"C'mon, Yo-kun," Omi begged, impatiently tugging at Yohji's sweater.
"No." Yohji hid behind his book, pushing his glasses firmly into place. Green glasses that concealed his eyes just fine from the chibi. Omi had not considered it beyond himself to try and bribe Yohji with a mug of coffee and a pack of his favourite tobacco. Now he was on his knees by the couch, hugging Yohji's legs and digging his sharp little chin into the older man's denim-clad thigh.
"Someone's gotta do it," Omi sulked, fidgeting and grinding his chin into hardening muscle. It hurt, but when Yohji tried to twitch away, the chibi clasped his legs with surprising strength. "Yotan, if you don't fuck me tonight, I'm gonna go out and pick some sucker from the street, and then I'll get bloody paid for it as well."
With an exasperated gasp, Yohji dropped the book and grabbed a handful of Omi's hair, dragging him up to sit on the couch by his side. "No. I'm not gonna fuck you, and you're not going soliciting 'cos bloody's just how you might come back if at all."
"But-"
"But my ass. If – nah, when – Fuji finds out, he'll skewer us both."
"You clucking over me?" A small, sly smile began to play on Omi's lips, his eyes narrowed a little, and he slanted a strange glance at Yohji from beneath long lashes. "Skewer us, huh?" He rolled the words on his tongue, as though to savour them, then licked his lips and grinned. "You afraid? Man, Yohji, I'd never thought... there's more to you two than this pants-down thing, right?"
"You little slut," Yohji grumbled, letting go of him and ruffling his hair in a warily amused way. The chibi really was way beyond his years. Innocence spoiled beyond redemption, rotten to the core. Like all of them but so painfully young. How did he hide it in school? Given, at nineteen, he should have been at university – Yohji did not have the slightest doubt Omi was bright enough for it – but their lives were not normal, and the frequent uprooting and working on bloody missions at night did not help. Omi was lucky to look younger than his years, that he went to sink schools where no one bothered to ask unwelcome questions and did his cramming in places probably even worse than that, but still... how did he manage to learn anything at all like that? Yet he was the smartest brain in their team. Yohji suppressed a sigh. Omi's future could have held so many promises... what a waste. They were all wasted. Aya, Ken, Omi, him.
"Slut, huh? You tell me." Omi sank back, the mischief in his eyes giving way to sullen resignation, mingling with a good measure of self-loathing. "Fine then. I'll do it myself. It's boring. What about that rubber doll you promised me?"
Yohji rolled his eyes. "That was a joke." And in a moment of rare madness, he added, "Go ask Ken. I think he really likes you." Don't waste it, he meant to say and did not dare when he met Omi's eyes again, eyes too old, too cold, too wary for such a young face. The boy did not belong here, Yohji thought with a vague dragging pain in his chest, but Kritiker would not let him go. No one would walk from Kritiker, or Eszet, or any of this mess. They were all broken, snagged, ensnared and had given themselves over. Quite readily by now. Aya was corrupted into liking to kill, Ken just did as he was told because Omi was here, Omi had no hope of ever feeling clean again and carried on because his alternative was lifelong prison. For someone with his pretty ass? Yohji shuddered. And he, Kudo Yohji? He was just debauched enough to cling to life no matter what, and having traipsed right into every trap and snare Kritiker had laid out for him. Truth was, after Asuka he did not care any longer. But Ken liked Omi, that was a fact. Ken still had dreams.
Omi snorted. "Likes me? Yeah, he runs after me alright, but he doesn't wanna touch me when it comes to the crunch. Not anymore."
"'Cos you made him promise when you broke up with him." Yohji shook his head. "Man, Omi. I'd give my hide for that. Someone to really like me."
He had said too much. Had let it slip unthinkingly, unaware perhaps of thinking aloud and startled back into reality by Omi's huge eyes that fixed on him with unsettled, bitter astonishment. "Likes you? Haven't you had enough of 'liking' already? I don't care who the fuck likes me," the boy growled.
"Not even who likes to fuck you?" Yohji forced a grin, ripped open the pack of tobacco and rolled two cigarettes. He lit them and offered one to Omi, who took it and began to puff.
Watching the smoke disperse, Omi shrugged. "Nah. As long as I get relief."
"Ever enjoyed it?" Yohji saw the boy start, then shrink back into himself, coiling up tightly, ready to jump, like a loaded steel spring. No, he sure had not enjoyed it. He knew sex, not pleasure.
"Hey, 'course, ol' man," came the snotty reply. A bit too cocky, too sassy, the defensive note a little squeak he tried to blot out with coughing.
Yohji sighed. He was twice as old as the boy and sometimes felt anient with exhaustion. Omi had turned nineteen a few days ago, and Ken had been the one to remember. With a few candles, cake and a kiss. He had woken Omi to the scent of coffe, taking the mug to his bed, and Omi had padded into the kitchen where they sat by the shabby table. Aya icy, unreadable, Yohji edgy, Ken naively expecting Omi to be pleased. The boy had stared at the flower-bedecked cake, at them, then at Ken, and his face had turned first mad, then stony. Without a word, he had stormed out, door slamming, and not returned until the small hours of that night, high on something and with the reek of cheap sex about him.
Yohji could imagine what he had felt. All the hopelessness of their existence had rolled over him that very moment, and Ken, bewildered and hurt, did not understand a jot of it. Because he refused to look ahead into the black void that was their future.
"Where's our professional asshole Fuji?" Omi broke into Yohji's gloomy reverie. His slender fingers curled around Yohji's wrist and squeezed, thumb slowly rubbing over Yohji's pulse. He had not given up; if Omi had set his mind on something, it was rather difficult to dissuade him. He would nag, pout, squirm, bribe. Ken would always melt. Aya would always get jarred. Yohji felt like bolting right now.
"Gone out," he managed around a mouthful of smoke.
Omi shifted closer, bringing his leg flush agaist Yohji's. "Yanno," he suddenly whispered, sounding strangely tired, "Ken... he... my birthday – shit, I dunno how to say it. You understood, didn't you?" Large blue eyes boring bleakly into green glasses.
Yohji dropped the glasses to the tip of his nose and met Omi's gaze. "Yeah. But he's right."
"I... I can't." Can't accept it, can't face it, can't live with knowing there's nothing else to come, only this, kill for money, try to save your hide, knowing one day someone will get you anyway. Senseless, meaningless, hopeless.
"Hope's a good thing to hold on to," Yohji said quietly, all lightness gone from his voice. He laid his hand over Omi's.
"How d'you know it's worth it?" Omi murmured, and if the boy had been less jaded, less hardened, Yohji could have sworn he would have cried. As it was, he only shivered a little, and Yohji wound his arm round his waist and drew him close so the boy could lean against him.
"I just do." Really, another lie, but what the hell? Nineteen was too young to contemplate stupid stuff.
They had killed folk younger than that. Omi had been living with seven years of blood on his hands and more to come.
Omi sagged against Yohji, hand with cigarette limply between his knees, eyes closing as he leaned his head back against the older man's shoulder, a whisp of smoke rising from his nostrils. "So you know how it works, Yo-kun?"
"What?"
Omi's throat jumped as he swallowed, lifted the cigarette to his lips for another long, lung-deep drag and gulped down most of the acrid smoke. He carelessly tossed the stub onto the bare planks of the floor that sported a fair number of burn spots. The stub smouldered, the pong of hot floor wax, dirt and burning paper rising into the dank, stuffy room. "How it is..." He choked, began to cough and dipped forward, while Yohji gently patted his back. "I mean," Omi said roughly when he could speak again, and he hid behind this head-down pose, elbows braced on his knees, hands dangling in between, "I mean how to make it... uh, nice?"
Ah. Another try at seduction, this time by manipulation through sorrow. A crude attempt at invoking compassion and guilt and using both for reckless blackmail. Yohji could not even smile. It hurt. "You really have no idea? C'mon, Omi, I'm not falling for this."
"But you should!" The chibi shot up straight and gave him a glare to rival Aya's sternest. "Who else can I ask? Ken's getting his hopes up; I don't want that. Aya... well, fuck Fuji, I don't think I'd cope – he scares me shitless when he's prowling. Rather you than me, huh? Anyone else? Someone from the street? Or a girl who ends up in all that shit that usually comes with us?"
Startled, Yohji blinked at him. Omi stared back his challenge, resentful and forlorn, making his young face as cold as frost. "C'mon, Yotan," he said, his voice softening into something cool, almost impersonal, "I'd like you to show me. For my birthday present. Wanna enjoy it, just once." Without raising false hopes in Ken. Without being afraid of Aya. Without being bruised or bled by a casual pickup. "And I won't hurt you, either."
Omi knew? For a moment, Yohji fought hard to keep his smiling, easy mask in place.
"Why d'you let him hit you?" the boy prodded stubbornly, concern lacing his gruffness.
Yohji managed another laugh, another cigarette, and to keep his hands steady as he lit it.
Omi would not buy it. "So he's got a vent, huh?"
Damn, the chibi was too lucid. "You got a livid imagination."
"No, I got eyes in my head and a brain that actually thinks," Omi retorted sharply. "Ken doesn't wanna see, but I do. Make me understand, Yotan."
Yohji dropped the laugh. He inhaled a deep breath of smoke and let it curl out from his nostrils, his eyes almost closing, his glance guarded behind golden lashes. "It's none of your business."
Omi bristled. "We're all each other's bloody business 'cos we're stuck with one another, like it or not. Gimme another fag, will you?"
He had a point, Yohji conceded unwillingly, but they would all go to hell if they started scraping at their respective facades now. Better to keep it all low, locked away safely, unacknowledged. Don't touch 'cos it hurts. Gods, how it hurt... No, rather than that, keep up the makebelieve. Determinedly, he shook his head and began to roll another couple of cigarettes. This time, Omi leaned down and took one with his lips. Brushing Yohji's fingers in the process, staying down, his tousled head hovering over Yohji's hand, flattened over the packet of tobacco in his lap. Over a growing hardness there.
"I don't want you like this," Yohji said softly, sitting deadly still. "You're not with it, chibi."
Omi let his head drop, burying it in crumbs of tobacco and the heat of Yohji's groin, his arms coming up and around Yohji's waist, clutching him close. "No, I'm fucked up like the rest o'you," he groaned.
A small pause, before Yohji lit his cigarette and laid his hand over Omi's neck. "You don't know what you want."
"Do you?" Omi blurted, without moving from his hot, safe, musky place, his voice muffled, sending a resonance straight into Yohji's hardened flesh, up into his stomach, down his thighs, along with a faint tremor. His mind chilled, but his body hummed. He tightened his hand slightly and felt Omi tense, drawing up his shoulders into the older man's touch.
Yohji pressed firmer, keeping him from sinking deeper into his lap. His fingertips would leave dark marks on the sides of the boy's fair neck. "Omi-"
"You want Aya? Or Schuldig? Or Crawford? They're all after your ass. I think Craw's your best match, but you won't go for him 'cos he bores you. You'll tangle with Schu or Fuji an' get bruised. Hell will have me before I grasp that."
Schuldig was Aya's match, Yohji thought faintly, and how did the chibi work all this out? Did he have a thing for Nagi then, gods forbid? That would leave Ken and Farfarello, and Yohji nearly laughed out loud at the idea. As it was, only a low grumble made its way from his belly to his throat. "Rubbish," he mumbled around his cigarette.
"Oh yeah?" Omi's stifled words vibrated against Yohji's crotch, through layers of clothes. Well, one layer. Yohji tended to go commando because Aya liked things quick and rough and practical. So he could conveniently screw and then deny it had ever happened. Aya was such a damn coward. Dreamer, he had spat at Yohji once, and it had sounded like a swearword.
"Yeah, rubbish," Yohji confirmed, a click in his voice in spite of himself.
Omi's nose rubbed against Yohji's hard groin. Yohji dug his hand into short hair and pulled the boy up to face him, then without a word drew him into a hug and bedded Omi's head against his shoulder. Holding him, in silence, motionless, time ticking away in the rhythm of their heartbeat.
"If you can make someone happy," Yohji whispered after a long while, turning his head so that his lips touched Omi's ear, "you feel lighter for a moment. Really light, as though you'd touch life."
"And then you lose it again?" came the bleak, quiet retort. More painful for its stillness, it's acceptance of things as they were.
Yohji knew surrender when he saw it, and to see the youngest of their group yield thus cut him to the quick. If Omi was losing himself like this, what about the rest of them? He could not allow this. Staring into nothingness, he began rubbing wide, slow circles over the boy's back. "Yeah," he breathed, "but it's better than being dead already. It hurts like hell, but it feels like... like redemption."
Omi dug his face into Yohji's shoulder and tightened his embrace. "Your point being?" he whispered, pain ragging his voice.
Another circle, a breath of smoke, a soft rocking motion, as though he was cradling a child, then Yohji said softly into the boy's hair, "Go, ask Ken, Omichi. If it doesn't work out, you're welcome back with me."
xxx