Fanfic: Shards - Part 4
Title: "Shards - Part 4"
Author: J.J.
Warning: It's an AU BASED ON THE MANGA, it probably contains some OOCness, uses Japanese words and includes some spoilers.
Notes: I wanted to make a fic. I ended up making this weird things instead…
Disclaimer:
"Tokyo Babylon" and "X" belong to Clamp. I'm merely using their characters because I love them... especially Seishiro and Subaru...
Do I own something here? Oh yes, I own the plot and a sensitive heart which would surely break if you give me harsh reviews, so please be honest but nice, okay?
Summary: Can you really let your favourite glass cup shatter?
Deep down
Subaru had no idea what he was doing in Seishiro-san’s house.
He should have gone back to his own apartment… if it was still standing… or maybe he should have joined the other Ten no Ryu… but of course when Seishiro-san had said ‘come’ all Subaru had been capable to do had been follow and so he had ended here.
He didn’t like that house that felt more like a cage than a residence. He liked even less the garden that pulsed with power, a garden in which Sakura and Tsubaki were blooming out of season.
He moved through the place uncomfortably, painfully aware of his condition of guest and of the fact he shouldn’t bother the magical balance the place had.
Seishiro-san instead moved carelessly, looking around for stoves and eatable food.
The place was… an inheritance, he said and it was large enough for the two of them. Plus being in the outskirts of Tokyo it should also be quiet enough for the time to come.
He hadn’t been really living here out of late, just dropping by sometimes.
Despite his cheerful behaviour Subaru had the feeling the place unnerved him too.
Subaru didn’t like that house and a side of him wished he and Seishiro could leave but he didn’t voice it out loud. Instead he awkwardly fumbled in the kitchen for tea and teapot and prepared Seishiro tea because drinking tea was relaxing and that was all he could do to help out Seishiro-san.
Subaru had done his best to change himself but deep down he was still a young teen who only wished to please the always smiling veterinarian that sometimes visited him…
Never been
Seishiro had took care to fill the house with innocuous chattering at which Subaru-kun had rarely replied all the day, but he couldn’t really claim he’d said a single serious word even if his mind had constantly mulled over their present situation. Evening was coming and while there are more than one bedroom in that house he had known, as soon as he had set his feet in it, he would sleep in his old bedroom and that he would have Subaru-kun sleeping with him.
Knowing this and liking this are two completely different things.
That bedroom still reeked of the smell of him and his mother and there was something inside him that protested at having Subaru-kun’s purity tainted by it.
Deep down he was still seeing Subaru-kun as the pure and innocent child that had charmed him so when he had first seen him. Deep down he didn’t want that child to change, to grow. Deep down he didn’t want to acknowledge it had already happened and, at the same time, it hadn’t at all.
Subaru-kun has changed and yet he was still the same of that far day. Seishiro preferred not to see that and pretend it was still a teenager game. He didn’t realize it had never been.
So close, so distant
Subaru knew he could have refused to share his room with Seishiro-san, he could have refused and spent his night staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t refused nor accepted instead, merely following the man inside that bedroom and getting inside that bed as he’d been told.
Whatever might come from it he was still sure that being close to Seishiro-san was better than being far from him, at least when he was concerned. He had nothing important to lose apart from the man after all and so he could be as careless as he prefer about himself.
The bed wasn’t huge but spacious enough for two. They both took a side of it. Subaru didn’t move from his but Seishiro-san didn’t move from his either.
Subaru wondered if he wanted Seishiro-san to but believed the man considered him not worth enough to move from the position he was in.
They were close in that bed and yet Subaru felt as if worlds divided them.
Nothing like her
Subaru-kun was in bed next to him and, had he stretched his hand, he could have touched him. He hadn’t.
There was a line he had never crossed with him and he had no idea why. It was just there.
He could hear his mother laughing at him, his mother with whom he’d slept so many times, but Subaru-kun wasn’t his mother and he didn’t want to mix the two of them together.
His beautiful mother. His kind and pure Subaru-kun.
His two favourite toys. He broke the first but he refused to have the second face the same destiny. Subaru-kun wasn’t like her, he wasn’t done for the kind of games he played with her.
Subaru-kun was _nothing_ like his mother and he was going to stay like that.
He sighed as he closed his eyes and wondered if there was a brothel still standing in Tokyo. Possibly one with a girl with long dark hair, red lips and pale skin wrapped in a pale Furisode, one he could lay with and stain with the smell of blood and sex while she would stare at him and feel nothing, as he would feel nothing for her.
A quick intercourse, an easy way to find some relax after the time he’d spent babysitting Subaru-kun at the hospital. No feelings, no thoughts, no care. Easy. Cheap. Empty. As it had been with his mother.
He glanced at Subaru-kun next to him, the boy so adorable looking curled next to him and trailed a finger gently over that soft, pale cheek warily, as if his touch could dirt him. Subaru-kun mumbled something and moved closer innocently, like a kitten seeking some heath.
Innocent.
Pure.
Beautiful.
No, Subaru-kun would never been like her. He would never allow it.
Abandoned
Seishiro-san had abandoned him alone in that place. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t probably be the last. Subaru contented himself knowing the man would return there. Sometimes he felt almost tempted to dream he would return to him, that he would return for him. He never did.
Seishiro-san lived there. That was his house. He had to return there.
Subaru didn’t know what Seishiro-san did when he left but he knew he didn’t want to know. When Seishiro-san returned he always smelled either of blood or of female perfume or both and Subaru was old enough to guess that the first was due to Seishiro-san’s work and the second was due to Seishiro-san’s… amusement.
He didn’t complain, thinking he should be grateful enough he was, at least, being kept as a pet by the man.
He didn’t ask for more, he was sure he wasn’t worth it.
Often silence stretched between him and Seishiro-san like a wall they couldn’t climb.
Sometimes Subaru was tempted to try anyway but he wasn’t sure he would be welcomed on the other side and so he always ended up giving up.
Sometimes it was Seishiro-san the one who tried to climb up that wall but, apparently, there was something that stopped him along the way. Probably the thought Subaru wasn’t worth all that work.
Sometimes Subaru looked at the many Sakura in the garden and believed he saw a girl under them. She looked young but he knew she wasn’t. She always stared back at him with a frown, as if he shouldn’t be there, as if he was some sort of intruder or thief, someone who had taken something that belonged to her and her only.
Sometimes Subaru wished he could go out and tell her he had nothing so there was nothing he could have taken from her, and to give her piece of mind if nothing else, but he didn’t, because Seishiro-san didn’t want him to wander in the garden and Subaru was still too polite to do something his host didn’t want him to do.
The more time passed the more she seemed annoyed, as if Subaru had got a very important thing instead, the thing she had so desperately wanted, but he wasn’t aware of it because, even if it was technically his, it hadn’t been given to him yet and so he didn’t know and it was like he didn’t own it at all.
In this light she had no reasons to be jealous of him at all. In this light she’d been the lucky one.
Fleeting
Having sex wasn’t much better than doing his job, both giving such a fleeting satisfaction of having done something the right way he sometimes wondered if they were worth the bother. He didn’t like to leave Subaru-kun alone but he still believed the boy too polite to kill himself in his house or leave without giving notice to him first. He left the house often, because he felt the need to be out often. He returned to the house always, because he felt the need to see Subaru-kun again, pure, green eyes haunting him everywhere he went.
He couldn’t forget them and he didn’t like it so he was careful in picking up his whores, in selecting only the ones that had golden eyes, like her. Their skin was warm and their legs were ready to open. Pleasure was fleeting and unsatisfying and easy to give up, an undeniable need with no name was instead what unfailingly pushed him back from Subaru-kun.
His pure, lovely toy always waited for him and a side of Seishiro relished in the ownership of something so special and beautiful. The other was dismayed to realize he didn’t know how to play with him anymore and felt like a child who’d seen his favourite Teddy Bear being put on a shelf too high for him to reach. It was still his but he couldn’t touch it and it felt like having ripped it away and… it hurt somehow.
Lost
He closed his eyes and wondered if living like that was so different from being death. Seishiro-san still didn’t pay him any attention apart from the casual chattering and holding him there. Would it make much difference had Seishiro-san killed him and get done with him?
Subaru didn’t know. He’d been telling himself than being with Seishiro-san would be enough, but he felt that, despite sharing the house, he wasn’t with Seishiro-san at all, the girl in the garden his only company and he knew better than anyone else, she wasn’t a good one.
She knew of his misery and thought Subaru couldn’t hear her voice he could see her coming close to the house, almost about to step on the Engawa. She didn’t do that but it didn’t do a great deal of difference.
He didn’t talk with her, too much time had gone from the last time he’d tried to help a Yurei to move over with words and anyway he was sure words would never suffice for this one and he had not the strength to try to force her to move over with a spell.
He had noticed that being around forever blossoming Sakura and Tsubaki amused her, and that she was always guarding over Seishiro-san as if he was her own property.
Subaru found her presence suffocating, but maybe it was because he could read in her aura what made her think she owned Seishiro-san… It wasn’t due to the family tie… it wasn’t the connection between master and disciple, between the Sakurazukamori of the past and the one of the present.
She had took the habit to smile at him suggestively when Seishiro-san wasn’t there and he would find hard to breathe, as if, for a second, he’d found himself in a Maboroshi in which two people indulged in carnal pleasures, passionately, sensually, with the abandonment of two consumed lovers that know perfectly how to work each other body, how to touch it and draw it in a spiral of pleasure, a crescendo that…
It always lasted a second. He always managed to free himself from the illusion before seeing its end. He didn’t want to know. She unfailingly pouted at that. She wanted him to know. To know what she had and what he had not.
_His_ attention.
Subaru knew better than to believe carnal pleasure might meant something to Seishiro-san but he also knew she had given Seishiro-san more than what Subaru had to offer.
Seishiro-san was not interested in him. He’d been in her. He was in whomever he were to meet once out of the house.
Subaru sat at the couch and watched the ceiling and almost wished the Chi no Ryu would win.
Always one future
Subaru-kun ignored him when he returned back. Subaru-kun ignored the food he cooked for him also. And the ‘it’s late, Subaru-kun, it’s time to go to bed’ as well.
Seishiro decided to ignore him in return and let him stare at the ceiling because the alternative was having a fight and he didn’t feel like having one.
The bed was cold without Subaru-kun’s presence on the other side of it and the second he closed his eyes he found himself staring at his mother walking toward him with a sensual smile.
He stared at her almost in shock as she embraced him and ordered him to kiss her. His mother. Alive. There. And willing to spend the night with him. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Wasn’t her what he wanted and not the mere illusion a whore could provide? He obeyed to her request and… tasted ashes. He ignored it as he continued to touch and kiss her, trying to lose himself in the pleasure she could give him. Yet… she felt no different from the whores, like them she was a thing for him to use and to get done with and the mere reason for which he’d almost forgotten his touch was… it was nothing worth remembering, nothing like the whores’ were.
Nothing, his mind repeated as he didn’t waste his time undressing himself but quickly buried inside her. Nothing, but he had nothing else, he mused as he moved inside her, nothing, but he’d known nothing else, he thought as he panted, nothing, but he felt nothing else he realized as he… he shook his head as she vanished under him, his surroundings changing and morphing into… a coast. Odaiba, he recognized, standing, not too far from Rainbow Bridge, thought that side of the coast looked at the ocean, not at Tokyo Bay.
Seishiro turned to meet the Chi no Ryu’s YumeMi’s flat gaze.
They weren’t acquainted, not in the real sense of the term. Seishiro had seen him only once when he’d visited the ToCho after Kamui’s awakening. The YumeMi had been comatose and, anyway, Seishiro hadn’t been interested in him. He had assumed the disinterest was reciprocal but he might have been wrong.
“To what I own this visit?” he asked. The man didn’t reply as he turned toward the ocean his behaviour disturbingly similar to Subaru-kun. “I’ve made you a question,” Seishiro pointed out in a rather careless tone.
“You did,” the YumeMi agreed not really paying him attention.
“When one does a question it’s polite to reply,” Seishiro informed him in a casual tone, walking closer to the coast and to the YumeMi. He got no reply. “Nice dreamscape.”
“It was one of your victims’ favourite,” came the flat reply.
“Oh,” Seishiro observed and wondered if the man could know his mother. Somehow however he doubted she had ever loved the ocean. He’d been the only thing his mother had loved. “Should I feel threatened?”
“I’ve no interest in killing you. It won’t return to me the person you killed,” the YumeMi countered, his voice still flat, empty, uncaring. He held no interest in taking a revenge for Seishiro’s actions. He held no interest in Seishiro either. Seishiro didn’t like to be dismissed.
“Japan is probably a better place without this person. Safer,” he reminded to the YumeMi, aiming to get a reaction. The man gazed at him blankly.
“That’s your excuse?”
“The mere truth.”
“You don’t know the truth. They point you to a target, you check if he has spiritual power and then you kill him. They might have lied you tons of time by now but that’s not important to you. You don’t care about the people you kill,” the YumeMi replied in a empty tone, returning to gaze at the ocean.
“I don’t,” Seishiro agreed. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“I didn’t want to talk with you,” the YumeMi informed him. “You’re the one who can’t stand being ignored.”
“You know… one would think you’ve a death wish,” Seishiro observed and in his careless tone there was a quiet threat.
“I do. But you can’t fulfil it so you’re of no use to me,” the man clarified. “It was Kamui’s idea to bring you here. Thanks him for this… and for that,” he added gesturing with obvious distaste to the point where Seishiro had had sex with his mother.
“I will. Any idea why he wanted me here?” Seishiro asked. Kakyou looked at him again and, for once, there seemed to be interest in the YumeMi’s gaze.
“Don’t you get it?” the man asked back.
“A repayment for the fact thanks to him brothels are becoming hard to find?” Seishiro ventured. The YumeMi shrugged and turned his eyes away again.
“Kamui said to let you have it as long as you don’t figure it out. Or until the day your housemate dies. Whichever came first,” he reported.
“How is Subaru-kun related to all this?” Seishiro asked, frowning.
“The Chi no Ryu’s victory will follow his death. The Chi no Ryu’s victory will sign my death and after I’ll die I won’t be able to influence your dreams anymore,” the YumeMi explained.
“Subaru-kun won’t die,” Seishiro stated firmly.
“He will. Kamui will kill him,” the man countered.
“Kamui won’t touch him!”
“He won’t have any other choice. It’ll be his Wish,” the YumeMi stated flatly.
“It’ll be not.”
“There’s only one future…” the man whispered before disappearing from Seishiro’s sight, the dreamscape morphing again into a devastated Tokyo, drowned in the water. In the middle of that were the Chi no Ryu’s Kamui, the Ten no Ryu’s one, three other Ten no Ryu and… Subaru-kun. Seishiro had only the time to notice him before the Chi no Ryu’s Kamui’s ShinKen went through him, then, as the Ten no Ryu’s Kamui screamed Subaru-kun’s name he came awake, panting and shivering.
All night
Subaru had no idea for how long he’d been staring at the ceiling before he felt a hand on his cheek. His head was turned to meet Seishiro-san’s stare. The man seemed troubled, disappointed. Subaru wondered if he was considering killing him. The next second he was being picked up, carried in the bedroom and placed down in the bed. The sheets reeked of sweat, tobacco and… something else Subaru wasn’t sure he wanted to identify and so Seishiro-san. The man joined him in bed immediately, clung to him like a scared child to a Teddy Bear and fell asleep the next second. Subaru remained awake instead, just to feel Seishiro-san awakening all of sudden short later. The man stared at him and Subaru stared back then Seishiro-san shook his head and clung to him again. Tighter. He fell asleep, even if not for long. It went on for all night.
Shattered cup
Seishiro’s night was a circle of dreaming to have sex with his mother, seeing Subaru-kun being killed and then waking up. Soon his dreams were filled with the knowledge that the sex was merely anticipating Subaru-kun’s death and he couldn’t stay asleep not even during that.
Finding all of sudden Subaru-kun wasn’t in bed with him anymore was unpleasant as he got immediately up and tracked him back in his kitchen. The boy turned as he entered and offered him a cup of tea. Irritate, he slapped Subaru-kun’s hand, causing the cup to smash on the floor.
“You broke your cup,” Subaru-kun observed in an empty tone as they both stared at it and there was some sort of horrid symbolism in that and Seishiro didn’t like it at all. The cup was shattered, broken and couldn’t be retrieved anymore. It didn’t matter he didn’t care about it but then his gaze fell on Subaru-kun and he grabbed his arms tightly.
“You’re mine. You go nowhere without my own permission,” he stated but his fax beeped and he knew there was a work coming. Subaru-kun lowered his head, his expression blank and his eyes as empty as the YumeMi’s had been. Seishiro didn’t like that as he pulled him closer and embraced him, more a possessive gesture than an affectionate one. Subaru-kun leaned limply into it, like a broken doll. Shattered, like a glass cup, which shards would only end up cutting Seishiro also if he were to try to pick them up. Actually they were hurting Seishiro also, even if he couldn’t understand why.
The glass cup had been his, the shards were his, if he wanted to pick them up it was in his right to do so and the shards… they didn’t have a will of their own so… why were they hurting him? Why was Subaru-kun hurting him without doing anything special, really?
He tipped the boy’s head up, toward himself. Green, empty eyes stared at him.
“Let’s go out for a date, Subaru-kun,” he suggested. “You need some fresh air.”
Subaru-kun looked at him and, for a moment, a flicker of surprise lightened his eyes, to vanish immediately as the boy lowered his head.
“You’ve got a job. And I’m not accompanying you on it. I…” Subaru-kun trailed off but it wasn’t hard to guess there were things Subaru-kun couldn’t bear witnessing.
“I’ve to take care of something more important than work,” he replied raising gently the boy’s head. Subaru-kun’s eyes remained empty. “Subaru-kun. Let me take care of you.” Subaru-kun blinked at that, as if he couldn’t understand him and Seishiro stared back.
‘Kamui will kill him. … It’ll be his Wish.’
He tried picturing a world without Subaru-kun and saw the same emptiness that was now in the boy’s eyes.
His arms tightened around Subaru-kun.
No. _No_.
Lie
Being outside wasn’t that different from being inside. He followed Seishiro-san, head lowered, hands in his pockets and empty gaze knowing he shouldn’t be there and yet… unable to go away.
He should be with Kamui. He should be doing his duty as Sumeragi no TouShu. But for him it was already too difficult to breathe on his own and Kamui and his grandmother seemed so far away right then… He won’t last for long and he knew it. Living was like drowning, sinking deeper and deeper until he would be so deep he won’t manage to rise anymore and… He stumbled and Seishiro-san caught him.
“Subaru-kun, are you all right?”
No. No, he wasn’t all right, he would never been.
Even when they were so close they were too distant for Subaru to feel Seishiro-san’s presence. The world was a cold, unwelcoming place and he wished to die, if only to have Seishiro-san looking at him as he aimed at him.
“I’m fine, thank you.” The lie was painfully obvious to both and Subaru wished to take it back. But there was no point in it and so he let them stay, another wall placed between them.
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Author: J.J.
Warning: It's an AU BASED ON THE MANGA, it probably contains some OOCness, uses Japanese words and includes some spoilers.
Notes: I wanted to make a fic. I ended up making this weird things instead…
Disclaimer:
"Tokyo Babylon" and "X" belong to Clamp. I'm merely using their characters because I love them... especially Seishiro and Subaru...
Do I own something here? Oh yes, I own the plot and a sensitive heart which would surely break if you give me harsh reviews, so please be honest but nice, okay?
Summary: Can you really let your favourite glass cup shatter?
Deep down
Subaru had no idea what he was doing in Seishiro-san’s house.
He should have gone back to his own apartment… if it was still standing… or maybe he should have joined the other Ten no Ryu… but of course when Seishiro-san had said ‘come’ all Subaru had been capable to do had been follow and so he had ended here.
He didn’t like that house that felt more like a cage than a residence. He liked even less the garden that pulsed with power, a garden in which Sakura and Tsubaki were blooming out of season.
He moved through the place uncomfortably, painfully aware of his condition of guest and of the fact he shouldn’t bother the magical balance the place had.
Seishiro-san instead moved carelessly, looking around for stoves and eatable food.
The place was… an inheritance, he said and it was large enough for the two of them. Plus being in the outskirts of Tokyo it should also be quiet enough for the time to come.
He hadn’t been really living here out of late, just dropping by sometimes.
Despite his cheerful behaviour Subaru had the feeling the place unnerved him too.
Subaru didn’t like that house and a side of him wished he and Seishiro could leave but he didn’t voice it out loud. Instead he awkwardly fumbled in the kitchen for tea and teapot and prepared Seishiro tea because drinking tea was relaxing and that was all he could do to help out Seishiro-san.
Subaru had done his best to change himself but deep down he was still a young teen who only wished to please the always smiling veterinarian that sometimes visited him…
Never been
Seishiro had took care to fill the house with innocuous chattering at which Subaru-kun had rarely replied all the day, but he couldn’t really claim he’d said a single serious word even if his mind had constantly mulled over their present situation. Evening was coming and while there are more than one bedroom in that house he had known, as soon as he had set his feet in it, he would sleep in his old bedroom and that he would have Subaru-kun sleeping with him.
Knowing this and liking this are two completely different things.
That bedroom still reeked of the smell of him and his mother and there was something inside him that protested at having Subaru-kun’s purity tainted by it.
Deep down he was still seeing Subaru-kun as the pure and innocent child that had charmed him so when he had first seen him. Deep down he didn’t want that child to change, to grow. Deep down he didn’t want to acknowledge it had already happened and, at the same time, it hadn’t at all.
Subaru-kun has changed and yet he was still the same of that far day. Seishiro preferred not to see that and pretend it was still a teenager game. He didn’t realize it had never been.
So close, so distant
Subaru knew he could have refused to share his room with Seishiro-san, he could have refused and spent his night staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t refused nor accepted instead, merely following the man inside that bedroom and getting inside that bed as he’d been told.
Whatever might come from it he was still sure that being close to Seishiro-san was better than being far from him, at least when he was concerned. He had nothing important to lose apart from the man after all and so he could be as careless as he prefer about himself.
The bed wasn’t huge but spacious enough for two. They both took a side of it. Subaru didn’t move from his but Seishiro-san didn’t move from his either.
Subaru wondered if he wanted Seishiro-san to but believed the man considered him not worth enough to move from the position he was in.
They were close in that bed and yet Subaru felt as if worlds divided them.
Nothing like her
Subaru-kun was in bed next to him and, had he stretched his hand, he could have touched him. He hadn’t.
There was a line he had never crossed with him and he had no idea why. It was just there.
He could hear his mother laughing at him, his mother with whom he’d slept so many times, but Subaru-kun wasn’t his mother and he didn’t want to mix the two of them together.
His beautiful mother. His kind and pure Subaru-kun.
His two favourite toys. He broke the first but he refused to have the second face the same destiny. Subaru-kun wasn’t like her, he wasn’t done for the kind of games he played with her.
Subaru-kun was _nothing_ like his mother and he was going to stay like that.
He sighed as he closed his eyes and wondered if there was a brothel still standing in Tokyo. Possibly one with a girl with long dark hair, red lips and pale skin wrapped in a pale Furisode, one he could lay with and stain with the smell of blood and sex while she would stare at him and feel nothing, as he would feel nothing for her.
A quick intercourse, an easy way to find some relax after the time he’d spent babysitting Subaru-kun at the hospital. No feelings, no thoughts, no care. Easy. Cheap. Empty. As it had been with his mother.
He glanced at Subaru-kun next to him, the boy so adorable looking curled next to him and trailed a finger gently over that soft, pale cheek warily, as if his touch could dirt him. Subaru-kun mumbled something and moved closer innocently, like a kitten seeking some heath.
Innocent.
Pure.
Beautiful.
No, Subaru-kun would never been like her. He would never allow it.
Abandoned
Seishiro-san had abandoned him alone in that place. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t probably be the last. Subaru contented himself knowing the man would return there. Sometimes he felt almost tempted to dream he would return to him, that he would return for him. He never did.
Seishiro-san lived there. That was his house. He had to return there.
Subaru didn’t know what Seishiro-san did when he left but he knew he didn’t want to know. When Seishiro-san returned he always smelled either of blood or of female perfume or both and Subaru was old enough to guess that the first was due to Seishiro-san’s work and the second was due to Seishiro-san’s… amusement.
He didn’t complain, thinking he should be grateful enough he was, at least, being kept as a pet by the man.
He didn’t ask for more, he was sure he wasn’t worth it.
Often silence stretched between him and Seishiro-san like a wall they couldn’t climb.
Sometimes Subaru was tempted to try anyway but he wasn’t sure he would be welcomed on the other side and so he always ended up giving up.
Sometimes it was Seishiro-san the one who tried to climb up that wall but, apparently, there was something that stopped him along the way. Probably the thought Subaru wasn’t worth all that work.
Sometimes Subaru looked at the many Sakura in the garden and believed he saw a girl under them. She looked young but he knew she wasn’t. She always stared back at him with a frown, as if he shouldn’t be there, as if he was some sort of intruder or thief, someone who had taken something that belonged to her and her only.
Sometimes Subaru wished he could go out and tell her he had nothing so there was nothing he could have taken from her, and to give her piece of mind if nothing else, but he didn’t, because Seishiro-san didn’t want him to wander in the garden and Subaru was still too polite to do something his host didn’t want him to do.
The more time passed the more she seemed annoyed, as if Subaru had got a very important thing instead, the thing she had so desperately wanted, but he wasn’t aware of it because, even if it was technically his, it hadn’t been given to him yet and so he didn’t know and it was like he didn’t own it at all.
In this light she had no reasons to be jealous of him at all. In this light she’d been the lucky one.
Fleeting
Having sex wasn’t much better than doing his job, both giving such a fleeting satisfaction of having done something the right way he sometimes wondered if they were worth the bother. He didn’t like to leave Subaru-kun alone but he still believed the boy too polite to kill himself in his house or leave without giving notice to him first. He left the house often, because he felt the need to be out often. He returned to the house always, because he felt the need to see Subaru-kun again, pure, green eyes haunting him everywhere he went.
He couldn’t forget them and he didn’t like it so he was careful in picking up his whores, in selecting only the ones that had golden eyes, like her. Their skin was warm and their legs were ready to open. Pleasure was fleeting and unsatisfying and easy to give up, an undeniable need with no name was instead what unfailingly pushed him back from Subaru-kun.
His pure, lovely toy always waited for him and a side of Seishiro relished in the ownership of something so special and beautiful. The other was dismayed to realize he didn’t know how to play with him anymore and felt like a child who’d seen his favourite Teddy Bear being put on a shelf too high for him to reach. It was still his but he couldn’t touch it and it felt like having ripped it away and… it hurt somehow.
Lost
He closed his eyes and wondered if living like that was so different from being death. Seishiro-san still didn’t pay him any attention apart from the casual chattering and holding him there. Would it make much difference had Seishiro-san killed him and get done with him?
Subaru didn’t know. He’d been telling himself than being with Seishiro-san would be enough, but he felt that, despite sharing the house, he wasn’t with Seishiro-san at all, the girl in the garden his only company and he knew better than anyone else, she wasn’t a good one.
She knew of his misery and thought Subaru couldn’t hear her voice he could see her coming close to the house, almost about to step on the Engawa. She didn’t do that but it didn’t do a great deal of difference.
He didn’t talk with her, too much time had gone from the last time he’d tried to help a Yurei to move over with words and anyway he was sure words would never suffice for this one and he had not the strength to try to force her to move over with a spell.
He had noticed that being around forever blossoming Sakura and Tsubaki amused her, and that she was always guarding over Seishiro-san as if he was her own property.
Subaru found her presence suffocating, but maybe it was because he could read in her aura what made her think she owned Seishiro-san… It wasn’t due to the family tie… it wasn’t the connection between master and disciple, between the Sakurazukamori of the past and the one of the present.
She had took the habit to smile at him suggestively when Seishiro-san wasn’t there and he would find hard to breathe, as if, for a second, he’d found himself in a Maboroshi in which two people indulged in carnal pleasures, passionately, sensually, with the abandonment of two consumed lovers that know perfectly how to work each other body, how to touch it and draw it in a spiral of pleasure, a crescendo that…
It always lasted a second. He always managed to free himself from the illusion before seeing its end. He didn’t want to know. She unfailingly pouted at that. She wanted him to know. To know what she had and what he had not.
_His_ attention.
Subaru knew better than to believe carnal pleasure might meant something to Seishiro-san but he also knew she had given Seishiro-san more than what Subaru had to offer.
Seishiro-san was not interested in him. He’d been in her. He was in whomever he were to meet once out of the house.
Subaru sat at the couch and watched the ceiling and almost wished the Chi no Ryu would win.
Always one future
Subaru-kun ignored him when he returned back. Subaru-kun ignored the food he cooked for him also. And the ‘it’s late, Subaru-kun, it’s time to go to bed’ as well.
Seishiro decided to ignore him in return and let him stare at the ceiling because the alternative was having a fight and he didn’t feel like having one.
The bed was cold without Subaru-kun’s presence on the other side of it and the second he closed his eyes he found himself staring at his mother walking toward him with a sensual smile.
He stared at her almost in shock as she embraced him and ordered him to kiss her. His mother. Alive. There. And willing to spend the night with him. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Wasn’t her what he wanted and not the mere illusion a whore could provide? He obeyed to her request and… tasted ashes. He ignored it as he continued to touch and kiss her, trying to lose himself in the pleasure she could give him. Yet… she felt no different from the whores, like them she was a thing for him to use and to get done with and the mere reason for which he’d almost forgotten his touch was… it was nothing worth remembering, nothing like the whores’ were.
Nothing, his mind repeated as he didn’t waste his time undressing himself but quickly buried inside her. Nothing, but he had nothing else, he mused as he moved inside her, nothing, but he’d known nothing else, he thought as he panted, nothing, but he felt nothing else he realized as he… he shook his head as she vanished under him, his surroundings changing and morphing into… a coast. Odaiba, he recognized, standing, not too far from Rainbow Bridge, thought that side of the coast looked at the ocean, not at Tokyo Bay.
Seishiro turned to meet the Chi no Ryu’s YumeMi’s flat gaze.
They weren’t acquainted, not in the real sense of the term. Seishiro had seen him only once when he’d visited the ToCho after Kamui’s awakening. The YumeMi had been comatose and, anyway, Seishiro hadn’t been interested in him. He had assumed the disinterest was reciprocal but he might have been wrong.
“To what I own this visit?” he asked. The man didn’t reply as he turned toward the ocean his behaviour disturbingly similar to Subaru-kun. “I’ve made you a question,” Seishiro pointed out in a rather careless tone.
“You did,” the YumeMi agreed not really paying him attention.
“When one does a question it’s polite to reply,” Seishiro informed him in a casual tone, walking closer to the coast and to the YumeMi. He got no reply. “Nice dreamscape.”
“It was one of your victims’ favourite,” came the flat reply.
“Oh,” Seishiro observed and wondered if the man could know his mother. Somehow however he doubted she had ever loved the ocean. He’d been the only thing his mother had loved. “Should I feel threatened?”
“I’ve no interest in killing you. It won’t return to me the person you killed,” the YumeMi countered, his voice still flat, empty, uncaring. He held no interest in taking a revenge for Seishiro’s actions. He held no interest in Seishiro either. Seishiro didn’t like to be dismissed.
“Japan is probably a better place without this person. Safer,” he reminded to the YumeMi, aiming to get a reaction. The man gazed at him blankly.
“That’s your excuse?”
“The mere truth.”
“You don’t know the truth. They point you to a target, you check if he has spiritual power and then you kill him. They might have lied you tons of time by now but that’s not important to you. You don’t care about the people you kill,” the YumeMi replied in a empty tone, returning to gaze at the ocean.
“I don’t,” Seishiro agreed. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“I didn’t want to talk with you,” the YumeMi informed him. “You’re the one who can’t stand being ignored.”
“You know… one would think you’ve a death wish,” Seishiro observed and in his careless tone there was a quiet threat.
“I do. But you can’t fulfil it so you’re of no use to me,” the man clarified. “It was Kamui’s idea to bring you here. Thanks him for this… and for that,” he added gesturing with obvious distaste to the point where Seishiro had had sex with his mother.
“I will. Any idea why he wanted me here?” Seishiro asked. Kakyou looked at him again and, for once, there seemed to be interest in the YumeMi’s gaze.
“Don’t you get it?” the man asked back.
“A repayment for the fact thanks to him brothels are becoming hard to find?” Seishiro ventured. The YumeMi shrugged and turned his eyes away again.
“Kamui said to let you have it as long as you don’t figure it out. Or until the day your housemate dies. Whichever came first,” he reported.
“How is Subaru-kun related to all this?” Seishiro asked, frowning.
“The Chi no Ryu’s victory will follow his death. The Chi no Ryu’s victory will sign my death and after I’ll die I won’t be able to influence your dreams anymore,” the YumeMi explained.
“Subaru-kun won’t die,” Seishiro stated firmly.
“He will. Kamui will kill him,” the man countered.
“Kamui won’t touch him!”
“He won’t have any other choice. It’ll be his Wish,” the YumeMi stated flatly.
“It’ll be not.”
“There’s only one future…” the man whispered before disappearing from Seishiro’s sight, the dreamscape morphing again into a devastated Tokyo, drowned in the water. In the middle of that were the Chi no Ryu’s Kamui, the Ten no Ryu’s one, three other Ten no Ryu and… Subaru-kun. Seishiro had only the time to notice him before the Chi no Ryu’s Kamui’s ShinKen went through him, then, as the Ten no Ryu’s Kamui screamed Subaru-kun’s name he came awake, panting and shivering.
All night
Subaru had no idea for how long he’d been staring at the ceiling before he felt a hand on his cheek. His head was turned to meet Seishiro-san’s stare. The man seemed troubled, disappointed. Subaru wondered if he was considering killing him. The next second he was being picked up, carried in the bedroom and placed down in the bed. The sheets reeked of sweat, tobacco and… something else Subaru wasn’t sure he wanted to identify and so Seishiro-san. The man joined him in bed immediately, clung to him like a scared child to a Teddy Bear and fell asleep the next second. Subaru remained awake instead, just to feel Seishiro-san awakening all of sudden short later. The man stared at him and Subaru stared back then Seishiro-san shook his head and clung to him again. Tighter. He fell asleep, even if not for long. It went on for all night.
Shattered cup
Seishiro’s night was a circle of dreaming to have sex with his mother, seeing Subaru-kun being killed and then waking up. Soon his dreams were filled with the knowledge that the sex was merely anticipating Subaru-kun’s death and he couldn’t stay asleep not even during that.
Finding all of sudden Subaru-kun wasn’t in bed with him anymore was unpleasant as he got immediately up and tracked him back in his kitchen. The boy turned as he entered and offered him a cup of tea. Irritate, he slapped Subaru-kun’s hand, causing the cup to smash on the floor.
“You broke your cup,” Subaru-kun observed in an empty tone as they both stared at it and there was some sort of horrid symbolism in that and Seishiro didn’t like it at all. The cup was shattered, broken and couldn’t be retrieved anymore. It didn’t matter he didn’t care about it but then his gaze fell on Subaru-kun and he grabbed his arms tightly.
“You’re mine. You go nowhere without my own permission,” he stated but his fax beeped and he knew there was a work coming. Subaru-kun lowered his head, his expression blank and his eyes as empty as the YumeMi’s had been. Seishiro didn’t like that as he pulled him closer and embraced him, more a possessive gesture than an affectionate one. Subaru-kun leaned limply into it, like a broken doll. Shattered, like a glass cup, which shards would only end up cutting Seishiro also if he were to try to pick them up. Actually they were hurting Seishiro also, even if he couldn’t understand why.
The glass cup had been his, the shards were his, if he wanted to pick them up it was in his right to do so and the shards… they didn’t have a will of their own so… why were they hurting him? Why was Subaru-kun hurting him without doing anything special, really?
He tipped the boy’s head up, toward himself. Green, empty eyes stared at him.
“Let’s go out for a date, Subaru-kun,” he suggested. “You need some fresh air.”
Subaru-kun looked at him and, for a moment, a flicker of surprise lightened his eyes, to vanish immediately as the boy lowered his head.
“You’ve got a job. And I’m not accompanying you on it. I…” Subaru-kun trailed off but it wasn’t hard to guess there were things Subaru-kun couldn’t bear witnessing.
“I’ve to take care of something more important than work,” he replied raising gently the boy’s head. Subaru-kun’s eyes remained empty. “Subaru-kun. Let me take care of you.” Subaru-kun blinked at that, as if he couldn’t understand him and Seishiro stared back.
‘Kamui will kill him. … It’ll be his Wish.’
He tried picturing a world without Subaru-kun and saw the same emptiness that was now in the boy’s eyes.
His arms tightened around Subaru-kun.
No. _No_.
Lie
Being outside wasn’t that different from being inside. He followed Seishiro-san, head lowered, hands in his pockets and empty gaze knowing he shouldn’t be there and yet… unable to go away.
He should be with Kamui. He should be doing his duty as Sumeragi no TouShu. But for him it was already too difficult to breathe on his own and Kamui and his grandmother seemed so far away right then… He won’t last for long and he knew it. Living was like drowning, sinking deeper and deeper until he would be so deep he won’t manage to rise anymore and… He stumbled and Seishiro-san caught him.
“Subaru-kun, are you all right?”
No. No, he wasn’t all right, he would never been.
Even when they were so close they were too distant for Subaru to feel Seishiro-san’s presence. The world was a cold, unwelcoming place and he wished to die, if only to have Seishiro-san looking at him as he aimed at him.
“I’m fine, thank you.” The lie was painfully obvious to both and Subaru wished to take it back. But there was no point in it and so he let them stay, another wall placed between them.
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