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 - PG-13 Chapter 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....
Kamui's whole body caught on fire from that kiss. He could feel his legs and arms quivering as he hovered over Subaru, and a tingling, coldly molten sensation curled its way up from the base of his spine. Subaru's mouth started drifting away from his again and he followed it--he pressed his lips back on Subaru's urgently, feeling their surprised tremor, the butterfly touch of Subaru's breath against him, and then a tentatively yielding acceptance. Moving his head, he changed the angle of his mouth on Subaru's, wholly absorbed in the movement of their lips against each other's. Wanting even more, he flicked his tongue delicately against Subaru's upper lip, teasing the onmyouji's mouth open a little bit, then a little bit more...he slipped his tongue inside and could feel Subaru flinching away from it. Pursuing the kiss anyway, even despite that, he coaxed Subaru's tongue with just the very tip of his own--and Subaru abruptly let go, his lips parting further and mouth softening all at once under Kamui's urging. Putting one hand and then the other between Subaru's arms, Kamui pushed them sideways, pinning the onmyouji against the pillows. He leaned forward, feeling Subaru arch as the other began reacting--he could feel Subaru's mouth really answering him at last, welcoming him in--and the kiss went on and on for a very long time until Kamui's chest started to ache and his head spun from not being able to get enough air into his lungs.
He broke away at last. Putting his head down and resting his cheek against Subaru's, his forehead buried in the pillow near the onmyouji's shoulder, he concentrated on breathing, on the rapid rise and fall of Subaru's chest beneath his own, and on the hope that the fierce heat starting up in his crotch wasn't about to go all the way into something else. He wondered if he hadn't overdone it a bit. As their breaths quieted, Subaru's hands lifted gently to his shoulders and he suspected Subaru was going to try to push him away. He wouldn't be that surprised. Kamui closed his eyes and steeled himself as Subaru's hands slid down onto his chest and then around to his back...they came up under his wings, and Kamui stiffened as Subaru's fingers touched the webbing on their undersides.
"Soft," Subaru murmured, his breath just barely stirring the fringe of Kamui's hair. "They're so soft...."
Kamui's eyes flew open. After a second's pause, he struggled to push himself upright. The sensitive edges of his webbing glided through Subaru's fingers as he moved, and it made Kamui shiver. Subaru lay silent and motionless underneath him, and as Kamui got to his knees and looked down the other returned his gaze with an expression of perfectly calm seriousness. If there was tension in that steady, watchful look, it was no more than the barest shadow. Instead, Subaru's eyes seemed to hold what had just happened without any question or judgment. It was as though Subaru really was entirely accepting of the thing Kamui'd just done.
Was waiting for whatever Kamui might decide to do next....
Subaru's hand slipped back from Kamui's now-lifted wing. Kamui caught it swiftly. He took it between both of his own and pressed it to his chest. He stared into Subaru's eyes--not faltering now, needing to know if this was true and if Subaru really understood what he wanted and was still afraid to ask for outright. Beneath Subaru's palm Kamui's heart beat more slowly, but nonetheless with a deep and imperative rhythm. Subaru matched his stare for a long, long minute, then smiled, a smile that rippled the dark, expressive surface of the onmyouji's eyes.
He spread his fingers over the cloth of Kamui's T-shirt, pressing his palm more firmly against Kamui's thrumming heart.
Kamui exhaled sharply. Something dawned on him then, a thought that hadn't even occurred to him before, and he paused. "Do you...do you know how...?" he began, and Subaru's smile faded behind a perplexed look.
"I've never," the onmyouji answered.
"Oh." Now Kamui wasn't quite certain what he should do. Kissing he knew a bit about; at school there'd always been girls for whom a "cute" face was reason enough to forget about a questionable parentage, at least for a while. He'd stolen a few kisses and gotten away with it--and gotten a really good smack instead the couple of times he'd tried to cross the unspoken line of what was allowed to him. He'd resented it, both their silly, careless patronizing and their rejection, but now that a way was open to him he was more scared of taking it than of anything else. Especially when the person involved was someone as important to him as Subaru was...he was frightened above all things that he'd get something wrong--that he'd upset Subaru and make an absolute fool of himself in the process. Kamui dropped his eyes in confusion.
Subaru's other hand lifted to touch his face one more time, its back brushing lightly against his cheek. Surprised, Kamui glanced up. He met Subaru's gaze, and discovered that the onmyouji was smiling once more.
"'Together,'" Subaru murmured. "We'll learn it 'together'....
"Isn't that right?"
"/Yeah./" Kamui drew in another breath. He could feel his own smile starting to glimmer out of him. "That's right." Slowly he bowed forward and set his lips against the side of Subaru's face: a hesitant, caressing kiss that held all the tenderness that he felt for this one most special person. As Subaru turned his head in response, Kamui shifted down, lipping shyly at the onmyouji's earlobe before nuzzling into the curve of shadow along the other's neck. He felt Subaru sigh against him and Subaru's arms came up around his back. The onmyouji drew him even nearer, sliding one hand up into the strands of his hair, and as they pressed together the other's body was perfectly relaxed and willing beneath his own. Something in Kamui's heart began to sing, a high, soaring counterpoint to the music that pulsed in his blood.
That kind of acceptance, and that kind of love....
It was what he had always dreamed of.
Closing his eyes then, he surrendered to the urgings of his body--and to the other longings which were paired with that purely physical desire. He touched Subaru with all his passion and with the wish to fulfill the other: to bring them both into that same place of ecstasy.
To let them at long last be made one....
* * * * *
As his heartbreat finally slowed and stumbled back to normal, Kamui drew in a breath. Then he sighed, a long, drawn-out gust of perfect happiness. After their fumbling but enthusiastic lovemaking he felt sweaty and sticky all over, but it was as though he had been washed clean deep inside. He'd given wholly of himself for the first time in his life, mind, body, and soul--without fear, and without holding anything back. To have that great a love and trust for someone...it was like being freed from every last limitation.
Like giving himself to the sky of a brand new world.
And floating in Subaru's arms, his wings wrapped about the dozing onmyouji, he relaxed into that, letting himself truly be that entirely at ease and happy. He spared just one thought to wonder if anyone might have heard them making love. He thought that he'd been pretty noisy, but if he'd set off an alarm then surely someone would have come charging in on them by now. And if not--if that someone had only just noticed and was going to burst in--
--he'd just kill them.
Kamui smiled.
"I know," Subaru breathed unexpectedly, somewhere very close to his ear, "I know why he can make his wings disappear and you can't."
Kamui blinked. He'd thought for sure that Subaru was almost asleep...and certainly he hadn't been prepared for something like that. "Why?"
"Because you care." The onmyouji's voice was thin and vibrant with emotion, the edges of it sounding almost blurred. "Because you care so much. You hold onto everything inside yourself and won't ever let go." Taking another soft breath, Subaru pressed his forehead into Kamui's shoulder. "/He/--what he's become--doesn't care about anything. He thinks only 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 against 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 and wings around Subaru, drawing from the other a startled little gasp.
Hugging the Sumeragi against himself with all his strength, Kamui smiled once more.
No matter what happened....
He'd never, ever give up.
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