Disclaimer: All characters are copyright of CLAMP. No monetary profit is being made from the writing or distribution of this fic.
Please Note: It started out as a drabble, however, over the course of time, it's turned out more to be something like a prologue to Schnickledooger's fic, "Addicted To You." This is the other side of the story, or what happened to Subaru and Kamui before Fuuma came to deliver the Dimensional Witch's message to Seishirou. The truth, according to the Beta-reader. XD I admit that I wasn't going to post this on fanfiction . net, because personally it's not one of my better fics, but Schnickledooger requested it, and well, I can't resist a request from the author of the fic it's based on! So just do me a favor and don't hurt me for any and all strangeness/stupidity that might take place herein...
Be WARNED... First of all, lime, between way too many people. Second, if you've read Addicted To You, then you know Schnick writes humor. I don't. I err on the side of seriousness. Just don't expect this to be funny like hers.
Repercussions
Seishirou had been having difficulty finding Subaru. Actually, difficult didn't even begin to describe it. The green-eyed boy couldn't be found anywhere! Having traveled through so many different worlds, it was only logical he should have run across a couple dozen copies by now at the least, but no. He'd managed to find a grand total of SEVEN. It was frustrating. It was more than frustrating. It was a downright tragedy!
But Seishirou couldn't have known that he wasn't the only one having trouble, because while he was distracted discovering a distinct lack of Subarus across the worlds, Kamui and Subaru were having the opposite problem...
"They're everywhere!" Kamui exclaimed, annoyed, as Subaru dropped into the new world right into the outstretched arms of yet another Seishirou. Actually, he looked rather familiar, but Kamui had seen so many now he couldn't be sure. And while said Seishirou's hands were tied up holding Subaru, Kamui took the opportunity to bite the man's arm, hard enough to feel bone grind beneath his teeth and force the man to drop his twin. The next moment, he was running, pulling Subaru behind him, away from that man and that place.
"I can't believe this!" Kamui huffed. "This makes the third one this week!"
When Kamui and Subaru had started hopping worlds in order to flee Seishirou, they had quickly discovered that actually getting away from the man was more difficult than anticipated. It was a bit unnerving actually, how many times they ran into him, in one form or another, across the dimensions.
At first Kamui thought they were just unlucky, running into every Seishirou in existence, but as time wore on, he began to realize luck didn't have anything to do with it. Actually, it was more like fate, like the universes themselves were combining against them. If there was a Seishirou in a dimension, inevitably said Seishirou would run into Subaru. Never into Kamui. Always Subaru. With that same sort of inevitability typical of a rigged game or a compass needle. It was almost as if the two of them were destined to meet, and so every Subaru-less Seishirou in all of existence invariably ended up meeting Kamui's brother.
Strange though, but it seemed like more and more often recently they were running into the hunter and having to flee to another world to escape. And as the instances increased, Kamui was secretly becoming more and more worried...
He dragged Subaru over a guard rail, dropping neatly to the pavement below, and ran forward, into the dark mouth of a crumbling overpass. But as they drew closer to the light at the other end, Kamui skidded to a halt, Subaru beside him, as he caught sight of a familiar figure silhouetted in the light before them. With a curse, Kamui backpedaled.
"How the heck did he manage to get in front of us?" Kamui asked, racing back the way they'd come, Subaru step for step beside him.
"Actually," Subaru replied thoughtfully, "I think that was a different one..."
Kamui stared. Well, he would have stared if he hadn't been focused on running. "What?"
"Well, the first one was missing his right eye, and I think that one was missing a left..."
Kamui really didn't want to think about that, but he knew Subaru would never forget a Seishirou. The implications were rather troubling though. He hadn't failed to notice the dramatic increase in worlds with Seishirous lately, but there could have been any number of reasons for that... Or so he told himself. He was being paranoid. Surely, it was just coincidental...
Whatever the case, they had to get off that world.
He led them up an off-ramp, wondering vaguely why they weren't being pursued more avidly, but thankful. The ruined carcass of a building loomed before them. Kamui threw himself inside it right beside his brother. If they could just spare a few safe minutes to jump to the next world...
And exactly as he was thinking that there was a tremendous cracking sound as the wall opposite crumbled, revealing none other than the person they were trying most desperately to avoid. Except, this time, Kamui couldn't deny that this was definitely a different Seishirou. The age difference was too big to ignore.
"Subaru-san!" The little Seishirou smiled pleasantly, blind right eye crinkling with the smile. "How good to see you again!"
"A pleasure," Subaru responded sadly. "Seishirou-kun, what happened?"
"Oh, this?" Seishirou gestured to his eye and Subaru nodded. "Chasing you has a price, you know."
While Subaru wilted in misery, Kamui was still reeling from the implications. As if to prove his worst nightmares had come true, three more Seishirous suddenly appeared, one dropping down from the floor above, one knocking down part of a wall, and one blocking the door.
"Ah," one said, catching sight of the others. "It seems this might be a bit of a problem..."
"Indeed," another replied.
Kamui stared. "Do you realize what this means?!"
Subaru blinked wet green eyes at him and wailed, "I caused lots of Seishirous to lose their eye!"
"Ah, that too." Kamui rallied quickly. "But more importantly! Who knows how many of them there are out there!"
Subaru's eyes grew even wider at the thought, mouth opening in horror. "I might have caused hundreds of Seishirous to lose their eye!" That hadn't been exactly what Kamui was getting at, but it was close enough...
Two more Seishirous joined them, stepping out of the darkness, exchanging pleasantries with those already assembled, and it was only then that the implications really set in. Only then that Kamui realized just how wrong things had gone...
"Subaru," Kamui turned to his brother as the many Seishirous advanced, "I swear, if we ever get out of this, you are henceforth banned from so much as looking at another Seishirou ever again!"
"We could always draw lots..."
Subaru stood at the center of a distinctly over-protective circle of Seishirous in the living room of a little house, looking completely pink and flustered as he listened to them discuss his fate.
"I think we should fight to the death. Whoever wins gets to keep him," suggested another Seishirou.
"Or we could simply divide Subaru into sixths and each take home a piece of him."
Subaru squeaked at the thought, eyes flying wide in fright, and quickly backed away across the circle until a different Seishirou's arms closed protectively around him from behind.
"We can't hurt Subaru-kun!"
Subaru smiled thankfully up at him, leaning into the hand that reached up to sweep strands of hair out of his eyes in gratitude, and the other one was quick to concede.
"It was only a thought..."
Safe for the moment, Subaru glanced over at his brother, who was tied hand and foot and glaring death from his spot on the carpet. There were certain advantages to being the only Subaru in known existence. For starters, he had managed to convince the Seishirous that he would be very uncooperative if they even thought of killing Kamui. Now he just had to figure out how to peaceably settle the dispute...
"Why don't you just all come with us?" Subaru suggested.
"WHAT?!" Kamui yelped, glancing at him sharply. "No! Subaru!"
"But Kamui, they're all out there all alone!"
Kamui glared. "What is wrong with you?! They're the enemy!"
"But..."
"NOT another word! You can't keep them!"
"Actually," another Seishirou interrupted, gagging Kamui quite firmly with a strip of cloth, "that's not so bad. I'm sure we could... come to an agreement."
"Yes, that might be acceptable," another agreed thoughtfully, eyeing Subaru speculatively, and Subaru suddenly had the bad feeling he didn't like where this was going...
Kamui muttered something possibly murderous that was muted by the gag, glaring.
"Yes," another Seishirou concurred, and now they were all staring at Subaru. "It would definitely be more advantageous in this situation to... share."
At that point, the arms wrapped around Subaru let go, leaving him strangely bereft, and hands on his hips propelled him toward a dark doorway along the wall to the right, more like herded with so many Seishirous around him, keeping him hemmed in. He didn't resist, letting them guide him forward even though he didn't quite understand where this was all going yet and despite a steadily growing sense of suspicion and dread. As it turned out, the room on the other side of the door was a bedroom—a fact that halted Subaru dead on the spot (and consequently, all the Seishirous behind him). Traveling through so many worlds had in no way hindered his understanding of what sort of activities went on in bedrooms. Also, the fact that it was night and had been for quite some time was not reassuring. It was a bad sign even. A very bad sign.
Upon realizing these two important facts, Subaru abruptly turned brilliant red, did an about-face and tried to walk back through the door—a feat that didn't work so well considering that the Seishirou behind him was very solid and very immobile. So he only succeeded in walking in place, feet stepping forward and sliding back on the carpet uselessly. Then hands gripped his arms, gentle but firm, and lifting him up, turned him around and set him back down facing the bed again.
"No! Wait! WAIT!" Subaru protested, digging his heels into the carpet as he was pushed forward. The sound of the lock on the door snapping into place was very loud in the little room and Subaru heard it like the clank of nails being hammered into a coffin. Then one of the Seishirous got tired of pushing and swept his legs out from under him, lifting him up and settling him down on the bed, and there was a little voice somewhere shrieking that beds were not safe, not safe, not safe!
"Wait! Please!" But he could already feel the mattress dipping where the others were settling down with feline grace, a perfect circle of predatory vigilance on all sides so that when he tried to bolt up, it was only to be caught by another set of arms, wrapping around him, soothing him.
"Hush," someone said, and then there were hands everywhere: hands on his chest, firmly and persistently pressing him down, and hands tugging insistently at his shoes, freeing him of his footwear, and hands trailing teasingly over his stomach and tangling in his hair, pulling his head back while one mouth kissed the pale expanse of his throat and another ghosted against his lips. He gasped up into that mouth when another set of deft hands pulled down his pants unexpectedly, sliding along his bare legs only to draw tormenting little circles along his exposed thighs. But the hands on his chest kept him firmly down, the tongue lapping at his navel distracting him.
"Seishirou-san..." he whispered deliriously, raven hair askew across the pillow, and it was anybody's guess which one he was talking about.
Several sets of amber eyes met in silent communication above his head, and if he'd had the wherewithal to notice or care, he probably would have found it frightening the way so many different versions of the same person could think and function in unison. But drowning in something close to sensation overload as he was, rational thought had long since disintegrated, lost in the tide of those hands holding him, touching him...
Subaru knew only that, at some point, hours later, he was lying in a bed, naked, utterly content, perfectly comfortable, and draped in warm bodies like living comforters. Yawning cutely, he turned just enough to bury his face against the chest of one at his side and then fell into drowsy sleep again...
Days later, Kamui stood with his arms crossed, seething quietly in front of a locked bedroom door. If looks could kill, the door would have long since cried mercy, vaporized itself, and the remaining dust particles hidden under the rug in fear. The situation was simply unacceptable.
Who knew what those Seishirous were doing to his poor brother! The memory of how they'd gotten into such a situation was still bright and bitter in his mind...
While Kamui attempted vainly to fight off the six Seishirous and succeeded only in getting crushed to the ground, his arms and legs forcefully held down by different versions of the enemy as they bound him with strong cord, one of them snuck around behind and captured Subaru.
"I've got him!" the Seishirou announced, holding a still Subaru immobile in his arms.
"Subaru!" Kamui cried. "Save yourself! Fight free!"
"I can't do that!" Subaru replied, shaking his head. "I might hurt them!"
All in all, they'd been captured rather quickly.
The day after, when Subaru had finally managed to sneak away for a few minutes, he'd crept over to have a quick word with Kamui, looking distinctly flustered and embarrassed. Kamui had stared, all righteous accusation. Subaru had smiled guiltily. "They want to stay. You don't mind, do you?"
"What? Are you nuts?" Kamui had asked. "We are not a boarding house for lost Seishirous!"
"But they'll be good! They won't hurt anyone! At least, I don't think they will..."
Kamui wasn't so sure about that, judging by the penetrating stares they'd shot him if he so much as looked as his brother wrong. "That's not the point!" he had replied. "They can't come with us! Get rid of them!"
"We can't just leave them all alone here!" Subaru had turned martyred green eyes on him then and Kamui had groaned.
"Agh! Have you forgotten that we're trying to get away from that man?!"
But at that point one of the Seishirous had found them and dragged Subaru away, gold gaze boring holes into Kamui.
Kamui's eyes narrowed at the unpleasant memories.
Ever since then, he'd barely managed to get a word in to his brother edgewise before one Seishirou or another would pull him away, and there was always one of them watching his brother now at any given time...
He was really getting tired of being locked out of his brother's presence, but then, at least he wasn't alone. One of the really little Seishirous had been kicked out with him. Kamui couldn't help but find a perverse sort of pleasure in that. Unfortunately, he was pretty sure Subaru would be upset if he strangled the little one in his sleep. Assuming the little one really was asleep and not just pretending (Kamui had the pesky feeling he wasn't). So he took out the full force of his glare on the door instead.
"We are going to find Seishirou," Kamui told the door spitefully. The Dimensional Witch had been all too happy to give him the man's address. "The right Seishirou. This is all his fault somehow, I'm sure of it. And when we do... there are six people I'm dying to introduce him to..."
End Note: So the reason the little Seishirou got kicked out is because there was one that was only 10 in ATY, and I thought that was pushing things. Schnick says, and I agree, that there probably would have been a fight in there with all the Seishirous at some point, but I couldn't figure out how to end it without somebody dying, so now they're just a bit too "getting along" -ish. I also might be of the personal opinion that there aren't that many copies of really powerful people throughout the worlds, but heck, it's fun to write scenarios where there are! All kinds of amusing things happen!
P.S.: If you haven't read Addicted To You, you should. It's funny and cute and, of course, the rest of the story... ^_~