Lust

By Tien Riu

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Disclaimer:

Weiss Kreuz and all characters do not belong to me.  Plot (what little there is of it ^_^) and depiction of characters are mine. 

C&C, R&R and any other derivation there of including flames will be appreciated. 

"Lust" is the first of three Weiss Kreuz stories that are determinedly yaoi (that means homosexual relationships for the initiated) and (unfortunately, since I was aiming for a PWP at the start and failed miserable) plot-driven.  For those who are interested, "Do you believe in sin?" is a short background story to this series - however, you don't need to read it to understand anything that happens. 

Extra Note: Please note that chapter eleven, twelve and thirteen were merged into one chapter known as 'Colors, Celibacy, Mine'. 

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Ashes of a smile

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Aya

      Memories of laughter; a photo of his parents standing on either side of his laughing sister crackling as it turned black from the flames; ashes to ashes -

    This - this is familiar.

    Fire crackled, he could feel asphalt against his cheek, the edges rough.  The screech of a car as it accelerated - and the smell of burning rubber -

    No -

    And beneath his hand - limp and lifeless -

    No -

    Aya's hand -

    No -

The tears were scorching hot, trickling down his face - and there was blood as he looked up and caught the shimmer of light. 

      This - this has happened before. 

      The grass was green here, it rolled down the expense of empty landscape.  The three graves, side-by-side, words carved in marble.  Enough time had passed that there were sparse blades of grass growing from the bare soil. 

    There was nothing left - no tears, no grief.  Three graves were all that remained of the Fujimiya line. 

    A shadow fell across him; he turned. 

    This -

   "We must leave now."  The woman - Manx, she had told him to call her Manx - said quietly.

He followed her.  There was nothing left - but blood.  Aya was not dead.  He would not let her die.

    The graves remained where they were, marking time overlooking the bare expanse of land. 

      This is just a dream.

      He woke up in the chair, disorientated, and found himself staring at Youji.  The man was tossing and turning on the bed, a line of tension running across his eyes.

"That I'm yours."  Youji looking away, his voice almost too soft, "To have, to hold - sick or well.  It won't go away.  .  .  And they want to make it worse.  Until I'm yours." 

      Aya shook his head angrily - He was hysterical.  Sleep deprived and working at less than optimal intellectual capacity - and this is Kudou we're talking about.  There wasn't much intelligence to begin with.  There was no logical reason he should pay any attention to Youji.  None at all.

"The way you talk.  The way you walk.  The way you breathe and smell and smile - if you smiled.  I thought it was a fixation, an obsession - an interest brought on by hormones -"

Everything he had said was suspect - rambling at best, complete idiocy at worse. 

" - why did you have to be beautiful?" 

      He should not have paid any attention to anything Youji had said.  His lips were warm - and you wanted what he said to be true.  You wanted him to be yours.  You wanted to own him - claim him.  To make him want you -

    Shut up.

Youji moaned softly, as if in pain, the line of tension deepening as he twisted on the bed.  The sheets were wet from sweat.  A brief touch on his forehead revealed no fever.  Nightmare.

    Helpless - even if you know it is a nightmare, you're helpless.  Watching the past repeat - again and again, unable to change it.  Or able to change it while still knowing that it is a nightmare - and futility is helplessness as well.  They were opposites, Kudou and he, but they shared this at least. 

    Youji turned again, one hand escaping the sheets; the limb brushed the edge of Aya's legs, making him jump backwards - startled though he would never have admitted it.  His hip slammed against the table.

    There was a brief clatter; he turned.  Oh.  The picture had fallen down.  Aya-chan.

    The last remnant of a life that no longer existed.  He stared down at it.  He had forgotten - How could you forget? – the way she smiled.

    Youji groaned again, shifting restlessly, " - hot -"  the word, a bare puff of air, " - got to -"  the man twisted; the blanket slid to the floor as slender fingers grasped at the grey jumper, struggling out of its confines.  He wasn't wearing anything under it. 

    Aya was unable to look away.  They had all seen the others in some stage of undress at some point during the past six months.  It was part of the enforced intimacy they had to endure.  But this - this was different.  Youji was tanned here as well, and smooth - No.  There were lines - pale and white, running down his side.  Star like formations of white lines - long healed bullet wounds.  I wonder what your lovers think they are.  What distinction do you create for yourself between feckless flower man and Weiss? 

      Youji gasped, liquid shining, briefly delineating the long lines of his body.  The window was open - he remembered, vaguely, opening it sometime in the night when the heat of the chalet had gotten too oppressive for sleep.  A cool breeze blew gently; the older man arched upwards in greeting, as sensually as if touched by a lover –

    Heat rushed to his face.  I shouldn't be watching this. 

    There was a rustle of denim against skin - he watched slender fingers move downwards, pulling and tugging at the buttons -

    Get out of here.

    Youji moaned softly, long fingers sliding down the bare expanse of his stomach -

    Aya whirled, putting the photo frame back on the table – behind him there was a rustle of skin against rough cloth – he flipped the picture face down on the table.

    There was a muffled thump.  He turned and felt his eyes widen.  The jeans had followed the path of the jumper.  Glimpses of skin, golden all over - a natural tan.  Youji was starting to shiver - a faint tremor.  You shouldn't be looking.

    He didn't stop to think why he paused to cover the man with the discarded blanket.

Youji

      Visions of helicopters and mountains assail me in a confusing welter of noise, sensation and fleeting memory.  Awareness returns with jolting speed that slows to a gradual halt - I can hear birds singing outside, and a cool breeze.  The blankets are a warm arch of shelter around my body.

      Eyes first.  A cautious pull on the blankets to make sure this isn't that strange dream where I wake up to find myself naked in the Koneko about to be pounced on by a hundred school girls. 

    Check for the naked, and - thankfully - the box for crazy schoolgirls can remain empty this time round.  Probably not a dream then.  Besides, it's too peaceful.

    The walls are bare, teasingly familiar in their vague resemblance to some fragment of recollection - old fashion timber a shade of warm, soothing brown.  There is an open window, with sun-bleached curtains blowing inwards with the gentle breeze.  Next to the window is a bookcase, the shelves half filled with tattered paperbacks. 

    This is Aya's room - at the chalet in the mountains. 

    I sit up and memory returns.

      The door swings open into my line of vision; I look up and flinch at the sight of Manx and Aya.

    Foreshadowing of things to come indeed - if I had known what Kritiker wanted from me I would have -

    What would I have done?

I hope that I would at least have sidled over to Aya's side of the car. 

    "The helicopter is waiting."  Manx's voice - I can see the edge of her socks and heels from the corner of my eyes.

I can't stop staring at Aya.  Strawberry tinted impatience with a healthy dose of that underlying anger that Aya emanates all the time.  Go figure, the one time my 'talent' might have come in useful, and - it isn't.

   "The mission will be completed by the period stated."  Aya says in his low voice - there is no emotion in his words.  Nothing but the fact - but I can feel what he feels, and it is anger.

    It is always anger.

    He is standing in front of me.  He stares down - I stare up.

    Did I mention how much I hate significant looks? I can never understand them. 

   "Where are we going?"  I finally ask; waiting for Aya to explain things is a futile gesture.

   "The chalet."  Two words - somebody's feeling laconic today.

   "Why?"

He turns as if to leave without me.  It doesn't seem so bad - I could continue sitting here in this corridor in the middle of this deserted manor. 

    Deserted - it sounds good.  Nobody around, nothing to come near me.  No more second-hand erotica from Ken.  No more strawberry-tinted burning Aya.  No more Omi and his -

    Okay, so Omi's night time forays through the grey ether haven't been that bad -

      I - don't remember what happened after that. 

    My head hurts; a tentative touch confirms my suspicions: Aya had taken the fastest approach - and, coincidentally, the method that involved the least amount of speech and the fastest results - to ensure my 'cooperation'.

    He'd have made a great lawyer. 

    I look around the room for signs of my elusive redheaded controller, hastily yanking the sheets around me as a slightly colder brush of air reminds me that I am naked.

    So when are you going to ask who undressed you -?

Thankfully - for the sake of the pronounced 'bump' underneath the sheets if Aya ever figured out the cause -  Aya is not in the room.

I can't feel him.

    The almost constant sensation of his anger playing ghost-fingers over my spine is missing.  In fact I can't feel - anything.  Nothing but the crisp sensation of clean sheets over my skin.  For the first time in a month, it feels as if I'm in control of my central nervous system again. 

    For the first time in - okay, not that long damn it, I might be beautiful but I am not the stereotypical blond.  Besides its honey brown all right? Not blonde. 

    For the first time in a while it no longer feels as if I'm thinking through a thick wad of cotton candy.  Well, welcome back IQ points.  .  .  Thank you - nice to be back.  Love how you didn't clean up after yourself the whole month I've been gone.

A glint of sunlight against glass caught my eye.  There, lying on the table - next to my watch - is the blue vial, the needle in its plastic case still attached to the side.  My fingers twitch, and I stare at the vial, reviewing my memory - stripping it of the overwhelming emotions and analysing what I remembered.  Oh god.

    When I decide to go into hysterics - I really do it with style.  No wonder Aya knocked me out.  I think ruefully as I reach past the vial and pick up my watch.  The solid weight feels good in my hand; I automatically check to make sure the catch that controls the wire release works as I lock it into place on my wrist.  Think this through logically Kudou.  There are no electronic watchdogs on the vial - or the needle.  Both of them are throwaway items.  So - Kritiker has no way of knowing if you're injecting yourself to BDSM heaven.  Not if you act the way they expect you too. 

    If the missions were completed successfully - or at least, if Aya has no reason to complain about my behaviour during a mission - why would Kritiker care? They never have before. 

    You meet Doctor Tsukiata once every three weeks over a four-month period, then your brain - or whatever - starts producing the chemicals by itself.  So you just have to fake the correct behaviour patterns in front of the expert for four months - and then after that, they'll stop noticing.  Right?

    Or at least stop paying too much attention.  It was a convoluted riddle: What's the difference between acting like Aya controls you and willingly allowing Aya to control you?

    I can live with role-playing submission to Aya's dominance - so long as I don't have to like it.  So long as it isn't real.  Besides, Aya has to sleep sometime - and even if it's a little adolescent to sneak out the bedroom window.  .  .  Hey, if it means I can get laid, I can deal with being clichéd.

    But I can worry about that later.  .  .  If this - talent - returns.  Currently the only thing playing merry havoc with my skin is the breeze and the sheets - and it feels so good.   

      I dress slowly in the chill mountain air, glad that my less-than-logical approaches to avoiding human contact meant that I was protected from the cold.  It might be late summer down in the lowlands, but in the mountains it feels like late spring or early autumn. 

    My thoughts turn to Aya - somewhere in the chalet.  Even if - for the first time in a month - I can't feel the burn of his hatred.  I - know he is here.  Logically right? Somebody had to have undressed me - and unless my previous fantasies of a naked demon Aya are true, that same person left me to sleep off the headache he induced in his bed.  In his room. 

    I still at the thought.  Aya is an intensely private person - even oblivious Ken-Ken figured this out fairly early on.  I know about as much on the inner working of Aya's mind as I do about physics - maybe less.  But there are hints you can pick up from what a person wears, his choice in food, his hobbies.  His bedroom above the Koneko hold no mystery - if there's anything in there that shows a sign of who he is underneath all that ice other than that anger, I've never seen it.  But he spends almost as much time in his room here at the chalet as I do in mine when we come down for a weekend.  

    The books aren't surprising.  When he isn't working, glaring at us or sleeping, Aya reads.  The range of languages are - Russian, German, French and - Latin? Who reads Latin? - are intriguing, but considering his scholastic approach to free time, it's not that far out of the range of possibilities.  The glass photo frame lying, face down and forgotten, on the bare expanse of the desk next to the bookcase is however, a complete surprise. 

    I lift it up; the picture is creased with white lines - as if it spent a long time folded sometime in the past - and too small for the already-small frame.  But the colours are still strong - hidden away in this room, far from sunlight, no fading has occurred yet.

    I stare at the girl whose smile blazes from the dusty surface.  She's pretty - in a young way.  Doesn't look older than sixteen: her hair in pigtails and a school uniform I don't recognise - probably a private school.  Girlfriend?

    I remember - perhaps for the first time in a way that matters - that Aya is nineteen.  And I am twenty - twenty one this year.  Our youth - for want of a better word - seems as much a lie as the image we project so effortlessly to the girls that flock to the Koneko.  Between the shadows of night and the scent of flowers, it is hard to remember that Aya hasn't reached his majority, Ken is barely legal and Omi still has to graduate.

    It is not impossible for Aya to have had a girl as young as this as a girlfriend.  How old were you when Kritiker swallowed you whole Aya?

    Young enough to have a sixteen-year-old girlfriend?

    It's a disconcerting view of a different Aya.  It's a vision of Aya who might consider having sex!

    I need to get laid - this month long abstinence is obviously destroying my ability to concentrate.  Either that or I can't think of Aya without thinking of sex.

      The practise area takes up the only area flat and wide enough for the purpose - the attic.  Kritiker modified it for that use back when Omi requested a secure, dependable vacation house for Weiss' use - a couple of weeks after Aya joined us.  There are fluorescent lights embedded in the bare beams but they have been left off, leaving the area shadowed but for the light streaming through the sole, small window at the far wall.  It is cold here - as it is everywhere else.  I wonder what happened to the central heating.  Even the grey jumper can't stop the chill.

    The katana is sheathed, leaning against the far wall.  He is standing in the pool of light; hands flash, pale light against dark shadow, as he moves them in a motion too gentle to seem normal from Aya Fujimiya.  The sunlight dilutes the brilliance of his hair - funny how the light up here in the mountain always seems so much more - white.     

      I recognise the kata from my own stint with a Kritiker instructor.  Tai chi rather than karate, kendo or ioeka.  The stance is for meditation rather than concentration - 'physical peace' was the phrase my instructor described it with.  My methods of drowning thought involve more nudity but judging by Aya's expression, it works for him.

    He looks - less tense.  At peace.  It - disconcerts me.

    I've come to realise that the control - the ice - of his demeanour hides an intensity.  Perhaps I would never have realised if this 'talent' hadn't started ruining my life, because my discovery stemmed from the constancy and intensity of his anger.

    It is disconcerting to realise that he can feel something other than anger - that he can show any emotion at all, especially peace.  So why then, if emotion rests so uneasily on his shoulders, has he never looked more beautiful - To me.  .  .

    Aya freezes, I can see the tension stiffen his shoulders.  His hands drop - and I feel it.  The shiver of sensation against my skin.  Aya.  .  .

    Somewhere, I can smell the faint scent of strawberries - heated and warm, a rush that trickles down my spine.

    By the time I can meet his eyes fully, the heat of his emotions has burned away the cold from my skin.  So my 'talent' didn't go away as suddenly as it appeared.  But at least I know that if I get far enough away from other people it'll stop - sort of like the reception for my mobile. 

    I swallow a chuckle as I imagine Aya perched on top of a mobile tower, transmitting signals to the little receiver in my head.  Wait a second -

    I couldn't sense anything from him.  Not until - not until when? Not until I came into the room - no - not until he stopped.

    This was important - there was something here.  Every single one of my returning brain cells were clamouring of the significance of this finding.

    So - if everybody meditates, I can get on with my life like normal?

    Argh - you're an idiot Youji Kudou.