Touch

Touch
By: Orien A.


It was already way past eleven at night when his brother came barging into his room without even knocking. Yuuta looked up from his text book and frowned at him, but that didn't faze Syuusuke at all; it never did.

He stepped inside without any hesitation, sidling up next to his desk and placing a hand on Yuuta's shoulder as he set a mug of coffee in front of him. “I thought that you might need this,” he explained. His fingers brushed lightly against Yuuta’s cheek as he reached up to run his palm over his soft, spiky head of hair.

Yuuta thanked him because it was expected, and it would have been rude not to, even as he irritably slapped away Syuusuke's hand. He must have told him not to touch his hair hundreds of times before, so he felt that the blow was justified.

It was nice of Syuusuke to think about him like this—he somehow always knew what Yuuta needed without him having to say anything—but he was tired, he was on the verge of a total meltdown after only getting five hours of sleep over the last two days, and Syuusuke was holding him up when he still had a couple of chapters to read through before he could even think about going to bed. He had the right to be a little pissy and rude; especially when his brother chose to ignore the obvious warning signs and remained standing by his side.

“It's good to see you putting so much effort into your studies, Yuuta. But don't go overboard with it, all right? You've been looking really tired lately,” Syuusuke said, frowning as he took in Yuuta’s disheveled state and the dark shadows beneath his eyes.

He didn't like seeing his baby brother going through the motions of everyday living as though he were half-dead. It worried him, and he was glad that Yuuta had decided to live at home instead of going away to some far off college. This way, he at least got to watch over him, make sure that he ate properly, got some sleep, and kept his messy room from being taken over completely by big piles of dirty clothing and clutter. He really shouldn’t have let this go on for as long as it had, and he was determined to put a stop to it.

“I'm retaking a practical exam the day after tomorrow,” Yuuta said, picking up the mug and sipping at it experimentally, just in case his brother had decided to try and put a little more kick in the coffee by adding a touch of wasabi or chili powder. “I failed the first time. If I can’t pass the next one, I'm going to have to retake this class next semester, and it'll mess up my whole schedule.”

“Is it anything that I can help you with?”

“I don't think so. Not unless you happen to be a genius at soft tissue mobilization, along with all of the other things that you’re already good at.” Yuuta was only joking when he said that, but considering the effortless way that his brother seemed to soak up all the knowledge around him, it seemed entirely possible that Syuusuke would be good at this too. He waited warily for Syuusuke’s response, deciding that he would have to kill him out of frustration if he did indeed turn out to have some vast hidden knowledge of this subject.

“I don't even know what that is...” Syuusuke admitted, much to Yuuta’s relief. He was disappointed that he wouldn't be able to help his brother out with his studies, like he used to when they were younger, but he knew nothing about the subject of physical therapy, beyond his own experience with it when he’d had to undergo rehabilitation for a sprained ankle back in his second year of high school.

“It’s really nothing, aniki. It’s just a fancy way of saying therapeutic massage. I’m sure I’ll get it, if I just read up on it a bit more,” Yuuta said, pointedly turning back to his book. It was better this way; he didn’t think he could concentrate with Syuusuke around. He’d always hated revealing his weaknesses to annoyingly perfect older brother, and he’d just be self-conscious the whole time if he stuck around.

“Maybe that’s your problem right there.”

“I’m studying, aren’t I?” Yuuta snapped, resisting the urge to turn around and glare at his brother. Maybe he’d go away if he ignored him. It was annoying how Syuusuke seemed to think that he had a better way of doing everything.

“Not the right way, though.” Syuusuke grabbed the textbook that lay open on the table and flipped through the pages, just to see what was so frustrating Yuuta. “If this is a practical exam that you’re worried about, shouldn’t you be taking a more hands-on approach, since you’ll actually be demonstrating therapeutic massage to your professor instead of taking a written test about it?”

“Well, yeah. That’s how we do it in class; we practice on each other. But I don’t have anyone to use as a test subject right now, so I have to improvise,” Yuuta pointed out.

“That’s not true. You have me, and I’ll let you use me any way that you want to, Yuuta,” Syuusuke told him, his voice light and teasing and completely belying the intensity in the deep blue eyes that he directed at his younger brother. He reached out and playfully tapped the tip of Yuuta’s nose with his index finger, allowing it to trail down until it rested over his brother’s pursed lips.

Yuuta jerked away and scooted his chair back to put some distance between them. Syuusuke was being too transparent in his intentions, and he was really far too tired and aggravated to welcome his advances right now. Even on good days, he was usually less than receptive to Syuusuke’s charms. “Do you know how weird you sound to other people when you say things like that?” he demanded, trying to will away the blush that he knew was coloring his cheeks. The fact that he could never seem to control his body’s reaction whenever Syuusuke decided to be playful like this just made him angrier. “Do you even think before you speak?”

“Of course I do. At first I was going to say ‘I’ll let you use my body any way you that want to, Yuuta’, but then I thought that would sound too forward, and that you would overreact and just throw me out of your room. So instead I decided on ‘I’ll let you use me anyway you want’, because it seemed less suggestive and less likely to scare you off.” Syuusuke told him as an example of his thought process.

“Well, the second version doesn’t sound much better, and I’m still going to be throwing you out,” Yuuta gave his brother a little shove that had him tottering back a few steps. Sometimes he had to resort to physical means to get the message across to Syuusuke that he wasn’t in the mood for playing around. Then he would invariably end up feeling guilty about it afterwards and be extra nice to his brother for the next couple of days to try and make it up to him. It was an old routine that worked for the two of them. “I need to study, aniki.”

“You can study with me then,” Syuusuke insisted stubbornly. “I need you to do a bit of work on me, anyway. My back’s been hurting since Eiji jumped me the last time the team got together. He made me fall down, and I hit a table.” Syuusuke pulled a pained face and made a big show of wincing as he arched his back.

Yuuta looked at him skeptically, not ready to believe that this was anything more than an attempt from Syuusuke to have his way. “Why didn’t you mention this accident before, then?”

“I didn’t think that I had to, but lately it’s been keeping me from sleeping well.”

Sighing, Yuuta held out his hand for the book that his brother had taken from him, and Syuusuke returned it. It was obvious to him that he wasn’t going to getting any peace until he gave in, and in all honesty, it did make more sense for him to get some hands on practice rather than to try and review from the diagrams in his books alone.

Syuusuke’s eyes lit up in anticipation when he was told to take his shirt off and go lie face down on the bed. Yuuta should have recognized that as a warning sign, but missed it because he was too busy rummaging through his backpack for the bottle of massage oil that he used in class.

Syuusuke lifted his shirt off over his head, and Yuuta was finally able to see that he hadn’t been lying at all when he said that he’d fallen down. There was a big, mottled bruise on his lower back, marring his brother’s otherwise perfect skin. “That looks like it must have hurt,” he observed.

“It did. Eiji keeps on forgetting that he’s gotten much bigger since junior high and shouldn’t be jumping people anymore,” Syuusuke said, a trace of fond amusement in his tone. He flopped down gracefully onto Yuuta’s bed and positioned himself the way that his brother had asked him to.

The bed was far too low for him to be comfortable massaging Syuusuke while standing up, so Yuuta decided to get up on it next to him for the sake of his own back. It wasn’t the best position to be in, and he wouldn’t be able to apply as much pressure as he would like, since he wouldn’t have the advantage of having his bodyweight against the movement of his hands, but it would have to do for now.

“When you become a licensed physical therapist, will you still give your aniki freebies, or will you be charging me?” Syuusuke asked him. When Yuuta failed to respond, he craned his neck around awkwardly to smile at him. “I guess it wouldn’t matter, since I’d be willing to pay anything for your loving, healing touch!”

Yuuta rolled his eyes, placed his hands against the side of Syuusuke’s head and maneuvered him around so that his disquieting gaze was no longer trained upon him. He smacked him lightly on the shoulder to discourage any further nonsense. “Be quiet or I might be tempted to smother you against the mattress, all right? Don’t say anything weird; don’t even move. Just lie there and be serious. You said that you wanted to help me out, so do it by shutting up,” Yuuta said in his most commanding tone of voice. He could hear Syuusuke chuckling quietly to himself, but he eventually did as he’d been asked to and fell silent.

He climbed up onto the bed and knelt by Syuusuke’s side, unscrewing the cap to the massage oil and pouring a liberal amount onto his hand, before bringing his palms together and rubbing them against each other briskly to warm up the oil. The scent of lavender wafted up to his nose, pleasant and soothing, and he breathed in deeply in appreciation.

“Yuuta?”

“What did I just say about not speaking, aniki?” he demanded, not at all surprised that Syuusuke hadn’t been able to maintain his good behavior for more than a couple of minutes.

“This is just a suggestion, but I think it might help if you pretend that you’re teaching me how to perform a massage on someone and talk me through what you’re doing. I know that tutoring Eiji in English really helped me with my own tests and homework.”

“That makes sense,” Yuuta admitted grudgingly. It may also help take his mind off the fact that he was going to be handling his brother here, with whom he had a much more complicated relationship than his usual lab partner.

Yuuta had no problem with people touching him; it still annoyed him, but he’d had to learn to deal with constantly being grabbed at, what with having Syuusuke as his older brother and Mizuki Hajime as a close acquaintance. He did, however, still have a major hang up when it came to him having to lay a hand on other people. He didn’t like it. After years of having his own space relentlessly invaded at every possible opportunity, he’d become something of a fanatic when it came to respecting other people’s comfort zones and keeping a nice, appropriate distance.

Come to think of it, that was probably why he’d done so badly with the therapeutic massage unit in class. His reluctance to initiate physical contact with others was something that he had to train himself out of, if he wanted to become an effective therapist, and he should consider this his first step towards that goal.

Taking a deep breath, he placed his palms flat against his brother’s back and began to stroke the smooth expanse of skin in a slow, sweeping motion, placing very little force behind his hands. “This is called effleurage,” he explained, speaking softly so as to help Syuusuke relax. “Basically, I’m just letting you get used to me touching you before I start with the actual massage.”

Syuusuke’s skin felt warm and smooth beneath his hands, and a rosy flush was already marking the path of his palms as he ran them along his brother’s back. When Syuusuke let out a breathy sigh of pleasure, Yuuta increased the pressure slightly, working upwards from the small of his back, to his shoulders.

Encouraged by Syuusuke’s reaction, Yuuta’s hands ventured lower as he continued to explain what he was doing in a soft tone. Syuusuke was wearing loose, low riding shorts in preparation for bed, easily allowing access to his lower back, right down to where the curve of his buttocks began to swell.

He started tentatively, brushing lightly against the bruise first to see if that would bring any pain, but it had already begun to heal and there were no complaints from Syuusuke. He dug into his brother’s flesh with strong fingers; seeking out trigger points and pressing down on them to help facilitate the release of tension from within his muscles.

At the age of twenty, Syuusuke still had a very lean, boyish body that was all sharp lines and angles. He was never going to be a big man; Yuuta was taller than him now, and broader around the chest and shoulders. However, Syuusuke was compactly muscled, and his body was hard and strong; pleasing to both the eyes and touch.

This wasn’t half as bad as having to practice on his overly hairy lab partner had been, Yuuta decided. His brother was even behaving. He would have thought that their current situation would prove to be too tempting for Syuusuke to resist making some kind of move on him, but he was actually keeping still. He kept on talking, in spite of Yuuta having told him not to, but only to ask him rather intelligent questions about what he was doing and why.

His good behavior had effectively lulled Yuuta into a false sense of security, just as Syuusuke had intended it to.

Thirty minutes into his uneventful free massage and he could tell that Yuuta’s mind had already wandered from his task. He seemed to be just going through the motions now, from the way that his running commentary had petered off, and how his hands had begun to move in the same pattern over and over again with little variation.

It was easy to take his younger brother by surprise, with him in that state. He flipped onto his back, grabbed Yuuta by the collar of his ratty old T-shirt and pulled, so that he was thrown off balance and had to fall on top of him.

Yuuta’s angry spluttering was quickly silenced with a kiss; even someone as practiced in complaining as his brother was couldn’t keep it up while his mouth was occupied with something far more pleasurable. Syuusuke had found this to be a very useful method of shutting him up over the years.

When Yuuta finally stopped struggling and actually began to participate in the kiss, Syuusuke pulled away to whisper into his ear. “Thank you for the massage, Yuuta. Now it’s my turn to make you feel good.” It had been too long since they’d last done this. In spite of their living in the same house together, both of them had been too busy with their respective lives to seek the other out, and Syuusuke thought that perhaps sexual frustration was also contributing to the strained look in Yuuta’s eyes, along with the sleepless nights and his academic problems. It was a good thing that he knew just how to make his brother relax, then.

He pushed against Yuuta until the two of them were face to face and lying on their sides. The hand that Syuusuke had been running along Yuuta’s back ventured lower and slipped past the waistband of his brother’s pajama bottoms. Yuuta didn’t make a sound when Syuusuke took a firm hold on his cock and began to stroke him to arousal. If it weren’t for his heavy, ragged breathing, and the responding hardness that he held in his hand, then Syuusuke would think that he was having no effect at all.

Yuuta buried his face in Syuusuke’s chest as his fingers continued to work on him. He reached up to cradle the back of his younger brother’s head, placing a soft kiss against his temple as he toyed idly with Yuuta’s hair using his unoccupied hand.

Syuusuke was in no hurry and took it slowly, his movements languid and designed to prolong Yuuta’s pleasure. Tonight was all about his brother and helping him forget about his worries and frustration. He knew that Yuuta hadn’t been sleeping well for the past month, what with his heavy course load, and based on personal experience Syuusuke could attest to the fact that nothing put a healthy young man to sleep faster than a good orgasm.

His fingers skimmed along Yuuta’s hardened shaft, taking note of every ridge and raised vein of his cock, and how pleasantly heavy it felt in his hands. Syuusuke paid close attention to his reactions as he jerked him off, slowing down when Yuuta began to get too excited, bringing him to the very edge of climax before teasingly abandoning his arousal to capture his mouth in another lingering kiss.

When he finally did allow Yuuta to come, his cries were muffled by Syuusuke’s chest as his hips jerked upwards, thrusting his cock rhythmically into Syuusuke’s hands. They lay there together afterwards, breathing heavily and looking into each other’s eyes, Yuuta’s half-lidded in satiation and sheer exhaustion.

It seemed to Yuuta as though his climax had caused all of the sleepless nights to finally take their toll on him, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open, but Syuusuke was still there. He hadn’t been taken care of yet, and it would be unfair to leave his brother in his obviously aroused state after he’d been treated to such a great handjob. After all, he believed in reciprocity and in never owing anyone anything; especially Syuusuke.

Intent on returning the favor, he reached for Syuusuke, but was unexpectedly pushed away as his brother got up on his feet and moved out of reach. A pillow was shoved under his head and a light blanket was drawn up over body. “What’re you doing?” Yuuta mumbled, trying to throw the blanket off and just getting himself tangled up within the folds.

“I’m getting you ready for bed,” Syuusuke told him as he continued to tuck him in.

“But I still have things to do!” Yuuta protested, putting up a token fight even though he knew that he wouldn’t be able to summon the energy to get up, walk back to his desk and open his text book now. He was spent; his eyes were feeling terribly heavy, his muscles had gone lax and unresponsive to his brain’s commands, and Syuusuke’s words were beginning to sound fuzzy and muddled.

“You can study and pay me back tomorrow. I just might teach you more of my personal version of ‘touch therapy’ then. But you can’t use it on anyone but me, all right?” There was no answer, Yuuta had already fallen asleep. Smiling, and very happy that his plan had worked out, Syuusuke placed a goodnight kiss on his brother’s cheek and let himself out of the room.

He was going to make sure to offer himself up as a test subject again tomorrow.

End.