"Is it the pain Sou-chan?" Kio asked absently as he watched Soubi's brush move across the almost completed painting.
"Hmm?" Soubi murmured, his concentration broken only by the sharp smell of cigarette and Kio's prying words. "Are you talking about Seimei and Ritsuka again?" Soubi asked, let his brow furrow as he mixed the paints on canvas to get the sharp, edgy feel he needed.
"Yeah, I want to know why you stay with them, even when they destroy you, time and again." Kio almost absent mindedly said, opening another sucker as he finished off the one in his mouth.
"You can't understand it, you have no person that is your world, your unbroken law. You do not live for anyone but yourself Kio." Soubi answered straightly, pulling no punches. Kio flinched.
"How do you know that?" Kio asked though, hiding the pain in his voice with the skill he normally only used for the times that his love for Soubi tugged at the thresholds of his control. He smiled thinking about the years it had taken to perfect it, the skill so subtle it had never been noticed before.
"You do not think about someone every waking moment of the day Kio. You do not long for their voice with an intensity that only they can break. You are not willing to give up your everything, to change. You do not love. Neither desperately or lazily Kio. You love nothing at all, but the paints in front of you and the art in your soul." Kio flinched, feeling each and every word as if he himself had been stabbed to the special rhythm they spoke of. It was painful, unbearable, but Kio hid it under a flirtatious smile and a lick of his lolly.
"Really now. You figured this all for yourself?" Kio tsked at Soubi, shaking his head at the other man, his eyes gleaming in a way that most would take for amusement. "I would've thought you would know to ask by now."
Soubi turned to look at Kio, a fleeting smile touching his lips before he stood and tucked his fingers into his coat pockets. "I have a meeting with Ritsuka, Kio. I'll see you later." He smiled, that smile that told Kio that he was only thinking of Ritsuka, of his master. Kio gritted his teeth until it turned painful, somehow still managing to smile like he meant it and tilt his head just right, so that Soubi wouldn't suspect.
"Bye bye Sou-chan. Don't forget to turn that art project into sensei tomorrow though! Remember to finish toning it so that it can dry before grading period." He called after his precious Sou-chan, laughing at himself as he foolishly mooned over a man that could never return his love, never understand what actual love was in the first place. No, his Sou-chan only wanted domination and pain, if he was smart he would stay far far away from the only person that he had ever been tempted by. Of course, he would never leave. And that's what terrified him the most, if Soubi asked him to hurt him, to dominate him… To cut into that precious, perfect skin.. Would he do it? Would he become one of the very people he hated?
The more he thought about it, the more he thought the answer was "yes."
-The next week -
Kio caught himself staring at Soubi in the middle of class again, when he was supposed to be working on an abstract piece.. Of course his subject was Soubi, the prompt was the thing that you desire most. Still, that was no reason to stare in the middle of perfectly applicable free time. Yet he couldn't look away. Soubi moved his brush with a graceful rhythm unbroken by outside influence, to create an image that only he could ever create. He was a god among art students, and among men. So gorgeous, with his hair haphazardly tied back, and the long white smock covering his body shapelessly.
Breaking away, Kio stared at his nearly empty canvas, just looking, to see if his paints had something in mind. And sure enough, an image began to build in his head, of a large blue dragon, of hands that appeared from nowhere in turns caressing and loving, breaking and dominating, taming the savage beast until it was fit to see through the eyes of reason once again.
He smiled at the odd picture inside his mind, of the swirling dipping colors that spoke of disgrace and downfall. Of sin and betrayal and lust. For love had no place in this picture, because this….
This was reality.
When the class ended, Kio sat back in his chair with a heartfelt sigh, fingers aching from the way he had held the brush, as if his life had depended on the way the colors blended together and twisted, into one of the best pieces Kio had ever created. And he owed it all to Sou-chan. Shaking his head, Kio turned his thoughts away from that subject, once again letting himself get lost in the swirling blues, into the grays and greens that clashed and collided, inner nature fighting among itself. He frowned, shutting his eyes and leaning his head back on the chair. Why? Why did he have to fall in love with the one person that he could never have? What had he done in the past that warranted this torture?
"Are you coming Kio?" He heard Sou-chan from the front of the room, and knowing he wouldn't wait, he stood and stretched. "Hold on Sou-chan! I'll be right out." Kio gathered his paints, tucking back into his allotted space, and with a quick glance for anything he missed, grabbed his bag and went to meet Sou-chan.
