Chapter Text
The thing about Akihito was that he was shy. He was painfully shy. He was the kind of shy that prompted cold sweats when there was any kind of public speaking involved. Every time he met a new person, his hands got so wet and clammy he would fake a cold to avoid having to shake their hand. He was the kind of shy that prompted him to burst out in a bright red flush that extended from the roots of his golden blond hair down to the peachfuzz on the back of his neck anytime anyone unexpectedly turned their attention towards him.
Middle school was a misery. High school was worse.
But he made it through.
And he made some good friends to boot.
Of course, those he met in kindergarten. Akihito had been sitting in the corner, playing with the velcro on his new red sneakers because he was too timid to grab one of the toys, because he was afraid one of the other children might want it and ask him for it. Kou sat down next to him with two plastic dinosaurs. He kept the T-Rex and he gave Akihito the Brontosaurus and they walked them on the windowsill and pretended Mrs. T’s plants were a prehistoric jungle. He began talking at an almost rapid fire pace and Akihito quickly realized he didn’t actually expect an answer, but that was alright. He was just happy someone wanted to talk to him and Kou was delighted to have a captive audience for the nonstop verbal diarrhea that drove his mother to drink.
A few minutes later another little boy named Takato joined them. He had found a Stegosaurus in another toy box and took exception to the fact that Kou was pinching leaves and feeding them to his T-rex and felt the need to lecture him about the dietary preferences of carnivores. Kou got angry and called him a poopyhead and Akihito finally piped up and explained that Kou’s T-rex was a vegetarian T-rex. That Takato seemed to be able to accept, because his crazy aunt Chiyo was a vegetarian and she always ate miso soup when his mom made teriyaki chicken.
From that point, the three of them were inseparable. If Takato and Kou were the bread in their friendship sandwich, Akihito was the PB&J that kept them together. Because you see, thats the thing about shy people. Their calm, quiet energy may not be noticed right away, but it helps everyone around them. Hot-tempered, easily angered, skeptical Takato and flamboyant, loud mouthed, overly optimistic Kou would have been like oil and water if they had been by themselves. Akihito was the emulsifier that allowed them to mix. He was the one who said the least, but he watched and he listened and he always knew just the right thing to say to make them smile and shake hands again.
His mother always encouraged him, saying he would eventually overcome his shyness, that he would outgrow it. When he was younger, Akihito hoped it was true. He waited for the day when he would suddenly be able to move through a room of strangers, shaking hands and introducing himself and making small talk easily and comfortably, the way he saw Kou do so often. He longed for the day he would walk up to someone he was attracted to and just start a conversation with them and not want to vomit in fear at the thought.
It never happened.
Over time he came to realize he wasn’t shy in the way most people were, it wasn’t that he didn’t like himself or that he didn’t have confidence. He did, in the right circumstances and the right environment and if he had something important to say. The thing was, he didn’t have important things to say all the time and he didn’t enjoy small-talk. He didn’t enjoy gossip, talking to people about other people and he didn’t watch TV, he wasn’t into sports and what did that leave? Religion, politics and the weather. Nope, nope and hell- nope. Overall, talking to strangers just exhausted him. Trying to keep up with what they were saying and remember it and then think of something to say back to them that would be both interesting and show that he had paid attention…. Guh. Exhausting.
What Akihito DID enjoy, was being by himself. Perhaps it made him a bit of a sociopath, or maybe a touch misanthropic, but the times he liked the best were when he was alone. Just him, himself and a good book. There were people that might have been afraid to go to the movies or out to dinner by themselves, but not Akihito. He was secure enough in himself that it didn’t matter to him what others thought. He loved to go to the park, museums, shopping and the waterfront. He made time for the people he loved, lunch with his mother and beers and darts or videogame nights with Kou and Takato, but for the most part, he was a loner. And he was ok with that. He was happy alone and even though society said that was weird and that there was something wrong with him, he really honestly was HAPPY. All by himself. He loved his job as an at-home software programmer/debugger and his hobby as an amateur photographer. He loved his teeny apartment and he loved his plants and he loved his little balcony overlooking the park. Well, it was technically a park, but had somehow become the hotel of choice for the homeless. Akihito didn’t live in the nicest part of town. He didn’t make a lot of money. Sometimes it was a stretch to make ends meet and he had to live on ramen and green onions, but overall, he considered himself to be pretty successful. There was only one problem in Akihito’s world.
Sex.
He had never had it. He had never even come CLOSE to having it. He was a twenty three year old virgin. And he hated that. He was content with everything else in his life but that one fact just made him feel utterly pathetic. It was like having straight A’s and then failing gym class. Painting a wall white and leaving a dirty fingerprint in the middle. Running a race and falling on your face at the finish line. It overruled all the other good things.
Akihito wanted to change it. He just didn’t know how. He was rather attractive, if he did say so himself, but the types who seemed to hit on him never appealed to him. And the types he wanted to hit on well…. that wasn’t going to happen. He had conquered his shyness with regular people for the most part just fine. He could go to a party and make small talk and introduce himself to strangers. He didn’t enjoy it, but he could do it, unless that person was attractive to him. If poor Akihito was attracted to said stranger, he reverted to his fourth grade self; bumbling, fumbling and falling all over himself like a social reject. He never failed to say just exactly the worst thing and then stuttered and clammed up and always, always ended up feeling like a complete and utter fool.
It was even worse because Akihito was gay. He had known he was gay ever since he went to Kou’s third grade birthday party at the pool and Takato stole Mutou’s swimtrunks and the other boy had run naked around the pool trying to get them back. Mutou had been a bit of an early bloomer and watching the other boy’s larger than average cock and just barely fuzzy testicles bounce between his legs as he ran had turned ten year old Akihito on like nothing else ever had before. It only got worse in high school as his troll of a teenage cock utterly ignored the girls in their short skirts and barely there tops and then responded immediately, rising like a really persistent and obnoxious flagpole every time he walked into the boy’s locker room, forcing him to hide in the showers until everyone was done changing and thereby ensuring he was always late to PE and always had to run extra laps. So he pretty much knew he was gay.
And gay guys were supposed to be funny and cool, flamboyant and suave and up for anything and Akihito was absolutely none of those things and he wasn’t going to try to be something he wasn’t.
And so, he was horny. A miserably horny twenty three year old virgin.
Across town there was another man who was miserably horny as well.
Thirty four year old Asami Ryuichi was Akihito’s opposite in almost every way, except one. But it was the most important one. He also preferred to be by himself. He was tall, rich and strikingly handsome, so of course, he wasn’t called shy but rather ‘introverted’. The tall dark and silent type. Silent mostly because he didn’t have anything to say. Idle talk irritated the shit out of him. He was the type who felt if you didn’t have something important to say, it was best not to say anything at all. Silence to Asami was gold.
He was an open misanthrope and a complete sociopath and was wholly unashamed of it. People were, for the most part, utterly boring to him. He would rather staple his tongue to the desk than try and make small talk about Aiko...Aika… Akiko?... whatever her name was’s new baby boy and the utterly amazing fact that he could now crawl, burble unintelligibly and shit his own pants. Asami’s idea of hell was to get cornered in his office by a chatty business partner that would not shut up and no foreseeable escape plan.
He paid his personal assistant Kirishima extra to recognize the ‘talkers’ and extract him from such situations. It was like Saving Private Ryan, where he was Private Ryan, Kirishima was Tom Hanks and extroverts were the Nazis.
Damned extroverts.
He loved his life, just as it was. He was happy alone. He loved coming home to his delightfully empty, deliciously quiet penthouse where, rather than be attacked immediately by someone wanting to know all about his day and what he did and who he saw and blahblahblahblah… no. It was silent. And he could finally, finally rest and relax and be at peace with himself. He was not ashamed to admit that he liked his own company better than anyone else’s. He ate what he wanted, worked out in peace, read his newspaper and recharged for the next day, where he would go to work and smile and talk to clients and business partners all day, making idle conversation with a charming, fake smile he had mastered so well. It was a challenge to go against his own introverted nature, but he loved his company and his job as CEO required him to interact with people all day long and therefore he had mastered the art of social conversation out of necessity.
The problem was, the idea of doing that when he was not at work just seemed utterly exhausting. Essentially, like MORE work. Dating? Taking someone he didn’t know out for dinner and drinks and trying to judge how long he needed to listen to their inane blathering before it was socially acceptable for him to ask if he could put his dick somewhere inside them… that, well that was NOT his idea of a good time. Plus with the sex came the inevitable phone calls and ‘why didn't you call me?’ and ‘why don’t you like me?’ and his best attempts to explain that it wasn’t that he didn’t like her it was that he didn't particularly like anybody and that he wasn't interested in a relationship right now. Or ever. And of course then the woman would be upset and then drama ensued. And since Asami’s sexuality was a bit like a well oiled weathervane, and swung both ways depending on the direction of the wind, he soon found out that gay men were just as bad as women, and sometimes even worse. So dating was out and that pretty much left prostitutes and call-girls and Asami quite frankly hadn’t gotten quite that desperate. Yet.
But he was getting there.
It had been six months since he had last gotten laid and he was bloody well nearing the end of his rope. Another six months of this dry spell and he might just hang himself with it.
He enjoyed porn, like any man, loved seeing pretty little twinks getting ploughed by large muscular men like himself and begging so sweetly for more. He liked some of the fetish sites too, innocent teens calling their lovers Daddy and getting spanked on their round naughty bottoms. He liked bondage sites too but had a particular affinity for cam-boy websites. It was an anonymous way of expressing his need to control and dominate his partner in bed, in a way he just couldn’t do in real life. He enjoyed logging in under his screen name ‘SugarDaddy34’ and would pay, sometimes exorbitant amounts of money, to get to tell the boys on screen what to do and how to do it. Play with themselves, play with their toys… it was exciting at first, but in truth, it all got a little boring after a while. They gave him fake names and fake smiles and it was perfectly obvious after a time that they were faking their enjoyment and their reactions to him. He wanted something a little more intimate. A little more real. A little more…. something.
Asami sighed and logged off. Not tonight.
He went to sleep horny and frustrated that night and so did Akihito.
The next morning Asami woke and went to work as he always did.
Akihito woke and logged onto his computer to see what projects he had been assigned and found an email from his boss containing the one thing no employee ever wants to see. He was being laid off. Budget cuts at the software company and the first to go were all of the contracted programmers that worked from home.
He took a deep breath to keep from panicking.
There was a small severance package offered and he had a bit of savings to tide him over. He could get through a month, maybe two on it before he would be in trouble. He just had to start looking for another job right away is all.
He immediately began to search all of the websites, but there was nothing listed. What if nothing got listed? He took another deep breath. He could find work. He would find work. Maybe not programming, at least not right away, but something. Maybe in the IT department at a company or… well heck he could always be a server again. And he did have a few photography jobs coming up, there was a wedding.
Akihito took the rest of the day to polish his resume and post it on every website he could find. He submitted to every job listing that he was even remotely qualified and then also uploaded his photography portfolio to several websites. And then he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Everyday he looked for postings and there were none. And everyday he sent his resume out, even walking and hand delivering it to the jobs he really wanted, but he never got a response other than a few polite “I’m sorry but we are not hiring at the moment’ courtesy letters. Which were a nice sentiment, but the reality of hopefully opening them only to have those hopes dashed time and time again was really quite discouraging. He’d rather they hadn’t sent anything at all.
Weeks passed, and then a month and that was when Akihito began to truly get desperate.
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This one is for all my introverts out there.
You get it.
