His room was still, the sounds of the busy street no more than a distant murmur. It was as though he had willed them to subside because the single glass pane and the flimsy bamboo blind against his window could not possibly muffle them that much.
His room that was forbidden to us unless we managed to sneak in to snoop around a bit – Ken is good at picking locks, and I managed to convince him to help me in my investigation a while ago. Innate curiosity is a good thing for a professional snoop, and as compulsory as pickpocketing or shoplifting. So that's how I knew his room before he officially allowed me to set foot into his realm.
I liked the scent. I liked the way the light turned soft as it flowed in pale swathes over the tatami floor, and the sparseness and the cleanliness that seemed to tell so much about him, more than he would ever give away willingly. From the closed expression on his face I couldn't guess whether he was aware of this. Whether he'd made a conscious decision to let me in. It bothered me not to know.
By the door, on a stained white cotton cloth, lay his sword, next to a jar of grinding paste. He pulled the door shut and sat down on the floor, crosslegged, coyly holding his yukata shut over his groin, his back to the wall. He gripped the blade with his rag-bolstered hand and placed cloth and steel across his lap so he could resume his work.
I was a bit lost, so I sat down by his side and watched. He dipped the bunched up rag into the jar to scoop out a glob of the off-white stuff. Slow, hard, even motion, spreading the paste thinly on the cold greyblue metal, the dark sleeve of his yukata rustling softly as it brushed over his lap, following the sweep of his hand. I could see his nails and knuckles whiten as he pressed down on the steel, and the muscles of his underarm strain, relax, strain, relax... His wrist, sharp bone under white skin, staying perfectly straight.
Perfection. My addiction to perfection made flesh.
"You may smoke if you like," he said, casually, and caught me completely off guard.
"Huh?"
He blew a few tendrils of hair out of his face and gleamed at me sideways without interrupting his work. He could easily cut himself like that. "Smoke, Kudoh. S, M, O-"
"Gotcha, Ayan," I said, nervous and amused all the same. I could not help watching, afraid he might slice into his hand, ready to yank his injured fingers away and kiss off the blood... almost wishing... gods, what was I thinking? Now where did I have my fags?
He focused on the sword again, flipping it so he could treat the other side of the blade. "What's funny?"
Am I that transparent? "Don't have any smokes on me. Coulda sworn-"
"You left a packet in your apron."
No way I would go now to get them. "Oh, well... Ayan, why d'you ask me in?"
Swish, swish, gloop, more paste, swish... Hiding behind red bangs, nails white, posture tight, shoulders up, back straight, so very straight, so neat, so fussy.
"Aya?"
"I meant to ask you something." He did not stop working. He may be singleminded in his goals, but he can very well concentrate on more than one task at hand. Like talking to me in this level tone that betrays very little emotion, and honing his razor sharp blade to flawless precision. Perfect, perfect, Aya is all about this insane drive for total perfection, he can't do less, it kills him not to be perfect.
"Fire away," I said, groping around in my jeans pockets in the vague hope I might have missed one containing cigarettes. I had to lift my bum off the floor a little to get at the rear pocket, and yes, he was shooting me a glance that landed squarely where it made me all hot and bothered before he broke away to examine his handiwork.
"What is wrong with me?"
I know I froze, yet again, while he placed the lid on the jar, wiped down the sword and sheathed the damn thing. Breast pocket, it shot through my brain; so I touched there, found a packet of fags, plus lighter, and lit up with a groan of relief. Should have looked there first, but him eyeing my groin was worth looking stupid right then.
He folded the cloth that had protected his yukata from getting stained and set it aside, along with the jar. Then he rose and tossed the slashed, dirty polishing rag into the bin he kept by the door, and went to tuck his katana under the edge of his futon, on the side where he slept.
I watched, as I had been watching him from the day we met him, fighting like hell, with reckless abandon until my wire brought him down.
Aya, bound, arching against me as he sank to his knees.
His eyes full of hate and sorrow.
So much loathing.
So much sorrow.
On his knees, beautiful, head thrown back, gloved fingers hooked into the loops of steel to prevent them from slicing his throat, this pretty, bony white throat. His body taut against mine, radiating heat and energy, a mad resistance until my thumbs pressed the breath out of him and he sagged into my embrace. No boneless collapsing, but an agonised melting away of strength as his lips flushed blue, his tongue crept out between his teeth, and his eyes bulged. Strangling himself while still trying to fight.
He could not stop fighting. Even in the intimacy of my killing embrace, a flick of my hands away from being garrotted.
Omi yelled at me to stop just before my reflexes kicked in.
It always chills me to remember this.
I had no idea what an exotic bird I had caught in my snare. A broken, sad, frightened bird.
"Yohji?" He crossed the room with a few steps and kneeled by my side, settling his hands on his thighs. His firm, white fingers relaxed on the dark fabric. His right wrist a little smudged with grinding paste. Imagine to kiss it off, how would he taste? Of salt and steel, perhaps. Of his soap. Of a hot summer day on the banks of a river. Of warm mud and reeds, blood and death. Of life and love. Of sex.
He had told me he wanted to know.
My breath grew too hot for my lungs. He was too close for comfort. I blew a long stream of smoke through my nose and shrugged. "What's wrong with you, huh?"
"Hai."
"Why ask me? There's so much wrong with me, how could I know what's it with you?"
"I cannot ask anyone else." He had me there. Aya logic, unshakeable. It should help him with the chibi – Omi is a sucker for logic, and he never fails at it. "So tell me."
"Dunno."
"Yohji."
"Hm." More smoke. It helps me think, or fog up, or hide out. Whatever.
"You owe me." Never slow to call in a favour, Aya. (1)
"Perhaps there's nothing wrong at all. It's us who're all screwed up, right?" I did not mean to be nasty, it slipped out before I could think, he'd mushed my brains alright, and I tried to remember why I wanted to go out that night – ah, the girl who looked like Asuka. Some dancing, some booze, a good lay perhaps, and my world would be just fine, so why did he make me so damn edgy?
"Yohji, I am trying," he said quietly, his eyes steadily on me, probing, weighing, considering my worth. Trying whether I was worth trusting, worth the tiny bit of closeness he had allowed to grow between us during those last few months, worth anything.
I knew I wanted to be worth something, even though he was an ass sometimes. Silly, stuck up, lost and broken. Trying so hard to keep a hold over himself that he nearly crushed his own soul in the process. "You'll have to relax a bit," was the best I could come up with, now that I had the distinct feeling that it really mattered.
A one off moment. Make or break. No wind-back, no cut-outs allowed. He had opened a small door for me. For me! I did not want it slammed into my face, and all I could think of was something downtrodden and shallow.
"Explain," he demanded, his right hand lifting a little and resettling on his thigh. Keeping the door open still. Wellshaped muscle beneath dark, crisply starched fabric that looked as though it was newly bought though I had seen this yukata on him before. Once, ages ago, and I wondered what he wore underneath.
Smoke. I wished this was a joint instead of an ordinary nicotine fix. "Well, you could join us a bit more often," I fumbled, "ease up, get sloshed, that sorta thing. Be a bit less stiff, yanno?"
He considered that. He is too controlled, unless irked beyond endurance, and then he'll let his temper rip. Rarely. It is possible to see it brew, rise and boil over – in a way, his lack of spontaneity is fair on us 'cos it gives us time to run and hide should we be the cause of his ire.
I watched him and could see something shift in his eyes, his gaze home in on mine, holding me just so: he could have pinned me to the door with his katana and it would have been the same. Needled like a moth that had come entirely too close to the flame, been singed and caught.
Perhaps it was too late anyway to run. I could sense the fire beneath the ice, and I was hooked. That moment of silence, in his room, with his eyes expectant and sharp on me, it rushed at me like a train, and took me clean under. A challenge, better than any drug I knew. I am a sucker for challenges.
"Less stiff?" He paused again, his hands coming together, fingers linking, holding on to one another. Aya trying to hold on to himself. "So I am too... conventional?"
I shook my head, vaguely amused that he should deem himself conventional. "Ah, not quite, Ayan. More like unbending, hidebound, rigid, obstinate, inflexible – that sorta thing."
He swallowed hard, his gaze drifting to his hands. "I see. Tell me, Yohji, why should I cast away everything I learned?" He spoke quietly, his face blank, but his tone so tense as though it would shatter any moment. I winced. A thousand splinters of Aya's soul. "I thought... I tried to hold on to those things I was brought up to value. Things that made me. Now they're drifting away from me, and I suppose that is the way it should be. That is what you mean, by easing up, isn't it?"
Again, not quite, but... "Which things, Ayan?" Though I knew.
He looked up at me as though gauging his response, before he said carefully, "Simple things. How to eat. How to be polite. How to try to respect those you live with... as... as..." He trailed off and suddenly turned away, his head dipping against the wall against which I was leaning, his eyes hidden behind red bangs.
"As a family?" I ventured, a queasy sensation beginning to settle in my stomach.
He snorted softly. "I just meant to keep out of your hair. Didn't want to force my ways on anyone. I know you all think I'm an asshole. That's ok." He leaned forward, pulling up one leg to wrap his arms around it. To think what the yukata would bare should it slip just by an inch or so... "I don't mind, really, 'cos it doesn't matter."
Ouch.
"It's only that..." He rested his forehead against his raised knee, hair falling over his hands, crimson on white, blood on skin, the cross we bear within. "Sometimes I'd like to know more about... those things..."
"Like, how it is to be in love?" I ventured.
"Tell me about it, Yohji. How is it? How was it for you with her?"
A quick drag at the cigarette, so deep it made my lungs ache and my eyes water as I let my head thud back against the wall.
"Yohji?"
Forgot that he's got no idea how it is. How young we were, and how old already. Perhaps we'd all died already and just not realised... He never knew how love feels. He might never find out. No, don't look up now, Aya, fuck, now I am not... I am not...
He leaned in, close, warm, his hard thumb stroking over my cheekbone. My eyes closing, catching this incredulous expression on his face, before he withdrew his hand and stilled; I could feel him freeze, right there, next to me, I could sense the shock and the anger and...
"Ah," he breathed, with an air of realisation.
I hate meaningful pauses. "So," I sounded raw, had to clear my throat and scrubbed at my face with my sleeve 'cos the friggin' smoke curled right into my eyes then, "wanna know how it is." I'm good at parroting.
He regarded me, unsure. "It hurts that much?"
Why did he have the knack to make me breathless every time he jabbed home with one of those remarks? Prod, jab, thrust, touche. Easy. Offhandedly. It stung, badly. Just how much time did he spend watching US while we believed we were watching HIM? And how damn lucid is he, Aya-not-so-clueless or innocent? Or did he merely have uncanny instincts? Either way, it was wrong. All of it. I could feel it in my guts that were churning madly with a mix of sensations I didn't even want to begin to explore. There, analyse that, Kudoh, you're used to it, leftover from your old job, your old life, but no, pretending to be blind and dumb suits you just fine now, doesn't it.
"Yohji, you need to breathe."
And hell had me because he cracked a joke, as dry as cinder, and I sucked in air with a gasp like a drowning man and quirked a grin, wide, false and cheerful. "Man, Ayan, you make me laugh."
"That appears to be my job in this team," he snitted, "to be the butt of everyone's jokes, and seeing that you are coming up with most of them..."
I had been teasing him, but only to unbalance him a little, to help him mellow and settle in. I tried a shrug, glad that it came out smooth and nonchalant. "Gotta do something with you, Ayan." Never mind what I would really have liked to do with him then, and I was ashamed and heated by the images my stupid mind shoved into my consciousness.
Redhead was not amused. "Fuck you."
Cussing did not sound right from his mouth, from these thin, unsmiling lips, but he could do it, like an old salt. Where had he learned it? I dropped some ash onto the spent polishing rag in the bin. Stared at him, grin in place. "Well, I'd let you but in your case, it comes with strings."
Silence. He looked stunned, forgetting for a heartbeat his guarded ways, his eyes growing wide, then narrow. This was one step too far, Kudoh, I chided myself, one shade too bold, this was Aya, you don't talk like that to Aya 'cos he can gut you if he feels like it, and making a blatant pass at him might just qualify as something that pushes him that tiny bit too hard. More godawful silence. I knew damn well I dressed up what I wanted with another joke, made it sound light, playful, yeah, I'm good at that until I believe myself, but really, all his little hints, hadn't they prepared the ground?
Suddenly, I needed to know, so to hell with it; I let the remark hang, the silence stretch and grow thick around us. To imagine having him... So vivid... So harsh he'd cut me like his blade might cut, so pretty and so sad... To kiss those mirthless lips until they flushed pink and coax a smile out of them... I had to swallow a groan that instead chose to vibrate down between my legs, but there was also this burning inside my chest that was different from anything I'd found in the clubs or in the arms of strangers. It reminded me of Asuka, and I realised with a shock that, earlier, he had made me weep.
I wanted to make him smile. Laugh, perhaps. Make his pretty cold eyes glaze over with lust and love.
Love.
I could show him that we were not dead yet.
I could show him how to love. And perhaps, I could love someone again, even though he had nothing to remind me of her, and he was a guy.
"You-" He swallowed hard, pressed his lips together in a hard line and took a long, slow breath through his nose before saying, "You make everthing sound like a joke. Even that."
Shit, no. No-no-no-no, this was NOT happening. I was not joking, not at all.
He sat very still, holding my gaze with those distant, guarded eyes, shielded behind those cursed purple contacts. "It ever occurred to you that's why I can't..."
Loads of ellipses. I hadn't realised that Aya was a master of the ellipsis. He faltered again, but only to strengthen his resolve. "It would never work, Yohji. Even if I could make you stop, it wouldn't be you anymore."
And that's why I couldn't have him. Couldn't own him. Couldn't fall so bloody hard for him that it hurt like hell already, good grief, this was SO not happening, not to Kudoh the Flirt, who'd been playing this kind of game longer than he cares to remember. I should have known better than that: blokes are for fucking, girls for loving. Where did Aya come in?
No, this is not what happens to me.
And Aya looked at me with this odd expression in his eyes, so cold, so hard, so pained, and I forgot myself and leaned towards him, closed my eyes and kissed his lips. I was ready to die.
xxx
Next chapter: Truth
1) see 'Finding Stillness' for why Yohji owes Aya