Legitimately Binding Ch. 5
Title: Legitimately Binding
Genre: Angst
Rating: M
Characters: Fuuma, Kamui, Seishirou, Subaru
Warnings: AU, blood, mild mutilation (?) and all the things that come with vampirism, as well as non-graphic nudity, sensuality, implied sexuality, shounen-ai... I'll stop now.
Summary: The first thing Subaru felt, upon finding the other boy standing there in the middle of the empty, echoing entrance hall, was fear.
Word Count: 1,913
Author Note: Missing parts summarized in red.
Chapter 5
Coercion
“Stop!” Kamui hardly registered the voice, but he felt the disorienting jerk as he was torn free, the room swinging wildly around him. Then arms lifted him up, cradling him close to a warm chest. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Fuuma sounded angry, Kamui thought, but if he was supposed to reply, that was too bad. He had gone limp, head back, limbs draped bonelessly in the man’s arms, and he was sure he wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon. But then Fuuma’s father spoke, and Kamui realized the question had never been directed at him in the first place.
“You can’t keep him. He’s broken the Binding. There are laws.”
“Laws! Your laws can’t save us!” Fuuma replied. “Killing every human who finds out about it… is just slaughter!”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” his father’s reply was patient. “The reason there isn’t a current Nekoi Seat is because of humans. The reason there isn’t a Kusanagi Seat is because of humans. I don’t think I need to remind you that the reason there isn’t a Magami Seat is because of humans as well.” Kamui was just coherent enough to realize they were talking about him, what he'd done. “We are few in number. The laws keep us safe.”
“But there are just as many deaths caused by our own! Kanoe-san, Hinoto-san…” But Kyougo was already shaking his head.
“It’s inevitable: the other Elders are going to find out about Kamui. They’re going to take him away. Then they’re going to make you watch him die. Is that what you want?”
Kamui tried to pull himself up at that, tried to fight through the fog that was stealing his vision to ask the man what he meant. But in the end, he managed little more than a faint tug at Fuuma’s shirt. Fuuma looked down at the movement and smiled sadly.
“I won’t let him die…”
“Killing him would be a mercy compared to what you propose to sentence him to.”
Fuuma was still looking down at him, so Kamui could see how he closed his eyes, steeling himself against what he’d have to say. “How can you sentence to death what okaa-san wanted to protect?” The silence following that pronouncement was deafening. Dead. Fuuma’s gaze, lifting to meet his father’s over Kamui’s body, was molten gold fire. In all the time Kamui had been with Fuuma, he’d never heard him mention his mother. Not once. And finally, the silence broke under the weight of quiet words.
“You have a week.”
Kamui lost consciousness.
He surfaced some time later, the bits of darkness sliding away from him, sifting through the net of arms he could feel at his back, firmly supporting, keeping him from falling away with the darkness.
A.N.: Fuuma explains to Kamui that his father is one of the Elders, responsible for the wellbeing of all those under his protection, responsible for making sure the laws are upheld, and how it’s been decreed that no human is allowed to know about their kind and live.
Kamui has a week to make his choice: whether he’ll join Fuuma for eternity, thereby nullifying the law, or whether he’ll choose to remain human, in which case Fuuma has decided to stand by him.
“Fuuma, I don’t want you to die for me too.”
Fuuma bent to kiss him kindly on the forehead. “Then make the right decision.”
Seishirou stood for a few minutes, a shadow among shadows in the doorway, and simply watched the boy sitting cross-legged on the wooden flooring of the back porch. He couldn’t see Subaru’s face-it was turned away from him, out toward the garden and the cool night air-and so he could only imagine the look of concentration furrowing thin eyebrows and pursing pale lips. A small loss though in comparison to the flicker of fingers as hands came together and parted again and again in a dizzying dance. There was a book lying open by the boy’s bare feet, but the swiftness with which each of the base forms was executed didn’t diminish even when a gust of wind sent pages tumbling over each other in a cascade of parchment, and Seishirou was sure that if he looked, he’d find emerald eyes drawn shut. Mesmerizing.
It wasn’t surprising how quickly the boy had picked up the art, really. Seishirou had expected a strong innate affinity for it. After all, it was in his blood. But watching the ebb and flow of each position as the boy practiced, entranced by the gracefulness of the working, he felt strangely proud. He liked watching Subaru practice.
But he liked Subaru’s attention even more.
“Have you memorized them already?” Seishirou stepped out of the shadows and drew sheltering arms around the figure kneeling there in the half light all in one smooth motion, pleased by the startled shiver it produced, by that lovely voice faltering into silence. Pleased that he had been right-the boy’s eyes had been closed the entire time. The thought was exciting.
“It was…” Subaru paused for balance, staring down at his hands as if they were instruments he’d never known he had, “easy.” He sounded surprised. Seishirou hid a knowing smirk in raven hair.
“You have natural talent.” He inhaled suddenly, taking in the boy’s scent, the sharp tang of magical working that had so recently become associated with him, everything that he was. “Just like the Sumeragi…” He stilled at that, surprised and annoyed that he’d said such a thing. And from the tentative little “Sumeragi?” from the boy in his arms, Subaru was surprised too. The Sumeragi had always been something of a taboo subject since Subaru had come to live with them, and Seishirou wondered wryly if it was nostalgia that made him bring it up just then or the weight of recent events or the desire to have back things long lost, dangerous as that was. But dangerous or not, right just then he simply didn’t care, gripped by a sudden urge toward recklessness.
“The Sumeragi…” With a flicker of fingers along a slender throat, enough to make that head of ebony hair tilt back dizzily into his hold so as to better meet emerald eyes, he continued, “What do you know about them?”
“Nothing.” That green gaze was confused, looking up at him. “Only that they were destroyed.”
“They were practitioners too.” Reaching out with the hand that wasn’t tangled about Subaru’s throat, Seishirou tapped the book still lying open at his side for emphasis. A few more pages fluttered over with the wind. “They were very powerful. Very skilled.”
Subaru blinked. If he wondered about the strange turn in conversation, he didn’t show it. “But Seishirou-san… I’m not like them at all. I’m no one. I don’t even have a name.” The complete sincerity with which he said it irritated Seishirou somehow. As if he didn’t mind at all. As if he really considered himself of no worth.
“You have a name!” The hand at Subaru’s throat tightened and the boy leaned into it blindly, totally trusting. Sieshirou continued more peaceably, loosening his grip again, “You’re not no one. Never no one.” There was a little voice again, whispering warnings in the back of his mind: Reckless. Reckless. So he didn’t say the most dangerous thing of all. Not out loud.
You don’t understand right now, but some day… Some day you will. You can’t know just yet how important you are, but you are… very, very important. Even in thinking that, the part Seishirou himself couldn’t know… it wasn’t just that the boy was important, but that at some point, so gradually that even he, himself, was not fully aware of it, Subaru had become important to him.
With a sudden disarming smile, he changed the subject.
“I don’t think you need this anymore.” Reaching down, he closed the book still lying open at Subaru’s feet, listening to the satisfactory thud of the cover falling shut. Then, lifting the boy’s hands in his own and drawing them together, he continued, “Why don’t we try something a bit harder?”
Subaru stuttered in embarrassment, but Seishirou was already guiding him through the positions and the strange conversation fell forgotten.
Kamui didn’t need a week to make his decision. He’d already made it, from the moment Fuuma’s father had caught him the night before, intending to make the choice for him. Permanently. Maybe it had only been impulsive at the time-the last-minute flicker-like thought of a soul about to be snuffed out-but if the twenty-four hours since then had done anything, they’d only served to strengthen his resolve.
It was ironic, he thought, as he waited to tell Fuuma-ironic that it should take getting exactly what he’d thought he wanted to realize he didn’t want it. All those years ago, he’d asked Fuuma to kill him and been turned down. Now Fuuma was willing to offer him death… and he had to refuse.
Of course, there was still the risk, as long as he was alive, that other people would get hurt. But life itself was a risk, and Fuuma was strong-strong enough to have taken the full force of his power and kept coming. It was a strange feeling, having so many people around he didn’t have to worry about hurting or waking up to find them dead. He wasn’t used to feeling… safe.
So by the time the swish of the door sounded behind him, he was already turning, having wanted to tell the man all day.
“Fuuma, I’ve made my decision. I want…” He blinked to find amber eyes staring back at him with startling intensity, taken off guard by it somehow. “Fuuma…” And then everything slipped away, falling like sand from his grasp. “I…” he tried again, but it was all fuzzy, and he couldn’t remember what had been so important. Couldn’t remember at all.
Fuuma closed the distance between them, sitting down beside him and pulling him close. Kamui went willingly into the hold, still dazed. The hand cupping the side of his face, drawing him closer, was warm. It took him a second to realize the man was whispering something, lips moving in the dark.
“Hush. It’s not important.”
Kamui wasn’t so sure of that. He was pretty sure it was very important. “But I…”
“Forget about it.” And he did. He would have done anything just then that Fuuma asked. “Listen to me very closely…”
Kamui nodded, dizzy. He couldn’t really keep up, but it was warm in Fuuma’s arms, and he felt so very drowsy. He tried to listen to what the man was saying, but it was no use. Those amber eyes were above him, watching him closely, and there might have been lips against his forehead, against his throat, but he couldn’t be sure. Amber was the last color he saw.
When he woke up again, it was to a steady clip of steps at the door, a familiar voice: “Kamui, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Fuuma, Kamui’s mind told him. He sat up groggily, disoriented, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember how he’d fallen asleep…
“Fuuma, I…”
“Was there something you wanted to tell me?” the man asked, coming to sit next to him.
Kamui fought to remember, brows furrowing, but there was nothing. Whatever it had been, it was gone.
“Nothing.”
Author Note: Well, that was incredibly short. I don't usually post chapters less than 3000 words long, but that missing scene probably would have increased it, and seeing how it won't be finished... T_T I know this is incredibly late in coming. I do apologize. I should have put these pieces up MONTHS ago. I uh, kind of got married, and everything was in chaos for awhile, and I'm trying to write my own original stories now instead of fanfiction that'll never get published. It's really sad to not be writing for this series anymore though.
Chapter: one, two, three, four, five, six
Genre: Angst
Rating: M
Characters: Fuuma, Kamui, Seishirou, Subaru
Warnings: AU, blood, mild mutilation (?) and all the things that come with vampirism, as well as non-graphic nudity, sensuality, implied sexuality, shounen-ai... I'll stop now.
Summary: The first thing Subaru felt, upon finding the other boy standing there in the middle of the empty, echoing entrance hall, was fear.
Word Count: 1,913
Author Note: Missing parts summarized in red.
Chapter 5
Coercion
“Stop!” Kamui hardly registered the voice, but he felt the disorienting jerk as he was torn free, the room swinging wildly around him. Then arms lifted him up, cradling him close to a warm chest. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Fuuma sounded angry, Kamui thought, but if he was supposed to reply, that was too bad. He had gone limp, head back, limbs draped bonelessly in the man’s arms, and he was sure he wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon. But then Fuuma’s father spoke, and Kamui realized the question had never been directed at him in the first place.
“You can’t keep him. He’s broken the Binding. There are laws.”
“Laws! Your laws can’t save us!” Fuuma replied. “Killing every human who finds out about it… is just slaughter!”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” his father’s reply was patient. “The reason there isn’t a current Nekoi Seat is because of humans. The reason there isn’t a Kusanagi Seat is because of humans. I don’t think I need to remind you that the reason there isn’t a Magami Seat is because of humans as well.” Kamui was just coherent enough to realize they were talking about him, what he'd done. “We are few in number. The laws keep us safe.”
“But there are just as many deaths caused by our own! Kanoe-san, Hinoto-san…” But Kyougo was already shaking his head.
“It’s inevitable: the other Elders are going to find out about Kamui. They’re going to take him away. Then they’re going to make you watch him die. Is that what you want?”
Kamui tried to pull himself up at that, tried to fight through the fog that was stealing his vision to ask the man what he meant. But in the end, he managed little more than a faint tug at Fuuma’s shirt. Fuuma looked down at the movement and smiled sadly.
“I won’t let him die…”
“Killing him would be a mercy compared to what you propose to sentence him to.”
Fuuma was still looking down at him, so Kamui could see how he closed his eyes, steeling himself against what he’d have to say. “How can you sentence to death what okaa-san wanted to protect?” The silence following that pronouncement was deafening. Dead. Fuuma’s gaze, lifting to meet his father’s over Kamui’s body, was molten gold fire. In all the time Kamui had been with Fuuma, he’d never heard him mention his mother. Not once. And finally, the silence broke under the weight of quiet words.
“You have a week.”
Kamui lost consciousness.
He surfaced some time later, the bits of darkness sliding away from him, sifting through the net of arms he could feel at his back, firmly supporting, keeping him from falling away with the darkness.
A.N.: Fuuma explains to Kamui that his father is one of the Elders, responsible for the wellbeing of all those under his protection, responsible for making sure the laws are upheld, and how it’s been decreed that no human is allowed to know about their kind and live.
Kamui has a week to make his choice: whether he’ll join Fuuma for eternity, thereby nullifying the law, or whether he’ll choose to remain human, in which case Fuuma has decided to stand by him.
“Fuuma, I don’t want you to die for me too.”
Fuuma bent to kiss him kindly on the forehead. “Then make the right decision.”
Seishirou stood for a few minutes, a shadow among shadows in the doorway, and simply watched the boy sitting cross-legged on the wooden flooring of the back porch. He couldn’t see Subaru’s face-it was turned away from him, out toward the garden and the cool night air-and so he could only imagine the look of concentration furrowing thin eyebrows and pursing pale lips. A small loss though in comparison to the flicker of fingers as hands came together and parted again and again in a dizzying dance. There was a book lying open by the boy’s bare feet, but the swiftness with which each of the base forms was executed didn’t diminish even when a gust of wind sent pages tumbling over each other in a cascade of parchment, and Seishirou was sure that if he looked, he’d find emerald eyes drawn shut. Mesmerizing.
It wasn’t surprising how quickly the boy had picked up the art, really. Seishirou had expected a strong innate affinity for it. After all, it was in his blood. But watching the ebb and flow of each position as the boy practiced, entranced by the gracefulness of the working, he felt strangely proud. He liked watching Subaru practice.
But he liked Subaru’s attention even more.
“Have you memorized them already?” Seishirou stepped out of the shadows and drew sheltering arms around the figure kneeling there in the half light all in one smooth motion, pleased by the startled shiver it produced, by that lovely voice faltering into silence. Pleased that he had been right-the boy’s eyes had been closed the entire time. The thought was exciting.
“It was…” Subaru paused for balance, staring down at his hands as if they were instruments he’d never known he had, “easy.” He sounded surprised. Seishirou hid a knowing smirk in raven hair.
“You have natural talent.” He inhaled suddenly, taking in the boy’s scent, the sharp tang of magical working that had so recently become associated with him, everything that he was. “Just like the Sumeragi…” He stilled at that, surprised and annoyed that he’d said such a thing. And from the tentative little “Sumeragi?” from the boy in his arms, Subaru was surprised too. The Sumeragi had always been something of a taboo subject since Subaru had come to live with them, and Seishirou wondered wryly if it was nostalgia that made him bring it up just then or the weight of recent events or the desire to have back things long lost, dangerous as that was. But dangerous or not, right just then he simply didn’t care, gripped by a sudden urge toward recklessness.
“The Sumeragi…” With a flicker of fingers along a slender throat, enough to make that head of ebony hair tilt back dizzily into his hold so as to better meet emerald eyes, he continued, “What do you know about them?”
“Nothing.” That green gaze was confused, looking up at him. “Only that they were destroyed.”
“They were practitioners too.” Reaching out with the hand that wasn’t tangled about Subaru’s throat, Seishirou tapped the book still lying open at his side for emphasis. A few more pages fluttered over with the wind. “They were very powerful. Very skilled.”
Subaru blinked. If he wondered about the strange turn in conversation, he didn’t show it. “But Seishirou-san… I’m not like them at all. I’m no one. I don’t even have a name.” The complete sincerity with which he said it irritated Seishirou somehow. As if he didn’t mind at all. As if he really considered himself of no worth.
“You have a name!” The hand at Subaru’s throat tightened and the boy leaned into it blindly, totally trusting. Sieshirou continued more peaceably, loosening his grip again, “You’re not no one. Never no one.” There was a little voice again, whispering warnings in the back of his mind: Reckless. Reckless. So he didn’t say the most dangerous thing of all. Not out loud.
You don’t understand right now, but some day… Some day you will. You can’t know just yet how important you are, but you are… very, very important. Even in thinking that, the part Seishirou himself couldn’t know… it wasn’t just that the boy was important, but that at some point, so gradually that even he, himself, was not fully aware of it, Subaru had become important to him.
With a sudden disarming smile, he changed the subject.
“I don’t think you need this anymore.” Reaching down, he closed the book still lying open at Subaru’s feet, listening to the satisfactory thud of the cover falling shut. Then, lifting the boy’s hands in his own and drawing them together, he continued, “Why don’t we try something a bit harder?”
Subaru stuttered in embarrassment, but Seishirou was already guiding him through the positions and the strange conversation fell forgotten.
Kamui didn’t need a week to make his decision. He’d already made it, from the moment Fuuma’s father had caught him the night before, intending to make the choice for him. Permanently. Maybe it had only been impulsive at the time-the last-minute flicker-like thought of a soul about to be snuffed out-but if the twenty-four hours since then had done anything, they’d only served to strengthen his resolve.
It was ironic, he thought, as he waited to tell Fuuma-ironic that it should take getting exactly what he’d thought he wanted to realize he didn’t want it. All those years ago, he’d asked Fuuma to kill him and been turned down. Now Fuuma was willing to offer him death… and he had to refuse.
Of course, there was still the risk, as long as he was alive, that other people would get hurt. But life itself was a risk, and Fuuma was strong-strong enough to have taken the full force of his power and kept coming. It was a strange feeling, having so many people around he didn’t have to worry about hurting or waking up to find them dead. He wasn’t used to feeling… safe.
So by the time the swish of the door sounded behind him, he was already turning, having wanted to tell the man all day.
“Fuuma, I’ve made my decision. I want…” He blinked to find amber eyes staring back at him with startling intensity, taken off guard by it somehow. “Fuuma…” And then everything slipped away, falling like sand from his grasp. “I…” he tried again, but it was all fuzzy, and he couldn’t remember what had been so important. Couldn’t remember at all.
Fuuma closed the distance between them, sitting down beside him and pulling him close. Kamui went willingly into the hold, still dazed. The hand cupping the side of his face, drawing him closer, was warm. It took him a second to realize the man was whispering something, lips moving in the dark.
“Hush. It’s not important.”
Kamui wasn’t so sure of that. He was pretty sure it was very important. “But I…”
“Forget about it.” And he did. He would have done anything just then that Fuuma asked. “Listen to me very closely…”
Kamui nodded, dizzy. He couldn’t really keep up, but it was warm in Fuuma’s arms, and he felt so very drowsy. He tried to listen to what the man was saying, but it was no use. Those amber eyes were above him, watching him closely, and there might have been lips against his forehead, against his throat, but he couldn’t be sure. Amber was the last color he saw.
When he woke up again, it was to a steady clip of steps at the door, a familiar voice: “Kamui, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Fuuma, Kamui’s mind told him. He sat up groggily, disoriented, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember how he’d fallen asleep…
“Fuuma, I…”
“Was there something you wanted to tell me?” the man asked, coming to sit next to him.
Kamui fought to remember, brows furrowing, but there was nothing. Whatever it had been, it was gone.
“Nothing.”
Author Note: Well, that was incredibly short. I don't usually post chapters less than 3000 words long, but that missing scene probably would have increased it, and seeing how it won't be finished... T_T I know this is incredibly late in coming. I do apologize. I should have put these pieces up MONTHS ago. I uh, kind of got married, and everything was in chaos for awhile, and I'm trying to write my own original stories now instead of fanfiction that'll never get published. It's really sad to not be writing for this series anymore though.
Chapter: one, two, three, four, five, six