The Curb

Yohji sat on the edge of the concrete pier, watching the slopping water. He was smoking. The collar of his tidy blazer turned up against the fine rain and the chill of the autumn breeze, his heels knocking softly against the greenish-grey wall as he dangled his legs. He did not want to go back yet. He had seen Crawford go into the house.

An odd, wrenching sensation dragged through his chest as he thought how ridiculous it was to envy someone like Schuldig, and how stupid that he could not help it.

Crawford contained Schuldig. They needed one another, part of the odd symbiosis that formed Schwarz where one was nothing without the others, but together they were all but unbeatable.

Yohji lit a new cigarette with the stub of the old one and tossed the butt into the dirty harbour water. Weiss had never been like that. Weiss had always been more independent, but also easier to split. It had just been his bad luck to fall for…

He started, instinct kicking in before he could think, hand darting for the harigane in his pocket and his body tensing without moving much. A finely tuned spring, coiled for action, waiting for the trigger.

And then the scent of pine and steel washed over him, and felt the warm press of a body folding into a crouch by his side and a hand joining his around the harigane. "You won't need it now," Aya said quietly.

Yohji closed his eyes for a moment. Aya pulled him close. Yohji let his head sink against Aya's chest and was wrapped into the embrace of Aya's hard, muscular arms. For a while, they remained still, listening to the bustle of the darkening docks, Yohji smoking, Aya wrinkling his nose.

"I hate you going there," Aya finally said when dusk began to obscure Yohji's features. "I don't understand it."

"He reminds me of you," Yohji replied softly.

Aya scowled, brushed his small hard hand over Yohji's brow as if to wipe aside a strand of hair. He missed Yohji's long hair. He let his hand linger, cupping Yohji's cheek and jaw, fingertips touching his eyelid. Warm, firm skin, pliant beneath his touch. "I am not like him."

"No," Yohji agreed, around a mouthful of smoke that welled between his lips and for a moment floated above his features like mist. "He is what you could have become." He turned his face into Aya's palm. "He reminds me to value what I have."

Aya bent low, his breath mingling with Yohji's, and kissed him on the forehead. "You do not know what you have. You do not know me."

"I know enough," Yohji said, "to trust you."

Aya's breath hitched in his throat. "You trust me?"

"Hai."

"Even if…"

Yohji's one visible eye gleamed up at him, and he felt Yohji's lips twitch in a small smile. "You're jealous, Ayan. I know how that feels."

"But," Aya gasped, "what if…"

"I'll be ready for you, loverboy." An odd undertone to Yohji's voice, a dark current that was anything but an empty threat, accompanied by the metallic whisper of the wire in Yohji's pocket – and Aya realised that Yohji had not let go of it all that time.

He allowed himself to relax a little. "Aa, so you will. You're mine, Yotan."

"I know that." Yohji closed his eyes and drew a lungful of Aya's scent, along with the cigarette smoke.

Another long silence, darkness settling over the harbour, lights springing up in clusters, sprinkled over the cranes and warehouses, mirrored in the lazily rolling waters. Aya absently caressed Yohji's shorn head, his face, and finally picked the smouldering stump of the cigarette from his lips to throw it away. Yohji smiled up at him, and for a moment, they locked eyes, Yohji quiet, Aya oddly breathless, before Aya whispered, "Could you kill me, Yohji?"

Yohji, without batting an eyelid, replied, "Aa, Ayan. I think I could."

"Good," Aya whispered, "Good." And leaned intohim tomet his lipsin a kiss.

xxx

The End