FicWad

I'm not sure I can describe the emotions I felt when I got home one day and saw a dark car pulling away from the house. Blank surprise for a moment, certainly. Followed by brief seconds of confusion, realization and alarm, in that order. But after that, it got a little muddled.

I'd had errands to run after school that day, you see. And Tohru was, as usual, working. Which meant that Yuki had gone ahead home, alone.

The house was dark and silent, and there seemed to be something cold settling in my stomach as I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Yuki's door was open, with a very faint light spilling through into the hallway. Far from being a welcoming sight, it very nearly made me turn around and walk away. I could imagine what might be inside that room, though I certainly tried not to, and the thoughts nearly made me sick.

When I rounded the corner, though, there was only Yuki-- curled up on his side, facing away from me, clutching the bedsheet around his shoulders. He flicked his gaze up to me as I came around the bed and moved to crouch beside it, putting my face at a level with his-- and there was that dark thing again, crawling through his eyes. It was pain, it was horror, and frustrated anger and hatred and a sparking touch of madness.

I reached across the white expanse of the sheet and tucked my hand around one of his, and just held on while he struggled with whatever was going on in his head.

Eventually, his grip on the sheet eased, and his eyes slipped closed. He sat up, and my eyes flinched away from the bruised purple spots on his bare neck and chest. Wordlessly, I pulled the top blanket from the bed and helped him wrap it around his shoulders.

I could see him wincing as he moved, and it was enough to make me break the silence. "Did he-- hurt you?"

Yuki gave a short, bitter laugh. "No. He never does, really. He never does anything to make it better for me, but he doesn't do anything to make it worse, either." He shook his head sharply and curled a little tighter around himself. I could hear the loathing coming off his voice, could almost feel it, and I wasn't sure that it was all directed towards Akito. "I wish sometimes that he would tie me down or beat me up. At least then I could pretend that I fought back."

I couldn't speak for a long moment. Impulsively, I reached out and pulled him into a loose hug-- just a light touch, nothing clutching or forceful. It was a reaction to pain, an instinctive move on my part. I think, maybe, that even if he'd still been the old Yuki I might have done the same right at that moment.

He was stiff for a split second, then relaxed against my shoulder, his head sliding sideways until his face was hidden in the crook of my neck. I felt one hand slowly settle on my back, sliding around until he was nearly hugging me, as well. I don't know how long we stayed like that.

Then he shifted, and I let go. Wordlessly, I steadied him while he stood, still wrapped in his blanket, and walked to the bathroom. I turned on the water, he adjusted it while I found a towel. Then I left him to his shower while I went back to his room and did my best to erase whatever had just happened there.

The sheets were stripped immediately, and I took them down to the washing machine and shoved them in-- though I doubted that I, at least, would ever want to reuse that set. As an afterthought, I gathered up the clothes scattered across the floor and sent them off to the same fate.

I remade the bed, and even went so far as to shift some of the furniture around. I couldn't have said why, but there was some instinct prompting me to change things-- to make it so that, perhaps, he wouldn't walk into the room and immediately see the place where--

It was that denial, thing, again. So long as something isn't right in your face, it's possible to just pretend it doesn't exist.

My first evidence that perhaps I was doing the same thing came when I was shifting the bedside table. I looked down, and there, next to the softly glowing lamp, was an open and dribbling tube-- and I froze. I couldn't bring myself to touch it. I couldn't even bring myself to look away.

Slap in the face. Hello, reality.

I was outside and on the roof before I consciously realized I was moving.

He came and found me out there some time later-- long enough that the sun had started to set, and the air was cooling quickly. He stretched out beside me, and neither of us said anything while the sky changed colours and blazed briefly before fading towards black. Then, he turned his head towards me and calmly asked if I'd finished the essay due the next day.

His eyes thanked me, though. And the warmth in that expression went a long way towards driving away the chill that had settled into my bones.

When we settled down in his room later, over our papers and texts, my eyes skipped sideways towards that table-- only to find it empty.

The next days were filled with long silences between us, which he seemed to need and which I was willing to give. We still ended up doing our homework together, sprawled in one or the other of our rooms-- from habit, we pulled out some of our usual bickering when others were in earshot. But I could see things churning behind his eyes, could tell that some thought was being turned over in his mind.

That Friday, Tohru went to stay with her friends for the weekend, so we walked home by ourselves, in companionable silence. When we arrived, we found a note from Shigure saying that he'd kidnapped Hatori and taken him to the hot springs-- and if his editor called, to tell her he'd be back in a few days. Maybe.

Yuki and I exchanged a smirk before going inside. Just another day..

We scrounged through the kitchen for food, then I retired to the roof-- it had been unseasonably warm that day, and since it was the weekend, there was no real reason not to enjoy it. It's probably the cat in me, but I've never been able to pass up an opportunity to nap in the sun.

The sun did set, though, and I reluctantly went back inside, yawning and stretching as I made my way to my room-- only to find Yuki perched on the edge of my bed. He had changed out of his uniform into more comfortable clothes-- with short sleeves, which surprised me even with the heat of the day. He never wore anything without long sleeves anymore, preferring to hide the scars rather than deal with the reactions they got.

So I was already a bit curious when I came over and sprawled out next to him, leaning back on my hands and just looking at him with eyebrows raised. He had his arms curled in against his stomach, a posture that made him look very uncertain, but his expression was set. Determined. There was something on his mind, and it seemed obvious that it had something to do with me.

He looked at me once I had settled. "Kyou-- I want to ask you something." Despite the apparent nervousness, his voice was steady.

I waited, but he didn't say anything more. "What?" I prompted.

He took a deep breath, seemed to brace himself, then lifted his head and looked straight into my eyes. "Would you sleep with me?"

I blinked at him for a moment, while the words sank in-- then had to keep blinking while my mind woke up and started saying 'what the hell'. But at the same time-- I think I /wasn't /that surprised, on some level. I'd already so much as told him I'd be willing to have sex with a guy, after all. And if I was going to be honest with myself-- my cousin really was beautiful. Perhaps on some level I'd thought about him, and wondered what it would be like.

Still. "Why are you asking?" I said carefully.

His eyes slid away, and his shoulders slumped a bit even as he shrugged one of them. "Because-- you're probably the only person I still have the freedom to go to."

That made me blink again, but before I could begin to wonder why that particular answer had hurt, he was continuing in a rush.

"Because you're the only person I trust enough to do that with. Because you already know why-- why it's important. Because I--" Without seeming to realize what he was doing, he turned his arms up and started staring at the scars. "Because I want to know what it's like. What it's supposed to be like. Even if it's just once."

He fell silent, still looking down. After a moment, I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his wrists, holding them gently, looking down at the puckered red scars and occasionally running my thumbs along the edges of them. "Why did you do it?" I asked.

He opened his mouth but stayed silent for a while, and I could see him turning over the words in his head. "Because I didn't see any other way out," he whispered eventually. He shrugged awkwardly. "I didn't plan it, or anything," he added, a bit louder. "I just-- saw the opportunity, and suddenly it seemed like a good idea. I'd gone ahead and done it before I really stopped to think about it."

He was quiet, then. After a moment's pause, I bent and kissed each wrist, right over that ugly scar-- I still can't say why I did it, but it seemed like the right thing.

And when I looked up again, his eyes were wide and too bright, and his lips were trembling faintly-- so I leaned forward and kissed those, too.

It should have seemed odd-- awkward, embarrassing, something/-- what with me not really that sure of what I was doing, and Yuki whispering instructions in my ear, but somehow it wasn't. I unbuttoned where I was directed, slid cloth away, touched, and /touched/, feeling the warmth of my cousin's body and the clench of muscles as Yuki arched a little under my hand. It should have seemed-- /wrong/, perhaps, or perhaps just surprising, to have /Yuki's hands on my hips, lightly guiding, and I did have to wonder-- but then I couldn't seem to come up with any questions, or even a coherent /thought/, as I was pressed forward and /inside/--

And all I could do was gasp, struggling to control the raging of my pulse while helplessly pressing my face into Yuki's neck, trying to understand the many conflicting signals my body was sending. It came to me slowly that Yuki was shaking slightly under me, panting in quick, broken puffs against the side of my face-- but when I managed to lift my head to look, there was an expression of stunned wonder in his eyes. His lips were moving, but I had to lean even closer to hear the words.

"It doesn't hurt-- oh, god, it doesn't hurt--"

Something inside me seemed to shudder, and it suddenly seemed like it would be much more odd and awkward not to shift over and kiss him, deeply enough that I might have been trying to taste his soul.

And then he shifted, and I moved-- and it all melted into a haze of warmth and wetness, tongues and fingers, gasps and groans-- and it all kept building long after the point where I was sure it would shatter into stardust around us.

Until Yuki gave a drawn-out, broken gasp, pulling away from my lips, and I felt a warm wetness erupt between us. Then, something finally shifted, and I was hearing my own startled cry as all of my nerves exploded at once.

It should have been awkward, and strange, but when I came back to myself enough to feel Yuki trembling beneath me, I didn't even think before rolling to my side and pulling him against my chest. He slid an arm around my waist, tucked his head under my chin, and just settled into place, and I rubbed his back slowly until the shaking stopped.

At one point, in our pasts-- I would have made a point of his apparent weakness, would have laughed or taunted or stored it up for a challenge at a later date. I would have used this sight of him, shaken and very vulnerable all of a sudden, and no doubt started another fight.

At that moment-- I think I felt somehow /honoured/, that he might trust me enough to let me see him that way. So I ignored the dampness of tears on my chest, and any thoughts of insults or fighting were the furthest things from my mind.