Disclaimer: I have not magically bought Weiss Kreuz in the week and some days since I LAST submitted something and made not that Aya and Yohji did not belong to me.
Notes: This was the first shounen-ai fic I ever wrote. Aya/Yohji, as always, of course. Forgive the quality, since I am not altogether happy with how it turned out, but I can't find anything I want to change.
I actually wanted to post this fic closer to the end of December, but I'm going to be busy all month, so I decided now was better than in January.
At any rate, this was written to be a present for SkyRat, who is a great author, but an even better friend. Merry Christmas, Rat-chan!
Maybe Next Time
Yohji knew just how stubborn he could be, and he was going to make full use of that fault. Thus, he absolutely refused to let any of it matter, and he would keep his promise.
Promise, yes. They'd made a promise before it began.
It had been a terribly ordinary day, two nights after their latest mission, with average shop traffic. Yohji had been sulking in his room that evening because the mission had left him with too many cuts and bruises to go out in anything more revealing than a raincoat, and Yohji refused to embarrass himself by entering a bar without being sexily dressed. Thus, he had been forced to stay in his apartment and pout prettily over his myriad of personal issues.
And then, Aya had come to chastise Yohji for something or another. Yohji, especially bad-tempered from lack of all things bad for him, snapped in irritation that if Aya couldn't supply him with either drugs or sex, then would Aya please get out of the room. Aya had explained that drugs would cause Yohji to become mentally unstable, which could jeopardize the team in the case of a sudden mission. Therefore, Aya would not give Yohji drugs. However, Aya concluded, he had no issues with the second choice.
Yohji nearly fell off his bed.
Before they began, Aya insisted that both of them understand what they were beginning. Nothing, really, Yohji had said, and they knew it to be true. They promised not to make it into anything more and that it wouldn't matter. If it even happened again.
So it never did matter. It wasn't that often, and it didn't happen regularly or by any sort of schedule. Perhaps one to three times a month, if Yohji was shut in for some reason and Aya happened to be home and desirous of a bed-partner, then they went about their business behind closed doors.
They were both healthy young men, and certain distractions were better off gone anyway. Occasionally it was more convenient to do so with someone inside the house. It was relief.
It was just relief.
**
It was nothing more than relief.
Aya wouldn't call what he did with Yohji sleeping together, because they didn't. Whoever's bed it wasn't always left directly afterwards. They had never actually fallen asleep in the same place.
There was, of course, a reason he had chosen Yohji. Aya wasn't more or less attracted to Yohji than to anyone else. However, they lived conveniently close, and neither Ken nor Omi seemed like a very good idea, and then Yohji had made the suggestion. It had simply happened.
Not that Aya was worried about it. They had promised it was nothing, and it still was.
After all, neither of them could make it anything more anyway. They were just killers, just Kritiker's tools and toys. Aya had only so much humanity, but it already belonged to Aya-chan. Yohji loved Asuka, and she was dead, and what was real about Yohji died with her. Even beyond that, Yohji loved women, in whatever way he could still do so. Aya knew of some married men who would arrange to have a temporary physical relationship with a stranger just to feel some type of relief. It was the same for the two of them.
And they were satisfied with this state of affairs. It worked out.
It wasn't anything, and it would never be anything, which was convenient for both of them. They were using each other, but they were both aware and willing. They simply made each other feel better, nothing beyond that. They didn't look at each other. They didn't caress each other. They didn't embrace.
They didn't even kiss.
**
They never kissed.
At first, this was slightly odd for Yohji, who kissed nearly everyone, whether sincerely or not. Aya said kisses were for lovers, or people who wanted lovers, and this wasn't the case between them. They'd agreed on the rules of their mutual usage, and these rules were simply to leave both affection and shows of affection out of the picture.
Yohji conceded. He got what he wanted, and he had no desire for this to accidentally become something meaningful. If they had to avoid certain displays of affection, that was fine by him.
It almost never mattered anyway.
Only every once in a blue moon did he feel slightly curious about actually kissing Aya, but Yohji would then remind himself that he had kissed every other person under the sun, and Aya couldn't be that different.
Yohji knew the perils of love—he'd been there, after all, and lost Asuka, and he wasn't going to do that again. Aya, Yohji knew, was holed up in his own problems and had no time or effort to give to something as trivial as love. They were assassins, for heaven's sake. Or maybe hell's. Whatever—the point was that they weren't suited or able to love. They didn't want to be.
And sometimes they were kind to each other. Sometimes Aya brought Yohji a bottle of alcohol to last out the evening. Sometimes Yohji bought takeout for all of them when Aya was too tired to cook on his night. But they did the same sorts of things for Omi and Ken. They were a team, after all. They were just a team.
They didn't need each other.
**
They could live without each other.
The only time one needed the other was on missions, but even that varied depending on the plan. Sometimes Ken was back-up for one while the other backed up Omi, or whatever various other mixtures of the team they created. It was better for their dynamics if they switched around their mission pair-ups every so often.
Aya almost never went to Yohji's room on mission nights. It was too late, and they were both tired and really could think of very little other than guilt and sleep. And yet, slowly, the nights they used each other for relief grew more frequent as weeks passed.
But Aya was fine with it because he knew—they both knew—that if one day they were to go on with their own separate lives, there wouldn't be an issue. They wouldn't care, and it wouldn't matter. They could live on their own—this non-relationship didn't mean anything.
It was a flat, stagnant nothing they had, and it would never become something.
After all, Aya knew, people who could barely feel lust for each other could never feel anything else.
The one thing Aya admitted to himself that he liked about this un-relationship was that it was simple. Out of all the random, complicated things that life threw at them, this was just what it looked like. They got what they needed, but once they were finished, they could go on as if nothing had changed. Because it hadn't.
At least, Aya knew, this much was sure. He and Yohji wouldn't complicate this.
They couldn't.
**
They weren't able to make anything from it, even if they wanted to.
Sometimes, but only very rarely, and he always quashed the thoughts, sometimes Yohji wondered. He thought it might be interesting to have something with a man. He'd never tried it before, and Yohji, unfortunately for his health, was prone to trying new things. Of course, if he didn't like it he dropped it quickly, but…he might like it.
Other times he wondered what Aya would be like as someone's—anyone's, really, it didn't have to be Yohji's—lover. Yohji wondered who would put up with someone like Aya in a relationship like that. He wondered if Aya had ever done it before.
But his wonderings only ever happened in slivers, which he always pushed into the back of his mind before they could expand at all. He didn't need it. He didn't need to think about it. He didn't need to complicate something so wonderfully simple.
And he didn't need Aya to kill him for it, either.
Lately, though, he felt a little odd. He didn't want Aya to come to him anymore, and so he dragged himself out every day, whether he wanted to or not. Sometimes he picked up girls, but often he just stayed at the bar until daylight before stumbling home. Aya said nothing. It was not a relationship, so it didn't matter whether Yohji was home. Yohji was his own master.
At the same time, he really didn't want to see Aya outside of the shop and missions. He skipped dinner, always went out for lunch, and came in late for breakfast. He didn't want to look at Aya. He didn't want to think about Aya. He didn't want to have an un-relationship with Aya. He just wanted to be alone.
Yohji decided he had fallen out of not-love with Aya. Now there really was nothing between them, not even relief.
But there really hadn't been all that much to begin with.
**
They never had much, and now they had nothing.
Aya knew it. He saw that Yohji was gone more than usual, and he realized why. Aya didn't push the subject. He just calmly accepted the fact and moved on. He stopped visiting Yohji's apartment, and he remained mostly serene and goal-oriented at both his jobs. It didn't bother him. There was no reason for it to.
He never paused longer by Yohji's door than usual.
In fact, Aya had not even expected their un-relationship to last this long. They were both killers, and they were both obsessed with their own issues, and, perhaps most importantly, they were both wearing too many masks.
No one could argue that Aya was hard to read most days, as long as Takatori wasn't involved. Aya was controlled, focused, and mentally impenetrable. Whatever he really thought or felt or wondered, Aya locked away and never mentioned again.
Even Yohji wasn't genuine all the time. The playboy, the joking and teasing big brother…those were his false faces. Yohji wasn't really that happy, and most of him wasn't really laughing, and he cared about certain things much more than whatever over-eighteen girl he had flirted with last. He did it to maintain a sense of security and stability, for both himself and the team. No matter what happened, there was always Yohji to make a crack to help put away the demons into the closet.
As time passed, Aya had learned to see through all of them. He often thought they had probably learned to see through some of him too, but he could never be sure. He saw through Yohji the most easily, funnily enough, for reasons Aya couldn't name.
But now he could see that all of them were falling apart, even himself.
Weiss was already fracturing, Aya could sense it. They were fine cracks, but they were everywhere. He was fracturing. He needed to go. Ken and Yohji were both fraying, and Omi was dipping deeper and deeper into his need for a home that Weiss could no longer provide—and Aya needed to leave before all of it brought him down too.
So he chose to do so.
He saw no reason to specifically tell Yohji first, since their not-relationship had long ago petered out, and even back then, as they hadn't meant anything to each other, Aya's departure should not have been more important to Yohji than to anyone else.
Aya announced it one day to all the others at once. It obviously made them unhappy, but they did not hinder him or attempt to talk him out of it. After all, they were only a team, barely friends, nothing more. He was happy to see that Yohji was not especially disappointed compared to the others. Good—their promise had held.
They were still nothing.
**
Were they still nothing?
Yohji couldn't wrap his head around it. They'd promised, promised, to be nothing, and he could no longer stand to even look at Aya, but now he was reluctant to see Aya leave? What kind of twisted logic was that?
But there it was, and he knew he had to see Aya before Weiss broke for the last time, because otherwise he would probably regret it forever.
Aya tensed slightly when Yohji entered.
There was a very, very long and awkward silence.
"Aya."
"Yohji."
Another long pause.
"Uh…so where are you planning to go?"
"I don't know. Maybe America. Possibly Europe." Yohji blinked.
"That far?"
"Does it matter?"
"No," Yohji answered immediately, by habit. "It's just…kind of far—can Kritiker even reach you there?"
"I don't know. I hope not." Something dropped inside Yohji, though he couldn't figure out which organ it was. He seemed to still be breathing, so he ignored it.
"What about Aya-chan?" Yohji asked.
"It doesn't matter. She's doing fine now, and I don't want her to see me." Yohji sighed.
"She would like to see you again, you know."
"I. Know." Aya bit out the words, making it clear the Aya-chan discussion was over. A third silence. Yohji thought maybe he should start keeping track of them.
"Aya."
"Nn?"
"We're still nothing, aren't we." It wasn't a question at all, but Aya answered anyway.
"We always were."
**
"Did you ever wonder, Aya?" Yohji queried, genuinely curious. Aya paused, thinking. Was Yohji trying to keep him here by asking him a slew of pointless questions? He took the bait anyway.
"Wonder what, Yohji?"
"According to Buddhists, the present life is used to pay and claim debts from past lives."
"Are you going anywhere with this? Because I do have to leave today, Yohji." Yohji ignored him.
"Did you ever think that maybe in our past lives we owed each other something?" Aya made a noise of contempt.
"Assuming that's true, Yohji, we wouldn't have had nothing between us."
"Did we?" Yohji replied immediately.
"Yes." There was no room allowed for questioning or hope or anything else.
"Did you ever wonder, though, Aya?"
"No, Yohji, I did not waste time on questionable philosophical debates."
Did you ever wonder what something might have been like?"
Aya had. Something was better than nothing, he was always told. And having nothing was not his choice. But the wonderings were never allowed to live for more than a few unguarded moments. He couldn't afford something, so nothing had to do.
"No, Yohji." He wondered why Yohji looked so unhappy. It still didn't matter, after all.
There was a fourth long pause, and Aya picked up his luggage and started for the door.
Yohji's voice caught up from behind him.
"Did you ever wonder about kisses?"
**
"No." Aya was still firm. Yohji had not expected him to be anything else, but Yohji kept on, like he was possessed by someone braver and more foolish.
"I have," said Yohji. Aya stood at the door, refusing to turn and look at him. "Aya." Look at me.
Aya turned.
"Aya." Let me…
Yohji moved forward as Aya stood still at the doorway.
"I…" But Yohji couldn't figure out how to end the sentence, so he changed directions.
Neither of them really actively kissed the other, but there was just enough of something to keep their lips together for a moment.
"Yohji," said Aya as they pulled away from each other.
Yohji decided he was wrong. Aya did not, in fact, feel like the multiple people he had kissed before.
"I'm sorry, couldn't resist," said Yohji as cheekily as he could. It wasn't very much, since his hands were shaking visibly.
They both felt it when the façade broke.
"Aya…" Yohji couldn't tell if Aya's eyes were wet or if it was just the normal gloss over the pupils. "I just wanted…" I don't know what I wanted…
"No, it's…it's fine."
"It's…still nothing, right?" Yohji wanted it to be, or maybe he didn't. He wasn't sure.
Aya had to think for a moment this time.
"Yes, Yohji." He began to walk away again.
Yohji called after him.
"Thank you." Somehow Yohji wanted to speak, but he couldn't remember what he wanted to say. Aya kept walking. "Aya." Turn around. Look at me. Don't leave. "Aya. Don't…" Don't forget me. Aya had turned the corner, and Yohji finally gathered his wits enough to make it to the hallway. "Don't die, Aya," Yohji called.
"It doesn't matter," Aya replied without pausing. "I don't matter to you."
"You…" You do. You matter. Somehow. Even if we're nothing. If I'm nothing. "You matter to someone." And Aya was moving down the stairs. Yohji kept following, because he had something else to say, and he still couldn't remember what it was.
"I shouldn't," said Aya, stopping on a step. "Not to you, not to her, not to Ken and Omi. I'm not part of your lives anymore, Yohji."
Aya started walking again.
**
He refused to stop anymore. He had already stayed too long, especially if Yohji was still supposed to be nothing.
"Aya…" Yohji called again. Aya refused to let this simple action upset him.
"You can't follow me," he told the blond man behind him. There was silence.
Aya steeled his resolve and refused to turn back again as he got in his car and started it. He did not check his rearview mirrors as the engine fired up and started out of the garage. Yet as he drove down the street for the last time, he couldn't help but look into the mirror once.
Yohji was standing behind him, silent and unmoving, nearly expressionless. Had Aya been pressed to identify the emotion, he would have called it heartbreak—but that would only be possible if they had hearts.
Aya looked away again and kept driving.
He wasn't crying for his nothing.
There was just a lot of dust.
**
Yohji stared through the floating dust specks.
As Aya's car grew smaller and smaller down the road, so did Yohji's mental capacity. By the time he could no longer see Aya, Yohji was left to mumbling Aya's name over and over.
What had he wanted to say to Aya, anyway? It still hadn't come back to mind.
Did it even matter? He couldn't follow Aya, and they were nothing. It didn't matter.
He tried to remind himself that this was the man he hadn't wanted to even look at for the past several months, but it didn't seem to help at all. He still didn't understand, and now he was just tired and ached terribly.
Yohji turned to the house and began walking back to his apartment. There weren't tears, he told himself, because Aya would have refused to let him have tears—they were a sign of the end of nothing. Yohji didn't have tears, just like he wasn't afraid and didn't want Aya to return.
Just like he didn't wonder.
Maybe, Yohji couldn't help but think, assuming the Buddhist stuff was real, maybe they owed each other enough for them to meet again next life.
Maybe next time, there would be something.