And I need you now tonight...
This happens somewhere in the middle of the next chapter, and is in a strange and detached kind of third person perspective. We all want to give dear Ken a rest, this is Aya x Yohji. Also, the warnings come into play a bit more blatantly: the AU and the unintentional OOC.




"Nice improvisation," Aya muttered as he and Yohji left Omi's hospital room.


Summary: Omi had regained consciousness. Yohji decides to redecorate the wall with a whole in the shape of his fist. Now, he and Aya conveniently leave in order to let the two younger boys discuss in all the privacy they needed.


Statistics: (1) Yohji's left hand is bleeding. (2) Regular heartbeats be damned. (3, 4, 5, 6, 7...) Aya's hand is on the small of Yohji's back.


Yohji was washing his hand in utter fascination, as if investigating how wrinkly his skin could get. It was a terrible mess, blood and water cascading in the sink. "What do you think they're talking about?"


Thinking. Yohji was thinking. Man always gets into trouble when he's thinking. STUPID MAN. There are basics to stick to. Hunger. Hurt. Feed yourself. Slay your enemies. You are then neither evil nor good, you are basic.


Aya knew how much Yohji wanted to get thrashed. Drown his thoughts in bottles and bathtubs of alcohol, drink the amnesiac serum in dangerous luxurious amounts. It's a crying shame he couldn't, because he had to take this well. Too bad. Yohji could barely take any consolation in that he was taking this the best among the three, all things considered. Aya was hardly surprised by Yohji's emotional stamina. Aya was rarely surprised anymore, anyway.


"You're concerned about him. Both of them, actually, but especially him."


"Gee, really? Thanks for reminding me, lest it slipped my mind." Yohji sighed, plopping down on a chair. "Wonder if he's dead." He later amended it to, "I hope he's dead."


(Psst. He's just annoyed that he never really mastered the divine virtue of apathy; oh! sweet lack of concern.) Aya knew he didn't mean it. Aya just knows these things, out of habit.


The omniscient redhead handed Yohji an ointment he got from a nurse. "It'll make you feel better."


It was difficult, too difficult, to ignore Yohji's whispered, "No, it won't..."


"Yohji..."


Aya's voice came out hoarse, and fatigued, and (miracle of miracles) laced with the need to tell Yohji something. Making Yohji ask, "What's wrong?"


"I know how you feel."


Nope, not in the list of expected answers. "Uh huh."


"I mean it. I feel what you're feeling right now.


"You do?" What was that hollow, echoing, multiresonating tone? Less importantly, who did it belong to?


A man, a stranger, a closest friend -- they all looked at Yohji simultaneously through Aya's eyes. "I mean, I know your emotions. I'm an empath, Yohji. Other people's emotions are transposed into me, even when I don't want them to. Your emotions are so loud right now, I can't even tell them from mine anymore..."


"You're an empath?" The blonde one seemed to be stuck there. There comes a time when your jokes can no longer save you. Fact.


"I never told any of you," Aya said simply, needlessly.


Aya... is that why you're so distant? Do you isolate yourself because you can't endure other people's pain? You shut yourself off the world, and this is why. It explains everything. Well, not exactly everything, but I do understand you a bit more now.


But you're here with me, and you're exposed to my grief...


"That's why I wasn't surprised when Ken told us about him and Omi. I got him to tell me about it, even if it did involve a little trickery." There was a pause, because Yohji had been expecting Aya to say more. Maybe even to rewind time and smear a proverbial eraser all over his latest speech. Yohji has always seen it unfair that life didn't come free with Aya filters. It's so unreasonable living under these conditions, attaching yourself to a three-dimensional likeness of a human being, chasing always after said statue.


"Why are you telling me this? Not the Ken thing, but the whole empathy thing."


Leave it to Yohji and his big fat anti-intimacy hammer to ruin every fragile camaraderie threatening to build itself between him and any other human being. "I don't know, just forget it..." The hammer's smash resonated throughout Yohji's brain in prevalent echoes.


Not this time. "I don't want to forget it." Telling Aya not to push him away, not now.


Aya sensed, knew, that Yohji didn't want him to take back that particular, almost tangible seal of their... their friendship. Aya knew what Yohji needed. He just knows those things, out of habit. "I don't know why I told you about my curse." (Curse, n. a dreadful subjugation by a greater force, presumably some vague deity whose name is always mentioned. May be mistaken for a gift, and vice versa.) Danger: the cool, calm, I'm a Deadly Sexy but Stoic Bastard mask is about to fall short. This is not a drill: danger! "I don't know why I wanted to tell you about how I feel what my victims feel while I'm murdering them. How it pushes me to this insanity and almost eagerness to see them die amongst the chaos and the noise. How it's the very thing that wreaks my soul and casts me further into oblivion, when things are quiet and peaceful."


"Aya..."


...was dictating Yohji's life in first person.


"Omi knew about my sufferings, not because he is an empath like me. But because he forced himself to synchronize with my emotions, to help me get through them. He isn't innately empathic like me. He built in his empathy, while I've always been trying to diminish mine." Aya clenched his fists, his jaw, his heart. "I'm so weak. This child was going out of his way to feel my pain, and I was doing everything under my power to ignore his..."


"You think... you think that's why he tried to kill himself? Because he couldn't handle it?"


"Don't you see? That's what's wrong, that none of us even have a clue why."


Cold realization hit Yohji. His pancreas felt frigid and sweaty. (because pancreases often do. Pancreai? Whatever.) "Not even Ken knows..." Imbecile probably thought that Omi was extremely homophobic. That's not true, Omi couldn't have been that delicate. Ken was just either extremely paranoid or extremely dense. Or both. Because, seriously, Omi? Straight? As in, anything but gay? In Omi lingo, information does not compute! There had to be a better reason -- not a good one, just a better one. And the guilt ate at them, because none of them even knew that something was wrong.


After a while, Yohji declares, "I know why."


"...Fool."


"I know why you had to tell me about your empathy, I mean."


Aya raised an eyebrow. "Enlighten me."


How can you compare to a man who has nothing to lose? "Don't bullshit me. You know that all we have is each other. And, for some reason unbeknownst to even me, there's something only the two of us share." Ugh. But, since when did dependency feel so not degrading? So concrete?


Still, he didn't have to say it with so much certainty. "Fool," came Yohji's Not-So-New Nickname, part 2.


"I don't know why you just have to deny it," Yohji said, almost petulantly, arms crossing over his chest.


"Because I don't know how to confirm it." Which he just did, by the way. See, for all the things Aya knew, he was rather stupid. Nah, actually, "dense". Charmingly oblivious, to borrow Ken's phrase.


"But then..."


"I know." No words. (Because, really, Yohji and his words.) STUPID MAN.


"So you know--"


"Yeah, I feel it as well." A pause, the pregnant kind. "I mean, I feel that for you. Aside from the empathy."


Then streamers and confetti showered upon the two men, and along the sides materialized a chorus of angels, bursting into a powerful romantic ballad. ...No, not quite.


Pro Hac Vice. (For this occasion only.)


That'll do, Aya, that'll do. Okay, so it wasn't exactly the most profound or enlightening declaration, but it would have to do. (For now.) Anything more divulging would've been equivalent to meaningless drivel. "Can you feel Omi? Or Ken? Do you know if everything will turn out okay for the four of us?" Yohji asked, even while thinking he was abandoning all and what little respect Aya might have previously owned for him, with one blindingly hopeful question. Trading it for the relationship he already had, but just recently established.


"I'm an empath, Yohji, not a gypsy." Would've been cuter otherwise. Screw the details. But it was in the expected list of answers, just not in those exact words.


"So you don't know what'll happen to us?"


"No, Yohji, I have no idea."


"Not even what'll happen between us?" You and me?


"You tell me."


And Yohji would've been glad to, of course. He wanted to say so many things to Aya, let him understand everything. Naturally, Aya knew anyway. Aya just knows these things, out of habit.




[[ Have I mentioned strange? ^_^ I dunno, I've always wanted to write an AxY with this "dark comedy" sarcastic atmosphere. At least I tried. ^_^' And that's out of the way. Phew. Ken will be back where he left off. It's officially summer in this side of the world so I'm back to being able to do whatever the heck I want. ^_^ ]]