The Silence Of Metawin.

家

After the two policemen have left them, Bright lights the tallow candles in the lanterns and quietly makes up the fire. The warm golden glow spreads out from the hearth, illuminating the corners of the room, but somehow the shadows still persist. The table where they have been sat has been cleared of everything now, but Win can still see the pictures spread out there. Inside his skull something that has been dormant is alive and moving again, skipping lithely from image to image, showing him one bright, blood-red frame after another. He only becomes aware that he's been standing motionless for some time when Bright's hand comes to rest on the curve of his shoulder. Win can feel his warm breath behind his ear, and flexes his neck sideways to meet it.

"Come out of there now. Come back to me."

He doesn't want it to, but his voice as he replies sounds dishonest, even to his own ears.

"I am here. I'm here."

And then a sudden excruciating pain in his shoulder rips through him. Bright's fingernails are digging deep into the muscle around the old knife wound, and his face is dark with an unreadable expression. Gripping his wrist, Win twists it backwards knowing instinctively what he will do, but is still left breathless when Bright twists under his grip and reverses the hold, so his own arm is brought over his throat in a chokehold. The full length of Bright's body presses against him from behind, the muscles of his thighs corded with the effort of holding him prisoner. He speaks again, directly into Win's ear.

"Now you're here."

He is slightly breathless, and Win can't help but notice, more than slightly aroused.

"This isn't really how I envisaged the evening ending, Win."

"Isn't it?" His air supply is being severely limited, but Win finds that he is still being allowed enough to reply. "I thought we were practicing mindfulness these days? Living in the here and now."

He feels Bright's mouth move against the nape of his neck.

"That's how I've always lived, Win. You know that."

"And yet you make plans," Win shifts, dragging down experimentally on Bright's forearm, but his hold is like iron. He's not giving in just yet. "You envisage things, you have expectations."

"No. I never have expectations. Not when it comes to you."

Bright's chin and then his teeth press into the trapezoid muscle beside his neck, and the sensation is painfully, viscerally delicious. And for a moment the arm across his throat is no longer holding him prisoner, it's just holding him. And then, just as suddenly, it's gone.

Later, when he has eased his body inch by inch into the scalding water of the cedar wood onsen, Bright returns to him. Silently, his friend washes and rinses himself clean beside the bath, as tradition dictates, before entering the water. The onsen tub is small, and although there's plenty of room for both of them to sit in it without touching, it seems to Win that Bright has chosen to sit fractionally further from him than is absolutely necessary. Removing the hot cloth he's laid over his eyes, he looks across at him questioningly, but Bright's expression is completely opaque, which irritates him.

"What's going on with you?"

It's a rude question, and Win likes the look Bright gets when he asks it. Like he could lunge at him right this second and end his life with one graceful and efficient snap of his neck.

"You ask that way and you genuinely expect a cognisant answer from me?"

"Oh please." Win rolls his head back on his neck, bouncing it off the wood in exasperation, "Aren't we past all this bullshit? Aren't we over protecting each other's delicate sensibilities for the sake of...what? Etiquette? Habit?"