Chapter 7

"Fei Long!" Kirishima tried calming his patient, "Fei Long, please, calm down, it's cool, everything's cool…the valium, Takato..!" He reached out to touch the young man soothingly. Fei screamed again and cringed away in terror, trying to escape. Since he was still not wholly conscious, nor very coordinated, this would have looked comical or perhaps pitiful on every other person, but with him…

Gorgeous muscles tensing, he staggered to his feet, his open leather jacket sliding off perfectly defined shoulders, dusky skin glowing. There remained only the slashed rags of his "Canto-Pop" body shirt and his ruined designer jeans and sports underwear, which pooled around his left ankle. In rising he had ripped off the monitoring appliances, and the machine ran amok, frantically beeping.

"Come on, you freak," goaded the antique leather jacket guy, an excited gleam in his pale predator's eyes, "that's it for you, you're done, you ugly monstrosity", he pounced. Lust and disgust were still battling in his rat's face when the man called Yoh efficiently took him out. So fast that no one could tell what exactly had happened, the obnoxious guy was lying on the floor, handcuffed, cursing. "You're mad!" he screamed, "you don't know what he is! You wouldn't defend him if you did!"

But Yoh had eyes only for his companion, circling him like a hunter. Fei seemed to recognize him, but this did not calm him. Instead his features slipped as if he had been hit. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out of it.

"The valium! Give me the valium", Kirishima cried. With badly shaking hands, Takato handed over the 10 mg diazepam syringe, which promptly fell down on the floor. He yelped in frustration, scrambling around between shuffling feet.

Now Yoh pounced, trying to herd his companion in. This roused Fei; he drew himself up to full height and turned burning eyes at him, spitting out something in Chinese that made Yoh flinch and look stricken.

Then the drug pulled him under again and he reeled, gazing about himself like a deer caught in the head lights. Yoh didn't dare make a move. Fei seemed to come to the conclusion he was surrounded. Barely able to hold himself upright, he had apparently decided on reasoning with his pursuers…

Rambling in a curious mixture of English and what was probably Cantonese, he sounded far younger than the way they knew him from class. But it wasn't so much how he was speaking, it was what he was saying, or wailing …"brother, don't"…was to be made out in between, and (his audience froze at that) "don't kill him"…"I'll do what you want"…in a bizarre reversal of Mikhail before it was Fei now who wasn't to be kept from baring his soul… "it hurts"…

"Stop him!" the shout wasn't even particularly loud, but so full of force and fury that even the antique leather guy on the floor jerked around. "Stop this at once!"

Only now did Mikhail realize that Professor Asami had not been in the main room with them, but had just come rushing in.

"I'll have your necks for this."

With the force of a firestorm he broke into the circle and was over at the confused young Chinese' side, who was just trying to pull off the rest of his ruined clothes. "Father, I always give my best to please you", he said in a small voice, in English, alas, before Asami slammed his hand onto his mouth. "Grab his arm now, you imbeciles", he roared, bending Fei backwards over the counter, bare skin pressed against the cloth of his suit, and holding him fast. With a searing stab of jealousy Mikhail realized that Fei wasn't resisting….even though the Japanese was roaring again, he was letting himself be held by the man he had attacked in full force earlier. His hair was splayed all over the counter, his lovely nakedness breathtakingly enhanced by the formal full dress of the forceful man pinning him down. He was even opening his legs a little, eyes fluttering closed, Asami's strong manly hands still clamped over his mouth and face…

Asami reflexively, even brutally, forced his legs together again, tightening his hold, causing the younger man to wince.

"I'll really have you sacked for this", the Japanese announced with such menace that Fei under him, still in the thrall of the drug's disturbing aftermath, began to whimper, eyes opening wide in fear . "What the hell is keeping you?"

But Kirishima was in undaunted professional mode again, effectively pressing down on the vein in Fei's wrist, pulling out the stopper and adjusting the diazepam syringe. The Chinese tried to pull away his hand, but the skilled paramedic had already injected half of valium, rapidly following up with the other half, when Fei didn't overreact.

The diazepam kicked in almost at once, and Fei relaxed into Asami's hold, gazing up in a dreamy stare. Over his submissive body Asami exchanged a glance with the hippie kid again, indicating the antique leather jacket guy on the floor. He released Fei, and Takato, hovering with the blanket, covered his classmate, at last. Swathed up to his neck, with only his face peeking through mussed long black hair, Fei looked vulnerable and adorable, like a child. With a thrill Mikhail remembered the force of his attack, even if it had been a sham one. No way he could have parried that, even if he hadn't felt so very drunken and overwhelmed at the moment. The hot nonsensical banter whispered in his ear, the Asian's tangy scent wafting against him. Later that scent had been mingled with an acrid smell of fear and stress, as he had collapsed into the Russian's arms in that scary dead faint.

Asami was watching Fei too. He looked up at Mikhail, including his friends, Takato and Akihito with a sweep of his head, and silently mouthed,

"Get him away!"

- to be continued -