"Are you going to breed with her?"
"I'm going to pretend I never heard you say that," Itsuki replied, taking the bottle of Perrier into his hand and topping off both glasses. "Just for my own peace of mind."
The arrival of Makoto to inspect the foundling had been unavoidable. Though Isshiki had predictably delayed his visit until well after any miasma of Helena had evaporated, it had only been a matter of time before the other member of their childhood trio had made a magi's visit. Instead of myrrh, Makoto had purchased champagne. That was fitting; Helena hadn't even brought biscuits.
It was red wine that suited the doctor's fancy most, though he never shirked a blush while in private. The mix of sweeter reds with dry whites tasted best when it resembled Quon's hair. Champagne of Makoto's preferences were pale draughts by comparison, sickly colors like that of river-gold shining its flecks through silt water. They would inevitably remind the doctor of Makoto's eyes for all that they were never half as grey.
Itsuki never liked the bubbles. He drank champagne to honor the preferences of his company, and because it made Makoto calm when he did.
"Anyway," the doctor had added reasonably in elongated afterthought, sliding into the chair across from Makoto once he'd placed the bottle on the shelf with the others. "You know I'm not cleared to reproduce at this point in time."
His words earned a snort, a scoff of a laugh. "At least you have the option." Makoto, like all Ds, was predetermined sterile. "I don't think even Helena was allowed fertility."
True enough. "That's probably for the best. She reminds me of the type who would eat her young."
Talk of parentage had never resolved itself to comfortable, not even when the years had gentled out memory of mud. It made Itsuki uneasy to have to dwell upon it. Makoto always became unpredictable over certain topics, anxious. Tense.
Then things tended to get messy.
"Maybe they should have revoked relationships permissions from you too," Makoto observed. His commentary was as dry as a snake's sheddings. "Do you ever wonder if you might have succeeded as an Ollin if you hadn't been allowed to date freely? Or did they already consider you a lost cause by then?" Spider's fingers had reached out and spindled themselves around the doctor's wrist where he had it perched on the fluted stem of the champagne glass; Makoto tugged Itsuki's hand down to the table with the same ease of a farmer sexing a goose. "Does that ever bother you to think about it like that?"
"No," Itsuki had lied. Pleasantly.
The undercarriage of Itsuki's wrist always fascinated Makoto. Fingertips traced again and again over the ridges of tendon and faint rivers of blood--blue, so long as you never exposed it to oxygen. Blue, which was only a lie for Itsuki and made his skin twitch when Makoto kept stroking a thumb across the nerves.
Blue, which was everything the doctor was not. Pretending that a beast magical slept in your veins only lasted so long as you never cut them open to test. You could stare longingly all you wanted, but in the process of reaching for reality, the creature would vanish and there would only be rose-blossom shades seeping down your arm.
"I was thrown away before either of you." Makoto's cold, meditative mumble was rote. "No one cares about me, just as long as I follow orders." He leaned forward until he was reciting into Ishiki's palm. "But I'll make them regret it."
"Makoto," Itsuki had started, attempting to pull himself away from the heat of the other's breath.
The white-haired D ignored him. "I'll make them regret throwing anything away." Tilting his face back up from where he'd been whispering to the doctor's thumb, Makoto allowed a look of hard hate to stray upon Itsuki. "That includes you."
"I have a purpose." Tension made the doctor's voice sharp. Cold. It was an inelegant means of trying to bully his companion off his wrist, but Itsuki was not well-acquainted with brute methods of force. He also was not sure where Makoto was categorizing him, whether as enemy or mere object. "Taking care of Quon and translating the arias is all I nee--ah!"
Pain shot in a fever's flare. Flesh protested the teeth clamped down upon it and triggered instinct. Itsuki jerked his arm away, struck the champagne glass by accident and sent it flying.
Liquid leapt free, soaring in a dolphin's arc across the table and presumably all over the ground as well; Itsuki heard the temple chimes of the glass shattering itself gaily on his floor.
Damn.
Rubbing his fingers over the slug-trail of spit left behind by Makoto's mouth, the doctor nursed the wound behind thoughts of practicality. This wouldn't be the first piece of his diningware that the D had broken on him, but Itsuki hated contacting the Foundation for more.
He'd have to make sure to get the shards all swept up. The last thing he'd want is Quon cutting herself on them, with the way she'd walk barefoot through the house or even forgetting clothes entirely.
"I thought I tasted blood." Makoto wouldn't leave the matter alone, voice twisting itself into a predator's lilting tease. "Is it red? Let me see."
Itsuki kept two fingers pressed over his own pulse. "No." He'd refused to elaborate further, only guarding his hand against his body until the impressions of Makoto's canines stopped humming with pain.
"You taste like apples, Itsuki."
The doctor refused to look at the thing sharing the table with him. Instead he rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, counting off rows of bottles along the way.
"Do you remember that time when we were young, and snuck down to the kitchens?" The words were spoken with only the thinnest relation to the conversation; Itsuki conjured the memory for himself out of desperate scrabblings of the past. "When Teacher had brought back all kinds of fruits from his trip? And we were supposed to only get them if we did well on our choir test, except that I'd had a sore throat and Helena kept teasing us that she'd get them and share none with us…"
A fumble, then, in trying to recollect the exact sequence of events. Recovery. Itsuki continued. "So we decided to get down there first in the middle of the night. Remember that?" Repetition of words intended to fill in the holes, the lapses in personality development that had bubbled into thick mounds of scar tissue over the years into maturation.
"We only had enough time to grab just a few pieces." It was hard to try and laugh. Itsuki did anyway. "Then we almost got caught trying to recover the grapes when we dropped them on the stairs. But we had apples for... three nights, was it? We ate them out on the window balcony so Helena wouldn't catch us and we could drop the cores into the bushes below. Those were some of the best apples I think I've ever had."
Silence was all that met his ears. Itsuki counted down the seconds in timed thumps of his own heartbeat against his fingers.
"Yes. Yes, I remember that."
The madness of flawed imprinting passed. Makoto was left behind, quiet. Subdued. The D searched in his pocket for a handkerchief, and covered one of the champagne puddles with it, soaking up the evidence of his distemper.
Itsuki pretended utmost interest with the color of the setting sun through the glass-paned walls.
It was Makoto who spoke first after that. "Helena's had hers forbidden. Her interactions, I should say." His knuckles shifted against themselves as he folded up the handcloth with the barest of movements and left it on the table. "You know they don't care about mine. Funny, isn't it--that it's Helena who's still important enough that she's kept restrained."
"I suppose being related to the Master by blood isn't such a good thing after all." Itsuki's reply was stated in a tone as perfectly calm as the sea. Vocalist's training did have some benefits.
The smell of fruit and alcohol began to congeal in the air. Itsuki thought about opening a window.
"Are you ever going to think about it?" Makoto was scrutinizing the side of one of his own fingers for callous-marks when he asked. The D never had mastered the pretense of being aloof, but Itsuki decided to act as if he was fooled.
"Hm?"
"Mating with your little Foundation present."
"Oh, you know me," Itsuki gritted out, inwardly wincing at the renewed pain when he tried to flex his injured hand. "I simply don't like paperwork."
Makoto had moved on to his nails then, exactingly careful to pick out any signs of dirt. "You're a terrible liar," the white-haired D had smirked, but he had let the conversation end there.
