This is sort of, but not really, a sequel to Drifting Away, my first AkitoxHatori fic. You don't need to read that fic to understand this one, just understand that here they are lovers. (But if you do read Drifting Away, please review? Thanks!)
Akito 1st person point of view. Oh and I know the Ch. 97 spoiler, but I don't care. My Akito is always a boy, which is how it should be. So no one start whining to me that's he's a girl, because here he ain't. Warnings: some shounen-ai, language.
DESPERATION
Chapter One: Hearing Things
It's midnight.
I'm not tired. I sit on my porch, yukata about my shoulders, and listen. To the silence.
You don't really believe that, do you?
There's no such thing as silence. Not anymore, not to me.
I'd started thinking, hours ago, about the many types of silences there were in the world. Uncomfortable silence, respectful silence, expectant silence…peaceful silence. My favourite kind is fearful silence. Like when my Juunishi kneel and quiver before me, waiting for words to drop from my lips onto their heads.
Now, the silence is loud. This night-silence, filled with wind-whispers, insects. After a while they magnify and pound against my skull. This screaming silence. I bite my lip. In the background of it all is this static hissing: and I know what it is.
It's me. It's the white noise of my mind, hissing at me through clenched teeth. I hear all my thoughts, my snapping neurons, my pounding blood, the hissing.
tsssssssss
It's really, really, getting on my nerves. I slam my hands against the side of my head. I have to make it stop.
Hatori's behind me. I can feel his presence. My Dragon, my lover.
He sees me pressing my fingers into my hair and comes and crouches beside me.
"Akito?"
"What?" I snap. Tssssssss whines my head.
"You should be in bed, Akito. I put you to bed three hours ago."
His face is cold in the moonlight. There's a hint of what he was like before, before I sunk my claws into him. Before he shared my bed. "Well, I wasn't tired. I was hot and came out here for some cool air. And…"
"What?" He moves closer.
"It's too loud." I start tugging at my head. Little wisps of hair come out.
Ha. That alarms the doctor in him. He pulls my hands away. "What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to make it stop."
"Make what stop?" He's definitely paler now.
"This abominable fucking hissing, Hatori." Honestly, he's deaf. "My head is fucking hissing and buzzing and I'm trying to make it stop."
Worried tone. "It will go away eventually." He's feeling my thin cheeks with his hands, feeling my forehead. "You're cold. Let's go inside."
I let him help me up and half-carry me to my bed. The night chill has sapped my weak strength. But in my hot suffocating sickroom it's quieter. I wrap myself in sheets and close my eyes. I hear Hatori slip into bed beside me, he's worried of leaving me alone now.
He's mine, my Dragon. We're no longer familiar strangers. Something broke the thin ice of the doctor-patient relationship. He did, in fact. A year ago he broke my wrist, and I sent him away.
In the time we were apart, we realised we were closer then we had ever been. I couldn't stand to be without him.
Now he's back, and he's my lover, and for a few hours I can enjoy his pale hard body.
tssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Damn this hissing.
I curl up into a hard ball. Put my pillow over my head. Now the noise is slightly muffled. Good.
My thoughts wander…
Actually, no. My thoughts do not wander, they scuttle. Yes. Scuttle and scurry like a thousand blind ants inside my white skullcap. Tickling and tingling along my neural pathways. Urgh. I need to sleep, damn it.
The hissing's stopped.
I remove my pillow – I've been pressing it so long against my face it seems like a membranous sac. I'm also half-gasping…I've almost suffocated myself.
For a moment I feel the tiniest thrill.
Strange.
I sit up. Hatori's fallen asleep beside me – that twitchy, restless sleep of his, the sleep of the worried doctor. It's one of his more endearing traits.
As I stare at him, at his face, sheened with moonlight, something turns in my stomach. Suddenly I hate him. I can feel that invisible, ever-flowing connection between us: the Zodiac bond. I can feel my life, streaming from me to him. He's bloated with it, lying in my sheets like some vast swollen tick. He's living and breathing my life…and here I am, slowly slowly dying, waiting for death. I hate him.
My Juunishi are parasites.
I grip my pillow.
There's nothing I hate more then people in perfect health. Damn their wholesome clean lives and happy white smiles.
The pillow collapses beneath my mad fingers, I'm almost tearing it apart. Hatori's lying down there, a million miles away, obnoxiously sucking my breath and life from my body. His cells endlessly multiply and divide, his insides churn, his heart pumps. Every second he's alive it's another second off my life.
The ungrateful shit…
"Akito?"
I stop choking my poor pillow. Hatori's eyes are open, he's looking at me confusedly. I realise I'm holding my pillow above his head.
"What is it, Akito? Are you alright?"
Down comes my asphyxiated pillow, down (onto his face) into my lap. I try and wave away all thoughts I had of smothering this little seahorse into the sheets. "Um…I…"
He's staring at me, upright on his elbows. I rack my brains – there should be plenty of reasons I'm awake: fitful sleep, nightmares, gastric pain, muscle pain, bone pain, fever, shortness of breath…I'm the world's number one fucking invalid.
"I was just…thinking of getting some water."
Oh, pathetic.
But he buys it. He nods. He looks slightly twitchy, he must've seen oh so briefly the murderous glint in my eye. You don't forget that sort of look. That burning, concentrated glance.
"Why don't I get it for you? Just sit there." Yes, doctor.
He pads out. I sit there for a while, stupidly clutching my pillow.
I don't know why I thought for one brief second of smothering Hatori. I love him. Well, need. I need him like water and oxygen. I need him every day, so badly. I don't know what I'd do if he wasn't here. Someone to wipe my brow, carry me to bed, stay up with me on the bad nights when my lungs hurt and every breath is like fire…
My lover comes back in, pajama-ed and barefoot. He hands me a cold sweating glass and I take meek little sips, to show willing.
Hatori tugs my crumpled yukata back onto my shoulders. Then softly, tenderly he brushes his lips against my temple. I quiver.
"Aren't you going to go to sleep?"
I shake my head. "I'll sleep when I'm tired."
"All right." He lies back down, my Dragon knows better then to argue with me. Pretty soon his breathing is deep and regular.
How can anyone fall asleep like that, so easily slip in and out of death? I take hours to fall asleep, and when I wake I'm exhausted. Or I dream that I'm awake, and when I'm awake I think I'm dreaming. It's sort of like a living death. Days can pass by and I'll never know it.
I take larger sip of water. And another. And another. Pretty soon I just down the whole glass in one go. I think I have a fever.
My lips are hot and dry. I weasel one finger into the glass and scrape the last few drops out, licking them down like cream. I sit in my hot, nebulous darkness and suck my fingers.
I hear a low chuckle.
My dry fingers drop the glass, it lands with a soft flumph on the sheets. "Who's there?" I demand.
Nothing.
I'm delirious already. That must be it. I admit it, I've heard noises before when I'm in one of my frequent feverish frenzies. But none of them sounded so real…so deliberate.
Well, I doubt some servant or Juunishi is hiding in my room. For one, if it was a Zodiac member I would sense their animal presence. Now, all I can feel is Hatori. And he's still sleeping.
There!
Ha! I most definitely heard that! Another chuckle, not as low. And the voice, the tone…I recognise it. What? Do I really? No. No, no. I'm feverish. My own senses are playing tricks on me. I hate it when even myself is against me. But my own body rebels all the time – my stomach, my lungs, my heart, my brain. I'm all alone.
I really need another glass of water. Wake Hatori up?
Wait. What am I, scared? I am Akito Sohma, God of the Zodiac!
Said the fever-ridden teenager, clutching his dead pillow in a dark room.
I nudge Hatori.
Damn him, he's out like a light. I nudge him harder. Nothing.
Finally I decide to poke his ribs, he hates being poked there. His hazy bluegreen eyes open, he grunts. "Uhnh?"
"Hatori." I'm amazed at how calm I am. I do have some self-control, you know. "Hatori, I need some more water. But before you do that…will you check if there's anyone in this room? Or in the hallway?"
"What? Why?"
"Don't question me." This is more like it. He bows his head away from my hard gaze.
"Yes, Akito."
I watch as he dutifully checks the corners of the room, peers under the bed, explores every shadow. I'm feeling silly and stupid before he's even finished: there's no one here. Perhaps there never was. My cheeks are red from fever and embarrassment.
He comes back, sits next to me and puts his cool white palm on my forehead. "There's no one here. And you have a fever…I'll get you some more water and some medicine."
"The syrupy stuff?" I whine.
"Yes."
"No." Blech.
"Akito." He's giving me his I-Know-Best look, that doctor look. I hate that look.
"Fine," I reply, making my voice frosty. "Then bring me juice instead, or I'll never get rid of the taste."
He's gone again, I'm alone again. Me, moonlight, and shadows.
Why, why, why do I get the feeling I'm being watched?
I'm just being stupid.
"Heeheehee."
….
What. The fuck. Was that?
"Who's there?" I grind from my lips. I'm not anymore afraid more then I am confused and annoyed.
I straighten up. I can't see the walls, except where they're scrawled by moonlight. I'm floating in a black and white world. My head reels.
A giggle. Something is giggling!
"SHUT UP!" I hurl my pillow in the direction of the voice, somewhere to my left. It smacks weakly against the wall. My strength is just about gone…oh God, my head…
"Akito?"
Hatori's back. I jerk my head up, but he's watching me carefully. I stare back. There's a certain stillness about him.
He stands in front of me, holding a glass and a brown bottle with spoon in his hands. "Akito. What were you shouting at?"
"Nothing." I reach for the glass of juice.
He holds it back.
He dares to…
"Give me the juice, Hatori," I whisper. "Give me the juice and I'll forget your transgression."
Still he resists, but it's hard for him to disobey God. He's chewing his lip. "Akito. Tell me who you were shouting at."
I'm so, so thirsty. My head is like a fucking jackhammer and I don't have time for this I don't even know what I was doing or what was giggling…
"I thought I heard something, ok? But I didn't. Now, I'm parched, so just give me the fucking juice, Hatori."
He hears the desperation in my voice, I take the glass from him and sip it. Barely a few seconds later there's a spoon filled with petrol-thick brown liquid in front of my nose. It reeks horribly.
The doctor can guess my expression. "Just take it, Akito. It will help your flu."
I do. He always makes me, in the end. He sits on the bed beside me and waits while I control my gag reflex and chug down juice to get rid of that awful, awful taste. It brings tears to my eyes and scorches my throat. I feel like vomiting.
He puts an arm around my shoulder, and I lean into the crook of his neck.
My headache's blossomed into a full-grown monster. I can practically feel my temples throbbing in and out, these large, quiet booms that resonant through my scalp. My eyelids won't open all the way…my mouth is sticky…I'm falling…
I wake up again, this time huddled on Hatori's chest. His arms are around me, holding me to him. It's early morning. The din in my head has quieted.
There's a strange shifting behind me. Like something's passed by, just out of sight.
"Who's there?" I croak. I struggle up and look behind me.
Grey walls and silence.
A giggle. A whisper.
I bury my face in Hatori's pajama shirt and hope like hell I wake up soon. None of this can be real.
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A/N: Hahaha. I know some people might be thinking that because Akito's God, the Juunishi daren't lock him up. But after weeks of enduring Akito's soon-to-be-deteriorating mental state, handing him over to strangers seems like a pretty good idea, yes? And it won't change anything about the curse…well, leave me to worry about the petty details. You just need to review, pretty please!