EQUILATERAL
"Why did you kill Euphie?" he asked plainly.
Lelouch shrugged, noncommittal. "Why did you kill your father?"
Suzaku's eyes widened. "Don't turn this back on me! And you know the answer to that—I thought it would create peace!" His reasoning for the murder slipped from his tongue so easily now, from years of practice and use. It was his mantra—to create peace, create peace, peace!—swirling around inside his head, the mantra that gave him the impulse to act.
"…But you didn't create peace, did you, Suzaku?" Lelouch asked, drawing him out in the familiar argument that seemed too recent, smiling slightly as Suzaku began to show signs of anger.
He clenched his teeth, "We've been over this, now answer me like a man: why did you kill Euphie?!" Lelouch frowned slightly at the blow to his masculinity, yet waved it aside, staying silent. Suzaku's eyes bored into his and he imagined, just for a second, that they were crowded with love instead of hate.
"She stood in the way of my goals."
"To destroy Britannia?"
"She needed to be eliminated."
"She gave you Japan."
"On a bloodied field."
"You killed her!"
"She stood in my way!"
"But she was your sister!"
"And the Prime Minister was your father!"
Both fell silent for a while, Suzaku's eyes wandering over the details of the finery Lelouch wore. It didn't suit him, such regal clothes. He looked all the part of an emperor and yet at the same time, so out of place. Was he more suited for the masked costume of Zero? Or the simple school uniform? Was Lelouch fit for anything, or had he alienated himself so completely that he looked out of place in anything?
At length, Lelouch spoke, his voice cold and reserved, hidden behind a mask. "Euphemia was a threat." To Japan, Britannia, herself? Lelouch wondered.
"I don't believe you," Suzaku's hands clenched at his sides as the anger welled up in him again—Lelouch was ugly in his finery, not out of place, but hideous in all the silk and gold details—"Why do you always LIE to me?! To everyone?!!" He screamed at him. "You're not human!"
Lelouch's frown deepened… not human? But that was the goal, he reminded himself, to be thoroughly hated and despised, and yet some part of him still yearned for the acceptance and forgiveness of the only person left to him. "Would you believe my truth?" he whispered.
"What truth?" Suzaku spat, disgusted by his very presence, regretting that he had ever had the same philosophy and view as Lelouch, the goal of the future that had entwined their paths at Charles's death. If only they had stayed enemies, he would have been so much easier to hate. "What truth could you, Lelouch vi Britannia, ever tell?"
Lelouch recoiled a bit, in an instant realizing that he might never regain Suzaku as the only person left in his world. "Just hear me out!" And he let his voice stray from the refined chill it normally had, let his mask shatter.
"Lelouch, please--!" Suzaku whispered, not sure whether he was asking to be spared the truth, told the truth, or to be left in his world of hate.
Lelouch clutched at the front of his robes, hands twisting in the silk, "I never meant to use Geass on Euphie—!"
"—That's a lie! I know how your Geass works—!"
"—My Geass changed, I couldn't control it--!"
"—Why the slaughter of the Japanese--?!"
"—It was a mistake--!"
"--How can you mistake--?!"
"—It was a joke—I said it jokingly—my Geass changed—I never meant to use it on her—I tried to stop it—she tried to resist—I never meant—it was a joke!!!" Lelouch covered his face in his hands, hiding his face distorted with despair, hopelessness.
Suzaku sunk to the floor, numb. "A joke?" He felt his body convulse in a laugh, then a heave and he was vomiting on the floor but nothing came out, and he was dry heaving, as Lelouch just stood by, too ashamed to come to his aide. "A joke," he rasped, stomach still enflamed with spasms.
He looked up at the figure of Lelouch, hands woven tightly through his hair, part of his silken robes ripped in grief—
The sound of a machine gun continually firing cut through the air. Blood on her innocence, staining her dress, pooling at her feet. Eyes rimmed red with the Geass and tears welling up from some place, banished, in her soul.
--and Suzaku felt his heartbeat go erratic. He forced down another spasm, biting his lip as something else fought its way to the surface. There was wetness on his cheeks and Lelouch looked hideous in his torn robes, they had looked so good on him before, but now they were ruined and so was Suzaku's raison d'etra.
"Lelouch, you always told the worst jokes."
X X X
"Did you love her?"
He knelt in front of Suzaku, having prostrated himself once more at the feet of his friend, silently begging for forgiveness. Suzaku was unsure as to whether he'd given it or not in their long silence.
Suzaku looked up from his position on the floor, where he still sat haphazardly in his grief.
"I asked if you loved Euphie," Lelouch repeated, coldness creeping back into his voice. Suzaku frowned and Lelouch softened his tone, letting the broken mask shatter again.
Suzaku paused, letting his gaze wander into Lelouch's red-rimmed eyes, one from Geass, the other from true emotion, at which the corners of his mouth attempted to curl into a sadistic smile, but he forced his hatred down now that he knew his truth. "Did you?" he countered, not willing to answer quite yet. For did he? Did he love Euphemia?
"Euphie was perhaps the first woman I ever loved," Lelouch conceded, willing to give Suzaku time to contemplate his answer.
"Have you loved since?"
"Never a woman in the same way."
"How sad…"
"I never said I hadn't loved at all since then."
Suzaku blushed, surprised and a little embarrassed at what Lelouch was hinting, and he was hinting that, right? Or was he just distorting things, maybe Lelouch was conflicted about Nunnally, or maybe Lelouch really was implying that and Suzaku just picked up on it because… Because he didn't know why he noticed it but he did. If Lelouch was even implying that in the first place.
Lelouch crossed his arms, "Now answer me Suzaku."
"Very well, Lelouch," Suzaku closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, and opened them, "Yes." Lelouch merely nodded, looking into his emerald eyes with his red-rimmed purple ones—
"Princess, we really shouldn't…" Suzaku protested, face flushed with embarrassment and a desire he wouldn't acknowledge.
"But Suzaku this is what I want!" she argued back, looking all the more beautiful and fragile in her frustration. "I command you—!"
"To have sex with you?!" he interrupted, coming to his senses once again. "Princess, think of your honor: I'm an Eleven, your Knight, we're not married!"
She looked down. "Do you cling to such traditions in a way that they impair your heart?" She leaned in and kissed him and Suzaku found that any resolve he had to save her innocence was gone. "Suzaku, please make love to me," she whispered in his ear as his hand crept around her waist, his thumb rubbing her hip through the silk of her dress…
--"I loved her," Suzaku affirmed—
"Suzaku!" She cried out, arching off the bed, her hair fanned out behind her against the twisted sheets…
--Lelouch grabbed the front of Suzaku's robe, pulling him to his feet and in one swift movement—
"Euphie!!"
--He leaned in and captured his lips in a fierce kiss, pushing his tongue in Suzaku's mouth and plundering its depths—he was her Knight, they were intimate, he's my best friend--Suzaku struggled, hands trying to push Lelouch away—he's my best friend, he was her sister, he loved her intimately—but melted when he felt a hand creep around his waist, a thumb rubbing his hip through the silk of his robe…
X X X
"I love you," Lelouch whispered in his ear, causing Suzaku to shiver against the fingers that traced paths on his body, vaguely thinking that Lelouch looked much better without any of his clothing than he had when he was bathed in that shredded silk.
Suzaku bit his lip. "Don't tease me like this," he pleaded, hips bucking up into the air.
Lelouch smirked at the sight of his friend writhing beneath him, at his hands, at his mercy. "But it's the truth," his lips curved up in a genuine smile, his hands very lightly brushing Suzaku's nipples, marveling at how they hardened at his touch.
"How do I know you're not lying again?"
"Does it feel like I'm lying?"
Silence for a minute, broken only by soft gasps as Lelouch continued his ministrations. "…No."
"Then kiss me."
"But you're on--" Suzaku let out a sigh of defeat, surging upward to claim his friend's mouth, exploring its depths with his tongue this time vaguely wondering if he was "good" at kissing, having had so little experience, no, so little time to experience.
"I love you, too," he whispered back, arms reaching up to embrace Lelouch.
Lelouch let out a low moan from the back of his throat, and with that his hand darted down to between Suzaku's legs, which shamelessly spread apart to give him entrance. He flushed, eyes wide when he realized what would happen now, "Be gentle! It's my first… down there!" he added, correcting himself since they both knew he wasn't a virgin anymore just as they both knew Lelouch was still a virgin. Suzaku vaguely wondered if he had waited or if it was just that every opportunity had been stripped of him before now.
Suzaku winced when he felt a finger begin to probe inside him in that private place, feeling a mixture of discomfort, relief, love, and violation.
"I wouldn't hurt you," he soothed him with a thumb rubbing his hip.
"Liar!" Suzaku let out a cry of discomfort at the second finger.
"Not intentionally," Lelouch said over another cry at the third finger, subsequent splay, and retraction followed by intense heat…
They both knew that was a lie: after all, he had pulled the trigger.
X X X
Lelouch laughed lightly, hollow, his body curved around Suzaku. "We would make an interesting love triangle."
Suzaku lay silent beside him, unnerved by the feeling of Lelouch, sticky and sweaty, against his back, body pressed against his. "...Triangles with only two sides don't exist," he replied, and the two were suddenly aware of the heaviness of sadness hanging in the air, pressing at their hearts, with an underlying happiness that seemed out of place.
"Ah, but if the two lines are curvilinear," Lelouch countered, "They make a circle."
Suzaku only smiled, bittersweet, "That they do."