Title: Should This Be the End, I am Ready
Pairing/Characters: Yukimura/Sanada, Yukimura/Sanada/Yanagi, implied Yukimura/Yanagi
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, second person
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis belongs to Konomi.
Summary: Yukimura is looking for someone, and Sanada is looking for Yukimura. Post-apocalyptic setting.
Notes: Written for vacivity for the first round of rikkai_exchange. Thanks to Di for reading this over for me. :)

You wake up with him curled around you, hand covering your mouth and the cold metal barrel of a gun against your temple. You stay absolutely still, and you feel him smile against your neck.

"Why are you here?" he asks, and he removes his hand. His body is warm against yours.

"It was a safe place for the night," you tell him.

Silence, and then he withdraws the gun and moves away from you. "Come here. I want to see you."

You move toward the feeble rays of the moon, toward where you know he is, and you resolutely look straight ahead. You can feel his presence, the very strength of his being, and you wonder which leader you are having the fortune of meeting. You've heard of them during your travel, and all of them have their own unique traits.

"Look at me," he says, and although the voice is willow soft, you can hear the utter strength behind it. You do.

He is. You had heard descriptions, but you have never expected them to be accurate. Dark blue hair that curls to his sharp edge of a chin, hawk-keen eyes, a smile full of secrets, and you watch Yukimura Seiichi appraise you. His expression is inscrutable.

"I want you to join us," he finally says, and you are not surprised. You feel the draw of his power, the anticipation of strength by your side, and. Something about him calls to you, a faint stirring of a memory, and you feel like you should resist, but. You can't.

You know you should be afraid of that, and it scares you that you aren't.

Nothing you have heard of them is wrong. All the members of this band complement each other perfectly, a sort of teamwork you did not ever expect to see. A swindler and a gentleman who can switch at will, a man with an impregnable defense, a genius, a demon child, and him.

Yukimura draws you, draws everyone, like he is the ground. You do nothing to stop the fall, and you learn quickly that he only has one order: do not lose. No one does.

Traveling with them is nothing like the aimless wandering you did for years. You can feel the purpose lurking underneath everyone's skin, something different for each member. In this world, everyone is looking for something.

You are looking for Yukimura because the man in front of you is completely opaque. You know when you see him smile, the shadows lurking in the corners of his lips, the walls behind his eyes, and you want to know. You want to know why he draws people like light.

You don't know what you are expecting or why you want this. You just know that for the first time in a long time, you have a purpose again.

You left with your father in the morning. When you came back, nothing remained except for the ashes on the charred, black earth and the lazy wafts of smoke still spiraling up into the grey sky. You woke up alone the next day.

You took your guns from a dead man during your wandering. Yukimura examined them when you agreed to join him, and he had looked at you with calculation as soon as he ran his hands over them. He did not say anything.

He grabs one from you once, when his own runs out of bullets, and you watch him shoot two mercenaries, both in the exact center of their chests. He wields your guns with the familiarity of a lover, and it surprises you because the ones he uses are nothing like yours.

It is not your place to ask, so you do not. But you touch your guns, sometimes, and wonder what secrets they hold. You can still see the curve of Yukimura's finger over the trigger, his outstretched arm as he fires, the tiny recoil in his shoulder after, and you know there is something important behind this.

Right before you kill him, one of Tezuka's underlings says, "He is looking for someone." You do not hesitate because no mercy awaits those who do. When he is lying at your feet, though, you let yourself ponder his words.

It is almost too hard to believe, that Yukimura is who he is now because he is searching for someone. He is...too strong for that. He moves with the fluidity of a cobra, kills with the precision of a scorpion, and yet is elegant like what birds must have been like. He lives like he was born for the utter starkness and lawlessness of this world.

But you have seen the way Yukimura's eyes search, the longing taut in the lines of his body, the way his movements yearn for someone beside him. He is waiting, wanting, and you want to know, the person for whom a man like Yukimura would search the world.

A world like this, with no hope, no goal, no ending, and Yukimura is still willing to traverse it in the hopes of finding someone. This is a sort of devotion you had not even realized still exists, a sort of intensity that you were told had been lost when the old world ended, and it stirs feelings deep inside you that you do not know how to name.

You just want, want to know whom Yukimura seeks, want to know Yukimura himself, want to know what it feels like to yearn for someone so much you would search the world for him. You look at Yukimura and feel emotions rising up in you in what you imagine must be a tide, an overflow of things you were told people no longer had the luxury to feel, and you. You are just waiting.

The night watch schedule works on a rotation. Yukimura likes to move into position early, so when his watch is after yours, he often ends up sitting with you during the last dregs of your shift. He does not talk much, but he sits next to you, the warmth of his body fusing with yours, eyes unfocused, body unusually lax, and when he is like this, you feel like you really know him.

Maybe you do, in some way. His strength calls to you, and if this were another world, another life, you know you would match yourself against him, heed the pull of his power and lose yourself in the clash of wills. But there is no place for that here, and so you just feel the desire coiling within you, bound by the walls of your rib cage.

You become his second-in-command without realization until he turns to you one day, eyes dark, and you understand what he wants you to do. The rest of the band falls in line behind you, and you know, then, who you are.

You, just, somehow you know this side of him like you know your own body. Do not lose. is a part of your own very being, and you move with it thrumming against your skin, in your flesh, like a part of Yukimura is deep inside you.

You are sure no one else in the band feels this. He, just, you feel his pull more strongly than anyone else does, and the connection with him is deep within you, some place you can't reach, but you know it is there when he looks at you and the heat of his gaze makes your back crawl, when you understand what he wants you to do without words.

You think he must feel it, too, even if only unconsciously, or he would not turn to you, place so much in you, the man he has known for the shortest. When he turns to you at the end of another fight, another win, and nods, you suddenly think, I've spent my whole life waiting for this, and it's true.

When your shift ends, he stands with you. You do not expect it, and he wedges a thigh between your legs, presses a hand to your mouth (just like that first time, you think), and then, his other hand is undoing your trousers, slipping in, and you bite down hard on your lips.

This is something you rarely do, that you rarely have the luxury of doing, and it's a lot different with him (as it should be). His fingers are callused but gentle, and even though he touches you like he knows you already, his hand still moves differently compared to yours. A little twist when you don't expect it; a sudden painfully, torturously slow stroke; a rhythm all his own, full of confidence and knowledge and intent, and it is all you can do to push down any sounds welling up your throat.

He does not watch you but, instead, the surroundings, body alert and ready, as if he were not doing something so intimate, so private, but you know he feels it when you are almost there in the way his hand strokes you so quickly that it's a continuous presence everywhere on your skin, and his smile is sharp when you come. He turns away before you can gather yourself, though, and says, words distant, "You should get some sleep, Sanada."

You can only stare at the faint outline of his back as he walks away, your body still burning, hands wanting nothing more than to touch him. You feel even more restless now, the tension in your body curling ever tighter, and you. You did not even know you wanted this until now, but now that you know, you cannot stop. The desire inside you, it's always been twofold, and you just close your eyes because.

You never asked for this.

You dream of blue skies now that Yukimura has touched you.

It is bright there. When you look up, the sky is clear and a faint beautiful blue (the first time you've ever seen anything like it), and there's a bright bright circle up there, full of light. The sun, and you are drawn to it like you are to Yukimura.

When you see Yukimura standing across from you, you find him just as beautiful and deadly. His smile is just as sharp, the lines of his body just as bold, his movements just as perfectly graceful. The planes of Yukimura's body are caressed in rays of light, and when he turns that sun-blessed smile to you, you know you cannot win.

He leads you inside (you can still see the sun through the window, feel the residual warmth on your skin), pushes you against a row of metal boxes, and kisses you fiercely, and you can feel him hard against you, the way you cannot when you are awake. Here, he smiles at you like he needs you, and you close your eyes and let him take you.

When you wake up again and look at Yukimura, harsh against the grey sky, you think this world stole his heart. There, he is nothing short of brilliant, a star fallen onto earth. In this world, without a sun, he cannot shine, and he just lives, gritty and grey. He is looking for someone, looking for something that matters, and you cannot help him.

That bothers you, and you do not know why.

Yukimura does not stop touching you once he starts. He does it scarcely enough that it always surprises you a little, a long slow maddening release at the end of your watch, a quick session when another area is cleared, but he very rarely lets you touch him.

His face is divine when he comes.

You want to know whether, when you touch him, he feels the same things you do when he touches you. You can't tell because he only loses control in those tiny moments when he's lost in your hand, nothing like you, and you, you do not want this to be nothing. But you only know he is searching, still, always searching, and you are restless with him.

You watch the hollow of his throat when he touches you, his eyes restlessly scanning for danger, and you ache to just close your eyes, ache to put your mouth on his skin and feel the power thrumming in his blood. But there is no safe place for the two of you, not when what you are doing can threaten everything, when nobody can ever know, and you can have only what little you can get.

The turmoil inside you calms, though, when you are with him, until you are left with just a sense of waiting, and the longing in his body is less bold, less stark, these days. He almost looks content sometimes, as content as anyone can be in this kind of a world, but you know, both of you are still waiting.

You just don't know for what, not when Yukimura is finally in your reach, as open as any man can be here.

Nearly every night now, you dream of that other world.

In your dreams, you lose to Yukimura everytime. You play a game with him, a game with a fuzzy green ball that you hit back and forth, and even though you clearly feel the strength within you, he is simply just better.

His laughter is beautiful in the sun, and you close your eyes and raise your face to the sky, basking in the warmth. Nothing you had ever heard about the sun, the blue sky, can compare to actually experiencing it, even if they are only in your dreams, and you wish for this world to be yours.

Yukimura lets you touch him here, fingers tangled in his hair, mouth fervent on his skin, and he has no inhibitions. He closes his eyes, leans his head back, whispers I love you when he comes, and you feel a strange feeling in your chest that you do not understand, haunting and desperate and longing. It makes you just want to rest your head on his chest, feel the rise and fall of his breathing, hear the beating of his heart, just stay like this for the rest of your life.

You have never heard those words together before in your life, not from anyone. But here, you just breathe it into his skin in return, I love you I love you I love you. He smiles, sated and soft, and this simple little thing hits you so hard you just want him never to stop, want this never to stop.

It's becoming harder and harder for you to wake up, to look at Yukimura and see him closed to you.

"If I were born centuries earlier, I would have been the son of a king," Yukimura says contemptuously to the dead body. "There are no princes here, just the living and the dead."

"Would you really have?" you ask him later, when the two of you are sitting together before his shift. He just looks at you.

"That's what my mother told me," and he shrugs. "Does it matter?"

It does, but not in the way he thinks. Yukimura doesn't necessarily talk more now, but he says more. He is still completely closed in the day, when he is leading and fighting and surviving, but when it's just the two of you, he is much more open than he has ever been. You know he will never be open the way he is in your dreams, and you do not want that in this world. You are happy with what you are given.

You feel an openness yourself when you are with him, something beyond the mere calm he has given you, and sometimes, you want to just touch his hand or place your palm on his back or something equally small yet meaningful, but that is not for here.

One of your guns is knocked out of your hand one day, and he throws you one of his, then bends down to retrieve yours. You know Yukimura knows about the man scrabbling near him for his gun, know he knows when the man grabs it, but he does not turn even then. You shoot that man twice, and you know, as soon as he falls limp, that Yukimura trusts you enough to do this, and this means more to you than he can ever know.

You don't care that both of you are still waiting. What you have, here, is enough.

You start dreaming of a younger Yukimura, one still growing into his skin, body still waiting to reach full potential. He is vibrant even then, focused and determined and almost too strong for his age, and you run with him, reaching for the top.

You do not expect him to suddenly collapse one solemn winter day, his body folding together like a mess of sticks and bones, and you are more afraid than you have ever been in your life. You wake up and want nothing more than to reach for him, to make sure he is still solid underneath your fingers, and the very force of your fear is something you cannot control, something that scares you.

He eventually recovers, this dream Yukimura. This does not surprise you, but the fear that it may happen again lurks in the back of your mind, something you cannot erase. It bleeds into your conscious mind, and sometimes, you touch just a little too long or hold a little too tightly. Yukimura just glances at you then, (you can see the concern faint in his eyes), but he never says anything. (You think he trusts you enough to wait for you to tell him.)

But in your dreams, Yukimura is still beautiful, pliant, open, and the other world still enthralls you, the sky and sun and buildings and institutions and order. You can lie on a thing called a bed, and you can touch Yukimura almost as much as you want, a brush of hands, a circle around his wrist, a palm against his back.

And then, one day, you close your eyes, and there is another boy. Pure elegance in his very body, a sophistication complementing Yukimura's dangerous grace, and he smiles at you like he knows you.

You feel his strength as well, and the anticipation of matching him rises sharply. When you do play him, you find he is almost as strong as you, his strength utterly elegant in execution, and he pulls you toward him as well. And when you watch Yukimura play him, watch the lines of their hands merge when they shake, you know things are changing.

This new boy stays, draws you to him with his strength and elegance and knowledge. You find that he does already know you, knows you sometimes better than you know yourself, and you find that you want to know him, too, that this acquaintance is two-way. And the more he smiles and talks and plays and just stands with the two of you, shoulders touching slightly, the more he edges into your life until you care about him as much as you care about Yukimura, until this seems only natural. He belongs here, in this tangled mess of bonds and connections between you and Yukimura that all lead to the same place, and it doesn't matter that you still don't know his name.

When you finally kiss this boy, it feels like something that has been waiting to happen. His smile is a perfect curve, and when Yukimura comes, takes both of your hands, you feel as if you've found something crucial you didn't even know you lost.

The three of you touch, new hands on familiar bodies, and they are both amazing. Yukimura, head thrown back, utterly lost in the sensations, the other boy intent and focused, movements precise, and you think whatever this love is, you feel it for them both.

When you are awake, you feel this other boy's imprint now, and even though what you have is enough, this thing with Yukimura you cannot even begin to describe, you understand why he is still waiting. You cannot reconcile your own because you do not lack anything, but sometimes, when you look at Yukimura, and you feel the strong burst of what you think is called love tinged with a haunted longing, you do not know what to think.

Yukimura eventually says it. He's leaning against you, your mouth on his neck, your hands around him, that other boy between his thighs, and when he comes, glorious arch of back against your chest, he breathes, Renji, and you instinctively know this is the other boy's name. Renji, you mouth to yourself, and the shape of it melds perfectly against your lips.

And then, one day, he looks at you and Yukimura, reserved, hesitant, almost regretful, hugs you both tightly, and walks away. You look at the long line of his back, the back of a man, and you feel lost.

He does not appear again.

"You will fall to pieces before you die," the kid sneers before Yukimura kills him. Yukimura shrugs, utterly apathetic, and turns away, continuing his scan of the area around him. You watch the curve of his back, the precision of his body, and you remember the way he crumpled in your dreams, a flurry of limbs and bone and skin.

In this world, you will not let him just break apart. You will keep him whole until the very end, until he finds the person he is searching for, until both of you find what you are waiting for. Rules do not matter here, only human will, and between the two of you, you have enough to destroy the remains of a city.

He is walking back toward you when he stops and kneels. You go to him instead, constantly verifying that no danger is imminent. "We should get back," you tell him, although what you want to say is "This isn't safe." or "Thank you for trusting me." or. Or those words that do not exist in this world.

Yukimura does not answer. You look down for a split second, body tense and senses alert, and then you nearly forget everything.

The name Yanagi Renji is written in faded script in the top corner of the book, the paper yellow and curling with age. Yukimura touches the words gingerly. The image of a boy, a man, with chestnut hair and perpetually closed eyes appears in your mind. The last vertex of the triangle, in that world or this.

Yukimura picks the book up, and he is smiling faintly, hopefully when he rises.

You feel like you've finally found home.

07.09.08