A Song Of Destiny

by Fields of paper

In Love And In Death, Always Together, No Matter What The cost, Together Forever.

6. The Sleep In Your Eyes Is Enough

Chapter Six; The Sleep In Your eyes Is Enough

He let them stand there for a time, not wanting to let go of his vampire. The weight of his necklace hung around his neck comfortingly after all the time that he'd been without it, been without the gift that had kept him chasing after shadows and shades of wishes.
Subaru let out a quiet sigh, face pressed into his shoulder, but did not let go. "We should probably go to dinner before it gets too late." he said without conviction.
"Couldn't we skip it?" he asked, resting his cheek on soft black hair.
Subaru shook his head with some difficulty. "The amount of trouble that not showing up will cause is more than I want to draw to us."
Seishirou sighed, but released him, slightly. "I take it that there are vampires who would feel slighted if you didn't show up?"
Subaru gave him a very sad look. "There is a vampire who would be slighted no matter what, but I can't just bow out."
He did not agree with this attitude, but seeing the dark resignation in Subaru's eyes, didn't argue the point. Instead, he simply made sure that he didn't let go of Subaru's hand when he let go of their embrace.
The soft smile that Subaru gave him made it worth it, and they left the sanctuary of Hokuto's rooms.
The walk down the hallway was far too short, even walking as slowly as Subaru would let them, and the sound of laughter and constant chatter filled his ears in no time.
The dining room was significantly louder than both of the times that they had been there before; and despite the vanishing sun, seemed to be brighter. Maybe it was the fact that the torches were lit on the walls, it seemed more likely that the light just seemed to reflect more warmly off of everything when there was laughter.
When they got in, Subaru immediately went towards the head of the table, where he saw that no one sat in the highest seat, and that Hokuto was right next to it, across from a woman with a sour look to go with her enormous age; she reminded him rather of a shriveled fruit that had refused to give up on life just yet.
Subaru took him to sit by Hokuto, or rather, where Subaru was in between the two of them with one other empty chair. Hokuto ceased her dark look competition with the woman across from her to smile at the both of them. "Glad to see you've decided to join us!" she said with a grin, "Kyou-chan's off getting Sakura and Kamui, and Fuuma-chan's been invited too."
The sniff that the old woman let out was summarily ignored by all three of them. Hokuto gave a thankful smile to the woman who placed her dinner down on her plate; and if that were a normal animal, he'd be absolutely stunned. It was some sort of mammal if one went by the body, but it had eight curled legs like a dead spider, and two rows of four eyes each that were glassy in death.
It smelled interesting, but the look was almost enough to put him off of the one placed down in front of him.
The woman let out a sigh of sheer annoyance, not even looking at the blank-eyed woman who gave her a spider thing, and gave Hokuto another dark glare. "It would be nice if your other children would at least show the courtesy to arrive at dinner on time. But I shouldn't expect too much out of them."
Hokuto rolled her eyes dramatically, and ignored her with devious intent. "Don't listen to Madame Magami, Sei-chick." she said with the tone of the confidential and the volume of one who seeks to aggravate others. "She's just a noisy old bitch who's never liked any of us because we aren't bigoted race purists like her."
The woman made an offended sound, but he didn't see any need to look at her. "Magami, like Subaru-kun?"
Hokuto grinned. "Yes." Her knife cut through the belly of the beast in front of her with one smooth motion, spilling out a tirade of cooked plants, other meat and what reeked of an enormous amount of spices lacking sugar. "There's always a bad egg to every family, and she's the one for the Magami. She's also older than dirt, and not as nice."
Seishirou resisted the urge to laugh at the comment, and only because he could think of someone else who fit that last description. "I feel sorry for you, to have to put up with her."
Hokuto shrugged, and speared something purple and meatlike in her food. "I knew what I was getting into when I accepted Tohru's proposal."
Madame Magami gave Subaru a smile that was only barely less dangerous than the knife she held in withered fingers. "Subaru-san, it is so nice to have you home again. How were your travels?" she asked, putting a nasty spin on the last word.
Kakyou and Sakura entered the room at that point, and walked over to the table. Sakura took the space next to her mother, and Seishirou had the sneaking suspicion it was because the woman across from them had a bad habit of saying nasty things to her without Hokuto able to defend her. As energetic as Sakura was, he wasn't sure that she really had the play of language that one would need to win a battle against this shriveled vampire quite down yet.
Kakyou sat down on his other side without a word, merely a gentle presence that still radiated a quiet strength.
"Kakyou-san." Subaru began, looking down at his food, "Did you find our brothers as well?"
The man smiled at him, sliding the sleeves of his robe up to rest on his forearms where they wouldn't get lost in his food. "They are on their way. Sakura-san and I had to wake them."
Seishirou snorted. How so very like the both of them to actually sleep past the beginning of what was turning out to be such a political dinner.
The sudden sound of running footstep interrupted all other conversations as Kamui and Fuuma rushed into the room, seeming to be struggling with getting themselves tidied up. Subaru looked up at them from his plate and smiled nervously. "There you are." he said with both relief and trepidation.
Kamui shrugged and pulled the dark purple coat on his shoulders out of the wrinkles it had bunched itself into. "I told him it was a bad idea." he told his twin as he walked past him, to sit across from Seishirou with a dramatic sigh. "If we'd been here earlier, we might not have to sit next to her." he said without bothering to be nice to the glowering woman.
She huffed in anger as Fuuma circumnavigated the table, sitting down in the empty space on Kamui's side away from the woman with fear that was so obvious he smelled of it.
Kamui gave her a very flat look. "Bitch now and quickly please, I want to eat." he told her with no respect. Seishirou smiled at the arrogance in his tone, and the utter lack of respect.
She didn't seem to find it so amusing. "How dare you be late on such an occasion, you obstreperous child?" she screeched in a voice not meant for screeching anymore.
Kamui grinned at her, and he could easily see Hokuto's influence on him. "Well I think I was late because I overslept. I didn't actually miss it, although considering your kind greeting, I think I might have preferred that."
She hissed, but made an effort to calm herself. "No matter. I'll deal with you later," she said in a bitter tone and slit open the torso of her food with one sharp motion. The meat seemed to wither at the foul look she gave it.
Kamui smirked at his temporary victory. Then he looked down at his plate, and that smirk vanished. "Oh great." he said in a grumpy tone. "I would have skipped if I'd known that we were going to eat this." Seishirou watched in all too much interest for their tastes as Fuuma brushed their arms together in the action of reaching for the only knife, and their eyes met; Kamui smiled at him for a moment, and then picked up his knife with a sigh.
The conversation picked up from then, increasing in volume as the rest of the clan began to relax and try to enjoy the meal, probably hoping that the head of the table wouldn't explode into nasty arguing again. He could see the girl that Subaru and he had met earlier engaged in a discussion with the ruby-eyed Nakuru, seemingly not put off at all by her attitude. And next to him, Kakyou talked in soft tones with a girl with long white hair falling to pool around her chair, her light eyes giving away no more than their conversation.
Kamui cut open the stomach of the meat in front of him, releasing the smell of too many herbs, and then looked at Fuuma. Not feeling particularly eager to attempt eating his own food, Seishirou decided to watch the two in front of him. Fuuma had made a face that he hadn't seen in years and was staring down at his food. "How can you eat it?" he asked Kamui as the vampire swallowed his first bite of strange food.
Kamui gave him a dry look. "By opening my mouth, putting the food in, and chewing and swallowing. We don't eat food any differently than you do."
Sakura giggled slightly, as Fuuma returned to staring at the meat with blatant horror. "You use the knife and the fork farthest from your plate to open it up." she whispered to him kindly.
Giving her an awkward smile, Fuuma thanked her, and then trying to hide the fact that he just really didn't want to eat the thing on his plate, picked up the fork, and pressed the tip of the knife to its neck without actually doing anything. His expression said that he'd rather eat any of Seishirou's failed attempts at cooking than what was in front of him.
Kamui chuckled, swallowing what he had in his mouth, and leaned in closer to Fuuma with a grin. "Just don't look down while you eat," he said, "It tastes better than it looks."
Fuuma looked at him, and then Seishirou couldn't help but chuckle himself, as Fuuma looked down again and winced.
"Fuuma." he said with amusement, "I'm sure it tastes better than my cooking."
"Many things taste better than your cooking," Fuuma said with black humor, "That doesn't mean that I'm going to eat them." He reached for the glass of dark red liquid in front of him, and started to bring it to his lips until Kamui placed a slender hand over the top of it.
He looked over at Kamui, who was staring at him with a knowing scowl, and shook his head. Then he leaned in towards Fuuma, to whisper in his ear. He didn't hear what Kamui said, but by the interesting look on Fuuma's face, he could guess.
Fuuma swallowed awkwardly, and placed the glass back on the table. Seishirou almost felt sorry for him, for so many bad things happening at the same time.
Probably at Hokuto's command, Sakura had removed herself for the table at some point in time, and just then came back with another glass held delicately in her hands. Carefully sitting down, she handed the cup over to Kamui, who immediately passed it to Fuuma. Seishirou could smell the faint scent of water, and realized that Hokuto had probably recognized the problem before any of them, if Sakura had to sneak away to get any water.
Fuuma gave the girl a grateful smile. "Thank you, your highness." he said without a trace of irony in his voice, bowing his head slightly.
She smiled back at him, the beginnings of a blush staining her face.
The clinking of silver wear as it was set back on wood with an emphatic sound drew Seishirou's attention away from his brother's food problems, to look at the sneering little elderly woman in front of him. Clearly the course of the meal had not calmed whatever problem she had, and she was ignoring Hokuto's glare like she was a master of it. "I really don't see the purpose in granting a human any opportunity to sit at this table." she began, the tone of her voice grating on his ears. "Such a mistake will lead to even shadowstalkers feasting themselves on our food, and then where would our power be?"
Now Nakuru, even as far down the table as she was, shot the woman a dark look, and gained a scraping of points for tolerability for that. Still not enough to redeem herself.
Madame Magami delicately wiped the invisible traces of any food from her mouth and continued on. "And it is invited to our table by a child who failed to show hallowed blood, being tainted by the Sumeragi as he is."
She, on the other hand, was rapidly losing any chance of being anything less than pond scum in his eyes. In fact, there were whole festering demons that he would treat with more respect than her.
Subaru set down his own fork with almost no sound at all. "Grandmother, I must please ask you to talk with respect at the table. Although I can understand that you are not pleased with my choice, there is no need to discuss it in such a way."
She looked at him with black eyes, and then turned her head away. "Subaru-san, as you are still young, I am inclined to give you a slight chance to prove your heritage, and at least not blacken this table with incorrect opinions."
He almost snapped at the woman, but the presence of Subaru's hand on his thigh prevented him. A quick look at his partner, and he saw the almost invisible tensing in his jaw, how he was restraining himself from saying anything less polite.
If she was bitter enough to make Subaru angry, then he'd wait for the inevitable end of her.
He knew exactly what his vampire could do in the height of cold fury.
Kamui stabbed his knife into his dinner so that the blade scraped on the plate with a rather jarring sound. The rest of the table fell silent. "Shut your mouth, and stop talking shit." he ordered. "Just because you're a Magami doesn't mean that you get any leave to talk trash in pretty words. Subaru can do everything better than you anyway, and you're just way too behind on anything to pay attention to what he says."
Subaru winced slightly, and his hand rested heavier. The other one gripped the armrest of the chair.
The woman sneered at him. "Clearly the taint of imperfect blood shows itself in ways other than not having the power of the gods." she sneered, her eyes twisting devilishly. "I always knew that Tohru made a mistake when he chose that woman as his wife."
He was almost surprised that Hokuto hadn't killed her yet, certainly the look that she sent her was nasty enough to put Setsuka in her child-loathing rages to utter shame. Subaru said nothing to her, but the soft rumble from his throat put Seishirou in mind of a dragon preparing to burn someone alive.
Sakura, surprisingly enough, was the one who responded to that latest taunt. "Don't talk about Mom or Kamui that way! You aren't allowed to." Hokuto putting a hand on her shoulder was probably enough to prevent the little vampire from continuing to say things that might get her in trouble. That didn't stop the girl from glaring at the imp of a woman with sharp green eyes.
She ignored Sakura entirely. "Don't even think of getting sharp with me, young man. Since when do you address your master in such a manner? And even if you are nothing but a Sumeragi, I'm still head." She said with cool cruelty, sliding her plate forward with wrinkled hands to indicate that she had eaten her fill.
Kamui growled again, lower and more acidic than before, but kept his proud position. "I belong to no one, and answer to who I chose." he hissed, baring his fangs at her in defiance of anything that she might say to him. Strange as it was, but Kamui's vitriol being targeted at someone other than him was actually slightly endearing, to see such a sharp tongue used on someone who deserved it.
Madame Magami crossed her fingers and rested them in her lap in something that would have been demure were it not for the nasty smirk on her face. Madame Magami crossed her fingers and rested them in her lap in something that would have been demure were it not for the nasty smirk on her face."Is that so?" she intoned, "I don't see it that way, in fact, it seems that you have allowed yourself to be influenced greatly by the blooming affections of a human," she said with dark pleasure. "It is not fitting that a Magami heir, even if he does not show the gifts as he should, should associate himself with such things as layabouts from another world."
He wouldn't have minded at all if Kamui leaped up now and buried his claws in her lying mouth until she drowned in her own blood, but Subaru's slight throat clearing sound interrupted that action. "Grandmother, I would greatly prefer it if you did not speak with such disrespect to my brother." he said in a tone so level that it had to be killing him to keep it that way. In the green of his eyes, he could see the coils of anger slipping about like a pair of snaking dragons. "Do not forget who the rule of this family passed to when Father died."
She scoffed at him, waving her hand in a languid manner; she was not taking him seriously, and that was more than enough of a transgression to earn her a certain death. "You are not of age, and I have experience with ruling this family as it should be. It is only a tragedy that you have fallen so far from the Progenitor that you would even think of offering mercy to a lowly human."
As Subaru's nails bit into his thigh, Seishirou reached down to rest his hand on Subaru's, trying to offer him some sort of support to win this putrid fight.
She did not miss the action at all. "And this human that you fall so weakly for, what hold has he on you? He's more tainted than that brother of yours. What on earth possessed you to change such a failure of even a human?" She said with a grotesque satisfaction.
The wood creaked alarmingly under Subaru's hand, and he could see the fine lines of tendons rising up under whitened skin. "Grandmother, I warn you now and I warn you once. As it has always been, I will not tolerate you speaking in such a way about those whom I love. If you continue to do so, for any reason, I will drown you in your own flowers before you can even attempt to apologies. Now if you will excuse me."
Somehow, when he stood up from the table, he took all the power and threat of Madame Magami with him, leaving her a frail woman sitting on a chair looking ashen. Seishirou kept his fingers laced in Subaru's, preventing the vampire from leaving him behind.
As he stood up to follow Subaru out, the elderly vampire appeared to regain some of her bitter strength, or at least enough vitriol to keep spitting bile at him. "How dare you talk to me in such a way?" she snapped, face still pale. "I suspected that that woman had tainted you far too much to listen to reason, but I still hoped you might grow up to show some sense!"
Subaru turned around despite Seishirou's feeling that it was a very bad idea to continue to interact with her. "Continue to talk like that, and I will show you why I am heir to the Progenitor, and you are not."
Again, she whitened, this time to a shade paler than chalk, and shut her mouth. It may have also been that she caught sight of the lovely lily that he'd left gilding the arm of the chair; slender vine wrapped around the wood in a chokehold.
It was entirely childish, entirely beneath him, but Seishirou really couldn't resist the temptation. As Subaru stormed out of the room, he lifted a very polite finger to the woman with a sardonic grin.
The hall was utterly silent after Subaru and Seishirou's departure, and Fuuma was rather afraid to move for fear of inciting a rampage. The woman sitting only three chairs away from him was white with fury, and from the way that her eyes were fixed on Subaru's chair, there was something about it that was terrifying her. But he couldn't see it over Subaru's untouched food.
The silence was broken by Hokuto, breaking into almost hysterical laughter. "Well done Madame Magami, well done! You chased my sons out of dinner by being such a rotten utter bitch. Well done." she congratulated the woman with all the sarcasm she could put in her voice. Next to her, Sakura cringed.
The old woman flinched, and then returned her glare. "That abomination of a changeling should not associate with a Magami, and certainly not with the only heir we have left. If your son knew what was best for him-"
Hokuto interrupted her by slamming her hands on the table, making each and every bracelet on her arm jingle. "He does know what's best for him; his Seishirou. And if you weren't so blind, you'd see it!
Hokuto's laughter, and subsequent yelling seemed to be the breaking of the ice, and many of the vampires inexplicably stood up to leave, regardless of their previous actions. Fuuma watched Nakuru do her weird blurring thing from her seat to the door, and then blur away again.
Kamui grabbed his hand. "Do not go anywhere without me." the vampire hissed, eyes slitted and golden with anger. "I don't know what anyone who actually listens to her is going to do."
Fuuma nodded tersely, and tried not to flinch at the nasty look that the girl from earlier gave him, the coil of cable snaking up her arm to look her in the eye without eyes of its own.
Kakyou leaned over from across the table, heedless of the fact that he dragged one of the light blue sleeves of his robe through his dinner. "Kamui-san, get him outside."
Kamui didn't protest the command, or the honorific, but pulled Fuuma out of his chair so that the wood scraped alarmingly on stone. "Move." the vampire ordered him, and Fuuma practically ran to keep up with him.
As they passed Subaru's chair, he saw a pure white lily growing into the wood, vine in a stranglehold around the arm.
A sinking feeling in his stomach told him that he really should know what clan Subaru was after all of this, but from what he knew of them, it didn't match up with the gentle vampire that he knew.
Tonight's display of temper didn't match up either though.
Despite his relative weariness from the stairs, it seemed to not take so much time to get down those seven flights of stairs. Maybe it was a rush of adrenaline, maybe it was just that when Kamui was holding onto him, distance didn't matter so much.
Kamui stormed out of the castle, towing Fuuma behind him like a particularly obedient dog, and brushing past the blank-eyed guards that stood watch by the doors. The vampire was making harsh breathing sounds that were less from exertion, and more from being as pissed off as hell.
When they made it into the garden, he let go of Fuuma's hand abruptly and turned straight around to slam his foot into the wall. "I cannot believe her!" he exploded, and kicked the wall again for good measure. Something cracked, and he didn't really want to know what it was, the wall or Kamui's leg. "That spoiled, infested, self-centered bitch." he continued to yell as he stalked through the garden.
Fuuma followed him, unwilling to be left behind in the dark. "Kamui, maybe we should just calm down and take a break," he said, trying not to trip on the stones that seemed to appear in his path. "She didn't actually manage to do much, did she?"
Kamui glared at him, the tips of his hair silvered by the rising moon, and then turned away. "She's not like Magami are supposed to be, she doesn't use her gift at all, rants about how we're all 'tainted' because we try to find a way to use it that doesn't involve killing everyone in sight, and is from a day long gone by. So's the Progenitor, but only Mother and Subaru have to put up with him, he's even worse! I don't get how they can talk to him without murdering him a thousand times over!" he yelled, but Fuuma got the feeling that it wasn't so much needing to yell at him as much as needing to yell in general.
He did slow his storming rate though, enough that Fuuma could walk next to him without being in danger of flying chips of stone. "But isn't that a better way to respond?" he asked quietly, "Not bending over and committing murder because someone is annoying?"
Kamui sighed openly, "I'd happily murder the both of them and not even regret my punishment. It's verbal torture, what they do." he said, and kicked a rock spinning into what he suddenly realized was a pond when it splashed up and disturbed the reflections.
Fuuma could feel the chill of the wind hit his skin, sending icy waves down his spine. But Kamui was beginning to settle down a little bit. "Despite what that woman said, and this Progenitor, I wouldn't mind staying here for the rest of my life." he said with a soft smile.
Kamui looked up at him in surprise. "But why doesn't she like you?" he asked, regretting it seconds later when a look of pain crossed the vampire's face.
Kamui sighed, but actually opened his mouth to speak. "You don't know, and that's why I'm not going to hurt you for it, because you can't know without someone telling you...When we were born, only Mother seemed to know that she was carrying twins...well her and Father. Everyone was expecting a single child, and I was...unexpected. So, according to them, I wasn't supposed to be born. And she resented me for it, and for not at least being a Magami. Just a Sumeragi. She hasn't let go of the idea that I'm a mistake ever since." he sighed, kicking a small pebble that rested a few inches from of his foot. "Mother has always done her best to kick her back down to size, and Father and Subaru can scare her if she goes too far, but they can't do everything."
A silence fell between them, and he was scared to break it. So he listened to Kamui's breathing as they continued to walk to the shore of the pond, and then started to go around it.
If Subaru was a Magami like everything that he'd heard today pointed to, then what could his gift do?
"Kakyou's your stepfather, right, so may I ask what happened to your father?" Fuuma asked at last, when the weight of the silence grew too great, breaking his concentration on the slow lapping of the waves. Kamui looked at him for a split second, and like a broken mirror, he looked hurt and corrupted. His eyes fell away somberly, the curves of his smile long gone. But he forced himself to look back at Fuuma with a bitter hope, and he smiled again.
"He died when I was young, younger than I look now." he said with a wry tone to it all, his mouth pulled down into an unhappy frown.
Fuuma swallowed at that, turning away to look at the shore of the pond, the light of the rising moon turning the faint waves silver. The gravel they walked on cracked and crunched together, reminding him of bones clattering together, while somehow Kamui didn't seem to make any sound at all.
"My father was a great man." the vampire continued, looking beyond the garden to distant memories. "He always looked after me when Mother couldn't, and even when she could, he'd come and sweep me up and play with me, and he taught me many things."
Their hands brushed together as they walked, and Fuuma noticed how cold that Kamui seemed to feel. When the instinct rose over him again, he gave into it, taking Kamui's hand gently in his own.
Kamui said nothing of it, but held on, and something in his chest grew warm. "But when he went off world to try and find out why vampires who went to a certain world vanished entirely, there was nothing for a month...and then just his necklace came back." he let out a sharp breath. "And Subaru left just as suddenly, and I didn't have anyone left to be with. Mother did her best, but when Father died, she had to take care of both his duties and her own." He sighed, and lifted violet eyes to the moon. "I didn't have anyone to take care of until Sakura was born."
A long moment of silence passed between them, before Fuuma inhaled deeply, and looked over at him. "Were you lonely?"
Kamui looked at him for a moment, his eyes startled and open, but then turned them to the ground. "I'd rather not talk about it." He said, as if he was shying away from dark memories.
Fuuma said nothing, respecting the vampire's wish. He knew probably better than anyone, what things that it was just too painful to dredge up.
He looked to the shore as they walked on slowly, their fingers laced together, and he thought back to his mother for some reason.
She had been a beautiful woman, with long black, sleek hair like a pampered horse's mane that fell to the floor when she stood. With her lips always painted a dark ruby, like blood, or rich wine, and skin as pale as alabaster, she was rather like the tale of the fairest child, ebony, ivory and crimson in one painfully beautiful form. Her eyes were a glossy deep amber, like his brother's, and they captivated him in an horribly hypnotizing way. They had both known her as Setsuka, and if beauty was kindness, then she was uglier than sin.
Smiling from the sofa where she had arranged herself, she looked like a cat sprawling gracefully. "You really are useless." she purred to him, voice almost careless, but just enough not that way to show that she had all of her attention placed on him. Her hair was strewn across the cushions like spiderwebs of blood, and it shone in the golden glow of sunset. He tried to pay no mind to her as he continued to wash dishes, focusing as much as he was on not dropping them. "I really do hate you, Fuuma, I never needed a second child."
He looked at her for a split second, and then back at the soapy water, trying not to show her how much that had hurt him.
Moving lazily like the dust motes that swirled through the air, she had cast off a layer of her kimonos, the dark fabric falling away underneath her to leave her only in a nearly sheer white yukata. The heat of the summery day had settled in well before, and despite the setting sun, only seemed to increase.
"Okaa-san, would you like me to turn on the fan?" he asked, attempting to change the subject. She looked at him and smiled with a cruel edge.
"Why yes, that would be a great help to me, my dear Fuuma." he could hear the joyful sarcasm in her voice as he wiped off his hands on a dishtowel, and then began to move to the light switch. When she gave him a hard look, he stopped.
She wanted him to try and use his little scraps of magic to do the task. He bit his lip and tried not to show his frustration. Slowly, he reached out to the wisps of power that floated in his veins, and tried.
Like the flexing of muscle, he could feel the way that it tried to respond to his call, tried to do his bidding, but switch only sunk a little before he had to let up. A second, and a third try left him with no more success.
He let out a depressed sigh, walking over to it and flipping it up manually. He heard her laugh, a dark and mocking sound as he walked back over to the sink, letting the soapy water swirl around and down the sink.
"Your powers aren't even developed yet. How cute." She mused, turning around on the couch and arching her back until the upper half of her body bent like a swan's neck. "And how sad. Your brother could levitate me entirely by the time he was your age."
He took the dish towel that seemed bone dry in comparison to the soapy water, and picking up the first plate in the line of them, began to wipe it off until it too, was dry.
"It is amusing to watch you fail at following him, failing to be useful at all." she said with vindictive pleasure. "If nothing else, that would be a reason to exist, to amuse me by your failures."
He almost dropped the plate he held in his hands, and held onto it all the more desperately for that. He put it away, trying not to let the ceramic clink against itself, she hated that sound.
Tugging at the front of his school uniform, he tried to get a little of the stiflingly hot air out of his clothes, unwilling to remove even the hottest part of the uniform around her. Seishirou was staying late for some reason, he had offered to find a way for Fuuma to wait inside the building for him, but in a moment of foolish pride, he had opted to try and defend himself against his mother. Leaning against the counter, he tried not to look at her as she rolled over again in a cat-like manner, arching her back and letting the yukata slide off of one pale leg.
When she sat up a moment later, she gave him a smile that made him shiver in fear, and twitched one finger at him in a beckoning action. He obeyed silently, one foot in front of the other as he fought to keep from running away, he knew exactly what she'd do to him for such a thing; and came to a stop in front of her.
She smiled up at him with kindness, yet it did nothing to mask the hatred in her eyes. "Come closer, my child." she said sweetly, looking up at him with red lips parted. He swallowed the lump in his throat and fought down the urge to whimper.
The fairy tale had always been a lie; fair Snow White and the vain Evil Queen were the same all along.
He stood there, hoping desperately that Seishirou would come home now, that he could run away and hide from this bitter reality.
She reached up and slid her hand up the tie of his uniform, before pulling it tight enough that it suddenly became very hard to breathe. He let out a choked whimper, but remained where he was, unable to break away.
She laughed softly and cruelly, her red lips seeming to glitter in sync with the birds chirping outside in the heat. He only didn't cry out by the force of not doing so, if he screamed, she'd hurt him; probably worse than last time, too. She might even break his arm, and find a way to make him lie to Seishirou about it.
Then she slid her other hand up his leg, resting it on his thigh, and moving the hand on his tie up to his throat, she pulled him down farther, her tongue darting out to run a trail of saliva along his cheek, and laughed again, high and cold.
He fought back a cry, but the unvoiced sounds began to run down his face in trails of tears.
"Please, please Okaa-san, not again!" he begged, trying to pull away, but she held him in place, her hands burning him like ice.
Then, the sound of the door opening on determinedly rusty hinges resonated from the entry hall, and she froze, the only movement being her smile melting away.
Fuuma took the opportunity to practically throw himself away from her, pulling his tie looser and wiping away the tears carelessly.
Seishirou walked in, bored saunter well practiced, and threw his jacket onto the sofa next to her, "Far too damned hot to be wearing that thing." he explained for his greeting.
"Tadaima, Seishirou-chan." she purred, seeming completely unaffected at almost being caught hurting him. "We've been waiting for you all afternoon. How was school?" she asked, picking at her long nails idly. "I hope that no one saw the need to hold you for anything...unsavory."
Seishirou sunk into the chair, looking bored. "It was fine, nothing happened that I didn't want it to, thank you Mother." he said, almost as dully as her.
The dark look that she gave him was enough to make his stomach roil with all the sensations that he didn't want to feel, and he sprinted for the bathroom, bile and terror and tears falling into the toilet as he threw up.
He did his best to keep the sound minimal, so that Seishirou wouldn't have a reason to worry. A fight between those two was the last thing that he needed right now.
All he wanted was for her to leave him alone.
He sniffed slightly and pressed the heel of one hand against his eye, trying to keep the tears from falling, but to no avail. Biting down on his sleeve to keep a sound from escaping, he sobbed silently on the bathroom floor, hoping that it would end soon. From outside the room, a thump sounded, and he assumed that Seishirou had dropped something.
But as always, the tears continued to fall.
Phantom pain shot through his chest, and he flinched away from the waves of memory, trying not to give in to a ghost.
A gentle squeezing of his hand rocked him out of that tide, pulling him out of the darkness again. Looking at the connection, he saw that Kamui hadn't let go, was still there. Then he looked up, and saw that violet eyes wide with worry. "Are you alright?" he asked, eyebrows furrowed in a way that said that he wouldn't accept anything that even felt like a lie.
So he didn't. "Now I am, but only because you are here." he said with a smile, and watched the vampire. "I'm not afraid anymore."
Kamui blinked at him, twice, and then to his complete surprise, he abruptly dipped his head down, and turned his face away. "Kamui?"
"I'm fine." the vampire bit out, but he sounded rather like he was trying to not say something otherwise.
The slow tide of red spreading up the back of his neck was an enormous clue to what Kamui was suffering, and Fuuma couldn't help but grin at him. "Are you blushing?" he asked with amusement.
"N-no!" Kamui barked out, and Fuuma stifled a laugh. "Why would I do something like blush? Even if you did say something nice, I'm not like Subaru, I'm not going to blush."
"But I can see that you are." he told Kamui with way more amusement than the situation probably warranted, and grinned when Kamui squeezed his hand rather painfully. "Your neck is all red."
Kamui turned around, and although he was definitely blushing, it didn't stop him from glaring at Fuuma with all of his might. He made a growling sound in his throat. "Better start running Fuuma, because I'm going to get you."
In retrospect, chase games usually worked better when the parties involved weren't clinging to each other, Subaru's fist had smashed into the stone of his room hard enough that a violent crack rang from the contact, and by the way that he shook out his hand and chips of rock fell to the ground, causalities had been suffered on both sides.
Seishirou stood against the wall, watching Subaru attempt to not destroy anything beyond repair, turning about and punching walls whenever the urge to smash one of his pretty vases or shred the curtains down appeared to try and take over him.
He hadn't seen his partner this pissed off in a very long time. And the last time he'd been angry enough to break something...
"Are you going to kill her?" he asked, keeping his tone carefully mellow, despite the fact that seeing the tumbling flickers of green to gold to green was just the slightest bit unnerving. "I wouldn't care if you did."
Subaru spun around and smacked his fist open-palmed into the wall. A single crushed tiny starflower fell to the floor. He let out a sharp breath, and then turned back, looking slightly calmer, although his eyes still flashed. "No, I'm not going to kill her for this." he said with a shaking voice. "But I don't understand how she can look at all of you and- and say such horrid things."
Seishirou shrugged. "I've known she's existed for all of half an hour and I can tell you now that she is a feckless, shriveled up excuse for a racist prune."
Subaru let out a bark of a laugh that was far too much like him when angry for other reasons, and clenched his hands tight. "I shouldn't agree with you as much as I do on that." He tilted his head down, so that his bangs covered his eyes and Seishirou couldn't see them. "I could handle it if she said them to me, but she's not. She's saying them to you. To Kamui and Fuuma and Mother and you and anyone else who doesn't fit her ideas."
Seishirou watched as he began to shake, his hands clutched tightly enough together that his nails bit through the skin and left trails of ruby blood to ooze out from between his fingers. Subaru was hurting himself to not hurt anything else.
How endearingly foolish of him.
Two steps to cross the distance of the floor, his shoes barely making a sound against the stones, and he was able to catch up Subaru's hands, slip his fingers around Subaru's, prying them open until they laced in his to prevent him from escaping. Clotting blood tried to meld their hands together as Seishirou pinned them to the wall. "Do not, and never blame yourself for the actions of others." he said harshly, pressing his forehead against Subaru's slightly harder than needed. "I already have enough trouble keeping you from killing yourself over the littlest things."
Subaru blinked at him, and his hands went slack, no longer tensing enough to try and hurt himself. Sinking against him like a lost child in the face of a dead world, the last comfort he would allow himself, he made a soft despairing sound, trapped against the wall.
Seishirou gathered him up, pulling him closer so that no one could ever see the shadows of his self that Subaru bared for him. In the growing night, he could be the hallowed guardian of a broken angel.
Subaru shook, little tiny tremors that ran through his whole body, but he did not cry. All he seemed to want was confirmation that it was all right to be angry for a moment, to let the emotion run its course so he could return to serenity.
So he let him have it. but Fuuma couldn't find a single reason to let go of Kamui's hand.
At last the shaking died down, and Subaru let out a long sigh. "As long as she doesn't try to do anything else, I'll be okay." he said to Seishirou's shoulders. "You can let go if you want."
Seishirou slid his thumb in between one of their clasped hands, feeling the drying blood and healed skin underneath. "But I don't."
There was a soft laugh, "You won't ever change, will you?" Subaru said with calm affection.
"I don't plan on it." he said with a small smile of his own. "Now are you going to stop hurting yourself?"
Subaru nodded against his shoulder, soft hair brushing against his neck.
Outside the closed door, he could hear the echo of footsteps of someone stomping their way past, too angry to consider the fact that everyone would be able to hear them. "Is there anywhere where we can go where someone else won't walk by?" he asked his armful of vampire.
Subaru looked up at him. "To do what?" he asked, green eyes open to most likely whatever suggestion that Seishirou could bring up, even if it involved murdering a certain foolish vampire that could put him in such a state.
Which, of course, meant that he had to come up with a reasonable activity that did not involve mass bloodshed, even if the person he was thinking of deserved it. "A bath." he said almost without thinking, and then glanced down.
Subaru had a surprising grin on his face, either amusement, or happiness, or both, the former at his expense at least. "Wait a moment," he said, gently pulling away from Seishirou to move to the curtained window.
Outside, he caught a glimpse of the first scattering of stars in the deepening sky, but Subaru appeared to be looking for something else, leaning out alarmingly until he made a soft sound and swung himself back in. He gave Seishirou a smile that was less forced than any of the others before. "We should get moving, since we have to make it down the stairs."
Seishirou furrowed his brows as he looked outside through the curtain that still remained ajar. "What were you looking for?" he asked, not moving as Subaru opened up the door to the hall.
"Are you coming or not?" his partner asked, standing in the light spilling in from the hall, flames dancing over his back and leaving him silhouetted.
Seishirou gave the open window one last confused glance, and then followed Subaru, out the door and over to the hall of stairs.
They seemed to spiral down endlessly, although they were less occupied than the halls themselves. Subaru didn't even give the long way down a first glance, let alone a second one, but began to trot down the stairs with the ease of much practice. Seishirou followed him with trepidation, looking over the elegantly carved banister more times than was really necessary.
Subaru spun around the landing in a swirl of dark green coat, the fabric fluttering out gracefully, and Seishirou gripped onto the polished wood as he did the same. The two vampires on the stairs, a tall woman who wasn't just stacked in height, and a man with scruffy blond hair and a smarmy look about him gave him a less than pleased look, but he was content to ignore them in the process of navigating the stairs. Other than sheer power of habit, he had no clue how Subaru was able to dart down them like a butterfly, each step only on the balls of his feet.
He was starting to run out of breath at their sixth door down, but from the amount of stairs left, they didn't have much to go. Subaru reached the bottom first, turning about quickly, and then taking Seishirou's hand in his, and pulling him along as he turned out of the stair room, and then skipped the main hall to go into a second room. "I don't think they've shut my way out yet." He told Seishirou over his shoulder as they avoided a veritable fortress of plush chairs. "Kamui and I used to climb out this window all the time, because we got all kinds of questions if we tried to leave by the front way after sunfall."
They left the sitting room and then were in a back hall, the most damning evidence that it wasn't really used being the much smaller amount of lit torches along the path, and when Subaru let go of his hand to go over to a window that had a sill topping out around his shoulder, he found it easy to sink into the shadows.
Subaru jumped and lifted himself into the window, crouching there in the dim light of the torches and the starlight from outside. He made a soft sound as he ran his hand over the frames, and another more pleased one as he found what he was searching for.
It slid open easily, Subaru guiding it so that the glass that he could just barely make out in the darkness didn't crash on the stone outside. "I had to find the pin." he said unhelpfully as he turned back from setting the window to rest. Then he shifted his balance so that he was crouched in the window and leaning in to beckon Seishirou over, a beautiful little sprite to seduce him away from the light.
He walked over without hesitation. "Where are we going?" he asked as Subaru smiled at him.
Subaru leaned back, and Seishirou saw the glitter of his necklace fall over to hang outside the window from his neck as he prepared to jump down. "You'll see." he said, and dropped out of Seishirou's sight.
He hurriedly climbed up onto the windowsill himself, and saw Subaru just below him, on a drop that wasn't more than four feet. "Will you be able to climb back in the window if you jump down?" Subaru asked in a hushed tone, looking around the surroundings for something or someone.
He looked down again, and then up at the frame and saw what 'pin' Subaru had been talking about; a strip of metal that bent down from the inside of the frame, just enough to prevent it from latching. "Easily."
He slid out of the window and caught himself easily, standing up without a problem as Subaru shut the window again, and if it weren't for knowing of the metal strip, he would have not thought that it could open again.
In the light right before the moonrise, Subaru seemed to be drawn into elongated shapes; graceful and poised like a marble phoenix ready to take flight in a sweep of fiery wings. He held out one white hand from underneath the green cloak stained black in the lack of warm lights.
Seishirou took his hand and held on tight, clinging on like a lost child. Subaru smiled and laced their fingers together until he could pretend that he didn't know where he ended and Subaru began, and then began the could see the first rays of moonlight stretching over the long hills that arced gracefully over the land, gilding the trees in a stream of silver so it looked like a glass forest; but he was not given the chance to admire it as Subaru's hand clenched a little tighter around his own, and they walked past it, walking around the large walls of the castle for some unknown destination. "Where are we going Subaru-kun?" he asked as the smaller vampire led them down a staircase carved out of the bedrock, his bare feet making no sound and barely being more prominent than the shadows that lay behind them.
Subaru turned radiant green eyes back on him, with a range of emotions that lay between mischievous and shy flickering in the depths. "You said you wanted a bath. So we're going to take a bath."
Silvered grass flashed on the edges of the stones, and then they had left the castle walls behind entirely, walking along a path with windows carved from the rock itself so that the beginning moonlight and the stars, faintly brilliant, shimmered off of something inherent in the stones. Seishirou saw a hint of blue glittering at the edges, but they were walking past each window fast enough that he wasn't getting enough time to study the nature of them. "You had a bath in your rooms, didn't you?"
Subaru gave him a level look, keeping his pace without having to look where he was going. "There's another one, that's probably more to your tastes." A flash of starlight from outside glittered on the edges of the carved windows as Subaru continued. "And...there's something about it that won't be as spectacular if we don't get there soon."
Seishirou allowed himself to continue being towed, easily keeping up with Subaru as they left the windows behind. Although his range of sight wasn't as vibrant as in the day, he could still see the tide of crimson creeping up the back of Subaru's neck as they were plunged completely into darkness, and it drew up the corners of his lips in a smile, the faint hints of Subaru letting go of the things that made him angry was really quite pleasing. "Is it something pretty?"
He could barely see the deep expressive green of the vampire's eyes as Subaru again turned back to look at him. "You'll see it very soon." he answered unhelpfully.
They turned a last bend, and then Subaru had stopped and released his hand, and there was the slow groaning of stone against stone as he pushed on something until the darkness fell away into a rhythm of reflected starlight.
He stepped forwards to look, and although he kept control enough not to show it, he was stunned. He could safely say that this was probably the first thing he'd seen, besides Hokuto, that had been astonishing enough to completely draw his awe away from Subaru.
The cavern was large, with elegant looping designs carved into the wall that spiraled about in faint shadows. It was open to the night air, long windows cut out in such a way that someone would have had to grow wings in order to look in, but the sky wasn't blocked at all from sight. Several pools lay in the floor, with ornate stones laid into the edges that glittered in the little light there was. In the shadowed corner, there was the sound of rushing water, and it seemed like there was a stream running down rather like a waterfall
It was overwhelmingly ethereal, and Seishirou heard himself say in a tone that was a little too openly awed for his tastes; "This is a bath house?"
Subaru's laughter was as soft as ever. "It is really something, isn't it?" He stepped in more, and then into the depths of the remaining shadows, still easily visible "Are you going to come in?"
He took three steps in, almost feeling indignant at the vague suggestion that he wouldn't.
On the far wall, he could see a wall worn smooth with a thousand years of constant falling water, and the water itself, glittering icily cold. "The pools are kept warm." Subaru informed him from the shadows. There was a sound of shuffling feet, like Subaru trying to decide whether or not his current action was really the best.
He knelt before the nearest pool, and extended one hand towards the water. It slid around his fingers like normal water, except there was a glimmer of magic in it to accent the warmth. The stones under his knees were the same as the pool, and seemed to hold a vast history of little bits of magic; carefully stored and locked away in the exact same way every time it was refilled. "Your family magicked the pools?" he asked absently, running his fingers through the flawless pool and destroying his vague reflection.
"Not mine directly." Subaru answered, and there was something odd in his tone. "But the clan has had the honor of restoring these pools to an eternal grace through the stones, yes."
Seishirou turned, and then stopped as the heavy sound of fabric meeting stone resounded through the otherwise almost silent room. Subaru's coat spilled out from his feet like a tide of blackness, spreading out with the long feathery ends sinking into the starlight. The rest of his clothes were tossed carelessly on top of it, almost uncharacteristically for the shy vampire.
A wave of rose rushed over Subaru's cheeks, and he closed naked arms about himself in a gesture of shyness, closing over the chains of his necklace. But he did not drop his gaze, and that was enough. "Sorry..." the other vampire began, the sound barely carrying over the waterfall. "I can't bathe in my clothes."
Seishirou did not laugh at the blatantly obvious statement, or the way that it was whispered in a rush. Instead, he simply stared, and was dimly aware that this was doing absolutely nothing to sooth the other in the space.
Subaru at last stepped away from the wall, still with his vibrant blush, and past him with methodical footsteps, light enough to not echo in the room. pull him along the path that began to arc out from their feet.
There was one faint splash, and then another as Subaru stepped into the pool next to him, the water rising up as he displaced it. There was a pause, and then Subaru smiled faintly. "Aren't you going to get in too?"
Seishirou started, and then regained control of himself with a smirk. "In the same pool, Subaru-kun? How forward of you." he purred, to Subaru's cool look.
"Well you could sit in one of the other pools, but I don't think that you want to." Subaru said with quiet amusement. "Otherwise you would stop staring at me."
Seishirou chuckled slightly as he stood, fingers going to the buttons of his coat. "You do know me well." he told the vampire, who smiled at him before averting his eyes out of a habit of modesty.
His coat hit the ground with the same intensity as Subaru's had before, the fabric tumbling away with its own weight pulling it down. Green eyes flashed over him for a second, and then were drawn away forcibly. He discarded his shirt, letting it fall away as well.
The necklace that Hokuto had given him; the sword in the center glittering in the moonlight, thunked into the depression of his hips as he slid into the water fully, Subaru blinking in a manner that suggested he'd gotten an unexpected, but not unappreciated eyeful.
The water was very warm, almost too much so, but was really very pleasant, and Seishirou exhaled in silent appreciation. There was nothing left in any of the ways that Subaru held his body to suggest that he was still holding onto any anger or resentment from earlier, and a small smile hung about his lips continuously.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a stream of bluish white light creep over the window's edge, sliding sinuously over to gild the floor in silver light. Seishirou turned to look at it, and Subaru's voice echoed from behind him, a pleased awe filling the single word until it seemed to be the whisper of the water, the rocks, the air itself. "Moonrise."
Like the tide itself, rising on the pull of the moon to reshape the oceans to a different splendor, the light crept over the window in the dawning of true night. Sliding across the floor, it touched the first of the pools, and it changed from plain water to a gemstone; brilliantly blue in a way he hadn't been awed by since the first glimpse of the sky after changing.
In a silvery wave, the moon itself became fully visible through the windows, glittering in full radiance. He followed the path of its light, and his gaze alighted on Subaru, watching him with an ethereal smile that brightened his eyes until they rivaled the moon.
The rays of the moon climbed up and over them both, and the effect of it left Subaru's hair touched with the edges of grey, and smoothed any flaws from his face. Aged his ageless eyes and gentled the curves of weariness around them. Offered him an immortality longer than the lifespan of a vampire, and showed how he might be as only a human.
Gave him something eternally evanescent.
Slowly, the bitter light of the moon lost its newfound radiance, dulling down to something more manageable, and yet the strange effect it had on Subaru lingered. At least until the vampire blushed heavily and attempted to hide his face in his knees, making the water ripple around them in sparkling waves.
"Subaru-kun." He whispered harshly, and Subaru's eyes flashed up to him as Seishirou slid long fingers under his chin, pulling him back from his bout of shyness.
Something infinitely caring filled green eyes, and he thought he was beginning to understand all the connotations of 'in love', as he smiled at his vampire.
To move past the tiniest space between them was easier and more right than falling asleep, and the flutter of Subaru's eyelashes as he reached up to twine his fingers in Seishirou's hair was as light as butterfly wings.
Even with much experience and practice, kissing Subaru was still as unexpectedly thrilling as ever, one of the very few things that did not lose their exciting buzz when repeated, and it felt like he could never have enough of that rush.
Subaru made a very soft sound in the back of his throat, and clung tighter to him as he moved closer, not wanting to stay separated from his other half.
The moonlight spilled across both of them, white against his eye, and cut off the strands of time for just a moment. He was shuddering, barely in control of baser desires, and Subaru's shivers and slit green gaze were speaking of the same thing. As reluctant as he was to not continue on this course, there were certainly more dignified places for consummation than in a bath house.
He drew away enough that they were no longer pressed closer than the water, and for a moment he thought the other vampire might follow him; the thoughts were certainly circling in his viridian stare, but he didn't.
A long moment passed, quiet and ethereal, but it wasn't awkward or painful. Then Subaru smiled at him, his gentle smile that could brighten even the most shadowed of days. The world softened again, and he smiled back.
Subaru looked up at the darkened ceiling, seeming to sink into his thoughts. "Do you like it here?" he asked after a long pause, the ripples of the water around them slowing until they barely marred the moonlit surface.
He leaned back in the calm water, looking at the slits of the window. "There are far too many vampires to annoy you here, but it's nice." he said, and got a happy smile back as Subaru pulled his knees up to his chest.
Seishirou froze as Subaru seemed to be swallowed up by the silvery light, left glittering and frosted in the pale glow. Behind him, a dim blue light began to emanate from the carved symbols, and suddenly they seemed more like words than uneven decorations.
Subaru noted where his gaze had turned, and turned around, the water lapping at his waist as he smiled at the words. "It's our ancient language." he said without needing the question. "Most of us don't speak it anymore because it's rather limited in all the things you can say, but we keep it around." He turned his smile onto Seishirou. "Would you like to hear it?"
He gave him a grin of his own. "If you can handle the words."
Subaru turned back away as the letters grew brighter as the moon rose, and then opened up his mouth. Not to speak them, but to sing. "Ashryn, suun con lesherare saunfwer." he began, the notes strangely high for his voice, but he handled them easily. "Mesho la malrei aunmyn. Seisa shei con la malrei."
He sat and listened as his vampire showed off the language, the liquid syllables falling from his mouth with ease and blending into the richness of the night. "Aeshal saunfwer, un dei sonsei makeshka ashsyn."
Subaru looked at him with warm green eyes as the last line of the melody hung in the air between them. "Dei alshansei, on la ryn." Then he turned his face aside with the faint hints of a blush. "It sounds better when it's sung, sorry."
"Don't be." he said. "It sounds nice when you sing it."
Subaru blushed more violently, but kept smiling. "My Seishirou-san." he said with obvious affection.
Seishirou watched his blush fade as he waited for whatever Subaru was going to do next, and then received a playful and sensitive grin.
The vampire stood up suddenly, disturbing the water's eerie calmness, and walked over by the tumbling waterfall.
Seishirou watched without any shame, although he was rather confused by the action, and watched as Subaru reached into what must have been an icy stream of clear froth to pull out a stone bucket.
He could see the faint trembling in Subaru's arms, signaling that it was, in fact, cold, but it meant nothing to either of them in terms of actual trouble. When the vampire turned back around, he had a rather devious grin on his lips, much more like Hokuto's or Kamui's than what he was used to associating with Subaru. "Do you see something you like?" he asked with an overly innocent tone, eyes dipping into the pool he sat in.
Seishirou almost had the urge to blush overtake him as he looked down at what Subaru saw, and noted the problem. He pulled his knees to his cheat, hoping that Subaru hadn't seen his reaction, and swallowed at the fact that Subaru's smirk didn't disappear at all.
He placed the pail of water on the smooth edges of the stones, kneeling down and running his fingers over the damp and deepened rock, before resting them on Seishirou's shoulder
Seishirou easily willed off the temptation to flinch, but obviously some of it snuck through his commands to his body anyway, because Subaru looked at him worriedly, emerald eyes bright with concern. "Are you okay, Seishirou-San?" he asked, all of the concern for what caused it coming out in his voice.
Seishirou smiled at him. "I'm fine." he said, and leaned into Subaru's touch. Subaru's eyes were tender, and so were his hands, running along his shoulders in a way that could only be described as worshipful. He welcomed that touch as he wouldn't another, his eyes drifting shut as Subaru slid his arms around to hug him from behind, placing a gentle kiss on the side of his neck. He felt everything in his body relax slowly, slipping into Subaru's arms with his own serenity.
He could feel Subaru's smile against his neck as the other vampire shifted to rest a little closer, nose resting in the curve between his shoulder and neck. The gentle tickle of Subaru's breath rushed over his skin, and he suppressed a soft shudder at the action.
The soft sound of splashing had him turning his head, and he saw Subaru reaching into the bucket, slender legs extending out behind it. Those legs were moved as Subaru sat up, sliding into the water on either side of Seishirou and barely disturbing the water in the process. Seishirou tilted his head back to look at Subaru, and found the vampire bearing a rather playful grin as the sounds of dripping water echoed from the washcloth he squeezed in his hand.
Subaru kissed the top of his head as he brought the cloth over from the bucket, and Seishirou sighed with content as he rested the very soft cloth against his neck.
"It's made from unicorn hide." Subaru whispered into his ear, running the fabric down his neck and over the top of his chest, gentle fingers massaging out the bits of tension he hadn't even realized had collected there. Seishirou resisted the urge to purr at the sensation.
The vampire ran the cloth over his chest, and then onto his back, still gently working away any remaining lines of stress from his body. "My father used to have a unicorn," he explained as he briefly removed the cloth to dampen it again. "He was a very beautiful unicorn, proud and strong. And when he died, Father took his coat and used it for all sorts of things." The washcloth on his neck was followed by the tender sensation of Subaru's lips pressing against the skin. "He made Mother a coat, and he took the other pieces and made them into household objects, like this." Subaru set aside the cloth and slid his arms around Seishirou's neck almost thoughtfully. "For us, it wasn't the value of a unicorn hide that we kept it, but because it was the last memory we had of him. It's all we have." he said with a strange sense of finality behind the words.
"Why is it so unusual to have any, is there a reason not to kill one?" he asked, puzzled.
Subaru's hands pressed tighter against his chest for a brief moment, before loosening. "Because to slay something so pure and innocently trusting, it's one of the most irredeemable things you can do." his voice was calmly sad, as he explained it. "They are such gentle creatures, and to slay them for such a callous reason is wrong. Destroying such innocence should never be forgiven." he said with the faintest edge of anger to his voice, the little wave that lurked behind the tsunami. Listening to the danger behind Subaru's gentle tone, his mind automatically leaped to when Subaru had that edge all the time, and Setsuka. The sudden tide of memories swept him up, and he tensed under Subaru's touch as he fought to keep his breathing even.
Subaru loosened his grip, undoubtedly because he recognized the reason behind the sudden tension, and abruptly slid around him to climb back into the pool, watching him with intent green eyes. Those eyes that knew everything and that he'd never be able to entirely fool. "Seishirou-san."
The smile that he placed on his lips was undeniably fake, but he couldn't make it real."Kamui and Fuuma are well on their way to becoming love sick children, aren't they?" he asked with a lighthearted tone to it all.
Subaru's gaze was almost flat, but he kept eye contact solemnly. "Seishirou-san," he began, "I already know, you can't lie to me that easily."
Under the weight of that unyielding gaze, he folded, again bringing his knees up in front of his chest. "Fuuma's still afraid. Uncomfortable with intimate touch, shying away when it's someone he doesn't know in his heart that he can trust without condition." he said with a sigh, the bitter memories of youth flickering in his mind for a moment. He thought back to all the times that he had taken the punishment in place of his little brother, unwilling to let him be corrupted at Setsuka's foul hands. When he met Subaru's gaze again though, he met it without question or fear. "Some things don't hurt as much when it's only you and not the one who makes it a little better."
Subaru's sad smile understood all. Moving to be right next to Seishirou, he reached up and turned Seishirou's head to face him, resting their foreheads together. "It's best not to dwell on the past, love." he said softly.
They stayed that way for quite some time, and then Subaru smiled, a curling of the lips that brought to mind Hokuto right before making some sort of deadly comment designed to send everyone into either gales of mortification or laughter. "Why Seishirou-san, you mustn't be so sullen." he purred, pulling back from his partner. "It's rather unhealthy, in retrospect." he smirked in a very uncharacteristic way.
All sorts of thoughts as to what Subaru was planning flashed through his mind and then he swallowed.
The vampire grabbed the bucket he had placed by the pool earlier and in one fell motion, flung its contents all over him.
Seishirou let out a startled cry as he was abruptly drenched, the cold water sending aching chills throughout his body. Subaru had managed to scramble out of the water, refilling the pail, and waiting for Seishirou's next move.
Seishirou stared at him as drops of icy water slid out of his hair and over his face, completely dumbfounded as he tried to process the fact that Subaru had just thrown ice water all over him.
Subaru's quick breaths slowed and stopped, and his face grew puzzled as Seishirou made no move.
Then he began to laugh, the kind that started in his stomach and rose through his body. Subaru stood there, looking completely stunned, and he couldn't stop laughing. The entire thing had been so unexpected, so out of the blue that it just was funny.
When he managed to get control over his laughter, he pulled himself out of the pool, grinning wildly, and snatched the bucket from Subaru's slackened hands. "You look so Stunned, Subaru-kun." he said with a laugh. "It's rather unhealthy, in restrospect." he retorted with malevolent glee before dumping the water over Subaru's head in playful revenge.
Subaru squeaked and began to laugh as the water drenched him the rest of the way, and then he splashed Seishirou with water from the waterfall, freezing him even more.
Seishirou made a face, and attempted to sweep the bucket through the water to splash Subaru again, but the smaller vampire darted away from the spray of water, leaving prints of water behind him as a testament to where he'd been.
Seishirou dropped the bucket on the stones, letting it roll off without a care, and chased after Subaru and his radiant laughter.
It wasn't that hard to catch him, despite the relative lack of height difference, since Subaru wasn't really trying to get away, and he was able to wrap Subaru up in his arms from behind. Subaru quaked with stifled giggles, but made no attempt to get away, only turning around to hug Seishirou in return.
They simply stood there, holding each other, and he sighed with content, not needing anything else in the world to be happy.
As the night air encircled them in blankets of silence, the combination of cold water and lack of protective clothing started to make him shiver, and there was no way to conceal that from Subaru. "Not to ruin the moment, but I'm freezing." he said carelessly, and Subaru chuckled in response.
"I suppose we should dry off now," Subaru said without actually moving. Seishirou could understand the reason behind that.
Seishirou let go reluctantly, to look over at their discarded clothes by the pool. Then he crossed his arms as he saw the problem. "Your water attack killed the clothes." he complained, and Subaru whipped around to look."
"Oops." he said intelligently, blinking his green eyes in dismay. "I didn't mean to."
Seishirou shrugged. "I know, but how are we supposed to get back to the castle if our clothes are soaked?"
Subaru walked over to his heap, prodding them carefully. "Wear them anyway." he answered without turning around to look. "We can change again in my rooms."
Seishirou made a face at his clothes, but didn't argue it. "I hate wearing wet clothes." he said petulantly, as he picked up his shirt and wrung a large amount of the water out of it into the pool with vigor. "So uncomfortable."
Subaru did up the buttons on his shirt deftly, clearly having no such objections to wet clothes. "You'll be wearing them as long as it takes for you to get back inside and to my rooms. And then you can actually wear the jacket that Mother made for you."
The shirt clung to his skin in a very uncomfortable way, and his hair dripped onto it. "And dry off my hair." he said to the vampire who was watching him without a hint of a blush as Seishirou struggled with his pants. "I'm not going to drip on everything while at a party."
Subaru picked up his coat and, instead of putting it back on, rested it over one arm. "I don't think Mother would care that much." he said, and reached out a pale hand towards Seishirou.
He took it without hesitation, and smiled.
She'd told them to be there before the moon rose to its zenith, and he wasn't going to risk the amount of danger and pain that would follow missing out on that time.
Discarding the long purple cloak, Fuuma averting his eyes with strange modesty, Kamui adjusted the white shirt that had crumpled up during the garden walk, and gave himself a cursory look in the mirror.
At least she wouldn't immediately start fussing over him and trying to fix his clothes when she first caught a glimpse of him.
Fuuma turned his gaze back around as he cleared his throat to inform the man that he had finished doing anything that might offend his sensibilities, still wearing his coat despite the fact that Kamui had told him it was okay to take it off. "Is Hokuto-san going to be alright with you in just your shirt?" he asked, adjusting one of the sleeves with embroidered dragon fire nervously.
He shrugged, glad for the lack of the weight of any coat. "The whole point of it is actually us getting to be with each other without formal actions for the first time all day. Even if she does care, she's not going to make me dress like we're going back to dinner."
Fuuma looked unconvinced, but let it go. He didn't remove his coat, instead running a hand over the bright dragon on his chest as if to reaffirm that it was actually there. It was strange to see anyone so attached to a piece of clothing, but he didn't know any of the circumstances behind Fuuma's life, and with all of the times that his mother and Subaru had gently tried to ground it into his head that he couldn't judge actions without knowing the reason behind them, he was going to actually listen for once.
But probably just this once.
Pulling on the shirt one more time, just to try and get it to look a little less wrinkled once again, he turned away from the mirror. Fuuma followed him slowly, a tentative child uncertain if the steps he took were the right ones.
Kamui gave him a smile. "The only reason she'd be mad at us is if we actually did something irredeemable, like kill her or something like that. It's fine, come on."
Fuuma didn't say anything, but kept walking with him, speeding up enough to keep up.
The hallway was almost eerily silent now that everyone else had gone back to their own rooms downstairs, and he relaxed slightly, not quite so concerned about listening for someone in the shadows. It was so quiet, even Fuuma would have heard them before they could do anything.
Walking past the dining hall, he could see the silvered hills outside the far window, glimmering under the full moon. The door that they aimed for was just past the hall though, and so he didn't get a chance to see if the river was as silver as the hills.
The door slid open as loudly as the owner of the room frequently was, hinges crying out in rusty despair as he pushed it all the way, and walked into the room that already flickered with warm light.
Hokuto sprang up from the plush couch with far too much ease for how impractical her shoes were, clattering across the floor to hug him, bracelets chinking peacefully as she linked her arms around him. He returned the hug gratefully, leaning into her touch, and inhaling the smell of wisteria, feathers and something indescribable, but all hers.
"Welcome home, Kamui." she whispered to him, arms tightening a little around him, and he smiled, holding onto her a moment longer before releasing him and going straight over to hug Fuuma, who looked completely floored by this action.
Kamui leaned against the wall as he watched Fuuma look first stunned, then inexplicably extraordinary happy, eventually returning the hug cautiously, as if he were afraid that she might shatter into shards of glass at his touch.
When Hokuto let go of the younger man, Sakura came bounding over to pull him into the room, and Kamui took the opportunity to see who else was there.
Kakyou leaned against the couch Hokuto had been sitting on with him, looking laid back and sleepy, in one of his usual ornate dressing gowns that Hokuto loved to sew for him. This one had long deep midnight purple loops spiraling out over a blue so dark it was almost black, and a sliver of a sickle moon hovering on his right shoulder like a wreck of a butterfly's wing. Kotori sat on the chair next to the couch, in plain white as she loved to wear and with no birds poking out from the loops of her hair for once.
Yuzuriha shared Sakura's couch, and waved with a grin at Kamui as he saw her, her Inuki perking up slightly as he walked over. "Welcome home, Kamui-san." she greeted him with a warm smile. "I'm sorry I didn't get to say so before, Inuki and I were out visiting Keiichi-san all morning and we only saw Subaru-san and Sakurazuka-san this evening in time to greet them." Inuki stood up and licked his hand for emphasis.
He couldn't help but smile back at her. "It's alright. How is Keiichi doing?" he added with genuine curiosity that she didn't miss.
"He's doing fine, great really." she said brightly. "He's been painting something for you, but apparently it's not done yet and he wouldn't let me see it."
Kamui snorted as Fuuma drifted over to them, Sakura attached like a determined vine to his arm. "He hasn't changed, has he?"
Yuzuriha giggled as Inuki settled back down into the cushion he had been taking up before. "Nope!"
Kamui shook his head in amused fondness, and then looked around the room again. It was just them in it, he saw; wherever Seishirou and Subaru had gone, they weren't back yet.
Hokuto saw the amusement leave his face, and gave him a look as she settled back into the couch, resting her head against Kakyou's outstretched arm gently. "They'll be here, don't worry." she mouthed to him, but it did absolutely nothing to smooth out the tension.
Sakura tugged on his sleeve, and Fuuma's at the same time. "Sit down here." she told them with fierce affection in her green eyes. "There's enough room." she told Fuuma as he gave it a slightly apprehensive look.
She flopped down next to Fuuma as he gingerly tried to sit without disturbing the other girl and the translucent dog, who only gave him a sleepy blink, before stretching out farther. Kamui glared at the hound, seeing exactly what it had done.
"I'm sorry Kamui-san." Yuzuriha said, tapping the dog's shoulder in reprimand. This had the effect of not making him move at all, but simply yawn in exaggerated calmness. "Inuki, move." she told the dog more sternly.
Kamui looked at Fuuma, then shrugged. "Don't worry about it." he told her as he stepped back.
Fuuma made a startled sound and all of the air rushed away in a huff as Kamui sat down on his lap. "What?" he asked when everyone's eyes flew to him. "There's no room on the couch any more, and I wanted to sit here."
Hokuto started to cackle, and Kakyou shook his head slightly, sending ripples of pale golden hair sliding over the dressing gown like a rain of stars. "Sakurazuka-san is already shy enough without you laughing at him, Hokuto-san." he said quietly, looking at her with vaguely stern golden eyes. "Remember, not everyone grew up with you as their mother."
She thankfully stopped laughing, but that didn't deplete the smirk on her face at all. "Well if I'm going to be their mother, then they'd better learn to get used to me. You had to get used to me too, Kyou-chan."
Kamui could completely sympathize with Kakyou's sigh, and how he rested his face in his free arm. Underneath him, Fuuma shifted his legs awkwardly, and then stilled, but his thighs were tense enough to suggest that he hadn't calmed down at all. Hokuto looked over at him. "Tongue-tied, Fuuma-chan?" she asked with dark delight.
He forgot about being relatively amused by her antics, and glared at the woman. Hokuto was entirely unfazed, pulling one leg up onto the couch, linking her fingers over her knee, and resting her chin on that. "It's okay, I get that Kamui's stunning enough to steal all of your words."
Fuuma squirmed again, and Sakura shifted back from him just a little bit, bumping into Inuki's hindquarters. "No, that's not it." he got out, his tone sounding mostly embarrassed...and something else.
Hokuto blinked at him for a minute, and then grinned even more felinely, "Fuuma-chan. Is Kamui sitting on the wrong place on your lap?"
Fuuma made a choked sound, and her grin abruptly vanished, dying away. Kamui turned around to see his blush looking strangely brighter, and it took him a second to realize that it was because the blood that wasn't lingering in his cheeks and the bridge of his nose had abruptly drained away.
"Get off of him," Seishirou commanded from the doorway, tone lazy with more than a hint of danger lurking behind the blank gaze that he had aimed straight at Kamui. Beside him, Subaru stood there, more still than the shadows that danced about the room. "I would have thought that you'd known that if someone's white, that's generally a sign to stop doing what you're doing."
Kamui got up without a word of protest, and didn't miss the tiniest shifting that Fuuma did in relief. A horribly guilty feeling ran through his stomach, bitter and cold at the thought that he'd been hurting Fuuma and hadn't even realized it.
Seishirou walked past him without a sound, long coat fluttering with his motions so that the cherry blossoms on it looked like they were real, floating along in an invisible breeze, to drape himself onto the couch gracefully, the coat caught under his thigh to prevent it from slipping away. Subaru followed him, but lifted a hand and brushed it against Kamui's cheek before moving to the couch himself, leaning against the arm. A silent forgiveness without question, his twin as gentle as ever.
A gentle tug on his sleeve had him assuming that Sakura was wanting his attention, but when he turned to look, Fuuma had regained some of his color, and the four of them on the couch had rearranged themselves so that Kamui could sit down, Inuki now sprawled gracelessly over the laps of both girls. Four sets of eyes looked up at him, ranging from pleading to lazy, but the ones that he was searching for something within were golden.
A second tug convinced him that at least the man had forgiven him enough to want him sitting there, and he sank into the spot, shrinking down as much as possible to avoid touching Fuuma more than the other wanted him to.
The clicking of heels drew his attention to his mother, who had stood up in a whirl of red fabric, discarding her black coat onto the space next to Kakyou with a roll of bare shoulders. Everyone was looking at her as she sauntered her way around the couches to the thing she prized most outside of her family and sewing utensils. Subaru had a faint smile on his face, one that might have had nothing to do with the fact that he'd been drawn down to lie on Seishirou's chest with long fingers sliding through damp hair over and over again, and it might have had everything to do with it.
The sound of wooden feet scraping over stone emanated through the room as Hokuto pulled out the bench and sat down with a flourish of skirts that left them covering her thighs easily, and the second thump of wood sliding back into the piano, baring a long row of keys long memorized.
Subaru sat up carefully, avoiding placing any elbows on his cushion, to look at his mother. "Are you going to play?" he asked, looking very curious.
Hokuto rested her fingertips on the keys, her smile softening, even if it did nothing to mute the tartness of her voice. "What did you think I was going to do, open it up for shits and giggles?"
Kamui sat up as well, as the first notes began to echo and repeat, the same three notes over and over again, before shifting the lowest up two. When she had the rhythm and pattern established, she added her right hand to the equation, high up enough to mimic a flute's soaring swoops.
Seishirou gave Subaru a smile that could only be fond and gentle as the vampire began to hum with it, small words mingling in that Kamui couldn't understand, but Seishirou obviously recognized. Although the familiar pit of angry resentment that Seishirou could have such influence over /his/ twin rose up in his stomach, it faded away almost as rapidly, his sister leaning against him affectionately as the song ended with a gentle flourish.
When she began to play the second song, her fingers spanning the keys to get an almost celestial harmony out of them, with Yuzuriha's help, Sakura managed to get the lazy hound off of her, and pulled Kamui up with her, over to the piano.
Hokuto smiled up at them as she trilled her fingers up to strike a chiming note near the top of the piano, and then began to sing. "Why is it when I'm with you, so fair and wondrous, that the hours slip away on pearlescent wings?"
Sakura joined in with her on the third line, resting her head on Kamui's shoulder peacefully as he wrapped one arm around her waist in return. "Night descends on lifeless seas, silvery and silently, the first star is so bright."
When he looked back at the others around the room, the tension seemed to have begun to diffuse entirely, any actions and memories from earlier discarded for the sake of time together. Kotori shifted and her wings.
When he looked back at the others around the room, the tension seemed to have begun to diffuse entirely, any actions and memories from earlier discarded for the sake of time together. Kotori shifted and her wings shuddered as she arranged them a little more neatly over the arm of the chair, and Kakyou smiled at them all, looking weary, but not enough to sleep. Yuzuriha had a smile on her face as she listened, one hand running over Inuki's evanescent fur over and over again, and Fuuma had closed his eyes to listen.
Kamui smiled at all of them in return, and wasn't surprised to find that he was truly happy to be home, even with a human and a dick of a changed vampire along with them.
The music seemed to swell beneath his mother's fingertips, and grow like flowers along a garden wall, reaching for the sun. She and Sakura sang in transcendent harmony, building the layers of melody up with the song. "Moonlight destiny, in all of the worlds there is no person I want to love more. In the vast sky, the trembling of fate's threads say that this is meant to be."
He couldn't resist joining in any more, and his tenor blended well with their sopranos. Fuuma's eyes opened wide in surprise as he heard Kamui's voice, and then he smiled, watching the three of them with all the wisdom he held.
Sakura hugged him a little tighter as the chiming notes before the second verse rang out again. "After I met you, my fair and wondrous, everything around me became so vibrant. In the dark of lifeless seas, roads of stars so silvery lead to the sky."
He lost the train of the song as Seishirou suddenly slid out from underneath Subaru with feline grace, standing up as tall as his frame would allow him. Subaru took his offered hand elegantly, standing up as gracefully as any deity. Standing close together, they looked like a statue of lovers, frozen in time for all to admire how closely they bonded together.
Sakura tugged on his sleeve with her free hand warningly as the second verse drew to a close and they went back into the chorus. Thankfully the words came back to him, and he was able to sing, swaying a little with Sakura in time with the music. "Moonlight destiny, however far that I must walk, I still look to that ending. And today's dreams return to tomorrow's, brilliantly glowing in the dawn."
When he looked over at Seishirou and Subaru again, they were still standing as close as physically possible without melding into one another and swaying together very slowly, like they were dancing.
Sakura leaned in a bit closer to him, the sound of her voice vibrating against his shoulder. "Moonlight destiny. Overcoming all of our fears, spiraling throughout the years." He smiled down at his dear little sister. "When I'm with you, you turn my love to life. Together in the night."
The music abruptly ended as Hokuto looked over at the dancing pair, and a rather comical scowl appeared on her face. "You're not supposed to dance slower than the music!" she called over at them, to Subaru's stunned look and Seishirou's smirk. "Dance in time and then it looks nice."
"Then play it so I can hear the rhythm." Seishirou told her, narrowing his eyes impishly, and Kamui almost had an idea of what he was planning on doing next.
Hokuto gave him a flat look, but returned to playing it. Kamui didn't chime in when they went into the last chorus, preferring to watch whatever Seishirou had in mind.
The vampire didn't disappoint, first speeding up the dance pace until they were swaying in time with the chiming notes, and then abruptly pulled them into something fast enough that Subaru almost tripped, starting to laugh in surprise as he adjusted easily to the rapid pace.
Kamui grinned as the notes emanating from the piano suddenly soured and stopped altogether with a slam. Hokuto whirled around again. "You two are horrible!" she called to them, any harshness to her words utterly destroyed by the fact that she was laughing.
Seishirou pulled Subaru closer to him as they stopped, perhaps somewhat dizzily, and smirked. "You said we weren't supposed to dance slower than the music. You never said we couldn't dance faster."
Kamui couldn't help but snort at the whole situation as his mother began to cackle. "Do you want to dance fast then?" she invited them teasingly, turning back to the piano. "I can play a faster tune."
Sakura leaned against him with an affectionate smile, and when Kamui looked over at Fuuma, he could see the man looking totally relaxed in the couch, smiling even with his eyes behind the glasses.
Seishirou clearly had no idea what he was in for as he took Subaru's hand again. "That sounds nice."
The piano almost seemed to roar to life as Hokuto abruptly started in on a song that was much faster, and Seishirou stumbled on the rhythm for a moment before Subaru took the lead from him and they both whirled in some strange mixture of formal and free interpretation dance.
Sakura reached down and grabbed his hand. "Dance with me Nii-chan?" she asked with hope shining in her green eyes.
There was no way he could say no to those eyes. Gently pulling her away from the piano, they began to dance.
The liquid that sloshed in the cup he held rather uncertainly was a dark ruby red, and more transparent than blood. The scent of it was rather potent, and swam about in his head luxuriously. The warm room kept him pleasantly afloat and the warm arm around his chest that held its own drink was just grounding enough to prevent him from getting any more intoxicated.
Subaru watched the room rather serenely from the influence of the overly strong beverage his mother had seen fit to bestow upon them, looking over his family with the familiar sense of happiness that they were here. He could almost feel the rather feline grin that Seishirou wore from behind him, warmer than the room itself.
Kamui had placed himself, slightly flushed from the heat and his own wine, between Fuuma and Sakura, looking enough relaxed to let his shoulders slump and not bear his almost ever-present scowl, and ignoring their sister's small pout each time he lowered the level of wine in his glass.
Kotori had stood up from her chair to stand closer to the fire that crackled as merrily as a fire ever could, and if his mother's comment on the situation held any water, it was quite merry indeed, and had declined the offer of wine, instead just watching the inevitable descent into inebriation.
Hokuto had already gotten there, the flush on her cheeks had nothing to do with the warmth of the room or the fact that Kakyou was dozing off on her shoulder, blinking cat-like golden eyes sleepily, and probably only not completely dead to the world due to the fact that his wife could engage in volumes loud enough to drown out any shrieking fits from every other vampire in the castle at once without straining her voice.
Needless to say, when she forgot to control her volume, she left the rest of them wincing.
"And that's why Madame Magami officially wrote it in her will that she loathed me and that the only reason she didn't disown Tohru right there was because he was the last young Magami at the time." she concluded her tale with an almost disastrous flourish of her glass, to the laughter of both Kamui and Sakura. "Stupid bitch." she continued, tipping the glass and her head back so that the short black hairs temporarily mixed into Kakyou's, who was just as amused as all of them, if rather more quietly. "No sense for a good prank."
Seishirou lifted his glass in a long range toast, single eye glittering with good humor. "I'm not so sure that most people would call it a good prank to deliberately show up to any dinner dressed exactly like your grand-aunt many times removed except edited to look more like a harlot's just to show her up, let alone your wedding dinner."
Hokuto shrugged, the action dislodging Kakyou for a moment before he shifted with her, and grinned. "Well Tohru liked it, and Grandmother was amused as ever, so I think it was good."
Kamui made a face. "I could have lived without the implications in that sentence." he told her with a frown.
Hokuto chortled as Subaru resisted the temptation to drop his face in his free hand. "But I didn't put them there, that was all you."
Kamui did rest his face in his hand, and still managed to avoid Sakura's questing fingers reaching for his glass. "But I want to try some, and Mother said I could from your glass." she pleaded with him as her fingertips passed far short of their goal, currently held close enough to Fuuma's mouth that the man probably could have stolen from it instead.
Kamui gave her a violet look. "If she's going to keep telling these stories, I'm going to need /everything/ in this glass." he told her with all the stern affection he could muster.
It did nothing to dispel her pout.
Hokuto grinned at the three of them. "You're being so quiet, Fuuma-chan." she addressed the last on the couch. "Too many people talking for you?"
Fuuma shrugged, the firelight glinting off of his glasses. "If everyone else is having fun, I'm content to listen."
"Fuuma doesn't talk when other people are talking." Seishirou interjected. "He and Subaru can have an entire conversation out of nothing but silence. It's impossible to understand."
Kotori spoke up from her corner. "There isn't anything wrong with that, Seishirou-san." she said with her own quiet wisdom, wings twitching in a belying sign of an omnipresent tempest beneath the surface.
He had never seen her mad, he didn't want to.
Seishirou fortunately was able to diffuse the situation either recognizing that she was more dangerous than she appeared, or through sheer luck. "I didn't mean there was, just that sometimes it's a little confusing how they seem to be psychic without any psychic powers.
Kotori's wings shifted to lie flat against her back again, and she smiled. "Such is the mystique of introverts." she said with personal experience coloring her tone.
Kamui nodded along with her. "Although they aren't mystical when you've grown up with them." he replied, again moving his cup away from his sister. "Just quiet."
"I disagree." Seishirou said smoothly, and Subaru fought to not blush as the warm arm across his chest tightened slightly. "They are just as mystical, but one gets better at guessing why they aren't talking with the others."
Fuuma saluted them both with his wine glass, far more controlled than Hokuto looked or Subaru felt. "Well the answer is obvious, isn't it, Subaru-san?"
Subaru smiled, well aware that at least Seishirou was going to laugh when he joined in. "Because often there's no need to talk about a topic where everyone else already has something to say, since often, however correct the sentence is, it will simply be ignored because it was not said at the top of one's lungs."
Kamui snorted, but it was drowned out by Hokuto's laugh. "Formal as always, Subaru. You could just say that you don't talk because stupid people don't listen, but instead it comes out all formal."
He cringed slightly, and the wine in his glass tipped back alarmingly towards his hand. "I didn't want to be rude." he told the wine glass softly, and she continued to chortle.
Seishirou pressed his lips against the back of Subaru's neck, and a tingling sensation that had nothing to do with the wine arced up his arms and down his spines so that he shook almost imperceptibly, and got an affectionate sound for his troubles.
Hokuto's smirk promised absolutely nothing good, although her shifting about woke Kakyou up the rest of the way, with him reaching out to steal her glass before she managed to ruin the cream of the couch. "That reminds me of when you two were children, little children." she added with a slight drunken wobble to her voice, and he couldn't remember being more grateful to Kakyou, as he watched her wave one of her hands presumably at what height they had been. "All big eyes and following everyone around because you were so scared of being left alone. So adorable."
Kamui scowled, his mouth pulled into one nearly invisible light, face tinted rose by the dancing flames. "Mom. do you really have to?"
She blinked at him as if she couldn't imagine him saying such a thing, but the grin she was forcing from taking over her lips belayed the fact that she had entirely expected it. "Well Sakura never saw you when you were little like that, and Sei-chan and Fuuma-chan missed out on it too."
"I wasn't born until after you'd grown out of that state." Seishirou hissed in his ear, sounding rather disappointed, and Subaru hoped that the blush crawling up his neck would be nice enough to be mistaken for the effects of the fire.
Hokuto leaned back into the couch, somehow managing to completely avoid catching any of Kakyou's hair with her shoulders. "I remember when Subaru was small, and whenever he had nightmares, he would climb out of bed and walk over to wake me up with his big green eyes looking so sad and ask if he could crawl into bed with me."
He could remember it too, both the sense of feeling protected and safe cocooned between his mother and his father, and then happier when Kamui would inevitably follow him, rubbing at his eyes sleepily and not bothering to ask before trying to climb in, the nightmares themselves.
That didn't mean that it wasn't as embarrassing as being walked in on in the middle of kissing, and the blush he'd been hoping so desperately to fade, instead consumed his face, leaving him feeling like he'd just fallen in the fire and rather disturbingly dizzy. If it weren't for the grounding of Seishirou's arm, he might have fallen down. "M-Mother!" he cried, flustered, but unable to look away from her. "Please don't tell them that!"
She shrugged, unfazed by his embarrassment. "Well you don't do it with me any more, but I thought that Sei-chan might like to know where the habit came from."
Seishirou pulled him more securely onto the couch, and Subaru almost resisted the temptation to bury his face in Seishirou's shoulder. "Well it's never happened with me, but then I was always the one getting there first." Seishirou lied glibly to Hokuto and Sakura's continued laughter, Kotori, Kakyou and Fuuma's smiles, and Kamui's outraged scowl.
Hokuto abruptly shifted the weight of embarrassment from him to Kamui so fast it gave the rest of them whiplash, as she pulled her legs up under her and grinned in such a way that only evil could accurately describe it. "But climbing into bed with someone else isn't such a big deal, right Kamui? After all, we had to change your sheets every night." she laughed.
Kamui, who had opened his mouth to say something scathing, shut and opened it a couple of times as the implications of her comment washed over him. He went a shade of white comically pink in the firelight. "M-mother." he whispered in unabashed horror, "You-you didn't j-just say that."
She flapped a hand at him carelessly. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, it happens, and you stopped soon enough. But too bad all of those cute sheets went to waste..." she trailed off enough that Kamui could cringe and take rather a larger gulp of wine then he was evidentially comfortable with, judging by the way that he made a disgusted face and swallowed heavily, pulling the cup away as Sakura tried to take advantage of his distraction.
"Please Nii-chan." she whined, sounding rather annoyed. "Let me try some!"
"No." he told her in a strangled voice. "I need to be as drunk as possible or I will die before I can leave this room."
Sakura pouted and crossed her arms. Hokuto gave him a look. "Kamui, let your sister have some."
That tone of voice allowed, considered and thought of absolutely no argument, and indeed, Kamui handed over the goblet without a single word, probably for the best.
Sakura took one sip, and then her face screwed up adorably and she handed it back. "That's yucky." she told them all, shuddering. "How can you drink it?"
Seishirou drank from his almost demonstratively, "Practice."
The not amusedly confused look on her face demanded a better explanation. "It doesn't taste as bitter when you try it a lot, and eventually you either start to like the taste or you learn how to swallow so you don't taste it." Subaru explained, leaning over to set his cup on the floor. He'd had more than enough for the night.
"Usually the latter." Seishirou added, and gave him an innocent look when Subaru turned around to look at him. "It is true." he added plaintively.
Hokuto smirked at Kamui, and Subaru braced himself for round two of Kamui's image getting utterly destroyed. "You also used to get your vowels confused." she began, smiling rather fondly, as if in remembrance. "Every time you said an 'r' sound in the middle of a word, it became an 'l'."
Kamui forcibly knocked back another shot and gave her a muzzy dark glare. Fuuma missed the danger zone entirely. "Oh really?"
"Oh yes," she chuckled, swirling the wine in her glass with ease. "He was so very fond of Subalu and Kotoli." Kotori herself smiled from the corner, but it was less teasing and more just remembering herself those times. "Also Cerbelous."
Kamui scowled harder, and when offered the remainder of Fuuma's wine, took it rather aggressively. "Mother, why only me?" he asked rather antagonistically, looking like an irate pigeon.
"What?" she asked with what had to be the most faked innocent tone he'd ever heard; and he'd watched Seishirou grow up. "At less I didn't tell them about how you used to follow your cousin Keiichi around. You had the most adorable crush on him!"
It was incredibly rude, but he couldn't help chuckling at the strange mix of horror and memories making themselves blatantly plain on his twin's face. He pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth in an urge to stifle the sounds, but couldn't keep from quaking still.
Kamui appeared to have given up on getting through this evening with his dignity intact, only shrinking into himself and his wine glass. "Subaru, please don't laugh." he said in a tone that said he understood if Subaru couldn't.
But he sobered himself anyway, and the gentlest pressure on Seishirou's arm convinced his partner to also cease.
The lonely tolling of a bell high up startled them all, and Subaru silently counted each ringing cry as it reverberated through the floor. Five, six, seven, eight, nine... and it sang out another three times.
Somehow his mother shook off the wine as if she'd had less than a glass as opposed to somewhere around ten, and stood up with a maternal briskness. "I hadn't realized how late it was getting!" she explained, as the rest of them all stood up with her, manners or instinct making them follow her without question. "If you don't want to be dead tomorrow, you should go to bed."
The last part seemed more suited for Kakyou, who was again blinking rather like a cat startled from a nap, but he had no qualms with following it at all.
She moved to hug Sakura first, his sister smiling and returning it with the energy of the dawn, before the girl ran to hug her father, getting a kiss on her forehead and holding onto him contently.
Kamui was the next to get a hug, and he sank into it like he had thirty years ago, the time blurring back into him for a moment before he remembered that he was supposed to have some dignity, and she let go of him. Fuuma got a gentle pat on his arm, and Subaru knew that he was grateful both for the fact that it was a relatively impersonal gesture, but also that she gave him it at all.
He got a hug last of her three, but he didn't mind at all. She smelled of cinnamon and roses, and all the wonderful memories of childhood rushed through him for a moment, leaving a stinging feeling pricking at his eyes.
But it passed like dandelion seeds caught on the wind, and when she let go, he was under control. "You take good care of my son tonight." she told Seishirou, smiling at him, and the way that Seishirou held him from behind said everything of his reply without a word.
She shooed them all out with a grin, even Kotori leaving with a soft shifting of her wings, before the door shut on her smile for the night. As the sounds of Hokuto and Kakyou behind the door faded out, Seishirou reached down and twined their hands together, fingers weaving seamlessly until it seemed like it was where they melded to one.
Sakura and Kotori went in the opposite direction of them, Kotori undoubtedly still going back to the greenhouse, and Sakura to her rooms on the other side of their mother's.
Ahead of them, Kamui walked with Fuuma, their hands not joined, but bumping together from time to time as they moved. Any words spoken between them were not loud enough for him to hear- and that was exactly as it should be.
They vanished into Kamui's room after a moment, and then they were alone.
Subaru seemed almost unnaturally warm, his hand almost hot enough to not suck heat away, and he wondered if it was the effect of the alcohol, or the fire, or just that he had soaked up so much vitality that it continued to emmanate from him even after they all were scattered.
Seishirou followed him through the hallway, the shreds of moonlight still leaking into the slits of windows showing how high it had risen since their bath, and were not outshone by the now extinguished torches, burned stumps black in both shadows and light.
The door to his room was cloaked in shadows, a pit in the night, but he could still see the outline of the handle as Subaru opened it up into his own room, pulling him in gently.
The fire within had burned down to mostly embers, the open window sucking out much of the hot air, but Subaru seemed to be relieved by the chill, a small tremor running through him as he walked towards the window, letting Seishirou's hand fall in case he didn't want to be impacted by the cold.
Subaru turned around and gave him an affectionate smile. "Sorry, it gets really warm after a while in Mother's rooms." he explained. "I've always preferred it a little cooler."
Seishirou smiled back at him from over by the fire. "So that explains the utter lack of caring for when it was snowing on you. Because you like it cold"
Subaru tried to cover his still-present smile with his hands. "You never said anything about it before. I thought you would have realized that I'm not bothered by things like snow."
He walked over to steal one of Subaru's hands for his own, pressing it against his cheek. "You're a flower, how do you like snow?"
Subaru blushed then, a pretty rosy color in the starlight. "W-well it doesn't bother me, and sometimes i-it feels nice to be something so soft."
He had to lift up an eyebrow at that. "Snow isn't soft. It's cold, how can it be soft?"
The vampire let out a soft laugh at that statement and leaned closer to him, turning his hand around to caress Seishirou's cheek. "My Seishirou-san." he said lovingly.
Seishirou reached up to return the soft sensation, brushing his fingers over soft cooling skin. A heartbeat later, he leaned in further and kissed Subaru, as gently as he could.
The taste of wine and laughter still lingered on Subaru's lips, and for a moment he thought he could feel the curves of the couch and the heat of the fire again, before he returned to much more interesting things, like the fact that Subaru was sliding his hand up against the back of his head, preventing escape. He still fit perfectly against him, seeming to lock them together into two halves of a whole when Seishirou was able to hold him there.
Subaru's hair was soft under his fingertips, silky and smooth and he ran his hands over it again and again as Subaru moved his lips against Seishirou's, sending pleasant tingling feelings through his body. Oh how he had missed this, being able to touch him without revulsion or bad memories souring the experience and calling up experiences he didn't want to remember. Subaru had been the first to break through the walls and that was how he wanted it. The past was far behind him, and he had every intention of keeping it there.
Subaru clung to him, the hand not in his hair now clutching at the back of his coat, pulling the embroidered cherry blossoms up his hip, and he was breathing, little faint sensations fluttering into his mouth as somehow Subaru took all the myths of kissing and turned them backwards. His eyes were shut in piece, black eyelashes slicing against the perfect white of his face and no longer blushing, but a living marble statue in the starlight.
Rapidly the other vampire seemed to forget how to stand up, and Seishirou caught him up in his arms as Subaru fell against him, lips working harder against his and the dampness of his tongue seeping through. He shivered a little bit, but stilled when Subaru started to draw back, incorrectly recognizing a trigger sign, kissing him harder to get the point across.
Opening up his mouth to Subaru's questing tongue, he heard and felt the other vampire make a desperate sound in the back of his throat, something akin to a purr and a mewl at the same time. Subaru was still warm in his arms, not heavy at all, but it was difficult to keep his balance easily when Subaru was so determinedly leaning into him.
It was rather disappointing to have to pull away just after reaching that part of the kissing, but he had no intention of toppling over and dropping Subaru on the floor. He didn't let go though, and looked at Subaru as he blinked open green eyes with brilliant confusion. He was slightly flushed now, seeming to have either only now realized how close they were, or was having some trouble climbing back down from cloud nine.
His voice was a rather husky whisper that make him want to shiver for much darker reasons than just kissing, "Why did you stop?" he asked, looking a little lost.
Seishirou was more than half tempted to return to kissing him at that and screw the consequences of inevitably falling on the floor, but managed to refrain from kissing him senseless. "You're going to fall if I move."
Subaru almost immediately put two and two together and blushed a brighter red, abruptly hiding his head in the crook of his shoulder. He mumbled something that Seishirou caught easily, but was just blurred enough to allow an excuse to tease him.
"What was that?" he purred at the smaller vampire.
Subaru made a noise in his throat and repeated the sentence, just as blurred as before.
He couldn't help but grin at his partner, enjoying the unexpected flip from lustful to shy. "I'm afraid I can't understand you when you're talking to my shoulder. Please repeat the sentence?"
Subaru removed his face from his shoulder just enough that he could be heard more clearly. "...I said we could go kiss on my bed if you'd prefer..."
Seishirou let out a soft laugh, and Subaru cringed, but he could feel the shy smile again pressing into his skin, soft and tender. "That sounds like a good idea." he told him, and was surprised to not feel the twinge of hesitation that usually accompanied such things.
He was getting better. Finally.
Subaru didn't let go of him through their walking past the window and slivers of starlight to the curtains cutting off his bedroom door from the rest of his suite, Seishirou pushing it aside rather than making Subaru turn more than his head to watch where they were going, and it swished back into place with an aura of cutting away any other sounds in the world.
It was even darker in his room, and warmer, like a cave of seduction already prepared, preventing the participants from being seen by any others, unwanted anyway. Subaru caught the corner of his mouth in the shadows, quickly sliding in the correct direction to kiss him fully.
Unlike their last kisses, this one seemed to burn in all the best ways, curling through his stomach and sliding down his legs. Subaru pressed closer to him again, all long limbs and grace, and Seishirou let his eye fall shut and sunk into the sensations, enjoying the actions without memory behind them. He rested one hand on the small of Subaru's back, felt the pulse of life even through the heavy fabric and tangled the other in Subaru's hair.
The vampire was warming up again, and he wondered dimly what was causing it, but since it was unimportant to the act of kissing, he dismissed the thought to return to licking at Subaru's lips and feeling the puffs of breath that Subaru made in response.
His pants were starting to become mildly uncomfortable, which was an interesting response, and he was getting tired of standing.
Subaru made a yelping sound when he abruptly pulled them over towards the bed, but became much less complainy when Seishirou pulled him down on top of him, the vampire somehow avoiding slamming any knees or elbows into painful places.
He actually shivered a tiny bit when Subaru returned to kissing him after a moment of adjusting them so they were lying flush, and nipped playfully at his lip just a little bit. Seishirou pulled the smaller vampire closer to him, and bit back the growl of pleasure from Subaru continuing his actions.
He was fumbling, and fumbling was the word, since Hokuto seemed to have sewed them on tightly enough that he couldn't get them to bend around the tiny slits in the fabric, with the buttons of Subaru's coat, attempting to push the flat discs through so he could get rid of that fabric. Subaru was, much more deftly, since he'd had far more experience with his mother's style of sewing, undoing his as well, and brushing his fingers against his chest through the white shirt.
At last he got the hang of how to remove the buttons, and then he was trying to push it off of Subaru's shoulders without disrupting either his hands or his mouth from their pleasing actions. This was something that turned out to be rather impossible in hindsight, and Subaru broke away from his lips to shrug the coat off in one smooth rolling of strong shoulders, the fabric resting on his legs before sliding to the floor with the weight of it all.
Subaru's mouth was insanely warm on his, licking at his lips until Seishirou opened up his mouth, and darting in to brush against his canines. His hands were again on Seishirou's chest, running gently against his neck before to his shoulders, pushing the black away until he arched into Subaru's touch and allowed the vampire to free his arms until he could leave the cherry blossoms and the coat behind to pull Subaru closer to him. Subaru's knee bumped his before pressing much more determinedly into the bed so that Seishirou was trapped in a shield of a vampire who had quite literally held his life in the palm of warm hands for more than half his life.
Subaru's fingers were then working at the buttons of his shirt, sending virulent waves of fire through his body with each new touch. He was clenching at the back of Subaru's shirt, the thin cloth feeling like it was threatening to rip as he pulled it tighter against the curves of his back.
When Subaru finished with the buttons, he slid his hands up Seishirou's stomach, caressing the curves and bends as he sucked in air at the beautiful fiery sensations.
He didn't want to stop, not at all.
Subaru was kissing him rapidly, hungrily as if he wanted to drink in everything that was Seishirou and keep him forever in his heart. The lightest touches of his fingers, his hands were enough to steal the breath from his lungs, tighten his pants beyond comfort and make the tiniest part of him cry out for more.
He wanted Subaru, in every way possible, to be his.
Subaru placed a warm hand on the his thigh, and there was a moment of hesitation. For a split second he froze at that touch, unable to respond, unable to move.
Subaru immediately pulled his hand away as his mind automatically flashed back to Setsuka, the horribly seductive way she moved, her dark feline grace, and her bitterly exposed body. She had forced it all onto him.
"Seishirou-chan...come here. If I'm happy, he can be happy. Alright? You know that you're the only person I'll ever love...My Seishirou-chan."
They sat up together, and the vampire placed a hand over his heart, his eyes shimmering with aged wisdom that didn't seem to match his body, but he knew better. "Your heart is ready, and your mind is ready, but your body isn't. Not yet." he whispered, and Seishirou's eyes widened as he struck through to the bottom of the problem with the same ease as ever. "And that's okay. I'll wait until all of you is ready." he said, and leaned down to place a kiss on his mouth so chastely he could have screamed with frustration and still wouldn't have.
He narrowed his eyes in frustration and distaste, but refused to pout, at least visibly, to Subaru's low chuckle. At the slightly questioning look accompanying the sound, he sighed. "I don't want to wait until 'all of me is ready'."
Subaru let out a full throated laugh and bumped their foreheads together affectionately. "It's okay to wait. I've waited all this time, I'm fine waiting longer. Don't worry about it," he added with the same strength of wisdom that Hokuto had, "Everything happens as hitsuzen means it to."
"You're talking like the witch. Stop that." he told the vampire. "It's creepy when you talk like the witch."
Subaru smiled a little wider at him, and then pulled away, moving off of him. Without Subaru's heat and weight, he began to feel a little more normal, and a lot more like he wanted to go back to what they were doing, except that he knew full well he was just going to keep twitching and shivering so that they couldn't get anywhere.
Damn nerves, he thought, and rolled onto his stomach in frustration to avoid pouncing the vampire right next to him, consequences be damned.
It took everything he had to not jump when Subaru reached over to gently touch the base of his neck, warm fingers brushing against the tense muscle there. "What are you doing?" he asked through the comforters, and then clenched his hands into the bedspread when Subaru began to knead at the spot his fingers were resting.
"You're so tense." Subaru mused out loud, "Would you like me to help?" he pressed the palm of his hands against the muscle and it slowly began to unknot under his skilled hands.
"If you keep doing that, yes." he said, perhaps slightly more growly than he meant, but it was to be expected with Subaru doing things like that.
Subaru laughed under his breath, and his fingers dipped a little below the collar of his shirt. Seishirou sighed and his fingers loosened slightly as Subaru began to touch him again, but much less intimately than before, and yet at the same time it was more so. A different type of intimacy, really.
Subaru at last started to draw his shirt off, finding it in the way of his actions, and then tossed it aside. He heard the soft sound of fabric encountering stone as Subaru again spread his hands over him, over the blades of his shoulders like he was caressing wings, tenderly and with a hint of worship. He sighed and allowed himself to relax a little more as the man began to press the balls of his hands in more firmly, working out the kinks.
As sensually as sex, Subaru leaned further over his body, straddling him before sitting down gently, the fabric and skin within of the inside of his thighs as hot as a brand, and his hands began to move more intensely, more heavily. Seishirou couldn't hold back a moan as everything in his back gave into the touch, and all of the blood flow in his body balanced out to only a rapid pulse that soaked into the rhythm of Subaru's hands.
He thought back to the moment they had minutes before, and he sighed. He desperately wanted to be with Subaru in the most intimate way possible; he wanted to please the man, if anything else, thank him in all the ways he could. In his years of adolescence, he had dreamed about Subaru in wholly unaltruistic ways on occasion- he couldn't help himself. In a young frame where hormones usually got the best of him, he couldn't do much to stop the urges. Not until...well, he still had no intention of remembering it.
But to be with him now, like this, even if not in the way he had pictured it, was perfect. He couldn't begin to describe why it was perfect, but it was.
Seishirou sighed with content as Subaru pulled his hands away, running them down his back smoothly and climbing off of him to collapse next to him on the bed, looking like a cat who had been at the cream.
He arched his back up and braced himself on his elbows to look down at his lazy partner, smirking. Subaru had a grin that he might have very well stolen from Kamui's face, so impish it was. "Why are you running away?" he asked softly, eyes glittering teasingly in the dark.
Seishirou snorted. "I'm not running away, does it look like it?"
Subaru laughed, a soft sound that rang through the darkness of the room, and writhed against the bed until he was looking up, ghostly against the dark blankets. "It looks like you're the big bad wolf about to eat me?" the tone of his voice said that he wouldn't mind certain definitions of eating.
Seishirou resisted the temptation to fall back on the bed laughing, and instead made a rather playful growling sound at the laughing vampire. "I'm looming over you then," he began, trying to keep his amusement from ruining the sentence, "the better to flirt with you, my dear."
Subaru laughed harder, trying to stifle the sounds. "Why Seishirou-san," he purred, arching his body in ways that no one else was allowed to see, "What a big...smirk you have." he choked out and started to giggle again, the sound almost hysteric in the way that he couldn't stop.
Seishirou let himself fall onto the bed, unable to restrain amusement and hold himself up at the same time. "I know a few other things of mine that are big." he told the snickering vampire.
Subaru's eyes flashed open, strangely strong in the dark, and his grin could have made a midnight sun, it was so bright. "Like your feet?" he asked, rubbing his toes against the aforementioned pieces of his body. "Or your hands?"
Seishirou reached forwards and folded one of his hands around Subaru's slimmer ones, letting the mirth fade away. There were so many things that could have filled the silence, that maybe should have filled the silence, but he didn't really want to say them.
Subaru's smile said it all, and he squirmed closer to him, mussing the blankets further. "I love you too, Seishirou-san." he said, gently pressing their twined hands to his cheek.
This would always be the most endearing part of Subaru, the part where he always understood without needing anything at all to hint at it. He just knew.
Subaru moved closer to him still, suddenly quiet as if the joking and teasing were no longer appropriate for the situation. "You're so warm, Seishirou-san..." he mused softly, burying his face into his chest. Subaru had at last settled back to his normal lack of heat, and Seishirou folded him up a bit closer in his arms.
The post-midnight chill had begun to seep within the castle, tendrils of winter that still lingered in the later reaches of spring slinking over stone floors and making the whole world different, and Seishirou shivered as it blew in from the open balcony, the curtains doing nothing to stop the flow of air, and he sighed, knowing that if he wanted it warmer, he had to get up and close it. It was, of course, very inconvenient, since he had no desire to get up and leave his cuddly Subaru, but he knew that he had to if he wanted to be more comfortable.
He groaned, and Subaru stirred in his arms. "What is it, Seishirou-san?" he asked, suddenly concerned.
"Nothing." he told the other vampire, and got a flat look complete with the lowering of eyebrows in an unspoken command to tell him now. "I'm just going to be cold if we don't close the balcony up."
He got a slight smile from Subaru then, and he pulled away form Seishirou's arms, moving up towards the head of the bed slowly, like an exhausted cat. Seishirou lay there a moment longer before summoning the will to get up and close the damn doors.
Walking towards the open balcony, he looked out beyond the curtains as he fumbled for the latches, and saw the moon high above, the goddess of a silver world in her cloak of stars and deep. He closed it firmly behind him, and the moonlight collided against his bare feet, bleaching them of normal color and leaving him as ghostly as any vampire who was born that way. Then he stepped out of the pool of light and returned to himself.
Turning around, he saw that in the span of time that it had taken him to shut the balcony, that Subaru had managed to sneak under the blankets, had pulled himself to one side of the large bed and was looking at him almost impatiently, except Subaru didn't get impatient and even if he did, he wasn't going to say anything.
When he climbed into the bed, Subaru immediately curled up against him, nuzzling into his chest and inhaling. "You're so warm Seishirou-san. So comfy and...and warm."
He chuckled slightly, wrapping his arms around the other's thin frame, and kissed him lovingly. "You said that already Subaru-kun." he mused softly, reaching up to stroke soft black hair tenderly. "Getting a little tired?"
Subaru smiled in return, his eyes slightly barred by black eyelashes, and he wrapped his arms around the man's neck, and kissed him. It was a much briefer kiss this time, and cut off by Subaru suddenly pulling away and covering his mouth as he began to yawn, manners taking over things like being cute. "I'm sleepy," he tried to say through his yawn, and the hunter laughed at that, admiring at how insanely cute Subaru could be when tired.
"Then go to sleep, love." he whispered, kissing Subaru's forehead, and the vampire smiled in weary agreement. He yawned again, resting his head on Seishirou's chest and closing brilliant green eyes, and seemed to almost immediately shift into a space of dreams, fingers curling against his chest.
He let the smile linger on his lips a little longer before shifting forwards and kissing Subaru's forehead, and was interrupted by a yawn trying to crack his jaws open.
He held Subaru a little closer, and shut his eye, memorizing the gentle lines of his face to carry them into his dreams, along with rich green.
If the option was valid, he really wouldn't mind staying here forever, even though Kamui and Madame Magami and the strange shadow stalker woman lived there, because it was worth putting up with such idiots to see Subaru's smile.
To his immense surprise, when Kamui had entered his room, he had immediately gone for the window instead of the bed, and Fuuma wondered if the slender vampire was more intoxicated then the amount of wine that he had consumed suggested. "What are you doing?" he asked as Kamui swung open the windows and the chill of the night rushed in.
He got a wholly devious grin, and then he hopped up to balance on the carved stone sill. "I want to show you something, now that it's late enough." he said, standing up so that his head and shoulders curved up out of view. "And if you follow too slowly, I'll lock the windows on you."
Fuuma chose not to point out that his windows locked from the inside, and followed him reluctantly to the window. Outside, the moon had risen to its zenith, casting silver beams over the garden and the stream glittered with the bite of cold and starlight, illuminated further by tiny flecks of blue that gleamed like torches, not crystallized by the moonlight.
Kamui pulled himself up without much exertion coloring his tone, the violet coat sweeping out into the night as he pulled his legs up, then slipped away out of side. "Come on up already!" the vampire called from out of sight, "There's a ladder right above the top of the window."
He hesitated, then climbed into the sill, having to crouch far more than the smaller vampire. He glanced down, and suddenly the ground seemed a lot farther away than it had when he was safely inside. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked, bracing whitening knuckles against the frame.
There was a scuffling of leather on stone that did absolutely nothing for his nerves, and then he could see Kamui by looking up, clinging like a bat to extended stones poking out from the room like they would in a gym wall. "It's fine. Stop being a scaredy-cat and come on!"
Fuuma made a face back up at the vampire, although he was sure that Kamui wasn't in a position to look down at him safely. "I'm not 'being a scaredy-cat.'" he said indignantly.
"Yes you are." the vampire said as he moved up with cat-like ease. "Now come on."
Fuuma sighed, and bracing his hands hard against the sill, started to stand up. All too soon, he reached the maximum height of where he could stand in it and was forced to let go of the frame in order to scrabble for one of the extended rocks that Kamui was using.
The texture of the stone he grabbed was rough enough to cut a careless hand, and he gripped it as tightly as possible, standing up shakily to reach for the next one before standing up fully. He could see the ends of Kamui's coat fluttering like bat wings against the stones, and he followed that. "Oh good." the vampire said as he seemed to hop up another set of stones. "You're making progress."
"Please be quiet." he said, and hoped his voice sounded nowhere as weak as it felt to him, trying in vain to not look at the suddenly more terrifying than usual drop.
Kamui snorted, but remained silent otherwise, to his own silent gratitude, only springing up the rest of the way to peep over the edge like a startled songbird, which didn't do a thing to boost his confidence.
Fuuma sighed, looked down again and prayed that if he fell out of the window to his sure death, Seishirou would bury Kamui in his grave until he joined him, and then pulled up with all of the muscles in his arm.
His head smacked against the top of the frame before he remembered to move further out, and then he was able to balance himself very awkwardly while he reached for the next stone with his lower hand. When he got it, he held on tightly, and then reached for the next, and the next, far too many lessons of specialized p.e. coming back into play and mostly taking over, although a spotter's harness would have made him feel much better.
When he reached the limits of how tall he could stand, he took a moment to prepare himself, using his upper arm as a convinient replacement for his hand in pushing his glasses back onto his face. "It's easier than it looks, just jump up." Kamui offered unhelpfully, shrugging his shoulders and continuing to watch.
Fuuma glared up at him for being supremely unhelpful, and pulled up with all of the strength in his arms at the same time as he jumped up from the frame, clinging so tightly he thought that he might take the stepstones down with him.
His feet hung out in space for a stomach-dropping second before he was able to pull himself up far enough to brace them against the frame, and then reach for another stone as quickly as possible. He knew he had to be as white as the moon above, and yet since he was doing it, he wasn't going to quit now.
He kicked off of the frame, and managed to catch his foot on the first stone he'd found before. He got the other one on the next stone, pressed himself as close to the wall as possible, and started the thank all of the gods that Seishirou had said weren't real for not dropping him from the castle at that time.
The sound of applause rang out above him. "Congratulations!" Kamui called down, and he could hear the smirk even though he wasn't looking up to see if it was there. "You have officially beaten Subaru in how fast you can manage to get yourself onto the roof part of the roof without a parent or guardian there to guide you."
He was tempted to tell Kamui to fuck himself after all of that, but he was too busy being glad that he hadn't fallen, and that he wouldn't if he continued to hold on to the wonderfully solid stones. "Please don't give me commentary or family history right now." he gasped out, and again used his arm to push the glasses slipping off the bridge of his nose back up to rest there, hoping the sweat falling down his face wouldn't cloud the lenses or slick them too much.
He took a moment longer to find his courage, or sheer stupidity, to make it up the rest of the way, remembering that at least the top of it was solid and flat, and that spurred him on.
First one foot up, and then another. Left hand, right hand, grip and rest for a moment, then begin again. He was sure that Kamui wanted to kill him with frustration, but he wasn't going to be able to make it up any faster.
At this point he had no clue how he was going to get back down, but that problem could be set aside for the moment.
At last he was able to get his hands onto the flat part of the roof, moving his feet very cautiously up the last steps so that he didn't slip after all of his work. Kamui grabbed one of his hands, holding on tighter than his body looked capable of. Fuuma didn't protest the tight grip; it was doing something for his nerves just to have him there to catch him.
When he got all the way onto the roof, he promptly allowed himself to fall over somewhat dramatically and thank again the gods that didn't exist for not throwing him down to become a bloody mess.
Kamui hovered over him somewhat awkwardly, at last reaching out to rub against his back right against his spine. Fuuma felt the slightest strangest desire to purr, but it seemed an entirely reasonable reaction to the nausea swirling about his stomach. "Why were you so scared?" the vampire asked with inhuman curiosity. "I mean, I know that if you fall too far, you'll splatter and die, but why were you scared in the first place?"
Sometimes he kind of sort of forgot that Kamui had spent little time around humans, and that it was his twin who could answer all the pertinent questions towards human habits within reason. "Generally if we know that it can and will kill us without mercy if we mess up, we tend to be more scared of it." he answered through the roof, not quite at the point where he was ready to peel himself away.
Kamui drew his hand away. "Oh..." he said intelligently. "I never thought of that."
Smashing his head into the roof was not an appropriate response to that comment, but it was very tempting. Instead, Fuuma forced himself to sit up, sitting well away from the edge. The vampire sitting by him appeared to be lost in thought, violet eyes turned towards the heavens as he pressed his lips together into a thin line and then loosened them.
"What did you want to show me?" he asked after a moment of waiting, and Kamui blinked in surprise. Then he grinned, a slow curling of his lips that bared elongated canines elegantly to glint ominously in the moonlight.
"Is it not obvious?" he asked with an amusement that rivaled Seishirou's for sheer ability to piss off all around him, and spread his arms, the cloak tumbling away from his arms like a river of night as he indicated exactly what Fuuma was supposed to be looking at. Then he appeared to get a better idea. "Wait!" he called, and abruptly leaned forwards to cover Fuuma's eyes. "Not quite yet."
"And what am I supposed to be doing?" he asked, using the annoyance in his voice to cover up any fear or trepidation from the sudden action.
Kamui's lips brushed against his ear and he shivered slightly as the breath of words brushed against sensitive skin. "Lie back down, on your back. Trust me." he intoned, and he dimly thought that Kamui could have a good career as an hypnotist if he ever wanted.
Fuuma didn't fight the vampire, knowing full well how strong Kamui could be when in charge and well fed, and instead laid back and hoped that his trust was not being misplaced again. The cold stone seeped through his pants and up the back of his neck, rather like shards of ice, and he resisted the temptation to shiver again.
Kamui's fingertips lingered against the lids of his eyes for a moment longer, then drew away like a painter's brush. He kept them shut for a moment longer, then opened his eyes.
What he saw, lying on the roof with nothing to bar him from the sky, was nothing short of beautiful. Except that wasn't a strong enough word for it, but none came to mind. Like a ring of endless light, the night sky spread out before him, and unlike all the worlds that he'd had time to relax and really enjoy such a thing, there was not a single light other than the moon to try and blot it out.
Hundreds of thousands of stars spun out across the tapestry of the sky, celestial brilliance glittering with a hundred thousand worlds with so many thousands of stories to tell. And through all of it, a band of light as pale as ghostly milk streaked there, too long lasting and far too wide to be a comet's trail.
He was trapped on a roof staring at the sky, and aside from violet eyes filled with mystery, he couldn't name a single thing in all the worlds that he'd been to that could rival it for sheer wonder.
He inhaled sharply, and let his eyes spin about to try and memorize as much of it as possible, from the band of light to the stars shaped like the sleeve of a trailing kimono, or a club-wielding hunter forced to his knees, to the cluster that glittered somewhat dimmer than the brightest collections, but were close enough to be a pack of sisters fleeing from a terror nipping at their heels, to the wide disc of the moon, and back to the center.
"It's beautiful..." he whispered, barely sure that he had even said it, or that it had been heard under the radiance of the world.
"Do you like it?" Kamui said, some strange sound clogging up his throat, and Fuuma couldn't understand why the confident vampire would be tripped up by that.
"It's amazing. I can't believe I'd never seen such a thing before..." his voice traced off, and he smiled at the uncertain-looking vampire before returning to try and see more of the sky that bowled around him peacefully.
He missed seeing the change on his face, but he could hear the smile on Kamui's face coming out and softening his voice. "I'm glad." he said, scraping his nails along the roof lightly and then stopping.
A heavy silence fell between them for a few minutes, deep and forgiving. At last he returned to the first seven-starred group he'd seen. "Do you have names for the star groups here?" he asked.
Kamui lifted up his head and blinked. "The what?"
"The star groups." he continued, "Where there's a shape in a pattern of stars and you give them names to decide what they are?"
Kamui stared at him blankly for another few seconds, and then laughed slightly, pushing a few strands of dark hair out of his face. "Well for one thing, we call them constellations, and yeah, we do."
"Would you show me?"
Kamui looked at him for a moment, and then shrugged and moved over to lie down next to him, pressing himself as close as possible in order to not screw up where they were looking with minor things like position differences. "Okay, so you see that cluster of seven stars, really close together, right there?" he asked, pointing up towards the second group of stars he'd found before. He nodded in admittance, and the vampire continued. "We have two names for them, mostly because our paternal grandfather, before he died, went and found another culture with a different name for them. We usually call them the Pleiades, but they are also Subaru."
Fuuma turned his head to cast a startled glance at the vampire, who seemed to be enthralled by the stars, but noticed nevertheless, and grinned. "Yup, my brother's named after a constellation."
"And what does your name mean?" he asked.
Kamui turned his face back to the stars. "The box shape right there with the arching stars on all for sides is our alicorn symbol, and up past it, almost out of sight, the upside-down funky double-u is The Foolish Queen, who bragged about her child's beauty until she was captured by the gods and hung in the sky so that her beauty could last forever. That girl is right there, to the northwest, as a galaxy now, and she's in a much kinder shape than her mother."
Fuuma could agree with that, seeing as how it couldn't be comfortable to sit for eternity upside-down. "Are any of your other family constellations too?"
Kamui sighed heavily. "Well I wouldn't say that one of them is my family, but I'm pretty sure Subaru would disagree with me on that." He pointed up towards a string of stars that could have been a dipping spoon. "That's the Ladle, which is also part of the Great Cat, and that's also Hokuto, so my mother's up there." Then he went and traced out the seven-starred group he'd found first. "And that's the great hunter, who is trying to either protect or capture the seven maidens of Subaru's constellation...also known as Seishirou." he hissed out the last word.
"Oh." he said intelligently. "Wait, so my brother's named after a constellation?"
Kamui shrugged next to him. "Don't ask me why, since he even had the conceit to be on the same side of the silver river as him."
"The silver river?" he asked, but even as the sounds left his mouth, he could already see what Kamui was referring to.
Kamui snorted. "It's only the biggest thing in the sky, and the most prominent." he said, but it was affection that layered the underside of it and not anger or resentment or even annoyance.
"So you're not in the sky?" he asked after a moment.
Kamui shook his head, wisps of black hair moving like shadows against the roof tiles. "Nope. Star names are very rare, and Mother and Father didn't think that a star name suited me."
"So what does your name mean?" he asked again.
Kamui ignored him in favor of staring at the sky more. Fuuma sighed, and waited, but Kamui was stubbornly obstinate about keeping his mouth shut on that confession.
"Your family is very nice." he conceded at last, and smiled. "Much nicer than most people around."
Kamui looked over at him for a brief second, his face blank, and he sighed heavily. "Well they're something at least." he said, seemingly unable to take the compliment for what it was. "Most likely batshit insane, but there's nothing I can do about that."
Fuuma snorted at the relative naivety of the sentence. "I grew up with batshit insane, and they aren't it. They're just...quirky, is what they are."
"And by quirky, you mean batshit insane." Kamui said, not without amusement of his own. "Even Subaru, if you get him in the right moods, is certifiably off of his head with madness."
"All the best people are." he said in reply, thinking of an old book he'd read with that line. "Do you like them anyway, though?"
Kamui sat up to lean over him, tips of his hair glittering with the faraway stars, and his mouth twitched into the tiniest of smiles. "Yes I do, despite their insanity." his eyes took on a distant cast, as if he were falling into the pool of his memories. "Mother, she's always been there for me, never didn't have the time to answer a question or do something to make me happy. Even if it meant blowing off a Clan meeting, she'd just do it and go to play with me and Subaru. And she never did anything that was...chiding, I guess. Things like 'sit up' or 'eat your soup' never really passed her lips. She was more than just a mother, she was a friend to me as well. And she was able to teach the important things in life without actually needing to say them." he said, fiddling with the end of his cloak as he recollected his thoughts to continue on.
Fuuma watched him for a moment as the vampire was caught up in memory, his grin widening until it became a full fledged smile. "And Subaru, he's just always been there for me too, as much as he's been able to. We grew up together, were always together and knew what the other needed. I really couldn't have asked for more for more from him, and even if I hate your brother, I'm glad he's happy, because it's the best thing I can give him for all he's given me. And Sakura...when Subaru left and I was alone, even though Mother couldn't have planned it that way, she saved me. She was the first person I'd ever had to take care of, and even when it was the middle of the night and I just wanted to sleep, I would happily get up to take care of her when she dreamed bad things, whether they were just nightmares or future-seeing dreams, she saved my life in a way because I had to be strong to protect her."
The words were tumbling from his mouth rapidly, as if a dam had been opened up in his mind and the things he needed to say the most and had never admitted were allowed to come out. "Kotori's the closest thing I have to a big sister, and she's always been one for me. Even though she's quiet and is able to understand birds better than people, she always was there when Subaru and I wanted to see something new. She was the first person who helped me understand the weight of my power, even though she can only hear and speak to birds and not all the creatures in the world. And.." he trailed off, and swallowed heavily "And my father...I...I miss him. He was a good man. I wish I just could have said goodbye to him, at least...that I'd realized that what he was doing was going to change everything forever and just that I'd had time to tell him the things that were most important..." The stream of words trailed off, and when Fuuma really looked at him, he could see the pain of that parting still as clear as day, unable to let go just yet for whatever reason.
Fuuma watched him begin to pull himself together, or lock himself away again, and shake himself like a cat regaining control of the situation.
"Did you have a good family?" he asked, honest curiosity in his tone and posture. He obviously had no clue what he was asking for, but that was alright.
Subaru already seemed to know more about what happened than he did, it was only right, even if it hurt, that he share a little with Kamui, so that he could understand some things.
Also so that Fuuma could repay the debt of being honest. "I never knew my father, from what Seishirou said, Mother killed him before I was born." Kamui drew in a sharp breath at the words, but didn't interrupt. "My mother...well, if there was such a thing as an opposite of yours with the same cheerfulness, it would be her. She was born and raised in a family of assassins, and according to Nii-san, when she was fifteen, she slew all of them, and turned the profession she'd been born into from human hunting to vampire hunting. I never got involved in it!" he exclaimed as Kamui's eyes went dark with anger, "And Nii-san stopped really quickly and never got back into it, so it was just her really. But she was...very unbalanced. Some days she'd be almost normal, she'd make sure we had food to eat, and tend to her garden and leave us alone. But those were rare days, and usually she'd spend her free time when I was home and Nii-san wasn't to basically hurl as many bone-cutting insults at me as possible, and sometimes tell me that she didn't even know why she'd allowed herself to carry the second pregnancy to term if the child was just going to be a...failure." The words tasted just as bitter on his mouth as they did whenever she said them. "She died when I was ten after she...crossed a line...with both of us. I don't know what happened, but I'd never seen Nii-san so scared as when he told me to run and hide."
Kamui had stopped looking dangerous, and was now just looking stunned, and a little flattened. "Seishirou's probably the only reason I'm still here. Since my mother hated me more than anything, he raised me, from the day I was born. He wasn't very good at being around a kid, and sometimes he'd have to ask me over and over again if there was something he could do better just to be sure that I wasn't hurting, but he was always...there. And safe. My mother tried to kill me several times, and somehow Seishirou always protected me from it all."
His throat dried up and refused to say anything more, and he turned his eyes back to the stars. They stung a little, but he'd cried enough times for the things that she had done, and he didn't want to cry any more.
"I'm sorry." Kamui said unexpectedly, his voice incredibly quiet. Fuuma whipped his head around to look at him, and Kamui had his head bowed, looking uncharacteristically sad. "I didn't mean to drag up painful things."
Fuuma forced himself to sit up. "You couldn't have known." he said softly. "It's alright. I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't able to handle it."
"But..." Kamui trailed off, picking at the threads on his boot. "Talking about this is something that Subaru's much better at." he said at last, looking strangely flattened. "I don't know how to not offend with my words by saying things that shouldn't be said."
Fuuma couldn't resist the urge to snort at that. "You're doing fine, I don't care. If I wanted to tell Subaru, I would have told Subaru. But I told you instead."
Kamui looked up at him, violet eyes open as he'd ever seen them, and his breath caught and tangled in his throat. Then he smiled, a curve of lips that was completely genuine. "That is true. So, thank you."
Even if there was a way to reply to that besides the generic answer, he didn't think he could. He felt like he was back at high school, looking at the picture again and realizing that there was a reason that those violet eyes were so attractive.
A feather-light brushing of fingertips against his cheek drew out the ability to breathe again, except far too fast to try and calm down. His heart raced, but not with terror, and he suddenly felt like everything was all right, even if he was too high up by far and he didn't want to think about how he was getting off of the roof, that the world was finally balancing out enough to let him find his own footing.
All the blood in his body was probably rushing to his face to collect around the slight sensation of Kamui's fingers, tingling all the way up and sending gentle ripples of fire back down. He swallowed once, then again when it didn't solve the problem.
He'd kissed people before, it just had never been as interesting and heart stopping as it was now.
"Sorry if this is bad, I've never done this before." Kamui whispered, the tendrils of air from his words fluttering into his lips and tasting so sweet with their shy certainty.
He shut his eyes, and trusted.
Then wings smacked against the top of his head, and if he'd been standing up, he'd have fallen down. His eyes shot open, and he saw Kamui looking as startled as he felt, then absolutely furious, as he caught sight of whatever hit them.
Fuuma saw it a second afterwards, a pale bird soaring through the darkness on silent wings. Had he just been hit by an owl?
Clearly Kamui thought so, because he shot to his feet, yelling after it. "Fuck you, I was doing it just fine!" there was a soft hoot from over head. "I don't care if it was not according to normal owl rituals, I am not a fucking owl."
Fuuma gaped at him as Kamui continued to swear at the owl, who kept banking and turning to hoot down at him again, and was very glad that Seishirou wasn't up there.
If his brother had been there, he suspected Seishirou would be laughing too hard to stand up anymore.
At last the owl grew bored of bothering Kamui, and flew off in search of dinner...or breakfast, or whatever time it was for owls to eat at, and the vampire flopped back down to the roof. "Fucking owl!" he exclaimed at no one in particular. "Of all the times to fly by and offer advice, that was the fucking worst! Damn damn damn damn!"
He trailed off into a stream of expletives that only served to ruin the mood even further, and Fuuma couldn't help but suddenly see the whole thing as downright hysterical. How many times in life did one have the opportunity to be cock-blocked by an owl?
He started to laugh, little sounds that at first were easy to cover, but steadily growing louder and louder until he was shaking with it. Kamui's petulantly sulky look only added to the flames, and he bit on his hand in an attempt to stop laughing. Although he was not met with much success.
At last Kamui seemed to find the humor of the situation too, and started to chuckle himself. "Well now that the mood is completely and irretrievably dead, should we go back inside?"
That actually had a stronger effect of sobering him up than just about anything else could. "I have to climb back down now?" he asked, trying his best to keep it from being whiny.
Kamui snorted. "Yes, unless you'd rather sleep on the roof tonight."
Fuuma gave him a look. "Have you joined the ranks of your 'batshit crazy' family?" he asked, feeling immature enough to use air quotes at the vampire, and Kamui laughed, standing up slowly.
"I'll go first, and catch you if you somehow manage to fall to your untimely death while climbing down, which you won't because you'll know what you're doing."
Suddenly climbing down those stairs didn't seem as bad as before, although still inarguably bad, he thought he could handle it now. He stood up as well, starting to walk with Kamui to the edge of the roof.
Kamui went down first, first into a crouch, then turning around and feeling for the first hump of rock to put his foot on. "Would you like me to narrate my way down?" he offered with a smirk as he braced his hands on the roof and started to slide the other foot.
"You really don't have to do that." he said, and was summarily ignored.
Kamui moved the first foot down, and then began to narrate as therefore offered and decided on without Fuuma's input. "Okay so I've moved down a total of two steps, I can go down another two before I need to start holding onto the rocks."
Fuuma did not look down at those words, but instead pushed up his glasses and again wished that there was an easier way to get up and down off of this roof in the dark.
"I am putting my hands on the rocks now." Kamui continued, his voice low and sinuous with amusement. "It is very easy to climb down these rocks except for the last part."
"You can stop now." he said, and again was ignored.
"I'm...what's the right verb for the situation...shimmying down the rocks and it's completely easy. I know exactly where to put my feet next, is that your problem? They're spaced evenly along the roof so that it isn't hard to climb." Kamui continued to monologue with dark pleasure. "The only hard part is making sure that the window didn't blow shut so I can swing back through the window."
He wasn't looking at all, but that didn't stop the horrible feeling in his stomach when Kamui abruptly stopped talking and then there was a thud and a grunting sound. "Okay." the vampire called back to him, and the horrible feeling started to go away. "I'm inside my room now, the windows are very open, you can get in easily."
He considered the idea of just waiting on the roof until sunrise, but then realized that Kamui would probably go up and forcibly carry him down the stones, and that would be even worse than climbing down himself.
"Are you coming or not?" Kamui called up again, and Fuuma sighed, dropping to his knees and clutching at the textured tiles as he cautiously poked a foot over the edge, sliding it down the roof with a scraping sound.
The first hump of rock appeared under his foot at what seemed like the perfect time, delightfully solid, and he let out a sigh of relief. The first step had been taken.
"I'm going to be all grey by the time you get back in here." Kamui called up, and he froze for a second.
"Allow me my acrophobia and I'll be down in a few minutes." He yelled back and heard Kamui chuckle. He was getting rather tired of his attitude, and that more than anything was the main force continuing to drive him down the steps. First the second step, then the third. At the fourth, his foot almost slipped, and he shoved it on even harder than before, and hesitated a moment.
Five, and six, and then he had to reach down and grab the first stone in one white-knuckled hand to keep moving. He was never climbing up this roof again. The only thing keeping him on it now was rather misplaced pride.
Seven, eight, he was holding onto the stones tightly enough that he imagined them crumbling to pieces in his hands, nine, ten, Kamui seemed to be listening for him. Eleven, twelve.
At thirteen, Kamui called up to him again. "If you're on your thirteenth step down, you only have two before you need to swing into the window."
"Thank you so very much." he said dryly, and felt for the next step with even more fear than before. It rested under his foot, solid and sturdy, and then he had to swallow and reach for the next.
His stomach dropped from under him as he looked to see if there was one more thing he could stand on to get his hands lower before swinging in. The bronze frame of the window glinted dully in the moonlight, and despite the fact that it was a stupid idea, he moved his foot to it, and felt it shift slightly, but not enough to kill his balance in any way.
He moved his hands two stones lower, and felt the frame shift again. He moved his right hand down one more stone, and decided that he'd had enough of that.
He pushed off of the frame and the stone abruptly, refusing to think of all the ways that it could fail, swung his lower body out, then as gravity worked with him and motion to pull him through the window, let go.
He landed on the floor of Kamui's room hard, not managing to balance himself enough to stand and instead collapsing into an ungainly heap on the floor. The vampire of the room himself stood above him, arms crossed. "Took you long enough."
He started to shake, and was vaguely aware that he'd probably pushed his nerves and coping mechanisms farther than he could actually handle things, and that was probably most of what was providing his difficulties with the roof that he could easily handle on a good night's sleep and a restful day. "Could I go to bed now?" he asked without moving. "I think I've had enough."
Whatever Kamui saw, it must have softened him the rest of the way. "You're shaking." he said with concern. "I think it's time to get off the floor."
Strong arms grabbed his hands and started to pull him up, the only thing stopping Kamui from bodily lifting him being the rather large height discrepancy and the fact that Fuuma picked himself up as well. He was suddenly bone tired from everything that had happened and was really just ready to sleep for an eon. "Come on," Kamui encouraged from under him. "Keep moving or I won't be able to make you move."
Fuuma obeyed, and flopped on the bed as soon as Kamui guided him close enough in the dark. Then, possessed of a sudden spurt of reasonable energy, he turned around and began to fumble at his boot ties. He pushed one off and started work on the other, letting it fall to the floor with a heavy thud that rattled his bones. The coat was next, and tossed to the foot of the bed, and his glasses were last, placed on the convenient little table beside the bed with a gas lamp. He curled up on the bed, and looked over at Kamui.
The vampire, in what seemed to rapidly be becoming a habit, showed absolutely no shame as he shucked off his pants, leaving them tossed on the floor carelessly, and was wearing only his underwear and the shirt from dinner, a glowing white in the darkness. Fuuma would have blushed, but he was too tired.
He did blush when Kamui walked over to the bed, started pulling down the comforters from midway down, and then climbed in to curl up against the pillows, flipping the blankets over them.
For some reason, an unanswered question from earlier popped into his mind with a desperate need to be asked. "Kamui," he began, and the vampire, fussing against the blankets like a dissatisfied cat, stopped and looked at him questioningly. "What does your name mean?"
Kamui started to laugh, and moved closer to him. "Do you really want to know that badly?" he purred, pressing against him just enough that he wanted to squirm away before abruptly stopping his movement and just lying there.
"Yes." he said without a hint of doubt in his voice, and the vampire chuckled again, the little sounds shaking the bed ever so slightly.
Kamui snorted. "Persistent, you've got that going for you at least." He pulled the blankets up higher on them, until they were over his shoulders and tucked beneath Kamui's chin. "If you really want to know that badly, then it means The One Who Represents The Majesty Of The Gods."
Fuuma blinked at him. "You're named to represent the majesty of the gods?" he asked, trying to comprehend the meaning of the name with the rest of his family.
Kamui laughed under his breath. "Yes, I am. And this god-representing vampire is cold and would like to snuggle against your warmness and not have any more conversations until way later tomorrow morning."
He really couldn't argue with that, not very much, and hesitantly slid an arm over Kamui's waist to hold him a little closer. Kamui's only response was to curl up more and make a sigh of contentment.
"...Your feet are cold, O Majestic one..."
"Shut up and go to sleep Fuuma."
"Yes sir."
There was no reason for him to be awake right now. He was in bed, it was dark out, he had his Subaru curled up in his arms, it was the perfect situation for sleeping well past the normal times he got up.
And yet for some reason, he was awake, with a little niggling beacon in the back of his head insisting that he get up and move, go somewhere to erase the feeling that was annoying him.
How so very annoying.
Seishirou blinked once in the darkness, noticing that there were no longer moonbeams resting on the floor, so it had to be pretty late, and shut his eyes again, resting his nose against the top of Subaru's head.
The natter of the beacon in the back of his head got louder, rather like Hokuto when getting into one of her tirades, which he now knew both from Subaru's stories and personal experience, was very hard to ignore.
When his shifting about to try and ignore it started to disturb the vampire curled up against his chest, Seishirou hissed through his teeth. This had no effect on the feeling in his head, and at last he gave up on ignoring it. It was only bugging him more the longer it went on unceasingly.
It was rather like a chanting in his head, only the words were up to him. And it was fucking annoying. At this rate, he was going to get out of bed just to kill the person doing so.
That was a very tempting idea in fact.
Subaru shifted against him again, whether unconsciously distressed by Seishirou's troubles, or just lost in dreams, he couldn't tell, but he pressed a gentle kiss against Subaru's forehead and then stroked his hair until the other vampire quieted again. Then, regretting it every step of the way, he disentangled himself and silently climbed out of the bed, making sure not to disturb the sleeping man next to him, and picked up the discarded shirt from earlier, since he had no desire to walk over to the annoyance clad in almost nothing. The pants followed suit quickly, and then he walked away before he could convince himself to ignore the repetitive annoying sensation and just go back to bed.
He opened and shut Subaru's door as silently as possible, guiding it shut so that the hinges didn't cry out as he closed it again, and then walked to the stairs, following the invisible trail of sound to stop at the top of it.
After a second's hesitation, in which he violently cursed whoever had the brilliant idea to wake him up in the middle of the night and disturb his Subaru, he started down the stairs, counting on the shadows in the deep to show him how many steps he had left before turning round to go down another flight. If it weren't for the fact that the relevant vampires were probably long dead, he would have taken whoever designed these stairs and introduced them to the idea of falling in circles.
At the bottom of the stairs, inevitably the beacon did not cease pulsing intently at him, and he growled slightly as he slowly walked through the halls towards a wooden side door that appeared to be conveniently unlatched...
He pushed it open to the night, and found at his feet, a thin long stone trail leading into the sinking moonlight and the mysteries of the night. The beacon sang with delight as he walked out of the castle entirely, humming contently as he started to walk along the cold path, feeling the curves of each stone with bare feet.
The path quickly led him to another small door in the vast wall of the garden, and he opened up that too, shutting it swiftly in case anyone was following him. Not that it was very likely, but seven years of fear were not lightly tossed aside, even with another fifteen to work on them and at least mute the habits.
When he stepped away from the shadows of the wall, he saw a garden that he logically knew was the same one as the day, and yet somehow looked completely different, and it was all because of one thing.
Fat blue flowers turned radiant faces to the sky, tall enough to be sunflowers if they had yellow stubby petals and a big fat center for seeds instead of a tiny center and long graceful petals. There could have been hundreds of the flowers lining the walkways and tracing out the pools, and they all had one thing in definite common.
They all glowed.
He could safely say, that in all of the worlds that he'd been to, none of them had ever had a glowing flower. He started to walk into the garden, sliding his feet along the grass so lightly he barely disturbed it, and, ignoring the less pleased humming in his head, began to try and study the moonflowers a little closer.
As he leaned down to look closer at the glowing flower, unable to figure out how it had such a celestial shade of light blue, he felt the buzzing of rapid wings fluttering across the back of his neck. When he whipped his head around to look at it with his single eye, he saw a darting ball of light, like a firefly, only too big and too brightly colored to be one. There was a soft humming noise, and when he turned his head to it, he saw another ball of light floating barely a foot away from him, before darting away into the night.
His curiosity, and the desire to see if they were something pretty, struck him, and he began to watch them intently, staring at them as they fluttered nearby to gather around him, standing as still as he possibly could.
Then, with lighting speed, he reached out and snatched one within his palm, and hesitantly he uncurled his fingers to see what had been following him. What he found surprised him, and he stared down at the little creature in wonder.
It was a small fairy, no bigger than the length of his thumb, with white skin that seemed to glow like the moon. When he turned slightly to put the sinking moon itself at his back, it became apparent that it was.
Looking like a tiny human for the most part, the thing that set it apart the most, other than its size, was its wings, thing as paper, and infinitely more fragile. They looked like mayfly wings, fat and translucent and one was torn in such a way that the fairy, if it was still alive, probably wouldn't be able to fly any more. He stated down at the little thing, wondering if the act of catching it had killed it, before it let out a rasping cough. The fairy lifted its head slowly, before sitting up and looking at him, and then it coughed again. He lifted it up higher, to see more carefully the glowing of it. "You are kind of pretty," he told it.
Without any hesitation at all, the small creature suddenly lunged forwards with an angry buzzing sound and bit the center of his palm. He cursed and shook his hand, throwing the thing down onto the ground heavily. He continued to utilize his knowledge of less than innocent words softly, examining the small crescent shaped bite mark in the center of his hand, and scowled. He looked back down at the little thing, seeing the small luminescent glow fade away; it had now died from the impact, tiny wings shattered beyond repair.
There was remorse, yes, but the only remorse he felt for it was the fact that he had killed such a beautiful creature, even if it was snotty with sharp teeth.
The beacon in his head tugged again, distracting him both from the tiny pain and the guilt, and he ran a hand through his hair, feeling how it almost seemed to divide before his fingers reached it, it was so clean, and let the sensation of healing take him over, the skin growing back from the wound on his palm, filling in the teeth marks until it was smooth again, fully healed and seemingly untouched.
Then he walked forward once more, ignoring the little fairies as best he could as they rushed over to the one he had killed, and he paid no mind as they swarmed around them once again, buzzing in agitation and the speed of their wings.
As he broke away from the normal path to follow the persistent nagging, he left the glowing moonflowers for the deep of the woods, blotting away the stars with the verdant leaves.
There were no secret tree conspiracies to trip him floating about his ears, and he managed to pick his way through the woods without error, slowly yes, but that was a slight side effect of walking in woods well past midnight.
At last he broke free of the trees into a clearing, where the starlight fell down to strike the little flowers with five white petals like them, and with a large bubbling fountain in the center of it. He walked over to it at the behest of the sensation in his head, and knelt down to look at it.
Abruptly the beacon in his head ended, and before he had time to look away from the babbling water, a voice called out to him, warm and rich like the earth that he knelt on. "Sei-chan."
He lifted his head abruptly to see Hokuto having appeared from the other end of the clearing, goblet held in one hand somehow both carelessly and delicately at the same time. "Hokuto-san." he said in return, not really sure how else to respond to her sudden appearance.
She made a face at him. "Don't use -san on me, I get enough of that from everyone who /doesn't/ treat me with respect. If you have to use an honorific, use -chan." The look in her eyes said that she held about the same respect for the honorific as she would for vomit at this point.
He decided not to argue the point with her, and instead sat on the stone rim of the fountain. "Hokuto-chan, then. Good evening. Why are you out so late?" he asked, watching as she walked across the clearing on bare feet to settle on the stone around the fountain. Strangely, she was wearing the least provocative clothing he'd seen her in all day, a black top and short black skirt with black leggings underneath, and it made her look much less like a painting sprung to life. A little more human, or vampiric if human was an insult to her.
"You has trouble on the way here, did you not?" she asked instead of answering his question as she sat down the goblet to run a slender finger across the water's surface, ripples trailing like fish fins.
Under her gentle touch, he saw the shadows of real fish fluttering up from wherever they were to bump against and nip at her finger gently. "Nothing serious, but you poked your nose where it shouldn't be." When she met his eyes, hers were dark and serious. "The fairies were all complaining and stirred up by "a vampire with no sense", and you're the only one else out here."
"How do you know that?" he asked her back, watching as she slid her fingers a little more into the dark water and the fish swarmed around more eagerly. "Can you hear other vampires walking around?"
She grinned at him impishly. "Not the vampires themselves. But everything else does talk about the things that disturb them, and I know how to listen to them." Her eyes took on a dim cast. "I can even hear the whisper of the stars if I want to. But they don't sing of the little things. Only the big ones. Like death. They know death, especially when it was death that wasn't supposed to happen. But they know life just as much."
How was he supposed to respond to that? He wasn't what she was, he couldn't hear the world. Just destroy it a piece at a time if he wanted. "I was bitten by one of those nosy fairies." he told her at last, trying to push away the weight of the conversation. She stared at him for a moment, and then laughed shrilly and harshly, scaring the fish back off into the deep pockets and crevices of the pond. "How did you provoke one of them into biting you? That's more than hilarious!" she shrieked, and he valiantly resisted the temptation to cover his ears from the sound.
"I picked one of them up and it bit me." he answered her, and was answered in return by another gale of laughter that really just stung at both his ears and his pride.
She covered her mouth with her free hand and squeaked with laughter as she rocked back on the stone. "Well I guess I can't blame you too much, since they are pretty." she said at last, still shaking and holding back the sound. "But they really aren't nice. At all."
He gave her a flat look. "Yeah, I got that." and she started to laugh again.
When the forest had been thoroughly scared away by the sound of her voice and the world seemed to be silent, she ceased laughing, and instead just smiled at him. "Go on and ask the questions you want to ask me. It's why I'm out here."
He gave her a flat look, and she just shrugged playfully. So he took the bait, knowing full well he might get more answers than he necessarily wanted. "Why did you call me out here?"
"So I could talk with you." she said enigmatically, picking up the goblet and holding it gently between her hands. "Out of all of my children, you are the one who I've spent the least time with, and perhaps the one who needs it the most."
"Why do you say that?" he asked harshly, perhaps more harshly than needed, but he wasn't going to take his chances.
She was completely unfazed by it, only setting down her glass again and reaching into the pond, trailing her fingers beyond where the fragile starlight could pierce through. "I know who your mother was, and why you are unhappy." she said, eyes trained on the pond, and not on him. "And I know that if you could never think of her again, it would be too little still. But no child is happy when alone. So I thought I would talk with you, perhaps not like a mother, if you can't handle that any more, but as a friend who has been a mother."
How so very strange, it was impossible to be angry with her when she came off as so reasonably wise, and yet she still seemed to know more than he wanted her to. "What did you want to talk about then?" he asked, less confrontational than the first time.
For a moment, the woman didn't answer, intent on whatever was happening in the pond, then she smiled and began to draw her hand out carefully, immediately cupping her hands together as she freed herself from the water. The very act of her concealing something made him curious to what she held, but he said nothing. "Subaru's life force is changing, fading away." she said, her voice full of nothing but love for her son, yet Seishirou could somehow still feel her uncertainty in it. "His life span is reversing from near immortality to match yours, a changed vampire. Even though you do carry the blood of the most powerful, your life span could be seen as negligible to what his could be."
His breath caught in his throat. "What do you mean?" he asked in a voice that was unable to be more than a whisper. "Is he...?"
She shook her head faintly, still holding whatever she'd found with all the tenderness of a mother who did love her children the way they should be loved. "When a vampire, of any clan, finds the one they are destined to love, they bind their souls together. It's why we exchange necklaces, so that we can show the tangible mark." Seishirou reached up to touch the one now hanging from his neck, the comforting silent weight. She smiled at him as she saw the motion. "You do already understand it a little, the amount of power you give and you take, and how it can change you beyond ways you thought you could be changed."
Her smile was sad, filled with a thousand memories he would never be able to tap into. "I have given that power, and taken it back now twice. And I love both of my husbands equally, they both have changed me in ways that I cannot even begin to understand all the ways they did. And I love them dearly despite it, and because of it. Without them, there is something that I will never see the same way. Without them, I would not have my children, and without them, we would not be sitting here today, talking of this."
"Subaru is not dying." she continued. "But he is changing, whether for the best or not, I cannot say, for who is it of me to decide whether another person's life choices are worth it in the end, and it is because of you. There will never be someone who can make him be as much as he is, and he will never want it. Only you. So I have to trust you with him, with his life, his love and his happiness. And all three are very important to me. Do you understand what I ask of you to take them on?"
'Do you understand what I ask of you to take them on?' Seishirou let the last words of hers spill over into his mind into a circuitous waterfall, over and over again, while the woman herself was patient with him, letting him figure out the meaning behind her words.
'Do you understand what I ask of you to take them on?' She was trusting him with her son, with Subaru, after everything he did, and everything he'd let happen to him, because it would make Subaru happier. Even though she knew all the scars that he would never acknowledge, she was still willing to trust him, willing to come out and confront him with that very fact.
'Do you understand what I ask of you to take them on?'
Almost as if the answer to her question could be summed up by a single image, a memory floated to mind, of Subaru showing him something, something little and he couldn't even remember what it was. Maybe it was a bird's nest, they had been in a tree at the time. Subaru had been up higher in the branches than him, peering through the heavy leaves of that tree, rather like an elf in the stories Fuuma had loved so dearly then.
He had turned back to smile at Seishirou then, as the wind fluttered by and brushed aside the leaves enough to gild him and his bright smile in sunlight. And while at the time he didn't know why it affected him so, looking back he could understand everything clearly.
He knew exactly what he'd found then.
He smiled back at her. "I do." he said with sincerity, and her smile brightened to drown out the stars above.
"Then you are truly as honorable as the stars say." she said softly, "You are worthy of their praise."
This had the strange effect of making him want to shift away from her gaze, rather like Subaru did when flattered enough to blush, and fidget uncomfortably.
Hokuto laughed gently, and then lifted her hands up to him before uncurling her fingers slowly, revealing the little treasure she'd found.
When he caught sight of what she held, he couldn't help but grin. It was a fairy of some sorts, that resembled a human at first, but with the most peculiar frog legs. The creature stared at him, tilting its head to the side so that deep olive hair dripped onto Hokuto's hands, staring up at him in wonderment. "It's a frog girl." he said as he leaned in a little closer to see it, not currently possessed of his glasses to look closer at the creature.
Hokuto giggled a little bit, startling the strange being and causing it to leap from her hand and back into the murky water, disappearing into the deep.
Seishirou watched the beast swim away and vanish, before looking back up at the vampire. "How do you hear the stars?" he asked her then, now that she seemed to be more relaxed and happier.
She smirked at him. "The same way I hear everything else. The whole world, and everything in it is born with a voice. Just most people can't hear the voices of anyone besides other humans." She looked rather proud of herself. "I can hear all the animals of the world, and all the plants. I can hear the groaning of the rocks, and the singing of the water and the whispers of the wind. I can hear the sun, and the moon, and the thousands of stars above. I can hear the world in its endless journey, circling and living in a way we can never mimic."
She leaned back, pulling her feet up onto the rim of the fountain, continuing to talk without needing him to interrupt. It was rather nice in a strange way, that she knew which tangents to take without him having to go to the effort of asking her. "Tohru was always asking me what I could here, and frequently if it was talking badly about him. Which, half the time, it was, because he'd be trodding on flowers and accidentally scaring away the birds or rabbits or foxes that came to me."
Hokuto laughed again, rather like the chinkling of bells as opposed to her usual hysterical riot, and continued, "He seemed so arrogant to me when I first met him, the prankster. He took credit for my prank then, so that I wouldn't get in trouble. And he was always following me around and being far too protective for my tastes, once he set my curtains on fire because I got stuck in them. I hit him for that afterwards." she added with a snort. "But I fell in love with him, and all of the silly traits that seemed so odd. And when he asked me to, I married him." she said, smiling widely.
Seishirou could see the ghost of memory in her eyes as she stared at him. "And then I got pregnant. He was so stunned, and so overjoyed; the very fact that I could conceive meant that I had become mortal for him, forsaking the longest years of my life to give them to our children. Love tends to do that, you know, such foolish things as giving up eternal life." she said, winking at him.
He couldn't quite share in her amusement, but he nodded at her, and then stared at the ripples on the water as they swayed slowly, little silvery tides drawn up against the walls of the basin by the moonlight.
"Subaru has chosen to give up his immortality for you." she said, again growing serious. "Although you both will live a long time, especially if you stay together, and happy, there is now a definite end to his time on this world. As there is with everything, but it is painful to realize it." Her eyes sang of all the conflicting feelings she held, those of a mother who had to fight for everything she had now and was still a little wary of letting her babies leave the nest to face the world alone. "I don't know what will happen, I cannot see the future in dreams, or water, or in visions, but I can watch everything, and trust my hopes that it will be alright."
"And you may live well beyond a millennium, past how long I can watch you both and protect you. I can see that in your future." she mused with a softer smile. "If that is so, then when I pass on, I will wish you all the happiness you've had and you've yet to have."
"And now it's time for you to go back to bed!" she said suddenly, startling him out of the contemplative state she'd lulled him into, with a burst of energy that would have made any child envious of how long she could bounce around. "I'm sure that Subaru's getting all cold and lonely in the bed now that you've left him there for so long."
He opened his mouth to tell her that it was her fault he was up and out so lately, but she flicked her hands teasingly at him rather like one would shoo off a persistent pet. At last he bent under her will, fighting against it would be much harder, and laughed. "Okay, I'm going, I'm going!" he called back at her as he stood up.
She grinned at him as he turned around, walking away from her and the fountain back to the castle where a nice bed and a cuddly Subaru waited for him. But when he had almost left the clearing, she called to him again. "Seishirou!"
The use of his whole name drew his attention, and despite the fact that he just wanted to go back to bed, he turned around to look at her again.
She had stood up now, still as any of the trees around them, and ghostly pale in the starlight. Her smile was warmly enigmatic, and he had the thought that if he spent a hundred years with her every day, he would still never be able to read that smile. "I know what you've done in your past. I know the evils you've caused and the hate you've born and shared. But you did it all to be with Subaru. You've traveled across space and time for him, you've lost an eye, you have even given up all you knew, just for Subaru. And that is love that no one can deny." Her voice was as warm as a mother's gentle hand, and inexplicably sad. "I suggest you get as much rest as you can tonight, Sei-chan. I fear tomorrow will hold many hardships for us all."
"What do you mean?" he asked her, but she shook her head, lines of black hair scattering against her face like night rain.
"Good night, Sei-chan!" she called at him, and again made the shooing motions with her hands, not stopping until he turned around reluctantly, and began to walk back through the woods, feeling much more like an adult than usual.
The woods were darker now, or maybe they just seemed that way. He walked through them, looking for the silhouettes of branches and trees more than actual shapes, and mostly avoiding them, although smacking his foot into a heavy log caused him to need to muffle the instinctive curses.
The weight of the darkness and the night, and all the things he had to carry wrapped around him like a shield of wings, both a blessing and a prison, and he couldn't say which they were more.
He left the shadows of the woods, into the garden of blue and fluttering lights. The moonflowers were much more successful in guiding his path back out of the garden, and the flickering lights of fairies darted about from blossom to blossom and successfully ignoring him. He walked along the path in thought, trying to not bow down under the weight that Hokuto had put on him.
Subaru had chosen to bind their lives together so that they wouldn't be apart.
There was so much he didn't know about vampires, so many things that all the books in the library could never tell him, and now he was going to have to step up and be strong. Because the very thought of Subaru dying was so horrifying as to be incomprehensible in its wrongness.
The door had not latched in his time away, and he was able to push it open with only the softest groans on old hinges.
It fell shut with a silent thud that seemed to rattle his bones. Despite being able to hear that it wasn't enough to wake anyone who wasn't right in front of it, he still looked about the hall for signs of anyone waking up and moving around.
And it was silent.
So very strangely silent, and suddenly it didn't seem like a warm place, a place where he could imagine a much younger Subaru living and being happy in, because how could a child as sweet as him be happy in such a gloomy place?
He knew full well that it was an effect of the late night and the fact that everyone was asleep, but it just seemed so empty now.
Walking away from the door at last, he ghosted across to the stairway and padded up the stairs, all seven flights, aware of how much more ancient the castle looked without light and people in it. Even after dinner and on their way back from their bath, there had still been hints of life in the burning torches and little whispers drifting around corners. At the top of the stairs, a last flicker of moonlight shown through the western window in a sad little pool on the floor. He stepped around it, and back into the darkened halls.
Past the great dining room doors, and the two rooms set between those doors and Subaru's room, and there wasn't even a great panther stalking along the floor to break the silence of it all. How so very strange, that everything seemed so much more abandoned now, in the deep of the night. The metal handle was bitterly cold under his hand.
He opened the door carefully, and was greeted by more silence, the room unchanged since his departure. He shut it just as quietly, and walked across the chilly floor. Pushing the heavy curtains covering the doorway of Subaru's bedroom aside, he walked in and let it fall.
The young vampire, and he was young in the standards of his people still, regardless of actual age, was curled up in a tight ball against where he had been lying before, with the blankets pulled up to his chin, looking cold and small on his own.
It was adorable in a lonely way, and that was a strangely sad thought. He didn't want to think of his Subaru being lonely.
He walked across the floor as lightly as a shadow, gently freeing the covers from Subaru's tightly curled fingers, and slipping into the bed again, pleased to feel that beneath the blankets was /much/ warmer than the outside air.
Subaru shifted and snuggled closer to him as Seishirou wrapped his arms around the smaller vampire, rather like a cat only disturbed by the gentlest of affectionate touches, but did nothing more as he continued to walk through his own dream world, curled up against Seishirou like there was nowhere he'd rather be.
Seishirou let himself smile a little and rested his forehead against his Subaru's, falling asleep and collapsing into strange dreams he wouldn't remember, nor care about not remembering in the morning, the moment his eyes closed.
For the first time in his entire life, everything straightened around him and maybe the little things didn't matter so much. He felt peaceful...and at home.

-A/N- Hello again! the next chapter after this will be epic! though not the most epic part! we are working very hard to get this to you finished! written by Fields Of Paper and Phoenix To Flame. stay tuned, and please leave a review! We thrive on them! :D