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Miwaku no Zakuro	By : Tcharlatan Category: > Kyo/Kaoru Views: 2861 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of pure fiction. I do not personally know any of the members of Dir en grey, X Japan, or KISAKI, and do not profit from this work.

Chapter List
- 39
- 40
The clock flicked once, its glowing blue digits rearranging themselves silently to read 6:00 AM, and the figure on the bed began to stir. By six-thirty, Kyo’s eyes opened to stare blankly at the ceiling, vague thoughts of sleeping in dancing just behind the vacant gaze. At seven, a hand reached out to turn on the radio, turned down very low. Mismatched eyes drifted shut, their owner allowing his mind to drift, soaking in the music until his pulse synched up with the beat. This was, without exception, the most peaceful part of his daily routine. At eight o’clock, he turned the music off, and the familiar weight of loneliness began to set in with the silence.
[Summer came and went. Kyo felt broken, and spent the vast majority of his days with the doctor, working on his physical therapy to rebuild the strength in his leg. As predicted, he never did regain full use of the limb, but he certainly came as close as he possibly could, pushing himself to the absolute limit of what the doctor recommended, never once past it. He still walked with a cane, but he used it more for balance than actual support anymore, resting on it only when the joint began to ache or weaken over the course of the day. Bones mended, wounds healed into near-invisible scars, and as days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, bandages and braces and pain became less and less part of his life. Eventually, he got to the point where he was as healed as he was ever going to be, and the doctor stopped visiting. Still, he felt broken.]
He got up and went to the kitchen to make breakfast; a variety of light, cooked foods and cut-up portions of fresh fruits, transferring the entire array to a low, heavy table near an east-facing window. When a bundle of long, luxurious black and grey fur with big green eyes and a kinked up tail started following him with increasingly loud, insistent mewls, he opened a can of cat food and emptied it into a ceramic bowl on the floor by the table. The noisy feline he called Badger settled down in front of her bowl with an imperious air of satisfaction, purring as she ate her breakfast. Kyo picked at his own meal languidly, eating small bites from each plate at random, more of his attention focused on the small fountain in front of the window and the way it scattered the light from the morning sun, the way it tinkled and burbled so cheerfully. By eight-forty-five his motions slowed almost to a stop, and at nine, he stood from the table.
[In the fall, Kyo began to feel worthless. He called on the contacts Toshiya had provided him, and they periodically contacted him in for small jobs. They were always once-off gigs; he was asked once or twice to deliver messages or small packages, or to help train new dancers, but usually he was called on to sing in clubs and bars, and those were his favorite days. Not knowing what he wanted to do – or what he should do, or what he was even capable of doing – and being somewhat cowed by the prospect of the interview process, he never attempted to find himself proper work. He lived very simply, and had been provided enough money to start with that he rarely found himself short on funds, so it was never a dire issue. But they always called him, not the other way around, and when his phone was silent, so was he. Still, he felt worthless.]
He packed up the food he hadn’t eaten, storing it in the fridge for later before cleaning up the mess he’d made cooking. From there, it was back to the bedroom to get dressed, and Badger followed him with her crooked tail held high, twining between his ankles in either a vie for attention or an attempt on his life. For over half an hour, he stared blankly into his wardrobe, absently fingering the chain and padlock hanging at his collarbone as he considered. He eventually settled on a simple, low-key outfit of black jeans and a red tee-shirt with a subtle black spider design creeping over one shoulder. The next stop was the bathroom, to clean up a bit, arrange messy black hair into some semblance of order, and begrudgingly slip on his eye patch. He hated the thing – it was itchy and put an irritating pressure on his mostly-blind eye – but he couldn’t stand the way people stared at him when he didn’t wear it.
[In the winter, in an attempt to fight a sense of disconnection from the rest of the world, Kyo took to spending his time in a bar near his home that catered primarily to gay men. He never could bring himself to approach anyone though, simply settling himself into a darker corner and nursing a single glass of rum and coke for hours on end. Periodically, men would try to speak to him; all manner of personalities engaging in all manner of flirting, all getting the same vague replies in the same soft, apprehensive voice and taking it as disinterest, moving on quickly to more receptive potentials. Once or twice, however, men would come along who spoke and held themselves with a certain sort of authoritative confidence, and he found himself responding almost in spite of himself.
He went home with these men, seeking to strengthen the tenuous links to society they represented, even if being in their company made him feel ill at ease. Every one of them, though, turned into domineering, almost abusive partners once behind closed doors. One had panted all manner of cruel, demeaning names into his ear while holding him pinned against the wall, feeling him up. Kyo managed to stick it out until the man called him a whore, before the combination of unfamiliar hands and hurtful words sickened him too much to bear. Another preferred to inflict more physical mistreatment, thinking him a full-blown masochist, and he tolerated that even less. He gained something of a reputation – the kindest rumors calling him a cocktease; the cruelest, certifiable – until people stopped approaching to him at all and eventually, he just stopped going to the bar. Still, he felt disconnected.]
A final sweep through the apartment to collect his wallet, phone, and keys, pause at the door to pull on his long jacket and shoes, give the cat one last skritch under the chin in farewell, and he stepped out of his home and onto the elevator. Halfway down, someone else got on, so he got off and waited for it to pass before pressing the down button again, humming to himself quietly while the car finished its trip to the ground floor and came back for him. On the street, he looked first left, then right, then settled for left simply because it looked less crowded. Doing his level best to avoid notice, and to ignore it when it inevitably fell on him, he resumed his search for something – anything – or someone – anyone – that might hold the cure to his ever-present discontent; the insidious restlessness that colored his days.
[In the spring, demoralized by a pervasive feeling of vulnerability, he called on Medved for help. In response, the Russian spent a great deal of time paying back his presumed debts by leading Kyo through a daily regimen of strengthening exercises. He lost the lean, almost androgynous build of a dancer and began to take on a more masculine shape, an indefinable power settling in underneath his graceful motions. After a while of this, Medved presented him with the cane he used now; a beautifully-balanced length of ebony, lacquered to a high shine and topped with a simple but elegant silver knob for a handle.
Then he taught Kyo how to fight with it.
Kyo was a touch uncertain about the insistence for self-defense training, maintaining his distaste for violence, but being stuck in a padded warehouse room that local mercenaries used for sparring, with a man more than twice his size charging him like a blue-eyed bull on a rampage, was a strong motivator. They met and trained every day for months, until Kyo managed to knock Medved on his ass, and the Russian proudly announced that he had nothing else to teach so long as Kyo was small and refused to hold a gun. Still, he felt vulnerable.]
After a few hours of fruitless wandering, Kyo’s leg began to bother him, and his gaze fell downcast as he followed the familiar path to the small park a short distance from his home. He found a secluded bench near the playground and settled onto it, unobtrusively observing people around him with a wistful eye. He watched happy couples strolling and holding hands, listened to the bird-flock squeals of children playing, and tried to figure out why he still felt so detached from all of it. Tried to think of what it was he had to do in order to feel human again; to be a functioning part of society. These days with nothing and no one to occupy him were always the worst, and they were becoming more and more frequent, more devastating as time went on. Something – almost like… guilt? Remorse? – was always holding him back and he didn’t know how to get past it to reconnect with life outside his apartment.
[Aching for belonging, Kyo called his parents. He hadn’t spoken to them in years, but he knew the old phone number would still work. He thought maybe they’d heard he’d gone missing and were wondering about him. His father answered, and Kyo somewhat uncertainly explained that he just wanted to let them know he was okay; that he’d gotten himself into a bit of trouble for a while, but he was getting his life back together now. Silence filled the line for a moment before he tried again, hesitantly admitting that he missed them, and asking if he could come home to visit some time. He heard his mother’s voice in the background, wondering who was calling, and his father responded ‘no one’ before hanging up the phone. He felt like he didn’t belong anywhere anymore.]
At three-thirty, Kyo reluctantly stood and left his bench to start the walk back home. At a listless pace, he made it back to the building with ten minutes to spare, but the elevator proved a greater challenge than usual. People kept getting on and he kept having to get off and wait for them to leave before calling it back, only to find that someone else was already there and letting it pass again. Anxiety flared in his chest as minutes ticked by, and he wound up climbing the last two floors on the stairs in a rush, all-but flinging himself through the door just as the clock ticked around to four o’clock. He leaned back against the panel, one hand over his pounding heart, and fought to calm himself back down.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
‘Getting all worked up over nothing.’
[Feeling stagnant, Kyo tried on many occasions to break himself of his habits and routines. He tried to eat lunch on days other than Saturday, and found that he couldn’t stomach anything past the first few bites. He tried to clean less fastidiously, leaving his bed unmade and dishes unwashed and clothes on the floor. It lasted for all of an hour before the nagging awareness that his home was messy – imperfect and unworthy – finally drove him mad and he scrambled to clean up. He tried to sleep in, but couldn’t keep his eyes closed; tried to stay out all evening rather than returning at four and leaving after dinner, and found himself in a hysterical panic by four-fifteen. The routine and the habits were deeply comforting, giving him the structure and certainty he could find nowhere else, and so he found himself unwilling and unable to remove himself from them. Still, he felt stagnant.]
Berating himself silently, he peeled the hated eye patch off and settled down on the couch. Badger was stretched across his lap in half a heartbeat, yowling and looking up at him expectantly, and he picked a comb up off the side table. She quieted down to a deep, raspy purr as he began the nightly task of tending her fur. A disjointed sense of something like uselessness or emptiness surfaced as he worked, and he did his level best to ignore it as it joined the sickening mass loneliness and restlessness had grown into over the course of the day. Around five o’clock, the cat got tired of his attention and wandered off, so he read until six, when he stirred again to make himself and her dinner, and eating once more in silence at the low table.
[When summer came around again, Kyo fought a growing sense of discontent with his own appearance, and sought to change himself. Toshiya gave him the name and number of a nearby tattoo artist who, upon hearing who had referred Kyo to him, offered to work on him for next to nothing. He quickly became addicted to the needle; coming to crave the pain, the beauty, and the trance-like state he fell into on the table, until he was coming in every week for as long as the man could see him. He despaired his own fate, though he never spoke of it, and labeled himself Damned. He sought strength and rebirth; he got a tiger and a phoenix etched into his skin. His old blue butterfly unsettled him, but he didn’t want it covered, so he obscured it in writhing vines of darkness. He craved compassion, so Senju Kannon’s many arms now stretched across the entire expanse of his back, the merciful bodhisattva’s elegant form rendered in delicate golden lines. Still, he felt discontent.]
Halfway through his meal, the oppressive solitude of his home gripped him by the heart and he faltered, several fat tears and half of a sob escaping him before he could get himself back together. At eight-thirty, he gave up on dinner and packed up his leftovers, cleaning up his mess before retreating back to his bedroom. At nine, he went to take a ten-minute shower, shaved, and dealt with his teeth and hair again. He only went out on Friday nights, if he went out at all, so he simply changed into a pair of loose-fitting pajama pants and settled into his bed, leaving his cane propped up against the nightstand. Badger hopped up after him, stretching out across the other pillow, and he reached out a hand to thread through her fur. He wanted – so badly it almost hurt – to pull her close; to wrap himself around her living, breathing warmth and feel less alone, but he knew if he tried, she would only squirm away, settling out of reach to groom herself while leveling him with a reproachful look, so he contented himself with this simple touch. He lay there, curled up and doing his absolute damndest to swallow down the lump of despair in his throat, until ten, when his eyes finally started to drift shut. By ten-thirty, he was asleep, and another day was finally over.
~*~
-“you ever want something more out of life?”-               -[Kaoru is my purpose]-   -“Such a good boy”- -“yours, Master, always yours, only yours”-                  -“want is rarely – if ever – what you need”-                   -“keep him happy for us!”- -“you’re really quite beautiful like this”-    -“take care of this ego-maniacal street punk for me”-
Kyo’s eyes snapped open, a strangled gasp sucking in past his lips. At first, he didn’t know what had woken him. The room was dark and still, and it was only just past five in the morning. But he felt… vulnerable, somehow – raw, as if he’d been mentally flayed. Something had ripped open the festering, cancerous corner of his mind he kept those memories in and sent them splashing, like burning poison, across his psyche in a jumbled mess.
-“life is defined solely by what you are to me”-              -‘so much better, when he’s happy’-         -[addicted to this fate He’s spun for me]-        -“don’t think anyone else is worth having you”-    -“need your help making the boss happy. You’re the only one who can”-         -“not going anywhere, dear pet. How could I, when you look so damned beautiful?”-
Then it hit him. The sound of rain pelting against his windows and roof. The sound of wind howling. The alteration of pressure that made his knee ache and the shivering feel of raw energy in the air, working to pull his mind loose from its moorings.
-‘takes care of me’-           -“become the flower that blooms again”-        -‘almost as if… as if He… cares…?’-      -“a most profound, one-sided love”-         -“his happiness is your happiness; his pain is your pain”- -“good boy”- -‘this place is where I am meant to be'-             -‘needs me to keep Him happy’-     -[this travesty of love between us… my destiny]-
A flash of white light through his windows confirmed his fear, and he had just enough time to utter a faint whimper before his entire world began to rumble, and his mind split a little further under the force of the storm’s booming voice. He couldn’t sleep, not like this, so he wouldn’t dream as he rode this tempest unsecured, pitching past fantasy and into the darker recesses of his head. Whispers he didn’t want to hear, prophesies he didn’t want to know, clarity so sharp his soul began to bleed; it all washed over him in a rush, and his own frantic grasping for stability only served to deepen the tears.
-“won’t let you fall”-           -“the best companion Kao’s had. He’s been so damn happy lately”-                -‘just want… to be happy…’-         -“merry Christmas, Kyo.”-             -“make me damn proud to call myself your master”-          -“will not have wasted my life from happiness just because what makes me happiest is ‘wrong’”-
“Oh no…” he breathed helplessly. “No, no, no, not this… I can’t…”
It was too late. His mind was already flying into the swirling mess of questions he couldn’t answer and hurt he couldn’t sooth with nothing to anchor him, no one to keep him safe and his entire body hurt for want of human contact. Lightning flashed again, thunder following hot on its trail. Tears streaked unheeded over his cheeks in an unending torrent as he flew out of his bed and scrambled for something – anything – that might alleviate his ache. He felt silk and grabbed onto it.
-new butterfly basked in the warm sun, and the spider was pleased-              -‘everything is okay, because He’s happy’-          -“this is your home now.”-            -“we all become just who we are meant to be”-    -‘not sure I know how not to be His anymore’-              -[my master, my keeper, my spider, my god, my devil]-                   -“I’ve got you, pet.”-
He didn’t understand why he was so unhappy. He didn’t understand why he always felt alone and anxious and worthless, why he couldn’t break away from his past to live his life. The memories spilling over him gave a bitter edge to his suffering and he fought to push them back down to a place where they could stop hurting and confusing him, but they continued to pour, like blood through fingers pressed over a gaping wound. He just wanted to move on, but something always dragged him back.
-“destroys every life he touches, but if you can make it past the initial shock… if you can look past the darkness, he replaces it with something so much better… something wonderful”-
He couldn’t take it. Not now, not any more, not again; he had to do something. An idea presented itself, surfacing from the roiling frenzy of distress his head had become, and he grasped onto it desperately. He grabbed his cane, threw on his jacket, and rushed out of his apartment, scrambling in his coat pocket for his phone. What he had in mind was reckless and stupid, and he knew it, and part of him hoped Medved would answer his summons just to kick his ass for even considering it, then present him with some more rational, less outrageously dangerous solution.
-‘He’s… warm…’-
~*~
Kyo moved through once-familiar halls, driven by little more than a frantic sort of resolution. The storm, it seemed, was riding on a wind at his back, and even coming this far out of the city had not allowed him to escape its pull. He fought it. He was here, and come hell or high water, he was going to get what he needed to live his life. When he reached the top of the stairs and the heavy door to his destination, one of the men guarding it moved to stop him, but the other shook his head once to halt his partner, curiously watching the smaller man blow past them into the depths of the master suite.
Kyo made it halfway down the hall before something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye, gripping him by the heart and forcing him to a stop so sudden he almost fell over. There, mounted on the wall, easily a full meter across, was a blown up black and white photograph. Of him; hanging – blindfolded, arms bound behind his back, legs half-curled at just the right angle to obscure his genitals – suspended in a massive spiderweb. The black ropes making up the web were almost invisible against the background, the dark purple of the walls in the shibari room turned near-black in the monochromatic format, so Kyo’s pale hair and skin stood out in sharp relief, contrasting with the dark bindings arranged so artfully around him. It was phenomenally crisp for its size; one could make out every bead of sweat on his skin, the tense line of every muscle, the subtle parting of his lips as he panted. It was… beautiful, somehow, and it shocked him to see it hanging so proudly where anyone could see it.
“Gods…” he breathed, stricken. He almost couldn’t even recognize himself. There was a soft click at the end of the hall, faint and unassuming, but it brought his head snapping around, wide-eyed and petrified with nerves.
Even after all this time, the effect Kaoru’s mere presence had on him was overwhelming, and he felt his mind shatter into panic-stricken static. The man had hardly changed; immaculate as ever, though his features perhaps a bit more weary than Kyo remembered as he stared at his unexpected visitor with muted surprise. It occurred to Kyo all of a sudden that he probably looked like a mental patient, wearing nothing but pajama pants under his jacket, barefoot, and absolutely drenched with rainwater. He looked down at himself, at the puddle forming under him, and back down the hall, at the trail of blood-and-water footprints he’d left. Apparently at some point, he’d cut his left foot. Looking back at Kaoru, he opened his mouth, but found that all the words he’d struggled to gather the whole trip over had fled him. After a few fruitless attempts, he snapped his mouth shut and just stared.
“Kyo,” Kaoru greeted, carefully. “…Good morning. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I… I need to talk to you,” Kyo managed breathlessly. Kaoru’s voice made his heart twist fiercely.
Kaoru still looked perplexed, but simply gestured to the door leading to the tea room. “I was just on my way to breakfast. Join me.”
Kyo stared as the man continued into the familiar room, and his legs moved of their own volition to follow. Kaoru indicated one of the cushions opposite his usual spot and Kyo settled onto it. Everything was just as he remembered it – though he’d never actually sat on this side of the table, so the perspective was a bit off, and he was almost certain Kaoru never used to take beer with his breakfast – and the weight of too many memories crashing into him at once almost undid him entirely. Thunder crashed outside and for one brief, terrifying moment, Kyo truly believed something in his chest had been torn; that he would look down and find a gaping wound or the end of a bloody blade piercing his flesh. Kaoru sat across from him and folded both hands around his coffee mug, taking a delicate sip of it before turning his full attention on the younger man.
“So-” he started.
“I need you to let me go,” Kyo interrupted, finally catching the errant thought he’d come here with and grasping onto it like a lifeline.
“…How’s that? I was under the impression I had done so already.” Kaoru’s voice went a little bitter. “That mad Russian you brought home with you saw to it, as I recall.”
Kyo fisted his hands in his pant legs, shoulders hunching anxiously. “That’s just it. You set me free with a gun to your head, and I can’t help but feel like I didn’t-… you and I-… it didn’t… end. There was no closure, and I need…” his gaze flicked up to meet his former master’s, forlorn, “I need you to tell me you don’t need me anymore.”
“Is that so? …Hmm…” Kaoru hummed thoughtfully, taking a slow drink of his coffee as he considered the request. Swallowing, he gave the younger man a smile that bordered on apologetic, and replied simply, “No, I don’t think I can do that.”
Kyo jerked back a bit, startled. He hadn’t been expecting that. He’d been almost sure Kaoru would laugh in his face; tell him of course he didn’t need him, how could he be so stupid as to ever imagine otherwise? In a way, part of him needed it, needed Kaoru to hurt him. But he remembered, Kaoru could be terribly obstinate – particularly in the morning – and was not one to succumb to demands or orders. He’d just asked improperly; he knew better. “P-please?”
Kaoru chuckled a bit and shook his head. “I didn’t refuse because you weren’t polite enough.”
“What? Th-… Then why-…?” Kyo trailed off, helplessly confused.
“Because I don’t need any more sins on my conscious. I have more than enough undesirable qualities as it is, and I’d really rather not add ‘liar’ to that list.”
Apparently feeling the matter settled, Kaoru set his mug down and set about eating his breakfast with his usual deliberate motions. Kyo pressed on though, almost frantic. “But you can’t-… I’m not-… that doesn’t make any sense!”
“How’s that?”
“Because I’m broken, Kaoru! I’m crippled and I’m disfigured and I can’t be what you need anymore,” Kyo insisted, bordering on hysteria as he pointed to the hallway where that haunting picture hung. “I can’t be that person anymore, you know that; it’s the only reason you let Medved do what he did! And I know you have at least a dozen courtesans in this house right now that would fall all over themselves to be your companion. I don’t need the apartment or the money or any of it; I just need you to tell me you don’t need me so I can move on with my life!”
“‘Broken?’” Kaoru wondered. “I’m not sure I believe that. Maybe you can’t dance anymore, but you seem to be getting around just fine, so I don’t think I would really call you ‘crippled.’ Your face healed up nicely and your eyes are a touch mismatched, but certainly not unattractive, so I’m not sure what about you is meant to be ‘disfigured’ either. Your mouth doesn’t seem to have taken any damage, and that’s most of what I needed you for, so I don’t see why it’s unreasonable that I still do.” Pausing to think back on his words, he quirked a slight grin. “That was meant to be far less lewd than it probably sounded.”
Kyo slammed his hands down on the table, frustration flaring. “This isn’t a joke!”
Kaoru’s eyes narrowed and one hand shot out, grabbing Kyo by the wrist and dragging his arm across the table even as his other hand shoved the sleeve of the smaller man’s jacket up over his elbow. Kyo yelped and tried to pull away, tried to cover his shame, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Kaoru had seen the damning length of black silk wound clumsily around his forearm; the blindfold he’d clung so desperately to following their shibari sessions so long ago, the relic of security he’d latched onto when the thunderstorm tore him open inside. Kaoru stared him down intently, leaning across the table and holding his arm firmly stretched between them, speaking sternly.
“No, it’s not a joke. I’ve taken at least a dozen courtesans as companions since you left, and every one of them has been nothing more than a vapid, simpering fuckhole interested only in my money and my power. They were tolerable before, but after having you, I can’t see them as anything other than insufferable nuisances. I let that bastard take you away from me because he was right; I did owe you, just not for the reasons he thought. You are part of my family, Kyo; my responsibility. Do you understand? You are mine to care for and protect, and I failed to do so. Soejima hurt you on my watch and for that I am sorry, because you never deserved it. I let you go as penance for that failure, not because I don’t need you.”
“K-…Kaoru…” Kyo whispered, shaking. “Please… I-I can’t…”
Kaoru’s voice gentled just a shade. “I was willing to let it stand, if only because I’ve come to dislike seeing you as miserable as you were when we brought you home. I can’t enjoy keeping you when you’re like that. But obviously freedom hasn’t made you happy, so I have to think maybe you came here because you need something else, and you simply don’t know how to ask for it.”
Kyo paled, shaking his head frantically. “You don’t mean-… I-I can’t! What happened before… what we-… it’s not right! I need to be free, I need-… it’s wrong, Kaoru…”
Kaoru reached up and put his free hand against Kyo’s cheek, feeling a powerful shudder ripple through the younger man’s tense form at the light touch as he searched the asymmetrical gaze. “And what was so wrong about it? You seemed content enough to me, before you were taken.”
“I told you! You ruined my life, you took everything I had and-”
“And what did you have that you don’t have here? A home? A job? Family? You have a life here, and I daresay it’s a damn sight worthier of you than the one you had before.”
Thunder rumbled through them again, and Kyo choked back a sob, his voice wavering and accusatory. “You don’t love me.”
“No, I don’t. And I will never intentionally mislead you into thinking I do, or expect you to love me, because love implies an equality you and I can never have. But I do… care for you.”
It couldn’t have been an easy admission, but Kyo couldn’t think on that at the moment, taking comfort from the hand collecting his tears even as he begged, “Then why can’t you just tell me what I need to hear?”
Kaoru gave a small, wry smile. “Because it’d be a lie and we both know it won’t make you happy.”
“You’re so selfish…”
“Yes, I am. And you’re decidedly selfless, so I fail to see what’s so wrong about our arrangement.”
Kaoru finally released his grip on Kyo’s wrist and sat back, watching the younger man shrink in on himself, both hands folding over his quivering mouth. Kyo knew – knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt – somewhere in the back of his mind that what he and Kaoru had was nothing but a grotesque perversion of a relationship. But he also knew that he’d been in the man’s dark underworld so long, the light of the world outside burned and blinded him viciously and he couldn’t seem to readjust to it. He’d come to rely so completely on the man he both deified and demonized and, somehow, the perversion he was offering – the promises to take care of him, to always be honest even when honesty broke his heart, to need him – was so much more than he’d ever been offered before. He felt the poisonous words spreading through his veins and trembled against them.
Hands slid over his shoulders, catching at the front of his jacket and beginning to tug it off, and he jumped as if scalded. He hadn’t heard Kaoru move. “Wh-what are-…?”
“You’re going blue around the edges. You’ll get sick, sitting around in wet clothes.”
Kyo watched over his shoulder, dazed and helplessly torn, as the older man peeled the sodden garment from him and set it aside. Kaoru traced a curious hand over newly-decorated skin, and he had no way of knowing if it was the man’s warmth against his own cold flesh or the startling intimacy of the gesture that set a fresh wave of shivers washing over him. Kaoru only shook his head a bit and wrapped a familiar plush throw blanket around him. He clutched the cover to himself, lowering his gaze again, and when an arm slid around his waist, he found himself leaning into the half-embrace instinctively, entirely in spite of himself.
“It’s… it’s not right…” he whispered; one last hopeless denial.
“Maybe not. But it’s ours – yours and mine – and what has been done, what we’ve become, cannot be undone.” Kaoru’s voice lowered then, taking on a tone that teetered precariously between order and request in a way that nothing he’d ever said before had. “Stay, Kyo.”
Kyo closed his eyes, and knew then that he was lost. He would never not need this man and this place and this life; he’d been pulled free of the spider’s web only to find he didn’t know how to fly on his own. The parts of him that were capable of any other existence were dead and rotted to ash. And somehow, when he began weeping, it was equal parts mourning and relief, and he never felt freer as the web closed in on him once again. He couldn’t leave Kaoru; not if the man truly needed him. There was a soft shifting of the body beside him, before Kyo felt a cluster of something cool and smooth touch his lips, smelled Kaoru’s cologne mixed with a fresh, red sort of smell. He opened his eyes again – desperate, pleading – and met that intent dark-chocolate gaze – reassuring, confident – and understanding passed between them.
Kyo parted his lips and accepted the offering, biting down to let the bittersweet blood of the pomegranate seeds slide down his throat.
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