Archive of Our Own

The story of Yushi and Riku was never a straight path; it was, rather, a path built on shared silences and infinite caution. They met at a stage where both were desperately looking for a place to fit in, and in the other they found a refuge that felt as warm as it felt dangerous.

From the beginning, their relationship was marked by what was not said. Riku, with his identity protected under layers of clothing and a defensive attitude, found in Yushi someone who did not ask difficult questions. Yushi, for his part, accepted the role that seemed to be expected of him: the protector, the strong, the one who took the initiative in bed and in life. They became boyfriends almost by inertia, because the outside world was too noisy and they, together, were a comfortable murmur.

On Riku's birthday, the atmosphere was charged with vibrant joy. Riku loved that particular bar; it was a place with pink and blue neon lights, music that invited you to get lost and an energy that made him feel strangely free. He had spent an hour in front of the mirror, not out of vanity, but out of the desire to look radiant for the man he loved. Yushi, for his part, had not stopped smiling at him all night, celebrating Riku's every laugh as if it were a personal gift.

They danced for hours, with their bodies stuck together and sweat mixing in a dance of pure happiness. Riku felt invincible, loved and, finally, completely himself.

"I'm exhausted," Riku laughed, letting himself be guided by Yushi to the bar after a particularly intense song. But it's the best night of my life.

Yushi squeezed his hand, kissing his knuckles before ordering two drinks. They were immersed in their own talk, laughingly planning what they would do the rest of the weekend, when a strange presence broke the spell. A man stopped next to him, recharging at the bar with a naturalness that denoted that he knew the place- or the people in it- perfectly.

"Yushi? Is it really you?”

Riku felt how Yushi's fingers tightened on his for a fraction of a second. Yushi turned and his eyes opened with a surprise that quickly was tinged with a poorly disguised discomfort.

"Sion?" Yushi murmured, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Sion was, without a doubt, an imposing man. He had a confidence that seemed to emanate from his pores, a marked jaw and a look that scanned everything with almost predatory certainty. He was handsome, in a classic and direct way that made Riku unconsciously straighten up in his seat and adjust his jacket.

Before Yushi could catch his breath to explain who the newcomer was, Sion broke the air with a quick and sonorous phrase in impeccable Korean. Riku remained static, with his hand still brushing his boyfriend's, feeling how the frequency of the night suddenly changed.

Yushi answered almost instinctively. His lips moved with a speed and a cadence that Riku had never heard. Riku watched Yushi with a mixture of fascination and a growing alarm; his boyfriend gestured differently, moved his hands with a new energy, and although he tried to keep that mask of discomfort poorly disguised, the fluidity with which he communicated with Sion was undeniable.

Sion spoke animatedly, with a smile that never left his face and a look that kept scrutinizing Yushi, as if he was checking how much the man in front of him had changed. Yushi, for his part, nodded and answered with short but precise sentences, moving in that language with a naturalness that made Riku feel a chill. It was a part of Yushi's life that had never been deployed so hard in front of him.

Finally, after a few seconds that seemed eternal to Riku, Yushi seemed to remember that he was not alone. He cleared his throat, breaking the flow of the Korean to return to the Japanese with a voice that sounded a little louder than normal, forcing the transition.

"Sion, this is my boyfriend, Riku," Yushi said, pointing to Riku with a gesture that sought to be protective, but that felt strangely stiff. Riku, Sion is an old friend from a long time ago, from when he lived here.

Sion turned his head towards Riku slowly, almost theatrically. His eyes, dark and bright under the neon lights, stuck into him with an intensity that made Riku want to shrink. But then, Sion widened his smile. It was not a common polite smile; it was an expression loaded with overwhelming confidence, one that seemed to say that he knew exactly what place he occupied in Yushi's story.

"Nice to meet you, Riku," Sion said in Japanese with a strong but perfectly intelligible accent. “I've heard... well, I haven't heard anything, because Yushi is an expert disappearing. But it's a pleasure to meet the boy who keeps you so busy in Japan.”

Riku forced a smile, feeling his cheeks tense. Sion's kindness felt like a silk glove covering an iron hand. At that moment, the pang of anxiety he had felt at the beginning turned into a real doubt: that man was not only handsome and confident, but he possessed a key to Yushi's life that Riku did not even know existed.

After that initial scrutiny, Sion relaxed his shoulders and let out a small laugh, as if he was genuinely enjoying Yushi's confusion. He leaned forward a little on the bar, shortening the physical distance, and changed the register. Yushi flinched, opening his eyes wide, almost dropping the glass he was holding.

"Are you speaking Japanese?" Yushi asked, with a mixture of disbelief and admiration that he could not completely hide.

Sion widened his smile, showing that row of perfect teeth that seemed to shine under the pink neon of the bar. He gave Yushi a look full of a meaning that Riku could only intuit, a look that spoke of promises made in the very distant past.

"I told you I would learn, didn't I?" Sion replied, dragging the syllables a little but maintaining that playful tone. “I'm a man of my word, Yushi. It took me time, but here I am.”

Yushi was speechless for a second, scratching the back of his neck with that nervous gesture he used to do when he didn't know how to process a strong emotion. The fact that Sion had learned Yushi's language- his mother tongue- just for him, felt like a low blow to Riku's safety.

Riku watched the scene in silence, feeling how the air became heavier. It wasn't just that Sion was handsome or that he spoke Korean with Yushi; it was the effort behind that imperfect Japanese that really worried him. Riku looked at his boyfriend and saw on his face a nostalgia that made him feel, for the first time in the whole night, as if he was the one who didn’t belong at the bar of that pub.

"You do... you do speak it very well," Yushi finally managed to say, breaking the silence with a voice that sounded a little softer than Riku would have wanted.

Sion nodded self-smugly and then returned his attention to Riku, as if he had just remembered that the boy was still there, watching everything with attentive eyes.

“I hope you don't mind, Riku. Yushi and I have a lot to catch up on," Sion added, although his tone did not ask for permission, but simply reported an inevitable reality. “Work brought me to Japan, but knowing that he was here... well, it was a mandatory stop.”

Riku just nodded his head, sketching a tense smile that didn't reach his eyes. He couldn't find the right words; anything he said would feel small in front of Sion's electrical presence and Yushi's obvious upset. He settled on his stool, suddenly feeling that the jacket he had liked so much when he left home now weighed too much.

Sion, noticing that Riku had no intention of interrupting, turned his attention to Yushi with an astonishing naturalness. It was as if a switch had turned on. The conversation between them began to flow with a dizzying speed, a torrent of words that jumped from Japanese to Korean and vice versa, intertwining anecdotes that Riku could not reach.

As the clock hands moved forward, Riku's isolation became deeper. He looked sideways at his boyfriend: Yushi was leaned towards Sion, listening to him with an intensity that made him forget, at times, about the drink he had in front of him. Riku saw Yushi laugh, a laugh that sounded different, looser, motivated by internal jokes and names of people he had never heard.

Riku stopped trying to integrate. He realized that, every time he opened his mouth to say something, they were already three topics of conversation ahead. The feeling of being out of place set in his stomach like a cold stone. He remained silent, taking refuge in his own drink. He took slow sips, concentrating on the cold of the glass against his fingers and on the sweet taste of the alcohol that began to make him slightly dizzy.

By his side, the world of Yushi and Sion seemed to shine with its own light, a bubble of memories and complicity in which he had no invitation. On his own birthday, in the bar he loved so much, Riku felt like a castaway watching from the shore as the boat of his security slowly moved away, driven by the constant laughter of the man who called Yushi "old friend."

The journey in the car was, for Riku, an extension of the silent torture that had begun in the bar. The interior of the vehicle smelled of new leather and the expensive perfume of Sion, a fragrance that felt invasive in the closed space. As Sion had barely drunk, he insisted on taking them, and Yushi, with his cheeks burning by alcohol and a persistent smile, accepted without hesitation.

Yushi sat in the co-pilot's seat, and during the twenty-minute trip, the conversation didn't stop for a second. Riku, from the back seat, watched the silhouettes of both cut out against the city lights that passed at full speed. He heard the constant murmur, Yushi's soft laughter and Sion's protective tone, feeling like a package being transported out of courtesy.

When the car finally stopped in front of the building where they shared their lives, the silence of the engine off felt almost violent.

“We should go out one day, Yushi. Really," Sion said, turning to him with one hand resting on the back of the seat, ignoring Riku's presence behind. “There's a lot I haven't told you yet.”

Yushi, off guard from tiredness and drinking, nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes, of course. I'll text you,” he replied, giving him one last farewell look before getting out of the car.

Once inside the apartment, the atmosphere changed drastically. The silence of the home, which used to be a refuge, now felt loaded with unspoken words. Riku moved around the room mechanically, taking off the party clothes that had been so hard for him to choose. He put on his pajamas with slow movements, avoiding looking at Yushi, while he felt a tightness in his chest that the alcohol could not domb.

Yushi, on the other hand, seemed to be in a cloud of residual euphoria. He quickly changed and got into bed, stretching his arms towards Riku with a cuddly gesture, looking for the physical contact that he used to close all his nights.

"Riku... come here," Yushi murmured in a pasty voice, patting the mattress next to him. “I'm so tired, I’m going to go to sleep now.”

Riku lay down, but remained stiff, like a rope about to break. Yushi, noticing the lack of response and the sepulchral silence of his boyfriend, leaned on one elbow and looked at him with eyes narrowed by sleep and drunkenness, trying to focus his face under the dim light of the night lamp.

"What's wrong?" he asked with a softness that, at any other time, would have melted Riku. “You've been so quiet since we left the bar. Is something wrong with you?”

Yushi settled closer to him, letting the weight of his arm fall naturally on Riku's waist. His breath still smelled slightly of the cocktails of the night and his gaze was clouded by drowsiness, but his insistence was clear.

“Come on, Riku... Don't be like that," Yushi whispered, brushing his nose on his boyfriend's shoulder. “It's your birthday. You should be happy.”

Riku let out a trembling sigh, staring at the wall of the room that was in shadows. The lump in his throat, the one he had tried to swallow throughout the stay in Sion's car, finally gave way a little, letting out a small voice full of a doubt that he tried to disguise as simple curiosity.

"It's just that... I didn't know," Riku began, his voice barely a thread. “I didn't know you had lived so long in Korea. Not even that you spoke Korean so well. You sounded... different.”

Yushi let out a small distracted laugh, as if he was talking about something as mundane as the weather, and shrugged his shoulders under the covers.

“Ah, that... It was a few years ago, before we met. I worked on a couple of projects there and Sion helped me a lot with the language. I guess it was engraved on me," he replied naturally, closing his eyes for a moment. “But I hardly practice it anymore. It was weird to speak it again after so long.”

Riku nodded slowly, feeling that the explanation was logical and, at the same time, insufficient. He felt like a fool for thinking about it so much. He didn't want to be the boyfriend who ruined a perfect night by retroactive jealousy towards a friend from the past. He wanted to be someone easy to love, someone who didn't need constant reaffirmations.

"I understand," Riku said, closing his eyes tightly. “You're right. I'm just tired, it's alcohol. Let's go to sleep, Yushi.”

He tried to settle down to end the talk, but Yushi didn't move. On the contrary, he got up a little on the bed, forcing Riku to turn to look him in the eyes. Yushi's expression was no longer just a cuddly drunk; there was a hint of real concern, one that is born when you know someone so well that you know that their words do not match their body language.

“No, Riku. Look at me," Yushi insisted, taking his chin gently so that he wouldn't look away. “I know when you're ‘just tired’ and when you have something spinning in your head. I don't like you keeping things to yourself. Tell me what really happens. Is it because of Sion? Did it make you feel bad?”

Riku swallowed saliva, looking away to an uncertain point in the room. He didn't want to be a burden, nor did he want Yushi to think that his happiness depended on constant surveillance of his past.

"It's not that it made me feel bad," he lied softly, trying to soften the tension in his shoulders. “It's just that... I realized that there are many things about you that I don't know. I would like to know more about your past, about that time in Korea, about how you were before me.”

Yushi watched him for a few seconds, his eyes still somewhat clouded by fatigue. At the end, he let out a light sigh and dropped his head back on the pillow, downplaying it with a wave of his hand.

“It's not important, really. It's just the past, Riku," he murmured, closing his eyes while looking again for the warmth of his boyfriend's body. “Those were other times, another life. What matters is what we have now. You won't miss anything interesting, I promise you.”

Riku nodded silently, although the answer, far from calming him down, left a cold hole in his chest. "It's not important." For Yushi it was a closed stage, but for Riku it was a glass wall that separated him from the person he loved. However, he didn't want to press any more. He knew that if he insisted, he would end up looking desperate, and that was the last image he wanted to project, especially in front of the shadow of someone as sure as Sion.

“You're right. Goodnight, Yushi," Riku said in a whisper.

Yushi leaned over, looking for his lips in the darkness. It was a soft kiss, with a taste of tiredness and the familiarity of their months together.

"Happy birthday, Riku," Yushi whispered against his mouth before settling down definitively and falling deeply asleep in a matter of minutes, with the rhythmic breathing of someone who has nothing to hide.

Riku, however, remained motionless. The silence of the apartment felt heavier than ever. He heard the ticking of a distant clock and the distant sound of a car passing through the street, but his mind could not find the switch to turn off. He looked at the ceiling, reviewing every word he did not understand, every laugh of Yushi that was not provoked by him and the way Sion seemed to occupy so much space even when he was no longer present.

It took him hours to fall asleep, trapped in the silent doubt of whether the "Yushi of the present" was really the happiest version of his boyfriend, or if he was simply the only one he could meet.

Then the next morning came; with a soft light filtering through the curtains, bathing the apartment in a calm that Riku desperately wanted to believe was real. Yushi got up early to prepare breakfast and, later, a special meal that he knew Riku loved. They spent the day under a blanket, with the TV on and a movie marathon that served as the perfect excuse to not have to talk about anything deep.

During the first few hours, everything was ideal. Yushi snuggled up against him, offering him bites of food and lazy kisses on the timble. But, shortly after noon, the silence in the room began to be interrupted by the constant buzzing of a phone on the coffee table.

Yushi ignored it the first three times, but the persistence of notifications was undeniable. Riku, staring at the television screen, felt how his peripheral vision inevitably deviated towards the device every time the screen lit up. He couldn't see the messages, but he could see his boyfriend's reaction.

At one point, Yushi stretched out his arm and checked the phone. His eyebrows rose slightly and his fingers flew over the screen for a few seconds before he put it back on the table. However, his mind seemed to have left the movie. Riku noticed that Yushi no longer laughed at the same time as him, and that his eyes were lost in the emptiness of the room during the dialogues.

Yushi took it again. This time, he let out a small choked laugh, the kind of laugh that arises from a private joke.

"Who is it?" Riku asked, trying to make his voice sound casual, as if it were an unimportant question.

"Ah, it's Sion," Yushi replied without looking at him, still writing. “He is sending me photos of Coco his dog and telling me about a disaster that happened today in his office. It's an exaggeration.”

Yushi left the phone, but the distraction remained. During the rest of the afternoon, the ritual was repeated. Yushi responded from time to time, and although he was still there physically, Riku felt that his attention was being sucked by a conversation of which he was not part.

Riku began to overthink. Every time the phone vibrated, a pang of anxiety ran down his chest. He wondered how much they had to say after so many years. How much were they talking about? Why did Yushi seem more excited by a text message than by the movie they were watching together?

Slowly, Riku was immersed in his own silence. He stopped commenting on the plot, stopped looking for Yushi's hand under the blanket. He stood there, still and quiet, feeling how insecurity stole his oxygen.

When the credits of the last movie began to shoot silently on the screen, the gap between them felt wider than the sofa itself. Yushi stretched his arms, letting out a relaxed yawn, but when he turned to Riku, he found an ice statue. Riku's gaze was lost in the white letters that went up the TV, his lips clenched in a thin line and his hands intertwined so tightly that his knuckles were white.

"Riku..." Yushi murmured, dropping his hand on his boyfriend's knee. “Is something wrong with you? You've been very quiet throughout the movie.”

Riku didn't answer. The buzz of Yushi's phone, which had vibrated just a few minutes before, still echoed in his ears like an alarm. He felt that if he opened his mouth, what would come out would be a mixture of reproach and sadness that Yushi would not understand, or even worse, tire him.

"Hey, look at me," Yushi insisted. When he didn't get an answer, he moved with agility, placing himself in front of him and taking his face in his hands, gently forcing him to break his attention with the screen. “I'm talking to you. Tell me what’s up.”

Riku tried to look away, but Yushi's hands were firm despite his delicacy. Under the dim light of the room, Yushi's eyes were full of genuine tenderness, the one that always managed to disarm Riku.

"It's just..." Riku began, his voice sounding rough from the disuse. “It seems that you have a lot to talk about with... him.”

Yushi let out a small laugh, one of those that intended to subtract weight from the world, and shook his head in disbelief.

"It’s because of Sion?" he asked, as if the idea was absurd. “He's just an old friend, Riku. It means nothing. Don't tell me you're jealous.”

Before Riku could articulate how he really felt, Yushi leaned over and captured his lips in a deep kiss. It was a kiss that sought to erase doubts, a distraction maneuver full of affection.

"You're so dummy sometimes," Yushi whispered against his mouth, wrapping him in a suffocating and warm hug, sinking his face into Riku's neck. “You don't have to think so much about things. I'm here with you, yeah?”

Yushi squeezed him tightly, filling his face with small and quick kisses, trying to force a smile on Riku through pampering. Riku let himself be hugged, closing his eyes and trying to convince herself that the warmth of his boyfriend's arms was enough to melt the insecurity that continued to grow inside him.

Then the kisses went from being comforting pampering to something much denser and more urgent. Yushi intensified the pressure, opening Riku's lips with his own and letting their tongues meet in a slow, almost hypnotic rhythm. The air in the room seemed to thicken, charging with an electricity that Riku knew well: it was the sign that the words were about to be superfluous.

Yushi began to move his hands with an expert familiarity. His palms went down Riku's shoulders, ran down his sides and stopped for a moment at his waist, squeezing gently over the fabric of the pajamas. His fingers traced invisible lines, exploring every curve, every corner of his body with a delicacy that sought to convey to him that, at that moment, there was nothing more important than him.

Riku closed his eyes, letting his head fall back when Yushi's lips left his mouth to trace a path of wet kisses down his jaw until he reached his neck. His mind, which just a few minutes before was a boil of doubts and scenes of Sion, began to fail. Physical pleasure acted as an anesthetic, clouding his ability to overthink. He felt adrift, letting himself be carried away by the tide of sensations that Yushi provoked with each caress.

"Riku..." Yushi whispered against his skin, his voice sounding hoarse and full of a vibration that shook the lowest.

He separated just a few millimeters, enough for his eyes to meet in the twilight. Yushi's gaze was darkened by desire, but he also maintained that spark of tenderness that always made Riku lower his guard completely.

"Don't think about anything else," Yushi continued, cradding his face again. “I want you. Only you.”

That phrase was the anchor that Riku needed to sink completely. Hearing those words, while he felt the heat of Yushi's body pressing against his, made his defenses finish falling apart. He clung to his boyfriend's shoulders, burying his fingers in his shirt, wanting to believe with every fiber of his being that what was happening in that armchair was enough to erase the shadow of any past.

The touch of Yushi's hands became a little more daring, going down to the edge of his pants, while the kisses were deep again, claiming every inch of his attention.

Riku let himself fall back in the armchair, his breath short and his eyes clouded by desire and emotional confusion. Yushi didn't waste a second; he positioned himself between his legs, kneeling in the narrow space of the sofa with a determination that made Riku's heart skip a beat. Yushi's gaze was intense, loaded with an excitement that seemed to feed on his boyfriend's vulnerability.

With slow and sure movements, Yushi slid the pants of Riku's pajama down. Upon discovering his boyfriend's intimacy, his eyes shone under the dim light of the room. Riku was visibly excited, his body reacting to Yushi's caresses despite the mental noise that had tormented him all day. Yushi let out a heavy sigh, a mixture of surprise and triumph, when he saw how much Riku wanted him.

"Look at you..." Yushi whispered, his voice barely a low roar as his hands rested on the inside of Riku's thighs.

Without waiting for an answer, Yushi lowered his head. His lips, hot and moist, began to occupy the soft skin of Riku's thighs. It started with light kisses, almost chaste, but soon the intensity rose. Riku let out a choked gasp when he felt Yushi's teeth gently dig into his flesh, leaving marks that would disappear in hours but that felt permanent at that moment.

Yushi didn't stop there. His tongue began to trace erratic and hot paths through Riku's skin, licking with a tortuous slowness that made Riku arch his back, instinctively looking for more contact. The contrast between the softness of the tongues and the firmness of the bites had Riku on the verge of collapse.

Yushi, without breaking eye contact for a second, leaned forward until his lips brushed the fabric of Riku's underwear. It was a deliberate, hot and humid contact, that made Riku let out a contained moan, squeezing his eyes because of the intensity of the sensation.

Yushi began to lick rhythmically on the area, wetting the thin cotton layer until the fabric became almost translucent and adhered completely to Riku's skin. The humidity and warmth of his tongue, combined with constant friction, created an unbearable sensitivity.

With an expert movement, Yushi began sucking directly on Riku's clitoris through the wet fabric. The pressure of the vacuum and the friction of the soaked cotton sent an electric shock that ran through Riku's spine from top to bottom. His fingers buried themselves tightly in Yushi's hair, pulling slightly while his hip rose from the armchair instinctively, trying to press more against his boyfriend's mouth.

Riku was lost. The pleasure was so sharp that he could barely breathe, surrendering completely to Yushi's mouth who kept sucking and licking with a voracity that promised not to stop until Riku could not even remember his own name.

Yushi pushed himself up, looking for Riku's lips with an urgency that did not admit waiting. The kiss was deep, hungry, loaded with the metallic flavor of desire and the heat that had accumulated between their bodies. Riku clung to Yushi's neck, looking for air and closeness at the same time, feeling how the world was reduced to that wet and desperate contact.

However, it was the movement of Yushi's hand that finished breaking the little composure that Riku had left. His fingers slid with a lethal softness below the edge of the underwear, immediately finding the center of Riku's heat. Feeling how soaked he was, Yushi let out a low growl against his boyfriend's mouth, a vibration that Riku felt in his chest.

With a tortuous parsimony, Yushi separated Riku's lips, using his own fluids to lubricate the entire area, spreading that natural moisture with circular and slow movements that made Riku sob directly in his mouth. It was a broken sound, a mixture of relief and a suffocating need.

"You're so wet for me..." Yushi whispered between kisses, while his hand began to move with a constant rhythm.

Yushi began to masturbate him with a mastery that only the months of knowing every reaction of his body give. His fingers circled and pressed at the exact points, going up and down with a firmness that made Riku arch his back against the back of the armchair, with his legs trembling and his mind totally blank. The rubbing of Yushi's hand was the only real thing; every movement was a burning caress, a friction that pushed him closer and closer to the abyss.

Riku felt completely exposed, but also strangely protected. In the shelter of that kiss and the relentless rhythm of Yushi's hand, the anguish of the previous day felt like something that had happened to someone else. He let himself be carried away by the tide, sobbing and panting, while Yushi masturbated him with a physical devotion that seemed to swear to him that, no matter who appeared in his life, no one else could touch him that way.

Yushi climbed up his body, marking his territory with a possessive intensity. His lips sank into the sensitive skin of Riku's neck, sucking hard until they left purplish marks, small physical reminders of who that skin belonged to.

Riku gasped, with his head thrown back, feeling the burning of the pacifiers like a delicious burn.
Suddenly, the hand that took him to the limit stopped. The sudden emptiness of contact made Riku let out a groan of protest, opening his eyes with difficulty to find Yushi just getting away enough. With his gaze fixed on him, Yushi finished stripping him of his underwear, leaving his intimacy completely exposed to the cold air of the living room and his excited scrutiny.

"Turn around," Yushi ordered with a voice that did not admit replies, loaded with an authority that made Riku obey almost instinctively.

Riku turned around, lying against the armchair, feeling the texture of the fabric against his bare skin. Before he could settle down, he felt Yushi's hands close firmly on his hips. With a dry and dominant pull, Yushi lifted his pelvis, forcing him to be in a vulnerable and perfect position.

The contrast was immediate. Riku felt the scorching heat of Yushi's bulge, still contained by his clothes, directly brushing his soaked entrance. The friction of the friction against his most sensitive area made Riku let out a choppy gasp, sinking his face into the cushion of the armchair. It was a firm, rhythmic pressure that promised to fill the void that Yushi's hand had left moments before.

"You're so wet, Riku..." Yushi whispered behind his ear, squeezing his hips harder. “You can't stop wanting me, can you?”

Riku could not respond with words; he could only move his hips back, desperately looking for more of that contact, feeling how Yushi's physical presence completely erased any shadow of the past that he had tried to sneak into his night.

Yushi kept control of the situation, his thumbs sinking firmly into the dimples on Riku's hips, tracing slow circles that forced him to arch his back even more. Riku was a line of tension and desire, desperately looking for the contact that Yushi administered to him with almost cruel precision.

Without undressing yet, Yushi began to ram against him. The pressure of Yushi's bulge through the fabric of his pajamas hitting directly against Riku's hypersensitive entrance created a scorching friction. It wasn't a real penetration, but the force of the impact and the accumulated heat were so intense that Riku felt like he was going to fall apart right there.

"Riku... you're soaking my clothes," Yushi growled in Riku's ear, feeling how the moisture of his boyfriend's fluids pierced the fabric of his pajama pants, creating a dark and hot stain.

Riku let out a high-pitched moan, hiding his face in the cushion of the armchair. The sound of wet friction and Yushi's weight on him were too much.

The tension in the living room reached a point of no return. Yushi was completely stiff, his own underwear had become a fabric prison that squeezed him and caused him a stabbing pain due to the erection, but that only fueled his intensity. He didn't stop; on the contrary, his thrusts became deeper and more deliberate. Every time Yushi hit him, with that hard and slow rhythm, Riku's body moved forward, forcing him to cling with his fingers to the fabric of the armchair so as not to lose his balance.

Riku let out choppy, rhythmic moans, marking the beat of each thrust he felt at the base of his spine. The world had been reduced to that constant friction and the heat that emanated from both.
Suddenly, one of Yushi's hands left his hip. Riku felt the weight change just before his boyfriend's arm completely surrounded him, leaning on his back until his breasts were stuck. In that position, Yushi's hand went down precisely, sliding between their bodies until he found Riku's clitoris, which was throbbing and extremely sensitive.

"Don't move," Yushi whispered in his ear, his voice broken by the effort.

Yushi began to caress him with circular and firm movements while continuing to push from behind. The combination of the slow pressure of the thrusts and the direct stimulation of his fingers was too much for Riku. The pleasure became something almost painful, a sensory overload that made him arch desperately.

Riku tried to find the air that was missing by turning his face to the side, meeting Yushi's lips, who took the opportunity to seal his skin with feverish kisses on his cheek and temple, marking every centimeter with an almost desperate urgency.
The acceleration of Yushi's fingers on his clitoris already had him on the verge of collapse, but then the sensation changed drastically. Yushi, without warning, stuck two fingers in him, breaking the barrier of his entrance. Riku twisted harder, arching his back in such a way that his ribs were marked under the skin; the sudden invasion was a mixture of overwhelming pressure and pleasure so dense that it left him breathless.

Feeling that he had total control, Yushi rejoined his knees, gaining height and lever. With one hand he clung to Riku's hip, sinking his fingers into his skin with a force that would leave traces, securing him against the armchair so that he could not escape from what was coming. With the other, he began to penetrate him strongly with his fingers, a rhythmic, deep and merciless movement.

Riku felt that he had stretched, that his body was molded to Yushi's will while the third finger made his way with the same determination. The feeling of fullness was absolute; Yushi's three fingers moving inside him, pushing and claiming every inner wall, plunged him into a trance state.

Riku's sobs became more erratic and audible, escaping from his throat like pleas as he managed to articulate between gasps that he was already close, that he could not stand any longer. Far from softening the touch, Yushi took it as a sign to claim his surrender.

He increased the pace, moving his fingers with a force and speed that gave no respite. He stretched Riku's walls with circular and deep movements, looking for every point of sensitivity. Riku felt that burning characteristic of stretching, a sharp and full sensation that always managed to ignite a spark of masochistic pleasure in him; he liked to feel invaded in that way, to feel that Yushi was claiming every millimeter of his interior.

His walls squeezed spasmically around Yushi's fingers, trying to catch what made him feel so good. Riku's hips began to swing from side to side in a desperate attempt to find relief or perhaps to push even further inward. His thighs trembled violently, unable to support the weight of pleasure, and his knees hurt from the pressure against the armchair, but that physical pain was erased by the firmness with which Yushi squeezed his hip.

"That's it, Riku... you take it so well," Yushi whispered to him, his voice was a low growl, almost animal, while his fingers continued to work tirelessly inside him.

That hand on his hip was his only anchor to the real world. Yushi held him so tightly that Riku felt that, if it weren't for that grip, he would simply disintegrate. He was totally at the mercy of his boyfriend's relentless rhythm, with his body vibrating and orgasm throbbing right under his skin, waiting for the final blow to explode.

Riku finally collapsed. His body tensed in a violent bow as the orgasm hit him with a seismic force, sending waves of heat that made him spasm against the backrest. The hot fluid soaked Yushi's hand and began to drip on the fabric of the armchair, leaving a dark stain under them, but Yushi showed no mercy.

"What a good boy..." Yushi murmured, his voice full of dark satisfaction when he felt Riku's walls desperately tighten around his fingers.

But, just when Riku thought he could rest and let himself fall into the lethargy of post-orgasm, he felt a new and overwhelming pressure. Without giving him a second to recover, Yushi inserted a fourth finger suddenly. The stretch was immediate and brutal, breaking Riku's already skin-to-enthe sensitivity. Yushi did not stand still; despite the fact that Riku kept coming, he began to move his hand with a demanding rhythm, stirring his fingers inside him.

The overstimulation was immediate. The pleasure turned into something too electric, too intense to be endured. Riku let out a broken cry, tears running down his cheeks as he hid his face in the cushion. He couldn't process so many sensations at once; his nervous system was screaming.

"Yushi... no! S-sto... it hurts, it's too much...” he stammered with a broken voice, his words barely audible between the sobs.

He took a hand back, trying to push Yushi's wrist away with a weak and trembling push. He didn't have the real strength to stop him, and his fingers barely brushed hos boyfriend's skin before falling energyless on the armchair. He was completely at his mercy, trapped in a climax that Yushi refused to let die, forcing him to feel every movement and every inch of that invasion while his body continued to vibrate from orgasm.

"You can handle this, Riku... hold on a little longer for me," Yushi whispered in his ear, his voice was a deep murmur that contrasted with his boyfriend's sobs.

Yushi continued pumping his fingers with a relentless cadence, forcing Riku's body to process a pleasure that was already bordering on suffering. Riku, with his face sunk in the cushion and soaked in tears, frantically shook his head.

"It's too much... Yushi, p-please... it hurts...” he managed to articulate between spasms. The burning of the stretch had become so sharp that he felt every fiber of his interior tense to the limit.

It was then that Yushi, with a cruel and expert precision, curved the four fingers upwards, pressing directly against his most sensitive point from the inside. The effect was instantaneous: Riku felt an internal pressure that made him lose control of his own muscles. The fluid began to flow from him with renewed strength, dripping down his thighs and soaking Yushi's hand to his wrists.

Yushi slowed down, but didn't stop. He began to beat slowly, enjoying the resistance of Riku's walls and the wet sound of friction. He was stretching it deliberately, savoring his victory over his boyfriend's body. Finally, he removed his fingers with a tortuous slowness, allowing Riku to see- and feel- how he kept dripping, irretrievably wetting the fabric of the armchair under them.

Panting, with his lungs burning and his mind clouded, Riku turned sideways on the furniture. His legs were shaking and his cheeks were reddened as he watched the liquid disaster he had caused.

"Look at yourself, Riku... how incredible you look like that," Yushi congratulated him, approaching again to kiss his forehead while his hand went down to caress his clitoris with a softness that healed the previous pain.

Riku, still in full trance, placed his hand on top of Yushi's. His fingers on top of each other and he himself helped guide the movement, caressing himself with a lazy rhythm while his body finished expelling the remains of the orgasm.

Yushi leaned over him and their lips met again. First it was a game of languages, a wet and warm touch that tasted like delivery. As Riku's climax finally dissipated, leaving only a pleasant languor, his hands clenched tightly, intertwining his fingers on Riku's chest as the silence of the apartment returned to surround them, sealing the moment in an exhausted peace.

The atmosphere in the living room was dense, loaded with the aroma of sex and the sound of their breaths trying to return to normality. Riku, still with sensitive skin and a fast pulse, looked Yushi in the eyes. Despite his own exhaustion, seeing the pronounced and tense bulge in his boyfriend's pants generated a mixture of guilt and desire.

"Do you need help with that?" Riku whispered, shyly stroking Yushi's thigh. “We can... you know, we can have sex. I'm fine, really.”

Yushi watched him with infinite tenderness, pushing a lock of sweaty hair away from his forehead. He gently shook his head, sketching a small and tired smile.

"No, Riku. You're too sensitive now," Yushi replied, his voice was a protective murmur. “Your mouth will be more than enough.”

Riku nodded, feeling a different heat rise to his cheeks. He settled in the armchair, sliding up a little and leaning on his elbows to be in a semi-sitting position, with his back against the backrest.

Yushi moved with agility, settling on his knees on the armchair, right on top of Riku. His legs were on both sides of his boyfriend's torso, positioning his crotch at the exact height of Riku's face. The pressure of the fabric of Yushi's pajamas, now wet from the previous encounter, was a few centimeters from his lips.

From that perspective, Riku could feel the warmth emanating from Yushi, an imposing presence that dominated him completely.

Yushi didn't wait a second longer. With his hands firmly sunk into Riku's hair, he exerted a constant and dominant pressure, pushing his boyfriend's head directly against the erection that tensed the fabric of his pajamas. He began to move, swinging his hips forward to create a slow and heavy friction against Riku's face.

Riku closed his eyes, letting himself be guided by instinct. Instead of stepping aside, he surrendered to contact, rubbing his cheek devotionally against the fabric. The texture of the cotton was soaked, not only by Yushi's heat, but by his own fluids that had been marked there during the previous thrusts. Feeling his own moisture mixed with Yushi's scent on his skin made him let out a trembling sigh.

Yushi let out a low laugh, a vibration that Riku felt almost on his own lips due to the proximity.

"You look like a kitten, Riku..." Yushi whispered, stroking the back of his neck with his fingers while continuing the rhythmic touch against his face. “A desperate kitten.”

At those words, Riku opened his eyes and looked up, holding Yushi's gaze with a fixed intensity and loaded with voluntary submission. Without breaking eye contact, Riku stuck out his tongue and began to give long and slow licks on the fabric of the pants.

The heat of his tongue going through his pajamas was the final blow to Yushi's composure. He felt how Riku marked the outline of his hardness with the tip of his tongue, moistening the area even more and tracing the path that his lips would soon follow. Yushi gritted his teeth, clenching his fists in Riku's hair as he was being watched with bright eyes and burning cheeks.

Yushi, with a quick movement and a breathing that already sounded erratic, hooked his fingers into the elastic of his pajamas and lowered it enough to release his erection. The heat that emanated from direct contact with the air made Riku instinctively bow. Without wasting time, Riku began to give him short and constant licks, circling the tip and going down the trunk, filling it with saliva until Yushi's skin shone under the light of the room.

The sound of Riku's tongue against his flesh was the trigger for Yushi to lose the little patience he had left. He let go of Riku's hair to lower his hands and frame his face, taking his cheeks firmly. His thumbs pressed on Riku's cheekbones, forcing him to keep his mouth open as he guided his head forward with silent authority.

"Take it, Riku. Everything," Yushi ordered in a hoarse whisper.

Riku obeyed, closing his lips around him. The sensation of Riku's hot and wet mouth wrapping him made Yushi let out a deep growl that vibrated throughout the room. Riku began to suck it hard, moving his head in a rhythm that Yushi dictated with the pressure of his hands on his cheeks.

Riku made an effort, opening his mouth as much as he could and letting his saliva facilitate the way, trying to please Yushi with a surrender that bordered on despair. But Yushi, carried away by the intensity of the moment and the control he exercised over the situation, was not satisfied with the slow pace. With a dry and determined movement, he pushed his hips forward, sinking his erection deep down his throat.

He held Riku's head firmly, blocking any attempt to retreat and forcing him to hold it in his throat for a few seconds that seemed eternal to the shorter one. Riku let out a deaf moan, choked by the invasion, while his fingers dug hard into Yushi's thighs. The reflection was immediate: his eyes filled with involuntary tears that rolled down his cheeks, and a slight tremor ran down his shoulders.

When Yushi finally relaxed his grip and allowed Riku to move away, he stepped back just a few centimeters, enough to catch his breath. Riku began to cough hard, with his face lit and his breathing erratic, trying to calm the burning in his throat while cleaning traces of saliva from his chin with the back of his hand.

"That's it..." Yushi murmured with a voice full of a dark and honeyed satisfaction.

He leaned forward and began to caress Riku's hair gently, running his fingers between the locks with a tenderness that contrasted with the strength of a moment ago.

"You're taking it very well, Riku. You're so good," he continued, proudly observing his boyfriend's vulnerable state.

Yushi didn't give him time to compose himself completely. With one hand firmly on the back of his neck and the other holding his jaw, he guided Riku's head forward again, but this time with a much more aggressive rhythm. He began to fuck his throat with deep and constant thrusts, a rhythmic movement that left no room for air.

Riku closed his eyes tightly as tears flowed uncontrollably, soaking his eyelashes and sliding down his cheeks. He could do nothing but cling to Yushi's thighs, sticking his fingers into his boyfriend's skin to try to anchor himself to the intensity of the situation. The sound of the meat colliding and Riku's choked noises filled the small space between them, creating an atmosphere of dominance.

Yushi was completely lost in pleasure, watching from above how Riku strove to receive everything. To end the series, Yushi gave one last sharp push, sinking his erection to the maximum and keeping Riku's head pressed against his pelvis. He forced him to stay there, feeling the heartbeat and the heat in the bottom of his throat for several seconds that felt eternal.

When Yushi finally let go of the grip, Riku collapsed backwards, leaning back on his elbows on the armchair. The air suddenly entered his lungs, causing him to cough repeatedly, with his face completely red and a thread of saliva escaping through the corner of his lips.

Yushi watched Riku for a moment, delighting in the image of his boyfriend undone, with swollen lips and eyes clouded by tears. The excitement he felt was so high that he could no longer contain himself; he surrounded his own erection with his hand and began to masturbate hard, with fast and desperate movements that made his body tense up.

Riku, wanting to be part of the ending, rejoined as best ad he could, resting his hands on the armchair to be at the height of his erection. As his boyfriend's hand went up and down frantically, Riku leaned forward and began to suck the tip of the penis, using his tongue to collect every drop of preseminal fluid and moisten Yushi's skin even more.

Yushi's rhythm became erratic; his breathing was a low roar and his hips began to shake involuntarily. The combination of the warmth of Riku's mouth and his own grip quickly pushed him to the limit.

"Riku... I'm cumming..." Yushi managed to gasp, with a broken voice and his gaze fixed on his boyfriend's face.

Riku understood the order immediately. He separated just a few centimeters, closed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, waiting with total dedication. Yushi gave one last firm squeeze and came hard, covering Riku's tongue and splashing his face with hot jets of semen. The white fluid stained his cheeks, nose and chin, filling it completely while Yushi let out a growl of absolute release, letting his head fall back as his body finished spasming from the climax.

The silence that followed the final burt was dense and restorative, interrupted only by his choppy breaths that sought to tune in to the gloom of the room. Yushi, still with his pulse accelerated, stretched out a hand to caress Riku's cheek with his thumb, cleaning with an almost devoted tenderness the trail of semen that began to dry on his skin. They kissed again, but this time it was a slow, salty kiss full of a mute gratitude, a pact sealed in the disaster of the armchair.

Under the stream of hot water from the shower, the steam helped dissolve the last remnants of tension. Riku let the water hit the back of his neck, feeling how his muscles, once stiff from the insecurity and the sturking of Sion's shadow, finally gave way. While Yushi soaped his back sparingly, Riku was convinced that the facts spoke louder than the doubts: Yushi's dedication, his possessiveness and that "I love you" were enough anchors to keep him afloat.

However, peace is a delicate crystal.

The following days passed with a deceptive normality. Riku felt refreshed, but that lightness began to fade when Yushi's schedules began to blur. What was originally a "last-minute meeting" or "an inevitable commitment after work," soon became a routine of absences.

Riku came home after his own day, hoping to find the usual warmth, but he only ran into the echo of his own steps. He sat at the kitchen table, with dinner cooling down in front of him, while the minutes turned into hours. The clock on the wall seemed to mock his wait, marking ten, eleven... and Yushi did not cross the door.

The doubt, which Riku thought he had drowned that day, began to sprout again like a silent undergrowth. Who was that "someone?” Why were departures becoming more and more frequent? Every night he spent looking at the empty door, the image of Sion and the secret conversations came back to his mind, sowing suspicion and insecurity.

The atmosphere in the apartment became so icy that even the air seemed difficult to breathe. The intimacy they previously shared had become a mechanical and empty courtesy. When they went out to dinner or walked through the park, Yushi's presence was only physical; his mind and fingers were captivated by the bright screen of the cell phone. Riku observed the reflection of the phone light in his boyfriend's eyes and felt that he was competing against an invisible ghost.

The words got stuck in his throat. Every time he tried to ask, every time he looked for an explanation for that distancing that opened a hole in his stomach, Yushi dodged it with a distracted smile or a banal comment. The doubt, fueled by weeks of silence and late arrivals, had become a permanent knot in his chest.

That day, Riku came home from work with his shoulders full of fatigue, hoping to find the shelter of his home. But when he opened the door, the sound of a familiar laugh stopped him in his tracks.

In the room, sitting with a confidence that stirred Riku's insides, was Sion. He laughed animatedly while Yushi, with an expression of vitality that Riku had not seen in him for weeks, gestured enthusiastically. Upon seeing Riku, Yushi got up with a naturalness that bordered on cruelty.

"Oh, Riku! You're already here," Yushi said, as if the presence of the man who had caused his greatest insecurities was the most normal thing in the world. “Look, Sion came to look for me. We're going out to party for a while, it's been a long time since we've seen each other to celebrate something like this. Don't wait for me awake, but I'll try to come back early.”

Riku felt such a sharp sting in the center of his chest that he feared it would be noticeable on his face. He looked at Sion, who gave him a cordial but distant greeting, and then at Yushi. He was waiting for an explanation, an apology, or at least a gesture of affection to assure him that everything was fine.

But there was nothing.

Yushi put on his jacket, took his keys and walked to the exit next to Sion, talking about which club they would visit. He passed by Riku's side without stopping, without a hug and, what hurt him the most, without even giving him a goodbye kiss. The sound of the door closing rumbled in the silence of the empty apartment, leaving Riku alone with the echo of Sion's laughter and the bitter certainty that the abyss between them had finally become insurmountable.

And then Riku realized.

His house, which once felt like a shared shelter, was transformed into a museum of the presence of Sion. It didn't matter that Sion wasn't physically there; his name had become the invisible guest at every dinner and the protagonist of every Yushi anecdote. “Sion says this restaurant is better," "Sion recommended this series to me," "Yesterday Sion and I laughed so much..." Each mention was like a small incision in Riku's heart, a wound that he didn't finish closing before the next one arrived.

What hurt Riku the most was the change in bed. The space that used to burn with the intensity of their encounters now felt vast and cold. Every time Riku tried to seek Yushi's contact, brushing his arm or kissing his neck in the hope of recovering the spark of that night in the armchair, he received the same mechanical response: "I'm sorry, Riku, I'm dead tired. The work and the outing with the boys left me exhausted."

Even the few times he’d agreed to be together, intimacy felt unaffectionate and empty. There was no real sex, there was no possessive urgency from before; they were just warm caresses that ended soon, leaving Riku with an unbearable feeling of emptiness.

Riku began to look at himself in the mirror with critical eyes, wondering if his body was no longer enough, if the skin that Yushi once devoured was now indifferent to him compared to the novelty that Sion represented. His physical insecurity grew like a shadow, making him feel small and disposable.

Confusion devoured him. Riku loved Yushi with a despair that scared him, and the idea of losing him in front of someone from the past was a constant torment. He wondered again and again: Did Yushi no longer love him? Had the love evaporated between the laughter shared with another?

Riku knew he couldn't go on like this. Silence was killing him inside, turning him into a spectator of his own relationship. He needed to face Yushi, demand the truth from him even if that truth was the final blow. He wanted to put an end to Sion's ghost, he wanted to recover the man who looked at him as if he were his whole world, but the fear that the answer would be "I don't love you anymore" kept him paralyzed, with the words burning on the tip of his tongue as he watched Yushi smile at his cell phone screen once again.

Later that day, Riku sat at the edge of the bed, the same bed that felt bigger yet emptier, when the first tear rolled down his cheek. It was as if a dike had broken; in a matter of seconds, the sobs shook him completely.

He cried with raw anguish, letting out all the poison of insecurity, the fear of not being enough and the torture of seeing how Sion recovered a land that Riku thought he had conquered. He hugged himself, shrunken, feeling small in the middle of a home he no longer recognized. Time lost its form; he didn't know if minutes or hours had passed, but his eyes were swollen and his throat burned from so much silence.

He didn't hear the front door, nor the sound of the keys on the furniture. He only realized that he was not alone when the door of the room slammed open.

"Riku?" Yushi's voice sounded loaded with a genuine alarm. Upon seeing his boyfriend's shattered figure, Yushi dropped his backpack on the floor and ran towards him, kneeling on the carpet. “Riku! Oh my God, what happened? Are you okay? Did someone do something to you?”

Yushi wrapped his arms around him with an urgency that Riku had not felt in a long time. He pulled him to his chest, allowing Riku to hide his face in his neck. Riku clung to Yushi's shirt, squeezing the fabric with his trembling fingers, while his sobs turned into hiccups that prevented him from breathing.

"Shh, calm down, here I am..." Yushi whispered, stroking his hair in despair, visibly affected by Riku's state. “Tell me, please, you're scaring me. What’s happening?”

Riku tried to speak, but the words got stuck in his oppressed chest. It took him several minutes to regain a fraction of composure, moving away just enough to look Yushi in the eyes, with his face soaked and his gaze broken by pain.

"Yushi..." he managed to say in a small, broken and almost imperceptible voice. “I... I just need to know one thing.”
Yushi stared at him, his hands still holding Riku's tightly, as if he feared that he could vanish.

"Tell me anything, Riku. Whatever.”
Riku swallowed saliva, feeling his heart beating with a terrifying fragility before releasing the question that was consuming him inside:

"Do you still love me? Or is it that... am I no longer enough for you?”

Yushi's silence lasted so long that the air in the room began to feel heavy, almost suffocating. He watched Riku with a painful intensity, seeing how his eyes were lost in a sea of tears that did not stop. Riku's question had fallen like a dead weight between the two, and the lack of an immediate response was like a physical blow to Riku.

Yushi finally sat next to him, sinking the mattress. His hands, warm but somewhat trembling, went up to frame Riku's face. His thumbs moved with extreme delicacy, sweeping the moisture from Riku's cheeks, but it was a lost battle; for every tear he wiped, two new ones took their place.

"I'm sorry... Riku, I'm really so sorry," Yushi whispered, with a voice that sounded hollow, loaded with an indecipherable mixture of emotions.

Riku, feeling that he needed a real connection so as not to fall apart, raised his own hands and surrounded Yushi's wrists. His fingers closed on hos boyfriend's skin with a desperate force, as if trying to anchor himself to reality.

"It's... Sion...” Riku managed to articulate, with a broken voice. “Sion makes me feel so small, so insecure... I feel that he has parts of you that I can no longer reach. I don't want to be a burden to you, Yushi. I know you must be tired of dealing with my fears, with my insecurity... but I can't take it anymore. I feel like I'm losing you and I don't know how to stop it.”

Yushi still didn't speak. His eyebrows furrowed, creating a furrow of concern or perhaps regret on his forehead. His eyes, once bright with desire or joy, were now cloudy. Riku stared at him, trying to decipher that look that danced between pity for seeing him like this and guilt for being the cause of that state.

Riku's heart beat with a painful slowness. The fact that Yushi did not immediately deny his fears, that he did not shut him up with a kiss or a resounding declaration of love, fed the emptiness in his stomach. Yushi's silence was speaking more than any word, leaving Riku suspended in a thread, waiting to know if that was the beginning of the end or the moment when they would finally recover what the shadow of Sion had stolen from them.

"Tell me something... please, Yushi, say something," Riku begged, his voice barely audible by the knot in his throat. “Tell me... tell me that I'm just imagining things, that I'm exaggerating, that I'm worrying too much as always, okay? Please.”

Riku was desperately looking for a way out, a pious lie or one of those comforting phrases that used to calm his storms. He needed Yushi to laugh a little, to tell him that he was a fool and hug him tightly. But Yushi's silence was an insurmountable wall. His gaze was still indecipherable, a dark abyss where Riku did not find a trace of the heat that used to dwell in those eyes.

Panic began to take hold of Riku. His lips trembled violently, unable to contain the spasm of anguish, and his hands, which still surrounded Yushi's wrists, began to shake. That's when he felt the final rejection: Yushi, with a slow but firm movement, lowered his arms. He stopped touching him.

The emptiness that Yushi's hands left on his face felt like a stroke of icy air. Riku stayed with his hands in the air for a second, broken and empty, before letting them fall on his lap.

Yushi couldn't hold his gaze any longer. He turned his eyes to an uncertain point in the room, unable to see the shattered face of the person he was supposed to protect. That gesture, that inability to deny what Riku felt, was the confirmation that broke his soul.
Riku let out a sob, one that was born from the depths of his chest and stole his air. He shrank on himself, hiding his face between his hands while the crying returned with renewed strength, now loaded with the bitter certainty that his fears were not paranoia, but the reality of a relationship that escaped him through his fingers.

Finally, the silence was broken, but Yushi's words did not bring the relief Riku expected. His voice sounded opaque, devoid of that warmth that used to be Riku's refuge, and each sentence fell like a half-sentence.

"I'm sorry, Riku... I'm really sorry," Yushi murmured, keeping his eyes fixed on his own hands, which now rested inert on his knees. “It's my fault. All this is my fault.”

Riku raised his face, with red eyes and shortness of breath, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. His heart beat with a painful force, waiting for an explanation that would stop the collapse.

"I should have been honest with you from the beginning," Yushi continued, swallowing saliva with difficulty. “I thought that... I thought it was something temporary. That I would pass if I just went ahead, that it was not necessary to hurt you with this. But I was wrong.”

Riku looked at him with an absolute confusion that soon turned into a stabbing pain. Yushi's words were a maze of ambiguity. It was a nameless confession, an “I'm sorry" that tasted like goodbye.

"What are you talking about, Yushi?" Riku asked, his voice barely a broken thread as he turned to look for his gaze. “Please, look at me. Tell me what's going on.”

But Yushi couldn't. He remained there, in profile, with his jaw tense and his eyes lost in the gloom of the room. That inability to connect, to hold his gaze to the person he said he loved, was what ended up breaking Riku inside. The suspicion that Yushi was no longer fighting for them, but that he was simply admitting his defeat, left him feeling more alone than ever in his own bed.

Yushi hid his face between his hands, sinking into a gesture full of frustration that he could not contain anymore. The silence that followed was sepulchral, broken only by the sound of his heavy breathing, until he let out a sigh that seemed to empty his lungs.

"Everything would have remained the same if Sion had never appeared..." Yushi confessed, his voice choked between his fingers.

That phrase was the piece of the puzzle that Riku didn't want to fit. In a second, all the late arrivals, the lack of affection, the disinterest and the laughter with Sion took on a devastating meaning. Riku felt as if the ground disappeared under his feet.

"No... don't say that, please," Riku denied with a broken voice, shaking his head as the tears fell harder. “You're confused, it's just because of nostalgia, right?”

But Yushi finally admitted it. He lowered his hands and, although his eyes reflected a genuine regret, the truth was there, naked and cruel.

"Sion makes me feel different, Riku. I'm very sorry... I'm really sorry," he said, and for the first time in the whole night, he stared into his eyes, looking for a spark of that understanding that Riku always gave him. “I love you, I really do, but I don't know what to do. I'm lost.”

That pleading look was the final blow. Riku didn't feel compassion; he felt a violent nausea stirring in his stomach. He jumped up from the bed, stepping back as if the contact with the sheets they shared now burned his skin. He felt sick, humiliated and with his heart in pieces. The person who should be his safe place had just confessed that someone else had altered his world.

"Riku, wait... let me explain," Yushi got up immediately, extending a hand to try to reach him, to try to console the disaster he himself had caused.

"No!" Riku shouted, his voice breaking into an echo of pure pain as he pointed to the door. “Don't touch me. Go away, Yushi. Please, just... get out of here.”

Riku hugged himself, trembling violently, unable to continue seeing the man he loved while he admitted that his heart no longer belonged only to him. Yushi remained static, with his hand suspended in the air and guilt weighing on his shoulders, as he watched Riku's confidence fall apart before his eyes.

"I didn't want to lose you! Riku, please, that's why I didn't say anything... I didn't want this to happen!” Yushi exclaimed, his voice broken by a late despair.

Despite the words of rejection, Yushi stepped forward and wrapped Riku in a suffocating embrace, trying to contain the tremor that shook the minor's body. But the contact, which used to be heaven for Riku, now felt like a prison of betrayal. Riku began to twist violently in his grip, hitting Yushi's chest with his fists and trying to get out of those arms that no longer gave him security.

"Let go of me! Leave me alone, Yushi!” Riku shouted between heartbreaking sobs. “Let me go!”

"I don't want to be with him, I want you!" Yushi insisted, squeezing him harder, sinking his face into Riku's shoulder while the tears of both mixed. “I'm just confused, forgive me, please...”

Riku, driven by a rage born of the deepest pain, accumulated all his strength and gave him a dry and violent push in the chest. Yushi, taken by surprise, took a couple of steps back, finally releasing him. Riku didn't lose a second; with his vision clouded by tears and his chest rising and falling erratically, he turned around to run out of the room, wanting to flee from that house, from that smell and from that confession that was killing him.

However, it didn't get far. Before he could cross the threshold, Yushi's hand flew to his arm, holding him with an iron force that stopped his escape suddenly.

"You're not going to leave like that!" Yushi said, pulling him back to force him to enter the room again. “You can't leave me like this, Riku, please.”

Riku turned around abruptly, his face disfigured by anguish and his eyes watery. The pressure of Yushi's hand on his arm felt like a burn.

"I don't understand!" Riku shouted, his voice breaking into a high of pure pain. “Why did you do this to me? If you were tired of me, if you couldn't stand me anymore, why didn't you just tell me? Why stay with me after all, pretending that everything was fine while you thought about him?”

Yushi looked at him, and for a second, guilt in his eyes was replaced by a spark of accumulated fatigue, a despair that eventually caused the filters to break. He let go of Riku's arm, but took a step towards him, invading his personal space.

"Do you want to know why?" Yushi blurted out, breathing agitated. “Yes, there were times when I got tired! I got tired of dealing with your constant insecurity, Riku. To spend every night consoling you because you are too unstable, because anything breaks you. It's exhausting to have to support yourself all the time so you don't fall apart.”

Riku took a step back, as if the words were physical slaps. The silence that followed was dense, full of a cruelty that could no longer be removed.

"With Sion... with him I never had those problems," Yushi continued, lowering his voice but maintaining the harshness. “Our relationship was so different, so easy in that sense. But ours... ours also has its good side. That's why I stayed. Because these months with you were incredible and I wanted to try to keep loving you, Riku. I really wanted it to work.”

Riku felt the air turning into poison in his lungs. Hearing that Yushi saw him as a burden, as someone "unstable" compared to Sion's perfection, was the final blow. It wasn't just that Yushi was confused; it was that Yushi resented him for being who he was.

"Try... to keep loving me?" Riku whispered, with a new sob. “You're telling me that I'm a problem you're trying to solve... Really, Yushi...?”

Riku covered his mouth with his hand, feeling that he was going to collapse at any moment, as he saw Yushi in front of him, a man who said he wanted to love him but who had just confessed that his own essence exhausted him.

"No, Riku!" I didn't mean that... you're not a problem," Yushi exclaimed, extending his hands as if trying to catch the words that had just escaped from his mouth. His face was out of sty, in a real panic when he saw the expression of absolute defeat in Riku. “It's just that... I get tangled, I don't know how to explain it. I felt overwhelt, but now, seeing you like this... realizing that I can lose you...”

Yushi took a clumsy step forward, his eyes shining with a desperate urgency. In that chaos of guilt and selfishness, the possibility of an empty apartment and not having Riku hit him with a force that Sion could never replicate.

"Please, listen to me. I realized how much I care about you, that I need you with me. The Sion thing was... it was a mistake, a distraction because I was scared of how much I feel for you. Riku, please!”

Riku looked at him through the veil of his tears, his heart beating with a funeral slowness. Yushi's apologies sounded like distant noises, like echoes in an empty room. The revelation that Yushi considered him a burden had gone too deep; there was no turning back for that kind of damage.

"I can't believe it..." Riku whispered, with a voice that no longer had the strength to scream. He stepped back, shaking his head while abruptly wiping his face. “You're an asshole, Yushi. I really thought you were different... that you saw me differently.”

"Riku, wait!"

But Riku had nothing else to listen to. He turned around and left the room with heavy and erratic steps. He ignored Yushi's calls, crossed the corridor feeling that the walls closed on him and, before Yushi could reach him, he went out closing the door with a bang.

The rumble of the door slammed throughout the building, leaving Yushi alone in the suffocating silence of the apartment, while Riku went down the stairs crying inconsolably, fleeing from the person who had promised him love but who had only given him pieces of his tiredness.