INKed

by Sei-chan-1999

Kamui gets a tattoo. Subaru attempts to understand why.

TITLE: Inked

BY: Sei-chan-1999/Darkest Symphony

SUMMARY: Kamui gets a tattoo. Subaru attempts to figure out why.

RATING: M, for some adult themes, violence and sexuality.

WARNING: SubKam pairing. Some descriptions of abuse, sexuality and injury. A mixture of angst and fluff.

DISCLAIMER: All right to CLAMP

Inked

His dreams are terrible because he doesn't know that they are.

They seize him from normalcy and gently walk him down the path to the edge of insanity, so slowly and softly that he doesn't realize how the world around him falls out of order and darkens, as the familiar faces beside him vanish one by one, but always, always, before he can react, he's slated for torture murder and even then, it's not a nightmare; just an experience. Another everyday challenge he fails yet again.

And he doesn't scream.

He wakes up with a gasp that's blocked with congestion and then breaks out coughing as he chokes, but reality is a tangled mess of men and women who have held him down in different ways and with the one sliver of breath he's given, he raises his voice and screams the name of the first person he thinks of in the dark.

XXX

It's a few days later that Subaru finds one of Kamui's t-shirts wadded up and tossed underneath the bed. He's not particularly neat by any standard, but it strikes Subaru as a slightly unnatural thing for the boy to do when living in someone else's house.

That's why he takes the effort to get on his knees and actually go after it. When he tries to force the crushed fabric out from its impossibly tiny niche, he realizes that it's been done intentionally.

As soon as he lets it flutter to the bed, he understands why.

XXX

One evening, he asks Subaru to hold him down.

"I know," Subaru says and Kamui knows that the other man has noted the surprise flitting over his face. Barely seconds later he feels humiliation; red like blood that makes him warm and unable to look up.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Subaru adds, seeing that as well, "Don't. It's all right."

To want to be abused by one of the few people who treat you with kindness?

Only Subaru would ever accept that as normal.

"…Will you?"

Kamui's question is barely audible (but the thought of what's being suggested does send a dark shiver of curious anticipation through him) and he nods.

"I want to take it all," Kamui continues when no answer is forthcoming, "Your full strength."

That, then, makes Subaru stop.

"One condition," he says and his voice is almost steady, "You will tell me when you want me to stop."

"I won't want to-"

"You will tell me."

That rare edge of authority makes Kamui look up in surprise and there's no half smile or silent amusement in Subaru's expression this time.

"Understood," he says, with a hint of steel in his own.

XXX

He's waiting with a book he hasn't read for the last half hour when Kamui returns home from school.

Subaru gives the teenager a moment to catch his breath, shut the door, drop his bag and then announce himself before he stands up.

"Can we talk?" He asks. It's a quiet request, but he's positioned himself in such a way that there's no other option to be pursued. Kamui notices and it seems to stop him, but he concedes with a nod and he's still half-smiling.

"What is it?"

Subaru holds it out to him; the crushed, off-white shirt he found two days ago, ruined by splotches of brown.

"Who did this to you?"

Kamui stares at his own blood on the cloth, head slightly bowed, but expressionless, all former traces of amusement gone.

"I'm sorry," he says finally.

"I asked you a different question."

"I know."

"Kamui."

"I did it," Kamui says in a rush, "Nobody hurt me. I did it…"

"You injured yourself on purpose?"

Subaru tries to suppress disbelief, shock and anger but it shows in his voice before he remembers that he doesn't have a right to condemn someone for such a sin.

"No! I-"

Kamui falls silent as well and shakes his head, as if unable to find the words.

"You should see for yourself," he says at last and steps forward so there's no longer a cautious distance between them, "I'm sorry."

Subaru hesitates, but he hands Kamui the tattered piece of fabric and then forces himself to undo the first few buttons of the teenager's shirt, dreading what he's going to see. He tugs it aside to expose skin.

"You-"

He can't speak.

There's the scar of course, the one that never fully faded after that night Kamui was half crucified to a stone wall and a drain pipe was driven through his shoulder.

But it's changed.

There are two clean black strips running through it from opposite directions, nearly obliterating the once indelible mark.

"A tattoo," Subaru realizes in disbelief and unthinkingly touches the edge of one bar but Kamui hisses and shoves his hand away, "Kamui, it's fully infected!"

And so it is. The skin around the almost branded mark is reddened, swollen and the punctures are still oozing.

"That guy was an asshole," Kamui mutters, "He said it would heal in three days."

"When did this happen?"

"It didn't happen. I did it."

"When?' Subaru repeats.

The boy squints upwards as he thinks.

"Probably….last week?"

"You're going to the doctor," Subaru decides but Kamui pulls away.

"You can't!"

Subaru easily grabs him before he can slip out again but where he would've once coaxed and then dragged the stubborn child to Shinjuku General's emergency room, to hell with the consequences, plain logic now forces him to take a hard look at their situation and admit that Kamui is right. All they needs now is a self-righteous nurse and there's a very good chance that the whole issue could become a child abuse case.

He lets go of the boy and sighs heavily.

"New?" He asks.

Kamui looks blank and he hastens to clarify.

"The needles. Were they new? Cleaned?"

Kamui nods fervently.

"I don't think it'd kill me otherwise either," he mutters and Subaru ignores that comment.

"Nonetheless," he says at last, "I want you to have it checked-"

"You just said you weren't going to."

"I can arrange for a private visit here," Subaru continues, "Will you agree to that?"

"As long as the quack doesn't freak out," the teenager shrugs, "It's fine. I'm sorry."

"He's with my family," Subaru explains, turning away, "I'll phone him now."

"Meaning he's seen worse?" Kamui asks then and that halts his step.

Of course.

Far worse.

But there's a more insistent question pulling at him now.

"Kamui," he says, feeling completely defeated by the world and everything in it.

The teenager waits.

"Why?"

He expects a flippant reply or contempt but Kamui just looks a little unhappy.

"You won't understand," he says and drops the bloodied shirt to the floor before leaving the room.

XXX

His full strength.

It's terrifying, just short of full blown violence, and Kamui wonders, hopes, that Subaru is enjoying this; the rare chance to be selfish, to exert his full force and subdue something that fights him until he's taken his full pleasure of it.

And Kamui fights and struggles against him for all he's worth.

To his own shock, he's overpowered far more quickly than he expected and he finds himself forced to the floor at an awkward angle, hips forced upwards and Subaru's arms restraining him without mercy as he prepares to end it. And that's when Kamui realizes that he made an unforgivable mistake; that he underestimated the other and overestimated himself, that he's not ready and that he cannot go through with this.

That he will die if he's made to.

"No," Kamui pleads, as he feels Subaru preparing to take him like that, "No. Stop it! Let me go!"

And against his own expectations...Subaru does just that.

XXX

Kamui keeps a diary these days.

On review, that word seems somehow inappropriate and Subaru struggles to name the bound and battered book that the teenager seems to always be scribbling into, holding it against himself in an awkward position and working on its pages with whatever writing instrument happens to be lying in the vicinity. A day book? Journal? Note pad?

He's not particularly careful about hiding or concealing it when he's at school. Subaru has seen the abused note thrown over his desk with the creased pages splayed but Kamui keeps it discreet when he's filling it up and against his own instincts, there's an urge to open it up, flip through his pages and see exactly what's been coughed up from the boy's heart.

He doesn't touch it.

XXX

An hour later, he's still sprawled on top of Subaru, not feeling as awful as he did before, but not quite ready to stand up and face him yet.

"All right?" Subaru asks, running his fingers through his moist hair.

Kamui wants nothing more than to apologize at that moment; for being a-

But he doesn't even want to think of the slur meant for people like him who do such despicable things to the ones they claim to love, but he knows Subaru won't like it and would vehemently disagree, so he remains silent.

"I didn't mean to," Kamui whispers instead and Subaru is silent, "But if you want-"

"I'm glad," he cuts in, "I didn't really enjoy it either."

"What?"

Kamui raises himself on his elbow to look down at the older man and Subaru shakes his head with a frown.

"Causing pain to another person isn't something that gives me pleasure," he says quietly, "Kamui, the two don't always have to happen together."

He pauses.

"I might not be the best person to teach you that, but...you'll learn."

XXX

Subaru opens the book.

He's holding his breath despite himself, half waiting for the owner to come bursting in as if alerted and just as he does, he remembers too late that it could be spelled to throw him half across Tokyo if Kamui had actually decided to be vigilant.

There's nothing.

Not even the faintest whisper of magic arounds the pages and that does surprise him. Trusting as Subaru was during his teenaged years, even he resorted to the most basic of guards to protect his work.

He flips Kamui's diary, so to speak, to the end and lets the creamy pages flutter back until words begin to appear.

He stops at somewhere midway to stare at a two-page spread where almost every inch of white space has been filled up with the same messy word written over and over, easily over several hundred times, with a bleeding marker.

'Sorry'.

He runs his fingers over the words; the pen has been pressed to the paper so hard that he can feel the little depressions in the smudgy black strokes.

Feeling a little numb, he flips back another five or six empty page and stops short again.

A sketch.

It's a barely discernible pen and ink doodle; the sort that gets clearer the further away from himself he holds it and as Subaru does that, he's staring at himself. And Kamui.

They're seated at opposite benches on a badly proportioned table and he can make out his own basic details; taller, dressed in white and with spiky hair, (cigarette abandoned in a tray to the side) pointing out something in a book to the smaller stick figure with no eyes or nose, but with a distressed frown, drawn with more disheveled hair. Subaru is nearly faceless as well in the picture, but where he expects his mouth to be a stern line, it's curled up at one edge, ever so slightly.

It takes him a long time to move away from that picture but he finally does.

The next find forces him to swear out loud in the empty apartment. His fingers come away black and sticky and he realizes that Kamui has used a stick of charcoal from god-knows where and completely blacked out about a dozen or so consecutive pages, filling every papery pore with so much dark powder that it's soggy and in danger of falling apart in his hands. Gritting his teeth and making sure not to dirty himself any further, Subaru skips back again.

The last page just has the tattoo, the source of their latest fight, drafted out at least a dozen or so times until it looks almost calligraphic in its neatness. No doubt, Kamui's model for the real thing. He imagines the boy secretly locating someone unscrupulous enough to scar a minor, holding up the mark he'd created in the book, undressing and lying back on the chair and waiting for a complete stranger to lean over him and pierce away the reminders of his old life and overwrite all those terrible memories.

Enduring the pain of his creation with that tightened expression and the suppressed little sounds Subaru now knows too well.

X

Almost like an exorcism.

And that's when he understands why.

Subaru decides that he's seen enough. Replacing the diary, he steps into the bathroom to wash his hands and struggles to calm the infinite whirling and panicked thoughts in his mind.

XXX

That night, Kamui crawls into bed, rolls onto his side so his back is to Subaru and falls asleep in a matter of minutes.

Before his getting inked, their routine had been drastically different.

Not happy. But in a way, better.

Kamui would relax against him, barely awake, defences down, and full of sleepy smiles and smirks while telling him about school or homework or a funny story about a classmate and in turn, Subaru would share something about his day or a light memory and they'd exchange like that, until Kamui usually dropped off.

Ever since the doctor had come and gone four days before, they hadn't spoken a word to each other and the atmosphere was becoming familiarly depressing for Subaru.

He sighs loudly tonight, stares at the rise and fall of the teenager's side and calls him by name, his voice quiet but firm.

Kamui stirs awake and rolls onto his back, trying to find his bearings and scowling at the light.

"What?"

Before he can say anything else, Subaru leans over and hugs him harder than he's ever done before.

He never used to enjoy hugs himself, instead preferring the gentle holds and light caresses of the people around him. However, through experience he's learned that Kamui isn't like him here. Kamui needs pressure and sensation, needs a grip that borders on the violent and strength that's powerful enough to drag him back to the present from wherever he's caught.

For a moment, Subaru is sure that he's wrong and that he's going to be pushed off, but after a second or two where Kamui is just soft and confused and unresponsive in his arms, trying to process what's happening, he reacts and returns the embrace with almost crushing force.

Subaru moves back to lie down but Kamui refuses to let go and keeps his arms wrapped around his neck. He ends up on top of Subaru, their faces barely a few inches apart and sharing the same breath but with the younger boy gradually waking up more and more. The tattoo mark has been bandaged with an antiseptic soaked plaster that's been taped down and with Kamui's shirt hanging a little, Subaru can see the edge of one piece peeling off.

"I thought you were angry at me," Kamui whispers at last, raising his head.

"I am," Subaru replies and teases the curve of Kamui's spine with his fingers. The act has the intended effect as the teenager presses closer to him until he can feel that heart racing out of control. Or perhaps it's his own.

"But I think I understand now," Subaru confesses.

"Really?"

"Yes," he says, "I wish you hadn't done it this way, but I accept that it was what you needed to do. And more than that, I understand why."

"And why is that?"

He's not letting him get away that easily.

"You're refusing to stand still," Subaru says and touches the bandage to test the tenderness of the skin below. To his credit, Kamui doesn't grimace as much anymore, "You keep everything you've ever felt for the people you loved and give it all to the next person you come to love. You don't inhibit yourself along the way. And you don't want to look back at that year and lose sight of what's happening right now."

He hesitates but continues.

"I wish I could learn that from you."

Kamui shakes his head, he's not sure for what reason, but it's too late to get into that now.

They kiss and it's just stronger than usual, filled with the tension of the last few emotionally charged days. But as soon as it ends, Kamui shifts his weight against Subaru's abdomen in a way that's too suggestive to be an accident and leans down again, this time for a deeper exploration-

"No," Subaru counters, catching him, "Not until you're completely healed."

The teenager's expression is indignant but embarrassed.

"I'm fine!"

"This time, I'll decide that," Subaru corrects and then frowns at him, "You remember I'm still angry, right?"

Kamui huffs but he rolls off and stares, unabashed, until Subaru starts feeling a little indignant himself.

"What is it?"

"I'll stay to watch that," is Kamui's final reply.

XXX

His dreams are terrible because he doesn't know that they are.

They seize him from normalcy and gently walk him down the path to the edge of insanity, so slowly and gently that he doesn't realize how the world around him falls out of order and darkens, as the familiar faces beside him vanish one by one, but always, always, before he can react, he's slated for torture murder and even then, it's not a nightmare; just an experience. Another everyday challenge he fails yet again.

And he doesn't scream.

He wakes up with a gasp that's blocked with congestion and then breaks out coughing as he chokes, but reality is a tangled mess of men and women who have held him down in different ways and with the one sliver of breath he's given, he raises his voice and screams the name of the first person he sees in the dark.

Despite all the power he has, he still can't save himself.

"Kamui!"

The teenager shields his face and squints up at the older man leaning over him, feeling his stomach drop in fear at what he might've said or done in a state of half consciousness. He's screwed up before, disconnected sounds escaping at the worst of moments because the body longs for what it felt first, doesn't distinguish between pain and pleasure, good and evil the way the mind does and when Kamui is still caught up in the aftermath of dreams or the aftershock of intercourse, his mind shuts down and his body takes over.

Some things just can't be unlearned.

Now, there's a slightly cold hand against the side of his face to steady him, while another rests on his shoulder.

"You called me," Subaru explains before he can start and Kamui notices that there's a sort of stunned surprise in his eyes, "That's why I came."

Kamui sits up in a mess of sheets and Subaru releases him.

He remains silent, but looks around the room, taking in the familiar details and grounding himself once more. The harsh afternoon light hasn't quiet become the serene evening glow yet, but the almost unnoticeable transition is taking place. The air-conditioner whirs, the curtains flutter ever so slightly and Subaru is still breathing a little faster than usual.

His latest injury stings as he flexes his hand experimentally. The older man watches him do it, but then reaches forward and shifts the collar of his shirt to see it for himself.

"It's better now," he admits and Kamui nods in agreement. Subaru slides his fingers down his shoulder and arm as he pulls away, their fingers briefly intertwining before the contact is broken.

"Go back to sleep," he says as he stands up, "I'll get you some water."

"I don't want to sleep again," Kamui mutters as he slides back against the pillows, "Damn all of this."

Subaru is looking down at him, but it feels as if everything is flipped and Kamui has the sudden sensation of being somewhere very high and away from the rest of the world, while Subaru is the one who waits below and gazes upwards.

It must be the sickness. It has to be.

Subaru seems to sense his unease and he shakes his head.

"You'll be fine," he says quietly, "Don't worry."

A light touch and then he switches off the light and leaves the room, to presumably return with the water, but as is usually the case with Subaru, Kamui is never sure if he will.

Either way, it doesn't torment him anymore.

Ignoring the fading pain in his chest, he decides not to wait, but just hopes that he'll be woken up soon.

End.

XXX

Author's Note:

So, my first fanfic for this site that I'm writing from my student apartment in Tokyo. The city is amazing, I'm in love with it, the lights, the buildings, the culture, knowledge, nature and the people, though I could live without the very stressful quakes that are doing wonders for my usually low blood pressure.

Anyway, that aside, I hope things are more authentic now. Also, I have to credit my awesome senpai who suggested the term 'share breath' as opposed to my use of the vulgar urban term 'making out'. Except, at the time, we were talking about a straight couple I was writing for in some original fiction. Oh, well. In my humble opinion, the phrase felt more beautiful here.

Please do read, review and feel free to chat! ;D I'm back and ready to ship these two harder than ever!