It was a rather subdued, definitely bedraggled pair who lumbered into Room 114 some fifteen minutes later.
And not a moment too soon for Ran.
The mud in his hair had partially dried, turning it into the color of chocolate milk. His cheeks and T-shirt bore traces of dust, so knocked free with every shivering step he had taken.
But that wasn't the worst of it, oh no. The worst was looking down at himself in the glaring fluorescence of the back stairwell and finding, not one, but four leeches attached to his forearms.
Now, the slimy creatures were nothing but tiny, bloody puddles in front of the exit, so made by the soles of Ran's sopping boots. The lovers were once more safely ensconced in their room, their shoes toasting on the floor in front of the fire.
As for their selves...the two of them were standing around like wallflowers at a school dance, still clad in their damp clothing.
"But believe me, I WON'T do it again!"
"Ever!"
How many times have I heard that? How many plants have met their demise at his hands, only to be apologized over.
Only to hear as their last sounds of life Ken swearing that he would never try anything like that again.
Ran sighed quietly. I hope the next time he tries that on me that we're near something soft and drastically drier...
And why are we just standing here dripping on the carpet, and possibly putting ourselves at risk for pneumonia?
...Like two ridiculous teenage boys?
Ran scrubbed at his nose, sending a few fine flakes of dirt cascading onto his shirt. "I want to take a shower and change clothes. I know you want to do the same thing..."
"So...Um...Why don't we take one together?"
"I promise, I won't try anything. I'm just trying to be practical..."
Ken paused a moment, letting the adjustment lever for the fireplace be, since evidentially, it had no intention of making the blast any more extensive than it already was. He stood up then, shedding a few leaves himself (as he had had the luck to fall into the overgrown part of the pond) and regarded Ran with a teeny bit of a flush.
"Hey, I trust you, and if you want the truth, I was kinda thinking about asking you the same thing, and making the same promise." A shake of his head and a grin. "So let's go before we start sneezing!"
Naturally, the moment those words had been uttered, he sneezed so loudly the metal supports in the ceiling rang. Holding one hand before his nose, he beckoned with the other and started trudging to the bathroom. Having paused a moment to tear out a dry cleaning bag from his trunk (minding to slam the thing closed as soon as his boyfriend approached!) he only stopped a moment to catch his breath.
Well, here goes!
And had himself quite stripped in a moment. His one wish once he had finished? Damnit, if only I could at least look a little embarrassed! Somewhat modest!
But this is what you get for being paraded around stark naked in front of guests, spending hours in hot springs with a million other grope-y couples and living without pants during the J-league off season.
Not to mention showering while I was still in the J-league...
And besides, I'm not totally naked! I've still got lots of mud on!
Ran, however, hung in the doorway, hazy-eyed and seeming reluctant to join him suddenly. He kicked over a second bubble of plastic. "Just toss your things in there and we'll have 'em washed quick."
He didn't move.
"Hey, it's not so bad. Besides, you'll be nice and warm if you blush!"
And he ran off to the bathroom then, chuckling in spite of the full knowledge he had just flagrantly flashed his bottom and the paths the fire tongues had left on his back.
Sad fact, in point: Hidaka Ken was somewhat of a nudist, and he knew this. Got very silly and almost rude when he knew this.
Frankly, Ran was shocked. Not to mention, somewhat...turned on.
Well, that was the most I've ever seen of you.
You can't stand to have me touch you, but you don't mind flashing me.
I think you got a kick out of doing it...
I must admit...I did too.
He heard the taps being turned and the water gushing out into the tub; the rush of the shower. Ken cheekily called to him again.
Well, it was your idea...Can't back out now.
He took off his shirt and sweater and tossed them into the bag.
Not that I really, really want to...
Followed with the rest of his garments and padded into the bathroom, trying for all the world to look as if he was used to running about naked in the presence of other men.
Other young, attractive men, who rarely blushed as he himself was now doing.
Don't start thinking about that...It's going to be bad enough, having him close enough to look at. REALLY look at.
"Well..." Ran leapt lightly into the shower stall and closed the door behind him. Shunned the offered cloth and bar of soap in favor of first dunking his head under one of the shower's twin jets.
"...it's not THAT bad, is it?" Ken finished his boyfriend's sentence with a little kick against the water that was swirling silver umber around the drain even as his beloved's hair regained it's crimson luster. Speaking of Ran, he shook his head, but still somewhat refused to tilt his head away from the veil of the falling droplets.
"Saa..." he sighed himself, his breath making backwards clouds of clearer air in the steam, "I know I'm a little... too happy. I don't mean anything by it."
Ran didn't seem to hear until he suddenly stood and shrugged and reached for the shampoo.
Yeah, you're a little afraid you might say something I'll take the wrong way, huh? That's the hardest part of doing this with someone else around. S'ok. It's cool. I'll be quiet too.
Maybe then you'll stop adhering to that old catholic school "anyone with wandering eyes gets hit with a ruler".
Pouting as he started scrubbing his face. Stupid earthlings, so hung up on clothes.
Nah, Ran's got his reasons... for most people. But he already showed me his scars. A quick glance down. Well, maybe for someone who's used to going around behind a black trench coat or sweaters so baggy you can't even make out of they're male or female, that is worse.
And you've got nerve! Why, if you were anyone else, he could wash your back, and expect a little kiss maybe. Anyone else, and you could do it right here in the shower and then go faint in the tub!
Self-consciously, he began to whistle, and got no signal to stop. He didn't even know what tune he was failing to carry. No, his visions distracted him. He felt rather bad... well, for many reasons, and standing somewhat behind his lover so as to get a better look at him while he washed... that was just one.
Ran happened to be just as bloody gorgeous without anything on. Cute even, in a fae and lithe way. Since he was that. Ken though pondered for a moment the almond curve of his hips, which seemed to slide in just so, as if inviting a pair of hands to rest on them. Not like a girl's though the slope was all wrong, too clear, to clean. Neither was his companion spindly, though his legs seemed impossibly long now that they had nothing to exaggerate their tone. His neck looked graceful enough to be snapped with a tap.
And this was the body of a swordsman? The sweaters, the coats, they all made sense now!
Ran had to do SOMETHING to make himself look threatening.
The average person wouldn't have picked up at all on the way this muscles moved under that porcelain skin... he just had one of those bodies that never showed them. Barely even hinted, just looked graced to a sketchpad somewhere in vanishing isles of spirits.
The little imperfections of his scars seemed... more to bequeath his form unto Ken as a gift, rather than a chance or bad luck on someone's part. The bullet wound caught the slope of his shoulder, and the trailing slash seemed to drag Ken's eyes down the reflection of his belly and show off the darling little dip of his navel, the thin fine, punctuated little jerk along his waist that lead down to puddle of red fluff suddenly blurted out between his legs.
Ken then remembered he hadn't exactly been paying attention to washing himself and had quite missed a few spots, which he went back to just as Ran stopped to scrub off a few scuffs of dirt on his shins.
And that had been what he'd noticed, the night they'd decided to end up here? Ran, then Aya's, bottom. Since despite his thinness, he did have one, which Ken found to be wonderful in every way, although with his lover at such an angle, he did see a bit more than he had been expecting and gulped silently.
Geez! He's even... barely pink there! Underneath... I guess... that's what you'd call it. Umm... aw man he's gotta be tight too...
And as he turned and groped for the shampoo himself, he felt his stomach dissolving into very irked butterflies that conjured his most deprecating grin.
After all, he hadn't responded otherwise.
Ran was pretty, and perfect, and infinitely fuckable.
But he was Ken, and he was a blind looser whose sex drive apparently had no sense of art, even if his heart throbbed, and his eyes ached to see his lover so.
Ran turned then, having had put off warming his back under the hot, slushing shower for longer than he would have liked -- and all because he was afraid he'd be caught ogling his own boyfriend. As it was, even after he had turned around, and had positioned himself just right under the steaming jet, he had kept his eyes closed.
For all of five seconds.
Ken had his back to him, affording him another view of his perfectly sculpted ass; of his well-defined back and arms, the muscles of which rippled like waves beneath his skin with every swoop of his hands across his foamy hair.
Thin rivulets of suds, snagged by a stray trickle of water, would flow from time to time down that shiny, broad expanse of flesh all the way down to Ken's rear. Would cascade over the firm mounds; jet daringly between them; slither brazenly down those strong, tantalizing legs to swirl away.
All the paths he'd send his fingers down, if only Ken would let him touch him.
If only...
Silently, he pleaded with him to turn around, and let him see everything. Pleaded that he would stay there like that and let him look to his heart's content at that which he had so long fantasized about.
But he didn't. Merely scrubbed and whistled merrily, blind to adoring man behind him.
The suds were rinsed away, and, after a moment's contemplation of the shampoo bottle, another smaller dab was applied. But as he went to repeat the procedure, Ran caught his wrists, cringing inwardly over his impulsiveness.
He held him that way until Ken had lowered his hands to his chest, then he lay his own hands on his shoulders, feeling them tense under his touch; stroked him there, quietly willing him to relax.
"Let me do it."
Ken had to admit he was startled. Really startled. They had spent what seemed like hours NOT talking, and then all of a sudden... but then he shrugged it off and smiled at his beaded reflection in the shower glass. "Sure, Ran."
And like a little kid awaiting a candy from a favorite grownup, he dropped to his knees and craned his head backwards to flash Ran his biggest grin, before relinquishing his wet locks to his fingers. After all, they stood nearly the same height, and this made thin easier and...
He couldn't believe he hadn't offered the same little luxury to his beloved.
Well, he just looked so absorbed!
And seemed so nervous, being naked, I didn't want to like... get all over him right away.
This leading into the realization that if he could see his contemplation-empty face in the shower door, Ran could see it as well... though he found his own eyes tending to linger on the white body and the even whiter hands that danced onto his temples and started smoothing the soap into his hair. This same slender fingers that had moments before been touching Ran's shins, and Ran's delectable belly.
Ran's lovely red floss. Here and there and places not named.
Now working the lather into his hair, small caress by small caress.
That feels nice.
A little sigh.
I wish it was sexy nice though.
I AM sorry, Ran. You know that. But you stay... you really do and I...
Don't think I'm ungrateful.
He rocked against one of the soft palms and giggled appreciatively.
You like this, I take it.
Score one for me.
I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't believe you're letting me do this.
And I'm so glad that you did, Ken.
Ran moved his fingertips across Ken's head, swirling his foamy hair into odd little peaks. Smiled at his reflection in the glass door before gently urging him to bend his head down. One hand stroking his neck, Ran reached for the shower nozzle.
"Close your eyes."
He lowered the nozzle and moved it this way and that, watching the suds melt and slip down Ken's body. Once his hair was shampoo-free, however, Ran didn't stop -- merely switched to waving the wand over his back.
Instead of my hands, water... he mused again, not realizing that he had said that aloud until he met Ken's surprised gaze in the fogged glass. Still, he didn't move, didn't push him away, so Ran continued until all the flesh within view was free of soap.
It was the most intimate thing he had ever done with someone.
Then he did the unthinkable -- at least, in his mind: He dropped the nozzle, not heeding the racket it made when it hit the tub wall, and sank gracefully to his knees behind Ken. Wrapped his arms around him, pressing his cheek against that of his lover's.
"Arigatou."
With that, Ran left him, exiting the room in the soft flap of a towel being drawn, and the fading slap of bare, wet feet on the tile floor.
Ken remained kneeling a moment, and dripping erratically, though he stayed quite still. He had no more sense of where the liquid from the shower passed his skin, only a few memories of silk dragging along his breast and the edges of his face. It took him what seemed like forever to finally remember to turn the shower off... that he could. That he stood not a prisoner of the little glass box and could in fact lean from it at the very least, and jiggle the door so it would slide back.
Which he did.
Feeling clenching memories on his wrists for only a split second.
But it's always like that with me, isn't it?
Ran, oh Ran, where art thou Ran? Have you flown out the window at last or collapsed in the satin of our bed?
Our bed!?
Geez, that sounds funny... doesn't it. Ran?
Sure enough, there he stood, toweling himself off... in front of the filigree arch of the mirror, watching himself, and Ken's delighted little gaze. How meticulous. How commanding of that bare alabaster form he seemed even in this, when only a moment before... Those were the arms that he brushed him, the cheek that had met his own? Nah, couldn't be... could it? And if so, what amazing luck!
Still... hardly seemed like the same boy... but how he glinted in the bedroom light alone!
So Ken scuttled out of the shower and not exactly snuck up behind him... but with a little giggle, tossed one of the smaller towels lying around over his head and started to frizzle his ruby hair dry, while his own went and drizzled little noisy puddles on the previously pristine carpet.
"I guess this didn't turn out so bad after all, sweetheart?" But just for the hell of it, he leaned in a little too close and got him wet again.
Since you're even too cute when your just drying off.
"Do I get to comb your hair out? We could sit in front of the fire awhile..."
When Ran removed the towel from his head, he found (much to his dismay) that his hair now resembled overdyed cotton candy, and no amount of finger combing would settle it. He dismayed of ever being able to tame it.
But then, he really didn't have to worry about taming it. He had Ken.
Ken, who was standing so beautifully nude behind him. Ken, who was grinning like a well-fed cat.
How could he possibly refuse him?
"Yeah, we'll sit in front of the fire, and you can comb my hair out."
And then, after a moment's consideration of his reflection in the mirror, he lowered the towel he'd been holding in front of himself, and let it drop to the floor. Caught Ken's eye in the silvered glass, and asked timidly, "How about we...forget the clothes for awhile?"
Ken's blue eyes became considerably larger, training steadily to the crumple of fallen terry cloth for a moment. And then he clapped his hands in glee as he scampered into the living room still in his full nymph regalia.
IE -- nothing.
"I think that's a great idea, Ran! If you're OK with it. It might get kinda chilly!" But he got no answer as he tugged on the handle for the fireplace, already having forgotten it seemed, that he had previously wrenched it all the way over to high.
Now flopped in on of the arm chairs as he had been the night before, he found the feel of it completely different that when he had first tried it. The fabric of it seemed quite thin, and in that easily copied even the slightest contours of his form, bending in tickling ever little crevice, fitting him exactly. Ran joined him, and seemed rather timid about sitting down, as if not expecting what to feel. Ken wondered if the carpeting tickled his bottom, since it certainly felt like the antenna of a million fluffy moths, even to those soles ragged, battered feet.
Neither of them sat in a manner expressing any inclination of cover themselves. Ran's head remained so close to his lap, guarded by his drooping knees.
Doesn't seem to make you uneasy. I thought that was a little funny even when we had clothes on...
But he reached for his comb -- the brush was sweeter but not fit for damp hair -- and began to creep it through that crimson envy of his beloved's that he cherished so very much, turning the frizz and the knots back to order and faint shimmers that wiggling over his fingers in the firelight, where Ran's eyes still hovered, far away from the... rather undignified muddy pile of their shoes.
Ah well.
He leaned back, fitting the curve of the chair to the curve of his back, and ran just his fingers through one eartail, curling it around and around like a bit of ribbon.
Ran tilted his head back a little at the feel of Ken's twining fingers, eyes mere glittering, languid slits in the firelight.
Okay, so he has absolutely NO problem with being naked.
He wriggled in place on the thick carpet, nearly giggling at the tickling sensation. Now if I can just get used to it.
Not that this is so bad. This is rather...sensuous, actually, what with the fire, and his legs against my back.
His hands in my hair...
I want to talk to him, but words just seem so out of place now. Sacrilegious almost.
I want to touch him, but...I don't want him to get nervous...
So, Ran did the only thing he could think of to do: Leaning back, he slithered his hand around one of Ken's calves and lifted his leg, hooking it over the wide, bony slope of his shoulder, and began to knead the ball of his upraised foot.
Ken flexed the muscles in his whole leg against the intrusive warmth of his lover. "That kinda tickles, I like it."
Which earned him a faintly skeptical glance.
"Really! I do!" So he reached down and was just smoothing the fluffy bangs when...
He couldn't be sure he'd heard it the first time, and neither did his boyfriend seem certain of the noise. But then it came again. Someone rapping on the door, but the sound seemed muffled, as if they knocked with their palm rather than their knuckles.
He jumped then, as if the door had already been opened and the two of them caught in a faintly compromising position. A moment, a very slow moment, where they nodded to one another and disentangled their limbs with grave reluctance, slinking bath to the bedroom after the pair of white terrycloth robes that appeared in every closet of the Kalm Inn.
As members of Weiss, visitors had always been suspicious, either as messengers of darkness or the succubae that Youji bade inhabit his quarters, but something that with certainty, they could not simply let slip.
Ran stood halfway behind the door as Ken opened it.
"Savil? What are you doing here?"
Standing outside sure enough stood their herald, in what had to be off duty clothes: baggy black shorts and a blue baby-t with the cover of a Kazuka Minami doujin emblazoned on a sticker over her chest. Somehow it didn't surprise him it was Gifted Child.
The fact she had what appeared to be a leather case of recently developed photos did.
"I brought you a present!" She announced with a titter, skipping into the room as he swept aside to allow her entrance. "That and I couldn't exactly leave my two boys all alone, now could I? Someone has to check on you." She smirked at them both, clasping the case behind her back now, as if daring them to ask of what it was. "Have you been doing OK?" Her question mark was all but spoken by the fire, which popped as if to greet her as some master of its brethren.
Ken couldn't make himself answer with any words, so he nodded, enthusiastically, and waited to get a death glare form Ran.
Though he didn't.
The girl instead spun around and cocked her head at his lover, like a little owl, though owls have no heels to click as she did then.
"Oh... I'm sorry. I thought you'd told him. Well... do you want to or should I?"
A bitter silence descended over the little group, one broken only by the occasional pop and hiss of the fire. Ran had remained where he was, all pale of face and blank of expression up until the time that Savil addressed him.
No, No, NO!
I can never have any peace, can I?
Ran glided out of the corner where he had taken up his post, and the curl-up-and-DIE glare Ken had expected to receive was now given -- to Savil.
"Tell him? Tell him what? That you are Schuldich's sister?"
He jerked his chin towards the windows. "That the whole lot of those vipers are here, on The Planet?"
"About how you sicced that redheaded bastard on me after Ken left?"
Did you enjoy that Savil? Did Schuldich?
Did you both have a good laugh at my expense?
Ran stalked past Ken, the tails of his robe floating around his legs much like the skirt of his old, black trench did. "Or shall I tell him that I have no intention of having YOU as my herald any longer?"
He yanked his hands out of his pockets then, showing them to be clenched so tight that the knuckles had gone red from the strain. "I am NOT your boy! I am NOT your damned plaything, and I do NOT give you permission to invade my thoughts."
Silence. Savil merely stared at him as if she'd been wounded to the core, and for an instant, he felt the pang of a guilty conscience. But the feeling was gone in a blink, and then he simply couldn't be bothered; just like no one else could be bothered about Aya. Ran snatched up the bundle of books off the chair where they had rested, tearing the paper away from one corner in his haste.
"You can keep your presents. I don't want them."
The books now tucked up under his arm, Ran shot her a baleful look as he passed by her. "I. Don't. Want. You."
The bedroom door slammed shut behind him, and the lock on the knob fell in place with a certain click. Ran sagged against it and covered his eyes with one hand, the books sprawled in their tattered wrappings at his feet.
Ken stood utterly still, the edges of his robe clamped and sweaty under his hands, eyes fixed everywhere and nowhere all at once, waiting for the deeply demure being before him to catch fire or jingle out with a flurry of sparkles and majestic imaginary tones as if she had never existed. Her eyes had already dissolved to mere pools of blackness, robbed of any blue light to catch them with the proper color.
He couldn't move. As dearly as he wished to go flying after Ran, whoever that was in the middle of the room, he could not walk before or even breathe, and she made him wonder if he had not become the latest victim of her witchery.
It just wouldn't fit though. Her, Schuldich, evil and grace, would not meld into one form, take one presence in his eyes.
It's not that I don't trust Ran, I trust him with my life! I always have it's just... I can feel how sad you are and I...
::Never expected any kin of his could feel sad? Well, I can. So there.::
Smitten with the impossible horror of it, he slid towards her a step, and kept his words none too soft. "So it's true... You are... you of all people!"
"It never ceases to amuse me..." her own voice had collapses away as if in mere moments she had shrank to the old woman for whom she had been named among the heralds, so sly words or not that shivered like pussy-willows in a spat of breeze, "...that the women at the academy always, always introduced me as 'having the uncanny ability to finish people's sentences'."
"...Since it doesn't matter what they're about to say, you always know."
"C'est vrai." The black pools drew up from her shoes and she swung herself around in a way that could not be mistaken for anything but pure Schuldich. So they both looked to the bedroom door in the end.
::I have not 'sicced' my brother on anyone. I am NOT responsible for his actions. And if I have been through your thoughts it's because...:: "I was hungry and I couldn't help it."
That got him. "HUNGRY!? Hungry! What the fucking hell...?" His head shook. "What am I supposed to think of THAT?"
"I wouldn't know. I don't know what else to call it. I hate words. But you don't trust me to actually TELL you in any way that makes sense." ::But then again, do you trust Omi to watch your back?::
Yeah... I do but... you want me to... to think of you LIKE that! After... whatever you've done, I don't even know!
"I can see that."
Silence fell once more and even the flames had been quieted by unseen hands of salamanders. No, Ken thought nothing at this point, felt nothing but wonder and it smote his veins like ice as he crept up to her, awaiting the bite, the pain, the fingers in his head... but they never came, and yet he could feel her watching him, while all other sanity of his swirled and dipped and circled the conclusion he could not make like the white vapors of a coma. One hand grazed her shoulder and she whirled around to face him. No he couldn't make anything of her...
So, they're...
::Here. All of them, but we keep Farfie on a leash.::
And you've...
::Lived with him my whole life.::
It's almost...
::Cute, in a sick way? That he would do that.::
Are you...?
::Enjoying this on some level? You asked me in my head, so I have to say yes. But it's a lot more complicated than that!::
Can you...?
::Actually be bothered by how you feel about me? Can I love someone? The word love makes no sense to me.::
So would you mind...
"Getting the hell out so you can go be with Ran?"
One of his hands wondered up and cupped her face, tilting it this way and that as if examining a jewel. No, she still looked just like Savil, when the image of Schuldich still failed to phase over her in his mind. Still a child, and nothing in the whole world would ever make him think she wasn't that. She reached up and held out the little leather case.
"I brought these for you, as a token of my good faith. They say a pictures worth a thousand words..." Her fingers hovered in a diamond in front of those colorless eyes. "Click."
His hand tingled and prickled where she had brushed it -- whether brought on by the snags of her hair or his own entranced fear he knew not.
"Oyasumi, Ken-dono." As she slipped out the door.
His eyes followed her imaginary form down the dim halls. And then with a cry he tore to the bedroom door. "Ran! Ran! Are you OK, sweetheart?"
Probably not after he bashed him with the door he hadn't known he was leaning against. The packet fell from his hands and the contents rushed out over the floor in a sudden torrent of Omi and Youji...
Once more Ran suffered an indignity at the hands of his knight in dented armor. Caught off guard, he was thrown forward, one foot meeting with the pile of books and sending them shuffling across the carpet. He landed on his hands and knees and cursing softly -- over Ken's exuberance, over Savil's interference, and over the fact that he feared his ankle was sprained, it was smarting so.
But he stood up anyway, eager as he was to regain some shred of his dignity. Had inadvertently picked up some of the pictures from the carpet as he rose, but he didn't cast them so much as a glance.
"Ken, if you're trying to kill me, please just do it and get it over with."
With that, he shuffled off to the bed, doing his best to make it look as if he was not hurt in any way. "She's gone, I hope?"
A nod. Ran sighed wearily and raked his hand through his hair. Smoothed his eartails thoughtfully.
"Good riddance, and I hope I never see her or her psycho little family again." He sighed again, and glanced down at the pictures he held. "And what are these?" he groused, turning them over (for these few had fallen face down). "Pictures of...Omi and Youji...?"
He toyed with the edge of the first photo, one of the two of them walking through some garden with a picnic basket in tow, arms around each other and clearly happy. Clearly a couple. That last caused Ran to quirk a brow in mild surprise.
"It seems that Youji isn't strictly a ladies' man, doesn't it?"
Caused a pang too just seeing the picture, for he was suddenly hit with a feeling of wistfulness and regret. Ran realized then that he did indeed miss them -- missed them more than he ever thought he would.
He held that photo out for Ken to see, then glanced down at the next one...And nearly choked.
Before him, in multi-colored glory, was proof positive that Youji had decided to broaden his romantic horizons. Slowly, Ran held it up for Ken to see. It was a photo of Youji being ravished by their own sweet little Omi.
"I think it's safe to say that they're taking our disappearance well. Wouldn't you agree?"
Ken had for the first few moments of embarrassment, which he had, as always been the root of, fumbled around with the books as they had been spilled, restoring them to their neat little stack as quietly as he could. His kitty had his tongue, and he made no attempt to ask Ran if he could have it back.
He just sat curled up by the heap of novels and waited patiently to be reprimanded. Not just that almost joking little sigh.
To his own horror, he found himself expecting...
The thought passed him so quickly he didn't at all know what he'd been expecting. Just that his cheeks hurt and he wanted desperately to pitch himself back into the pond and drown.
And finally to empty the chaos of his waiting body... YOUJI and OMI!?
He dove for the latter half of the images and started to flip through them. He got through them twice before his eyes focused not on the faces of his two friends but on... other things.
"Holy shit!" The file of photos wound up face down before him as he kept his hand clapped over his mouth. If having inadvertently beaten up his dear lover twice in one day wasn't bad enough! "These are PORN!"
Savil... you little HENTAI!
Youji... you BIG HENTAI!
Omi... bad boy! Into the corner with Youji! Wait.. no, I think you'd like that.
I think if I ever see then again, I will go redder than I've ever gone in my whole goddamn life.
But he lifted the corner of one especially graphic rendering of the other two members of Weiss. And yet I'm glad you're enjoying yourselves.
"Yeah... really well." It almost kinda hurts but... so does what they're doing. I should know...
Did they have any lube?
His third and much more timid glances at the images revealed both a bottle of mayonnaise Kinky! and a small leaf of blue paper held to the back of one image with a little static charge. Or luck. "Hey! I think I... I think this is a note!"
The hotel stationary crinkled as he unfolded it, providing the only sound in the room.
[Dear Aya and Ken, Youji and I are alright. We both really hope that you're doing well too. Please don't think we're mad at you for leaving. We understand. I understand at least, if Youji doesn't read this before he signs it. If I could...]
"Oh god..."
He had to gulp and force himself to read the last lines, which he managed to do only by the grave grace he allowed himself -- that he didn't think about them until he had finished.
[If I could leave you know I would but for now, I'll just be happy that you're free. And I'll think of that every day now, so maybe someday we can all be together again. We love you both very much. Ganbatte ne.]
Ken's crestfallen expression chilled Ran's blood. He heaved himself off the edge of the bed, one hand on the other's shoulder to support his weight.
"What? What is it? Are they...?"
Ken handed over the note, and Ran read it in the same sinking sorrowful way as his lover had done, sans comment.
...Oh, Omi...
I didn't think...
Ran folded it finally and laid it reverently on the mound of sordid photos. Slipped his hand around the back of Ken's neck, and gave him a squeeze.
"I didn't think they'd take it so badly. I..."
I didn't think I'd take it so badly, being reminded of them.
I didn't think I'd regret leaving them in that hell.
Ran released Ken, and settled himself heavily on the bed again, hooking his heels on the edge of its metal frame, and contemplated the dingy, crinkled note.
Maybe...I'll have to see about rectifying that...
...And Aya too.
"Your herald said that we can communicate with anyone in Anti-Terra via courier, so...we'll write them a letter. Yeah, even I'll write them."
"But tomorrow..."
Ran caught his hand then and lifted it to his lips for a kiss.
Ken couldn't exactly bring himself to smile, but gazed reverently up at his beloved and held his fingers quite still.
"Ah, alright. I'd like that. I think they would too... but you make sure to tell them you're glad they're together."
After all, you never know with Omi...
Or Youji. Sometimes...
Ran gave him a small nod and as if it had been an answer to his second question, he took it so, and climbed slowly up on the bed, couching about the covers as if waiting to be pushed away. Which he wasn't, and he couldn't imagine anyone doing.
The hovered there for awhile, admiring one another, before he slipped away again, and wandered over to where their pajamas hung together.
"Let's just go to bed for now. I'm tired."
My head hurts.
"You seem tired too."
I've done enough damage for one day. The blue silk fell all over him and for a moment he felt more naked than he had without them on. Ran's hung in his hands for a moment and he regarded them with a rueful look.
"Umm... I knew you didn't wear anything to sleep. You ah... never put any PJ's in the wash after all and I did the laundry enough either way... I just thought you'd feel better around me if... you know. Had something to wear. So you don't have to."
He left them on the very edge of the faerie circle of their bed and climbed onto the half he had occupied the night before. "You don't have to read to me either. I ah... doubt you feel like it after all that..."
Ran took the silky garments in hand, but made no move to don them. Instead, he folded them up as neatly as possible and slowly made his way over to the one dresser, laying them on top of it.
"If it's all the same to you, I'll skip wearing the pajamas tonight, and every night thereafter. But reading to you?" He turned around and gave him a tiny smile. "I think I have enough energy to do that."
Ran walked back over to the bed, and stooped down to examine the titles he'd bought, judging which would be the best to read. Hastily shuffing the volume of gay erotica to the bottom of the pile, he set the rest back down on the floor by the foot of the bed. The bathrobe slipped from his body with a sigh, and Ran slid under the downturned blankets, two paperback books in hand. These he held up for Ken to see, one showing a cover of a star-filled night sky, with one outshining the others, above which was the word "Stardust," the other showing a Japanese style painting of a courtesan.
"Which do you prefer? Poetry or Fantasy?"
Ken, who had rocked under the covers even as he threw them back and patted the space beside him, wondered if he had found himself a little suggestion in the nuances of Ran's words. What did Ran most want to read him?
But nothing came to him. His beloved remained just as naked as before, if not wondering over his rather lasting silence, so he made a few small noises of contemplation.
If I say poetry, well, what does poetry mean? Everything wonderful of earthly love and thoughts of it being more than earthly! And that lady on the cover? It's just got to be some heavy reading... thinking, here and grounding.
But fantasy! That's just it! A fantasy, something far, far away from where we are. And escape. Something I really shouldn't.
Well, I'm the one with the pajamas on. I have to make up for it.
"How about Stardust?" And he lowed himself to the satin husk over the mattress where his pillow put him just about even with his lover's marble hips when he sat down and began to read with a voice so clear and scholarly, it made his heart flutter.
Because no one could have made such exquisite inflections as he did without practice.
Once again, he envied Aya-chan.
Ran read all the way to the part where the boy, armed solely with a true-to-life glass snowdrop, crossed over into the realm of Faerie to bring back a fallen star for his beloved. Then the book was marked with a photo of Youji and Omi sharing a kiss, closed and laid to rest on the nightstand on his side of the bed. The fingers that had spent the better part of the hour brushing over yellow-edged pages then started rifling through Ken's dark hair.
"I read to Aya when she was little. I took up the practice again after her accident." Ran smoothed a few lagging strands away from Ken's temple. "I hoped she would hear me, and would wake up."
Does anyone read to you now, Aya?
It's funny...I can't even cry over you anymore. I want to...But...
It's like I've gone numb.
Does that mean I'm a bad brother?
He felt Ken move as if he were restless, and Ran realized that he had stopped stroking his lover's hair; that his hand had simply buried itself in those silky strands and fell asleep. He swept his fingers free and sent them down the curve of Ken's cheek in silent apology.
"I'll read to you some more tomorrow night, if you want."
"It's a great story, Ran!" he made his words as cherry as he could, even through his drowning yawn, for Ran indeed, had faded out for a moment into what might have been Aya, or some far, chill corner of a true heart, but one lost to lost considerations. "I'd love to hear you read the rest of it. You're really good."
Again, he rubbed up close to the fingertips that chanced him, keeping his head quite still so only his feet trembled. It felt so good, like being embraced inside and out and still...
Well, if I won't let him get any glummer, I won't let myself either!
A few little tugs and Ran lowered his bare form into the sheets beside him, where they lay for a long time in silence, merely tracing each other's gazes.
He seriously could think of nothing fit for this time, or the next or anything at all worthy of his beloved in his sleep-drenched eyes. So he said nothing. Nothing at all.
Spent and sated, a gloriously nude Crawford now reclined on the other end of the long sofa, his long legs tangled suggestively with his lover's, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
"Well, I'm sure Nagi had a good jerk off in the next room, what with all the noise we were making."
And yes, I know I was moaning as loudly as you were.
"Next time, perhaps we should invite him in. There are many things I'd still like to do with that boy."
"Many things I'd like to see you do with him."
"And perhaps..." An image of a naked, chained Nagi being licked by the dog popped into his head for his lover to nibble upon.
It's nothing he wouldn't enjoy, I'm sure.
He slid one foot over one of Schuldich's calves, and contemplated the whiskey in the deepening light. It was more the color of the sea now than of antique amber. "Tell me, liebe -- do we still have that video recorder lying about anywhere?"
Schuldich pondered this question, flexing against the mingled satin of the sofa and his parted robe, which he found his arms still slipped through. Of all things. He pulled his calf a little closer and giggled to feel the bare toes skating over it once again.
::You know I'm not a giggler, therefore I like it.::
::You know what else I like...? Mmm...?::
::Nibbles!::
::Besides, sacrilege, lust, hate, pain Stevie and your ass on a platter. Literally.::
"Hmm..." A little stretch over the arm rest. "I think Saffie had it last. She picked up that voyeur trope from you after all."
And since video recorders aren't allowed here, and anyone who brings one in gets spanked by a herald... it makes sense to let the herald keep it.
He seriously considered sitting up, but the moons, as the peering form the still enduring day and over the edge of the balcony, seemed to push him back down, just like the hand that snatched at his ankle.
Instead, he took up his glass from the sprawl of papers on the coffee table and whistled once his lips were wet.
"Farfie! Be a dear nut job and see if your mistress left the Sony about."
A brief pause, a faint clatter and Farfarello, walking on two feet now and pawing humanly at his face where it was marked from the balcony floor, entered the room, bearing with him a small, single-hand camcorder with a fold out LCD. He glared at the two nude lovers wrapped together on the sofa, but handed over the toy with no complaints or otherwise remarks.
"Sit down," The telepath told him, and plainly he had regained control of his faculties, for he did not, in the least, obey.
"The heavens shake when a man mounts another man."
"What? And suddenly God doesn't hurt? We mustn't be trying hard enough."
With a groan, Crawford reluctantly extricated himself from the flesh and bone knot he had formed with Schuldich's legs, and heaved himself off the couch. Met the one-eyed Irishman's stare coolly. "Sit down, Farfarello, and do as we bid you without complaint, and when we are finished, I will give you a knife."
That brightened the madman up considerably, and he let out a blood-chilling cackle as he lowered himself to the floor. Crawford whirled about, and, after making a stop to the chest full of toys, set off down the hall towards Nagi's room.
And of course, I'm lying. It's back to rawhide toys and leashes for him when we're through.
You can hold onto him, can't you? I don't wish to have Nagi -- or us -- end up in so many bits and pieces.
Okay, okay. It was only a question.
He knocked, and the door opened to reveal Nagi -- a flushed, wide-eyed Nagi -- sitting on his futon, bathed in the glow of the twin moons and nothing more. The rumpled state of his clothing revealed that Crawford's supposition had been a correct one, but Brad only smirked.
"What do you want?" the boy asked in a soft, suspicious voice.
"I think you know what I want by now, Nagi. The question is: What do you want?"
"I...don't want anything."
"Liar." Crawford walked into the room, completely oblivious to the fact he was naked -- that is, until he caught the look of longing that the boy had thrown him. He paused for a second, then made his way over to the futon to stand directly in front of him.
"You still want me." A statement, it was, and not a question, but Nagi nodded in answer anyway. Brad regarded him in curious silence for a long while, watching his eyes dart between his naked body and the floor.
"You can touch me, you know. I won't stop you."
Nagi looked up at Crawford then, searchingly, and then, he brought both hands up to take his half-hard sex in hand, cupping it in the one and firmly stroking it with the other. Brad gasped softly at his touch, unwilling to take his eyes away from the sight.
Then, he drew his hands out from behind his back and snapped the manacles around Nagi's slim wrists. Grabbed the chain and hauled him up with it. Held his arms over his head and close to his own body with a steadying arm around Nagi's waist.
"What are you doing?"
Crawford's hand left the curve of Nagi's lower back and smoothed its way over his rear, cupping it and forcing his hips forward. "I just want to play some more, Nagi-kun."
"And if I don't?"
He only grinned and dipped his head to dab his tongue into the tender shell of his ear. "Do as I ask, and I'll let you play with me some more...Later."
And that is NOT a lie.
Why of course, you can watch.
Yes, yes, I'll even buy you some ice cream and that chocolate liqueur you like for the occasion...
Nagi didn't answer, merely gazed up at him with those dark, unemotional eyes. Crawford gave him a smug sort of smile as he released him, and jerked him forward by the chain. "Come on."
He led him back to the living room, to the newly cleared out space in front of the coffee table. Watched with delight when he noticed Farfarello kneeling there.
"What...what do you want me to do?" he whispered at last.
Crawford waved his hand impatiently at the floor as he poured himself another whiskey from the bottle on the table.
"Lay down and raise your arms over your head. Farfarello will take it from there."
"And don't even think about running, Nagi," he added, when he saw the boy's gaze flicker to the door. "I'll only come after you, and then..." A nasty sort of smile.
Nagi gave Brad an unreadable look, then he did as he was told.
Schuldich had, in the mean time, relaced his kimono and propped the camera on a pile of books on one of the end tables where he could reach it and manipulate the zoom as much as he liked, then return to whatever other delightfully wicked activities his hands might be involved in otherwise. The angle he had chosen presently had their mad friend in one quarter and Nagi in three quarter, the lines of their two forms leading out to the semi-gloom of the patio, beyond the spaces where the candles now blazed -- their light as one steady as a heartbeat, save when one would give into the will of the wind and choke on its own smoke which would whirl down into the glass eye of the camcorder and linger there like ghostly fingers.
His own slim legs then, darted around behind the two stars of their impromptu erotica as he headed to the cabinet.
::Let's play it dangerous, Brad. You know, just because. I can watch Farf, you know that. So...::
Farfarello found himself then presented with a leather and iron choke chain, which he did not seem to recognize as any pertinent object. The telepath explained. "You can put this on your little toy and he shan't run away then." Oh, his words were all glitz for the camera and his hands empty then. The collar wound it's way around Nagi's slender neck but his gaze showed nothing of this, nor the present frame any more of Schuldich, who took a little zoom shot of how the device had fitted so well to his thin throat.
The leash of it already dripped with sweat in the hand of their dog. But he did nothing at first with it, merely contemplated the rings. The bare body before him whose thighs were ticked faintly with traces of ignominious silver-white.
"Oh, you've sinned," he finally whispered. "I like that. I really do."
"Yes!" Schuldich chimed in. "We're all wretched sinners. Now, let's really piss off God, shall we?"
This got him a bit of a hiss, to which he shrugged and slumped down beside Brad, to whom he winked rudely before leaning back and slipping his hand into the nether reaches of his robe, miming a long, dirty moan.
One Nagi happened to get a good look at, so he failed to be facing Farfarello when their mad friend licked his lips. "Let's sin together. The demon thought me all of your wishes. Jesus will never forgive you for even thinking of THAT. What does it matter? When if he cries over you, his tears will run like acid in the mind of the heavenly father. Mmm... God will hurt. And so will you."
::Was he always this eloquent?:: Schuldich mused, ::Or has Saffie been feeding him vocabulary building exercises BESIDES filling his head with the urge to piss on treestumps and bite mail men?::
Nagi showed no opinion on this or his impending ravishment, not even when Farfarello slipped his shirt over his head, and descended over his body, fixing his heavy lips to the edge of his ear where he whispered the incoherent maladies that troubled him in his own dreams of sex and razors.
Nagi made no sound in protest of the vile confidences Farfarello had hissed in his ear. He simply closed his eyes and laid there, forcing himself to remember Crawford's promise. Forcing himself to keep still and be a good little toy.
Still, he couldn't help but whimper when the madman raked his nails down his torso, the tips of them kept filed to perfect points by Savil herself under Schuldich's watchful eye.
"All dogs have claws. Why shouldn't mine?"
Farfarello whispered something unintelligible, and then Nagi felt a hand encircle his limp sex, squeezing it just hard enough to make him cry out pitifully. Crawford's interest was torn away from his miming lover to his chained ward. He watched with delight as the boy arched and squirmed, trying to get away from Farfarello's torturing hands.
Watched until he grew bored, that is.
"That's enough. I want him to cry out mostly in pleasure, not pain. And I do not want him maimed for life."
That earned him another filthy curse, but Farfarello eased the grip he had on the boy. The desperate mewling soon became shocked little gasps. Crawford shook his head in feigned disgust.
Kids today...
He poured himself another dram, but didn't drink it right off. Instead he turned back to his lover, swirling his finger in the smoky-gold liquid and licking it clean.
Crawford then carefully poured a tiny amount of the whisky into his palm, scrunching his fingers into the sharp-smelling liquid until he thought they were damp enough.
Then he dipped that hand down between his legs, and, with a smirk at Schuldich, began to fondle himself.
"Give us oh Lord our daily bed, to besmirch with our juices and the blood of your lambs we have slain in morning. Give us our maidens to fuck and the boys with asses tight as cherries that pop like candy and make you cry. Curse our father who art in heaven that he is not a woman and can not feel pain in both places at once, so he sends me the two blond afrits to remind me of this even as I remind you that you are nothing but an exquisite corpse that will fall into ruin and shredded entrails some day and nothing more."
::Now that,:: Schuldich began, offering his usual irreverent commentary, ::Was a soliloquy!::
::I wonder if Shakespeare was as mad as our little Jei?::
And of Farfarello, he leaned down then, sucking Nagi's neck as if he had turned into one of the children of Rice presently. His tongue though ran down the bitter leather of the boy's collar, under and around it, playing with the tenseness, even as he scooped him into his arms, pulling him halfway from the floor and letting his arms sag awkwardly behind him.
::On second thought... I take that back. Forget I ever thought it.::
Nagi proved still as if he had been drugged to the point of madness, though obviously not to the boundless depths of the insanity winking in and out with Farfie's one clear eye, which drifted open and closed with no cadence as he set his hand prints all about the child.
As for the telepath, his own lover's alcoholic pleasures had not escaped him, but he pretended well to have no interest, at first. At least until he had plucked his own beginning wetness and reached over to swirl it in the whisky glass, smirking the entire time. Finally he took some of the now cloudy draughts of oblivion and rubbed then over his neck like perfume, letting one drop slide down and dampen his collar.
Nagi gasped as he got a little yank on his choke chain and two of those sharp fingers reaching into him at once with no warning. Farfarello obviously knew both of them stood on display, as he had most kindly adjusted their placements so the rag doll of Nagi, though lost in the spider-web scars of his arms, had his opening on full view for the second time that day, and visibly shook there as he was pried at.
"Farfie! Mind!" Schuldich interjected.
"He's a tight little sodomite." His lunatic friend replied. "May I get a knife from the kitchen and open him up?"
Nagi blanched full body at the ensuing silence.
"A knife won't be necessary, Farfarello. Just slick it up -- or don't, whatever you're preference -- and screw him.
Jesus...How big is his cock, anyway?
I suspect he's boasting...
I suspect...he's just insulted me too, in an offhand sort of way.
Why, the little bastard.
Crawford gave a choked little chuckle of surprise at that, his hands leaving off their idle play over his rampant erection. Instead, he moved a little closer to Schuldich, eyeing him intently, a smile dancing over his lips. Completely tuned out the squeaks and gasps coming from the middle of the room; it was being recorded after all.
He slipped an arm around his shoulders.
"Mmm...What are you wearing?" he slurred, pushing at his nose as if his glasses were still perched there. "It's driving me absolutely mad."
Crawford bent his head a little and licked his neck where he had dabbed on the liquor mix.
"You're drunk!" Schuldich implored with a wretchedly impersonated shock, which fell into a smirk and an outright fit of laughing. "Goodie!"
Nagi and Farfie had by now, ceased their peacock eroticism, to gaze blindly at the couch, as if for some strange reason they didn't believe what they saw there. They actually glanced at one another, seeming to ask each other -- "Have you done this? Have you made our parents as insane as we are? You being the problem child..."
Crawford in the mean time had started sinking against his lover, lapping and slurping as if diving into a creamscicle on a hot day. The telepath gasped and snickered beneath him, only cracking his eyes towards the other "happy couple" long enough to say, "Hey! Back to whatever you were doing. Oh, Bradley! 'tis eau de libertine! Your favorite!"
A false swoon, just like Saffie's only immortalized forever by the ever creative Farfarello, who took the opportunity to nick the camera from it's perch and turn it around... at least the lens. Doubtless the mic picked up his slurping as he watched now, ever disinterested Nagi beautying at his side, and shortly collapsing in another bought of groans as the fingers that had breached his body returned, and without that single eye to guide them.
"Ooooooooooh God is mortified!"
And so, he paused from his own divertissements to interject in the middle of their tape, Schuldich and Bradley do a love scene from an old movie.
Make that an old porno.
The green kimono sailed away out the window and onto the deck, as if it was a captive bird returning to the vaguely remembered homeland of it's youth. It's owner took a most impossible position, like a white star flung to earth -- one arm behind his head, the other over the edge of the couch with his right leg while the left dangled to the floor. He laid there, panting and open as a book dropped on it's spine, taking up the whole couch like a cat, rippling like taught silk all over as his lover, too lost in his whisky to know better, hung over the opposite arm, almost upside down and thereby set about licking him in very interesting places.
"Brad! Oh Brad! Do it! C'mon! I know you don't like it when you're sober but you're... ooooooooooh... not..."
The tongue that entered him without a second thought was ample proof of this.
Blind to the camera, to the kids' antics, to the fact that he was lying at an odd angle across the sofa, Crawford continued his play. Schuldich's cries were highly pleasing to his ears, egging him on, and he delved further in, spreading the creamy mounds and laving the whole of the warm, velvety crevice with his tongue. Stabbed at his opening, only to feel his lover jerk, another throaty moan quavering on the air.
From somewhere in the shadows, he heard another cry, this one belonging to a child surely, as high and clear as it was. He raised up long enough to see a kneeling Farfarello impaling Nagi, the one grinning maniacally and the other pulled taut in his chains, body bowed against the assault.
My...! He does have a big cock.
He sat there stroking Schuldich's thigh, oblivious for the moment to everything except the sex scene going on before them. Then, with light slap on the head and a protest from his redhead, Crawford sank back down on the sofa and resumed his ministrations, exploring his nether regions with tiny, creeping flickers of his tongue until he felt the need to move on.
So with a bite on one cheek -- one hard enough to leave a mark -- Crawford shifted down lower, raising Schuldich's leg up and feeling along the delicate skin between here and there with his lips.
Drew one testicle into his mouth and gently sucked on it as if it were a piece of fine milk chocolate.
Schuldich started to scream, but in the end his breath collapsed into a quavering and hidden place of airy moans and sharp gasps. One of his hands came down and caught in Bradley's hair, none to gently, not that either of them would have minded, whispered on by alcohol or not. One of his eyes however, did crack open a bit to catch the glint of that one gold eye, seen backwards through the infinite recastings of the camera lens, as a dark thing with no malice. He waved, and declared, "Yes! This is a far from typical evening in La Maison de Crawford et Marlow!" A quick point to his lover, who glanced up for a second and waved. "It's usually me doing that to him and I... ah! Ah! AHHHHHH! Gimme that camera, Farf!"
Farfarello, of his own will or not, quite obeyed, and stood to be captured himself shortly, shoved into Nagi, their bodies meeting with a mutual flush. Nagi's perhaps of pain, Jei's as well, but a wholly different sort. He lounged against the mandelbrot of scratches he had woven on the tender skin, riding the spastic waves of the child's body, leaning upwards himself only for an especially deep thrust, and once to grab the chain again, for it had slipped him in his passions.
"You know," he whispered, though the mic caught it under the symphony of moans. "Your body tries to eat mine when I pull this. Would you like me to pull it? Bad little boy?"
Not that he waited for an answer. A clattering yank and Nagi lurched backwards with a strangled cry, his legs twitching with the force his inner walls had conjured when he pulled together inside.
Farfarello was the one who ended up screaming, and having dabbed the mingled salt water and spit from his toy's face, he repeated the operation.
As Schuldich had the camera again, he got to film the rolled up real-estate printouts he bashed their resident psycho with.
"Nien nien! Schlechten hund!! I said screw his brains out, not choke them out."
Camcorder set aside, he hauled the Japanese boy up from the floor, his fingers slid down his chains against his soar skin, and kissed him, as if to make up for the pain.
(OOC: That's a "No no! Bad dog!".)
Christ! Do I ever love spending time with the family...
Ah, but my dreamily intoxicated state is wearing off...
And, according to my vision, I'm due to be drunk for a little while longer. All the better to be that much sicker in the morning.
Crawford rolled to a sitting position, and poured himself three fingers without so much as a wobble; leaned back with a contented sigh, and draped one arm across the back of the sofa. He lifted his glass to the cavorting threesome before taking a sip.
And so, Crawford looked more like he was holding court at a society soiree rather than presiding over an orgy, for all his nakedness.
And Nagi...Nagi was thoroughly enjoying himself now. Schuldich could be gentle when he was of the mind to be, and he was being so now. His hands moved so soothingly over his scratched and bitten torso; his tongue weaved in and out of his mouth with slow strokes. It was the perfect counterpoint to Farfarello's frantic, brutal humping.
And it was much appreciated.
It was little wonder then that the first wave of his orgasm rolled over Nagi the second Schuldich touched him where he was most sensitive. The redhead pulled back a little, his free arm supporting him as he watched him, leaving Nagi free to sound out his pleasure in a series of hushed moans and gasps.
On the sofa, Crawford began to applaud.
Schuldich didn't remember just WHEN he had fallen off the couch, but it seemed he most certainly had. And now, his hands doused with his warm, sweet cum of his lover's ward, he frankly didn't care.
"Ooooh, wasn't that nice?" he asked the child, who nodded, more in obedience, still shuddering though under the thrusts of Farfarello, who had not spent himself just yet and was snarling at the two psychics before him as they shared the colorless juices that wound around the elder's hands like two bobby-soxers would have enjoyed a malt.
The telepath's jade eyes though came to rest on their madman, who doubtless saw no reason to quail in them, though any semi-conscious person would have. "Let's not have a curtain call just yet." He decided, not suggested, and with that, clocked Farfarello over the side of his head.
"Turnabout's fair play, after all, Nagi-chan?"
And with a little wink in Bradley's direction, he shoved himself into Jei while the Japanese boy, still curled up and panting himself through his afterglow held his down with merely a thought.
"You stupid sister-fuckin' mind raping cumbucket coward!"
Schuldich did not seem amused by this outburst and smacked him again. Several times. Each contact electing a pleasured howl, the last on a gush of sexual fluids that went more or less unnoticed by the still unsatisfied telepath, who took the opportunity to jam a few fingers in along side his cock. "Don't you drag my Saffie into this yet!"
"God hurts! God cries."
"You're crying, imbecile!"
Miffed, as he was by all tears shed for him, he finally pulled away and sank back to a heap on the floor with Nagi, and they lay there for just a few feverish seconds, working each other's forms inside.
::You've got soft hands, Nagi-chan. I like them. I'd enjoy having them in me again... I...::
A very long, desirable cry that surely echoed in the gardens.
And then all three of them stood, and, with arms enlaced, bowed for Crawford.
Nagi had felt the unmistakable grope of a curious hand on his ass as they made their bow, but he had made no move to brush the wandering paw away. After all, it was most welcome...As was its owner.
If you will love me as gently as you did just now, Nagi thought, holding himself as impassive as ever as his father raised his glass to them in a half-slurred toast, then you can have my fingers in you whenever you like...
He held still while Schuldich removed the collar and shackles, steadily meeting his burning gaze. After all, you do know where I sleep.
The restraints clinked and chattered as he replaced them in their chest, the other now working his wonders on Farfarello. Nagi idled there for awhile, listening to the goings on behind him: Crawford's liquor-husked laughter; Farfarello's curses and Schuldich's sly innuendo.
This is the most sex I've had in awhile.
Okay...it's the best sex I've had in awhile...But don't tell Crawford.
A mental shrug. I like to keep him off guard. I don't think I have to explain the reasons why to you.
The sound of a glass being slammed down on the table rang out dully through the cavernous front room at that moment, and Nagi turned around to find Crawford on his feet, looking for all the world like he was about to give a speech.
We aren't so different are we, you and I?
Instead, he merely snatched up his bottle, tucking it under his arm and offering them a salute.
"Bravo. Well played, my dear thespians. I am in your debt."
With that, Crawford wove off to his room like a drunken officer, leaving his clothing where it lay scattered around the sofa.
::Ah... I do too! Isn't he just grand when he's pissed?::
::Isn't it grand not being alone when it gets late?::
The telepath saluted in return, stiffly as a navy corporeal. A little nudge and Nagi mimicked him perfectly. Farfarello, his face bathed in snot and saliva and someone's cum, ran barking out onto the patio and there began to wash himself rather frantically.
Saffie! You spend all that time telling me you wanted a DOG! Sheesh!
Well, he is cleaner this way...
"See, it's not all bad, is it?" Schuldich performed the slip to spoken language as effortlessly and fluidly as always, taking a moment to help himself to the silver cigarette case in his lover's trousers, which he held tight like a purse full of diamonds as he reclined across their ever so ignominious couch and lit himself a single sliver of clove and tobacco from which he drew smoke which he fashioned into a ring, much like Crawford might have...
::But I never do it in front of him. He doesn't even know I've picked it up. There, I have your secret, you have mine.::
He patted the cushion beside him. "Lesson number three for the day, how to lounge around and look bored after a good fuck. Everyone's doing it now, you see. And you've already got the bored part down pat!"
The laughter which swelled through the room had not a trace of culpable sound to it. Just the unmistakable sense of laughter, somehow flavored with the redhead, as he stretched in his seat.
::But it's the little things -- the timing of the ballet he does for me and will do for you, Nagi-chan. No, we're not too different at all, you and I. That's what I've been trying to tell you for two goddamn years now.::
"Want a cigarette?" Asked slowly to Nagi's still form as it remained painfully fair and decadently marred, there in the middle of the room.
::And I will "love" you however you want, even if you insist on thinking such a light, little term. Tell me why, think me why or I might be tempted to have a little look for myself.::
::It's late, and I am tired and easily fascinated.::
Nagi wrapped his thin arms around his body as if he were suddenly struck with a chill. He regarded Schuldich with a tint of apprehension, but walked over to the sofa anyway, settling himself down on the silver cushions rather daintily. He took the offered cigarette with a slight nod of thanks, dragging deeply from it as he watched Farfarello roll around on the balcony, tongue out and occasionally howling.
"This isn't my first one, you know. I like to sneak one every once in awhile."
And yes, I know you know all about that.
Do you want me to tell you why...I referred to it as "love"? Hmm...Maybe it's because I'm a romantic at heart? Because I like to pretend? Or maybe it's because I know as well as you do that there is no such thing as love -- not in the sense of poetry and Beatles' songs -- and I'm making a joke.
"Or do you want to know why I want you to be gentle with me?" This ask in a musing half-whisper. Nagi shrugged, and tipped the ash from his cigarette onto the carpet. "Maybe the idea of you being tender intrigues me. Maybe...when I do have sex, it's always hard and fast; the heat of the moment, and there's no time for foreplay."
And that's the only kind of sex I've ever had, Schuldich.
But then you know that.
"Even whores want a bit of kindness from time to time."
For once, and keeping with tradition of being without traditions, Schuldich failed to laugh, but rather grinned instead. What a joke indeed. He reached over and lightly struck the boy, just hard enough to tip his head. "You don't work at a Villa, therefore you aren't a whore. But otherwise..."
Another smoke ring, this one purposefully lopsided, snapped in the middle as if pulled apart by elementals who had dived into it's barriers at the last moment. He let them have it to play with and leaned over the child, his loose hair coming down to graze his bare shoulders.
::...I've won, I've gotten you interested in something besides destroying the world. Isn't it awful that it's me, or at least something about me? I don't see you bothered by it though. No, not at all. Lucky you.::
Farfie bayed at the moons for a moment, and of all absurd things, it sounded just the same as it would have had he been on Antiterra and only one sphere had existed for him to accost.
"Then tell me, was it sweet and gentle when I took Zack in one of his closets, just because?"
"Or last night when I had Brad hanging from the light hook outside?" ::Oh, you should have seen it!:: So he offered up a few mental stills of the night before.
"When I thought of doing all of this to you someday the night Crawford dragged your through our door the first time?"
He plucked both their cigarettes away and kissed him thoroughly, with little dancing twists of his wet muscle.
"You say you like to pretend, or you think you do. One world of illusions to another, where you have gone from a garcon de joie to a little kitten I can play with whenever I want. Is not this the illusion of tenderness? What am I but make believe in your eyes? When I can be anyone for any number of moments and you see me as some half-crazed shape-shifter who grows wings in the evenings and flutters back to hell. I wonder, where is the end of that creature and the start of this? Our little game..."
Another long kiss and he finally returned the ashy stalk. "But if you like it, I have no intention of giving it up, and no matter what you would tell me..."
Not a whore? So you've often told me.
"I happen to wonder why you keep telling me that, when you know the truth of my past..."
Nagi drew heavily on the smoldering stick, the cloves blending with the redhead's lingering taste in his mouth. Schuldich had kissed him many times since he had been enveloped in the oppressive arms of his new family, and still Nagi couldn't get enough of them, of him, of his taste -- even though he had tried to pretend otherwise.
But then, that was what he was good at -- pretending, and one thing Crawford had taught him was the wisdom in playing to one's strengths.
"Does it matter where it ends? Does it really matter if you are real or an illusion? You make yourself out to be what ever you want to be, and no one really knows who or what you are."
"Except for Savil...And Crawford? Or am I wrong about that too?"
But then, I don't suppose it matters if I am...
Nagi sinuously stretched his arms over his head, arching up and tilting his head back, and all for Schuldich's amusement.
"I believe you'd continue the game whether I liked it or not. It's just your way." He stubbed out the remains of his cigarette, and took another one, slumping back in his seat as he lit it.
"But...just for the record...I do."
Schuldich took a moment to contemplate the flesh that had just stretched so enticingly before him, and did so with his fingers, running them up and down the stiff little chest.
"I don't know, actually. I haven't got a really great motive for telling you such a thing. Though, even if I hate it when you call me mom I know we're still... well, the epitome of dysfunction. But is what they call a real family back on Antiterra not perverse in and of itself?"
He borrowed the cigarette of Nagi since his own had died and paid him for it with another impossibly wet and lasting kiss. "Doesn't this at least suck LESS than being on the street turning tricks in the backs of cars? And what's keeping you here if you don't like it, mmm? Couldn't you kill us all with a thought? Oh yes! And you've considered it too."
With those words hanging in the air, he tossed himself back against the cushions and regarded the now still body of the boy from beneath the shade of his arm. "As if that strikes me as odd even. You might even be surprised if you knew how many times the average person thinks of killing someone in an HOUR."
::You can't help but be honest with me, Nagi-chan. And that's what disturbs most people.::
A second impression in his mind. Not a voice, nor a color, just a feeling, like a memory of someone from long ago. ::About the two of us.::
The door shortly parted and Savil, her eyes downcast, came sliding into the room.
"You were never a whore to us, Nagi-chan. Your memories were, but you never tasted like one in the present when with both went all over you inside. I can't make it..."
"...any clearer..."
"...than that."
Yes, I have considered it. I won't lie, because I can't -- not to you at any rate.
And I won't destroy you, because...I have nowhere else to go if I do. And...at least with the three of you I am needed...perhaps even wanted. Whether it's for my power or my body... He shrugged, and made an attempt at blowing a ring -- tried and failed. He looked over at Schuldich, expecting ridicule or laughter, but instead, he found him looking off to some point behind them.
Nagi followed the trail of Schuldich's quizzical gaze to the squashy, burgundy armchair where little Savil had curled up, looking as if she'd just lost her best friend.
He mentally sent a question her way, but it went unanswered, so instead he made a verbal one, accompanied by the porcelain faced, raven-ringleted, blue velvet-and-lace clad antique doll which Crawford kept on display in a glass front cabinet across the room.
She pirouetted gracefully through the air, and curtsied to her as if she were a princess. "Savil-chan? Daijoubu desu ka?"
Saffie's deep blue eyes finally trickled away from the interminable reaches of imaginary space. She had never cared much for dolls, since after all, they had no scrumptious morsels to offer in the way of naughty, naughty thoughts, nor inspired any in most cases, less they had belonged to this overly stern relative or that long lost childhood sweetheart. Now dolls who moved of their own accord courtesy of her step-father's ward...
"Iyee," she whimpered, but rather than shrinking into an even smaller ball, sat up and fixed her gaze upon the doll as if it was the only thing which had spoken to her in ages.
In the mean time, Schuldich sighed heavily and stretched out across the couch, somewhat facing his sister, wondering how he could ever put into any semblance of language the conversation they were having, if rabbits in waist coats are but beasts even when they sing and patches of memories ripped from soul to soul can be spliced and recounted, dissolved into signifiers even with the million flavors of sugar bleeding through the images, the sounds, the ghosts of touch.
But he would not devastate what she meant to him with pedestrian communication.
::You want me to tell him?::
::I can myself.::
"Aya-kun is very, very mad at me. He says he doesn't want me to be his herald anymore. Hidaka-dono doesn't know what to think, but he never does... how can I be sad, Nagi-chan? When I'm so used to marveling other people's woes?"
"Nien, not even Bradley understands that."
The back of her hand crossed her lashes and she shuddered a moment. "But I liked them so very much! I went special out to the country this afternoon and took pictures of their friends for them. That's why I didn't walk the dog!"
Farfie had by now passed out on the deck and was snoring. She found herself in no mood to awaken him.
Then too the hovering toy once more: "But dolly, dearest? What do we know of humans, nor humans know of us?"
The doll dipped down and brushed its tiny, china hands over the flushed curves of Savil's cheeks, then cupped them over its own brown eyes as if it shared her grief. Then it sank down onto the chair beside her, nestling against Savil and closing its eyes as if in sleep.
Nagi, now clad in Crawford's shirt (which hung to the tops of his thighs), rose from the sofa and padded noiselessly over to where she sat, perching himself on the coffee table. He reached out and petted the doll's soft hair -- made from human hair as it was. Gently curled one ringlet around his little finger.
"Aya-kun is angry at everyone and everything -- but most especially us. One doesn't need to be a psychic to see how he feels."
And there is why I feel such a connection with him.
"Nevermind that he no longer likes you, Savil-chan; he is nothing to worry about. I mean, aren't there other people on Terra, or in Anti-Terra for that matter, whose thoughts are delicious enough to amuse you?"
That made Saffie giggle with just the faintest twitch of wickedness to her sounds. That though? The doll who had feigned life? The surreal wit of the Japanese boy? Or that he had decided to sit so close to her with his own form and that of cold porcelain he controlled if he so liked?
::All of the above!:: Schuldich asserted.
She reached down and scooped the porcelain child onto her lap, tipping it close with one arm and guiding Bradley's ward's hand along with it, only stretching the ringlet a little further than he had, and placing part of him in front of her... in a faintly awkward way.
"Oh! He is! That's true! But he is angry with Kaze most of all, not us any longer, so I ought to be glad! We should all be glad indeed."
"I can't believe he's changed his mind," the elder telepath drolled, propping himself up on his elbows with one cheek cupped in his fingers.
They all nodded to this.
::Saa, Nagi-chan?:: She offered then. ::Don't you know, Aya is irresistible and even my ni-chan fancies him? Just because of that?::
"I admit that." To most ears, he had admitted literally to nothing. "Sex may sell, but what sells sex? As Bradley says..."
"Ust!" They choired.
"And everyone has ust! Some's just better than others... say, have you ever been in him very deep?" This continued as he considered helping himself to the liqueur cabinet... ::Just a nip.::, ::But who will mind Bradley if you're both bloody smashed?:: and changed his mind, his gaze fluttering back to his sister. "Seen... what he is? It's not too far back."
"He is his sister. As he sees her, and then it gets all like..."
"Evangelion? Aaa, but he didn't have to be. He chose it. You can see the very moment. It's almost like... he made himself out of little pieces of things that used to be. A touch of samurai, the form he remembered of a girl all but dead, ink eyes of a dead master..."
"Shades and wraiths and puppy dog's tails!"
"What are little boys made of? Nothing of the sort!"
"So it's almost like he's..." Her eyes had in this finally brightened and so she dared to lay her hand on Nagi's.
"A doll. Exactly."
Schuldich grinned, and almost, almost gently were it not for the light of the candles throwing his looks all indistinct and wild.
Nagi withstood Savil's touch without so much as a twitch or a murmur. Radiated only the faintest spark of curiosity before it was extinguished beneath his usual apathy. Met her probing, wise gaze unflichingly.
"Then shall we buy him off of Ken and put him on display in that Italian cabinet of Crawford's?"
You are an innocent, you know, for all your brother's influence; for all your parents brutality.
"Or shall we place bets on how long it will take for them to get together?"
Don't be so quick to completely lose that quality, Savil-chan. Hold on to it as long as you can.
At the same time that Nagi shot Schuldich a questioning look over his shoulder, a crash was heard from the of end of the hallway. Something made of glass had been broken.
And then, this...
"I AM THE ANTI CHRIST."
"I AM AN ANARCHIST."
"DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT BUT I KNOW HOW TO GET IT!"
"I WANNA DESTROY THE PASSERSBY."
"CAUSE IIIIII..."
"WANNA BEEEE..."
"AN-AR-CHYYYY."
Brad burst into the living room then, wearing Nagi's headphones, and dressed in a pair of plaid bondage pants and his old, long-hidden Dead Kennedys t-shirt.
Outside on the balcony, a newly awakened Farfarello began to howl piteously.
Between the two telepaths, both had actually been rather absorbed with contemplating the wisps of eucalyptus thoughts whirling easy from their companions, though Schuldich kept a firm and crystal thread encircling his sister, if only because he suspected the words of Nagi had to them perhaps some thread of truth, and the younger of the two children stood as unsullied as the toy she claimed herself to be.
She herself had just timidly wrapped the boy's fingers with her own. He had such long and spindly fingers on his stiff palms, she could imagine them curling all the way around her forearm or her ankle, and they felt as if they had been burned at least once, a sensation rather like old, knotty satin. She started to speak to him without her tongue, a dancing ring of implicit questions; of cream for the pixies of his troubles and the wonder of his vision of her and her brother, who smirked, and even worse so once they had been so rudely interrupted.
Then he burst out laughing and for the second time that night, fell off the couch, his naked limbs flailing wildly and snatching up his lover's glassy, whisky eyes.
Savil gasped, clapping her hand across her mouth. The dolly she offered to Nagi's lap as she scuttled across the room. No, this did not seem the man who earlier would have complained as to their borrowing of his antique, not a man who cared anything for antiques at all.
"Oh Bradley! You're ever so drunk! And that shirt doesn't fit you anymore! I do think it's time I put you to bed! Come along now..." Saffie at this gathered Crawford hands into her own and started leading him back towards the hall from whence he had burst so randomly but a moment before. "...there are not nasty Nazis in the bedroom. No, none at all."
::Hide the safety pins once you get him in bed.:: Schuldich reminded her.
::And the electric razor, I know.::
::But why are you making him go back to sleep? I mean... he's frickin' hilarious when he gets like this!::
::And undignified too! Oh, he'd just be mortified if we let him run around like last time. Remember the last New Years party at Estet?::
::Like yesterday.::
::I don't want to draw his eyebrows back on ever again!::
::Neither do I...:: The redhead gathered himself up from the floor, and reached for the newspaper, thusly managing to cover only one ear.
"And don't you hit my dog!"
"Damn."
From the bedroom came the sounds of Crawford's cursing protests and Savil's scolding. Of a window being broken and the thump of a tall, usually elegant American stumbling backward over one corner of the bed and hitting the floor.
And then, calm. Just the chirp-chirp of the crickets in the garden outside.
Nagi had remained quiet through the whole thing, both mentally as well as physically. The doll he had taken in hand, holding it up to the dim lamplight and looking at it as if he'd never seen such a thing before. In truth, he was imagining how the doll's first owner must have looked; was she as bright and sweet as Savil? Was she a rosy-cheeked, ebony tressed little charmer, with eyes the shade of pecans?
Then he toyed with the idea of making it shatter; imagined how it would look then, all porcelain dust and tattered velvet.
But in the end he simply levitated it back to the cabinet, and placed it carefully back on its shelf. Destroying it was not an option, not really -- not when it was so handy for amusing the youngest member of the household.
And...he actually enjoyed making her smile.
Nagi rose from his perch and turned around, and halted in his tracks with a start; he had forgotten about Schuldich. Had been struck with a momentary twinge of fright when he found those preternaturally bright green eyes trained upon him. The feeling passed with a slight shudder. Nagi glided back over towards the heart of the living room, pausing before the liquor cabinet. A quick perusal and he opened the door and took out the bottle of B&B.
"If you care to have a drink, Schuldich, now's the time. If he asks about it later, we can just tell him he drank it."
Schuldich had just finished singing the telepathic equivalent of "Rock-a-bye Baby" to Farfarello, who, as a consequence, now lay curled on his side, sucking his thumb and snuggling half of one of the curtains he had torn down in his struggle against sleep, rather foppishly wiped at his brow, even if it wasn't sweaty, and opened the door, stepping through it's frame though he did, before shutting it behind him. Force of habit.
Awaiting his invitation, he watched Nagi. What a sweet little ass he had indeed. Would he have paid for it? Real money, not merely the illusion of such as he could have managed? He'd never wanted a whore and NO he would not have paid for it he found. Not a dime. What good is force or coins before swelling bittersweet gush of seduction true?
There a little start and the words he had been waiting for. He smiled. "I think I will have a nightcap, Nagi-chan." A huge yawn as he sauntered back over to the couch, snatching up a pair of glasses as he went... funny, he could have sworn they'd had at least twice this many when they first moved in... some clanking in the bedroom. "I really oughta burn this." "Thoo jus' twai i'..." "Don't put that in your mouth!"
The glasses, what he highly suspected to be the last two glasses remaining fully intact within the premises, lifted from his hands and stood quite still between he and his lover's ward as their faceted bellies were filled with the earth-hued liquid that rose from the bottle and snaked around in curlicues before settling.
"Mmm... danke..." breathed into his first sip that merely wet his lips before he leaned over and set them to the telekinetic's.
::Wouldn't you like to know what I'm thanking you for, hmm?::
::Is it really that important?::
::Maybe it's even for something that hasn't happened yet.::
But the lewd graces his companion considered had nothing to do with what was on his mind, and so, more chaste in his moves, he caressed a few strands of his fine brown hair.
"Ahh, do me a favor, Nagi-chan. Saffie's had such an awful day. Why don't you keep her bed warm for her tonight?"
For the umpteenth time in his life, Nagi wondered how thoughts might taste. Were they really like honey, or did they sometimes veer off into other, occasionally unpleasant flavors? If so, did reluctance taste like brussel sprouts? Disbelief, like anchovy paste?
It was a such an odd request, one he had never expected to receive; one he didn't want to accept, but he had no choice. He had, in the interest of sharing, kept his shields down and now the redhead had his mind. Even though Schuldich had asserted that nothing sexual was intended, was wanted, Nagi had struggled with him anyway. Such a concept was alien to him, and he feared that he had plans to rob her even further of her innocence.
But...his assault against Nagi's will went no further than trying to convince him to sleep in her bed, so finally he gave his mental assent, blankly regarding the still untouched drink in his hand. This he knocked back with one gulp, and fixed Schuldich with doelike eyes.
"Oyasumi nasai."
Nagi set his empty glass down, and, throwing up his shields at last, set off down the hall to his room, his bath. Washed away all traces of sex, and changed into a pair of black pajamas covered with brightly colored fish.
Then he crept off to Savil's room, and slid under the covers of her bed.
Savil took a rather long, rather cold shower. After all, she was treating herself to the "good" bathroom, the one off the master bedroom which nearly invariably before had been off limits. Only when sneaking home before one of her brother's missions had been finished, or by some other blessing of the so-called adults not being home, had she ever enjoyed the twelve jets Crawford had insisted be installed.
Schuldich kept tapping on her shields while she washed.
::You little beggar.::
He waited outside the door for her, still naked himself, and grinning down on her as she shook her head in mock shame regarding his ever complicated self. Perversities be damned. She would not have known one if it bit her! Living with those who treaded along the fine line of them so long.
The sprite of her brother leaned down and pressed some part of his face to her damp hair, before stretching the towel around her and walking her to the door as if he wouldn't see her for years.
Bradley snored on through their wordless goodnights.
Saffie snatched up her favorite mint green shift from the linen closet and ambled into her room, carrying a goblet filled with water and exactly three lacy ice cubes. What a sight greeted her! Something very shiny had taken up residence behind the translucent curtains of her bed.
::Happy All Saint's Day! I've seduced him for you!::
And even if she knew full well the boy would be there to greet her, she still wondered over the sight.
The goblet ended up forgotten on the glass lake of her dresser top, where it talked to it's incorporeal twin all night, dripping onto each other. The curtains flew away from her bed as she jumped into it, quite jostling her companion.
"Wai! Nagi-chan! Nagi-chan!"
And with that she threw herself down beside him, finding herself quite out of the rut she had pressed in her feather bed for once. Yes! All close up against the part that was still fluffy. Her arms darted around him and she made a pillow of his chest, rubbing up against him like a kitten with a new owner.
::So you're wondering what thoughts taste like?::
::Let me see...::
So she did for Nagi what her brother always did for Bradley: she sent him a little sweet, specially prepared for him, just as close as she could make it to how she felt with the same thing drifting over senses. Even if only telepaths could taste in truth, there was much to be said for making facsimiles in second hand offerings, a satisfaction they could bring. Like presents come on the wrong day.
She sent him how happy she was to see him, followed by how Aya felt. Alone. In the dark. Wondering over Schuldich and a little sleeping girl somewhere who wasn't her.
It was the last thing Nagi ever expected, finding himself in a curtained, lushly appointed bed with a cuddling little girl draped across him. It was the warmest reception he'd ever received, and he let his astonishment bubble up in his mind for her to snack on. Astonishment and embarrassment, for he felt awkward and silly being hugged so tightly; at being touched so affectionately at all. It just wasn't done.
The ice cubes rattled against each other as they melted; the sheers rustled a lullaby in the breeze; and over all that, he was treated to a snack himself, albeit leftovers. Oh, her happiness tasted like caramel, buttery and smooth...but Aya's misery and longing? Like burnt toast. His anger, like fresh coriander leaves.
They don't taste like honey to me...
But then, I don't have your power...
This thought with some wistfulness. He knew his power could inspire fear in others, that he was the strongest in that regard for all his youth. But...there was a lot to be said for reading thoughts. He could only hurt people in the physical sense: A few moments of excruciating pain and it was over. But messing with a person's mind, learning their deepest secrets and threatening them with them -- controlling their actions even -- there the real damage could be done; there one could cause pain to another that might last for years.
"I'm envious."
"N-no, stop," Ken whimpered into the elder boy's collar. The hand creeping back into the warmth between his legs trickled away onto his thigh and patted him there.
Kaze had been trying to quiet his tears for nearly an hour, then the skies had dimmed with evenfall, the kettle gone cold on the stove. No one had sat at the white table since their second tryst of fingers. The third had been on the sofa where they sat together now, he limp and warm against Kaze, who had tried to comfort his soul by way of pleasing his body. What a funny, funny boy indeed.
He curled up and bumped into the back of the couch, waiting for any offer of words his companion would try. He wanted some, and he didn't know why.
"KenKen, why are you crying? Did I hurt you?"
"I dunno why." He sobbed loudly, ashamed once more of his ignorance. Words did not exist for what he knew now. He did not feel like Hidaka Ken at all. He just seemed... full and queasy somehow. But not in a bad way. He liked it. But just felt himself folding over and over inside himself, bumping into burst shadows that had ended without the grace of years. He knew too much, worst of all, he knew this fact.
"But did I hurt you?" A small sigh. "C'mon. Talk to me... I don't know what's the matter with you!"
Instead of an answer, he tugged away from the rut he had worn in the other boy's sweater -- his blue eyes ringed with crimson, his nose damp so he mopped at it with his sleeve.
Kaze watched him with half lidded seriousness.
Spoken then with young resolve and nothing more. "Does this mean you're my boyfriend?"
Chuckles. He felt himself clasped close, felt fingers in his hair. "If you want me to be."
Blink. "Woul... I don't know that either!"
Could that be a hint of disappointment on his neighbor's face? Wait... like something he had heard, something like in those boring grown-up shows... if he thought about them did that make him a grownup? "You don't have to make up your mind right now. Why don't you... tell me tomorrow after school!"
Tomorrow! Tomorrow was worse than forever! He agreed though. Something kinda romantic about forever...
A knock at the door. Muffled. "Ken, are you in there?"
At the sound of his mother's voice, he blushed a heavy red and regarded Kaze deeply struck. How could he ever face her...
"Hidaka-san, the door's open." Spoken with true calm.
The door parted and in slipped the wings of black that made up his Hidaka Hiharu -- her dress tossing about beneath her cape, the veils of dark lace over her dishwater blond curls. And yet all betrayed the ultimate frailty of her form, for she stood entirely too tall to be anything but. She tucked her glasses into her pocket and slid up to the two boys, blinking slowly as if the light from they two, or the lamp bothered her... it was hard to tell.
"You've been crying."
Admonished, Ken dropped his head. His friend answered though. "Ahh, he fell and hurt his hand. He'll be fine, Hidaka-san."
Silence then and at last she smiled. "Thank you for watching him, Kaze-chan." And down to her knees, only a moment wobbling on her dark heels. One of her chenille gloves met the wet cheek of her son. "Are you alright?"
And he smiled at her, staring into his own eyes. Laughed at last. What else could he do, she didn't know what she was talking about.
Stunned, she edged away, then got back to the tips of her teetering shoes and lead him back home, where after she hand changed into her pink pantsuit that she liked so much, they two had dinner in silence as usual.
It was enough he got to see her like this. Most people, why, they were so certain she wore nothing but black! And that wasn't true. No, KenKen was special. He knew his mother, the part of her clients never guessed. The pinks and blues of home when the fortune-teller's garb came off. Two secrets he carried now, perhaps the new one would come to remind him of the old -- for he had been sad at first she would not take him to school as the being that wandered the kitchen. But now... special. Just special. Weird and worth the teasing, but no one else knew.
Could Kaze be like that to him...?
"Have you finished your homework?"
"Ahh... yes, Okasan." Just a little lie. He hadn't missed any all year, and what she usually offered with that question he would not give up... no, not for one night.
"Then let's go to bed early and be nice and warm."
The dishes she neglected and raced him to her small chambers, slippers falling away from both of them before the tatami. It smelled like spring here, even if Hiharu always reminded him of winter, and without the lights on, they could just see each other by the pale glow of the snow.
They both laughed like fools and shed their clothes in favor of pajamas, huddling up next to the window for a bit, watching the silent crashes of the flakes against the earth.
She blew against the window, and he wrote in it, but the lines faded before he finished the kanji.
"I do like snow-kami," she said.
"Me too, Okasan."
Then he offered her the hairbush, the one with the tortoise shell handle she used only on him. And she brushed his hair until it shone more than the icicles on their dead flower bushes, until her arm fell asleep, and the rest of her fell asleep and Kaze's parents finally came home, the light from their car worrying the waking Ken beneath his mother's arm.
Suddenly, he felt horribly, horribly ashamed to be there.
(OOC: Hiharu, besides being a DJ circle, can also be read as "non-spring".)
In the night, when all good assassins usually go forth and kill, Fujimiya Ran found himself in bed -- a comfortable bed with an equally comfortable body next to his own. Subconsciously, he could sense the rise and fall of Ken's chest, of the weight of his arm across his bare waist: So sexy in its innocence.
In his mind though, Ran was in his sparsely furnished apartment, doing up the numerous straps which molded the trench coat to his body. She was gone; had been taken. He was going to go too -- screw Persia. Screw Kritiker and that whole "for the greater good" mentality.
He took the katana in hand and opened the door, only to find himself on the threshold of a dank, dark cavernous room instead of the hallway. It was devoid of furniture, of any sign of life. It just was.
He crossed the threshold with no small amount of trepidation, footsteps muffled as if the floor was covered with marshmallow paste. He periodically heard bells in the distance as he went, sweetly ringing out an unrecognizable tune.
At last, a low, hollow voice called to him then from everywhere and nowhere at once. "Fujimiya!"
He whirled this way and that, tense and ready, the sword held tightly in preparation of a strike. "Where are you? What have you done with her?!"
Footsteps followed, just as faraway sounding as his own, but slightly echoing. Ran spun in their direction, feverishly peering into the gloom, only to be rewarded for his efforts by the smugly smiling visage of his nightmare.
"Why I'm right here, Fujimiya. And so is she."
Aya appeared then as well, bathed in an iridescent glow -- eyes opened wide and a smile on her face. But her head was cocked to one side, and she was walking in a twitchy sort of way, arms swinging stiffly at her sides as if her limbs were attached to marionette strings.
"Doesn't she look well?"
"What...What have you done...?"
"Why, what do you mean? She's awake. She can talk, and walk, and do all the things she used to do." He reached out and petted one long braid. "She can do all sorts of things..."
"Don't touch her!"
"Tsk, tsk, Fujimiya, she likes to be touched." His smile turned cruel. "Would you like me to show you?"
"No!"
"Too bad..."
And then, Aya wasn't a marionette but a living girl. She cried his name and screamed and begged him to save her, that she was trapped.
Ran rushed forward, growling, but found he was trapped too, in a way. He could swing at him with his sword, could charge him, but he could never strike him -- not even a scratch. He was too slow. Always too slow.
All he could do was watch...
And then he woke up, sweating and gasping and his cheeks wet with tears. And he wasn't alone for once.
It was the same old nightmare, but with a new twist.
He wasn't in bed; wasn't even in his own apartment. He was kneeling in the midst of a room lit by brightly colored, revolving globes, full of blaring music and people -- a great many of which were now staring and snickering at him.
And the katana wasn't a katana but a mere broom; his trench coat wasn't a trench coat but a robe. Ran jerked his hand away from the worn, chipped length of wood as if it were on fire. Staggered to his feet and stared around at the small crowd. Stared and stared and let their laughter and questions sink into him.
Someone touched him, and he whirled around to snarl a curse. Playing Abyssinian and not Ran. Settled into Aya and not Ran.
Not Ran.
But that wasn't right.
But I...I am Ran...I...
I have to be....
"...I have to be...!"
Many pairs of strange hands came for him again, but he managed to evade them all. Spun on his heels and burst through the crowd at in frantic barefoot sprint, out of the foyer and down the twisting halls until he found the rear stairwell's door.
Ken awakened quite slowly this time, his dreams broken by small caresses of his lucidity. He knew he was dreaming, or dozing, or lost somewhere in a memory so clear it had gone as vivid as the colored glass of his night world.
Tender did the darkness around him come into his body and his mind. And darkness it was indeed, a fuzzy grey kind he failed to worry over.
His eyes opened onto it and found the dawn had barely broken, if at all, and the faint luminescence beyond the curtains was not the stuff of those ghosts he remembered from the day before.
The thing was... he could see the window. Without a silhouette before it. And shadow of any kind. The space beside him in the bed stood cool and bore only rumples rather than a body.
He wondered how long he had been alone. Not that this bothered him too much; he had awakened so only hours before.
But he couldn't shake the feeling he ought to get up right away, and did so, rubbing his eyes to try and make them cling to the shuddering shapes that made up his surroundings. Then he noticed the light in the bathroom was still off.
And he could hear nothing but dead air. Still scrubbing at his irises, he cocked the door to the main room open.
There found Ran, huddled in one of the chairs, half hidden by the folds of his robe. The only light here was the traces of morning from the bedroom -- the deep, deep cobalt and grey, waltzing against his figure and fading, returning as he stared, becoming no more defined as he drew near.
Ken walked back into the bedroom, yanked the sheets from the bed and tucked them around his beloved.
He was shivering after all.
Then he pulled the ottoman closer and sat there beside him, holding his hand and waiting for him to open his eyes and speak.
The fragments of his nightmare had lingered in his mind's eye, continuing the torment where his demon had left off. She danced jerkily on fine steel strings, clothes rent and bloody, eyes gouged out. That same sickening smile plastered on her face.
But now...All Ran knew was that he was warm. That some kind soul had wrapped his trembling body in blankets. That someone was now holding his numb, chilled hand in his or her own.
But did he deserve kindness from anyone? Did he expect it? No, he did not. He was Weiss, and, though Persia and Manx and Birman had made a great deal of noise about how much he was needed, he knew in his heart of hearts that he was essentially expendable. If he died, he would be replaced by some other bitter, lost young man. Such was the depths of Kritiker's fidelity and compassion towards their agents.
So of course, he cracked open his lids to see who it was that had deigned to bother with him, pupils dilating and irises more ash than violet in the newborn light. Blinked, and blinked again at his benefactor as one would who had enjoyed very little slumber.
"...Ken..."
Ken nodded, reaching over with his free hand and rubbing the back of Ran's neck where the edges of the satin didn't quite cover it. His lover folded up under his touched, not pulling away, but shrinking inadvertently, trying to find some even warmer spot among the covers or some nibble of wakefulness to call his own. He made no effort to hold him up or curl him away into the chair where he could perhaps rest for a bit yet. Just touched him. Didn't have to say who it was.
"You were sleepwalking again, huh?"
His hand clasped down on the one he held, as if he expected it to pull away, now that he had admitted this little thing.
And more.
"Hey, don't be scared! We all knew, back at the Koneko. Why else would you be storming in and out at such odd hours, mumbling to yourself. Or wandering around before dawn, knocking you head and then staring at the wall. Lots of people do it, it's no big deal. We just didn't know you... that you..." He tipped himself forward just the littlest bit and brushed his nose to the wet cheek beside him. "Didn't know you were having such bad nightmares."
A long silence followed, and he decide it was best, if things were ever to settle.
"But... why didn't you come back to bed?" He asked, the tone of his words firmly implying he placed the blame somewhere on himself. "I won't ever mind if you wake me up! That's part of sharing the same bed. So roll me over, bash me with the pillow, pull my arm around you, bounce on the bed. Smush me. Wake me up and yell at me. Wring my neck. It's just fine."
A second pause, this one wavering on the edges of his sigh.
"Everything will be just fine. We're going to Valdemar to-day!"
"...Yeah. Valdemar."
The bundle of satin and cotton that enveloped Ran fell away from him then like the petals of a dying flower from its stem. A glimpse of slender, pale thighs was offered to Ken before he stood up, tugging at the tie of his robe as if he wasn't sure whether to leave it closed or remove it.
Everything will be just fine? You say that like you know it for a fact.
He stood there uncertainly in the predawn darkness rubbing at his aching eyes with the heels of his hands.
You all knew. And I thought I was being so careful...
Ran padded off to their bedroom then without another word. He was mortified beyond belief over what had happened; speechless in the face of Ken's understanding. Wondered just how long his goodwill would last.
This won't be the last time I sleepwalk. Won't be the last nightmare I have.
It won't be the last time you find me huddled and quaking somewhere, bruised here and there from where I'd collided with walls and tables.
The robe fell into a heap on the floor and Ran left it behind without a glance. Rustled through his bags until he found an outfit that more or less matched; blue jeans, blue, long-sleeved v-neck shirt. He dressed quickly, not bothering to check his appearance in the full-length mirror. He didn't have to -- he already knew just what he'd see: An ill-used zombie staring hopelessly back at him.
Just as he was now staring at the floor.
"...Just be glad I didn't have my katana last night..."
Ken stayed. Right where he was, but not as a statue. Rather he rubbed his hands as if he was cold himself now, as if Ran's fingers had traced him with some small perfume that only he could detect on the sill air, one that faded only as he rubbed and made him ripple to ecstasy inside, while leaving the rest of his body so dumb and quiet.
And then his beloved specter appeared, his skin gleaming against his clothing -- mother of pearl on bastard jade. And then he spoke. Ken answered. "I'm glad you didn't hurt yourself."
Forget about me.
"Do you think I'm afraid of you because of this?"
Or are you just that much into your own pride still?
"'cause I'm not."
And you don't need me mushy right now. Even if I can't feel what you do at the moment. I couldn't. I don't think I...
And even if you're suffering, I want to. I wanna help, Ran.
"Katana or no katana."
And then he rose, feeling out the wrinkles in his pajamas as the clung to his thighs when he walked, came up to Ran, and did not lift his face. Merely appeared in his presence. Would not even hold him. Not just yet.
"You... wanna watch the sun rise? We have a little deck after all... and then we can get something for breakfast."
Ran stood there, not wanting to look at Ken, not wanting to face him. Just let his words sink in. And then he nodded stiffly, a bit of the tension easing away from his shoulders.
"Yeah, I want to watch the sun rise before breakfast."
He slid him a tentative look, barely pivoting his head in his direction, then slunk out of the bedroom behind his retreating lover.
The carpet-covered deck was damp and a touch cold beneath his feet, and he curled his toes up when he did come to rest just short of the rail. Gazed towards the horizon and the slowly hatching sun. The sky was all purple and blue and orange before it. The birds had awakened en masse, and were singing praises for the new day.
And deep inside, Ran was too; another night of horrors had passed, and he had come away from it without finding blood on his hands.
Anyone's blood...
Ran closed the distance between them, hovering quietly at the brunet's elbow, voice very soft.
"...I'm only glad that I didn't hurt you..."
As redolent as the morning had swung herself over Terra, Ken closed his eyes for a moment, and dwelled on her be means of other senses. The wet aroma of the dew, the birds begun to cry to their feathered gods in the chapels of their trees, or even beneath the eaves, he could feel them fluttering above him. And the first twinges of warmth over his cheeks.
Like someone had reached into him and held his heart. The shy aura chancing his side no doubt, none at all.
And even the busting spun sugar heavens had nothing on his dear boy. So he watched him instead for a moment.
You know... what am I supposed to say to that? I know you didn't. I know you could. I know you keep thinking you will... but part of me wishes you would, just so I could convince you I wouldn't mind.
But you want me to mind.
And yet I love you so much, how can I refuse you?
God, it's too early for this.
"You feel better now? Saying hello to the new day?"
A faint pause. Ken scratched the back of his head and tilted his head down.
"Ah... didn't mean to talk down to you... that's just... what I always used to say. Funny though it might be..."
"Don't..." Ran laid one hand on Ken's shoulder. "Don't apologize, don't be sorry."
He closed the tiny gap between them, and rested his cheek against his head. Nuzzled him like a cat, eyes shut. His hair smelled sweet and sharp like rain; felt all cool and tickly against his skin. He could hear the faint thrum of Ken's pulse -- or was it his own?
"Don't regret...this..."
He bent his head, spanning the few inches separating his mouth from the back of Ken's neck and placed a small, open mouthed kiss at its base. Stroked the tanned flesh with careful fingers.
Another brief nuzzle to his ear and their eyes met. Ran let his arm slip around Ken's waist, holding him lightly and wondering over him as Dawn's roseate fingers skimmed over his face.
"And forgive me for this..."
Ran kissed him then; not an innocent little peck, but a kiss that spoke of dreams and heartfelt longing; one that carried with it a taste of the intense emotions Ken inspired within him.
Ken's lips gasped wetly as Ran's left them. No, this wasn't drowning and this wasn't dying or breaking or bursting... no chill washed over him, only an intense weightless warmth that left his swaying slightly. The only steady point on his whole form became his eyes, which met the perplexed and purple gaze of his lover. The birds had gone mute and yet it seemed they left their lords to weave spells somewhere in him, douse his insides with feathers and his heart with spider webs of this he could not feel.
But did, at least for a second, plunged into the well of falling spring, the echoes of someone living besides himself. For what is a person on the street but an image or a sound? A friend but a voice? Nothing compared to Ran, whose cheek he caught with his hand, cupped it like the glass edges of a soap bubble lest he fall against it and dash it to bits.
You think I'm blind Ran, and numb? You think I can't feel your heartbeat through your lips and everything else deep down in there.
I know what you want...
I know there's some part of you still thinks I don't love you because of me being a fool and me being whatever I am and GOD! Ran, do you know you're tearing me up? And you just won't stop and...
I like it.
But it hurts! It just hurts so bad!
But his voice seemed barely the beating of a dragonfly's wings. "Of course I forgive you. I love you."
He could feel his vision dimming... or perhaps going so brilliantly bright he could no longer see with it.
In an instant, he pitched forward, smothered Ran's lips with his own and caressed the inside of his mouth with everything he had in him -- every frantic tremor in his blood, every shard of the morning he wanted to keep.
Every hope he had.
He only pulled away when he realized at last that his knees had been shuddering so bad his whole body was bouncing with them. As if he was having a fit.
A little smile though, as he pulled away into a patch of creeping sunshine, all pink and new and embarrassed to be alive.
A lot like him, though silent on one matter. "You ah... taste really good, Ran. Like cream."
Ran's fingers brushed over his kiss-reddened lips in wonder. He'd kissed him, and was kissed by him, and Ken hadn't come apart as he had feared he would. Oh, how he marveled over that! It felt like something had melted inside him with the touch of his mouth on his own, his tongue delving so tenderly.
He hadn't missed what Ken was trying to convey, not at all -- and it thrilled him.
Even though he had started shaking in his arms -- still...It was a beginning.
A most delightful beginning at that.
And then his hand fell to his side, and Ran's expression crumpled in a look of embarrassment. He scoffed softly, averting his eyes to the wind-caressed trees in the distance.
"I don't taste like...Like cream," he protested, more out of shyness than true anger over Ken's remark.
Hanging over the edge of the balcony now, Ken chuckled, just softly, and from nothing but pure relief. His quivers evaporated, and he looked to the petals of the clouds that had skated in overhead. "Well, maybe not cream exactly. You're Ran, after all. You're not a saucer laid out for a kitty... well... meow but anyway."
Slowly he turned, eyes still thrust heavenward, still flushed and enjoying the tapping of his heart as a backbeat for the choruses of life that morning.
"And you're not exactly a rose either, but I can still describe you like that. What's so bad about cream? It's white and silky and smooth. Rich and sweet and cozy on my skin."
With that, he lowered his gaze, taking a little lick at his lips. Ran, however continued to flaunt his abashment, more so than ever before. His faint blush wore off on Ken, who regretted going off on such a peculiar tangent. Well... maybe not. He had the chance to make up for it, after all. Just as good! If not better...
Hands behind his back, he shuffled up to his lover, and bent a bit, so they stood eye to eye. "I still liked it."
A quick peck on the cheek.
Interrupted by an astounding grumble from the deepest darkest reaches, not of the hotel nor some fantastic be-scaled beast... but rather from Ken's very empty stomach.
"Umm...How about blueberry pancakes? Just two orders of those and a big pitcher of... orange juice!"
He'd meant to say milk but well...
"Uh...That sounds good. But I want..." An unexpected yawn.
...You. "...Tea, too. No, make that coffee."
Lots and lots...
A tiny smile and Ran walked away, re-entering the hotel room and crumpling into the oversized armchair he had staked out as his own. The flush on his cheeks, painted there by his shy discomfort, still lingered faintly. But the reason why had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the fact that Ran was indisputably caught in the grip of raw lust.
Ken, with all his talk of cream and how it felt and looked on his skin -- with that tiny lap at his equally kiss-bruised lips -- had thrown him into that trap. Now Ran was being tormented by scrotum-tightening images of Ken standing in the middle of a sunken bath, pouring warm cream over his naked body.
"....."
Stop it, Ran.
Stop thinking about him like that! Cause it's going to come to nothing!
With a quiet sigh, Ran twisted around in his seat for the phone and rang up room service.
...I think I need a cold shower.
Ken scratched his head a moment, tipped his head funny at the little sparrow who had alighted on the railing, and had no intention of being frightened away by the likes of him it seemed.
Well... I was gonna call, sweetheart. You didn't have too...
No point in arguing with you.
The wren started pulling on a loose thread from his robe. "Or you either." The bird skittered away as he yanked the bit of string free and hung it over the railing. It didn't thank him either, but then again, he did step back inside rather abruptly and go for their shopping bags.
The first thing he noticed there, besides that the wren was staring at his bare bottom through a crack in the shades, happened to be that he hadn't bothered with underwear.
I knew I forgot something.
No matter, he'd never liked it much anyway. Then again, did chastity belts count as underwear? He took a moment to survey the dents in his hips Ran had such a fascinations with. No, probably not and anyway, he had to put some pants on some time. Specifically, a brand new pair of heavy, taupe cargo pants, a melon green t-shirt and...
Something told him the flight to Valdemar would be, at best miserable. Forethought alone could not explain his foreboding, nor the sense he was doomed to wash his new garments repeatedly once he reached his new home since they simply did not feel right at all he'd gotten so used to old clothes. Staring at his hairbrush, he wondered over his mother for a moment, but nothing coherent came of it. His jacket proved to be the only remotely homey article of clothing he owned at the moment, so he put that one and got outside in time to greet the room-service boy and send him to the washroom with their muddy clothes from last night, insisting they be returned within the hour.
Ran crossed his legs abruptly the moment he turned to face him though.
And is it just me or are you still kinda... red?
Oh geeze.
"Coffee?"
Ken's drab little wren excitedly hopped along the rail, caroling merrily and bobbing its long tail up and down. Was it trying to call its mate? Was it begging for the world to notice it? Or was it simply so full of joy that it couldn't contain itself?
Uhh...I don't fucking care...
Ran tore his eyes away from the twittering, dancing bird and turned them upon his oh-so-charming lover and the oh-so-desirable-yet-ugly grey plastic, insulated pot he held in his hand.
"Yes. Coffee. No cream. Two sugars."
Ran sagged listlessly in the chair again, staring at the fire and listening to gurgle of the coffee as it spilled into the cups. He could smell its smoky-sweet aroma even from where he sat.
He heard the cups rattle and he looked over in Ken's direction, expecting to find his lover coming towards him with the much yearned-for brew. Instead he found himself presented with the tempting sight of Ken's backside, as said man pulled the rolling table over to where he was currently sulking.
Ran bit down on his lip then to stifle a groan.
Ken pulled his chair around to the other side of the cart, and then quite obligingly prepared one black but sugared coffee, which he managed to do without once taking his eyes from the suddenly so listless Ran.
He needed no surreptitious glances in the direction of his companion's lap to know why. No visual confirmation whatsoever!
After all, what was his job in the world besides being Hidaka Ken who royally flubbed up on a regular basis! Whether it me mutilating gentians, clawing the wrong politician to death or giving his boyfriend the hard on of a lifetime and not being able to do anything about it! His own lap seethed only with intense, hot, throbbing... disgust for himself.
Actually, in other circumstances, I bet this would be funny. But for now...
He tore the lid off his pancakes and shoveled an extremely indelicate portion into his mouth. Yes, only one way out of this! Loosing himself in those luscious, luscious blueberry pancakes! While Ran, darling, lusty little ran, sat there and pondered his coffee rather than drank it.
Worst of all, he wanted dearly to excuse himself for being himself even if he knew full well that would make things suck even worse than they did now.
Today was not shaping up to be a good day. Tomorrow didn't look good either. They ate mostly in somewhat companionable silence in his occasional, and obviously wrong interjections somewhere along the lines Ran needed some sugar and caffeine. Ran who had resorted to trying to hide himself under the cart.
Once the food had vanished, and interestingly enough, they both ate every bit and left not a drop of coffee, he gut up, stretched, and ambled over to the door, trying in vain to look nonchalant. "I'm gonna go check on the cleaning. Be right back."
In reality, he ducked outside and made it no further than the stairwell before he found himself obliged to sink down and bury his head in his hands.
Well, at least he can have a nice jerk off while I'm gone.
Stupid, stupid Ken.
And then he blanched.
I just hope he's not one of those guys who never plays with himself no matter what. Oh SHIT!
Ran wasn't the sort of the person who spent every other minute lost in thoughts of sex. In fact, he never thought about sex at all. Instead, he lost himself in books and flowers and, in times of extreme stress, swordwork. And then, of course, there were always the missions to occupy him -- every one bringing him that much closer to achieving his ultimate goal.
But now? He didn't have his katana. He'd gotten his revenge on Takatori ages ago.
And reading a book just wasn't the answer.
He rose from the chair, and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.
Again, it wasn't that he had never fondled himself as needed -- he had. But usually in the middle of the night, when, in the depths of sleep, his long ignored desires made themselves known. Even then, though the act had been done in shame. In speed. Had been looked upon as being a necessary evil, and he cursed himself for his weakness afterwards. Punished himself in some small way the next day.
But now? Yes, the shame was still there, gnawing at him, but as before -- it wasn't strong enough to dampen his urges.
Ran sat down on the bed, and stared at the closed door, trying to reason with himself over the intense ache that demanded to be relieved now.
What are you worried about? He'll probably be gone for a while.
No one is around. No one's going to walk in demanding attention.
No one can hear you, Ran...
He abruptly got up and went to the bathroom for a washcloth, kept dry to better soak up any mess he might make.
Just do it and get it over with...
He came back and lay back on the bed, and glared at the ceiling, feeling every inch the fool. "This is so pointless..." he muttered, but he pulled his shirt up anyway, and unfastened his fly. Tugged his jeans a little past his hips and folded the fabric back. Let his fingers creep down his lower stomach until they met with the brilliant red thatch that marked the center of his body.
He took himself in hand then, and let his eyelids drift shut, losing himself in thoughts of Ken.
Ken had no clue where he was. Neither did he care. He just walked, hand jammed in his pockets, eyes unable to hover from the floor. He wondered his he was blushing as much as he felt like blushing, but the crowd swallowed him up -- what crowds there were by day -- and he felt sure it didn't matter since no one would bother to notice him. He noticed him, that he found intolerable in and of itself, and would have failed in it, dissolved to a will-o'-the-wisp by sheer WILL if it wasn't that...
Ran had noticed him. Really seriously, noticed him. Like no one had done in years. And not the chaste sort of noticing either! Not the innocent flickers between school children. But then again, no such thing had ever befallen him, or probably very many kept boys.
But no! No! Anything but that! He'd think about anything but Ran.
But himself.
But being himself.
Someday. Anything else now though... being good would turn on him. Being sane would turn on him, since he was neither good nor sane nor normal enough even to have a little fun with Ran before they left for...
...hell.
Well, what can I say besides that I'm the one who lied. Ken doesn't like hell. Yeah. Sure. But that's what this will be, won't it?
He came across, of all things, a grape fanta can, and since fanta was rarer than straight women on Terra, he seriously had to wonder where it had come from. Why no one had swept it up, or at least kept it as a souvenir.
He himself, gave it a good kick and shuffled on his way, his gaze finally stealing up to the glass arches above him- the ribs over the heart of the sky with its bandages of clouds. He felt his own heart melt a little and sat down then, took up the entirety of the nearest bench fell back and breathed. Just breathed. He couldn't smell the violets anymore, not really. His system had learned to filter them out ages ago. Long ago when he seemed to remember the curve of this particular bench against his bottom... since it was after all, somewhat lopsided. What was it still doing here if that happened to be the case? Shouldn't all busted things go to hell?
I can't start thinking like that already. I just can't
I will do something.
I'll think about... how nice it will be to... be with Ran! Someday.
I bet he's soooooooo shy. It'll feel like being in one of those hurt/comfort fics online, except he won't be hurt, he'll just be nervous as anything... and I'll get to calm him down! Hold him, all mine! Just me, all me. And he'll get over it and I'll get to kiss him again, and this time it'll be alright if he gets all hard, 'cause I can make that better too! And we'll go rolling on the sheets and...
...and...
His imagination seemed to have jammed at this point.
"Ah shit."
A pair of passing lovers took him with a grain of salt and a pleasant chuckle. He just leaned even further back across his bench. So far his bangs fell away from his forehead and onto the concrete of the buttress behind him.
I wish... I wish I hadn't noticed, that I could be as oblivious as I'm acting.
I know what else I wish too.
I wish...
...too much. Just... too much.
I wish I remembered how to at least blow you, Ran! But it's like it's all gone away... The simple consideration of his mouth on a member made his mouth stale and his throat quiver inside like he would be sick shortly.
With that, his resting place seemed to ripple with auras of shame so he rose from it and tried somewhat to get his bearings and a cup of coffee to settle his stomach; head to the dry cleaners where the hotel sent their things. He found it at last, once his coffee had died and it's soul of steam left it. He fought to claim his stuff from the boy trying to run it to his room. Then ended up back at the bench -- that turbulently familiar place -- where he fished his boyfriend's shirt from it's plastic case and gave it a good sniff.
Still smelled just a little tiny bit like him.
I have to stop thinking like this. I just said that!
Almost for a joke to himself, he wandered into a restroom, shut himself in a stall; clasped that shirt to his nose with one hand and reached inside his cargo pants with the other, running his fingers up and down the length of his sex, petting it, twiddling his little slit.
All that accomplished was making him jump as if he'd been jabbed with a pin the moment someone slammed a door halfway down the aisle. He waited until they had left to slide out himself, which he could do, since his caresses had proved in vain once again.
I wonder... if I should go back yet... I've probably already taken too long, or not long enough...
Back to the bench for the third time. He thought he heard death come clanking over the marble floor, but it turned out to be nothing but a B and D affiliate traipsing from one of the nearby shops. What would death be doing in a shopping arcade anyway?
And then he remembered the where he was, through space and time, this place had remained -- still broken. He could see someone else entirely besides that skinny blond bisheinin passing him. He could almost hear him shouting, the other voice, like wind and chiffon. Almost see him waving his latest indulgence.
"Kenken! I bought you a new toy! Wanna try it on?"
Almost feel his lips on his own. His fingers flew up to tear them away, but only ended up cupping his mouth as he tipped forward, gasping as if he'd been whispered the taboos of the universe and it's endless gears and these, not meant for human ears had ruined him inside.
"Sure I will, sure just... gimme a sec."
But he looked up and found now one, kissed the naked air and started jogging back to the hotel room. Sense made him stop for a cart to put his trunk on. Sense had nothing to do with the fact he couldn't help but feel he'd cheated on Ran.
With a mere memory, and nothing more.
Ran still lay on the end of the bed, one hand extended down the length of that side -- Ken's side -- feet just dangling mere centimeters from the floor. He was finished, yes, and had been for awhile, but he just wasn't in the mood to move yet. More in the mood to brood over Ken and his situation and so forth.
The washcloth lay in a sad, damp heap on the threshold between the bedroom and bath, and his clothes were once more arranged properly. But the room smelled of sex, and a glance at the looking glass showed a Ran with lust-rouged cheeks and rumpled hair; bright eyes and rosy lips.
What would Ken think of me if he could see me now?
He'd probably run away, shaking with fear.
Ran rubbed at his eyes; they stung so from the lack of sleep.
But it's not his fault. He didn't ask to be treated like a plaything.
I just really don't understand how he feels, I guess. And I don't want to press discussing it.
Being all open and chatty isn't my style anyway -- and I don't want to upset him...
He sighed. I'm just going to have to get used to it, I guess, this petting myself in dark, silent rooms.
Ran rolled onto his side towards the pillows. Ken's still bore the imprint of his head; it was smushed down on one side, and bunched up on either end, where his hands had probably clutched at it. He could picture him as such in his mind's eye. Pictured himself tenderly smoothing his bangs from his forehead.
He heard the front door open then, and the clamor of a rickety cart being dragged into the room. Ran was off the bed in a blink, hastily straightening his garments as he went.
Their eyes met and hung there, both looking as guilty as if they'd committed some horrible crime. But what could Ken have done?
Oh, no, this isn't working out as nicely as I had hoped.
Oh, God! I want you so badly...
So Ran walked over to him and, taking his face in his hands, gave him a shy kiss.
But...I don't want you to feel sad...
"Uh..." he began, forcing himself to hold those sad eyes for a bit longer before dropping his gaze to the floor. "Okaeri nasai."
"Tadaima!" And Ken helped himself to a second kiss, just as light little one that would earn him another peek at those violet orbs that had been cradling his body so softly for so long. Not that he hadn't learned a lot from the first one. More than he ever could have wished for.
He knew that Ran wasn't mad at him. At least... not TOO mad.
Because why would you kiss me if you were angry?
Wow... phew! I'm so glad.
He knew Ran was still frightfully sleepy, act or no act.
Because the angle of your lips against mine was all funny like when you kiss me goodnight.
He knew that Ran, had, in his absence, taken full advantage of himself.
Hehe, they're warm and juicy.
And subsequently, has not sampled the flavor of the results.
'cause they're not salty. Gosh, don't you even taste yourself? You poor thing. The thought, nasty as it was, made him giggle a little and go searching for his smile. Which he found and popped on straight off, even though, he did possesses one more scrap of information.
Saa, you're worried about me? Well no wonder when I come in looking like I've seen a ghost.
I did.
He opened his mouth to speak but Ran's formal little Japanese boy gaze stopped him. Another kiss, a reward for being cute but no. So many smooches after condemning someone to play with themselves? Not exactly bright or kind.
"Sorry I took so long, had to go grab the cart for my old trunk and all..."
That and I'll be damned if I'm paying someone to cart that thing around! Yeesh! What they would charge me for that!
"There's plenty of room in it still. I can probably get all our things in it so... umm..."
His hand ended up behind his back and this time he looked away before Ran, even though they more or less both assumed the embarrassed posture.
I guess you also have some ideas about what's in there besides, huh?
"So, I'll go pack up and if you want, you could write that letter. If you don't want to, I will..."
His eartails batted back and forth as he shook his head.
"Alright then, we can drop it off on our way to the airport."
A little clap as of determination as he pulled away, fingers lingering over those that had brushed his cheeks.
I do like it when you hold me that way. I hope you know.
And set about trying to think of a way to cram all those pullovers in around his bondage gear!
Ran waited until Ken had disappeared into the bedroom, cart in tow, before he went over to the feminine-looking writing desk by the window. A rummage through the bottom drawer produced a sheaf of thick, cream paper, a pot of black ink and a little box filled with pen handles and nibs, and tiny, keen-bristled brushes. Ran gave the array of old-fashioned writing instruments a wondering sort of look, then shrugged and drew out one of the brushes.
Luckily for me that Shion was so dead-set on me learning calligraphy. All to make me more patient, more focused. Calmer.
As if merely painting kanji over and over could do that for me...
He sat and stared at the blank pages while his mind searched for just the right thing to say. Then he dipped the brush in the ink, and painted out the kanji for,
[Dear Omi,]
Which he just as easily painted an 'x' upon; too polite and usual -- and not at all him. The sheet was promptly pushed aside. Ran dipped his brush into the ink jar, and began again.
[Omi and Youji,]
"That's better..."
[As you may have guessed by this, we have received your letter. We are fine -- quite well. No one can hurt us here.]
"I hope," he murmured as he re-dipped the brush into the ink pot, thinking then of Schwartz.
[Our departure wasn't planned. In fact, I might not have left at all, except...I had a feeling that Ken was going to leave, and I just couldn't let him go alone.]
Here he paused to consider just how much he should let them know; decided to tell them the truth.
[I love Ken. You may not believe that, but I do. I have for quite awhile. So, you see, I had to come along.]
"Because...I don't want to live without him..." he said, softly, and as if he'd only just realized it. Which he had. A moment's pause and he wrote that in as well. What did it matter?
[I don't want to live without him. And yes, Youji, I know that sounds sappy. I don't care.
I hope you both will forgive us for our actions. I hope you both will stay well.
I hope you both are happy with each other.
We will see each other again, and soon.
I promise.]
He signed it, and then lay the brush in its holder and read over the neatly painted letter. Then, satisfied, Ran set it aside to dry, and re-stacked the paper, slipping it back into its protective folder. Left the ink bottle and the box of implements where they were, then rose with the soiled brush in hand, intending to rinse it clean under the bathroom faucet.
"I've just finished the letter," he said to Ken when he entered the bedroom. "It's on the desk if you want to sign it."
Ken had, by sheer luck, just been placing the finishing touches on his packing job. They being the ginger tests to make sure those strained catches were in fact, caught. He poked one most dubiously, found himself imagining one more fragment of plastic peering from between the bevels of rim and body. No no, they were all crammed inside by now!
Weren't they?
He jiggled one of the fasters just in case. It groaned. He groaned. Ran opened the door.
"Of course I will!" He answered the query with a bright little swell to his words and a longing glance to the pinned gorge of his trunk. He could hear it laughing... laughing at him!
Thoroughly insulted by such a surly inanimate object, he swayed into the living room, made his way to the desk and picked out a blue ballpoint to sign with. Inks left free to roam in bottles, as much as he longed to feel the satisfaction of swirling a legion of brushed through waters as black as the heaven's between stars, made him more nervous than that crammed closed trunk. His eyes stole over the sentiments he was about to endorse, but earned him little save the sensation he was, at best violating the law by reading someone else's mail. One phrase caught his eyes though:
[I promise.]
With a waver and a lopsided, grinning moogle, he committed his name to those crows of Kanji. Proudly.
So we leave and THEN we have honor among assassins!
Wait... that's thieves.
The lines now officially married to the page, he folded them in upon themselves and tucked them into a vellum envelope, which he addressed Terran style: Koudou Youji and his Ada, Fifth of Time, a Flowershop in Hell.
He knew it would never get where it was going otherwise.
This he handed to his beloved... who mused over the queer little markings for some time as he himself hefted his trunk, his past and present onto the web of metal rods, which moaned in protest and hummed like mad squirrels as he trundled them along. Ran followed behind him at first, as wary of the leather case as he had been, but then he stopped, and wise or not, he took up his arm with his own and lead him along. He seemed stiff at first, unsure and too timid to step exactly beside Ken, but eventually, the two of them melted together, their muscles relaxing into a long, slow pirouette tied together with their hands.
Everyone saw them this time it seemed, between the whispers of that nosey little patchouli boy from the day before and the sound of their abused cart crying out beneath its burden. No whispers yet, that would come later. For now, just eyes. The Dono and his best appurtenance. The Dono who just felt like... Ken. Not Lord of Valdemar and it's house of champagne bodies, rolling through bubbles of customers and the ecstasy of money changing hands.
They stopped to drop off their letter. The herald, one of the eldest he had ever seen at fifty, took no interest in it besides that it was a piece of mail, one destined for a place she claimed to not remember. But she filed it away and promised not much more than a week between its entry into her basket and its arrival into the hands of that Koudou-san.
It would take so long only because said Koudou had never gotten a letter before.
But it always did. This at least, he found comfortingly unremarkable.
No more business at hand, nothing in their hands besides each other, Ken and Ran made their way to the airport terminal -- basically the inside of a nineteenth century New York train station somehow transported to the arms of an all too modern service maintained by Japanese businessmen who rather took to each other in many a way. The benches rose from swirls of white filigree, the doors leading to the bridges between the ground and the planes were fitted as if they lead to ballrooms.
But here too a ceiling of glass, streaked with the traces of the latest departures, and cornices of brass set inside.
The place echoed phenomenally, despite being nearly deserted. A man in a conductor's uniform adjusted the white chalk letters detailing the flight's estimated time of departure -- 10:02 now. They had plenty of time. He also started when he saw them, shook his head. Shuddered.
Not that Ken hadn't expected this, because he had.
Just not for the reason it had been offered.
Someone or some thing growled within the reaches of the room. A quick survey done by him and by his lover confirmed no genetically mutated monsters, no raving lunatics, no lions, no dragons! Not even a surly bouncer.
Why, the only unusual addition to the area happened to be a young girl. One who wore something besides a herald costume. Something that made it hard to pin her as a little girl.
Standing beside the gate, fidgeting and seeming to belong in anything- anything at ALL besides her red 1950's cape and pillbox hat, stool a short but gangly child. About fifteen, with a mop of unruly brown hair, olive skin and eyes that proved blue once her ire had subsided enough that it permitted her to open them. She clattered across the floor, tripping a few times over her own heels.
Fiona though most certainly should not have been wearing heels.
Ran wondered: Was the wraith in the thrift shop garb really that same surly child he'd met two days ago? The scowling, baby face framed under that ridiculous hat proved that she was -- that and the awkward way she was walking in her high heels. Ran felt like he was watching a little girl at play in her mother's -- or in this case, her grandmother's -- clothes.
And no girl of her age should be wearing heels, he thought. Sixteen maybe...
She stumbled again, somehow nearly kicking the shoe off her foot in her effort to regain her balance. Ran was torn between going over and making her take off the damn things, and laughing. He did neither. Simply regarded her with a disapproving frown as she drew closer to the pair.
"What are you doing here, Fiona-chan?"
Ran got no words for his troubles. Got no regard from the sky slits of her eyes. He did, however, receive a series of loud crinkling noises and a paper thrust into his face by one be-gloved hand, with not a word to explain it, just a very, very angry sigh.
Written upon it in glittering indigo script was this --
[Dear Fujimiya Ran; King's Own of Valdemar,
In lieu of the pains bade upon you by and your lover by means of one of our demons, the office of the Su-dono offers our deep regret and our most profound sympathies. Please accept this letter as a formal apology to both of you, and many well wishes.
As material compensation for the shame you both endured, and may yet endure among those not faithful to our assurances of your innocence, we wish for you to always appear at least physically beautiful in the eyes of your beholders, whatever small comfort that may be. Fiona here has recently been severed from her keeper and is hereby left to you as a handmaid, servant, or page, as you should see fit to use her. We will send a reasonable allowance to you each month to cover her expenses. If she gives you any trouble, please feel free to punish her within reason.
Godspeed and Tender Dreams of Ardis,
The Mages of Su-dono.]
All Ran managed to catch from the note before it wound up too close for him to read it properly was his name and the odd title he'd been given.
King's Own of Valdemar?
Just what I need -- another alias.
But if I'm...Then is Ken...?
Ran angrily snatched the letter out of Fiona's hand, giving her his usual death-glare before re-reading the flowery script. Then he passed the note to Ken, and went off on a long overdue rant, directing it at Ken, at Fiona, at no one in particular.
"Who the hell is Su-dono? What sort of place is this, anyway, where there are more whores than legitimate lovers and little kids are little more than slaves -- sexual and otherwise?"
"And why the hell did you want to come back here? Why is this place considered to be better than...Than where we came from?"
He tore the letter out of his lover's hands, and glared at it, crumpling it up into a tight ball with one hand. "I don't care who thinks I'm beautiful. I don't give a damn what anyone thinks about me."
Ran tightened his fist around it until his hand shook, then he let it drop to the ground between him and Fiona. "Especially someone who thinks I'm fucking innocent..."
He kicked the wad of paper away as deftly as Ken would a soccer ball; watched it roll across the floor to the dusty baseboard. Raised his eyes to the still quietly fuming Fiona again, and added resignedly, "Because I'm not."
She still wouldn't look at him; Ran didn't know if she had lifted her eyes once to either of them. Whether that was part of being a servant, he didn't know, but he wasn't going to stand for it -- especially not from her.
"Cut the meek act, Fiona-chan. You don't want to be in our employ anymore than we want you to be."
That got her. Not that he had read her so well, because most people could. Not that he had more or less jumped headlong into the flames of his own irony, because over the years she'd seen an awful lot of that, say about as many potential suicides as the Japanese police found atop buildings during the highschool entrance exams.
But there again with the -chan and Fiona was not in the mood to be coddled like that! Not now, so set on doing the resigned and proud of it act the alteration of her destiny so demanded!
"Meek ACT!? You know, I could have SWORN I WAS meek last time I talked to you, or at least that's what you wanted to think. But you're pretty good at that! You can make yourself into a crazy person after all! Someone should really give you a reward, just for being pigheaded, because you SOOOOOOOOOOOOO are! Oh, but you know what else? At least it's nice to know we DO have something in common now! After all, guess what? I'M not thrilled about this, you're exactly right! But YOU of all people should be since it's pretty fricken obvious you need someone to screw your head on straight for you!"
With that she walked backwards a few steps, no small feat for someone so obviously unused to high-heels. What could she say, she needed more room to gesture to the whole, conceited, bitter bubbly aura of her new employer. Though I doubt if I went to New York I'd have enough room to wave around all of THAT thing! "But you wanna be miserable and you wanna have problems asking nicely for something? You do that. I don't care! I don't have to care, I just have to do your laundry!"
Her arms crossed which made her cape to rumple up around her like the ruff of a miffed hen. She threw a small glance to Ken, who stood off to the side like an incidental ripple of a person in a timelapse photo. Did he want to say something? It seemed so, but with his eyes cupped in his hands, she couldn't tell.
Ran, I got no clue what you're doing with that guy but I'll find out if it's the last thing I do.
So it was with fantastic, oozing menace she added, "And I'm going to do your laundry, whether you want me to or NOT!!!" This she made the mistake of enunciating with a stamp of her foot. One that sent her falling squarely on her ass in waves and waves and waves of crimson wool.
Ran had simply stayed where he was and let Fiona vent; didn't react at all until she fell over. Even then, it was without much outward concern.
"Now that's the girl I remember from the other night. It feels good getting all that off your chest, doesn't it?"
"And -- just to correct your fallacious assumption -- IF I, as you say, need someone to screw my head on straight, I wouldn't turn to an equally messed up teenage girl for help."
"And yeah, you are just as fucked up as I am."
Ran crossed the distance between them, and settled himself on his knees, grabbing one of her ankles when she attempted to scramble away from him -- out of sheer stubbornness, not fright. He removed first one heel and then, amidst a bit of a struggle, the other. Let her go with a faint scowl.
"Just because you're dressed like a woman, doesn't mean you are one." Ran set the shoes beside him, and regarded her blandly. "Who's idea was it to get you up like that, anyway? Your former mistress?"
She simply glowered at him.
Ran merely sighed. "No matter," he said, waving a hand at her in exasperation. "Her rules and whims don't apply to you anymore."
"I suppose there's probably some law that says I can't free you, that I have to keep you or transfer you away or send you back."
And I don't think you want to go back, do you?
I guess I can live with having you around.
But there's no way in hell that I'm letting you look after me.
"So...I guess we're just stuck with each other -- at least for now."
A pause, and he scooped up the shoes, and stood up, and held a hand out to her even though he didn't think she'd take it.
"Come on, Fiona-chan."
Ran had been correct in his assessment. Fiona most certainly did not take his hand.
You're exactly right though, you moody, messed up bastard! You can't send me back! I hate it! I just hate it you're right! IT SUCKS!
Well, sucks less than living with Ysanne. I should be grateful! If I had a mother I could hear her chanting it over me. Be grateful! Be grateful!
But I don't and that's why I'm here.
And just where do you get off with the fuck-fuckity-fucking-fuck around me?
It's worse than the -chan's.
"Nope. Can't sent me back. Nowhere to send me."
But, in spite of all this, she did manage to get to her feet, and in doing so did not even use her own hands. Her feet bare, assuming several miles of medical tape did not count as covering, she flexed them around and flipped to their souls without need of any muscles above her waist, but still found them cold and soar and balanced on their edges accordingly. Then she quite blatantly rubbed her soar rear.
Her new master -- lovely, hopelessly insane little Ran -- cocked an eyebrow at this and she wondered why it should bother him at all. After all (a quick glance here to the Hidaka-dono's butt) he had a fine one to keep his interest otherwise. She'd watched enough boys sizing each other up to know what was fashionable in such areas.
I know a damn lot.
Hence her smiling coolly through the whole incident, as if she had a wrenching secret, a rack of diamonds for a vain queen, some really, really dirty pictures.
"Of course we'll live with each other. You need someone to stop you in the middle of your social screw ups, and hey, I'm one of their favorite victims. Kinda fitting I get to try and stop you. TRY and... hey Savil!"
Not that her sourness had morphed to sweetness, nor her smirk faded. That was one of the roughest hellos ever to be shouted in Terra -- Fiona's, be she pissed or, on the off chance, not. She waved though, just a touch with her little black gloves; the only gesture she had made so far that at ALL suited her new position.
Having just now appeared amid the clattering swell of many very expensive shoes indeed, stood the little herald, though her garb now spoke rather of looking glasses and Jabberwocks about to pester innocent boys carrying vorple swords: a little blue dress flashing white crinoline as she walked and so, hovering about her spindly legs like the petals of a droopy flower. This graced with a lacy pinafore made from something that shimmered with too many colors for ordinary silk. A filet crossed her loose and yellow hair, a thread of velvet dotted with stars ran around her neck. Her Mona Lisa smile could be nothing but show.
She playing Alice not for the school of floating suitcases that finned their way long behind her, but rather those who had packed said multitudes.
Schuldich, naturally followed the closest behind her, though he seemed to be attempting to chat with Crawford, who thusfar had failed to answer him. Probably, the clairvoyant had objected to answering since he did have a rather peculiar greenish cast this morning, or possibly because he found himself embarrassed by his lover's mode of appearance. The redhead had never before presented himself (at least not in public) wearing little orange cat ears that matched his henna locks exactly, nor mascara whiskers on his cheeks where mascara doesn't ordinarily go. He wore himself a blinding ultramarine crop top that flashed his pale belly at random, black leather biking gloves, a very, very short pair of tan shorts that were not snapped and openly declared some additional leather beneath, not to mention the rim of the garter belt which was both holding up his candy-striped stockings and steadying his long, fluffy tail which he shortly caused to wrap around Crawford's one leg by means of a toss of his hips.
Bradley himself had been it seemed, somewhat spared. At least if he had not otherwise been inclined to wear suits, for his bondage pants form the night before he had donned once more, only this time, their plethora of zippers had all been graced with little clear plastic heart keychains. Yes, every single one and they were occasionally snaring on the edges of his red cape, whereupon he would have to flick them away with his whip. Halfway down the hall, he was obliged to stop and open the crimson vinyl of his vest.
Nagi had no such troubles with his; the buttons had mysteriously vanished from their maroon brocade beds, so he found himself quite on display and seeming to be literally ticking with nervousness though that annoyance actually proved to be the result of the pocket watch he carried in one of his -- and antique model of the precognitive's that hadn't been wound in decades. He had gotten away with ordinary jeans otherwise, but not with avoiding the obligatory white bunny ears, or the puffball tail.
As for Farfarello, he seemed to have on a perfectly decent Edwardian gentleman's costume under his Hannibal Lechter gear, but all that could be seen of it was the hat.
They all came to stand quite nonchalantly before Fiona and Ran, suitcases and all.
"Ohayo gozaimasu, minna-san."
Savil curtsied.
In mind-numbing shock: That was how Ran received the sight of his old nemeses dressed like they were going to a costume party at an S&M club. For a while, he couldn't tear his eyes away from the quintet, but Savil's trebly voice drew him out of his stunned scrutiny. After dealing her the sparest of glances, Ran pointedly ignored the primly posed little herald, choosing instead to level a particularly loathsome look at her brother -- and his bespectacled companion, both of whom only smirked devilishly.
Which only made him angrier, and he lashed out accordingly -- although, not in the manner as he wished.
"Tasteful as usual," he sneered. "I gather you both are planning to open a brothel of your own, not that this godforsaken place needs another one."
"No, no, Schuldich. Don't bother answering, because I really don't care if you do."
Ran turned to go, but froze when he heard a familiar, nasty little voice in his head, followed by a laugh. He turned back around to face them, expression schooled once more into an infuriated mask.
"You...aren't going to be on that plane with us."
"You aren't going to Valdemar...?"
Crawford, still very much green around the edges and bleary-eyed, said nothing -- merely snapped the whip at Ran's feet.
Ken had been forced to brace himself against the wall some time ago, or else face sinking to his knees. If his mind had been of gears, it would have stopped or started squealing relentlessly.
He could feel his head starting to throb.
He hadn't had a headache in years, but this most certainly started shaping up to be one.
Then Farfarello had to happen, of all things. Thoughts blind to all else, he swore he could hear the madman panting at him, even above the sound of his beloved's hissing, the whip cracking in the general direction of his beloved...
Dazed by his own foolishness and wheeling in the chill he'd earned himself, THAT still breached his brain, got him to his feet and placed him firmly between Crawford and Ran, arms outstretched as if to hopelessly invite the sea to strike him.
Bradley looked faintly amused and twirled the handle of his whip around his finger. Nagi looked bored. Schuldich and Saffie looked at each other in evident pondering, and then shortly reached for each other's pockets.
Ken only knew they moved. He had locked eyes with the precognitive. So this was what it was like having the point of a cold, cursed blade worming its way into your heart...
"Actually, according to our tickets..." Savil began.
"...we're not only going to Valdemar, we're going to Valdemar on this plane, right now!"
"First class!"
"But I dunno about opening a brothel, I thought that was your job?" A curious finger laid itself aside of his cheek as he feigned to wonder over this.
Silence. Obviously someone anticipated a reply to something.
"Well, that's none of your damn business," Ken asserted.
Fiona stalked over to wait beside the gate, trying to hide her smile. The only honest, open ordinary smile of them all.
Oh Savil!
But this perished with her glance back to her new employer. God! Now what's gotten into you? I mean I know her family is WEIRD, but they're not THAT bad.
Whatever happened to assassins having respect for each other and all that other shi -- ...
It finally occurred to her that perhaps these were not two friendly sects of such people, but then again she knew nothing of the culture, nor the particulars, let alone how come she suddenly remembered that's just what Ran had been! The papers she'd been given to read before... so vague. Then over her shoulder, that cloying, drippy voice of her friend's brother!
"What's the matter now, Farfie got your tongue? Don't normal people get on planes and go places all the time?"
Nothing eases a hangover faster like a bit of torture.
Crawford was still amusing himself with Ken -- toying with the whip and smiling at him. He shot a quick sidelong look at his lover before he settled those chilly eyes on Ken again. "Would you look at that, Schuldich? One would think that he could read minds too."
"That's just as I'd like to have you, Hidaka-san: Spread-eagled. Tied down, and naked too..."
Over Ken's shoulder, Ran hissed, "Try anything with him, and I'll kill you."
Crawford mimed a yawn. "God, but you are a bore! How many times have those vile sentiments spilled from those luscious lips?" He shook his head, flashing him another nasty grin. "Can't you be nice to me just once...Aya-chan?"
Ran growled then, and, ducking past Ken and tearing free from his restraining hands, lunged at Crawford -- who only neatly sidestepped him. Ran ended up grabbing at air. He turned about to find both Schuldich and Crawford laughing at him; Farfarello eyeing Ken maliciously and Nagi wandering back and forth in front of the picture windows, admiring the view, very nonchalant over the fact that the crazy Weiss redhead had just tried to maul his guardian.
Savil's voice came into Ran's head, chiding him and reminding him of Terra's rules, to which he only glared and thought a particularly nasty curse at her. But he stayed still, looking from Crawford to Schuldich as if he'd expected them to try something further to provoke them both.
He knew them so well.
A suave voice floated through the air from the intercom, summoning all travelers for the 10:02 flight to Valdemar to the gate. Crawford affected a heartbroken sort of look -- one which lasted for about five seconds before it was replaced by his usual menacing smirk. "Ah, that's a lonely sound -- departure calls," he said, waving at Nagi to join them. "I always feel think of tear-filled, angsty parting scenes whenever I hear one."
No, not really. Of course not!
You don't think I'm that pathetic, do you?
And watch where you're putting that tail.
In a heartbeat, the whip lashed out at Ken, snaring him around the waist. A hard jerk and Crawford had him in his arms.
"Good luck in your new venture, Hidaka-dono," he murmured seductively, blithely giving him a deep kiss despite Ran's angry protests. He was quite unconcerned over anything the redhead might try -- for he couldn't move. Schuldich had seen to that at his request.
I constantly marvel over you, Schuldich...
I am a lucky, lucky man...
With a good grope of Ken's ass, Crawford released him, laughing as he strode off to the gate, Schuldich at his side and the kids in tow.
"See you on the plane!"
And just like that, everything stopped. The bags all came crashing to the floor. The tickets hovered halfway between Schuldich's pockets and the outside world. Ken stood frozen in the middle of spitting onto the otherwise pristine tile floor. Fiona had never quite managed to rub her brow.
Savil, however, stamped out of her congregation and wrenched everyone around to face her, not bothering to adjust their positions her much first. Alice she was not, at least, not now. Though she seemed to be gleaming sharply. Did telepaths sparkle when they got dreadfully irked?
"OK!" she asserted with a certain uncommon rancor. Not the sort one finds in exasperated mothers or mistresses. But close and cold in that and... and...
Well, frankly sounding very much like her brother at the same time as echoing such defeated sentiments, though his asymmetrical glance rather portended his NOT knowing what was going on. "That's it! Bradley! You're embarrassing me. Aya, you're embarrassing me, and don't you go and tell me it's got nothing to do with me. If we ever want to make it to Valdemar ALIVE here's the deal -- Schwartz leaves Weiss alone, Weiss leaves Schwartz alone. Anyone misbehaves, they have to sit next to Fiona!"
Fiona: "HEY!"
But other than her delightful little protest, the room swirled with candy apple confusion and a certain sort of backhanded relief that had no flavor, stood as the very absence of flavor.
"I WILL NOT choose between you people. Any questions?"
Ken tried to put his hand up but he still wasn't allowed to move, so he imagined putting hi hand up as he wondered... had his poor French, or what he remembered of his poor French deceived him? "Did you really just call that THING your dog?"
"Well, yes I did. It's more fun to say than raving lunatic, though both are quite accurate."
Silence fell, not only among them, but the handful of other passengers who hadn't been frightened off. The novelty of seeing her, the small child, rile like an old woman remained there, but little else. The woman minding the gate contracted a distinct rosewater apprehension.
::YOU ARE SO NO FUN!:: Schuldich whined.
::I said you had to leave him alone, and I made that reciprocal. Sitting next to Fiona is a suitable eye-for-an-eye punishment for most of the things one can do on a plane. Therefore, if he torments you by having delicious thoughts, you can have revenge by nibbling a few of the.::
::Sweeeeeet. I love loopholes.::
To avoid any complaints of nepotism, she returned the use of their limbs to everyone at the same time. Nagi and Ken fell over. Fiona laughed dubiously. Aya seemed to fall too but in fact ended up kneeling beside Ken, who was gurgling and expelling the water from his mouth so frantically, one would have guessed he'd just been punched in the stomach.
::Embarrassed to break down in front of us? Why, we've seen worse. You OK? Please?"
He met her eyes where she had lingered between the walkway and the void of her family's former existence. "Don't talk to me." He spit again and wiped his mouth in the back of his hands.
"Ah, alright..." a serious nod with the blankest of stares, though she took off with the words, "Schu-baby! Wait for me!"
"God you people are sooooooo weird." Fiona sighed, appearing before her masters with her hankie at the ready. Her eyes had no particular hold though, and if she had spoken after the psychics or Ran and his lover, it could not be told.
Ran, however, did read her comment the way he'd wished. After all, she'd been nothing but antagonistic towards them both. The hankie he took but ungently from her outstretched hand, and only because of his suffering lover.
"So you think we're weird? That's just too damn bad."
A scowl and he turned back to his spluttering, stunned boyfriend, his expression softening considerably. He held the scrap of lace-edged linen out to Ken. Laid a hand on his shoulder out of a need to comfort him, even though he knew it was a weak gesture.
But Ran didn't know what else to do...
And even if he'd had any better ideas, he certainly wouldn't do anything more than that in front of Fiona.
Then he got to his feet. "Come on, anata," he said quietly, holding a hand out to him.
Ken, unlike his impromptu servant, accepted the palm that was offered him and clasped it all too tightly as he stood, refusing to release the white fingers from the confines of his own. He nodded though, softly, and with his damped lips smiled at last. "Yes, let's."
A glance here towards Fiona, who had taken the liberty of finding someone to cart their trunk onboard. Terra had no such thing as baggage check. One always watched one's bags being loaded. Nothing lost, nothing ending up in Tahiti. The moment her back was turned, he brushed his nose to Ran's, stilling the little kiss that had bloomed in his mind. How could he press his lips to those of his beloved when they stood so sullied by those of Brad Crawford! He did not think they would ever feel fit to brush against Ran again!
In the back of his mind, he kept two small truths though.
I will kiss Ran again. I have to. I can't go without that.
I'm a bastard. Brad kissed me. And all I could think was what a bastard I was, since he was good.
But I suppose that's what you get, being him.
I'm on Terra, the point of being here was so I wouldn't be afraid.
Yeah, right.
He dared a whisper. "You said we could be scared together, sweetheart well... alright then. I'm scared stiff. But let's go anyway. They know we're afraid, but let's pretend they don't. Let's just... pretend they're not there."
Ran's indecorousness filled the room.
"OK, let's at least play it cool."
With small and hesitant steps, he started pulling his beloved forward to the gates, as if in time, gravity would wipe those visitants away from space, or decide they had not existed at all. For a moment, it was just like getting on any other plane, save for calling after Fiona. He'd been on plenty, the humming in the hall leading to the cabin almost knocked him out at once, but the shifting of it failed to bother him.
But the moment they strode into the cabin, there they were, taking up the entire right row of seats. Saffie rooting through her bags in the first, Fiona leapt to join her, much to his chagrin at first, but then he decided at worst, it was for the best. Behind her, her brother and his lover. Farfie and Nagi in back, looking away from each other with mutual distaste.
In other circumstances, he would have found the mere notion of them all perched so... so pedestrian in their seats hysterical.
Now he just shook, and shivered, and hated them and hated Ran, though he dragged him into the first two seats on the left.
After all, who cared for Schwartz and their happiness? They stood shut off in their own minor and major insanities. He curled up in his own mind and just hung beside the window, not knowing what else to say.
What could he say?
"And why the hell did you want to come back here? Why is this place considered to be better than...Than where we came from?"
"Because it's my home..." he murmured to himself.
It was so soft, that murmur, that it almost didn't penetrate the morass of Ran's dark thoughts. But it did. And it made him feel even more like a bastard than he usually did in hindsight.
Which was nearly all the time.
He folded his arms loosely across his lap, drumming the fingers of one hand against the padded support for his armrest. Tried not to look at Ken. Tried to reason with himself, telling himself that he was justified for his outburst.
But Ran didn't succeed in either: Ken was too beautiful to be ignored and he knew deep down that he was only fooling himself.
And he knew he'd hurt him, and cruelly.
As usual...
Oh, damn.
So forgetting the madmen across the aisle, he uncrossed his arms and draped the one nearest Ken on the armrest between them. Paused, and then reached over and snatched up his hand, holding it tightly.
"I'm an unfeeling bastard, and I'm sorry."
From somewhere behind them, Crawford piped up with, "Hear, hear!"
And then, "Well, he is, Savil darling."
"Exactly!" Schuldich shouted then, clapping as loudly as he could. "We should have a toast to that and, well if you're not happy with it, we can toast to something else too. Oh alewife!"
A little wink here in the direction of Crawford, not that the Stewardess would have cared, one way or the other she was plainly pissed. "What can I do for you, sir?"
"A bottle of champagne, please."
"We're not serving drinks until after takeoff."
"Sure about that?" A twangy bat of his lashes that seemed barely enough to convince her to speak louder, but nonetheless, she bustled off to wherever the booze was being hoarded.
Savil rolled her eyes but finally managed to come up with her CD player (something she intended to make use of the very moment they were airborne) and her book, but not the disc she had sought. "Nagi-chan, have you got my copy of the 1982 Aida in Dresden?"
No answer, but a jewel case floated over Aya's head in the general direction of the little herald, who thanked him non-verbally with a quick sample of the red-headed Weiss boy's internal strife.
"Coooooooool," Fiona marveled. Her friend shrugged. So did Nagi, presumably.
As for Ken, he remained rather silent. He had grown used to being in display physically, to the point of enjoying it, but having his heart passed around on a dish... this he imagined would take some getting used to. As if speaking could at all further the tears, the naked blush that had settled on his face.
As if anything he said he might be theirs, though some part of him maintained it made no difference, what he said, and thought of saying. He pulled a few switched and the armrest folded up leaving nothing between them.
"It doesn't matter, what you think you are, it makes no difference to me, because I don't believe you, and I don't even think you believe you anymore."
The plane, which had its seats assumed quite quickly owing to its small size and earlier outdoor show, gave a little lurch and started to creep forward, and so did his eyes, albeit only because they happened to be fixed to the concrete beneath his feet.
He sighed.
"God will hurt."
"Shuttup, ya fuckin' shit for brains!" Then sighed again.
"Funny, I call him almost the same thing sometimes..." the elder telepath mused. "Isn't it fun?"
This time he gulped. It was true...
Oh, it had smarted, Ken's astute observation. Of course, he was right, and of course, Ran wasn't going to admit it. Didn't want to accept it himself.
And he really didn't like hearing that Ken didn't believe him, that he didn't care.
But then, what the hell did you expect?
Ah, I'm so tired. And I'm a damn fool.
Why couldn't this have gone better? Why did they have to come along?
Why can't everyone just leave us alone?
Not that it matters anymore that they won't...
The plane picked up speed, and then he felt the overwhelming pull of gravity as the plane lifted off. A few minutes and the odd feeling gradually faded. Ran unhooked his safety belt, and resignedly withdrew his hand from Ken's, letting it drop onto his lap. Yawned quietly and rubbed at his eyes with thumb and forefinger.
"Fine, Ken," he murmured. "You don't care, don't want to hear it, don't believe me; well, I know that's your right. I only wish you had mentioned all that three days ago in your bedroom at Koneko no Sunu ie. Then you wouldn't have been put through the aggravation of being in the presence of someone you can't stand."
He stood up then, and stalked off, only acknowledging Schuldich's and Crawford's whistling and cackling with the flick of a middle finger. He clutched at seat after empty seat until he'd reached the back. There he flopped down in the windowseat, and drew the shade down over the portal. The attendant came around to inquire, possibly (probably, he guessed) intending to urge him back to his seat, but he gave her a look so foul that she promptly backed away. He was not going to move, did not want anything.
As for him wanting anyone, that was an entirely different matter.
::They should have written "buffet" on the door to the plane. Ne, Liebechen?::
::Ummmmmmmm...::
A small mental lick grazed the candy rain regret blooming in her mind, like a kitten trying the salt from an owner's wound. ::You taste so fine when you're sad.::
::And you have no remorse for making me brunch. I'm glad, I want someone to enjoy this. YES!::
::It's good, itn't it? :P::
For his trouble, he got a spoonful of syrup that ran out through his veins like whiskey. Not his alcohol of choice. At least, not on planes. There, ah! There he indulged in his cheap wedding favorite, something so unrefined, so passe that just sampling the runoff of Crawford's embarrassment over his lover was intoxicating in and of itself.
He got a bottle of cheap party champagne. He'd had one glass of it already, but said glass he threw over his shoulder, where it clattered and splattered, being plastic and all, not to mention forsaken in favor of popping the thin neck of the bottle straight in his mouth.
Fiona and Saffie both turned in their seats when they heard him gurgling. Fiona crammed her fist in her mouth to keep from laughing, Saffie shook her head and blew him a kiss. He caught it in mid air, handed Bradley the bottle, stretched the kiss, invisible and incorporeal as it was, between his fingers like a rubber band and launched it at Ran's head.
Courtesy of the Schuldich's powers, Ran obviously felt the imaginary missile, for he jerked quite sharply.
As for Savil, she shuddered in mock disgust and flipped on her CD player. The smooth rush of the overture stole over her mind, calming it as mermaids calm the ocean, freeing her, breaking ever cloud in her. It worked better than shields, the almost indecent rippling of those violins, coaxing out the voices. She offered Ken a little, but he turned her down, she offered to read him "Ghosts" as it was meant to be read -- all feelings, no words, no intrusions of Mr. Auster and his clumsy, brilliant prose.
Crawford watched his lover knock back swig after swig of the cheap Californian bubbly in ever growing disgust. Dismay. At last, he summoned the charmed attendant over and ordered a snifter and a bottle of the best French brandy they had in their stores.
Haven't I taught you any better than that?
Really, you're behaving like a...
..a...rock star...
"You know...I never really thought about that before..."
But you do, and you look like one too.
All sex and sin and rebellion...
I must say...I'm suddenly rather turned on...
Crawford looked him up and down quite lasciviously, then shot a look back at the sulking Ran -- who as it turned out had fallen asleep. The precognitive nudged Schuldich, gesturing towards the snoozing redhead with a glance.
"Isn't he cute?"
And isn't he so fuckable? What do you think he'd do if Nagi started sucking him off just now?
I wouldn't mind seeing how he looks when he...
A leer, and Crawford switched the conversation over to Ken.
He's not bad, you know. Nowhere NEAR as good as you, but...
The attendant came back with his order. Crawford set the opened bottle on his tray, and sank back in his seat, taking his first sip with relish.
Oh, and he definitely responded to me. Did you feel it?
Makes me wonder...
Savil promptly gave up, snapped on her riot gear and dove into her book and her aria, leaving the world far, far behind, save for the persistent tapping of Fiona's ankle against hers which she was fighting to ignore or resist taking under control with a quick nonculpable choke hold. Too bad she didn't have physical shields as well. Oh well boys would be boys, brats would be brats. Aya tasted yummy when he dreamed. It was like having a never ending chocolate coke jolly rancher.
As for Schuldich, he quite purposefully allowed a rivulet of white, foamy liquid to go rolling down his chin and onto the front of his crop top, where it left a long, coiling transparent streak across his chest. Made his neck shine.
::Oh, I felt it alright! From you AND him! You think I'm jealous, eh? Insisting he's not as good as me? I wouldn't care if he was, even though I KNOW he couldn't be. You know why? I love it when you get me candy...::
As testament to this, he leaned back, smiled up at Bradley and passed him a little lick of Ken's explosion of emotions. Like burning ice cream they were, thick and fleeting and bloodied -- a sunset margarita drenched in grenadine.
::Wonder what though, Mon petit lapin? The nature of the universe and why you get to see it before all others when it tries to flash us? Just what has come over our two lovers from white? What they dream of between moments trying not to fondle each other? If you would like to take that one like a Lord unto a concubine? Sweet, and fast and knowingly? As if he were a child? I think you do, all of the above! And you are well justified!::
With a flick of his wrists, he had tossed his tail over Bradley's thighs, though of all things, he looking into his eyes then, gently as if they spoke beside a fire somewhere deep within the woods.
Where the smirk could have been for any number of other reasons.
::Isn't it nice, knowing we could have him right now if we liked, and make him like it? But force is so dull and inelegant.::
::I have an idea...::
::I've thought of a game we could play!::
And I've just had a vision...just a glimmer of one. A very delightful one. I would think it would taste like broiled lobster. It's yours to sample...
Later...
"But I'm getting ahead of myself, and being quite rude aren't I?" A smile and Crawford's gaze wandered to those mysterious, glowing eyes. Paused there and then slid down to the curve of his throat.
"Look at the mess you've made," he murmured, hooking his finger under the neckline of his tank. Let it slid back and forth over warm, moist skin, nail lightly scraping flesh.
I want to tear this off you. Tear it all off you and fuck your brains out.
And, just so you know, I will be doing that later...
But right now...
He bent his head and began to lap all traces of the champagne from Schuldich's throat. Tasted salt and the slightly herbal flavor of his skin.
Tell me all about this new game.
Schuldich bit his lips closed and rubbed himself against Brad, all but forcing his flesh into that juicy, warm mouth. He had himself turned almost in his seat by then, his head thrown back.
::Oh, you do know how to tempt me!::
A long looping thread of knowing.
::But of course. As for my game? Oh, it's much more fun than naked hopscotch or even human furniture!::
He tossed one of his legs over Bradley's thighs and pushed their upper bodies apart then, as if he had to look him in the eyes to say something grave. Rather, he held his cheek as tightly as he could, feeling it tighten with the very epitome of evil grins, one he could not resist teasingly grazing with his bubble-bepricked lips.
::It's pretty simple though, and yet, quite taxing I'm sure. Like one of those lacy iron tavern puzzles. I mean, how long has it been since we seduced someone? I'll take Aya, and you take Ken and the first one to get their kitten into bed wins. But no powers, no drugs, no booze, no... restraints. And don't think Saffie would hesitate to rat either of us out for cheating! It'll just be us and our... charms.::
The armrest fell between them. Schuldich's restraining leg was caught up and pushed aside, and the redhead soon found himself draped across their row of seats with one randy American toying with the waistband of his shorts. One who was also chuckling with delight.
"I do adore your devious mind, liebe."
And I take you up on your proposition.
And that would explain the vision I had just prior... He bent to suckle his throat, grinding his hips against Schuldich's as he dropped his shields and let him see the vision he'd had -- one of a screaming Ken, and an equally teary-eyed, horribly stricken Aya.
I knew you'd enjoy that.
And now you know why I wanted to keep it from you that much longer.
He undid the top button of his shorts, tugged down the zipper just to tease him, then slid his hands upwards to pluck at his nipples through his tank top.
Oh, it will be fun won't it? Getting into their pants.
"After all, a little variety can go a long way in spicing up a love affair..."
Of course, it will destroy theirs...
Quel dommage.
He leaned down and took his mouth, kissing him as if it were the first time he'd ever done so, his hands now roaming under the tank.
Do me one little favor?
The night you take that luscious little Abyssinian...Get it on film.
Schuldich smirked under those curious lips, meeting them with a long, willing caress of his own, tangling his fingers in Bradley's hair. Ah, perhaps such motions belonged to young girls, not as young as his sister, but those just learning to kiss, save that they hung so close not in some token of submission, but as a sign of a serious desire for contact.
That and Oh! He did love playing in Crawford's hair, and did so, crunching it up between his fingers, spinning it up around his palms... pausing to wave to Nagi who glowered and went back to turning his empty eyes to the window.
He took it and pulled, causing a little irked hiss, but he had known so well his lips had curled almost sweetly at that moment, and he could not resist the shock sporting them would get him.
I can't resist a lot of things.
::Oh, but thou dost shower me with chocolates and drown me in cheap bubbly for a chance to run you dainty hands all over me. You have ruined the underworld for my bed, as if I really were a demon, but then again, how can we be sure? And now you will tear apart two innocents just to, ah, re-affirm our membership in the Mile High Club!::
With that, he snatched his lover down for another kiss, another shock of their waists wrapping together and a quick creamy acid slide show of dredged up memories that would have banished Aya and Ken from the arms of even saints.
::I think taping Aya when I fuck him blind would be at best small reflection of my gratitude.::
::Don't act like you think I'm not into all that.::
::You know how it turns me on when you share those little morsels of yours.::
::So what do you see yourself doing to the Hidaka-dono? Mnn?::
This paired with an odd little inflection, "You called me Liebe out loud and he wasn't awake to..."
Schuldich's voice trailed off and he began to fidget underneath Bradley, as if something has stuck him suddenly and he knew not what. He reached into his drooping shorts, first one pocket, then the other, finally coming up with a small, white bar of plastic, which he pressed into his lover's hands as if he'd been asked for a stick of gum.
He met the nonverbal confusion with a yawn and a distinctly disinterested, "Oh, that. I guess it's the remote for the butt plug I'm wearing."
Fiona's eyes could not have gone any wider if she had found herself faced with a repentant Ran, offering to go down on her in apology. Something she possibly would have looked even less kindly upon than her present situation.
She reached over and plucked one of Savil's earphones away, whispering into the white swirls beneath, "Do you know what your brother is DOING!?"
The younger telepath regarded her with not a twinge of emotion.
Fiona just winced, now able to hear some of the soaring sopranos her companion so favored. "They're..."
::Having sex on the plane?::
"YES!"
::Oh, well, you should have seen them on the flight from New York to London.::
"You mean you're..."
"Not even interested, let alone upset." ::They do this all the bloody time, it's like walking, or sleeping or getting drunk off their asses.::
"BUT!"
Savil shrugged, clicked back to the beginning of the interlude she had been enjoying, and promptly popped her nose back into her book.
But then, ::Ne, are they making you uncomfortable? Ah... sorry, dumb question. Here you are. This should drown them out.:: A few clicks and a second pair of headphones had appeared on the discman. These the servant girl took and timidly placed upon her head as if fearing they would tickle.
They did worse than that.
Oh man, maybe I'd be better off listening to them...!
Nagi, bored to the point of restlessness, abruptly got to his feet, and, after having a brief disagreement with Farfarello over him moving his legs back long enough to let him pass (which ended with a steak knife hurdling through the air and embedding itself into the Irishman's leg), went to the back of the plane. Sent the armrests crashing into their cubbyholes between the seats, and flopped himself down, legs stretched out before him. Threw up his shields and watched the odd wisp of cloud sail past his window.
At least I can't see them now. Don't have to be bothered with Schuldich's forays into my mind.
But I wonder what they were talking about...?
Does it involve Weiss?
Ha! Probably...Not that I really care about what happens to them.
He lay his head against the deep cushioned seat and felt himself fall into a sleepy lull. Jerked himself out of it when he heard Farfarello spew forth an impromptu rant on God.
No, I don't need to fall asleep now, not with Schuldich too concerned with being fucked and Savil too lost in her music to mind Farfarello.
I wish it was me at risk of being fucked by Crawford...
He sat up, summoning the attendant forth and requesting freshly brewed Colombian coffee, with thoroughly chilled cream on the side. A look and the door to the overhead compartment slid back. His bag smoothly emerged from it, and sailed through the air to him. He rested his chin on his hand as the items inside were shuffled around until he found what he wanted: A book -- specifically, a book on tape, that of Nigel Terry reading "The Once and Future King."
On went the headphones, and Nagi, at last, was able to relax.
"Nii-chan! Niiiii-channnn!"
Ran looked up from his open Math book just in time to see his sister burst into his room. "Maa, maa, Aya. What is it?"
"This!" A red leather-bound book was thrust at him, the gold-leafed title of which named it to be a collection of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales.
"What...?"
"Read to me?"
"Aya, you're 8, you can read..."
"Not like you can."
He glanced down at his books and scattered papers. "Uh...I have homework and chores yet. Can't you ask..."
"Otou-san isn't home yet, and Okaa-san is busy." She pouted a little, shuffling one sock-covered toe in the carpet. "Come on, Ran. Please?"
"...Well..."
"Please, please, please, ple -- "
"All right, all right! I'll read to you," he said, exasperated in a way but yet, not really. He pushed the book away and sat up. "Anything but the story about the mermaid. I don't like that one."
"Okay! No mermaids." She pressed the book into his hands, then looped her arm through his and proceeded to drag him off his bed and out of his room.
"Where are we going?"
"Outside. I want to sit under the ginkgo and watch the leaves fall as you read."
The story, a tale of a little toy soldier who loved a ballerina doll, had come to an end. As it was the third one he had read to his sister, Ran begged off reciting any more, despite her protests and coaxing. At last, she gave up, and sank herself into a fairy tale of her own imagining.
"One day, I want to be a princess, and live in a castle with a moat. Like the kind I've seen in picture books about France."
"Those aren't castles, they're called chateaux," Ran proclaimed most certainly. "And you..."
He was going to say "...Can't be a princess," but he couldn't; it was the sort of thing his father always said whenever something they did or said struck him as being too fanciful. He knew he could take the crushing of his silly fantasies and useless dreams, but Aya? She was all spun sugar feelings and cloud wishes. Bruised so easily inside if one hit her just right. He'd seen it happen, and it had hurt him terribly.
And so...
...I can't do it...
So he smiled, and watched her mimic his expression -- albeit a shade more brightly. "...You'll make a lovely princess."
The little girl clapped with glee. "Do you think?"
A nod and she started twirling the end of one braid, dropping it at the little disapproving shake of his head. She shrugged then, and started planning out her wardrobe, naming off the colors and fabrics, spinning around as she did.
"And I'll wear ribbons in my hair and I'll have a biiig white horse, and..."
"Who's going to defend your realm?"
Aya skidded to a stop and promptly tumbled to the ground in front of him. "Huh?"
"Knights; armies. Every castle had men to defend and keep it and the land surrounding it. Who will protect your lands?"
"Why do boys always think about fighting and stuff like that?"
"Because...It's necessary."
She threw up her hands in exasperation, sending little girl sized piles of leaves cascading down on Ran's head. "You're too serious."
He shrugged, looking rather pained, but she seemed to miss it. And then, "You'll be my knight."
"Me? Huh. I'm no knight."
"Yeah, you are! You're always telling me to be careful, and putting bandages on my cuts when I'm not, and buying me candy and sneaking it to me when Okaa-san isn't around, and you..." Here she bit her lip, suddenly suspecting that he was poking a bit of fun at her.
"And I what?"
"You read to me." She made a face at him, and dodged him when he tried to swat her.
"And those are the things you think a knight is supposed to do?"
Aya nodded solemnly, and kicked up another shower of leaves, scattering them all over Ran's lap. Giggled when he protested.
"So, nii-chan? Are you gonna say yes?"
Aya was kneeling beside him now, hands looped together as if she were begging, but smiling assuredly as if she already knew the answer, knew she had successfully persuaded him to bend to her will.
And she had, as usual.
"...Yeah, I'll be your knight, Aya."
And then Ran fell awake with a jerk. Blinked stupidly at the dimly lit cabin, not knowing for a moment where he was. Where Aya was.
And then he remembered, the grim realization swelling and spilling over him like an angry wave. He heard the sound of Schuldich's gasping, Crawford's murmurs, and the damned shocked blush flooded over his face. He dipped his head lower, eartails jetting across them like a shield of sorts, and peered at the top of Ken's head over the seats.
Never mind them. What am I going to do about him?
It's just a mess...My whole fucking life is, for that matter.
He yawned quietly, not bothering to hide it behind his hands. Oh, I wish I could sleep some more, lose myself...
Anything to get away from their damn prying...
Because what does it matter if I dream?
A moment, and he waved a hand for the attendant, and, almost magically a carafe of water and a foil packet of pills were presented from the depths of the tiny pushcart. He took one, folding the thin metal edges over the other and slipping it into his pocket. Settled back in his seat, his eyes pinned to Ken until they were completely closed.
"Butt plug, hm? How interesting."
I've never used one before...
Crawford punched the button with his thumb, and was rewarded with the sound of a muted hum from the device and a gasp from his lover.
Mmm...I prefer the real thing to toys.
But I certainly don't mind you playing.
He snaked his hand under Schuldich's head and sank his fingers into his hair, tugging it just enough to force his head back a little. Dipped down and bit him just under his jaw hard enough to bruise. Kissed him deeply.
Then he rocked back onto his knees, and started fumbling with the snug, parted folds of cloth covering Schuldich's groin. Slipped his hand inside to play with his favorite sex toy, and sent him an image of himself holding a naked, moaning, weeping Ken against a tile shower wall while he, half-dressed and smirking, took him.
And that's just one tableau out of many, my beautiful demon.
Oh SHIT! I knew I should have tried this thing out before I popped it in.
Schuldich found his legs had involuntarily locked together and were shivering beneath their red and white tights, right in tune with the wavering pitch of his plaything. His teeth ground and he squirmed under Crawford, somewhere between trying to wedge the plug in deeper and find a way to coax it away from the particularly sensitive flesh it was presently meeting with all BUT enough force to bring him to climax momentarily.
THIS IS THEN 'LO' SETTING!?
It wasn't often Brad laughed purely mentally, but now was own of those times. He glanced up at him, fighting to stay still, fighting to keep from smacking that gorgeous smart-ass smirk. The hand around his penis squeezed him and he bit his lip to keep from outright howling.
::OK! I BIT OFF MORE THAN I COULD CHEW! TELEPATHS DO SCREW UP YOU KNOW!!! I ADMIT IT!::
::You know what we're gonna do with this?:: Inquired between his panting as he began to wilt into the seats, his gulping breaths signaling defeat. ::Forget about Ken for a minute! We're gonna put this in Nagi and make him wear it ALL DAY!::
Another capital idea! You control him and I'll put it in.
And yes, you can mind the remote on it.
Crawford slipped said contraption into the cloth catchall behind Fiona's seat and slid down to lay between his legs, pinning him there with his weight. "First things first, though."
He pulled the skintight shorts a little further down Schuldich's hips, freeing him. Gave him a sly grin.
"Right now, I want you to cum for me."
And he lowered his head over him, hoping to give him that much more impetus to fulfill his request.
Schuldich watched the remote part ways with his reach with his eyes quite wide with displeasure, his bottom shaking with the now most unwelcome visitor within. Ever muscle in his stomach had gone to knots and the tightness was spreading steadily, easing up into his chest.
"Believe me, I'd like to!" He snapped, swallowing down a groan. "I hate this thing already!"
And yet somehow his limbs went limp and easy.
But that might have had something to do with the fact Bradley had decided to wet him down despite his over-stimulated fidgeting. He sighed, a perfect little moist breath that betrayed them more than any of their whispered insinuations. He crossed his legs, shoes and all, over Bradley's back and gasped beneath the pressure of his warm body and his tongue pressed into the slit of his member. The seat squeaked where he clawed at it when he bucked up against his lips.
His orgasm, which felt hours away, hit him like a hard slap or the force of all his bones breaking. Either way, he slumped back against the seat, finding the hand he had stuffed in his mouth to keep from screaming was bloodied and he had not the power of his afterglow to hold it up and rue the damage.
The plug continued to buzz away. Suddenly it didn't feel so bad.
"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm." ::Stay a sec, Brad. Right there with your nose against me. It tickles.::
Crawford complied with his request; after all, Schuldich had been most accommodating to him of late.
Not to mention that he was rather enjoying the pleasurable little sounds he was making; the taste of him. He smiled around the softening member he still held in his mouth.
Like this? he thought, nuzzling him lightly.
I like the way you smell. He did it again, then withdrew. Dabbed away the traces of his lover's juices from the corners of his mouth and, locking gazes with his Schuldich, licked them clean.
I like the way you taste...
I like the way other men look at you.
He stretched out atop him and kissed him wholeheartedly, and sent him an image of Schuldich wearing a crystal studded leather dog collar and long, slender chain -- which was held by Crawford -- and nothing else.
Showed them having sex on a pile of cushions in the middle of a smoky club, surrounded by a throng of leering, drooling men.
That's what I want to do with you. I want to take you in front of others, let them see how beautiful you are, and how pitiful they are because they can't have you.
Why, of course, I wouldn't care if you slept with any of the ones you like! But they don't have to know that at the time, liebe.
"There's where the fun lies, my demon. Some of it, anyway..."
::Crystal studded leather dog collar? Where DO you get those?::
::I want a cigarette. I want a cigarette in the worst way. Stupid no smoking regulations.::
::Sorry, but that need strikes me presently as someone more urgent and practically fulfilled when compared to that collar.::
::Not that I wouldn't wear one for you.:;
One hand lazily reached up and tweaked his cat ears. ::Not much of a difference there.::
"Mmm, yes. But there is something to be said for those who play hard to get, isn't there, mon petit lapin?"
::Or those who are playing hard to get without their knowing it.::
Speaking of hard to get, he wriggled his way far enough from his seat that he could reach over and collect the remote, which he turned to the off position just as quickly as he could, before sinking back down to those warm, sacred spaces under Brad.
::One of my favorite places to be, audience or not.::
His lips curled in and he glossed them over with his saliva, pinching them between his teeth so they flushed crimson for a moment.
"That's quite a hard-on you've got there. What are you planning to do with it?"
Oh, you mustn't mind me and my quirky fantasies, liebe. I'm just...rather proud of you.
But...hmmm...maybe we could get one, and have Nagi wear it? Just for special occasions, and only at night...
Crawford snuck another kiss, smirking at his lover and gesturing at his groin. "This? Why, this is for you."
And because of you...
With a kiss to his navel, Crawford leaned back on his knees and removed one of Schuldich's shoes. Hooked his fingers in the waistband of his shorts, and started wriggling them off with a little help from his lover. Left them dangling around the other shod foot. Admired his half-naked lover unabashedly.
Sometimes, I think the anticipation of having sex is just as pleasurable as actually having it.
I said sometimes ...
The toy was eased out with a gentle pop! and handed over, and Crawford went for a toy of his own. Dug down into his pants pocket and produced a vial of oil. Then said pants were unfastened and pushed down to his thighs.
Never let it be said that Brad Crawford comes to parties unprepared.
A quick, heavy coat and he was on him, and then in him with a throaty moan and squeaking leather, his oil slicked hands curling around him and clutching at Schuldich's shoulders. Lips sucking on and kissing at the side of his neck.
...Love you...
"Mmmmmmmmm, danke," Schuldich whispered into Bard's ear. "You do get me the best presents." This said, he sighed between the soothing presence of Bradley in his body and replaced his words with his tongue, nibbling at his ear.
And then he stopped himself, hung quiet and still beneath him for some time, shuddering with his thrusts, motion by motion making himself unfold as much as he could. One of his arms came up and brushed over his eyes, obscuring the ticked white of the cabin ceiling. Brad smacked him for it, and he found his lover now poised over him, staring into his eyes. How could Ken not revel in such fearsome beauty! He chided the boy he knew and barely knew. God it was exquisite, god it was feeling his whole body rent apart by that fantastic cock!
"Shred me," be breathed with the barest tingle of a laugh to his words, but he crossed his arms over Crawford's back then, fingers locked on wrists as if he fought to keep them there.
And then he kissed him, wound their mouths together.
And he wondered many things as the leather warmed against his back.
Hidaka Ken had never before been so glad of getting to stay after school and clean the classroom with a few other little boys and girls. It was warm at school, warmer than at home, and they had, from the third floor of the elementary a pretty good view of the town, which has transformed itself over night into one of those little white icing pictures from European post cards, rather than the ever so ordinary flocks of mismatched buildings that dominated Japan. Not that he didn't enjoy that. He figured children elsewhere got bored always looked at the same sorts of buildings, seeing a skyline that didn't look to have been cut with a broken pair of pinking shears. He also figured the other children around him seemed just as preoccupied as he was. That projection, doubtless, but it comforted him enough to keep him dancing with the mop until the floor shone.
"You gonna go home and play in the snow?" a little lass sucking on her finger presently asked of him.
He didn't remember her name at the moment, but he answered anyway, "I dunno. I dunno a lotta things."
"Like why the sky is blue?"
"They sky's grey today."
"Or where baby's come from."
"I don't care."
That got him a fleet of odd little looks.
"Well I don't!"
He had, after all, a single glimmer of knowledge they knew not of. A snowdrop in the snow. So who cared why the sky was blue? Who cared where babies came from? Or why the stars sparkled? He knew something even more fun than staying up late or having candy. Who could want candy when...
...he still had no idea what he would say to Kaze when he got home.
And his loins thrilled to think that one afternoon had ruined everything he knew of being a little boy. Changed the insinuation of his eyes upon the world. He wondered if they had changed color. They hadn't.
He didn't fall coming home from school. He barely even realized he had left school again. Not for the reasons of the quiz he had actually gotten good marks in, not for the mangled little origami blooms he had folded... not even for the flurry that began, for that shook him from his drifting thoughts, settled him on a bench outside one of the noodle shops, where he sat for so very long that the traces of snow crept up around him just as they did the road signs and the statuettes of beckoning cats and merciful goddesses. His eyes began to fail him, rather than merely shift his point of view. Ken saw snow-kami for the first and only time that evening.
A heavy blue blanket had crept over the world by the time he awakened, thinking he heard bells or harps passing him. With a sigh, he resumed his walk home, leaving a veil of discarded snowflakes behind him as he went along. From the corner of his street he found no sign of his mother's car, no indication of her presence otherwise -- no haze of black the spoke and fumbled at his hair.
No sign of anyone alive save him.
He raced up to his door and ducked inside, leaning up against the door he had slammed. His books spilled.
And then he laughed for awhile, all by himself, left tracks of water over the floor as he headed for the sliding glass door in the kitchen. So much for manners, but no one would know.
Out in the cyan embrace of descending night, he found the sky had indeed turned blue, but starless. The stars had thrown themselves to earth and spoke to him, brushed his cheeks, the only reassurance he could need as he crushed a handful of them into a little orb and lobbed it at Kaze's window. Ice broke someone what hovered closer and closer. The other boy's snowball caught him upside the head and he collapsed giggling into a shallow bank of white.
"Oi! Kenken! Where have you been?"
"I hadda stay after school."
Kaze's face appeared above the fence, seeming skeptical and quite expectant. The younger child rolled over onto his back, throwing his arms out beside him. Spread-eagled, but they hadn't gotten to that yet.
"Sure you did."
"I did! I hadda mop."
"Well, if you want the truth, so did I."
Some scuffles and the scraping of his boots as he jumped the fence into the Hidaka's garden. He ran one of his boots along the lines of Ken's impression in the field of cold stardust. "Yuki no tenshi."
"What's that?"
"It's what you've got in the snow there with you. Here, I won't mess it up, that way you can look at it. Mmm... even better."
With a few little mumbles about the temperature, Kaze threw himself down beside Ken, winding his gloves into his bar palm. "Well..." The breath of that one word caught and rose like lace from the white earth.
"Well what?" He laughed.
"Will you...?"
"Let you be my boyfriend?"
"Yeah, what did you decide, I've been waiting all day."
"Me too!"
"Waiting for what, this is all your fault! Being indecisive."
His blush made his pillow go to water, and his red little pout seemed but a shadow crossing his face as he rolled over and planted his lips smack against Kaze's.
"I've going to take that as a yes."
He also took Ken, right there in the snow, leaving not a trace of anything remotely like an angel behind. Hiharu found they had made her some tea when she came home, and she was too grateful to ask after the marks about the shroud of her garden. After all, she had left a few herself, gathering up snow to sprinkle over her son and his lover, who smiled at each other knowingly, as if they had been wedded in secret.
Ken woke up with a start, still not certain if he had been truly sleeping or lost in the traces of his headache. He held one of his wrists to his nose, finding it not only more than ten years too old for his fragile frame, but that it bore not the crystalline steel tang of new fallen snow. Then he realized he hadn't been asleep at all... only wishing he could sleep. He was either too cold or not cold enough though. One way or the other. His hand stole over the seat beside him. Nothing. He tried a few strands of his hair for that familiar scent... nothing if not summer dirt and welcome fingers.
The sense he hadn't really been sleeping at all, that night dreams became and excuse for daydreams.
Scrubbing at his eyes with the sides of his hands, he rose from his seat and wandered back a few rows until he came across Ran.
Who he sat down beside, and coaxed to lean against his shoulder as he slumbered.
It was like a Spring morning in Paris being inside of Schuldich: Glorious. Crawford inched his hand forward and tangled it in his lover's trailing red-gold locks, continuing his tender assault on that maddeningly sweet mouth. No, it hadn't escaped his notice that Schuldich didn't return his sentiments verbally or mentally, but...He really didn't have to do it. For that matter, he rarely said it himself; considered it a cheap, overused phrase, one oft uttered when the emotion wasn't really felt.
But Crawford, who did feel it, occasionally did slip, would cringe a bit inside afterward waiting for the blow to come. A vestige of his childhood, and his oh-so-loving parents.
However, such blows never fell. There was never any literal pushing away, any insults. Just...this.
Crawford couldn't help but feel grateful, and he expressed that gratitude in what ever way struck his fancy at the time.
He arched up on his elbows, sliding his wandering hand back into place on Schuldich's shoulder, and practically slammed into him, he thrust so hard.
"Anything, liebe. Anything."
"Shut-Achhhhhhh-up."
Schuldich hissed through his teeth, arching into those hands clasped to shi shoulders, the whole body that was offering him those jarring fits of pressure in his belly. His chin would not me the only thing bruised today. His cat ears started to fall off and he let them go while that cold sea breath of demons and sea beasts rained down upon him.
Bradley's inner turmoil he took in and cradled close until there was nothing left inside him save then blank surrealism of walking down a deserted beach on a cloudy day with the waves asking to take him and drown him.
But Crawford was taking him.
"No, here, this is why."
For who the exclamation stood he could not say, and even while he was fighting to keep his breath steady between being impaled, he tore his lover's glasses away and began to drizzle his face with the air that fled his body and his ever soar and crimson lips.
Held him still when he tried to tug away. Retraced every tempting nuance of his mouth.
If I can't breath than neither will you.
::Shhhhhhh Bradley.::
Her face had swirled in Ran's dreams off and on until he was finally dragged out of his drug-induced sleep by sensations unknown. How long he'd lain there he didn't know, didn't really care. All he knew was that his pillow had grown somewhat harder, and warmer, but strangely more comfortable than it had been. It now smelled less like new car and more like...
Ran turned his face to the column of flesh that was Ken's neck and nuzzled it ever so lightly. Cracked open his eyes to find himself partially buried in a vale of chocolate silk floss. He raised his head then, and found himself staring into a pair of mournful eyes, slightly red with weariness.
He didn't say a word, kept his mind trained to the most innocent thoughts. Just stared at him, lost in some silent communion.
Then he gave Ken a tentative, questioning kiss.
Please don't be mad at me, Ran. Please?
Even if I woke you up... He kicked himself under the seat and hid his toes away. Damn, I didn't mean to. I just wanted to mind you awhile... I couldn't imagine you feeling alright... me watching over Aya Fujimiya while he naps. What a joke... anyway...
He returned Ran's little kiss with one as warm and light as he could manage, and somehow it reminded him of everything he wished to say, Ran too perhaps, for he nodded before sinking back down against his shoulder. He slid his arm around him there, and tipped his head away, wondering, marveling. Just knowing somehow not feeling completely ingenuous. He meant not to pet him under his silky shirt, really just to... to feel his weight against him, the certain curves of him so distinctly Ran, the way they fit together. He knew that body naked, and tried to place his favorite places where it met him, with the most favored haunts of his eyes. And yet...
You fee like a baby, you know? At least to me. I'd never understand, if I could see us, how much you have to hate yourself. You feel so trusting there near me. How can you, Ran? Do this to yourself...
Let me do this when you know I'll just flip out if...
His hand reached up and tangled in his bangs, as if he soothed and infant indeed, willed it not to cry, though no tears had been shed. Not today.
It only seemed a matter of time.
"I said we could just be scared together, so you know what? That's not a promise I'm about to go back on."
Ran closed his eyes, choose to concentrate solely on Ken and what his hands were doing than on sleeping. And Ken got an arm slung around his waist and a cuddle for his troubles. "Mm. I didn't expect you to come back here to me. I didn't expect you to break your promise."
"I've never known you to do things like that."
"But..." And here his voice dropped lower. "I...I am."
And I've gone so far as to admit to it before, not even to...
He added, whispering, "...Afraid."
Why am I thinking about him now?
He turned his face towards the curve of Ken's neck as if to hide. Too many lingering ghosts, too many failures, and he didn't want to remember anymore.
The shields stayed down, but Crawford went quiet. Lost himself in his lover; every hitch of his chest, the feel of his hands swarming his body. How he felt from the inside, all velvet and hot and smooth. And so, he slowed down a bit, just a little, but still moving just as deep as before.
Jerked away to draw breath, only to be snatched at and pulled in for another kiss. And it was in such a position, his mouth melded to Schuldich's, his lover's legs twined around his lower back, that Crawford found his release.
He collapsed on him and lay there for a few weary breaths, then he pulled out and pulled away. Retrieved his glasses from where they had tumbled under Fiona's seat, miraculously unscathed. Fortunately, he couldn't say the same for himself. He ached. Bruises were already blooming on his skin. One shoulder bore the imprint of Schuldich's teeth.
And he felt another headache coming on.
Never had he had such a glorious flight since...Well, since the last time he and Schuldich took a trip.
There was only one problem:
Damn...I need a cigarette...
"Me too," Schuldich offered verbally, reaching up and running a few fingers through his bangs, only to find, much to his annoyance, that said fingers were trembling a little. Unwashed pleasure, unspent calm. He spit on his palm and ran it over his soar chin. The skin remained wet, so he tilted himself upwards, rather like a romance era tumbler and smudged at Bradley's shoulder having reached it through his semi-buttoned collar.
Brad regarded him with a sort of uncommonly unreadable look, his blue eyes falling down the length of his ragged body -- the mussed hair, the wrinkled tank, his oddly stretched tights that with their stripes seemed to be making his legs look rather a-symmetrical at the moment... besides the odd placement of his shorts.
But Crawford's eyes fixed on something in particular, something he had already availed himself of.
And beyond there.
Schuldich regarded the semen and oil dripping from his entrance with a faint whistle.
"Oh... eww." And then his hands flew to his hips. "Well, I'm not going to sit in that!"
The deactivated plug wound up back where it belonged, preventing any further leakage. ::I think I'll let you in me for awhile longer...:: Accentuated with a little sway of his torso, such as one might administer upon a nearly empty bottle. ::It's only fair considering I'm ON you.::
At least Brad was wearing a vinyl vest.
::I'll race you to the bathroom!::
Pants dragging on the floor, one shoe missing and one clasp for his garters undone, Schuldich tumbled over his lover and skipped merrily to towards the washroom.
Ken and Aya regarded him with jaws slack and eyes revealing too much of their whites.
"Oh don't look so surprised! And calm down too! I mean I'm going to be sitting behind you in a minute here. Brad got cum all over the seats!"
With that, he locked himself in one of the bathrooms, not to mention the precognitive out. A sure benefit to his own health.
Ken dipped his finger into one of his nostrils as delicately as he could. Rude or not, he had to confirm SOMEHOW his nose wasn't bleeding.
Thank god it's not!
His mouth refused to work at first, but his gaze hovered still on the spot where his eyes had been first singed, and somehow the empty air bequeathed to him something at least semi-coherent.
"Holy. Fucking. Shit."
"That about sums it up."
Ran, who had been on the verge of falling asleep on Ken's shoulder now sat bolt upright in his seat, very much wide awake after Schuldich's blatant display.
"And they're going to sit behind us? K'so."
"I'd rather sit in front of Farfarello."
Crawford stood outside the toilet inside of which Schuldich had barred himself, giving the knob a pointless few rattling turns. Imagined the redhead standing on the other side, snickering behind his hands.
And then he heard him laugh out loud.
You brat.
Crawford shuffled off to the one next to it, and went about the process of cleaning himself up and straightening his clothing, but didn't bother with his hair. Fresh-from-bed suited it better than slicked down and perfectly combed.
Then he leaned against the tiny sink basin and pulled out his cigarettes, and lit one. Flipped off the red-lit No Smoking sign that hung on the wall opposite.
He lingered there until he heard the door open and close, and then he waited just a little longer, to allow his lover to take his seat. He didn't have to be present for his little conversation with the two Weiss, for he'd already seen it happen, of course.
And Schuldich always did like to make an entrance.
"That COULD be arranged," Schuldich said, pulling the kinks from his arms as he held them behind his head. One of his joints popped right next to Ken's ear and Ken, most appropriately, jumped. "But you won't even play Alice in Wonderland with us! So I can't imagine you'd want to play musical chairs with us instead."
Ken fumed wordlessly for some time, grinding his finger tips into the unrepentant plastic of his still-lowered arm wrest. He swore he could feel a pantheon of be-bat-winged telepaths flitting about his face, prodding him with obscenely shaped pitch forks.
Wait a second! How could I...?
"...think of such a screwed up thing?" The redhead shrugged and flipped at his hair. "How should I know. And yes, to answer your next question I'm SURE Farfie-chan is secure. Aren't you, boy?"
"Woof woof!" said Farfarello.
"Shhh!" Savil whispered to her pet, the first indication she had made in recent hours that she was indeed, still conscious. Schuldich winked at her. She rolled her eyes and jumped back into her book, cheeks somewhat aflame. Something about her brother's visage just screamed of unsavory notions about someone's netherparts. But then again, he usually looked like that.
The fact Ken understood this as normal disturbed him to no end.
"Hey! You never answered me! About musical chairs. Would you like to play musical chairs wi -- ..."
"I'd rather stick a fork up my own ass and show it to my mother on national television."
His cat ears took another tilt downwards, almost on cue, and he wrinkled up his nose in a fashion that would have been comical in other situations. Then, with bubbly audacity, he shouted aloud amid many a giggle. "Oh ALEWIFE! I'd like another bottle of bubbly and a salad fork please! CHILLED!"
As if she had been awaiting another such indecorous exclamation, the stewardess appeared with a pop and a glint, stuffing the requested items into the outstretched hands before trotting off, all but steaming in her vast ire.
Schuldich attempted to drink the champagne with the fork hanging from his nose by condensation alone.
And that was how Crawford found him when he seated himself to the left of his lover, having heeded some silent cue to appear. Champagne dribbled most fetchingly from one corner of his mouth, to stream down the twitching contours of his throat and puddle in the hollow at its base. Crawford dipped his finger in that shallow well and tasted of the leavings judiciously. Wrinkled his nose and glanced at the label and then sent the mental equivalent of a sigh at the redhead.
Australian champagne? My sweet lord.
Really, Aubrey.
The fork bobbled with his greedy swallows but stayed put; Crawford made no move to pluck it away. Such quirks were the stuff of entertainment, and he certainly had his fair share of them. And he never liked to pass judgment on people anyway; they did that rather well to their own selves.
He took out a cigarette and lit it, and soundly cursed the frowning attendant in particular and rules in general. Not that he heeded either.
"A fork, Hidaka-dono?" he purred, closing the remark with a knowing little chuckle. "I can think of something that would feel much, much more pleasant jammed in your ass."
And then, after giving an unseen smirk to a gasping Ken, shot out with, "And in reply to your just-now-thought-of retort, Fujimiya: Eat me."
Ran closed his mouth then, his unspoken insult dying away uselessly on his tongue, and curled his hands into such tight fists on his lap that it looked as if the bones were about to split through the flesh.
::But I wanted to do that! Yummy Aya!:: Schuldich protested, the fork finally gliding forth from his nose and clanking to the floor, where it lay, undisturbed for some time even after the flight was over since the flight attendants dared not touch it. And what is it with you calling me Aubrey right now? It's not that I don't like it...
::'cause you do.::
::AAA! Bad Liebechen! Bad!::
::Insert snickering noises here.::
Ken in the mean time, unable to blink coherently, curled his own arms around one of his boyfriend's, expecting to get another spurt of teasing for it, or a remark that Ran rather preferred his hands in his lap, just as they sat now.
Well, teasing is better than bullets any day!
Even if it will be EVERY day soon.
He found no such reaction though, but his heart in truth began to cease its frantic beating, arm with the heat residue of Ran's covered skin, even through his leather coat. Even feeling a pair of blue eyes trained on him the whole time, he felt no need to look back into them and feel his blood go to ice, and his cheeks to fire, for the taste of that kiss seemed rubbed into his lips like oil.
Still, he leaned over and pecked Ran's temple, his gaze darting back onto their unwelcome companions, but only for one defiant second.
::I know what you're thinking about, Kenken.::
An interruption, ::Yes, I'm thinking about why Ranaiya is like Peter Stillman.::
::HEY! You're not KenKen.::
::In Auster Land, all people are KenKen.:: A slippy sound as she turned in he seat, tugging wires after here. "I may even be nothing but a color."
"I never should have bought you that book."
"Umm... what is going on here I think I have a r -- ..."
Fiona griped rather loudly, the headphones now blaring Carmen still firmly tucked in her ears. "I DO NOT see the connection here, you two."
"I don't see a damn thing!" Ken asserted, squinting, though in fact he was rather mulling over how utterly bizarre it had been overhearing a conversation of concepts unsullied by words.
"Well," Savil began, "Peter Stillman is a manufactured archetype but kinda a modern permutations, one of the bastard one's like..." She started to laugh then, her teacher like seriousness dying an wretched death.
Ken found his eyes swimming with visions of people he had never read about, (a sub-deluge of other people's conversations, a crowded silent room...) and somehow, by his will over the invasive memories or not, compelled to refute at least one of them, "Ran is not the least bit like Billy Pilgrim!"
"Is too!" Fiona protested.
"Who's Billy Pilgrim again?" he then asked himself.
"I don't know either, but I agree with Ken. Schu-baby, you're basing you idea on PATHOS alone, if not BATHOS."
"What, like there's a difference?" the elder telepath wondered with a bored little sway to his words.
Ken futilely plugged his ears and thusly missed the announcement they were about to land...
"Would you all quit talking about me as if I weren't here?!" Ran barked, looking from the direction of Savil and Fiona to Ken -- Ken whose closest hand he pulled back down to the armrest, pinning it there with his own. Schuldich he pointedly ignored.
"And who in the hell are Billy Pilgrim and Peter Stillman?" he growled in Ken's ear, quite put out now by it all. But he didn't get an answer then, because the plane bounced hard and suddenly, and a faint squealing was heard as the wheels made their first contact with the ground in over four hours. Ran scrambled to fasten his seat belt, having nearly been thrown out of his seat from that first kiss of rubber and asphalt, but a minute or two later it was all over. The wheels ceased their subtle complaints and the seat its quivering.
And then, "My, Fujimiya, don't you read very much?"
"Shut UP, Crawford."
Behind him, Crawford shot Schuldich a sly smirk, and leaned forward to drawl, "Ooh. I just love it when he's all sassy like that, don't you, Hidaka-dono?"
Ran stood up then, leaving his seat to stalk over to Crawford's, one hand snaking out and grabbing a fistful of cape. "Don't fucking speak to him."
"I will do as I wish, Abyssinian. I will speak to him. I might even kiss him again." Crawford gave Ran a cold smile before directing his gaze at Ken. "Would you like that...Ken?"
A growl escaped Ran's lips, and he yanked on the cape, jerking an unexpecting Crawford forward, and drew his other hand back to punch him. All of that he did in a blink, but it still wasn't fast enough to catch Crawford. The American was on his feet and had thrown a well-aimed punch to Ran's stomach before the other could even react. Ran staggered back, winded and with both arms slung protectively around his waist. The look he gave Crawford was one of pure venom.
Crawford merely dusted off his hands as if he'd just touched something foul. "It was self-defense, pure and simple. You were going to hit me, so I..." He gestured at Ran's stomach and shrugged. "Besides, pretty Aya, you know fighting isn't permitted on Terra. I just saved your neck."
Crawford blithely stepped around him, dodging Nagi and his hovering carry-on as he did so. Planted himself firmly in Ken's path, smiling at the sight of the spreading blush on his face. One hand rose to cup one inflamed cheek. Ken started, but didn't pull away as that hand made a deliberate downward journey across his jaw and throat, only to halt at the first button of his shirt. Crawford lay his hand flat against Ken's chest, and felt the quickening beat of his heart beneath the layers of fabric and flesh.
Then he drew away from him, looking as pleased as if he'd just gotten the answer to a long pondered question.
"I'll see you later, Hidaka-dono."
You may release your kitty cat now, Aubrey.
A wave and Crawford was gone, pausing only to take his small carry-on down from the overhead compartment. Ran felt Schuldich's mental hold on him slip away as the other man left the cabin, and he nearly stumbled backwards but caught himself in time with the help of a few seats.
Ken didn't even notice, though, still staring as he was at the place where Crawford had last been, clearly disturbed. Eyes bright and wide, and skin flushed, and breathing a bit hard -- just like...
...Like he'd just been in the arms of someone he desperately desired.
The realization alternately crushed him and angered him. He, who loved him so, couldn't evoke such a response from Ken, while Crawford...
What did you expect, Ran? You're completely inexperienced, emotionally and sexually. A timid, cold fish virgin, and nothing more.
Why the hell would he ever want you?
Inside, Ran wilted, but he hid all his hurt and disappointment behind his usual stoic mask. He hesitantly reached out for Ken's arm, touching it lightly before heading off to collect their things.
Why didn't you come to me, Ran? Why didn't you help me?
You worthless little... you worthless...
Ken ground his shaking hands against his cargo pants -- felt faintly damp patches where they had passed; stared at his fingers as if expecting to find them bloody, though rather they drew all the similarities with a wholly different sort of passion. Rather than one kin to fear, one kin to lust, something he did not feel at that moment.
Oh no...
So what do I...?
Warm. Warmth invaded him there where it had come from he knew not.
Rather, he padded up behind his boyfriend and took him by the shoulder, holding him there as they walked as if he was blind and being lead somewhere.
"I didn't... I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. I was bad. I couldn't help it..."
But Ran didn't turn to look at him, didn't really want to answer. He only wanted him to let him go because it hurt just having him so close. A knife-in-the-ribs sort of pain. One he knew would never go away, would linger as a dull ache.
He wanted to shake him off, but he didn't. Just dragged himself and Ken and their bags out of the cabin.
"It's...all right, Ken. I would have done something but...Schuldich..." He bit down hard on his lip. "I'm sorry..."
"Just forget it...If you can..."
Though I know you won't, will you?
He bowed his head a little in defeat, and pressed on down the rollaway steps, Ken still at his back.
A gust of warm, humid air struck Schwartz as they slid into the terminal, one that smelled of age and lazy lakeside afternoons with glasses of lemonade and singing insects in the trees of some stage of the forest come summer.
A gust of childish irkdom too pure and immature slid between where it had been thought and sent, to be recorded her in words, whapped Schuldich upside the head.
"OUCH! Saffie!"
::MEANIEPANTS! I try to stop you from picking on my boys and this is what I GET!!!!!::
"Oh calm down, liebechen!" ::You know you enjoyed that.::
::God I did but still...::
::So this is a front?:: Wink wink. Nudge nudge.
"Is not!"
"Is too!"
"Is not!"
"Is too!"
"Is not is not is not!"
"Is too is too is t -- ..." Crawford, who had just observed in the sight of Ken and Ran standing off to the side, thoroughly boggled by the latest family dispute, took the opportunity to kiss his lover, effectively silencing him. ::That and I didn't do anything...:: This thought as he mopped some saliva from his lips.
They both regarded Crawford.
And walked off in opposite directions.
::What? You think telepaths don't fight?:: Saffie offered Ran as she approached Farfarello, who she proceeded to unchain, while speaking to whoever had thought over any of her actions, "Well, they don't have a law in Valdemar like the do on the Planet, so mad people are allowed to run around loose. But you're not a mad person, are you Farfie?"
"Yip! Yip! Owwwwoooooooh!" His bonds parted. He slipped to the floor and curled up there, licking the drooping socks which covered her ankles. With a titter, the little herald kneeled and stroked the short wire of his silver hair. He, his thick, pouty lips parted, started licking at her face with the same tongue that had so often graced blades, drawing laughter and not screams.
"Chen mignon! Oui Oui! Farfie est tres mignon!"
Ken couldn't help himself then. Demon child or not he WAS NOT in the mood to watch that maniac disembowel her. "SAVIL! Are you CRAZY! Don't DO THAT!"
"What? My puppy won't hurt me!"
Right there in the terminal, she embraced him, then cast his hat aside, replacing it with a pair of floppy, silver dog ears extracted her carryon, adding a blue lucite collar to his neck and a pair of heavy, leather gloves that strapped on and where padlocked to his hands. This done, she lead him over to the Hidaka-dono, her shoes making the only noise in the whole room, as he family regarded her candid show as if she designed to ask the nature of the universe from some ordinary soul. Her younger charge huddled behind Ran, peering out quite curiously though.
"He doesn't bite when he's a dog! Do you, Farfie-chan? He does whatever I tell him too! He's a good puppy!" And then to assuage the obvious disbelief. "Roll over!"
Farfarello rolled over.
"Speak!"
"Won't anyone get me away from this awful child, please?"
"Silly! Shake!"
Farfarello offered his hand to Ken, who still clinging to his lover, reached out, and most shyly took it, only to have it returned to him, something he had not entirely been sure of. The dog's mistress patted his head and he barked for her. "Well, you two know where to get me!" And then to her brother and his party. "I have papers to go file. I'll be back when I'm done."
She fled down the aisle between the two camps as if it stood as a perfectly mundane hall.
"Hey! Wait I...!" Fiona began, having only just then stumbled off the plane, a bulging carpet bag in tow. She leaned against the wall then, flung aside her hat.
"Her and her stupid dog!"
"What?" Schuldich fussed. "You think I'd let her run around without an escort?" ::You think she likes the dog better than you, eh?::
Fiona blushed. Possibly because of the heat, or because so many other people were blushing already.
Nagi had followed after Savil at a more dignified pace, his bags sailing behind him. He didn't care to be present for any more skirmishes between his guardian and Schuldich and Weiss. He'd seen enough. Felt that he would be subjected to more such confrontations in the weeks to come -- until one or both of them got bored.
I give it three months...
As for Ran -- he had watched the whole exchange between Savil and Farfarello and his no-longer lover with only the barest glimmer of interest. And now, he watched Savil leave in much of the same matter, muttering a parting shot under his breath after her retreating figure. "I don't fucking care where you are, and I am not going to look you up."
And then, just for good measure, thought at her, And as I told you earlier: Stay the hell out of my mind, you goddamned brat.
He leveled those ire-filled eyes at the German assassin to add, And that goes for you too, Schuldich.
Ran wasn't really angry anymore, wasn't sad. Just numb, just tired. He was stuck in hell, not heaven, and there was no way out. Nothing but torment lay ahead of him, such as he'd always had--but now, he didn't care. He was tired of caring, and so, nothing mattered anymore.
He didn't have Ken, didn't have Aya, and now he wouldn't have any peace. Schwartz would see to that, he was sure.
I wish I was dead.
I wish you were dead, you conniving bastard.
That last was certainly directed at Crawford, even though Ran knew he wouldn't be able to 'hear' it. It made him feel a teeny bit better nonetheless. For a brief while.
Now, Crawford of course, didn't wish any such thing. He was in Valdemar, the pleasure capital of Terra, and in the company of his beloved. So many possibilities for play! Such as he'd never known...
Beautiful whores, and opulent bedrooms, and fine food and liquor...
...And two gorgeous little kittens to kiss and cuddle and fuck blind.
Sort of makes all those years working for Takatori worth it, now, hm?
He turned then, giving Ken a wink and the scowling Aya a grin, and glided away in the children's wake. Stopped short, and retraced his steps back to Schuldich, snatching at his hand. Pulled him close for a passionate kiss.
"Come on, then..."
...My love.