Chapter 3.3

“Can I just… keep holding this without drinking it?”

Dan, who had seemed about to unleash a string of curses, said it with desperate earnestness, like someone making their last wish in life. Chris couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing loudly. The glistening tear-shiny eyes stared blankly up at the man laughing his head off.

“Ahem.”

Chris cleared his throat having laughed his fill.

“Yeah? I can’t?”

The face that had startled him asked earnestly once more toward the one who had stopped laughing.

“Do you think you’d be able to just hold it?”

At the worried words Dan nodded vigorously.

“That’s going to be hard.”

Chris pointed out practically that it would be realistically difficult to the hopeful face. Dan, who had been nodding energetically, quickly pouted. He knew alcohol could cause infantile regression, but this was the most entertaining infantile regression he had ever witnessed.

“I’ll really really hold onto it well.”

The drunk voice said haltingly.

“Where’s the cap?”

Chris asked, thinking he shouldn’t be doing this.

“Over there.”

Dan pointed with his hand in the direction he had staggered in from.

“Wait here.”

Chris went and brought the cap that had been abandoned in the middle of the hall. Since Dan had a fit even when Chris just touched near the bottle, Chris handed the retrieved cap over to Dan.

Dan had thrown away his glasses and couldn’t focus well, on top of having drunk heavily and not being in his right mind. Because of this it took quite a lot of time before he managed to properly aim the cap at the small miniature and get it closed.

“Hehe.”

The face that had been crying and sorrowful until moments ago smiled, hugging the capped Absolut vodka to its chest.

“Happy?”

Chris asked with the feeling of having given something up. He should take the bottle from an alcoholic, but if he forced it away he’d probably cry until morning and he couldn’t bring himself to do that.

If it had been his father or a friend, a team staff member, a sponsor, he’d have taken the bottle away with a blank face and no hesitation. The sight of someone who couldn’t care less about drinking but just wanted to possess the alcohol even without drinking it was both funny and amusing and strange.

“Happy.”

Dan answered, hiding the Absolut vodka behind his back. He smiled with his eyes and spread a ridiculous hehehe sound.

“Really really happy.”

He said it without pausing to breathe. The brightly smiling face had deeper colour in his lips than usual, perhaps because of all the water he had drunk earlier.

The soft smiling lips came close to Chris’s lips.

Peck.

Chris, off guard from watching the smiling lips, had no thoughts at all as the water-moistened lips came closer. He only realized it was a kiss when the smiling lips made contact and spread a soft sensation.

“…”

Chris had no time to worry about Dan’s ridiculous laughter or the state of him talking without stopping to breathe.

“It’s so good.”

The face that had come up close in front of his face spoke with its laughing eyes still crinkled.

Peck.

Every time that face smiled it kissed Chris’s lips. It was only after the soft sensation overlapping his lips repeated several times that Chris properly registered the distinct impression.

Even after the soft lips came to him several more times it was difficult to come to his senses. It was a situation that felt not quite real.

The sweet sensation had been too sudden.

“Hehe.”

Chris just looked at Dan’s smiling eyes. He himself found it hard to come to his senses, but the face in front of him didn’t seem to be in its right mind either. The brightly smiling face that spread laughter endlessly came close softly again.

“Are you alright?”

The bewildered face said toward the smiling one. Dan’s smiling face said lightly:

“Happy.”

Next came a kiss.

“Hold on.”

Chris’s hands urgently caught the approaching Dan.

“You’re not happy?”

Dan was smiling with his eyes crinkled. His cheeks were flushed red and his mood looked dangerously good.

“…”

Chris couldn’t find an answer. The person caught by him licked his wet lips with his tongue and mumbled with his slurred speech.

“I’m happy though…”

If such a thing had happened in the past, he thought he understood how Dan had gotten involved with a man. In this state it seemed like it wouldn’t matter whether the other person was a man or a woman. There was no way anyone would refuse a man with a pretty and elegant body smiling as if he had arrived in heaven and coming in for a kiss.

The grinning face coming closer put people completely off guard. There would be no occasion to feel threatened by the bright face or to push away the approaching smile.

The speed of kissing and pulling away in an instant was also remarkable. A hundred out of a hundred times, you’d be kissing before knowing when it had started, and before you knew it you’d be tangled up together while he giggled.

“…”

Chris was silent in the midst of an unfamiliar sense of danger. Dan, seeing the still face, gradually settled the smile and whispered:

“You don’t like it?”

It was a ticklish whisper that would make the one refusing look bad for answering. A confusion he had never experienced before swept through Chris.

There were not a few people who came to him showing interest, or who gave off the nuance that they would accept if he showed interest. But this was the first time it had been like this. He was aggressively forward to a bewildering degree, and at the same time impossibly refreshing.

He himself had gone around showing no small amount of interest in others, but he didn’t think he could give others this kind of feeling. There was no sense of being a nuisance or giving off a threatening air at all. The bright face and the softly murmuring voice produced a pleasant tickling feeling and made laughter rise up.

“…No.”

When the belated answer came, the face that had been waiting with patience spread its eyes into a smile again.

“I can’t see your face well without my glasses.”

Chris had been debating whether to ask ‘is this how you seduced men.’ Dan pulled the arm of the seriously deliberating man and brought the handsome face into his field of vision.

“I can see well like this.”

The smiling face whispered.

‘So this is how you did it.’

Chris found the answer on his own without asking.

He tilted his chin and kissed the smiling lips. The breath spreading with fruit fragrance spread a ticklish sensation and met him back.

He wanted to let out a groan at the exhilaration that rose instantly. He swallowed his excitement and lightly licked up the wet lips. Dan, lips together with his, kept smiling. Without taking their lips apart, the still-smiling-shaped lips whispered:

“It feels good but you’re still awful.”

Not something the smiling eyes and lips should be saying. The quietly grumbling lips sent out a tongue and deeply took Chris in.

“Awful?”

Chris calmly sucked the tongue stimulating him. The warm soft thing that had been against him pulled back.

“This place is cursed.”

The smiling face said cold words.

“Cursed?”

“There’s no sugar here and no salt.”

Dan made a genuinely worried face and then smiled and rambled on again and kissed Chris’s lips. But this time didn’t use his tongue as before. He just placed his lips there obediently.

Just as the lightly touching lips were about to pull away, Chris pushed his tongue between the wet lips and thoroughly traced the soft inside. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] And then persistently sucked and pulled at the soft tongue.

“…”

When he stopped the kiss, the lips that wore a smile giggled. With a bright face he whispered:

“This place is hell.”

Dan, with a face like he had arrived in heaven, rambled that this place was hell.

“It’s hell?”

“Yeah. Inside your stomach there’s probably an almond tree, a chicken breast tree, and a salmon tree.”

The face that looked like the happiest person in the world smiled. Dan made a ridiculous sound laughing and kissed Chris’s mouth. And while doing so delivered an incongruous out-of-nowhere remark that didn’t go with the laughter.

Chris was there with a relaxed face making it easy for the other to come in for a kiss. He left alone the approaching smiling lips but furrowed his eyebrows at the words those lips were saying. The creased eyebrows slowly returned to their place.

“Are you cursing at me with a smile? Not drunk ranting but saying what you actually wanted to say.”

Dan laughed without a care.

“Not letting me eat sugar, not letting me use salt, you’re really awful.”

He smiled at the awful person and kept kissing him. Receiving what must have been who knows which number kiss, Chris let out a laugh. There was no way to get seriously angry at someone cursing while smiling.

“You bastard.”

Dan kept smiling and cursed at the smiling him.

“You really awful bastard.”

Dumbfounded, Chris just watched. The curses ringing in his ears were unpleasant, but he had no time to get angry with his eyes going to the smiling face in front of him.

“So petty.”

Chris let out a sigh with a smiling face.

“Keep going.”

This isn’t a serious fight with a drunk person.

“Not knowing the bitterness of beer means not knowing life, you idiot. Damn, I want to drink.”

Dan grumbled with a smile. He cursed too. Chris murmured ‘after crying comes laughing’ and let out a wry smile.

“You bastard.”

“Keep going.”

“Hey. Hey, you idiot. You, why are you laughing? Are you laughing at me? I’m a scary older brother.”

Dan threatened with a beaming smile. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Chris kept laughing thinking he must be very scary indeed. The smiling face grumbled about why he wasn’t believing it. Even while showing something like irritation the crinkled eyes didn’t uncrinkle. The ends of the water-moistened lips were also smoothly curled up.

“You?”

“I used to live pretty rough in the old days. Really. I’m a scary older brother, I’m telling you. Are you going to keep laughing at me?”

Dan put away the smile and chattered like a grumbling child.

“Why, going to punish me if I keep laughing?”

“Your house has a shotgun, right?”

The sideways face said sulkily.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

There was definitely a shotgun in Chris’s house. Clay shooting models and hunting models that maximised the display effect occupied the centre of the display cabinet. But the ones who actually used the shotguns were not him but the stable manager and gardener from the house below.

He lent his equipment to the two who got worked up over who could hit more pigeons (clay shooting is a sport based on ‘pigeon hunting,’ so the target, an orange disc, is called a ‘pigeon’) or catch more pheasants, and watched them go at each other.

“Watch yourself.”

Dan threatened with his eyes crinkled brightly.

“Watch myself for what?”

Chris only laughed at the words of the heavily drunk man.

“This older brother used to shoot guns a bit. Be careful.”

Dan put his hands together and said it in a take-note tone.

“What are you going to do if I don’t?”

“If you keep pushing…”

Dan suddenly flushed the grinning smiling face red. The redness that had been flushing his cheeks from the alcohol seemed to spread to his face and chin and neck and ears and his whole body. The face that had been happily smiling to itself had its lips twitch and its finger quickly pointed down and then pulled back.

“There. Right there… at your pepper, I’m going to shoot it off.”

Then it happily squirmed and giggled.

“I’d rather that didn’t happen.”

Chris whispered quietly and tilted his face and consumed the smiling lips. He reached out a hand and pulled the bottom of the team clothes Dan was wearing toward himself. Dan, led by the man’s hand, touched with his tongue the lips coming in for a kiss.

The overlapping lips locked deeply and resonated softly. Dan giggled and firmly tangled his tongue with the rough tongue licking inside. After the long kiss he separated his lips and sucked the lips coming at him breathing hard, and murmured:

“It’s because you keep laughing at me.”

“Me? When? And what did I do so wrong that you say such a scary thing? Is it bad to push a little?”

Dan burst out laughing at the aggrieved grumbling.

“A little? Hey, be good to me.”

“I’ll be good to you.”

Chris promised without a moment’s hesitation. Dan, stopping the kissing and separating his lips, said with a blank face:

“Hey, I know everything.”

“What do you know?”

“Kekekeke.”

He laughed in a daze. Chris couldn’t kiss Dan because he was laughing with his mouth tightly shut in a ridiculous way, but was satisfied he wasn’t crying. The smiling face overlapped its lips again with the puzzled face.

“Your rear wing has ‘Keep your distance!’ written on it, right? Was it the season before last? Anyway it did. ‘Keep your distance!’ That’s actually ‘Get lost, you idiot!’ isn’t it? I know everything.”

No answer came back. It didn’t matter. Dan said it triumphantly without caring.

“You chased away everyone who worked here, didn’t you?”

Chris didn’t answer.

“Chased away?”

He repeated Dan’s words meaninglessly. Or made some appropriate flattering sound. Chris focused only on the lips licking and sucking and taking in his lips.

Kim Dan had a slender-boned and elegant body, but he was a man.

Chris thought he could do it with a man. In the past he had rolled around with three or four partners a night as a matter of routine, switching between them. There had been many times he had been with multiple partners at once.

When the ratio of his partners leaned toward more men and fewer women he had pushed more than one penis inside a vagina. He had done anal sex countless times and thought he had done almost every form of sex that was possible.

He had suggested sex to Dan, but Chris himself couldn’t gauge how much of it had been sincere. He could do it if it came to it, that was roughly what he had felt at the time. That day he hadn’t wanted to go looking for a partner, so he had said it out of nowhere, and the other person had refused outright.

When he met Dan again he had kept suggesting sex at the drop of a hat, but without any thought behind it. It wasn’t a serious proposition. It was closer to an unpleasant joke meant to irritate the other person.

Chris had vaguely thought he could do it with a man, but he hadn’t known he could kiss a man and tease him and hold him this naturally.

Every time Dan came in for a kiss it felt indescribably good. An unbelievable sensation stimulated him. At the ticklish kisses, even the flat kisses of just lips touching, his muscles flinched non-stop.

It was simultaneously strange and naturally accepted that his erect penis stirred at the meaningless hand stroking his knee. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] He felt no rejection, resistance, or displeasure at all.

It just felt good. So good it was bewildering.

Chris reached out and took off the team clothes Dan was wearing. As if helping along the hands removing his clothes, the well-shaped legs moved this way and that.

“Why are you taking my clothes off?”

Dan blinked and asked, in contrast to having instinctively helped along the approaching hands.

His words and actions were going separately.

“Strange.”

“Hm?”

“You’re going to take off my clothes for me?”

He pushed forward the bottoms with only the buckle undone as if to say do as you like. As he brought his waist forward Dan naturally reached out his hands.

“What are you going to do after taking the clothes off?”

The blank-looking face asked seriously. It was a face that was neither crying nor laughing. He wondered if intelligence dropping noticeably after crying your fill and laughing at length was the sequence of drunken behavior.