Blindsided

by Kibethan

[COMPLETE] 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 the name of S

10. Questions, Questions, Questions

Title: Blindsided

By: Kibethan, yo!

Disclaimer: I've noticed that people try to make disclaimers interesting. Let me tell you now that that is :one: tough job. All I can say is...Noitativarg nwo t'nod i.

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 the name of Shindou Shuichi?

Half-warning: Oh, look, swearing...

Previously, on Blindsided:

Actually, Yuki looked longingly at the floor; maybe the floor would be more comfortable. He mentally debated for a minute, but then he saw the kid he had placed in the beanbag chair just staring at him, waiting for him to read the story. He opened the book to the first page again.

Yuki took a deep breath and began.

From the doorway to the children's room a pair of ears with pink hair dusting on top of them listened to him as he read the kid's story.

Chapter 10

Questions, Questions, Questions

Never. Never again was Yuki going to read a story to Soushi. That little boy had seemed so sweet at first, asking Yuki to read him a story, but, inside, he was really a demon that just continued on wanting to be read to. Sure, he didn't look it. But Yuki knew the truth.

After all, how could he not after the kid had made him read the book to him multiple times with different tones of voice –drone being the last one that Yuki had used. Needless to say the kid was not happy. But, of course, that didn't really matter, because Yuki had had enough of reading to Soushi.

"Please, Yuki-san, please read it to me again," Soushi begged and pleaded. But, this time, Yuki was not going to give in and finally Soushi gave up, resolving to just try to read it himself.

Yuki took that as his cue to quickly exit the kid's playroom and go visit Shuichi. It had been a while since he had seen Shuichi, and as much as he hated to admit it, Shuichi was starting to grow on him. I mean he had taken Shuichi outside. That, in and of itself, was quite a task.

He knocked on Shuichi's door and called in a quick, "Are you decent?" to make sure that he wouldn't have to see more of Shuichi than he wanted to. Receiving no reply, he just walked right in. Shuichi was sitting on his bed looking wistfully towards the window. He wasn't actually looking at it per say, his eyes were just facing where the light shone through the window.

"It's a nice day, today, isn't it, Yuki-san?" Shuichi asked Yuki.

"How…?"

"I can feel the sun on my face."

"Ah." Yep, Yuki was being intelligible today. What can you expect, though, after he had just read the same story over and over, again and again?

"We should do something, Yuki!" Shuichi suddenly exclaimed jumping onto his feet. Yuki, surprised from the fast outburst, reeled back in surprise. This was not a side of Shuichi that he had really seen that much. Was the sun really affecting him?

Shuichi, as though sensing the look on Yuki's face, quickly reassured him that he was not crazy.

"I just want to go outside again, Yuki. The sun and the fresh air felt so nice."

Yuki couldn't argue with that. How many times had he stopped to feel the sun on his face as he was walking towards the hospital? Okay, so he wasn't really stopping to feel the sun; he was debating whether or not he should actually go in that day. But maybe next time he stopped, he would because he felt the warm sun on his face, or the soft breeze on his face—

Okay, that was going a little bit too far. Yuki knew that he would never do something like that, and he almost chuckled at the thought. In fact, he would have chuckled had he not at that exact instant been tackled by something with pink hair.

Something with pink hair that couldn't see.

Something with pink hair that couldn't see and had a damn good sense of where people were.

"What the hell!" Yuki yelled out loud, digging his feet into the floor to keep from falling. When it finally registered in his brain what was currently giving him a giant hug, he jumped again. "Get OFF!"

Instead of feeling the release of arms around his neck and the slow backing away of a body that Yuki should have been feeling, he instead felt the body shift as Shuichi moved his face, to face Yuki's, tears starting to shine in his sightless eyes.

"Yuki-san…hates me now?" The tears that once were held prisoner in his eyes slowly started to break from their cage (with the help of gravity) and make their tracks down Shuichi's eyes.

Now, seriously, is there anything worse than making a blind boy cry? Just think about it for a second. Maybe the deaf mute little girl that has bouncy red curls up in pigtails. But the blind boy was pretty much right up there.

Yep, guilt was eating away at Yuki's soul, wounding him to the core. Okay, so that's a bit melodramatic, but dammit, Yuki was feeling a little bit bad. Not so bad as to give an apology, but bad enough that he let Shuichi hang off of him in a slightly loose hug. Hey, it was his apology.

And they stayed that way for, one minute, two minutes, even five minutes. Heck, they probably would've stayed that way for a long time had there not been the sound of the door opening up.

Yuki's head (which had been beginning to drift down from the body heat that was wrapped around him), snapped up. In strolled Ezaniya with Shuichi's lunch. He walked in slowly and looked around, puzzled, for Shuichi. His head turned towards the left, and then turned to the right.

For Yuki, time seemed to go in slow motion. It was like watching a train wreck. As soon as Ezaniya saw both of them, standing there, he jumped about six inches into the air. The food that he had been going somehow, by a miracle of some sort, managed to stay on the tray. His eyes went wide.

Yuki, at that moment, realized that the situation probably looked a lot worse than he had first imagined. He remembered that they were standing there hugging, but he had completely forgotten that, well, both of them were male (and to some people, that's wrong) and that Shuichi was, in fact, a minor, while he was quite legal. Oh yeah, Shuichi was definitely jailbait. It is not that they were that far apart in age –six years could hardly be considered taboo- but the fact that Shuichi was still underage was what presented the problem.

Fuck.

He didn't even like Shuichi like that, but as far as Ezaniya could tell, they were both lovers gallivanting under the sunny skies.

"What. Are. You. Doing?" he asked in a quiet threatening tone. Shuichi, who had felt Yuki stiffen, turned towards the source of the voice.

"I…" Yuki started to explain.

"WHAT. ARE. YOU. DOING?" he asked again, his tone of voice getting much louder and more threatening. Yuki couldn't really blame him. He had seen the protective look thatEzaniya had given Shuichi before. Shuichi was like a son to him. To have some man that he hardly knew –who had a bad rep in the newspapers no less- with his arms partially wrapped around Shuichi was practically clearly enough to make him see red.

Shuichi threw a confused look towards the yelling.

"What's wrong with me hugging him? I just wanted to give him a proper thank you for taking me outside." Shuichi quickly explained. Yuki was quite happy to hear the reason why Shuichi had given him the hug too; he had, after all, be a bit curious himself.

Ezaniya sizzled down a little bit after hearing why it was that he had walked in on the two guys embracing. If it was just because Shuichi was giving a thank you, that would be okay.

Yuki could see the shock that was still evident on Ezaniya's face and he struggled to think how long it would have been since he had seen Shuichi embrace somebody else. When he had first told Yuki about Shuichi, he had explained that Shuichi was kind of quiet, shy, and a recluse.

That certainly didn't seem like the case now, with Shuichi yelling out and jumping all over him. Well, it was probably a good thing that Shuichi was starting to come out of his shell.

"Well, sorry, just jumped to conclusions a little bit," Ezaniya mumbled, "Here's your food, Shu-chan."

Shuichi untangled himself from Yuki and followed his nose to the food. When he got closer, however, he wrinkled his nose at the foul smell. He did not want to eat that food.

Ezaniya, seeing the look of distaste Shuichi gave his lunch, rolled his eyes and shoved the food into Shuichi's hands.

"It's all your fault," he scolded Yuki. "You made him remember what it was like to eat normal food. Now he hardly touches this stuff when he used to eat it without complaining. He's going to start not having enough nutrients and get sick."

With that final parting thought, Ezaniya left, stage left. Yuki peered towards the food. It did look a little bit inedible, resembling the kind of food that was forced on him when he was in elementary school. In fact, it looked like the exact same food, like they hadn't changed the recipe for that long.

Yuki gave out a loud sigh as Shuichi poked at the food.

"Shuichi, you know, you really should eat it."

"Have you ever tasted it?"

"Well, I…"

"Have you ever tasted it?" Shuichi repeated. "If you taste some of it, then I'll eat the rest of it," he added as an after thought.

Yuki thought about it for a minute, and then decided that it might be okay.

"Promise?" he asked.

"As you long as you promise that you'll have actually eaten it."

"I promise." Yuki moved towards the food –so what if he couldn't figure out exactly what it was? He grabbed the fork, the only fork, and took a small bite of the food. Despite the fact that the bite that he took was so small, he felt as though his taste buds were being raped. He almost spit out the food, but then he remembered his promise to Shuichi and made a heroic effort to swallow it. "There," he choked out, "your turn to eat." He handed the fork to Shuichi and collapsed onto the floor. Yeah, it was just like the food that he was forced to eat in Elementary School.

Together they sat there, Shuichi coughing and trying to eat his food, and Yuki coughing and trying to get his stomach under control after his encounter with the foreign food. Did he really want Shuichi to be eating that?

Yuki heard Shuichi fall back to lie on the bed. He had finally finished eating all of the food. Granted, it had taken a while, but he had finished eventually. Yuki sat up and saw Shuichi just laying there, his eyes closed, looking like he was deep in thought.

"Yuki, can I ask you something?" Shuichi said quietly. The change in Shuichi's voice reflected what Shuichi had been like when he had first met him –albeit, no yelling and swearing.

"Sure," Yuki answered hesitantly, "What's up?"

"I watched you read to that kid." Even though Shuichi had said it quietly, Yuki heard it in his head plain as though it had just been shouted in his ears. He felt his face grow hot and it took him a second to realize that he was blushing. That hadn't happened to him in years. "I watched you read to that kid," Shuichi continued, "and even though I couldn't actually see what was happening, your tone of voice indicated that you would probably be a good person to talk to, if I ever needed to."

"Shuichi, what's wrong?" Yukiquestioned him.

"I need to talk to someone; I just can't keep it bottled up inside forever." Yuki gave him an encouraging nod, before smacking himself and nudging Shuichi on verbally. "I remember my parents. They were both very loving and kind, giving my little sister and me things just to the point of not spoiling us. We were all happy. But then, it happened. When it happened, everything just went downhill. All of a sudden, my family wasn't there and I was in an orphanage." Yuki wanted to question what "it" was, but Shuichi continued before he could.

"The orphanage wasn't all that bad. Sure, the food tasted almost worse than what the hospital is serving, and there wasn't really enough room for all of us that were there, but all of us eventually became pretty close-knit. I had two really good friends. Hiro and Suguru were there names. All of their parents were gone too. Sometimes I wonder why they haven't come and visit me in the hospital. I mean, we were really good friends."

At this point, tears started to show in Shuichi's eyes and Yuki was helpless to do anything but continue on listening to Shuichi's sad tale.

"We did everything together; we ate, and slept, and even showered together (theorphanage couldn't afford that everybody take all of their showers separately). But then, he came. And he ruined everything. He broke up groups that used to be really tight. He couldn't come between us three though, and I think that that pissed him off. So he started to bully us. Hiro was the biggest one of us and could easily stand up to the bullying. Suguru was the smallest and the most easily beat, so Hiro started watching out for him more. Me, being the one that was in the middle was supposed to be able to stand up for myself. I mean, I could even see! But, no, he was stronger than me. I just, couldn't take it. I don't remember exactly what happened...but something did and I ended up here. I wish that I could remember..."

Shuichi ended his story and Yuki was in complete shock. He had never expected Shuichi to open up that much to him. It just…hadn't seemed possible. And now, here he was, sitting here like a fish with his jaw on the ground and grappling to find words that he could say that could have some sort of meaning.

What Shuichi had just told him had answered a lot of the questions that had been running through Yuki's head. But, it had also opened a lot more.

What was "it" and who was "he"? These were all things that he was determined to find out.

End Chapter 10

Woo-hoo! I made it less of a time between updates than last time! Aren't you proud of me? I just have to say that it's June. That means that a) I am graduating from High School and getting my A.A. from college and b) I am moving. I am going to be quite busy, from now on. I will do my best to update, however, okay?

Onto a review of reviews:

Shuuichi-chan: Yes, yes, you got the first review! And sorry about the ooc-ness from Yuki..., Cheley: Hehehe...I really like Soushi too and I'm glad that you like my story, Skweeshy: Ah! Right! I'm glad that you do like it, Redroseprincess678: Shuichi, Kloudy Reignfall: hehehehe...I'm glad that you liked the Harry Potter thing..., Shirubaa Kitsune: Essentially, it's when my friends and I get to together and make apple crisp..., Sailor Epyon: Thank you, lord knows I need it, GravityNeko: I'm so glad that you liked it, Starlit-Knight: Yes, yes, tell your friends :pressures you, goku-the-saru: Hey! It's not like it's that rare of an occurance. Just think, almost done with school..., checkmarks: Yay! Me too, bitter green tea: Woo-hoo! I'm glad that you like it, PyrokineticFeral: You have NO idea how happy that that makes me, ichi-chan: GRINS, Bram: Gomen, gomen, it's hard to overcome writer's block, Syaoran is kawaii: I'm SO glad that you liked my Harry Potter, tangerine-asuka: I thought that the kids were so cute, blu-rain: muwahahahahaha, DarrkKatt: Oh noes!A frying pan, Tokyo Kitsune: Yes, sometimes the cuteness is nice, WhiteLightning: At least you got it was a spoof on Harry Potter, tammy-love: Nah, the Decemberists are a band (which I love), but yay for NJ, lemur130: Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! I hope that you're having fun doing whatever it is that you're doing, Aya: I have a friend named Aya, shuXyuki: Meh, random can sometimes be good, Kaylariana: Yeah, well, so what? They'll be back..., DarkRemembrence: Woo-hoo! It'll be good, no worries, necrophile: Oh! Right! It's on Mediaminer!...I actually forgot...thank you for reminding me, Sakura Minamino: Yay! I'm glad that you liked my Harry Potter, Elements: I'll e-mail you back, I promise! I'm sometimes slow like that, gomen, Flame-chan: Yes, yes, Shuichi's past was in there, no, Reader: Ooh! It's a half flame, that's cool. Well, sometimes it's nice to be able to be surprised, no, Sliver Rose Fox: I'm so glad that you like it :grins, Tiki-chan: Yay! I'm SO glad that you like it, rebelyell59: I got your review today. I'm gonna have to ask; what gave you the impression that English wasn't my first language? Because, believe it or not, I was born in Iowa, and lived in Washington and Texas, and Washington again. I'm quite American and would be THRILLED if my first language wasn't English...but it is...so I'm just curious where you got that impression. Anyway, I'm glad that you like it ;

That. Is. IT!

Now, I've noticed that a lot of YOU have noticed that Yuki can be, at times, at bit OOC. Trust me, it was not my intention to make this happen, but generally when I'm writing, I'm in a REALLY good mood, so Yuki ends up being in a good mood too. Now, I promise that I'll TRY to get him back into more character, but you have to remember...this story is AU. Therefore, he can be a little bit happier than he usually is. After all, Shuichi isn't usually blind, right? So Yuki can sometimes be happy and fluffy.

Don't fear the fluff, fear the Chacha (KATIE!)

Please, please, please review! It would mean SO much to me! And, um, if you ever want to talk, my AIM name is Kibethan, my msn is Kibethan at msn dot com, and my livejournal is Kibethan...

Until next time,

Ki-chan