Sakura and Snow

Drift I - Alone in the Dark

 

By Natalie Baan

 

 

Subaru's eyes shivered open against the fall of sunlight. He blinked, gradually focusing on the expanse of window panes that let the thin, yellow-gold light pool about him. The light formed a rectangle that lay across him, divided up into even sections by the casement's shadows. Turning his head, he glanced along his outflung arm. Those shadows made a slender, dark cross on the wrist of his shirtsleeve.

Shifting his head against the bedspread, he shut his eyes. He'd been dozing, and the relaxed tranquility of that sleep still lapped through him. His book had fallen open and was lying against his chest; he fumbled it closed, then rolled over onto his side, pushing it away. Curling up, he rested his cheek against one hand as he let himself drift off into the....

...what...?

Oh, he must have fallen back to sleep, he realized dimly. Now he was rising up from it again, ascending little by little through that shallow slumber. Everything around him seemed distant and unreal, as though sensed through a shimmer of water, but that insubstantial surface was parting around him as he woke up further. His eyelids lifted, light and vision filtering in between them.

A shadow, standing up before the glass.

Bewildered, Subaru frowned, trying to make some sense out of that. The tall figure he was fairly sure hadn't been there before shifted toward clarity as he studied it. Almost perfectly immobile except for the movements of breathing, the small, rhythmic rise and fall of the muscular chest, that person leaned one shoulder against the window's frame. Head turned to the side and chin lifted alertly, he gazed without expression through the glass. His one visible eye was almost imperceptibly narrowed. An intent, cold jewel with a fire at the heart of it, the undreaming eye of an animal that watched the world outside, it was uncanny and yet wholly suited to the lines of its owner's face: to those strong angles turned in profile to Subaru, the hair falling over the forehead, the unusually serious set of the mouth.

Seishirou-san.

Fully awake, Subaru continued to lie motionless, watching the man through half-opened eyes. So rare, the opportunity to see him like this: unguarded, not surprised from himself by the shock of the unexpected but instead simply being who and what he was. Being natural and unfeigned, as perhaps nobody ever saw him.

Nobody but the people that he....

No, Subaru thought. Even for them, the uncounted and unnamed victims, there must have been the smile, the polished grace, the hunter's face no less a mask than that of the pleasant veterinarian. If there had ever been a moment when that mask might have slipped, it would have been in the very instant of the strike. In the sheer terror of that moment, what victim's eye wouldn't have been blinded by his or her own fear?

Subaru flinched then at the thought of all those people--so terribly many people, all so helpless and afraid. He squeezed his eyes shut against the memory of their suffering and the knowledge of what by rights he should do.

But....

His eyes drifted open once more; he drew in a deep and soundless breath. Staring at Seishirou, he tried to encompass both that horror and the unmistakable "something else" that he felt--and more than that, more even than that, the probability that nobody had ever been where he was. That nobody had ever been given the chance to know the man truly.

Against the possibility of that understanding, the burden of the need to accept and to forgive.

Against the dread of what was inhuman, such a terrible, wonderful longing.

So much danger, lying in the embrace of the Sakurazukamori.

So very brightly shining a light of hope....

And as Seishirou started turning toward him, Subaru's eyes dove shut. He trembled--oh, he hoped that Seishirou hadn't noticed--before willing himself to lie still. Why was he afraid to be caught gazing at the man--afraid yet strangely, delightedly thrilled, like a child for whom a game of hide and seek held the greatest mysteries and risks in the world? A tremor ran down the length of his spine, a river of silvery fish beneath the skin.

From behind almost-closed lids, he dared another peek out at Seishirou. The man was looking right at him, a level and considering gaze, and Subaru's heart flipped over. For a minute Seishirou simply continued to regard him, long enough that Subaru had time to relax once more and to decide that maybe Seishirou hadn't realized that he was awake, and then the man smiled. A subtle wryness quirked at the corner of his mouth, an expression that seemed almost rueful, if that could be so--Seishirou ducked his head as if in amusement at some private thought, a silent chuckle twitching at his shoulders, then straightened. His mood appeared to change abruptly, and his eyes shifted, began to prowl intensely over Subaru. Their heat stalked up Subaru's body as he tried to remain unmoving; he could feel them brushing against him like something alive and territorial. They lingered by his face for an endlessly held breath before stealthing away. A scattering of embers was left behind as they receded: a fire trail cooling in Subaru's blood, leaving him chilled, without light--

He opened his eyes.

Seishirou's glance immediately leaped back up to his, and as Subaru met that gaze he saw the swift flick there: a bird startled into a wing-tip change of direction or the false start of a tiger toward its prey. Discovered, that second of wariness said. Then it passed, and the warmly affectionate look slid back into place. That familiar look, although Subaru still could sense something else there, something darker...he watched the lie sweep across Seishirou's expression, covering everything else with its bland, even cheerfulness.

He felt a stabbing pang, as though something inestimably rare had been lost.

Seishirou pushed away from the window's frame. He opened his mouth as if to speak--and before any words could be said Subaru reached up, touching the fingers of one hand to his throat. He trailed those tentative fingertips across his own skin, drawing them from one side of his neck to the other and then downward.

Seishirou's eyes sharpened into alertness again as Subaru's fingers curled beneath his collar. And as the man's attention settled on that place almost physically, Subaru arched his head back and to the side, drawing the shirt from his skin.

 

* * * * *

 

Bemused, Seishirou stared. Such a tiny gesture, really, but also so extraordinary, considering that this was Subaru, after all.

That Subaru would even think of trying to play like this....

He watched those fingers walk down the shirt's white lapel until they reached the first fastened button. They undid it, and the shirt's collar gaped wider at Subaru's neck. Underneath, there was a black T-shirt, and Subaru traced its half-circle opening, separating the two sides of the overshirt even further. He caressed the angle of his collarbones, the slight, shadowed well at the base of his throat, then drew two fingers up with almost painfully patient slowness, painting along his neck's arch all the way to the point of his chin. His fingers lifted, brushing across the curve of his lips, which parted the merest fraction beneath that touch. An unexpected frisson of arousal flickered through Seishirou. Subaru nipped at his fingers, those verdant eyes half-lidded, then flipped his hand over and raised it in front of his face. His eyes snapping open, he looked at Seishirou through the lattice of his fingers, his expression alive with wonder and shy daring.

With desire...and just a touch of fear.

Leaning back against the window's frame once more, Seishirou smiled with deliberate eagerness. The thrill of attraction between them was like a fine, electric thread. He could break that thread if he chose, but for the moment he'd allow it--he wanted to see more of this unanticipated side of Subaru, to see how far Subaru would go. It was an interesting pleasure as well to let that chill spark grow inside him as he watched Subaru playing for him and observing his responses. How aware was Subaru of his effect on Seishirou, both the physical ache and that other inexplicable wanting? How much did Subaru understand of the interplays of sex or of his own eroticism?

Perhaps this little game was Subaru's way of discovering such matters. Considering that, Seishirou found himself intrigued and quite surprisingly turned on--and also, for some reason, disquieted. He wasn't quite sure why that was.

As he'd been reflecting, Subaru had twisted into an S-curve on the mattress, his head flung back against the pillowshams. He arched, sliding his hand up and into his hair, the slender barrier of his forearm still partially concealing his face. His other hand traveled down the front of his shirt, toying with and then abandoning unopened each button that it passed until it reached his waist. There his fingers tangled in the white cloth and tugged it upward, his shirt forming ripples like wind-drifted snow as it came out of his jeans.

Seishirou's gaze locked to the movements of that hand, and then to the space above Subaru's belt as the shirttail appeared, its tapered points slithering out of the waistband and leaving a triangle of dark, close-fitting T-shirt across Subaru's flat stomach. Inhaling, Subaru ran his hand across that gap, then let his fingers wander upward once more. They lingered on each button, undoing them all this time, inching the white shirt aside. Alighting on the final button at last, they slid consideringly around its polished small curve. Without haste Subaru undid that closure, his other hand drifting down from his face to join the first one there, and as the shirt parted over his chest he swept both hands down his sides and then outward, spreading those pale wings of cloth around himself like a butterfly fixed in that patch of sun, its flutterings stilled.

Almost without realizing it, Seishirou drew in a breath. He could feel desire knot itself inside his gut, sending insistent pulsings throughout his blood. Hunger for the willingness that was laid out in front of him, the usual sensations raised to a keen, new pitch by this improbable situation.... Subaru's eyes shone with that ethereal smile of his as he glanced toward Seishirou, an understatedly playful expression but also one that was somehow knowing. It was as though by this hint of exposure he was abandoning his defenses, laying down the shield of modesty and self-restraint--was leaving himself wide open, vulnerable to Seishirou's gaze.

To his least wish....

Seishirou blinked away inadvertent surprise, and then grinned to himself. To reply to that alluring submissiveness, to step forward and join Subaru on the bed...the urge he felt was powerful and compelling, but for the moment he didn't intend to follow it up. Instead he shifted to lean more comfortably against the window's frame. Clasping his hands behind himself, he looked intently at Subaru, his breathing calm and measured once more as he concentrated the full weight of his attention. After all, there were some interesting possibilities in this.

He wanted to explore them all properly.

Subaru had writhed around to lie flat on his back, and now he tugged the T-shirt out of his pants. His spine hollowed, arching as the shirt came free at last and his fingers skimmed across uncovered skin. Lifting one hand toward his face, Subaru played his mouth along its curve, a rapturous exploration with breath, tongue, and tiny nips of his teeth. His lips closed finally, suckling at his wrist with pliant urgency as his other hand jerked the T-shirt halfway up his front. He arched and twisted further, raking his fingers across his midriff, and Seishirou, observing his distracted air, had to wonder what excited him the most. What was in his mind--the newly discovered pleasure of touching himself?

The memories of how he had been touched?

Subaru's eyes skipped back to Seishirou's, glancing past his upraised arm. He hesitated, then caught the shirt's cuff between his teeth. He pulled and twisted at it, making a credible but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to unbutton the sleeve, before his shoulders jerked in an unmistakable silent laugh, his green eyes sparkling--his real laugh, not the awkward, nervous stutter of the sixteen-year-old boy. His gaze held Seishirou's, shy but alight with the irresistible energy of pure desire. Seishirou discovered himself swaying forward almost imperceptibly; he made himself relax, leaned back again. His grin widening further, he nodded once.

Go on.

And as the free hand that had been gliding across Subaru's stomach came up to help undo that cuff, Seishirou's own hands curled into fists behind his back. He held himself there by the side of the window, the pale light angling past him as the sun slipped minute by minute toward the west. Thinking of Subaru thinking of him, perhaps fantasizing about his caresses; seeing Subaru aware of him watching and yet still doing these things; playing the witness for Subaru, not even touching him but nonetheless intimately connected with each shiver, each faint gasp of breath...he was finding the challenge of resisting that enticement more difficult than he'd planned. A complex and primal magic was spinning itself out between them, a magic different from but no less binding than onmyoujitsu. He could feel the spell that it was casting inside his mind. Even as he stood there savoring this novelty, enjoying Subaru's naive effort of seduction, something within him demanded that he respond. It sang to him to close that circle, to submit to its insistence, a call that grew more powerful as this game progressed.

Seishirou stared across the little space that lay between them. He watched Subaru unfasten one cuff and then the other, observed the fluid, almost esoteric lift of each arm, the white cloth fanning wide about the slender wrists. As Subaru finished and glanced once more at Seishirou, both arms twining sensuously above his head, their gazes met. Seishirou looked briefly into those luminous and inviting green depths before letting his eyes slip aside. His gaze traveled the length of Subaru's stretched-out torso, sliding across the bared skin at his waist until it struck the demarcation of his jeans, and then flicked back up. Very deliberately Seishirou drew on his smile again.

Why are you stopping there, Subaru-kun?

There was an instant of puzzled confusion on Subaru's face, and then he started in sudden understanding. As Seishirou rather pointedly returned his attention to the arousal that those jeans covered but didn't quite conceal, Subaru flushed. He looked away, embarrassed, even as his hands glided hesitantly down his sides. His hips shifted as he reached them, a slight, possibly unconscious undulation; he touched the belt buckle, and Seishirou focused on his own breathing, on resisting that urgency.

No, certainly not yet.

Not quite like this.

It would be a waste of a real opportunity.

Then Subaru's glance sprang back to his face, those eyes as always crystalline as windows. Seishirou felt a tiny jolt of surprise even through the steadiness he'd just managed to attain. Subaru's eyes touched on his like a flash of light, their green flat and brilliant with fear, but something else was rising there, filling the clear space of Subaru's gaze.

A burst of sudden, joyful resolution.

Subaru's fingers folded around the strap of belt. As he started to unfasten the buckle Seishirou just stared, fascinated and more than a bit nonplused. Even though he'd urged this, to see Subaru going ahead gave him a strange, disjointed feeling. It was interesting but somewhat disturbing at the same time. The ends of the belt parted, and Subaru yanked them out to either side of himself, lifting his hips up off the bed, then released the belt and slowly sank back down. His body swayed against the mattress as though to the rhythm of a silent music. Fingers trembling, he undid the button and the zipper; he pushed both hands into that opening, stretching the taut cloth aside--

And as he touched himself Subaru shuddered once, powerfully, sensation warring with the last vestiges of doubt in his expression. Bending one knee, he slid that leg alongside the other like a dancer assuming a position. Those green eyes drifted shut, and when they opened there no longer was any flinching in them. He ran light hands up and down his body as it continued its slow dance against the bed. Tugging one arm out of its sleeve, he slipped that newly-freed hand beneath the T-shirt, raising the cloth to half-reveal the roseate flower around one of his nipples as he touched himself there...he paused, clad in the wild disarray of his clothing and in that play of sunlight and shadow as he looked up to meet Seishirou's tensely focused gaze. His face abruptly aflame with that radiant smile, he held out one hand, asking without words, sweetly, urgingly....

Seishirou grinned again.

And shook his head.

He saw the fractured grief in Subaru's eyes, their green glass splintering and forsaken. Having regained his sense of balance at last, Seishirou simply watched. In his chest, though, there was a hollow and expectant feeling, a bubble of excitement pushing everything else aside as it grew. He understood now what it was that he'd truly wanted. To have everything of Subaru exposed to him like this, all the way to the final ecstasy.

To ravish and cage that butterfly, the laughing almost-stranger behind Subaru's eyes.

After all, Subaru-kun, I don't think I'm going to give in to your temptation just yet. Cute as you are, I'm not ready to give you that kind of power over me.

I want you too much sometimes; it's no excuse for my being foolish.

And also, in this kind of game--

Seishirou smiled.

I always win.

 

* * * * *

 

Subaru slumped down against the mattress. He hugged his arms around the ache spreading out in his heart. How had it happened, when he'd tried so hard to give without holding back: to step forward and answer whatever Seishirou had seemed to ask, even when the thought of such things was embarrassing, was frightening?

How could it hurt so much, when all along he should have known better?

He lifted his head and looked at Seishirou, the man's outline vaguely blurred by tears he was striving not to set free. The Sakurazukamori stood with arms folded loosely, that tall shape a pillar of darkness against the light. Dark and despite that casual pose somehow rigid and unmoving....

The shadow of a person who would not change.

Subaru looked at that upright shadow for a long, still moment. Then he sat up awkwardly. He drew off the other sleeve of his shirt and let the white cloth flutter from his shoulders. Catching the bottom of his T-shirt, he peeled it up over his head, and as it cleared his eyes he saw the flash of surprise and gratification on Seishirou's face. He took the pain that those things caused him and accepted it; he cradled it inside himself as he dropped the T-shirt onto the mattress, and then let it go. Holding onto the harm that was done only made it become a part of him.

It served no purpose.

In one quick, flexing move he slid his jeans and underwear off. He stripped away his socks too as the rest of his clothing passed them, then tossed all those things aside. Drawing in a huge breath, he lay back against the mattress, acutely aware of its give and of the bedspread's texture beneath him as he centered himself in that place. Locking his gaze onto Seishirou's hot and cold, demanding and remote one, he brushed both hands down along his body, moving to touch...the shock of his fingers closing crackled all throughout his body, miniscule rivers carrying that sensation beneath his skin. He couldn't, didn't repress a fervent little quiver. He started to slide both hands up and down his flesh, still almost painfully aroused even despite the persistence of the injury done to his heart. That disappointment and grief were being joined by other things, though, as he slipped toward the center of a vast resolve. In that wide open space flares of pleasure started to grow, transient and yet recurring, relentless. They were glowing electron trails that wavered toward the sky, pleading for the lightning's strike.

He stared into Seishirou's eyes and let their power build.

He let himself be given to that pleasure.

Not just in order to please you. Not because I have no existence outside of you, or because your desires overshadow my own, or because you have the right to make me bleed like this.

Instead, just because I can.

Because I'm strong enough to remake myself, to recreate myself, to yield and still not die to what I am.

If I weren't, then all of this would be worse than useless, and I should never have made the choice that I did.

His hands traveled, their feathery touches growing deeper and more lingering, caressing the velvet heat that throbbed between his legs. Fear and shame melted like a dream into the background, their shadows stirring behind the curtain of the body's desire, the soul's one wish.

All my life, I've let my fears rule me. But even while still being afraid, I can do so much better than that.

Seishirou-san, do you want to look at me? Then look. You don't need to twist me up inside to make me show myself. But if you do that to me anyway, I'll survive. I'll grow, and I'll learn from all the things you do.

I never knew before that I was capable of this.

He writhed beneath his own touch, beneath that watchful look, barely perceptibly at first, but then with growing urgency. The pulse of his blood and breath inflamed him, those brightly flowering sensations coming one upon the next, cold fire beneath the surface of his skin. His one hand wreathed about the column of his shaft, a rising and falling ring that lifted him higher with each movement, while the other flickered about his body, touching, teasing, setting off small fireworks as it played across the high, hard peaks of his nipples.

Yes.

Subaru gasped and shuddered.

I consent....

He reached toward still-distant release.

I put myself here. I chose this, and without that you'd have no power over me at all. I recognize the shadow that you cast on me.

But some things in a person's life are worth this little pain.

He flung his head back, a whimper unfolding in his throat, his body leaping under his own hands, his clothes rumpled beneath and around him.

Do you want me to be your mirror? I'll be everything that you're not. I'll cry tears for you, I'll be angry when you hurt me, I'll smile when you least expect it, reflecting your emptiness with the absolute truth of my love for you. All those passions that you can't feel, Seishirou-san--

--I can feel them.

He was closer and closer still to that one place, he was almost there, and yet--

Subaru hesitated for just an instant. His eyes had fallen shut. Now he urged them open again. They let in the sight of Seishirou standing there motionless, half-silhouetted against that changing play of light.

But even so, Seishirou-san, I'm not just your reflection.

He shivered, closing his eyes.

I'm here...with you. I've been in front of you all this time. All you have to do is....

Look at me.

Weightless and aflame, he bridged that gap at last; he closed the remaining distance toward completion, wrapped in that awareness of himself, and the awareness as well of the presence that was watching him steadily, the dark shadow that he loved so very much. From deep inside himself he reached out toward that other, uniquely imperfect and yet without any equal in this world. His whole self sang with longing, and his hand tightened about the length of his shaft, enfolding it once and again--and there was a blinding flare of light from behind his closed lids--there was nothing at all but light, growing wave after wave--great shudderings of light that filled every part of him, lifting him out of himself--and then let him fall, naked, shattered, and spent, like rain dropping out of a cloud or a feather buffeted and tumbling raggedly to the earth. It let him fall back into the darkness behind his closed lids, leaving him there empty.

And alone.

Subaru trembled. This was the place that he dreaded, the abyss that he couldn't escape. After all the reaching out and praying to be heard, there was always that ebb tide to draw him back. There was always the inevitability that only he could feel what he felt, that the best any person could do in this life was to call into the dark and wait for some other voice to answer that cry. To long for the perfect connection, the sharing that might or might not ever truly come....

To be a lonely prisoner inside his own skin.

As if from far away, he could feel his breathing quake his limp body. He could hear Seishirou's breaths too in the room's perfect stillness, seeming unusually loud. He measured time passing by the patterns of those breaths, by the gradual calming of his thundering heart, and he could feel himself falling every moment of that time, trying to hold on to the now-vague sense that he'd been right no matter what, no matter whether anything ever came of his sacrifice, of his surrender.

He'd been right.

Hadn't he?

His breathing had dwindled into silence, and now he couldn't hear anything from Seishirou either. In the hush, he became fantastically aware of the softest sounds. Scarcely audible, then, the whisper of a single footstep....

Another one, a house shoe stealthing across the wooden floor....

There was a tiny creak as the mattress settled underneath him, and Subaru opened his eyes. He looked up as Seishirou stole softly over him, implacable as sleep. One hand settled onto the bed beside him, then the opposite knee close to that--and then the other hand coming ahead as Seishirou stalked over him, moving on all fours like a great dark-haired cat, those odd eyes gleaming. He took hold of Subaru's wrist and brought it up with him, pressing Subaru's arm to the pillow next to his head. Half-sitting, half-lying on top of him, Seishirou pinned Subaru to the mattress, the laughter in those eyes giving the lie to the leashed tautness of the body, to the tensed muscles in the legs and the unmistakable arousal that prodded against him.

"Subaru-kun," Seishirou murmured as he folded his hand around Subaru's, running his thumb across Subaru's fingers and toying with them, "would you really let me do anything to you that I wanted?"

Subaru stared back bleakly. Exhaustion and that dark place of alienation had left him without any words. He looked into Seishirou's face, just tired now, and feeling a vague and bitter disillusionment.

Seishirou-san, even though you know me better than anyone else does...some things after all you just don't understand.

However Seishirou might have interpreted his blank look, the man's amusement didn't even falter. He drew Subaru's arm out sideways to its full length, then pressed it down gently against the bed. Leaning after it, he lowered his head, bringing his mouth down to touch at the wrist; he opened his lips against the skin, an excruciatingly lingering kiss, and Subaru felt something else unfolding there, an energy like the igniting of desire, only somehow different.

A spell.

Subaru twisted his head around. He couldn't see anything, even when Seishirou lifted up his head, but he could feel the magic's gleam. An invisible pattern had spread itself over his pulse point, flowing up onto his palm: an interlocking web enwrapping his wrist, its thin threads binding him down.

It was as though a switch clicked over inside his mind. Automatically he tensed his arm against the restraint, but when it held then he went limp, lying there unresistingly as Seishirou stretched toward his other side. He sensed his other arm being drawn out, laid down, and bound with the magical ward that Seishirou's kiss left, but he did nothing to prevent it. In place of anger or resentment, he could feel only that ceaseless falling: the opposite of weightless, soaring joy. It was as though some final shell that had enclosed him was breaking--as though he was dissolving, everything he had being given out--and all that was left to him now was to be that person who was waiting, who was listening for an answer that would never come.

Seishirou's hand slid ticklishly along his side. He flinched at that sensation. It was all that was keeping him from going all the way down, to a place that was starting to feel an awful lot like madness. Brushing over his hip and past his sex, Seishirou's fingers slid into the hollow of his thigh. They lifted, extending and straightening his leg, the man's touch careful and precise. Both hands slid together down Subaru's leg, and Subaru focused on that caress, on those strong fingers stroking his skin, until they closed about his ankle and he felt Seishirou's breath and sorcery settle on him there as well. Then Seishirou did the same thing again, on the other side. The man finally sat up and moved next to Subaru, leaning over him, gazing down into his face with a look of alert and considering interest as Subaru stared emptily back--

Seishirou's eyes brightened, and he stretched out his hand to cover Subaru's face. Subaru closed his eyes as the man's fingers traced over their lids. As that touch moved away, he opened them once more.

To blackness.

"S- Sei-" The man's fingertips pressed against his mouth, and the word died in the back of his throat. Like that time in the dream, but then he had been sure of himself, not frightened and defenseless as he was now. Instinctively he jerked against the bonds that held him, but without any effect, without even feeling the psychic threads that kept him from moving. As he squirmed and then fell back, he realized that the Sakurazukamori's presence was gone.

Seishirou-san?

In the dream he'd been able to speak to Seishirou so easily, but this was the real world. Here all he had was the physical sensation of his body against the bed and that terrible, yawning place inside his mind. He couldn't even tell if he was feeling the sun's warmth lying over himself, or if he was only imagining it. He strained to hear Seishirou's movements in the room, to hear anything at all.

Nothing.

Was he deaf too?

No, he decided finally, after an awful moment: he could hear the whispering tick of the bedside clock, and even more remotely some far off traffic noises. His hearing hadn't been taken; it just had to be that Seishirou wasn't doing anything that made a sound. Maybe Seishirou was waiting silently, studying Subaru's reactions to what had been done to him.

Maybe Seishirou had left him there alone.

Panic flared up in him, unreasoning and extreme, and he lunged heedlessly against those wards. He ripped at them magically, swept up in that spasm of fear, trying to claw apart their patterns as white terror convulsed his body and scattered his will into bright, frantic shards...and in that instant of brokenness there was a flash of recollection: the remembrance of how fright had colored his life and of how he'd stepped above it for just that little time. He forced himself to lie still then, even despite the fear. His head rocked back against the pillows as he swallowed tautly. His eyes flickered helplessly from side to side--he stopped them, he made his heart slow its batterings against the inside of his chest, and by focusing on those sensations he was able to use the discipline of years of magical working to find a stillness, a breathing place where he could hover precariously above the dark. In that stillness, as he waited for whatever might be going to happen next, he became aware of a net of tiny cracks running through his mind. It was the splitting of a chrysalis, and behind that a newborn thought was emerging as if it were a stranger's voice inside him:

How far can I be taken without losing myself?

How far can I go?

He was looking at that thought and trying to grasp it when there was a touch on him at last. Two fingers trailed up the inside of his arm, brushing almost imperceptibly against his skin. That contact grew lighter and was gone by the time it reached his wrist, vanishing as if it had been a hallucination. Subaru jerked his head in the direction of that touch, even though he had no way of seeing the source of it and reassuring himself that it was the person he thought it had to be. He listened for even the sound of a breath, his heart hammering wildly.

There was nothing.

Long moments dragged by in waiting, time stretching out weirdly under the effects of fear and adrenaline. Those fingers touched him just as he'd started to accept their absence, a maddening tickle across the bottom of his foot. He gasped without sound. Flinching against the bindings, he yanked his leg up as far as it would go, which wasn't far at all--he twitched in expectation of the next touch, trying to guess where it might come from. Those fingers glanced unexpectedly across his mouth. He arched for them, lips parting, but they were already gone, and there was a soft sound like a chuckle in the back of somebody's throat. The answering noise that was silenced in Subaru by Seishirou's spell was inarticulate, something far beyond speech. He'd let himself go already, was falling into mindlessness, no longer fighting fear, desire, rage, violent reaction...he strained and twisted furiously in the binding's grasp. A touch upon his shoulder, a touch through his hair, another one here, one there...blind beyond the simple loss of vision, nothing for him anymore but those sensations, those hands but no more understanding of those hands, and his own heedless movements in reply--and then the weight that was coming down over him, that entered him with force, those teeth closing onto the skin of his neck; the animal exhaustion that was taking him and leaving him shaking and weak, his body moving to a rhythm no longer his own; the hot pounding of his heart and of sweat-drenched flesh on flesh and of the hard fire striking into him faster and faster becoming one thing that threw red flashes on the sightless dark--

--shattering--

--pieces falling--

--not even that--

 

--and out of that nothing, that darkness, that crumpled and abandoned self, one single moment: a moment of perfect stillness, of arms wrapped around him, a body frozen into a shuddering arch against and inside of him, its driving force for an instant stopped.

A moment of completion...

...of cessation....

And when everything else had stopped and there was just the darkness and that stillness, consciousness kindled into life in Subaru like a flower of brilliant flame. There was an instant of realization in that place beyond words, an instant of mind crashing back into body and knowing that these things were real. There was that emptiness outside himself and then there was also him, but there were those strong arms as well that were folded around him, the face pressed into his hair--and the realization struck him then that the two of them really were the same thing after all. No difference at all between them: that person--Seishirou--was an awareness like his own clothed in the separateness of flesh. A being, a sentience, no less alone than he was, and no more capable of real communication.

But they had that aloneness in common, those bright sparks of their consciousnesses, their aching and mutually unspoken wishes...he was sure of that. Here in the dark they'd touched each other, two creatures in one isolation. So little against the emptiness, against the terrible, inevitable end, and yet--

--and yet--

 

--and emotions and physical sensations came slamming back into him: that stillness exploded in a flood of ecstasy and pain, of joy and grief. A tremendous spiral of release engulfed him, flinging him back into life. Those bindings were unraveling, and he flung his arms about Seishirou.

He cried out, one lone and shattering cry--

 

* * * * *

 

Startled, Seishirou glanced down at the trembling onmyouji. Sweat soaked the dark hair and chilled damply on Subaru's skin. After Subaru's silence, his cry seemed to echo in midair; he shook, but his arms were fiercely, vehemently wrapped around Seishirou's body.

"It's all right," Seishirou began murmuring reassuringly, trying to raise himself up on one arm. He wondered if perhaps he hadn't played a little bit too carelessly with his admittedly rather fragile lover. "It's all right, Subaru-kun. I've got you...."

"But for how long?" Subaru's eyes lifted to stare into his, their green light lovely and wild. "How long...?" He tightened his arms abruptly, pulling Seishirou against him with surprising strength, and Seishirou felt a distinct leap inside himself then, an agitation like the kick of adrenaline speeding up his heart.

"Don't let go," Subaru whispered. His hand crept up behind Seishirou's head, drawing it down against his shoulder. "No, don't let go. Not now....

"Not yet."

 

 

 


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