Title: Blindsided

By: Kibethan

Disclaimer: Nope, don't own it.

Summary: Yuki isn't exactly a favorite in the public's eye, so his editor decides to shape him up to seem like a good guy by volunteering him to volunteer at a hospital. What will happen when he meets a particularly interesting patient by thename of Shindou Shuichi?

Half-warning: This story is rated PG-13. I'm warning you here. There is some swearing in here. More than there ever was in my Earthquake story, I think

Chapter 2

Off to a Rocky Start

Yuki took a deep breath and walked into the hospital room. Shuichi was still exactly how he'd left him: on the bed, sitting up, with a confused look on his face. Shuichi's head turned towards Yuki's as he heard Yuki's footsteps walk into the room.

"Hello?" Shuichi asked shakily.

"Um…yeah…hi…" Yuki answered him. Shuichi furrowed his eyebrows and cocked his head. Yuki could tell that he was trying really hard to remember if he'd ever heard his voice before. Yuki decided to save him the trouble of having to keep on trying to remember. "You don't know me," he said.

If it was possible, Shuichi got an even more confused look on his face.

"Then," Shuichi asked, "Why are you here?"

"I'm not here because I want to be," Yuki snapped at him. Shuichi cast his eyes down to the blanket on his bed, a pained expression written all over his face. Yuki's eyes softened as he remembered what the doctor had said earlier, about Shuichi never getting anybody to visit him. "Sorry…I was cast into this without any warning."

"I get it. Just leave." The pained look was still in Shuichi's eyes. Yuki's apology hadn't done anything to help ease the pain of not having anyone want him.

"I'm sorry," Yuki tried again.

"I don't care! I can tell by the sound of your voice that you don't want to be here! You just feel sorry for the blind kid! 'Oh…it's a blind kid…I should attempt to comfort him, when actually I don't want to be here'," Shuichi mocked Yuki.

"Hey!" Yuki started defending himself, "When I initially came in here, I had no idea that you were blind! I just knew that you didn't get many visitors, so I was going to be one."

"You thought that a jackass that I didn't know would make me feel better? Are you insane? You have some fucked up logic!"

Yuki slammed his hands down on the side of the bed. He was fed up with being insulted. It wasn't fair! Just last night, he'd had a normal life. Normal for him is to write, write, write.

"At least I'm not some blind kid that's stuck in a hospital bed with no one to visit him. Boo hoo. I bet you cry yourself to sleep every night because you're ALL ALONE!" Shuichi got really pissed off.

"Get the fuck out!"

"How long have you been in here, anyway?" Yuki asked loudly. He was on a roll, and wasn't going to stop. "Two weeks? Three weeks? A month? Longer? I bet you were abandoned here!"

"GET THE FUCK OUT!" Something snapped in Shuichi. His eyes got really dark, and he started shaking really violently. "Get out! Get out! Get OUT!" Yuki was surprised that nurses weren't racing in here to see what was wrong.

Yuki slowly and silently slipped out the door. He doubted that Shuichi had even heard him leave. Yuki looked at his watch. He had lasted in the room just over five minutes. He sighed. He had tried to last longer, he really had. Since Yuki was a kid though, he hadn't gotten along well with people. They tended to just piss him off. Or rather, he tended to piss them off. Either way, he just didn't get along with them.

He walked down the hall, intending to just quit the volunteer work and face the consequences. Nothing was worth the distress he was having. He could get fired from the publishing agency for all that he cared. He stomped down the hall and in front of the elevator. The doors opened, and there stood Ezaniya Akinori. Yuki's eye's widened, but he just pushed right through the crowd that stepped off the elevator and onto it. Well, he tried to, but the doctor grabbed him before he could.

"Where are you going, Yuki-san?"

"Home, where I belong."

"You haven't even been here thirty minutes."

"It doesn't matter," Yuki explained. "I just cause people unnecessary grief. I'll be surprised if I didn't just permanently mess up the kid I was talking to. I have no people skill's whatsoever."

The doctor's eyes got a really worried look on his face.

"Which kid?" he asked.

"Shindou Shuichi." The manager's eyes got even more worried. Without another word he walked hastily to Shuichi's room. Yuki, intrigued as to why the doctor was so worried, followed along behind him. He stopped short of following him into the room though. He didn't think that he or Shuichi would be able to handle another encounter today.

The doctor immerged about thirty seconds later with a relieved look on his face.

"He's asleep. Thank God he's asleep."

"Why?"

"Yuki-san, I need to tell you some things about Shuichi. He's been here for about six months." Yuki's eyes went really, really wide. "As I told you before, he gets no visitors, and we're not even sure what happened to him. Somebody had found him on the street, picked him up, and dropped him off here. For the longest time we didn't even know what his name was, because Shuichi was in a coma for about a month. When he did finally wake up, the only thing that he could remember was his name. When we found out his name, we checked out police reports and schools, seeing if anyone had reported him missing. No one had, so essentially, he was abandoned here. We tried to send him to an orphanage, but he just kept getting hurt there. They bullied him because he couldn't see. He was hurt so often, that it just seemed wiser to keep him here."

Yuki's mouth was dropped to the ground.

"Wow."

"Also," the manager added as a side note, "we're pretty sure that Shuichi wasn't blind to begin with, and whatever had happened to him right before we got to him was what caused it."

Yuki tried to say something, but couldn't. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He fished in his mind for something -anything- to say, but he didn't catch anything.

"If you want to go," the manager told Yuki, "you can. I'll expect you back here in two days, though. And I want you to be here for longer. Maybe I'll have you play with some of the younger kids."

"Okay." Yuki walked back towards the elevator. The doors "dinged" open and after all the people who were in it stepped out, he walked in. He pressed the button on the side of the door that said "L" for lobby. After stopping at every other level to pick up people, the elevator finally reached the lobby. Yuki was the first person out of the giant box when the doors opened. He walked himself over to the sliding glass doors that would let him out.

They opened automatically and he stepped out into the frigid air. It was absolutely freezing. It definitely hadn't been that cold out when he had left to go to the café that morning. He certainly wouldn't have left the house without a coat if it had been that cold.

It was so cold, that he almost jumped back into the warmth of the hospital. He decided not to, though. He'd had enough of the hospital for one day. On the way down the elevator, he had decided that he would do what the manager had told him and come back in two days.

He had been hell bent on not coming back before then. After he had met up with the manager though, and the manager had practically told him Shuichi's life story, he figured that he was obligated to come back. If not to just apologize to Shuichi. Shuichi deserved an apology, and Yuki would give him one. He just wouldn't give him one just yet, though. He figured that he wouldn't get forgiven if he barged up there and woke Shuichi up, then apologized to him. Shuichi still probably not completely be over the last meeting, and waking up someone when their sleeping is not the best thing to do if you're trying to beg forgiveness.

Not like Yuki was going to beg or anything.

With newfound resolve, Yuki practically skipped home. It would feel nice to do something nice for somebody else. He got to his house and unlocked his door. He stepped inside, out of the cold, and went into the kitchen. He put some water in a pot and started boiling it. He walked into his study to check his messages. The answering machine blinked that he had one message. Yuki pressed the play button, and then moved to his computer, listening all the while to what the message had to say.

"Yuki-san. It's your editor. I want you to call me when you get this and tell me how your first day volunteering went. I hope that it went well, you have no idea how hard it was getting somebody to let you volunteer after your reputation. The hospital was my last hope. Anyway, I'm rambling. Call me."

The answering machine clicked off. Yuki reached for the phone, knowing that if he didn't call her back, he was going to get hell in the morning.

"Hello, Yuki-san," she said when she answered her phone. Quite obviously she had caller I.D. and knew immediately who was calling.

"It went like shit, thanks for asking," Yuki said, answering the message that she had left. His editor's voice immediately turned worried.

"Why? What happened?"

"I got into a fight with a patient." His editor was silent for a few moments. Despite the fact that he knew she was worried, he heard what sounded like laughter trying to be covered up in the background.

"You…got into a fight…with a patient…" She dissolved into a fit of laugher, more audible this time.

"Yes. Why the hell is that so damn funny!?"

"Yuki-san, even though it's in your nature to be mean, I didn't think that you would actually pick a fight with a patient in a hospital. That's one of the reason's why a hospital was one of my choices."

"Hey! I didn't start the argument."

"Yeah, like I'd believe that for a second."

"Seriously, I didn't!"

"Yuki-san…"

"Okay…maybe it was a little bit my fault. But it was part-way the kid's fault too." His editor was practically yowling when she heard that the person that Yuki had gotten into a fight with was a kid. "Shut up. You'll be happy to know, that despite the fact that I got into a fight, I'm going to go back to that hellhole that they call a hospital."

"Good. I want a detailed report on what happens after you get back from your second session. Alright?"

"Alright, I'll call you in two days."

"Bye, Yuki-san."

"Bye." He heard the click of his editor turning off her phone. He quickly did the same and started typing on his computer. It wasn't yet that late out, only about two o'clock. He did need to continue writing, even though he was now volunteering. After all, he did have a deadline to meet.

As he typed, though, he found himself thinking of ways that he could apologize to the blind boy. He figured that a straight up apology would probably be best. But he didn't know if he should get him anything to go with it. He might be allergic to chocolate or flowers, and he certainly couldn't get him a card; he wouldn't be able to read it! Yuki didn't think he'd be able to handle it if he had to read a card out loud to Shuichi. He might start cracking up in the middle of it, and then his apology would be ruined.

Yuki finally settled on getting Shuichi a teddy bear. It would be the perfect thing. Yuki wouldn't arrive empty handed, and Shuichi would finally have a companion that could be with him at all times.

Yuki started to continue writing his book, but ended up just stopping and shutting down the computer. He was tired, dammit. He hadn't had barely any sleep the night before, and the night before that, he had been on a writing streak and hadn't gone to bed at all. The day's events were finally starting to take a toll on him.

He walked into the kitchen and turned off the stove. He had almost forgotten that he had water boiling in there.

He walked into his bedroom. He had barely made it to his bed before he fell asleep.

End Chapter 2

I did it! Another chapter of Blindsided! And it only took me six days to get out! Yay! Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I don't have a whole lot to say here...so...

On to a review of reviews! I must say, I'm so INCREDIBLY HAPPY!!! Never before have I gotten 25 reviews for one chapter!!!

Anyway, here it is:

Tati: Congrats. You're my first reviewer! I'm glad you like it, gravi addict: I'm glad that you like it, MC-88: hehehe...I didn't forget about Earthquake. In fact...I'm almost finished with it! Na no da, lollyflop: I'm glad you enjoyed it, Dark Mimiru-chan: Here you go!, Soralover1:Unfortunately...this is as soon as possible, Hiei chan: I'llkeep it up, Hammy-chan: I hope that I've kept your interest!, goku-the-saru: slaps forehead. I should've known you'd say something like that..., Kumagorou-kun: Hehehe, I'm glad you like!, i love athrun: You mean, anew chapter like the one I just posted?, Ildreen Love: Yep...non-existant. I'm sorry if Yuki seems at bitooc is this chapter at times, Queen of the Paperclips: Is this regularly enough?, Shirubaa Kitsune: Are you waiting, still, afteralmost a week?, CassiToTheStars: I'm glad that you like it. I'm sorry thathe's a bit OOC at times. I can't help it, I just can't make him TOO mean..., Little Fox Kit: Glad that you like it much!, tammy: I'm gladyou think it's interesting, Rin: Do you still like it?, Dana: We shall see...we shall see..., zafiro A carillo:Don't worry...I will ALWAYS finish my stories..., clari chan: glad you like!, Viriel: TSUZUKI!!! I LOVE TSUZUKI!!!, xxPetalsAndThorns9xx: I'm glad you like my mechanics and story!, sera: Yay! I'm glad you're intrigued!, Lara: I'm certainly glad that you liked it,and Earthquake!

Well...that was a little big...but anyway! Um...yeah...I'm really tired. Still like? Please review and tell me! I love reviews! So much! The more reviews I get, the more motivated I am to write! Also, if you ever want to talk, my AIM name is Kibethan. I love chatting with people!

Happy Thanksgiving again,

Ki-chan