Something Me In You p.8
Nagi froze as a soft moan emerged from the body beneath his hands. He’d been trying to be quiet, trying to let his fingers work without conscious thought, and he was good at being quiet. But Schuldig had heard him anyway. Or perhaps it was just the pain that had woken the German.
Twin slivers of green peered out at Nagi through a fall of fiery red hair, and a familiar voice replied to his thoughts. / No, just being touched. Can’t sleep through it. /
Nagi nodded, not bothering to frame a reply in words or thought. It was something he and Schuldig had in common. They’d both spent time living on the streets, and shared some of the behaviors and reflexes of that particular sort of nervous, uncertain existence.
Nagi turned back to his task, gently smoothing antibacterial ointment along the ragged edge of a long gash on the German’s lower back. A few other such wounds had already been covered with the cream and carefully bandaged. As in everything else he did, Nagi was meticulous and precise in his nursing.
"What’s the damage?" Schuldig asked quietly. Nagi glanced at the older assassin’s face again, but the eyes had slid shut behind the hair.
"It’s…pretty bad," Nagi admitted, since it was fairly pointless to try to lie to Schuldig. "Just bruises on the front and a split lip, but he was really angry. He knocked you down after a while, and then he took off his belt and used it on your back," Nagi explained in his best detached, clinical tone. He paused to secure a length of gauze over the gash he’d been working on with some medical tape. "It wasn’t so bad until he started using the buckle end," he added quietly, trying to contain his anger and guilt at the memory. He’d been forced to watch, to learn a ‘lesson’ of his own.
"Whipped like a disobedient dog, huh?" Schuldig asked, an odd note of whimsy in his voice making Nagi stare at him incredulously. Schuldig snorted. "He should know better than to try and play psychological games with me," he remarked. "Someday, he’s going to push too far."
No he isn’t, Nagi thought bitterly. If it was ever going to be too much, you would have left or fought back years ago, but you didn’t. You let him treat you like this because you love him. How can you love somebody who hurts you the way he does?
"Maybe because I don’t have any basis for comparison?" Schuldig replied sarcastically, answering Nagi’s thoughts.
Nagi sighed and clamped down on his opinions, focusing on Schuldig’s wounds.
"You shouldn’t be doing this, Nagi. You should be laying down, letting your leg heal," Schuldig scolded him after a moment of companionable silence.
Nagi shrugged away the words, glancing down at the bloody field dressing Schuldig had applied back at the Kritiker base. The bullet had just grazed the side of his leg, but it hurt a lot. Crawford hadn’t been terribly concerned about the wound, just telling Nagi to change the dressing to sterile gauze before he’d left the house to go find Farferello.
Nagi hadn’t bothered with it yet. He’d used his power to get Schuldig upstairs to his own room, and then set to work on the German’s injuries.
"Nagi, you stupid little shit," Schuldig snapped irritably, picking up this information as Nagi reviewed it in his mind. The German began pushing himself up off the mattress.
"Schuldig! Stay down!" Nagi demanded worriedly. "Your back is - "
"Is fine," Schuldig interrupted firmly, shooting Nagi a quelling glance. "A couple of welts are hardly going to kill me. It doesn’t even hurt much." Which was a blatant lie, judging by the tightness at the corners of his eyes and mouth, but of course Schuldig was the only one of them who got to lie with impunity. "Now, put your leg up here," he commanded, patting the bed beside him as he picked up the medical supplies scattered across the rumpled sheets.
Nagi glowered at him reproachfully for a moment, but Schuldig just cocked an eyebrow challengingly at him, and finally the Japanese boy sighed and, with a grimace of pain, lifted his leg onto the bed.
This put him in a rather awkward position, as he had to turn in the hard wooden chair he’d dragged into the room, holding onto the back with one arm and resting his weight on his hip so the side of his right leg was fully exposed. He felt off balance and vulnerable. Schuldig flashed him a reassuring grin before turning his attention to Nagi’s leg.
"I don’t think the pants are salvageable," Schuldig observed wryly, gesturing at the dark, half-dried bloodstains surrounding the hole torn by the bullet. Nagi shrugged in response, and Schuldig produced a knife from somewhere and began gently cutting away the fabric. After a moment, he’d removed most of the leg of the pants, revealing Nagi’s pale, blood-spattered flesh.
"This will probably hurt," Schuldig warned, as he untied and removed the makeshift bandage he’d applied earlier. Nagi hissed as the removal of the fabric pulled a half-formed scab off the wound. Fresh blood began to ooze as Schuldig made small sounds of concern, dabbing gently at the gash with some iodine-soaked gauze.
Nagi watched Schuldig work, the long slender fingers gentle and soothing. Schuldig was careful not to hurt him any more than he had to in order to cleanse the wound.
The tears came anyway.
Schuldig looked up at him, frowning as he set the last piece of tape in place. "Nagi? Does it hurt?" he asked quietly.
Why do you ask questions you know the answers to? Nagi wondered, wiping irritably at the foolish tears that continued to fall.
"I like to be thorough," Schuldig replied, offering a tissue. Nagi took it and pressed his face into it. "So what’s wrong?" Schuldig pressed.
"It was my fault," Nagi muttered miserably. "I shouldn’t have gotten hit, I should have been able to take them both, but I screwed up, and you took the blame, and I…I let you," he concluded bitterly. I let him hurt you because I was too scared to take my own punishment, he concluded in his head.
"First of all, it was not your fault," Schuldig denied flatly. "I should have been paying closer attention. Yeah, maybe you should have been able to handle your two, but people can surprise you. And these were Kritiker agents, not common street thugs. It’s my fault you got hurt, because I was distracted. As far as taking punishment…" Schuldig snorted. "We got them all. It got messy, and we came close to screwing up, but we did the job. There shouldn’t have had to be any punishment. It wasn’t about who messed up, it was about Brad putting me in my place. It would have happened anyway."
"But…that’s not…fair," Nagi complained, knowing even as the words left his mouth that it was a ridiculous protest.
"All’s fair in love and war, kiddo," Schuldig replied with a grin as Nagi peeked out from behind the dampened tissue. "You know what makes it even better? He knew what was going to happen. He told me the other day I was going to screw up and hesitate, and when we got back, I could see that he’d had a vision of how the whole stupid mission would turn out. Since we got all the targets anyway, he didn’t bother to interfere," Schuldig informed Nagi irritably.
"He…he knew?" Nagi asked incredulously.
"Of course he knew. He is the great oracle, right?" Schuldig replied mockingly. "For myself, I don’t care," he continued grimly, "but he didn’t have to let you get shot. That really pisses me off."
"It’s nothing," Nagi muttered dismissively, working through the implications of what Schuldig had just revealed. "But, Schu…if he knew what was going to happen…then he let it, just so he’d have an excuse to…to…"
"Beat the crap out of me? Pretty much," Schuldig agreed. "It’s part of the ritual, you know," he continued calmly. "There has to be a reason, no matter how ridiculous."
"Why do you stay with him?" Nagi asked incredulously.
Schuldig’s green eyes narrowed slightly, warning that Nagi was straying into dangerous territory. But he still replied, "Where else would I go?"
Nagi sighed, recognizing in a sudden shift of Schuldig’s posture that this little interlude was at an end. Reluctantly, he stood up, ignoring the pain in his leg as he shuffled wearily to the door. He glanced back at Schuldig, sitting on the bed with his knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. Waiting. For Nagi to leave, for Crawford to come…
He would wait. After everything he’d just told Nagi, he would sit there and wait in defiance of everything Nagi had ever learned about self-preservation.
Why do you love him? Nagi dared to wonder again.
Schuldig shot him a frosty glare, and the Japanese boy stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind himself. He shouldn’t have let himself think that. There were lines he and Schuldig didn’t cross, and that was one of them.
But as Nagi reached the door to his own room, he heard Schuldig’s voice in his mind, strangely wistful.
/ Who else would let me? /
Nagi sighed again as he stepped into the darkness and shut the door.
After Nagi left, Schuldig sat on his bed for a while, reviewing the events of the night in his mind. It was really very…troubling, the way Yohji seemed to be able to take limited control of Schuldig’s body. He really shouldn’t be able to do that, and it bothered the German deeply to have his control over himself challenged like that.
Still. There wasn’t really much he could do about it until he figured out how to get rid of the Japanese man.
Schuldig finally lay down on the bed, not caring if he got blood on the sheets. Wouldn’t be the first time. He could feel the welts and cuts on his back stinging at the contact with the bed, but it really wasn’t that painful. He could ignore it.
His eyes slid shut, and he probed into the shadows of his own consciousness, seeking Yohji. The Japanese man was getting quite good at hiding himself away in there, and Schuldig wasn’t very happy about that, either. In the end, though, it was still his mind, and he was the telepath, not Yohji, so he finally managed to find his passenger.
He could tell immediately that Yohji was ‘asleep.’ Not that he really needed rest, not having a physical existence at the moment, but the mind still required a certain amount of time spent in the sleep cycle, regardless of physical activity. Schuldig considered leaving the Japanese assassin alone with his dreams, but…he was bored.
And…well, perhaps he could admit, just to himself, that he was a little worried.
Just a little.
After all, as he’d told Yohji before, he didn’t want to end up sharing brain space with a psycho, right?
Right, Schuldig. Sure, he mocked himself. Or maybe you’re just a horny little bastard and you want to see if he’s having a sex dream.
With a finesse born of years of dream manipulation, Schuldig insinuated himself into Yohji’s dream, not appearing physically, but blending into the scene, observing.
Yohji was sitting on a bed in a dingy, shadowed room, staring at the closed door. Dirty yellow light from a street lamp was the only illumination. It crept through the blinds, falling in stripes across Yohji’s bare torso.
The setting was familiar, although the precise situation was new. This was Yohji’s old apartment, where he’d lived when he’d worked with Asuka. Schuldig had seen it before, in Yohji’s recurring nightmare of the last day of his former partner’s life. But that dream started in the morning, with Yohji lying in bed as Asuka walked in to wake him up.
Schuldig watched Yohji for a while, but the other man just sat on the bed and slowly smoked a cigarette.
This was getting boring.
Schuldig probed gently at Yohji’s mind, trying to figure out what was going on in there.
He recoiled in surprise at the chaotic swirl of emotions. Guilt, anger, fear, loneliness, hatred, disgust…
Not all directed at Schuldig, either. In fact…
This was not shaping up to be a very good dream, once Yohji got it started.
The door opened.
Schuldig walked into the quiet room.
Yohji looked up at the new arrival, and it finally became clear that his face was streaked with tears. He puffed on his cigarette, glowering at the German assassin.
Schuldig walked a few steps into the room and leaned against a table, twirling a flower in his fingers. He smirked challengingly at Yohji.
"You are such a bastard," Yohji growled at the other man.
Schuldig laughed softly at the accusation and raised the flower to his face, sniffing it, his eyes never leaving Yohji’s. "Did it really take you this long to figure that out?"
"You’re proud of it, aren’t you?" Yohji demanded. "Proud to be a heartless, remorseless killer - "
"Remorseless? Then why call myself ‘guilty’?" Schuldig interrupted mockingly.
"Because you’re proud of it!" Yohji yelled back, rising from the bed, his fists clenched at his sides.
"You’re not dressed for an argument, Kudo," Schuldig pointed out, green eyes gleaming in the shadows as he smirked at Yohji’s nearly naked form.
Yohji stood there, still glaring, wearing only a pair of dark boxers. "Yeah, I noticed. Another of your little games?" he snapped.
Schuldig shrugged, sliding the flower along his cheek as he smiled smugly at Yohji. "Not anything I did, though I can’t say I mind. You must just be feeling…vulnerable. Shall I comfort you?" Schuldig offered, holding one hand out in smirking invitation.
"Fuck off!" Yohji yelled at him, grabbing a blanket off the bed and wrapping it around himself. He stalked over to the window, yanking the blinds up. Schuldig shifted to the side to stay in the shadows. "I can’t stand this, I really can’t," Yohji murmured raggedly, staring out the window at a half-formed dreamscape of downtown Tokyo. "You’re corrupting me, I know you are. The longer I stay here, the more like you I’m becoming. That’s why I did what I did tonight. That’s why I…"
"You killed that Kritiker agent," Schuldig concluded. Yohji gave him a dirty look, which Schuldig shrugged off. "Well, you did. There’s no use whining about it, and it’s silly of you to try and blame me. I’m just a convenient excuse. The truth is, it was you that cast that wire out and crushed his trachea. I would have just shot him."
"Shut up!" Yohji yelled, slamming a fist against the wall. He leaned his forehead beside it, shoulders shaking, with rage or grief. "Can’t you leave me alone for a while? Did you have to follow me here to torture me? Is it that much fun for you to make me feel so fucking miserable-"
"Hey, credit where it’s due, pal. I didn’t do any of this to you," Schuldig interrupted, shaking the flower at Yohji in emphasis. "Delude yourself all you like, but you’re the one who killed that guy, and you’re the one who feels bad about it. I could frankly care less about him."
"Of course. People don’t matter to you at all, do they? Maybe I wish I could be like you…"
"You are like me," Schuldig remarked quietly.
Yohji shivered at the cold tone. "No, I’m not. I’m Weiss, we have a purpose, we protect and defend…You’re just a killer, a murderer…"
"Am I?" Schuldig asked curiously. He looked down at the flower as if it held the answer. "Well, I suppose I am. So you’re right about me. But you’re wrong about you."
Yohji turned his head, still leaning against the wall, to stare questioningly into the shadows.
Schuldig’s eyes glinted out of the darkness, along with a flash of white teeth. "Let me ask you something, Weiss. Can you imagine any of your little playmates cohabiting with me?"
Yohji frowned, apparently trying to conceive of Aya, Ken or Omi trapped in Schuldig’s head. "No," he said thoughtfully. "I mean, I guess it could happen, the same as with me, but…I don’t know how they’d deal with it."
"I don’t think they’d have any trouble figuring out if I was their friend or their enemy," Schuldig observed thoughtfully. "So tell me, Kudo, why do you?"
"I don’t," Yohji snapped. "You’re Schwarz, you’re evil, you’re my enemy. It’s that simple."
"I don’t think so," Schuldig dismissed Yohji’s statement, ignoring the Japanese man’s glower. "We work quite well together, you know. You saved both our lives tonight. You’re very good at what you do, Kudo."
Yohji just stared at him.
"And just for the record, Kudo," Schuldig continued in a tone of quiet, mocking menace, "what you do…is kill."
"I’m not a murderer," Yohji protested flatly.
Schuldig laughed harshly. "Tell that to the pile of corpses you’ve left behind you these past few years. Come on, Kudo, idealism is for kids like Omi, innocents like Ken, fanatics like Aya. You’re the jaded sophisticate, don’t you know better by now?"
Yohji’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the other man. "I thought you said there weren’t any innocents," he accused quietly.
Schuldig only chuckled again, playing with his flower.
"You’re not Schuldig," Yohji said slowly, peering into the shadows where the other man stood.
Schuldig stepped forward into the light from the window. The dirty yellow glow illuminated his red hair, green coat, yellow bandana… He raised the flower to his face again, catching one of the petals in his teeth as he smirked at Yohji.
"That’s a Cattleya," Yohji pointed out quietly, staring at the flower.
"I know," Schuldig murmured, releasing the bruised petal. He offered the flower to Yohji. Yohji took it.
"Cattleyas are…sort of my signature," the Japanese man continued, speaking almost to himself. "They’re my favorite, I give them to pretty girls sometimes, I… They’re my flower."
"I know," Schuldig repeated.
Yohji’s grip tightened around the fragile stem. "You know because you can read my thoughts, or you know because…because…"
Schuldig chuckled, reaching out and gently lifting Yohji’s chin, forcing the Japanese man to meet his sardonic green eyes. "You’re a lucky man, you know, Kudo. Not everybody can put a face other than their own on their guilty conscience," he observed.
"You’re…a real bastard…aren’t you?" Yohji whispered slowly, staring with sick fascination into the green eyes so close to his own. Those eyes slowly shifted to a darker shade, with golden hazel flecks…
"Always have been, always will be," Yohji smirked back at himself.
The blanket fell from limp fingers to pool on the floor, and a moment later, Yohji fell to his knees among its folds. His mirror image smirked down at him, then faded away into the shadows. Yohji stayed huddled on the floor, clutching the somewhat battered pink and purple flower to his chest.
Figuratively speaking, Schuldig bit his lip.
That had been a fascinating little dream sequence. He’d been intrigued enough at his own entrance that he’d just hung back and watched the scene play out. It was always good to know as much as he could of what his enemies thought of him, after all. Of course, he’d known the Schuldig in the dream was just a projection of Yohji’s mind, but he hadn’t expected that last little twist.
What does that mean, anyway? He feels some kind of kinship with me? He thinks I’m like him…or he’s like me?
Schuldig probed lightly at Yohji’s dreaming mind.
He’s afraid he’s like me. He wants to blame me for what happened, but…he knows he can’t.
Schuldig sighed to himself. Yohji was not entirely stable at the moment. Much as he might have liked to leave the Japanese man to deal with his own issues, though, he couldn’t quite convince himself to do so.
He’s not going to want to talk to me, though. How do I connect with him without…
It came to him as a fully formed idea, and it was perfect. But he took a moment to question the wisdom of it. Do I really want to mess around with that complex, too?
In the end, though, Yohji’s troubled mind convinced him. He had to do something, or he’d be stuck with a brooding assassin with an identity crisis rattling around in his brain. Who needed that?
It was easy enough to assume the form he needed. Unlike Yohji, Schuldig didn’t require the structure of physical reality to feel comfortable inside his head. Identity, even gender, were just a state of mind to him.
He appeared in the room and walked over to Yohji, crouching down beside the other man. "Hey," he murmured softy, sliding an arm around Yohji’s hunched shoulders. "It’s okay, Yohji-kun. Nothing to be upset about."
Yohji turned to face him, eyes wide in surprise and a little fear. "Asuka?" he murmured.
Schuldig smiled brightly back at him.
"Asuka, what are you…oh, yeah, it’s a dream," Yohji murmured to himself, turning back to his flower.
"Hey, dream or not, I’m still one of the more sensible people you know, so don’t ignore me, okay?" Schuldig demanded, poking Yohji in the shoulder playfully. It was easy to imitate Asuka’s mannerisms, too. He just had to let Yohji’s memories and expectations guide him.
Yohji smiled wearily up at him. "Yes, I suppose that’s true," he sighed. "But if you were all that sensible, you probably wouldn’t have stayed with me for so long."
"Feh," Schuldig said lightly, dismissing Yohji’s words with a flick of one delicate hand. "You needed me to look out for you. Still do, really."
"Asuka," Yohji murmured wearily, leaning over to rest his cheek against Schuldig’s… uh, breast. Schuldig repressed a smirk, bending over to drop a light kiss on the top of Yohji’s head. "I miss you," Yohji admitted quietly. "Things were so much simpler then…"
Schuldig frowned down at the man leaning against him, a bit uncertain. He’d taken Asuka’s form in order to reassure Yohji, but… Well, there was reassuring, and then there was ‘reassuring.’
Schuldig’s eyes widened in surprise as Yohji’s hand slid with affectionate familiarity up the inside of his thigh. "Yohji…" he murmured, remembering to make it come out soft and breathy, not sharp and confused.
"Asuka…" Yohji whispered again, turning his head to reach Schuldig’s neck, which he began gently kissing. "Please, Asuka…I need this…I need you. Just for a little while…"
"Yohji…" Schuldig replied in a similar tone. Oh, I really shouldn’t do this. This, right here, is a bad idea. Bad for him, bad for me, bad for everybody involved… Yohji’s lips moved higher on his neck, his tongue gently tracing the curve of Schuldig’s jaw.
Of course, this right here, is pretty damn good, too… All a matter of perspective, I guess…
"Asuka…please…"
Oh…God…damn…Hell, noble sacrifice. That’s what it is.
"Yohji…yes…"
But remember, you asked me. Sort of.
Yohji wasted no time sweeping Schuldig up in his arms and carrying him to the shadowed bed. The Japanese man laid the other down on the rumpled sheets, and then just stood there a moment, looking down at him. Schuldig felt a moment’s panic that his disguise had somehow slipped, but then Yohji smiled.
It was a gorgeous smile. Bradley’s was nothing next to this. Yohji’s smile lit up his sleepy eyes, made the handsome face soft and warm, open and inviting and loving…
Schuldig could only stare.
So…that’s what it looks like…
Yohji frowned slightly, reaching out to brush at Schuldig’s cheek. His fingers came away glistening wetly. "Asuka? Is something wrong?" he asked worriedly.
Schuldig blinked in surprise, not having realized he’d let his emotions run away with him. He didn’t do that very often, not anymore. But…there was just something about the picture of Yohji bent over him, smiling like that, wanting, caring, loving…
I will never have that, Schuldig thought with heart-wrenching surety.
"It’s nothing, Yohji-kun," he murmured, striving to stay in character. "You’re just…beautiful when you smile."
Yohji smiled again, looking amused and pleased at once. "Beautiful? Me? I don’t think so, love. You’re the one who’s beautiful." And he slowly climbed onto the bed, straddling Schuldig’s reclining body, bringing their faces closer and closer together. "You’re so beautiful," Yohji murmured when they were inches apart, brushing Schuldig’s hair gently away from his face. "I lo - "
Schuldig quickly closed the distance between them, silencing Yohji with a kiss.
It was…it was…
It was.
The single most incredible kiss Schuldig had ever experienced. It was warm and soft and firm and gentle and hard and deep and… Nothing like he had ever felt before.
Yohji went slow, gentle caresses and whispered words of affection wrapping Schuldig in a haze of the other man’s passion. It was strange…things like this had never touched him before, had never brought him any enjoyment or pleasure…but now, with Yohji…
This is what…this is what it feels like when…
Schuldig let himself be caught up in Yohji’s emotions, riding the tide like an euphoric high better than anything he’d ever experienced. Far too soon and not nearly soon enough, the crucial moment approached. If he’d had any remnant of rational thought left to consider the situation, Schuldig might have found it amusing that Yohji was entering a woman while Schuldig was being entered as a male. As it was, he was just happy to be there.
It feels so…good…right…
"Now?" Yohji murmured against Schuldig’s ear, both of them slicked in sweat.
"Oh, God…yes," Schuldig gasped, then dug his nails into Yohji’s back as somehow Yohji managed to drive into him deeper, harder…
It was more than enough to send Schuldig over the edge. He screamed inarticulately, his entire body shuddering with release. Yohji followed him into oblivion a moment later, more quietly, but again with that amazing smile on his face.
Yohji held himself up a moment longer, staring down at Schuldig with a look of profound satisfaction and complete contentment.
Schuldig felt at once completely elated, and sickeningly guilty.
I…shouldn’t have done that. That was…special. That was…
"I love you," Yohji murmured with passionate intensity.
Schuldig closed his eyes against the words, against the image in Yohji’s mind of Asuka’s smiling, flushed face. Not for me…this is not for me…
"Asuka?" Yohji asked, sounding confused.
Schuldig felt a bitter smirk twisting his lips. He knew what was expected.
I brought this on myself.
"I love you, too," Schuldig murmured. He opened his eyes and smiled up at Yohji, pulling the other man down beside him. "Now be quiet and go to sleep," he admonished.
Yohji snorted softly. "I’m already asleep. I’m dreaming."
"Well, dream of sleeping, then. You haven’t gotten much rest so far."
"Yes, ma’am," Yohji replied sleepily, obediently snuggling against Schuldig and relaxing.
Schuldig lay there silently and stroked Yohji’s sweaty hair until the Japanese assassin slipped into a different stage of the sleep cycle, and the dream melted away into nothingness.
And then he curled in on himself and closed his eyes against the lonely dark.