[X/TB/CCD] Clamp Campus X (4/5)
Nov. 2nd, 2003 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterSeries: X, CCD, TB
Pairings: Seishirou + Subaru, Tooru x Saya, OMC x Kazuki, Karen + Aoki
Warnings: Almost total AU, fluff, major OOC, semi-original characters, shojo-ai, shonen-ai, romantic attachment of a child to a teenager (but not quite; you'll see)
Summary: A WAFFy school fic concerning a special group of friends in Clamp High. One of them is followed by sakura petals, another loves computers, yet another's surname is Magami...
Rating: PG-13 unless you're really squicked by shota (as I mentioned, it's not shota, but may border on it enough to make some people slightly uncomfortable)
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Clamp, except Tetsuo (who's mine)
Previous parts available at Beth's Miscellany
Dedicated to: Rachel, for her patience
CLAMP CAMPUS X
Chapter 4: Chaos
There were few things that scared the students at Clamp Campus, used to the unexpected as they were. Sudden explosions, ninja battles in the middle of gym class, aliens and wiring turning predatory (which usually prompted cries of "Yatouji!!!") were everyday occurrences.
But Kanoe-sensei's science experiments would do it every time.
Even Seishirou, Tetsuo, Seiichirou and Saya eyed their teacher's new science group project with obvious trepidation. It consisted of a raised platform surrounded by bright lights and dangerous-looking laser projectors. In the middle of all that Kanoe turned round and round like a crazed spinning top, her long black hair tied into a messy knot. She was muttering something about genetic recombination and morphic resonance, which they decided meant that once again she was using a mix of deranged technology and magic to construct a machine from the fragments of dreams she had remembered.
"Aoki-kun, get the rat, please," she commanded.
The young windmaster opened the cage that stood on a side table and fetched the lab rodent. The creature seemed decidedly reluctant to actually stand on the platform, but Tetsuo wrapped a wire around it with a snap of his fingers and attached it to the device.
The lab door opened.
"Seiichirou-kun, are you ready to leave?" Karen trilled. "I've got cinema tickets!"
"Kid's right, you've spent enough time in that stuffy room already." Tooru leaned over the younger girl's shoulder. Behind her, Kazuki waved at her friends.
"Sides," Tooru continued, "Sei-chan apparently has an appointment as well." She patted the head of the small boy beside her. Subaru, predictably, blushed.
"Right," Seishirou nodded. "The penguins. Kanoe-sensei?"
"Just a moment!" the teacher called out. "We'll just run one more test of my morpher."
"Morpher?" Kazuki seemed surprised. "Isn't it what my grandfather's company is working on as well? Father mentioned their
latest tests had failed, but he's optimistic about it."
Kanoe nodded as she ran around the machine, checking all settings. "Yes, but I'll accomplish it first!" There was a distinct hint of researcher's madness in her voice.
Finally she flipped the last switch. The lights in the entire building dimmed.
The laser projectors flickered on and off. Then they started sending up sparks as the current exceeded their capacity. The arcs of electricity connected random point of the device, and centered on the wire that still held the rat in place.
Then something went wrong, as the wire released the animal and writhed like a living being. It shot back to Tetsuo, nearly piercing his skin. It would have done it, but he jumped back to avoid it; instead, he knocked over several computer banks, and the out-of-control wire ran through some more of them. The room filled with the acrid smoke of burning circuitry as further cables wriggled out of their bearings and fought what seemed to be a pitched battle between Tetsuo and some unnamed, malicious spirit. The boy sent them out wildly; most of the time all they hit were the walls and ceiling of the lab.
One cable headed straight for Kazuki's body, still frozen in surprise in the doorway. Tetsuo's eyes flickered with recognition beyond the pain, and the cable veered sharply to the side. Instead of running through the girl, it knocked her companions to the side. Tooru, Karen and Subaru landed in a heap on the platform just as the lights brightened again to an unbearable intensity, and all laser projectors fired at once. The air smelled of ozone and strange incense.
For a moment, no-one moved in the sudden stillness.
Then the room filled with frantic activity. Seishirou reached the platform first, then froze. Something was definitely wrong.
Tooru seemed the one least changed, though the front of her uniform blouse was distinctly flatter than before, and her skirt hung loosely on slimmer hips. Karen looked at least four years older and a lot more curved, which was only accentuated by the fact her uniform now fit far more snugly. But the one at the most disadvantage clothing-wise was a half-familiar boy - sixteen, pale-skinned, green-eyed and looking nothing as much as an angel direct from heaven.
Seishirou realized he was staring, and the boy - Subaru? could that be the same cute child? - was most definitely staring back.
"Ooooh, it worked!" Kanoe exclaimed.
"What worked?" Aoki demanded, carefully not looking at Karen's suddenly tight blouse.
"The machine - it's a single-argument morpher. It takes one characteristic of the target that differs most from the source and morphs the target to equalize that characteristic. The, ah, mishap caused Yatouji-kun to become the target, and for Kasumi-chan and Sumeragi-chan the chosen characteristic seems to be age, while in Tooru's case it was her gender that was changed."
"Waaait," Tooru muttered, shaking her - his head to clear it. "Is this permanent??"
"Oh no, I can easily reverse it." Kanoe paused to look around her wrecked lab. "Uh, tomorrow. Once I get some replacement equipment here. Until then, I guess I'll tell your parents you were injured in a minor lab accident. It's really better if they don't see you like that."
Tooru hissed something under her breath that made Subaru blush as he helped her up. The boy moved surprisingly gracefully in his new adolescent body, all long legs and catlike gestures.
Aoki showed surprising sense by fetching lab coats for all three transformed persons. Meanwhile, Kazuki knelt by Tetsuo and tried to get any sort of coherent signal out of him. The boy sat on the floor in the same spot he'd fallen to during the disaster, and he kept staring at the hole the stray wire he had launched had gouged in the doorframe.
"Come on, I'm here," she crooned. "You're safe. I'm safe. It's alright."
Kanoe shook her head. "You'd better take him home, Kazuki-chan. And - uh - the others will need clothes."
Seishirou eyed the two boys in lab coats - one of whom had been a girl only minutes before. "I have some of my old clothes that should fit Tooru-kun and Subaru-kun." He started to the door, side-stepping a kick from 'Tooru-kun'. "Kanoe-sensei, it would be best if you could drive them to my place. People in lab coats will be noticed on the street."
"I can lend Kasumi-chan some clothes," Saya offered.
"You live far away - I think it will be better if Kasumi-chan goes with me to my dorm room," Kazuki said.
* * *
Tooru glared at the mirror as if she/he wanted to break it.
"You look very good, Tooru-sempai," Subaru assured her. Both victims of Kanoe's experiment were now wearing Seishirou's old clothes, but while the young Sumeragi had opted for a loose shirt and pants, Tooru's choice was a little less conventional.
"She should," Seishirou put in from where he was leaning on the bathroom door. "She was the one who talked me into buying the leather pants that time."
"I think they looked better on you." Tooru wrinkled his/her nose.
"They are club wear," Seishirou noted. "Why did you dig them out anyway?"
Tooru grinned mischievously. "If you think I won't take the chance to take Saya-chan out dancing, you're wrong."
Her friend winced. He had thought she would stay with them for the evening. It was not that he did not like Subaru, really the reverse, but the child was not dealing well with the new grown-up body. And the Sakurazuka heir for his part did not think it was fair for Subaru's new body to look like that. The boy had him feeling self-conscious about his own looks, and that was simply not fair.
Tooru's head turned when she/he heard a chime at the door. The black hair flew into the violet eyes, and for a moment she looked right as a boy, fey and exotic.
"Saya-chan!" she/he trilled.
Saya did not even come in through the door, and she barely had the time to turn and wave at the boys before her girlfriend dragged her off in the direction of the subway station.
"When do you think she'll be back?" Subaru asked timidly.
"Before midnight," Seishirou said. "If I know her, they'll dance their legs off and get tired quickly."
"They look nice together," the Sumeragi offered, then blushed and ducked his head. "Uh, I'll go and read a bit, if I may. You have some old books that I haven't seen before..."
Seishirou's eyes followed the other boy down the corridor. It was not fair for a teenager to look like that, so graceful and beautiful - yes, like an old painting...
Eight years old, he reminded himself. But it was hard to see the cute child he had come to like instead of this vision of boyish perfection. So fragile, so exotic, so moving.
* * *
Kazuki sighed. It looked as if Tetsuo had not moved at all in the half-hour since she had left him in the darkened room, though the tea she had prepared had been drunk. She thought she should be grateful for small mercies.
"Karen-chan and Aoki-kun went to the cinema," she said softly.
Tetsuo didn't react. In the twilight, his pink hair looked almost purple, and his eyes were two dark hollows. He looked at the wall as if seeing ghosts there, frail wisps of beings beyond her sight.
Kazuki knelt beside him on the sofa. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her head on his.
"You didn't scare me in Kanoe-sensei's lab, but you're doing it now," she said. "Please, Tetsuo-chan..."
A hand closed over hers. Then Tetsuo half-turned to hide his head in the crook of her neck.
He cried for a long time, though with few tears.
Once it was over, Kazuki kissed him.
"There you have your answer." She smiled.
Tetsuo managed a questioning sound.
"To the question you wondered about," she explained. "This is why it is wrong to hurt human beings."
She traced the trails of his tears with the tips of her fingers.
* * *
Seiichiro was in two minds about how it felt to go out with a Karen who was exactly his age. On one hand, it was good not to have to worry about what people would think about him dating a child. On the other, it was... distracting. Yes, that exactly.
Yet the additional four years (and at least one cup size, his treacherous subconscious added) did not change Karen's attitude much. She still detested popcorn, so here he was standing in the concession stand queue with three bags full of various chocolates.
He paid for the sweets and turned around. The cinema lobby was crowded, but not crowded enough that he couldn't see Karen's flame red hair, right there by the fountain, next to the blond guy who had just grabbed her by the elbow.
Oh.
Neither of the two had noticed him. The blond guy looked about twenty, Seiichiro's height, and definitely up to no good by the way he was looking at Karen's blouse. There were three other guys standing around, "hangers-on" pretty much written on their faces. Seiichiro decided he needed to do something, now.
Using his wind mastery was right out: too many people and paper around. And he could not exactly pick a fight with four guys older than him; it wasn't really something a guy like him did.
So he couldn't do anything he would do normally. Which left him with few options. What would his friends do in a situation like that? What would, say, Seishirou do?
And then Karen shot him a look, half fright and half relief.
Seiichiro stopped thinking. He walked straight to Karen. He handed her the chocolates and looked into her eyes. The fact that he happened to bump into the blond guy hard enough to throw him back a couple of paces was completely and utterly accidental.
The guy didn't think so. "Watch where you're going!"
Seiichiro turned with a blank look on his face. "Excuse me?"
"And stop bothering the girl!" the guy continued. "The lady's with us now and doesn't want your stupid stuff."
Karen seethed, but Seiichiro squeezed her arm to keep her quiet. He stepped towards the blond guy until they were nose-to-nose.
The air howled in a sudden wind. The fountain shimmered as the streams of water wavered and shook.
"Get lost," Seiichiro suggested.
One of the other three young men grabbed their leader by the arm. "Come on, Kigai-kun, not worth the bother."
Seiichiro calmly, very calmly took Karen by the hand and walked with her through the cinema lobby. Before they made it to the ticket check, she managed to drag him into a convenient corner for a deep and passionate kiss.
* * *
Subaru stirred his food around on his plate.
"Tooru-sempai should be back soon, yes?" he asked.
Seishirou nodded. "Any moment now, I'd bet."
Silence fell again. Seishirou wondered idly why they were both so quiet now. He had eaten with Subaru before - ice-cream in town, lunch in the cafeteria, even here when Subaru got roped in as food tester for the cooking lessons Akira had given Seishirou - and they usually didn't lack for subjects to talk about. He thought about bringing up one of them now. He could ask about how the boy's sister was, or whether he'd found time to check out the new bird enclosure on campus, or...
Or he could just look at dark hair and pale skin. Green eyes that sparkled with new fire as they shot furtive but inquisitive looks. Elegant lines that were already elongated, though not filled in, and so possessed a strange delicacy. Like a figurine of silver filigree, lit up by an inner fire. So bright, so frail.
What had he been thinking about, anyway?
The phone rang, startling them both.
"Sakurazuka-" Seishirou barely managed to get out.
"Hi, calling to say I won't be back!" The voice was rushed and deeper, but definitely Tooru's. "We'll be - Saya-chan!"
In the background he heard Saya's voice saying something at near-lightspeed. He caught the words "water bed" and then "crimson velvet". He suddenly decided he did not want to know where they would be spending the night.
"Fine," he muttered.
"Okay, bye, have fun together!" And just before the call was cut off, a muted remark. "Twenty thousand yen per night? What do they think they are, the Imperial Hotel?"
Seishirou hung up the phone carefully. "She won't be back," he announced.
"Oh."
Subaru looked at Seishirou with very wide eyes. The older boy decided the situation was starting to verge on the ridiculous.
"Let's watch a movie," he offered. "I think there's a new science-fiction one this evening. Blade Runner, something like that."
Subaru nodded timidly and helped with cleaning up the dishes.
In the living room they tried to find a comfortable position on the sofa without touching each other. When the movie started, Subaru ended up sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa. By the time Harrison Ford was buying noodles on the screen, Seishirou's fingers were in the younger boy's hair.
By the time the dove flew into the sky and tears were lost in the rain, Subaru was sleeping with his head propped on Seishirou's arm.
Seishirou carried him gently into the large bedroom, the one that had been empty ever since his mother died. Even at supposedly sixteen the boy barely weighed anything, too lean even if it meant this fey, elegant kind of gauntness.
Seishirou stayed for a long time by the bed. Standing guard against nightmares.
If anyone ever wants to hurt you, he thought to himself, I'll chase them away.
* * *
In the morning, Subaru seemed much more at ease. They took advantage of the fine weather and had tea in the garden after breakfast.
"Your house is beautiful," Subaru observed, peering at Seishirou over the rim of his teacup. "The garden is so large."
"It's been in my family for a very long time," Seishirou said. "My earliest memories are of mother teaching me how to care for the plants here."
"I wish I had memories of my mother," Subaru said. "I was too young..."
For a moment, he looked his true age despite the more mature body as his eyes closed and his mouth trembled.
"You have a family still. You have friends as well." Seishirou placed a hand on Subaru's shoulder. "Never forget that."
"And then there's you." Subaru looked downwards.
The older boy laughed. "You don't count me as a friend, then?"
Subaru blushed furiously. "No - it's not that - I mean - since-"
"Since?" Seishirou raised an eyebrow. He fully enjoyed teasing the boy.
He did not expect what happened next.
Subaru set down his teacup, took away Seishirou's as well, twisted his fingers in Seishirou's shirt and tugged the other boy towards himself. It was a clumsy and innocent kiss at first, but the smell of summer and his own shampoo on Subaru's skin got into Seishirou's head. He deepened the kiss and his arms wrapped around slim shoulders without any conscious thought.
They separated with twin gasps.
"I'm sorry!" Subaru whimpered. "It's - it's just - you're so good and so kind and so - and since yesterday I-"
Seishirou held the boy down when he attempted to get up and run. "I know. It..." he paused to get his own emotions in check, "it's called hormones. It's hard enough when you become a teenager the normal way, and you had it all dumped on you in one go."
Green eyes blinked. "So - you're not mad?"
"Why should I be?" Seishirou's voice was positively mischievous, but he didn't care. "I liked it."
"That's good. Because - I really, really like you." If Subaru's skin got any redder, he could easily hide in a tomato patch.
"I like you too." Seishirou hugged the younger boy tightly. He tried to be firm and noble and not give in to temptation. Then he sighed and stole another kiss.
Subaru wriggled happily, but then stilled. "Seishirou-sempai, would you like me to stay this way? Not be a kid again? Then we could-"
Seishirou mercifully interrupted him before he could choke on further words. "No. I can wait. I-"
Fingers against his lips stilled his voice. "Will you?" And the question was childish, but completely serious.
I promise you...
"Yes."
* * *
Kanoe did get the replacement parts, and she managed to reverse the experiment before classes started. If anyone noticed the ring on Karen's finger, Tooru's smugness as she looked at her girlfriend, or the way Subaru blushed whenever his eyes met Seishirou's, no-one commented.
Until a few weeks later Saya calmly bought a pregnancy test kit and informed Tooru they had to have a talk. But that is another story.
~TO BE CONTINUED~
Author's Notes:
Yeowch. If anyone knows a graceful way to address an artificially transgendered character like Tooru-as-a-boy, please tell me. I'll be eternally grateful. Unfortunately in this case, I couldn't take the old Sandman way where Desire (a character that can appear of either gender at will) is addressed as "it"...
Pairings: Seishirou + Subaru, Tooru x Saya, OMC x Kazuki, Karen + Aoki
Warnings: Almost total AU, fluff, major OOC, semi-original characters, shojo-ai, shonen-ai, romantic attachment of a child to a teenager (but not quite; you'll see)
Summary: A WAFFy school fic concerning a special group of friends in Clamp High. One of them is followed by sakura petals, another loves computers, yet another's surname is Magami...
Rating: PG-13 unless you're really squicked by shota (as I mentioned, it's not shota, but may border on it enough to make some people slightly uncomfortable)
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Clamp, except Tetsuo (who's mine)
Previous parts available at Beth's Miscellany
Dedicated to: Rachel, for her patience
CLAMP CAMPUS X
Chapter 4: Chaos
There were few things that scared the students at Clamp Campus, used to the unexpected as they were. Sudden explosions, ninja battles in the middle of gym class, aliens and wiring turning predatory (which usually prompted cries of "Yatouji!!!") were everyday occurrences.
But Kanoe-sensei's science experiments would do it every time.
Even Seishirou, Tetsuo, Seiichirou and Saya eyed their teacher's new science group project with obvious trepidation. It consisted of a raised platform surrounded by bright lights and dangerous-looking laser projectors. In the middle of all that Kanoe turned round and round like a crazed spinning top, her long black hair tied into a messy knot. She was muttering something about genetic recombination and morphic resonance, which they decided meant that once again she was using a mix of deranged technology and magic to construct a machine from the fragments of dreams she had remembered.
"Aoki-kun, get the rat, please," she commanded.
The young windmaster opened the cage that stood on a side table and fetched the lab rodent. The creature seemed decidedly reluctant to actually stand on the platform, but Tetsuo wrapped a wire around it with a snap of his fingers and attached it to the device.
The lab door opened.
"Seiichirou-kun, are you ready to leave?" Karen trilled. "I've got cinema tickets!"
"Kid's right, you've spent enough time in that stuffy room already." Tooru leaned over the younger girl's shoulder. Behind her, Kazuki waved at her friends.
"Sides," Tooru continued, "Sei-chan apparently has an appointment as well." She patted the head of the small boy beside her. Subaru, predictably, blushed.
"Right," Seishirou nodded. "The penguins. Kanoe-sensei?"
"Just a moment!" the teacher called out. "We'll just run one more test of my morpher."
"Morpher?" Kazuki seemed surprised. "Isn't it what my grandfather's company is working on as well? Father mentioned their
latest tests had failed, but he's optimistic about it."
Kanoe nodded as she ran around the machine, checking all settings. "Yes, but I'll accomplish it first!" There was a distinct hint of researcher's madness in her voice.
Finally she flipped the last switch. The lights in the entire building dimmed.
The laser projectors flickered on and off. Then they started sending up sparks as the current exceeded their capacity. The arcs of electricity connected random point of the device, and centered on the wire that still held the rat in place.
Then something went wrong, as the wire released the animal and writhed like a living being. It shot back to Tetsuo, nearly piercing his skin. It would have done it, but he jumped back to avoid it; instead, he knocked over several computer banks, and the out-of-control wire ran through some more of them. The room filled with the acrid smoke of burning circuitry as further cables wriggled out of their bearings and fought what seemed to be a pitched battle between Tetsuo and some unnamed, malicious spirit. The boy sent them out wildly; most of the time all they hit were the walls and ceiling of the lab.
One cable headed straight for Kazuki's body, still frozen in surprise in the doorway. Tetsuo's eyes flickered with recognition beyond the pain, and the cable veered sharply to the side. Instead of running through the girl, it knocked her companions to the side. Tooru, Karen and Subaru landed in a heap on the platform just as the lights brightened again to an unbearable intensity, and all laser projectors fired at once. The air smelled of ozone and strange incense.
For a moment, no-one moved in the sudden stillness.
Then the room filled with frantic activity. Seishirou reached the platform first, then froze. Something was definitely wrong.
Tooru seemed the one least changed, though the front of her uniform blouse was distinctly flatter than before, and her skirt hung loosely on slimmer hips. Karen looked at least four years older and a lot more curved, which was only accentuated by the fact her uniform now fit far more snugly. But the one at the most disadvantage clothing-wise was a half-familiar boy - sixteen, pale-skinned, green-eyed and looking nothing as much as an angel direct from heaven.
Seishirou realized he was staring, and the boy - Subaru? could that be the same cute child? - was most definitely staring back.
"Ooooh, it worked!" Kanoe exclaimed.
"What worked?" Aoki demanded, carefully not looking at Karen's suddenly tight blouse.
"The machine - it's a single-argument morpher. It takes one characteristic of the target that differs most from the source and morphs the target to equalize that characteristic. The, ah, mishap caused Yatouji-kun to become the target, and for Kasumi-chan and Sumeragi-chan the chosen characteristic seems to be age, while in Tooru's case it was her gender that was changed."
"Waaait," Tooru muttered, shaking her - his head to clear it. "Is this permanent??"
"Oh no, I can easily reverse it." Kanoe paused to look around her wrecked lab. "Uh, tomorrow. Once I get some replacement equipment here. Until then, I guess I'll tell your parents you were injured in a minor lab accident. It's really better if they don't see you like that."
Tooru hissed something under her breath that made Subaru blush as he helped her up. The boy moved surprisingly gracefully in his new adolescent body, all long legs and catlike gestures.
Aoki showed surprising sense by fetching lab coats for all three transformed persons. Meanwhile, Kazuki knelt by Tetsuo and tried to get any sort of coherent signal out of him. The boy sat on the floor in the same spot he'd fallen to during the disaster, and he kept staring at the hole the stray wire he had launched had gouged in the doorframe.
"Come on, I'm here," she crooned. "You're safe. I'm safe. It's alright."
Kanoe shook her head. "You'd better take him home, Kazuki-chan. And - uh - the others will need clothes."
Seishirou eyed the two boys in lab coats - one of whom had been a girl only minutes before. "I have some of my old clothes that should fit Tooru-kun and Subaru-kun." He started to the door, side-stepping a kick from 'Tooru-kun'. "Kanoe-sensei, it would be best if you could drive them to my place. People in lab coats will be noticed on the street."
"I can lend Kasumi-chan some clothes," Saya offered.
"You live far away - I think it will be better if Kasumi-chan goes with me to my dorm room," Kazuki said.
* * *
Tooru glared at the mirror as if she/he wanted to break it.
"You look very good, Tooru-sempai," Subaru assured her. Both victims of Kanoe's experiment were now wearing Seishirou's old clothes, but while the young Sumeragi had opted for a loose shirt and pants, Tooru's choice was a little less conventional.
"She should," Seishirou put in from where he was leaning on the bathroom door. "She was the one who talked me into buying the leather pants that time."
"I think they looked better on you." Tooru wrinkled his/her nose.
"They are club wear," Seishirou noted. "Why did you dig them out anyway?"
Tooru grinned mischievously. "If you think I won't take the chance to take Saya-chan out dancing, you're wrong."
Her friend winced. He had thought she would stay with them for the evening. It was not that he did not like Subaru, really the reverse, but the child was not dealing well with the new grown-up body. And the Sakurazuka heir for his part did not think it was fair for Subaru's new body to look like that. The boy had him feeling self-conscious about his own looks, and that was simply not fair.
Tooru's head turned when she/he heard a chime at the door. The black hair flew into the violet eyes, and for a moment she looked right as a boy, fey and exotic.
"Saya-chan!" she/he trilled.
Saya did not even come in through the door, and she barely had the time to turn and wave at the boys before her girlfriend dragged her off in the direction of the subway station.
"When do you think she'll be back?" Subaru asked timidly.
"Before midnight," Seishirou said. "If I know her, they'll dance their legs off and get tired quickly."
"They look nice together," the Sumeragi offered, then blushed and ducked his head. "Uh, I'll go and read a bit, if I may. You have some old books that I haven't seen before..."
Seishirou's eyes followed the other boy down the corridor. It was not fair for a teenager to look like that, so graceful and beautiful - yes, like an old painting...
Eight years old, he reminded himself. But it was hard to see the cute child he had come to like instead of this vision of boyish perfection. So fragile, so exotic, so moving.
* * *
Kazuki sighed. It looked as if Tetsuo had not moved at all in the half-hour since she had left him in the darkened room, though the tea she had prepared had been drunk. She thought she should be grateful for small mercies.
"Karen-chan and Aoki-kun went to the cinema," she said softly.
Tetsuo didn't react. In the twilight, his pink hair looked almost purple, and his eyes were two dark hollows. He looked at the wall as if seeing ghosts there, frail wisps of beings beyond her sight.
Kazuki knelt beside him on the sofa. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her head on his.
"You didn't scare me in Kanoe-sensei's lab, but you're doing it now," she said. "Please, Tetsuo-chan..."
A hand closed over hers. Then Tetsuo half-turned to hide his head in the crook of her neck.
He cried for a long time, though with few tears.
Once it was over, Kazuki kissed him.
"There you have your answer." She smiled.
Tetsuo managed a questioning sound.
"To the question you wondered about," she explained. "This is why it is wrong to hurt human beings."
She traced the trails of his tears with the tips of her fingers.
* * *
Seiichiro was in two minds about how it felt to go out with a Karen who was exactly his age. On one hand, it was good not to have to worry about what people would think about him dating a child. On the other, it was... distracting. Yes, that exactly.
Yet the additional four years (and at least one cup size, his treacherous subconscious added) did not change Karen's attitude much. She still detested popcorn, so here he was standing in the concession stand queue with three bags full of various chocolates.
He paid for the sweets and turned around. The cinema lobby was crowded, but not crowded enough that he couldn't see Karen's flame red hair, right there by the fountain, next to the blond guy who had just grabbed her by the elbow.
Oh.
Neither of the two had noticed him. The blond guy looked about twenty, Seiichiro's height, and definitely up to no good by the way he was looking at Karen's blouse. There were three other guys standing around, "hangers-on" pretty much written on their faces. Seiichiro decided he needed to do something, now.
Using his wind mastery was right out: too many people and paper around. And he could not exactly pick a fight with four guys older than him; it wasn't really something a guy like him did.
So he couldn't do anything he would do normally. Which left him with few options. What would his friends do in a situation like that? What would, say, Seishirou do?
And then Karen shot him a look, half fright and half relief.
Seiichiro stopped thinking. He walked straight to Karen. He handed her the chocolates and looked into her eyes. The fact that he happened to bump into the blond guy hard enough to throw him back a couple of paces was completely and utterly accidental.
The guy didn't think so. "Watch where you're going!"
Seiichiro turned with a blank look on his face. "Excuse me?"
"And stop bothering the girl!" the guy continued. "The lady's with us now and doesn't want your stupid stuff."
Karen seethed, but Seiichiro squeezed her arm to keep her quiet. He stepped towards the blond guy until they were nose-to-nose.
The air howled in a sudden wind. The fountain shimmered as the streams of water wavered and shook.
"Get lost," Seiichiro suggested.
One of the other three young men grabbed their leader by the arm. "Come on, Kigai-kun, not worth the bother."
Seiichiro calmly, very calmly took Karen by the hand and walked with her through the cinema lobby. Before they made it to the ticket check, she managed to drag him into a convenient corner for a deep and passionate kiss.
* * *
Subaru stirred his food around on his plate.
"Tooru-sempai should be back soon, yes?" he asked.
Seishirou nodded. "Any moment now, I'd bet."
Silence fell again. Seishirou wondered idly why they were both so quiet now. He had eaten with Subaru before - ice-cream in town, lunch in the cafeteria, even here when Subaru got roped in as food tester for the cooking lessons Akira had given Seishirou - and they usually didn't lack for subjects to talk about. He thought about bringing up one of them now. He could ask about how the boy's sister was, or whether he'd found time to check out the new bird enclosure on campus, or...
Or he could just look at dark hair and pale skin. Green eyes that sparkled with new fire as they shot furtive but inquisitive looks. Elegant lines that were already elongated, though not filled in, and so possessed a strange delicacy. Like a figurine of silver filigree, lit up by an inner fire. So bright, so frail.
What had he been thinking about, anyway?
The phone rang, startling them both.
"Sakurazuka-" Seishirou barely managed to get out.
"Hi, calling to say I won't be back!" The voice was rushed and deeper, but definitely Tooru's. "We'll be - Saya-chan!"
In the background he heard Saya's voice saying something at near-lightspeed. He caught the words "water bed" and then "crimson velvet". He suddenly decided he did not want to know where they would be spending the night.
"Fine," he muttered.
"Okay, bye, have fun together!" And just before the call was cut off, a muted remark. "Twenty thousand yen per night? What do they think they are, the Imperial Hotel?"
Seishirou hung up the phone carefully. "She won't be back," he announced.
"Oh."
Subaru looked at Seishirou with very wide eyes. The older boy decided the situation was starting to verge on the ridiculous.
"Let's watch a movie," he offered. "I think there's a new science-fiction one this evening. Blade Runner, something like that."
Subaru nodded timidly and helped with cleaning up the dishes.
In the living room they tried to find a comfortable position on the sofa without touching each other. When the movie started, Subaru ended up sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa. By the time Harrison Ford was buying noodles on the screen, Seishirou's fingers were in the younger boy's hair.
By the time the dove flew into the sky and tears were lost in the rain, Subaru was sleeping with his head propped on Seishirou's arm.
Seishirou carried him gently into the large bedroom, the one that had been empty ever since his mother died. Even at supposedly sixteen the boy barely weighed anything, too lean even if it meant this fey, elegant kind of gauntness.
Seishirou stayed for a long time by the bed. Standing guard against nightmares.
If anyone ever wants to hurt you, he thought to himself, I'll chase them away.
* * *
In the morning, Subaru seemed much more at ease. They took advantage of the fine weather and had tea in the garden after breakfast.
"Your house is beautiful," Subaru observed, peering at Seishirou over the rim of his teacup. "The garden is so large."
"It's been in my family for a very long time," Seishirou said. "My earliest memories are of mother teaching me how to care for the plants here."
"I wish I had memories of my mother," Subaru said. "I was too young..."
For a moment, he looked his true age despite the more mature body as his eyes closed and his mouth trembled.
"You have a family still. You have friends as well." Seishirou placed a hand on Subaru's shoulder. "Never forget that."
"And then there's you." Subaru looked downwards.
The older boy laughed. "You don't count me as a friend, then?"
Subaru blushed furiously. "No - it's not that - I mean - since-"
"Since?" Seishirou raised an eyebrow. He fully enjoyed teasing the boy.
He did not expect what happened next.
Subaru set down his teacup, took away Seishirou's as well, twisted his fingers in Seishirou's shirt and tugged the other boy towards himself. It was a clumsy and innocent kiss at first, but the smell of summer and his own shampoo on Subaru's skin got into Seishirou's head. He deepened the kiss and his arms wrapped around slim shoulders without any conscious thought.
They separated with twin gasps.
"I'm sorry!" Subaru whimpered. "It's - it's just - you're so good and so kind and so - and since yesterday I-"
Seishirou held the boy down when he attempted to get up and run. "I know. It..." he paused to get his own emotions in check, "it's called hormones. It's hard enough when you become a teenager the normal way, and you had it all dumped on you in one go."
Green eyes blinked. "So - you're not mad?"
"Why should I be?" Seishirou's voice was positively mischievous, but he didn't care. "I liked it."
"That's good. Because - I really, really like you." If Subaru's skin got any redder, he could easily hide in a tomato patch.
"I like you too." Seishirou hugged the younger boy tightly. He tried to be firm and noble and not give in to temptation. Then he sighed and stole another kiss.
Subaru wriggled happily, but then stilled. "Seishirou-sempai, would you like me to stay this way? Not be a kid again? Then we could-"
Seishirou mercifully interrupted him before he could choke on further words. "No. I can wait. I-"
Fingers against his lips stilled his voice. "Will you?" And the question was childish, but completely serious.
I promise you...
"Yes."
* * *
Kanoe did get the replacement parts, and she managed to reverse the experiment before classes started. If anyone noticed the ring on Karen's finger, Tooru's smugness as she looked at her girlfriend, or the way Subaru blushed whenever his eyes met Seishirou's, no-one commented.
Until a few weeks later Saya calmly bought a pregnancy test kit and informed Tooru they had to have a talk. But that is another story.
~TO BE CONTINUED~
Author's Notes:
Yeowch. If anyone knows a graceful way to address an artificially transgendered character like Tooru-as-a-boy, please tell me. I'll be eternally grateful. Unfortunately in this case, I couldn't take the old Sandman way where Desire (a character that can appear of either gender at will) is addressed as "it"...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Cute!
Date: 2003-11-03 07:48 pm (UTC)Though to be honest, patience is a virtue I decidedly lack.... ^o^