The sun crested over the top of the skyline. Between the deep shadows cast by looming high-rises in the distance, a warm glow doused the city. It was a beautiful view from the balcony, serenely peaceful if not for the soft rumblings of early traffic, but Katsuyuki paid it no attention. Eyes unfocused at some empty middle distance, he barely registered his surroundings at all. His cigarette was already used up. Flicking it into the ashtray, he immediately reached for another and lit it. His hands were unsteady - probably a mix of a mild hangover and frayed nerves. Drawing a deep first breath through the new cigarette, the smoke from the fresh new filter was smooth and soothing, and he felt a small wave of calm wash over him; fleeting, subtle, and soon lost.

He ran his fingers through his hair. It was wrong, in every sense of the word. Whatever it was he had thought he'd felt last night, he must have been mistaken. Confused, drunken imagination running wild. Because there was certainly no way he could be...

He couldn't even bring himself to think it. The words were too shameful to draw upon.

Suffering from mixed feelings, one could say.

Thoughts of his friend sprawled out on the bed crept back to his mind; half-undressed and dulled by alcohol, Yuanfei has seemed so vulnerable, so unthreatening. So easy to let one's guard down. Katsuyuki had been careful to keep some degree of emotional distance, but still, he'd been too familiar, and his overindulgence in this bonding moment had torn open his defences. Something new - a sickening, threatening new feeling - had been exposed. Its presence couldn't be suppressed any longer. The soft spot for his good friend was twisting into something far more sinister, he feared.

Something men weren't supposed to feel.

He sighed a fraught, ragged breath.

It was disgusting. Unforgivable. That's what he'd been taught, and he knew that such lessons were gospel. He didn't dare even question it. It was abhorrent, because it was.

Enforced, ingrained, internalized throughout his life, he would never debase himself with such depraved inclination. What was he thinking? Of course he wasn't some closeted nutjob. Besides, if he was, he would've known by now. Today, and last night, it was just a brief lapse in self-assurance, one that had spiralled out of control into the realm of the unreasonable. He was getting worked up over nothing.

No, he was being dishonest - and lying was doing him no favors. Now that the doubt was creeping in, his comfortable denial was getting slowly and painfully ripped apart. Whatever he was feeling right now, last night was not where that problem started. No, this went back further - it had lingered dormant for some time now. His mind reeled back through his memories, tentatively testing the waters of this strange new feeling. A complete picture was slowly forming, and Katsuyuki didn't like it. That feeling had begun to worm its way into his life months ago. And it was only with... him.

Then...

What was it that he felt towards Yuanfei?

One memory stuck in his mind: that day they'd trained together. Katsuyuki sighed bitterly, exhaling another plume of cigarette smoke. He'd been uncharacteristically playful, eager to be the one to put a smile on his friend's face - and in an impulsive moment of poor judgement, had caught him off-guard with impromptu roughhousing, tackling him to the ground.

Hilarious.

Katsuyuki took social competence seriously - years of careful networking had taught him well. Yet that was the best he could come up with in the moment? What the fuck had he been thinking?

And yet, even when Katsuyuki did something so fucking stupid, so tone-deaf and awkward - Yuanfei went with it. And, unlike Katsuyuki, he was content to enjoy the moment without ruminating on its contingencies or implications. He just laid there, wearing that warm smile Katsuyuki had hoped for, while his friend was leaning their full weight onto his body. It must have been uncomfortable, physically and emotionally - but he didn't show it. He was happy to indulge Katsuyuki's impulses.

His throat tightened. Why had it felt so...

He swallowed. Crossed wires in his brain, surely. The close proximity must have triggered a misguided reflex, an assumption that the physical contact was inherently intimate. Add in a shot of post-sparring adrenaline, it was no big surprise that such closeness with a good friend might feel... Sort of nice.

But it didn't end there; no, it got far worse.

The locker room.

The nudity.

Katsuyuki's eyes had... wandered, perhaps. Just a little. But surely that was normal. Humans find their gaze intuitively draws to interesting elements in their view.

Not that he was interested. But he wasn't acquainted with male nudity, and Yuanfei had walked around so freely. It was new, an unexpected moment he wasn't prepared for. Certainly not his fault.

Katsuyuki sighed again through snarled lips. That was a lie. Locker rooms were always shared with naked men, and he'd never felt the reflexive nudge to look.

But this was different. Yuanfei didn't merely undress and throw on a towel; he embraced his nudity, entirely unphased and with no sense of urgency to to hide it. Just walked around like that - like he revelled in it. Irreverent. Devoid of bodily shame. How could Katsuyuki avoid seeing him naked? When he spent so much time exposed like that...

Another lie. Perhaps if Yuanfei had been that way for some time already, but it was as soon as he'd slipped off his clothes that Katsuyuki had stolen a glance at his body.

And he'd seen it all.

His arched spine as he stretched, flexing the muscles of his back. His powerful, toned thighs, narrow hips, and...

He clutched at his t-shirt. The thought of his friend's slender body twisted his stomach in knots.

No. No, no, no. It was wrong. The glance had been... It was surely something Yuanfei had done. He must have pulled his clothes off in an unconventional way, or moved strangely, which Katsuyuki had subconsciously detected from the corner of his eye. It was a failure of Yuanfei to act accordingly, to minimize his visibility in such a delicate moment.

Not to mention when he had walked in on him that morning. It seemed he had a bad habit of exposing himself. He could have just locked the fucking door, but no. Why would he allow Katsuyuki to see him in such a private moment? Why did he always do this?

The sun was now crowning over the taller buildings, illuminating the city as it awoke. Another cigarette already close to done. He reached into his pocket for another, but stopped himself short. He'd had enough.

Yuanfei didn't deserve the blame. If anything, he was a victim - to be surreptitiously eyed, and admonished for it, just to alleviate a little of Katsuyuki's discomfort. But this burden wasn't his to bear; it was on Katsuyuki's shoulders. Much as he hated to admit it, he was alone in this. And he truly was alone - swept out to sea in unfamiliar, turbulent and dangerous waters. To even entertain the notion of attraction to another man, in any capacity, threatened to topple the life he'd built for himself, and uproot everything he thought he knew of himself. His skin crawled at the thought.

To be one of them. It was unthinkable.

He resented them. His whole life, taught to despise them, to look down at them and their shameless, hedonistic perversion. The hatred had taken root deep in his heart. Unlike his elders, however, Katsuyuki wasn't repulsed so much by their specific inclinations. Worse than that, he had determined, was their complete lack of shame about it all. They lived openly, boasting that they loved whoever they wished, that no one could force them to do otherwise, that they deserved to exist without scrutiny. Who the fuck were they to decide such a thing? It wasn't their call to make. One couldn't just opt out of judgement.

And Katsuyuki, he was shackled to the rules of societal expectation; it was the only way to keep his head above water and escape the wrath of Yegor and his father. He didn't dare put a foot wrong. He lived meticulously under an unwavering critical eye, striving endlessly for perfection and the safety that came with it.

And what awaited him for his efforts? Nothing. He didn't get to live or love the way he wished. He was resigned to a lonely existence with some awful trophy wife in his future. Like father, like son. The thought loomed over him as a dark shroud of inescapable misery. Why did he not get a say in who he loved? Why couldn't he live that liberally, removed from scrutiny? He had played by all the rules, done everything he could to claw his way to a shred of happiness that was never quite in reach, but these fucking deviants got it for nothing. They weren't bound by the rules; they superseded them. They weren't trapped like he was. They were free.

And then to have the nerve to gloat about it...

Not that he wanted what they had.

... Did he?

Katsuyuki's shoulders slumped. There was that knot in his stomach again.

The vibrant city life was now coming into full swing; Yuanfei would likely be waking up soon. He took one last, long drag from his cigarette, flicking the end into the ashtray. Mind occupied on damage control, his body ran on autopilot. He turned to leave the balcony, pulling the door closed behind him.

Whatever it was he was feeling, it couldn't be attraction - romantic, sexual, or anything of that sort. It couldn't be.

It wasn't.

He ascended the stairs with slow, deliberate steps, making his way back to his shared bedroom. His mind was quieted; this moment of madness was passing, and reason had re-emerged.

He was just hungover. It was the usual double-punch of drunken stupidity and morning-after nerves.

He was just confused, not accustomed to such close proximity with another human being for such a long time.

He was just frustrated - hormones and compounds had emotions running high without an outlet.

He was fine.

Nothing was wrong.

Katsuyuki nudged the bedroom door open. Yuanfei was in the same position he'd left him, eyes gently closed and breathing in slow, deep sighs. He looked so peaceful, blissfully unaware of the hangover he was likely in for.

Katsuyuki might have smiled if not for the spiralling panic that had gripped him and soured his mood. He watched him, transfixed for a moment, as his chest rhythmically rose and fell.

A tumultuous blend of affection and guilt unsettled him. All this scorn he had foisted onto Yuanfei to protect his own ego was hideously unwarranted. He deserved better. Katsuyuki wanted to make his life better. He wanted to be the only one who could.

This friendship was a true gift. It was a connection like no other he'd known: he felt understood, and accepted, and supported; like they had just... clicked. Yuanfei brightened his day, challenged him to become a better person, connected with him on the same, lonely wavelength... and he had no idea. He didn't know how special he was.

He didn't know how special he was to Katsuyuki.

Katsuyuki bit his lip. He sighed, and his breath trembled.

He was special; as a treasured, valued friend.

Such a good friend. Nothing more, nothing less.