• 1-Broken

Yohji drowned
the pounding music out with another shot of Jager, knocking it back and signaling
the bartender for a fourth. The crush
of bodies in the posh club bothered him less than the bad techno, but he ignored
the eyes that invited him to come closer.

As the liquor
burned down his throat, he felt hands on his shoulders. A sultry whisper invited him to dance, but
he shook his head, turning to shout ‘no thanks.’ The boy moved away with a pout.

Yohji stared
down at the shot glass that he still gripped. Muttering a curse, he shoved it across the smooth bar and stood,
scanning the crowd with a practiced eye.
He shook his head ruefully, realizing that the face he searched for
wouldn’t be caught dead in this particular club.

The blond
assassin tugged at the leather pants that hung low on his hips, and set off
through the crowd towards the door. When
he reached the street, he lit a cigarette, sliding his Zippo back into the
tight pocket. The warm buzz of alcohol
teased at him, but he shook it off as he walked the few blocks to where he’d
parked his Roadster.

The moon
was full overhead, and instead of turning the car towards home, he drove aimlessly
out of town, finally turning and taking the back roads that wound through
the countryside. It was nearly two
in the morning when he was ready to go home and face his empty bed.

He let himself
into the apartment he shared with the other members of Weiss. The kitchen and hallway were dark, but the
soft flicker of television lit the living room.

Yohji’s
stomach knotted, and he almost went straight to his room. But lavender eyes and red hair beckoned him, and he gave in to the
temptation, padding barefoot to stand over the couch.

Aya lay
there, asleep, unconcerned with the colorful anime battling across the screen.
Wisps of hair fell across the delicate cheekbones, and Yohji groaned
softly. He leaned against the back
of the couch, peering down at his partner’s face.
Gently, with a feather soft touch, he brushed the errant hair back.

The only
reaction was a slight shift and a soft murmur.
Yohji moved around the couch and turned the TV off. Aya sat up as the sound died and the room dimmed.
“Waiting up again, Aya?” The blond kept his voice light, trying to brace
himself for the pithy comment sure to come out of the icy redhead’s mouth.

But instead
of the expected barb, there was silence.
“Aya?” Yohji stepped closer,
and his foot hit something under the coffee table.
Looking down, he could barely make out that it was an empty bottle
of wine. The glass on the table was
half-full, and in the moonlight, Aya’s face was flushed.

“You’re
home early.” His voice was uncertain,
blurred around the edges. The older
man shrugged a little, not sure what to say.
Lavender eyes glittered. “What,
couldn’t find any willing women?” Yohji
stepped back at the venom in the comment.
Aya rubbed a hand across his face.
“Sorry. Drank too much.”

“Yeah…” He held a hand out to his friend, and the younger
man hesitated for a moment before putting his hand out. Yohji hauled Aya up, making him stumble slightly
and grab onto the silk of Yohji’s shirt for balance. Their eyes met, and neither moved. Finally, Yohji closed his eyes. “C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”

The lean
body in his arms froze at the comment. A
tiny breath made it though normally iron control, and Aya shivered.
Yohji opened his eyes to see what was the matter, and the look of half-fear,
half-anticipation on Aya’s face nearly made him shudder.
“Relax. I’m not going to ravish you. You’re drunk, and I just want to make sure
you make it to your room.”

The redhead
nodded slowly, and something flashed through his eyes too swiftly for
Yohji to discern what emotion was there.
But Aya allowed the blond to slide an arm around his waist, and help
him stagger towards his bedroom. Yohji
lowered Aya to the bed, but the hand tangled in his shirt didn’t let go. “C’mon, Aya, let me go.”

“Where do
you go?” The words were so soft, only
the movement of his lips betrayed that he had spoken at all. He tilted his head so that he didn’t have to
look at Yohji. “At night, where do
you go?”

Yohji froze,
a dozen responses zipping through his mind, and finally, the truth came out.
“Places that I would never see you in.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, and Aya’s hand loosened, letting the
material slip through his long fingers and fall free.

“Like where?”
He stared up at the taller man through a veil of red hair, and was
surprised to see a blush blossom across the tan of Yohji’s skin.

“Clubs. Bars.” A
shoulder rose in a half-shrug, but the man’s body was tense, too tense, and
Aya couldn’t help himself, the liquor loosening his tongue and his inhibitions.

“What kind?”
He moved his hand away from Yohji, resting it on his stomach, fidgeting
with the soft cotton of his black t-shirt.

The silence
stretched out, Aya unwilling to take the question back now that he had found
the courage to ask it, and Yohji unwilling to answer it with the truth, but
not wanting to lie to a man who had saved his life.

He heaved
a sigh, running a hand through his hair.
“Gay clubs, Aya. I go to gay
clubs.”

“Why.” It wasn’t a question, so much as a statement,
and Yohji couldn’t figure out where Aya was going with this conversation.

“Why does
it matter, Aya? What do you care where
I go at night?” He rose, began to
step away, but those long fingers snatched at his shirt again, snagged at
one of his belt loops, and he stopped dead, Aya pressed up against his back.

“Because
I can’t go out.” The words were whispered
into his spine, puffs of breath tickling at his skin. “Because I can’t be there with you.”

Yohji twisted,
his hands going to pull at Aya, until they were facing each other.
Lavender eyes refused to meet green ones, until strong fingers gripped
his chin and wrenched his gaze upwards. “Why
would you want to be there with me, Aya?
Why does this matter to you?”
Yohji was breathing hard, angry and frustrated and confused, and all
Aya could do was try to shake his head, look away, the courage gained from
the wine dissolving under that hot green gaze.

Yohji shook
him, hard. “C’mon, Aya, tell me. Tell me the truth. Don’t give me all that crap that you normally spew about being the
leader and needing to know where we all are just in case.”

Aya was
shaking his head, his mouth forming words that had no sound. Yohji let go of him, and the smaller man fell
back to the bed, laying there staring up at Yohji with a stricken look in
his eyes.

Yohji cursed.
Whenever Aya showed emotion, something inside of the former private
eye always wanted to protect him, wanted to keep pain from shooting through
those deep lavender eyes. He put one knee on the bed, leaning over to
stare into those desperate eyes. “Aya….”
As he came closer, he could finally make out the whisper of sound.

“Pleasepleaseplease…” The normally cold assassin scrunched his eyes
closed, a look of panic replacing his usual calm shell.

Yohji grinned.
“Apparently you get downright chatty with a whole bottle of wine in
you. I’ll have to remember that.”
He bent further, letting his lips brush against Aya’s. He spoke lightly against the younger man’s skin, breathing deep
of the strange mix of smells that the redhead encompassed. Vanilla and cinnamon and sword-cleaning
oil, overlaid with the sharp bite of wine.
He smiled as Aya gasped, body tensing up under Yohji. The older man’s hands moved of their own volition
to the sharp hipbones, tracing their way up under the tight black t-shirt
as if to memorize every inch of skin.

“Ohgod.” Aya began to breath faster, nearly hyperventilating.
“Nonononononono….”

“Too late
to turn back now.” Yohji pressed another
kiss to silky lips, to a sharply pointed chin, down the long neck to nudge
at the material keeping him from the rest of Aya’s chest. “You finally showed emotion, Aya, and I’m afraid
that I can’t hold back anymore.” But
he stopped, his head rising, his laser-green eyes nearly glowing in the dim
light, catching Aya’s attention and his breath.
“You’re what I go to the clubs to forget. But I spend all my time there searching for you in the crowd.”
He pressed a kiss to the pure white hip near his face.

“I don’t…know
how to deal with this.” Despair filled
his voice, and Yohji could practically taste the fear underlying everything
else.

“This isn’t
something that you deal with. This
isn’t something to push away or repress or hide from. This is something to celebrate, Ayan.” He virtually crawled up Aya’s body to kiss away the confusion and
terror. “You have to let people in,
or you’ll break.”

“I’ll break
if I let anyone in.” The redhead’s
breath gasped out as Yohji ran a hand across the front of his jeans.

“Then break.”
Lazy green eyes were steady on alabaster-pale skin and red-as-sin hair.
He pressed tiny kisses to whatever skin was near. “Break apart in my arms, break apart under
my lips, fall to pieces here, with me. I’ll
put you back together in the morning.”

“Yesssss.” The word hissed out, sibilant, drawn out and
desperate. Hands came up to hesitantly
touch Yohji’s face, to twist in the hair that escaped from his messy ponytail,
to drag him back down for a real kiss. Hot,
hard – teeth nipping, tongues tangling - the sharp scent of desire overlaid
by a need that neither man could voice.

Yohji felt
something inside his heart fall away, as the body that he’d dreamed about
so many nights yielded to his lips and hands.

Aya stretched
out across the bed, his shirt thrown to the floor by an impatient Yohji, ivory
against the deep blue of his comforter. And Yohji’s breath hissed from his lungs, need knotting his stomach
and nerves causing his hands to shake as he unbuttoned the fly on Aya’s jeans.

Red hair
tousled around his face, Aya stared up at Yohji, wonder and awe shining from
eyes that ordinarily promised death. The
taller man groaned, diving in to claim lips and tongue and follow the line
of Aya’s body down to the waistband of his boxer-briefs. His tongue ran down Aya’s chest, teeth pulling
at the elastic of underwear and warm lips closing around soft-as-sin skin.

With a shuddering
breath, Aya gave himself up.