Chapter Text
It had been raining for three days straight, the kind of heavy, relentless downpour that turned the entire city into a blurred, gray static. Jo’s sneakers were soaked completely through by the time they reached Yuma’s apartment building. It was a cheap, rundown brick complex on the edge of town, with a lingering smell of damp concrete and a flickering hallway light that buzzed like an angry wasp.
Yuma hadn't said much on the walk up the three flights of stairs. He had just kept his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his oversized, frayed black denim jacket, his shoulders hunched defensively against the cold like a stray cat.
He pulled a small brass key from his pocket and slid it into the lock. Click. Then a second deadbolt. Click. It was a heavy security measure for a crappy one-bedroom apartment but the way Yuma’s tense shoulders finally dropped as the heavy locks engaged told Jo he was trying to keep out a lot more than just the rain.
When Yuma pushed the front door open, the apartment completely swallowed them. Welcomed by a thick, stale air that smelled faintly of old cigarette smoke and the kind of biting cold that meant the heater hadn't been turned on in weeks.
There was no hum of a refrigerator, no ticking clock just a hollow, ringing void. It wasn't a peaceful quiet; it was the heavy, suffocating emptiness of a place completely devoid of life, making it painfully obvious that Yuma was the only breathing thing that ever crossed this threshold.
"Take your shoes off," Yuma muttered, shaking the rain out of his dark hair.
Jo left his wet converse neatly by the door besides where Yuma left his big chunky boots. The apartment was impossibly small, feeling less like a home and more like a bunker built for one. The floor was an absolute minefield of junk. Seeking the only clear surface in the cramped space, Jo carefully made his way to the large mattress resting on a low wooden frame in the corner and sat down.
As soon as his weight settled, the surface beneath him gave way in a strange, rolling motion. Jo’s core instinctively tightened, his hands shooting out to the sides to brace himself against the sudden instability. The mattress wasn't just soft; it felt almost alive, undulating beneath him with a heavy, unnatural shift that completely threw off his balance.
"So... yeah. That's a waterbed," Yuma said, a soft,raspy laugh escaping him.
Jo shifted his weight cautiously, trying to find a stable center. The heavy, unsettling slosh of the water inside echoed loudly in the otherwise painfully quiet room, making him feel almost seasick. He looked down at Yuma, who was already sprawling out on the floor right in the middle of the mess, completely unfazed by the damp chill of the room, surrounded by a fortress of cracked jewel cases.
Yuma pulled his phone from his pocket, the screen cracked in three different places. "You hungry? I can order something. Pretty sure there's a cheap ramen place a few blocks down that delivers in this weather."
Jo didn't even hesitate. "No, I'm good. I ate right before I came."
Yuma shrugged indifferently, tossing the phone onto the floorboards. "I swear I never see you eat anywhere outside, your mom must cook some serious gourmet shit at home for you to always skip the junk food."
Jo forced his face to remain completely neutral, offering a small, polite smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah. Something like that."
A sudden, sharp cramp twisted in his empty stomach, accompanied by a brief flash of nausea. Jo swallowed dryly, quickly shoving his slightly trembling hands deep into the pockets of his oversized sweater before Yuma could notice anything.
Desperate to shift the attention away from himself, Jo gestured to the plastic sea on the floor. "What are all these?" he asked.
"I score most of these old albums second-hand off Mercari," Yuma continued, picking up a disc. He gestured vaguely toward the huge CD player. "But I actually got the player off this local marketplace app. The lady who sold it was moving into a nursing home. Husband passed away a couple years ago. She just... didn't want the memories taking up space anymore, I guess. She even threw in three Beatles albums. I figured you'd be into that."
It made sense, in a twisted way. Yuma had a habit of collecting things and people that felt a little broken or left behind.
Jo watched him for a moment before letting his eyes wander. The room was a visual representation of Yuma’s beautiful but, aggressively chaotic mind. The only illumination came from a bedside lamp smothered under a faded, graphic t-shirt, casting a bruised, muted red glow across the walls. Jo stared at it for a long moment, his fingers twitching with the urge to pull the fabric off before it became a fire hazard. But he forced himself to look away, leaving it alone. This was Yuma’s world; Jo was just a guest .
In the far corner, a forgotten lava lamp bubbled sluggishly, throwing slow, hypnotic shadows over a cheap floor mirror leaning against the wall. The space around the glass was littered with copies of old 2000s Japanese rock magazines. Several were left open on the floor, displaying pages of androgynous musicians with heavy, dark makeup and messy hair.
Jo’s eyes lingered on the open pages, and a quiet realization suddenly clicked in his head. He could perfectly picture Yuma sitting cross-legged in front of that glass for hours, staring intensely at those magazines, painstakingly figuring out how to smudge his own eyeliner just right so it looked like he didn't care at all.
Next to the door sat the bulky, vintage CD player Yuma had mentioned, its massive, dented speakers taking up space. Resting unsecured on top of one was a crushed beer can overflowing with cigarette butts, sitting right next to a cheap lighter and a half-empty pack.
"Why do you collect all these CDs, anyway?" Jo asked, eyeing the plastic sea. "Half of them you don't even have the patience to listen to."
"Look, there's even Hikaru Utada. You love their songs," Yuma deflected smoothly, tossing a jewel case up to Jo.
Jo caught it effortlessly, staring at the cover art. He noticed the dodge, the way Yuma’s eyes flicked away, but he let it slide.
"I've even got some Madonna in here," Yuma muttered, his fingers idly tracing the edges of a different case, organizing the clutter just to keep his hands busy.
"I thought you hated pop music?" Jo challenged gently. He set the Utada album down on the undulating mattress beside him. "You said it sounded like fake happiness."
Yuma didn't answer right away. His fingers, which had been flipping through the plastic cases with a rhythmic click-clack, suddenly stilled. The abrupt silence in the room felt heavy, almost suffocating. He kept his eyes glued to the faded cover of the Madonna album. His thumb absentmindedly traced the jagged, cracked corner of the plastic case, over and over, like he was tracing an old scar. The playful, chaotic energy completely drained out of his posture, leaving behind a boy who suddenly looked incredibly small, hollowed out by whatever memory just hit him.
He stared at the cover for a long beat, his jaw clenching tight, before he let the CD slip from his fingers. He didn't toss it; he just let it drop onto the pile, like the fragile plastic had suddenly become entirely too heavy to hold.
"I do," he muttered, the words scraping out of his throat, raw and defensive.
Jo noticed the shift immediately. He realized he had just stepped blindly onto a landmine. "Then... why keep it?" he asked, his voice softening into something much gentler.
Yuma’s shoulders caved in, his spine curving as if shielding himself from an invisible blow. He shot a brief, exhausted glance at Jo. In the dim, bruised red light, his dark eyes looked painfully old and impossibly tired.
"They were my mom's," he said. His voice didn't just drop to a whisper; it cracked, fragile and barely there. He pulled his knees up slightly towards his chest, instinctively creating a physical barrier between himself and the rest of the room.
His gaze drifted away from Jo, fixing emptily onto a torn, peeling band poster on the wall, but it was obvious he wasn't really seeing it. "She used to blast this in the car when I was little," he mumbled, his voice dropping so low Jo had to lean in to hear him over the hum of the bubbling lava lamp. "She was... fun, back then. Singing at the top of her lungs, ignoring the speed limit, laughing until she couldn't breathe."
Yuma swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. A bitter, self-deprecating edge bled into his tone. "It’s like physical proof that there was a version of her that actually liked being alive. Before everything went to shit and she turned into... whoever the hell she is now."
He reached out and mindlessly pushed the Madonna CD a few inches further away from him, like being too close to it physically hurt.
"Listening to it makes me sick to my stomach," Yuma whispered, shrinking further into his oversized sweater. He let out a shaky, broken sigh, shutting his eyes for a brief second as if trying to lock the memories back in a box. "But throwing it away feels like erasing the last good piece of her I have left, so... I don't know." He dragged a hand down his face, completely exhausted. "I just... I don't want to talk about her."
The seasick feeling from the bed was getting to be too much or maybe it was the heavy, suffocating tension suddenly anchoring the room. Jo stood up. The floorboards creaked as he moved to sit on the floor next to Yuma. The space between them was a landmine of debris: two oversized hoodies that smelled faintly of nicotine and rain, a frayed black denim jacket, and a scattering of obscure Japanese rock albums.
Jo reached over, sweeping the pile of heavy clothes onto the waterbed to clear the physical space between them.
"Yuma... you know you can talk to me, right?" Jo pressed, his voice dropping to a softer, more intimate register.
Yuma refused to meet his gaze, staring intensely at the bruised skin over his own knuckles. "I can't," he choked out, a bitter, defensive edge creeping back into his tone. "I can't talk about my family with you, Jo. You just wouldn't get it."
He dragged his hands down his face in frustration and slumped backward onto the floor. As he hit the hard wood, his oversized, messy sweater rode up, pooling around his lower ribs. A sliver of pale skin was suddenly exposed in the dim light, revealing the dark, jagged lines of a tattoo inked right on the left side of his stomach.
Jo’s eyes darted down instinctively. A sudden, sharp jolt of heat hit his chest a deeply inappropriate spike of arousal at the sight of that bare skin and dark ink. But almost instantly, a suffocating wave of guilt crashed over him. Yuma was literally breaking down in front of him, entirely vulnerable, entirely broken, and Jo felt like an absolute piece of shit for getting turned on by it. He quickly dragged his eyes back up to Yuma's face, swallowing hard to force the guilt and the heat back down.
He couldn't argue with what Yuma had said. Jo grew up with loud, happy Sunday dinners, parents who asked about his day, and a house that always felt like a safe haven. He had absolutely no idea what it was like to survive in a house that felt like a war zone.
He watched as Yuma lay there, hiding behind his hands, looking entirely too fragile. Gently, Jo laid down on the floor beside him, shifting through the scattered CDs until their faces were mere inches apart. He reached out, his warm fingers gently wrapping around Yuma's cold wrists, slowly pulling his hands away from his face.
"Hey..." Jo whispered, the word hanging in the incense-laced air.
Yuma looked up, his dark eyes wide, vulnerable, and completely exhausted.
"I'm sorry," Jo said softly, his thumb lightly brushing the inside of Yuma's wrist. "You're right. It's hard for me to understand but i will listen. I don't need to get it to be here for you. I just want to—"
He didn't get to finish.
The noise in Yuma's head, screaming memories, the suffocating overthinking loops was deafening. He desperately needed a distraction. He needed to consume the calm, warm light radiating from the boy next to him.
With a sudden, explosive surge of energy, Yuma lunged. His right hand slammed down hard onto the floorboards to brace his weight, coming down violently onto the pile of CDs. The plastic cases shattered sharply under his palm, a jagged edge slicing deeply right across the side of his hand.
Yuma didn't even flinch. His other hand tangled fiercely into the hair at the nape of Jo's neck, pulling him in, throwing his leg over Jo’s hip to pin him to the floor. Their lips crashed together with a feverish heat, igniting that guilty spark in Jo into a full-blown forest fire. Jo gasped, his hands instinctively flying up to wrap around Yuma's waist, his fingers brushing against the bare skin of Yuma's tattooed stomach.
But then, the sharp, metallic scent of copper cut through the dust and stale nicotine. Jo felt a warm, wet streak smear against his jawline where Yuma was holding him.
Jo’s eyes snapped open. He shoved Yuma back slightly, breaking the kiss, his chest heaving. "Yuma, wait- stop," Jo panicked, his voice breathless. He hated blood; the mere sight of it always made his stomach churn with cold anxiety. He grabbed Yuma's right wrist, holding his hand up between them. A thin line of dark red was welling up along the side of Yuma's palm, dripping down his skin. "You're bleeding."
Yuma just stared at the cut, his dark eyes glazed over, completely numb to the pain. He didn't care. He just wanted the noise to stop, and Jo's panic was ruining the distraction.
Without breaking eye contact, Yuma brought his own injured hand to his mouth. With a feral, almost impatient energy, he dragged his tongue slowly over the cut, licking his own blood right off his skin. But he didn't stop there. His heavy, dilated eyes dropped to the warm streak of red he had just smeared across Jo's jawline.
Before Jo could even blink, Yuma leaned in closer. The hot, ragged puff of his breath hit Jo's neck just a second before Yuma's tongue slowly and deliberately dragged against Jo's jaw, licking the blood right off his skin.
Jo's entire body shuddered at the wet, metallic intimacy. Yuma didn't give him a second to recover. He dropped his injured hand, grabbed the collar of Jo's shirt, and crashed his mouth back down onto Jo's, kissing him even harder than before. He kissed him like he was starving, his tongue parting Jo's lips with a desperate, heated urgency, leaving a faint, sharp taste of copper between them. It was messy, breathless, and incredibly deep.
When they finally broke apart, they were both gasping for air. Yuma didn’t pull away completely; his body just went slack. He let his forehead drop heavily against Jo's shoulder, burying his face in the crook of his neck. His bleeding hand rested limply on the floorboards beside Jo's head.
Jo laid frozen beneath him, staring up at the ceiling where the red shadows danced.
Growing up, Jo had watched too many romantic comedies. He had a very specific, carefully constructed idea of what his first kiss would be like. It was supposed to be soft. It was supposed to happen under a gentle streetlamp in the rain, or maybe during a perfectly timed pause in a conversation. There was supposed to be a tilt of the head, a swell of indie-pop music, and the sweet, clean taste of mint or cherry chapstick.
It definitely wasn't supposed to taste like copper.
It wasn't supposed to happen on a hard wooden floor, with a shattered Visual Kei CD digging into his shoulder blade, in a claustrophobic room that smelled heavily of sandalwood and old paper. And the guy he kissed definitely wasn't supposed to lick his own blood off Jo's face like a stray, feral animal before practically drowning him in it.
This was his first kiss. It was violent, terrifying, steeped in guilt, and completely, undeniably unhinged.
The room fell quiet again, save for the low bubbling of the lava lamp and the ragged sound of Yuma catching his breath against Jo's skin. The spot on his jaw where Yuma had licked him felt like it was burning, but as Jo felt the erratic, broken shivering of Yuma's spine slowly start to settle, he realized something.
He didn't care.
The movies had it all wrong anyway. He didn't move an inch. He just adjusted his grip, his thumb lightly stroking the edge of the tattoo on Yuma's stomach, anchoring him to the real world, and letting him hide there in the quiet mess of his room for as long as he needed.