With short, brisk strides, Kaito Shion strode towards the exit of the mostly-empty public park, his face set, firm, and white. His head whirled with angry thoughts. So demanding, he thought in disgust. Doesn't think about anybody but himself . . .
Guilt struck him as he remembered Len's looking up at him with shimmering sea-blue eyes which held the open love and admiration that always so unnerved him, as it had the first time he'd glimpsed it. He shivered, and to disguise it, shifted position and sat upright.
After a moment, Len sat up, too, bringing his knees to his chest and gazing at him in concern. "What is it?" he asked, his voice so gentle that it could have been a caress. He frowned at the lack of response. "Are you cold?"
Damn it, the boy must have seen him shiver. He had only a moment to be angry before Len slung an arm across his back and drew closer. Kaito looked at him in surprise and smiled, but it was a smile that didn't touch his eyes with that electrifying, teasing spark; they remained the rich, serious blue that was all that most people ever saw. Len felt an odd mixture of irritation and worry, but before he could inquire further, Kaito said, "You haven't made a birthday wish yet." He fixed Len with an expectant gaze.
". . . I've made the same one every birthday since I was fourteen," Len said quietly. "This year . . ." He opened his eyes and looked deep into Kaito's. "This year I want it to come true." He seemed to glow with the secret and his hope for it, and Kaito found himself slightly breathless.
"What is it?" he asked, urgently. "What do you want?"
Len swallowed, amazed at the rapid rate at which his heart pulsed. "I want to be with you," he blurted, and Kaito's brows knit together in confusion.
"You are with me," he said, frowning.
"No!" Len cried, shortly, as if he were in pain.
Kaito started at him as his face contorted with some powerful emotion he was wrestling down. "You're with me right now," he said, reasonably.
"Not like that," Len retorted. "I mean the two of us—together. Like you promised me, remember?"
A shock widened Kaito's eyes, transforming them into their true electric blue.
As rain pelted his back and streamed down his hair, he plunged into icy water and came upon a small child that screamed at him: "Get away!" He opened his arms and brought the stubborn, headstrong boy to his chest, feeling the tremors that ran throughout his body and sheltering the source of his fears.
"You love me, too," he'd said, wearing serenity on his sweet face because he now knew, he understood why he'd been denied at first: fear. And what could he fear now that Len knew? Discovery—but then Len promised not to tell even his twin, Rin. Nothing, then. No more fears.
"What about the age gap?"
". . . I can wait for you." The words fell from lips stunned by their emergence. "Like a rainbow waits for the end of a storm." He met Len's simmering eyes and watched the lean face that had once been so round and boyish transform into a tender smile. He still had the same fathomless blue eyes, and even if they were no longer as wide, they glittered with all the dazzling charm of an infatuated young man.
Len's grown up . . . and still adores me as much as he did then. You should be grateful, you fool.
Len looked away. "I thought you'd forgotten," he said, "and now . . . I'm ashamed that I could even think such a thing."
Kaito sighed. "I could never forget that, Len."
"But why did you never bring it up again after that?" Len demanded.
"I wasn't ready. And neither were you—you were too young."
"And I'm still too young, is that it?" he sneered. "It's been three years now, Kaito." Len spoke in earnest . "I'm seventeen—a man. I'm ready. I've been waiting for this day, for you, for so long . . ."
And he heard the longing in his voice, in the low, husky timbre it had taken on. God.
"Ever since you gave me that promise, you've been my hope . . . I've been saving myself for you, don't you see?"
He closed his eyes. Stop it. Stop saying these things.
"No, that's right, you don't want to see." The voice was almost a growl—low, dangerous. "That's Kaito for you, always putting off and ignoring and denying, like you denied me that first time when I came to you, when I told you—" He broke off, feeling suddenly as though he was going to cry. It had taken so much courage . . .
Kaito's eyes opened; he was obviously wounded. "I came after you! I came to you and held you and carried you and confessed! And all that meant nothing to you?"
The boy stared at him, still as a stone, and when he spoke, his voice was dull and tired. "That's what I've been trying to tell you, Kaito—it meant everything to me when you gave me that promise. Everything! But if I hadn't run away and got caught out in that rainstorm, you would never have come after me, and I would never have even known you loved me, and why?—You were too afraid! I would have been heartbroken, all because you were too afraid to tell me!"
". . . At the time, I really thought I was doing what was right."
"You told me I didn't understand love! You thought that was right?"
He groaned. "Try to see this through my eyes, okay? You were only fourteen at the time. I was seventeen. Telling you would have made me feel like a pedophile."
There was silence, in which Len looked oddly calm, but Kaito knew he was boiling underneath. "So now you're twenty." He spoke lazily. "And I'm seventeen. This relationship would no longer smack of pedophilia, yet you don't seem very eager to engage in said relationship. Hmm . . . Now why would that be?" He raised a golden brow at Kaito, an ironic element to his face.
His throat felt dry. "I just don't feel it's time yet, Len. You're still so young, and I—"
"Bullshit!" Len cried. "I'm ready as I'll ever be; it's you who's not ready! You're still afraid, or insecure, or something . . . !" His eyes flashed suddenly. "Or . . ." His voice became tight and silky, might have been seductive in another context. "There's someone else."
He knows, Kaito thought, heart thumping powerfully in his chest. My God, he knows.
A/N: Next update is Monday the 14th-Valentine's Day, so make sure to add to story alert if you like!
