Chapter 2

The shaking started before they reached the condo. The flight back to Tokyo had taken five hours after a delay of nearly two and now more than an hour in traffic from the airport. Not knowing when Akihito's last hit had been—or even what he'd been given, though the surest guess was heroin from what he was able to describe—it was tough to judge when the symptoms would kick in.

He had been so close to unresponsive in the brothel and in the car on the way to the airport that there had been a very real fear that he'd been overdosed. That was the razor edge unpredictability of heroin, especially with whatever cheap shit that brothel owner had been pumping into those boys. Even a veteran junkie was only operating on blind faith in the strength of what he'd been sold.

But Akihito had come back to himself on the jet, the warm soft fog of the drug falling away like the cloud cover as the jet climbed; and for a few hours it was enough, hurtling through clear air, the confused jumble of days he had stopped counting tumbling into the past, the dark emphatic solidity of Asami next to him, anchoring him in open space.

"You came for me again."

Asami looked at him in mild surprise.

"I told you I always will."

There was both comfort and dread in the word "always," but he shied away from it, turning instead to the thought that Fei Long's prediction had not come true. He had been made to beg for his next hit but nothing—nothing had come close to the intense flood of answered longing that had swept through him when he had felt Asami's arms lift him out of that black hole.

He looked at the man seated next to him No, he had never stopped wanting Asami.

Asami read the raw, open need in the boy's eyes, and his own face tightened with a feral hunger Akihito knew well, and he was pulled into one of Asami's invasive, possessive kisses, the kind that was not content with mere physical contact but sought to drag part of Akihito's soul away with it. Gods, he had never wished for death, even in the blackest of those days, but if he had to die, he hoped it would be like this, devoured alive like this.

But his body could not follow him. Still sick and weak, he collapsed bonelessly against Asami's chest

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"Why are you apologizing?" Asami's deep baritone rumbled against Akihito's ear.

Too much to even begin to list.

"This," Akihito said. "All of this. Remember what you said to me after Hong Kong? I made you do all of this?"

He felt Asami shrug.

"And you said I was in your debt then." Akihito closed his eyes and laughed a little, half joking, half afraid to say what he was thinking. "What am I in to you for now?"

"Lifetimes," Asami said. "You owe me lifetimes. Fortunate for you, little cat, that you have more than one to give me."

If part of him still rebelled at the idea of owing body and soul to Asami, it could not fight against the immediate need for security that the man's presence represented. And it could not even quiet the voice that said no, it was more than security. The warmth, the familiar scent of the man's skin, the stringent taste of smoke on his tongue filled a less easily classified need, and Akihito was tired of fighting. He'd tucked his head under Asami's chin and let everything else go.

Now huddled in the back of the limo, his body taken by tremors, a strange battle was taking place, playing across Akihito's face and tormenting his eyes in a way Asami could hardly bear to watch, knowing it was only the opening salvo of a long war.

If it was just a fight between fear and determination, he wouldn't have worried. He'd seen Akihito win that one over and over. This time, though, Akihito was up against an opponent that Asami knew fought dirty, that whispered things you needed to hear and drew you on to places you never knew you needed to go. The kid got in and out of scrapes on a heedless, bullheaded bravery all his own. Would it be enough now?

He reached across the seat and pulled Akihito into his lap as he had numberless times before, this time drawing a suppressed grunt from the boy in place of his usual stream of noisy arguments and blustering curses. In his knowledge of this war—as a general and never as a foot soldier—Asami understood the insidious weapons of the enemy and how they would turn Akihito's body against itself. His touch, he knew, was probably already uncomfortable and would become unbearable after a while, but he could not help himself. The need was too great. It was a need completely free of lust unless it was the insane lust of the obsessed for the obsession too long lost. Seeing was not enough. He had to know through the simple intimacy of skin and the warmth and weight of the boy against him, his own hit, his own drug, the misery of his withdrawal ending as Akihito's began.

The dark hair cut so short didn't help this feeling that the Akihito he held was an illusion or could slip away from him in any number of ways. It was the outward mark that someone else had altered what was his, prickly against the palm of his hand when it had been soft strands that once slipped yieldingly through his fingers. Yes, hair would grow and the color could be corrected but what else had been changed that could not be changed back?

The limo pulled up in front of Asami's condo building. Kirishima was waiting on the steps and hurried to open the door. If he didn't gasp out loud when he saw Akihito, it was out of the discipline of years, but his face gave him away.

"I know," Akihito said, hastily manufacturing a smile. "You're wondering what you're going to do now that you can't make dumb blond jokes about me."

"No, it's just—" Kirishima was totally caught off guard. "I'm glad you're back, Takaba."

"That's pretty good," Akihito said. "You almost sound like you mean it."

He slid off Asami's lap and pulled himself out of the car by the door handle. But when he stepped onto the sidewalk, his knees seemed to be made of jelly and his legs threatened to fold up under him. Kirishima had to grab him to keep him from collapsing in a heap, and this time, he did gasp at the feel of the painfully thin arm beneath his hand.

Two powerful arms caught Akihito behind the knees and around the shoulders as Asami lifted him almost effortlessly.

"I can walk," Akihito protested, heat flooding his cheeks. It was early morning and the sidewalk was bustling. He heard a woman giggle into her hand.

"Why bother?" Unconcerned, Asami sailed up the steps with his mortified burden

Inside, they passed the old doorman, who accepted their arrival with almost bored equanimity. He had, after all, seen Akihito carried in conscious, unconscious, drunk, fighting and now like a bride. It was nothing new, really. No reason for the boy to bury his face in his hands.

In the elevator, Akihito squirmed, not so much out of mortification as out of a vague, spreading discomfort.

"Seriously, Asami," he said. "Put me down."

"No room," Asami said, which was patently ridiculous but Akihito recognized Asami's warped idea of humor. "Is Nagato here?" he asked Kirishima.

"Yes, Asami-sama. Also, Chao Wa Lon has agreed—"

"Not now."

Akihito felt the muscles of Asami's arms tense. Chao Wa Lon wasn't a name he recognized. If it was business, it was odd for Kirishima to bring it up in the elevator, but probably it was urgent. How much time had Asami lost, looking for him? He couldn't think about it. He could feel his mind beginning to be pulled away by his body, by the mounting aches and jitters that would bloom into real pain and the inability to be still and to him on the floor, on his knees, begging…

Not this time. He was here, he was safe. The heroin had been for escape. There was nothing he needed to escape here.

There was a soft ding and the elevator doors slid open with quiet efficiency. Kirishima opened the penthouse door and Akihito was home. For a moment, the force of it—the cool, clean, elegant lines of Asami's apartment, the sanity and order—threatened to break him at last. He choked on a sob.

"All right?" Asami looked down at him.

"Yeah. Just…put me down, okay? Please?"

But Asami slipped off his shoes and carried Akihito through to the living room, where a small woman in her early fifties was waiting, seated on the white leather couch. Her dark hair was scraped back into a bun and black framed glasses magnified large, observant eyes. She wore a white lab coat over a sleek blue dress and an air of contained impatience. She stood up when she saw them and bowed.

"Asami-sama."

"Dr. Nagato, thank you for waiting," Asami said. "You remember Takaba, of course."

Akihito was deposited at last on the sofa. He knew Dr. Nagato, who ran a private clinic Asami funded and in a manner of speaking, cleaned up workplace injuries sustained by Asami's men and occasionally Asami himself. Akihito had been taken to see her after a bad beating by some street punks, out of an excess of caution on Asami's part. He'd been a little unnerved by her steady gaze and her calm way of asking questions that cut right through his bullshit. He could see why Asami valued her. He just wasn't sure he had the stamina to deal with her right then.

"Of course." She perched on the coffee table in front of Akihito and opened a large, gray plastic box that served as her medical bag. "Kirishima filled me in on the basics. I'm just going to do a quick assessment, take your temperature, your blood pressure. Are you feeling up to that, Takaba?"

"I'm not feeling up to arguing with you about it," Akihito said, "so it's your lucky day."

"Indeed." She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and held up a thermometer. "Put this under your tongue and stop talking."

She slipped the thermometer into Akihito's mouth but he pulled it out and glared at Asami.

"Don't even say it!"

"What?" Asami raised his eyebrows.

"I know what you're thinking, that she's asking the impossible."

"I did say stop talking, didn't I?" Dr. Nagato put the thermometer back into Akihito's mouth and clamped his jaw shut with her hand. "You're warm. A low-grade fever is normal. The perspiration is normal, too."

He hadn't even noticed he was sweating until she said it. Now he realized that the clean white shirt he'd been given on the plane was sticking to his arms uncomfortably.

"Your eyes will water, too. Sneezing and yawning are common. How long has he been shooting up?" she asked Asami.

"Mot sooting," Akihito mumbled around the thermometer. "Forthed!"

"We're not sure," Asami said. "He'd been missing for seven weeks."

Akihito looked up at Asami with a start that Dr. Nagato did not miss. The thermometer beeped and she pulled it out and looked at it.

"Thirty-eight point two." Dr. Nagato put the thermometer back in the box and got out her stethoscope. "Do you know when you were given the first injection?"

He shook his head.

"What do you remember?" she asked as she put the tips of the stethoscope in her ears.

But that question was too much. His heart hammered in his chest and his vision started doing funny things, lights sparking behind his eyes. Too many things. He remembered too many things. In front of him, Dr. Nagato seemed to be floating, her face coming in and out of focus. He closed his eyes and tried to stamp down the nausea.

"It's all right," she said. "It's not that important."

She put the stethoscope back in the box without using it, got up and went over to Asami, who had been watching, his hand on his chin.

"What's wrong?" he asked under his breath. "Why did you stop?"

"Look," she said. "It's obvious he's malnourished and dehydrated and he's heading into full blown opiate withdrawal. He's also obviously traumatized. I don't want to stress him more than I have to. I'm sure—" Here she rose unconsciously on her toes, as if the extra inch or two could make her seem more threatening to the man who loomed nearly two full heads over her. "—there is more going on here than Kirishima has told me. Maybe things I need to know, maybe things I don't. Some things I can guess."

"You know enough to treat him," Asami said tightly.

"Do I?"

"Yes."

She stared him down a moment longer.

"We've been down this road once before, haven't we?" she asked and Asami's eyes widened in alarm. "You know what he's up against. Heroin alone is bad enough but if there's something else—"

"He will be all right," Asami cut her off.

"You thought that the last time." She was pushing it, she knew, but she liked the boy who was now curled up, trembling on the sofa. There was something in his eyes that brought out what she refused to think of as a maternal side.

"This is different," Asami said. "He is different."

Yes, he was. It was what had caught at her. How, she wondered, had he ended up here, with a man like Asami? Not that Dr. Nagato disliked Asami. She respected him, certainly. But Takaba had to fit into his world about as well as a boisterous puppy at a board meeting. She sighed.

"All right. You know the drill." She went back to her box and took out a couple of small white paper envelopes. "Loperamide for diarrhea," she said and Akihito groaned. "Amitriptyline might help him sleep. It will help with the leg cramps. I don't want to give him anything else unless we have to."

She reached into the box again and pulled out a length of rubber and a syringe.

"I know the last thing you want to see right now is a needle," she said when Akihito blanched, "but I need to draw some blood. No, don't get up. Just turn onto your back."

But she couldn't find a vein in either arm and finally had to go into the back of his right hand, which hurt like hell. Akihito flung his left arm over his face and drew a hissing breath between his teeth.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I know it hurts. Just relax your hand now."

She yanked the strip of rubber off his arm, withdrew the needle and taped a cotton ball over the back of his hand. He watched her, his eyes enormous, hoping that she would put the tears down to the watery eye thing she was talking about.

"You're looking for HIV," he said quietly.

"Yes," she said. "Among other things. I'm going to leave a list of symptoms of other STDs here. If you experience any of them, I want you to contact me immediately. Will you do that?"

He nodded.

She crouched down by the sofa, on eye level with him and regarded him for a long moment, her myopic eyes searching his face.

"Is there anything else you need me to look at?" she asked carefully. "Anywhere else you've been hurt?"

Of course, she knew, Akihito thought. Asami's private physician was no dummy. It was kind of her to let him make the call, though, as to how much he wanted to admit.

"No, it's okay," he said. "I'm okay."

He smiled at her to reassure her, but he didn't know how his own smile affected people, how it cut right through her pragmatic heart so that she had to turn away and busy herself, stuffing things back into her box.

"I should have the results of the blood test in a few days," she said, "but we'll need to test every two weeks for three months and again at six months before we can say for certain. It goes without saying but I'm going to say it anyway—"

"Ugh," Akihito said, knowing what was coming.

"Yes. No unprotected sex until then."

He put his hand over his face again and so he didn't see the look she threw at Asami.

"Not," she said, "that you're going to feel like doing much of anything for the next few days." She reached up and pulled his hand away and he saw that her brows were turned up in concern. "It's going to be rough, Takaba. You're going to think you're dying, but you won't die. You can do this."

"I've got weeks of you sticking needles into my hands to look forward to," he said. "Why would I want to miss that?"

Dr. Nagato closed up her box and stood, smoothing the skirt of her dress.

"Try to get him to eat something, if he can keep it down," she said to Asami, "and get as much liquid into him as you can. I'll come back after clinic hours to see how he's doing."

When she had gone, Asami went to the kitchen, poured a glass of orange juice and brought it to Akihito.

"Sit up and drink this," he said.

Akihito didn't think it was a good idea but he pushed himself up and took the glass from Asami.

"Those other boys," he said, staring at the glass in his hands. "Can you get them out of there?"

"Fei Long has already picked them up." Asami reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table, shook one out and lit it. "He's none too pleased about it and sent me a rather strongly worded text."

"Can I see it? What did he say?"

"Basically asking what is he supposed to do with twelve pretty boys."

Akihito chuckled. "I dare you to text him back and tell him to start his own boy band."

A smile quirked the corner of Asami's mouth. "I did say it was a question I certainly never expected to hear from him."

But Akihito didn't laugh.

"Thirteen of us in just that one house," he said. "And how many other places like that are there, just in that city? And then how many other cities?"

"Akihito—" Asami began.

"I know," Akihito cut him off. The juice didn't look at all appealing, but it might wash the sour taste out of his mouth. He tipped the glass up and drank half of it in one go.

"Take it easy," Asami said.

"What did she mean, the doctor?" Akihito asked. "She said you'd been down this road before. Did she mean you—"

"No." Asami took a long drag on his cigarette, holding the smoke in for the maximum nicotine hit. "I've seen other people go through withdrawal, that's all."

That's all. Akihito knew there was more to it than that but he also knew Asami would only tell him what he wanted to tell him. Like for instance if he asked who those other people were, he could almost guarantee a change of subject. And maybe he didn't want to know anyway. Didn't want to know how it had turned out, where they were now. His stomach contracted painfully. The juice had been a bad idea. He wrapped his arms around his middle and bent over, a helpless, embarrassing little moan escaping him.

"Hang on."

Asami got up, went back to the kitchen and returned with a deep plastic dish basin. He sat next to Akihito and held the basin while Akihito vomited. The juice, the little bit of miso, rice and fish he'd managed to eat on the plane all came back up in a disgusting orange mélange. Before he could even pour words over his humiliation, his stomach twisted again and another orange stream hit the basin. Three more times he retched until nothing came out and he felt he was being torn across the middle and his little moans were full-out cries. Through it all, Asami sat next to him, calm and quiet, showing no sign of revulsion or pity. Nothing fazed him, Akihito thought. He doubled over and wept.

Asami got up again and came back with a warm, wet cloth and cleaned Akihito's face and hands and eased him down on the sofa. Akihito curled into himself, his face buried in his arms, and shook.

"I'm afraid," he mumbled.

"That has never stopped you," Asami said.

Akihito turned and looked at Asami with an expression of puzzled surprise that lanced through Asami's gut.

It didn't show. Akihito certainly didn't see it, but Asami felt every contortion of muscle, every stab of pain as if it was his own and thought that Dr. Nagato didn't have a clue what she was talking about. He had never been down this particular road, not watching Akihito suffer like this. It was entirely new and unwelcome terrain. What burned a hole in the center of his chest was the knowledge that the trip had been deliberately arranged for him. And Akihito was collateral damage.

Thanks for reading this far! Please let me know what you think.