Fic: Broken from the Beginning...[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles] for ghost_whisper
Fandom: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: Let's give it an 'R', shall we? For poRn.
Written for: ghost_whisper for the challenge found here.
SPOILER: Volume 6 of TRC.
Disclaimer: CLAMP, those wonderful, terrible women.
Dedication: To ghost_whisper for the challenge (I hope it's what you were looking for) and to chelle_sama for being my sounding board and twin.
Broken from the Beginning, Fixed at the Start
You see…in my career, if anybody comes to kill me, I kill them. If there's something I'm protecting and anybody tries to steal it, I kill them. I can't count the number of people I've killed. I don't even try to hide it anymore. But…the ones I hate the most in the world are they guys who still have lives to live, but they don't make any effort to live them.
~Kurogane (to Fai) TRC Vol. 6, chapt. 37
Having lived with Kurogane for the better part of a year, Fai had learned to read him, accurately, if not well. And, in that same year, he'd come to care about the ninja, if not for him.
"Naa, Kuro-pin is restless tonight," he observed, brushing his fingers over Kurogane's bicep and pulling the stitch he was placing there tight. "He's got something on his mind?" His voice was teasing, but he meant the question seriously enough. Kurogane, when not at purpose, was still. Not just 'unmoving' but still. Like meditation, only watchful and aware and ready, his temper quietly below his skin instead of radiating off of him in waves. The fact that he was currently fidgeting in ways that were in no way related to the medical treatment he was getting was telling. Especially since Fai had actually iced the area numb before starting.
Beneath his hands, Kurogane twitched. "No."
Which was the most obvious lie he could have told, Fai thought. "Oh, I see. The man at the bar knocked the thoughts out." He smiled and propped his chin on Kurogane's shoulder, threading another suture. Kurogane grumbled, but didn't shrug him off. He was glad of it since the most physical contact either of them had with anybody was usually when embroiled in a barroom brawl. The difference was…nice. "I told him not to hit you."
Kurogane growled, "He wouldn't have hit me if you'd done something about it and hit him first."
"But you hit much harder than I do!" He finished and sat back, setting the needle back into their medical case. "That's you done," he hummed. Because he wanted to, and because he was sure it would annoy the ninja and probably jog him out of his mood, he dropped a light kiss on the place where his chin had just been resting. He didn't bother to keep it short. Then he stood up. "And…I don't think I have anything that needs attention," he said, surveying himself. "Nothing life threatening."
"And is that a good thing, or a bad thing?" Kurogane muttered, stowing their kit away under his bed.
Fai tensed. Since the other man had been bent when he'd said it, he decided to pretend he hadn't heard. "Eh?" he asked cheerfully, thinking say nothing or say something else.
"I suppose," Kurogane said, "that caring either way would be caring too much, for you."
He reigned in the urge to smack Kurogane for bringing that up again now, in the aftermath of a fight, when he was the most vulnerable to himself and his loneliness. When he most craved the contact of human emotions. "Saa, Kuro-pin, you know that the only thing I care about is you," he deflected with the best smile he could muster. He headed for the door of their shared room even though it was the middle of the night and he had nowhere else to go.
Which, like the loneliness thing, Kurogane obviously knew. "You're running away again," he said in an irate voice. "How are you ever going to live if you keep running away?"
Instead of doing the sensible thing and lying about tea, Fai snapped. "You want me to take advice from somebody who doesn't…what's the term?...practice what he preaches?"
"What the hell do you mean by that?" Kurogane's voice was low and dangerous.
"Do as you say, and not as you do, Kuro-sama?"
"I live my life with no regrets."
"Oh? I see." He put on a mockingly childish voice, "'Tomoyo-hime, don't send me away! I want to stay with you so that you can tell me what to do!'."
Kurogane snapped too. Before Fai could do more than crack the door open, the flat of Kurogane's palm was there, slamming it shut again and the man himself was a hot, dark shadow on his back. "Did you pick a fight and run away last time, too?"
Fai let go of the door and shoved Kurogane back, hard, making him stumble into the center of the room. "You couldn't possibly understand it."
"You're right," Kurogane sneered. "It's impossible to comprehend how somebody could spend their time running away from life while still not chasing death."
"I'm running away because I don't want to die," Fai spat. "That's living."
"You don't want to kill yourself and giving up is as good as. That's not the same as not wanting to die. It's certainly not living."
He looked so insufferably smug that Fai couldn't help stalking up to him and leaning in close. "And the way you live, that is living?" he whispered in his ear.
"I said it before; I live my life with no regrets." Kurogane's tone was forceful, but his breath stirred the hair next to Fai's ear and one of them, at least one, shivered.
"But you don't live your life." Fai pushed away, pushing Kurogane away too. The sexual teasing was supposed to be a game. A way to get close without being close. "You have your life and you like it, but you let others live it or spend it as they choose. You've said it yourself, that you serve nobody except your princess. You don't even serve yourself because your wants and your desires, they come second to anything she might ask of you." It was part of why, as dangerous as he was, he was the safest choice Fai had ever made. "So we're the same. Except…I make my own choices."
"You don't make any choices, so that you don't have to care." Kurogane came back at him, pushing at him. "You run and you run and you run away," he said, punctuating the words with short, sharp shoves.
Fai slapped Kurogane's hand away from his chest. "That is a choice," he hissed, pushing back angrily.
"Not really." Kurogane grabbed his wrist and caught his arm close, "You're afraid to make a real choice. To have something you want. Because if there is something that you want, you might have to care," he let go as though dropping something disgusting, turning away.
"You're afraid to have what you want," Fai told his back, lounging against the dresser when Kurogane reversed direction, coming at him. "You're afraid to even know what you want."
Kurogane caged him where he stood, his arms like bars on either side of him. "I'm not afraid of anything!"
With an oddly tender touch, feeling almost gentle despite his fury, Fai laid a hand on Kurogane's cheek. "Then why, oh why, Kuro-sama, do you not have what you want?"
"Because I haven't returned home yet," Kurogane glared, and Fai's hand was pushed away as Kurogane's own hand came up and fisted in his hair, shoving it clear of his eyes. "Home is my only desire."
"Is that really what you tell yourself? Kuro-rin, how sad that you can't even tell yourself the truth!" Fai got his own fistful of hair, tugging at the short hair at the base of Kurogane's skull. "You're running away too," he crooned. "Back to the one person who can tell you what to do and how to live. You can't have a choice, because her choices have to come first. You want to go back to her so that you can bury your heart under hers. So that you don't have to think about your heart or wonder about it or use it. That's your desire." He paused and then, wanting Kurogane to just let go and back off and quit looking at him with those eyes, licked a path from the point of Kurogane's chin to a point just under his ear. "Or at least, it's the only one you'll let yourself think about."
"What do you know about anything? Even if you had a want, even if it was right here in your hands…"
Fai looked down at the hand not fisted in Kurogane's hair and was very nearly unsurprised to see it curved around the crest of Kurogane's hip with two fingers hooked up under his belt.
"…you'd never do anything to get it. In the choice between taking and having," Kurogane's other hand moved to be a mirror image on Fai, by way of a long stroke down his shirtfront "or running and being uncomplicated, you're running again. This time with words." And Kurogane's tongue traced the shell of his ear.
Fai shuddered involuntarily, letting his fingers leave hair to curl over the cusp of one strong shoulder. "What do I know? I know that you're pushing me to take what I want…" he snapped his head back up, fingers digging in tight "because you're hoping that what I want is you."
Kurogane's lips parted on a silent sound. His eyes went hot. "What makes you think I want you?"
Fai canted his hips forward, meeting unmistakable interest. "You do."
"I'm not the only one," Kurogane pushed him hard against the chest of drawers and ground against him. "You want this to be my choice," he growled, "because if it is, you don't have to think about it or care about it one way or the other." Kurogane shifted and wedged one knee between Fai's. "It's just another thing that happens or doesn't and doesn't affect you anywhere at all."
Mindlessly, Fai jerked down against the thigh pressing up between his own. "And if it's my choice you don't have to involve your heart; you can blame your body and mine."
"You're too much of a coward to simply ask for it," Kurogane's insult was delivered with a stinging bite just above the collar of his shirt.
"You're too much of a coward to even admit wanting it," Fai returned, recklessly taunting. The palm of his hand, and the fingers not involved with the belt, cupped around the hard heat or him, rasping against the zipper that restrained it.
He wasn't sure how it happened that his shirt was opened, but he couldn't care as Kurogane's naked chest came into contact with his own in a slow sear of skin and the first gloss of sweat. "Do something, you coward," Kurogane muttered roughly, his mouth moving in lightening quick strikes in places that made Fai shake.
"You first," he groaned, both hands below the belt, still over frustrating amounts of fabric.
Kurogane shook his head mutely and Fai growled in displeasure even as Kurogane's hands slid over the curves of his rear end to pull him closer. His hips jerked in response and he felt the answering thrust that pushed them into a rhythm. "If one of us," Fai panted, "doesn't give in, then this is as far as we're going to get."
"I realize that," Kurogane replied, biting hard at the junction of neck and shoulder before Fai pulled him up to look him in the eye.
Fix a problem for one of us; compound the problem for the other he thought. It was win/lose in the worst possible way. "Kuro-min," he gasped, still writhing against the body that held him, hips moving in an age-old dance, "just ask me."
"Why don't you do something," Kurogane moaned. "Now would be good."
Fai uttered a low cry, body moving faster almost against his will. "This is probably a huge mistake."
"So? Just do it. Just take what you want." Kurogane's voice was straining against the words.
Fai clutched at him, trying to hold himself together by holding on. "Ask me for it.
They might have remained locked at an impasse, for eternity if not for fate. Or destiny. Or the 'hitsuzen' that the Witch had talked about. But whatever it was it finally bowed to them both, letting their wills crumble at the same time; Kurogane's choked out 'okay' fell in the same second as Fai gave up and lunged desperately forward.
Kurogane's kiss was like finely milled chocolate melting in his mouth with a fire like hard liquor burning its way to the pit of his belly. Sweets and alcohol. Fai hooked his arms over Kurogane's shoulders and pulled himself closer to that mouth and those kisses. When Kurogane pulled away Fai grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him back in. "Stay here," he sighed, licking his way into another addictive kiss.
"We're not doing this against the goddamned wall," Kurogane managed to say when the need for air drove them apart.
"It's not even the wall," Fai said by way of agreement. "It's the furniture." He curled, wrapping his legs easily around Kurogane's waist.
"Thank god you're flexible," Kurogane said, taking on his weight and tumbling the both of them breathlessly onto Fai's bed only steps away.
By the time Fai got his breath back, the moon was high enough to be shining in their window. It was the only illumination since, sometime during the endless fight for being on top, one of them had managed to kick the lamp off the nightstand. "That didn't solve anything," he murmured lazily, drawing idle circles in the drying sweat on the back of Kurogane's neck.
"Did you think it would?" Kurogane's voice was quiet, but it held an edge that could have been anything from irritation to weariness. It was a very normal sounding voice, which proved even more irrefutably that having sex wasn't a cure-all.
"Not really," he said cheerily, letting the slight sadness slip behind it like it always did. He rolled off of the smooth, strong heat of Kurogane's back with a reluctant sigh, settling beside him. Kurogane, head pillowed on his arms, was facing away from him. He was tempted to touch the dark hair in front of him, but he didn't want to make the other man look at him. "But…I had hopes I guess. I want things to be solved."
Kurogane turned his head, his eyes-half closed, his face half hidden in his arms. "That's something." He closed his eyes completely, settling more deeply into the blankets. "If the one you're running from came tonight, I'd help you fight against him."
Fai turned those few words over. It was a qualified promise, like his own simple request, but one that came unasked for-again, like his own. "That's something," he decided at last.
"It's a start," Kurogane said.
A quiet voice that reached out across a vast and unknown space.
"It's a start," Fai repeated.
Not like an echo, but like a voice reaching back.
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: Let's give it an 'R', shall we? For poRn.
Written for: ghost_whisper for the challenge found here.
SPOILER: Volume 6 of TRC.
Disclaimer: CLAMP, those wonderful, terrible women.
Dedication: To ghost_whisper for the challenge (I hope it's what you were looking for) and to chelle_sama for being my sounding board and twin.
Broken from the Beginning, Fixed at the Start
You see…in my career, if anybody comes to kill me, I kill them. If there's something I'm protecting and anybody tries to steal it, I kill them. I can't count the number of people I've killed. I don't even try to hide it anymore. But…the ones I hate the most in the world are they guys who still have lives to live, but they don't make any effort to live them.
~Kurogane (to Fai) TRC Vol. 6, chapt. 37
Having lived with Kurogane for the better part of a year, Fai had learned to read him, accurately, if not well. And, in that same year, he'd come to care about the ninja, if not for him.
"Naa, Kuro-pin is restless tonight," he observed, brushing his fingers over Kurogane's bicep and pulling the stitch he was placing there tight. "He's got something on his mind?" His voice was teasing, but he meant the question seriously enough. Kurogane, when not at purpose, was still. Not just 'unmoving' but still. Like meditation, only watchful and aware and ready, his temper quietly below his skin instead of radiating off of him in waves. The fact that he was currently fidgeting in ways that were in no way related to the medical treatment he was getting was telling. Especially since Fai had actually iced the area numb before starting.
Beneath his hands, Kurogane twitched. "No."
Which was the most obvious lie he could have told, Fai thought. "Oh, I see. The man at the bar knocked the thoughts out." He smiled and propped his chin on Kurogane's shoulder, threading another suture. Kurogane grumbled, but didn't shrug him off. He was glad of it since the most physical contact either of them had with anybody was usually when embroiled in a barroom brawl. The difference was…nice. "I told him not to hit you."
Kurogane growled, "He wouldn't have hit me if you'd done something about it and hit him first."
"But you hit much harder than I do!" He finished and sat back, setting the needle back into their medical case. "That's you done," he hummed. Because he wanted to, and because he was sure it would annoy the ninja and probably jog him out of his mood, he dropped a light kiss on the place where his chin had just been resting. He didn't bother to keep it short. Then he stood up. "And…I don't think I have anything that needs attention," he said, surveying himself. "Nothing life threatening."
"And is that a good thing, or a bad thing?" Kurogane muttered, stowing their kit away under his bed.
Fai tensed. Since the other man had been bent when he'd said it, he decided to pretend he hadn't heard. "Eh?" he asked cheerfully, thinking say nothing or say something else.
"I suppose," Kurogane said, "that caring either way would be caring too much, for you."
He reigned in the urge to smack Kurogane for bringing that up again now, in the aftermath of a fight, when he was the most vulnerable to himself and his loneliness. When he most craved the contact of human emotions. "Saa, Kuro-pin, you know that the only thing I care about is you," he deflected with the best smile he could muster. He headed for the door of their shared room even though it was the middle of the night and he had nowhere else to go.
Which, like the loneliness thing, Kurogane obviously knew. "You're running away again," he said in an irate voice. "How are you ever going to live if you keep running away?"
Instead of doing the sensible thing and lying about tea, Fai snapped. "You want me to take advice from somebody who doesn't…what's the term?...practice what he preaches?"
"What the hell do you mean by that?" Kurogane's voice was low and dangerous.
"Do as you say, and not as you do, Kuro-sama?"
"I live my life with no regrets."
"Oh? I see." He put on a mockingly childish voice, "'Tomoyo-hime, don't send me away! I want to stay with you so that you can tell me what to do!'."
Kurogane snapped too. Before Fai could do more than crack the door open, the flat of Kurogane's palm was there, slamming it shut again and the man himself was a hot, dark shadow on his back. "Did you pick a fight and run away last time, too?"
Fai let go of the door and shoved Kurogane back, hard, making him stumble into the center of the room. "You couldn't possibly understand it."
"You're right," Kurogane sneered. "It's impossible to comprehend how somebody could spend their time running away from life while still not chasing death."
"I'm running away because I don't want to die," Fai spat. "That's living."
"You don't want to kill yourself and giving up is as good as. That's not the same as not wanting to die. It's certainly not living."
He looked so insufferably smug that Fai couldn't help stalking up to him and leaning in close. "And the way you live, that is living?" he whispered in his ear.
"I said it before; I live my life with no regrets." Kurogane's tone was forceful, but his breath stirred the hair next to Fai's ear and one of them, at least one, shivered.
"But you don't live your life." Fai pushed away, pushing Kurogane away too. The sexual teasing was supposed to be a game. A way to get close without being close. "You have your life and you like it, but you let others live it or spend it as they choose. You've said it yourself, that you serve nobody except your princess. You don't even serve yourself because your wants and your desires, they come second to anything she might ask of you." It was part of why, as dangerous as he was, he was the safest choice Fai had ever made. "So we're the same. Except…I make my own choices."
"You don't make any choices, so that you don't have to care." Kurogane came back at him, pushing at him. "You run and you run and you run away," he said, punctuating the words with short, sharp shoves.
Fai slapped Kurogane's hand away from his chest. "That is a choice," he hissed, pushing back angrily.
"Not really." Kurogane grabbed his wrist and caught his arm close, "You're afraid to make a real choice. To have something you want. Because if there is something that you want, you might have to care," he let go as though dropping something disgusting, turning away.
"You're afraid to have what you want," Fai told his back, lounging against the dresser when Kurogane reversed direction, coming at him. "You're afraid to even know what you want."
Kurogane caged him where he stood, his arms like bars on either side of him. "I'm not afraid of anything!"
With an oddly tender touch, feeling almost gentle despite his fury, Fai laid a hand on Kurogane's cheek. "Then why, oh why, Kuro-sama, do you not have what you want?"
"Because I haven't returned home yet," Kurogane glared, and Fai's hand was pushed away as Kurogane's own hand came up and fisted in his hair, shoving it clear of his eyes. "Home is my only desire."
"Is that really what you tell yourself? Kuro-rin, how sad that you can't even tell yourself the truth!" Fai got his own fistful of hair, tugging at the short hair at the base of Kurogane's skull. "You're running away too," he crooned. "Back to the one person who can tell you what to do and how to live. You can't have a choice, because her choices have to come first. You want to go back to her so that you can bury your heart under hers. So that you don't have to think about your heart or wonder about it or use it. That's your desire." He paused and then, wanting Kurogane to just let go and back off and quit looking at him with those eyes, licked a path from the point of Kurogane's chin to a point just under his ear. "Or at least, it's the only one you'll let yourself think about."
"What do you know about anything? Even if you had a want, even if it was right here in your hands…"
Fai looked down at the hand not fisted in Kurogane's hair and was very nearly unsurprised to see it curved around the crest of Kurogane's hip with two fingers hooked up under his belt.
"…you'd never do anything to get it. In the choice between taking and having," Kurogane's other hand moved to be a mirror image on Fai, by way of a long stroke down his shirtfront "or running and being uncomplicated, you're running again. This time with words." And Kurogane's tongue traced the shell of his ear.
Fai shuddered involuntarily, letting his fingers leave hair to curl over the cusp of one strong shoulder. "What do I know? I know that you're pushing me to take what I want…" he snapped his head back up, fingers digging in tight "because you're hoping that what I want is you."
Kurogane's lips parted on a silent sound. His eyes went hot. "What makes you think I want you?"
Fai canted his hips forward, meeting unmistakable interest. "You do."
"I'm not the only one," Kurogane pushed him hard against the chest of drawers and ground against him. "You want this to be my choice," he growled, "because if it is, you don't have to think about it or care about it one way or the other." Kurogane shifted and wedged one knee between Fai's. "It's just another thing that happens or doesn't and doesn't affect you anywhere at all."
Mindlessly, Fai jerked down against the thigh pressing up between his own. "And if it's my choice you don't have to involve your heart; you can blame your body and mine."
"You're too much of a coward to simply ask for it," Kurogane's insult was delivered with a stinging bite just above the collar of his shirt.
"You're too much of a coward to even admit wanting it," Fai returned, recklessly taunting. The palm of his hand, and the fingers not involved with the belt, cupped around the hard heat or him, rasping against the zipper that restrained it.
He wasn't sure how it happened that his shirt was opened, but he couldn't care as Kurogane's naked chest came into contact with his own in a slow sear of skin and the first gloss of sweat. "Do something, you coward," Kurogane muttered roughly, his mouth moving in lightening quick strikes in places that made Fai shake.
"You first," he groaned, both hands below the belt, still over frustrating amounts of fabric.
Kurogane shook his head mutely and Fai growled in displeasure even as Kurogane's hands slid over the curves of his rear end to pull him closer. His hips jerked in response and he felt the answering thrust that pushed them into a rhythm. "If one of us," Fai panted, "doesn't give in, then this is as far as we're going to get."
"I realize that," Kurogane replied, biting hard at the junction of neck and shoulder before Fai pulled him up to look him in the eye.
Fix a problem for one of us; compound the problem for the other he thought. It was win/lose in the worst possible way. "Kuro-min," he gasped, still writhing against the body that held him, hips moving in an age-old dance, "just ask me."
"Why don't you do something," Kurogane moaned. "Now would be good."
Fai uttered a low cry, body moving faster almost against his will. "This is probably a huge mistake."
"So? Just do it. Just take what you want." Kurogane's voice was straining against the words.
Fai clutched at him, trying to hold himself together by holding on. "Ask me for it.
They might have remained locked at an impasse, for eternity if not for fate. Or destiny. Or the 'hitsuzen' that the Witch had talked about. But whatever it was it finally bowed to them both, letting their wills crumble at the same time; Kurogane's choked out 'okay' fell in the same second as Fai gave up and lunged desperately forward.
Kurogane's kiss was like finely milled chocolate melting in his mouth with a fire like hard liquor burning its way to the pit of his belly. Sweets and alcohol. Fai hooked his arms over Kurogane's shoulders and pulled himself closer to that mouth and those kisses. When Kurogane pulled away Fai grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him back in. "Stay here," he sighed, licking his way into another addictive kiss.
"We're not doing this against the goddamned wall," Kurogane managed to say when the need for air drove them apart.
"It's not even the wall," Fai said by way of agreement. "It's the furniture." He curled, wrapping his legs easily around Kurogane's waist.
"Thank god you're flexible," Kurogane said, taking on his weight and tumbling the both of them breathlessly onto Fai's bed only steps away.
By the time Fai got his breath back, the moon was high enough to be shining in their window. It was the only illumination since, sometime during the endless fight for being on top, one of them had managed to kick the lamp off the nightstand. "That didn't solve anything," he murmured lazily, drawing idle circles in the drying sweat on the back of Kurogane's neck.
"Did you think it would?" Kurogane's voice was quiet, but it held an edge that could have been anything from irritation to weariness. It was a very normal sounding voice, which proved even more irrefutably that having sex wasn't a cure-all.
"Not really," he said cheerily, letting the slight sadness slip behind it like it always did. He rolled off of the smooth, strong heat of Kurogane's back with a reluctant sigh, settling beside him. Kurogane, head pillowed on his arms, was facing away from him. He was tempted to touch the dark hair in front of him, but he didn't want to make the other man look at him. "But…I had hopes I guess. I want things to be solved."
Kurogane turned his head, his eyes-half closed, his face half hidden in his arms. "That's something." He closed his eyes completely, settling more deeply into the blankets. "If the one you're running from came tonight, I'd help you fight against him."
Fai turned those few words over. It was a qualified promise, like his own simple request, but one that came unasked for-again, like his own. "That's something," he decided at last.
"It's a start," Kurogane said.
A quiet voice that reached out across a vast and unknown space.
"It's a start," Fai repeated.
Not like an echo, but like a voice reaching back.