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[A brief interlude. Bit of a large age gap here,
but both characters are of legal consenting age.
This page is explicitly NSFW and anything but healthy.]


[Johan Liebert] - [Roberto]

A pair of pale blue eyes scanned the crowd of people as their owner stepped off of the train, swathed in thick coat and scarf. The air was chilly, warmed above freezing by the sheer number of bodies at the station that seemed to press in on Johan as the young man wove his way through the crowd.

It wasn't hard to find Roberto, towering stronghold of a man that he was. Not a word was exchanged between the two, a healthy distance between them as they made their way to the street outside. A brief taxi ride to their hotel room, and Johan was finally feeling the effects of the long train ride he'd taken to reach their meeting point. His ankles ached from where he'd stood for a good part of the time, given his seat up for an elderly man who he'd talked with.

"Bath?" Roberto murmured, warm and honey-smooth as he locked the door behind them. Johan quietly turned to nod, and Roberto was gone within seconds to draw a bath. It was a nice hotel--sweetly decorated, warm colors, a view of the street far below beyond the balcony.

Johan drew near to the balcony doors as the water pipes creaked to life.

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The air was colder, here, Johan thought as he slipped onto the balcony and rested his arms on the railing. Perhaps it was due to his being shed of scarf and coat, but the wind was biting, slicing through his thin swath of blonde hair until it had him shivering. His fingertips found the cold metal rail, gripping tight as he leaned over and peered down at the street, expression placid even as his world began to sway slightly with the sheer height of it.

"Johan," Roberto's voice was soft, and far away, as if the man feared spooking Johan. The blonde turned to eye the other man, his eyes crinkling at the sides with a smile.

"Take a rest, Roberto," he murmured as he passed, shutting the balcony doors behind him as he made his way to the bathroom. His hands were pleasantly numb from the cold. Roberto seemed, if not satisfied, then at least placated with Johan's words, and started on removing his shoes and suit jacket, sitting on the edge of one of the two beds.

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When Johan sank into the water, it seared his skin red-hot with the new change in temperature. His lashes fluttered closed, lips parting in a shaky exhale as fire lapped at his skin, and then finally seemed to settle into softer warmth.

Disappointing. Johan hummed quietly to himself as he washed, rubbed at his bruised ankles. Investing in shoes that were kinder to his skin may be a good thought. He took a moment to lean back in the water, his hair dipping into it as he sank further into the tub, lidded eyes closing for a moment.

When he opened them, it was not without a small touch of surprise to see Roberto's face and hand in the crack of the door. He met Roberto's eyes for a moment, staring, before the other man spoke.

"Everything alright?" it was a simple question, and Johan's face eased into a gentle smile. Perhaps Roberto, recalling the way Johan had leaned over the railing, was checking to see if he'd drowned himself yet.

With not a single change in expression, Johan let his face slip beneath the water.

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He could've sworn he heard a muffled, panicked 'christ' come from somewhere above the water's surface. He reemerged as Roberto's hand was coming down to lift him back up, bringing his own hand up to rub water from his face and slick his hair back. The smile that he gave Roberto was unchanging, unflinchingly soft, even at the look of shock on Roberto's face.

"Aren't you attentive," Johan murmured softly, and Roberto shifted uncomfortably, bringing his hand back to his side. Johan watched as Roberto's eyes darted over his naked body, and he angled his head in such a way that seemed to suggest coyness, were Johan capable of such a thing. "Leave me."

"Don't be rash," Roberto murmured, then seemed to clam up when he realized his own gall. A smile of his own eased over his face. "Very well," he finished, turning to go. Trust, then. It was about trust, was it...?

Roberto was hard pressed to leave his savior, who may or may not be suicidal, to his own devices. But over time, he'd begun to ease into the idea--even so, this behavior was new, and it worried him, somewhere deep in the buried recesses of his emotional capacity.

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Worries aside, Johan emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his shoulders, looking a bit more alive than before, a bit pinker. Roberto looked up from the book he was flipping through, a little thing belonging to the hotel, his gaze drifting over the other man's form.

Johan calmly walked to the dresser to retrieve a pair of nightclothes, letting the towel drop unceremoniously to the floor and nudging it into a neat little pile with his foot. He felt eyes on him, from behind, felt warmth trickle from the base of his spine towards the base of his neck, pleasant in its burning.

This 'new behavior' as Roberto regarded it was Johan's newest game. With such a lull in his plans, games were essential to keep himself busy.

"Are these new?" Johan murmured, pulling out a red, silken pair of nightclothes he'd never seen before. Roberto's expression flickered as he was regarded, though not face-to-face, and he murmured ascent.

"I bought a few things for you, since I knew you'd be arriving soon." Johan didn't have to look to see the tinge of warmth to Roberto's features, though he knew that expression would be as set and crooked as ever. "If you hate them, don't use them."

Johan thumbed over the silk, smooth, too smooth. He held it up to his bare torso, the hem of it brushing along his abdomen and hips. "I'll use them," he simply said, and quietly dressed himself. Johan's thankless gratitude was all the titillation that Roberto needed.

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Roberto's silent form was behind him before Johan could finish tying the sash. The hardness pressing in on Johan's lower back was anything but silent in its desires, its needs. At Johan's silence, once more, uncharacteristic, Roberto hesitated, second-guessed Johan's invitation for intimacy. It wasn't rare, so much as it was loveless--and always had been. It was just as well.

"It looks good on you," Roberto murmured simply, as Johan stepped out of his shadow and over to a mounted full-length mirror on the wall to view for himself. The lack of reaction on his face, other than a complacent smile, twisted knots into Roberto's stomach. "At least... I think so."

"You indulge yourself," Johan murmured, twirling the sash around a finger, wrapping porcelain white skin in red silk, "don't you." The question, if it was a question, made Roberto's shoulders tense ever so slightly. "You waste your time."

Roberto's jaw set, a more dangerous smile easing onto his face. "I waste mine freely, but would never do the same to yours." He walked over, once more, like some great lion stalking its prey--how strange, then, that it was the prey that held the leash. "You act as though we're running out of time."

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Johan's calm silence did nothing to smooth over Roberto's tension, still loud and visible against his inner thigh. His large hands found Johan's shoulders, running over the fabric, callouses catching on the immaculate smoothness. "You're tense, Johan," Roberto murmured, leaning in from behind, his voice near Johan's right ear. "Let me unwind it."

Johan's expression didn't move, but he quietly angled his head away, baring his throat to Roberto's waiting mouth, pressing in without another word of warning.

It was rare that Johan allowed his body to simply move, and react, without calculation. Rare and beautiful, some small secret part of him thankful that he had one so devoted to him, so wrapped completely around his fingertips that he could trust such a mouth so close to his vital veins. Hot tongue on his skin, Johan keened a breathless, softer-than-death noise, his body sagging back against Roberto's strong form. "That's it," Roberto breathed against the wet skin, encouragement drawing another mewl from Johan's mouth. "That's it..."

Johan's eyes lifted heavy lids to stare at his own rather debauched form in the mirror, pleasured but not yet properly aroused. His mouth formed a thin line, licking dry lips as his hand traveled up to Roberto's hair and fisted into it, gripping hard and twisting. A pained sound was punched out of Roberto, snarling at the junction of Johan's neck and shoulder.

It was only when Johan felt the scrape of teeth on his throat that he truly pulsed with warmth.

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Pale, trembling fingers found their way to the sash around the nightclothes, and Johan tugged it free haltingly as Roberto worked gentle torture on the skin of his neck. He wrapped it tight around his own hands, over and over, the pressure calming his skittishness into something more focused, more heightened.

When Roberto paused for air, it was Johan who twisted around to catch the other man's mouth on his. Roberto froze, then backed away, his eyes wide as saucers. Sex was comfortable. A kiss as tender as that was something foreign to Roberto, so much so that he was on the defensive, stumbling back towards the end posts of the bed he'd deemed his for the night. An absent thought suggested the other bed might go un-used--but there was no such thing as assumption, here. Roberto couldn't count the times that Johan had built him up, brought him to the brink, and left him, strolling away with a simple yawn and a command for Roberto to finish himself quietly so as not to wake Johan.

He was already sinking down to the floor, thighs spreading, when Johan's foot pressed between his legs against his rock hard arousal. Roberto's mouth twisted into a kind of pressured smile. "Will you be cruel to me, tonight?" he murmured, then tensed when Johan shifted more of his weight onto that foot. "God--stop, please, oh god--"

Johan hummed in his chest, lidded eyes considering Roberto's pained shuddering. The dampness he felt beneath his foot told him otherwise--but regardless, he removed the pressure and twirled the sash in his hands thoughtfully. His voice was even, and conversational as he spoke. "Cruelty... is that the thing you want, Roberto? I feel as though I never can read you these days."

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The game was edging on exciting, now. Roberto's pain had been palpable on Johan's skin, racing goosebumps over his arms, tenting the front of the loose silk pants he wore. He eyed Roberto's hungry stare, a quiet amusement in his eyes, then snapped the sash tight between his hands.

"On your knees," Johan murmured, repeating the order slower, and more dangerously, when Roberto hesitated. It wasn't his fault, truly--his brain was slow, that night. It had been weeks since his last kill. Itchy palms laced together behind his back as he propped himself up on his knees, the space between his legs aching from the gentle abuse that Johan had exacted on him.

He closed his eyes, feeling the sash slip behind his back and tie round his wrists, soft, yet too firm for any kind of stretch or give. When he opened them, his eyes widened fractionally as Johan slipped out of the pants, letting the partially-open shirt hang loose on his shoulders. Red fabric still so intense against the bloom of pink at his inner thighs, he sank down as well, idly glancing at the bathroom door as he began to stroke himself to half-hardness. "You know," he mused aloud after a moment, shifting gears to run a finger around the head of his own cock, teasing himself without even so much as a bodily reaction. "You seemed rather genuinely worried for me, in there. Don't tell me you doubted me, Roberto."

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Roberto sent up as many silent curses as he could think of. He was meant to watch. Just to watch while Johan pleasured himself--if such a word could be used to describe the thoughtless ministrations Johan was giving himself.

Roberto couldn't tell if this was punishment or reward.

"Mm... you're quiet tonight..." Johan hummed aloud, letting his eyes slip closed as he sank a bit further against the dresser, his legs spreading out on the plush carpet. "I rather like that. You talk too much."

Roberto's expression faltered, before it settled into an automatic smile. "And you talk of wasting time," he murmured, a gentle jab that seemed to bring something that almost looked like a real grin to Johan's features. It was a rarity. Roberto mentally captured it in a picture frame, Johan's face all flush, pale lashes against his cheek. "And how slow you're going. If you hadn't tied me up, you know I would've taken care of you threefold by now."

"And where's the point in letting you do as you please?" Johan murmured, the grin returning to a normal curve of his lips, eyes opening to stare at Roberto with such intensity that it silenced the other man. Johan licked his lips, breaking the moment, and sighed out a wandering moan. "I believe you, though, Roberto. You know how to hurt, and how to be hurt... tell me," he continued, "Why did you try to shoot the doctor without my permission?"

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Roberto felt his mouth run dry, for a moment. Right... right. Something in his lower stomach ached, a phantom pain from where Tenma had shot him. It hadn't been long ago... perhaps only a few months. Time moved quickly, lately. Would move quicker if Johan would untie him. "It was self defense," Roberto lied, and Johan knew it was such. The blonde man let go of himself and got to his feet, clicking his tongue in disappointment.

"I'm going to bed," he sighed, ignoring the frustrated grunt from Roberto. He moved to the bed, just barely in Roberto's view, and lied down on his back. "Sleep like that. It will build your character."

Roberto felt angry heat rise in the back of his throat. "Shit," he whispered under his breath, struggling to get to his feet, though his hands remained tied. "It wasn't that. I wanted to kill him," Roberto's voice was low, rough with rage at Johan's neglect, and at his own failure as an assassin. Tenma should be dead. Would've been dead, if things had gone differently.

Johan hummed and shook his head, eyes closed to Roberto's anger. "It's a miracle I haven't let you go, yet. It might suit you to be lying in a ditch somewhere." The bed jumped slightly, and Johan opened an eye leisurely, staring at Roberto's hip that had slammed against the mattress in some vain attempt to jostle Johan back awake.

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"I wanted to kill him for you," Roberto snarled through a twisted grin, inhibitions fading as the sash around his wrists dug into his skin. "He was ready to shoot you. He had the weapon to do it. He was aiming for your head--your brains would have splattered Schuwald's stage. Any person who dares make an attempt on your life would already be dead in my hands."

The corners of Johan's mouth quirked up slightly. "You got in his way," he simply said, making the look on Roberto's face crack slightly. Johan rolled onto his side and sat up, trailing his fingers on the linen sheets and patting the space beside him. "In the end, the job was still done. Up in flames, the whole thing went. You didn't ruin that, at least."

All said with a smile--Roberto felt his anger, his resolve, crumbling under that delicate expression. He sat down--lied down when Johan barely pushed on his chest, his wrists painfully pressed between his own lower back and the bed. "Yet you keep me around. Don't you need me?" Roberto whispered, in a brief moment of confused weakness. He wished he could take back the question as soon as he'd said it.

Johan's fingers tugged at Roberto's pants, freeing the man's thick cock and letting it fall heavy against his thigh. Johan's fingers slid into his mouth, then between his pale thighs, setting his jaw and meeting Roberto's fragile gaze as he worked himself open, uttering no sound.

Roberto wanted nothing more, right then, to break that faultless composure.

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The noise that came out of Roberto as he was enveloped by Johan's heat was positively animal in nature. He longed to place his hands on Johan's waist, to grind upwards and pound mercilessly into the man seated on his hips, but the twisted angle of his shoulders and pinned nature of his hands made breathing, much less moving, difficult. Even so, he took a moment to stare up at Johan's form in the lamplight, the blonde shedding the last of the nightshirt, pale skin blotched with flush. "I affect you, too, then," Roberto breathed, clinging to that thought, that perhaps he did have value to Johan.

The younger man's eyes lidded, a hum that seemed one part affection and two parts pity coming from somewhere deep in his chest. Johan placed his hands almost primly on Roberto's chest and canted his hips forward, a note of satisfaction rising in his chest as Roberto was effectively silenced. Well, silence was a word for it. Johan wasted no time in bouncing his hips, braced with his hands, Roberto's thickness stretching him wide and painful and oh, yes, he would feel this ache for awhile. The pained pleasure was enough to bring him to hardness, red-tipped cock tapping wetly against Roberto's stomach as the other man's arching hips aided him in the ride.

The lack of words to say, in moments like these, were a blessing. Neither speaking, the air full of breathless gasps for air and finally, finally some noise out of the blonde man, little aching cries and moans as he mercilessly impaled himself again and again, scraping that spot inside of him that turned his muscles to quivering fire under his skin. Release, when it came, was in the form of a jolting tremor under Johan's hands, heat filling the deepest parts of him and running down his thighs when he pulled off. He frantically jerked himself to completion, beads of white pooling in the crease of Roberto's stomach. Johan's mouth was stretched wide in overwhelm, his hair mussed and body aching with the aftershocks. Roberto's arms had gone numb a long time ago.

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When he came back down, Johan gingerly folded his legs beneath him, fawnlike in his shakiness. All said and done, the pain was difficult to navigate gracefully. With Roberto's lethargic help he managed to turn the other man onto his side enough to get at the sash, and untied it from Roberto's wrists, running fingers with a quiet curiosity over the sharp marks they'd made in his skin.

Drowsiness overtook him. Johan curled himself into the warmth of Roberto's chest, silently accepting the stiff arm that curled over him and pulled him closer. Just filling time--that's all it was, this sort of thing. Johan felt no warmth in his chest save for the pumping of his own blood, rushing through him on waves of heat and life. There were moments where he doubted his own utter deadness--it was moments like these, among others. The tenderness of Roberto's touch told him all he needed to know about the other man's feelings on the subject, though.

A pity. It really was a pity. "You should clean up," Roberto murmured lazily into Johan's hair, matted with sweat. Johan murmured in the negative, pressing closer to the man's chest, hair tickling his nose. "Morning, then." Roberto's eyes softened, electing to leave the lamp on as he let himself sink into the mattress, Johan's arm draping over his waist.

The morning came with rain, pattering sharp against the glass patio doors.

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"Mm. Yes. Alright, thank you. I'll call you when we need you again."

Johan's eyes fluttered open to the sound of a phone hanging up. He raised his head, blinking at the blanket covering him, and moved his bleary vision over to where Roberto, fully dressed, was standing by the phone. The man turned, blinking to see Johan awake, and smiled. "Good news," he murmured, stepping towards the bathroom to finish getting ready for the day. "Our guy found him."

Johan's expression barely shifted as proper awareness leaked into it. Roberto disappeared into the bathroom, and Johan properly sat up, staring out the patio doors at the dark grey sky and rivulets of water on the glass. He got up, the ache in his body forgotten as he ran a hand through his hair to tame it, mentally sloughing off the previous night's sensations.

"Doctor," Johan mused softly, aloud to himself, as he watched thin rivulets of rainwater join with others, forming thicker streams all the way down to the concrete outside. "Perhaps we'll be meeting again sooner than I thought."