Rating: Pg-13. Slash - sensuality - violence - light incest.
Category: Angst/Romance
Pairing: Kyou/Yuki
Length: 2?
Ache
by Lanie Kay-Aleese
Chapter 2: A Fault Line in the Status Quo
Passion.
That had to be it. Passion was definitely the thing that Yuki had lost, because the next morning, when Kyou had cornered him against a wall, he'd just stared back at the cat and walked away.
Sure, yeah, he'd walked away from fights before, but always with some snide remark, like "I don't have time for this" or something arrogant and proud. But damnit! It wasn't as if the rat didn't care. He was... he was beyond apathetic. Which should have made him incapable of caring, so hell, he really didn't make sense by snubbing Kyou in the first place by not caring OR caring too much.
The damn rat, what the hell was his problem?
Kyou figured that he'd been staring at the wall for too long. Because Tohru teetered up to him with a worried look on her face. For some reason, when Kyou turned to look at her, that expression was much more annoying than it used to be. Still cute, but, it was frustrating that she was there. Since Kyou wanted to go back and demand that fight from Yuki.
"Damnit!" he spat, all the while looking over Tohru's shoulder to see Yuki disappear back upstairs, "What do you want?"
"I... ah..."
"C'mon, say it," Kyou prodded, now turning to her. She appeared vaguely stricken, and at once, Kyou felt horrible and softened his eyes. "Go ahead."
Tohru swallowed and conjured those tears that seemed to spring from her bottomless well of empathy. She often found that particular brand of emotion far too quickly for Kyou's comfort - he was completely on ends. She always made him - nervous? No, not weak. Tense was a better word for it. But this "tenseness", too, felt to be a different sort of the same anxiety that he'd always experienced to her. What had changed? Had it happened over night? Or had he forgotten his memory... and maybe... feelings, too?
"Kyou-kun," Tohru bit her lip, "I am very sorry to say this. But I want you safe. You don't look well, and, and you neeed to get well... So..."
Kyou felt his left fist, twitching, as the words bounced in his head, Get on with it, say it, it's driving me crazy...
"It would be best, Kyou-kun, if you stayed away from Sohma-kun."
And at that moment, the entire world stopped spinning - it tilted off of its' axis - and dropped all of Kyou's thoughts from orbit.
"You gotta be kidding me," he said, stricken. What the hell? Tohru had tried to love Akito. She had shown love to him. And now... she did not want him to try and care about his family? When she had wished for so many new years, that they would get along better? He didn't get it. He didn't want to. He hardly believed that such insensitive words had come from her mouth.
Judging from the look on Tohru's face, he'd need to start believing, fast.
It wasn't hard to stay away from the rat prince. Kyou had tried to do that all of his life, and maintained what he considered to be a considerable personal distance - up to the point when Tohru came along and tried to bring him and the rat together. Things had gotten better between them, slightly. Every time that the rat spoke, Kyou hated him even more, and Yuki hated him likewise, but that's how things were and there was almost something... predictable, consistent, and safe in that tradition. Kyou clung to that safety net over everything else in his life. And there were two times that they had fallen asleep together, in the same room. Wait, they had only done that once.
Then it changed. In one sentence, Tohru had practically told him to undo everything she had ever done, and to ignore a person who suddenly was everywhere around him and totally immersed in his life. Kyou had never been able to do that, at least, from what he remembered. Keeping the status quo shouldn't have been so difficult. Except that the Unmemorable Event had changed the status quo.
Because really, Kyou wanted nothing more than to talk to Yuki and find out what he knew about the whole situation. Or maybe they could work together to figure things out. Kyou wasn't sure how he could even stomach the thought of doing anything with the rat, but it was something he didn't have time to think about, because he was too busy watching Yuki - wondering how much of his behavior had changed.
That he'd tied his tie correctly, for once, and it was perfectly straight without Tohru's help at all. When had that happened?
Had he always been so self-sufficient, so isolated, so... lonely? Was it normal for him to exclude himself from the group and watch cooly from a distance? Kyou didn't remember caring before, but suddenly, these lines of thought were triggering all sorts of questions about who Yuki even was.
After the walk home from school, with Tohru chattering, laughing, and spilling her thoughts like jugs of lukewarm water, Kyou had never felt more relieved to trudge upstairs. Yuki stole away before they even reached the house, and Tohru gave him a surprised look before then sighing in adorable relief.
"He's probably just going to his garden," she said, though her mouth twitched strangely at the last word.
Kyou just shrugged and said he didn't care. Why would he? It was just a stupid garden with stupid plants. And it had been the longest day of his life. He remembered all these school lessons - mostly. He remembered understanding it and he remembered recalling certain information that he couldn't recall learning. At one point, Kyou had just wanted to scream. He'd wanted to leave the class, preferably by the window, and most of all he wanted to not feel Uo and Hanajimas' eyes drilling into the back of his head.
He slipped into his room, and grunting, dropped his backpack on the floor. His clothes were hot and sticky from the humid air; hadn't a cold front just come through? It was strange that he remembered the cold weather being important.
Kyou slid open his closet and began to undo his shirt, so he could take off the damn thing and wear something comfortable and collarless. He was reaching above his shoulderblades to tug on some of the fabric, when something strange - from the very back of his meticulously neat closet - caught his eye. Kyou dropped his grip on the shirt, and moved his hand to pull aside the clotheshangers instead.
It wasn't his imagination. It couldn't be his imagination, because this monstrous creation was too awful for words. And for the first time all day, Kyou felt certain about something: he was glad that he didn't remember owning a dress.
Like a thing possessed, he tugged the costume roughly off of its' hanger, and, maintaining a firm distance, held the dress aloft. It was actually quite harmless. It was probably Tohru's. Kyou did not want to imagine why else a dress would be in his closet. Maybe Shigure had to do the laundry and thought it would be a funny joke? Maybe Tohru ran out of space in her closet? God, was he really that desperate?
"Hell, yes," he said, and glared at the green atrocity. He didn't hope that it would burst into flames if he stared at it long enough, but it was a fantasy that he didn't mind indulging while his mind short-circuited again. This led to visualization of him setting the dress to flame, and then catching himself on fire, because he was, in fact, wearing the dress, which he solemnly refused to consider any further.
And it was midway through this fantastic nightmare that Yuki Sohma broke down the door to Kyou's room, covered in dirt up to his shins and up his elbows, and with a disturbed expression on his face.
"Someone destroyed my garden," he explained. The rat then paused for a moment before sending a blank look to Kyou and 'company'.
He made a subtle gesticulation. "Is that a...?" Kyou mentally filled in the blank as Yuki continued. "...So, it's yours?"
"Don't ask me that!" shouted Kyou, and he flung the dreadful object at the rat and the doorframe. "You're the girly man, you take it! It's YOURS!"
"So what was it doing in here?" Yuki asked neutrally. The hair on the back of Kyou's neck prickled.
"I DON'T KNOW!" He shouted, as the rat bent over to pick up the dress. He dusted it off lightly.
His mouth twitched at the corner.
"You should treat your clothes better, Cat." He was going to smile! That damn rat!
"Shut up! It's not my dress! It's probably Tohru's!"
The smirk grew on Yuki's face, easily, and he stepped into the room. "First it was mine... and now it's Honda-chan's, can't you even try to be a convincing liar, you - stupid - cat?"
Kyou leaned in. "You calling me stupid?"
"Yes."
"Why I oughta-"
"Why you oughta what?" prodded Yuki.
"I'll beat your girly face in, all right!"
"You can't even touch me," Yuki smirked. Kyou, enraged, opened his mouth to shout a reply, and truly meant to, but instead his jaw kept itself where it was and he stared in some sort of horror: the rat's eyes were glimmering.
Why? Yuki cocked his head, a little to the left, and somehow Kyou felt all thousand of his thoughts running through his head, even though he was never this clear-headed when he was fighting Yuki and now he had just - just withdrawn himself completely, and stopped, and actually looked into a pair of violet eyes that he could've sworn to be... Besides, Kyou figured it was just because he and Yuki weren't in sparring distance. The tips of their feet could've touched, and Kyou found it strange that they had left absolutely no space for attacking whatsoever. Not good attacks, anyway.
Why?
"We're not fighting, are we?" the words tumbled from Kyou's mouth. "I mean it sounds like fighting and looks like it but I don't feel like it... huh."
Yuki stared back at Kyou, for barely a moment. Then, a sudden panic flit across the violet irises, and Kyou jolted to throw up his guard, but lightning flashed, and it struck him, a shock of motion and electricity. Kyou stumbled backwards with his hands cradling his jaw. Stars flashed in his eyes. His lip swelled and he blinked his eyes twice, just enough to catch the rat grimacing. Kyou focused on keeping his feet attached to the floor.
For a moment, the world spun again as it tried to realign itself and spin Kyou back into its' orbit, but Kyou couldn't understand anything outside of two real and familiar feelings: First, the heaviness of Yuki's footsteps as he left in the room. And then, strangely, the feel of his stinging, bruised lips.
It felt familiar. It felt euphoric.
Why?
And now a brief message from: your local hill-billy.
"Betchur hankerin' fo' sum lemin writin', does ya? Har-har-hiddly-har! Yer a-gunna hafta asker nicelike, yup.."