I already posted this on my lj, but I just like having everything all neat and pretty and lined up in one place. Plus, I'm a total sucker for reviews. Based on the first of Newton's three laws of motion, because... just because. Because I'm a geek, pretty much.

Motion – I

Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it.

Kamui reread the sentence for the fifth time, working from some vague hope that if he just read the words enough times, they would magically start to assemble themselves into something that made sense (though really, he should have learned by now that magic was never that helpful. If the words in his physics textbook ever magically did anything, it would probably be to leap up and try to eat him). He was so tired; there had been another kekkai to defend last night and while he hadn't gone (the other Seals hadn't wanted to interfere with his schoolwork; his laughter when his teacher told the class the next day that homework wasn't the end of the world was tinged with hysteria), he had stayed up all night worrying about Sorata and Subaru.

Especially Subaru. It wasn't that he didn't care about Sorata, but he could trust the man to look after himself, unless Arashi was involved. Subaru, however…

"Having trouble?"

"Subaru!" Kamui started guiltily as the subject of his thoughts walked into the room. "Hi. Are—are you okay? Did the doctors say you could get up? How's your arm feel?"

Subaru smiled a little. "It's nothing. I'm not even sure how Kigai-san managed to hit me in the first place." He cast a rueful glance at his bandaged wrist.

Kamui crossed his arms. "You didn't answer my question," he told Subaru reproachfully. "The one about the doctors. If you get sick and die because you're not bothering to rest every once in a while, I will be so mad at you. And it would just be ridiculous anyways."

Something in Subaru's smile shifted. "This won't kill me, Kamui," he said gently.

The silence that followed had an oddly heavy quality, as though all that couldn't be said by either of them, Subaru—but I must eventually, it is Wished twice over, my fate was sealed nine years before I met you—

and Kamui—but I couldn't bear that, your absence, you more than any other, I—I—

I care—

it was as though the words permeated the air itself; unsaid but not, perhaps, unheard.

"I know," Kamui muttered eventually, though whether he was responding to the spoken or the unspoken even he didn't know.

Subaru sighed, the sound soft and delicate and almost regretful, and then the strange tension lifted completely and he walked to Kamui's side. "Is that something I can help with?"

Kamui scowled, secretly grateful for the change of subject. "I dunno. I think it's not making any sense, but I can't be sure because to be sure I would have to know what it would look like if it did. I swear, they come up with this stuff just to torture us."

He laughed, the almost-laugh that Kamui had come to realize was the closest he would ever get to hearing true amusement from Subaru, and said, "I don't think that's quite it." He leaned a little closer over Kamui's shoulder, and Kamui had to repress a shudder as he felt the vibrations from Subaru's quiet hum in his ear. "Mm. Well, physics work a little differently in onmyoujutsu, but I think…" His voice trailed off, and Kamui could all but feel his thoughts drifting away.

"Eh, it doesn't really matter. The test's a week away—I'll probably get it by then." After a full night of sleep, and maybe some coffee. He shut the book and twisted around in his chair to face Subaru properly, resting his chin on the back of it. "You're sure that you're okay?"

"Yes. You don't need to worry about me, you know."

Kamui's eyes narrowed, and he let out a huff of frustration. "Maybe I don't need to, but I do. I apologize if it irritates you, but I worry about you and if you're in pain or sad, it makes me sad, too, and that's not going to change and you're not going to convince me to even try."

Subaru's eyes wandered away from his and settled on the black gloves covering his hands. "You shouldn't," he said quietly, almost whispering, and Kamui had to strain to hear him. "Worry about me, or care. I would… be unhappy if I were to hurt you, through that."

Now Kamui's eyes fell, too, and they landed on Subaru's gloves; he understood the symbolism behind them far too well. "But I choose to," he reminded Subaru. "It's a part of—" He hesitated, reconsidered what he was going to say. "—of friendship, that risk, that you will be hurt by someone else's pain, isn't it?"

"Risk?" Subaru was definitely talking to himself now, Kamui realized. "But there is risk and there is certainty, and I am too selfish to give up my certainty—even for this, because that, too, would be a risk." He sounded like the doctors had given him painkillers or something, because normally Subaru would never talk like this, ever.

Kamui wanted to ask what he meant when he said "certainty" with that weirdly happy-sad inflection, but he knew that would be crossing one of the indefinite but so very real lines that were a part of Subaru—the things that were not talked about but danced around, carefully and awkwardly, less choreography than being dropped in a maze and told to find the other end, blindfolded, without touching any of the walls. He had come too close already, he felt, and at any minute Subaru would fall back even farther into his retreat of coldness and distance and polite, formal solitude.

Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line…

He looked at Subaru suddenly, really looked at him, and saw with an almost nauseating surge of fear that Subaru was still staring at his gloves—lovingly—and that in and of itself was painful, to see Subaru so hopelessly attached to someone who hurt him so badly; but worse was a vision of Subaru with the Sakurazukamori's hand through his chest, and him smiling, as though this was all that he could ask of the world, to die at the hand of someone special. And then, another image: Subaru alive, the assassin dead, but some part of Subaru dead too and the rest a living, walking corpse—Angel—eye—blood. Every time, so much blood.

That—just—no. No, no, no. Never. Kamui didn't know what part of him it was that was rebelling so strongly against the images, and—well, if it was Subaru's Wish—but how could he let Subaru walk into this blindly?

…uniform motion in a straight line…

It seemed massively unfair, that the older man would never realize—not really—that there were others who cared about him, who would mourn his death, who would die with him. Oh, Kamui didn't doubt that he knew it on an intellectual level, but it wasn't the same, it wasn't knowing.

Then, how…

…unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it.

Subaru looked up, shocked, as Kamui's lips met his.

I put up a... continuation (not a sequel, not really the same storyline, just happens to be prompted with the second law) at my lj, too, but I really really really want to revise it before I actually do anything else. If anyone's interested:

http // eoedad . livejournal . com / 1365 . html # cutid1