Title: Emerging
by Coley Merrin
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own Kyou Kara Maou, and there are no profits made from this... at least that I know of.
Firelight, and mud puddles...
Emerging into a mud puddle was a dirty, slimy business by all accounts. Yuuri's echo of relief when he spotted Conrad with the two horses, which had followed a personal monologue of frustration, distracted Yuuri from trying to wring the mud from his clothes while they were still on him. The sky, only so fickle as to briefly give hope, opened again as Conrad swung down from his horse.
"Conrad!" Yuuri said with obvious relief. He reached out, bypassing Conrad's hand to grip his arm. A man where once a child had been. "Thank goodness you found me. I was about to think I'd have to climb a tree. Are we far from the castle?"
"Far enough," Conrad said as Yuuri, oblivious to the rain, began petting the black horse's nose. "We'll stay in a cottage not far from here. No one expects us back tonight."
"Excellent. Thank you, Conrad!"
Yuuri looked a bit like a drowned rat on the back of the black horse, and was silent which he must have thought hid his shivering. They rode directly to the leanto next to the cottage, unsaddling with record speed. Seeing that the horses were content, wiped down and with their feed bags, Yuuri darted under the eaves, shaking his head like an enthusiastic dog. Yuuri knocked, very politely, until Conrad, amused, opened the door for him.
It was abandoned, that much was clear, dusty and nearly empty. But there was warmth from the banked fire he had left before continuing his wait. Yuuri dropped down in front of it, holding his hands out like a child.
"You have dry clothes here," Conrad said, setting the bag down beside him.
"You think of everything." Yuuri clutched the bag, and stared Conrad into turning around so he could changed without being embarrassed.
"Hungry?"
"Not really," Yuuri said, muffled by a shirt.
Conrad set a blanket around Yuuri's shoulders so he could warm up properly as he sat down by the fire. Yuuri sighed, and it seemed pointed. As though he was waiting for a question to come.
"Is something bothering you, Your Majesty?"
Yuuri's fingers twitched against his knees, which was his only reaction to Conrad's use of the title.
"It's hard sometimes to go back there, and change from being a king to... being normal."
"People treat you differently?"
"No. They just... expect different things from me. I can't do things for people. I have to be the person who knows nothing."
"And yet still too many expectations?"
Conrad was glad to see a smile touch Yuuri's face, even if it was slightly ironic as half his face was shadowed when he turned towards Conrad.
"Just confusing ones."
"We are here to help you," he reminded the king with a murmur. "Yuuri."
Yuuri's forehead rested lightly on the point of Conrad's shoulder. He could feel the weight of Yuuri's sigh, before he whispered "Conrad" in a sort of thankful way that sent prickles up the back of his neck. A throaty chuckle escaped Yuuri as he squirmed away from the finger that had poked into the unwary flesh of his stomach. He tried to look indignant at Conrad and failed, which was just as well when Conrad was struggling to retain his mask of innocence, and had to compromise with a half smile that knowingly or not had spread to his eyes as well.
Conrad could see the boy in the shining eyes. Yuuri thanked him sometimes, with an embarrassing sort of regularity, staring at him as if he had expected that Conrad had forgotten, or would deny it. Yuuri would never cease to be grateful. While Conrad was his to command, and would protect him without order, Yuuri seemed to depend on that. But somehow they stood on the same legs. A three legged race through Yuuri's life. He would be amused at the idea. The vine of Yuuri who could strangle the tree, but lived in harmony with it. The tree would feel naked without it, and there was no weakness in that.
Yuuri tugged the shirt over his head, and tossed it aside. The glow of the fire shot light through the pendant, laying glitters of blue across Yuuri's chest. It cast a faint shadow into the line that gouged along Yuuri's rib cage. Conrad had been there, heard the ping of the blade as it glanced off a rib, felt Yuuri's blood slide between his fingers as the young king writhed, and Morgif moaned beside them.
He watched now, detached and inside the memory as Yuuri took his hand, laying it across the scar as if Conrad's presence there could erase it.
"Your only failure was me as a swordsman," Yuuri said, looking quite triumphant in his wit.
"Your memory is selective, Your Majesty."
"It was useful though. It made me see how painful fighting was, that way."
"You didn't have to be cut to know you were no fan of fighting," Conrad said, letting his thumb gently trace the scar.
"Wolfram said you were white as a sheet and looked... older."
Wolfram had been scared as well, looking on with worried eyes until Yuuri had stared up at him.
"I can't marry you," he had cried. "I can't, I can't."
And before Wolfram could say a word Yuuri had fainted, nearly dealing a killing blow of fear to Conrad's heart as well. For one long second Yuuri went very still, and then began to breathe, and Conrad with him. Even Wolfram could not argue with that kind of desperate plea, letting out an exasperated "Well!" to retreat for help and contemplate his now single life.
"We were all scared for you. It was too close."
Yuuri breathed in, his face intent on some vague memory. "I remember you being near, and you put your hand on my face, and whispered...'not again.'"
Conrad was stunned. Yuuri had seemed deep asleep, bandaged and resting. He had expected that moment to remain a secret part of his fears.
"Conrad," Yuuri said, leaning forward with every intent showing in his eyes.
But he stopped, warned somehow by the stiffening of Conrad's neck, the awkward posture of his head.
"We were all worried," Conrad reiterated. In Yuuri's eyes there was no gratitude, in his voice no duty. The hand on Conrad's arm was not forceful, or desperate. Conrad could have turned Yuuri away if he had seen any of that.
He would have turned away, instead of letting his fingers nudge Yuuri's spine. Or stared into the fire for answers to questions best left unasked.
He smiled at Yuuri with his eyes, and Yuuri, with eyes wide open, kissed Conrad with an uncertainty that was not his alone. It was hardly more than a press of lips, but it spoke more of Yuuri's feelings, of Conrad's, than he had ever been willing to see.
Yuuri made a sound of protest when Conrad rose to his knees but Conrad wasn't leaving. He pulled Yuuri up so that they could kneel, nearly face to face. Yuuri blinked rapidly when Conrad's hand cupped his face as it had in Yuuri's memory. It seemed that it was just that simple touch took away Yuuri's uncertainty, and Yuuri's lips were eager, even insistent. And as Yuuri's teeth fixed on Conrad's lip, Conrad felt inclined to go along.
- - -
Yuuri waited until Conrad was busy making a sort of makeshift dinner before saying anything.
"I love you," he told Conrad simply, and Conrad stared at him, a trickle of blood from the slip of the knife, unnoticed.
"I'll try my best to show you," Yuuri assured him, snug again now in Conrad's shirt.
Conrad smiled and shook his head. "You show me every day."