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[tsygan]

you know who it is. tell me what you want and fuck off.

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[revolts]

[ don't worry, in this particular instance toji is going to let cain have his plausible deniability because as much as he likes to call cain out, being personally missed is such a strange, nebulous thing. he mostly said it to be a flirt. wanting him around is crazy enough, who would miss someone like him?

moving on to safer topics: ]

you eat yet?

[tsygan]

( funny thing about that: he finds that he'd kind of wanted him to call him out as he normally does. not only because it's normal, but it wouldn't give him a chance to sweep his feelings under the rug as he usually tries to, and having it end up glossed over like that jars him a little.

but hey, if we're just pretending like nothing at all has happened and you haven't been mia for an indeterminable period of time, we'll just move right along.

( he would miss you, asshole. he did. that's not about to change anytime soon. ) )

recently enough

( that's probably a lie, especially since kakashi isn't around to con into feeding him anymore. )

what about you though
are you taking care of yourself

[revolts]

you hit your head while I wasn't looking? when have you known me to take care of myself?

[ don't worry baby boy, the fussing is incoming. ]

where you been sleeping? you alone?

[tsygan]

( he asked for it ... )

that was a roundabout way of me fussin over you, starik
somebodys fuckin got to

( hold that thought. )

havent really been sleeping much
but yeah, im alone

( that's alexei-ese for 'i've been so damned worried about you that i haven't been able to stay still for long, which means not sleeping and occupying myself any way i can. mostly getting drunk with a depowered superhero and learning about earth bullshit'. )

[revolts]

[ the frankness with which cain fully cops to fussing over toji makes the older man blink, taken aback with just how foreign the experience is. luckily for him, he's able to move right along in tracking cain down to see just how full of shit these answers are.

god, this having to work out whose house is vacant enough for him to not feel any more awkward around cain than the whole situation already makes him is a pain in the ass, though. he's beginning to sense he's going to have to do something about that, and the whole notion makes him tired.

one thing at a time. ]

aw, baby boy need to get tucked in so he can sleep?

send me your location.

[tsygan]

( the fact that he'd come right out and said it -- admitted it -- is a testament to how much of a rattled mess he's been in his absence, and while he's not about to admit it ( to himself or toji ) that little thing is telling enough all on its own.

you're giving yourself away, alexei. what happened to all those walls you worked so hard to build up?

looks a little bit like they're starting to crumble. come down around your ears. )

oh you can fuck right off

( to the being tucked in bit. but at least it's beginning to sound a little more like something of a normal exchange between them.

but look: he's sending you his location, and he just so happens to be in the now-empty treehouse. it's free real estate at this point, and he managed to get up there all by himself. ain't you proud of him? )

→ action

[revolts]

[ color toji surprised at the location, though it comes with a sour taste at the back of his throat he doesn't care for. it doesn't bear thinking about, the people who used to live there. dying's just another form of leaving, and leaving is another form of dying. people come and people go.

toji's still here.

so is cain.

toji doesn't answer, he just moves. he's quick, like always. barely time to set the phone down on cain's end before toji's through the window like he likes to do, crashing into cain like the tide. slow, steady, inevitable. he draws cain right into his arms, pressing him down against—is that the couch? it's probably the couch. he doesn't stop until he's knelt over cain laid out beneath him like an offering, pale and lean and beautiful and tired and worn and gaunt.

he had other plans, coming here. other thoughts. playful words, dragging cain out for food, looking after him a bit, catching up properly, no bullshit. and then he saw cain through the window and all those thoughts went away, and now he's seeing how cain looks beneath him and all he can do is take in a slow, tight breath as he runs his thumb over cain's lips. ]

Alexei, [ he murmurs low, remembering the taste of the name upon his lips. ] You look like shit.

[tsygan]

( everyone leaves, yeah, that sounds about right — nothing in his life has ever been concrete, nothing good ever stays for long if anything good comes to him in the first place, and if pressed … he would say that staying in that treehouse had everything to do with it being a place he didn't have to worry about bothering anyone else.

not because it has anything at all to do with the kindness of the ones that had lived here before, and finding that space empty reminds him of the things he could still lose, and at this point —

well. he knows what he has to lose. he's just not about to put a voice to it.

he's pretty sure he doesn't have a whole lot of time between giving over his location and toji's inevitable arrival — you're quick for an old man, you know — and he barely has a chance to set his phone down before the other is in through the window and on him like they both might expire if he doesn't, and the weight of the other's body pressing him down, it finds him hooking his legs over thick thighs and holding him close. biting at the thumb that touches the line of his mouth.

well. nipping, more like. but that's neither here nor there. )

Posmotri na sebya, starik.

( look at yourself, old man. ) … Ya skuchal po tebe.

( i missed you.

he drags him in by his collar, one hand curling around the back of his neck to keep him there ( as if he could if toji really wanted to keep distance between them ), giving his mouth and his body and his everything over as an offering. like that alone would keep him from disappearing again. )

[revolts]

Yeah, yeah, missed you too baby.

[ toji hasn't suddenly learned russian or even guessed the content of cain's words, he's just teasing back like he would with anyone else. being missed is even more unfathomable than being wanted, and he's still grappling with the idea of having space that isn't begged, bartered, or stolen in anyone's life.

even this surely still counts as bartered. he gives cain something cain so desperately needs, something to have, somewhere to belong, and in return cain offers the only currency he's ever known, has ever had to give, the bloody hacked off pieces of his body and soul. toji would take him whole, wants to piece him together and give him back to the world complete, but toji is hardly in position to give something he has never known himself.

it's laughable, the blind leading the blind, but still, toji also can't find a way to let go. toji is poison, and cain deserves better, could have better, should have better, and toji lets himself be dragged down into him. more than just passively allowing but sliding arms around cain to pull him closer in turn, both bearing down on his lover with his weight and caging him in more tightly still. he bridges the space between them in a slow kiss, as sensual as it is claiming.

they should talk. they really need to talk. toji palms his way under the hem of cain's shirt.]

[tsygan]

( he knows he can't possibly understand what he's actually saying, but maybe given the context of this little reunion, he might actually be able to grasp at straws and put two and two together; yeah, okay, sure they haven't known each other for very long, and he's never bothered getting attached to people in the first place because they always leave and maybe he'd thought that was what happened. maybe toji had disappeared into thin air like kakashi had, like haku had, and maybe that had been what kept him from checking in on him in the first place. not knowing is somehow better than leaving a message and never getting a reply, because then he would know, and that would just —

make it hurt worse.

but he's here, a solid, heavy, familiar and comforting weight above him and his heart does a ridiculous stutter-stop-flutter behind the cage of his ribs that he tries to ignore, because yeah they really should be talking, catching up, doing something other than making sure there is no space at all between them.

he sighs into that kiss, something so much slower and so much more intimate than he might have expected from him but only because they've always been more teeth than anything else, but he likes it, melts into it, wants to fucking lose himself to it because this man makes him feel the most wanted he's ever felt, and if he ends up clinging a little bit. well.

he'll deny it, but it doesn't matter.

he pulls back for a gasping breath and gently bonks their foreheads together, laughing quietly into the minimal space between their lips. )

Fuckin' right you did.

( thanks for finally coming back. )

[revolts]

Brat.

[ toji snorts this at cain's feigned confidence. he knows forced cockiness when he sees it, lived half his life learning how to fake it well enough that he stopped being able to tell the difference himself. cain does earn himself a rake of teeth against his lips for it, but it's not a reprimand. it's just toji chasing more connection in ways that feel familiar to him, in the only ways he really knows how.

still, increasingly with cain even the familiar patterns are starting to feel foreign to toji and while he's more than aware of why, he can't look those answers in the eye. all he can do is bury himself in the moment, give into impulse and desire so he doesn't have to question their source. he strokes over the flat of cain's stomach, hiking his shirt up to map out the sharp ridges of each rib. ]

You've lost weight, you little shit. What was that about eating?

[tsygan]

Tvoy soplyak.

( your brat. and no, he's not about to elaborate on that one.

but yeah, maybe it is false confidence, because why would he miss him? that train of thought is a two-way street, it seems, because he doesn't exactly feel like he's someone worth missing, either, but he sure can posture until his breath runs out and his face turns blue.

even if — haven't we said this before? — toji has always been able to see through him like he's made of fucking glass.

he stretches beneath that wandering hand, and maybe that makes his ribs stand out more, but all he does is chuckle at the admonishment. ) I never said how much I was eatin'. ( nonchalant, like it doesn't matter that he's been neglecting the nourishment of his body. that kind of thing has never really mattered much to him. )

F'it helps, I've been eatin' more here than I ever did on the colonies.

[revolts]

[ right now, to likely both of their mutual shock, toji is holding cain like he's made of glass, like he isn't painfully aware that cain's made of the same mangled stuff that he is. scar tissue and knotted, splintered bone bound back together with nothing more than spite and grim determination. he snarls softly, a low rumble deep in the back of his throat, and he pulls cain's hips up to seat him against his lap like he's weightless, like they're in space and he's an irresistible force. ]

You gonna make me waste my breath answering that? If you're eating more now and still losing weight, we got other problems.

[ but problems for later, another time, when it doesn't feel so much like his skin might blister and peel from a lack of having cain against him. his lips wander to cain's jawline, teeth raking over his throat, peeling his shirt from him in inches. but he pauses as the thought strangely, jarringly occurs him to ask— ]

...you want me?

[tsygan]

( toji has never handled him like this, like he's something precious, breakable, fucking fragile and he's not sure how to process it, because he would never consider himself as any of the above. but then he's pulling his hips to fit more securely against his own and he moans at the feel of the other's body fitting against his own as it does, two pieces of a puzzle coming together as they should, but he's not going to think about it like that —

he laughs. ) Maybe my metabolism picked up here, whaddya want me to say?

( his fingers drag through dark hair, dig blunt fingernails into the back of his neck as he all but writhes against him as those teeth rake over his throat, as those fingers peel his topmost layer away from his skin and when he pauses, when he asks.

are you fuckin' serious? )

You gotta— ( he pauses, and bites at his bottom lip. ) Fuck, you think you gotta ask? Your mind's slippin', starik. ( just wait, he'll sooth the sting of his teeth with the sweep of his tongue. slow, hot, sweet. )

I always want you.

[revolts]

[ toji's tongue flicks over the same spot cain's teeth tugged against, inhaling sharply through his nose at the reliable rush of adrenaline that always chases after his pain. when cain answers like that, it draws into stark relief how much toji has no idea why he even asked. he wouldn't have gotten this far with cain if cain didn't want it, never once questioned if his partner wanted to be with him because if they didn't they wouldn't bother with him to begin with. if they changed their mind halfway, he'd know.

is it time to teach cain a lesson about consent? maybe, maybe. toji rakes his hand through cain's hair in return, pinning back his bangs to get a better look. ]

You ever said no to someone before? [ he asks softly, pausing as he waits for an answer. ]

[tsygan]

( cain has never bothered with anything he didn't want to, anything he couldn't be bothered to put the effort into — and he's never really bothered to put his effort into much of anything, because that would mean investing, and anything he's ever thought of investing in … well.

he's not thinking about that. not now, when he finally has his this stupid old man back in his vicinity, and if he's perfectly honest with himself, that's been enough from the start.

it's just enough to be with him. be around him. but that question comes when that hand sweeps his bangs off of his forehead and he — his brows furrow, and he looks up at him questioningly before giving a roll of his shoulders that equates a shrug. )

Never had to. ( like it's nothing. ) Never thought about it.

[revolts]

Yeah?

[ toji mulls over the answer as he thinks about what he's doing here, what he's trying to accomplish with asking someone like cain, someone like him, about holding onto what little the world offers them with both hands. whatever it might be, however mangled and filthy and unfit for consumption. surely cain's standing invitation is an extension of that, toji holding a space no one else has ever occupied. and cain thinks it's good enough, thinks it's worth it, thinks it's everything because it's all he's ever really had.

cain's his, and toji won't walk back on that. he warned the boy, again and again, let him know exactly what the consequence of being toji's would be. toji's far from a fucking saint, and even giving that much warning is out of character for him. so. as far as he's concerned, cain's more than had a fair chance to end up somewhere better than this.

still. all that said, cain is changing him. toji isn't a saint, but when he's with cain, when cain looks at him like that, when cain wants him, holds him, talks to him like this is something real to cain too— it makes toji human in ways he thought he left behind long ago. ]

You're not begging for scraps anymore, Alexei, [ he settles on, the hand in cain's hair slipping down to hook fingers under cain's chin, angling his face up. ]

You've got me. You can decide what you want and what you don't. Got it?

[tsygan]

( he still like to think he knows what he's gotten himself into, as far as giving himself so wholly over to the other, what it means to be possessed by someone; he's not about to rescind his offer, or take back anything he's said in the interim, but it's still going to take a little bit for him to realize that what toji is about to tell him is true.

he's not begging for scraps anymore.

even though it still feels like that's how things are always going to be for him, because that's all it's ever been and things have never been as good for him as they are now. he's never felt like he really belonged anywhere, had a place to call home even if he's realizing now that home doesn't have to be a place. it can be a person. it can be —

his throat works in a dry, clicking swallow as the other hooks his fingers beneath his chin and angles his gaze upward, and for a second, he doesn't know if he can meet toji's own; he feels achingly exposed, vulnerable, as he never has with him before, even after giving over his stupid name and everything that had come with it. so soon after meeting this man, this whirlwind of a human being that he wants to get even more swept up in.

hw swallows again, finally meeting those dark eyes and holding steady, one of his own hands coming up to curl cool fingers around his forearm. ) Yeah. ( it comes out as a croak. ) Yeah, I got it. But that don't mean I don't still mean what I said. ( i always want you. )