AN: This is dedicated to SakuraSango for diligently following and reviewing this fic, the fact that I didn't notice the last two reviews is entirely mine and I apologise. Sorry also for the long break, but I now have a long summer, so hopefully we will enter update land, if I have ideas, the characters co-operate and my parents don't ban me from the computer. You never know.
WARNING: This chapter contains one instance of strong language, which is entirely justified, references to gore (courtesy of Seimei), references to Soubi's naming (ditto), and very angry Kio.
Kio had been angry before, but never this angry. All he had known up till now was that Soubi and Aoyagi Seimei had a relationship and that sometimes Soubi would come back with strange marks. He watched as Seimei kissed Soubi hard, crushing his lips, then pushing him away so hard the tall, willowy blonde staggered, his foot meeting with the edge of a patch of ice. He skidded and fell. Seimei sneered and kicked him, then turned his back and walked away.
Soubi huddled on the ground for a moment, shaking, the world swaying around him as the blood began to soak through his scarf and his breath misted the air. He had to get up, had to... to reach... the... the house... . his vision grew fuzzy around the edges and he could not stand.
Kio was out of the house in an instant, running to his side, lifting him up in his arms, supporting the weight. He swore fluently in a mixture of Japanese, English, Chinese and every language he knew when he noticed the blood. He carried Soubi into the house and unwrapped the scars, paling and clenching his fists when he realised what that little shit had done.
Soubi often murmured something about Beloved being his true name, but this was too much... for the kid to play to his ravings like this, to enforce them like this... Kio would be perfectly happy to strangle him now, but Soubi was his priority. He lay the deathly pale man on the bed and hurried to find the antiseptic he knew all too well. He gently applied it over the vicious marks then wrapped bandages around Soubi's slender neck.
The moans had stopped now, as had the whimpers, and the colour had not come back to his cheeks. Kio sat next to him on the bed, placing a gentle kiss on his cheek, knowing Souchan was too weak to protest. This made him burn with rage, but he sat there, forcibly calm, watching over him and stroking his hair, watching the chest heave with hitching breath and the eyelids flicker.
BELOVED. The marks were jagged, streaming blood over the snow-white skin, the shade of the weather outside. Kio sighed. Soubi wasn't beloved. Not by Aoyagi Seimei that was for damn sure.
One day Kio would make him pay for what he had done, and one day Kio would teach Soubi what those scars really meant.
