Insomnia
By The Eternity Dragon
Disclaimer: …..o..0;
Chapter 8
Presumptions
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Tala sat, leg crooked, a dark brooding expression winding its way down his face and concentrating in a slight sneer down the corner of his bottom lip. The whole thing was a mess really, a whole god damned mess, and Kai was sitting right in the middle of it. Slowly Tala Valkov shut his eyes and pressed the tips of his fingers against his closed sockets and took a deep steadying breath in, feeling his toes clench and unclench inside of his shoes and fighting down the wave of nausea.
"Hey," the husky voice to his left startled him so that he nearly fell from the concrete wall he was sitting on, his hands clenched about the rim as he glowered down coldly at Justine Moore who was now lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag as smoke coiled like whispers of silver from between her lush lips.
"Do you mind?" he rebuked coldly, eyes narrowed and flashing with irritation, he could not help disliking her, he could not, there was just something about the way she moved, walked, talked and laughed that made him…aggravated.
"No, I'm allowed to take a break once it a while, last time I checked you weren't the boss of me." she replied pleasantly, taking another drag, and looking up at him from beneath her lashes said softly, "It's a long shot but I hope he can cope."
The red haired youth turned his attention towards the car park again, his eyes scanning rows upon rows of cars, "Here's to hope then." came the static response, brows raised haughtily, mouth compressed so thin it almost disappeared.
Justine smiled to herself, tapping the ash from the butt of the roll over the side of the balcony where it tumbled to the floor in a little heap of grey dust, as the wind snipped parts of it away with long creeping fingers.
"He's beautiful isn't he? Don't you think he's beautiful?"
"What?" Tala blinked, feeling the raw astonishment creep its way over the features of his face (it occurred to him that the question should have been better stated as whom- but in entire truth he knew whom it was Justine was referring to, however little he liked it).
"Don't you think so?" she continued, drawing her long blonde hair over her shoulders in a golden fall of light, and regarding him seriously from the depths of her bottle green eyes.
"In a very gentle sort of way," she continued, her eyes locking into his, those eyes, Tala thought, you could dash yourselves to pieces on them, essence searching, probing eyes, that seemed to rip the flesh from his body and gaze down at his naked soul.
"I admit I was surprised at first," a slight flutter of lashes and a gentle twitch of the mouth, "there's something ultimately childlike about him, wouldn't you say? A sort of naivety that is rather alluring, it makes him-beautiful somehow, simply so. Not like Kai, it's not the same kind of attraction, with Kai, you'd want to…."
She giggled a little then like a naughty girl with a dirty secret, and stabbed out her cigarette on the cold concrete before tossing it in the silver ash tray, the embers smouldering crimson in the burnt out end, "You'd want to do things to Kai, or at least let Kai do things to you that aren't well- how should I say? Talked about in polite conversation."
Her eyes again slipped to Tala, she obviously knows, was the passing thought in red haired youths mind, damn her if I'll let her see it.
"Such as?" He was asking for it but his reckless side had kicked in- he had already signed his doom this morning, another foot in the grave couldn't possibly hurt.
"Kai is raw Tala, and don't tell me you've not felt that, I know differently. The look is often on your face you know, like you're wondering about it, thinking about it. But then again I can hardly blame you, Hiwatari's so very," her eyebrows had descended down over her sea green eyes at vertical angles intensifying her expression tenfold, she wasn't teasing him, she could see that, she was simply stating a fact, and a dangerous one at that.
Tala Valkov glared back at her, back taught and rigid, knuckles white with tension, he could hear the drumming of his heart pounding feverishly in his ears.
"So very evocative." He finished acidly for her, wrenching himself from the wall and landing cat like beside her, face to face, nose to nose, cold grey eyes scintillating into irises the colour of flaming jade.
She looked coolly back at him, flicking the lid of her lighter open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, with a gentle tinkle each time the metal lid rocked back on its hinges.
"If Kai ends up hating me for this, it will be a small price to pay if he's still around to hate me for it in years to come. I'd do anything for him, even you know that."
"It's not your fault you know," she responded on a pacifying note on what was a totally different subject, that took him by surprise, his hands momentarily slackening from tightly curled fists.
"I never said-" he began, blinking hard, cheeks flushed crimson.
"But you think it is," she continued looking at him hard again, "'Why isn't it me?' you keep thinking, 'I had it much worse than him. Why aren't I the one with Insomnia?'"
"I had Insomnia." Tala snarled defensively, that wolf-like expression drawing its way across his mouth and brows.
"But you did have it, and even now you don't quite know the reason why you don't have it anymore. Even I don't know why-and now, it's killing Kai."
"Don't say that!"
"Why?" she asked shrugging her slim shoulders, "because it's the truth? Are you afraid to admit it Tala? Does the truth frighten you? Is the thought of losing him just too much to bear?"
"Stop it!" the red haired youth was shouting now, damn it if weren't the fact that she was a girl he would have punched her squarely in the jaw by now, and my god he would have enjoyed it too.
"If you drive them apart Tala- it will more then kill Kai, you can't afford to think about yourself at a time like this-"
"Don't you think I know that!" he was dimly aware of how loud his voice had become, or how his nails were pressed so hard into the soft under flesh of his hands that they were drawing blood that was slowly spooling down the tips of his fingers.
"Don't you think I know that?" he said again in barely more than an inaudible whisper, falling back against the cold concrete; cool grey eyes staring fixedly at the square stone slabs.
"He told me the other day-" quietly he marvelled at the steadiness of his own voice and regarded his bleeding palms with a detached pain and absorption, "he told me that if you couldn't stop it, that I was…" he paused, and pressed the lids of his eyes firmly shut. As if to block out the horrible image that was writhing its way through the layers of his subconscious.
"That I was to kill him."
The lighter lid tinkled back on its hinges again as Justine flipped the lid repeatedly backwards and forwards over and over again for another few moments. Her expression was totally unfathomable, at a glance perhaps even bored, but Tala could see the slight dilation in her pupils, the way in which the corners of her wide red mouth had curled back in recollection and distaste, and even self loathing. Her fingers moving ceaselessly over the silver surface, scraping her nails hard against the metallic surface as slowly, achingly slowly she opened her mouth to reply.
"It would be preferable wouldn't it?" It was a short, ejaculation of words, that comprised of both briskness and defiance, as though trying to convince ones self of the candour of the statement.
"What?" Tala stormed in open outrage- that was the last thing he could have expected from her- her of all people.
"You'd just let him…?" he mouthed wordlessly, unable to say it out loud as though reality would quickly follow it on silent dark wings of fate.
"Would I kill if I couldn't prevent it from completely devouring his mind!" she snarled suddenly, her vivid eyes scintillating with a mad ferocity be fitting of a golden lioness.
"You can't think I'd let it progress when I have seen first hand what it can do? You yourself are a living example of the trauma it creates for the body; let alone the mind! Can you honestly look at me Tala Valkov and tell me that, you, of all people would let Kai- your friend, the person that you perhaps love the most in all of the world-"
The red haired youth put his hands over his ears at this and turned away, not wanting to listen to the rest of the statement, why now of all times was he shivering so? Why was his heart beating so loudly in his ears that it was almost deafening to him?
Justine gripped him forcibly by the shoulder and span him about, glaring hostilely back at him, her own eyes glittering with thick tears as she choked between clenched teeth, "That you would let him become less than human? When you saw what happened to all those other children- so long ago at the Abbey? You'd let him become like that? Willingly?" She threw out the last part so it stung the air, its acidic tendril threading their sinuous way about their ears, fingers and limbs.
Oh how he wished she hadn't started crying, it was so easy to hate people when they weren't crying. Not that she was crying audibly, two trickles of clear liquid slid down her cheeks and she quickly, almost angrily rubbed them away; her mouth compressed as though frustrated with her own lack of self control.
Slowly Tala shook his head, feeling awkward, the nauseous feeling coiling itself tightly about his stomach.
"Shit!" Justine muttered running her hands over her face and straightening her hair, "What the hell is wrong with me today?"
The red haired youth, regarded her critically for some time, his head tilted at a slight angle, his grey eyes narrowed, although not unpleasantly, and said, "What do you mean today?"
Justine Moore chuckled, and reached into her pocket for a packet of tissues and wad of gum.
It was a stupid thing really to be angry about, Kai Hiwatari though irately, leaning against the wall glaring acidly at his shoes, a damned stupid thing that just couldn't be helped in any form shape or manner. And yet, it did matter, it mattered an awful lot. It mattered too much.
Tyson had kissed him in the lift, freely, unhindered in wanton abandon for what had seemed like an eternal gap in time. The kiss itself had been pleasant enough- could he describe it like that? It had been more like a reassurance of actually being alive; that dreams are based in reality and that heaven does, for a brief moment, exist in the mortal realm. It had only been after the exchange, when his heart had been beating so very fast and his blood rushing in erratic delirium about his body that his mind had seemed to recall the fact that on that perfect day three years ago the single kiss they had exchanged then had been so very very different. Naïve and tempestuous in its raw innocence- a virgin's kiss in other words, and Kai had known it too, looking down into those very open blue eyes and seeing the blithe smile and the cherry flush spreading slowly about his cheeks. And he remembered now how he had bent his head again to kiss him, with another slow brushing of the lips, and saying softly against the hot whisper of his temple three simple words: 'I love you.'
There had been none of the gentle teasing of the tongue, the urgent press of limbs against each other, the slight twisting of the shoulders and the lower back so that all could be felt through the light soft denim fabric. It had been a totally different expression of what- love? Kai felt his mouth involuntarily curl up into a cynical snarl, and he bit down on his lower lip hating his own jealousy in that moment.
It wasn't love- but raw desire- and a type of desire that had been practised as well, one didn't move, want and need like that on instinct alone, one was taught that 'type' of movement, and he had certainly had not been the one to take it, or do it for that matter. For some reason, despite the logical thoughts that presented themselves to him, the thoughts of three years, and I shouldn't expect things that I never gave to, and even what right do I have to expect?
The question, the hatred and the insane jealousy still rang very loud and clear- who was it?
Kai drummed his fingers across the wall behind him, and allowed his vision to drift slowly up to where Tyson was standing, a few meters away, with his back to him. The computer screen span with numbers and figures as the reading where read from the scanner that rested just above his right eye, his eye carefully diverted to the blitz blade that was rotating before him. Stat numbers rolled and dilated in a flickering kaleidoscope of colours.
They had been sitting in silence for almost half an hour, Tyson with an almost a resilient determined air, it was an odd thought to love someone so much and yet consciously try everything possible to move so far away.
An odd jibing pain sprang callously up and down the flesh of his right arm and his head sang in aching delirium. It wasn't fair to Tyson to push him through so many hoops and then expect anything back in return; no matter if his heart was breaking into so many pieces, no matter how much it hurt.
He slid further down the wall, the pain drilling into his temple like a falling hammer, his knees buckling beneath him as the shooting hurt began to hum at the base of his skull. Kai had wanted, what had he wanted? He thought dimly as he felt his legs hit the floor in tangled numbness beneath him, thoughts becoming a bubbling swirl as the pain became suddenly worse, much much worse. He could hear the screaming now, the high ethereal screaming as something shattered and the monitors flashed on and off and on and off.
There was no air. No air. And then mind numbing silence as the pain came again.
How could he have been so stupid as to have thought something like that?
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