Samurai Champloo

Genre: Angst

Type: Complete

Pairing: MugenxFuu

Title: Iterum (again, a second time, once more)

Summary: It can't exist otherwise. MugenxFuu.

(I don't know and I have no idea. This just hit me out of nowhere; enjoy!)

xx

He fights and he bleeds and she heals.

It's their cycle, it's what they do. Back and forth, back and forth, and neither will admit that they take comfort in its consistency.

Her eyes squeeze shut and her breath becomes shallow the second his shirt is removed. It's not because they are alone, or because she can almost feel what it would be like to touch him. It's because she can never get used to it. This sight--deep gashes, in rows of two's and three's, running down the length of his ribcage--that chokes her throat and stops her heart and makes her tremble with shaking fingers.

"You're an idiot." She says sharply while opening jars and readying bandages, and he just lies there, quietly, smirking to himself.

Until her hands touch him. Soft, cool, soothing hands that can only be appropriate once he's left the battlefield.

And he jerks.

"You're the idiot." He bites out, pretending to be affected by the pain in his side, but really her touch--like fire, all consuming, it burns more than his wounds ever could.

"I'm not the one trying to get myself killed." Her eyes cut up to his, all narrowed and harrassed and full of worry, before sliding over his wounds along with delicate fingers.

There is nothing hurried in her movements, nothing rushed. She takes her time, inspecting the damage closely and pausing where she feels the cut is worst. It strangles him and soothes him and haunts him because he hates the fact that a part of him, more and more and more and more, wants to get hurt.

Just so he can have her touch.

Because this, them, stolen moments and burning flesh under featherlight fingertips--it can't exist otherwise.