Thursday1.6 - Recovery

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

Ran set the bowl of uneaten oatmeal on the table by the couch and sat down gingerly, folding his hands in his lap. He wished he could draw his legs beneath him and meditate.

He didn't understand why Yohji had gotten to him that much. Yohji was just teasing, Yohji always teased.

It was just that the things Yohji was teasing about now, Ran knew held a note of truth.

Even if they were little things, meaningless things, even if the words held a compliment and even if Ran knew that Yohji had truly not been flirting with his sister.

Ran was used to protecting the people - the person, as it had been for so long - he cared about, even from these people whom he lived with, considered his friends and even family in some small way. He had guarded how he really felt about his life for so long. Even the small glimpses Yohji was offering the others on his behalf, without his permission, felt like a gross invasion of his privacy.

Ran looked down at his hands.

But they were his friends, and they still lived together. It would be impossible to hide something like what Yohji was trying to start from them for long.

Ran let out a small sigh, and closed his eyes.

...perhaps he had been wrong to have taken it the way he did.

...but Yohji had still been trying to make him uncomfortable, and had seemed singlemindedly bent on revealing what had happened. And remembering what had happened made his breathing catch.

Ran sighed quietly again.

Comments

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

"You're saying that *I* was the reason..." The incredulous words escaped Ran's lips before he could stop them. He bit them off immediately, alarmed.

It recalled the panic he'd felt yesterday, the surprising sense of potential loss, the abyss that promised an absence of hope. All the things he'd already managed to forget he'd felt. Yohji had said many things to him that week, and Ran had categorized each one of them into definitions of delusion and simple lust. He was being too honest that morning for Ran to write off what he was saying now, especially after he had accomplished the sole thing Ran had thought he'd been after.

His heart was thudding in his own ears. What if he hadn't accepted Yohji's proposition? Would the man be back at Schwarz now, erasing himself? That was not acceptable. He did not want that sort of responsibility.

But if somehow, he had truly saved Yohji from that...

The man's hand was burning into his skin.

If they could manage to save each other...

Ran looked away, trying to hide his roiling emotion from the searching green eyes of his teammate. A knot was forming in the back of his throat.

Could he really blame Yohji for needing another person to live for? Ran had that already. Aya had been the only thing keeping him anchored, many times. Even if he considered Yohji's judgment unsound, even if he couldn't understand why he deemed taciturn, uninteresting Ran a suitable lover, could he really sneer at Yohji's reasons?

As last night had proven, Ran himself was more than willing to offer both his own health and Weiss' information to save the other man. That spoke of something far deeper than just mutual attraction.

It terrified him though, just how much Yohji had rested his entire being on the chance that Ran would be selfish enough to take the risk of acting on his own desires.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

"And the light bulb finally goes on," Yohji said, somewhat relieved. "Don't sound so shocked."

A rapidly changing slew of emotion was shifting across Ran's face. Yohji met his eyes steadily until the redhead turned his head away. He moved his hand up to thread through Ran's hair. He'd been fascinated by the scarlet locks long before he'd accepted the broader scope of his feelings for the other man. He'd spent far too much time in the flower shop distractedly staring; he loved that he was now allowed to touch it.

Should he continue to repeat himself? Would reiterating actually get through to Ran, or was he just feeding him reasons to return to shutting down and keeping his distance? Perhaps Ran had only allowed their recent liaison to occur because he hadn't believed Yohji's sincerity. He wasn't sure that Ran had room for a second person in his life as solidly as Yohji wanted to insert himself. He might be crossing a line Ran wouldn't find acceptable. Why else would he be so resistant to accepting Yohji's confessions? But Yohji had a habit of continually pushing the envelope. Sometimes it seemed like he was never satisfied until he ruined things.

He'd said everything else he possibly could though. And it's not like he hadn't already announced his feelings. More than once even.

"I fucking love you, dumb-ass. How many times do I have to say that before you'll believe me?"

Except he hadn't actually said so, not in so many words yet. He'd only implied the true depth of his feelings with the words 'attempt' and 'love confession.' It wasn't quite equal. He couldn't entirely blame Ran's deliberate cluelessness.

He recalled the utter void he'd felt while contemplating Schuldig's proposition and hoped he wasn't accelerating himself towards a new regret.

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

Ran was forced to meet Yohji's eyes again, his own eyebrows raising with shock. "Love?" He managed to rasp out through his clenching throat.

He suddenly felt his nakedness. He felt exposed to Yohji in a way that transcended his lack of clothing. He kept his gaze locked to Yohji's, but found nothing but sincerity in the blonde's eyes. They contained warmth, and beneath it, what Ran interpreted as a stark fear.

Yohji had said, in so many words, that he'd returned to Weiss for Ran.

Ran had leaned his head without realizing it into Yohji's touch. He closed his eyes for a moment. He wasn't as eager to name what he felt toward the other man as Yohji was, but his presence was comforting. His body felt undeniably right. The sex was something that he almost needed to repeat. And his loss, as he'd already realized, had felt like the death of himself.

And as things stood now, it was as dangerous to them both for Ran to deny them this as it was to risk it all and see it out.

"...Probably more than that," Ran admitted finally, opening his eyes again. He quirked his lips up in a tiny, shy smile.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

A breath escaped that Yohji hadn't even been aware he'd been holding. He felt like he'd just stepped out of the path of a speeding train.

Ran's response had been neutral, but that alone was far more positive than Yohji had anticipated. It had never even occurred to the blond that he might be met with a similar admittance. He knew Ran well enough to guess that even if feelings were present, Ran would require extensive processing time to even begin to accept them, let alone verbalize. The simple lack of rejection was much better than he'd expected.

And the smile was downright promising.

"Yeah, love," he hammered it in. "Puts you on a very short list there." If a list can consist of only two. After losing Asuka, he'd promised to cut himself off at one, it seemed like perfectly reasonable damage control. He got too easily lost in it. His reacquaintance with the emotion had been an accident and taken himself rather by surprise. He might have tried to avoid it's development as Ran apparently had, if he'd seen it coming. But once formed his chances of ignoring it was shot to hell. It was like trying not to breathe, the years of it's absence only serving to tighten his hold on it.

"And I can accommodate that," he smiled back.

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

Yohji was beautiful when he smiled, Ran assessed silently. He knew most of his smiles' manifestations as well, from razor-sharp to teasing to the one that hid his pain, but this was the only one that made Yohji look like sunshine. One of the few that weren't fake.

Ran tried to come up with a reason to leave, and found he couldn't. Omi and his sister should have been long gone to school by now, and Ken wasn't - under most circumstances - someone who needed babysitting.

He cautiously met Yohji's eyes, with tentative acceptance in his own. He reached a hand up and threaded his fingers through Yohji's hair above his temple. Gingerly, he scooted forward until he was almost laying full against the other man's body. He let his head fall back against the mattress.

He was amazed that Yohji had been returned. He was still in shock over his own reaction; his whole being was glad of it.

"We are who we are," Ran mumbled after a long silence. Part of him was still afraid Yohji would change his mind after what he'd told him about Schuldig's offer. "Even our pain shapes us, Yohji. Without our memory..."

He would have been like a sleepwalking Aya, a husk not quite himself.

He searched Yohji's eyes, trying to impress how serious he was. "...I would not be here with someone else."

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

Yohji wrapped his arm around Ran and pulled the other man in so that they were touching. He had assumed that his announcement would create a conversation-stopping awkwardness. He was almost surprised to find Ran still in the room with him, honestly.

But he was grateful for the reassurance, it was actually more vital than anything else Ran could have responded with. He was prepared to approach the topic of relationships with spans of patience. He'd seen the warning signs going in, aware that Ran was someone who'd require copious space and time to accept him. It was already going far better than Yohji had dared hope. But the matter of Schuldig... Yohji needed his decision validated. Immediately. If he didn't completely eradicate his doubts, the chances where good that in a single bad moment he could easily find himself grasping at a life-shattering mistake.

"Yeah, I know it," he said finally. "When I really thought about it, it felt like killing myself. Only emptier. I really think I would have preferred to just die and be done with it all."

Schuldig had really seemed to want him to go through with it though. Had he known Ran returned his feelings? Did he only present the offer because he knew the weight of what Yohji would lose if he never saw his teammate again?

Yeah, probably.

It made him uneasy thinking about it. For a while it had seemed like Schuldig might still wipe his memory, consent given or not. In which case, why hadn't he? He wasn't just bidding his time, was he? The tragedy of amnesia would be so intensely amplified were Yohji to be erased now. Suddenly he felt kind of ill.

He let his eyes slide shut and kissed Ran needily.

"Ran," he said, opening them again. "Promise me that if I ever disappear, you'll come looking, okay?"

He hated that he felt he even needed to ask. He hated even more than he had so extensively considered doing just that, in hopes that Ran wouldn't.

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

Ran growled lowly into the kiss, it wasn't enough of a distraction from Yohji's words.

"You already did, and I have."

He left unspoken the part about having fainted from bloodloss because of it.

"Ken and I went after you, but we lost the trail. None of us gave up on you, Yohji. We were going to keep looking." Ran's mouth pulled down in a frown, irritated that Yohji would have to ask that. "If you think that you could leave now, Kudoh, without me coming after you, you better hope I don't find you if that happens."

The man had better not be even considering that as an option. And if anyone dared kidnapped him now, Ran swore, they would know who he belonged to. Ran would personally make sure it was the last thing they knew.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

"I just wanted to make sure you knew it wouldn't be voluntary," he explained. "After what I just told you."

The threat tacked on to the end made him smile with reassurance. He'd been afraid...well, it hadn't seemed too unlikely that Ran would chose the self-sacrificing path and let Yohji go, if he thought that's what would be best for him. He knew Ran was capable of inflicting his own personal judgment on others.

"Schwarz isn't finished with us yet," he concluded morosely. "Keep that in mind."

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

Ran tightened his fingers into Yohji's scalp, scowling at his words. He kept idle threats in check, however. They may have kidnapped the blonde, but they had, for whatever reasons, let him go, and though threatening Aya-chan, they had ultimately left her behind and Ran merely with a sore leg. Something bigger was going on with them, and it didn't seem like they were particularly interested in Weiss at the moment, aside from toying with them.

"You think Schuldig will still be interested in wiping your memory?" Ran's eyes scanned his face, expression dark. His lips thinned. "They let you go."

He felt sick at the thought. But if Schuldig was truly as interested in simply torturing them, now would be far better timing than before Ran realized what he had to lose.

But in some ways, it would have been worse to leave them both with searing regret.

Ran abandoned trying to use logic to figure out Schwarz. They had never made sense to him, aside from the fleeting similarities he saw between Crawford and himself. He supposed he was glad for that.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

"It's likely he's too distracted now to care anymore," Yohji shrugged, recalling the surprise with which he'd witnessed Schuldig's utter panic in reaction to Brad's seizure. "But it's not a possibility I'd discard lightly. He really seemed to like the idea."

He leisurely traced along the edge of Ran's side with his fingers. "Let's not dwell on it though. I just wanted to clarify I won't be reconsidering."

Ran's face retained a grim countenance. Yohji regretted having removed the rare contented smile that had been there shortly before. He should have saved that warning for later, when he wouldn't be ruining such an intimate moment. He shifted so that their bodies ground together. "It would be sacrilege to reconsider," he reinstated.

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

"Hn," Ran rumbled. HIs eyes remained troubled, but he responded to Yohji's body against his and reached down between them to touch Yohji. His palm encouraged Yohji's movements. "Perhaps you need more incentive anyway," Ran suggested, deep voice almost a purr.

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

Yohji hadn't really thought that his body held the stamina to even engage in what they'd already done, let alone continue.... it was rather impressive just how effective a distraction Ran was when it came to bodily discomfort.

He also had never imagined he'd hear Ran talking like that to him. Fuck, it was hot.

He nodded in agreement, continuing to slide against Ran. "Doesn't hurt to make sure," he said encouragingly, reaching down to touch Ran back.