Drabbles. SotC, PW, KH, KKM, TRC.
First off, something I swore I'd never do. A Shadow of the Colossus drabble. You know, considering no one's ever played it, and it's obscure like Wander is tragic. D:
A Land of Dreams
Her body is heavy in his arms, and her skin is cold against his. He lifts her from the mat, an arm about her shoulders, and another beneath her knees. She doesn't move, or breathe, just as she hasn't since she held a cup to her lips and drank, the village gathered around.
The funeral shroud tangles about their arms, and her lips are white. He covers them both with the shroud, tucking her closer against his chest, and the fabric stinks of death.
Agro shies away from them both, and it's difficult to lay her body across Agro's back. Difficult, but not impossible.
He has learned, in the past three days, that nothing is impossible.
x
The land of the gods is forever southwards, on a road that never ends. He travels upon Agro's back, and Mono's body is heavy against his chest. Time never seems to end, and the days seem to last for years, the nights for decades. At times, Mono's hair will slip against his neck, soft and smooth, and Agro will shudder beneath him.
He stops counting the days, and waits for Mono's body to begin to stink. It is, he is sure, only a matter of time, for the land of the gods is far, and the human body is small. Still, times goes by, and Mono's body is the same, smelling of bitter poison and little else.
At times, he wonders if they are all trapped with a dream, and if he will ever wake from the never ending roads.
x
The temple echoes about him, and when he catches Mono from Agro's back, the sound of his gasp is loud to his ears. Mono is no lighter than she was before, and the shroud covers her as it did then, hiding hands and feet and face, hair the color of the sun-bleached clay.
He lays her upon a stone altar, and pledges himself to chaos, because ever since the village held out a little wooden cup, there has been no order in the world. It takes little courage to destroy his life; all it takes, he learns, leaping from a cliff into a chasm, is betrayal.
x
He doesn't recognize himself anymore. His face is pale, and his fingers are numb. His legs give out beneath him, and he clutches to Agro's saddle more and more, fighting to stay upright. His chest burns, then freezes, then burns again, and the world spins before his eyes.
He takes to touching Mono's face while in the temple, to tracing the slant of her jaw, brush back her hair. She looks more alive with each piece of Dormin, and there's a near-flush to her cheeks. At times, if he stands still long enough, holding himself up from the stone, the world sways, and Mono seems to breathe.
At times, he forgets to breathe, and it is the falls from the colossi, the broken rocks beneath his body, the stinging of his sword and the quivering of his bow, that reminds him to gasp in pain. Time continues, a never ending day with a sun that never stops burning into his eyes, and he wonders if he's the one dead, and if Mono's the one dreaming.
It is confusing, and frightening, to piece together a god.
x
He feels little of anything, and he remembers even less. There is her, laid out in white, and there is him, dressed in blood. There is the voice, ringing in his ears and mouth and chest, and there is the urgency, the pressing need, because this day cannot last forever.
There are less colossi than towers of light, and the world becomes a little less real, and a little less real. He would feel that he's being cut apart from his body, but he can't feel even that, and so he continues, in a haze and a dream. His hands move, slow and clumsy, and his feet stumble upon the stone pathways, but he continues, one hand upon the sword, one hand upon Agro's bridle.
Agro shies away ever more, stamping feet and the snap of leather, and so he lies his hands upon Agro's neck more and more, and his hands tremble, though he cannot feel it.
x
He stumbles, and he loses his footing, but he fights, and he dies, and he rises to fight again. He is losing something, because at times he can feel it, between the burning and the freezing, but it's never something he can remember. He forgets, while standing beside Mono, and while leaning in Agro's saddle, and while falling into the chasms, what he's lost, and what he's losing.
His skin is white now, paler than Mono's, and her skin feels as though it's fire when he touches it. He can't decide if it's because she is burning, or he is freezing. He wonders, hand against her cheek, if it's both. Mono's body is still, but her lips are parted, and he can't stop, because he's close enough to take the world and set it right again.
Dormin whispers and growls in his head, and he rides ever longer across the land, climbs and falls and climbs again, covered in sunlight and shadow and every manner of thing in between.
This, he is sure, is a little price to pay; there is nothing, he is sure, that is too heavy a burden.
x
In the end, he tries to crawl to Mono. She is upon stone, still as clay, and he wants to touch her, feel her skin, listen to her breathe and watch her wake. He wants to see her live, and know that somehow, he chained chaos and made it his. He wants to know that somehow, he's set a wrong to right, and that maybe, somehow, he might be forgiven.
In the end, it burns as fire and freezes as ice, and no matter how powerful the sunlight, the shadows grow and swallow his world. He bleeds, for everything bleeds, and he empties to a vessel to house a god, but even a god can't change the world. And what, he wonders, was he dreaming of, to think that he might do that which even a god cannot do?
In the end, he falls into shadow, and wakes into light.
It is not, he learns, the end of which he dreamed.
A few drabbles for techiegoat.
Phoenix Wright. Miles Edgeworth. Their love is...snarky?
To Think Before You Act
"You really should think things through," Edgeworth says dryly, and he flicks Phoenix's ear. Phoenix flinches, because his ear is still sore, and really, flicking isn't the best thing to go about right now.
"Of course," Edgeworth continues, and he always looks so mocking, "it's not as though you ever think."
"Shaddup," Phoenix says bitterly, covering his ear. "Maya said it'd look good."
"Maya?" Edgeworth asks, raising one smirky eyebrow. "And you believed her because...?"
"Shaddup," Phoenix says again, and wonders if maybe the earring wasn't the best idea. Last time he'd trust Maya's fashion sense, ever.
And Kingdom Hearts. Riku screams, Sora butters toast, and Kairi buys curtains to block out the moon. Sora/Riku with a side of Kairi.
To Nightmares and Moonlight
They're seventeen when they finally get back to the islands. At least, Sora's seventeen, and Riku's two months from eighteen. Then he is eighteen, and Sora's still seventeen, and Kairi's seventeen, too, and then they're all eighteen.
They all graduate together, because Riku's fallen too far behind his own class, and because Donald had quizzed Sora enough during their adventures that Sora's still mostly caught up with his own class. Kairi stands between them both, and the three of them smile for the camera, and Riku's hand is clammy on Sora's shoulder.
"Wanna be roommates?" Riku asks the day after graduation, when the three of them are lying on the beach, wet from the water and grainy from the sand.
"I need to move out," Riku says, and his voice sounds a little tight, like it has ever since the World that Never Was.
Kairi leans up on her elbows, the bathing suit straps criss-crossing over her back, and Sora rolls onto his side.
"Sure," Sora says, and Kairi says she'll help them move their stuff, and pick out curtains, because Sora and Riku are hopeless at that kind of stuff, and maybe Selphie and Tidus can help out, and Wakka has some friends who could move stuff--
x
Riku screams at night, Sora learns. Every third night, like clockwork, Riku screams, and his face goes pale and cold. And every third night, like clockwork, Sora sits on the edge of Riku's bed, curtains pulled tight over the windows, because Riku can't stand the light of the moon.
"Sorry," Riku says, and his voice is hoarse. "I didn't want, but my mom--"
"It's fine," Sora says, even though it's really not. Riku's screaming at night because of Sora, and Riku's always been screaming because of Sora, ever since they were little kids, and Sora was trying to be some kind of hero.
"It's not," Riku begins, and he's picking at the burnt toast, flicking crumbs across the coffee table they call 'theirs.'
"It is," Sora says, and he feels so angry, because Riku's the one screaming at night, not Sora, not Kairi, always Riku, because somehow, everything dark and shadowy and empty finds Riku, Riku who never lost his heart, because it was eaten up before Riku could ever lose it.
"It's fine," Sora says, and he throws a glass into the sink, watches the shards shatter in the sunlight.
x
Sora starts sleeping in Riku's bed, because it's easier than stumbling from one room to another when Riku begins to scream. It's easier, then, to roll over and press his body against Riku's, and it's easier to cover Riku's mouth with his hand, and it's easier to lick his own blood when Riku bites on Sora's hand.
It's easier, Sora learns, to fuck Riku, because Riku is already there, cold and pale and empty, eyes that stare at nothing and a mouth that whispers sorry, sorry. Sora slips his fingers through Riku's hair, slides his hands down Riku's body, curls his arms around Riku's waist. Riku's cold, but Sora's hot, and between the two of them, Sora thinks he'll be able to break his heart apart, and maybe give a bit to Riku, enough to keep Riku from screaming at night.
"It's fine," Riku says, and his hair is spread out over the couch. His fingers are flicking the pages of a book he'll never read, and Sora scrapes butter onto a piece of toast.
"And Kairi?" Sora asks, and the butter knife grazes his hand. Sora eyes his hand, licks the blood.
"It's fine," Riku says, and Riku covers his eyes with his hand, because the sun is setting, and soon the moon will rise.
"It's not," Sora says that night, but Riku's screaming, and Riku can never hear anything when he's screaming. It's not alright, nothing's alright, but Sora will fix it, Sora will make it better. It'll just take time, and maybe a little of Sora's heart.
For x_saturnine, a KKM drabble. Vague Conrart/Yuuri. Brothers.
Laughing Boys
Conrart is nothing like Gwendal. Gwendal was a silence that faded into the background, of rustling papers and the scratching of a quill. Conrart is a silence that roars in Wolfram's ears, like the ocean beyond the shore. Conrart is all the power of the world, pent up in the body of a half-demon, with the short temper and the short eyes and the shorter life.
Except, somehow, Conrart changes over the years. Yuuri comes, and Conrart's smile grows a little longer, stays on a bit stronger. Conrart laughs sometimes, and he laughs for Yuuri, not Wolfram, never Wolfram.
Gwendal used to laugh for Wolfram, before his stomach was slit and he was emptied like a torn doll.
Now, Conrart laughs for Yuuri, and Wolfram cries for Gwendal, and it goes over and over, like this:
Conrart grabs Wolfram's hand, pulls him outside to the courtyard, where the other soldiers are holding practice blades.
You, Conrart says every time, are out of control. And every time Wolfram sneers, turns away.
Every time, Conrart beats him with the flat of his blade, again and again. Block, Conrart says, defend, and Wolfram lets his blade to the ground.
The bruises grow on Wolfram's skin, bone-deep, and Conrart's smile grows shorter.
Why don't you, Conrart asks, and the practice blades are silent, fight back?
Why don't you, Wolfram asks, and he can forever see Gwendal in the corner of his eye, fading wisps of gray blood and gray smiles, laugh for me?
And one for hayden_clone! TRC.
Fai brings a cup of water, some conversation, and a bit more. Kurogane/Fai. Or possibly Fai/Kurogane. Someone's being played like a game. Early Acid!Tokyo.
Dust Parches the Throat
"Here," Fai said, holding out a tin cup. Kurogane took the cup with a frown, water sloshing within.
"Did the kid," he begin, and Fai nearly beamed at him, a tilted head and tousled hair.
"Syaoran-kun already drank," Fai said. "I've saved some water for Sakura-chan, when she wakes up, and I'm sure they'll give us more, if we ask very nicely."
"Don't count on it," Kurogane grumbled, and he saw Fai twitch, a shake of a laugh.
"Ah, Kuro-tan's so mistrusting," Fai laughed, and Kurogane drank the water quickly, trying to ignore Fai.
"They've asked us," Fai continued, and he was sliding his hands into his pockets, standing long and lean in the dim light, "to help them hunt for food. I told them yes. It's the least we can do, since they're giving us their water."
"I," Kurogane, because he'd be damned if he let Fai, with all his stupid obliviousness, or the kid, with his new knack for acting partially possessed, go out alone with strangers in a decimated city, hunting for who knew what. Probably with weapons. Most certainly with weapons. But, of course, Fai interrupted him, because the magician was always interrupting him.
"I already told Syaoran-kun," Fai chirped, "and he's excited to see more of the world. I told him you'd be happy to guard the princess while we were gone."
And, like always, Kurogane was waylaid by Fai, sent aflounder by quick words.
"Like hell," Kurogane began, because he'd be damned, but then Fai was nearly crawling into his lap, slender hands knotting around the back of Kurogane's neck.
"You'd protect the princess very well," Fai said, and he sounded as though he was purring. "You're stronger than all of them here, except maybe Kamui. But Kuro-pon's very good with his sword. Sakura-chan will be safe, with a knicht like you."
"You," Kurogane tried to growl, and Fai's fingers were brushing light against his jaw.
"Syaoran-kun's worrying me," Fai said next to Kurogane's ear, and Kurogane dropped the tin cup, hands going to Fai's waist. "I'm going to talk to him. So take care of Sakura-chan?"
"Fine," Kurogane breathed, because it was always easier to agree, and Fai's fingers were playing with Kurogane's collar, and Kurogane let his hands slide further down Fai's legs, against soft fabric.
"Good puppy," Fai laughed into Kurogane's neck, and Kurogane got a feeling of being played. "Kuro-wanwan," and Fai was spinning out of Kurogane's lap, twisting beyond Kurogane's and ever closer to the door, "is such a good daddy!"
And then Fai was gone, a bubble of laughter, practically mocking laughter, going down the hallway. Kurogane cursed, then grabbed for the forgotten cup.
He was still thirsty.
A Land of Dreams
Her body is heavy in his arms, and her skin is cold against his. He lifts her from the mat, an arm about her shoulders, and another beneath her knees. She doesn't move, or breathe, just as she hasn't since she held a cup to her lips and drank, the village gathered around.
The funeral shroud tangles about their arms, and her lips are white. He covers them both with the shroud, tucking her closer against his chest, and the fabric stinks of death.
Agro shies away from them both, and it's difficult to lay her body across Agro's back. Difficult, but not impossible.
He has learned, in the past three days, that nothing is impossible.
x
The land of the gods is forever southwards, on a road that never ends. He travels upon Agro's back, and Mono's body is heavy against his chest. Time never seems to end, and the days seem to last for years, the nights for decades. At times, Mono's hair will slip against his neck, soft and smooth, and Agro will shudder beneath him.
He stops counting the days, and waits for Mono's body to begin to stink. It is, he is sure, only a matter of time, for the land of the gods is far, and the human body is small. Still, times goes by, and Mono's body is the same, smelling of bitter poison and little else.
At times, he wonders if they are all trapped with a dream, and if he will ever wake from the never ending roads.
x
The temple echoes about him, and when he catches Mono from Agro's back, the sound of his gasp is loud to his ears. Mono is no lighter than she was before, and the shroud covers her as it did then, hiding hands and feet and face, hair the color of the sun-bleached clay.
He lays her upon a stone altar, and pledges himself to chaos, because ever since the village held out a little wooden cup, there has been no order in the world. It takes little courage to destroy his life; all it takes, he learns, leaping from a cliff into a chasm, is betrayal.
x
He doesn't recognize himself anymore. His face is pale, and his fingers are numb. His legs give out beneath him, and he clutches to Agro's saddle more and more, fighting to stay upright. His chest burns, then freezes, then burns again, and the world spins before his eyes.
He takes to touching Mono's face while in the temple, to tracing the slant of her jaw, brush back her hair. She looks more alive with each piece of Dormin, and there's a near-flush to her cheeks. At times, if he stands still long enough, holding himself up from the stone, the world sways, and Mono seems to breathe.
At times, he forgets to breathe, and it is the falls from the colossi, the broken rocks beneath his body, the stinging of his sword and the quivering of his bow, that reminds him to gasp in pain. Time continues, a never ending day with a sun that never stops burning into his eyes, and he wonders if he's the one dead, and if Mono's the one dreaming.
It is confusing, and frightening, to piece together a god.
x
He feels little of anything, and he remembers even less. There is her, laid out in white, and there is him, dressed in blood. There is the voice, ringing in his ears and mouth and chest, and there is the urgency, the pressing need, because this day cannot last forever.
There are less colossi than towers of light, and the world becomes a little less real, and a little less real. He would feel that he's being cut apart from his body, but he can't feel even that, and so he continues, in a haze and a dream. His hands move, slow and clumsy, and his feet stumble upon the stone pathways, but he continues, one hand upon the sword, one hand upon Agro's bridle.
Agro shies away ever more, stamping feet and the snap of leather, and so he lies his hands upon Agro's neck more and more, and his hands tremble, though he cannot feel it.
x
He stumbles, and he loses his footing, but he fights, and he dies, and he rises to fight again. He is losing something, because at times he can feel it, between the burning and the freezing, but it's never something he can remember. He forgets, while standing beside Mono, and while leaning in Agro's saddle, and while falling into the chasms, what he's lost, and what he's losing.
His skin is white now, paler than Mono's, and her skin feels as though it's fire when he touches it. He can't decide if it's because she is burning, or he is freezing. He wonders, hand against her cheek, if it's both. Mono's body is still, but her lips are parted, and he can't stop, because he's close enough to take the world and set it right again.
Dormin whispers and growls in his head, and he rides ever longer across the land, climbs and falls and climbs again, covered in sunlight and shadow and every manner of thing in between.
This, he is sure, is a little price to pay; there is nothing, he is sure, that is too heavy a burden.
x
In the end, he tries to crawl to Mono. She is upon stone, still as clay, and he wants to touch her, feel her skin, listen to her breathe and watch her wake. He wants to see her live, and know that somehow, he chained chaos and made it his. He wants to know that somehow, he's set a wrong to right, and that maybe, somehow, he might be forgiven.
In the end, it burns as fire and freezes as ice, and no matter how powerful the sunlight, the shadows grow and swallow his world. He bleeds, for everything bleeds, and he empties to a vessel to house a god, but even a god can't change the world. And what, he wonders, was he dreaming of, to think that he might do that which even a god cannot do?
In the end, he falls into shadow, and wakes into light.
It is not, he learns, the end of which he dreamed.
A few drabbles for techiegoat.
Phoenix Wright. Miles Edgeworth. Their love is...snarky?
To Think Before You Act
"You really should think things through," Edgeworth says dryly, and he flicks Phoenix's ear. Phoenix flinches, because his ear is still sore, and really, flicking isn't the best thing to go about right now.
"Of course," Edgeworth continues, and he always looks so mocking, "it's not as though you ever think."
"Shaddup," Phoenix says bitterly, covering his ear. "Maya said it'd look good."
"Maya?" Edgeworth asks, raising one smirky eyebrow. "And you believed her because...?"
"Shaddup," Phoenix says again, and wonders if maybe the earring wasn't the best idea. Last time he'd trust Maya's fashion sense, ever.
And Kingdom Hearts. Riku screams, Sora butters toast, and Kairi buys curtains to block out the moon. Sora/Riku with a side of Kairi.
To Nightmares and Moonlight
They're seventeen when they finally get back to the islands. At least, Sora's seventeen, and Riku's two months from eighteen. Then he is eighteen, and Sora's still seventeen, and Kairi's seventeen, too, and then they're all eighteen.
They all graduate together, because Riku's fallen too far behind his own class, and because Donald had quizzed Sora enough during their adventures that Sora's still mostly caught up with his own class. Kairi stands between them both, and the three of them smile for the camera, and Riku's hand is clammy on Sora's shoulder.
"Wanna be roommates?" Riku asks the day after graduation, when the three of them are lying on the beach, wet from the water and grainy from the sand.
"I need to move out," Riku says, and his voice sounds a little tight, like it has ever since the World that Never Was.
Kairi leans up on her elbows, the bathing suit straps criss-crossing over her back, and Sora rolls onto his side.
"Sure," Sora says, and Kairi says she'll help them move their stuff, and pick out curtains, because Sora and Riku are hopeless at that kind of stuff, and maybe Selphie and Tidus can help out, and Wakka has some friends who could move stuff--
x
Riku screams at night, Sora learns. Every third night, like clockwork, Riku screams, and his face goes pale and cold. And every third night, like clockwork, Sora sits on the edge of Riku's bed, curtains pulled tight over the windows, because Riku can't stand the light of the moon.
"Sorry," Riku says, and his voice is hoarse. "I didn't want, but my mom--"
"It's fine," Sora says, even though it's really not. Riku's screaming at night because of Sora, and Riku's always been screaming because of Sora, ever since they were little kids, and Sora was trying to be some kind of hero.
"It's not," Riku begins, and he's picking at the burnt toast, flicking crumbs across the coffee table they call 'theirs.'
"It is," Sora says, and he feels so angry, because Riku's the one screaming at night, not Sora, not Kairi, always Riku, because somehow, everything dark and shadowy and empty finds Riku, Riku who never lost his heart, because it was eaten up before Riku could ever lose it.
"It's fine," Sora says, and he throws a glass into the sink, watches the shards shatter in the sunlight.
x
Sora starts sleeping in Riku's bed, because it's easier than stumbling from one room to another when Riku begins to scream. It's easier, then, to roll over and press his body against Riku's, and it's easier to cover Riku's mouth with his hand, and it's easier to lick his own blood when Riku bites on Sora's hand.
It's easier, Sora learns, to fuck Riku, because Riku is already there, cold and pale and empty, eyes that stare at nothing and a mouth that whispers sorry, sorry. Sora slips his fingers through Riku's hair, slides his hands down Riku's body, curls his arms around Riku's waist. Riku's cold, but Sora's hot, and between the two of them, Sora thinks he'll be able to break his heart apart, and maybe give a bit to Riku, enough to keep Riku from screaming at night.
"It's fine," Riku says, and his hair is spread out over the couch. His fingers are flicking the pages of a book he'll never read, and Sora scrapes butter onto a piece of toast.
"And Kairi?" Sora asks, and the butter knife grazes his hand. Sora eyes his hand, licks the blood.
"It's fine," Riku says, and Riku covers his eyes with his hand, because the sun is setting, and soon the moon will rise.
"It's not," Sora says that night, but Riku's screaming, and Riku can never hear anything when he's screaming. It's not alright, nothing's alright, but Sora will fix it, Sora will make it better. It'll just take time, and maybe a little of Sora's heart.
For x_saturnine, a KKM drabble. Vague Conrart/Yuuri. Brothers.
Laughing Boys
Conrart is nothing like Gwendal. Gwendal was a silence that faded into the background, of rustling papers and the scratching of a quill. Conrart is a silence that roars in Wolfram's ears, like the ocean beyond the shore. Conrart is all the power of the world, pent up in the body of a half-demon, with the short temper and the short eyes and the shorter life.
Except, somehow, Conrart changes over the years. Yuuri comes, and Conrart's smile grows a little longer, stays on a bit stronger. Conrart laughs sometimes, and he laughs for Yuuri, not Wolfram, never Wolfram.
Gwendal used to laugh for Wolfram, before his stomach was slit and he was emptied like a torn doll.
Now, Conrart laughs for Yuuri, and Wolfram cries for Gwendal, and it goes over and over, like this:
Conrart grabs Wolfram's hand, pulls him outside to the courtyard, where the other soldiers are holding practice blades.
You, Conrart says every time, are out of control. And every time Wolfram sneers, turns away.
Every time, Conrart beats him with the flat of his blade, again and again. Block, Conrart says, defend, and Wolfram lets his blade to the ground.
The bruises grow on Wolfram's skin, bone-deep, and Conrart's smile grows shorter.
Why don't you, Conrart asks, and the practice blades are silent, fight back?
Why don't you, Wolfram asks, and he can forever see Gwendal in the corner of his eye, fading wisps of gray blood and gray smiles, laugh for me?
And one for hayden_clone! TRC.
Fai brings a cup of water, some conversation, and a bit more. Kurogane/Fai. Or possibly Fai/Kurogane. Someone's being played like a game. Early Acid!Tokyo.
Dust Parches the Throat
"Here," Fai said, holding out a tin cup. Kurogane took the cup with a frown, water sloshing within.
"Did the kid," he begin, and Fai nearly beamed at him, a tilted head and tousled hair.
"Syaoran-kun already drank," Fai said. "I've saved some water for Sakura-chan, when she wakes up, and I'm sure they'll give us more, if we ask very nicely."
"Don't count on it," Kurogane grumbled, and he saw Fai twitch, a shake of a laugh.
"Ah, Kuro-tan's so mistrusting," Fai laughed, and Kurogane drank the water quickly, trying to ignore Fai.
"They've asked us," Fai continued, and he was sliding his hands into his pockets, standing long and lean in the dim light, "to help them hunt for food. I told them yes. It's the least we can do, since they're giving us their water."
"I," Kurogane, because he'd be damned if he let Fai, with all his stupid obliviousness, or the kid, with his new knack for acting partially possessed, go out alone with strangers in a decimated city, hunting for who knew what. Probably with weapons. Most certainly with weapons. But, of course, Fai interrupted him, because the magician was always interrupting him.
"I already told Syaoran-kun," Fai chirped, "and he's excited to see more of the world. I told him you'd be happy to guard the princess while we were gone."
And, like always, Kurogane was waylaid by Fai, sent aflounder by quick words.
"Like hell," Kurogane began, because he'd be damned, but then Fai was nearly crawling into his lap, slender hands knotting around the back of Kurogane's neck.
"You'd protect the princess very well," Fai said, and he sounded as though he was purring. "You're stronger than all of them here, except maybe Kamui. But Kuro-pon's very good with his sword. Sakura-chan will be safe, with a knicht like you."
"You," Kurogane tried to growl, and Fai's fingers were brushing light against his jaw.
"Syaoran-kun's worrying me," Fai said next to Kurogane's ear, and Kurogane dropped the tin cup, hands going to Fai's waist. "I'm going to talk to him. So take care of Sakura-chan?"
"Fine," Kurogane breathed, because it was always easier to agree, and Fai's fingers were playing with Kurogane's collar, and Kurogane let his hands slide further down Fai's legs, against soft fabric.
"Good puppy," Fai laughed into Kurogane's neck, and Kurogane got a feeling of being played. "Kuro-wanwan," and Fai was spinning out of Kurogane's lap, twisting beyond Kurogane's and ever closer to the door, "is such a good daddy!"
And then Fai was gone, a bubble of laughter, practically mocking laughter, going down the hallway. Kurogane cursed, then grabbed for the forgotten cup.
He was still thirsty.