Wasteland
By spheeris1
Pairing: Saionji/Touga
Warnings/notes: See Author's Note
***
Kyouichi liked to sneak around some after school.
He would pass up the offers of a ride home, he would slip around the corners of the empty kendo room—the one with his fathers picture up on the wall—and take an old path through the woods.
It sidestepped the highway. It curved silently around the alleys and the buildings. It was shaded from the afternoon sun. It promised dusk.
Sometimes, once home, his mother would scold him for getting his school uniform dirty. Kyouichi said he just got shoved during school, hitting into the ground in horseplay.
She didn't need to know where he went. It was his place, his path...no one else from school took it. Kyouichi would walk it slowly and listen...just in case someone followed him.
Of if some guy came in there, in the quiet solace of the forest, to fuck around.
Kyouichi, who understood the urge to get off just like any other guy, still found it almost...sacrilegious ...to screw some girl in this place. It was too nice for that.
Out of that forest, with the bizarrely tall maples and the winding ivy and the rose bushes dotting the edges, Kyouichi never thought about it.
*
Everyone was murmuring on Monday.
Kyouichi was drowning them out. He had smoked his first cigarette this morning, at the teasing of one of his friends.
It left his normally clean lungs feeling tight.
The sound of girlish whispers followed him most times. But not today.
Those lips of cherry red and smelling of raspberry, those fingers twirling rivers of black hair...a new student had arrived and it had stirred their imaginations.
One guy said the boy was a millionaire.
Another that he was really a Prince.
All the girls seemed to be leaning toward the door. Just waiting...just waiting...Kyouichi noted with a smirk that some of the boys did as well.
'Who is this guy?' Kyouichi wondered to himself, tapping the tip of his pencil on his desk and earning a glare from the teacher.
Then the door opened. And a name was given, sliding off the lips of a young man.
Kiryuu Touga.
A desk was assigned and the room seemed to collectively sigh. Kyouichi dropped his pencil and the other boy, Kiryuu Touga, looked over at him briefly before sitting down.
*
Kyouichi never asked about his father much. It is not something you bring up over dinner, your dead father. You just accept it and act okay. You just suck it up.
But Kyouichi did wonder sometimes...looking at photos of him, from when he was young...in the big war, in the fields, in a business suit that seemed ill- fitting...Kyouichi thought that it might make him feel closer to the man.
All it did, though, was make Kyouichi feel cold.
He never seemed to feel enough. His mother, a good woman who tried her best to raise a young boy correctly—Kyouichi felt nothing more than respect for her. He did not love her. And for some reason, that did not surprise him.
Kyouichi would often think at night, with the window open and the breeze blowing in. His thoughts would run together like water.
'I am like my father. I must be...we must be just alike...' Kyouichi saw it in his fathers fading eyes.
A deep and twisting cold.
An undying fury.
*
'Can you spar?' A voice asked above his head.
Kyouichi looked up sternly from his lunch, not wishing to be disturbed...until he saw who it was. Kyouichi felt his fingers freeze up, like with the pencil, and his bowl fell.
Hot liquid soaked into his pants leg.
Kiryuu Touga just raised an eyebrow lazily, but said nothing. Kyouichi was expecting a laugh or some sort of derisive comment.
'Do you need a towel?' The other boy offered.
'Yes.' Kyouichi spit out, feeling overwhelmingly angry that this had to happen...in front of this boy, in particular.
Kiryuu Touga had caused such a sensation. He was number one on all the girls lists. The teachers fawned over him. He was decent at sports. He never got into trouble. His clothes were expensive. He was more confident than anyone Kyouichi knew. Even the most annoying of students seemed enamored of him and would leave him alone.
Kyouichi was both fascinated and repulsed by Kiryuu Touga.
The boy dropped a towel in Kyouichi's lap and looked off in the distance.
'Someone told me that you once practiced kendo, but that they shut down that class. I was wondering if you would pick it up again. I need to practice against someone who knows what they are doing.' Kiryuu Touga continued on, as if Kyouichi was not a complete mess beside him.
Kyouichi had been secretly glad the class was removed from the curriculum. It was a painful reminder of his father. Of the man who wanted his baby son to grow up so strong and so tough. Of the man who taught form and lessons, who dropped to the mats with a heart-attack.
A hand shook Kyouichi's shoulder lightly and he looked up into azure eyes. They were all at once bright yet shadowed. Kyouichi, for a moment, thought that they were a lot like his path in the woods.
A mystery. A secret place. A hidden wonder.
And Kyouichi was the only one who went there. It belonged to him.
'I can help you after school, if you like.' Kyouichi said in a brisk manner. The other boy smiled, nodded and walked back to another table.
***
TBC
