backlit and looking colder for it; he mourns the distance a little longer before he settles on the irony of what has been said to him and what has been asked. ]
Bein' observed, [ he comments with no sarcasm at all. whether he attracts those who have an obsessive component to their personality or they attract him because he likes feeling seen is a riddle he's never set about solving; some things are just synchronicity and he can accept them for that because the results have worked out in his favor more times than they haven't. Guanshan is nothing if not a young man shaped by his experiences, moreso than some others. ]
[ the list goes on: ]
And intimacy. Sometimes intimacy is violent, and sometimes it ain't. I like both. I want both. One or the other ain't enough.
[Features blend into seamless shadow with fire a hot wall at his back, warming a sharp silhouette that loses detail and nuance of expression—eyes two bright, cherry-red slits that lower onto the sand between them, mouth bent down. A creature in the dark; he could vanish inside of it. He appreciates the concealment now while laboring over the dichotomy of those two ideas.
Violence without intimacy: cold, ruthless, impersonal as a blade wedged into a stranger's back. It's what he knows, far better than intimacy—that raw and searing sore vulnerable to infection.
He doesn't move, but his gaze tracks sideways to stare at Guanshan's hands in the distorted radiant light, watching the spindly shape of fingers and a soft hidden palm and remembering what it felt like to hold. Physical touch is intimacy. Physical touch is also violence. Where had he begun to learn the divide, exactly? What would happen if he said right now the reason Guanshan should never trust him, should never pursue his company, should never seek him out—what if he said it all and torched every potential future to a burnt, black root? Anything else is deception in the face of open honesty. Yet that has been his nature for so many years now that to act otherwise is jarring and wrong, like stones underfoot. He deserves to be dead—not whatever this is.
Itachi stands abruptly, but even that sudden movement is silent and liquid as shadow.] That was all I had to show you tonight. [No more illusions and no more questions. An unknown partygoer comes into view far down the beach, near the street, figure lit beneath luminescent blue lamps before vanishing again, headed away. Itachi's eyes follow their trajectory and then snap back, irises now dormant black.] If there's nothing else, you should return.
[ the exchange has a businesslike conclusion that leaves a sour taste in his mouth, slowly overriding the stale char on his tongue from their burst of Synchrony fizzled out. unsatisfied. it's what has him reaching for Itachi's hand, stretching over that gap between them with long limbs and a deceptively gentle grip on his wrist. it pulls — not forcefully, but guiding. ]
Stay a little longer.
[ less confidence to those words than he'd like. his encouragement is a plain one, to sit back down where he once was, spare a little more of his time. he could tell him he'd make it worth his while, but he should be understood enough by now that no amount of calm and quiet inaction could ever hold his attention for too long; for better or worse, the electric storm inside of him always finds an outlet with the right polarity. ]
[ and as Guanshan looks up at him, the cold luminance of the moon strikes his eyes silver and emotive, imploring. ]
[A year ago, that raw plea would not have been enough to tether him back down to earth, would have done nothing but swept him out to sea like ashy smoke, eager to flee, to separate, to be alone in his own mind again. Now, he cannot summon any resistance to the hand that snags his own and tugs. Not strength enough to keep him; that alone a reassurance, like a wild animal that cannot be leashed but instead must be persuaded to obey.
He sinks down again, almost a graceless collapse of defeat, heels digging divots into cold nighttime sand.]
I don't have anything else for you.
[An interaction without purpose, without some goal... his limited social skills flounder when left to improvisation. He looks at Guanshan almost cautiously.]
Edited (found a typo late.....) 2021-06-29 00:09 (UTC)
[ perhaps the caution is warranted; when Guanshan is given an inch, he inevitably takes a mile. no sooner than Itachi finds his seat again is he crawling into it too, up and forward, a spread of knees that bracket his hips and a weight that sinks onto his lap. drawn close, his arms loop his shoulders to cage him in fully, lashes low as it tilts their height difference even further in his direction. over Itachi's head, the light of the fire hits him in its entirety — gold-faced and silver-backed. ]
[ Synchrony is fuzzy and distant, as if muffled by clothing. skin doesn't touch skin. it's still impossible to mistake the sunburnt heat of him from the fever of something else, unrepentant and constant desire — not all of it sexual in nature. ]
You're disappointed 'cuz you tried to do it from a distance. [ as if providing the answer to a question he has not been asked but knows it remains all the same. he's too much for people like Itachi, like Rokurou... and yet they seek him out for that same intensity. he'll have to learn one way or another that the only way to be satisfied is to embrace it, sooner or later. ] You got a weapon on you, right?
[ and he means that in the most traditional sense. ]
[Struck immobile with astonishment, his body does not resist that encroachment on space, only a slight lean-away of shoulders borne more of an instinctive twitch like some handshy horse than anything deliberate. Above him, Guanshan is carved out of the fire—sharp figure set goldly aflame against the backdrop of black. A towering statue, attractive and alien, sculpted by someone else’s artistry.
Against the heat of proximity both emotional and physical, Itachi is a shadow slithering through it, cool, daring to be caught. Dark eyes narrow in an angular face.]
Yes. [Of course. Always. Similar answers, but too emphatic for a man like him.] ... Distance is advantageous on the battlefield.
[Yet his slender hand produces a kunai like a magic trick, its sudden appearance reflecting a band of firelight in one quick, brilliant blink, then held in deft fingertips expertly.]
[ a blink and it's there, mystifying, and yet it doesn't surprise him. a paltry trick in comparison to just being eaten by a monster of flame. Guanshan hedges it from him with appropriate respect, meeting his eyes for a brief moment, as if willing the wild beast he's trying to tame into accepting him. ]
Assumin' the other guy knows you're tryna kill him. [ his words have an uncharacteristic fullness. weapon passed off, the loop winds up around one knuckle and the threading lays across long fingers, sleek and pretty. Guanshan rocks it back and forth in admiration (or maybe calculation), gaze tracking grooves of its last whetting for telltale signs of recent use, all those nicks and burrs the human body causes on metal. it moves then: helicoptered around his palm, swift and blurred motions, caught to run parallel to his ulna, and rolled across knuckles like his own little magic trick. ]
[ weight of him minutely shifting on Itachi's lap as he moves, it comes to a stop when he tosses it up and catches it on the tip of a finger by the point. blood bleeds readily, but he doesn't let it fall; blades are, after all, his partner's weapon of choice, and Guanshan has touched more knives in his life — in and out of the kitchen — for this to be his preference. for it to be the way in which he chose to kill a man for the first time. ]
Do I make you feel like you're on a battlefield? [ it's asked as he tosses the weapon to the opposite hand and offers it back handle-first... before his gaze tracks to the same stretch of beach Itachi had witnessed a straggler, pointed. when he looks back, that bleeding tip of his finger moves across Itachi's lips — answering his dare. ] Or have you jes' spent too long keepin' everyone that far away?
[ and with Itachi barely older than himself. it's been a long journey, but Guanshan's been exposed to so many different worlds that he's met men who were killers before they hit double digits. is it intrusive speculation, or a coy way of pointing out just how different their interactions are? different, and important. ]
It was the first assumption those of my world would have made, seeing me.
[A quiet murmur expecting no response, his attention soon beholden to the display of familiarity with the blade. Use shows on looped handle and silver edges, a weapon that has met its purpose over and over again, sharpened to a gleaming triangular point. Guanshan's manipulation is like a performance—dark eyes never stray far, body becoming more aware of the weight sitting across it, the slight shifts of necessary movement. Hands eventually clamp down onto that narrow waist beneath the lip of the shiny jacket he wears.
Blood shines like oil in the fire's glare, slick and black; low-lidded eyes crack wider when the fingertip is brought to his mouth and smeared in a gory lipstick. Unconsciously, a red tongue licks to clear it, tasting Guanshan's metallic flavor, taking that essence into his own system, catching the callused pad of a finger.
... A strange intimacy forced upon him, for a moment he does not react. Guanshan does make him feel as though he's on the battlefield—adrenaline spiking, anticipation thickening, that alert short-term mindset where every action takes on great significance, where physical language screams loudest. His hands constrict on Guanshan's waist, a bruising suggestion of strength in them. Arousal is a violent beacon in his awareness then, an attraction he didn't realize sat deep within himself yet undiscovered, something about what Guanshan has done—the hot taste of his blood, perhaps, or the bright blade misused now—dredging it all up.
Instead of an answer, he shoves Guanshan out of his lap with sudden force that sends him sprawling into sand. His expression is almost identical to that day in the park, except cut across now by shadow, disguising most of its haunted, hungry effect. He doesn't move again.]
[ quicker than he even has time to assess the situation does he find himself flung back onto the sands, long legs in a gangly sprawl and palms behind himself to keep from sliding back further. well. it isn't surprising — the look he takes in during a momentary bewildered stare connects to the image of him upside down above as he'd moaned his name while strung out by vines, only so quick and visceral a connection because of how he'd ruminated on it enough nights after. his guts clench with heat, expression slacking again as he realizes; he didn't need Synchrony to tell him this time, not like when he was still half a beast hunting in the woods. ]
[ despite his genius with anything else, here Itachi is a slow study. Guanshan doesn't mind. ]
You can't touch me yourself... [ he starts, slow and cautious, aware of the shinobi's penchant for disappearing. maybe if he chooses the right words, he won't — but that's a big ask of someone like Guanshan, who has very little mastery over language. ] So do it with that instead.
[ his chin jerks forward, gesturing at the weapon returned to Itachi's care. hands leave the shore, go to the zipper on a half-closed jacket and pull it down with a noise that's entirely too loud for the quiet between them, just breath and the crackle of fire. he shrugs out of it, leaving it in a pool around his seat; his shirt comes off overhead next, ruffling spikes of auburn only for them to return to their original chaotic disarray. moonlight rims his edges even paler. the emerald at one side of his ribs, the vicious bitemark scar at the other, the myriad of other dings marking him as little more than a civilian with a rough sense of play and taste for violence — violence he's as hungry to share with Itachi as he is his bed. ]
No Synchrony. I won't reach out for you. [ Rokurou had told him touching him was... too intense, sometimes; he has no doubts it must be the same for Itachi, although not quite for the same reasons. ] Just stay close'n keep your eyes on me.
[With that, indicating the silver weapon returned to his hand, balanced in fingers and palm like an extension of body. He understands the attempt for compromise. No Synchrony means no risk for crossed wires, for him to be brought into the violent undertow of lustful emotion, buoyed by an intimacy still so at odds with his whole identity. Itachi's eyes narrow to slits, the film of Sharingan a red glaze over sight; he hadn't even noticed its reactivation in the powerful wake of his own response to the taste of blood. As though keeping eyes on Guanshan was ever in question.
The jacket is shed and cast aside, shimmering like a pale wing as it lands in the sand, shirt soon shucked off to follow it. The landscape of Guanshan's torso is wild territory marked by past encounters, stories laid out by scars and impressions that he can't know with a glance. That lack of knowing is the worst part. So, too, is a sudden sense of insignificance; anything he commits here will become another meager trophy of flesh, unoriginal, another notch on the post. One of many—if it is even permanent at all.
Perhaps that is better, lending equanimity as it subtracts some burden of weight in the action. He leans forward on bent knees and works off the light of fire from behind, kunai a shadow across Guanshan's skin before it ever touches, other hand lifted to seize the back of a nape until it shies and hovers instead. Any more physical contact than this is a danger. Whatever the deeper meaning, Itachi cannot diminish the intensity of his own concentration—his mind slides into another persona altogether, the one put together to take enemies apart. The blade lands low on Guanshan's belly, near the defined jut of a hip, blood blooming to the surface in a slivered ribbon of red, not deep enough to scar but no less magnetizing for the sight of split flesh. Another one follows, then another, until three shallow lines like perfectly straight claws have dragged across his left hip barely shy of bone.
He takes a breath that shudders in, then back out, and looks at Guanshan's face. The kunai rests against the flat plain just beneath his navel. There it sits without the pressure to cut, yet, as though seeking some reaction first.]
[ the expression of it is immediate and strong; the hiss of breath he sucks in makes skin all the way down his core swell with its necessary room. it bleeds more red that drips steady to the elastic seam of his boxers, pooling light fabric with crimson all the way down to the line of his shorts slung even lower. a hiss between clenched teeth shivers out of him, his fingers curling in the sand and toes curling in his sneakers. the heat of it isn't unlike a brand, wrenching his eyebrows together and quickening his pulse, sting of it pulsing in time with the throb of interest heading south. ]
[ he swallows hard and wrenches his eyes from the seeping wounds and silver assailant to Itachi when he sees movement, expression open and laid bare. pain thrusts him into honesty as much as pleasure does, the wires between them so crossed that he begins to harden from the stimulation of it alone. it's the fact that it's Itachi — his gaze and his interest and his hovering presence — that has him tail-spinning towards a full erection so readily, swelling against an inner thigh and curving the drape of his loose shorts between his legs. ]
[ a beat of that intense eye contact and he swallows, nodding, the bead of sweat at the corner of his jaw running down onto his throat. legs widen ever so slightly, knees turning out, giving Itachi a wide berth between them. as promised, he doesn't reach out to him, allowing the space and patience needed for Itachi to explore as he pleases without the Synchrony's interference. all of these, quiet little acts of encouragement, with a bullet of a question already loaded in the chamber: do you like this too? ]
[ he doesn't need to convey his body's response any more than the needy lid of his eyes or how his top row of teeth seek his thin bottom lip to bite and drag, vulnerable and uncomfortable in his own need. perhaps that's something Itachi can find kindred, among all the things he can't. ]
[Eyes devour all of it: every bodily flinch, hissed intake of air, throat working through swallows, fingers curling, legs spreading, cock stiffening. He can see all of this as evidence of Guanshan's affected state. He wonders why, and would he react the same beneath someone else's pointed blade? Blood lures most of his focus; he cannot look at much else for long, not like he watches those red, trickling ribbons drip down flesh like veins of rain over glass. He recalls the flavor of it on his tongue—bright, hot, vital copper tang. The act of consumption as intimate as their kiss days ago, shared breath and tongue swallowing the same stale spit.
He had expected to remain aloof and impersonal even in this act. It's how he has felt every time he's turned a weapon on another: detached, outside himself, clinically removed through rote habit and training. It isn't the case now, seeing Guanshan's lip bitten to a swell and outline of his cock a thick shape within fabric confines. What does he look like, beneath all of that? What does he taste like? A sympathetic throb of arousal settles in his own gut; and although easy to ignore in the moment, Itachi can tell when his own dick has grown hard and stiff between rigid, folded legs.
Alleviating lust is secondary to a different desire. Almost preemptive of thought, his free hand comes up to hold Guanshan's slender throat at the base. No applied pressure yet. The kunai is led up higher as if changing its mind to nick the sharp bones of Guanshan's collar. Blood dripples from the cut, and as Itachi pulls down on that leashed hold of a throat, his mouth latches across the shallow wound, tongue lashing hot. The force of movement drags Guanshan solidly down into his lap. A line he crosses on his own, although Sychrony remains sealed out—one last barrier of necessary restraint.]
[ unmatched by Guanshan's eagerness, who is settling into Itachi's lap and moaning his appreciation with that inherent unstifled honesty, laboring breaths fanning against silky black fly-aways. he wants to hold him, wrap his arms around his head and pull him in, encourage the viciousness of his drink — but he made a promise he wouldn't reciprocate, wouldn't seek him in return... and so instead he leans back, core a delicious arc against Itachi's curving body, and rests his hands on the shinobi's knees. needy fingers twist the knit of his slacks, insistent on remaining still. ]
[ likewise, what little of his own Synchrony he can control, he does. it isn't much — enough for the channel to be that of a ripped-open, frayed wire still pumping with electricity, sparking and crackling in the rage of missing its other parts. sex is a bond, a connection, no matter how much in his past he tried only to make it a transaction; with Itachi more than most, he burns for the reciprocity of it. ]
Y... you're driving me fuckin' crazy...
[ an emphatic whisper, rough like a breath of the campfire smoke over his head. that roiling lust leaves him restless, the heat of Itachi's mouth blister-stinging on the wound, his every squirm a rub of friction where his cock protrudes perhaps a little too proudly low against the other man's belly. swollen lips are lapped again as he fishes for something to return, his seat intentionally rolling down in an attempt to uncover Itachi's own fledgling hard-on — given an inch, he takes a mile. ]
Take more. Use your teeth.
[ the only thing better than guiding a weapon to hurt someone is doing it yourself. ]
[Heady with reins of control, lording power over this moment and taking what he wants of Guanshan's body with no threat that it will be reciprocated—as if drunk on the blood that coats his tongue—Itachi does not immediately respond. There is no praise or commendation offered for that resiliency, even suspecting how difficult it is for someone who speaks the physical language of attraction with such fluidity. There is no command for silence, either, despite those needy instructions.
Hands find knees a still and solid support. As Guanshan rolls down, ass fitted neatly across evidence of arousal in the hard, clothed shape of an erection at the center of his lap, Itachi's unoccupied hand drops from the collared throat to a sharp hip bone in sudden descent. There, fingers dig in with bruising pressure, denting flesh. Stay still.]
Even forbidden from it, you lack the self-control to completely cut yourself off. [Mild, gritty words in a throat thick with the taste of blood. He can feel the raw electricity of Guanshan's presence in his awareness, Synchrony's channel unmet and unsatisfied.] It was the same when we first met as well. You did not even need to try.
[Guanshan bleeds emotions from every tender pore; he'd needed to be told how to intentionally connect through Synchrony, but even that had been second nature in the end, in the blue backwash of that alley.]
It is... [his mouth hovers over the same nicked wound, breath fanning hot and damp,] ...puzzling to me.
[And there he latches on again, prying at the seam of flesh with the jab of a tongue, teeth sinking to take better hold in a circular bite.]
[ prick of shame needling heavy with those words and that hand imposing its will, he stills again, sheepish mixture of guilt and impossibility. surely Itachi understands by now that self-control is beyond him. once, he craved it; now, within even this experience, he's come to rely on it to get what he wants. if he had it, this wouldn't have happened — if he had it, would Itachi have looked his way at all? ]
the rubber coating that protects all those electric storms inside, isn't it for everyone else's protection and not Itachi's? Guanshan has spent more than his fair share of life wanting to be invisible — an easy life where money and people weren't problems — but never has he wanted to be digestible. ]
[ maybe devourable. ]
I... [ the response dies in tandem with Itachi's tongue, amidst a rack of shivers that make music on his spinal column. he jerks and cries out at the much better connection of his teeth — and still the attempt is there, one of Guanshan's supporting hands flying to the forearm of the hand pinning down his hip, pressing it harder as though it might actually get him to stop moving. he's like a junkie with the shakes now, one of his chosen drugs so close and yet so far. ]
I don't wanna stop. I don't know how ta stop. [ words rasped low and tremulous, sex-soaked and borderline desperate. any other words and he'd sound on the cusp of begging, every part of him asking Itachi to rip him open and take. the dark thought buoys to the top — and Guanshan rides it up, opening eyes blown dark with his dilated pupils, the sets of fingers on both Itachi's forearm and just above his knee gripping down tentatively. ]
...Don't you ever want someone to just accept how insane you are?
[It isn't difficult to understand that not everyone is built by the same parts, that some are assembled like a bleeding wound, porous enough to feel everything—and perhaps he even possesses self-awareness to understand his own dormant potential, once upon a time, until the cold reality of the world sheared it away. Guanshan is a reminder of it, hot and alive in his lap and under his tongue, flavor of his blood fresh and hot as coppery coins sliding across an intimate tongue.
Guanshan isn't begging, but it is a near thing. Imagination unfolds upon the image of that lean, lanky figure sprawled in the sand, pleading, hot-mouthed and obscene beneath his blade and body. To force him to suffer the torment of pleasure carried around like a close, addictive friend. Trembling, shaking out of his bones, dilated eyes blown in the expression of the truly desperate.
His own breath is quick and rapid now, lips fastened to the cut, tonguing its raw slit for every last drop willing to fall, leaving a diluted smear of spit across the gored marks of teeth. Holding him in place with hands like iron shackles.]
I have a feeling, [he says against the bitten-open wound on Guanshan's collar,] there is little in you that I would not accept.
[That grip finally relaxes, allowing Guanshan free range to grind into his lap as he pleases.] Can you come from this alone? [He leans away, slightly, kunai cast aside in the sand, admiring Guanshan's figure.] Or do you need more?
[ words that worm their way into his blushing ears and cut the cord on every other sound. he goes deaf to rolling waves, crackle of the dying fire, avian cries, a peel of laughter somewhere far up the beach carried by the wind. his world narrows on a pin, a halting exchange where his gaze pours over Itachi's handsome features: long lashes, fine bone structure, sharp jaw, bloody lips. his heart does something he knew he'd be capable of inspiring and yet it catches him by surprise nonetheless, pressure sneaking up from his guts to close the teeth of his ribs. ]
[ for a boy who's craved little else than understanding and acceptance the better part of a life that already feels too long, it's an arrow ran straight through a red, red epicenter. he processes it slowly, set free with a bolt between the lungs. ]
F... fucking asshole, I can.
[ the animosity is self-aimed, but he's never stopped it from leaking out of every pore. it comes with a boost of roughness, palms finding Itachi's chest and pushing him down onto the soft bed of sand below; Guanshan and all of his pale, freckled, bleeding skin is cast again into the low light of embers barely keeping themselves warm. they warm his colors only somewhat, a body full of autumn and sunsets on a backdrop of sharp, cold dark. ]
But you gotta help.
[ spine in a fine arc around wiry muscle, his body's a stretched and slender triangle whose point seats itself right upon Itachi's erection, forcing him into acknowledgment of it. it comes with reward, how Guanshan's seat rests directly upon the shape of him — how, when slender hips begin to grind and rock in earnest, he brings friction and roiling heat to them both. layers of fabric are all that separates him from being filled up and fucked open; when the veiled tip of his own cock accidentally brushes his wrist as he runs his hands down Itachi's core, he realizes just how damp his clothes have become. ]
Push up in'na me, [ is what he directs around a low moan, swallowing his panting breaths as his back arches for more friction, chin tucked to his chest to keep his eyes on the body he wants to bleed too, ] Like you wanna get as deep as you can...
[He hadn't wanted it to go this far. Flattened to the bed of sand, its grit tickling skin only slightly warmed by fire and body and chilled by everything else in the night, Itachi feels his own breath slip out of his throat like a thread yanked up from the bottom of his chest. It's a rough, startled sound. Guanshan's ass has settled over the tucked line of his cock, a distinct shape through clothing, brought into jagged awareness like a hot shard in his mind. It has always been difficult to ignore the attraction between them—vivid, impressionable, constant interactions like a band snapped against bare skin—but perhaps he could achieve detachment if only Guanshan forced him not to. Reality is a raw and painful thing.
Strong, powerful hands drop to the circle of a narrow waist, fingers applying bruising pressure to the points of hipbones, digging cruelly in with strength half-meant to leash him back. Every grind is wholesale torture. Guanshan's weight dragging across his cock, reminding him over and over that he is aroused by this, that he cannot escape that fact. That it would be so easy to shred fabric apart with the same bloodied blade and fit himself inside of Guanshan's body to fulfill both of their current needs. That, perhaps, he has been goaded to do exactly that over the last several weeks.
Those sharp, copper eyes are on him, lines of muscle stitched with the gold of the fire behind them, attention like the excruciating angle of a magnifying glass in the sun. Itachi releases one hand, lifts it up, and clasps it over the nape of a neck. Then he's hauling Guanshan down, folding him against his own chest, locking their mouths in a kiss that cannot be refused—teeth cutting at Guanshan's lower lip, tongue slick as it bullies inside, sharing the diluted flavor of blood, taking this space if he cannot let himself have the other.
One invasion for another, as meanwhile he obeys the grinding rhythm of hips and pushes up against that taken seat, chasing friction in the illusion of fucking. His world is soon nothing else.]
[ he could be licking cute little tablets or the body of Christ himself into him, neither could improve the zealot's high with which he succumbs. lash for lash, tongue chasing its companion, there's smoke and blood in his teeth and gasoline in the promising roil of his body, sparked by their friction and conflagrating. the only cool is the sand under his palms and between his fingers, great fistfuls of it that attempt to root him to the Earth before he falls right off its edge. it's a tolerable replacement for Itachi's hair as he attempts to maintain his promise, void though it might be for the blistering bloom of Synchrony at their mouths. ]
[ vocal even when he has no words to form, he drives into him those desperate little noises, makes him swallow the bawdy grunts and moans that rise as he approaches that threshold hurriedly, eager. for all the lush color and tone the Manna had engendered during their kiss — Guanshan's desire, satisfaction, curiosity, caution, torrential — it all cuts out abruptly as his body jerks and stutters out of their tempo. knees stutter and thighs clamp, tension drawing to a taut bowstring and snapping back into place with a rapid thrum, his spine curving delectably. ]
Oh fuck, oh— ohh. [ suddenly, he feels nothing. no thought, no emotion, all of it thrown out of him as he's reduced to pure sensation, riding out those last dregs of a cleansing euphoria that permeates his bones. blissful and vulnerable, blank and welcoming, it's a precipice he wants to linger on, still tethered to the man beneath him, expression wrenched into rapture or agony. ]
[ it won't. it can't. with a heavy sigh, he slacks all at once, buckling at the shoulders as though he could no longer support his own weight; his shorts and boxer briefs are spotted with damp heat, a few determined beads of semen sprouting out of the fabric and dappling Itachi's shirt. his afterglow is warm, syrupy bliss, a regal sort of laziness — a panther sprawled and soaking in a spot of sun. sated. eyes flutter and crack open, dark with molten heat for how large his pupils are, panting through his nose and sucking on Itachi's swollen bottom lip in relish. ]
[To hold another warm, soft, shaking body through this never loses its intimacy, each time new and vibrant in the act of losing all composure as pleasure cuts a riptide straight down. He holds Guanshan’s weight uncomplaining, their skin sealed in a stamp of sweat and blood and the gritty remnants of cold sand. He betrays himself immediately by encircling him in a tight embrace at that finish. Like holding someone’s life in his arms—the throes of death comparable to that toe-curling shiver of an orgasm—he cradles Guanshan to the end, tasting the flavor of spit and breath and sharp teeth shared between them. Every noise, too, yanked out of his throat or forced down it by the mingling of air. The moment goes on forever.
He didn’t believe he would come from only this. That initial awareness of hot, sticky dampness against his crotch is mistakenly believed to belong to Guanshan, until he realizes his cock is soft, and the wetness is smeared beneath his own waistband, saturating already dark fabric. It’s stunning—and likely a consequence of the fact that Synchrony has betrayed him after all, linking himself to the sieve of Guanshan’s pleasure spilling out at the seams. He can feel the mutual pulses of bliss and contentment, that gauzy sensation from the tether of their gems aglow, green on lilac, unintentional. It seems that in this act he’s far less in control of himself than expected. It’s become a learned pattern; he wasn’t careful enough.
Guanshan’s weight grows heavy, stretched on top of him like an animal that’s claimed its place to sleep. He first begins by clearing his mind in cold reality. Easier to find in the aftermath, harder when joined to Guanshan’s sated web of emotion—he accomplishes it by sitting up and easing that lean, lanky figure onto the sand at his side. Extricating himself into the sobering chill of physical solitude. Looking away from those blown pupils, that slack expression, a mouth kissed red, the vivid cuts on bare flesh.
Itachi leans away, fingers hunting the kunai from the sand to be repocketed. And he’s up on grounded feet. The shadows around his eyes are more noticeable in the fall of firelight on his body from the campfire, although it has begun to die into untended embers.
He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t look back, walking away with all the composure of a man chipped to pieces now scrambling to put himself together again after narrow escape.]
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The temptation passes as a cool cloud overhead, and then he's sinking down near those long legs, knees folded in the sand, posture straight, just beyond reach without a strain. Guanshan is half in shadow, half in light at this spot—from this angle—like an eerie, alluring hallucination of his own, one watched closely.]
I've observed your behavior for some time now. [Adrenaline-hunting, impulsive, desirous, stubborn, risky behavior though it may be. But observation is one measure. Perhaps it would help him predict and kill an opponent; Guanshan isn't that category currently.] What does it take for you to feel understood?
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Bein' observed, [ he comments with no sarcasm at all. whether he attracts those who have an obsessive component to their personality or they attract him because he likes feeling seen is a riddle he's never set about solving; some things are just synchronicity and he can accept them for that because the results have worked out in his favor more times than they haven't. Guanshan is nothing if not a young man shaped by his experiences, moreso than some others. ]
[ the list goes on: ]
And intimacy. Sometimes intimacy is violent, and sometimes it ain't. I like both. I want both. One or the other ain't enough.
[ of his few demands, these are principle. ]
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Violence without intimacy: cold, ruthless, impersonal as a blade wedged into a stranger's back. It's what he knows, far better than intimacy—that raw and searing sore vulnerable to infection.
He doesn't move, but his gaze tracks sideways to stare at Guanshan's hands in the distorted radiant light, watching the spindly shape of fingers and a soft hidden palm and remembering what it felt like to hold. Physical touch is intimacy. Physical touch is also violence. Where had he begun to learn the divide, exactly? What would happen if he said right now the reason Guanshan should never trust him, should never pursue his company, should never seek him out—what if he said it all and torched every potential future to a burnt, black root? Anything else is deception in the face of open honesty. Yet that has been his nature for so many years now that to act otherwise is jarring and wrong, like stones underfoot. He deserves to be dead—not whatever this is.
Itachi stands abruptly, but even that sudden movement is silent and liquid as shadow.] That was all I had to show you tonight. [No more illusions and no more questions. An unknown partygoer comes into view far down the beach, near the street, figure lit beneath luminescent blue lamps before vanishing again, headed away. Itachi's eyes follow their trajectory and then snap back, irises now dormant black.] If there's nothing else, you should return.
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Stay a little longer.
[ less confidence to those words than he'd like. his encouragement is a plain one, to sit back down where he once was, spare a little more of his time. he could tell him he'd make it worth his while, but he should be understood enough by now that no amount of calm and quiet inaction could ever hold his attention for too long; for better or worse, the electric storm inside of him always finds an outlet with the right polarity. ]
[ and as Guanshan looks up at him, the cold luminance of the moon strikes his eyes silver and emotive, imploring. ]
Please?
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He sinks down again, almost a graceless collapse of defeat, heels digging divots into cold nighttime sand.]
I don't have anything else for you.
[An interaction without purpose, without some goal... his limited social skills flounder when left to improvisation. He looks at Guanshan almost cautiously.]
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[ perhaps the caution is warranted; when Guanshan is given an inch, he inevitably takes a mile. no sooner than Itachi finds his seat again is he crawling into it too, up and forward, a spread of knees that bracket his hips and a weight that sinks onto his lap. drawn close, his arms loop his shoulders to cage him in fully, lashes low as it tilts their height difference even further in his direction. over Itachi's head, the light of the fire hits him in its entirety — gold-faced and silver-backed. ]
[ Synchrony is fuzzy and distant, as if muffled by clothing. skin doesn't touch skin. it's still impossible to mistake the sunburnt heat of him from the fever of something else, unrepentant and constant desire — not all of it sexual in nature. ]
You're disappointed 'cuz you tried to do it from a distance. [ as if providing the answer to a question he has not been asked but knows it remains all the same. he's too much for people like Itachi, like Rokurou... and yet they seek him out for that same intensity. he'll have to learn one way or another that the only way to be satisfied is to embrace it, sooner or later. ] You got a weapon on you, right?
[ and he means that in the most traditional sense. ]
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Against the heat of proximity both emotional and physical, Itachi is a shadow slithering through it, cool, daring to be caught. Dark eyes narrow in an angular face.]
Yes. [Of course. Always. Similar answers, but too emphatic for a man like him.] ... Distance is advantageous on the battlefield.
[Yet his slender hand produces a kunai like a magic trick, its sudden appearance reflecting a band of firelight in one quick, brilliant blink, then held in deft fingertips expertly.]
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Assumin' the other guy knows you're tryna kill him. [ his words have an uncharacteristic fullness. weapon passed off, the loop winds up around one knuckle and the threading lays across long fingers, sleek and pretty. Guanshan rocks it back and forth in admiration (or maybe calculation), gaze tracking grooves of its last whetting for telltale signs of recent use, all those nicks and burrs the human body causes on metal. it moves then: helicoptered around his palm, swift and blurred motions, caught to run parallel to his ulna, and rolled across knuckles like his own little magic trick. ]
[ weight of him minutely shifting on Itachi's lap as he moves, it comes to a stop when he tosses it up and catches it on the tip of a finger by the point. blood bleeds readily, but he doesn't let it fall; blades are, after all, his partner's weapon of choice, and Guanshan has touched more knives in his life — in and out of the kitchen — for this to be his preference. for it to be the way in which he chose to kill a man for the first time. ]
Do I make you feel like you're on a battlefield? [ it's asked as he tosses the weapon to the opposite hand and offers it back handle-first... before his gaze tracks to the same stretch of beach Itachi had witnessed a straggler, pointed. when he looks back, that bleeding tip of his finger moves across Itachi's lips — answering his dare. ] Or have you jes' spent too long keepin' everyone that far away?
[ and with Itachi barely older than himself. it's been a long journey, but Guanshan's been exposed to so many different worlds that he's met men who were killers before they hit double digits. is it intrusive speculation, or a coy way of pointing out just how different their interactions are? different, and important. ]
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[A quiet murmur expecting no response, his attention soon beholden to the display of familiarity with the blade. Use shows on looped handle and silver edges, a weapon that has met its purpose over and over again, sharpened to a gleaming triangular point. Guanshan's manipulation is like a performance—dark eyes never stray far, body becoming more aware of the weight sitting across it, the slight shifts of necessary movement. Hands eventually clamp down onto that narrow waist beneath the lip of the shiny jacket he wears.
Blood shines like oil in the fire's glare, slick and black; low-lidded eyes crack wider when the fingertip is brought to his mouth and smeared in a gory lipstick. Unconsciously, a red tongue licks to clear it, tasting Guanshan's metallic flavor, taking that essence into his own system, catching the callused pad of a finger.
... A strange intimacy forced upon him, for a moment he does not react. Guanshan does make him feel as though he's on the battlefield—adrenaline spiking, anticipation thickening, that alert short-term mindset where every action takes on great significance, where physical language screams loudest. His hands constrict on Guanshan's waist, a bruising suggestion of strength in them. Arousal is a violent beacon in his awareness then, an attraction he didn't realize sat deep within himself yet undiscovered, something about what Guanshan has done—the hot taste of his blood, perhaps, or the bright blade misused now—dredging it all up.
Instead of an answer, he shoves Guanshan out of his lap with sudden force that sends him sprawling into sand. His expression is almost identical to that day in the park, except cut across now by shadow, disguising most of its haunted, hungry effect. He doesn't move again.]
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[ despite his genius with anything else, here Itachi is a slow study. Guanshan doesn't mind. ]
You can't touch me yourself... [ he starts, slow and cautious, aware of the shinobi's penchant for disappearing. maybe if he chooses the right words, he won't — but that's a big ask of someone like Guanshan, who has very little mastery over language. ] So do it with that instead.
[ his chin jerks forward, gesturing at the weapon returned to Itachi's care. hands leave the shore, go to the zipper on a half-closed jacket and pull it down with a noise that's entirely too loud for the quiet between them, just breath and the crackle of fire. he shrugs out of it, leaving it in a pool around his seat; his shirt comes off overhead next, ruffling spikes of auburn only for them to return to their original chaotic disarray. moonlight rims his edges even paler. the emerald at one side of his ribs, the vicious bitemark scar at the other, the myriad of other dings marking him as little more than a civilian with a rough sense of play and taste for violence — violence he's as hungry to share with Itachi as he is his bed. ]
No Synchrony. I won't reach out for you. [ Rokurou had told him touching him was... too intense, sometimes; he has no doubts it must be the same for Itachi, although not quite for the same reasons. ] Just stay close'n keep your eyes on me.
[ to him, it sounds like compromise. ]
cw blood/weapon play
The jacket is shed and cast aside, shimmering like a pale wing as it lands in the sand, shirt soon shucked off to follow it. The landscape of Guanshan's torso is wild territory marked by past encounters, stories laid out by scars and impressions that he can't know with a glance. That lack of knowing is the worst part. So, too, is a sudden sense of insignificance; anything he commits here will become another meager trophy of flesh, unoriginal, another notch on the post. One of many—if it is even permanent at all.
Perhaps that is better, lending equanimity as it subtracts some burden of weight in the action. He leans forward on bent knees and works off the light of fire from behind, kunai a shadow across Guanshan's skin before it ever touches, other hand lifted to seize the back of a nape until it shies and hovers instead. Any more physical contact than this is a danger. Whatever the deeper meaning, Itachi cannot diminish the intensity of his own concentration—his mind slides into another persona altogether, the one put together to take enemies apart. The blade lands low on Guanshan's belly, near the defined jut of a hip, blood blooming to the surface in a slivered ribbon of red, not deep enough to scar but no less magnetizing for the sight of split flesh. Another one follows, then another, until three shallow lines like perfectly straight claws have dragged across his left hip barely shy of bone.
He takes a breath that shudders in, then back out, and looks at Guanshan's face. The kunai rests against the flat plain just beneath his navel. There it sits without the pressure to cut, yet, as though seeking some reaction first.]
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[ he swallows hard and wrenches his eyes from the seeping wounds and silver assailant to Itachi when he sees movement, expression open and laid bare. pain thrusts him into honesty as much as pleasure does, the wires between them so crossed that he begins to harden from the stimulation of it alone. it's the fact that it's Itachi — his gaze and his interest and his hovering presence — that has him tail-spinning towards a full erection so readily, swelling against an inner thigh and curving the drape of his loose shorts between his legs. ]
[ a beat of that intense eye contact and he swallows, nodding, the bead of sweat at the corner of his jaw running down onto his throat. legs widen ever so slightly, knees turning out, giving Itachi a wide berth between them. as promised, he doesn't reach out to him, allowing the space and patience needed for Itachi to explore as he pleases without the Synchrony's interference. all of these, quiet little acts of encouragement, with a bullet of a question already loaded in the chamber: do you like this too? ]
[ he doesn't need to convey his body's response any more than the needy lid of his eyes or how his top row of teeth seek his thin bottom lip to bite and drag, vulnerable and uncomfortable in his own need. perhaps that's something Itachi can find kindred, among all the things he can't. ]
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He had expected to remain aloof and impersonal even in this act. It's how he has felt every time he's turned a weapon on another: detached, outside himself, clinically removed through rote habit and training. It isn't the case now, seeing Guanshan's lip bitten to a swell and outline of his cock a thick shape within fabric confines. What does he look like, beneath all of that? What does he taste like? A sympathetic throb of arousal settles in his own gut; and although easy to ignore in the moment, Itachi can tell when his own dick has grown hard and stiff between rigid, folded legs.
Alleviating lust is secondary to a different desire. Almost preemptive of thought, his free hand comes up to hold Guanshan's slender throat at the base. No applied pressure yet. The kunai is led up higher as if changing its mind to nick the sharp bones of Guanshan's collar. Blood dripples from the cut, and as Itachi pulls down on that leashed hold of a throat, his mouth latches across the shallow wound, tongue lashing hot. The force of movement drags Guanshan solidly down into his lap. A line he crosses on his own, although Sychrony remains sealed out—one last barrier of necessary restraint.]
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[ likewise, what little of his own Synchrony he can control, he does. it isn't much — enough for the channel to be that of a ripped-open, frayed wire still pumping with electricity, sparking and crackling in the rage of missing its other parts. sex is a bond, a connection, no matter how much in his past he tried only to make it a transaction; with Itachi more than most, he burns for the reciprocity of it. ]
Y... you're driving me fuckin' crazy...
[ an emphatic whisper, rough like a breath of the campfire smoke over his head. that roiling lust leaves him restless, the heat of Itachi's mouth blister-stinging on the wound, his every squirm a rub of friction where his cock protrudes perhaps a little too proudly low against the other man's belly. swollen lips are lapped again as he fishes for something to return, his seat intentionally rolling down in an attempt to uncover Itachi's own fledgling hard-on — given an inch, he takes a mile. ]
Take more. Use your teeth.
[ the only thing better than guiding a weapon to hurt someone is doing it yourself. ]
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Hands find knees a still and solid support. As Guanshan rolls down, ass fitted neatly across evidence of arousal in the hard, clothed shape of an erection at the center of his lap, Itachi's unoccupied hand drops from the collared throat to a sharp hip bone in sudden descent. There, fingers dig in with bruising pressure, denting flesh. Stay still.]
Even forbidden from it, you lack the self-control to completely cut yourself off. [Mild, gritty words in a throat thick with the taste of blood. He can feel the raw electricity of Guanshan's presence in his awareness, Synchrony's channel unmet and unsatisfied.] It was the same when we first met as well. You did not even need to try.
[Guanshan bleeds emotions from every tender pore; he'd needed to be told how to intentionally connect through Synchrony, but even that had been second nature in the end, in the blue backwash of that alley.]
It is... [his mouth hovers over the same nicked wound, breath fanning hot and damp,] ...puzzling to me.
[And there he latches on again, prying at the seam of flesh with the jab of a tongue, teeth sinking to take better hold in a circular bite.]
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the rubber coating that protects all those electric storms inside, isn't it for everyone else's protection and not Itachi's? Guanshan has spent more than his fair share of life wanting to be invisible — an easy life where money and people weren't problems — but never has he wanted to be digestible. ]
[ maybe devourable. ]
I... [ the response dies in tandem with Itachi's tongue, amidst a rack of shivers that make music on his spinal column. he jerks and cries out at the much better connection of his teeth — and still the attempt is there, one of Guanshan's supporting hands flying to the forearm of the hand pinning down his hip, pressing it harder as though it might actually get him to stop moving. he's like a junkie with the shakes now, one of his chosen drugs so close and yet so far. ]
I don't wanna stop. I don't know how ta stop. [ words rasped low and tremulous, sex-soaked and borderline desperate. any other words and he'd sound on the cusp of begging, every part of him asking Itachi to rip him open and take. the dark thought buoys to the top — and Guanshan rides it up, opening eyes blown dark with his dilated pupils, the sets of fingers on both Itachi's forearm and just above his knee gripping down tentatively. ]
...Don't you ever want someone to just accept how insane you are?
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Guanshan isn't begging, but it is a near thing. Imagination unfolds upon the image of that lean, lanky figure sprawled in the sand, pleading, hot-mouthed and obscene beneath his blade and body. To force him to suffer the torment of pleasure carried around like a close, addictive friend. Trembling, shaking out of his bones, dilated eyes blown in the expression of the truly desperate.
His own breath is quick and rapid now, lips fastened to the cut, tonguing its raw slit for every last drop willing to fall, leaving a diluted smear of spit across the gored marks of teeth. Holding him in place with hands like iron shackles.]
I have a feeling, [he says against the bitten-open wound on Guanshan's collar,] there is little in you that I would not accept.
[That grip finally relaxes, allowing Guanshan free range to grind into his lap as he pleases.] Can you come from this alone? [He leans away, slightly, kunai cast aside in the sand, admiring Guanshan's figure.] Or do you need more?
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[ for a boy who's craved little else than understanding and acceptance the better part of a life that already feels too long, it's an arrow ran straight through a red, red epicenter. he processes it slowly, set free with a bolt between the lungs. ]
F... fucking asshole, I can.
[ the animosity is self-aimed, but he's never stopped it from leaking out of every pore. it comes with a boost of roughness, palms finding Itachi's chest and pushing him down onto the soft bed of sand below; Guanshan and all of his pale, freckled, bleeding skin is cast again into the low light of embers barely keeping themselves warm. they warm his colors only somewhat, a body full of autumn and sunsets on a backdrop of sharp, cold dark. ]
But you gotta help.
[ spine in a fine arc around wiry muscle, his body's a stretched and slender triangle whose point seats itself right upon Itachi's erection, forcing him into acknowledgment of it. it comes with reward, how Guanshan's seat rests directly upon the shape of him — how, when slender hips begin to grind and rock in earnest, he brings friction and roiling heat to them both. layers of fabric are all that separates him from being filled up and fucked open; when the veiled tip of his own cock accidentally brushes his wrist as he runs his hands down Itachi's core, he realizes just how damp his clothes have become. ]
Push up in'na me, [ is what he directs around a low moan, swallowing his panting breaths as his back arches for more friction, chin tucked to his chest to keep his eyes on the body he wants to bleed too, ] Like you wanna get as deep as you can...
[ he's pathetically close at the mere thought. ]
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Strong, powerful hands drop to the circle of a narrow waist, fingers applying bruising pressure to the points of hipbones, digging cruelly in with strength half-meant to leash him back. Every grind is wholesale torture. Guanshan's weight dragging across his cock, reminding him over and over that he is aroused by this, that he cannot escape that fact. That it would be so easy to shred fabric apart with the same bloodied blade and fit himself inside of Guanshan's body to fulfill both of their current needs. That, perhaps, he has been goaded to do exactly that over the last several weeks.
Those sharp, copper eyes are on him, lines of muscle stitched with the gold of the fire behind them, attention like the excruciating angle of a magnifying glass in the sun. Itachi releases one hand, lifts it up, and clasps it over the nape of a neck. Then he's hauling Guanshan down, folding him against his own chest, locking their mouths in a kiss that cannot be refused—teeth cutting at Guanshan's lower lip, tongue slick as it bullies inside, sharing the diluted flavor of blood, taking this space if he cannot let himself have the other.
One invasion for another, as meanwhile he obeys the grinding rhythm of hips and pushes up against that taken seat, chasing friction in the illusion of fucking. His world is soon nothing else.]
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[ vocal even when he has no words to form, he drives into him those desperate little noises, makes him swallow the bawdy grunts and moans that rise as he approaches that threshold hurriedly, eager. for all the lush color and tone the Manna had engendered during their kiss — Guanshan's desire, satisfaction, curiosity, caution, torrential — it all cuts out abruptly as his body jerks and stutters out of their tempo. knees stutter and thighs clamp, tension drawing to a taut bowstring and snapping back into place with a rapid thrum, his spine curving delectably. ]
Oh fuck, oh— ohh. [ suddenly, he feels nothing. no thought, no emotion, all of it thrown out of him as he's reduced to pure sensation, riding out those last dregs of a cleansing euphoria that permeates his bones. blissful and vulnerable, blank and welcoming, it's a precipice he wants to linger on, still tethered to the man beneath him, expression wrenched into rapture or agony. ]
[ it won't. it can't. with a heavy sigh, he slacks all at once, buckling at the shoulders as though he could no longer support his own weight; his shorts and boxer briefs are spotted with damp heat, a few determined beads of semen sprouting out of the fabric and dappling Itachi's shirt. his afterglow is warm, syrupy bliss, a regal sort of laziness — a panther sprawled and soaking in a spot of sun. sated. eyes flutter and crack open, dark with molten heat for how large his pupils are, panting through his nose and sucking on Itachi's swollen bottom lip in relish. ]
itachi running away, the life and story
He didn’t believe he would come from only this. That initial awareness of hot, sticky dampness against his crotch is mistakenly believed to belong to Guanshan, until he realizes his cock is soft, and the wetness is smeared beneath his own waistband, saturating already dark fabric. It’s stunning—and likely a consequence of the fact that Synchrony has betrayed him after all, linking himself to the sieve of Guanshan’s pleasure spilling out at the seams. He can feel the mutual pulses of bliss and contentment, that gauzy sensation from the tether of their gems aglow, green on lilac, unintentional. It seems that in this act he’s far less in control of himself than expected. It’s become a learned pattern; he wasn’t careful enough.
Guanshan’s weight grows heavy, stretched on top of him like an animal that’s claimed its place to sleep. He first begins by clearing his mind in cold reality. Easier to find in the aftermath, harder when joined to Guanshan’s sated web of emotion—he accomplishes it by sitting up and easing that lean, lanky figure onto the sand at his side. Extricating himself into the sobering chill of physical solitude. Looking away from those blown pupils, that slack expression, a mouth kissed red, the vivid cuts on bare flesh.
Itachi leans away, fingers hunting the kunai from the sand to be repocketed. And he’s up on grounded feet. The shadows around his eyes are more noticeable in the fall of firelight on his body from the campfire, although it has begun to die into untended embers.
He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t look back, walking away with all the composure of a man chipped to pieces now scrambling to put himself together again after narrow escape.]