A/N: Prompt from K.I.T.T. RIDER. Rated K+/T. Merry Christmas Eve:)

23

Doll

Sometimes IV looks at Rio and feels a tiny ball of hysteria rise in his throat. It nestles somewhere around his Adam's Apple and slowly suffocates the rationality out of him. For a handful of seconds, he is so very terrified - and then it slowly resides down into his stomach to create a brief moment of nausea. It comes and goes fast, so fast he barely has a chance to register it ever happened. He does this every time and it's always just as unsettling.

It happens when his eyes meet hers accidentally, when they wander to catch a tentative glimpse of her, even when it's just a picture of her in another room.

And it's probably because IV has had the awful pleasure of breaking her perfect face into ashy, singed, and grey puzzle pieces that only by a miracle were able to be put back together with the glue of professional medical treatment and recuperation.

She is like a doll, IV thinks horribly. The thought often sickens him, nearly as much as the amount of times he has thought such a thing.

Her skin is porcelain much like a doll. He has proof. Her skin is pale like porcelain, smooth like porcelain, flawless like porcelain (but he thinks she might be hiding burn scars beneath her clothes, because how could she not?), and oh so fragile like porcelain.

He has seen the light in her eyes die and go dull much like a doll. It's a memory he relives every morning when he wakes up before realizing that they're friends now and that it's all "okay" even though it's not.

In the hospital for all of those months, she had been still, motionless, laying and sitting there much like a doll. Barely breathing. So very, very doll-like.

He watches as Rio throws shoes at Ryouga and Ryouga throws them back at Rio and IV feels himself invisibly panicking because what if she cracks, what if it hurts her but it doesn't and she tears off her other shoe and pelts her brother with it since he's "an idiot".

She kicks footballs, trips like every other human on cracks in the ground, backhands Ryouga on the face when he takes his teasing too far, runs faster than anyone he knows, and Duels mercilessly, like a professional. He's very bad at not chewing the inside of his cheek in apprehension when Rio does any of this. He's worried she'll fall apart, even though he knows she won't.

And he doesn't trust himself when she pushes him against the bed, whispering in his ear and kissing him. His breath rattles in his chest because he wants to so terribly and he kisses her back and suddenly he's wondering if he's kissing her too hard - and oh God if he is, her lips could split and she could fracture and he could wreck her and he couldn't live with himself if he did, he couldn't, he couldn't -

"It's all right," Rio says quietly, burying her face against his neck, then trailing open-mouthed kisses along his jaw. "It's okay."

And IV debates; he's scared, she's far too much like a doll, she could shatter if he touches her.

But IV has never been a good person, that's a lie people have told him so many times, he's a sinner, and so he believes her and gives in and rolls so he's on top of her and smiles gently before pressing his mouth to hers once again.

In the end, Rio doesn't break, and IV is very relieved.

~Finish~