Chapter 2
"Eyyyy, So-So!
We're headed out.
You coming to the station with us?"
Sato's putting on his coat in the genkan and Tachibana is sitting in one of the armchairs, focused on his phone.
"Ah, I actually drove," Sota says.
"Alright, then," Ueda says, heading over to the genkan to put his shoes on.
"See you at practice!"
"Bye, So-kun!" Sato waves around Ueda's big body as they head out the door.
Sota stands up and realizes he's made a fatal error as soon as the door clicks shut.
Why didn't he say he'd walk down with them?
Now he's alone, in an apartment with Tachibana—Tachibana and his leather harnesses.
He nearly chokes on his own spit, rushing towards the door.
"You still have a few drinks in the fridge.
I won't drink them so please take them with you," Tachibana says, grabbing the clicker to flip the TV over to the news.
"Right," Sota says and abruptly switches directions.
He grabs his two remaining peach teas up and puts them in the convenience store bag he brought them in. He rushes back into the living room.
He doesn't quite get to his coat on the hook by the door before Tachibana speaks.
"Hey, Nakamura—"
"I saw the sex stuff in your bathroom," Sota violently blurts against his will.
Time stretches out again, eternal, unending... the void at the beginning and end of all things coming to claim Sota as he stands in his borrowed house slippers by Tachibana's door.
There's a ringing in his ears, or perhaps it's the laughter of some vengeful god.
Tachibana's expression doesn't outwardly change.
His eyes feel like they're drilling holes in Sota's head.
"It's not sex stuff.
It's bondage gear."
Ok then.
Ryo gets a series of texts later that night.
He's just changing into a pair of clean boxer briefs and a white tee shirt in preparation for bed when his phone buzzes on the side table.
From:
Nakamura Sota
What do you mean it's not sex stuff?
I thought bondage gear was sex stuff.
He should probably just ignore the text, but delicacy has never been Ryo's strong suit.
To:
It can be used in sexual play but BDSM isn't inherently sexual.
Do your own research Nakamura.
Still, Ryo would hate for Sota to search some porn site and think he was doing research.
Considering the horrors that could be heralded by a free-range Sota, Ryo decides to pull up a BDSM 101 article from a trusted source and send the link.
He then decisively turns his phone to
do-not-disturb
and turns off the lights.
They don't have practice the next day, so by mid morning Sota has read through the link that Tachibana sent, as well as three or four of the pages that were hyperlinked in it.
As a free-wheeling bisexual who's never had trouble finding a partner, Sota considers himself pretty experienced.
He's had a girl ask him to smack her on the ass before, and he had a short lived boyfriend who liked to have his wrists held down when they fucked.
Even so, he's always had pretty vanilla tastes, he supposes.
Two bodies touching each other has always been pretty much enough to get Sota going, either in person or on video.
So, he really just opens the link out of some morbid curiosity.
He hadn't even really meant to send that text, but it had just been... eating at him.
It may have been a tactical error because, no matter his reasons, Sota didn't expect to be
fascinated
He had no idea BDSM was so complex.
He clicks a link to something called
shibari
and his eyes go comically wide.
He's still having trouble wrapping his head around the idea of this not being a sex thing, though.
Especially as he hops in the shower and finds his hand wrapped around his cock, one forearm braced against the tile.
The scalding water pounds down on his back as images of rope and kneeling figures run through his head.
Sota pants through his open mouth, fingertips pressed into the wall as his pace speeds up against his will.
He thinks about studded collars and an ass so red you need to put lotion on it when you're done.
He thinks about a pale chest wrapped in a clean, black, leather harness.
"Mmnf-fuck!"
His strangled curse is drowned out by the sound of water against porcelain, and the evidence of Sota's sudden obsession disappears down the drain.
About fifteen minutes later, Sota is sitting in his kitchen in a pair of sweats with his towel around his neck, perusing an article on different types of doms and subs.
Once again he finds his fingers flying over his phone keyboard before he can think better of it.
Ryo-Ryo
Ryo r ya a dom or a sub?
Sota checks the article again, realizing he forgot one of the main ones.
Or a switch?
Anyone else would probably tell Sota to fuck off, but for all his derision, Tachibana is rarely anything but brutally truthful when asked a direct question.
Sure enough, only five minutes later his phone dings.
I primarily dom.
Stop texting me about this or I'll tell your mother you entered someone's bedroom without asking.
A few prickles of sweat break out on Sota's brow as he's forced to imagine the hell and fury his mother would bring down upon him for being so rude.
Well, he'll have to continue doing any more research on his own.
Ryo should have known better than to believe that would be the end of it.
Unfortunately, he wouldn't even get through the end of the week before he's faced with further consequences of trusting his teammates to respect basic boundaries.
He'd just needed to sanitize and oil the leather
It needed twenty-four hours to dry.
He hadn't
planned
for anyone to rudely enter his ensuite bathroom.
Damn Nakamura and his nosiness.
On Friday they have morning practice followed by a few hours of individual skills training.
Ryo heads to the locker rooms after most of the veterans have already left the courts.
Normally Ueda and Sato would have been fixtures in the group that stayed late, but the team had three days off and the pair wanted to make a weekend trip to Crestview, so there were only a handful of players still practicing quietly.
Ryo showers and then spreads his towel out on a bench to finish getting dressed.
He's just about done packing his bag when Sota himself walks into the otherwise empty locker room.
"Ryo-Ryo."
Ryo isn't sure when he stooped pushing back on the nickname.
Once Ueda picked it up, resistance became pretty much futile.
"Nakamura," he responds with the extra cool warning he's been using all week.
Beyond his texts, Sota hasn't mentioned his discovery of Ryo's hobby in person so far.
He began to hope that it would fade into irrelevance in Sota's mind as he loses interest or the novelty of the discovery fades.
That hope is shattered as Sota turns towards Ryo, stripping his sweat-stained practice shirt off.
"Hey, Ryo," Sota says.
"I have another question 'bout the BDSM thing."
"I thought I told you to stop talking about that."
"Ya told me to stop
textin'
ya about it," he says, with the conviction of someone who played the
i'm-not-touching-you
game far too much as a child.
Ryo doesn't gratify it with a response, but Sota is predictably undeterred.
"Anyway, I think I wanna try it," he says.
"Congratulations," Ryo deadpans as he zips his bag up.
"And since yer the only person I know who does it, I think we should do it together," he finishes.
Ryo freezes for just a moment and then slowly raises his head to level a black stare at the setter.
"No," he says, decisively, incontestably.
"Why not?
!" Sota asks, head tilted to the side in confusion like he couldn't possibly imagine why Ryo wouldn't want to.
Like there aren't millions of obvious reasons.
Sota puts his hands on his hips as he stands there in just his practice shorts.
His wide shoulders, bleach-blonde hair, and heavy, cocksure eyes remind Ryo how well he'd fit in an American fraternity.
Which is only one of the
many
reasons, honestly.