Work Text:
It is so sudden that Ogata yanks himself off the futon before he can even come back to full consciousness. One moment he’s dozing off — finally unaware of himself after an honest day’s work — and the next he’s hurled into his wakeful state, heart scared into a frenzied beat. Such is the pain that pierces his empty socket, without even the meager courtesy of announcing itself first. There have been no signs during the previous hours, no discomfort that could foreshadow a night like this. And now, unable to breath, he squeezes his eyes — or whatever’s left of them — shut so tight he might never open them again. The world has rarely been this dark.
And even in the absence of light, right beside him, he feels that Sugimoto is instantly alert. Two years ago, if he fell out of his soldier sleep like that, he would have thought of a sneak attack and stabbed Ogata back to rest with his bayonet; tonight, he offers the comfort of a soothing hand, gentle on his lover’s back, and a whispered question soon to follow. The warmth spreading from that palm feels distant now, as if Ogata’s material form only exists in the concentrated, excruciating radius of a missing eye. Face buried in his hands, his fingers curl up nervously against his brow, unable to reach below, into his skull, and rip out the agony that folds him in half. Only a beggar would keep their head hung so low. He forces himself to open his eyes in the hope that gravity will make the curse drip out of him, little by little, but it doesn’t.
Pain is nothing new. Ogata’s tolerance for it has always been unnaturally high, as long as he did everything in his power to warrant its coming. As long as he knew he deserved the punishment, he welcomed it, solicited it even. It tasted like victory then. What makes it unbearable now is how — against what his own sense of guilt had prompted him to do on the roof of that train — he’d believed the promises of Asirpa’s light, and let Sugimoto decide his fate with an obstinate dash that made his rifle shoot in the air. The ghost of Yuusaku had disappeared the moment Ogata had resolved not to die, and rarely came back to haunt him ever since.
His newfound conscience crucifies him still but, despite it all, Ogata has been trying . For he owes it to these people who took it upon themselves to teach him how to be human. And so he has permitted himself to go where they guided him, to nestle into some resemblance of a new start. His rifle only ever fires at the animals they eat and whose pelt they sell now. On the best days he’s even happy about this chance to rekindle bonds he had deemed beyond repair and, in so doing, to earn the gift of a quiet life with Sugimoto at the kotan. There, community and purpose reside not in military hierarchy, but in nurturing the cycle of nature.
When the healing is so gratuitously and viciously disrupted, however, he understands there is no fooling the memory written in his body. Its parts are forever doomed to rattle with the echo of all the shots he took at men who had not seen him coming. Playing nice, what a joke. As if acting like a good boy could ever make him one. He should have known better. You can’t wipe clean a tar-black heart. Its abysmal debt must be repaid in pain; so the gods will today, tomorrow, and the day after that.
Army doctors had often talked about similar cases. Phantom pain, they’d call it, and yet it is all but inconsistent. It’s a spike splitting his thoughts in two, bastard of a torture severe enough to drive him mad, but not enough for him to pass out in bliss. Exhausted by the effort to accept that it resides in him, Ogata lowers his eyelids again. That changes nothing. He wears through a deeper breath, and his stooped figure starts shaking with mute, violent sobs. Then, candlelight nibbles at the darkness in which he sits, followed by the sounds of Sugimoto moving through their domestic space in a haste. He rejoins Ogata’s side with uncompromising care, his presence alone an invite to straighten and obey. One hand is quick to cup Ogata’s face while the other one’s busy caressing too tense knuckles. Ogata looks briefly, only to realize he can’t bear to keep his one eye on Sugimoto and see those handsome features strained with worry. He’d rather stay in the dark, and spare himself at least that additional load of guilt. There’s just so much his body can contain.
Shortly after, Sugimoto brings to his mouth a spoonful of unpleasant smell. “Open up.” he says, not to command but simply to forewarn. As Ogata gulps the medicine down, he finds it ironic that while Sugimoto was delicate in parting his lips further and wiping them clean afterwards, the laudanum’s bitter taste does not match the courtesy at all. Ogata accepts that too as he lays down all curled up, his head in Sugimoto’s lap.
The medicine seeps in slower than his nerve endings need, but the consolation Sugimoto provides by massaging soft circles onto his scalp is all Ogata dares being grateful for. The man’s lack of pliancy makes it quite impossible for Ogata to be torn between rejecting and basking in his attentions. After all they’ve been through, Sugimoto is finally capable of forcing onto him the gentleness Ogata used to be able to refuse when their attraction first sparked. It feels good is all he knows, so he stopped fighting it.
The oil lamp burns steady, its glow painting the interior of the cise a warmer color. Their cise. Their home . Shadows sway and swell as the flame does, until one of them starts resembling an unwelcome shape. Yuusaku’s audacity to stand there next to his rifle, as if needed, chafes Ogata’s thin comfort. Desperate to rupture his brother’s dutiful stance in the corner, he hisses: “I know there’s no fixing me. Leave me alone. Please just leave me alone.”
It’s Sugimoto who answers though, in a slightly aggravated tone. “Don’t be dense, I’m not going anywhere.”
Ogata blinks, and Yuusaku is no more. Shifting on his back to look up at Sugimoto, he speaks to him then, the only one left to soak up his frustration. “You’re insufferable.” he says, devoid of spite to the point of sounding completely neutral. “All this love to give and you chose to waste it on me.”
Sugimoto frowns and his fingers revoke their magic. Ogata thinks he looks a bit funny upside down, but most of all stupidly, impossibly charming without even meaning to be. “No one could ever hate you more than I did.” There is no snark to the truth as Sugimoto spills it, only a special kind of vulnerability that is most precious to fucked up people like the two of them. “Persevering to this day in trying to outdo me is pointless. Grant yourself some rest from your conscience now, you’ve suffered enough.”
With a sigh, Ogata closes his eyes. Here with Sugimoto, he can allow himself to be bare, down to the weaknesses he has never admitted to before. “Have I? Maybe this is exactly the problem.” He sounds rueful, but strives to keep his voice from trembling with self-pity. He can, must , be a man and admit his faults are irredeemable. “There is no limit to how much suffering I deserve to endure. Convincing myself of the opposite is a delusion I’m sick of.”
Sugimoto’s thumb moves to trace the lower edge of Ogata’s orbital bone, thick lashes brushing against it ever so lightly. He does it again, his caress lingering on the thinnest skin that rests on bone. “You deserved that eye tore out. I would do it again, to save your life and hers . And hell, what do I know, maybe you do deserve endless suffering for the lives you took. But then, so do I? I refuse to spend the rest of my life in misery. I’d rather think we can move on, together, for the time we’ve got left.”
“Your reasons were never-”
“Selfish? They were. You know I exchanged my conscience for food and a roof over my head.” Sugimoto hints at the time he confided to him how he ended up enlisting. An early, unexpected confession that Ogata never taunted him about. “What’s more selfish than renouncing my goodness in order to stay alive? How is my life more deserving to continue than all those russians’ I took? What’s worse is that the more I killed, the more powerful I felt. All that blood, the viciousness I was capable of… I can’t bring back the man I was before, but that doesn’t mean healing is impossible. It is a conscious choice to refuse violence every day until my last.”
Ogata smiles. “Unless I ask.” Swathed by the opium-induced haze, he runs his hands down his body, fingers restoring heat to all the little bruises that fade underneath his night garments.
“Unless you ask.” Sugimoto agrees.
Ogata keeps blinking, more and more lazily until the dark embraces his temples. Who would have known it could be so comforting when you’re not alone in it. As the pain subsides, the medicine also slows his reasoning down. Talking is a task he has to commit to. “I’m tired.”
“Good, the medicine’s working. Sleep.” Sugimoto leans over to plant a chaste kiss on his mouth that leaves Ogata needing more.
Having his reflexes lagged, Ogata finds that Sugimoto slips out of his reach just one tad bit too fast. “I have more fun staying up arguing with you.” he teases, resorting to a different strategy to bring him back down toward his lips. “What you talked about is not selfishness, it’s survival.”
Victory takes the form of Sugimoto’s hands cradling his throat and tilting his head back for better access. Ogata welcomes the soft sweep of his tongue against his own, in a kiss that finally grants him the time to dip his fingers into Sugimoto’s unruly hair.
His dampened lips quiver gently as Sugimoto utters against them. “I was selfish when I decided to protect Asirpa because, if I could shield her innocence, I thought I could save my soul as well. I was prioritizing myself over her growth.” he admits, stealing yet another kiss Ogata would never deny him. “And I was also selfish when I kept wanting you after you ran from me twice , for the distance you put between us meant nothing to me. I wouldn’t have let go if you begged me for it. Not even death had the right to pry you from me.” Ogata believes him. Down to his core he believes, and savors, the darkest side of Sugimoto’s loyalty. “I am selfish now too.”
Ogata follows where Sugimoto leads him, and finds himself repositioned in a flurry of kisses and eager touches that hold him there, down to earth, down to life. Sugimoto’s taste already dissolved the medicinal bitterness that lingered in his mouth. It’s all him, all them now.
Sugimoto’s arms, like temple pillars, enclose Ogata in sanctity. “I’m not letting you flee from me again.” he says, his words the olibanum fumes Ogata breathes in. “I will chase you down wherever you go, you understand? So don’t go. Just save yourself the struggle. Don’t go.”
Despite the warm, fuzzy feeling that steers his mind towards sleepiness, Ogata understands that Sugimoto refers not to some physical place at the end of the world, but somewhere else. A far more sinister, desolate destination to enter. Ogata has been on the brink of falling into it all his life, and stared at its bottomless pit long enough to know it well. It’s where his mother had gone, while his younger self had been too powerless a creature to bring her back.
The intensity of Sugimoto’s eyes drills a profound ache inside him. ‘May I be truly and utterly damned the day I bid them farewell.’ Ogata swears to himself, a glaze of tears lacquering his vision. He doesn’t want to be that type of fool ever again and he speaks it by holding the man he loves tight, the hollow of his neck as safe as nothing else could be.
When Sugimoto’s lips travel the planes of Ogata’s face, sowing grace in the furrows that pain has carved there, he knows that — deserving or not — this is a peace he will question no further. Even dozy, Ogata clings to it, and when Sugimoto seeks his mouth again he kisses back, and deep, and hard, until relaxation takes him over limb by limb and makes him tender anywhere but between his legs, where his stiffness mirrors Sugimoto’s.
“Do you know where you are?”
The question coils around Ogata’s earlobe, raising goosebumps in places he can’t even fathom.
“Under you.” he sighs, eyelids fluttering close. “ Saichi .”
“Will you let me have you?”
“Always.” he says, promises, made restless by some ungraspable anxiety that words fail him at this and every time. “Always, always.” he repeats, his mouth at Sugimoto’s neck. If the laudanum does make Ogata’s speech slurred, it also magnifies his wish to serve himself up for him, pry his own ribcage open and let that rightful fist wrap around his ticker. There and then, in blood, is how Sugimoto could finally, truly know the extent of his feelings.
As soon as the cloth girding Ogata’s waist comes undone, the yukata falls open. Sugimoto’s fingers rake his thighs, lifting the undershirt above Ogata’s hip bones. Anticipation boils under Ogata’s skin, propels him to untie the fundoshi with abandoned desire, lest Sugimoto doubts how much his narcotized wildcat yearns for him. His sex springs up in need, and Sugimoto is quick to palm its length, a caress from below as he sinks into Ogata’s mouth one last time.
“I‘m going to take care of you.” Sugimoto coos. Uncruel, he withdraws his face from Ogata’s hands only to meet his nakedness and devote himself to it, to the act of honoring the flesh offered.
Anesthetized to pain alone, Ogata would recognize the shape of Sugimoto’s hunger even if it came from beyond reality. He did so before, in dreams that would replace a habit for nightmares; but now, all too real and capable to trespass the sheer veil of intoxication that opium provides, Sugimoto sears onto him the dearest of touches, a softer variation in the shared language their bodies are apt to. He takes Ogata in mouthfuls that wet him down to the balls, and no matter how deep his sighs grow, Sugimoto stays unhurried. The generosity of Sugimoto’s tongue, oblivious to time and fixated on no spot in particular, builds up a pressure that ebbs and flows, but never leaves Ogata dry. Does he intend to love him to no end, to the point of madness precisely after offering a cure for it? Too spent to do anything but grab onto Sugimoto’s hair with his left and drool against his right hand’s knuckles, Ogata allows it, allows himself to be consumed slowly.
Caught off-guard by the sudden peaking sensation, his hips jolt upwards when Sugimoto’s lips close firmly around his cock. His moans, spells-like, summon a force in Sugimoto that he adopts to grab Ogata’s waist and pin his restless spine back down. Ogata melts, into Sugimoto’s mouth, onto their bedding — marital in purpose. He rests one foot on Sugimoto’s rippling back and, with any anguish sucked out of him, pain is so far a memory he believes it will never be able to touch him again. Only this man can, and from the back of his throat to the tip of his tongue so he does, giving Ogata’s sex what none of his previous partners had been willing to grant: permission to enjoy, to reach out towards the bliss of receiving.
“Saichi…” he calls. At once, and without a guide, their fingers find their way to tangle together.
Sugimoto’s hot exhales, after each strain, lap at Ogata’s exposed skin. The rhythm he sets is lazy, its momentum profuse. And that way, amid the most perfect state of ease, an ongoing string of pleasure, sapiently taut, keeps Ogata from drifting into slumber for the longest while. At Sugimoto’s will, he’s lulled into longing for a release that is so intimately, delicately refused, it doesn’t spare in that absence the unspeakable joy of being cared for. The measure of it, filled closer and closer to the brim with each dive of Sugimoto’s mouth, weaves itself onto Ogata’s core. From there, it pushes the purest of smiles up to a face whose sickly pallor has been replaced by the blooming of life.
Finally, by his lover’s concession, the tension in Ogata’s body sparks up so strong a warmth it sheds blinding light even under his dozed eyelids, and when he arches his lower back now Sugimoto lets him. After that prolonged, sweetest of torments had him tethered to almost there almost there without ever crossing over, to reach the crest and slam his whole self against it makes Ogata spill copiously in a fragile, desperate cry. It punches the breath right out of his lungs and, wailing in disbelief of such an immense pleasure, he’s immediately sheltered by the security of an iron grip burning his thighs. They twitch around Sugimoto who doesn’t flinch, doesn’t succumb to the spams of his own throat as he gulps down everything Ogata gives him. That beautiful, splendid mouth Ogata tries to focus his blurred vision on, as it kisses down his shaft until the ecstasy wears off.
Head thrown back, Ogata lays there in stupor, blank slate, eyes closed by exhaustion. He’s alone for just one moment that feels awfully vast, then Sugimoto’s weight is atop him again, and Ogata — pacified by his presence and the earthy scent it carries — throws his arms around his neck. With unexpected accuracy, from the box of memories hatching ajar in his head, comes back the puncture he had felt in his resolve the first time he had afforded himself the imprudence of being held by Sugimoto. After that, where had he found, at Abashiri, the foolishness to turn him down by means of bullets? It seems absurd, completely absurd now. He doesn’t recognize the person who fired the rifle from that roof.
As Sugimoto’s mouth meets his own again, Ogata licks himself off his tongue. At that, Sugimoto’s growly moan sounds playfully upset, and he makes it his mission to take back what’s been stolen by kissing Ogata deeper. In the surging waves of it, there’s no mistaking Sugimoto’s cock for anything but painfully hard, still constricted behind a piece of cloth as it was in the beginning.
Chest heaving, eyelids too tired to rise, “Use me.” Ogata whispers. The invite extended is stripped of anything debasing; whatever a man like Sugimoto does to him, could only bring cleanse. Always and regardless.
Caressed by loving hands that brush the hair off his face, Ogata senses that Sugimoto has no intention of putting his medicated body through the fatigue of a full intercourse. He’s tempted to argue that such discretion is unnecessary, that Sugimoto could take him in his sleep if he so wished, but he’s cut short by yet another kiss he discloses himself to.
In its wake, Sugimoto pushes aside the front of his fundoshi, a sigh of relief leaving his lips when his sex is free to encounter the source of its appetite. Ogata welcomes the weight, the familiar length of it, scorching hot and dripping against the joining point of his own crotch and thigh. It’s where Sugimoto glides up in search of friction, thrusting down with all his loins are capable of right now to go after it. To shift under him, Ogata gathers every little crumb of himself he’s got left. Still half-shrouded in the yukata, he turns belly-up, stubbornly fixated on at least giving Sugimoto something more, a better angle to do this from. As expected, his effort is rewarded with a compliance so urgent it paints a pleased smirk on his yamaneko face. As Sugimoto humps the curve of his ass, Ogata revels in how good it feels to be the harbor of his desire. He thinks about having Sugimoto inside him, about the last time they did that and the next they will. He imagines another hour of the day for it, maybe even another place. Another season. Then another year. The two of them over and over again, growing older and saner, in and around each other.
It almost startles him how Sugimoto seems to read his mind, and pants into his ear, “Tell me you know that we can only heal together. Tell me you know.”
Ogata tingles from the top of his scalp to the sole of his feet. He’s grateful for not being able to look at Sugimoto. If he did now, he knows he’d break his own heart at the image of him: gorgeous, enamoured in a way that is for gifted poets to say. A solitary tear rolls down his cheek at the mere intuition of it. “I know. I feel it.”