SSX/AOMY timeline because that timeline has the most of the cutest Tochiro and the highest ratio of acting like a young married couple to distraught mourning.
"Tell me when you start feeling seduced, even if it's just a little."
Tochiro lied sidewise on the foot of the bed, head propped up in one hand and ankles crossed. Maybe he thought this conveyed sensuality.
Still, the words stung in a way. They'd had an agreement.
"Tochiro," Harlock maintained eye contact with the lenses of his friend's half-fogged glasses while his hands worked at the zippers up the backs of his boots. "I've invited you to my bed. Do you need further convincing?"
Tochiro smiled with half his face and sat up into a kneeling position. They'd managed to stay fully clothed up to this point, but baggy pants made certain things evident regardless.
"Ah, you know I'm joking," Tochiro said. Harlock couldn't tell through the glare where his gaze had wandered, but his face reddened further. "Just joking."
Harlock pried his boots off and stalked across the sheets on his hands and knees to offer Tochiro a warm smile. "It isn't funny to me when you say those things about yourself."
"And I said I wouldn't, yeah, I know," Tochiro said, tight fists on his knees. "Can you blame me, though? Somebody li-"
Harlock kissed him to stop the words, just for a second. Harlock was no good at kissing, he'd only ever really been kissed. Speaking or acting on tender vulnerabilities was so difficult. "I can only love you."
Even that was difficult. He'd spent so much willpower already, getting them here.
"I. Heh." Tochiro removed his glasses to wipe away the fog. His smile split his face. "That's, uh, a little-." He closed his mouth and regret touched his eyes. "Sorry. Just digging my hole deeper. I love you too."
"And I want you," Harlock said, forcing the sweet and heavy words like syrup through his vocal cords. They were true, they sounded firm enough, but his throat practically trembled saying them.
At this, Tochiro looked... Mildly incensed through the red in his face. He screwed his face up and pushed back on Harlock's shoulders, and Harlock let himself be pushed. Only so many enjoyed his absolute trust.
"All right," Tochiro said, one hand on Harlock's chest while the other tried the zipper on his collar. "Let's see how you get this thing off."
Harlock took his hand and helped his fingers find the tab that unfolded from the back. His shoulders prickled when Tochiro's fingers slipped under the tight band around his neck. The collar split with a tinny rasp and air touched the widening gash of his bare skin.
It had been a long while. He'd packed this part of himself away for more than two years. He didn't let the quasi-newness of it touch his face, set his mouth firm against the fear inherent in bringing a tattered heart and body to someone.
Tochiro paused to scrutinize him. Then, he pushed the material off Harlock's shoulders and kissed the junction of his neck and shoulder until he sighed and let himself fall back, smiling and holding Tochiro tight.
This was nice. The way Tochiro's thumbs worked at the muscles of his shoulders as he held on to him. How his mouth pressed soft and warm on skin that usually supported the weight of his cloak and the constricting interwoven armor of his jumpsuit. His toes flexed and his fingers dug into Tochiro's jacket. His lips found the shell of Tochiro's ear and he kissed it, less to be playful than to kiss at the first opportunity.
After all, it was so nice.
"Oh..." It was hardly a sound, just breath displaced by the heat spreading through Harlock's body, but the utterance broke the enchantment and Tochiro sat up abruptly. His glasses landed on Harlock's nose with a soft, undignified smacking sound. Harlock disguised a wince and handed them back, his expression already solidified again.
Tochiro snatched his glasses back and wiped them off on his shirt. He was red to his ears at this point. He sighed - huffed, really - and seemed to calm somewhat. He rummaged in the breast pockets of his jacket, grumbling, before he finally produced a frayed length of elastic cord. He tied one end around one arm of his glasses, pulled the cord tight, and tied the other arm and end together. When worn, the band flattened his hair somewhat.
"You don't have to do that," Harlock said gently. "It isn't that big a deal."
"Yeah, it kind of is!" Tochiro fumed, testing his fix by whipping his head from side to side. "You know I can't see a foot in front of my face without these."
"Are we not close enough now?"
Tochiro huffed again and fixed Harlock with an intense look. "Do the geometry! I can only see as far as I can reach without these on, and if we're gonna do it I wanna be able to see your face!"
Words failed Harlock, but Tochiro must have interpreted some kind of response because he grinned and leaned in close.
"See? Just like that, that's what I don't wanna miss."
Harlock's heart thumped. He felt the blood race right to his neck and face. "What is?"
"This," Tochiro said, placing one hand on each side of Harlock's very warm face and touching their foreheads together. "The secret Harlock with nothing cool left to say."
"Ah." Harlock let the tension hanging around his shoulders fall away, and his split jumpsuit fell a bit with it. He pulled his arms free and looped them around his friend's neck and shoulders. He was still rigid. "Is something the matter?"
Tochiro flinched. "Just taking in the moment," he said. A sheen of sweat had appeared at his hairline. "Never seen you like this, after all."
"We do swim together," Harlock said. He pulled Tochiro closer. Moving reminded him he was still half dressed, and not nearly as comfortably as Tochiro.
"Swimming's different," Tochiro said, and Harlock knew he was right. Tochiro pulled at his own shirt collar. "Uh. Should I?"
"Unless you'd like me to do it."
"S-sure," Tochiro said, color rising from the neck of his shirt to the rims of his glasses. "Not like there's anything shocking, you've seen it eno-"
"You are here in my bed because I love you and I want you," Harlock said, very firmly. He slipped his hands under the shoulders of Tochiro's open jacket and pushed it down. He let his touch trail and linger on the contours of his arms, appreciating the contrast of developed muscle under soft covering. "Your body isn't irrelevant. It's part of it."
Tochiro's eyebrows raised over the upper edge of his glasses and a ripple worked through his body. "Really?"
Harlock nodded, once, his expression set in the softest kind of smile he ever wore.
Slowly, smoothly, Tochiro leaned forward and let Harlock's hands slide down his arms and shuck the jacket off. He sighed Harlock's name sweetly, and the sound made Harlock's scalp tingle. Their bodies met in a way that made Harlock sigh wordlessly, pleasure swelling up inside him when Tochiro's knee pressed lightly between his legs.
"S'pretty nice to be appreciated," Tochiro said, his smile huge in contrast. After a second, it relaxed a bit. He studied Harlock's face. "Say."
"Yes?"
"Have you done this before? Be honest."
"Of course."
Tochiro pursed his lips. "With a guy?"
"No."
"Well, I hope you know the principle's different."
"Naturally," Harlock said. He picked up the hem of Tochiro's shirt, but Tochiro crossed his arms to keep him from lifting it off him. "What?"
"You're really sure about this?" Tochiro asked, considering him very seriously. The tent in his pants undercut the severity of his tone.
"I am." Harlock kissed him and swiped his shirt off the instant they parted. The smile he felt forming on his face was effortless and very sweet. "I'm quite prepared, don't worry."
"Prepared how?"
Harlock looped his arms around Tochiro's bare shoulders and breathed into the crook of his neck. "I asked the doctor the last time I saw hi-"
Tochiro's face turned hot against Harlock's cheek. "We're not a married couple trying to get pregnant, don't ask him about that stuff!"
"You forget doctors are discreet," Harlock said, unflapped. He buried his nose in Tochiro's hair and breathed in. If his body weren't burning and steaming him under the rest of his clothes, just this would be enough.
"Yeah, but I still gotta pass the guy in the corridors," Tochiro said.
"Think of it as something to be proud of, if you like," Harlock offered. He pulled on Tochiro's belt, but let Tochiro guide his hands away an instant later.
"Nope, you first." Tochiro pushed him back with playful force and worked his zipper all the way down.
Harlock's eye winced shut and he regretted missing the look on Tochiro's face when his prick got free.
The sound he made was enough, almost.
"Take a look at that," Tochiro said, beaming. He tugged on the suit again, and Harlock lifted his hips to help him pull it and the thin briefs underneath down to his knees.
"Are you sufficiently convinced?" Harlock asked. He propped himself up with one arm and reached out to Tochiro with the other.
Tochiro's grin spread wider. "And impressed."
The air in Harlock's throat felt thin and cold. The heat in him burned oxygen fast. "Is that so?"
After all, to him it only seemed roughly proportional to himself. He'd never been with another man. Besides that, only one woman.
"You bet." Tochiro plucked his gloves off, finally, and slid his palms up the insides of Harlock's thighs.
Over scarred skin that flinched subtly.
Harlock reached for his hands. "Let me touch you first," he said. He was curious, and hungry, and-
He wasn't accustomed to being touched, all things considered. Of course, that fed his curiosity for this.
Tochiro leaned back and chortled. He struggled with the buckle on his belt and Harlock caught himself staring.
Tochiro stared back. "What?"
"I want you," Harlock said, simply, as smoothly as he could manage, as he reached for the waist of Tochiro's worn out pants.
Tochiro's prick, fully hard and freed, looked out of proportion where Harlock thought his own seemed exactly right. It was oversized in a way that excited Harlock more than he could have expected.
Or that was the impression he got. Tochiro wasn't a big man, after all. But the contrast was exciting.
"Whatcha think?" Tochiro was watching him with a charged grin.
There weren't any words that would be of use to Harlock. He met and matched Tochiro's smile, lowered his head, and popped the head of Tochiro's cock past his lips.
It tasted about as one might expect, but that sensation couldn't hold Harlock's attention. The heat on his tongue and the deep pressure of Tochiro's fingers gripping his shoulders consumed his attention. Plaintive sounds in a tight throat, muscles gone tense under his grasp. It was all so good even when Harlock's body tried to cough. He wasn't in any danger of choking. It was fine. So fine his body smoked and burned like embers under a handful of straw. So long underneath ash, not exposed to oxygen and fed so full.
He was gasping and Tochiro was pulling on his hair.
“Harlock!” Tochiro sounded entirely too much like he'd dropped a wrench on his foot. All pinched and cross. “That's enough, damn it!”
They parted, Harlock rising up with a damp, lopsided smile he couldn't repress. “Is there a problem?” There very well might have been. After all, this wasn't something he could practice on himself.
Tochiro blew out a breath. He was smiling, too, shakily. “A little bit, yeah!” he said. He leaned forward a little and wagged a finger at Harlock. “Listen, Harlock, you need to understand that guys are a lot more... delicate, when it comes to this stuff, than women are.”
“Delicate?” Harlock asked. Why be offended? It was best, facing the unfamiliar, to be curious.
“Yeah.” Tochiro moved gingerly to the foot of the bed and herded Harlock up to the headboard. “Too much too fast, and it's... uh, it's over before you really get to have any fun.”
Harlock complied, settling in with much of the same confidence he commanded at the wheel. “And that was too much, too fast.”
“Unless that was all you wanted to do tonight.” Tochiro crawled to him and braced his hands on his knees, easing them further apart. Harlock's heart tripped and his eye widened. Tochiro's smile lost its wicked edge. “Which is fine.”
Harlock covered his hands so he couldn't pull away. “I do want more,” he said. His prick was a heavy, sore need between his legs. Just laying his palms over Tochiro's hands made his blood rush and crash in his ears. Of course he wanted more. But he had to invite Tochiro to believe him, which was proving difficult. “Would you be willing to demonstrate for me?”
Tochiro's eyes went wide and bright behind his glasses and he dove between Harlock's legs – not to suck him, but to nuzzle and knead his thighs and kiss red marks into the skin between his scars. Harlock sighed and let the warmth flooding his body melt him into the pillows. He'd fantasized about this so many times, and handing himself over to it was so different, so difficult, and so sweet.
He willed himself to be still, or as still as he could possibly be when his hands kept making greedy fists in the blankets. They wanted to clamp onto the back of Tochiro's head and pull him into place, but that seemed... unfair. Like it might spoil the fun for Tochiro. He chanced sliding a hand through his friend's hair – careful of the band securing his glasses – and smiled down at him.
“Tochiro,” he sighed, sweetness coming easily to his voice.
Tochiro parted his lips from Harlock's skin with a wet smack and returned the smile. He pulled Harlock's hand out of his hair and clasped his fingers. “Yeah?”
“I told you I wanted more,” Harlock said. The hunger coiled in him and the gentle light from nearby stars and planets through the lattice window drew the words out of him. He let them go happily.
This made Tochiro shudder visibly, delighted little prickles working all the way up his body to set his wide smile off-center. He patted Harlock's thighs and sat back. “Well.” He thumbed his nose and looked around. Harlock got up on his elbows to watch him search for words, to watch his prick bob subtly with his breath. He wanted so much. So badly. “I'm not gonna use spit. Did Ban give you anything?”
Laughter knocked Harlock onto his back again. “Yes, I took what he told me to take.” Tochiro was smiling warmly again, at ease. So he'd wanted the laugh, then. Good. “I stashed it in the liquor cabinet. It's all in a white bag.”
Tochiro slipped off the bed to go to the cabinet, and Harlock turned onto his side to watch. Just turning over struck him with an achy shiver. This involved so much waiting.
“Three?” Tochiro's head peered around the cabinet door.
“Three what?” Harlock asked.
“Boxes of rubbers,” Tochiro said, holding up one of the extraneous nondescript boxes for Harlock to see.
Harlock shrugged and rolled back over onto his back. “I didn't want to presume and bring the wrong thing. I'd never seen you hard before now.”
“Woulda brought the smaller ones, huh?” Tochiro asked as he made his way back onto the bed. He was, at the absolute least, half joking.
“It didn't occur to me to make a judgment,” Harlock said diplomatically. He let his eye drift shut, breathed in a chest worth of cooled air into his burning body. “Come on, now.”
Tochiro clicked his tongue and fumbled with something that crinkled. “Lemme get this on before my hands are too slippery to get it open.” Harlock opened his eye a fraction and watched him, smirking. Tochiro didn't notice. “So you, uh, you know what to expect?”
“Approximately.” Explanation and imagination weren't perfect preparation. “I'm prepared to discover it as we go.”
“Well, on your back's not gonna do this time,” Tochiro said. “Get on your side again, that's easier.”
Without question or hesitation, Harlock rolled. He rolled instinctively onto his right side, so that he could see Tochiro. “Like so?”
“Yeah, that's good.” Tochiro straddled Harlock's right leg and lifted the left so that his knee hooked over his shoulder. He leered. “You know, you look better than I imagined like this.”
“Oh?” Harlock matched Tochiro's expression to disguise the gleeful nervousness trying to creep into his voice. His trust was complete, but that didn't make it less strange to be laid out and opened up like this. He tried lifting his hips, and Tochiro latched onto his leg like he might get thrown off. “Show me more of what you imagine, then. You said men are delicate, but we don't always have patience to match. Are you not also impatient?”
Tochiro swallowed. “Point taken.” He took up the little white bottle Harlock had gotten from the doctor and flipped the cap open over his open hand. A cold, thin stream of it spilled off his fingers and onto Harlock, making him flinch and smile crookedly. Tochiro winced. “What a waste. Ah, well. You don't mind a shower after, right?”
“Not in the lea-” Harlock's breath snagged in his throat. Tochiro was working the pads of his fingers over the flesh just behind his balls, pressing deep and firm, and it felt-
“How's that?”
“Good.” Harlock sighed and tried to melt again. The new, peculiarly internal pleasure made it difficult, and anywhere that wasn't flooding with blood refused to relax. He had his fingers tangled in the blanket without even realizing.
Wet warmth sucked and closed on Harlock's thigh. Tochiro only had to turn his head to kiss him, and he did so liberally while he pushed two of his fingers into him. Harlock rocked back against him, savoring the pinch. He wasn't a stranger to pain, and Tochiro didn't exactly have big hands.
“You're really not nervous at all, are you?” Tochiro's voice dropped and he worked his fingers inside Harlock, stirring up a sharper resurgence of the feeling that stole his breath before.
“Not at all,” Harlock said, the words rolling past his lips with a groan. Though he wasn't certain what to expect – of the experience, of himself – he was purely excited. The gnawing pulse that ebbed from the bottom of his belly to the root of his prick certainly helped keep the nerves at bay. “I know that I'm in good hands.”
Tochiro nuzzled his leg. “Yeah, well, not everything's to scale with my hands so gimme a minute.” He gripped and stroked Harlock's cock with one hand as a distraction while he spread his fingers to stretch him.
Harlock's hips jerked, and he made a little sound without meaning to. His stomach lurched in embarrassment and he shut his eye. It was like being struck suddenly in how it pressed a reaction out of him, and it didn't stop. Why should it? He'd been in Tochiro's position before, and his was the expected and desired reaction. Knowing that didn't make it much easier to lie there choking on gasps while Tochiro toyed with him. He'd stretch and stroke him for a few moments, then back off from that to let his prick twitch untouched while he thrust his fingers in and out.
The pillow against his cheek was warm and damp from his breath. The end of his prick was dripping wet, and felt achingly cool compared to the rest of him. By now, he was imagining very vividly what it would be like to finally have Tochiro inside him, thicker and longer and hotter than his fingers. The thoughts, like the sighs that voiced them, wouldn't stop.
When he finally opened his eye again, caught Tochiro watching him, saw the enthralled and proud smile on his face, he forgot his shame. He stalled the sounds bubbling up his throat long enough to form a smile and ask, “Can you see me well, friend?”
“Yeah.” Tochiro said, swallowing. He withdrew his fingers. “You ready?”
“Desperately,” Harlock said, having chosen the word very purposely. He watched Tochiro's grin widen in response and congratulated himself.
Tochiro rocked forward, holding Harlock's leg in place with one hand and guiding the head of his prick to his opening with the other. His face was red, his eyes were very alive, and Harlock couldn't look away from him. “Here goes.”
The pain when Tochiro pushed into him was brief, but it was splitting and sudden. It made him gasp and twist. There was nothing slow or delicate about it. It was raw and vivid, and he loved it. “Tochiro! Hahh...”
“Still good?” Tochiro asked between wet breaths. Harlock forced his eye to stay open just so he could watch Tochiro's face going soft with overwhelm.
“Yes. So good.” Harlock flexed his leg against Tochiro's shoulder and moaned, urging him. “Move. More.”
Panting in place of speech, Tochiro pulled back. He dug his fingers into Harlock's thigh and shifted in place, angling his hips to thrust toward the front of Harlock's body.
A flash washed over Harlock's vision – even the half that only ever saw sights from inside his brain – and he balled the blanket in his hands. It dissipated immediately, but the sharp pleasure strikes from inside kept coming. He moaned appreciatively because he knew Tochiro was watching and glorying in the ability to do this to him.
And, besides that, because it was difficult to stop. He was used to setting the pace for this act, to taking pleasure as he knew he could endure it. Receiving – and from such an enthusiastic partner – was almost too much. The mounting pressure, the continued assault of pleasure that fed it, Tochiro's breath and voice and the hum of his lips on his thigh when he stifled his voice there. It was all so good and so much.
When Harlock started to lose his breath, Tochiro slowed to a crawl and patted his thigh as if to draw his attention. “Ha- Harlock.”
Harlock read the quiver in his face and the pulse thrumming through him for what it was and, recognizing it in himself, took a few long breaths before sighing, “Please,” and closing a hand around his cock to stroke himself in time with Tochiro's thrusts.
The frantic pace resumed, and Harlock's vision fogged over within moments. He panted and moaned through smiling lips and refused to bury his face in the pillow. He could feel Tochiro breathing hard and shaking, latched onto his leg to get leverage as he snapped his hips.
Half empty lungs strangled the sound that erupted from Harlock's throat when he came, made it more desperate than he felt in that bright moment. Hot gushes slipped through the gaps between his fingers as he gripped himself, his whole body gone rigid. Tochiro's nails bit into his skin and he smothered a moan in Harlock's thigh, just as stiff, sunk to the hilt in him.
They caught their breath together, frozen like that. Harlock was first to start softening and pooling on the bed. They parted and breathed more. Tochiro had to support himself on his hands, puffing and grinning until Harlock caught him up in his arms and stopped his breath long enough to kiss him.
Tochiro was a weight on his chest when they fell back together. “Blanket's a mess,” he pointed out once he had air enough in his lungs to make the words.
“That's all right,” Harlock said, the words coming out all dreamy and drowsy. “A bath and a change of sheets, and it's no problem.”
“Y'know, you're the only person I'd take two showers in one day for,” Tochiro said into Harlock's chest.
Willing to give his friend the benefit of the doubt, Harlock laughed as if this was a joke. “Would you be willing to make it a habit?”
Tochiro paused for a decidedly un-seductive length of time. “Sure.”