I am *good* (TDDUP 5)
*does dance of victory* Two updates. In three days. HAH.
... Admittedly, this is even more pathetically overdue than Feverbright was. But still, this is some kind of record for me.
Seishiro slept on the couch that night.
Eventually.
But not before he had managed to slip so many innuendoes into a single conversation that Subaru’s face had bypassed tomato-red in favor the realm of purples and, after one rather inventive comment that Seishiro felt particularly proud of, a blotchy sort of blue (Seishiro had backed off a bit after that; while it would certainly have been interesting to kill Subaru-kun through terminal blushing, he felt it lacked a certain dramatic touch). He’d almost forgotten how cute Subaru was when he was younger, so prone to blushing and stammering. The boy was one of the most entertaining people that Seishiro had ever met.
Hmm.
Seishiro paused and thought for a moment. He’d already decided against killing Subaru as he was in the (real? old?) other universe, but that was after the boy had lost the bet and his sister. The pain gave him a depth that he had been missing, Seishiro had thought at the time, with the proprietary pride of an artist who had just put the finishing touch on a masterpiece. Idealists were so much more interesting broken than they were whole. It was surprising, on reflection, that Subaru could still be so enrapturing with his sister alive. Perhaps he’d misjudged, before.
Oh, well. Seishiro rolled over and shut his eyes. Rest would be a good idea - he hadn’t slept since…
Since Rainbow Bridge, now that he thought about it. But this was the first time since his death that he had been to bed, in any of the hallucinations, despite spending at least a week in one of them. The idea simply hadn’t come up before - but he was rarely tired, after all, and even alive sleep had been an afterthought at best. Why should a hallucination be any different?
There was something wrong there, but Seishiro filed it under “in the morning.” Now that he was thinking about it, sleep sounded rather pleasant…
The world exploded and imploded simultaneously.
Seishiro gritted his teeth as something sliced him - sliced him deep, below flesh, below bone - and then shoved the remainder through an invisible net of cheesewire. It seemed ridiculously unfair to the vague corner of his brain that wasn’t locking down against the pain that he could be hurt when he didn’t have a body to experience the sensation. Assassins weren’t too concerned with fairness, as a whole, but even Seishiro wouldn’t pull something like this without a reason. There was no point, unless this was some sort of elaborate revenge plot. Or maybe he should revisit the idea of Christian hell -
He lost the battle to distract himself and did something that he would never have done during his lifetime. He groaned with pain.
And then he woke up.
“Seishiro-san? Seishiro-san, you’re… you’ve… Seishiro-san!”
Subaru looked adorably flustered as he hovered anxiously over the couch, but Seishiro couldn’t quite find the detachment necessary to appreciate the view. “Seishiro-san, what happened? Is something wrong? You were - thrashing, a little, and then you made a sound like you were hurt. Can I - ”
“Do what?” Seishiro asked, irritated enough to lash out at the first person in sight - which was a completely foreign sensation. You couldn’t love a glass cup, but it was equally pointless to yell at it. “What can you do, Subaru-kun? What are you strong enough to do for me, for anyone?” He wasn’t generally this harsh, but at least he had regained control of his emotions, and was no more than mildly curious to see Subaru’s reaction.
Subaru’s mouth opened and shut silently, surprised by the sudden viciousness of the attack, then hurt, then… “Nothing,” he admitted finally. His eyes closed and his head tipped back, like his neck was suddenly too weak to support his skull, and Seishiro noticed the white line of his throat against the dark night.
(Had it been night when he woke up? Of course it was - it must have been. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.)
“Nothing,” Subaru said again, still staring at the unseen ceiling, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t… if there is something I can do to help you, someday, I’ll do it. So I should ask.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, Seishiro thought cynically. Trying, and failing.
He said as much, watched Subaru crumble further, and wondered if he wanted Subaru to break. It would be interesting to watch, certainly, but -
Well, he wouldn’t do it now, at any rate. The lighting wasn’t right, for one thing. “It was a kind thought,” he added with absolutely no inflection, and observed as that filtered into Subaru’s head. Subaru-kun was ridiculously easy to read, Seishiro thought, watching as a quiet, bitter sort of self-mockery mingled with and replaced the despair on Subaru’s face. It suited him much better; Seishiro could practically hear Subaru bite off “kind,” aware now of how weak a thing kindness was. He would have to be aware, since he had apparently spent some time - even years, perhaps - living with Seishiro.
Keeping an eye on Subaru in case he did something worth watching, Seishiro thought again about the possibility that he had miscalculated. This was… unexpected, that a situation like this could be possible. That Subaru-kun could lose his naiveté, learn about the shadows that lay between black and white, and somehow still not hate Seishiro - it was surprising. Perhaps this was the “regret” part of dying that he had always heard so much about?
Regret. He tasted the word in his head, rolling the syllables around and trying to fit them to the emotion he was experiencing. It felt off. He didn’t care that it had turned out the way it did; Subaru-kun was still absolutely his, so there was nothing to regret. Perhaps this was something else, then - disappointment? Relief? Chagrin?
Oh, well. Seishiro shrugged to himself and returned his attention to Subaru. He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that emotions in other people, while less of a novelty, were also much easier to understand than his own. He glanced up at Subaru…
Blank green eyes met his own. Eerily blank, the pupils reduced until they were almost invisible, and so emotionless that they looked out of place on Subaru’s face. “You’re nearly there,” Subaru whispered, predatorily intent, as if the weakness he had just recovered from never existed. “So close…”
And then he blinked, and collapsed forward onto Seishiro. Their foreheads cracked together painfully, and Seishiro barely caught Subaru through the sudden burst of fireworks.
His brow furrowed. What on earth…? What was this? Some plot by the Dragons of Heaven - had he been caught by their dreamseer in some inexplicable dreamscape? Nearly there - nearly where? To Subaru-kun? To death? He was already dead! To some mystical final judgment? Maybe he was just going insane.
It was probably a bad thing when insanity was the best-case scenario.
“Ow,” Subaru muttered, and then tried to stand up. It was a valiant effort, despite the fact that his arms kept collapsing whenever he tried to push off of Seishiro’s chest. “I’m sorry, Seishiro-san - I didn’t… mean to… I hit…”
He sounded adorably dazed, Seishiro thought, completely unlike the disturbing creature of twenty seconds ago.Shrugging off the strangeness as something to think about when there wasn’t a pajama-clad Subaru in his lap, Seishiro pulled and tugged at him until the stunned boy was curled up on his chest, legs a careless sprawl between Seishiro’s own, and Seishiro felt confident that Subaru wasn’t about to injure himself.
The fact that the position happened to press Subaru’s face into the side of Seishiro’s neck was merely an added benefit.
“You’re so much trouble,” Seishiro said fondly, all the mannerisms he’d perfected during the year with the Sumeragi twins coming back to him. It was like slipping into a second skin - almost comforting, a refuge in a way, not that he would ever admit to it. The arm lying over Subaru’s back rubbed soothing circles between the boy’s shoulder blades, noting the tenseness of the muscles and the way that Subaru’s spine protruded from his back.
Subaru stiffened against him, then relaxed. Something warm and wet trickled down Seishiro’s collarbone, and Subaru choked out, “Thank you,” against the skin where Seishiro’s shoulder and neck met.
(Some unimportant, unheralded corner of Seishiro’s mind suddenly noticed that both of them were shirtless - it was difficult to miss, with the expanse of bare Subaru-skin pressed against his. It wasn’t unusual, per se, as anyone who had tried to survive a Japanese summer could attest to, and certainly having a half-naked Subaru-kun spread out over one’s chest was nothing to complain about. But he couldn’t remember actually removing his shirt - it was there before he lay down, and it was gone sometime after.)
“Thank you for what?” Seishiro asked, more interesting in feeling Subaru’s lips moving over his skin again than the actual answer.
Subaru sounded half-asleep and emotionally spent. “For letting me pretend,” he sighed drowsily before finally passing out.
“…I…”
It took longer than it should have for Seishiro to fall asleep.
Previous
... Admittedly, this is even more pathetically overdue than Feverbright was. But still, this is some kind of record for me.
Seishiro slept on the couch that night.
Eventually.
But not before he had managed to slip so many innuendoes into a single conversation that Subaru’s face had bypassed tomato-red in favor the realm of purples and, after one rather inventive comment that Seishiro felt particularly proud of, a blotchy sort of blue (Seishiro had backed off a bit after that; while it would certainly have been interesting to kill Subaru-kun through terminal blushing, he felt it lacked a certain dramatic touch). He’d almost forgotten how cute Subaru was when he was younger, so prone to blushing and stammering. The boy was one of the most entertaining people that Seishiro had ever met.
Hmm.
Seishiro paused and thought for a moment. He’d already decided against killing Subaru as he was in the (real? old?) other universe, but that was after the boy had lost the bet and his sister. The pain gave him a depth that he had been missing, Seishiro had thought at the time, with the proprietary pride of an artist who had just put the finishing touch on a masterpiece. Idealists were so much more interesting broken than they were whole. It was surprising, on reflection, that Subaru could still be so enrapturing with his sister alive. Perhaps he’d misjudged, before.
Oh, well. Seishiro rolled over and shut his eyes. Rest would be a good idea - he hadn’t slept since…
Since Rainbow Bridge, now that he thought about it. But this was the first time since his death that he had been to bed, in any of the hallucinations, despite spending at least a week in one of them. The idea simply hadn’t come up before - but he was rarely tired, after all, and even alive sleep had been an afterthought at best. Why should a hallucination be any different?
There was something wrong there, but Seishiro filed it under “in the morning.” Now that he was thinking about it, sleep sounded rather pleasant…
The world exploded and imploded simultaneously.
Seishiro gritted his teeth as something sliced him - sliced him deep, below flesh, below bone - and then shoved the remainder through an invisible net of cheesewire. It seemed ridiculously unfair to the vague corner of his brain that wasn’t locking down against the pain that he could be hurt when he didn’t have a body to experience the sensation. Assassins weren’t too concerned with fairness, as a whole, but even Seishiro wouldn’t pull something like this without a reason. There was no point, unless this was some sort of elaborate revenge plot. Or maybe he should revisit the idea of Christian hell -
He lost the battle to distract himself and did something that he would never have done during his lifetime. He groaned with pain.
And then he woke up.
“Seishiro-san? Seishiro-san, you’re… you’ve… Seishiro-san!”
Subaru looked adorably flustered as he hovered anxiously over the couch, but Seishiro couldn’t quite find the detachment necessary to appreciate the view. “Seishiro-san, what happened? Is something wrong? You were - thrashing, a little, and then you made a sound like you were hurt. Can I - ”
“Do what?” Seishiro asked, irritated enough to lash out at the first person in sight - which was a completely foreign sensation. You couldn’t love a glass cup, but it was equally pointless to yell at it. “What can you do, Subaru-kun? What are you strong enough to do for me, for anyone?” He wasn’t generally this harsh, but at least he had regained control of his emotions, and was no more than mildly curious to see Subaru’s reaction.
Subaru’s mouth opened and shut silently, surprised by the sudden viciousness of the attack, then hurt, then… “Nothing,” he admitted finally. His eyes closed and his head tipped back, like his neck was suddenly too weak to support his skull, and Seishiro noticed the white line of his throat against the dark night.
(Had it been night when he woke up? Of course it was - it must have been. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.)
“Nothing,” Subaru said again, still staring at the unseen ceiling, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t… if there is something I can do to help you, someday, I’ll do it. So I should ask.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, Seishiro thought cynically. Trying, and failing.
He said as much, watched Subaru crumble further, and wondered if he wanted Subaru to break. It would be interesting to watch, certainly, but -
Well, he wouldn’t do it now, at any rate. The lighting wasn’t right, for one thing. “It was a kind thought,” he added with absolutely no inflection, and observed as that filtered into Subaru’s head. Subaru-kun was ridiculously easy to read, Seishiro thought, watching as a quiet, bitter sort of self-mockery mingled with and replaced the despair on Subaru’s face. It suited him much better; Seishiro could practically hear Subaru bite off “kind,” aware now of how weak a thing kindness was. He would have to be aware, since he had apparently spent some time - even years, perhaps - living with Seishiro.
Keeping an eye on Subaru in case he did something worth watching, Seishiro thought again about the possibility that he had miscalculated. This was… unexpected, that a situation like this could be possible. That Subaru-kun could lose his naiveté, learn about the shadows that lay between black and white, and somehow still not hate Seishiro - it was surprising. Perhaps this was the “regret” part of dying that he had always heard so much about?
Regret. He tasted the word in his head, rolling the syllables around and trying to fit them to the emotion he was experiencing. It felt off. He didn’t care that it had turned out the way it did; Subaru-kun was still absolutely his, so there was nothing to regret. Perhaps this was something else, then - disappointment? Relief? Chagrin?
Oh, well. Seishiro shrugged to himself and returned his attention to Subaru. He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that emotions in other people, while less of a novelty, were also much easier to understand than his own. He glanced up at Subaru…
Blank green eyes met his own. Eerily blank, the pupils reduced until they were almost invisible, and so emotionless that they looked out of place on Subaru’s face. “You’re nearly there,” Subaru whispered, predatorily intent, as if the weakness he had just recovered from never existed. “So close…”
And then he blinked, and collapsed forward onto Seishiro. Their foreheads cracked together painfully, and Seishiro barely caught Subaru through the sudden burst of fireworks.
His brow furrowed. What on earth…? What was this? Some plot by the Dragons of Heaven - had he been caught by their dreamseer in some inexplicable dreamscape? Nearly there - nearly where? To Subaru-kun? To death? He was already dead! To some mystical final judgment? Maybe he was just going insane.
It was probably a bad thing when insanity was the best-case scenario.
“Ow,” Subaru muttered, and then tried to stand up. It was a valiant effort, despite the fact that his arms kept collapsing whenever he tried to push off of Seishiro’s chest. “I’m sorry, Seishiro-san - I didn’t… mean to… I hit…”
He sounded adorably dazed, Seishiro thought, completely unlike the disturbing creature of twenty seconds ago.Shrugging off the strangeness as something to think about when there wasn’t a pajama-clad Subaru in his lap, Seishiro pulled and tugged at him until the stunned boy was curled up on his chest, legs a careless sprawl between Seishiro’s own, and Seishiro felt confident that Subaru wasn’t about to injure himself.
The fact that the position happened to press Subaru’s face into the side of Seishiro’s neck was merely an added benefit.
“You’re so much trouble,” Seishiro said fondly, all the mannerisms he’d perfected during the year with the Sumeragi twins coming back to him. It was like slipping into a second skin - almost comforting, a refuge in a way, not that he would ever admit to it. The arm lying over Subaru’s back rubbed soothing circles between the boy’s shoulder blades, noting the tenseness of the muscles and the way that Subaru’s spine protruded from his back.
Subaru stiffened against him, then relaxed. Something warm and wet trickled down Seishiro’s collarbone, and Subaru choked out, “Thank you,” against the skin where Seishiro’s shoulder and neck met.
(Some unimportant, unheralded corner of Seishiro’s mind suddenly noticed that both of them were shirtless - it was difficult to miss, with the expanse of bare Subaru-skin pressed against his. It wasn’t unusual, per se, as anyone who had tried to survive a Japanese summer could attest to, and certainly having a half-naked Subaru-kun spread out over one’s chest was nothing to complain about. But he couldn’t remember actually removing his shirt - it was there before he lay down, and it was gone sometime after.)
“Thank you for what?” Seishiro asked, more interesting in feeling Subaru’s lips moving over his skin again than the actual answer.
Subaru sounded half-asleep and emotionally spent. “For letting me pretend,” he sighed drowsily before finally passing out.
“…I…”
It took longer than it should have for Seishiro to fall asleep.
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