Gypsy Moth's Realm
Version: Yukiverse
Disclaimer: Check first chapter, title taken from Richard Shindell's song "On a Sea of Fleur de Lis" as well as a few lines. Thank you so much everyone who reviewed. Edited for formatting.
The slamming of the apartment door rattled the windowpanes in the bedroom. The room seemed vacant and abandoned with no pictures on its white walls and nothing to mark the personality of the owner. Then again, maybe in that way, it did.
With shaking hands and tightly shut eyes, Yuki hunched over beside the door. The floor dug uncomfortably into his kneecaps and bit into his cheek. It was covered in the same golden floorboards as the rest of the apartment, but unlike their polished and refined surface, the bedroom floor had gouges, scratches, and burns to mark the passage of time and temperament of the man who occupied this space.
Fists digging into his eyes, mouth gaping and hollow, and unable to do more than gasp for breath in an awful visceral way, Yuki was shattered. He could not get his stomach muscles to unclench enough to inhale.
His soul was blackened. There was no way around, no way back. And every second of every minute of every hour of every day that Tohma was around him, it was as if that moment was happening again. Those old memories haunted him forever, but he never felt them so keenly, as when Tohma was there to remind him. When he got himself back together, he would mark today with a black circle on his calendar.
There were a lot black circles, too many for him to deal with without breaking sometimes. But what got to him more than anything else was the pity he glimpsed in Tohma's eyes. It made him sick. It made him broken, more than anything else. Yuki was exquisitely broken china in Tohma's eyes, to fine to abandon, but too cracked to put on display for anyone else to find.
The phone rang.
Yuki choked and let the answering machine pick it up, the vaguely feminine machine voice instructing the caller to leave a message after the beep.
"Are you there?" The caller demanded aggressively. "I hate….damn machi…Pick. Up. The. Phone. I know Tohma just lef……apartment." Static. "…freezing us out, Eiri, please. Please."
Yuki shifted so he was lying on his back now, listening to his sister break down on his machine. This moment had been documented on tape many times before and Yuki kept them all, not that anyone else would know. There was a stack of tapes in his closet with Mika crying/screaming/threatening/cajoling (rinse, repeat ad nauseum) Yuki to rejoin the living. This stark familiarity settled his nerves, letting his stomach unclench. He sucked breath deep into his lungs, holding it until it burned and black spots danced in front of his eyes.
He lived, in his way. The world on his terms was different than for anybody else. Mika and Tohma didn't…couldn't understand that, although they should by now realize he wasn't going to change.
Yuki found a crumpled cigarette that had been pushed into the dirty corner of the room. It was half-smoked and tobacco was falling through a tear in the paper, but it was relief against the pain.
Yuki lit up the cigarette while Mika pleaded with him, "Are you there?" Static. "…give enough? Do..y…give a damn? Eiri!"
Static.
Yuki crushed his cigarette into the floorboards.
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