Disclaimer: Don't own it, just borrowing.
The Sweet Far Thing
Chapter Three: Insomnia
Mai smoothed out the blankets she had spread over the unconscious boy that Andy had brought back from the mountains with him. He was just a child, no older than thirteen or fourteen, a child on the cusp of becoming a man. Mai was no doctor by any stretch of the imagination but even she could tell that the boy was malnourished just by looking at him. It was a wonder he had survived up in mountains all alone (assuming he had been alone).
She brushed a strand of stray hair away from the child's face; he looked so calm and peaceful while sleeping. Mai wondered if her own children would have looked like that had they lived. Would they sleep like little angels or would they drool all over their pillows like Andy did sometimes?
Speak of the Devil (or rather, think of the Devil), and he shall appear. Andy slid open the paper screen and entered the room with the silent grace of a cat, carful not to disturb the child that he had rescued -or abducted.
"How is he?"
"Alive." Mai responded mechanically. It felt odd to have Andy show concern for something that didn't directly affect him, especially when that thing was a human child. "And half-starved. Honestly! How did he survive up there?"
"I assume he stayed close to the hot springs to keep from hypothermiating and stole food from hikers that got to close to his home." He replied, sitting down next to her. Mai edged away from him ever so slightly, just enough for Andy to notice, a sign that she was still trying to distance herself from him. "I just got off the phone with Nakamura." Andy continued, pretending not to notice her action. "He says the kid's prints don't match anyone's in their database. As far as he can tell he's not a documented citizen of Japan."
"So we don't know if he has a family out there looking for him right now."
"Hey, we'll find out where he came from." Andy reassured her, or at least attempted to. "And while we're looking we can put him up here. We've got the space and it might be nice having company for a while."
Mai had a feeling that his 'company' remark was an allusion to her reclusive and standoffish behavior. She felt another pang of guilt but pushed it back down. If he was lonely then he could just as easily go and visit Higashi in Tokyo. So long as Andy didn't follow him to Thailand or run off to South Town he wouldn't be violating his promise to stay with her. So long as he didn't leave the country and so long as he came back to her.
She wasn't looking to forward to housing this wild child either. He seemed charming enough while sleeping but who knew what the feral boy would do once he woke up. She didn't want to have to deal with the drama of yet another traumatized character or extreme personality type living under her roof. In all honesty she wanted to drop the boy with Child Services and let them sort it all out, but Andy would never allow that.
Before they had been adopted by Jeffry Bogard, both he and Terry had lived in the Foster Care System in America and the experience had not been pleasant. Andy hated foster care and would never let her pass guardianship of this wild boy over to them. She wondered if he was starting to draw a parallel in his mind between himself and Jeff and this boy. She felt the beginnings of anger and just a little bit of jealousy creep into her heart. He was willing to care for this feral foundling but not about her and their own children?
"He can't stay here." She said, her voice deadpan.
"Why not? We've got the space."
"This is a dojo, Andy, not an orphanage." She reminded him. "When he wakes up we'll drop him off at the nearest Child Services office. They can take him from there."
"You're not fucking serious!"
She expected his reaction; Andy's experiences in the American Foster System had made him prejudice against all foster care agencies. She knew her decision would upset him before she even said it, but she didn't want the boy to stay here. She couldn't deal with having a child in the house, not now. Her wounds from the child she had aborted in '01 were still fresh and she couldn't handle having another child in the house, not a child that wasn't her own.
"I don't want him here, Andy."
"If you put him in the System you might as well just dump him back up on that damn mountain alone!" He snarled at her. "I will not let you do that! I will not let you toss an innocent boy into a System that treats foster kids like garbage!"
"He's not my child!" Mai shot back. "He's not my responsibility."
Andy glared at her for a long while. She could only guess his thoughts. He had been a foster child and knew better than anyone how awful it was, but that had been in America, surely the foster system in Japan was better, or at least different. She met his eyes briefly before turning her gaze to the floor; this was an argument that she wouldn't win, not without losing Andy as well.
"He won't be my responsibility." She said again, more subdued this time.
"Fine." Andy agreed, a bit of a clip to his voice. "I'll take care of him, he'll be my responsibility. You can go back to being a hermit if that's what'll make you happy."
Her head shot up. "That's not…" She wanted to say that that wasn't what would make her happy, but then realized that she didn't know what would make her happy again. She'd been depressed for so long that it felt like she had forgotten what "happy" was. She didn't really have time to figure out what she wanted because the boy began to stir and both she and Andy leaned over to see if he would wake.
The boy was startled to full weakness when he realized he was no longer in his secluded mountain home and was surrounded by strangers. He bolted upright in bed. "Where-!"
"Shh, don't move so quickly." Mai ordered pushing him back down. He was surprisingly strong for a pubescent teenager and offered considerable resistance. "Lay back down."
"Where am I?" The boy continued to press. "Who are you people? What's going on?"
"We'll tell you when you calm down." Mai told him. The boy relaxed back onto the bed. Mai turned to face her estranged lover. "Andy, you said he'd be your responsibility. You can start by being the one to explain how he got here."
Without waiting for his response she stood and exited the room, leaving Andy alone with the mysterious monkey-like boy. The blond ninja heaved a sigh, hoping the boy didn't remember that it had been he whom had knocked him out. It had been hard to see in the steam, he may not recognize Andy.
"We found you up in the mountains." He began. "You were knocked unconscious and I brought you back here." Short, simple, concise, that was what was best. Only give the facts and don't dress it up with pretty words.
"What is this place?" The boy asked, casting his eyes about the room in innocent fascination. He had turned from suspicious to curious rather quickly.
"The Shiranui dojo." Andy answered. He wondered if the boy was up for answering questions as well as he was asking them. The sooner they found out where he had come from the sooner they could get him back to his home. "What's you're name kiddo?"
"Hokutomaru." He answered matter-of-factly, while studying the painting on the shoji screens in fascination. "My head hurts." He reached a hand up to feel the large bump that had formed on the back of his head where it had collided with the ground up at the hot spring.
"Uhh…" Andy said with all the eloquence of an idiot. "I'll get you some ice to put on that."
Andy also stood and left as Mai had. He wondered if he should stop by her room, if for no other reason then to find out if she would talk to him again. Today had been the most that they'd spoken to one another since that day and he hoped it wouldn't be the last time she spoke with him ever.
As furious as he had been with her for even suggesting that they give the boy, Hokutomaru, to child services it was still just hot surface anger, it burned off quickly and when it was gone it left an emotional burn scar that could only be soothed by Mai's gentle words or, should he dare to hope, her touch.
He longed to feel her hands on him once more. Before he had left for his mission in the mountains, when she was watching him gear up he had wondered if she was going to jump him like she used to. Just rush in and pounce on him, pin him down, bite his bottom lip and have her way with him. He wished she had. It just felt so awkward and weird having her watch him change without even the slightest hint that she was still attracted to him.
He wanted her so badly and yet she was forbidden to him, her rule of abstinence holding firm. He had wondered if he had overstepped his bounds when he had taken her face in his hand, had wondered if she would pull away and tell him he was taking liberties that he did not have. But she didn't and that had encouraged him. But with Hokutomaru now living with them, on his insistence no less, he doubted he'd ever be allowed to make love to her ever again.
The world looked so bleak and depressing right now.
Andy returned to the boy's room with the promised ice pack and sat beside the bed in lotus position.
"Here." He held out the ice pack. "So, Hokutomaru-kun, is there a surname to go with that?"
"Surname?" The boy blinked in utter confusion.
"A surname, a family name, the name that identifies you with a group of relatives." Andy tried to explain, not sure if he was doing it right or not.
"No." The boy said. "I don't have one of those."
Andy didn't quite know what to say to that. Everyone had a surname, even he and Terry did before they became "Bogard", he didn't remember what his old surname had been but he remembered having one. Maybe Hokutomaru just didn't remember his family name.
"Okay. Where do you live?" If he couldn't find his family by name he could at least narrow down an area to search.
"The mountain."
"The mountains are a big place, kiddo." Andy reminded him. "Any particular area? Mino? Sanjo?" He tried naming as many towns as he could remember that were all considered "mountain villages".
"No." The boy shook his head. "None of those."
"What was your home called?" Andy pressed, becoming exasperated. Children didn't just fall out of the sky. He must have a home and a family somewhere.
The boy just shrugged. "Mori no Yama."
Andy's face fell into the palm of his hand. "Mori no Yama" meant the "mountain's forest" or the woods that grew all over these mountains. Basically, the boy was calling the entire mountain range his home. Now he truly was exasperated. Maybe he had jarred something when he'd knocked the boy out, or he hadn't yet recover enough to answer these questions, or maybe the boy was just slow to begin with. Andy pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off an oncoming stress headache.
"Gosaige-san?" Hokutomaru asked, referring to Andy as "Mr. Yellow-hair" a reference to the color of his blond mane and a reminder that Andy was yet to introduce himself to the boy. "What do you do at a dojo?"
"We train in martial arts." He answered. "And my name's not 'Gosaige' its Andy."
"Andy-san." The boy tested the name. "And the other was…"
"Mai. Shiranui Mai, she owns this dojo."
"Is she your wife?"
The boy's question was not unexpected; they were after all two young people living alone together. It was a natural conclusion to draw, but for Andy the question was still jarring. For almost as long as he'd known her, Mai had been trying to get him to marry her and for almost as long as he'd known her he'd been evading her come-ons. He felt a pang of guilt poke at that fresh wound in his heart. Maybe if he had married her she never would have done what she did and they wouldn't be in the situation they were in.
But he hadn't married her and it seemed that a proposal from him now wouldn't be enough. He needed to offer Mai more that just a ring and some vows. He needed to offer up something of himself, he needed to suffer in a way similar to how she had suffered alone when she had found herself with child and him nowhere to be found. A marriage alone could not heal their relationship; marriage alone wasn't enough.
"No, she's not my wife."
"Oh."
…
The boy's injuries didn't seem too severe but Andy still feared he might have a concussion and so refused to let him fall back asleep. They stayed up and played cards or Go for a few hours, Hokutomaru moaning and groaning the whole time about how he was tired and Andy was mean for not letting him sleep.
While annoying, the boys complaints reminded Andy of himself and Terry when they were much younger and still living with Jeff. Hokutomaru was much older than they had been back then but he seemed to display a level of maturity and intelligence much closer to that of a ten-year-old rather than a teenager. Andy wonder just how long he had been up in those mountains alone to still be at such a low level of mental development.
After a few more hands of Go Fish, Andy decided that enough time had passed for the boy to be out of any real danger from a concision and let him, finally, fall asleep. He was out before his head even hit the pillow, his shallow and even breaths the only sound in the stillness of the night.
As silently as he could, Andy stood and left, intending to get some sleep of his own. He paused, once again, outside the door to Mai's bedroom. She would most definitely be asleep by now, he wondered what she would say if he woke her. What would he say if he were to wake her?
"Hi, Mai. Don't take this the wrong way, but I've been horny for the past few months now and waking-off just ain't cuttin' it. I can has sex nao?"
Yeah. That would go over real well with her.
He imagined her reaction would be something along the lines of, "What!? No!! Get the fuck out, duschebag!"
If he was lucky he might get out with his penis still attached but his balls would most certainly be forfeit along with a few of his fingers. He sighed. She used to love his fingers…
He shook his head in a vain attempt to banish the ribald image from his mind but it had already taken hold. As he continued down the hall to his room, his mind played through some of his most fond memories of their intimate encounters. How she would press her back against his chest while spooning, the way she moaned low in her throat when he slipped his middle finger inside her, the feel of her warm cum running over his hand to drip on the futon, her hand stroking his shaft, his hand on her breast… God, he loved her breasts!
They were so soft and pliant under his hands, so full and voluminous that he often needed both hands to fondle just one, and they felt so good wrapped around his shaft. He loved the feel of his stiff member pressed between her breasts, and when she would teas his tip with her tong or when, be he ever so lucky, she would take him in her mouth…
Or when she would finally allow him to slip inside her warm and receptive body. How she would rake her nails down his back or bite his bottom lip when her climax came…
Andy placed a hand on the wall to steady himself as his un-channeled desire pressed against the cotton barrier of his pants. It was sometimes so difficult to live with this effect she had on him, she didn't even have to be in the room, all he had to do was think about Mai and he was rock hard and aching for her.
Andy grabbed a box of tissues from the bathroom before finally barricading himself in his room. He flopped down on his futon and struggled to free himself from his restrictive pants. Free at last he sighed deeply with relief and relaxed onto the bed, lying on his side he gently stroked his shaft while thoughts of Mai played through his head, slowly pushing him to a solitary climax.
And it was at that exact moment just as he was climaxing that Mai chose to enter his room. He didn't know why she was coming to see him so late at night. He didn't even know what she was still doing up this late. All he could think about was how quickly he could get the blanket over himself before she had the chance to see him jizz all over the place.
He gasped her name in shock but all that really came out was a strangled sigh that didn't even resemble a language let alone her name. She stood there, standing in the doorframe, frozen in shock (or mortification, Andy couldn't tell). She opened her mouth to speak then thought differently and closed it again.
The two of them remained there like that for a time, neither saying a word, just staring at each other. Just when Andy was about to speak Mai backed up, silently shutting his bedroom door as she did so, and left. Leaving him alone, exactly how she had found him, her footsteps fading down the hall the only sound in the dark house.
"God, freaking damn it!" Andy swore, smacking himself in the forehead for not speaking when he'd had the chance. Unfortunately for blond ninja he completely forgot that he still held the tissue soggy with his own ejaculate in his hand. "Gah! Ugh!!"
…
Mai lay awake thinking. She really had made herself out to be such a villain today. Andy had done the right thing by rescuing that child from the mountains and she had no right to condemn him to the foster system. She listened to them in the other room, far down the hall, playing Go-Fish, Go or just talking, keeping the boy awake because Andy feared he'd hit him to hard and given him a concussion. The more she listened the more she hated herself because she realized that Andy was really good with kids, that he would have made a great father. All this time she thought he never wanted children and now here he was slipping into the role so easily.
She wondered if he even noticed.
Maybe he was seeing himself in Jeff's shoes, maybe he was looking at that wild child and seeing himself from so many years ago, living alone with his brother on the streets of South Town. Maybe he was trying to follow in his father's footsteps. Maybe he had more caring and depth of feeling than she gave him credit for because she was to busy wallowing in self-pity to see past herself and her own bias views. Mai rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. She was an idiot.
She listened to the boy complaining about how mean Andy was being for making him stay up so late. Mai wondered if Andy had whined like that back before he came to live at the Shiranui dojo, back before his father died. The boy was much older than Andy had been when his father had passed away but, if the boy's whining was any indication, he was about the same mental age as a ten-year-old. A child like that would be an even bigger handful; Mai silently dreaded the prospect of him living at the dojo. She had a sinking feeling that, to spite the fact that he was 'Andy's responsibility', she would end-up being the one to take real care of the boy.
Andy's voice drifted to her from down the hall, murmuring that it was okay for the boy to finally sleep now. She heard the door to the boy's room slide open and shut and Andy's padded feet in the hall. His steps paused outside her door, just as he had earlier that morning and just like earlier that morning she feared he would barge in. Was he still mad at her about not wanting the boy to stay? Would he come in and tell her how much of a bitch she was being? She deserved it if he did, be she still hoped he wouldn't.
Mai heard him heave a heavy sigh before continuing back down the hall to his own room and for some reason she wished he had come in and yelled at her. Andy was such a passionate person but ever since that day, he had been so passive, it just wasn't him. As much as he annoyed and angered her, she missed the old Andy Bogard. He had been her first love, all her life she'd ever only loved one man and now, by her own hand, that man was being pushed away. She should talk to him. She'd been telling herself that for days now, they needed to sit down together and sort themselves out or else one or both of them was going to go insane living like this.
Mai resolved she would try and talk to him, soon, tonight, now!
She crawled out of bed and padded down the hall to Andy's room as silently as her bare feet would allow. She hesitated outside his door for just a moment before sliding it open all that way.
Mai stood there, frozen for a few moments as she watched Andy scramble for a blanket to cover his stiff erection. She'd seen Andy cum before, she'd most often been to one to do it, she's had him spray on her breasts or her face, she'd even swallowed his load a few times but that had all been a long wile ago and it seemed like it was ages since she's watched Andy climax. His face pinched in an expression that was half-way between elation and pain, his back arching ever so slightly and a gasp that was half sigh. She missed being the one to make him do that.
He gasped something that might possibly have been her name, but it really barely even resembled a language so she wasn't sure. The two of them just stayed there for long moments, just staring at one another, not saying a word. She studied his eyes that still carried the fog of the euphoria of orgasm, the line of his jaw, his quivering Adam's apple, the strait lines of his collarbones, the supple but pale skin pulled tight over his pectorals, the somewhat fast passed rise and fall of his chest with his breathing.
Mai felt her own desire start to rise. Whispering over her skin and tingling down her spine before it polled between her thighs.
They weren't going to talk about anything tonight. If she stayed, if she entered his room fully and tried to talk they would just end-up sleeping together. Andy may have just finished himself but she knew from experience that he would try his damnedest to give her just as much of a release that he got and that was something that she just wasn't ready for, not yet, not now.
Andy opened his mouth to speak but Mai took a step back. She didn't what to hear what he had to say. Whether it was an apology for what she's just witnessed or a rebuke for walking in on him she couldn't hear it. She felt like if he said anything to her, be it comforting or hurtful, she would try to silence him with a kiss, a kiss that would most assuredly turn into something much much more.
She shut the bedroom door behind her and left as silently as she had come. From down the hall she quite clearly heard Andy's exclamation of, "God, freaking damn it! Gah! Ugh!!" Before barricading herself in her own room.
…