"Kann denn..." part 1/? : “What do you gain out of this?”
I've been working on this Weiß Kreuz WIP over about 15 years, but I'm hoping that maybe periodically posting sequential pieces from the beginning here might help push me on, since that has sometimes worked for me. I have about 19K words as a long sequential section along with some future, so-far-unconnected pieces written.
It's Side B-era--so it takes place in the ’00s--and Schuldig and Crawford (and eventually Farfarello) are currently working in London too. Schu discovers that Aya, who's with Kryptonbrand, has a bit of telepathy and decides to train him in it for fun on the sly (and to hopefully get into his pants at some point); Aya takes him up on it when he sees it actually helps. The fic in general is mostly Schuldig/multi-directional, and some of it is about how being the village bicycle can suck.
The title--"Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?"--comes from an Eisbrecher song of the same name and loosely translates to “Can love be a sin?”
Part 1 is PG-13 but there are NC-17 bits later.
===================================
“Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?” 1/?
by Viridian5
===================================
I wasn’t adjusting as quickly to the move to London as I should have been, which bothered me. I didn’t know if it was from being old--by Eszett’s reckoning I’m 33 now, not that I necessarily trusted that, and not many Eszett telepaths lived to reach that age, let alone do it still operational and relatively sane--or from spending so much time in Japan on and off in the last 11 years. Maybe I’d gotten too acclimated to things in Japan, the culture and language and automatically standing out from the crowd when I let myself be visible. Everyone knew what an attention whore I could be.
Now that I was in London, sometimes I actually touched Aya or Ken’s minds just to feel something more familiar. I mean, Ken? Pathetic of me. I’d been trying to keep it all from Brad, figuring he’d mock me about that kind of weakness, but it appeared that he’d seen it a bit and it actually made him shift back and forth from the stern asshole he used to be to the more concerned partner he’d become to keep me around, freaking both of us out.
It did bother Brad that my English shifted between his American and the various local United Kingdom versions, and he’d been very vocal about that. If our job didn’t require one of us to sound some kind of British, he preferred me to take my English from him. He could bugger off about that. I’ll say what I want to however I feel like.
Nagi wanted to show up to help me out, but he’d be another familiar taste to hide in right now while I had to be more ruthless with myself. No crutches.
That said, I’d decided to treat myself by kind of visiting Aya. London had to make things up to me somehow.
I saw him sweeping in front of the shop wearing tight white jeans and a form-fitting black shirt with buckles under his apron. His daywear fashion sense had really improved over the years. Then again, with the way Kryptonbrand dressed him and his entire team all super-kink and with those creepy masks that didn’t even hide their identities, I guessed he couldn’t continue being dowdy.
Did Sir Richard dictate their casual wear as well as their mission uniforms? If I were him, I would.
If I were him, Kryptonbrand would be the most brightly clad assassins ever. For example, I’ve found that it’s harder to be angsty while wearing yellow. Then again, Kryptonbrand and Kritiker probably specifically hired angsty people.
I wanted to touch Aya’s mask while he had it on to see if it achieved skin temperature if he wore it long enough....
I set myself up in an alley not far away and used a compact’s mirror to watch Aya because why waste energy? I wanted to feel him out without having to do a notice-me-not at the same time.
His hair looked pretty nice in its current style, but I missed his eartails, having had such fantasies of using them as handles as he sucked me off.
Poor Aya-kun, all he had left were his obligations. He was content enough for a guy who’d gotten everything he’d thought he wanted--even if none of it was something he got to keep--and had no dreams left to take their place. He was cold ashes, resigned, smiling faintly all the time because then people would think he was okay. Also, he’d belatedly realized a lot of people had found his former brooding, sulky, taciturn mystery man air attractive and bothered him more as a result. He had his obligation to keep away from his sister for the sake of her safety and purity, his obligation to make sure Yuki was safe and okay, his obligation to his new team, his obligation to look out for Ken and get subtle vengeance on Chloé for every racist remark.... (He also didn’t want Aya-chan anywhere near Kryptonbrand after what they’d done to a girl named Kurumi, and after reading about it out of his head I wouldn’t trust them with a beloved little sister either. He was bitterly aware that he’d been able to talk to and spend more time with his sister when she’d been in a coma then he had since she woke up.) He was all about other people again, still, but the passion had been killed right out of him.
My Aya, and internally I went all “Daddy’s come to fix it and make it all better! Come to Schuldig!” Then I had to internally smack myself to make me seem a little less like a flower shop fangirl. Mustn’t rush over and carelessly break the Aya.
I felt a sudden stirring on the psychic plane, small, so small a low-level telepath would never have noticed it, tasting so familiar. It was Aya. He’d sensed something off and this tiny little bit of psionic power in him tried to look for it. He’d felt me on his own. He’d never done that before! I never even saw the potential in him the last time we met. Then again, he’d been so repressed every other time, and it had been a long while and several more traumatic experiences for him since I’d last been near him.
I couldn’t help reaching out to mentally caress those adorable little baby tendrils. In my little mirror I watched him shiver, then walk emphatically inside. Baby steps....
******************************************************
I didn’t tell Brad about my little visit to Kitten UK, and he hadn’t foreseen it so it stayed my secret.
I even kept my promise to Brad that I wouldn’t make a career of stalking and pouncing Aya, but I ended up meeting Aya on a job anyway. It turned out that we were both offered pay to terminate a serial killer preying on club folks. Understandably, club owners didn’t like corpses near their venues and fewer paying customers. The perp had a taste for really red redheads, not simply gingers, so I added a redder red in a few places as a temporary color to mine, dressed sluttier, and went where the flow took me.
And found Aya, who was on a solo mission trying to be bait but wasn’t looking hedonistic at all. In fact, he looked annoyed and like he’d rather be anywhere but here, even though he’d dressed a bit clubby. His little psi thing helped him see me, although he didn’t know that’s what it was. Of course his baby thang noted me, since I’d made myself more notice-me to get the target to come to me. (Fucker! Preying on my people, the hedonists! We make life more fun! Why couldn’t he kill boring or annoying people?)
Seeing me, Aya looked pissed off, so familiar. Smiling, I walked over and said into his mind, so I wouldn’t have to shout over the music, ~ Pretty you might be, but you’ll never draw the guy to you like this. You don’t seem slutty and available enough. ~
“While you do,” Aya answered snippily in Japanese, knowing I’d hear him no matter how actually loud our surroundings were.
~ It’s a talent, one that will bring your target to me, not to you. Unless you want to work together to make sure we get his attention. Komm, süßer Tod! Just dance with me! ~
Suspicious, Aya asked, “What do you gain out of this?”
~ Your company. I’ll let you take the kill if you’re quick enough. ~ I didn’t need this kill anyway since Brad and I have been here long enough to make our reputation and no matter what Brad said we didn’t need the money. I used money as a tool, but he saw it as an end within itself, proof that he was winning, so American. Meanwhile, the members of Weiß hadn’t struck me as being the kind of shrewd people who’d create a good nest egg for themselves, and they didn’t have a Brad in their lives to dispassionately invest and grow their income for them.
“I don’t trust you!”
~ I’m not surprised, but it’s not like you’re getting anywhere on your own so you might as well work with me. ~
I felt him think it over and see that I had a point. With the success of his mission at stake, finally he said, “All right. But don’t get too forward with your hands.”
~ Wouldn’t dream of it! ~
From the sour look on his face and cast to his thoughts, he didn’t believe me. Smart boy.
At first, he more circled me like he was looking for an opening to kill me, but he started to relax a bit the longer we danced, especially once his psi started to sync a bit with mine. Fuck, even his psi was lonely and aching for contact, even though he’d never admit it. Aya was ripping himself up a bit with the wanting to let loose a little somewhere warring against his natural distrust of people and experience in getting fucked over with no lube by life.
“You don’t have to put your hands all over me!” Aya twitched in a really amusing way.
~ He has a thing for slutty redheads, so we have to demonstrate our sluttiness to draw him in. It’s for the mission. You know I’m actually holding myself back here. ~
“...fucking hell.”
I enjoyed the situation for quite a while and let him know that we had the guy’s full attention and could lead him away by leaving now... fifteen minutes after the guy actually noticed us and about five minutes after Aya got really uncomfortable about having my hands on his back and occasionally his ass.
We left the club with Aya walking almost close to me and being frustrated by how he felt like he could almost trust me on this mission. In the alley, the guy came at us with what would have been a stealthy run if we weren’t what we were. Aya turned to shoot but I did it first and faster, so his kill shot went through our target about half a minute after mine.
“You poached my kill,” he growled at me. He probably would’ve been louder if he hadn’t worried about drawing unwanted attention.
“Take it,” I answered softly. When he gave me a look full of confusion and suspicion, I said, “I’ll just tell my employers the truth: that someone had gotten the bastard before me.” Awww, you could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears and the “does not compute” message. Aya.exe has stopped working.
But then he stared at me and I could feel him working something else through in his head. Finally, he asked, “Do I have something like you do? The telepathy?”
Interesting. “Why?”
“Because I’d been feeling something that might be like it lately. At least, something like what I think telepathy would be like.”
Well, blow me down. “Yeah, you do, though not as powerful as mine. What’s with that face? What reaction were you hoping to get?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Radiating warmth at him, I said, “Let’s meet another time somewhere else to talk about that, because having a corpse nearby in public doesn’t allow for longish conversations.”
“...good point. All right.”
He agreed! It probably helped that I’d very carefully declined to call it a date. I had some sense of discretion. “You might not want to mention it to Ken, though. He probably wouldn’t understand.”
“...you’re right.”
Then I went back inside to dance some more, since I didn’t have a corpse to wrangle, and stayed until the club kicked everyone out at 4 a.m.
******************************************************
I had him meet me in a place in public so he wouldn’t get as nervous about a trap and in a café where we could sit without being hustled to leave and where two guys sitting close together and being intense about it wouldn’t be as noticeable. We sat almost next to each other, just at a bit of an angle, instead of across from each other because we both wanted to sit with our backs to the wall and a view of the door. Most non-killer, non-security, non-mercenary people had no idea what that was about. I got a frothy café mocha with an amaretto cookie, while he just ordered a black coffee, the masochist. I knew he actually enjoyed some sweetness now and then. He shot me little suspicious anxious looks now and then that made me want to pet him.
I started us off with ~ Yeah, you have some psi, a little bit of telepathy. What made you wonder about it? ~
“I’ve been hearing fragments of things no one seemed to be saying aloud,” he said softly in Japanese. Hearing mostly mean, unedited stuff, but he hadn’t realized it was unedited, just figuring that people were bastards like that.
Just like the first time I recently saw him, his psi reached out for me a bit and I reached back, but this time it didn’t flee. It really was small, but the small talents got screwed up the worst sometimes just because they didn’t get a grand, obvious announcement of “Hey, you’re a freak!” He hadn’t had anything that announced itself years ago. Maybe it had been even smaller then, or maybe the sheer fucked-uppedness of that school shit that went down, losing Yoji, Weiß self-destructing so hard, and the shit that happened to him in New York had provided enough additional trauma to bring it out. Trauma could do that to some people.
The whole Yoji thing had broken him apart. Aya had something going with Ken now but not a real relationship, just friends with occasional benefits, some physical comfort, started by Ken, nothing like the highs, lows, and mad love and lust he’d had with Yoji. Ken-ken knew it and didn’t mind because he knew why, though Aya felt guilty about that. That slight, pleasant Stepford smile Aya put on his mouth and eyes these days prevented anyone who didn’t know him well--and even a few who did know him--from asking or worrying about him. The fewer people he had to speak to, the better.
It was such a fucking waste.
I should have been feeling smug and amused but just felt... pity, which he would still hate me for if he knew. I pondered the pros and cons of letting him know how I felt about it.
“What do I do with it?” he asked. “So far it’s just useless and annoying.”
“Learn to control it and hide it from people looking for psi talents. Eszett may be in a thousand smoking fragments, but there are others. Plus, some of the fragments are trying to rebuild.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“So I’m going to help you out. No strings attached.”
“Now I’m surprised.”
“Brat. Would you be less surprised if I told you I needed to touch you to do it? Bare skin to bare skin contact helps. It’s difficult to convey some concepts about telepathy in language, so I have to go in and do it the telepathic way.”
He made an “I smell something awful” face. “Less surprised and completely suspicious.”
“We’re in public. I’ll restrain myself.” Actually, I could screw everyone’s minds so they wouldn’t notice, but I wanted to build some trust with Aya here. “I’ll just touch your face. Lightly.”
Although he looked annoyed, he said, “All right. I’m holding you to that.”
Actually, I’d be the one holding him to something, which made me smile. I touched his face and used that to link us in deeper and better as I telepathically showed him how to start shielding. I wasn’t scamming him: words failed--were too imprecise--when it came to communicating certain aspects.
I liked being this close to him, although he didn’t smell right. No leather, blood, sweat, and metal to his scent. But he felt warm, familiar, and grudgingly willing. As ever, he tasted complicated: sweet, spicy, sour, umami, and salty all at once.
His face lit up and unclenched a little as a headache he’d had for so long he’d stopped consciously noticing it went away. Small talents had their own crosses to bear.
When I released him, he said, “I-- My--”
“I know. You’re welcome.” What a cute annoyed pout he had. “You should work on this on your own for a bit, then come back to me for more training. You’ll need it.”
“I will.” Surprise and vague confusion looked good on him as well. “...thank you.” His expression turned a bit softer and almost smiling for real, and we had something that almost qualified as a Moment. Then he recovered himself a bit, tossed down some money for his coffee, and left, although I saw him give me one last look before he went out the door.
So he kinda likes me! He wants me to train him!
...and I’m having a crisis of faith in myself.
I hate humanity. I’m a sadist. I only get even a bit squishy about My Own. For years my favorite hobby had been tormenting the kittens--all of them, Aya included--but right now I didn’t even want to fuck with dumb Ken’s head because it seemed kind of... done. Immature. Fuck, I don’t know.
I can’t go soft. I can’t. If you get soft and complacent, you get useless and then dead.
Though I might fuck over Chloé’s head with impunity since Aya thinks he’s a racist asshole who should stop baiting Ken. That could be fun.
It's Side B-era--so it takes place in the ’00s--and Schuldig and Crawford (and eventually Farfarello) are currently working in London too. Schu discovers that Aya, who's with Kryptonbrand, has a bit of telepathy and decides to train him in it for fun on the sly (and to hopefully get into his pants at some point); Aya takes him up on it when he sees it actually helps. The fic in general is mostly Schuldig/multi-directional, and some of it is about how being the village bicycle can suck.
The title--"Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?"--comes from an Eisbrecher song of the same name and loosely translates to “Can love be a sin?”
Part 1 is PG-13 but there are NC-17 bits later.
===================================
“Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?” 1/?
by Viridian5
===================================
I wasn’t adjusting as quickly to the move to London as I should have been, which bothered me. I didn’t know if it was from being old--by Eszett’s reckoning I’m 33 now, not that I necessarily trusted that, and not many Eszett telepaths lived to reach that age, let alone do it still operational and relatively sane--or from spending so much time in Japan on and off in the last 11 years. Maybe I’d gotten too acclimated to things in Japan, the culture and language and automatically standing out from the crowd when I let myself be visible. Everyone knew what an attention whore I could be.
Now that I was in London, sometimes I actually touched Aya or Ken’s minds just to feel something more familiar. I mean, Ken? Pathetic of me. I’d been trying to keep it all from Brad, figuring he’d mock me about that kind of weakness, but it appeared that he’d seen it a bit and it actually made him shift back and forth from the stern asshole he used to be to the more concerned partner he’d become to keep me around, freaking both of us out.
It did bother Brad that my English shifted between his American and the various local United Kingdom versions, and he’d been very vocal about that. If our job didn’t require one of us to sound some kind of British, he preferred me to take my English from him. He could bugger off about that. I’ll say what I want to however I feel like.
Nagi wanted to show up to help me out, but he’d be another familiar taste to hide in right now while I had to be more ruthless with myself. No crutches.
That said, I’d decided to treat myself by kind of visiting Aya. London had to make things up to me somehow.
I saw him sweeping in front of the shop wearing tight white jeans and a form-fitting black shirt with buckles under his apron. His daywear fashion sense had really improved over the years. Then again, with the way Kryptonbrand dressed him and his entire team all super-kink and with those creepy masks that didn’t even hide their identities, I guessed he couldn’t continue being dowdy.
Did Sir Richard dictate their casual wear as well as their mission uniforms? If I were him, I would.
If I were him, Kryptonbrand would be the most brightly clad assassins ever. For example, I’ve found that it’s harder to be angsty while wearing yellow. Then again, Kryptonbrand and Kritiker probably specifically hired angsty people.
I wanted to touch Aya’s mask while he had it on to see if it achieved skin temperature if he wore it long enough....
I set myself up in an alley not far away and used a compact’s mirror to watch Aya because why waste energy? I wanted to feel him out without having to do a notice-me-not at the same time.
His hair looked pretty nice in its current style, but I missed his eartails, having had such fantasies of using them as handles as he sucked me off.
Poor Aya-kun, all he had left were his obligations. He was content enough for a guy who’d gotten everything he’d thought he wanted--even if none of it was something he got to keep--and had no dreams left to take their place. He was cold ashes, resigned, smiling faintly all the time because then people would think he was okay. Also, he’d belatedly realized a lot of people had found his former brooding, sulky, taciturn mystery man air attractive and bothered him more as a result. He had his obligation to keep away from his sister for the sake of her safety and purity, his obligation to make sure Yuki was safe and okay, his obligation to his new team, his obligation to look out for Ken and get subtle vengeance on Chloé for every racist remark.... (He also didn’t want Aya-chan anywhere near Kryptonbrand after what they’d done to a girl named Kurumi, and after reading about it out of his head I wouldn’t trust them with a beloved little sister either. He was bitterly aware that he’d been able to talk to and spend more time with his sister when she’d been in a coma then he had since she woke up.) He was all about other people again, still, but the passion had been killed right out of him.
My Aya, and internally I went all “Daddy’s come to fix it and make it all better! Come to Schuldig!” Then I had to internally smack myself to make me seem a little less like a flower shop fangirl. Mustn’t rush over and carelessly break the Aya.
I felt a sudden stirring on the psychic plane, small, so small a low-level telepath would never have noticed it, tasting so familiar. It was Aya. He’d sensed something off and this tiny little bit of psionic power in him tried to look for it. He’d felt me on his own. He’d never done that before! I never even saw the potential in him the last time we met. Then again, he’d been so repressed every other time, and it had been a long while and several more traumatic experiences for him since I’d last been near him.
I couldn’t help reaching out to mentally caress those adorable little baby tendrils. In my little mirror I watched him shiver, then walk emphatically inside. Baby steps....
******************************************************
I didn’t tell Brad about my little visit to Kitten UK, and he hadn’t foreseen it so it stayed my secret.
I even kept my promise to Brad that I wouldn’t make a career of stalking and pouncing Aya, but I ended up meeting Aya on a job anyway. It turned out that we were both offered pay to terminate a serial killer preying on club folks. Understandably, club owners didn’t like corpses near their venues and fewer paying customers. The perp had a taste for really red redheads, not simply gingers, so I added a redder red in a few places as a temporary color to mine, dressed sluttier, and went where the flow took me.
And found Aya, who was on a solo mission trying to be bait but wasn’t looking hedonistic at all. In fact, he looked annoyed and like he’d rather be anywhere but here, even though he’d dressed a bit clubby. His little psi thing helped him see me, although he didn’t know that’s what it was. Of course his baby thang noted me, since I’d made myself more notice-me to get the target to come to me. (Fucker! Preying on my people, the hedonists! We make life more fun! Why couldn’t he kill boring or annoying people?)
Seeing me, Aya looked pissed off, so familiar. Smiling, I walked over and said into his mind, so I wouldn’t have to shout over the music, ~ Pretty you might be, but you’ll never draw the guy to you like this. You don’t seem slutty and available enough. ~
“While you do,” Aya answered snippily in Japanese, knowing I’d hear him no matter how actually loud our surroundings were.
~ It’s a talent, one that will bring your target to me, not to you. Unless you want to work together to make sure we get his attention. Komm, süßer Tod! Just dance with me! ~
Suspicious, Aya asked, “What do you gain out of this?”
~ Your company. I’ll let you take the kill if you’re quick enough. ~ I didn’t need this kill anyway since Brad and I have been here long enough to make our reputation and no matter what Brad said we didn’t need the money. I used money as a tool, but he saw it as an end within itself, proof that he was winning, so American. Meanwhile, the members of Weiß hadn’t struck me as being the kind of shrewd people who’d create a good nest egg for themselves, and they didn’t have a Brad in their lives to dispassionately invest and grow their income for them.
“I don’t trust you!”
~ I’m not surprised, but it’s not like you’re getting anywhere on your own so you might as well work with me. ~
I felt him think it over and see that I had a point. With the success of his mission at stake, finally he said, “All right. But don’t get too forward with your hands.”
~ Wouldn’t dream of it! ~
From the sour look on his face and cast to his thoughts, he didn’t believe me. Smart boy.
At first, he more circled me like he was looking for an opening to kill me, but he started to relax a bit the longer we danced, especially once his psi started to sync a bit with mine. Fuck, even his psi was lonely and aching for contact, even though he’d never admit it. Aya was ripping himself up a bit with the wanting to let loose a little somewhere warring against his natural distrust of people and experience in getting fucked over with no lube by life.
“You don’t have to put your hands all over me!” Aya twitched in a really amusing way.
~ He has a thing for slutty redheads, so we have to demonstrate our sluttiness to draw him in. It’s for the mission. You know I’m actually holding myself back here. ~
“...fucking hell.”
I enjoyed the situation for quite a while and let him know that we had the guy’s full attention and could lead him away by leaving now... fifteen minutes after the guy actually noticed us and about five minutes after Aya got really uncomfortable about having my hands on his back and occasionally his ass.
We left the club with Aya walking almost close to me and being frustrated by how he felt like he could almost trust me on this mission. In the alley, the guy came at us with what would have been a stealthy run if we weren’t what we were. Aya turned to shoot but I did it first and faster, so his kill shot went through our target about half a minute after mine.
“You poached my kill,” he growled at me. He probably would’ve been louder if he hadn’t worried about drawing unwanted attention.
“Take it,” I answered softly. When he gave me a look full of confusion and suspicion, I said, “I’ll just tell my employers the truth: that someone had gotten the bastard before me.” Awww, you could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears and the “does not compute” message. Aya.exe has stopped working.
But then he stared at me and I could feel him working something else through in his head. Finally, he asked, “Do I have something like you do? The telepathy?”
Interesting. “Why?”
“Because I’d been feeling something that might be like it lately. At least, something like what I think telepathy would be like.”
Well, blow me down. “Yeah, you do, though not as powerful as mine. What’s with that face? What reaction were you hoping to get?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Radiating warmth at him, I said, “Let’s meet another time somewhere else to talk about that, because having a corpse nearby in public doesn’t allow for longish conversations.”
“...good point. All right.”
He agreed! It probably helped that I’d very carefully declined to call it a date. I had some sense of discretion. “You might not want to mention it to Ken, though. He probably wouldn’t understand.”
“...you’re right.”
Then I went back inside to dance some more, since I didn’t have a corpse to wrangle, and stayed until the club kicked everyone out at 4 a.m.
******************************************************
I had him meet me in a place in public so he wouldn’t get as nervous about a trap and in a café where we could sit without being hustled to leave and where two guys sitting close together and being intense about it wouldn’t be as noticeable. We sat almost next to each other, just at a bit of an angle, instead of across from each other because we both wanted to sit with our backs to the wall and a view of the door. Most non-killer, non-security, non-mercenary people had no idea what that was about. I got a frothy café mocha with an amaretto cookie, while he just ordered a black coffee, the masochist. I knew he actually enjoyed some sweetness now and then. He shot me little suspicious anxious looks now and then that made me want to pet him.
I started us off with ~ Yeah, you have some psi, a little bit of telepathy. What made you wonder about it? ~
“I’ve been hearing fragments of things no one seemed to be saying aloud,” he said softly in Japanese. Hearing mostly mean, unedited stuff, but he hadn’t realized it was unedited, just figuring that people were bastards like that.
Just like the first time I recently saw him, his psi reached out for me a bit and I reached back, but this time it didn’t flee. It really was small, but the small talents got screwed up the worst sometimes just because they didn’t get a grand, obvious announcement of “Hey, you’re a freak!” He hadn’t had anything that announced itself years ago. Maybe it had been even smaller then, or maybe the sheer fucked-uppedness of that school shit that went down, losing Yoji, Weiß self-destructing so hard, and the shit that happened to him in New York had provided enough additional trauma to bring it out. Trauma could do that to some people.
The whole Yoji thing had broken him apart. Aya had something going with Ken now but not a real relationship, just friends with occasional benefits, some physical comfort, started by Ken, nothing like the highs, lows, and mad love and lust he’d had with Yoji. Ken-ken knew it and didn’t mind because he knew why, though Aya felt guilty about that. That slight, pleasant Stepford smile Aya put on his mouth and eyes these days prevented anyone who didn’t know him well--and even a few who did know him--from asking or worrying about him. The fewer people he had to speak to, the better.
It was such a fucking waste.
I should have been feeling smug and amused but just felt... pity, which he would still hate me for if he knew. I pondered the pros and cons of letting him know how I felt about it.
“What do I do with it?” he asked. “So far it’s just useless and annoying.”
“Learn to control it and hide it from people looking for psi talents. Eszett may be in a thousand smoking fragments, but there are others. Plus, some of the fragments are trying to rebuild.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“So I’m going to help you out. No strings attached.”
“Now I’m surprised.”
“Brat. Would you be less surprised if I told you I needed to touch you to do it? Bare skin to bare skin contact helps. It’s difficult to convey some concepts about telepathy in language, so I have to go in and do it the telepathic way.”
He made an “I smell something awful” face. “Less surprised and completely suspicious.”
“We’re in public. I’ll restrain myself.” Actually, I could screw everyone’s minds so they wouldn’t notice, but I wanted to build some trust with Aya here. “I’ll just touch your face. Lightly.”
Although he looked annoyed, he said, “All right. I’m holding you to that.”
Actually, I’d be the one holding him to something, which made me smile. I touched his face and used that to link us in deeper and better as I telepathically showed him how to start shielding. I wasn’t scamming him: words failed--were too imprecise--when it came to communicating certain aspects.
I liked being this close to him, although he didn’t smell right. No leather, blood, sweat, and metal to his scent. But he felt warm, familiar, and grudgingly willing. As ever, he tasted complicated: sweet, spicy, sour, umami, and salty all at once.
His face lit up and unclenched a little as a headache he’d had for so long he’d stopped consciously noticing it went away. Small talents had their own crosses to bear.
When I released him, he said, “I-- My--”
“I know. You’re welcome.” What a cute annoyed pout he had. “You should work on this on your own for a bit, then come back to me for more training. You’ll need it.”
“I will.” Surprise and vague confusion looked good on him as well. “...thank you.” His expression turned a bit softer and almost smiling for real, and we had something that almost qualified as a Moment. Then he recovered himself a bit, tossed down some money for his coffee, and left, although I saw him give me one last look before he went out the door.
So he kinda likes me! He wants me to train him!
...and I’m having a crisis of faith in myself.
I hate humanity. I’m a sadist. I only get even a bit squishy about My Own. For years my favorite hobby had been tormenting the kittens--all of them, Aya included--but right now I didn’t even want to fuck with dumb Ken’s head because it seemed kind of... done. Immature. Fuck, I don’t know.
I can’t go soft. I can’t. If you get soft and complacent, you get useless and then dead.
Though I might fuck over Chloé’s head with impunity since Aya thinks he’s a racist asshole who should stop baiting Ken. That could be fun.