FIC: Ultimate Fear- 3/5
Title: Ultimate Fear- 3/5
Fandom: Tekken
Pairing: Kazuya/Lee and also a bit of vaguely implied and one-sided Lars/Lee
Summary: Kazuya discovers a taste for fine literature and Lee is too busy to look deeper at what really lies behind this newfound passion. The most ridiculous of fights ensues.
Disclaimer: I do not own Tekken or any of its characters. I am not making any profit from this.
Rating: R
Warnings: Incest, language, violence. Crack.
Part Three
It was two in the morning by the time Lee had finally reconciled himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to sleep. It was torturous- he would drift, dragged under for brief minutes, only to jerk awake at the critical moment before he descended into the much-needed deeper phase. His brain was in overdrive and the racing thoughts wouldn’t settle. His head throbbed. He was drained, both physically and emotionally. He hurt all over- part from exhaustion, part from the extremely strenuous exercise he had engaged only brief hours ago. Bruised and bitten, numerous little hotspots of pain made themselves known whenever he made the slightest move and he was already beginning to dread the day ahead of him. Every bone he had in his body ached. He would be a broken mess if he didn’t get some rest and he needed all his strength and focus for what was coming.
Also, he worried.
He glanced briefly at Kazuya. His breathing was deep and even and his dark hair scattered in a mess on the pillow between them. His heavy arm bore down over his waist, trapping him. Getting out without waking him would be painstaking work, but Lee really, really needed to get to his phone. He had to call, he had to check. He felt as if he was in a vacuum; isolated, cocooned and oblivious. The world may as well have come to an end for all he knew and his only connection, his source of all information, was off. Dead and silent in a corner where he couldn’t just reach for it.
What if he simply got up and turned it on? Did it matter if Kazuya woke up?
It was better not to risk it.
He had to move his arm if he was going to make his escape and he decided for the old, already tried trick that may or may not work. Very lightly, he ran his fingers over his stomach and down his side, tickling, annoying, but not overly so. He knew from previous experience that Kazuya would either shift to get away from it, or wake up. The odds were fifty-fifty either way.
He held his breath as Kazuya growled and grumbled and then turned on his back. His arm fell away and Lee lay very still, waiting. Kazuya’s eyelids fluttered and he seemed to open his eyes briefly, but the he gave a deep sigh and closed them again. His breathing evened out and Lee gently laid the palm of his hand over his chest, feeling the deep, calm heartbeat. Slowly, carefully, as if he was playing a game of chess, he squirmed away, inch by careful inch, making a pause after every move and gauging Kazuya’s reactions, how deeply gone he was and what he could get away with.
He slipped out of bed cautiously, taking care not to let the cool outside air between the blankets and into the warm spot where he had been only moments ago. Soundlessly, he tiptoed to the jacket that he’d carelessly dumped in a corner and with a huge sense of relief, got the phone out of his pocket.
He looked over to the bed.
Kazuya hadn’t moved; he still slept, massive and quiet, shrouded in darkness and in heat. Lee felt a thrill, not unlike the one that was usually reserved for small mischiefs, and quietly slipped through the bedroom, down the low, curved stairs into the adjoining sitting area and out on to the veranda. It was cold outside, but it was safe to turn on the phone without worrying that the sudden chime of sound might wake a certain ill-tempered someone up. He waited impatiently for the start-up to load and to his infinite dismay, found thirteen messages waiting for him in the inbox. He sifted through them quickly, but there were no bad news. They were simple status updates from his staff; everything was fine and going according to plan. The last one was time-stamped only half an hour ago- the contracts were sealed, the work was finished and they were all going home to sleep.
How lucky for them.
The massive coil of anxiety that had had him so strung out and tense unravelled, and he suddenly felt foolish. Logically, he had to have known that if there had been problems, phone of no phone, his people would have been able to reach him. He had other phones in the house. He had staff inside and out who were perfectly capable of answering them and knocking on the door to inform him of any impending troubles. Feeling drained and frayed around the edges, he turned to go back inside and tripped on something uncomfortable and hard.
“Ow!” he exclaimed and looked down. It was Kazuya’s book, mistreated and messed up; lying sprawled where he’d dropped it yesterday evening. Scowling, Lee picked it up and took it with him. He sat on the couch and turned on the soft, muted lamp to examine it closer. The bright cover with the gold lettering was crumpled and torn and the spine permanently bent in the place where Kazuya had stopped reading. Lee hadn’t held an actual book that was made out of real paper in ages and he was surprised by how heavy it was.
Curious, he let it open and started reading a passage at random.
“…his searing, azure-veined man-hammer reamed through her divine scar, slick with the love juices from her treasure chest. She threw back her shimmering amethyst tresses as his throbbing member throbbed between her quivering thighs and divine ecstasy squeezed her innards into bliss. Her wet cave of lust milked his heat-seeking rod and his pulsating manhood exploded as he spilled the white life jelly into her…”
“Into her… what?!”
He closed the book and glanced at the cover again. The author’s name in enormous gold letters stood above the unrealistically proportioned, ridiculously positioned male and female figures entangled in a passionate embrace that defied all laws of gravity. Below them, the title tangled in a mess of excessive vines that formed no particular pattern. His eyebrows rose as he read it out.
Hostage of His Manly Loins, by Clytemnestra de Beauclerc.
He flipped the book over to find the heavily airbrushed, black and white portrait of the author striking up a pose with a glass of wine and a fountain pen which was, he supposed, meant to exude sophistication, but only managed to appear awkward and embarrassingly fake. He skimmed through the biography underneath and his eyes widened in shock at the number of copies she had sold to date.
Who in their right mind reads this sort of thing?
“What are you doing with that?” Kazuya’s dark, angry voice struck down like a hammer. Lee jumped in his seat and looked up at him with wide, guilty eyes. His brother stood above him on top of the small stairway, his arms crossed across his chest and a massive scowl on his face.
“I… I was just…” Lee found himself at a loss for words. It was a good question. What was he doing with it? That he had tripped over it by accident while he was outside, secretly checking messages on the phone he had promised to turn off, was not an acceptable explanation.
“Give it back!” Kazuya growled and stalked down. He snatched the book away from him and Lee just barely had to presence of mind to push the phone beneath the cushions and out of his sight while he was distracted. “You can’t have it!”
“Ha! I don’t want it!” Lee exclaimed. “Look at the condition you have it in! The spine is all broken and every second page has dog ears! Besides, I already bought the girls a new copy.”
Kazuya didn’t seem to believe him and held the book safely out of his reach. “Really.”
“Three, actually,” Lee clarified. “One for each, to make up for the trauma. And expensive chocolates in your name, wrapped in fancy paper and a pink bow.”
He really had, and he now felt like banging his head against the wall for adding to that insane number at the bottom of the back cover. Repeatedly. His faith in humanity dwindled further every day.
“You didn’t,” Kazuya said flatly as he examined the book for anything nefarious that Lee might have done to it.
“Oh, I did!” Lee said. “And you are going to apologise to them in person too, because not keeping your staff happy is detrimental to the smooth running of business.”
“Hmph,” Kazuya scowled.
Lee could be remarkably tedious when it came to things like this. The last time they were in this situation, he’d gone on and on about it forever and Kazuya really didn’t want to keep on fighting.Perhaps not wringing their skinny little necks the next time he ran into them in the hallway qualified as an apology? He hated them. He hated them to the core of his being, with their pretty faces and their silly giggles and adoring eyes. He wasn’t jealous; not really, anyway. He knew that Lee had no interest in fucking any of them; they were children- shallow, transparent and so very young- no different to him to the potted plants dispersed throughout the building as a twist on interior décor, with the added benefit that they took his calls, brought him coffee and sorted through his mail.
None of this stopped them from loving him, though.
All of them flirted and vied for his attention right in front of Kazuya, as if he didn’t even exist. It was infuriating that they didn’t know, couldn’t know- that even they, insignificant little insects that they were, could fawn over him so openly, publically, while he had to look on in bitter silence because the only way he could only assert his claim over the man he loved was in secret and behind closed doors.
An architect and fluorescent lights would have to be enough.
“Why are you up, anyway?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Lee said, sounding wretched and unhappy. Kazuya put the book down and reached out to touch his face, relieved when it wasn’t rebuffed and not entirely sure why he thought it would be. Lee turned into the palm of his hand, nuzzled and kissed it. Encouraged by the simple affection, he took a step closer and Lee leaned his forehead against his stomach.
“You are shivering,” he noted and Lee shrugged.
“I’m cold,” he said. He hadn’t been able to recapture the heat he’d lost when he’d wandered outside, barefoot and barely dressed.
“You went out to check your phone, didn’t you?” Kazuya said, guessing easily, now that he was close enough to smell the cool scent of the night that still lingered on his skin.
Lee looked up at him, obviously guilty and too tired to lie.
“Yes,” he said and Kazuya gave a long-suffering sigh. There were rings of exhaustion around his dark, pretty eyes and in the scarce light, he seemed almost worryingly pale. A large bruise was welling in the crook between his shoulder and neck and Kazuya distinctly remembered putting it there. The weight of the day behind them lay between them.
“And is everything all right?” he asked, trying his best to sound like he really cared. Lee blinked at him in surprise. He’d obviously been expecting a resurrection of the fight.
“It is,” he said. The vicious compulsion that had forced him to get out of bed had fizzled and without the unhealthy throb of energy, he felt sick, heavy and drained. “Everything is finished and ready for tomorrow.”
“So, do you think you can sleep now?” Kazuya asked.
“You’re not angry?” Lee said suspiciously.
Kazuya sighed and sat down beside him. “When am I not angry with you?” he said querulously and pulled him close. “Come here.”
Lee went easily. His aching head felt as if it was full of air and Kazuya was solid, stable and hot. He grounded him. There was a comforter thrown over the back of the couch and Kazuya pulled it over them when they lay down.
“Kaz,” Lee finally voiced the crux of his trouble, “what was all that about today?”
“Nothing,” Kazuya said curtly.
Lee looked up. “Nothing?”
Kazuya shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “I just don’t like it when you work late and never come home. I hate it when you sneak in and out of bed at all times of the night. It gives me bad dreams.”
Lee studied him for a long moment, contemplating, but then his forehead evened out and he closed his eyes. He was too tired to insist on it and there was always tomorrow.
“I still can’t believe you stole that book,” he said.
“Confiscated,” Kazuya corrected.
“Hn,” Lee said. “Either way, letting them read it would have been a worse punishment.”
“Oh, be quiet,” Kazuya said, offended on the behalf of the book. “I like it!”
Lee turned up towards him.
“Seriously?” he said. “What is there to like? It’s awful!”
“It has great characterisation!”
“Characterisation?”
“Yes!” Kazuya said. “For example, you have this awesome main character! He is great and powerful and he is a king of this huge kingdom, where he does a really good job of cruelly killing everyone who opposes him.”
“How does that make him a great king?” Lee asked. “He sounds like a tyrant to me.”
“Do you want me to tell you or not?” Kazuya said irritably.
“Yes, please do!” Lee said quickly.
“Then don’t interrupt!”
Lee yawned and settled as Kazuya went on. He had never quite outgrown bed time stories, especially when Kazuya was the one telling them. An entire lifetime later, they still brought on an almost reflexive urge to sleep. They used to do this when they were children; just the two of them, alone and awake in the dark at some godforsaken hour of the night. Kazuya had a collection of serial novels and comics that he loved; he would always pick obscure characters to follow- someone hidden in the shadow of the mainstream plot- and then track them obsessively. He’d never grow tired of trying to explain it to Lee, who could never see the appeal and consistently failed to grasp the point of it all.
But he had loved listening to Kazuya talk.
Sometimes, this was the only thing helping him cope, especially during the hell of the early years. One might think that the stories of violence and gore such as could be find in publications aimed at teenage boys were not the sort of thing one should listen to if they had trouble sleeping, but there was nothing in there that could possibly bring on nightmares worse than the stuff that Lee was already dreaming of. Anything that they might have spawned was an improvement in comparison.
“So, he is in love with this woman who makes his life miserable because she can’t be trusted. She is very beautiful and every man who lays his eyes on her wants to fuck her and the king solves the problem by building a huge castle in a magical labyrinth to lock her up in.”
Lee laughed. “Kazuya, there is a difference between a relationship and confinement! You should know that by now!”
“What did I say about interrupting?”
“Sorry!”
“Anyway, he finally has her under lock and key, and things are going great, but then this nuisance of a knight shows up and starts making trouble…”
“Kaz, you do realise that you are identifying with the villain here, don’t you?” Lee said sleepily.
“What are you talking about?”
“The king is the villain,” Lee yawned again. “He will probably die a horrible death in the end and the lady will run off with the knight.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Kazuya said angrily. “What kind of an ending is that?”
“A happy one?”
“Oh, shut up!” Kazuya growled. “You just have no sense for this sort of thing!”
“Mmmm…” Lee murmured, already drifting far enough for Kazuya’s voice to sound distant and blurred.
“I’m never telling you a story again!” Kazuya grumbled, more to himself than to him. Lee wasn’t listening anymore. His body was limp and heavy, his breathing slow and his blue-rimmed eyes sealed shut.
Typical.
But what was he going to do now? Any chance he’d had of sleep was thoroughly fucked. He arched his neck to look at the coffee table above him. The book was still there!
The lady run off with the knight, indeed! He scoffed. Lee had no idea what he was talking about.
He shifted to raise himself up higher and adjusted his brother’s pliant body to make them both more comfortable. Lee stirred and huddled down deeper in the narrow ridge between him and the back of the couch. Kazuya put his one arm around him and took the book with the other.
Where was he, anyway?
Ah, yes. The sex.