Asahikawa had its share of rotten winds, ones that blew over the canneries and ironworks, and they didn’t stop for the homes of the rich and powerful. Nature didn’t recognize fine breeding as different from any other kind. The night breeze was brisk and brought with it enough of the stench of industry to cover up the scent of blood that clung to Ogata even after he left his father’s house behind.

The carriage was waiting for him just down the street, which was almost too much. Too easy. He’d had visits to the barber that brought with them more complications. He climbed aboard, and once he was inside the coach the only smells were gun oil and leather and horse. They lurched into motion: horses snuffled, wheels rattled on cobblestone, and Ogata’s heartbeat kept drumming within his breast, even before Tsurumi’s wide hand slid smoothly from its resting place atop Ogata’s knee up and across his thigh.

“We may have lost a war hero today, but I’m sure we’ll find another one in you. You’ve done well, Ogata.” Tsurumi’s tone was grave, his voice full of consequence and secret-keeping. His hand travelled in increments. His grasp shifted by just the slightest inch, timed at every bump in the road, so that Ogata could have brushed it off as accidental if he didn’t know better. Once you knew what to expect, Tsurumi wasn’t half as subtle as he thought he was. Even with the door closed, the air was sharp enough Ogata could make out his own breath, and the weight of the hand burned through his trousers like a brand.

It didn’t take long until Tsurumi’s thumb had slithered all the way up to press insistently just under the place where the inner seams met. They rattled past a streetlamp, and in the flash of gaslight Ogata saw that Tsurumi’s gaze was fully, nakedly upon him, his eyes wide and expectant and a vague, fatherly smile in place.

They weren’t far from the officers’ club: just a few minutes away. There wasn’t much risk to it, not really. Let Tsurumi think he’d got him where he wanted him. Ogata splayed his legs apart, lazily, not so much an action as ceasing to hold himself in. The carriage wasn’t really big enough for it, but it felt easy to do, like the path of least resistance. One of his knees knocked against the door; the other rested against Tsurumi’s lean thigh.

As close as he’d get, Tsurumi held back from ever touching the obvious tent in Ogata’s trousers. Plausible deniability, or maybe just wanting to make Ogata work for it. The sound of his own blood rushing through his ears hadn’t abated since he left the general on the floor; he toyed with the idea of reaching out for Tsurumi’s hand and making him stop playing around, but he held off when he felt the coach start to slow.

(He didn’t always get hard from killing, just sometimes. When it worked out really well. When he’d earned it.)

Before he had a chance to open the door and step outside, Tsurumi leaned over and murmured, “Follow me, would you? I’d like to make a full report while the events of the night are still fresh.”

That close to his ear, he could feel Tsurumi’s beard rasp against his neck. The steel of his headplate radiated cold against Ogata’s skin.

A half-smile broke out before he could hold it back. “Whatever you say, sir.”

-

The officers at Asahikawa were usually busy with tasks of business or pleasure even after dark, but after exiting the carriage and entering the headquarters, his and Tsurumi’s footsteps were the only sounds of human life Ogata could hear. The two of them walked with the rhythm of lifetime military men, regimented and regular on their own but out of time with each other, and their footsteps were muffled by the carpet. There was the occasional muffled creak or murmur through some of the closed doors they passed, but they could be dismissed as the building settling after an unseasonably warm day. Perhaps Tsurumi had arranged for the halls to be emptied before they arrived—it was the kind of thing he would do, insufferably confident as he always was, though not wrong, either, at least not tonight. Ogata wondered how many other young men had been lead down this very hallway before himself; surely he wasn’t the first. The thought wasn’t enough to dull the current of energy that thrummed through his limbs, emanating from Tsurumi’s hand where it rested on the small of Ogata’s back. The press of Tsurumi’s gloved palm through canvas and cloth steered Ogata towards the First Lieutenant’s quarters, as though he needed the direction. As though Ogata didn’t know exactly where this was going.

Though it wasn’t as if he needed it, there being an absence of witnesses, he was grateful for the way his cloak hid the evidence both of what they had been up to in the carriage and what he had been doing before stepping into it.

When they reached their destination, Tsurumi opened the door and gestured for Ogata to enter ahead of him. He’d been inside the First Lieutenant’s offices before, of course—the plan had hatched somewhere—but never at this kind of hour. Behind him, the door snicked closed with the finality of a bolt being locked into its receiver.

The room was done up in the mix of conservative colours and fine materials that defined the officers’ club. Stacks of books and diagrams covered most of the available surfaces, though there was an order to the madness, even at a cursory glance. Nothing about it would have given the room away as belonging to Tsurumi specifically if not for the jar of imported sweets on one of the side tables.

Ogata leaned against the side of the desk, his fingers curling around the engravings on the edge, before he turned around to face Tsurumi, who was in the process of hanging up his coat. Tsurumi was a tall man, but he always looked so much smaller in just the black uniform without the layers of padding to ward off the chill. A long and thin figure that moved with precision and absolutely no hesitation, Tsurumi crossed the space between them to stand in front of Ogata, close enough Ogata had to tilt his neck to look him in the eye, and then pushed back the edge of Ogata’s cloak.

Ogata didn’t need to look down to know that, below the raincloak, his navy uniform was stained black with blood. Though in the process of drying, it was still wet enough for the fabric to cling to Ogata’s chest. He was soaked through his jacket, soaked through his shirt, all the way down to his skin. When Tsurumi ran a hand over the front of his jacket it was as though there was nothing between them.

“You’ll want to get that changed, of course,” Tsurumi murmured, and Ogata begun to unbutton his collar without breaking Tsurumi’s gaze.

He didn’t make a show of it. Tsurumi would have enjoyed it too much if he had. Tsurumi walked around to the other side of the desk to sit in his chair, legs crossed at the knee, and toyed with a stack of papers with more flourish than necessary.

Ogata set his cloak and boots to the side but dropped the rest of his clothes where they fell: first the jacket, then the shirt, and then his trousers, one leg after another. They were all ruined, anyway; it wasn’t Port Arthur anymore, you didn’t have to keep wearing them once they were done for. Laundry could only do so much.

Blood lay like a film over the the skin of his chest, diluted by sweat and everyday grime. By the time he was down to his fundoshi, Tsurumi had let go of his props. Tsurumi peeled off his gloves, set them down on the desk, and then rested his chin in his hand, eyes raking over Ogata from head to foot. They were soldiers, nakedness was nothing new to either of them, but something about the imbalance of it was affecting Ogata more than he expected; it was an effort to look nonchalant under the force of Tsurumi’s appraisal. He fought the urge to cross his arms over his chest.

“You know I abhor sake, but if you’d like anything else, I’m sure I can find something for you.”

“I’m not thirsty.” Like hell he was going to get drunk around Tsurumi, now or ever. The man already knew too much about him without Ogata giving him the opportunity to fish for more.

Tsurumi’s mouth twisted in a small, private smile, one given in confidence, and then got to his feet. “Just stay here a moment, won’t you?” Tsurumi left Ogata standing nearly-naked in the middle of the office while he went into the private rooms in the back. He wasn’t gone more than half a minute before he returned with a washcloth and bowl of water. He shot Ogata a scouring look through his lashes. “How careless of me. I should have known you’d need to be cleaned up. My apologies.” Ogata felt his eyes go wide, involuntarily, before he schooled his face back under control. Tsurumi took his seat again, setting the bowl down on the surface of the desk, and blinked pointedly until Ogata walked around to his side.

Tsurumi squeezed the extra water out of the cloth and raised it to Ogata’s breastbone. The water was colder than the surrounding air, and Ogata couldn’t help but flinch. Tsurumi made a ch-ch-ing sound under his breath, like you’d use to calm a child. It was a struggle not to bat his hand away and as much of a struggle not to press closer into it.

While he went to work, Tsurumi begun to question him in the same detached, official tone he’d heard a thousand times before. Not playing the seducer, for a moment. “Did anyone see you come in?”

The familiarity was comforting, and Ogata forced his breathing to slow, waiting to see what Tsurumi’s game was. “No one.”

“Which way did you enter?” Tsurumi kept his gaze on the path of his hand, never looking away from whichever part of Ogata’s skin he was bathing clean at any given moment, but the proximity combined with the growling anticipation that had lodged within Ogata’s chest made it hard to concentrate on Tsurumi’s questions.

“The attic. The servant’s entrance was blocked off, but the roof latch was ajar.”

“Where was he?”

A stray drop of water ran from Ogata's left pectoral down his chest, and he swallowed before speaking. “The office.”

“Is that where you did it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I moved him into his private rooms.” Ogata glanced at the bowl to see the water had turned the colour of rust.

“A bit of unnecessary risk, wasn’t it?” Tsurumi lifted Ogata’s right arm, his grip like iron despite the thinness of his fingers, and begun to sponge down the underside of Ogata's forearm. It was probably just due to the frigid temperature of the water, but Ogata’s skin was flushed pink everywhere Tsurumi had touched him.

“There wasn’t anyone else on the floor. I checked.”

“I have every confidence in your judgement, of course. But a commander must ask these things.” Tsurumi squeezed out the cloth one more time and then set it down on the desk. He licked his thumb and raised it to Ogata’s cheek. He moved slowly enough Ogata could have ducked away. Ogata just narrowed his eyes and smiled as Tsurumi rubbed the last of the blood off Ogata's face.

“For the report, right?”

“Exactly.” If they hadn’t been blown off, Tsurumi would have raised an eyebrow. You could see it in his smug face. “So you moved him into his rooms: how? Did you use force?”

As if his father would have made time to talk to his son in private out of the goodness of his heart. “Nothing that will show on the body.”

A hand curled around Ogata’s bicep, pulling him in closer, as if there could be any less space between them—he lifted a knee to rest against the chair, between Tsurumi’s legs, for balance. When Tsurumi’s benign smile didn’t waver, Ogata swung his other leg over to sit astride Tsurumi’s knee. Bare white thighs bracketed black trousered ones. Tsurumi set a hand on the small of his back, and went on with his interrogation as if nothing had changed, his gaze flickering across Ogata’s shoulders and chest, never landing on his face for long enough to make eye contact. Keeping him at some kind of a distance, in the place of any physical one. “How long were you there, all told?”

“I was there for a few hours, but only with him for about ten minutes.” A lie: almost an hour, easily. There had been hotpot on the boil, and they had a lot to talk about.

“So efficient.” Ogata didn’t say anything to that, just tilted his head back as Tsurumi walked the fingers of his free hand up and down Ogata’s breastbone, petting at his skin indulgently, absently. Ogata let him; it felt—it wasn’t enough, but it was something. Enough for now.

“You left the note, of course.”

“Obviously.”

“You did excellently. I’m very proud of you, you know.”

There was nothing he could say to that, and anyway it was harder and harder to keep his mind on the conversation. Tsurumi’s fingers were quicksilver, so practiced at this parody of a paternal caress—for all his seduction Tsurumi liked to keep his men striving, starving for as much as a touch of his hand, but there was no way this was the first time Tsurumi had someone on a platter like this. Like his praise, the benevolent weight of his touch was transparent. It was easy for Ogata to lean into it, to play the role of the grieving son as it was offered, though neither of them were fooled by his lack of sincerity.

Tsurumi wasn’t a large man and he hadn’t gained any weight with age. Even so, balanced precariously as he was on Tsurumi’s thigh, Ogata’s gut thrilled at the possibility he was about to be consumed, like he could be enveloped by those long limbs at any moment, should the spider decide to devour his mate.

Ogata shifted his left knee from its place between Tsurumi's thighs to the other side of Tsurumi’s right leg so he could straddle his lap in earnest. The movement brought them closer together, Ogata’s thighs burning pleasantly as they were stretched a little wider, sliding down until their hips met and Tsurumi smiled, unadulterated delight writ in every visible inch of teeth.

While Ogata sat astride his lap, Tsurumi lay back, luxuriating in his own satisfaction. Somewhere in the room a ticking sound kept time, a second hand making its journey around the clock face, steering them deeper into night. Spindly fingers dug into his haunches, a gesture meant to steady him, and it would’ve, if he had needed it. As it was, Ogata bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from shaking off Tsurumi’s hands. The support was unnecessary. A sniper learned how to hold a position regardless of pain, or he died. It was part of why he felt off-balance, surely. What he did earlier that day didn’t require much patience. He had gotten in so close; the knife moved his hand which moved his arm, faster than his eye could follow, until his father’s chest caved in, the punctures rendering it just so much mess attached to arm and legs. He didn’t usually get much blood on himself. Tsurumi had to have missed a spot, somewhere; his skin still felt like there was something clinging to it.

Besides, the ache in his thighs was useful. It cut through the sensations swirling through his head, the simmering dissatisfaction and anticipation that had lodged under his skin since he’d left his father’s side—it’d be stupid to let his guard down, now more than ever. Before, he’d had something Tsurumi wanted but hadn’t yet got; now Ogata was the sole witness to their mutual crime. A liability.

Tsurumi played it cool, but he wasn’t as unaffected by the whole pantomime as you might read from his face. There was a hot and hard length pressing against Ogata's ass through the thick fabric of Tsurumi's uniform trousers which Ogata ground down on experimentally: once, and then again when he decided he liked the way it felt.

He leaned in and put his face against Tsurumi’s neck, close enough to bite down on his jugular, close enough to hear the hitch in his breathing. “Come on, old man. Let’s get to it.”

Tsurumi hummed. “So little patience. Where else do you have to be tonight? Is there any better place for a grieving son than with his commander?”

Time to force the play-acting to a close. Ogata fisted a hand in the hair on the back of Tsurumi’s head and scrabbled at the fastenings of his trousers with the other. He didn’t get off of his lap, just pulled Tsurumi’s cock out as soon as the fabric was out of the way enough to allow it. To his lack of surprise, it was as long and finely formed as the rest of him. It fit inside his fist nicely, solid and hot.

He felt more than heard Tsurumi laugh from the back of his throat. The even fingernails of a pianist scratched across his ass and up along the line of his spine. “Do you want–”

“No. Just like this.”

“If you insist.”

In the end, Tsurumi fished some kind of oil out of his desk drawer and set to work opening him up properly. There wasn’t much Ogata could do about it besides grind down on his fingers impatiently. Something within his chest had quickened, like smoke on a pyre, and it demanded to burn a path out. Tsurumi worked long fingers into him and Ogata tried to control his breathing as not to let on how much it was getting to him. To distract himself, he rapped a fingernail against the headplate. “Do you ever take that thing off?”

Tsurumi blinked up at him and crooked one of his fingers; Ogata bit his tongue in an effort not to gasp. “Hmm, maybe next time. I’m shy, don’t you know?”

That was so—Ogata reached down, pulled Tsurumi’s hand away, gave Tsurumi’s cock a few strokes and then lined it up. It was too fast, it was burning him up from the inside, he didn’t know if he’d ever been so hard without so much as a hand on his dick.

The chair wasn’t built for two full-grown men. Its joints creaked, the legs shuffled back across the floor, and between that and the rasping sounds of pleasure they couldn't wholly suppress, anyone passing by in the hallway could get a sense of what was going on. It was enough to incriminate, though not enough to prosecute; not that it really mattered. They weren’t the first. As a scandal, it was so blase as to be almost uninteresting. First Lieutenant Tsurumi was brilliant and brave and Central could permit his little indulgences, as long as they didn’t get out of hand—which they would, soon, but not like this.

The next time Ogata was alone with Second Lieutenant Koito, he’d have to let him know: the view from the First Lieutenant’s lap isn’t bad. I hope you get to see it for yourself one day.

The pressure of Tsurumi’s cock pushing up inside him was almost as intense as the ache in his thighs from holding himself atop Tsurumi’s lap in the undersized chair. He hadn’t wanted it to feel good, and it didn’t. It was too much too fast. He wouldn’t be able to do it at all if his body weren’t still coursing with adrenaline: he hadn’t come down since the knife-point first slipped into Hanazawa’s chest.

Tsurumi could have made it good, could have made him enjoy it, and maybe someday before he left all this behind Ogata would let him, but he couldn’t give him that tonight. Ogata had shown Tsurumi too many of his soft places already. The thought had been jerk-off fodder for a long time, pretty much since he’d first joined the army and felt that hand on his shoulder, back before he knew Tsurumi looked at all his favourites that way. He’d never shaken the desire, it just changed its form. If Ogata had played along, Tsurumi could have had him on his back until the sun started to creep past the curtains, but things being as they were he’d go feral if he let Tsurumi touch him with anything close to tenderness.

A rivulet of milky fluid ran down from under the headplate, across Tsurumi’s cheek. Ogata waited until it had almost reached his moustache and then leaned in to lick it off Tsurumi’s skin. It tasted salty, but not strong, like sweat; more like tears. Tsurumi tipped his chin up before Ogata got the chance to pull away. He kissed the same way he did anything: smooth, forceful. Ogata let Tsurumi run his tongue against his teeth for a time before Ogata pulled back. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever had a chance to look on the Lieutenant from above. Tsurumi looked good with his face turned upwards.

Tsurumi stroked over his inner thigh, back and forth, exactly the way he had in the carriage, the touch itself almost chaste, except this time he followed the motion to its natural conclusion: he reached past the fundoshi, already pulled to the side, and pulled Ogata off in no time at all. The orgasm felt like it was ripped past his back teeth: Tsurumi’s grasp was scalding hot and his wrist snapped with marching-beat quickness and he had been strung out on the feeling ever since he’d seen the first splash of blood on the tatami. It was sickening, how good it felt; he was dizzy with the force of it, and he almost didn’t notice when Tsurumi pulled out until he felt him come over the inside of Ogata’s thighs, another burst of heat and filthiness he wasn’t sure if he wanted to wash off, or if he even could.

As Ogata pulled on his discarded uniform for what would be the last time before he burned them and requested a replacement for his spare set, Tsurumi delicately wiped his hands clean with a kerchief and remarked, “You’ll be noted down as attending morning muster whether or not you do. Just this once. Considering the circumstances.”

Ogata fastened the clasps on the front of his cloak and pulled it around himself, though once he went back into the hall it would surely be too dark to tell what kind of state his uniform was in. “No need. I’ll be there.”

Tsurumi paused and turned to Ogata with the first smile all night that didn’t look consciously painted on his face. “A unit of men like you, and there’s nothing we couldn’t do, is there?”

There are no other men like me, Ogata thought, but what he did was pull his hood over his head and nod: let Tsurumi read into it deference or insubordination, whatever suited him.

The way from the officer’s quarters to the barracks was as deserted as the way inside had been. There was no moon outside, no light shone in from the windows, and Ogata made his way back sated, restless, and silent, and alone.