FASH: Yay, time to start teaching Shin! I love writing his character so much, I just want to give him a bunch of hugs, or make Sena give him a bunch of hugs. For some reason though my chapters for this just seem to be getting a little shorter each time, I hope I don't make a habit out of that.
""-speech
''-thoughts
The following day Shin's lessons began. It had been difficult to keep him sitting still, despite Sena's constant attempts to keep him in place.
In fact, Sena got the feeling that after repeating the phrases so much when Shin started shifting about or his attention began to wander that he was actually was beginning to understand the meaning of "Sit still" and "Pay attention".
Understanding didn't help when he seemed unwilling to co-operate though, and Sena couldn't really prove that Shin knew what he was talking about anyways.
Takami and Sakuraba had been very understanding about everything though, and Takami had even allowed them to take multiple breaks to help with Shin's restless nature. But even after the chances to walk around and stretch his muscles out he still didn't seem very willing to try and learn, his attention always drifting to focus on something else, namely Sena.
"I'm sorry that he doesn't seem very interested, I'm sure once he gets into the swing of things he'll pay more attention!" Sena found himself saying on Shin's behalf.
"It's alright, we expected something like this to happen anyways." Takami replied with a kind smile. "Besides, I already how an idea on how to improve my lesson plans."
Sena blinked up at the young man curiously. "You knew this was going to happen?" He asked with no small amount of wonder in his voice, for the moment not noticing the almost jealous stare Shin seemed to be sending Takami's way.
"Well, in a way Shin is able to communicate: through body language. Since that's been the way he's always expressed himself, he probably doesn't understand or feel the need to communicate the way humans normally do. Right Sakuraba?"
"Huh? Oh, right!" Sakuraba agreed with a flush as he pulled his attention away from Shin's curious mannerisms.
"He doesn't want to learn? But he'll repeat things when I say them."
Takami's smile widened.
"And that point brings me to the improvements to be made in my lesson plan. As you've clearly noticed, Shin is attached to you, I believe he likes the idea of trying to communicate with you, but he doesn't necessarily care about anyone else. Which is why I'm going to need your help."
"My help?" Sena repeated incredulously, not entirely sure what he could possibly to do help.
"You're going to help me teach young Seijuro here, because he likes to listen to you and mimic you it would definitely make it easier for me to teach him if you helped out."
Sena blushed and nervously looked at Shin out of the corner of his eye. "Do you really think I could help?"
"Of course." Sakuraba stepped in, patting Sena's back in a friendly way until a low growl made him take a cautious step back.
"Y-you see, he must want to be able to communicate with you, and he must be frustrated that you can't seem to understand him sometimes, so you'd be the only reason he wants to be able to be able to speak and understand in the first place. Once he figures out that by learning what Takami teaches him he'll be able to communicate with you, we figure he'll start concentrating more."
During Sakuraba's mini-speech Shin had impatiently moved to Sena's side and began tugging on his arm in an attempt to steal his attention away from the older males, something that Takami noticed with a smile.
"How about we stop for now and start with a clean slate tomorrow? I'm not sure how much longer his attention span will hold out."
"Alright, I'll make sure Seijuro's interest is at it's peak for tomorrow!" Sena promised gallantly before taking Shin's hand and leading him out of the room.
"Maybe we can get a head start if I try teaching you more words. No more body parts though! Maybe this time I'll try and teach you things inside the house!" He excitedly continued as he dragged a quite willing Shin up the stairs towards their room.
Sakuraba ran a hand through his short crop of hair as he watched them go before turning to Takami.
"It's pretty interesting isn't it? I wonder how his attachment to Sena started off in the first place, I'm pretty sure it's not very common for them to take interest in one person while ignoring everyone else."
"Well, that's a mystery that can be solved another day."
Meanwhile up in their room Sena was vainly trying to make Shin repeat the word 'table' to him, but the other boy had ideas of his own.
"Lips." Was all he bothered saying, apparently wanting to continue on with what had almost started a couple days ago.
"No Seijuro, not lips. Table, this is a table. I know you can say it if you try!"
"Lips."
Sena sighed and slumped over. 'He's got such a one track mind, doesn't he?'
Needless to say all of his other attempts fell through and it wasn't long before he decided to give it a rest.
'But I must be on the right track, because Seijuro knows what he's saying when he refers to my lips. He's just completely uninterested in anything else.'
He really hoped Shin's interest in his lips would somehow dissipated during the night though, because it would be mortifyingly embarrassing if he were trying to help Takami teach and all Shin bothered to say was 'lips'.
That would probably bring up some rather unwanted questions.
In an effort to stop the problem before it started, because Sena highly doubted that Shin would just forget about something he seemed entirely too focused on, the following morning before going down to the lesson Sena confronted the other boy. Something that would have been a lot easier if Shin had a better grasp of language, but beggars can't be choosers.
"Alright Seijuro, today it's going to be very important that you sit still and pay attention." He began, being sure to look Shin in the eyes to show he was serious. "And since in order to pay attention you've got to stop focusing on my lips-"
Shin visibly perked up at the word and Sena steeled his nerves so that he wouldn't succumb to the urge to back away.
"I've got to make sure that you're not curious about them anymore, so..." Sena blushed hotly, closed his eyes and gave Shin a quick peck on the mouth.
"There, you can focus on other things now, right?"
Apparently not.
Shin stared at him with half-open eyes and slowly began moving in, repeating the word that Sena was starting to dread.
'Oh God, did I just make everything worse?!' He shifted back and raised up a hand to press against Shin's shoulder and hinder his progress.
Shin stopped and looked at him curiously.
"H-how about, if you're good during the whole lesson, I'll give you another kiss?" Sena asked, really hoping that Shin would just suddenly understand everything that he was talking about.
Shin just stared at him, confused.
"A kiss..." Sena began, trying to will the blush that had overtaken his face away. "A kiss, with lips."
"Lips." Shin repeated, moving in again, Sena's hand not nearly strong enough to stop him.
"No! Nononono!" Sena brought his other hand up to cover Shin's mouth and the older boy furrowed his eyebrows at him.
"You need to sit still and pay attention during your lesson." Sena said, stressing the words as much as he could, feeling somewhat better about the situation when Shin's eyes lit up with recognition.
"If you sit still and pay attention, then I'll give you a kiss, okay?"
Shin, although not nearly on his best behaviour, had improved a lot since yesterday's lesson, doing what Sena told him to do as best as he could.
The improvement was so noticeable, especially since Sena was no longer sitting beside him to keep watch over him, that Sakuraba was having a field day. He appeared to be excitedly studying Shin's behaviour, wondering what it was that got him to behave and throwing Sena curious looks.
'You can wonder as much as you want sir, but I'm not telling.'
Sena shuffled through the flip cards Takami had given him, each one had an object that they couldn't exactly bring into the room to show Shin realistically drawn onto it's surface.
"Ah, here's a good one." He held the card out in front of himself.
"Remember Sena, don't just say the word you want him to repeat, but also describe what it does." Takami told him and Sena nodded determinedly.
"Seijuro, this is a river, and rivers flow. Can you say river for me? River."
The first half of the day passed by in a similar fashion and after lunch Takami took over, to see if Shin would be willing to pay attention to him.
Shin, after Sena repeated to him that he needed to sit still and pay attention, thankfully did as he was told, although he didn't seem as eager to please.
As the lesson drew to and end Takami piled up all the cards they had used during the day and presented them one by one in front of Shin, tapping at the picture until Shin said something.
"It's to test his memory." Takami had explained while piling the cards together. "To see if his brain processes and collects the information, or if he just forgets it soon after. I'll start off with the ones we showed him during the second half of our lesson, which should be fairly easier for him to remember, then we'll move on and see if he can remember any of the one's from the first part."
Sena was fairly certain Shin would do well, but not to this extent.
Shin got every one right from Takami's part of the lesson, as expected, but then he went on to get all of the words right from Sena's part too.
Sena had never seen Sakuraba look so excited before, which was saying a lot considering how excited the young man became just by looking at Shin.
"Well, I'll have to go through them again tomorrow morning, but if his results then are anything like they are now, his memory is going to make a lot of things easier. Now then, class dismissed." He said jokingly.
"Thank you for your hard work, sir!" Sena said as he took Shin's hand and made his way out of the room.
Shin, apparently realizing that he no longer had to sit still and pay attention, quickly reverted back to his normal mindset.
Thankfully Sena had been dashing up the stairs at full speed and had locked Shin and himself up inside their room before Shin could even think of uttering the dreaded L word. And even as he began to say it in the privacy of their room Sena found himself covering Shin's mouth with his hand.
"I know what you're going to say, so you don't need to say it. I promised you a kiss, and a kiss is what you'll get."
Shin cocked his head to the side curiously and pulled Sena's hand away from his mouth.
"Kiss?"
"Yes, a kiss. You kiss with your lips." Sena replied, figuring if he was going to do this anyways, he may as well try and make it a learning experience.
He once again pressed their lips together for a fraction of a second before pulling away, leaving Shin with a distinctly unsatisfied look on his face.
"Now, now, don't give me that look. You'd feel strange about this too if you knew how, well, strange it was."
Shin's expression didn't change and Sena ran a hand through his hair with a sigh. "And, once you learn to speak properly, you'd better not tell the lady of the house about this, or she'll have my guts for garters..." Sena trailed off, another thought beginning to circulate in his mind.
"And you know, once you can speak you can tell me all about how you grew up. I've been curious about you since I first heard about you, you know. I've been asking unanswered questions about you for years. And you can tell me what it was like growing up with a mother bear-"
"Bear?" Shin suddenly repeated and Sena flinched a bit in surprise.
It was strange, he usually had to repeat a word several times for Shin to say it.
"Yes, because you grew up with a mother bear, right?" Sena asked cautiously, worriedly becoming aware than Shin was tensing up, as though he associated the word 'bear' with sinister actions and intentions.
In an effort to calm him down Sena awkwardly pulled the older boy into a hug and began to soothingly run his hands up and down his back.
"It's okay Seijuro, it's okay, you don't have to worry about anything. I'm here with you." Sena whispered lowly as he imitated the way his mother would calm him down when he was younger.
But Shin's obvious acknowledgement and dislike of the word 'bear' worried him, since he was fairly certain Shin hadn't picked the word up during his short stay at the house. And even if he did overhear some gossiping servants mention the word once or twice, surely it wouldn't have given him a reason to react the way he had.
Sena's embrace became a little tighter as he thought over the situation. He didn't know too much about bears, but he was fairly certain that they lived for a couple of decades at least.
When Shin had taken him into the forest he hadn't seen any bears, and he certainly hadn't seen Shin's mother bear.
'The hunters who used to always talk about him: the boy who was raised by bears, how could they believe in something like that without much evidence. They claimed they'd just caught glimpses of him, but what if they set up bear traps that caught his mother or...' Sena's thoughts trailed off as Shin began to relax in his embrace.
"Don't worry Seijuro, I'll always be here for you as long as you need me. Even if your mother doesn't like me very much." Sena vowed, tightening his arms once more before attempting to pull away only to find that Shin had decided to imitate his hugging.
Normally Sena would have at least attempted to worm his way out of the embrace, but he found he just didn't have the heart to at the moment.
"Sena." The older boy mumbled softly as he nuzzled his hair, sighing in contentment.
The brunette bit back a smile. "That's right Seijuro, Sena will stay with you for as long as you need."
-x-x-x-
Now that Takami and Sakuraba were around the weeks seemed to be flying by and it wasn't long before autumn was overtaken by winter's chill. And with winter came Sena's fifteenth birthday. His parent's had come over briefly to celebrate, since no one wanted Shin to have to wander off of the premises in case he felt like running off again. And several days after Sena's birthday came Christmas.
The Shin family always invited people over for a Christmas party, and although there was some concern regarding Shin being around strangers it was decided that the tradition should go on anyways.
So Sena had been ordered to keep Shin company in their room until it was late enough that, of the remaining guests, only ones who were as close as family or ones who actually were family remained.
It wasn't that bad though, and Sena had long since discovered that an easy way to pass the time with Shin was by trying to teach him.
The older boy was an incredibly quick learner whenever he put his mind to it, something that never ceased to amaze Sakuraba who was keeping a detailed journal of Shin's progress, or thrill Takami who was happy to have such a sharp pupil.
And thankfully Shin had become interested enough in learning that Sena had been able to stop bribing him to pay attention with kisses after the first several weeks. Although every once in a while after a particularly tough lesson that Takami and Sakuraba praised him for being able to complete he'd throw Sena a look as if he expected a kiss.
And by then he'd come to realize what a kiss was, so Sena would have to drag him away before he asked for one.
If he had been mortified at the thought of Shin saying 'lips' in front of Takami and Sakuraba, he'd possibly die from embarrassment if he asked for a kiss.
"Alright Seijuro, we've still got a bit of time until your mother and father said it would be okay to come downstairs. Is there anything else you'd like to do with me?" Sena asked, folding his hands together and placing them on his lap as he looked at the boy sitting beside him.
"Hands. Grasp." Shin replied, holding his hands out for Sena to inspect.
"You want us to..." Sena's eyebrows furrowed in thought. "Hold hands?" He questioned, lifting his own hands up.
Shin immediately placed their hands together, intertwining their fingers with a smile.
"You don't really get tired of this do you? Do you have an obsession with anyone else's hands that I should know about?" Sena laughed a bit before his attention was drawn away from Shin by a dull thud in the hallway.
"Hmm, I wonder what that was?" Sena rose up off of the bed and crept towards the door, opening it just a fraction to see what had caused the noise.
His eyes widened and his cheeks grew pink from what he saw.
Sakuraba had been all but pinned to the wall while Takami was doing something that, had Sena been younger and a little more naive, would have looked like some sort of vampire impersonation.
He slowly shut the door and turned around, jumping a bit when he saw Shin had managed to silently sneak up behind him.
"Downstairs?" Shin asked as he reached past Sena to grab the door handle, but the brunette quickly grabbed his wrist and shook his head.
"No, we're still not going downstairs for a while yet Seijuro." Sena managed to say without stammering, his thoughts unwillingly beginning to drift back to what he'd seen in the hallway.
He certainly hadn't expected anything like that. He'd always thought of Takami as asexual and, despite Sakuraba's infatuation with Shin, he'd always thought the light haired man got along well with the ladies.
'I'd better make sure we stay inside until they leave the hallway. If Seijuro sees that...' Sena blushed hotly, not entirely sure he wanted to know what would happen if Shin saw any public displays of affection.
He waited for another fifteen minutes, just to be completely safe, before opening the door again and leading Shin downstairs to where the party was being held.
As expect most of the guests had already left so they could make it home before it got too late, all the other guests would be staying overnight in the spare rooms.
"Ah, there he is! Our strapping young son, Seijuro, and his best friend, Sena!" Lord Shin announced loudly once he noticed their presence.
As one the remaining group of people turned to stare openly at them and Sena felt himself shrinking back from the attention.
Lady Shin strode forward and took Shin's hand, smiling lightly when he didn't pull away or glower at her as he was sometimes wont to do.
Then her gaze shifted over to Sena and the brunette felt a shiver run down his spine at the hardly concealed malice in her eyes.
His continued presence around her son seemed to be a constant annoyance to her, so he wasn't too surprised when she curtly thanked him for bringing her son down before suggesting that he go back to bed.
"Come on my dear, it's Christmas, surely the boy can stay up for a little longer during the holidays." Lord Shin had countered merrily. "Besides, Sena's going to be visiting his family for the whole day tomorrow, let the boys spend a little more time together."
"If you insist, dear." His wife had replied gracefully before tugging on Shin's hand, her smile fading when he didn't follow her.
"Come on, darling, I'm going to introduce you to a lot of interesting people. Don't you want to meet them?"
Shin stayed put, turning his head to look at Sena briefly.
"Yes, Sena will be coming around with us too, so please be a good boy and do as your mother asks, Seijuro."
This time when she tugged on his hand he moved forward. No one commented on how Sena had started walking in the direction Lady Shin had been trying to guide her son seconds before her pulling.
She went around he room, showing her son off to many friends before she finally came across a relative.
"Seijuro, this is your father's cousin, Lord Rodchenko. He's a very busy man, so he doesn't visit often." She said as they came to a stop in front of a very strong, slightly familiar looking man.
"Ah, so this is the boy everyone's been talking about." The man before them smiled in a way that made Sena feel nervous, like he was just baring all his teeth without a thought of good intentions.
Shin appeared to feel that way too, because he growled lowly in his throat at the sight.
"Seijuro!" His mother looked aghast for a moment before she turned to glare at Sena. "I thought I told you to make him stop making such barbaric noises!"
"It's okay, it must be habit since he was raised in the wild and all." Rodchenko waved a hand in a dismissive fashion, smile still wide and challenging. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and ask my cousin about something." He moved away, easily ignoring the dirty look Shin was sending his way.
Sena, not wanting to spend even another minute of time in a room with someone who gave him such a bad feeling, quickly excused himself from the party and made his way to bed. And, as he half expected, Shin followed him up not long after.
That night he was roused from his sleep for seemingly no reason. He thought he heard the slight creak of his door shutting, but he sleepily concluded that it was just the wind or the house itself creaking before snuggling back into the warmth of Shin's chest.