Author's Note: Warning for heavily implied dub-con in this chapter. Please read at your own discretion.

Chapter 14:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

The pastel blocks of color denoting the houses of Rainbow Row were as luminous as a field of dew spotted wildflowers in the early morning sun. Caribbean pinks, sunshine yellows, cornflower blues, and oceanic greens assaulted the eye with their wide variety of shades, so vivid and different from the plain brick houses and white clapboard carriage homes of the surrounding streets. Yu paced the cobbled road across the way, unsure of where to begin. Mitsu had been able to tell him that Mika lived 'somewhere on Rainbow Row', but he didn't realize just how many similar Georgian style houses populated that particular area. Looking up and down the street, he could see that there were at least thirteen different rowhouses, laid out all nice and snug like a set of crayons in a box. Seeing the situation, Yu knew he had no choice. He would just have to go up to each and every door and knock, working his way down the lane.

Several of the houses had storefronts on their bottom floors, and with those he simply went into the shop and inquired about the tenant upstairs. Usually the tenant would be the shop owner. Others had wrought iron staircases, which he climbed up and down, making inquiries as he went. No one he had spoken with so far had heard of a Mikaela Hyakuya. Yu was starting to lose hope, thinking Mitsu must have been mistaken, when he walked up to the candy pink facade of the next to last house in the row. He was about to knock on the door, when a pair of voices caught his attention from the last house in the lane, a sky blue colored affair with a garden attached to the side. The voices were coming from behind the garden gate, and Yu felt his breath hitch in his throat when he recognized one of the voices as Mika's. Quietly and cautiously, Yu made his way over to the high gate, pausing outside it to surreptitiously peer over its picketed top.

Yu wasn't sure what kind of scene he'd been expecting, but it certainly wasn't this: Mika stood outside on a small brick landing and the musician-the one who was at the pub the night of the fight-stood one step below him. Yu was shocked to see Mika with his hair all mussed and wearing what looked to be a blue silk robe, an outfit that hardly qualified, in Yu's opinion, as being dressed. The musician had his hair up in a ponytail and was wearing pretty much the same white shirt and open blue vest with brass buttons that he saw him in the other night. On his back was a new guitar. The boy was smiling and talking animatedly and Mika was smiling at him and nodding back, and something about the whole exchange set Yu's blood to boiling in a way he previously had never experienced. His felt his face heat up into a blistering shade of red as he listened in on their conversation, which went thusly:

"You didn't have to buy me a new guitar," said the musician.

"No, I really did," answered Mika.

"No you didn't. You already buy me too much stuff anyway."

"Consider it a fee for your body guarding duties from the other night," said Mika, laughing a bit (Yu realized, with some surprise, that he hadn't actually heard Mika laugh since they were both children). "I feel really bad about you breaking the old one," he added.

"Ha, I don't! Because now I have this sweet sounding piece to take with me to the boardwalk! It's beautiful, Mika. I'm really happy."

Yu watched the musician as he reached out to hug Mika, holding onto him, in Yu's opinion, for much longer than necessary. Yu, realizing how unusually and incandescently happy Mika looked in the other boy's embrace, felt his own happiness take a decidedly nasty dive. In that moment, it was as if someone had taken his heart out of his chest, thrown it on the street, and stomped on it. And then kicked it into the ocean. Just for good measure.

The long haired boy bounded down the steps and Yu fled to the end of the lane, turning the corner and pressing his back against the wall. His heart was pounding out an uncomfortable staccato rhythm in his chest and his thoughts were a whirling black sea of poisonous notions and tangled emotions as his listened for the telltale clack of the garden gate being pulled shut and the echoing sound of retreating footsteps. Then he carefully and cautiously made his way back over to the gate, standing frozen in place outside its barrier, until a voice from the other side said:

"I can hear your heavy breathing from the other side of this gate, you know. You might as well come out and quit lurking about."

Yu's eyes widened and he jumped back from the fence as if he'd been burned. With a trembling hand and a face flushed red with an emotion he didn't quite understand, he reached up and plucked open the latch, stepping through the gate and into the back garden. Before Mika could say anything, he found himself saying, practically yelling:

"Just who the hell was that?"

"Yu-chan?"

Mika stepped back from the gate, his face expressing shock at Yu's sudden and unexpected appearance. He was wearing a dark military uniform with a double row of gold buttons and green epaulets, an outfit he'd seen on the Citadel cadets around town. His face, much leaner and somehow more mature since the last time Mika had seen him, expressed outrage. Before Mika could recover himself enough to speak, Yu ranted on, prompting, "Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"

This was not how Mika had expected their eventual reunion to go. They both stood there, staring at one another, each trembling with two separate and seemingly diametrically opposed emotions, an uncomfortable space of several feet creating an unpassable, physical void between them. Mika allowed his face to go frustratingly blank, the expression he always defaulted to whenever he was feeling defensive. He turned and walked back up the stairs to the landing. "If you're going to yell like that, please come inside the house. I prefer to keep a low profile around here," he said evenly.

He heard rather than saw Yu's footsteps as he followed him up the stairs and into the house. Once inside, Mika turned to study him as he led him through various rooms. Yu was looking at all the things in his house, his head swinging back and forth like a pendulum as they walked through Mika's small kitchen, past its attached breakfast nook, and into a spacious sitting room with a trio of arched floor to ceiling windows. Mika dropped down onto a high back settee covered in gold damask. "So that was you I saw at the Blind Tiger last night," he commented.

Yu stood, fidgeting slightly, staring at everything but Mika. "Yey, that was me. I tried to catch you before you left, but things were a little...chaotic." Mika watched Yu intently as he prowled about the room, stopping to touch this or that object, his body language emanating a tension Mika couldn't comprehend. Yu finally swivelled back towards Mika, his eyes raking him up and down as Mika lounged insouciantly with his back against the settee and his feet up on the couch. Yu's eyes slid back to the floor. "So...the guy at the back gate...the same one from the pub...who is he?"

"Who, Narumi? He's a friend, Yu," was all Mika said.

"Just a friend?" prodded Yu. "You two looked...awfully chummy back there."

The corner of Mika's mouth lifted slightly. "We're just friends," Mika repeated. "In fact, we used to be flatmates. Why, are you jealous?"

Instead of answering him, Yu began pacing around again. He looked at the floor as he spoke. "You know, I spent months wandering around, unsure if you were even still alive. Most of New Orleans thinks you died with Bathory in that fire-well, everyone except for Krul. But here you are, lounging around inside this house like a king, living it up. Did you even once stop to think of me?"

Mika's head jerked back as if he'd been slapped. "Yu, I never stopped thinking about you! You were all I thought about! I never-"

"-but where were you, Mika? Not with me! Not where I needed you! Do you know how much I struggled after...after…" Yu's eyes were shining as he stopped to look at Mika. "After everything that happened to me?"

Mika's own eyes started filling with tears. "I'm sorry, Yu-chan. I really am. But I couldn't stay. Not after what I did." Mika clenched his jaw and added: "And it's not like I've been 'living it up' as you like to call it. It wasn't always like this. The first couple of months here were really hard. You don't want to know just how hard-"

Yu's head shot up at this. "Don't I? Why don't you tell me?"

Mika shook his head, his eyes becoming guarded as he spoke. "It's not something suitable for polite conversation…"

"Oh." Yu turned, glancing back around the room. He had his back to Mika as he said, "I see now. You didn't...you didn't buy this house yourself, did you?"

"No." Mika was gripping the back of the settee so hard his knuckles went white.

"Some man...a client...bought it for you?"

"Yes."

Mika watched as Yu raked his hands through his hair in frustration. "Why, Mika? Why? You don't live in the quarter anymore, so why-"

"-because I had no other way! I hit rock bottom after I...after I killed Ferid and I couldn't see any other way back-"

"-Just stop! Stop doing this-"

"-you know, sometimes it feels like I died five years ago," Mika said softly, his mouth trembling slightly as he spoke. "And all that's left inside me is this flat, unemotional monster who's wandering around in my skin. Now I can add cold blooded murder to the list of horrible things I've done," The icy blue of Mika's eyes matched the chill in his voice as he continued, "I'm sorry, Yu-chan. I'm sorry you had to see me like this. I was going to come back for you. I was. After all this was over, and I was in the clear financially, and I wasn't beholden to anybody. But you showing up like this threw a wrench in my plans." Mika closed his eyes and he rubbed his temples. "It's not like I want to rely on some other man to keep me-"

"-you mean someone like Kureto Hiragi?"

Mika's eyes snapped open. "What does Kureto Hiragi have to do with this?" he asked, perplexed.

The look of outrage was back on Yu's face. He slowly stalked towards Mika, standing over him in an almost menacing manner. "I can't believe you slept with Kureto Hiragi. He's the coldest, most asinine, arrogant man I've ever-"

"-you're saying it like I had a choice, Yu!" Mika fired back. "I didn't choose Kureto Hiragi. He chose me. And with the same amount of discernment he would choose a bottle off the wine list or an appetizer off a restaurant menu. It was that banal and that meaningless to him. So don't say it like it was some kind of attractive option-"

"-and what about the man who bought you this house?"

"-what about him? My name is on the bill of sale, and that's all that matters. That's all I wanted."

"-is it? Is that really all you wanted?"

"God, yes, Yu! What's the matter with you? Why are you grilling me like this-"

His words were stolen away with a kiss, but not the kind of kiss he'd received from Yu before, not like the one they had both shared down by the river. This was something angry and desperate, an act of overflowing emotion undercut with subtle notes of frustration. But because it was Yu, Mika kissed him back, reaching up to pull him even further into his embrace. Mika was only slightly surprised when Yu grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands to his sides, not allowing him to touch him. The moment Yu broke off the kiss, Mika stared into his eyes and said his name as a question. Instead of answering, Yu kissed him again, digging his hand through the back of his hair and holding him in place with his grip. He climbed onto the settee with Mika, pushing him back into a corner, smothering him with his weight. Mika's mind whispered that something was off, that things were going wrong, wrong, wrong, but he couldn't help himself. He could never help himself with Yu, could never deny him anything he wanted, so Mika allowed himself to be pushed and pulled, plied and puppeted, all without complaint.

Even when Yu wedged his knee in between Mika's legs, Mika did nothing, said nothing. His body responded automatically, independent from his mind, all distant mental warnings ignored in favor of pure animal sensation. Even in the midst of all the angry, bruising kisses and punishing nips and bites, there was an undeniable fire, a sense of rightness about it. It seemed such a paradox: it was both wrong yet absolutely right, all at the same time, a counterintuitive notion that left Mika's head spinning. Mika could feel the desperation, the pain, emanating off of Yu in waves. It was a pain he wanted to assuage, to take from him. He wanted to give him whatever solace he could, to be his haven from everything that had ever hurt him.

It seemed like such a small sacrifice to make. To the altar of his own guilt.

"Yu-chan, look at me." Once again Mika lifted his hands to touch Yu and once again he was rebuffed. Yu's face was buried in the crook of his neck as they lay awkwardly against one another, with Yu clutching his wrists and breathing heavily into his shoulder. Mika closed his eyes as Yu suddenly released him so his hands could wander, unopposed, beneath the silky confines of his robe. Mika sucked in a breath as Yu touched him, caressing him intimately, experimentally, testing the boundaries of how far he could go. Mika didn't resist any of it. Not when Yu raked his robe over his thighs, not when he pried his legs apart.

Mika tilted his head back against the arm of the settee as Yu pulled open his robe, kissing and biting his way down his chest, his hands exploring between his legs, saying nothing. His mind occupied a different sphere from his body, a body which betrayed him with its encouraging responses, its erratic signals. Mika gasped, his eyes falling half mast as Yu pushed one of his knees up and back. Not once did Yu look him in the face as he did this. Not once did he speak his name or ask his permission. He worked on Mika, his mouth worrying at his skin, a creature gone mindless with single minded purpose. Mika choked out a pained whimper as Yu finally pushed his way into him, thrusting up into him almost violently, the two of them locked in the steps of a dance that wasn't quite an outright violation, but had all the language and ornaments of rape attached to it.

Mika gritted his teeth, hissing out a tremulous moan as Yu pounded into him, the pace bruising and brutal. He'd gone in nearly dry, ignorant in his inexperience, and Mika felt almost no pleasure in the act, struggling only to maintain his composure in the face of Yu's overwhelming need. Yu buried his face against Mika's neck, sobbing out a choked cry as he shuddered with the force of his climax. Mika lay as still as stone beneath him, his head bent awkwardly over the arm of the couch, folded up like a piece of origami. After some moments passed without any kind of response, Mika finally said, "Yu-chan?"

He couldn't believe what had just happened. He couldn't believe how out of control he had been. How utterly unlike himself. Mika's words reverberated like a warning through his head: All that's left of me is this flat, unemotional monster who's wandering around in my skin. Was he so completely altered by all the things that had happened to him that he was doomed to become some unthinking and uncaring animal, one far too wrapped up in his own pain to see anyone else's hurt? Were the two of them simply too damaged beyond all hope or reason?

The temporary release he'd felt during sex quickly ebbed away and all that was left in its wake was a sense of guilt and overwhelming shame. Everything he had kept bottled up over the past few months had come bubbling out, pushing him to act with the force of a flash flood. He had not meant for it to happen. It had not been a conscious decision. A volatile cocktail of wayward emotions-jealousy, guilt, abandonment, desire-had all caught fire and run wild, sending everything up in flames.

"Yu-chan?"

Mika was whispering his name. Yu pulled away from him, sitting up and straightening his uniform without looking at him. He felt Mika's hands tugging at his arms. "Yu, look at me." The desperate tremor in his voice was like the final nail in the coffin of guilt that Yu had chosen to bury himself in. Without speaking, he got up and left, wandering back through the house like a ghost, a former specter of himself. He went through the kitchen, down the landing, and out the garden gate, utterly convinced that his cold and decidedly indefensible actions had just destroyed the most precious and most important thing in his life.