Disclaimer: Kazuya Minekura owns Wild Adapter. I do not.

Warning: Language, sexual references.

Notes: New year, new chapter?

Beretta 15

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January 2010

Ryoji helps you drag your unconscious roommate upstairs and onto your bed, and you realize behind your concern that he really has put on some weight since the day you first carried him home, slung over your shoulder as easily as the laundry.

"Call me tomorrow morning if you decide not to come in," you partner sighs, rubbing the back of his neck wearily and gazing sadly at Tokitoh's unresponsive form. "I'll cover for you, if need be." He claps you on the shoulder affectionately before disappearing down the rickety wooden ladder. He didn't ask any questions when you struggled to get your cat in the front door of the shop; for that you are profoundly grateful. Kasai is probably downstairs explaining things to Kou. You think for a painful moment that if Tokitoh opens his eyes with no recollection of your name, explanations won't be particularly necessary anymore.

The Seven Stars in your pocket don't seem very enticing in the wake of what's transpired in the last twenty minutes. You sit down on the mattress beside your roommate and stare at his handsome face, wonder if you even want to be here when he finally comes around. And as honestly scared as you are that he'll demand to know who the fuck you are again in a morbid round of deja-vu, you know beyond doubt that you won't leave him here to wake up alone, no matter what he remembers.

Or doesn't.

So you lay down beside him, ignoring the growing ache in your ass and lower back, and wrap an arm around his waist. You muse that he rolls into you on his own, but you're certain that he's still out cold. You pull him against the length of your right side, lace your fingers through his monstrous hand, and bury your face in his soft black hair.

And you wait.

You manage to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion. Your rest is interrupted, interplayed with nightmares and cold sweat. You dream of phantom gunmen and bullets, cruel grey eyes and a half-human beast that claws its way into your chest and tears out your heart and laughs maniacally as you bleed red and wet onto dirty concrete. A single yellow spotlight's flickering illuminates your dying moments in your sleep-drugged mind, and you understand that your life has been pointless, meaningless. You were brought into this world, unwanted, to die like an animal, unneeded.

A bruising grip on your hand drags you from this terrible dream and Tokitoh is staring down at you with wide violet eyes.

Caught between the realms of sleep and waking you reach for him instinctively, crushing your lips against his and forgetting for that single moment that he might not even know who the fuck you are. Your error is recognized too late, though. He tenses up against you. You just can't bring yourself to pull away from the softness of his mouth to witness the confusion that could be clouding his beautiful eyes. And for the longest heartbeat of your life, you wait for him to wrench away from you, to lash out at you, to break your arm again.

You're too scared to breathe.

You aren't naïve enough to believe that you can postpone the inevitable indefinitely. You just want one more minute with Tokitoh before Ushio Minoru rears up and beats the living shit out of you, demands to know what you're doing and who you are. You want to sear into your insecurity-riddled brain the feeling of his skinny frame over you, his full lips against yours, commit his taste to memory before it's all ripped away from you in a torrent of indignant protest.

When did you become so goddamned pathetic, so breakable?

And Tokitoh shows you just how breakable you've become as he crushes your hand as easily as you've shot so many nameless Yakuza, rips himself from your arms and backs away from you like a rabid animal. He's all bristles and fangs now, extended claws and hackles up, and it reminds you in some mildly amusing, half-defeated way of the angry stray that you had to feed through a nine year-old boy for so many weeks. Tokitoh is gone. This volatile stray is back.

Distantly you wonder how much trauma and strain one man can handle in his lifetime before he simply breaks under the pressure. You aren't sure if you're considering yourself or the feral creature growling at you from the corner.

Your hand is painfully broken, the fine bones in your fingers all but crushed. It doesn't hurt the way you suppose it should, like your heart pounding its way through your ribs right now, like your cold and agile mind calculating your escape route from this refuge turned containment cell. The terrified young man backed against the wall is glancing wildly around the room and searching for an exit. You know that you can't stop him if he decides to run. He'll just kill you.

You think that having to teach him to read, to tie his shoelaces, to boil water, to trust again would be your own undoing, though, so why not intercept your homicidally frightened cat? Suddenly fighting Sanada and the shadow conspiracy behind Wild Adapter pales in comparison to reconditioning Ushio Minoru a second time, and you wish that you had never picked him up out of that gutter. He could have been someone else's problem. He could have died on that cold city sidewalk. He could have left the barbed-wire fortifications around your shriveled little heart intact.

Instead, his infectious curiosity, his perpetual indignation at the horrors of life, his humanity have reacquainted you with yours, and you find yourself closing the distance between you and the cornered animal hissing and growling like vocalized pain. You've always lived on that razor's edge between suicide and carpe diem. You aren't sure which one you're committing when you reach out and pull him against you, when he sinks those terrible claws into your left arm and snarls at you in a combination of fear and rage.

He doesn't fight back as vehemently as you'd expected. He tenses like an overtaut violin string against you but does not run. You don't know what significance that holds for his memories or mental state, and right now you don't particularly care. Half of you wants those talons to rip apart your torso and spill your insides onto your shoes, wants this whole sordid affair over and done with. Half of you wants that flare of disoriented and terrified recognition that flashes in his very violet eyes to be real.

"W-Who the hell are you?" he asks shakily.

You smile without humor and watch the claws of that gruesome right hand of his sheath themselves deeper into your left arm. Fuck, does that hurt. "Kubota Makoto," you answer quietly, as if you hadn't known him inside and out for all this time, as if you were strangers. But then again, now you are. Again.

"Kubota?" He's never used your surname much, and it sounds awkward muttered in his voice, spat like a curse. "Where are we? What did you do to me?"

Carefully, you reach over and take his wrist, holding his gaze as you do. You pull his claws slowly and excruciatingly from under your skin, ignore the blood that wells to the surface and slides down your arm like morbid rainwater. You can't bring yourself to don that characteristic smile of yours. It may have died with his memory of you, of your tiny apartment and your spicy curry and the people you've killed to protect him. "I may need stitches," you explain. Your voice sounds dead and monotone, even to you. "I'll be back later."

You can tell that he wants a more comprehensive explanation, and answers to his questions, but you can't look at him anymore right now or you'll end up on a shooting rampage tonight. You back away from him, head down the stairs and ignore the shaking of your hands, the way your knees feel unable to support your body. You find Kou at his computer and take a seat on a nearby stool. You disregard the blood soaking through your shirt sleeve. "Tokitoh doesn't know who I am," you say quietly. Kou gives you a penetrating look. "I'm not sure what to do with him."

Your Chinese associate nods slowly, thoughtfully. Then he speaks carefully, and a part of you is shocked at what he says. "Perhaps this is your opportunity to rid yourself of a serious problem?"

The way he says it, and then fixes you with a completely unreadable expression makes your skin crawl. But the good doctor is correct--now would be your opportune chance to turn Ushio Minoru loose on the dirty underbelly of Yokohama and be rid of him, and Sanada, and the Yakuza. For good.

"No." The word springs from your lips with the lethal intent of a sword's downward arc in battle, and the conviction behind it is overwhelming. Kou's indifferent mask slips and a flash of approval glows in his dark eyes before he turns away from you to type a series of keystrokes into the computer.

"Then we start again," he says resolutely. "And I suggest we begin with his family connections. I expect your uncle should have some information." You nod. Love has made a fool of you in the past. You fully intend to grab it by the balls and bring it to its knees this time.

This story gets harder to write with every chapter. Let's pray that Minekura takes pity on us soon.