Kamui slid the glass door open and leaned out into the night. It was late, the moon was already making its way down the western sky, but he just couldn't sleep. The fresh air felt good, though, so he stepped all the way outside, pushing the door closed behind himself. They'd had to move him into another room while his old one was being repaired, but he didn't mind at all. Nokoru'd apologized because the new room was smaller and didn't have a sitting room, but that was more than made up for in Kamui's eyes by the fact that it came with a balcony. Suoh called the balcony a "security hazard."Kamui thought it was cool.
He hopped up onto the railing and crouched there, wings half-unfurled. Looking to his right down the building's face, he could see plastic sheets covering up the hole that he'd blasted last night. Kamui winced. Then, a little further on, the mansion's wall turned perpendicularly, becoming the main guest wing. Kamui counted windows along its length. Sorata's room, a shared library, and on the other side of that, Subaru's room...and despite the lateness of the hour, that one room's windows still were alight.
Staring at those tall, glowing rectangles, Kamui hesitated. Then he launched himself from the balcony rail. One swooping flap and then another carried him across the distance, and a third stroke, his wings sharply angled, cut back his speed. Kamui landed with a thump on the narrow ledge outside Subaru's window. He flattened himself against the wall and clung there, his heart beating far more rapidly than it should.
Wings
An "X" fanfic
By Natalie Baan
Part 5 - G-rated Epilogue Version
Warily Kamui leaned to one side, peering through the half-open window. It took a second for his eyes to readjust to the light, and when they did, he started. Subaru was awake, sitting up on the bed with his arms laced pensively about drawn-up knees, but the onmyouji's head was turned and he was gazing toward Kamui curiously. Kamui fought the desire to duck back around the window's frame. Instead he took a deep breath to gather his courage, and then remarked, as casually as he could, "Um, I saw your light. You couldn't sleep either?"
"I was asleep...I just woke up a little while ago." Subaru shrugged lightly, tightening his arms about his legs. "I guess I'm not used to sleeping through the night." Kamui knew how that was: after the couple of days they'd just had, he hadn't even bothered to get undressed for bed yet. Too many thoughts moving through his mind, and if he tried to go to sleep before he got so tired that he absolutely had to...
...far too many dreams.
"So is it all right now?" he asked softly, drawing his attention back to Subaru. His ghosts were the same old familiar ones, and right now he was more concerned about Subaru's. He felt kind of ridiculous, trying to have an earnest conversation while hanging off the side of the building, but it was instantly okay when Subaru smiled at him.
"Yeah...."
From Subaru, that simple admission had the weight of a world-changing truth. Kamui tightened his grip on the window so he wouldn't slide off the ledge in relief. Maybe something of that feeling showed in his face: Subaru's elusive smile deepened slightly, an expression of mingled affection and concern. "Kamui, maybe you should come inside. I wouldn't want you to fall."
"Oh...okay." Balancing himself with his wings, Kamui stepped around the window and then pulled it a little bit further open. Luckily the window was tall and it swung outward like a door rather than sliding up. The opening still wasn't very wide, though.
"/Oof./"
"Careful...can you make it?"
"Yeah." Kamui inserted himself wing-first into the gap, and with a bit of ducking and squirming he managed to squeeze through. There was /some/ benefit to being small, at least...he hopped down onto the floor and pulled his trailing wing in after himself, staggering sideways as it caught on something and then abruptly came free. Subaru was leaning forward with an anxious look, as though thinking that maybe he should get up off the bed and help, but as Kamui shook out his webs and refolded them Subaru sighed and sat back once again, recovering that smile. Moving toward Subaru, Kamui noticed that the onmyouji actually was dressed for sleep...at least, he was wearing a nondescript grey T-shirt and a pair of boxers, which wasn't something that Kamui'd ever seen him in before. It was all so very strange--Subaru's attitude and expression seemed so different, so much more at ease--that Kamui struggled with a sudden shyness even as his heart opened up in delight. His eyes wandering, half-avoiding Subaru's gaze, he glanced at the bed itself, and despite himself the corner of his mouth quirked up in a tiny little smile of his own.
"Hey...I thought you said you'd been in bed already."
For a moment Subaru puzzled at Kamui. Then he looked down and around himself and understood. The bed was still neatly made, a mass of pillows piled up at its head and the spread lying smoothly across it except for one vaguely rumpled spot near the center. Subaru seemed briefly embarrassed, but he collected himself and answered.
"I /was/ 'asleep,'" he replied, a gleam of amusement half-hidden behind his usual quiet seriousness, "even if I wasn't 'in bed.'" He shrugged again. "For so long I've worked odd hours and just caught a little sleep whenever I could...I got used to falling asleep on my couch. I guess it's become a habit not to go to bed properly." Subaru leaned back against the heap of pillows, one arm crooked behind his head. He glanced at Kamui fondly, then closed his eyes. Wandering up to the bedside, Kamui sat down on its edge, and he leaned on the pillows himself as he gazed into Subaru's face...so still and so calm, as if Subaru's whole being had relaxed itself finally.
As if a knot that had been tied around him had unexpectedly been released.
Subaru stirred and his eyes fluttered open. He looked up at Kamui inquisitively and Kamui froze. He hadn't realized...he hadn't noticed how close he was leaning to the onmyouji now, so much closer than he ought to be, and the endless green universe of Subaru's eyes had captured him there, giving him an infinite place to fall into so that he couldn't just pull away....
"Do you ever," Kamui whispered huskily, and his voice sounded strange even to him. He swallowed and tried again. "Do you ever think about that time?" Subaru put his head on one side and the light changed hypnotically in his eyes. All at once it was really hard to breathe. "That time," Kamui faltered, "that one time when I...when I...."
He couldn't get it out. Trembling, he stared at Subaru instead, and saw the gentle, questioning look leave and go slowly inward, as if Subaru had something that the onmyouji needed to ask himself too. After a moment, Subaru refocused. He raised one hand from the pillows to touch Kamui's cheek. He brought his other hand up, cupping them both together around Kamui's face; he carefully traced Kamui's cheekbone with the ball of one thumb...until finally, with the slightest of pressures, he drew Kamui down even closer, the green eyes holding Kamui up until the last possible instant when they slipped shut and Subaru's lips brushed ghostlike against his own....
That kiss...Kamui's whole body seemed to catch on fire from it. He held the gentle, lingering contact for as long as he could before the need to breathe finally made him break away. Putting his head down and resting his cheek close to Subaru's, his arms sliding tentatively around the onmyouji, he shivered with the astonishing feeling of that closeness and of the happiness that very nearly was complete....
"I know," Subaru murmured unexpectedly, somewhere close to his ear, "I know why he can make his wings disappear, and you can't."
Kamui blinked in surprise. "Why?" he asked.
"Because you care." The onmyouji's voice was thin and vibrant with emotion, the edges of it sounding almost blurred. "Because you care so very much. You hold onto everything inside of yourself and won't ever let go." Taking a soft breath, he pressed his forehead into Kamui's shoulder. "/He/--what he's become--doesn't care about anything. He only thinks of the end...and so nothing else exists.
"And that's why," Subaru whispered. "That's why he can wish them away whenever he wants to. And why you can't."
For a moment Kamui simply lay still and absorbed that. Then he whispered back , "I'm glad." Turning, he buried his face in Subaru's dark hair. "I'm /glad/ that I have these wings." And he /was/ glad: an unexpected fierceness that soared up inside of him, a light as pure and strong as a burning flame. He remembered what Karen had said to him then, that time when the maboroshi had fallen, and he tightened his arms around Subaru, drawing from the other a startled little gasp--
Hugging the Sumeragi against himself with all his might, Kamui smiled once more.
He'd never, ever give up.
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