reikah
in
inmyvortex
Fic: Not Quite Paradise [5/?], R.
Title: Not Quite Paradise [5/?; ongoing]
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Pairing: Fai/Kurogane/Yuui
Author: Co-write between mikkeneko & reikah
Rating: R
Word count: 5,620 this chapter (30,767 so far)
Notes: "In a future where science and psionics rule the skies, and both are controlled by the iron fist of the Earth government, two young men make a desperate leap into the unknown in order to evade capture and slavery. AU, Kurogane/Yuui/Fai."
Part One - Earth: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Part Two - Mars: [8] [9] [10] [11]
← back to chapter four
Part One: Earth
looking for a new world
Yuui was sitting on the lip of the rooftop when Fai came to find him, trying his best to light a cigarette. The lighter was their father's and there wasn't much fuel left in it, and even when he did manage to spark a small flame the wind quickly erased it.
There was a lot of wind up here. He was sitting on the very edge of the ridge that ran around the building, past the protection of the concrete safety barriers, his feet hanging over eight stories of nothing but air. It was an old building, tiny by modern standards, surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers jutting phallicly up at the stars. Cars were moving underneath him, beetle-bright and shiny, tiny like children's toys, but he wasn't afraid. Even if he did fall, he knew he could right himself with his gift, his... telekinesis.
He had heard the fire door clang when his twin emerged, and he knew who it was instinctively, some part of him as always able to identify his brother with no clues. The rooftop had been their hiding space since they were about six years old, when Yuui could first use his luck - his talent, he had to stop using the childish name for it - to help their small hands force the fire escape door open. It was an old building, strung with washing lines, but nobody bothered hanging clothes out to dry nowadays, not with all the smog and city-smells.
He didn't turn around, not even when Fai called his name; he had finally managed to get the lighter going and was cupping the spark carefully, shielding it from the breeze, as he ducked his head forward to touch the cigarette between his lips to the flame. He was snapping the lighter shut when Fai scrambled over the safety barrier, agile like a monkey, as trusting in Yuui's ability to catch him if he fell as Yuui was himself.
"There you are," he said, brightly. "I've been looking for you, why did you - is that a cigarette?"
"Yeah," Yuui said, taking a small drag. The oily smoke tickled at his throat and he coughed, but he took another one when he recovered; Fai was scowling at it, his blue eyes narrowed in distaste.
"Who gave it to you?" he demanded.
"Hanson did," Yuui replied, quietly. His hands were still shaking, he noticed with some detachment, watching the cherry-red glow of the lit end jitter in the air before him.
"The night shift manager? DJs? Flirts with the dancers?" Fai said, and Yuui nodded quietly. "Fine, I'll have to talk -"
"No, Fai, you won't," Yuui interrupted tiredly. "He gave me this and then told me he'd fired us."
It had reminded him somewhat of an execution; the offered cigarette, and then the bad news. Yuui had expected it, of course; Hanson's strip-club catered to some big business clients, and he'd decided the risks outweighed the benefits of keeping them, two scrawny janitors with questionable IDs, after Fai's little stunt. Yuui thought he might have done the same if he were in the man's shoes, which didn't make it easier.
"Oh," Fai said, and looked away. Yuui watched his twin's throat working out of the corner of his eye, and his hands itched with the urge to curl into fists. "I... that's... oh."
"Yeah. You caused quite a scandal when you had that fit. Two flights of stairs you fell down, wasn't it?"
"The hospital checked me out okay," Fai said, flushing indignantly. "I know you told them to do those scans, and they didn't find anything. Don't try to mother me, Yuui -"
"I have to!" Yuui snapped, and was surprised at the edge in his voice. "I have to, Fai, you've been scaring me and you don't remember! Did you take the pills I left out for you on the table?"
"No," Fai said, clearly taken off guard. "They're anti-psychotics, I don't -"
"I thought you had a brain tumor or something," Yuui said, and realized the edge was nothing but pure fear, suppressed and kept hidden for too long. "You've been blanking out and... and having what the hospital psychiatrist called 'dissociative episodes' for years now, where you don't know what's going on, and you're always too fucking stubborn to see anybody, and I..."
"I've been fine," Fai said, but his fingers were knotting in his jacket.
"You lost a whole day six months ago," Yuui said, letting the anger bleach out of his voice. He was tired and scared, and Fai was just being himself, brave and stupid and stupidly brave. "'Fine' isn't reciting mathematical formula and not noticing anything else. 'Fine' isn't splitting headaches out of the blue, 'fine' isn't memory loss, and 'fine' is not collapsing at work and falling down two fucking flights of stairs."
Maybe he was still angry. He didn't like to swear usually, but Fai had flinched with each fuck, and Yuui mercilessly took advantage of it. His hands were shaking again. "I love you," he said, and he meant it in every single way, "but I'm scared, Fai."
Fai reached into the pocket of the hoodie he wore and withdrew the bottle of pills, the white label stamped with the hospital logo. Another sticker warned of the legal dangers of attempting to trade, sell or redistribute prescription medication; underneath that was printed the false name Yuui had given the hospital staff on Fai's behalf when he followed the ambulance in. He opened his mouth as if about to say something, but then closed it and put the bottle on the rooftop between them, still lidded.
"I don't like them," he said. "I don't think they help. Whatever... whatever the hospital shrink thought I had when she diagnosed them -"
"- Schizophrenia," Yuui supplied quietly.
"Yeah, that. I don't think that's what I've got. I don't like them, Yuui, they make me feel. Muted, I guess? Fuzzy. But I still seethings, I just can't move about so much, and..." he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "A whole day?" he asked, quietly, and Yuui nodded confirmation. "A whole day I don't remember. It wasn't just any day, was it?"
"It was our sixteenth birthday," Yuui said quietly, looking down at the cigarette still burning away in his hand. It was very nearly finished, and he wrinkled his nose and flicked it away on the wind.
"How can I just lose a birthday?" Fai said, sounding frustrated. "What did we do?"
Yuui looked at him for a few seconds, and then glanced down at his sneakers, hanging above the street so far below them. "We got some hot food on the way home. We, uh. We ate it. We went to bed."
"Liar," said Fai, with a trace of affection. "Please tell me."
Yuui sighed. "You fucked me, okay? It was the first time."
You said, hey I have an idea, let's go up to the roof, he thought. And you made me bring our blankets and you had this... bag and when we got up here you put the blankets down and brought out this tarp you'd stolen from a dumpster somewhere, and you hung it over our heads like a tent so that nobody from the skyscrapers around us could see us. And then you kissed me and you asked if I wanted to, now that we were legal, and I said yes because you... you were so alive, I don't know. You looked so much like you and so not like me.
And it was messy and sore and fun, and I loved it, and I loved you, and I smiled so much my whole face hurt. And I woke up next morning stiff and aching and still so happy, and I went to wake you up and you looked at me with these lost eyes, wrapped up in the blankets and you said, Where are we?
And you didn't. Remember. Any of it.
"I what?" said Fai, staring at him wide-eyed, and Yuui sighed and ran a hand over his face. His eyes felt hot and dry, itchy.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "It was - it was just - never mind. Take your medicine. Just try them." He stood up, and Fai grabbed his sleeve, so fast he knocked his bottle of pills off the roof; Yuui caught them with his telekinesis and put them in his pocket. Fai's eyes were locked on his face.
"I'm sorry I don't remember," Fai said, and then bit his lip. "I am. Did I hurt you?"
"What? No!" Yuui said, shocked, and pulled his sleeve out of Fai's grasp. "Why would you even think you did?"
"Because I don't remember," Fai said.
Yuui's heart clenched in his chest, and he reached out, caught one of Fai's hands in his, cupped his brother's face with the other. "You would never hurt me," he said, gently, and kissed Fai, the sweet familiar taste of his brother settling him the way the nicotine hadn't.
"You taste like an ash tray," Fai told him when they parted, but some of the tension had ebbed from him. "Don't do that again."
"I won't," Yuui said, relieved to have the familiarly bossy Fai he was used to here, and Fai kissed him again, this time taking control of the kiss the way he usually did. Yuui curled his fingers into the back of his brother's shirt, felt Fai's heat all along his front, smiled into the kiss. It had been hard, holding it together while Fai was in the hospital; they had never been apart so long before, and his body was responding the way any teenager's would to the feel of Fai against it.
"I'm sorry I didn't remember last time," Fai told him, in between kisses, his hands hot and firm against Yuui's skin even through their clothing. Yuui hummed acknowledgment of his words, his mouth somewhat preoccupied with the warm, musky skin behind his twin's ear. "But maybe... maybe we can have another first time, Yuui."
Yuui paused to think about it for about as long as his sixteen-year-old hormones would let him, which was about five seconds. "Okay," he said, looping his arms around his twin's neck. "But not out here. Last time was in summer."
Fai smiled at him, his eyes bluer than the city skies, and said, "Dad won't be home for another four hours. You want to...?"
He tilted his head, and Yuui took his face in his hands, peering carefully into his brother's eyes, looking for hints of this unknown malady that made him so strange. All he could see was Fai, Fai who had been everything to him and still was. He paused for a few seconds, his thumbs stroking over his twin's cheekbones, and then he pressed their foreheads together gently, so close he could feel Fai's hot breath over his kiss-wet lips, and said, "I don't blame you, Fai. Whatever this is, it's. It's not your fault."
Fai jerked in his arms, and then whispered, "Thank you."
"Please be careful. I won't. I won't tell you what to do, but... please."
"You make it better," Fai said carefully. "Did you know that? Sometimes, you make it better. Easier to focus. I just, I see the colors and - and the lines in the world outside and then you're there and I can see you instead."
Yuui closed his eyes, smiled, and then nuzzled his nose against his twin's. "I'm not going anywhere," he said. "I promise. No matter how bad it gets. I'm not going anywhere."
For a while they stood there, pressed together, skin to skin, so close Yuui fancied he could feel Fai's heartbeat against his own chest. Finally he let go of his twin's face, sliding his hands down the fabric of Fai's hoodie, over the backs of his hands, and tangled their fingers together.
"Let's go have another first time," he whispered, and Fai's bright, happy laugh made him smile too.
He woke up on the sofa the next morning, on his belly with the sun playing over his back. Fai was wedged tightly against his side, still on the outer edge. They were both too tall for the sofa by now; he had his legs bent at the knee, lying with his ankles over the sofa arm and Fai's feet tangled with his, and he smiled to himself. He could feel Fai doing something to the bare skin of his back, and it felt ticklish and yet comfortable.
"Morning," Fai said, cheerfully.
"Mmm," Yuui said, and turned to pillow his other cheek on his folded arms, trying to get his brother within his vision. Fai's eyes were narrowed in concentration, but when Yuui moved he looked up from whatever he was doing to Yuui's skin and smiled at him. "You all... you?" he asked, somewhat cautiously, and Fai rolled his eyes fondly.
"If you mean, 'do I remember fucking you,' the answer is a resounding yes," he said.
"Was I good?" he asked, quietly.
"Of course you were," said Fai, and all the love in his voice made Yuui's belly tighten in a good way. He felt sore, still, and sticky, but it was worth it for this.
For a while they lay there, Fai tracing lines across his back, arching over his shoulder blades and wrapping around his hips. It didn't feel like his fingers he was using, but it was a good feeling, like being worshipped, and Yuui felt a smile tugging at the corners of their mouth. He knew they ought to get in the shower, wash away the evidence of what they had done before their father came home, but...
"What are you doing?" he asked drowsily, and Fai paused.
"Doodling," he said.
"Where did you get the pen from?"
"I found it." He resumed his doodling then, the nib of the pen scratching lightly over Yuui's skin as Fai drew over his back, looping designs that swirled and shaped. "It's an equation," he said, sounding preoccupied.
"Oh?" said Yuui. It didn't feel like numbers, but his muscles were fluid and he was sated, and Fai didn't sound hazy or incoherent.
"Yes. It's a means of bending space and time to allow instantaneous transportation through space," Fai said distractedly, looping a line around his shoulder blade, and Yuui smiled, nuzzling into his arms.
"Faster than light travel, huh?" he said. "You genius, you."
"No. Faster than FTL. Instantaneous."
"If that were possible you could be a - a gazillionaire," Yuui said, and Fai barked a laugh.
"I think it already has," he said, and drew one last line, a shifting, flowing line right down the centre of Yuui's back, tracing along his spinal cord. "She was sentenced to the Lunar colonies for something she didn't do, and she was scared, so she jumped back here. And once she did it nothing was ever the same for her. The whole universe, in her head. I think I see now."
"... What?" Yuui said, opening one eye. Fai was frowning intently at the pattern he'd drawn over Yuui's back, but he shook his head as if to trace those thoughts away.
"It was... nothing. Just a feeling."
"Oh." Yuui frowned, studying his brother, but Fai's eyes were clear and he held eye contact steadily, and frankly, Yuui didn't think it was worth pursuing. At least it wasn't rambling babble about colors. "Are you done?"
"I... I think so." Fai touched his shoulders gently, tracing his fingers across whatever it was he had doodled, and Yuui rolled onto his side, showing his twin his belly and removing his back from reach.
"Okay," he said, capturing Fai's hand, and he kept his eyes locked onto his twin's as he put it on his stomach and slid it down. He flushed proudly at Fai's reaction, the mixed approval and surprise. "I, uh. I think I could go again."
The second time had been just as sweet as the first, perhaps all the more so because now they both knew what they were doing. Yuui slid his hands over Fai's bare skin, panted into his twin's ear when Fai touched him just right, giggled into Fai's kiss, their mouths hot and wet and wanting, and he tangled his fingers in his twin's hair, the same fair shade as his own, and thought, just this. Please. Forever.
Afterward they had gone for that required shower and he had gotten his first glimpse of the design Fai had drawn on him in the mirror, the thick black lines curving over shoulder and around his hipbones, the wavering lines like a phoenix taking flight. He had only seen it for a few seconds, before the steam from the water made the mirror fog up.
But for weeks afterward he was unable to shake the feeling that the pattern had meant something, and if he only concentrated, he would see what it was.
His shaking subsided eventually, of course. He was simply too tired and hungry to keep it up. He hadn't asked the smuggler - Kurogane - whether or not he was entitled to food, but he had been explicitly ordered to keep to his cabin, and so he stayed there curled in the corner of his bed, his back to the wall. He couldn't see the window from here, which was just fine with him. He didn't know how take-offs usually went, but the noises echoing up through the ship were getting increasingly loud; booms and clicks and thuds and voices, muffled and indistinct but raised, came through the wall of his cabin regularly.
Yuui'd spent time in spaceship simulators, of course, both before his gift was discovered and after. And he'd ridden a suborbital shuttle twice, with Fai; neither were quite preparing him for the real thing. His mind couldn't stop running through the consequences of exposure out there, and he hunched into his corner, reminding himself that obviously the crew of the ship - Kurogane and Syaoran and whoever else might be on board - hadn't had any accidents yet.
He had stood there on the airlock of the space station and looked out of the window at his own planet, miles and miles beneath his feet, and it had hit him for the first time that he was leaving it and he would probably never be back. No more mesh of the old and new, buildings thousands of years old right next to shiny stratoscrapers. No more Earth television channels, sports teams, accents. No more familiar street corners and foods, and wide open roads that went on to nowhere. Everything would be different on Europa.
"It'll be worth it," he told the wrapped hulk of the triage capsule, and laid his hand gently over its disguised surface. He knew he was trying to reassure himself, but even as he said it he knew it was true. If Fai was safe, it would be okay.
Still, for a moment he felt the needling loss - the loss of his home, the blue and green planet he had been born to - under his breastbone, and quietly he climbed to his feet, swallowed back his nerves, and leaned out over the cryo capsule to look down over Earth's surface, the bands of thick white clouds, the green and brown and grey of the land and the blue of water.
He could see the boundaries between cities and farm plantations by the change in color; they were floating over the southern edge of the continent known as Eurasia and he could see, with his mind's eye, the clumps of cities overlaid with neat dots of his classroom maps; the gigantic sprawl of Hong Kong-Shenzhen city-province, spreading across the coast for miles, grey and bleak and home. He touched his hand to the glass of the window just as someone knocked on his door.
Goodbye, he thought, and turned away.
"Come in," he said, climbing awkwardly back onto the bunk for lack of anywhere else to stand. He didn't think it was Kurogane knocking - the knock had been small, timid almost, and he rather thought if it had been Kurogane the big man would have just pounded on the door and probably yelled at him to come out. He seemed like the type who needed everything done his way.
Indeed, when the door hissed open, the person standing inside it could never be confused with the smuggler captain in any circumstances; she was a she, and young at that, maybe sixteen years old at best but probably younger. Her hair was cut short, framing her face, and when she smiled there was a hint of teeth to it, awkward and teenage. Yuui put a hand on top of Fai's crate, steadying himself, and then flashed her his liar's smile. "Hello," he said pleasantly.
"Hi there," she said, with a sweet smile. "I just wanted to welcome you aboard the ship, and apologize for the captain. Have you got everything stowed okay?"
She was looking at the crate as she said this, and a small line appeared between her eyebrows, no doubt wondering what it was and how he had managed to get it here by himself. Yuui hastily headed her off and said, "Yes, thank you. I'm sorry, I don't know your name...?"
"Oh! It's Sakura, I'm the ship's engineer... but you probably worked that out already." She tugged at the coveralls she was wearing and grinned ruefully, and he smiled back at her, a little less fake. She seemed harmless enough. "I just wanted to tell you we're prepared for lift off, we're just waiting on the all clear from Station control. Um. Did you maybe... want to come have a look around? I can't imagine the captain let you, he can be very..."
She hesitated, looking for the right word.
"Yes," said Yuui, smiling. "He was very. I haven't been to space before, I'd love a look around."
"Oh! Not ever?" She was staring at him with wide eyes. "Wow, you Earthlings are so - um. Sorry, that is - really not ever?"
"Never ever," he assured her solemnly, and the incredulity on her face drained a little of the lie from his smile. "I haven't needed to before, but, well, with Earth's economy the way it is..."
He trailed off enticingly, and knew he had her; she seemed to share the same idealized version of Earth the colony kids at the Academy had had, usually arriving straight from the domes or the space station expecting utopia and finding grime. "Wow," she said. "We always just assumed - um, that is, I'm from Mars, you see. I've never been down to the surface of Earth. Is it as rich as everyone says?"
"I don't know who 'everyone' is," Yuui said. "But it's the same as Mars, I should imagine. Very rich people, less rich people, poor people."
"Oh." She bit her lip, and then shook her head, her sandy brown hair flying. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask questions, it's - we're very discreet." This last was said with all the seriousness of the young, and she no doubt believed it; Yuui nodded and shifted on his bunk. "Would you like to come see the rest of the ship? The captain and Syaoran-kun are in the cockpit, they won't mind. Although the captain might grumble anyway, you just need to know not to listen to him. He complains about everything but he's a good man. And Syaoran-kun is a really good pilot! He can fly rings around everyone!"
"Are they from Mars too?" Yuui asked idly, and she nodded and then changed her mind and shook her head.
"Syaoran-kun is," she said. "We think the captain is from one of the station colonies, but he doesn't talk about it much. Best not to ask. Um, shall we get going? I'd like to show you the engines before we lose the space station gravity."
It was a bit of effort to climb off his bunk and get out the cabin around the cryo capsule, but he managed it. Once he was out Sakura showed him how to use the keypad to close the door, and also how to lock it if he wanted a bit of privacy.
The bottom layer of the spaceship was built around a giant ring, with the cabins and a rec room on the outside; their cabin was next to Sakura's, and she was to the left of Syaoran's. Kurogane had to largest cabin of all on the other side of Syaoran. The corridor that ran around the outside was all steel grating and metal walls, criss-crossed with wiring; luckily to tell the rooms apart Sakura had painted decals on the cabin doors. Hers was of a pretty cherry blossom, Syaoran's was of a pair of goggles. Kurogane got a tangled Japanese-style dragon painted in silver, its red eyes glaring malevolently out at the corridor. Yuui thought it was apt, if excessive.
There were shared bathroom facilities on the other side of his cabin, and between the bathroom and Kurogane's cabin, completing the circle, was the rec room; it was larger by far than his cabin and contained cooking facilities, a television, even a shelf of worn battered electronic book libraries. Sakura confessed with a grin that Syaoran was an avid reader, and the five-six devices contained hundreds of thousands of books in their databanks. "And of course, if you want anything after that, you can always ask Mokona to get it for you," she said.
"Mokona?" Yuui said. "I thought that was the ship's name?"
"I forgot you were from Earth for a second," she said, giggling, and clapped her hands together, calling out in a voice that carried across the empty rec room, "Mokona, attention!"
A computer terminal next to the television blinked on, a cartoon figure of a curious rabbit-like creature appearing on its screen. It waddled into the centre of the screen and executed a bow.
"An AI?" Yuui asked, and she nodded.
"Mokona, this is Fai-san," she said. "He'll be our guest from here to Europa. Why don't you say hello?"
"Hello," the shipboard AI said in a monotonous tone. "I am Artificial Intelligence unit Em Zero Kay Zero En Aye, registered to -"
"Not that!" Sakura said, waving her hand. "Tell him what you can do."
"My primary directive is to assist in management of shipboard navigational tasks," Mokana said in the same wooden voice. Yuui tilted his head to one side; he had met car AIs with more spark than this one. Perhaps Kurogane objected to his AI having such a thing as a personality. He certainly seemed to object to people who had one. "I am also a fully programmable personal assistant and can provide a wide range of aid with daily human life."
"I see," said Yuui, a little unnerved.
Sakura must have caught some of this, because she said, in a quiet voice, "The captain is a little old-fashioned when it comes to AI units. He took out her personality core."
"Ah," said Yuui, wrinkling his nose. That was old fashioned. A lot of older folks tended to neuter their AIs the same way; when they'd started trying to build personalities into AIs the initial results had been really bad, and humanity generally refused to adapt. Before he could comment on this, though, his stomach rumbled, and Sakura raised her eyebrows and grinned.
"Oh dear," she said. "Shall we see what there is to eat, Fai-san?"
"Please," he said, flushing, and she just smiled at him gently and led him over to the cooking corner.
"Most of the equipment here is really old," she said apologetically, bending down to rummage through a cupboard and thus unable to see the covetous way Yuui ran his eyes over the cooking implements, the pans and pots and tools, the racks of herbs and spices and the big metal food storage unit. It was a fully functional kitchen and he could already see the things he could do with it. "We have enough food here to last about one Earth standard year, but by the ninth month we'd probably be down to the bare essentials, so we'll be stocking up on Mars. We're growing a lot more food now than we used to," she said proudly. "Have you ever eaten Martian food?"
He shook his head. As far as he knew Earth sold food to Mars, which didn't have much in the way of agriculture.
"It's very spicy," she said, pulling out a plastic container with what looked like dumplings inside it. "But really nice. Oh... we don't have anything but chopsticks onboard, I can teach you how to -"
"I know how to use chopsticks," he said, amused.
"You do? But you're not Martian..."
"I grew up in what used to be Asia," he said, taking the pair she handed him and wielding them expertly to prove his point. "The area that supplied the first Martian colonies? I'm sure I'll be okay."
She showed him how to use the microwave, which thanked him enthusiastically for his time and apologized for taking so long to cook his food, and they sat together at the metal countertop as he ate, minding his manners although he was hungry enough he could have eaten with his fingers. Sakura made herself a cup of green tea, drinking it out of a plastic cup with a special lid attachment; when he raised his eyebrows at it she lifted it and said, "This outer ring has gravity, but the engine room doesn't, so I guess I got into the habit of having my drinks with zero-grav protection. Have I told you about the engine room yet?"
Her eyes were sparkling, so he shook his head and watched her with interest that wasn't really all that feigned as she launched into a discussion about the great engine at the heart of the ship that provided everything they needed - power, air, gravity for the living quarters. He knew why the gravity was necessary - humans had found out centuries ago the damage living in zero gravity could do to the human body - but he hadn't realized how fragile the whole system was.
Before he could let himself get sidetracked with the scary possibilities of that thought, the door slid open and the teenage boy - Syaoran - came into the rec room while he was still finishing off the dumplings; his flight suit was unbuttoned at the neck, and he wore heavy spacer boots that clanked over the floor. His whole face lit up when he saw Sakura, and suddenly the dumplings tasted like ash on Yuui's tongue; he missed Fai suddenly, not the Fai in the crate but the Fai who had looked at him like that as they made love on the roof of their apartment block, their fingers tangled together and his twin so warm against him.
"Hello, Fai-san," Syaoran said politely, and Yuui forced himself to flash that fake smile again. Syaoran responded to it, tilting his head to one side and smiling back. His face was open and honest; his clear eyes were bright and warm. "We're almost ready to go. We're thinking of taking the route by the moon, keep clear of the major shipping lanes. Do you think that's a good idea, princess?"
"Oh, stop it," Sakura said, blushing. "I'm not a princess."
"You are to me," Syaoran said seriously, and they were making eyes at each other again for a few seconds before Yuui let his chopsticks click against his plate loud enough to snap them out of it. Sakura coughed and rubbed her hands over her cheeks; Syaoran fidgeted and looked slightly embarrassed himself.
"I think we'll be fine," she said. "I don't have a bad feeling about that route."
There was something going on with that exchange Yuui sensed he didn't understand, some kind of code he wasn't privy to, but he didn't comment on it, just kept smiling. Syaoran slid into one of the seats at the counter next to him, his hands neat on the metal surface.
"The captain's on the warpath today," he said conversationally. "It might be best if you kept to your room, Fai-san."
"You mean that's not how Captain Grump normally treats his guests?" Yuui asked, and Syaoran rubbed a hand over his mouth and shook his head.
"It's not like Fai-san's room is that large," Sakura said, frowning. "Especially not with that crate in it. It's not fair to expect him to stay there. Why is the captain so angry?"
"I don't know," Syaoran said uncomfortably. "He isn't usually like this, he's just... "
"Cranky," Sakura supplied.
Yuui traced a finger in spirals around his plate. He wondered if maybe the captain was angry because of him; maybe he was pissed at having to go so far out of his way to drop Yuui off. Well, tough to be him; Yuui had paid him. Maybe he just needed to get on Kurogane's good side. He wasn't entirely sure how to go about doing that, making friends was never something he'd learned, but...
Just smile, baby.
Well, if nothing else, there was always sex. The possibility didn't thrill him, but Kurogane seemed kind of like a bully, and bullies always liked to be in control. If things got bad he could always offer himself up; they liked that, liked having people plead. The thought filled him with a dull sort of terror - nobody had ever touched him intimately except Fai, he didn't really want to start now - but he knew he'd do it, if it kept the captain from hurting him or Fai.
It wasn't like he had anything else to offer, and... it might not be such a hardship. There was something about those red eyes, the way they looked at him... Yuui breathed out slowly. No. No, there was no point dwelling on this now.
"If you'd show me how to clean up, I'd like to see the engine before we leave," he said with a smile, and Sakura lit up.
Well, at least two of his travelling companions were nice. He hoped he could win the third over, too, in time. Using whatever means necessary. He didn't really know how to go about seducing someone for favors, but he thought he could figure it out.
chapter six →
-tbc
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Pairing: Fai/Kurogane/Yuui
Author: Co-write between mikkeneko & reikah
Rating: R
Word count: 5,620 this chapter (30,767 so far)
Notes: "In a future where science and psionics rule the skies, and both are controlled by the iron fist of the Earth government, two young men make a desperate leap into the unknown in order to evade capture and slavery. AU, Kurogane/Yuui/Fai."
Part One - Earth: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Part Two - Mars: [8] [9] [10] [11]
← back to chapter four
Part One: Earth
looking for a new world
Yuui was sitting on the lip of the rooftop when Fai came to find him, trying his best to light a cigarette. The lighter was their father's and there wasn't much fuel left in it, and even when he did manage to spark a small flame the wind quickly erased it.
There was a lot of wind up here. He was sitting on the very edge of the ridge that ran around the building, past the protection of the concrete safety barriers, his feet hanging over eight stories of nothing but air. It was an old building, tiny by modern standards, surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers jutting phallicly up at the stars. Cars were moving underneath him, beetle-bright and shiny, tiny like children's toys, but he wasn't afraid. Even if he did fall, he knew he could right himself with his gift, his... telekinesis.
He had heard the fire door clang when his twin emerged, and he knew who it was instinctively, some part of him as always able to identify his brother with no clues. The rooftop had been their hiding space since they were about six years old, when Yuui could first use his luck - his talent, he had to stop using the childish name for it - to help their small hands force the fire escape door open. It was an old building, strung with washing lines, but nobody bothered hanging clothes out to dry nowadays, not with all the smog and city-smells.
He didn't turn around, not even when Fai called his name; he had finally managed to get the lighter going and was cupping the spark carefully, shielding it from the breeze, as he ducked his head forward to touch the cigarette between his lips to the flame. He was snapping the lighter shut when Fai scrambled over the safety barrier, agile like a monkey, as trusting in Yuui's ability to catch him if he fell as Yuui was himself.
"There you are," he said, brightly. "I've been looking for you, why did you - is that a cigarette?"
"Yeah," Yuui said, taking a small drag. The oily smoke tickled at his throat and he coughed, but he took another one when he recovered; Fai was scowling at it, his blue eyes narrowed in distaste.
"Who gave it to you?" he demanded.
"Hanson did," Yuui replied, quietly. His hands were still shaking, he noticed with some detachment, watching the cherry-red glow of the lit end jitter in the air before him.
"The night shift manager? DJs? Flirts with the dancers?" Fai said, and Yuui nodded quietly. "Fine, I'll have to talk -"
"No, Fai, you won't," Yuui interrupted tiredly. "He gave me this and then told me he'd fired us."
It had reminded him somewhat of an execution; the offered cigarette, and then the bad news. Yuui had expected it, of course; Hanson's strip-club catered to some big business clients, and he'd decided the risks outweighed the benefits of keeping them, two scrawny janitors with questionable IDs, after Fai's little stunt. Yuui thought he might have done the same if he were in the man's shoes, which didn't make it easier.
"Oh," Fai said, and looked away. Yuui watched his twin's throat working out of the corner of his eye, and his hands itched with the urge to curl into fists. "I... that's... oh."
"Yeah. You caused quite a scandal when you had that fit. Two flights of stairs you fell down, wasn't it?"
"The hospital checked me out okay," Fai said, flushing indignantly. "I know you told them to do those scans, and they didn't find anything. Don't try to mother me, Yuui -"
"I have to!" Yuui snapped, and was surprised at the edge in his voice. "I have to, Fai, you've been scaring me and you don't remember! Did you take the pills I left out for you on the table?"
"No," Fai said, clearly taken off guard. "They're anti-psychotics, I don't -"
"I thought you had a brain tumor or something," Yuui said, and realized the edge was nothing but pure fear, suppressed and kept hidden for too long. "You've been blanking out and... and having what the hospital psychiatrist called 'dissociative episodes' for years now, where you don't know what's going on, and you're always too fucking stubborn to see anybody, and I..."
"I've been fine," Fai said, but his fingers were knotting in his jacket.
"You lost a whole day six months ago," Yuui said, letting the anger bleach out of his voice. He was tired and scared, and Fai was just being himself, brave and stupid and stupidly brave. "'Fine' isn't reciting mathematical formula and not noticing anything else. 'Fine' isn't splitting headaches out of the blue, 'fine' isn't memory loss, and 'fine' is not collapsing at work and falling down two fucking flights of stairs."
Maybe he was still angry. He didn't like to swear usually, but Fai had flinched with each fuck, and Yuui mercilessly took advantage of it. His hands were shaking again. "I love you," he said, and he meant it in every single way, "but I'm scared, Fai."
Fai reached into the pocket of the hoodie he wore and withdrew the bottle of pills, the white label stamped with the hospital logo. Another sticker warned of the legal dangers of attempting to trade, sell or redistribute prescription medication; underneath that was printed the false name Yuui had given the hospital staff on Fai's behalf when he followed the ambulance in. He opened his mouth as if about to say something, but then closed it and put the bottle on the rooftop between them, still lidded.
"I don't like them," he said. "I don't think they help. Whatever... whatever the hospital shrink thought I had when she diagnosed them -"
"- Schizophrenia," Yuui supplied quietly.
"Yeah, that. I don't think that's what I've got. I don't like them, Yuui, they make me feel. Muted, I guess? Fuzzy. But I still seethings, I just can't move about so much, and..." he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "A whole day?" he asked, quietly, and Yuui nodded confirmation. "A whole day I don't remember. It wasn't just any day, was it?"
"It was our sixteenth birthday," Yuui said quietly, looking down at the cigarette still burning away in his hand. It was very nearly finished, and he wrinkled his nose and flicked it away on the wind.
"How can I just lose a birthday?" Fai said, sounding frustrated. "What did we do?"
Yuui looked at him for a few seconds, and then glanced down at his sneakers, hanging above the street so far below them. "We got some hot food on the way home. We, uh. We ate it. We went to bed."
"Liar," said Fai, with a trace of affection. "Please tell me."
Yuui sighed. "You fucked me, okay? It was the first time."
You said, hey I have an idea, let's go up to the roof, he thought. And you made me bring our blankets and you had this... bag and when we got up here you put the blankets down and brought out this tarp you'd stolen from a dumpster somewhere, and you hung it over our heads like a tent so that nobody from the skyscrapers around us could see us. And then you kissed me and you asked if I wanted to, now that we were legal, and I said yes because you... you were so alive, I don't know. You looked so much like you and so not like me.
And it was messy and sore and fun, and I loved it, and I loved you, and I smiled so much my whole face hurt. And I woke up next morning stiff and aching and still so happy, and I went to wake you up and you looked at me with these lost eyes, wrapped up in the blankets and you said, Where are we?
And you didn't. Remember. Any of it.
"I what?" said Fai, staring at him wide-eyed, and Yuui sighed and ran a hand over his face. His eyes felt hot and dry, itchy.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "It was - it was just - never mind. Take your medicine. Just try them." He stood up, and Fai grabbed his sleeve, so fast he knocked his bottle of pills off the roof; Yuui caught them with his telekinesis and put them in his pocket. Fai's eyes were locked on his face.
"I'm sorry I don't remember," Fai said, and then bit his lip. "I am. Did I hurt you?"
"What? No!" Yuui said, shocked, and pulled his sleeve out of Fai's grasp. "Why would you even think you did?"
"Because I don't remember," Fai said.
Yuui's heart clenched in his chest, and he reached out, caught one of Fai's hands in his, cupped his brother's face with the other. "You would never hurt me," he said, gently, and kissed Fai, the sweet familiar taste of his brother settling him the way the nicotine hadn't.
"You taste like an ash tray," Fai told him when they parted, but some of the tension had ebbed from him. "Don't do that again."
"I won't," Yuui said, relieved to have the familiarly bossy Fai he was used to here, and Fai kissed him again, this time taking control of the kiss the way he usually did. Yuui curled his fingers into the back of his brother's shirt, felt Fai's heat all along his front, smiled into the kiss. It had been hard, holding it together while Fai was in the hospital; they had never been apart so long before, and his body was responding the way any teenager's would to the feel of Fai against it.
"I'm sorry I didn't remember last time," Fai told him, in between kisses, his hands hot and firm against Yuui's skin even through their clothing. Yuui hummed acknowledgment of his words, his mouth somewhat preoccupied with the warm, musky skin behind his twin's ear. "But maybe... maybe we can have another first time, Yuui."
Yuui paused to think about it for about as long as his sixteen-year-old hormones would let him, which was about five seconds. "Okay," he said, looping his arms around his twin's neck. "But not out here. Last time was in summer."
Fai smiled at him, his eyes bluer than the city skies, and said, "Dad won't be home for another four hours. You want to...?"
He tilted his head, and Yuui took his face in his hands, peering carefully into his brother's eyes, looking for hints of this unknown malady that made him so strange. All he could see was Fai, Fai who had been everything to him and still was. He paused for a few seconds, his thumbs stroking over his twin's cheekbones, and then he pressed their foreheads together gently, so close he could feel Fai's hot breath over his kiss-wet lips, and said, "I don't blame you, Fai. Whatever this is, it's. It's not your fault."
Fai jerked in his arms, and then whispered, "Thank you."
"Please be careful. I won't. I won't tell you what to do, but... please."
"You make it better," Fai said carefully. "Did you know that? Sometimes, you make it better. Easier to focus. I just, I see the colors and - and the lines in the world outside and then you're there and I can see you instead."
Yuui closed his eyes, smiled, and then nuzzled his nose against his twin's. "I'm not going anywhere," he said. "I promise. No matter how bad it gets. I'm not going anywhere."
For a while they stood there, pressed together, skin to skin, so close Yuui fancied he could feel Fai's heartbeat against his own chest. Finally he let go of his twin's face, sliding his hands down the fabric of Fai's hoodie, over the backs of his hands, and tangled their fingers together.
"Let's go have another first time," he whispered, and Fai's bright, happy laugh made him smile too.
He woke up on the sofa the next morning, on his belly with the sun playing over his back. Fai was wedged tightly against his side, still on the outer edge. They were both too tall for the sofa by now; he had his legs bent at the knee, lying with his ankles over the sofa arm and Fai's feet tangled with his, and he smiled to himself. He could feel Fai doing something to the bare skin of his back, and it felt ticklish and yet comfortable.
"Morning," Fai said, cheerfully.
"Mmm," Yuui said, and turned to pillow his other cheek on his folded arms, trying to get his brother within his vision. Fai's eyes were narrowed in concentration, but when Yuui moved he looked up from whatever he was doing to Yuui's skin and smiled at him. "You all... you?" he asked, somewhat cautiously, and Fai rolled his eyes fondly.
"If you mean, 'do I remember fucking you,' the answer is a resounding yes," he said.
"Was I good?" he asked, quietly.
"Of course you were," said Fai, and all the love in his voice made Yuui's belly tighten in a good way. He felt sore, still, and sticky, but it was worth it for this.
For a while they lay there, Fai tracing lines across his back, arching over his shoulder blades and wrapping around his hips. It didn't feel like his fingers he was using, but it was a good feeling, like being worshipped, and Yuui felt a smile tugging at the corners of their mouth. He knew they ought to get in the shower, wash away the evidence of what they had done before their father came home, but...
"What are you doing?" he asked drowsily, and Fai paused.
"Doodling," he said.
"Where did you get the pen from?"
"I found it." He resumed his doodling then, the nib of the pen scratching lightly over Yuui's skin as Fai drew over his back, looping designs that swirled and shaped. "It's an equation," he said, sounding preoccupied.
"Oh?" said Yuui. It didn't feel like numbers, but his muscles were fluid and he was sated, and Fai didn't sound hazy or incoherent.
"Yes. It's a means of bending space and time to allow instantaneous transportation through space," Fai said distractedly, looping a line around his shoulder blade, and Yuui smiled, nuzzling into his arms.
"Faster than light travel, huh?" he said. "You genius, you."
"No. Faster than FTL. Instantaneous."
"If that were possible you could be a - a gazillionaire," Yuui said, and Fai barked a laugh.
"I think it already has," he said, and drew one last line, a shifting, flowing line right down the centre of Yuui's back, tracing along his spinal cord. "She was sentenced to the Lunar colonies for something she didn't do, and she was scared, so she jumped back here. And once she did it nothing was ever the same for her. The whole universe, in her head. I think I see now."
"... What?" Yuui said, opening one eye. Fai was frowning intently at the pattern he'd drawn over Yuui's back, but he shook his head as if to trace those thoughts away.
"It was... nothing. Just a feeling."
"Oh." Yuui frowned, studying his brother, but Fai's eyes were clear and he held eye contact steadily, and frankly, Yuui didn't think it was worth pursuing. At least it wasn't rambling babble about colors. "Are you done?"
"I... I think so." Fai touched his shoulders gently, tracing his fingers across whatever it was he had doodled, and Yuui rolled onto his side, showing his twin his belly and removing his back from reach.
"Okay," he said, capturing Fai's hand, and he kept his eyes locked onto his twin's as he put it on his stomach and slid it down. He flushed proudly at Fai's reaction, the mixed approval and surprise. "I, uh. I think I could go again."
The second time had been just as sweet as the first, perhaps all the more so because now they both knew what they were doing. Yuui slid his hands over Fai's bare skin, panted into his twin's ear when Fai touched him just right, giggled into Fai's kiss, their mouths hot and wet and wanting, and he tangled his fingers in his twin's hair, the same fair shade as his own, and thought, just this. Please. Forever.
Afterward they had gone for that required shower and he had gotten his first glimpse of the design Fai had drawn on him in the mirror, the thick black lines curving over shoulder and around his hipbones, the wavering lines like a phoenix taking flight. He had only seen it for a few seconds, before the steam from the water made the mirror fog up.
But for weeks afterward he was unable to shake the feeling that the pattern had meant something, and if he only concentrated, he would see what it was.
His shaking subsided eventually, of course. He was simply too tired and hungry to keep it up. He hadn't asked the smuggler - Kurogane - whether or not he was entitled to food, but he had been explicitly ordered to keep to his cabin, and so he stayed there curled in the corner of his bed, his back to the wall. He couldn't see the window from here, which was just fine with him. He didn't know how take-offs usually went, but the noises echoing up through the ship were getting increasingly loud; booms and clicks and thuds and voices, muffled and indistinct but raised, came through the wall of his cabin regularly.
Yuui'd spent time in spaceship simulators, of course, both before his gift was discovered and after. And he'd ridden a suborbital shuttle twice, with Fai; neither were quite preparing him for the real thing. His mind couldn't stop running through the consequences of exposure out there, and he hunched into his corner, reminding himself that obviously the crew of the ship - Kurogane and Syaoran and whoever else might be on board - hadn't had any accidents yet.
He had stood there on the airlock of the space station and looked out of the window at his own planet, miles and miles beneath his feet, and it had hit him for the first time that he was leaving it and he would probably never be back. No more mesh of the old and new, buildings thousands of years old right next to shiny stratoscrapers. No more Earth television channels, sports teams, accents. No more familiar street corners and foods, and wide open roads that went on to nowhere. Everything would be different on Europa.
"It'll be worth it," he told the wrapped hulk of the triage capsule, and laid his hand gently over its disguised surface. He knew he was trying to reassure himself, but even as he said it he knew it was true. If Fai was safe, it would be okay.
Still, for a moment he felt the needling loss - the loss of his home, the blue and green planet he had been born to - under his breastbone, and quietly he climbed to his feet, swallowed back his nerves, and leaned out over the cryo capsule to look down over Earth's surface, the bands of thick white clouds, the green and brown and grey of the land and the blue of water.
He could see the boundaries between cities and farm plantations by the change in color; they were floating over the southern edge of the continent known as Eurasia and he could see, with his mind's eye, the clumps of cities overlaid with neat dots of his classroom maps; the gigantic sprawl of Hong Kong-Shenzhen city-province, spreading across the coast for miles, grey and bleak and home. He touched his hand to the glass of the window just as someone knocked on his door.
Goodbye, he thought, and turned away.
"Come in," he said, climbing awkwardly back onto the bunk for lack of anywhere else to stand. He didn't think it was Kurogane knocking - the knock had been small, timid almost, and he rather thought if it had been Kurogane the big man would have just pounded on the door and probably yelled at him to come out. He seemed like the type who needed everything done his way.
Indeed, when the door hissed open, the person standing inside it could never be confused with the smuggler captain in any circumstances; she was a she, and young at that, maybe sixteen years old at best but probably younger. Her hair was cut short, framing her face, and when she smiled there was a hint of teeth to it, awkward and teenage. Yuui put a hand on top of Fai's crate, steadying himself, and then flashed her his liar's smile. "Hello," he said pleasantly.
"Hi there," she said, with a sweet smile. "I just wanted to welcome you aboard the ship, and apologize for the captain. Have you got everything stowed okay?"
She was looking at the crate as she said this, and a small line appeared between her eyebrows, no doubt wondering what it was and how he had managed to get it here by himself. Yuui hastily headed her off and said, "Yes, thank you. I'm sorry, I don't know your name...?"
"Oh! It's Sakura, I'm the ship's engineer... but you probably worked that out already." She tugged at the coveralls she was wearing and grinned ruefully, and he smiled back at her, a little less fake. She seemed harmless enough. "I just wanted to tell you we're prepared for lift off, we're just waiting on the all clear from Station control. Um. Did you maybe... want to come have a look around? I can't imagine the captain let you, he can be very..."
She hesitated, looking for the right word.
"Yes," said Yuui, smiling. "He was very. I haven't been to space before, I'd love a look around."
"Oh! Not ever?" She was staring at him with wide eyes. "Wow, you Earthlings are so - um. Sorry, that is - really not ever?"
"Never ever," he assured her solemnly, and the incredulity on her face drained a little of the lie from his smile. "I haven't needed to before, but, well, with Earth's economy the way it is..."
He trailed off enticingly, and knew he had her; she seemed to share the same idealized version of Earth the colony kids at the Academy had had, usually arriving straight from the domes or the space station expecting utopia and finding grime. "Wow," she said. "We always just assumed - um, that is, I'm from Mars, you see. I've never been down to the surface of Earth. Is it as rich as everyone says?"
"I don't know who 'everyone' is," Yuui said. "But it's the same as Mars, I should imagine. Very rich people, less rich people, poor people."
"Oh." She bit her lip, and then shook her head, her sandy brown hair flying. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask questions, it's - we're very discreet." This last was said with all the seriousness of the young, and she no doubt believed it; Yuui nodded and shifted on his bunk. "Would you like to come see the rest of the ship? The captain and Syaoran-kun are in the cockpit, they won't mind. Although the captain might grumble anyway, you just need to know not to listen to him. He complains about everything but he's a good man. And Syaoran-kun is a really good pilot! He can fly rings around everyone!"
"Are they from Mars too?" Yuui asked idly, and she nodded and then changed her mind and shook her head.
"Syaoran-kun is," she said. "We think the captain is from one of the station colonies, but he doesn't talk about it much. Best not to ask. Um, shall we get going? I'd like to show you the engines before we lose the space station gravity."
It was a bit of effort to climb off his bunk and get out the cabin around the cryo capsule, but he managed it. Once he was out Sakura showed him how to use the keypad to close the door, and also how to lock it if he wanted a bit of privacy.
The bottom layer of the spaceship was built around a giant ring, with the cabins and a rec room on the outside; their cabin was next to Sakura's, and she was to the left of Syaoran's. Kurogane had to largest cabin of all on the other side of Syaoran. The corridor that ran around the outside was all steel grating and metal walls, criss-crossed with wiring; luckily to tell the rooms apart Sakura had painted decals on the cabin doors. Hers was of a pretty cherry blossom, Syaoran's was of a pair of goggles. Kurogane got a tangled Japanese-style dragon painted in silver, its red eyes glaring malevolently out at the corridor. Yuui thought it was apt, if excessive.
There were shared bathroom facilities on the other side of his cabin, and between the bathroom and Kurogane's cabin, completing the circle, was the rec room; it was larger by far than his cabin and contained cooking facilities, a television, even a shelf of worn battered electronic book libraries. Sakura confessed with a grin that Syaoran was an avid reader, and the five-six devices contained hundreds of thousands of books in their databanks. "And of course, if you want anything after that, you can always ask Mokona to get it for you," she said.
"Mokona?" Yuui said. "I thought that was the ship's name?"
"I forgot you were from Earth for a second," she said, giggling, and clapped her hands together, calling out in a voice that carried across the empty rec room, "Mokona, attention!"
A computer terminal next to the television blinked on, a cartoon figure of a curious rabbit-like creature appearing on its screen. It waddled into the centre of the screen and executed a bow.
"An AI?" Yuui asked, and she nodded.
"Mokona, this is Fai-san," she said. "He'll be our guest from here to Europa. Why don't you say hello?"
"Hello," the shipboard AI said in a monotonous tone. "I am Artificial Intelligence unit Em Zero Kay Zero En Aye, registered to -"
"Not that!" Sakura said, waving her hand. "Tell him what you can do."
"My primary directive is to assist in management of shipboard navigational tasks," Mokana said in the same wooden voice. Yuui tilted his head to one side; he had met car AIs with more spark than this one. Perhaps Kurogane objected to his AI having such a thing as a personality. He certainly seemed to object to people who had one. "I am also a fully programmable personal assistant and can provide a wide range of aid with daily human life."
"I see," said Yuui, a little unnerved.
Sakura must have caught some of this, because she said, in a quiet voice, "The captain is a little old-fashioned when it comes to AI units. He took out her personality core."
"Ah," said Yuui, wrinkling his nose. That was old fashioned. A lot of older folks tended to neuter their AIs the same way; when they'd started trying to build personalities into AIs the initial results had been really bad, and humanity generally refused to adapt. Before he could comment on this, though, his stomach rumbled, and Sakura raised her eyebrows and grinned.
"Oh dear," she said. "Shall we see what there is to eat, Fai-san?"
"Please," he said, flushing, and she just smiled at him gently and led him over to the cooking corner.
"Most of the equipment here is really old," she said apologetically, bending down to rummage through a cupboard and thus unable to see the covetous way Yuui ran his eyes over the cooking implements, the pans and pots and tools, the racks of herbs and spices and the big metal food storage unit. It was a fully functional kitchen and he could already see the things he could do with it. "We have enough food here to last about one Earth standard year, but by the ninth month we'd probably be down to the bare essentials, so we'll be stocking up on Mars. We're growing a lot more food now than we used to," she said proudly. "Have you ever eaten Martian food?"
He shook his head. As far as he knew Earth sold food to Mars, which didn't have much in the way of agriculture.
"It's very spicy," she said, pulling out a plastic container with what looked like dumplings inside it. "But really nice. Oh... we don't have anything but chopsticks onboard, I can teach you how to -"
"I know how to use chopsticks," he said, amused.
"You do? But you're not Martian..."
"I grew up in what used to be Asia," he said, taking the pair she handed him and wielding them expertly to prove his point. "The area that supplied the first Martian colonies? I'm sure I'll be okay."
She showed him how to use the microwave, which thanked him enthusiastically for his time and apologized for taking so long to cook his food, and they sat together at the metal countertop as he ate, minding his manners although he was hungry enough he could have eaten with his fingers. Sakura made herself a cup of green tea, drinking it out of a plastic cup with a special lid attachment; when he raised his eyebrows at it she lifted it and said, "This outer ring has gravity, but the engine room doesn't, so I guess I got into the habit of having my drinks with zero-grav protection. Have I told you about the engine room yet?"
Her eyes were sparkling, so he shook his head and watched her with interest that wasn't really all that feigned as she launched into a discussion about the great engine at the heart of the ship that provided everything they needed - power, air, gravity for the living quarters. He knew why the gravity was necessary - humans had found out centuries ago the damage living in zero gravity could do to the human body - but he hadn't realized how fragile the whole system was.
Before he could let himself get sidetracked with the scary possibilities of that thought, the door slid open and the teenage boy - Syaoran - came into the rec room while he was still finishing off the dumplings; his flight suit was unbuttoned at the neck, and he wore heavy spacer boots that clanked over the floor. His whole face lit up when he saw Sakura, and suddenly the dumplings tasted like ash on Yuui's tongue; he missed Fai suddenly, not the Fai in the crate but the Fai who had looked at him like that as they made love on the roof of their apartment block, their fingers tangled together and his twin so warm against him.
"Hello, Fai-san," Syaoran said politely, and Yuui forced himself to flash that fake smile again. Syaoran responded to it, tilting his head to one side and smiling back. His face was open and honest; his clear eyes were bright and warm. "We're almost ready to go. We're thinking of taking the route by the moon, keep clear of the major shipping lanes. Do you think that's a good idea, princess?"
"Oh, stop it," Sakura said, blushing. "I'm not a princess."
"You are to me," Syaoran said seriously, and they were making eyes at each other again for a few seconds before Yuui let his chopsticks click against his plate loud enough to snap them out of it. Sakura coughed and rubbed her hands over her cheeks; Syaoran fidgeted and looked slightly embarrassed himself.
"I think we'll be fine," she said. "I don't have a bad feeling about that route."
There was something going on with that exchange Yuui sensed he didn't understand, some kind of code he wasn't privy to, but he didn't comment on it, just kept smiling. Syaoran slid into one of the seats at the counter next to him, his hands neat on the metal surface.
"The captain's on the warpath today," he said conversationally. "It might be best if you kept to your room, Fai-san."
"You mean that's not how Captain Grump normally treats his guests?" Yuui asked, and Syaoran rubbed a hand over his mouth and shook his head.
"It's not like Fai-san's room is that large," Sakura said, frowning. "Especially not with that crate in it. It's not fair to expect him to stay there. Why is the captain so angry?"
"I don't know," Syaoran said uncomfortably. "He isn't usually like this, he's just... "
"Cranky," Sakura supplied.
Yuui traced a finger in spirals around his plate. He wondered if maybe the captain was angry because of him; maybe he was pissed at having to go so far out of his way to drop Yuui off. Well, tough to be him; Yuui had paid him. Maybe he just needed to get on Kurogane's good side. He wasn't entirely sure how to go about doing that, making friends was never something he'd learned, but...
Just smile, baby.
Well, if nothing else, there was always sex. The possibility didn't thrill him, but Kurogane seemed kind of like a bully, and bullies always liked to be in control. If things got bad he could always offer himself up; they liked that, liked having people plead. The thought filled him with a dull sort of terror - nobody had ever touched him intimately except Fai, he didn't really want to start now - but he knew he'd do it, if it kept the captain from hurting him or Fai.
It wasn't like he had anything else to offer, and... it might not be such a hardship. There was something about those red eyes, the way they looked at him... Yuui breathed out slowly. No. No, there was no point dwelling on this now.
"If you'd show me how to clean up, I'd like to see the engine before we leave," he said with a smile, and Sakura lit up.
Well, at least two of his travelling companions were nice. He hoped he could win the third over, too, in time. Using whatever means necessary. He didn't really know how to go about seducing someone for favors, but he thought he could figure it out.
chapter six →
-tbc