Chapter fourteen done finally! Useless information - there was a rumour that the song Ring o' rosies is a refference to the plague. It's quite morbid when you look into it but aren't all children's games based around death and destruction?

Doctor

XX

Kurogane stood by the window, watching the children playing outside. The hospital room was dingy and disgustingly dirty, the walls splattered with all sorts of stains and the floor smeared with dried blood and vomit. The smell was appalling and the low moans of their patients had become a background noise.

An unoccupied bed, the white sheets stained brown and red, stood in the corner by a cabinet full of jumbled medicines and used needles. The conditions really were appalling. In any stable society, no one would have let him operate without years of practice but here, with an epidemic running rampant, anyone who could make clean cuts could become a doctor. They were sorely needed.

He carefully sorted through a tray of glass tubes, standing close to the window for its light. Many tubes were broken. Of these, he gently picked out and dropped into the bin by his foot.

With an annoyed grunt, he disposed of over half of the tubes. Nothing in this damn, pitiable excuse of a hospital seemed to be working. Even the lights had gone out, leaving him stranded by the window in order to see through the gloom.

Of course, it was not so bad. He could see the setting sun from where he stood and the children play, though he cared more for the man playing with the children than with any of the little, grubby street children.

Fai stood in a circle with the tiny children, holding hands with the two closest as they slowly turned and chanted.

"Ring a ring o' rosies

A pocket full of posies

Ah-tishoo! Ah-tishoo!

We all fall down!"

As the children fell to the ground, Fai joined them in their laughter and helped them up again only to perform the same game again.

Kurogane stared at them. He did not know how anyone could be entertained by such a simple game and the children had been doing nothing but chanting and falling down for over an hour. He supposed that the simple-minded were easily amused. No wonder the blond seemed to be having so much fun all of the time.

Clink. Another broken tube went into the bin.

The setting sun made the dingy town glow in a way that somehow managed to hide all the death and decay that plagued the little huddles of houses. In its warm light, Fai's normally pale skin seemed to glow too; his hair was tinged with fire, his blue eyes brighter and clearer than Kurogane had ever seen them.

A sudden, sharp pain brought his attention back to where he was. He cursed and looked down at his bleeding hand where he had cut himself on the broken glass tubes. Swearing under his breath, he laid aside the tray. Blood dripped down his hand, running down his wrist.

He really had to pay more attention to what he was doing.

XX

"Kuro-chan, dinner's ready!"

"Give me a minute!" he yelled from his room. He wanted to quickly bandage his cut before anyone noticed. Maybe he could wear gloves to hide it and just claim that he was feeling cold.

He snorted at the absurdity of such a plan but before he could think of a better one Fai had already burst into his room, ready to drag him out by the arm in order to have him sample his cooking.

"Kuro-chi!" Fai entered their dingy room. Much like the rest of town, it was dark and decrepit. "What's this?"

"Nothing," he quickly hid his hand but Fai had already caught sight of it.

"Did you hurt yourself?" he grabbed Kuroagne's injured hand, inspecting it worriedly.

"I said that it was nothing!" Kurogane snatched his hand out of the blond's grip, letting it rest uselessly by his side.

Fai persisted in grabbing hold of his hand, holding it up to his face so that he could inspect the damage. It was a straight, clean cut, neither too long nor too deep but still it was a cause of concern for the man.

"If we were in a different world it would be nothing but you know that there's an epidemic going around here!" Fai insisted unwrapping Kurogane's shoddy work.

Syaoran had come to the conclusion that the disease that was ruining the town was spread through the bodily fluids - most commonly blood. As long as it did not get inside your body, it was safe to touch and smell as much blood as one wanted, but if it made its way into the body…the results were almost always fatal.

"I'm fine!" Kurogane tried retracting his hand, without much success.

"Did you…"

"It's okay, it's fine!"

Fai determinedly held onto his hand. Raising it to his lips, he began licking the drying blood around the wound.

Kurogane started and roughly shoved him away. "What are you doing?"

"I'm kissing it better!" Fai grinned.

"Idiot!" he wanted to whack the man around the side of his head. "This disease is passed through the blood! If it gets into your system - "

"But Kuro-chin just said that he wasn't infected," Fai said pointedly, speaking slowly as if he were dealing with one of the many children that he played with outside of the hospital.

Kurogane growled and shoved him away as he tried to reach for his wounded hand again. "I'm not! That's not the point!" he yelled.

"So it's okay!"

"Even if I wasn't, there's no need to take that risk!"

"You're the one taking a risk, working in that hospital."

"So? What about you, always playing that morbid game with those children. They're covered in scrapes and cuts," he shot back, his hunger beginning to make him more annoyed than he usually would be.

"You don't have to talk about them as if they were parasites," Fai chided him, though his expression was strangely amused. "If Kuro-chi dies - "

"I'm not going to die!" he yelled, exasperatedly. Right now, he was willing to stomach a full course of Fai's ridiculously sweet pancakes than deal with the blond when he was being so stupidly complicated but Fai kept him pinned where he sat.

A flash of seriousness passed across his eyes before Fai artfully concealed it with a neutral expression. "I said if! If you die, don't except me to…to hang around waiting for your reincarnation!"

Fai smiled and tried to laugh off his remark but Kurogane caught the message beneath Fai's comment. He would not hang around waiting for his reincarnation, if there was such a thing, he would follow straight after him.

He could not take much more of this. Kurogane growled, grabbing his wrists and pinning the smaller man to the floor. He used his weight to keep the blond there, lying underneath him whilst he lowered himself to Fai's face.

"You really piss me off when you talk like that," he whispered dangerously, his hot breath tickling Fai's ear.

"And here I was thinking that you would be flattered," Fai countered, though without his usual cheer.

"Idiot!" he lifted his face just slightly so that he could stare into Fai's eyes.

"Kuro-rin?"

"This whole 'I'd die for you' thing is so disgustingly romantic, it makes me sick," he glared at the man pinned underneath him. It was funny how Fai, just by lying there, his hair dishevelled and his cheeks tinged with pink, his lips slightly parted in a frozen gasp, could make him so damn angry.

"I know that Kuro-chi can be romantic if he tried," he said teasingly but Kurogane was in no mood for their usual games. Fai held a hand to the side of his face, warmly caressing his cheek. "What do you want then?" he whispered, looking at him earnestly.

Kurogane sighed, wonderingly if such a reckless man could ever fulfil such a wish. He moved off of Fai to stand by the window where the light flooded through in thin, fragile streams. The children were still playing that damn game. When would they shut up and go home?

"Ah-tishoo! Ah-tishoo!

We all fall down!"

"I want you to live for me."

It should have been kinky. It was going to be kinky dammit, but Kurogane was being emo.