A brief word of warning; this work of fanfiction includes certain things that might prove distasteful or even distressing to some. I will not disclose at this time what those things might be, that would spoil the fun.
This is a warning, please don't be unhappy with me should this work prove… unsettling to you.
SPOILERS FOR WHOLE OF SERIES
Standard Disclaimers Apply
The only light in the room came from outside, filtered by the curtains. The sterile scent of chemical cleaners wasn't quite masked by the hasty application of air fresheners. It felt like a tomb.
Suzaku smiled bitterly at the thought as he stared down at the sheet covered figure. Lelouch looked so damned peaceful lying there - not moving.
Slowly, carefully, fearfully, Suzaku stretched out a trembling hand to touch the still figure. The fact that his flesh was warm and he stirred faintly at the touch didn't change the fact that Suzaku knew he was staring at a corpse.
The doctor had done his work well. The stitches were as neat as the stab wound they sewed. Suzaku could be precise, too.
This time the flesh was cold beneath his hand and Lelouch didn't move at all.
That didn't change a thing.
It was easier to touch him, now that he was dead. His fingers skimmed across bone white skin to brush along the raised stitches.
He'd ordered the crowd not to touch the corpse. They'd wanted to, wanted to burn and dismember it, chop the limbs off, scatter the ashes. Suzaku wouldn't let them.
He'd made a pretty little speech about respecting your enemies. They'd bought it. It wasn't very good, but they'd bought it.
Lelouch could have done it better.
He should say something. But he wouldn't apologize. Lelouch was the one who should be apologizing, but Lelouch wouldn't do anything ever again.
He always had been good at making others do his work for him.
Still, something need be said. Just not an apology.
"I gave you my heart once," he murmured, feeling foolish, hand flat over the stitches. "Now I've ruined yours."
"That's pretty. Trite, but pretty."
He'd been wondering where she'd run off to.
"He would've liked it. He always did have a thing for melodrama."
Suzaku grit his teeth and said nothing.
"You never told him?"
"No, he never knew." He hated the croaky sound of his voice.
CC laughed softly, running cool fingers through Suzaku's hair as she stood behind him. "That's not the same thing at all."
Suzaku tensed for a second as the words and their implication stung.
CC hummed a quiet quarter note behind him. "I suppose an unofficial rejection is better than a spoken one."
"I suppose," Suzaku echoed, wishing she'd leave him or at least take her fingers out of his hair. Their stroking was lulling, soothing. He didn't want to be soothed.
Lelouch had told him he was an emotional masochist once. He hadn't denied it like when Anya had asked if he was a physical one.
"Or maybe he knew this would be easier for you, if you didn't know."
Suzaku started, jerking on his stool to stare at her, jaw slack.
She smiled in a way he found infuriating; he wondered how Lelouch had managed not to try and kill her, immortal as she might be.
"Don't mind me, I'm just musing."
"Why didn't you give him your Code? That was the reason you did all of this, right?"
He was a bit mollified by the look on her face. It didn't last long and her fingers soon resumed stroking. "So he told you that, did he?"
"He talked a lot… at the end. Maybe that was his way of coping with the fear."
"So he told you about Euphy then?"
Suzaku tensed again. "What about her?"
"Oh, I guess he didn't. Never mind, then."
"What about her?" he repeated, not noticing how his hand was clenched in the sheet that covered Lelouch's body from the diaphragm down.
"It was an accident." Her voice was an antagonizing singsong.
Suzaku clenched his teeth and did not ask the question squatting on his tongue, How the hell do you do something like that by accident?
"He was going to join her – rule the Specially Administrated Zone by her side. His original plan had been to use his Geass to make her shoot him in front of everyone – live TV – but he changed his mind."
Suzaku fought to sit still and be silent as he listened.
"After he'd changed his mind, she asked if he really thought he could scare her into shooting her own brother; she figured out who he was, you know. She didn't need to see his face to know." Her words were a taunt.
"Anyway, he said that he could 'be very persuasive', convince people to do anything. Even, say, kill all the Japanese."
Suzaku stared at Lelouch's relaxed face and wished he could manage to feel anything but cold.
"Did you know he loved her?"
Suzaku took a deep breath and forcibly relaxed his hand in the crisp white sheet, wondering why that cold was suddenly so hard to hold on to.
"It's the only time I've seen him cry."
"Get out."
Her laugh was pleasant and tinkling as she departed with a last lingering stroke of her fingers through his hair.
Suzaku remained still for a long time as the rage crystallized.
He decided at last the underlying feeling he'd had since that morning was regret. He should have recognized it sooner; he felt it often enough.
He didn't regret not kissing Lelouch, or not… fucking Lelouch.
He regretted that the only time he'd held him was when Lelouch was dying in his arms with Suzaku's sword through his heart.
He probably could have last night, if he'd tried. Lelouch probably would have given him anything if he'd asked. He would only have held him, if he had dared to lift the sheet and slip into bed beside him. He wouldn't have wanted Lelouch to think it was a sex thing, but it couldn't have hurt to let him know that someone still loved him after everything that had happened, after everything he'd done.
Suzaku didn't bother stating the obvious, like how he wished he could either feel guilty or hate his best friend.
Instead he stroked the edge of Lelouch's jaw with the side of his thumb and kissed him.
As a kiss it sucked. Lelouch was entirely unresponsive.
Suzaku wondered when this whole thing had turned funny.
He ran his hand from the side of Lelouch's neck down across his collarbone then down further beneath the sheet to rest on his jutting hip bone.
Lelouch had always been far too skinny.
It was not the taste of formaldehyde, or the knowledge that human flesh should not be so cold, or that CC could still be there, watching from the sidelines, or even that this was incredibly disrespectful that made him pull away.
It was simply that he'd insisted it wasn't a sex thing when Lelouch was alive and it seemed a bit… silly… to change his mind about that now.
Suzaku pursed his lips in irritation, the irritation he probably should have felt when Lelouch had first told him of his brilliant scheme. He'd been calm then and had stayed in that same brilliant calm until the moment his sword slid so easily into Lelouch's body.
He'd thought it would be harder.
He'd cried then, but he hadn't cried after. There wouldn't have been any point to it. He'd gone from calm to tears to blank until the moment he'd kissed Lelouch's formaldehyde-flavored lips.
He didn't sigh or curse as he blandly smoothed the sheet out and wiped the traces of his spit from Lelouch's lips and then left the room, pausing only to pick up Zero's mask, still marked with Lelouch's bloody handprint.
He wondered if it had been Lelouch's first kiss too.