The rain pounds low and heavy against the windows as the wind presses it forward, like a dull roar from the distance. It runs through the grass, pushing it in waveforms away from the little house and races along the fields to lash around his feet. He stands, watches the low lights of the house through the haze of the storm, and he waits.
It's wrong. He knows that. But by the gods his feet keep turning back this way. Eventually the kid slips out the back window- you can tell because of the way the warm glow from inside the house spills out gold onto the wet grass. The kid knows where to find him. They tell each other that it could work, that Gohan just hangs out with that girl to make his mother happy, that one day she would understand and it wouldn't always have to be such desperate hiding. They don't talk about it now. They find each other, and loose themselves in each other. The storm goes unnoticed after that.
You shouldn't be doing this, he tells himself as he lies on his back in the wet leaflitter, feeling the drops that make their way through the net of the canopy to land on his nose and the tendrils of the kid's hair feathered over the side of his chest. You know he has a future ahead of him, away from here. You hear him talking about his school, his friends, how much he looks forward to graduating, going on to grad school, and his first job out of this backend of the world. Somewhere with lights and people. Somewhere you can't follow.
What the hell are you going to do when he wants to move out of his parents' house? You wouldn't survive in that world. And after the taste of freedom he's had for the last few years, he won't be able to survive out here. He's not his father- he can't live like Son did.
"Gods" he mutters to himself, the tone even flatter than he normally pushes it. There's a twinge at the side of his face as he thinks about the old man in the back of his head and he indulges in the thought of throttling him briefly for not warning him of this path in his infinite wisdom. Only ever gave advice when he didn't damned need it.
But it wouldn't make a difference. Kami wasn't the one who buckled to the kid's soft words and desperate caresses, the pleading that it had only ever been him he really wanted. Kami hadn't even been there- he shoves both the old man and the other one into a mental back room before he makes the damn decision every week. It's only him in his head when he waits here. When he puts his lips to the kid's throat and takes the little square packet that gets pressed into his hand as the body against him shivers. His stupid decisions. No one else's.
This isn't just your life you're playing hardball with this time, it's his. And if you screw up this one it's his life you're ruining. He pulls a hand out from behind his head to touch the face resting on his chest, trace the fine bone structure under the skin- surprisingly soft for all the hell it's seen. He's just... afraid, deep in the pit of his gut that this time something really is going to hurt Gohan, more than any of the fights could have. And it's going to be him that did it by accepting such a simple thing as a kiss.
Gods help me if I mess this one up.
3/20/2008 1:39 AM