I find myself losing the pretty, useless things I try to hold onto most.
0o0o0o
Yao had another sleepless night. The images of Ivan's cut-up chest resounded in his head, and his mind supplied scenarios where he had gotten to him too late and Ivan had silently stopped breathing halfway through, or where he did something wrong and Ivan gasped out his last breath in front of him. It was a hell he never wanted to experience again. Not to mention he still had to fulfill his end of the deal. Yao pulled his pillow over his head and fell asleep.
It barely seemed like minutes before he woke to Kiku opening the door.
'Yao.'
The fleet leader sat up, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. 'Is it morning already?'
'It's time to get up.' The younger man squinted at him, his face slackening into frustration. 'Did you sleep at all?'
'Yes,' Yao said, reaching for his robe. 'For how long, I can't say.'
'You need your sleep,' Kiku said, voice unexpectedly soft. 'You are our leader.'
'I'll be fine, Kiku, seriously.' Yao brushed him off. 'What's happening today?'
'A meeting between our scientists and the Russians to discuss cures for the coughing virus. The new strain has proven dangerous. You don't need to be there, but it would be good form.' Kiku stopped, waiting expectantly, and Yao groaned.
'I'll be there.' Yao cast a glance at the pile of paperwork on his desk. Maybe he could bring some of it and say he was taking notes.
'Also, Yao?'
The elder waved distractedly at the door, sorting through the slightly haphazard piles for high-priority documents.
'Is Ivan returning?'
Yao paused, the previous night flashing through his head again. 'Yes.'
0o0o0o
Yao was startled out of his paperwork by a gentle touch to his arm.
'Yao.'
'You look better,' Yao said, glancing at Ivan's chest. The larger man patted his coat.
'Yes. Thank you.' He looked back at the scientists before fixing Yao with his violet gaze again. 'Come with me. You have a promise to fulfill.'
A weight settled in Yao's stomach, but he nodded brusquely and, tucking the papers into his pockets, followed Ivan out of the laboratory.
Ivan led him back to his rooms. For the first time, Yao noticed the small painting tucked against the wall. Ivan followed his gaze to the painted sunflower. The frame was wood, simple and worn.
'Did you see them?' Yao asked. 'On Earth?' Ivan gazed at the painting for a moment longer.
'No. Just the imitations aboard the starships. The real ones died out years before I was born. I saw a picture of one. My mother saved a book full of painted flowers from the fires and brought it home to me.' His voice was unexpectedly soft and pained. Yao was struck by the raw emotion in Braginsky's tone, but felt he shouldn't pry further.
'What do you want to know?' he asked. Ivan chuckled and sat down in a chair.
'I thought you negotiated the terms of our alliance.'
'I do.' Yao twisted around to look Ivan in the eye, the weight in his stomach coiled tight, ready to snap. 'I'd guess this isn't for you. What information were you instructed to pry out of me?'
Ivan held his gaze and bewilderingly, looked away first. He seemed weighed down by the same pain as Yao.
'What if it is for me?'
'It isn't, though. Is it?'
Yao tasted blood and realized numbly that he'd bitten the inside of his mouth.
'Money and your trade influence with the other fleets,' Ivan said softly. 'My leader commanded it,' he added, as if that made it better. Yao felt a spike of pain in his temples.
'None of that ever required-' Yao gestured furiously at himself. 'Kissing me. Promising me Earth.'
'As you said, you control the alliance,' Ivan said. His voice was almost desperate in it's flatness. Yao gazed at him, furious and spurned and hopeless.
'We have the strongest trade routes with the EU fleet,' he spat. Ivan's head jerked up, and he stared at Yao in open disbelief. Yao waved a hand to quiet him and continued, the words giving him some form of bitter release. 'The Americans are extremely lucrative partners, but if the rumours hold true-' he sent a venomous look at Ivan's chest, '-your leader would be hesitant to deal with them. The Axis sub-fleet is a hub of the EU, they are powerhouses for technology an-'
'Yao, stop.' Ivan rose, looking weary. 'I don't want to hear about it.'
'Your earlier words contradict you,' Yao said sarcastically. Ivan compressed his lips and shook his head.
'If I wanted information, I wouldn't have come to you. I would have pried it out of your little prodigy, or the Mei girl.'
'Don't touch them,' Yao snarled, but Ivan cut him off.
'I'll ask again. Yao, will you tell me about yourself?'
Yao had seen frightening depths to Ivan Braginsky's violet eyes, from amusement to interest to pain, and they had enchanted him since day one.
'A while ago, I took the astronomer's position in my fleet,' he started hesitantly. Ivan sat down next to him, curled up on his bed like a great cat, and impulsively, Yao ran his fingers through his ashy hair as he spoke. Ivan made no move to stop him, and so he continued.
Yao let himself get lost in the storytelling. It was a relief he couldn't have previously imagined to talk freely or at length about small things he had liked. Like cooking, or proverbs.
'My fleet has a saying. I don't know where it came from, but it's 'May the stars come together for you'. It means…' He paused, more and more of him reveling in the rapt attention Ivan now awarded him, and continued. 'It means to have luck and fate bring you to where you need to be, even if it's not necessarily what you want at the moment, because it will work out in the end. Like nebulae. Fate willing, they all become stars.'
'Nebulae,' Ivan echoed.
'I love them,' Yao confessed. 'Deadly as they are.'
'Do you consider me something like your beloved nebulae, Yao?' Ivan asked lazily.
Yao curled his fingers gently in the slightly tangled locks near the nape of Ivan's neck. Ivan opened his eyes, and Yao bent down to kiss him, just a brush of skin of skin.
'I think so.'
Ivan blinked once, twice, and his hands clamped around Yao's shoulders to pull him down on top of him. Yao stretched his arms around the larger man's neck, breathing in the smell of his scarf and feeling the hard edges of metal underneath the fabric. Ivan kissed him gently at first, then harder, and Yao's fingers knotted in any hold possible; Ivan's hair, his coat, the back of his neck. Surely his coat wasn't always this soft, surely his voice wasn't always this reassuring growl, surely he wasn't like this from far away. Yao was lost in him.
'I'm interested in you,' Ivan repeated, hands sure to leave bruises on Yao's ribs, under the silk. 'I don't care about the alliance.'
'You...should,' Yao gasped. Beneath him, Ivan shook his head.
'Not when it comes to you.'
So lost in each other, they didn't notice when the door creaked open, the person outside expecting the intimidating ambassador to be working at his desk, not frantically holding the Middle fleet leader.
Yao froze. Ivan tilted his head to look and his mouth twitched towards a smile.
'Hello, sister.'
'Hello,' Natalya said gruffly. Yao carefully untangled himself from Ivan, who sat up on the bed as if nothing had been happening, smile fixed in place.
'What have you come to find me for?'
'You will accompany Yao-' she cast a glance at the slighter man, '-to the laboratory you left. They have new information.'
'Of course. Now, please leave us,' Ivan directed. Natalya closed the door behind her and Yao slumped against the headboard. Ivan chuckled.
'Will she tell?'
'Not if I ask.' Ivan rose from the bed, arranging his coat around himself, and offered Yao a hand up. With a sigh, Yao accepted it. Ivan pulled him closer and kissed him one last time before walking away.
0o0o0o
As soon as Yao stepped in, he knew something was wrong. The room was silent, with a buzz of tension about to break just below the surface. The scientists looked up when they entered, looking sorrowful, and people turned away as they walked past. Suddenly, Kiku rushed up.
'Yao, Yao, there you are! Where did you go?' Kiku sounded frantic. Kiku looked terrified, eyes wide. Especially in front of so many people, seeing that shook Yao to his core.
'I-I…' he stammered. 'Paperwork.' Kiku didn't challenge him. Instead, he just stood there, looking like a child, every line in his body slack with relief. 'Nobody could find you. We thought you'd gotten infected and taken away, too.'
A slow and horrible weight slid into Yao's stomach, adding to the other one. 'Too?'
Kiku opened his mouth, closed it, and refused to meet Yao's eye. 'Yes.' Yao felt dizzy, like the world was sliding out from under him, like he was standing in one spot in space and the fleet was moving away under him.
'Who else is infected, Kiku?'
Kiku closed his eyes. For the second before he spoke, the world stretched forever. 'Leon.'
0o0o0o
They'd only received the news a few minutes ago, Kiku had said, and nobody could find him or his ambassador. They thought he'd been taken away, too. There was a note of terror in Kiku's voice when he'd said that, and Yao resisted the urge to hug him like he was a child again, despite how much they both wanted it.
Yao ran through the sprawling hallways of the main starship, gasping for breath. He'd asked everyone how Leon had caught it, but nobody seemed to know. He was fine yesterday, and today, he was coughing his lungs out. The new strain didn't seem to have any extra side effects, the scientists said, but it worked faster. Three days. Maybe four with the right medicine. Of course, there was no cure…
Yao couldn't stop thinking about Ivan's machinery. It was unfair, it was hopeless, it was pointless to think Leon would be offered the same chance. He might die from it anyways.
And yet all his thoughts were swept out of his mind when he jammed the key in the lock, flung open the door and saw that dark, sleek hair, unmistakable against the white hospital sheets.
Ivan pulled him back out of the hospital and slammed him against the wall. Yao roared and struggled, but Ivan was stronger and didn't loosen his grip until Yao relented.
'You could catch the disease, too.'
'I don't care,' Yao hissed passionately. 'Leon is-is practically my brother. I raised him.'
Ivan's jaw tensed. He looked more aggravated than Yao had ever seen him, and yet Yao refused to back down.
'If I can't see him directly, find me a way to talk to him. To see him,' Yao added. Braginsky's eyes narrowed, and he abruptly yanked Yao towards the command room.
'Nobleman Yao needs to see the patient with the coughing virus in the medical bay,' Ivan announced, voice back to normal. The workers jumped, eying him nervously, and scrambled to type in the commands. A few minutes later, someone hurried to bring Yao a screen, and Yao took it, grateful for Ivan's intimidation. It popped to life, Leon's face clear against the pillows. The image was jostled, and Leon jerked his head at whoever was holding the other screen.
'Careful, now, Emil, neither you nor I have the money to replace that thing,' Leon joked, before focusing on Yao's face. 'So you heard. What's this call about?'
Yao drank in the image of his face, noticing the cast of his skin and the painful way he swallowed. 'I just wanted to check in. Are they good to you? Are you in pain? When did you find out?'
Leon grinned. 'Yes, no, last night. They put me on heavy painkillers and are trying antibiotics.' He glanced up to the person holding the screen. 'Emil, hand that off to Tino and come sit beside me.' The view jerked again, and a young man with oddly silver hair and a standard breathing mask sat down hesitantly beside the brown-haired boy. 'This is Emil Steilsson,' Leon introduced cheerfully. 'He's good to me.'
'Leon is...a good patient,' Emil said awkwardly. His voice was tinny through the breathing mask. From behind the camera, Tino chuckled. Leon wrapped an arm around Emil's shoulders and winked at the camera. The feed shut off.
'He seems well enough,' Yao said, putting down the screen with shaking hands. Leon looked happy. He looked in possession of himself. He looked just as bright and lively and usual. Yao could almost forget that Leon was sick. 'Thank you,' he added, nodding towards the command room workers, and walked out the door before he could start crying.
He walked down the hallway, blinking away the tears, repeating that if he could just get to his rooms, he could think.
'Yao!' Ivan shouted. Yao stopped short, confused, and felt the familiar weight of Ivan's hand on his arm. Ivan looked down at him, the violet of his eyes blue at this range. Yao blinked, his head fuzzy, and weakly tried to pull away.
'Unless you can save him, Ivan, it can wait,' he said tiredly, and pulled away and started walking again. Ivan did not follow this time.
0o0o0o
To Mr. Ivan Braginsky
I have written to you in order to discuss certain rumours. Particularly, if the rumours about your fleet being able to heal the virus are true.
If so, name your price. Do not tell Yao.
Sincerely, Kiku Honda
0o0o0o
Always the innocent.
:: The silence of the type of longing that follows a gentle touch that draws away too fast
