Disclaimer: I do not own any part of KKM… I wish I did

The carriage

"Why, why, why, WHY did I let them talk me into taking the carriage today?"

Yuri's thoughts were spinning around in circles. Although he had, this morning, agreed with the assessment that it would be foolish to ride since they were in human territory, he hadn't expected THIS to happen. As usual, Wolfram had insisted on riding inside the carriage in order to better protect him if there was an ambush. And, since Conrad had agreed with his little brother, Yuri had to go along with it. The day had progressed in the usual, boring way and Yuri had fallen asleep inside the carriage after a while. That is when it happened. The carriage hit a rut in the road and Yuri fell forward… right onto Wolfram. The impromptu embrace turning the double black's face beet red. Yuri immediately started to get off, mumbling excuses about the state of the road and the suspension of the carriage. To his amazement Wolfram didn't say a word. He merely let him go, silently watching as the double black went back to his seat. His eyes never once meeting Yuri's which confused the young king.

"Something is wrong, I just know it. He's never acted like this before."

Yuri decided to watch his companion more closely for the remainder of the trip when another pothole almost sent him flying again. This time he noticed how Wolfram tensed for a second, bracing himself, before relaxing the instant he noticed Yuri keeping his seat.

It's almost as if he expected me to fall on him again. Maybe I hurt him the first time and didn't even notice. But then he would have shown some expression of pain when we hit that bump. Not to mention when I was sent flying into him.

Slowly bringing order to the chaos within his mind Yuri came to two swift realizations: The first was that he never actually touched Wolfram unless it was either accidental or one of them was injured. And the second was that Wolfram had gone rigid and almost forcibly kept his arms at his sides when Yuri fell on him.

That's it! He doesn't want me to think that he's taking advantage of the situation because he doesn't want me to push him away.

Yuri decided to test that theory, allowing himself to fall the next time the coach lurched. This time grabbing onto Wolfram as if to support himself; he looked up into the blond prince's eyes for just a second and saw warring emotions flickering. The combination of desire, fear, grief and love was quickly suppressed but not before Yuri had seen it. This time when he sat up he pulled Wolfram into a warm embrace and whispered:

"If you wanted to hold me all you had to do was ask."

A/N: While I welcome any suggestions/criticisms/reviews, flames WILL be used for toasting marshmallows. And anything in italics is happening within Yuri's mind. If I get enough reviews I'll post a chapter from Wolfram's POV, if not I'll just hand out cookies to those kind enough to tell me what they thought.