Friction[Squared] - Part Five
It was hard giving directions when he was seeing double of everything. But at least the car ride was smooth.
“Are you sure this is where you live, Kuro-nye?” the singer practically laid on top of him to gaze out the window, his nose wrinkled in disapproval and his breath was fogging the glass. Kurogane noticed he smelled strongly of vodka and strawberries. And then realized that he shouldn’t know what the man smelled like at all.
“Yes,” he shrugged, trying his best to fight the urge to shove him to the other side of the car where he belonged. It wasn’t as though he had a problem doing it on any other occasion, but he feared any sort of attention might be seen as a form on encouragement. This man’s name was Fai after all.
“But it’s so tiny! Do you really life there with other people?”
“Just because you’re a spoiled brat, it doesn’t mean the rest of the world is,” he snapped.
But Fai only laughed. “Can I come in?”
“No,” he didn’t even have to think about it.
“Why not? I gave you a ride home, didn’t I?”
“Because if anyone sees you coming in, it’s only going to confirm what people have been saying.”
“I guess having a giant limousine parked out front right now will make them think differently?” even in the darkness his eyes twinkled with trouble.
Kurogane was not sure he had ever heard the word “limousine” before, but it obviously was another word for car.
“The kids are sleeping, I don’t want you to wake them up.”
“I can be quiet,” he purred dangerously into his ear.
Kurogane was convinced the only reason for the blush in his face was because he was so completely drunk it wouldn’t have mattered who had whispered things into his ear while practically sitting in his lap. Regardless of that fact, true or not, he was all too quick to brush the skinny blonde off of him and reach for the door.
“Thank you for the ride,” he mumbled quickly, scrambling out of the car to finally be away from him.
He never thought he would say that he would be glad to put up with his own Fai again. He wasn’t sure how much more of this new one he could handle.
Having almost fallen out the door after him, the singer gave a rather knowing smile and laughed. “I will see you soon then, Kuro-tan-mirror-san. I know where you live now!”
Before Kurogane could shout to refuse him, the car door was shut and the long black vehicle drove away, leaving Kurogane alone in the parking lot of the shabby apartment complex with a furious look on his face.
It was so late into the evening, nothing moved. Even the autumn wind seemed to have gone to bed, and he stood there, his world spinning as he tried to drive oddly disturbing images of someone he hardly knew out of his head.
Sleep would be a beautiful thing to him. If he could make his way up the stairs of course.
His hood back over his head once again, he drudged up the cracked cement stairs much slower than he normally would. They were hard to find when they were moving, for some reason. And doors with locks, he soon discovered, were about the stupidest ideas in the history of this world! How was he possibly supposed to get the thing to work if the keyhole kept jumping around?
Hunched over and trying to wrestle with the door knob, Kurogane soon found himself bathed in soft yellow light.
“Welcome home!” the same face he has just ran away practically radiated with it’s usual grin and pulled the drunken ninja through the doorway, nearly causing Kurogane to lose his balance and topple right on top of him.
“How did it go!?”
“Mumfff,” was about the equivalent to the response he gave as he tried to brush the other away.
“Come on! Tell me!” he seemed to bounce.
“I’ll tell you in the morning. I’m going to bed,” he grumbled and pushed past the skinny, far-too-awake and energetic blonde.
“Whaaaa, no fair! Kuro-pu gets to have all the fun and now he won’t tell me?!” he pouted in that voice of his that would rot a persons teeth if they heard it enough; arms folded and bottom lip stuck out in an attempt to be cute.
Kurogane only twitched his eyebrow. He would never understand why Fai thought that would work. “Good night,” he grumbled bitterly and stumbled down the hallway to leave Fai standing there to wonder about just what all had transpired throughout Kurogane’s evening to render him that grouchy.
But Fai was not about to let him get away so easily. They were sharing a room after all…
Kurogane didn’t even bother changing. He just flopped uselessly on the mass of blankets, making sure he didn’t land on the kid in the process. All he wanted was to rest, to let the alcohol run its course through his body, to sleep in as long as his body (or Fai) would allow him, and just start all over.
He’d gotten his pillow in just the right spot when the door creaked open. Quiet footsteps padded across the floor; Fai seemed to be the only one would could avoid the floorboard.
“You got to see them, right?” his voice was softer than normal. Syaoran was still sleeping, after all.
Kurogane gave him some form of an agreeable grunt and turned over so he’d be facing the boy rather than the blonde who had slipped into their pile of blankets with them.
“What was it like?!”
“I learned that no matter what world you’re in, you never shut the hell up,” he mumbled. It was supposed to have been an insult.
Apparently Fai just found it amusing.
“Did you meet them!?” Kurogane could feel the excitement radiating off him.
He didn’t feel up to regaling his story so he grumbled and pulled the blankets over his head, hoping Fai would take the hint that, as far as he was concerned, this topic was not up for further discussion.
“You DID! Didn’t you!?” he giggled and in typical Fai-behavior, flopped right on top of the frustrated lump under the blankets; arms stretched out like a child begging for candy in a candy shop. “Come on Kuro-woof, don’t be a bad puppy! Tell me what happened.”
“I said I’ll tell you in the morning!” he growled; temptation was eating away at him to just throw the skinny mage across the room.
He didn’t know what had possessed him to believe that Fai was any better to be around than the singer earlier.
At least this Fai was sober, fully clothed and not purring in his ear.
Nope, this one was traipsing about barefooted in sweatpants and a t-shirt and was rolling around on top of him. Comparatively, he didn’t know if one was actually better than the other. But at least Kurogane was pretty certain his Fai was not quite so self-assured as the other.
In his drunken state, he was quite certain that was a good thing.
On to part six!