Inui stepped into his residence, his shoulders thankful to be rid of the extra weight of a full schoolbag. All that remained among his schoolbooks were the chocolate that mysteriously appeared within during lunch break and the unwrapped gift from Echizen that would prove to be useful.

Pulling out his cellphone, he entered in a message before slipping out of his shoes and bounding up to his room.

Laptop on the bed, Fuji gave a curious look to the cellphone slithering across the comforter. He hit 'submit' and closed the livejournal window, scooping up the phone in one hand and flipping it open.

"Oh? How intriguing." Fuji dropped the phone back on the bed, still open, with Come over, I want to share my White Day gift with you visible if one had good eyes. He tugged on a hooded sweatshirt over the close-fitting t-shirt, running fingers through bangs that could probably use a trim. "I wonder what sort of gift it is," Fuji mused, collecting the phone and tucking it in the hoodie's pocket as he left the room.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a crisp knock on the Inui front door.

Inui padded down the stairs in a button down black shirt and matching slacks, the brand new lab coat warm from the iron was slipped over his shoulders before he opened the door. "Yo."

Wow. Just...wow.

Fuji felt his mouth go desert-dry, his knees threatening to melt around his ankles. It was one thing to know Inui was attractive (hot! not simply attractive, but blazing...), and quite another to have the door opened by a fantasy wearing skin and fabric. Black clothing, white lab coat. A study in polar opposites. Contrasts. Light and dark meeting along the edges dividing one from the other.

Hastily, Fuji wet his lips with his tongue, forcing the necessary moisture to his mouth for speech. "Hi." Sex. Now, his mind demanded. Eyes definitely would remain closed; while Inui still didn't completely speak that language, some things were universal.

Stepping aside, Inui allowed Fuji to enter the house. "Echizen thought to purchase me a lab coat."

"I see." Fuji followed, toeing off his shoes on the landing. "Some kind senpai should inform him that while White Day gifts are traditionally white, it is not mandated." Nevertheless, Fuji felt far more kindly disposed towards Echizen than he had....ever? He smiled, balling one hand into a fist, holding tight the fingers itchy to touch the lab coat.

"Did you receive your chocolate?"

"I did indeed. Thank you." Unable to keep his hands to himself, slender fingers reached for the coat, tasting the fabric beneath them. "And you yours?" ...it's still warm, even when it's not directly touching his skin...

"I did." Inui spoke softly, watching as Fuji's attention is drawn to the jacket. "I take you like it?"

"Yes...." The word is less speech and more purr, full of adult and knowing things. Fuji's fingers nearly disappeared against the pristine fabric, so tightly clenched they pale and whiten into their background.

Inui's grinned widened, "I suppose we should move away from the landing then." He reached for the ends of Fuji's hooded sweatshirt. "This can stay here, ne?"

"Aa," Fuji agreed, not quite caring whether he was consenting to sweatshirt removal or alien abduction. Do I have to let go of the lab coat~?

Inui slowly began to lift the sweatshirt over Fuji's head, quite pleased the way the shirt underneath hugged close to the other's toned form. "How did you manage to get my chocolates in my bag?"

Reluctantly, Fuji's fingers released their possessive grip on the lab coat, but only for the span it took Inui to separate Fuji and hoodie. "Trade secret. Handed down by generations of Fuji ninja." After all, it was ninja to enlist someone to make the drop, wasn't it?

"Trade secrets are meant to be discovered in time." Inui mused, resting his hands on both of Fuji's sides.

"Mmm. Not if they're protected by a nondisclosure agreement." Fuji tugged himself closer, savoring the spread of hands touching but not tickling him. "Besides, isn't the mystery part of the allure~?"

"Aa, that can be so." Inui laughed, stepping away from the landing, leading them both towards the stairs. "Would you like your wrappings now?"

Hand tucked in Inui's, Fuji echoed his laughter, warm and low, as they ascended the stairs. "And here I thought perhaps you forgot. Lead on," he nodded in the direction of Inui's room, "I'm curious to see what you picked out."

"To forget such a gift would be impossible." Inui bemused as they entered his bedroom. "I believe you will enjoy what I had found."

"Why do I suspect you've been up to something? You didn't get something from Ohkawa-san and the Adonis Hotel, did you?" Fuji cast a skeptical glance up at Inui, though mischief twitched the corners of his mouth.

"Up to something, perhaps. Something like that is not unusual for me." Inui turned over one of Fuji's hands, tracing the skin on the underside of the other's wrist. "I will admit to conferring with Ohkawa-san for suggestions."

Professor, you don't need any help from Ohkawa-san, Fuji thought, self-control still holding but weakening rapidly. You're doing just fine on your own. Indeed, the inside of his wrist was one of Fuji's favorite places to be touched. "And...what did he offer?"

Inui continued to run his fingers lightly along the faint veins visible. "I am not one who shops for apparel often, much less accessories. I had to find an appropriate scarf."

"I see," Fuji replied, not liking that his voice sounded faint and breathy, hitching in time with Inui's slow, deliberate motions. "Can I take it you were successful in your shopping?"

"Aa, I was." Inui answered quietly, reaching into the pocket of his lab coat to extract a scarf of thin, white silk. Grinning, he ran the fabric along Fuji's upturned wrist. "Do you like?"

"Nnnh." This wasn't fair, some distant part of Fuji said. Silk was not supposed to slide over skin in such a sensuous way. "Yes..." he said, though the words were not necessary; closed eyes and a sharply indrawn breath spoke well enough.

"Hm, interesting." Inui smirked, lowering his head to pause mere centimeters in front of the other boy's lips. "This must be explored in more detail...I would advise you make yourself comfortable." Inui gave a courteous nod to the bed and chair in the room.

"Jerk." Fuji gave a half-hearted push against Inui's chest, perversely glad for the brief distance as he turned towards the bed. He needed to clear his head, to think past the clutter of confusion and hormones that had wedged themselves so firmly into his hippocampus. One of them had to keep control, or it would be far too easy for things to erupt.

"You've gone to a lot of trouble," Fuji tossed back over his shoulder.

Inui laughed low in his throat, watching Fuji's form intently. He twisted the light fabric in with his hands. "For that I am a jerk?"

"For going to a lot of trouble, you are a good boyfriend. For being a tease, you are a jerk," Fuji corrected, taking a deep breath and flinging himself onto Inui's bed, bouncing twice with the impact.

"I can agree to those observations." Inui said, sauntering over to bed, kneeling by the edge.

"Very well, then. Do your worst...if you think you can." Better to lay the challenge out on the table and then concentrate on playing his game: steady returns while waiting for an opening and a misstep from his opponent. Silk scarves and labcoats already had him at a disadvantage; it was time to play the game with a bit more strategy.

Observing Fuji silently from behind his glasses, Inui made no immediate move. "My worst, ne?" he queried, pushing at the bridge of his frames, the lenses briefly flashing in the light. He leaned over the bed to place a feather-light kiss to Fuji's lips. As he did so, this hands busied themselves with wrapping an end of the scarf to a wrist.

He was expecting the initial volley. However, Inui's speed of delivery had improved beyond Fuji's expectations, and the left wrist was well and truly snared by the scarf's trailing end. "Not bad, Professor," Fuji murmured, impatiently stealing back the kiss Inui had taken and fastening both hands to the lab coat again. God, but he wanted to pull it and what was underneath it off and...and just shatter the sexual tension between them into teeny tiny pieces, no matter how his brain was screaming that this was a Very Bad Idea (and opening up Pandora's box as surely as anything).

Inui pulled away from the kiss, taking leverage from the hands gripping his lab coat to wrap the scarf around Fuji's right wrist as well. "Patience," Inui chided lightly, drawing the wrists closer together with a pull on the fabric. "There is still much to be observed."

"By you or by me?" Fuji countered, shifting his wrists to test Inui's handiwork. His fingers flexed, disappointed by the loss of the lab coat and wanting something to touch, to hang onto for control and reassurance. "Inui...this was fun for you when we tried it last time?"

Inui nodded, lifting Fuji's bound hands and tying them on the post behind them. "At least you can say you have tried it yourself."

"I can also say I've tried bok choy. Never liked it." Still, Fuji wore a wry grin, willing to go along at least for now despite the unease that no longer had anything to do with a glut of hormones. You can do this, Syuusuke. It's just another game, he reminded himself.

The voice inside that insisted but when I play games I never try to play them at a disadvantage, they're harder to control that way...really needed to shut up before he started listening to it. Relax, breathe deep, the other voice said. It's Inui and you trust him. Mostly, he amended, taking a bit of Polonius's advice and admitting that 'mostly' was about as far as he trusted anyone.

"You know..." Inui stated softly, sitting on the edge of the bed and lifting the edge of Fuji's shirt, "if you are not comfortable with this we can always do something else." He lowered his head to press a light kiss along taut muscle, smiling against skin. "This is not meant for everyone."

"No." Fuji was not willing to give up so easily, though the flesh under Inui's lips twitched sharply and the headboard rattled as the prodigy's bound hands jerked in response. "Not yet." His breath came faster, part excitement and part apprehension as he fought down his inherent resistance to being tied. Just a game, Syuusuke. Just. A. Game.

"Not yet what?" He asked quietly, kissing along the muscular planes of Fuji's stomach, slowly rolling up the shirt to kiss more skin.

You're killing me, Inui! Fuji squirmed fiercely, the motion baring more skin and inviting more kisses. It felt amazing, endless spiderwebs of sensation rippling out across his stomach, almost amazing enough to negate the confining silk knotted around his wrists. How to counter it, how to win the point and change the course? "Not giving up yet. Can't have you think that I'm easily bested." He opened his eyes and smiled, breathtakingly, up at Inui. Come closer...come here... the expression said.

Inui glanced up into Fuji's eyes, the message radiating from them abundantly clear. He slid onto the bed, his hands caressing Fuji's neck as he kisses the other boy lightly, nipping playfully on Fuji's bottom lip.

This was better, this was more familiar and safe. Fuji's hands itched to touch Inui in return, straining against the silken trappings holding them prisoner, but the scarf held fast. He nipped back at Inui, deepening the kiss with an urgent insistence spilling from the nervous tension that had built up from being tied.

His hands might be tied, but Fuji's legs were free. He tilted his hips to snake one leg up and around Inui's backside, drawing him down on top of him.

"Mm...whose game is it?" Inui murmured against Fuji's lips, rolling his hips faintly, moaning softly at the friction. He turned his lips away to suckle lightly on an ear.

"You're leading..." the admission was not an easy one, for in games where Fuji genuinely cares about winning a loss stings like no other, "but my goal is to break your serve." His breath caught, a paralyzed gale wind halted abruptly, as Inui's hips brushed his with clear intent. He groaned, rising into the motion, the slide of fabric against skin maddeningly erotic. His hands pitched back and forth, a futile battle waged for their freedom, their desire to strip Inui naked and set about doing all of those things burning in his mind.

"Careful..." Inui breathed heavily against Fuji's cheek, reaching up with one hand to brush his fingers along the scarf.

"Careful of what?" Damn, Inui had tied these well, Fuji thought. "The goal is to get free, right?"

"There are other ways to be set free."

There was the rub, wasn't it? 'To be set free' rather than 'to get free'? Relying on others and hoping such things would happen? It was so tempting...and so disturbing all at once, an approach/avoidance conflict that made Fuji's mouth go bone-dry. The silk felt tighter, the air in the room thinner, his head swirling with that hated, hated panic. "What other ways?" he asked, choking back the strangled 'let me go!' just in time.

"I'm sure you can gather the right idea." Inui kissed Fuji briefly before pulling back to examine the other's face.

There is no right idea! a part of him stubbornly insisted, lines of rigid tension making his body a bowstring from top to toe. "I..." God, pride tasted bitter as bile to swallow, threatening to come back up at any moment after he forced it down. "I...don't like this," Fuji said at last, looking away and beyond Inui, unwilling to face him when his voice sounded so desperate. "I like it the other way, but this...bothers me."

"You..." Inui pulled the scarf loose, "You should have said so earlier." His voice was slightly reproachful, partly at Fuji but at himself as well.

The material slid free from Fuji's wrists and he drew his arms down, rubbing his left hand over his right wrist. It hadn't hurt, nor had he been tied long enough to lose feeling; the motion, though, repetitive and seemingly purposeful, gave him the necessary time to calm his heartrate and cram all of that discomfort somewhere deep inside. Much like that nebulous bit of claustrophobia that occasionally bit him in the ass and reminded him 'you're not perfect, Syuusuke, no matter how many people think so,' it exposed a weakness, a vulnerability.

"I don't like giving up," his voice sounded a bit distant but still buoyed up with a stubborn lilt; this told Fuji that no matter how uneasy the rest of him felt, things would be fine.

"There is not giving up, but there is also knowing your limits." Inui reasoned, rolling onto his back, pulling Fuji on top of him.

"I used to believe I had limits." After a bit of wiggling, Fuji achieved a comfortable position atop Inui, one hand absently plucking at his boyfriend's shirt. "Then I played that match with Kirihara. It was like I could suddenly see beyond myself, see the cage in which that belief held what I really could do. I didn't need to see the ball; I could feel it. Where it was going to be, I knew. Physically, I was blind, but I had never seen so clearly." That match, and the results of it, had been a sore spot for them and it was only now, almost four months later, that Fuji broached the subject, even in passing to make a point.

"I think...after that experience, I started to think these other limits of mine were just as phantom, as ephemeral. That I could fly beyond them, if I simply decided it would be so." Fuji laid his head down, ear to Inui's chest, drawing up the calm, steady rhythm of his heart until his own slowed to match.

"It didn't work. I still get nervy if I'm closed in somewhere that I can't get out of. I still am addicted to control, and I still would rather see you being tied up than me." 'Master,' Inui had called him without hesitation in their charade during Tezuka's party, back before they'd begun this roller-coaster ride called a 'relationship.' What would Inui think to know just how much he had enjoyed that?

Ironic laughter made his chest buzz against Inui's before the air around them quieted once more. "How do you put up with me?" Self-deprecating, slightly amused, but underneath it the question was genuine.

Because..." Inui said quietly, toying with the strands of Fuji's hair, still absorbing Fuji's words. It was unusual for Inui, to have so many reasons to answer that simple question. Then again, he reasoned, complex was not needed. Something that once seemed to be a strength, an unwavering resolve had turned into his biggest vulnerability. Where he did not mind, there was a part of him that stalled. The reason of it he refused to answer, not even to himself. "...well, you know."

Fuji raised his head, stalling Inui's motion in half-pet, the hand sliding down the back of Fuji's head to rest there while the prodigy studied him. Thoughts rumbled in a silent stampede through blue eyes at half-mast, eyes that never blinked as he reached out for Inui's glasses, stealing that barrier between them and opening Inui to further inspection from Fuji's gaze.

"Aa..." Fuji said at last, making no further comment. It was not the answer he had sought, but for now it would suffice. "I know," he added belatedly. Maybe...

Gazing at Fuji, Inui smiled. "Will you stay?" he asked, knowing that was not want he wanted to say, but something deep down he needed to know.

How could I leave when despite all these sharp and misshapen edges we manage to fit together so nicely? That thought, while not without its share of irony, made Fuji smile, seeking that warm and comfortable place in the junction of Inui's shoulder and neck. "I will." Rather than teeth, he marked this favorite spot with a soft, chaste brush of lips; the unnerving experience of being tied up had quenched his libido and left him far more in a mood to lie quietly and simply be together. "Definitely."

"Good." Inui said with a faint grin. Tightening his hold around Fuji's waist, he closed his eyes. "I do not think I would have let you go even if you wanted to."

Those words should have bothered Fuji.

They didn't. Rather, they had a strange sort of reassurance that while he wasn't entirely sure he liked, he knew he didn't dislike. "Careful. I may hold you to that."

"I think I'd rather take the risk." Inui answered without pause.

"Ii data," Fuji murmured. "Reward never comes without risk, after all."

Inui nodded, Fuji was a risk he would always be glad to take. His breath slowly matched the body resting on top of his. the rhythm drawing him into a content lull. "I could not have said it better myself."

"Mmm." Fuji's fingers wandered, catching the lapel of the lab coat once more. Damn, he liked that, far more than he should, but the garment appealed to him in a deeply primal way. Absently, he wondered if it had anything to do with that childhood crush on their pediatrician. "Remind me to do something halfway nice for Echizen, hm?"

"I suppose a week free of juice would be a sufficient thank you from me, ne?"

"You still get the better end of the deal, but he doesn't have to know that," the prodigy pointed out.

"Of course not."

"You'll wear this again for me, won't you?" Fuji plucked the lapel between his fingers.

Inui ran his fingers along Fuji's side. "I will."

And nothing else? Oh, it was probably a good thing Inui wasn't telepathic, and despite the fact Fuji's mind kept running full-speed back towards sexsexsexnowplease!, at the moment what he really wanted was some time curled next to Inui and simply breathing in the scent of his skin. "Shall I make an appointment with you...doctor?" he teased.

"I will have to arrange a time in my appointment book, what would be a good time for you?" Inui asked, running lazy trails along Fuji's back with his hands. 

Mmm." The soft touch soothed the remaining tension in Fuji's body, scattered it along with the stray thoughts tickling his mind. "My calendar is yours to fill." The contented smile was rich in his voice.

"Hmm..." Inui hummed, those words even considered from all contexts bringing a smile to his face. Whereas sex flashed in his mind for a moment, the context that he will be there calmed a hidden part in his subconscious, a panic that held his confidence in saying what used to be simple to do. 'Perhaps...I may be wrong.' To be wrong just this one time would be a welcoming revelation indeed. To say that you love is equivalent to farewell. "I look forward to it." he said quietly, wrapping his arms around Fuji in a secure hold. 

Instead of feeling restrained, the arms tightening about him brought Fuji nothing but a sense of security, acceptance and belonging. Even when he hadn't been able to reciprocate their bondage games, Inui indicated it didn't matter. That did much to calm the stormy sea of his insides, and the stormier sea of a heart struggling to accept the things it already knew but could not admit. "Me too," he replied, satisfied and warm. Me too.