Insomnia

By The Eternity Dragon

Disclaimer: …..o..0;

Chapter four

The Wings of a butterfly

Tyson watched as the lighter skittered across the marble tiles coming to a slow halt before his feet, his deep blue eyes rested on it for a moment, the blood pumping hard in his ears as he breathed slowly, he felt as though he were choking on something wholly invisible, his brain seemed to have temporarily lost all focus on reality, his pulse jumped erratically in his body and his chest seemed to constrict in pain. He felt the pectoral muscles in his abdomen tighten in rigid formality as he bent down and picked up the lighter with shaking hands. The glass was cool against his skin, he didn't dare take his eyes from it as he stood slowly up, feeling a trickle of hair drift before his eyes. 'He smokes now.' was all his mind seemed able to register, he licked his lips and said his voice slightly hoarse in the chill of the afternoon air.

"You know smoking a pretty bad habit."

How lame, how utterly unfunny, his stomach seemed to twist and knot over itself as soon as the words left his lips. He cursed tongue, his gauche manner, his way of talking, his blithe, naïve expressions, everything that made him feel incompetent.

"I hear it's potentially fatal." Kai said, his voice low and sultry, Tyson couldn't help it, he looked up, and for a fraction of a second their eyes met, deep vivid oceans of turbulent lavender half closed beneath thick smoky lashes looked back at him, his heart jumped to his throat and he felt suddenly afraid of the feelings that were stirring in his gut. Broad shouldered and slender, sculpted face, slanted quixotic eyes moulded onto skin that could have been made from molten marble. His vision moved for a fraction of a second to the generous mouth, burgundy coloured and twisted into an unfathomable expression, Tyson felt his heart skip slightly in his chest as he hastily looked away feeling scarlet swim across his cheeks.

"Then why are you smoking?" he asked breaking the smothering stillness that seemed to stretch into an endless ravine before them.

"Perhaps I want to die."

"Kai!"

The name tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop it, his stomach convulsed, his heart seemed to stop, Hiwatari looked at him, the corners of his lips curling down into a sadistic malicious expression and his eyes glittering dangerously as he leaned back against the stone railings, elbows at and angle, legs bent slightly at the knees, head tilted in an assessing stare.

"Why are you here?" he asked, his eyes narrowed slightly, expression curling sarcastically.

'He's mocking me,' Tyson thought subconsciously moving away, 'he's laughing at me again.'

"I-I," he began, the words sticking in his throat, hating his incompetence even more, the lips convulsed into a sneer, "We were- Hiro-Max, Kenny and Hillary- we all….I was- I mean…."

"God you are stupid aren't you?"

He said it so pleasantly, leaning back on his hands, beautiful and angelic in the falling light, his hair dark and light at the same time, his eyes still narrowed and his alluring mouth moving into a smile that seemed to send thousands of shards of ice through Tyson's heart.

"I-…" he stopped his voice trailing away, something began to form in the back of his throat, hard and solid, jagging painfully against his flesh as he swallowed.

"I mean really," Hiwatari continued, "that's all I asked you, and you can't even answer it. I knew you were an idiot but I didn't suspect you were this moronic."

Kai laughed, little stabbing knifes seemed to slice through the air, embedding their sharp metallic points into the soft tissue of the other's skin.

'There are so many things I wanted to ask you, so many things I wanted to say.' Tyson Granger looked up, his deep blue eyes dancing with passion, cold fire seemed to be winding itself throughout his entire body, 'It was a mistake,' he thought savagely, as he bit down so hard on his lower lip he tore the flesh and felt warm blood spurt across his pallet.

He turned then and ran down the darkened corridor, back the way he had come, thumping blindly down criss-crossing passage ways, wanting to die, hating everything, cursing his existence.

"Hey!" someone shouted, a tall woman with long blonde hair and bright eyes as he shouldered past her, reckless in his despair and rage. Five minutes later he stood alone in the massive concrete parking lot breathing heavily, spitting out the blood that lay congealing in his mouth, eyes sparkling savagely as he hurled the lighter against the ground with all his might. Watching as hit and shattered on the black tarmac, his eyes roving across the broken remains the fractured pieces as it lay glistening in the sunshine.

Who was he kidding really? He had known all along right? Kai hated him, he always had done, he always would do, and he had just been kidding himself. Forcing himself to believe that something had changed between them. Because his feelings for Kai had changed over that period of time- but only he felt it. His finger tips brushed his mouth and he felt the salt on his skin tingle sharply on the exposed flesh of his inner lip. But then…what had that meant?

The world seemed to swim and slide before his eyes, he doubled over and threw up violently on the grey concrete slabs beneath his feet.

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"Shit," swore Tala as he watched them go. He had been thinking the same thing over and over and over again for the past few minutes ever since he had seen them stepping out of the elevator, laughing and talking with each other.

It was unreal, absolutely totally bloody implausible, why the hell were they here today of all days?

It had been the brown haired girl, the one with the volatile temper who had spotted him first, her name still escape him, but he remembered the cold chill of horrified realisation that had oozed down his spine as he had seen them coming.

His thoughts had fled to Kai, but spinning round he had found that his lavender eyed companion had slipped off when he hadn't been watching, at first he had felt relieved, but then he had realised that the world champion had not been in the group either.

"He's wondered off somewhere," the blonde haired one with the cornflower blue eyes had said with his hands behind his head when Tala had demanded to know where Tyson had gone, "I think he went to look for something to eat."

"Shit!" Tala snarled loudly coming to a halt in the middle of the reception area and looking about him with a frenzied canine expression on his face, "Kai where the hell are you?"

If he's bumped into Tyson he thought, that would be enough to set him off, to disorientate him, he felt a knot of worry settle in the pit of his gut and swallowed loudly. What if he had seen Granger, what then? Kai had never really told him what had passed between them three years ago; the probing questions he had asked so often always gave him little to no answers. It was like a maze of towering walls, twisting passage ways and dead ends, every time you made a turning you ended back were you were before, lost, completely lost.

He did remember one thing Kai had told him once, it had been a cold night and some how he had managed to loosen Hiwatari's tongue a little by giving him some alcohol. It had been one of the rare times Tala had ever seen his friend truly laugh, head back, eyes tilted in humour, a slow smile on his lips revealing a secret dimple in his left cheek. Tala had been mesmerised by this persona of Kai, still graceful and utterly unfathomable, hair ruffled slightly and skin lightly flushed. There had been feelings there, mixed with the alcohol and cold air that he didn't really care to analyse too closely, dangerous emotions that spiked on something absolutely crazy. Kai had seemed human that night, vulnerable and compassionate, for that one night the cold visage had been discarded, Tala had had the feeling that although his friend's mind had been left rational it had been left without its defences. The thought of starting something had crossed his mind at several different intervals as the hours progressed, he blamed it on the fermented drink he was allowing to course through his veins, addling his senses and needs.

"I hate the cold," Kai had said, shoulder to shoulder with Tala before the open fire, empty beer cartons littering the floor all around them. The firelight flickered around them casting long shadows on the wall and floor, shifting shapes that undulated and tapered into guttering darkness.

"Well then I guess you shouldn't have come here then." he had replied and to his surprise Kai laughed.

"It was stupid wasn't it? But I'm glad I did come here, otherwise I would be alone right now."

Tala had felt an odd feeling twist and turn in his gut, writhing down his lower abdomen and shooting through his legs.

"Why did you come here then?" he had asked and had been alarmed by the huskiness of his own voice, his toes curled inside his shoes as Kai leant a little more of his body weight against his shoulder.

"Because," he said, more to himself then to anyone else, "I knew he wouldn't come here to find me."

Tala had frowned not understanding who he meant, he looked at Kai, and saw the half closed distant expression that had drifted across his face, and suddenly he felt very bitter.

"He was always finding me when I didn't want to be found. I would go some place, and even if I was in a crowd full of people he'd always find me, looking like he did, smiling like it was the greatest thing in the world." His eyes were almost closed and a gentle, tender smile on his lips.

"I always wondered why he was so happy to see me again…such an idiot-" he laughed softly, Tala had watched him saying these feeling the words slip through his own mind like honeyed poison, acid eroding through his veins, bringing with it an acute rushing pain, like hell fire.

"I didn't realise what it was until it was too late."

Kai had turned and looked at him then, "I'm not making much sense am I?" he had asked, Tala hadn't trusted himself to speak then, the moment was to unnaturally relaxed and tense at the same time.

He remembered thinking that Kai's mouth was only a few inches away from him, it would have been very easy, painfully easy, to have leant over and brushed his own lips against Kai's, and he was sure that his friend in his present mood wouldn't have stopped him either. He had wondered- no, he had fantasised about doing that for sometime after he and Kai had met up again, this was a perfect opportunity to do just that, and it would be as terribly easy. But he couldn't, he couldn't, that expression, that look of tenderness that had burnt its way across his mind prevented him from doing so, he had realised then that despite whatever he might have wanted, this relationship, this mucked up, warped, twisted companionship he and Kai had was as far as he was ever going to be able to go. No matter how much it hurt him, no matter how much it pained him when…no matter how much it ached.

When he smiles, Tala had thought, lifting the carton to his lips and letting the sweet tangy liquid swirl down his throat in an exotic dance of tantalisation and raw feeling, he's not smiling for me, he's smiling for that 'other' person. So no matter how much I want to see that smile again, the can slipped from his numb fingers and clattered across the floor, spinning in circles before the fire, completely empty, coming to a halt with its mouth facing them.

No matter how much I wish him to smile again…

"Tala," Hiwatari had said, leaning back, cheeks lightly flushed and mouth gently parted as his eyes closed slowly, long lashes fluttering over his cheeks.

"Do you believe in Destiny?"

The red head had considered the question for a long time, his heart throbbing painfully in his chest, as though something was constricting his blood flow, he kept his eyes fixed on the flickering flames as they leapt in the grate, passionate crimsons intermingling with the licking reds and yellows of heat.

"No, I don't believe fate is pre-ordained, people make their own future, it isn't decided you know."

When you do smile…I always know…

His suggestive lips curved a little at the corners again, and this time Tala had felt himself look forcefully away, hands clenching and unclenching by his sides.

"I knew you'd say that."

"Then why ask?" Could Kai read him that well? Did he know what he was thinking now?

"Because," he shrugged his broad shoulders and tilted his head, looking quixotically at Tala with his iridescent pupils, "I used to think that too, until…" his voice trailed off.

"Until?"

He smiled that slow smile again and looked at the bottle in his hands, "Until someone showed me there might have been a reason for my derisory existence."

Tala had felt the all too familiar feeling burning inside his gut at those words, and viciously bit down on his lower lip as he asked, his voice hoarse.

"Who showed you that?"

Kai had looked at him then, with a slightly archful expression, his eyes sparkling in the wavering light as the soft shades of luminescence played across his skin.

"I haven't consumed nearly enough alcohol to tell you that, Tala." At which point he had placed the rim of the bottle against his lips still smiling that slow smile, but with an expression on his face that his red haired friend had found unfathomable, it had been a searching look, one that had spoken of dark words and dark intentions, and one that had in fact invited the notion of death.

That you are looking through me for someone else…and that that smile is never for me.

"Oh for God damn sakes you annoying bastard!" Tala suddenly exclaimed venomously, shouldering his way across the reception area and jostling people about as he forced his way into the wide glass elevator. An old lady holding a large black shiny handbag made a "Hrrum," noise of disapproval, Tala turned round hand on his hips, "You got something to say?" he snarled glaring at her.

This, was really the last thing he needed he decided as he began to make his way up floor by floor, scouring rooms and harassing white coats for information.

It was only when he was starting to lose all hope of ever finding Hiwatari that he spotted her, long blonde hair and startling gooseberry green eyes that seemed to threaten to break you to a thousand pieces in the depths of the bottomless irises. She moved like a dancer, slender and feminine, the gently 'clip' of her heels on the stone floor echoing across the corridor as she made her way towards him.

"Tala," she said, in a sonorous tone just like he remembered, "You've certainly grown taller, and you're quite handsome now I must say."

Tala had instinctively taken a step back, his skin prickling in goose flesh, eyes narrowed he snarled, "Justine, what the hell are you doing here?"

She pouted, hands on hips, scolding him like a naughty child, "Well what do you think? You're the one who made the appointment after all."

"You're the one they referred us to?" he couldn't believe it; one god damned coincidence after another, like a snowflake that sets off an avalanche, or the wings of a butterfly that sets off a tornado. This was something Kai didn't need to be reminded of, ever again.

"Where is Kai?" Tala demanded, damn this was all his stupid fault, if had know he would never had brought his friend here.

The sensuous lips parted into a illusory smile, "I found him on the balcony."

"And?"

"And?..." Tala felt all the familiar feelings of hostility, fear and trepidation that he always associated with Justine Moore.

She laughed, and again he felt dread ooze slowly down his spine, "And I told him about Insomnia."

Shit- was Tala's only thought.

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Quickie chapter, first draft of sorts so sorry if there are mistakes, busy busy busy! And thank you for the reviews and support etc…hope you like this chapter..ahaha- Kai and Tala-ness or rather Tala-I like Kai :sob: but he doesn't like me! Mwhaaa! Kai and Tyson 4eva! XD

Love the Eternity Dragon and Murray