Bedlam: Ten
Title: Bedlam
Rating: M
Warnings: Incest.
Paring: KuramaxHiei
Summary: There was going to be a new arrival tomorrow, they say that he thinks he's a dragon. It's not so strange when I think about it, after all, I am a fox aren’t I? Or at least that's what he says. My other self.
Notes: Argh, writing Shiori was like getting blood out of a rock. This is my favourite chapter so far, mainly because the plot is starting to kick in, now that Hiei will be around a little more.
Previous Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-
Chapter Ten
Family (and those who pretend to be)
"A mother loves her children even when they least deserve to be loved."
Kate Samperi
-
They’d been giving him sugar pills for the last week.
Shuuichi knew because Youko had become stronger, and certainly more volatile. He’d already been put in solitary three times, though he’d stayed in control for the entire time rather than leaving the Kurama or Shuuichi to deal with the boredom.
Kurama knew because he’d actually been able to win a battle against Youko in their headroom. He’d tasted a small dose of victory without the medication. He understood that that was certainly one direction that would have to be taken if he were to have this body completely and get on with his life without having to deal with the others.
But then whole ward was on edge, so today they put him on all sorts of different things. Different colours. They made no effort to explain to him what they were, just that they would help him feel better.
Kurama ran his fingers along the wall as he made his way down towards the living area, namely the television and the not so comfortable couch placed before it. Despite the pills only having being coated sweetly (and made so that he had happened to have saved a few and tried to overdose on them, he’d only throw them back up once again), they still left a horrible taste in his mouth. He didn’t know why he took them. He just did. It was something ingrained into the body by Shuuichi, something even Youko couldn’t fight.
It would be difficult, but that was one habit he’d have to break.
Behind him echoing down the corridor, the nurse’s loud voice called out the names of the other patients he shared ward with, calling them up to take their pills. He took notice of none of them. It was a dull ringing in his ears.
He was more interested in the way the floor shone like ice in the light coming through the window at the end of the hall. A hospital indeed, there was no carpet here. Not in this corridor anyway. The plant at the end of the hall, below the window, was obviously dead.
“Koorime, Hiei.”
What?
Kurama spun on his heel, his eyes widening.
Shuuichi seemed to be just as interest as he. The sense of him watching flickered inside, but Youko stayed precariously silent, locked inside the room he usually forced Kurama and Shuuichi away in. They weren’t sure if his absence was a good thing or not.
He passed a few people on the way towards the nurse’s station, and the window from which the Drug Lady gave the patients the dose of the morning. One, long limbed and pale man slowed and stared a bit too much for his liking. That and only that was enough to have Youko rise, like a much larger being inside himself. Like this body didn’t match his height and weight.
They stopped in their tracks and stared, nigh glared at the man.
Flicking his long hair over his shoulder the other patient broke eye contact and placed his hands in his pockets as he padded the rest of his way down the hall.
All three of them watched him go, green eyes narrowed.
This one was becoming a problem. He stared at them in group and stared at them whenever they happened to be within eyesight around the ward.
Threat dealt with for now, Youko slipped away without another word. Shuuichi prodded Kurama wordlessly, but it was ignored.
Hiei.
Where…
Oh.
Hiei blinked at him, standing a little way down the hall before Kurama. It’d been the first time in a while he’d seen him face to face, and had an actual opportunity to talk to him, rather than being held back by the orderlies. Kurama wanted to wring his hands together, but he settled for pushing his hair behind his ears.
He followed Hiei closely, all the way to the living room. He watched as he turned to face Kurama, pressing his back flush with the couch when he reached it, then flipped himself back so that he was lying upside down on the couch, his head on an angle on the cushions. Kurama doubted he could see the television screen from there. He walked around the couch and sat beside him then placed his hands in his lap. He stared at the blurred colours on the television as they made shapes and then people. Then dissolved, and shattered. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and blinked a few times.
A talk show.
Kurama cleared his throat before speaking quietly, smoothly. “You’ve been gone for quite a while. I am Kurama, by the way.” He felt the need to reassure him just who it was he was talking to, it wasn’t something he often did, but people often didn’t know just which one of his others they were talking to, despite the changes in voice and stature.
Hiei closed his eyes, and sighed. It sounded like a frustrated growl almost. But then his lips parted, and he took a breath as if he were about to speak.
Kurama looked down at him, noticing for the first time the way Hiei’s hair seemed bleached and dyed, the way it fell in his eyes. Something prodded him in the leg, and startled, he realised it was his own finger. Running up and down the seam on the outside of his jeans. He hadn’t realised he’d been doing so. He clenched it into a fist, in doing so solidifying the seat of power he had inside him.
“Shock therapy,” he said simply. His eyes flicked to Kurama, then back at the ceiling.
Shuuichi recoiled in horror and Kurama merely canted his head.
“To get the dragon out?” he asked, wondering if it would work on Youko. He hadn’t tried electrocution. He doubted his doctors would let him do such a thing, no matter how hard he pushed and manipulated them to do so. They didn’t have metal forks or plastic sockets to do so with on his own. He’d need Youko’s help to do so, and said fox was acting stranger than usual. Sulking, supposedly. Brooding. Call it what you like.
“It never fully leaves. They’re wasting their time.” Hiei held up his hands, staring up at them, turning them over so that his palms faced up, and he stared at the backs of his hands. “These limbs come and go but the dragon always returns and I eat the power it has gained when outside of me. It’s a parasite as much as I am.”
Kurama was silent, considering for a moment. Unsure of how to put his next words, and indeed if they were worth saying at all. “I wish Youko was the same. Then at least he’d be of some good to me.”
Hiei snorted. “The fact that you have an animal inside you rather than a mere human, a mythical creature, means that this is no ordinarily ‘illness’ you have. It can’t be cured. You’re here for life. Lie and say you’re all better, they’ll eventually let you go or run out of options and course high voltages through you until your insides turn into muck.”
It was probably the most Kurama had heard the dark man speak. He smiled warmly, understanding quite a lot of what he put forth. Strange this, to have such a connection to him. Perhaps it was compatible disorders, perhaps not. Maybe it really was supernatural, but he was wary of buying into Hiei’s illness.
Seated in an armchair nearby, Kuwabara chuckled and ran his fingers through his hair, then propped his chin up with his fist. “Do you realise how…odd your conversation is?”
Kurama blinked, not understanding what Kuwabara meant. What Hiei was saying made perfect sense. It would have been a little awkward if he could work past the ennui to care about Kuwabara’s feelings. Such a thing was Shuuichi’s responsibility. But then again, perhaps it was Youko’s feeling that were crossing over onto his side.
He blinked again, feeling the weight behind his eyelids, and the placid will throughout him.
Luckily, one of the orderlies interrupted Hiei, just as he was about to reply to Kuwabara. With a sour face, Hiei dropped his hands to his chest and closed his eyes. Kurama turned his eyes to the light cast on the floor by a window nearby, watching the small flecks of dust drift in the morning light. His lips parted slightly as he took a deep breath, and breathed it out slowly, leaning his head back against the couch.
“Kuwabara, you have a visitor,” the nurse said over the chatter coming from the television. “It’s your sister.”
Kurama had honestly never seen Kuwabara move so fast and with so much vigour. He watched him from his peripherals as his tall friend nigh ran out of the common room, towards the end of the mens' ward, presumably to the visitors gardens. Red eyelashes fell against his cheeks as he closed his eyes, and sighed. With the tips of his fingers, he traced the edge of his long sleeved shirt, the hem and stitching. Picking at it.
“No one visits you,” Hiei’s deep voice broke through the blessed quiet of Kurama’s mind. It wasn’t a question, merely a statement.
“I don’t have anyone to visit me,” he said.
“Shuuichi mentioned you have a family. They’re yours too then, aren’t they?” His eyes slid open, then fixed on Kurama. He could feel them burning into his neck and cheek. He turned his face away further to better hide his blank expression. He was aware of how people felt when he talked about such things.
“I never knew Shiori. I am told she now has a new family, with another child of the same name as Shuuichi.”
Hiei was silent for a long time. Kurama found it curious as to why Hiei was asking him such questions when he himself rarely gave up any information. “Yet she doesn’t visit him either.”
Kurama nodded, feeling Shuuichi stir within him with a powerful tug and surge upwards.
“Why?”
Shuuichi should have expected Youko’s treatment of Hiei, to put it nicely, though he had told the doctors it hadn’t technically been rape, what he’d seen, or been shown rather, certainly didn’t look like it had been gentle or kind on any sense. It went far beyond simple rough sex.
Youko’s track record beforehand was not impressive. He simply took what he wanted, and felt no remorse.
He had no morals.
--
Shiori was making herself tea when she heard the fumbling for keys and the sounds of her son stumbling in from outside, closing the front door rather loudly behind him. She kept her eyes on her mug, her drained features turned towards the sink. She saw his reflection in the window as he came into the kitchen, not exactly walking completely straight. She watched him lean against the kitchen table and cover his face with his hands, then rake his hair back from his face.
“Good evening,” she greeted, trying to keep the apprehension from her voice.
His head snapped to the side, hands falling from his head and fingertips trailing down his cheeks, as if he hadn’t noticed her. Shiori bit the inside of her cheek nervously, worrying it between her teeth, as she poured the hot water into her mug and watched the tea leaves flutter and spin in the dark liquid. Black with no sugar. Western tea. It tasted horrible, but she’d taken a liking to it over the past month. It was a better alternative to coffee, she supposed, and she wasn’t sure she could take as much caffeine she would devour if her son continued to stay out so late like this.
“Hello,” he greeted, his voice hoarse with something that was perhaps alcohol. He almost sounded like another person completely.
‘Hello mother’ he used to say. He’d hug her and apologize for being home late, then ask her if she’d eaten yet and how her day had been, if she’d talked to Hatanaka today and show Shuuichi was.
Taking a breath, she worked up the courage to turn and face him, her tea held in her hands before her. “Please don’t come home so late without telling me where you are, Shuuichi. I worry.”
For a second he looked angry, and Shiori felt frustrated for a moment. She didn’t understand what was wrong, she’d tried to talk to him, but he’d said nothing to her. He’d refused to tell her just what was going on to have him stay out so late and act so strange when he was at home.
Sometimes he’d be fine, and other times he’d be moody and belligerent. Then where the times she dreaded the most. The times where he’d come into her room, slip under the covers of her bed and lay his head on her shoulder like he was five years old once more. In times like those, he’d be distressed and she’d let him stay, but only because she knew something was wrong, and his psychiatrist could only help if he talked to him about his issues, not skirt on over to meaningless things or issues.
“My apologies, mother.” He snorted, crossing his arms over his chest and sniffing, then letting his eyes drift around the room distractedly. They settled on Shiori once again after a moment.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she snapped. He’d never been a difficult child before, and though she’d never really had to discipline him, she still had her maternal instincts.
Pushing himself away from the table, he took a few steps towards her, and she kept her stern look leveled with him. He was taller than her now, had been for a long time. She fought the need to press herself back against the sink as he advanced. He was her son, she needn’t feel as threatened as she did.
“My apologies then,” he said, stopping just before her, and reaching up to her face to brush a little of her hair behind her ear. It was patronizing in a way that only infuriated her more. She couldn’t exactly tell him to go to his room, he was much too old for that and she disliked being an aggressor.
There was something in the way he touched her that seemed a little off. This close she couldn’t smell any alcohol, and to the best of her knowledge she knew he wasn’t on any sort of drugs. His pupils weren’t dilated, he wasn’t shifty or nervous, nor overly happy or energetic.
Holding her mug of cooling tea in one hand she curled her fingers around his hand and kissed his palm, then brought his hand away from her face. She didn’t miss the way he tilted his head, almost curiously, and gave a slow smile.
“Is something wrong, Shuuichi? Lately you haven’t been yourself.” She doubted she would get a proper response, like all the other times, but she tried again. And would try once more, until he told her and let her help.
There where times when she missed having a male around the house, and though she and Hatanaka were talking about moving in together, thus bringing their children into the same house and hopefully creating a new family, she new that Shuuichi was her child, and this was something she couldn’t fall back on another to fix. Shuuichi’s father’s death had been hard on the both of them and she had pulled the both of them through that, she’d pull Shuuichi through this now.
Twisting his hand in hers until he pulled her hand up to his lips, and kissed the inside of her wrist, Shuuichi sighed and closed his eyes. For that single moment, he seemed to the tiredness his body displayed in the dark circles beneath his eyes and the gaunt look to his general appearance.
When he opened his emerald eyes, and pinned her with a look that was certainly not appropriate, then started placing kisses up her arm, flicking his tongue along her skin, she jerked her hand away from him with a gasp and took a step back, sliding along the counter to get away from him.
“Get out,” she demanded automatically. Her nerves sprung to life, and the coolness on her skin remained. She couldn’t quite conceal the shock from her voice. Nor the betrayal.
She wasn’t quite sure how to react.
He only stood, staring at her with that same nigh lustful expression, hands still held before him, as if he were still clutching her hand. The fingers slowly curled into fists, then dropped to his sides. Still he did nothing.
“Out!” Her voice was shaking, as were her hands.
His expression changed suddenly, and he stood straighter. He looked down at the floor and spoke in a quiet voice, so quiet she had to strain to hear. “Hush, hush, hush. It’s over now, he can’t hurt you.”
It sounded more like he was talking to himself than her.
He turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen slowly, brilliant, out of place, crimson hair hanging in his face as he did so.
She managed to hear his door close loudly before tears welled up in her eyes. She forced them down though, and sniffed, placing her mug down on the bench beside her carefully. Then she turned and tugged open on of the lower drawers and rummaged for her old pack of smokes and a lighter with shaking hands.
If there was ever a situation that warranted it, this was certainly one.
She picked up the cordless phone and was keying in Hatanaka’s number long before she had even gotten to the back garden.
-
Next?
Rating: M
Warnings: Incest.
Paring: KuramaxHiei
Summary: There was going to be a new arrival tomorrow, they say that he thinks he's a dragon. It's not so strange when I think about it, after all, I am a fox aren’t I? Or at least that's what he says. My other self.
Notes: Argh, writing Shiori was like getting blood out of a rock. This is my favourite chapter so far, mainly because the plot is starting to kick in, now that Hiei will be around a little more.
Previous Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-
Chapter Ten
Family (and those who pretend to be)
"A mother loves her children even when they least deserve to be loved."
Kate Samperi
-
They’d been giving him sugar pills for the last week.
Shuuichi knew because Youko had become stronger, and certainly more volatile. He’d already been put in solitary three times, though he’d stayed in control for the entire time rather than leaving the Kurama or Shuuichi to deal with the boredom.
Kurama knew because he’d actually been able to win a battle against Youko in their headroom. He’d tasted a small dose of victory without the medication. He understood that that was certainly one direction that would have to be taken if he were to have this body completely and get on with his life without having to deal with the others.
But then whole ward was on edge, so today they put him on all sorts of different things. Different colours. They made no effort to explain to him what they were, just that they would help him feel better.
Kurama ran his fingers along the wall as he made his way down towards the living area, namely the television and the not so comfortable couch placed before it. Despite the pills only having being coated sweetly (and made so that he had happened to have saved a few and tried to overdose on them, he’d only throw them back up once again), they still left a horrible taste in his mouth. He didn’t know why he took them. He just did. It was something ingrained into the body by Shuuichi, something even Youko couldn’t fight.
It would be difficult, but that was one habit he’d have to break.
Behind him echoing down the corridor, the nurse’s loud voice called out the names of the other patients he shared ward with, calling them up to take their pills. He took notice of none of them. It was a dull ringing in his ears.
He was more interested in the way the floor shone like ice in the light coming through the window at the end of the hall. A hospital indeed, there was no carpet here. Not in this corridor anyway. The plant at the end of the hall, below the window, was obviously dead.
“Koorime, Hiei.”
What?
Kurama spun on his heel, his eyes widening.
Shuuichi seemed to be just as interest as he. The sense of him watching flickered inside, but Youko stayed precariously silent, locked inside the room he usually forced Kurama and Shuuichi away in. They weren’t sure if his absence was a good thing or not.
He passed a few people on the way towards the nurse’s station, and the window from which the Drug Lady gave the patients the dose of the morning. One, long limbed and pale man slowed and stared a bit too much for his liking. That and only that was enough to have Youko rise, like a much larger being inside himself. Like this body didn’t match his height and weight.
They stopped in their tracks and stared, nigh glared at the man.
Flicking his long hair over his shoulder the other patient broke eye contact and placed his hands in his pockets as he padded the rest of his way down the hall.
All three of them watched him go, green eyes narrowed.
This one was becoming a problem. He stared at them in group and stared at them whenever they happened to be within eyesight around the ward.
Threat dealt with for now, Youko slipped away without another word. Shuuichi prodded Kurama wordlessly, but it was ignored.
Hiei.
Where…
Oh.
Hiei blinked at him, standing a little way down the hall before Kurama. It’d been the first time in a while he’d seen him face to face, and had an actual opportunity to talk to him, rather than being held back by the orderlies. Kurama wanted to wring his hands together, but he settled for pushing his hair behind his ears.
He followed Hiei closely, all the way to the living room. He watched as he turned to face Kurama, pressing his back flush with the couch when he reached it, then flipped himself back so that he was lying upside down on the couch, his head on an angle on the cushions. Kurama doubted he could see the television screen from there. He walked around the couch and sat beside him then placed his hands in his lap. He stared at the blurred colours on the television as they made shapes and then people. Then dissolved, and shattered. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and blinked a few times.
A talk show.
Kurama cleared his throat before speaking quietly, smoothly. “You’ve been gone for quite a while. I am Kurama, by the way.” He felt the need to reassure him just who it was he was talking to, it wasn’t something he often did, but people often didn’t know just which one of his others they were talking to, despite the changes in voice and stature.
Hiei closed his eyes, and sighed. It sounded like a frustrated growl almost. But then his lips parted, and he took a breath as if he were about to speak.
Kurama looked down at him, noticing for the first time the way Hiei’s hair seemed bleached and dyed, the way it fell in his eyes. Something prodded him in the leg, and startled, he realised it was his own finger. Running up and down the seam on the outside of his jeans. He hadn’t realised he’d been doing so. He clenched it into a fist, in doing so solidifying the seat of power he had inside him.
“Shock therapy,” he said simply. His eyes flicked to Kurama, then back at the ceiling.
Shuuichi recoiled in horror and Kurama merely canted his head.
“To get the dragon out?” he asked, wondering if it would work on Youko. He hadn’t tried electrocution. He doubted his doctors would let him do such a thing, no matter how hard he pushed and manipulated them to do so. They didn’t have metal forks or plastic sockets to do so with on his own. He’d need Youko’s help to do so, and said fox was acting stranger than usual. Sulking, supposedly. Brooding. Call it what you like.
“It never fully leaves. They’re wasting their time.” Hiei held up his hands, staring up at them, turning them over so that his palms faced up, and he stared at the backs of his hands. “These limbs come and go but the dragon always returns and I eat the power it has gained when outside of me. It’s a parasite as much as I am.”
Kurama was silent, considering for a moment. Unsure of how to put his next words, and indeed if they were worth saying at all. “I wish Youko was the same. Then at least he’d be of some good to me.”
Hiei snorted. “The fact that you have an animal inside you rather than a mere human, a mythical creature, means that this is no ordinarily ‘illness’ you have. It can’t be cured. You’re here for life. Lie and say you’re all better, they’ll eventually let you go or run out of options and course high voltages through you until your insides turn into muck.”
It was probably the most Kurama had heard the dark man speak. He smiled warmly, understanding quite a lot of what he put forth. Strange this, to have such a connection to him. Perhaps it was compatible disorders, perhaps not. Maybe it really was supernatural, but he was wary of buying into Hiei’s illness.
Seated in an armchair nearby, Kuwabara chuckled and ran his fingers through his hair, then propped his chin up with his fist. “Do you realise how…odd your conversation is?”
Kurama blinked, not understanding what Kuwabara meant. What Hiei was saying made perfect sense. It would have been a little awkward if he could work past the ennui to care about Kuwabara’s feelings. Such a thing was Shuuichi’s responsibility. But then again, perhaps it was Youko’s feeling that were crossing over onto his side.
He blinked again, feeling the weight behind his eyelids, and the placid will throughout him.
Luckily, one of the orderlies interrupted Hiei, just as he was about to reply to Kuwabara. With a sour face, Hiei dropped his hands to his chest and closed his eyes. Kurama turned his eyes to the light cast on the floor by a window nearby, watching the small flecks of dust drift in the morning light. His lips parted slightly as he took a deep breath, and breathed it out slowly, leaning his head back against the couch.
“Kuwabara, you have a visitor,” the nurse said over the chatter coming from the television. “It’s your sister.”
Kurama had honestly never seen Kuwabara move so fast and with so much vigour. He watched him from his peripherals as his tall friend nigh ran out of the common room, towards the end of the mens' ward, presumably to the visitors gardens. Red eyelashes fell against his cheeks as he closed his eyes, and sighed. With the tips of his fingers, he traced the edge of his long sleeved shirt, the hem and stitching. Picking at it.
“No one visits you,” Hiei’s deep voice broke through the blessed quiet of Kurama’s mind. It wasn’t a question, merely a statement.
“I don’t have anyone to visit me,” he said.
“Shuuichi mentioned you have a family. They’re yours too then, aren’t they?” His eyes slid open, then fixed on Kurama. He could feel them burning into his neck and cheek. He turned his face away further to better hide his blank expression. He was aware of how people felt when he talked about such things.
“I never knew Shiori. I am told she now has a new family, with another child of the same name as Shuuichi.”
Hiei was silent for a long time. Kurama found it curious as to why Hiei was asking him such questions when he himself rarely gave up any information. “Yet she doesn’t visit him either.”
Kurama nodded, feeling Shuuichi stir within him with a powerful tug and surge upwards.
“Why?”
Shuuichi should have expected Youko’s treatment of Hiei, to put it nicely, though he had told the doctors it hadn’t technically been rape, what he’d seen, or been shown rather, certainly didn’t look like it had been gentle or kind on any sense. It went far beyond simple rough sex.
Youko’s track record beforehand was not impressive. He simply took what he wanted, and felt no remorse.
He had no morals.
--
Shiori was making herself tea when she heard the fumbling for keys and the sounds of her son stumbling in from outside, closing the front door rather loudly behind him. She kept her eyes on her mug, her drained features turned towards the sink. She saw his reflection in the window as he came into the kitchen, not exactly walking completely straight. She watched him lean against the kitchen table and cover his face with his hands, then rake his hair back from his face.
“Good evening,” she greeted, trying to keep the apprehension from her voice.
His head snapped to the side, hands falling from his head and fingertips trailing down his cheeks, as if he hadn’t noticed her. Shiori bit the inside of her cheek nervously, worrying it between her teeth, as she poured the hot water into her mug and watched the tea leaves flutter and spin in the dark liquid. Black with no sugar. Western tea. It tasted horrible, but she’d taken a liking to it over the past month. It was a better alternative to coffee, she supposed, and she wasn’t sure she could take as much caffeine she would devour if her son continued to stay out so late like this.
“Hello,” he greeted, his voice hoarse with something that was perhaps alcohol. He almost sounded like another person completely.
‘Hello mother’ he used to say. He’d hug her and apologize for being home late, then ask her if she’d eaten yet and how her day had been, if she’d talked to Hatanaka today and show Shuuichi was.
Taking a breath, she worked up the courage to turn and face him, her tea held in her hands before her. “Please don’t come home so late without telling me where you are, Shuuichi. I worry.”
For a second he looked angry, and Shiori felt frustrated for a moment. She didn’t understand what was wrong, she’d tried to talk to him, but he’d said nothing to her. He’d refused to tell her just what was going on to have him stay out so late and act so strange when he was at home.
Sometimes he’d be fine, and other times he’d be moody and belligerent. Then where the times she dreaded the most. The times where he’d come into her room, slip under the covers of her bed and lay his head on her shoulder like he was five years old once more. In times like those, he’d be distressed and she’d let him stay, but only because she knew something was wrong, and his psychiatrist could only help if he talked to him about his issues, not skirt on over to meaningless things or issues.
“My apologies, mother.” He snorted, crossing his arms over his chest and sniffing, then letting his eyes drift around the room distractedly. They settled on Shiori once again after a moment.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she snapped. He’d never been a difficult child before, and though she’d never really had to discipline him, she still had her maternal instincts.
Pushing himself away from the table, he took a few steps towards her, and she kept her stern look leveled with him. He was taller than her now, had been for a long time. She fought the need to press herself back against the sink as he advanced. He was her son, she needn’t feel as threatened as she did.
“My apologies then,” he said, stopping just before her, and reaching up to her face to brush a little of her hair behind her ear. It was patronizing in a way that only infuriated her more. She couldn’t exactly tell him to go to his room, he was much too old for that and she disliked being an aggressor.
There was something in the way he touched her that seemed a little off. This close she couldn’t smell any alcohol, and to the best of her knowledge she knew he wasn’t on any sort of drugs. His pupils weren’t dilated, he wasn’t shifty or nervous, nor overly happy or energetic.
Holding her mug of cooling tea in one hand she curled her fingers around his hand and kissed his palm, then brought his hand away from her face. She didn’t miss the way he tilted his head, almost curiously, and gave a slow smile.
“Is something wrong, Shuuichi? Lately you haven’t been yourself.” She doubted she would get a proper response, like all the other times, but she tried again. And would try once more, until he told her and let her help.
There where times when she missed having a male around the house, and though she and Hatanaka were talking about moving in together, thus bringing their children into the same house and hopefully creating a new family, she new that Shuuichi was her child, and this was something she couldn’t fall back on another to fix. Shuuichi’s father’s death had been hard on the both of them and she had pulled the both of them through that, she’d pull Shuuichi through this now.
Twisting his hand in hers until he pulled her hand up to his lips, and kissed the inside of her wrist, Shuuichi sighed and closed his eyes. For that single moment, he seemed to the tiredness his body displayed in the dark circles beneath his eyes and the gaunt look to his general appearance.
When he opened his emerald eyes, and pinned her with a look that was certainly not appropriate, then started placing kisses up her arm, flicking his tongue along her skin, she jerked her hand away from him with a gasp and took a step back, sliding along the counter to get away from him.
“Get out,” she demanded automatically. Her nerves sprung to life, and the coolness on her skin remained. She couldn’t quite conceal the shock from her voice. Nor the betrayal.
She wasn’t quite sure how to react.
He only stood, staring at her with that same nigh lustful expression, hands still held before him, as if he were still clutching her hand. The fingers slowly curled into fists, then dropped to his sides. Still he did nothing.
“Out!” Her voice was shaking, as were her hands.
His expression changed suddenly, and he stood straighter. He looked down at the floor and spoke in a quiet voice, so quiet she had to strain to hear. “Hush, hush, hush. It’s over now, he can’t hurt you.”
It sounded more like he was talking to himself than her.
He turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen slowly, brilliant, out of place, crimson hair hanging in his face as he did so.
She managed to hear his door close loudly before tears welled up in her eyes. She forced them down though, and sniffed, placing her mug down on the bench beside her carefully. Then she turned and tugged open on of the lower drawers and rummaged for her old pack of smokes and a lighter with shaking hands.
If there was ever a situation that warranted it, this was certainly one.
She picked up the cordless phone and was keying in Hatanaka’s number long before she had even gotten to the back garden.
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Next?