Special Thanks: luckless-is-me, Lazy Gaga, Lovegranted, Blueninja89

Note: This will make a lot more sense if you go back and read sixteen. Just putting that out there so if you get confused, this chapter and the chapter before directly correlate.

Time

Part XVII

2/1/2012 6:02 PM

It was late. Suzaku was out like the flick of a light switch the second he'd hit the bed after their silent and tense dinner. His body was spread across the bed, his bare chest and stomach a soft texture in contrast to the smooth sheets wrapped around his lower half. In the space that Lelouch normally occupied, Suzaku's hand lay against the white sheets, wrapped in gauze and medical tape.

Lelouch had to close his eyes, looking away. Suzaku had been so tired that night, abnormally tired and it had weighted against Lelouch's conscious for hours at that point. By the time he'd slipped out from Suzaku's grasp unnoticed and around the room to lean against the door leading into their bathroom, it was well into the morning hours of the night. He watched his lover as long as he could before stepping onto the cold tile floors and into the bathroom. He clicked the door shut behind him, making as little sound as he could, before he flipped the light on. The room felt artificial the second the man-made light sprang up in the bulbs over the mirror, refracting from the white porcelain of the sink and marble countertop with the same artificial tinge.

Lelouch met his reflection in the mirror, with sharp, narrow, eye to eye contact. Violet eyes flicked down and over his body. He looked eighteen still. It hadn't mattered how long he would go without a shave or how smart he tried to dress, he still looked eighteen. Lelouch had always been able to lie his way around it easy enough. He had a young body was a large part of the problem, but a very different face. Lelouch had made himself look older, mostly by the way he acted, because that was what he had to do. Suzaku looked twenty five, and as far as they knew that was where he would hopefully stay.

Lelouch's fingers hooked on to the hem of Suzaku's grey shirt and he pulled it up over his head. The shirt dropped to the tile flooring with a muffled sound before Lelouch's eyes returned to the mirror again.

His shallow chest and slender shoulders moved down in a stream of pale skin until it reached the hem of the pajama pants. Between there and his navel was placed the red mark of his immortality, of his curse.

Fingers spread wide, Lelouch ran the tips of his long digits across the mark of that bloody bird. His eyes traced right along with his fingers and his mouth felt dry. Without that mark Lelouch wouldn't have been there that very day, wouldn't have built the little semi pseudo family that had somehow been created out of the ashes of two former lives in ruins. And yet, the signs of the times were coming, and it hurt more and more to realize what might happen to him if—

Lelouch looked away, his eyes moving towards the sink, towards the kitchen knife that sat on the counter. Suzaku's blood had been washed off earlier that night, but Lelouch had left it in the bathroom.

It weighted down his hand as he picked it up. But with ease he pressed the blade to his palm and with a quick motion set in a slit as long and as deep as Suzaku's had been. His hand poised over the sink Lelouch watched as the dark liquids ran down his skin, clinging to skin as long as possible until it dripped, hitting the white porcelain of the sink in horrible and stark contrast. From there the stream slowly ran down the basin and into the drain.

But by the time Lelouch looked back up at his open palm—the wound was already healing. The long slit in his palm was sealing, the blood was getting its last few streaming drops out before the wound sealed up in a fresh, fleshy red line. From there it was only a matter of seconds before the line itself started to move into his skin as well.

When he lifted his hand to examine it close, it was perfectly fine, as if it had been completely untouched. With a hard pressed swallow Lelouch looked down to the rumpled pile that was Suzaku's shirt. Lelouch reached down and pulled the shirt up and back on. He turned on the water to wash down the remaining blood and clean off the knife.

He flipped off the light before trailing into their bedroom again. He set the knife at the dresser, to take into the kitchen once Lelouch had the chance. Perched at his side of the bed, Lelouch reached out to Suzaku's hand. Soft and gently he lifted the hand up.

"Wuh?"

The grunt of a question perked Lelouch's ears and he turned to his partner.

Suzaku had his head raised off the pillows. Eyes cracked open, he had a lazy still sleepy expression of confusion as he searched Lelouch's' face. "'louch? Wuh are you-?"

"Shhh sh sh…" Lelouch whispered, his fingers petting through the tangle and wave of Suzaku's hair. He leaned forward, even pressing a kiss to Suzaku's tender temple. "I'm just checking your hand. Go back to sleep, baby."

"Oh," Suzaku breathed, accepting Lelouch's answer as good enough, and let his head fall back to the pillow. He turned on his side letting his hand still stay in the grasp of Lelouch's fingers, but his body folded, curling around Lelouch. Suzaku's other hand even rested at the small of Lelouch's back, rubbing a few times before Suzaku let his hand rest there as he drifted back to sleep.

Lelouch shifted to sit back up and lifted Suzaku's hand to press his lips over the wound wrappings in another tender kiss. "I love you." Lelouch said into the wrappings before he sat back, and started to unwind the cloth from Suzaku's hand.

Once all of the cloth and gauze and tape were all stripped away Lelouch stared down at the brutal slit through Suzaku's sun-kissed skin. The dried blood was a distasteful and vile black color, crusting along the wound. As hard as they had tried to get the trickle of bleeding to stop they had finally had to let it clot and dry on its own. Lelouch just hoped that the knife hadn't gone deep enough to slice through a nerve or a tendon. His faith in Suzaku's Geass was already waning, and only time would tell if it had come through fully this time.

Lelouch rose from the bed, setting Suzaku's hand down before going back into the bathroom. When he came out with a small basin of water and several other supplies to rewrap the hand, he carefully tried to stay quiet. When he sank back down onto the bed, and into the comfortable little cove created by the curved shape his partner had fallen to sleep in, Lelouch reached for the basin of water. He wrung out a wash cloth in the warm water before using it to start cleaning off the disdainful black crusting along Suzaku's palm.

So a bit of sad and sweet in this, but I hoped you enjoyed! :D

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