Authors Note: Hello everyone! We continue to be thankful for all the reviews, follows, and faves for this story. This story is still not on hiatus- we still just keeping getting busy. Trust me, it's just as bothersome to us as it is to those of you waiting for more.
Keep in mind this is just an extra. We're hoping the next CHAPTER wont be long in coming.
Meanwhile, enjoy, review, and be merry!
Extra: Seimei - The Box
Seimei stared as Kio and Ritsuka left, one hand on the doorframe, watching until the elevator doors closed around them. Something was prickling in the back of his mind, almost like an itch he couldn't scratch. It was concerning.
Had Ritsuka been truthful when he said he had been "maybe" jealous?
Really, with the manner in which he had said it, Ritsuka had practically turned that "maybe" into a "yes." A full-out admission.
But was it true? And why would he say it?
Seimei went back into the penthouse and shut the door behind him. Something to eat was in order, and then bed. He had fallen asleep with Ritsuka earlier-falling asleep after sex, rather than arranging transport for the boy and seeing him gone straightaway, was concerning in itself-but that hadn't been nearly enough rest. Seimei truly hated working all night; it left him drained and zombie-like. And, normally, he hated surprises, but the surprise he felt at seeing Ritsuka on his doorstep was of the pleasurable variety.
Toast was the fastest thing on the menu. Seimei enjoyed cooking but that was only when he had gotten more than five hours' sleep the previous night. Right now it was toast. Adding butter was the maximum effort he was willing to put into his cuisine at the moment.
Normally he brewed tea from fresh leaves, but today he poured orange juice into a plain glass cup and took that with his freshly buttered toast to the breakfast nook to eat. In summer he quite enjoyed taking his breakfasts at the small table on his balcony, and regretted the rain currently pattering against the rooftop. A bit of fresh air wouldn't have hurt, even if the young woman in the penthouse of the neighboring building often emerged onto her own balcony to stare hopefully over at him, her outfits absurdly suggestive of her intentions.
Oh, but her style of erotica had nothing on Kio's flair for fabulous. Particularly on Ritsuka; though, Seimei had a sort of muted dread bubbling up in the back of his mind that anything Ritsuka wore would be a might more enticing than anything anyone else wore.
Panda bear panties...
He set down his half eaten bit of toast and rubbed his temples as images of what exactly those looked like formed unwilling in his mind.
He had just had him. He had JUST had him, and Seimei was already anticipating their next encounter. He did not consider himself obsessed with sex, though his appetite for it was plenty healthy, but sex with Ritsuka was something he was steadily becoming addicted to.
Suddenly, Seimei managed to both lose his appetite and feel famished at the same time. He stared at his unfinished toast and orange juice and willed himself to eat.
Who is going to take to you to the hospital if you pass out, hmm? Even if you were to drop dead, exhausted and malnourished, who would know? Who would care?
An image of Ritsuka swam into his mind. Ritsuka would care - and would likely call an ambulance out of his sheer concern.
...the toast and the orange juice weren't nearly as appetizing as they were five minutes ago. Seimei could at least put a name to the prickling in the back of his mind now: anxiety.
anx·i·e·ty - noun 1. a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome
He was anxious about Ritsuka, and the "uncertain outcomes" their association would have. Was Ritsuka really serious about being jealous? Was he joking? Flirting? Perhaps just playing the part of a good consort? Was he that honest? Why? What did he mean by it? What did Ritsuka hope to gain? What was the object of the statement?
Seimei's thoughts swirled in unending circles like this for longer than he cared to admit. Exhaustion set in even more powerfully as they did, and Seimei found himself wanting nothing more than a deep, deep slumber.
He slid his hands down his face-the hands, he remembered, that Ritsuka had sketched-and pushed himself up from the table.
He gathered his dishes, flattening the toast by stamping his cup onto it. He dumped it all into the sink, not bothering to dispose of the remaining food as he ought to have done. The maid would deal with it when she came in for the day, long after he had set out for the office. He was much too bothered to deal with such mediocre tasks, much too unbalanced.
And with a sickening swoop of his stomach, he was forced to admit to himself that he was afraid. He was becoming frightened of Ritsuka's power over him because Seimei didn't do well with emotion. "Emotion" was about as far as he was willing to allow the himself to admit because he had loved once. How he'd loved, and nothing in the world had destroyed him so completely.
Perhaps though, it was because he was a child, and children loved without caution, with trust and innocence. Although, most people who had known Seimei then would have been hard pressed to label him innocent.
Much as he wanted to dive into bed, he took a detour to his bedroom closet. Behind the hangings of three-piece suits and polo shirts was a shelf with a single keepsake box. He pulled it from its place and knelt like a child onto the floor. He pulled off the lid.
There was a photo inside, and one tiny lock of hair. Seimei held it to his nose and breathed in gingerly. Illogical as it was, Seimei had the faint worry that if he ever inhaled the scent too strongly, it would all be used up, and that fragrance of baby powder and no-tears shampoo would be gone forever. The lock of hair was so darkly brown that it was nearly black, and shiny-straight. It was bound together with a blue ribbon. Seimei laid it carefully aside and turned to the picture.
An infant, with that same shiny-straight hair, and softly smooth skin, and rounded, happy cheeks, smiled up from the photo. A thousand memories flooded Seimei whenever he saw the image. Patty cake and baths in the sink. Pureed food in tiny, labeled jars with an airplane spoon.
Toji.
Seimei hadn't even been a teenager, but he'd taken better care of baby Toji than some adult parents did with their own children. He wasn't old enough to have reached puberty, much less have a child of his own, but Seimei had still felt, in some inexplicable way, that Toji WAS his own - though in another way.
Toji's grandfather and his own had been brothers. As one drew down the family line, the relation grew more distant; however, it was still Seimei's parents who had taken in the baby when his father had been killed and his mother had been hauled off to a mental hospital. Seimei hadn't been very happy about the new arrival at first, but that had quickly changed when the social worker had set down the infant carseat in the foyer of their home. The baby was small with huge dark eyes and chubby little fists and legs that kicked happily when Seimei walked over to him.
His mother had been the first to reach down and pick Toji up, smiling down at him and telling him softly, "Hello Little Toji...I'm your Aunt Asako."
She passed him to Seimei's father, Sora, who took him very carefully, as though Toji were made of glass instead of flesh and bone. "We'll all take care of you, Little Toji." his father had said to the baby.
Seimei had stood on his tiptoes, craning his neck to see the baby's face again, somehow eager to make those tiny legs kick happily for him once more.
"Do you want to hold him, Seimei?" his mother had asked kindly.
Seimei had nodded without saying a word. He held out his arms expectantly, though he had never before held an infant.
"I think you'd better sit down first, son," his father had said with a chuckle. "To us, he's tiny but to you he might be on the heavy side."
Wanting to argue but knowing it would do no good, Seimei had plopped himself down onto the closest chair and carefully Sora had laid Little Toji in Seimei's small arms.
Toji opened his mouth and made a cooing sound, like an audible smile, matching the one that stretched out his lips. The baby hadn't smiled for Asako or Sora, but he had smiled for Seimei. It had made Seimei feel a surge of responsibility and protectiveness rush through him.
From then on, Toji was His.
Seimei lay the photo aside and pushed the dark lock of hair to one corner of the box. Beside it was that little purple dragon plushy, no bigger than a child's fist, that Toji had carried around with him for two of the three years they had lived together. Seimei had used the money he had gotten from the "Tooth fairy" for his two back molars to buy it for Toji from the toy shop he passed every day on the way to school.
Seimei lived for Toji's smiles, which had graduated from a toothless, orange-wedge shape to a bright mouthful of pearly whites. Seimei read him books and told him stories, buttered his toast in the morning and cut it into quarters, helped him onto his plastic kids stool so they could brush their teeth together.
Asako had made up a room just for him, but she had been wrong. Toji didn't belong in any room but Seimei's, and after his parents had gone to bed, he would slip inside and lead Toji back to his room. It was delightful just to see him toddling on those chubby little legs, making straight for Seimei's bed and then sticking his thumb into his mouth once he laid down. Seimei would lay next to him and make shadow monsters on the ceiling with a flashlight. Sometimes he'd sneak cookies into bed. And other times, they would lay in hushed contentment together, Seimei rubbing Toji's back soothingly or softly singing a lullaby.
Seimei's eyes welled with tears, just as they did every time he opened this box. He refused to let them fall. Crying did no good. It wouldn't bring Toji back.
When Toji was three, his mother managed to escape her confinement - some good-for-nothing lawyer had seen to it to lose her Declaration of Incompetence case - and she had returned straightaway for little Toji. Seimei's parents had tried and failed to keep him. Toji's mother had every legal right to take him back into her custody, and in the end, Toji was taken away. Seimei had spent the entirety of that first night alone in awful, ugly tears, sobs wracking him until his ribs hurt.
In the morning, curled up and exhausted, Seimei promised himself that he would never cry again. He had so far kept that promise. Somewhere deeper, he had promised himself that he would never love again, and that was a promise easily kept.
How old must Toji be now? 17? 18? An adult, practically. Seimei wondered what he looked like. If he was well-cared-for. If he was happy.
Seimei dried his wet eyelashes on the back of his sleeve. With an effort, he put away the memories and the flood of emotions with the box, and managed a shower consisting of a mindful of nothing but meditative blankness. Back in bed, however, as he began to drift into dreams, a smile as bright as sunshine flashed across his mind—and he mumbled a name into his pillow.
"Ritsuka."
TO BE CONTINUED...
-BC3 & MAGIC MIND