Title: Distraction
Author: Lily
Series: Code Geass
Characters/Pairings: Suzaku/Kallen


Zero. What a word that was.

And perhaps it was just that, then – nothing but a word. Words, of course, were just sounds with meaning tacked onto them to create language. They were then categorized and given rules, and proper usage.

(denial, denial)

The mansion was quiet that morning. So quiet that you could hear every little noise, magnified in the void of darkness to become loud, ear splitting. Kallen's room was covered in a complex labyrinth of shadow and soft light coming in the window, highlighting the edges and faces of some surface while shadow swallowed others completely to create an entirely new landscape. It was early summer, with a drowsy stickiness in the air and an unusual heat that seemed heavy in Suzaku's lungs. He could hear himself inhale, feel his lungs expand with it and then shrink again. His half-lidded eyes stared at the ceiling but he saw something else in his mind, though flitting and moving quickly through the images, but then she'd glance down and hips would tilt up and he'd forget entirely what he'd been thinking.

People might imagine that it was the reverse. Himself on top, Herself beneath, like some overdone cliché; the same dull thump-thump-thump of the bedposts meeting the wall again and again. Maybe that's why she enjoyed the straddling position so much, or maybe she believed that this way, she had a choice. He never pins her down beneath his body - not that she would ever allow that, even if he tried.

He wasn't sure how it had happened from there (like he wasn't sure how he ever got involved with Lelouch, how he'd been pulled back into that world laced with blood).

Suzaku could blame it on her, but Kallen was about as persuasive as a can of shaving foam; even though he was well aware of her acting skills through her double life back at the academy. Kallen often got her way, never mind the methods, but she hadn't forced him to come to her (he'd forced himself). And she… well, he got the feeling that sometimes her head got too full— thoughts disorganized, contradictory, unclear— and maybe sometimes she felt as if her head might just explode; unable to calm itself down. Maybe this was all just a nice little distraction. He didn't care.

Truthfully, Suzaku held no real opinion for Kallen. He neither liked nor disliked the girl – life was going by in a distorted sort of rush for Suzaku, as if everyone around him kept moving while he made no effort to keep up. Well, not quite that… there really was no way to describe it. Perhaps it would be better said that he had taken a step back from life, and stopped struggling to keep up with the current. Instead, he simply let it carry him wherever it willed, taking a little more time to observe things. Although today, this morning, he had woken up with no desire to move at all. Not much of a desire to do anything. The strict routine his life that had run on for God knows how long was beginning to wear him down. To put it simply, he was bored to the point of exhaustion. He no longer wanted the things that he had. He had known such feelings before, but never a wanting this strong to escape it. If only for one day…

Suzaku flexed his fingers one at a time, feeling each muscles stretch and his tendons tighten as the carpet grinded into his spine and he thought dully about how the floor smelt like dust and old sweat in a room that could house a dozen easy. Kallen was a punishment in black lace and smooth translucent flesh; all clean curves and airy angles. During sex, she tended to babble and groan out broken words that made no sense. He imagined her silently wailing Zero's name in her head like a penitent sinner, like (zero, zero, lelouch, lelouch) knives in his skull. For his part he said nothing, it meant nothing (but God, it did, it meant he really was fucking this girl of a woman—). It was just someone staring down at him with pretty red strands of hair hanging over her eyes and pasting another face (mask) in the place of his. Maybe she wasn't the only one pasting faces—maybe he would too if he wasn't so tired of pretending. Euphie wasn't the type to ride him anyways.

He wanted this to be utterly loveless, wanted it to never mean anything (just masochism and sex, that's all there is to this whole damn diversion—masochism and sex), even though it did. Even though sometimes she'd look straight at him and whisper his name unasked while they—

(He had had a princess once. But she was gone now. He had seen the life slip from her eyes- bright amber melting from tigerstone iris and bleeding out onto the ground, gone with her last breath. Gone.)

But Kallen's eyes are empty now, just inkblots on a paper face. They were dead, deader than Euphie's eyes, deader than father's (black hollows) buried years underground. He knows his are the same.