KOF fanfiction written by RinoaDestiny

KOF and all characters belong to SNK/SNKP

Author's Note: I was browsing through the KOF fanart on one day when I saw that one particular artist favored a Kyo x Iori pairing. Let's just say that her Kyo was extremely aggressive to the point that it scared Iori shitless. Because I've never seen that reverse pairing before – Iori's usually depicted as seme – it planted a plot bunny in my head. Now, for KOF, I'm not one for BL but I'm gonna experiment and see what that kind of relationship would do to the stoic Yagami (It's already feeling weird for me). Apologies if Kyo feels really OOC - easy enough to write him when he's nice but hard as hell when he's like in that fanart.

An End to It All

Iori Yagami hated violence. Having grown up with it, he didn't need it now as a grown man and he especially didn't need it from Kyo Kusanagi. If there were several things Iori wasn't, he wasn't anyone's bitch, a simpering housewife, or someone who took blows like that lying down. He wasn't in a tournament – he was in his goddamn home. Kyo wrestled against him, trying to break free from his grip.

Iori was glad he had huge hands.

"Fuck you, Yagami!" Kyo lived up to his name – fucking spitfire. "Let me go right now!"

"Not till you explain why you hit me."

"Fuck you!"

"You said that already." Someone obviously forgot to mention that the downside of becoming obsessive with your rival was that it too easy to let him into your bed. Iori always wondered when Kusanagi simply became "Kyo". His old man would combust his ashes in his grave seeing this. Would serve the old bastard right. "You'd had too much to drink and it's the NESTS cartel, isn't it?"

Kyo's brown eyes widened before they narrowed in cold fury. "Don't mention that name."

"It is, isn't it?"

"Damn you, Yagami!"

So he'd been told to fuck off and been damned within several minutes. It was one of those days. Kyo usually was mild – a bit subdued lately after the clones wore his face – but that teenage hot-bloodedness had turned into pure anger and aggression. NESTS cartel had fucked around with Kyo Kusanagi and now Iori was the target time and time again, thanks to the younger man having nowhere else to vent.

The tournaments only occurred once every year after all.

"It's Iori, Kyo." He bit off the "Kusanagi" before he could say it. Last thing he needed was to goad Kyo into fighting him and destroying the apartment. Rent hadn't even been paid yet for this month.

"You're Yagami to me."

That bolt hit direct; Iori didn't blink, thanks only to his control and training. "You want to start up that old feud again?"

"You're hesitating, Yagami?" Kyo could be cruel – Iori wondered if Kyo's precious little girlfriend Yuki knew about that. "You? Didn't you want to kill me? Wasn't that what your daddy taught you?"

Another bolt and this one hurt, opening old wounds. "Don't talk about my old man."

"I'll say as much shit I want."

Thanks to his old man, Iori always hated violence. Tournaments gave him an excuse, a leeway – everyone knew they were going to come away with cuts, bruises, black eyes, and broken bones – but there was no excuse for subjecting a child to that. The child that he was, all of five years old stared back at him. At his grown self, clad in a simple shirt and jeans, holding Kyo back like a rabid animal as the favorite son of the Kusanagi clan strove to destroy him.

Sometimes, Iori wondered who wore the pants in this relationship.

"Why don't you kill me, Yagami?"

"You're fucking drunk, Kyo. Go to sleep."

"Like fuck I will!" It was too easy – simply way too easy – to underestimate Kyo's abilities. Before Iori was aware of it, Kyo's shoulder plowed into him, knocking him backwards onto the couch and then Kyo was above him, fingers twisting into his throat. Strangulation – brutal and simple. Fuck.

He tried to say something and then fought to breathe.

"Come on, Yagami. End this."

You're drunk and I can't breathe and...hell with it. His fist shot out, cracking hard against Kyo's skull like a cleaver halving melons. The other fighter slumped to the side, fingers loosening from his throat and Iori rolled off the couch, the sudden intake of air too painful to comprehend. He was going to have bruises the next day. Bruises and he still didn't understand why the initial punch was thrown.

Damn it to hell.

He got lucky. At least Kyo didn't use his flames.

Violence was a part of life. Human nature, innate and from all the literature Iori liked to read – old Japanese mythology, translated tales of Shakespeare, poetry (a shared interest even if Kyo couldn't write worth a damn) – people backstabbed each other, killed each other, threw each other into traps and had it happen right back at them. Some of the ingenuity was clever but it all led to the same result.

Death and vengeance and it all begot more violence.

It was weird how his mind worked, Iori thought, slotting that one quickly away as orange flames lit the side of the brick alleyway. Funny how he could be thinking about goddamn Shakespeare when Kyo was determined to smash his face in. A quick backwards leap and he lengthened the distance between him and Kyo. A fighter's instinct and a move that had saved his life so many times in the arena.

The only thing missing was his madness.

"Come on, Yagami."

He really had a bone to pick with NESTS. Not only had they fucking destroyed Kyo's life but the Kyo that survived just wasn't the same. Not that anyone else noticed. Not that anyone else cared. For all they knew, this was simply another throwdown between the Yagami and Kusanagi heirs. No one would mourn if Iori Yagami lay dead in the alley, twisted and burnt beyond recognition. But Saisyu Kusanagi would be out for his blood if Kyo Kusanagi was killed – self-defense a moot point – being ignorant of his son's proclivity in sleeping with the enemy.

"Not now, Kyo."

"Yeah. Now." So much for reasoning with the broken. "What, you don't want to kill me, Yagami?"

"No. I don't." Not the way you are now.

When had that happened? He dodged Kyo's incoming fist, blocked the second one striking from below, and backpedaled again to give himself room. Not much in a straight corridor like this and he didn't want to present his back to Kyo. When had the threats simply become taunts? When had he let Kyo go, over and over again, just to fight him another day? When had the battles transitioned into something else?

From what it appeared, it seemed one-sided.

"Stop it, Kyo." He leapt away from the incoming high kick before it broke his face into the pavement. The realization that Kyo wanted him dead or injured was sinking in, driving the nail in deeper with each action and Iori fell into his stance unaware. "I don't want to fight you."

He'd come out for a smoke.

Kyo Kusanagi had launched upon him, quick as a kamikaze attack.

Now this. Fuck fuck fuck.

"Quit lying, Yagami. How long you gonna drag this out?"

For however long it took to knock some sense back into that Japanese ex-schoolboy's head.

His old man had always stressed that beating him would help him learn. To learn to hate. To learn early that man – even his father – would gladly whip the shit out of him if it taught him to fight back against a hated blood enemy. To learn violence from the cradle – violence in his birth killed his mother – and to learn that violence molded his life. Little did his old man realize that too much instigated his hatred for it. It became a habitual instinct but he abhorred it. If he wasn't a Yagami heir, playing in the band and feeding stray kittens on the sidewalk would be just fine.

Instead, he had to deal with the fallout with his cursed blood.

He had to deal with what an apeshit Kyo did.

Not only were his bass strings severed and the case crushed – enough to start a murdering rampage – but Kyo had taken things too far the previous night and now he was paying for it. It still fucking hurt to walk and he'd never known Kyo to overstep his boundaries, to vie for dominance like that. He tried to think about why Kyo would do that – wincing with each step – and determined that Kyo never liked to lose.

Part of his personality.

But Kyo had never sought to take. Not like that.

He knew, with certainty, that this was a side Kyo's girlfriend would never see. He, Iori, was the whipping boy in all this. Whatever darkness Kyo revealed, it would be only for him to witness. One monster in front of another.

He needed the painkillers. He needed them now.

Iori Yagami hated violence. It was why he was leaving, packing away his goods and his prized possessions – his bass guitar with its costly string replacements and new case – away from the apartment he'd lived in for so long. Strategic retreat, a voice in his head mocked but he couldn't deny that it was the truth. For the longest time, Iori told himself that fleeing was a coward's duty; that only someone too chicken and wimped out would do that. But then again, he knew when to assess a threat and Kyo, unfortunately, had become just that.

The Kusanagi were too bright, too hot to grasp and the Yagami were too cursed, too condemned to tolerate. That was fine. But he'd stepped over the line in the first place, seeing in the other young man a kindred spirit of some sort – his old man's voice in his head, mocking him for reading that overly sentimental trash – and he'd went from obsessive rival to secret lover and for what?

To become Kyo's punching bag? To becoming another thing for the man to claim?

It had to stop. It had to stop somewhere and it wasn't going to be Kyo.

It had to be him. Let the Yagami end this.

Kyo could live his life of perfection to the public with that open charm and boy band looks with a girlfriend connected at the hip and friends gathered at his side. He could do that with his old man beaming pride and the Kusanagi clan would think their boy wonderful. Only their primal enemy, the Yagami – the current and possibly last Yagami heir – knew better. Only he knew what darkness scarred Kyo and how those scars had been inflicted onto him, because Kyo didn't know better.

Because how does one fix something that's broken?

How could he – someone also equally broken – fix what used to be right?

He couldn't.

It didn't take long to secure the place, leave the last of his rent in an envelope on the table for his landlord, and depart. He hoped Kyo would understand.

The next time he saw Kyo Kusanagi, it'd be next year's tournament. He'd find him, then, alone and one-on-one, they'd fight to the end.

Perhaps then, he'd grant Kyo's request.

Put an end to it all.