You made up your mind to leave it all behind...
Title: The Foreseeable Future
Author: Deathless Juliet
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: X
Pairing/Characters: Fuuma/Kamui
Disclaimer: X belongs to its brilliant creators, CLAMP.
Summary: Choosing your future comes at a price you can't always afford.
Theme: #22, Future
Notes: For 30_smirks
“You swear you recall…nothing at all, that could make you come back down. You made up your mind to leave it all behind, You fall away from your past but it's following you” -The Fray, “Fall Away”
“Just say that we agree and then never change
And suddenly I become a part of your past
I'm becoming the part that don't last
I'm losing you and its effortless” -The Fray, “Over My Head”
The Foreseeable Future
It had been a long time since they had gotten together, beginning with that first kiss the night after her funeral. Fuuma remembered that night, vividly. It was as though they were so drawn to each other that attempting to pull away would crush their very being, butterflies to the wheel. All the lights were off, a sole candle aflame in his bedroom, Kamui’s skin illuminated by the firelight, his eyes dark with the dimness as he reached up to grasp his cousin's face.
Kotori had died suddenly due to complications from her weak heart when she was eighteen, just a few years after the Monou siblings lost their father. Losing all of their family made the two boys stand on level ground, facing their future together as orphans. They had always had other people, distractions, to get them through the years of agonizing loneliness. But that night Fuuma had pulled Kamui to him, desperate for him, and they’d never been separated since.
They lived together after the shrine was taken over by the city for historical preservation. They moved into a good-sized one-bedroom apartment on the quieter outskirts of Tokyo. The neighbors thought innocently of them, they knew, though their relationship was anything but pure.
Kamui was finishing up college while Fuuma was training to become a history teacher. They would meet for lunch during the week, Fuuma dressed in his white shirt and tie, a blazer hanging lopsided off his chair, while Kamui was garbed in grungy student wear, his thin messenger bag laying next to him as they slurped ramen together loudly and cheerfully, sharing conversations that only people who’ve known each other their whole lifetime can keep up with, the winding intimacies of their lives known inch-by-inch.
People around them smile at their banter, or from hearing Kamui poke fun at ‘handsome Monou-sensei being chased by all the girls’ without noticing the lock of his eyes with his companion’s, an intense stare that screams ‘You belong to me and me alone’ matched from both sides.
They made time to gather at independent coffeehouses scattered all throughout Tokyo, when Kamui had late classes and Fuuma got off early. Kamui usually ordered a café au lait with more milk than coffee, and nearly more sugar than milk. Fuuma stuck with a dry cappuccino, so horribly bitter than Kamui had spat it out when he tried it.
“How can you drink this stuff?” He scrunched up his face in disgust, foam dripping down his chin as he held the drink further out. Fuuma had cracked up laughing, taking his handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the other’s chin gently, the act oddly intimate. Kamui gazed up at him with softened eyes, before he turned away and glanced at Fuuma sideways, grinning a little too overenthusiastically. “You’re gonna be a great teacher, Fuuma.” He had said, but his eyes and voice were tinged with sadness.
They spent most of their spare time in the privacy of home, Kamui reaching over Fuuma, purposely brushing his thigh to grab the remote, smirking, or talking and joking as they did the dishes, Fuuma snapping a towel at Kamui’s ass in a very unscholarly manner.
“Jock!” Kamui yelled at him, an old high school taunt, and started a chase throughout the apartment that ended, more or less always, with him getting tackled onto their bed.
But sometimes, for the briefest of moments, he’d catch Kamui gazing at him as a wave of unbearable sorrow passed over his face.
“What?” Fuuma asked and it was already gone, Kamui shaking his head.
“It’s nothing important. I was just thinking...” He said, and walked up to his lover, drawing down his head for a kiss. “About how happy I am to be here with you.”
In the evenings, they would rent videos and watch them on the couch together, take-out cartons steaming on the coffee table, until Kamui became restless or sleepy, turning his attention to his cousin. One touch, and Fuuma would shut off the TV, pick him up and carry him to the bedroom, the slighter boy curling his arms and legs around him like ivy, undoing Fuuma’s tie on the way, blazer shedding from his shoulders, his feather-light kisses quickly becoming more frantically passionate.
The mornings were peaceful and cozy, with Kamui constantly pestering Fuuma to get up until he grew frustrated enough to rip the blankets off completely. Then they made the bed together before Fuuma cooked breakfast, while Kamui hurriedly finished an assignment he’d put off, yet again, scribbling in messy kanji and emitting small noises of frustration as Fuuma hid his smile. Their lives were busy, but blissfully ordinary.
Then the illness hit.
Their happy, content, immensely private life took a drastic turn when Kamui started getting sick. He had had a cold, which turned into a bad cough, which caused him to hack until his throat was raw and sore. It became too painful for him to eat, and he would push away the food Fuuma offered, head shaking in refusal, his body growing thinner and weaker. Then one day, Fuuma came home to find Kamui collapsed on the floor, a stream of blood flowing past his lips to pool on the kitchen linoleum, his fallen English textbook and scattered papers encircling him, red bleeding into Shakespeare’s sonnets.
“Why so large cost, having so short lease…And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.” was the last line that caught Fuuma’s eye as the scarlet liquid stained the white paper.
He was deathly pale, completely unconscious; even Fuuma’s loud panicking could not rouse him.
The doctors tested him, scanned him for many possible diseases, fearing a mutated strand of virus above all. But everything came back clean, and Kamui lay half-awake and drowsing, a bewildering medical mystery. Fuuma wrapped his large hands around Kamui’s thin, wasted one, squeezing it reassuringly, smiling when he felt a faint one in return. However, when he glanced at his face, it was marred by a dim expression with dull, sunken eyes that Kamui had been fighting to hide, Fuuma knew with sudden certainty that he was dying.
“I can’t lose you, Kamui.” Tears began streaming freely down his cheeks. “You’re all I have left. If I lose you too-“ He choked on a sob, the words cut off. “I can’t go on.”
Kamui’s deadened eyes bored into his. “If we stay here, I’ll die. But that’s the price I paid; we promised that we’d never go back.”
Fuuma’s eyes widened, feeling an unpleasant stirring in the murky edges of his mind. He pushed it back. “What are you talking about?” It had to be the painkillers, they made people delirious. “You’re confused, love.”
Kamui shook his head painfully. “It’s better that you don’t remember. I’ve been so happy here-” He fell asleep abruptly, slumped like a ragdoll against his pillow, a new habit from the constant medication. Fuuma turned Kamui’s hand over, rubbing it worriedly, before glancing down and seeing a large scar snaking across the palm.
“What the-” Fuuma exclaimed, shocked. He didn’t remember this mark. There was an unseen rushing in his ears, like a torrential downpour during the darkest morning. Suddenly, the TV noise from the next patient’s bedside died down to a quiet hum, and the room flickered before him, and the black void that greeted made him feel that he and Kamui were the only real people in the world.
Abruptly, with the force of a truck slamming into his head, the memories came flooding back.
Imprisonment, anguish. Glass shards ripping though his cousin’s palm, a wound he had caused. His long sleep during 1999, the foreordained year. Dragons. A plea from his beloved for someone to save them all. “Anybody, somebody, please. I’ll do anything.”
The witch who had answered.
“I will bestow this dream life upon you, but the Savior will die to balance the debt. He will hold the memory of the past world in your stead, Fuuma.”
“Why must he be the one to pay, when he is giving me an escape?”
“He carries the weight of that world’s fate and must keep that life a secret from you in order for his Wish to be realized. Besides, suffering doesn’t only come from dying: It comes from living without the people who made your life meaningful.”
He stood up sharply, picking Kamui up, ripping him from the cords that bound him to this false realm, the hospital machines going haywire.
“Yuuko!” He shouted.
A large portal ripped apart the air before him, a black hole filled with cold still air that he shivered in as he stepped into a new dimension, his beloved life falling to shambles.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
“So, you’ve come back.” The long-limbed witch drawled lazily. “I’ve been expecting you. Was it worth it?”
Fuuma looked down at Kamui’s gaunt frame, fading still before his eyes. He hadn’t awakened. “No.” He whispered hoarsely.
Yuuko smiled at him ambiguously, carefully allowing no pity or sadness to betray her expression. “Are you willing to pay the price?”
“What options do I have?” Fuuma asked desperately.
“You can return to the dream world you’ve just left and have Kamui’s absolute death, or you can go to 1999 and have an indiscernible future, where neither you nor he has any guarantee of life or death. It has not yet been decided; even I cannot see the outcome of the final battle. I warn you that whatever you select, you will not be able to return again. Which is it, Monou-san? I advise you to choose wisely.” Yuuko’s eyes burned into his, a crimson hue to rival his own.
Fuuma was vaguely aware of her servant-boy, whom he had met briefly before, Wa-something or other, an eyepatch covering his right eye, staring at him, frozen in his sweeping. He was reminded heavily of Subaru and Seishirou, and he shivered.
“I can’t lose him. I can’t pay that price.” He turned to her, a set grim expression hardening his face. “No matter what.” He pressed his lips to Kamui’s one last time, teardrops falling on his forehead. “I’m sorry. I can’t live a life that causes your death.” He whispered softly, not noticing that Kamui was beginning to stir.
“All right.” Yuuko stood to her full height, garbed in her traditional clothing, the intricate pattern of her magic spreading out in glowing lines below her visitors’ feet.
“Do you accept the terms of our agreement, Monou Fuuma, with the price of your foreseeable future?”
Kamui woke hastily, dazed, roused by a tempest of magic pulsating in the air. It took him only a second to recognize where he was, and a second more to realize what was happening.
“No!” He shouted, grasping for Fuuma’s clothes. “I would rather die than fight you again, Fuuma. We had agreed to this, Fuuma please, we can’t go back, I couldn’t bear it, no Fuuma, no, no-“ He sobbed and moaned, begged, distraught and terrified, writhing like a weakened wildcat inside of his star’s grasp.
“I accept.” Fuuma said painfully, seeing at that last moment the strangled look of shock and betrayal crossing Kamui’s face at the same moment new life flooded in. He summoned his love for him and tucked it deep inside his heart, hoping that it would be, somehow, enough to save them.
The magical wind blowing around them whipped into a maelstrom, shrieking to the sky, Yuuko’s eyes dilated with energy. With a searing pain, the Dragon of Earth burst from the back of his mind where he had been sleeping, claiming his body and awareness once again as he himself began another long slumber, the last words of a dying prayer resting on his lips. Hoping the world, his world- his lover, would survive, hoping that in the end, he would not regret his future.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The grammar might be off, I'm too wiped out to care. Please comment!
Author: Deathless Juliet
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: X
Pairing/Characters: Fuuma/Kamui
Disclaimer: X belongs to its brilliant creators, CLAMP.
Summary: Choosing your future comes at a price you can't always afford.
Theme: #22, Future
Notes: For 30_smirks
“You swear you recall…nothing at all, that could make you come back down. You made up your mind to leave it all behind, You fall away from your past but it's following you” -The Fray, “Fall Away”
“Just say that we agree and then never change
And suddenly I become a part of your past
I'm becoming the part that don't last
I'm losing you and its effortless” -The Fray, “Over My Head”
The Foreseeable Future
It had been a long time since they had gotten together, beginning with that first kiss the night after her funeral. Fuuma remembered that night, vividly. It was as though they were so drawn to each other that attempting to pull away would crush their very being, butterflies to the wheel. All the lights were off, a sole candle aflame in his bedroom, Kamui’s skin illuminated by the firelight, his eyes dark with the dimness as he reached up to grasp his cousin's face.
Kotori had died suddenly due to complications from her weak heart when she was eighteen, just a few years after the Monou siblings lost their father. Losing all of their family made the two boys stand on level ground, facing their future together as orphans. They had always had other people, distractions, to get them through the years of agonizing loneliness. But that night Fuuma had pulled Kamui to him, desperate for him, and they’d never been separated since.
They lived together after the shrine was taken over by the city for historical preservation. They moved into a good-sized one-bedroom apartment on the quieter outskirts of Tokyo. The neighbors thought innocently of them, they knew, though their relationship was anything but pure.
Kamui was finishing up college while Fuuma was training to become a history teacher. They would meet for lunch during the week, Fuuma dressed in his white shirt and tie, a blazer hanging lopsided off his chair, while Kamui was garbed in grungy student wear, his thin messenger bag laying next to him as they slurped ramen together loudly and cheerfully, sharing conversations that only people who’ve known each other their whole lifetime can keep up with, the winding intimacies of their lives known inch-by-inch.
People around them smile at their banter, or from hearing Kamui poke fun at ‘handsome Monou-sensei being chased by all the girls’ without noticing the lock of his eyes with his companion’s, an intense stare that screams ‘You belong to me and me alone’ matched from both sides.
They made time to gather at independent coffeehouses scattered all throughout Tokyo, when Kamui had late classes and Fuuma got off early. Kamui usually ordered a café au lait with more milk than coffee, and nearly more sugar than milk. Fuuma stuck with a dry cappuccino, so horribly bitter than Kamui had spat it out when he tried it.
“How can you drink this stuff?” He scrunched up his face in disgust, foam dripping down his chin as he held the drink further out. Fuuma had cracked up laughing, taking his handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the other’s chin gently, the act oddly intimate. Kamui gazed up at him with softened eyes, before he turned away and glanced at Fuuma sideways, grinning a little too overenthusiastically. “You’re gonna be a great teacher, Fuuma.” He had said, but his eyes and voice were tinged with sadness.
They spent most of their spare time in the privacy of home, Kamui reaching over Fuuma, purposely brushing his thigh to grab the remote, smirking, or talking and joking as they did the dishes, Fuuma snapping a towel at Kamui’s ass in a very unscholarly manner.
“Jock!” Kamui yelled at him, an old high school taunt, and started a chase throughout the apartment that ended, more or less always, with him getting tackled onto their bed.
But sometimes, for the briefest of moments, he’d catch Kamui gazing at him as a wave of unbearable sorrow passed over his face.
“What?” Fuuma asked and it was already gone, Kamui shaking his head.
“It’s nothing important. I was just thinking...” He said, and walked up to his lover, drawing down his head for a kiss. “About how happy I am to be here with you.”
In the evenings, they would rent videos and watch them on the couch together, take-out cartons steaming on the coffee table, until Kamui became restless or sleepy, turning his attention to his cousin. One touch, and Fuuma would shut off the TV, pick him up and carry him to the bedroom, the slighter boy curling his arms and legs around him like ivy, undoing Fuuma’s tie on the way, blazer shedding from his shoulders, his feather-light kisses quickly becoming more frantically passionate.
The mornings were peaceful and cozy, with Kamui constantly pestering Fuuma to get up until he grew frustrated enough to rip the blankets off completely. Then they made the bed together before Fuuma cooked breakfast, while Kamui hurriedly finished an assignment he’d put off, yet again, scribbling in messy kanji and emitting small noises of frustration as Fuuma hid his smile. Their lives were busy, but blissfully ordinary.
Then the illness hit.
Their happy, content, immensely private life took a drastic turn when Kamui started getting sick. He had had a cold, which turned into a bad cough, which caused him to hack until his throat was raw and sore. It became too painful for him to eat, and he would push away the food Fuuma offered, head shaking in refusal, his body growing thinner and weaker. Then one day, Fuuma came home to find Kamui collapsed on the floor, a stream of blood flowing past his lips to pool on the kitchen linoleum, his fallen English textbook and scattered papers encircling him, red bleeding into Shakespeare’s sonnets.
“Why so large cost, having so short lease…And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.” was the last line that caught Fuuma’s eye as the scarlet liquid stained the white paper.
He was deathly pale, completely unconscious; even Fuuma’s loud panicking could not rouse him.
The doctors tested him, scanned him for many possible diseases, fearing a mutated strand of virus above all. But everything came back clean, and Kamui lay half-awake and drowsing, a bewildering medical mystery. Fuuma wrapped his large hands around Kamui’s thin, wasted one, squeezing it reassuringly, smiling when he felt a faint one in return. However, when he glanced at his face, it was marred by a dim expression with dull, sunken eyes that Kamui had been fighting to hide, Fuuma knew with sudden certainty that he was dying.
“I can’t lose you, Kamui.” Tears began streaming freely down his cheeks. “You’re all I have left. If I lose you too-“ He choked on a sob, the words cut off. “I can’t go on.”
Kamui’s deadened eyes bored into his. “If we stay here, I’ll die. But that’s the price I paid; we promised that we’d never go back.”
Fuuma’s eyes widened, feeling an unpleasant stirring in the murky edges of his mind. He pushed it back. “What are you talking about?” It had to be the painkillers, they made people delirious. “You’re confused, love.”
Kamui shook his head painfully. “It’s better that you don’t remember. I’ve been so happy here-” He fell asleep abruptly, slumped like a ragdoll against his pillow, a new habit from the constant medication. Fuuma turned Kamui’s hand over, rubbing it worriedly, before glancing down and seeing a large scar snaking across the palm.
“What the-” Fuuma exclaimed, shocked. He didn’t remember this mark. There was an unseen rushing in his ears, like a torrential downpour during the darkest morning. Suddenly, the TV noise from the next patient’s bedside died down to a quiet hum, and the room flickered before him, and the black void that greeted made him feel that he and Kamui were the only real people in the world.
Abruptly, with the force of a truck slamming into his head, the memories came flooding back.
Imprisonment, anguish. Glass shards ripping though his cousin’s palm, a wound he had caused. His long sleep during 1999, the foreordained year. Dragons. A plea from his beloved for someone to save them all. “Anybody, somebody, please. I’ll do anything.”
The witch who had answered.
“I will bestow this dream life upon you, but the Savior will die to balance the debt. He will hold the memory of the past world in your stead, Fuuma.”
“Why must he be the one to pay, when he is giving me an escape?”
“He carries the weight of that world’s fate and must keep that life a secret from you in order for his Wish to be realized. Besides, suffering doesn’t only come from dying: It comes from living without the people who made your life meaningful.”
He stood up sharply, picking Kamui up, ripping him from the cords that bound him to this false realm, the hospital machines going haywire.
“Yuuko!” He shouted.
A large portal ripped apart the air before him, a black hole filled with cold still air that he shivered in as he stepped into a new dimension, his beloved life falling to shambles.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
“So, you’ve come back.” The long-limbed witch drawled lazily. “I’ve been expecting you. Was it worth it?”
Fuuma looked down at Kamui’s gaunt frame, fading still before his eyes. He hadn’t awakened. “No.” He whispered hoarsely.
Yuuko smiled at him ambiguously, carefully allowing no pity or sadness to betray her expression. “Are you willing to pay the price?”
“What options do I have?” Fuuma asked desperately.
“You can return to the dream world you’ve just left and have Kamui’s absolute death, or you can go to 1999 and have an indiscernible future, where neither you nor he has any guarantee of life or death. It has not yet been decided; even I cannot see the outcome of the final battle. I warn you that whatever you select, you will not be able to return again. Which is it, Monou-san? I advise you to choose wisely.” Yuuko’s eyes burned into his, a crimson hue to rival his own.
Fuuma was vaguely aware of her servant-boy, whom he had met briefly before, Wa-something or other, an eyepatch covering his right eye, staring at him, frozen in his sweeping. He was reminded heavily of Subaru and Seishirou, and he shivered.
“I can’t lose him. I can’t pay that price.” He turned to her, a set grim expression hardening his face. “No matter what.” He pressed his lips to Kamui’s one last time, teardrops falling on his forehead. “I’m sorry. I can’t live a life that causes your death.” He whispered softly, not noticing that Kamui was beginning to stir.
“All right.” Yuuko stood to her full height, garbed in her traditional clothing, the intricate pattern of her magic spreading out in glowing lines below her visitors’ feet.
“Do you accept the terms of our agreement, Monou Fuuma, with the price of your foreseeable future?”
Kamui woke hastily, dazed, roused by a tempest of magic pulsating in the air. It took him only a second to recognize where he was, and a second more to realize what was happening.
“No!” He shouted, grasping for Fuuma’s clothes. “I would rather die than fight you again, Fuuma. We had agreed to this, Fuuma please, we can’t go back, I couldn’t bear it, no Fuuma, no, no-“ He sobbed and moaned, begged, distraught and terrified, writhing like a weakened wildcat inside of his star’s grasp.
“I accept.” Fuuma said painfully, seeing at that last moment the strangled look of shock and betrayal crossing Kamui’s face at the same moment new life flooded in. He summoned his love for him and tucked it deep inside his heart, hoping that it would be, somehow, enough to save them.
The magical wind blowing around them whipped into a maelstrom, shrieking to the sky, Yuuko’s eyes dilated with energy. With a searing pain, the Dragon of Earth burst from the back of his mind where he had been sleeping, claiming his body and awareness once again as he himself began another long slumber, the last words of a dying prayer resting on his lips. Hoping the world, his world- his lover, would survive, hoping that in the end, he would not regret his future.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The grammar might be off, I'm too wiped out to care. Please comment!