A/N: Frankly, I wasn't even planning on submitting this, but. It was this or bed. I have less than 4 hours until I have to wake up and go to swimming and then school, please do not rat on me for any grammer or spelling errors.
This is for my darling darlings, dearest Ma-kun [[Endless Eclipse]] and beloved Rae-nee [[Crimson Vixen]]. And I guess it can be for Kazu too, but EotS is still alive [[of sorts]] and will be updated for him.
I'm sorry for the delays, and this mess of a story...
- Masi
"Ikki…!"
The Crow coughed and choked, eyes opening for a second, only to clamp them shut again in pain.
"Ikki I don't know where we are, I can't…" Kazu was frantically spilling out words, the sight of Ikki's consciousness becoming the green light. "Ikki, I can't move, I'm sorry." The Crow groaned. "Ikki, please, can you try to knock your chair over, get underneath the layer of smoke?" The blonde's voice sounded pleading, full of panic, scared.
"Kazu…?" Ikki's throat was burning, vision blurred. Smoke…? "…'the hell're we?" he asked, voice slurred.
"I don't know, I only just woke up," he explained. "But Ikki, you have to knock your chair over, it'll help, I promise." Ikki found Kazu's shape in the blur of light and dark for the first time. "Try to get on your side."
Ikki blinked, hard, and tried to get his eyes to stop burning. His throat, his eyes, his entire body…The brunette leaned from side to side until momentum brought him tumbling to the ground towards Kazu with a thud. "Fuck…" Ikki swore at the impact, but the relief of clear air was immediate. "Thanks," Ikki mumbled, voice low but grateful. He coughed again before attempting to take in his surroundings. "What's going on, Kazu?"
"I think…I think they set a fire downstairs." Kazu's eyes were red, but there was no telling whether it was the smoke's fault, or something else's. Ikki's eyes wandered from Kazu's eyes to the boy's arms, legs, torso, taking it the fact the Kazu was bound to a wooden chair just as tightly and in the same places as himself; a tight coil around the legs, one to each foreleg of their chair, with their torsos and arms tied to the straight wooden back.
"Fuck," Ikki cursed again, straining to get any possible slack in the ropes. Immediately after he uttered the sound, there came the dull thud of boots on the wooden steps across the room. But of course, there was no such thing as a savior. "There's no point in trying to smoke someone out of a house if they can't move."
The man ignored them. "Would you like to get your asses out of here or should I let you burn?"
Ikki snarled. "What the fuck do you want?" he asked, voice venomous.
"Just some answers. But remember, I have no qualms with killing you two." He bent down and hitched Kazu over his shoulder and out of sight, but the blonde audibly winced as the wind was knocked out of him by the man's broad shoulder.
"The fire will only speed up, and since you two took so long to wake up, this is my only choice…too bad, I wanted to see you burn." He crashed the window open and as the smoke filtered out, Ikki was once again able to see Kazu's face, pale with fear, before the man propped the chair up on the windowsill and pushed.
"Kazu!" Ikki shouted as the blonde once again disappeared from his sight. At the sound of the wooden chair crunching, the man returned for Ikki, bending over to grab the Crow as well. "Get your filthy hands off of me, bastard!"
The man just chuckled darkly as he set Ikki's chair on the windowsill. "Alright." Ikki could only catch a glimpse; the ground was about nine, ten feet below, not enough to kill a person, but…
…still plenty high enough to hurt like a bitch. Ikki landed on his back, the chair cracking beneath him, and letting out a cry of pain at the impact; he had landed on the ground, luckily, because Kazu had moved aside. The blonde must have landed on his back as well, because his chair's back had been cracked into shards, similar to Ikki's. As long as his head and neck were safe. As the man went back around, presumably, Ikki struggled to get up, arms still bound tightly enough to his back that they were useless, even without the chair. He did, however, manage to break the seat off of the chair's legs so that he only had a few random pieces left together. "Kazu, break off the legs, it's easier."
The blonde nodded, propping himself up, off the grass, only to fall back again onto the back of the seat. There was a loud cracking sound and Kazu's chair broke as well. However, when they heard the man's voice again, it was not coming from the door as expected, but from the same window that they had just fallen from.
"Little good that'll do you," he shouted, before jumping out of the window. The two boys were in shock until they noticed a pair of AT's on his feet, which only changed the factor of their shock. He also held something else in his hand, and as he landed on his feet with a short slide, he slowly strode back to the two younger stormriders, who had both stood up to face him.
"Now what the fuck do you want?" Ikki asked again, looking around at the yard's fence surrounding them.
"I already told you. Now," he began, tossing the object in his hands down onto the ground, "why did you cheat against my team?" The question was directed at Ikki, the broad-shouldered man's expression dead-pan serious.
"Excuse me?" Ikki asked, before he sense Kazu jolt beside him. He looked to the side to follow the blonde's gaze, only to realize just what the man had meant; lying at their feet was a team helmet with a trunk, the uniform of Behemoth.
"You heard me. There was no way that you could have beaten our leader, even with that dirty trick that you and that Shark bastard used. Tag teaming…!" The broad shouldered man made a face of disgust. "You must have cheated. I saw how friendly with Udou-san you guys are."
"You think we cheated? We had nothing to do with it, all we did was fight!" Ikki's lip twitched, and Kazu just had a sour look on his face, legs shifting constantly, moving his feet a fraction of an inch every time, as if his AT's would come back at any moment. The man shot a look at the two boys before reaching behind his back to procure a rope that had obviously been hidden in either his shirt or his pants. Ikki made a move to run, hand reaching for Kazu's wrist and gripping tight, when the man barked out a short laugh.
"Do you really think you can escape without your AT's?" He smirked and sprinted forward, and his larger weight proved to be all he needed to make Ikki's knees collapse, and he forced the Crow onto his knees, roping his arms together and drawing this knife from his pocket to stake the tied knot into the ground.
Kazu was frozen in shock, blue eyes wide. Just as he made a move to recoil, the man left Ikki to struggle for freedom and moved menacingly towards Kazu, backing the Jet into the wall behind him.
"You…you gave Yasuyoshi-san too much trouble." His hand shot to the blonde's neck. "And all you could do afterwards was flip him off…why make him look bad just to lose in the end?" His large fingers pressed into Kazu's skin, and the Jet, trying to keep a straight face, bi this lip and set his expression, trying to get a slow breath through his nose without attracting any notice.
"Let him go!"
Kazu choked and spluttered, tears spilling over as the firm hand gripped harder at his throat, finally restricting all access to his lungs.
"Tell me the truth." Another squeeze, another strangled gasp. "Or I don't let him go."
"Fuck, stop it! I already told you the truth, let him go!" Ikki yelled, limbs pulling as hard as he physically could, muscles straining to get free, thick ropes burning his skin.
"But see, that's where I know you're lying," The man growled, dropping Kazu and lunging at Ikki instead. As the Jet sat slumped against the wall, hands protecting his raw throat and breath coming back in ragged gasps, the older stormrider grabbed Ikki's chin, wrenching the boy's face up, forcing the Crow's eyes to meet his own. "Because you can't have beaten my team with out cheating. Those five are the strongest we have," he said angrily. "They could never lose to someone of your level."
Ikki spat in the man's face. "Bite me. You're nifty little program "read" doesn't always work, bastard."
"But I know what does always work. I will get you to stop lying," the man murmured, the glint in his dark eyes positively malicious. "That boy over there, the one who fought Yasuyoshi-san…what is he to you?"
Ikki snarled. "What's it to you?"
The man walked back over to Kazu, hitching the still coughing boy up and dropping him right in front of Ikki. Getting down on his knees he straddled the blonde, reaching around to the boy's back and grabbing both of his skinny wrists in his large hand, the other hand grabbing at Kazu's chin. "Because sometimes proper bait is needed." His thumb tugged at Kazu's chin, pulling his lower lip down until his mouth was only just open. "And if this boy could be considered proper bait…" He leaned in, lips headed for the blonde's separated ones, with a very dissatisfied grunt coming from the blonde.
"Don-…!" Kazu and Ikki's voices both protested and stopped short in unison when the broad shoulders bent forward just enough for the man's cracked lips to meet Kazu's. The blonde's brow was furrowed but his eyes were wide with shock, struggling to get the large man's face off of his. After a few muffled sounds of protest from the Jet and louder swears from the nearby Crow, Kazu managed to get free of the man's grasp on his chin, face turning to the right as he shifted all of his weight and toppled over onto his side.
"Bastard, don't you fucking dare touch him again!" Ikki shouted, eyebrows furrowing so close together that they were nearly touching.
"Oh…?" The man's lips curled, his large hand reaching towards the still dazed Jet. He pressed one finger to Kazu's forehead. "I'm touching him."
Ikki fumed, teeth grinding together, and he tugged furiously at his ropes. The terrible rope-burn, the heat of the flames engulfing the shack behind them…yet Ikki still found it in him to shiver as the man's fingertips brushed against Kazu's jaw line.
"You know…Yasuyoshi-san was said to have a bit of a thing for this little blonde thing," the man murmured, voice low and soft but full of malice. "And therefore anything that he has interest in therefore is in my way…"
Ikki made a face. "You're pissed…" he asked hoarsely, "because that bastard likes Kazu more than you?"
"Why yes," the man snarled, "thought I must admit that it's obvious why you…both like him." He straddled Kazu and the Jet churned beneath him, trying to escape, forcing the man to pin him down with a wrist. "You've both seen him with this adorable expression of pain." He bent down and leant in towards Kazu, mouth hidden from Ikki's view so that the Crow could just see that much.
But then Kazu gasped and cringed in pain, Ikki didn't need to see the man's teeth clamp down on the other boy's throat to know just what had happened. Ikki cursed loudly and the tears welling up in the Jet's eyes were visible; Kazu wasn't masochistic in anyway, he hated the idea and feeling of pain. So Kazu being bitten was definitely not okay with either of them. Kazu pressed up and jerked his neck, gasping as the rough teeth tore at his flesh, but managing to break free for a long enough moment to get his leg between him and the man and shove him off with a strong kick straight to his chest. "Ikki!" Kazu found himself rolling to the side and calling his name on instinct, even though there was really no reason to call the Crow's name.
The word just felt right when it rolled off of his tongue.
He tumbled and stumbled over to Ikki and landed awkwardly on the brunette's chest and torso, but he didn't hesitate in reaching his arms around to fiddle with the bindings and pry at the ropes, the other boy in his arms in an uncomfortable sort of hug. "Just a little…" he mumbled to himself and Ikki when he heard the man recover and stand up.
But they didn't call him 'Stealth' for nothing.
Kazu finished untying the knot but as he stood up, he let his lips trail past Ikki's ear with a swift and nearly inaudible murmur of "stay there". He turned and faced the man, both of their expressions ragged and rough, but with different sources of malice – Kazu was fighting for love, while the man was fighting for hatred – and as corny as that sounded, it was that that let Kazu sprint forward and slid under the charging man's grasp, and it was that that caused Ikki to know exactly what Kazu's plan was, springing up from his position on his knees to land a firm and swift crack against the man's lower jaw.
And it was that that influenced the boys to intertwine their fingers as Ikki gave Kazu a boost over the fence, letting the Jet's momentum carry him into a swift kick-flip over the high fence.
It was that that persuaded Ikki to run his fingers through golden locks, that that persuaded Kazu to squeeze that firm hand tighter.