So, the last chapters were admittedly silly. But there will only be vague silliness in this chapter - sorry guys! Oh, and you people need to learn your pig latin ;). The correct translation was "Review or else Kyou will fall in love with Tohru Honda". Haha... don't worry, I don't think I could bear Kyou and Tohru falling in love, definitely not in this fic. Another common concern in the reviews was my apparent intention to shatter Kyou's dignity as well as masculinity. I am, myself, quite proud of the fact that boys are boys and vice versa. That's why in boys love, there are boys. Kyou would never be a fanclub member. Puh-leeze.

Her'es a long chapter than regular for you guys, since there was a bit of a wait. I've finally plotted out the rest of the story and it's going to be, well, "plotty". There is going to be even more angst, boy love and action than in "Plants". I'm excited! Hopefully I will have the next installation before finals week.

Ache
by Lanie Kay-Aleese

Chapter Five: What the Birds Could See

Rating: Pg-13. Slash - sensuality - violence - light incest.
Category: Angst/Romance
Pairing: Kyou/Yuki
Length: 6 ?

- - - -

Two white birds, gliding, in the wide blue sky; harmonized in the beating of their wings.

The broad canopy of oak tree branches, casting dappled shadows and light onto the schoolyard below.

A cool breeze, sweeping across the mellow blades of grass.

A warm hand ruffling his hair.

Was this what peace looked like? Was everything around him, even real?

Kyou's eyes fell closed as a purr stirred from somewhere deep inside of his throat. The body beside him scooted closer, sharing warmth and leaned against him with a satisfied sigh. He, the person beside him, was saying something so quietly that it got caught in the wind. Kyou humphed in reply, and the voice faltered. Then, suddenly, the person was breathing air at his ear, and Kyou managed to barely lift his eyes - and found his vision to be completely veiled by a purple curtain.

For some reason, this shot a terribly euphoric giddiness through his veins and into the tips of his fingers, and Kyou rested his head against the boy beside him. The boy laughed as he felt the purrs against his chest. But he didn't mind, and Kyou wasn't sure, but he felt like it had made him smile a little. Maybe they were both smiling. Yes... they were happy.

"Kyou..." hummed the boy's voice, low but soft as lilac, "You fell asleep again."

"Huh...? It doesn't matter, I'm not hungry anyway," Kyou found himself replying slowly, and buried his face deeper into the warmth of the soft body opposite of him. Because...

"K-Kyou..."

He felt something...

"You know we can't do that here - someone is going to see."

...Some warm feeling...

"Damnit, just let me stay a second longer? I'm tired, okay?"

...Something stirring inside of his heart.

"Baka neko."

"Kuso Nezumi."

- - - -

"Hey. Hey, Sohma-kun. Wake up, won't you?"

Kyou's eyes drifted open to a blur of blue. A strange voice echoed in his head, and at the corner of his wobbling vision, he imagined the outlines of a face.

"Oh! He isn't dead, then?" the person's voice rang out with a pout.

Kyou closed his eyes, trying to recapture the other voice that still echoed in the back of his head. It was throbbing. His head. It hurt so damn badly...

"Stupid, his chest was moving up and down because he was breathing."

"Oh. Right, well I didn't..."

A clammer of red and amber leaves drifted in zigzag gusts across the sky. Kyou followed their tumblings for a moment, as the voices joined into the swirling chorus of Autumn. There was a feeling, he could almost capture - something that someone had said about this feeling -

"... and it's, you know, weird."

- that's right - he'd said -

"...Shut up... You damn dog," Kyou grumbled, turning his head to the side.

"Dog? He just called me a dog!"

"Hey, it sure is taking him a long time to wake up."

Kyou felt a vague tingling around his tightly shut eyes. Something was wrong. These voices... they were not voices from his dream. They weren't just people walking around. They were the voices of people - talking to him, in the world that was real!

Kyou wiped off his eyes with the heel of his palm, and the moment he could see the girls' faces, he abruptly shot upright.

"...Y-You!" he stammered.

The president of the Prince Yuki club, Minami, looked back at him coolly. "Have a nice nap?" she asked.

"...H-hold on! Wait a second!" Kyou said with a voice still somewhat groggy from his nap, "What the hell is this... I was taking a nap! What's wrong with you people!"

"Wrong with us?" repeated the black-haired girl, strangely. She looked at Kyou, and then her friends, and then Kyou, and then went back to chewing.

Chewing. Because, Kyou assumed, the entire group was eating lunch. Eating lunch 'with' him. Kyou felt sick to his stomach. He definitely didn't remember them being there before he fell asleep. The witches must've come while he was sleeping. That was so damn creepy!

"Oh, you know. This is a nice place to eat lunch," said the witch, and then proffered a riceball to Kyou. "You want one?"

"No! I don't want your food, it's probably poisoned or something!"

"That's a pretty stupid thing to say," muttered Minami, who seemed to be sitting a fair distance apart from her two friends.

"Hey," cut in the brown-haired one again, "It's not poisoned! People tell me that it's really good!"

"No they don't," the others chorused, darkly.

"Awww, everyone is so mean-" she griped.

"-Would you just shut up?" Kyou grimaced, and began to massage his temples, "God, you're so loud! I wasn't even talking about you!"

"Well, if you won't apologize, fine! You can go hungry! I'll just eat this salmon onigiri by myself," said the blue-eyed girl, and popped the riceball into her mouth. Kyou flushed angrily and folded his arms.

Salmon flavor...! Of course he'd turn down his favorite food. It figured.

Kyou watched the girl for a moment as she chewed, and the black-haired girl made a joke. He turned his head to the side and yawned noiselessly. It was strange, but he was wondering...

"Hey. You."

All of the girls looked up - and fastened their eyes onto Kyou - who became immensely uncomfortable.

"You... I mean... uhm... The one with the brown hair. Yeah. Who are you, anyway?"

"What kind of a question is that?" she demanded, "That's so personal!"

Kyou rolled his eyes. "It is not! Besides, you just sat down here and woke me up from my nap, and you never really told me your name or anything. It's a reasonable thing to ask, okay!"

The brunette hadn't even opened her mouth when the blonde girl choked mid-swallow.

"Ah, President Minami?" the black-haired girl exclaimed. To her surprise, the president looked up with a sobering expression.

"That's so blunt. You shouldn't act like such a bastard, Kyou," she growled ominously, and suddenly an evil light emerged from the pit of the earth and began to swirl around her, "-You should be nicer to other people. Especially towards other people who are in charge of your very soul...!"

Kyou blanched completely white as the creepy blonde's eyes flashed with evil light. "Uh... I...Aah...!" he swallowed on his breath. Sitting next to Tohru would have been better than this.

"There is only one the thread of our approval that is dangling you from the pits of teenage humilation and eternal damnation! So - you had better watch out... or else I'll make sure that you will never, ever, ever --"

Kyou had been under the impression that Minami had something else to say after that, but two things happened at once: the president reached forward to grab onto Kyou by the tie (and intimidate him to the inch of his life, most likely), and at the sime moment, a soccer ball went sailing across the sky and smacked her directly in the face.

She promptly swooned to the ground.

It took several minutes to make the girl stop flailing ominously, somehow certain that her nose was broken. The entire group of freshmen who'd been playing soccer didn't stick around, since they all knew that Minami was a witch and, in Kyou's opinion, she was looking like Kagura in some state of frenzy or another. It didn't help that her two friends were unable to stop laughing.

"Oh honestly, Minami," the brown-haired girl chided the president, between giggles, "you are so dramatic sometimes."

"Dramatic? More like creepy," Kyou muttered to himself. Suddenly, all the witches around him bursted into laughter over again. Kyou tensed immediately and opened his mouth to defend himself, when he stopped. This was different than normal. The girls weren't laughing at him, not really - they were laughing with him.

Something strange flickered inside of his chest. It was... a good feeling.

Minami dusted off her blouse and sat down with a 'harumph'. Her pigtails bounced irritably as she folded her arms, then twitched, then picked up her chopsticks and stabbed at her croquette.

"Hey, you were asking my name a moment ago, right?" the brown-haired girl turned back to Kyou, her face still splotchy red from laughing.

"I'm Mio Yamagishi," she said, bowing slightly, "and the girl with black hair and her mouth full is Mai Gotou. And you already know our president, President Minami Kinoshita."

Another disdainful humph emitted from the president, who seemed to be picking out pieces of grass from her hair.

"We're all in the same class," Mai pointed out, "But usually you spend time with that... That Honda girl during lunch."

Kyou stiffened, and involuntarily dropped his head slightly. "Yeah, so what?"

"Well, obviously you're not eating with her today."

Kyou shruggd. "Yeah, what's it to you?"

"Nothing really. It's just strange, to see that you two have had some sort of a... falling out."

"Hey! That's none of your business! I'm doing just fine socially, okay?"

Minami tapped her chin. "Mmm, that's what you say, but you're not in any school clubs. So you're not very social, huh?"

"That's not true! I just didn't join a club 'cuz I practice sports outside of school! I study karate-do! It's a better thing to do than wasting my time with something like a stupid fanclub!"

"Stupid? How dare you insult Yuki's-"

"I didn't say that Yuki was stupid!" Kyou covered, suddenly flushing as he realized his mistake in the presence of darkness, "I just think that worshipping Yuki is stupid. You obviously think there is something about him that's worthy, and you think you love him, but you're wrong. You don't really care about his feelings!"

Minami clenched her fists. "How... How can you say something like that! We do love Yuki!"

"You said that you don't even like him!" Mio agreed.

"It doesn't mean that I don't know him!" Kyou returned, sharply, "I live in the same damn house as him. I know that he HATES the attention you give him."

"Kyou's acting jealous," Mai decided, her voice low and tremulous.

The words came without Kyou pausing for a second of thought.

"No I'm not!" he shouted, jumping to his feet, "I'm not jealous of what you people do! I don't envy him for your stalking, your love OR your hatred, your crazy rituals... Don't you realize that, because of you, everyone is afraid to even touch him?"

"Touch him?" Mai cut in. "Without his permission?"

"He's a prince, of course he can't just mingle with everyone," replied Minami.

Kyou threw out his fists.

"He's not a real prince, okay? Maybe he just wants to be treated like a person, you know! That's all he is! But you put him on a pedestal! He hates the way you fangirls love him for who you want him to be! I'm not saying that I even like that bastard or anything, but at least I made that judgement on who he is!"

Kyou stopped to catch his breath, and turned away, unable to face the girls any longer.

How long... How long had those feelings been hiding?

How long had those words gnawed at his heart?

Damnit, when had he begun to feel this way?.

He stared forward and saw a couple of sparrows land nearby, and began to peck at the ground. Minami, too, turned to look at them for a moment, then threw the rest of her lunch at them and the birds scattered into haphazard flight. Minami soundlessly left.

Kyou swung back around, suddenly consumed by the urge to apologize, at least to the girls who were still there - he really shouldn't have said that, even if it was true, what if they started crying - but there was no one there, they'd all vanished, like victims of some terrible magic spell, and they'd even left their food behind them. Even Mio's salmon riceballs sat limply on their plate; the riceballs that she'd told Kyou he couldn't have.

Seeing that made Kyou feel worse than if she'd have even cried.

If she had cried like Tohru had cried that morning on the walk to school, that would have been unbearable. But this was a different pain; this was different and it hurt just as badly. This time, it was his fault for saying something so stupid, something so unforgiveable. He didn't even know why it mattered so much if he would be forgiven or not. When had he become so self-decieved that he'd forgotten who he was?

Kyou knew he was. He was the cat, and the cat wasn't meant to be forgiven. The cat was worthless.

So, this cruelty... that he had shown the witches... it was in his very nature.

And he hated how he couldn't even look at the salmon riceballs that Mio had left behind, not without feeling sick.

- - - -

The Jivey Wivey says:
"Scribble yo' mama some' dat' review lovin', honey."