A.C.: I'm sorry ㅠㅠ but my computer died and I had to rewrite this chanpter while studying for exams that I know I'll fail and then on top of that my club at school demanded BL doujinshi and I've been trying not to strangle myself while drawing all the bed scenes (censored mind you) and then there was my birthday in which I had a nervous breakdown... ehh yeah... damn those balloons
Summary: The dark phoenix is amongst them once more. Between emotions, hormones, therapy, and all around domestication, the Neo Borg will discover the truth explanations behind one Hiwatari Kai's revival...
Warnings:Slashy themes, all around insanity? Structure, grammar, much mistakes. Un-Betaed, uke-Kai and possible/guaranteed oocness. While I did see V-force and G-rev to completion, I missed most of season 1 so... yeah. (everytime I tried to watch it was as if the series was stuck on the White Tigers arc >.>)
Pairings: Yuriy/Kai, one-sided/mild Brooklyn/Kai, Takao/Kai, Boris/Kai
-
-
His thoughts swam like the cream in his coffee.
One leg of the spiral had melted away, turning the black liquid to brown, brown to chestnut, then chestnut to a soft shade of caramel that unwound itself against the Milky Way in his cup.
For a moment he idly wondered if that was how the universe came to be. How they all had come to be born. Imagine, someone stirring a cup of coffee; add a sugar cube or two and you'd have massive supernovas orbiting inside the cup.
'Don't let go!'
He shook his head, freeing himself of the thread of thoughts piling up. The coffee was cool, cool like the shade of mesmerizing emerald staring back at him from the other side. He should drink it; really, it was his favorite brand...
He pursed his lips against the rim then stopped.
No, that wasn't quite right. It wasn't true; he had never liked coffee much. He had always preferred the sweeter taste of milk tea. The only reason he had stuck by coffee was because of the caffeine boost it gave him. The fact that it kept him from sleeping.
No sleeping meant no dreams, no dreams equaled no nightmares, and no nightmares equaled... sanity... something in himself to hold on against the oncoming tempest.
He swallowed the cold liquid, the web of chaotic thoughts going with it. He set the cup down on the corresponding dish, a pretty thing with cotton white blossoms. Brooklyn would have all the things he would need right here. But Kai hadn't spent years in his grandfather's company without recognizing a prison for what it was.
And a prison it was...
His vision fractured for a second and he blinked, rinsing away the fissure of amethyst surfacing briefly against the scarlet.
Brooklyn stood by the window, mask-smile present against the world. The sun was high, turning the normally ginger strands to citric orange.
"It's a nice day outside isn't it?"
Kai, Kai frowned, feeling the cold coffee churning in his stomach. There they were, the two black holes spinning towards each other. For what? To join? Combine perhaps? Or would they kill each other trying?
"Ah,"
The mask-smile disappeared.
-
-
"You never told me this would be a dangerous mission." Hissed Ivan as he stitched his upper arm and the nasty gash oozing against the skin. He winced everytime he felt the silver needle pierce his ruddy skin, everytime drawing out a bit more of the red pulsing beneath the surface. He bit the string before cutting a longer strand from the first-aid box. He looped the thread around the end of the needle, not having the patience to poke it through the minute hole. Then he began anew, only halfway finished.
Beside his mostly indisposed arm was a towel with a spot of blood in the middle. Sharp fragments of a broken bullet glittering in the flickering monitor.
"With the amount you were going to receive you should have been prepared." The other man was big, or seemed big (could have been some sort of a distortion by the camera) with bulging arms and shoulders. Not that he was the kind to judge a book by the cover, but definally not the kind who would need him to snitch this oh so top secret data. From the way how his employer's yellow dusted lips moved, they were not moving at all. Someone else was speaking, someone who did not want their identity exposed...
Typical business tycoons in a cliché chick flicks he watches on weekends.
"Look, I said that the chances of me actually succeeding was extremely low. And I told you that the most I would get would be a partial chunk of the data you wanted. And you accepted, I gave you roughtly 30 of it. Now if one or two of my f...partners were to join me it would be a completely different story." Ivan shook his head, mentally adding 'idiot' to this dialogue. He tied a knot at the end of his rather jagged stitching before carelessly throwing the needle and the remaining thread into the first-aid kit. He discreetly tapped the record button. The figure was mostly hidden by the shadows resulting from poor artificial lighting. He wasn't the one to pry but after seeing what some of the files he was supposed to steal, other files that were locked within the supercomputer he had hacked into...
"Look I did my research but they have bit-beasts," at this the figure on the otherside seemed to be taken aback, Ivan allowed himself a private smile before continuing. "Cyber-organic, presumably young, man-made." The indigo haired Russian threw the monitor a dry look before wiping away the excess blood. "Then on top of that they shoot at you. They have a secret to hide and they're not going to part with it easily." Even now he could still hear the sirens blaring in the distance.
"So you are saying you refuse this mission?" a flash of green in black behind the hulking blond.
"No" replied Ivan quickly, regretting the words that were about to follow. "I have to repay the favor." He patted his now bandaged arms. "I just want two friends brought in, think you can do that?" the thruth was that he did get more than the 30 he had supposedly risked his neck for. A folder titled 'KuroSuzaku'. Ivan narrowed his eyes as his employer nodded his affirmative.
"Last chance, don't mess it up this time."
The screen went blank. Why would someone want to dig up the past of what happened in the Balcov abbey some decades ago?
-
-
"Yes Yuriy, what is it?"
The redhead in question was currently propped up against the couch. His two legs stretched out on the coffee table with a maroon pillow cushioning the broken appendages. He imagined one of the maids or manservants got it for the elder from storage. He certainly couldn't imagine such a gharish excuse of a color surviving under his nose for long.
"I don't like it when you go to see him."
Kai rolled his eyes, slipping out of the woolen gray sweater.
"Ah, they asked me to keep him from going completely insane."
Yuriy snorted loudly to this.
"Why not send our hero Takao? The talk of friendship and love might keep the prettyboy down long enough to figure out how to deport him without buildings getting blown up... again."
Resentment,
That Takao had once again shown them all up by saving the world,
Resentment,
That the real players were not recognized, not given their due,
Resentment,
That once again they were pushed aside for something else.
"Exactly why I was volunteered."
They knew each other Brooklyn and Kai. (a little too much for comfort in Yuriy's humble opinion) Brooklyn knew Kai and Kai knew Brooklyn. They both knew Yuriy, Neo Borg and evertying in between; they knew the world wasn't sugar and spice like the others made it out to be. They knew that they would never understand, prefering to jam their fingers in their ears and hum rather than to hear what they had to say.
And it hurt.
"You don't have to go everyday you know." Muttered Yuriy darkly; knowing that to abandon a person like Brooklyn into the care of such an ignorant child like Takao would spell a certain death. And that not even he, the one who could pose a larger threat than Balcov ever could to a nation (in terms of natural disasters and famine of course) coule leave it to be. "You're not his bloody baby-sitter."
"Ah but then I wouldn't be able to see you pouting all the time."
The look on Yuriy's face was one of surprise, priceless. Kai quietly cursed himself; he had not meant to say that out loud. Not meant to say anything to suggest a promise of tomorrow, of healing, of a future. But what better to get Yuriy's mind off things? Horomons were useful at... inopportunant times as he found out, and he had missed the quiet look of softness in Yuriy's eyes.
If only he could look into them...
-
-
"Will I be able to touch anyone... Without... changing them?"
Brooklyn smiled broadly. He curled his larger hand against Kai's paler ones. Kai had shed his gloves earlier as Brooklyn was all too powerful to be affected by a trivial thing and that it was too warm inside to wear them.
"Is that what you call it? Changing someone?"
Kai looked up at him challengingly, he had leaned away. The spell of peace broken, and yet their hands remained connected finger to finger, parting at the palms.
"What would you call it?"
The smile broadened, green eyes twinkling Brooklyn brought their palms together.
"I would call it 'marking' someone."
"Heaven forbid..." commented Kai dryly,
"You can touch me." Brookly said softly. "You would never have to fear me changing, by your hands." Indeed the darkening flush was gone like drawings of chalk against the oncoming rain. The greeness in his eyes was as fresh as they had ever been, surrounded by smoke not of Kuro Suzaku's origin but of Zeus. "But all the same I suggest wearing fingered gloves."
The longer fingers closed against the shorter ones before letting go, abeit reluctantly.
-
-
'Was I not enough?'
'Was I ... not enough?'
Despair was an emotion he had come to know very well, something he identified himself with. Something that looked terrible on the older Russian's face.
Kai wanted to reach out so badly. To touch the snowy skin with his hands, replay throes of passion on which they had shakily built their relationship upon. He wanted... he wanted to...
Fire exploded behind his eyes, the maddened screech of anger shrill inside his head. He faltered momentarily, almost falling on his knees as the image of a giant firebird swallowed the blizzard and all its creatures. Froze momentarily as the ruch of black feathers claimed foothold on his stomach and cocooned his heart from the outside. A moment enough for Yuriy to see not a young man so confident and suave in his actions but a frightened boy, tossed in a storm like a fragile leaf.
"Kai..." the half-healed legs protested as Yuriy clutched the silver banged Russian into his arms, ignoring the shivers and trembles of a frightened animal as he tighted his hold around the shaking figure the redhead whispered, "I won't let you go, I won't, you're mine Kai and I don't like to share... I'm not letting you go." Slowlythe quaking ceased and as Yuriy collapsed on to his knees (stifling a yelp) Kai fell with him. Face buried in the long-sleeved shirt, breathing in the scent of the snow and the storm.
Or Yuriy.
"Yours," Kai said softly after a while, "Yours to play with, to keep, to abandon." Yuriy flinched. "Just like before... promises are meant to be broken aren't they? And I for one are sick of them."
"You promised Brooklyn didn't you?" said Yuriy quietly, not as a question but a statement.
"How'd you know that?" Kai's muffled voice replied,
"I guessed, I guessed that there was another reason you kept going back. Something you wanted." Kai was quiet.
"Yuriy, whatever you do don't hold on. Let go before it gets too high."
"Kai,"
"It's for your own good."
"The last time someone said that to me, I believe I was shut up in a tank for over a week." Countered Yuriy,
This elicited a weak chuckle from Kai. Yuriy smiled in response.
"Don't try to fight it... just let go."
"Kai..."
"Don't." Kai lifted his head off of Yuriy's chest, staring at the rehead youth with the eyes of a phoenix. Kai nearly wept in relief at the sight of the shade of aqua the elder teen's eyes had always been, but not here, not now. Yuriy's mouth parted once more.
"Kai..."
"I said don't."
Kai grabbed the paler hands; the younger teen's hands were gloved. That in itself was odd, Kai never wore fingered gloves...
"Please..." he brought the hands close and pressed his lips against the back of the leather-clad hands.
-
-
"Your legs will never heal at this rate."
"They'll never heal if I keep going back to that old hag."
Kai shrugged, setting a gloved hand on one of Yuriy's legs. The throbbing pain went away at the touch, like a swarm of rats being chased by a cat. Yuriy nearly purred as the hands moved up and down, confortingly rubbing the muscles to prevent atrophy.
"Why can't I stay home?" Yuriy snapped his fingers just as Kai's hands began to hover above the other leg. "You can be my nurse."
Kai shot him a glare and immediately began to massage the leg with more vigor than necessary.
"Or not," winced Yuriy, "Maybe we can convince Boris to be a nurse. He's such a girl anyways it wouldn't matter if we dressed him up in a bloody nurse's outfit."
Again a pause, quavering of the shoulders suggesting stifled laughter.
"...Aside from the fact I shudder to think of the impact of that idea on our society, Boris technically wouldn't be able to nurse you because Sergei would need 'extra' care."
"But he wants to be a doctor, no doctor gets sick..." Said Yuriy absentmindedly, "man I wish that old bag would break that rule and get terminally ill." Yuriy looked worriedly down at Kai who looked like he was having a series of convulsive fits. "Cancer maybe, or maybe I can give her a broken arm or two. Think she'd mind amputation?"
-
-
"You're in a good mood today."
"Ah so are you."
A series of kicks blocked easily,
"You and Yuriy kiss and make up?"
"...Not exactly."
A feint to the head, ignored
"You're smiling... what the hell's wrong with you?"
"...Nothing..."
Panting, locked together
"Ivan's calling for help."
"Why?"
"He says there's something important that he wants us to see..."
"Hn..."
"Call it a day?"
A nod,
"Boris?"
"Yeah Kai?"
"How would you like a nurse's outfit?"
"!...?...!"
A.C.: This last part seems too omake-ish...not much romance but some humor -squints- to be continued...