Disclaimer – I do not own or profit from Fruits Basket. If I did, Kyo and Yuki would be really living up the whole love-hate relationship thing...
Rated M for stuff that happens later on. Trust me.
And just so you know, there will be slash (yaoi) here, as well as just general dark themes. You've been warned.
More song lyrics as a chapter title, but still no lyrics in the fic... I don't own or profit from "Kickout"; it belongs to The Exies, so I imagine they do. Profit from it, I mean.
To Xiamandelaine, yes, this is a slash story for Yuki and Kyo, though it may not become overly obvious for a time... Thank you, thank you to all the people who reviewed or even just took the time to read the first chapter. I wish I could thank each and every one of you personally.
Anyway, enjoy. Peace, all.
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Kickout
Part Two – I'll Shut Down...
by Ghost Helwig
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Two weeks. It had been two weeks since Yuki got locked up, and though Kyo wanted (deep down where he could only barely admit it to himself) to visit him, he didn't. He couldn't. What would even be the point?
Tohru visited him, every day before work. Now that high school was over, she'd fully intended to get a fulltime job, but with what had happened at their graduation party all her plans had gotten side railed. She wasn't focused on a job anymore, on keeping her promise to her mother (she'd done that, really, simply by graduating); instead, she was focused on Yuki.
Yeah, that grated. A lot.
But Kyo didn't blame her, because he couldn't, not really. She cared about that damn rat, and seeing Yuki locked up (where I was supposed to be) upset her deeply.
Which was why it didn't surprise him at all when she came home that night in tears. Why wouldn't she? She was always crying lately, over that stupid rat-boy...
"Kyo." Tohru was looking up at him with those big blue eyes of hers. He froze. For a second, it looked like she might throw her arms around him and sob against his chest, but by now she knew better – she settled on grabbing his hand and giving it a squeeze.
"What's wrong?" Now, why did he ask that? He knew what the problem was. That damn rat-
"Y-yuki, he..." She wiped her eyes with her arm, like a child; his chest ached. "He told me not to come see him anymore."
Huh?
"D-did I do something w-wrong? I j-just wanted to c-comfort him-"
"It's not your fault. Yuki told all of us to stop."
Kyo's head shot up, his eyes meeting with Shigure's over Tohru's shoulder. Shigure looked... older, somehow, than he had before...
Tohru had turned to look at Shigure now, and out of the corner of his eye Kyo could see the concern and slight relief written all over her face. "R-really?" Shigure smiled at her, briefly; it struck Kyo as one of the more transparent expressions he'd ever seen on his cousin's face.
"Yes. I just received a very upset call from Aya. Apparently he, Momiji, and Haru were all told to back off today."
"And you?" Kyo asked. He wasn't sure why, but he needed to know the answer.
Shigure had turned away, but now he glanced back at him, his eyes unreadable.
"Before Yuki was locked up, he told Hatori and I never to come at all."
While Kyo was digesting that information, Shigure walked away. And it wasn't until Kyo lay in bed that night that it occurred to Kyo-
Yuki had never told him not to come.
He'd told the people he'd never trusted not to, and now he'd even told his friends (and his brother, whom he'd learned to tolerate, if nothing else), but never him. He'd never said anything about it to Kyo at all.
Kyo was out of bed before he could stop and think. It was late at night, close to midnight according to his clock, but that didn't matter. He could catch up on sleep some other time (he hadn't been sleeping, anyway). Right now he had a goal.
It was time to pay that damn rat a visit.
--00--
Sneaking into the compound wasn't particularly hard; finding Yuki, Kyo thought, would be the real trick. Who knew where Akito would keep him? He'd never bothered to ask the others about that.
He never asked them much about Yuki at all. Why would he?
He decided to check the first place he could think of – the small room where his Master had told him his grandfather had been held. After all, if Yuki was playing the part of the cat, he should be in the cat's cell...
Funny how that thought made Kyo feel a little sick. He pushed it aside.
Somehow his blurry memory of the way to get to the location he needed had led him true – only too soon he was peering into the inky darkness of a room that even at night he could plainly see appeared empty...
"Come to gloat, stupid cat?"
Kyo nearly jumped out of his skin, jerking backwards. He stared in shock at the barred window; he couldn't see Yuki in that place, but he knew he'd heard him...
"Damn rat," he muttered. "Come out where I can see you."
It was only when Yuki's eyes glared out at him through the bars that he realized his poor choice of words. Before he could even decide if he wanted to try to expend the energy necessary to find words that would form an appropriate apology without him actually having to say the words 'I'm sorry', Yuki spoke. His words came out the closest to a sneer that Kyo had ever heard from the 'ice prince'.
"Are you trying to be funny?"
No. I'm trying to understand how this happened – what I should say – what I should do – because I hate you, you damn rat – I hate you – I hate you but I never wanted this –
"Do you actually have a bed in there?"
Where the hell had that question come from?
Yuki stared at him; even in the gloom his eyes were fierce, dark and cold. The purple was lost to the shadows, just as the moonlight washed his silver hair to white; but somehow seeing him in the stark black and white that he was awash in made that weird little poignant ache in Kyo's chest all the worse.
He was not a bad person, by any means; so he knew he couldn't help but feel for someone in Yuki's position right now. But he resented it all the same.
"No," Yuki said, and Kyo's mind had moved so far from the conversation in those few seconds he'd spent musing that it took him a minute to remember – that's right. We were talking about beds. Because sometimes, I am a stupid cat.
And that thought pissed him off, pissed him off so much that it took another minute for him to register what Yuki'd said, and put it together with his question in order to get-
"Wait. You don't get a bed!"
In the dimness, he could sense more than see Yuki shrug.
"It's not so bad."
Then, in a quiet whisper Kyo was certain he wasn't supposed to hear:
"I'm used to the cold."
That wasn't supposed to make him ache, dammit. It wasn't.
He met Yuki's eyes again, squarely, and was startled by the abrupt realization that if they fought now, he couldn't hit Yuki, couldn't reach between the bars in order to reach those eyes and quiet their smug superiority for good-
"Why're you here, Kyo?"
He blinked, thought of a million different ways to answer Yuki's simple question, blinked again, shifted nervously from foot to foot, blinked another dozen times-
And still had absolutely no idea what to say.
So instead of answering, he asked a question.
"Why did you tell Tohru to stay away? You really upset her, you damn rat."
Kyo thought Yuki's eyes left his for a second to glance down – he couldn't be sure, though. And now those dark eyes were studying him thoughtfully...
"Would you want Miss Honda to see you this way, stupid cat?"
Kyo frowned. No, he wouldn't have – but he also knew he would've wanted to see her more than protecting his stupid pride-
But not more than protecting her...?
Was that why Yuki had sent her away? To protect her?
...Though he hated to admit it, Kyo knew that was probably it-
And that in Yuki's place (where I belong, where I was meant to be), he never could've done it.
"And the others?" he asked, knowing the answer was the same but needing to say something to get this sick weight off his heart, to take the taste of bile from his throat...
Yuki sighed, leaned his head down on the little ledge just inside the bars. Kyo immediately thought of about ten different ways he could tease Yuki about the little red line that would undoubtedly end up on his forehead tomorrow if he stayed there too long – then he realized that he wouldn't see Yuki tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that...
And suddenly teasing him didn't seem all that important.
Moonlight was still catching on Yuki's hair (even worse now, he could see it, it was worse now), turning gray to white, dark to light. There was an analogy in there Kyo was sure, but he was no good at metaphors or poetry or living outside in a world where the rat was caged for mistakes another rat had made in a story where all the main players had already died long ago-
And he had to go, now. No choice. He had to.
If he didn't, he was afraid he might cry. In front of rat-boy. And that was unforgivable.
"I gotta go," he muttered. Yuki shifted almost imperceptibly (if Kyo had not been Kyo, and thus trained in martial arts for much of his life, he probably would not have even noticed it), but said nothing. And for a moment, Kyo wanted to reach through the bars with his fingers and just touch that silky hair, maybe say thank you and I'm sorry in a way that would actually matter, actually make some small difference...
He turned away instead.
He was about to walk away when he heard Yuki's voice; slightly muffled now, but strong, stronger than the voice of someone so trapped had any right to be.
"They need to move on. They can't do that if they stay here."
He turned back to the window, but Yuki had already gone.
And it wasn't until Kyo had slipped back into the house and climbed once more into his bed (that felt too cold, and yet conversely, much warmer than it had any right to be – I should be freezing) that he realized two (very important) things.
The first, was that Yuki still had not forbidden him to come.
And the second was that, for the first time ever, Yuki had called him by name.
To his face. With no obvious animosity ringing in the word. No dubious intent.
Kyo couldn't quite figure out what that meant. And why it didn't bother him nearly as much as it probably should.
--End Part Two--