A/N: The result of a discussion on pinpointing the relationship between Lelouch and Suzaku.

we must be the world's most familiar strangers;

"What are you doing here."

Is how the conversation starts, but seconds later, Lelouch is the physicality and motion of the universe, Suzaku's collarbone curling under his fingertips and the thickness of the air between them. Their kisses are bitter and harsh and their teeth clash with hate and sorrow and feelings that hurt more than bullets. Lelouch's fingers are curved into Suzaku's spine, sighed against the space between his bones.

"Euphy," Suzaku bites at him. Lelouch doesn't flinch. "You killed her. You killed Euphemia. You killed your sister."

"What exactly is it you want to say?" Lelouch retorts, but Suzaku responds with his sweating palms and a force Lelouch has never seen so closely before. Suzaku's fingernails dig into Lelouch's shoulders, broad but bony, and traces jagged triangles across Lelouch's skin, each stroke drawn with purpose and a different kind of pain that Lelouch knows only too well.

"I know you, Lelouch. I know you and I knew you and when I knew you, you were different."

"Only the same," Lelouch mouths into the crook of Suzaku's elbow. "Nothing's changed since then. We're grown into ourselves, Suzaku. I've only grown into the person I was always going to become, and you cannot change that. You knew me when I was, but you know me now, too."

"You freak." Suzaku grabs at the messy strands of Lelouch's hair and clenches it all, through the steel walls that Lelouch has built, through to the small space next to his heart that represents only the source of anguish, the pain and longing he's been hiding. "You're a freak, Lelouch, did you know that?"

Lelouch says nothing, reaches out a finger to trace Suzaku's jawline and stare at his friend through familiar eyes.

"I loved her," Suzaku breathes.

"You didn't."

"I loved her, and so did you."

The silence is a sign of verification.

"You killed one sister to save another," Suzaku continues. "Don't you think you're being a little stupid, Lelouch?"

"But we are all stupid," Lelouch flares, the energy that had been dying once shooting through his body like a sudden spark, like a lightening bolt sleeping in the fibres of his conscience. "We are all entitled to stupidity. I have chosen this stupidity for a reason that no one but I will ever understand, Kururugi Suzaku. You stand in my way and I will crush you under my foot."

The power in Lelouch's eyes flicker with an undying purpose and as Suzaku hovers above, it feels as though their positions are switched, that Lelouch is pressing against his clavicles, and suddenly his breath cuts off and he can't think and maybe that's what the most frightening, his eyes blinking furiously, his body panicking and his inner turmoil thrashing inside him.

"There is a reason I am keeping you alive, Kururugi Suzaku." Suzaku strains to hear. Lelouch is growing weary, and it feels like everything has caught up to him, everything has clambered to its limits and Lelouch, with it all.

"Tell me."

"Nunnally," he whispers, and Suzaku's voice cracks for him.

"Do you think this is right?" he asks. "Do you really think what you're doing will help?"

Lelouch chuckles. "I'm entitled to stupidity," he says simply.

"You've never been honest about anything in your life, Lelouch vi Britannia."

It is morning. Lelouch reaches for Suzaku's hand and touches it and Suzaku laces his pinky together with Lelouch's own and understands with him, breathes the song of morning birds and mimics the way his heart beats and synchronizes them with the rawest form of familiarity. We can make weather together, he breathes. I can be a rainstorm and you can be a cyclone and then we can collide and stick into one beautiful destroyer of worlds.

"Suzaku. Why are you still here?"

It is a while before Suzaku's answer comes. "I'm not going to be here anymore," he finally says.

"Why?"

In the time that elapsed between the early darkness at night and the morning that spreads wide through the window, opening up the sky, Lelouch traps a tingling anticipatory need in his fingertips and holds it there. Meanwhile, Suzaku's hold on him is like metal, like walls, like unscathed steel and everything he wants (but doesn't have).

Owari

2011.08.01