Pairing: Citan/Fei
Rating: R
Warnings: Yaoi. General incoherency on my part.
Summary: Citan's very good at lying. Even to himself.
Though the summer had been one of many, that one in particular was special. It was the one that continued to haunt his mind, one that itched the whorls of his brain and tickled the cerebellum and made the pons Varolii feel as though it would snap. When he thought of that summer, Citan would whimper in shame and pull his hair over his eyes and wish that it had never happened, that he had been elsewhere, that Fei had never smiled at him.
But he still thought about it every night.
The moon was like a single, silvery eye that hung in the air; unblinking and unjudging, it merely seemed to take in the sight of the green-clad swordsman standing on the deck of a sandship. The swordsman who seemes to stare back into the eye of the moon every night. The swordsman who hated himself for being what he was and who he was and then dissolving into helpless apathy. And then went downstairs.
When he would slide into bed and think about a Summer Long Ago (though it was just a year or two, really), he would merely close his eyes and try and ignore the arousal of his body. He'd simply bury his face into his pillow and will the blush away, gulp down the desire he felt then and still felt today.
Fei had been so gorgeous. Not as attractive as Yui, not by a long shot, but Fei was beautiful in a way that only Fei could be beautiful. Yui was kindness, warmth, a soft hand in his wearing a ring to match his own. What did Fei have? What the hell had that skinny sixteen-year-old done to himself, that summer, to make him so appealing to Citan so suddenly?
When Citan tried to think like that, it only earned him curses from his honest half.
Yui was all that he had thought of her, and more. Yui was his wife, the mother of his child, the woman he had sworn to love for all eternity and the woman he still loved.
But Fei was different. He too was warm and kind, and he too had a soft hand that would gladly fit inside Citan's palm, and there would be no matching rings to seperate their skin. When Citan looked into the boy's eyes he saw the childishness that he clung to; behind that young happiness, however, there was an older fear, years-old pain. Pain that still wrapped it's tendrils around Fei's soul and bogged him down, weighted him to the Earth as surely as though he were crushed under Weltall.
Citan, being a doctor, thought it his duty to heal that pain. If his remedy happened to come in the form of kisses, so what? If his gliding touch, his probing fingers, his gentle tongue had all helped ease Fei's pain, then where was the harm done? When the pain had backed off, Citan kept telling himself that he could stand aside, brush his hands off on his tunic, and let the boy heal on his own.
What a horrible, terrible lie it all was.
He had been doomed from the moment Fei looked up at him and grinned that one swelteringly humid night. There had been nothing out of the ordinary all day long, just Fei watching him tinker and sometimes hiding behind his various projects, waiting for Citan to miss that steady brown gaze and come looking for him. He always did.
When night had fallen and the temperature had followed it only slightly, the both of them had decided by some mutual silent consent that it was a good night for Exploring, though they had both hunted out every interesting spot of land in Citan's ownership already. Even so, the pair slipped quietly down the hill behind Citan's house, Fei almost falling once or twice. When they reached the creek that wound its way through the trees, Fei happily stripped off his shirt and dunked his head and arms into the cold water. When he turned his head to look at Citan over his shoulder, a most peculiar thing happened.
The moon came out from behind her shroud of wispy, dark clouds, shining the great eye down on the two of them. Just as the light of the heaven-bound orb hit Fei's face, he grinned in such a way that broke Citan's heart. He felt the dull ache in his chest and realised that it was because he could see nothing but pain in those pretty brown eyes, a bizarre, buried, screaming pain that Fei himself seemed to be ignoring.
But never in his life had Citan ignored pain like that. It begged his attention, it wheedled his thoughts away from everything, everyone except for Fei. All it took was two long strides to be very near to him, and just a little twitch of some muscle to catch his face inbetween Citan's skilled hands. The boy's mouth dropped open, an invitation for the doctor to apply some of his very own unorthodox medicine, soft lips mashing together and hot tongues pushing against one another all in an instant.
And when Fei whimpered, it was in pleasure, not pain. When his hands twisted in Citan's hair, he was urging him on, not begging him to stop. For a while, all the pain was gone; real or imagined, it was nothing but a dream. The boy cried his tears for unknown reasons, and he was grateful when Citan licked them away, like taking away those tears, swallowing them down, would be like the doctor was swallowing his pain for him.
"Oh... Citan, I love you."
So that was why Citan Uzuki stood outside the door of Fei's bedroom, one hand poised and ready to knock. Fei still hurt, he still cried, and he still needed Citan to be there to swallow down his pain like any good doctor would do. Citan told himself over and over that he was doing his duty, that he did it just because Fei was his friend, and that as soon as someone else came along that could better treat Fei's wounds he'd step back with no regrets. He was still thinking that as he crushed Fei's mouth under his, and felt the answering moan from the boy more than heard it. Yes, no regrets. He would never regret leaving this boy, if it meant he was better taken care of, given more love than he could give. No regrets at all, his mind chanted over and over to itself.
Even if it was all just a lie.
-End.