chokuto

But you don't want to tell me. Is that also for their privacy, or another reason?

just privacy.

you haven't answered my original question, sweetheart.

It's fine.

[Is it? It will have to be.]

I'll see you later.

do you want to know something?

rhetorical. i'll tell you anyways.

since i've been here, there's only been you.

you meet every need i have.

[Then why does Cy want to sleep with this other person? Is that need unmet? But it would be an unfair question — Rokurou naturally comes to mind. Yet dealing with it, looking that complicated emotion in the face, is harder than he realized it was going to be.

There's only been him, Cy says. Until now? Until this stranger he wants to protect?]

I said it's fine.

（ he could call him on that. it isn't fine, he knows. but — as much as every instinct yearns to soothe and placate, this might be one of those things that's best left wilfully tangled. he can't just bulldoze every emotional hurdle out of the way because he knows how to deal with them. he's certain he could walk this conversation to a better place, but — some things have to be learned.

it still hurts. like doing battlefield triage, and seeing the moment someone realizes you won't help them, because you can't, because they can't be saved, or the risk is too great to try and will endanger many others. he can guess what sasuke's expression looks like, and the way hurt and doubt are both clawing furrows into him even now. he has no way of knowing if he'll return to bleeding wounds or healing scars. ）

okay.

i'll be back in three days. come spend the night with me then?

Okay.

[It's all he says — because even now, hurt and a little left out in the cold, he can't reject a request from Cy. So he closes the conversation and focuses his eyes on the wall of that cramped room, trying to keep his mind away from the thought of Cy, somewhere else, with someone else in his arms.

Three days pass quietly. He knows there is a clinic in the resort, but his wounds aren't severe enough he would even consider seeking outside help; they'll heal on their own with enough rest. The worst is what may possibly be a cracked rib — the area is tender and badly bruised, blister-red fading to ripe shades of blue and purple in short time. It hurts when he breathes too deeply, but it also isn't the first time he's broken his ribs. The difference then is that he'd had access to a medic-nin.

He regrets not learning healing techniques from Sakura while she was available to him in the Netherworld. Perhaps he'd taken her presence for granted, only to find it now gone, an absence more sorely missed than he expects. Their tenuous path back toward friendship had barely begun before he'd woken here.

On the day of what should be Cy's return, he keeps to his own floor — where he's stayed, unable to access Cy's room, restricting himself to bed. At least he'd made another trip to the library before his encounter with Pinocchio in the elevator; he has enough to read to keep himself occupied. Unsurprisingly, and unfortunately for his injuries, he doesn't sleep well.

Fresh from a shower (and the first he's successfully taken in this state), Sasuke is seated on his bed cross-legged, a book in his lap. Simply waiting.]

（ he parts ways with stiles (please understand he has yet to realize they live so closely to one another because all he ever does is teleport, actually, and all these fucking rooms look the same otherwise —) and makes only one stop before he heads to sasuke: one of the little stores that has a selection of savoury food items tailored to his preferences. then it's just a quick text: heads up and scant minutes later, an arrival.

showing up outside the door would only make it seem as if there was an issue, and so he doesn't trouble himself to try. instead, he just steals into sasuke's room through the void, and dumps a half dozen bags of assorted salty snacks on his bed before he reaches for him wordlessly.

and — stops. his brow furrows in concern, and that outstretched hand skirts the line of his jaw instead, whisper-light against that bruise. ）

Hey.

[There isn't much time to prepare himself, but he's spent three days mentally preparing, so — Sasuke only looks down at the tumble of food items that scatter across the bedsheet beside him. It causes him to realize the clench of his own hunger; he isn't certain that he's eaten since early yesterday, and even then no more than whatever meager store of nonperishable items he had in the plastic box under his bed.

Cy's touch lifts his head up, but his eyes are still resistant to make contact.]

It happened before you left. [Short, blunt words.] Before you ask.

[No, he didn't go off and do something stupid just because of his own jealousy.]

I'm fine. The injuries aren't anywhere vital.

（ he turns sasuke's head just slightly, seeking better visibility on the bruise than trying to force eye contact. then, soft — ）

Show me.

[Sasuke just obeys, slipping off the loose, black shirt he's wearing overhead, an act less graceful than usual but there's no flinch of pain in his schooled expression. His torso bears the worst of the damage. A mottling of bruises from blunt force trauma — clearly hard, heavy hits indicative of strength greater than the average human. Yet he was not lying, and none of the areas around vital organs have been struck. Only bone and muscle, including a particularly nasty patch over the right side of his ribcage.

He stays quiet.]

（ his face has been smoothed of all expression. like an empty mirror in a dark room — there is simply nothing to behold.

his fingers drop from against sasuke's jaw to the mottled skin of his chest, his side. the spots where the blood beneath its surface has started to migrate downwards with gravity's drag. ugly colours on pale skin. ）

What happened?

The portraits in the elevators. You must have noticed.

[They're possessed, he doesn't say. If he looks at Cy, it's only when he is sure the man isn't looking at him first — a very careful glance from the corners of eyes, veiled by lashes, seeming to seek... something. Not finding it, so another glance away.]

I encountered the one that demanded punishment for sins committed. I knew the person who was in there with me, so I told him to do this, that I would bear the punishment because I knew how to protect myself from permanent damage. It's not his fault.

[He has no idea that Cy was in the same situation with someone else — or that Cy used the same method, only with the advantage of an immortal body.]

（ he goes to his knees beside the bed, putting him a little lower than sasuke now, and with his right hand braced against the boy's back he leans in to kiss those tender bruises. this is done softly, the way one performs ritual. just as he insists on cleaning him after sex, so too does he offer these ministrations now.

when he's finished, he just loops his arms around him, shifted halfly forward across sasuke's crossed legs, forehead pressed just above his sternum. ）

Don't keep something like this from me again, please.

（ there's no anger in his voice. but there is a dappled glimmer of hurt, of resignation — not so much that sasuke kept it from him, but because he'd made the conscious decision to endure the discomfort alone. ）

[Sasuke's head remains lifted even as he's embraced, looking at the wall, trying not to — collapse forward with the want and craving for touch. All of the mental preparation he's done has amounted to nothing; the hurt fills him like a glass.]

What was I supposed to say? You were leaving to be with someone else.

[So there it is, lashing out of him, as raw a wound as it was when they had this conversation three days ago — or worse for its festering. He keeps his body still, but the effort required is noticeable in tension, muscles pulled like taut ropes.]

It would have looked pathetic.

[Don't go, a plea in the confession. I need you. But he didn't need Cy, or so he'd told himself, because he's licked his own wounds enough times alone to have it down to an art.]

To who?

（ because sasuke should know by now that cy wouldn't have found it so. ）

[He doesn't answer the question — it may as well be rhetorical, for all that he understands Cy is trying to make a point. Yes, it would have been pathetic to his own eyes.]

I wasn't going to hide it from you. I knew you'd see when you returned.

Sasuke.

（ it's said gently, as he peels himself back enough that a lift of both hands allows him to cup the boy's cheeks and look up at him. his brow is furrowed, but the genesis of the expression is not so easily parsed. ）

If you'd told me, I would've changed my plans, or found another way, or done something else. Finding out like this is hurtful, because I wasn't given the chance to demonstrate that care.

You said you needed to protect someone.

[And sleep with them. Yet the thought is a spur in his mind, unfairly buried, gritted down with effort. He doesn't fight the hands on his face, but his eyes remain reluctant to rise, afraid of seeing either disappointment or anger on Cy's face. Evidently he's made a mistake — and the guilt burrows deeper than even the jealousy. This will be it; Cy will decide he's too much.]

I knew that for me it wasn't as serious. It could wait.

（ his thumbs brush sasuke's cheekbones with unerring gentleness. ）

Look at me.

（ it's balanced between order and entreaty, the sort of statement cy makes when he wants to be listened to, but won't hang the moon on it. ）

[He does, quietly, lift those mismatched eyes to look at Cy's face — his own expression sore and hesitant, unsure what to expect and languishing somewhere in that uncertainty.]

（ he lets the contact sit between them for the slow, hourglass drip of seconds transmuted into sand, and then he tugs sasuke down and kisses him, nothing more than a chaste press of his mouth. ）

Do you still want to come to my room?

[His mind is screaming: Say something. The kiss eases some of that anxiety, a reassurance set against his mouth in the brief gravity of physical affection.]

Do you still want me to? [A swallow; an attempt to amend the surge of vulnerability.] I can't tell what you're thinking.

I wouldn't ask if I didn't.

（ as to the rest — he can't always help those moments when he becomes like still water, when the fabric wears thin between what he is and how he seems. humanity, worn long enough, becomes threadbare. ）

I'll explain what I'm thinking in a bit.

[And Sasuke can't help how it makes him feel, in that moment — an opaque pane unbearably familiar for how it closes between them, unknowable. He thinks of his brother again.

Yet the kiss, and the words, stabilize a composure that threatens to scatter in the wind. Sasuke nods, nudging the book he was reading away to make space on the bed — Vis-a-vis: Beginning French — and then spreads out his shirt. Carefully, he picks up Cy's purchased foods and wraps them in the fabric, a makeshift bag to allow easier transportation. He looks back toward Cy, expecting that this journey will be done through the void.]

Okay.

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