Chapter 15

Lull

/lʌl/

1. calm or send to sleep, typically with soothing sounds or movements

2. make (someone) feel deceptively secure or confident

3. a temporary interval of quiet or lack of activity:

"What did you just say?!"

"I said that Guren was being such a bastard cos I was like 'let me out on patrols already' and he was like 'you're doing the damn training first like everyone else, you spoilt brat'- can you believe it? As if I need to do stupid push ups or whatever to slice off bloodsuckers' heads."

"No no no, before that, what did you just say? About joining the Imperial Army?"

"Yeah, I've joined the army," Yuu said nonchalantly, as if he hadn't just dropped a bomb on Mika.

Mika let out a strangled noise that may or may not have resembled a dying whale. In a flash his hands were grabbing tight at Yuu's shoulders.

"What. Are. You. Doing," Mika ground out as he flung Yuu back and forwards with each word.

"What are you doing?! Dude, get off me!" Yuu exclaimed.

"You joined the Imperial Army?" Mika repeated and then he went alarmingly still, his hands still locked in place. "This isn't how it's supposed to go- no, you can't Yuu! I told you to stay away from them, not join them!"

"And I told you I'm not staying away!" Yuu shot back, batting Mika's hands off his shoulders. "I need to do this. I need to…fight….get stronger…."

Yuu's voice muddled and trailed off as he felt himself being yanked insistently, like someone was tugging a rope from his navel from far away.

"You're waking up," Mika was saying, faintly and echoing. "Yuu, please just do what I say and listen-"

But Mika's voice was being drowned out by another, one that was shaking him roughly and annoyingly persistently saying, "-get up already, you lazy brat."

An icy blanket of cold air assaulted Yuu and he yelped. Jolting up, he shuddered in the empty coldness and caught sight of his entire blanket flying with a thump to the other side of the room.

Guren kicked the blanket with one foot for good measure and raised an eyebrow at Yuu, unrepentantly.

"What the- what was that for?!" Yuu stopped, shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. "Asshole, it's freezing!"

"Because someone slept through their alarm," Guren rolled his eyes. "And watch your fucking language."

"You just swore though," Yuu muttered lowly which Guren pointedly ignored. With a wide yawn, Yuu rubbed the lingering sleep out of his eyes. "You interrupted my dream too, damn it."

"Oi, I don't want to hear about your pubescent wet dreams. I didn't sign up for any parenting shit."

"That's not what I meant! Who the hell would want you as their dad anyway?" Yuu's ears flushed a cherry red and he glared at Guren. The bastard, who at some point had pulled a wooden chair from the living room and had acquired a cup of coffee.

"…Why are you here?" Yuu asked. "Don't you have paperwork and all that crap to do?"

"Oh no," Guren said, taking a insufferably long sip of his steaming hot drink before continuing. "I'm just waiting for you to realise."

"Realise? Realise what?"

"Realise that you're late for your first day of fitness training- I told you to meet me at ten am, remember? Ah well, go run ten laps around the perimeter as punishment, and an extra lap for every minute you take to get outside."

Yuu spun his neck around at breakneck speed at the bedside clock- half ten- then at his rumpled pyjamas and finally at Guren in mute disbelief.

"You can't be serious-"

"Chop chop," Guren said idly. Yuu half fell out of bed and began to rush around with all the calmness and grace of a highly distressed puppy. Guren took another sip at his coffee, crossed his legs comfortably and hid a smirk behind the white china mug rim.

Yuu's entire body was aching in ways he didn't even know muscles could ache when he fell asleep that night.

"Are you still mad?" was the first thing he asked when the familiar canopy of stars unfolded above him. Yuu walked over to Mika who was sitting pensively, arms wrapped around his knees, and poked him in the cheek. "Hey come on now, don't be mad."

"I'm not mad," Mika said quietly, not reacting to the prodding.

"Liar," Yuu accused and nudged Mika with his shoulder.

"I'm not," Mika repeated and exhaled softly. "I'm worried. About the army using you, about them hurting you."

"Haven't we talked about this before?" Yuu scrunched up his eyebrows a little and stretched his legs next to Mika's. "I told you, I need to get stronger so I can kill all the vampires."

"So you can get revenge?"

"Yeah that's right. See, you do get what I'm saying."

"But what if that's not what I want?" Mika carried on. "What if I just want you to live happily, safe and away from danger? Don't my wishes mean anything to you?"

"Mika…" Yuu turned to smile a sweet, oh so bittersweet smile at Mika. "I can't. Even if you're the one asking, I can't. If I can't avenge you and our family so you can all rest in peace, what reason do I have to live?"

"Don't say that," Mika said a bit helplessly. He pulled Yuu forward and wrapped his arms around him. "Don't cry either, you big baby."

"I'm not crying!" came the muffled protest against Mika's shoulder.

"Sure you're not," Mika quipped but there was no bite in his tone. With his hands rubbing circles on Yuu's back, he rested his chin on Yuu's shoulder and sighed. "Why won't you just do what I say? You used to be so much easier to persuade... One on one fight, loser has to agree with the winner?"

"I'm not fighting with you about this," Yuu said seriously, staunch with uncharacteristically calm conviction. "You can beat me in a hundred fights and I won't change my mind."

"Ah, geez," Mika sighed again and buried his face deeper into Yuu's shoulder. "We've grown up, haven't we? Both of us."

"Mika, there you are!"

Waving his hand, Yuu jogged over in his dream to where Mika was standing. "Geez, where have you been? You haven't visited my dreams at all for a while now."

"Oh, there you are Yuu," Mika said somewhat absently. "I think from what I've worked out, we both have to be thinking of each other before we fall asleep for us to meet."

Yuu found himself remembering the past week with all the insanely long laps at insanely early hours, the staggering amount of push ups and weights training and practically being Guren's lap dog with him dashing from one building to another to deliver paperwork or "go fetch me some coffee in two minutes or you'll get five, actually no, ten more laps", as if that was even humanely possible.

Point being, Yuu had fallen asleep practically every night as soon as his head hit the pillow, too tired think of anything other than how much he'd like to dump Guren's boiling coffee all over his lap and precious paperwork.

"Sorry," Yuu groaned. "I was too exhausted from all this training from hell. What's up though? You look distracted."

In lieu of explaining, Mika simply gestured to Yuu and commanded, "Come closer, over here. No, face me like this."

Yuu obliged. "Yeah?"

"Do you remember the cherry blossom trees in Hiruma park?" Mika said seemingly off topic. "Actually you were only at the orphanage for a few days, you probably didn't-"

"No, I've seen them," Yuu corrected. He felt his heart constrict in that squeezing ache that always came when he though of the past. "The director took me and the younger kids to the park when you were at school once."

"Those trees were beautiful weren't they? They would have been in full bloom when you visited the park."

"Yeah," Yuu smiled a bit. "They were really nice."

Mika closed his eyes for a good few seconds with an expression of intense concentration before they flew open almost triumphantly. "Yuu, turn around."

Yuu turned around and gasped.

Just moments before the dream had consisted of only Yuu, Mika and the night sky above their heads. Now the wide-open expanse of emptiness was full of rows of blossoming cherry blossom trees, exactly like the ones Yuu remembered. The graceful brown branches were overladen with petals that danced in the air and glowed a silver-pink sheen under the radiant stars.

"Wow," Yuu breathed. Mika walked up to his side with a proud smile, the first time Yuu had seen him beam with such pure joy in all of their dream meetings. Yuu looked at him in awe. "This is amazing Mika! Did you do this?"

"That's right," Mika nodded. "Turns out I can still wander around this dreamscape when you're not here as long as I still thought of you before sleeping, and I ended up finding this out. If you think hard enough about something, you can make it appear."

"Wow," Yuu said again, but this time with a roguish grin spreading across his face. "Just think off all the things you could do…"

Yuu let his eyes shut. A few moments passed. A frown spread across Yuu's lips and just as beads of perspiration began to roll down his forehead, a green stem shot up enthusiastically from the ground. Within seconds it was growing higher, round leaves and petals stretching out until a single flower had sprung to life.

"That's not what I was imagining," Yuu said slowly to break the silence. Mika patted his shoulder.

"Don't worry about it," he reassured Yuu, leaning forward to peer at the flower. "That's interesting…yours is a daisy."

"What's interesting?"

"Well, the first time I tried to make something appear on purpose I had a flower grow instead too," Mika explained as he stroked the white petals beneath his fingers.

Yuu crouched down to join Mika's inspection of the flower he had just created from thin air. The flower head seemed to bob cheerfully in its creator's presence. "What was yours then?"

With a wave of his hand, a more delicate looking flower twisted up and almost coyly unfurled its six blood red petals.

"A clematis," Mika answered the question Yuu had just opened his mouth to ask. He let his hand hover above it and thin stems began to reach up and curl around his palm as if they were trying to climb onto him. Mika pulled his hand back and said, "The second try usually works normally. Why don't you give it a go, hm?"

"Don't you 'hm?' me," Yuu stood up straight. "I'm definitely gonna get it right this time!

"Sure, sure," Mika stepped back as Yuu flung his arm out and stretched his fingers wide. He squeezed his eyes shut, body almost vibrating with concentration and yelled, "I want a tree!"

He whooped as a trunk began to grow, but fell quiet again as it only reached his knees before tragically withering and dying away. He could hear a stifled snicker.

"S-shut up!" he floundered.

"Ahahaha!" Mika broke out into laughter and Yuu looked away with hot cheeks, kicking the pathetic looking stump for good measure.

"Ah," Mika gasped, wiping a tear away from his eye as he calmed down. "I haven't laughed like that in a long time. Don't worry about it Yuu, you just need to practice."

And with another lazy wave of his hand, Mika pulled Yuu down to sit. Before they even touched the ground, a plush velvet rug was beneath them along with two plump cushions and a silver tray of sandwiches. Mika's smile was practically bordering on smirking territory.

"Show off," Yuu grumbled, torn between another wave of awe or sheer irritation. Mika simply shrugged one shoulder and fell back on his cushion with a faint oomph.

"Like I said, practice."

Once again they were gazing at the stars above them, glistening bright in their iridescence. Yuu found himself wondering aloud, "How come these dreams always have the exact same setting? Like the same sky and stars and all that stuff."

Mika let out a hum. "You know, the sky is the only thing I can't change. Like I can make all sorts of things appear but the sky always stays the same no matter how hard I concentrate."

"How weird."

"But," Mika continued in a murmur. "I've heard- I think it's to do with us being soulmates. Apparently this sky is supposed to represent the soul bond between us."

"Oh, so that's why," Yuu said, half to himself.

"It's beautiful isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Come on," Mika blocked the view as stood and leaned over Yuu, with a fresh smile beginning to bloom on his lips. He offered his hand like it was a flower of its own. "I'll help you practise how to grow some cherry blossom trees."

Author's notes:

Daisy flower meanings: innocence, purity, loyal love, simplicity
Clematis flower meanings: ingenuity, artifice, mental beauty

NOTICE: I've changed my username from Camiella to florienna so fear not! This is still the same writer. I've also changed my tumblr url to the same username (where I post whenever there's an update in case anyone is interested).

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