De-anon Fic: Corruption (2/2)
Title: Corruption 1 | 2
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): fem!Kurogane/Kurogane, also strongly implied fem!KuroFai, also male!KuroFai if you squint really hard
Warnings: Genderbender self-cest = double Kurogane, sex, language, Infinity angst, uncharted characterizations ahoy,
Setting: Infinity
Spoilers: Minor hints to events up to Infinity
Featured Song: "Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele
Summary: In a world of infinite corruptions and uncertainties, two people find unlikely solace in each
other in more ways than one. Yet all is not as it seems.
Note: Continuation for this prompt at clampkink.
The rest is a blur.
One moment we smash our lips haphazardly after barely meeting halfway outside of the dingy bar and the next we’re back at my place. I think no one else is here, otherwise I would have heard them. Hell, it’s better that way.
At this point, we’re still going at each other, fiercely and hungrily, bruised and tired and drunk from alcohol and our feelings. We’re in my room (technically ours, but for now, it’s just mine room, not ours, mine) now, barely leaving each other to breathe, to pause and think, because we just want it now, now, now. If we can’t get further drunk on fine gold rum or any other heavy drinks for that matter, let us get drunk off of each other then. Those idiots, his idiot and my idiot, don’t know what they’re thinking or even missing, not when we finally found someone who completely understands each other, especially given the corrupt affairs of this place. Everything, everything is corrupted - the Mafia, criminals, police and law authorities. Maybe she and maybe this man’s idiot as well, but I don’t even want to think about her and I am sure he doesn’t want to think about his. I just want to, want to forget about this all for now, now, now and let myself get carried away with him, him who is in actuality pure underneath all of his rough mannered exteriors and scarred body. For as far as I can tell and feel and want and need, his pure heart and mind is something I’ve been seeking all this time in this sick world.
He’s still kissing me and I’m still kissing him savagely. We bite at each other’s lips and then mull back softly; grinding at each other’s teeth and then mollify them with our slick tongues. I was never really interested in men nor have I ever fuck with one, but even someone like me could get corrupted. Corrupted be damned, I bitterly think, wanting only pleasure and this want to be satisfied, pleasure and want I just now realized I want to get satisfied. I don’t know what he’s feeling nor do I exactly want to know, but at the least he’s catering to my wants and needs and I’m likewise doing the same for his. We’re just two people who are rough and violent, passionate and deliberate. He and I are the protectors, the people who demand justice and right-doing to those who are innocent and never before have I ever met someone who is just like me, and maybe, horrible as it is to think now, someone just for me.
Lying on my bed completely sprawled out now, we incessantly wrestle off the rest of our clothes to leave us both completely naked. We’re naked and vulnerable and open to each other - words and minds and feelings at first and now our bodies exposed to one another. My head is throbbing from the light and the alcohol and the heat of the passion but it doesn’t hurt as much. Nothing could ever match the pain of all the things I had just laid bare to him, my drinking companion and now willing sex partner. Heat and wants and needs are pooling far below my stomach and I feel him hardening already. Our bodies are ready, more than ready to be satisfied, but I know something else needs to be done.
“Wait,” I hiss, snatching myself away from him. “Before you go any further you need to wear a bloody condom or else I can guarantee you will suffer if you ever get me so much as pregnant,” I manage to spew out to him before he could resume prowling over me.
“Like hell I got one,” he throws back at me. I could care less that I am interrupting (though my body wants so otherwise) so I smirk at him and pull one out from under my pillow. I don’t remember if I cleverly somehow manage to get one before getting thick in the heat. Gripping the foil with my teeth I tear a corner off and immediately hand it to him. I have no heart or the desire to tell him that I never had to worry about sleeping with a man before and therefore I have no experience whatsoever putting on a condom. He just looks at me strangely enough, but I know he wouldn’t disregard all of this precaution so he puts it on without any more protest.
“Now what?” we both seem to be thinking, and for the last time I could remember before we headed out of the bar, we’re looking at each other distinctly. I search for something in his eyes, into the things unknown and I can feel he is doing the same. But that breaks immediately as soon as he leans down and presses his lips on mine again, but this time gently to my odd surprise. Do I still want this? Do I still want to go all the way with him? My mind and body tells me “yes”, but my mind also tells me “no.” It feels like the alcohol is starting to rub off on both of us and now instead of being insistent and needy and now, now, now, we’re starting over and taking it slowly. Maybe it is better this way, I think, instead of rushing headstrong like how we would normally do it in all other aspects.
As he slowly makes his way down my jawline and along my neckline, peppering every inch of them with the brush of his lips and sending shivers along my spine I run my hands absentmindedly over his muscular arms, letting myself roam over them and take in the arms of a warrior and a devoted protector. I wonder how many times he used them to hurt and kill, but to also care for and tend to his group, maybe even that idiot he claims to hate and loathe, but in reality he’s just an idiot who cares for an idiot. I envy him for being able to still reel in all of those he aims to look over, when I myself have failed to stop her from leaving me in the first place. Not wanting to let her haunt me right now and ruin all of this, I heedlessly seize him to kiss him roughly again. He doesn’t protest at all and obligingly caters to my selfish wants and needs.
Fingers of mine instinctively crawl their way up into his spiky dark hair, and to my immense surprise they are far from being sharp and crude. They’re soft and warm and inviting and I run my hands through them over and over, evoking strong memories of silky blonde hair the same intense color of the burning sun that I would run over day in and day out in the past. I immediately want to choke in this intense remembrance, wanting to wrestle my hands out of them at once. But when I feel his rough, calloused hands running up my neck and weaving into my own thick and silky black hair, I then could only think of her and not of this man.
I let myself go into those territories again.
There is no man in my room right now, it’s her. I’m not kissing him, I’m kissing her. Red eyes are automatically replaced with twinkling blue pairs and the vivid images are now burning heavily underneath my eyelids. Rough skin becomes smooth and supple in the very palms of my hands and I no longer hesitate to roam over them greedily. I haven’t seen her in months but I never forgot what she looks like; could never bear to forget and thus resign to have her burn in the back of my memories here and there. I would give in to her just as much as she would give in to me and now I’m slowly letting myself remember as much as I could when in reality it’s not her and it’s him who’s addressing that want and need. But nearly everything inside of me wishes it’s her instead and yet my body could care less. So I grab one of the hands roaming over my body and hold onto it and I hear his hiss hovering over my mouth. It turns out I went over his fresh scar and feeling ashamed I let go of it.
Still not wanting to let her image go, I kiss him fervently, urgently, wanting to feel that passion again desperately. Just like how he understood my pain much earlier and removed his tournament articles silently, he immediately responds to what I am asking for him once again. Rough kissing, lip biting and tongues clashing resume and soon we’re back to the beginning routine where we’re leaving each other breathless and wanting more until we’re both consumed in the other. Heat is returning again and soon my thighs are sprawled apart and I let him and I let him know by urging my mouth closer against his. The gesture is reciprocated with ravenous kisses peppering violently over my jawline as he lets me mount on him and soon enough he starts thrusting. My arms cling over him and he in turn clings onto me and pulls me up so that I am now wrapping mines over his neck. Another one comes and I’m gasping for breath over and over and yet we’re grinding our hips together in nearly tandem and the motion continues. We take pain and pleasure in this tangled mess, our hot breaths and sweat-soaked bodies mingling with the other, pushing past our boundaries and limitations and even hesitancy to keep going, because goddamn it this is something we both wanted - an escape. It goes on like this infinitely longer and I find myself never wanting to stop, to be relieved and to give reprieve to him as well.
But she won’t leave me, or rather I won’t let her leave me.
With every thrust and tightness and hitch of my breath rattling off of my chest, I see and feel her making love to me or I am making love to her. With every pent up building and rising inside of me I see and feel myself giving her what she wants and needs. With every kiss taking away my breath from him I feel that I am kissing her back vehemently with love only for her and not for him, never for him.
I love her, for all her idiocy and fears, flaws and imperfections. I love her and I want to give her that love. I love her and I want her back, for her to come back to me and us. And I am cruelly realizing that when in reality I am fucking with someone who just happens to be so much like me and can understand everything I’m going through.
It’s because of that I have a feeling he’s thinking along the same line as I am, except with his self-proclaimed idiot.
Each thrust, each movement that leaves my body pressing for more, more, more pains me in a completely different way. Because it couldn’t come to me until now, when two people happens to find what they think they need in each other. But it’s far from the truth.
It’s not love making for sure and it’s not even having sex just for the pleasure. We’re not doing this because we want to feel loved. It’s the contrary and completely the opposite. What ended up being a strange encounter at a bar and finding out we had similar pains and views led to counting on each other as sex partners in order to fulfill what had always frustrated us for so long. We fuck because we want to fully love that someone who deserves it, but that someone is too scared, too idiotic and afraid to stay around and accept it. And because they have run away from us - literally and figuratively - we have now just turned to each other to fulfill the needs and wants and desires of giving that love, that pain and frustration of wanting to care and fulfill the ones we’re in love with. It’s far from that horrible and misleading attempts to cure the need to feel loved, but in truth, it’s just as corrupt and awful. Are we corrupt to lead astray from who we truly seek to help and find to have sex with another? The thoughts pain me so and it hurts wondering if I myself have truly become corrupt, lost and tethering on this man, wondering if he too has become corrupt relying on me. In the short term, it feels good, but in the long run, what will happen? I dare not want to think about that now, not when I’m in my room and feeling oddly taken care of from this person who just happens to be like me.
So I once again let myself wander astray, corrupt or not, onto my true partner.
Suddenly, I find myself breathing heavily and quickly, chest shuddering, getting so close to coming. He keeps it like that and the only way I could feel justified letting myself, letting ourselves in regards to doing this is to keep seeing her just as I am lately. I’m quivering, I’m aching, but just at the pinnacle of this all, I can still see her bare in front of me. My partner, the woman I lost but still love all along is simply beautiful. She’s mine and I’m hers and I feel her coming close to me, giving me one last kiss just as I feel my pent up pressure release at last. Incidentally I bite hard and hear a loud hiss. Soon the images of her rapidly vanish and I have to open my eyes to see not blue eyes, but red ones that mirror my own.
Nothing hurts more than this.
I realize I was too invested, too hopeful all along that maybe somehow I could bring her back. I feel like an idiot for fooling my mind and my body, for letting myself get carried away with this, for letting him cater for me and letting myself use him to give the love I so badly wanted to give to her but couldn’t so he just happens to be the recipient. I don’t know what to do or say, but one look from him and I can see something too is running in his mind and the same sense of betrayal. Betrayal for that person he vented out to me earlier tonight. I don’t need to ask him and he doesn’t have to ask me. We’re eerily similar after all. He seems to understand without me or he saying anything as he slowly pulls out and I bite my tongue to stop myself from screaming. We had just used each other in more than one ways, when all along we were crying inside. And now real tears threaten to surface out of me in this silent, post-coital moment. In truth, we’re silently grieving. So I rest my forehead against his chests and he doesn’t protest at all. We stay like that for a bit, each mourning for whatever (more so, whoever) it is. The act has been done, and there is nothing we can do to erase it. Erase the fact that, at least on my part, I had sex with someone who I am actually not ashamed to run into. But he’s not her, and he can never replace her. And yet I slept with someone else besides her. I betrayed her.
I’m sorry…Fai.
“What…did you just say?” He grabs me and wrestles me away from his chest. He looks furious.
I did not just actually say that out loud, did I?
“Fai…Fai’s my partner,” I explain to him shakily.
“What?!” He’s angrier now, and I don’t know why. “F-Fai’s my traveling companion.”
It feels like something has just punch my stomach and it’s harder to breathe all of a sudden. No, no, it couldn’t be. “Fai has been with you all this time?” I manage to choke out.
“Of course!” he roars. “How, why? I had no idea that that damn mage has been out all this time.”
“Mage? She’s not a mage. She’s a bloody detective like me,” I tell him, wondering what on earth is going on. Are we actually talking about the same Fai?
“She?. The mage is a man. So, so…” He smacks his forehead. “So our idiots both happen to be named Fai. What. The. Hell.”
“I guess so,” are the only things I could say. I am too confused to be angry like he is. “So stop thinking I had been cheating or whatever the hell you call it on your Fai.”
He colors again, and I don’t know if it’s because I said, “your Fai” or because I’m calling him out again. Probably both.
“No,” he mutters. “It can’t be.” He now looks equally lost and even pained as I am about this entire ordeal. “Tell me your name, now.”
Despite all the seriousness and chaos going on right now, I find myself laughing and shedding some few tears as result, which I entirely blame on post-sex hormones. I’m laughing and crying shakily though, because I never realized that we never gave each other our names, when we could have at the bar from the start, until now.
“Fuck, you’re right. We never introduced each other.” I take some deep breaths, because there’s still in no hell’s way I want to look so fragile in front of him, even though we just had a serious fragile night now that I think about it.
“I’m Kurogane.”
But instead of him obligingly telling me his name in return, I find that he’s dumbstruck again. It’s actually getting on my nerves.
“Say something back, you know!” I find myself being impatient once again. But wait…if we both know and deeply care for a Fai, then…
“Don’t tell me…that your name…is also Kurogane,” I say.
He nods his head dully. I think I completely lost it.
“You bastard!” I start pounding on his chest. “You. Better. Not. Be. Messing. With. Me!”
“Oi!” He grabs my hand to stop my rather senseless beatings. “I told you I always say what I mean. I wouldn’t lie.”
I just stare at him. It’s sheer wonder we just went through a rough and passionate evening and now we’re just sitting here on my bed, both still fully naked, and both dumbly realizing just exactly how much we have in common. “This is creepy. How the hell is it that we both have the same names and know someone with the same names as well?”
Kurogane sighs. “It’s not an easy thing to explain, but long story short, I now understand why we happen to know each other so well.”
Maybe, maybe I’m starting to get it, but I don’t think I will fully ever understand. “Because we’re the same and yet we’re not?”
“Yeah…”
“Does this mean,” I dare to ask this. “That what happens to the Fai’s we know could be the same?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he admits. “Though frankly, it’s up to what we choose. And I should head back to the place we’re staying at.”
Kurogane gets up and starts putting on his clothes. I’m still letting his words sink in. He seems to know more about this than I do…but if I’m him and he’s me but I’m still just me and he’s still just him, then I trust him. It’s simple and it’s not. And yet both of us are calm, even though according to this strange theory we had just, to put it bluntly, fuck ourselves and yet not at the same time. There are far worse things to get your head into, I think. No, the only thing that is still in my head - had always been in my head, but didn’t really know until now, is coming back to me thanks to him, thanks to us - is Fai.
“I’m still going to find her. I will find her.” I let him know at the same time I’m pulling a long shirt over me. “Even though it sucks, so,” I take in a deep breath, “you, too, do what you got to do, Kurogane.”
“Tch, what else, idiot?” he says, but nonetheless we both chuckle at how we just throw that word around.
He comes over back to me where I’m still sitting on my bed, knees curled up, and sits down on it. Kurogane combs my hair with his fingers, but we both know it’s nothing more than newfound mutual respect and understanding. “Yes, it’s difficult,” he acknowledges, and I know it’s something that he wouldn’t normally say; what I normally wouldn’t say as well. “But still, never give up.”
Tonight, we may have ran away from the painful aspects that dealt with our Fai’s and nearly lost ourselves and get corrupted. But in the end, we had found each other and essentially help recharge the other because really, the best support we got is us ourselves despite how horrible everything else is. So long as we hang in and rely on ourselves for moral support, we can’t get swayed otherwise. It’s strange to think about considering what just happened, but I won’t think too much about it. But we’re still hanging in there, barely though, but still hanging nevertheless, and that’s what is important. So I look at him squarely in the eyes again and likewise reach up to ruffle his hair in return.
“You too.”
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): fem!Kurogane/Kurogane, also strongly implied fem!KuroFai, also male!KuroFai if you squint really hard
Warnings: Genderbender self-cest = double Kurogane, sex, language, Infinity angst, uncharted characterizations ahoy,
Setting: Infinity
Spoilers: Minor hints to events up to Infinity
Featured Song: "Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele
Summary: In a world of infinite corruptions and uncertainties, two people find unlikely solace in each
other in more ways than one. Yet all is not as it seems.
Note: Continuation for this prompt at clampkink.
The rest is a blur.
One moment we smash our lips haphazardly after barely meeting halfway outside of the dingy bar and the next we’re back at my place. I think no one else is here, otherwise I would have heard them. Hell, it’s better that way.
At this point, we’re still going at each other, fiercely and hungrily, bruised and tired and drunk from alcohol and our feelings. We’re in my room (technically ours, but for now, it’s just mine room, not ours, mine) now, barely leaving each other to breathe, to pause and think, because we just want it now, now, now. If we can’t get further drunk on fine gold rum or any other heavy drinks for that matter, let us get drunk off of each other then. Those idiots, his idiot and my idiot, don’t know what they’re thinking or even missing, not when we finally found someone who completely understands each other, especially given the corrupt affairs of this place. Everything, everything is corrupted - the Mafia, criminals, police and law authorities. Maybe she and maybe this man’s idiot as well, but I don’t even want to think about her and I am sure he doesn’t want to think about his. I just want to, want to forget about this all for now, now, now and let myself get carried away with him, him who is in actuality pure underneath all of his rough mannered exteriors and scarred body. For as far as I can tell and feel and want and need, his pure heart and mind is something I’ve been seeking all this time in this sick world.
He’s still kissing me and I’m still kissing him savagely. We bite at each other’s lips and then mull back softly; grinding at each other’s teeth and then mollify them with our slick tongues. I was never really interested in men nor have I ever fuck with one, but even someone like me could get corrupted. Corrupted be damned, I bitterly think, wanting only pleasure and this want to be satisfied, pleasure and want I just now realized I want to get satisfied. I don’t know what he’s feeling nor do I exactly want to know, but at the least he’s catering to my wants and needs and I’m likewise doing the same for his. We’re just two people who are rough and violent, passionate and deliberate. He and I are the protectors, the people who demand justice and right-doing to those who are innocent and never before have I ever met someone who is just like me, and maybe, horrible as it is to think now, someone just for me.
Lying on my bed completely sprawled out now, we incessantly wrestle off the rest of our clothes to leave us both completely naked. We’re naked and vulnerable and open to each other - words and minds and feelings at first and now our bodies exposed to one another. My head is throbbing from the light and the alcohol and the heat of the passion but it doesn’t hurt as much. Nothing could ever match the pain of all the things I had just laid bare to him, my drinking companion and now willing sex partner. Heat and wants and needs are pooling far below my stomach and I feel him hardening already. Our bodies are ready, more than ready to be satisfied, but I know something else needs to be done.
“Wait,” I hiss, snatching myself away from him. “Before you go any further you need to wear a bloody condom or else I can guarantee you will suffer if you ever get me so much as pregnant,” I manage to spew out to him before he could resume prowling over me.
“Like hell I got one,” he throws back at me. I could care less that I am interrupting (though my body wants so otherwise) so I smirk at him and pull one out from under my pillow. I don’t remember if I cleverly somehow manage to get one before getting thick in the heat. Gripping the foil with my teeth I tear a corner off and immediately hand it to him. I have no heart or the desire to tell him that I never had to worry about sleeping with a man before and therefore I have no experience whatsoever putting on a condom. He just looks at me strangely enough, but I know he wouldn’t disregard all of this precaution so he puts it on without any more protest.
“Now what?” we both seem to be thinking, and for the last time I could remember before we headed out of the bar, we’re looking at each other distinctly. I search for something in his eyes, into the things unknown and I can feel he is doing the same. But that breaks immediately as soon as he leans down and presses his lips on mine again, but this time gently to my odd surprise. Do I still want this? Do I still want to go all the way with him? My mind and body tells me “yes”, but my mind also tells me “no.” It feels like the alcohol is starting to rub off on both of us and now instead of being insistent and needy and now, now, now, we’re starting over and taking it slowly. Maybe it is better this way, I think, instead of rushing headstrong like how we would normally do it in all other aspects.
As he slowly makes his way down my jawline and along my neckline, peppering every inch of them with the brush of his lips and sending shivers along my spine I run my hands absentmindedly over his muscular arms, letting myself roam over them and take in the arms of a warrior and a devoted protector. I wonder how many times he used them to hurt and kill, but to also care for and tend to his group, maybe even that idiot he claims to hate and loathe, but in reality he’s just an idiot who cares for an idiot. I envy him for being able to still reel in all of those he aims to look over, when I myself have failed to stop her from leaving me in the first place. Not wanting to let her haunt me right now and ruin all of this, I heedlessly seize him to kiss him roughly again. He doesn’t protest at all and obligingly caters to my selfish wants and needs.
Fingers of mine instinctively crawl their way up into his spiky dark hair, and to my immense surprise they are far from being sharp and crude. They’re soft and warm and inviting and I run my hands through them over and over, evoking strong memories of silky blonde hair the same intense color of the burning sun that I would run over day in and day out in the past. I immediately want to choke in this intense remembrance, wanting to wrestle my hands out of them at once. But when I feel his rough, calloused hands running up my neck and weaving into my own thick and silky black hair, I then could only think of her and not of this man.
I let myself go into those territories again.
There is no man in my room right now, it’s her. I’m not kissing him, I’m kissing her. Red eyes are automatically replaced with twinkling blue pairs and the vivid images are now burning heavily underneath my eyelids. Rough skin becomes smooth and supple in the very palms of my hands and I no longer hesitate to roam over them greedily. I haven’t seen her in months but I never forgot what she looks like; could never bear to forget and thus resign to have her burn in the back of my memories here and there. I would give in to her just as much as she would give in to me and now I’m slowly letting myself remember as much as I could when in reality it’s not her and it’s him who’s addressing that want and need. But nearly everything inside of me wishes it’s her instead and yet my body could care less. So I grab one of the hands roaming over my body and hold onto it and I hear his hiss hovering over my mouth. It turns out I went over his fresh scar and feeling ashamed I let go of it.
Still not wanting to let her image go, I kiss him fervently, urgently, wanting to feel that passion again desperately. Just like how he understood my pain much earlier and removed his tournament articles silently, he immediately responds to what I am asking for him once again. Rough kissing, lip biting and tongues clashing resume and soon we’re back to the beginning routine where we’re leaving each other breathless and wanting more until we’re both consumed in the other. Heat is returning again and soon my thighs are sprawled apart and I let him and I let him know by urging my mouth closer against his. The gesture is reciprocated with ravenous kisses peppering violently over my jawline as he lets me mount on him and soon enough he starts thrusting. My arms cling over him and he in turn clings onto me and pulls me up so that I am now wrapping mines over his neck. Another one comes and I’m gasping for breath over and over and yet we’re grinding our hips together in nearly tandem and the motion continues. We take pain and pleasure in this tangled mess, our hot breaths and sweat-soaked bodies mingling with the other, pushing past our boundaries and limitations and even hesitancy to keep going, because goddamn it this is something we both wanted - an escape. It goes on like this infinitely longer and I find myself never wanting to stop, to be relieved and to give reprieve to him as well.
But she won’t leave me, or rather I won’t let her leave me.
With every thrust and tightness and hitch of my breath rattling off of my chest, I see and feel her making love to me or I am making love to her. With every pent up building and rising inside of me I see and feel myself giving her what she wants and needs. With every kiss taking away my breath from him I feel that I am kissing her back vehemently with love only for her and not for him, never for him.
I love her, for all her idiocy and fears, flaws and imperfections. I love her and I want to give her that love. I love her and I want her back, for her to come back to me and us. And I am cruelly realizing that when in reality I am fucking with someone who just happens to be so much like me and can understand everything I’m going through.
It’s because of that I have a feeling he’s thinking along the same line as I am, except with his self-proclaimed idiot.
Each thrust, each movement that leaves my body pressing for more, more, more pains me in a completely different way. Because it couldn’t come to me until now, when two people happens to find what they think they need in each other. But it’s far from the truth.
It’s not love making for sure and it’s not even having sex just for the pleasure. We’re not doing this because we want to feel loved. It’s the contrary and completely the opposite. What ended up being a strange encounter at a bar and finding out we had similar pains and views led to counting on each other as sex partners in order to fulfill what had always frustrated us for so long. We fuck because we want to fully love that someone who deserves it, but that someone is too scared, too idiotic and afraid to stay around and accept it. And because they have run away from us - literally and figuratively - we have now just turned to each other to fulfill the needs and wants and desires of giving that love, that pain and frustration of wanting to care and fulfill the ones we’re in love with. It’s far from that horrible and misleading attempts to cure the need to feel loved, but in truth, it’s just as corrupt and awful. Are we corrupt to lead astray from who we truly seek to help and find to have sex with another? The thoughts pain me so and it hurts wondering if I myself have truly become corrupt, lost and tethering on this man, wondering if he too has become corrupt relying on me. In the short term, it feels good, but in the long run, what will happen? I dare not want to think about that now, not when I’m in my room and feeling oddly taken care of from this person who just happens to be like me.
So I once again let myself wander astray, corrupt or not, onto my true partner.
Suddenly, I find myself breathing heavily and quickly, chest shuddering, getting so close to coming. He keeps it like that and the only way I could feel justified letting myself, letting ourselves in regards to doing this is to keep seeing her just as I am lately. I’m quivering, I’m aching, but just at the pinnacle of this all, I can still see her bare in front of me. My partner, the woman I lost but still love all along is simply beautiful. She’s mine and I’m hers and I feel her coming close to me, giving me one last kiss just as I feel my pent up pressure release at last. Incidentally I bite hard and hear a loud hiss. Soon the images of her rapidly vanish and I have to open my eyes to see not blue eyes, but red ones that mirror my own.
Nothing hurts more than this.
I realize I was too invested, too hopeful all along that maybe somehow I could bring her back. I feel like an idiot for fooling my mind and my body, for letting myself get carried away with this, for letting him cater for me and letting myself use him to give the love I so badly wanted to give to her but couldn’t so he just happens to be the recipient. I don’t know what to do or say, but one look from him and I can see something too is running in his mind and the same sense of betrayal. Betrayal for that person he vented out to me earlier tonight. I don’t need to ask him and he doesn’t have to ask me. We’re eerily similar after all. He seems to understand without me or he saying anything as he slowly pulls out and I bite my tongue to stop myself from screaming. We had just used each other in more than one ways, when all along we were crying inside. And now real tears threaten to surface out of me in this silent, post-coital moment. In truth, we’re silently grieving. So I rest my forehead against his chests and he doesn’t protest at all. We stay like that for a bit, each mourning for whatever (more so, whoever) it is. The act has been done, and there is nothing we can do to erase it. Erase the fact that, at least on my part, I had sex with someone who I am actually not ashamed to run into. But he’s not her, and he can never replace her. And yet I slept with someone else besides her. I betrayed her.
I’m sorry…Fai.
“What…did you just say?” He grabs me and wrestles me away from his chest. He looks furious.
I did not just actually say that out loud, did I?
“Fai…Fai’s my partner,” I explain to him shakily.
“What?!” He’s angrier now, and I don’t know why. “F-Fai’s my traveling companion.”
It feels like something has just punch my stomach and it’s harder to breathe all of a sudden. No, no, it couldn’t be. “Fai has been with you all this time?” I manage to choke out.
“Of course!” he roars. “How, why? I had no idea that that damn mage has been out all this time.”
“Mage? She’s not a mage. She’s a bloody detective like me,” I tell him, wondering what on earth is going on. Are we actually talking about the same Fai?
“She?. The mage is a man. So, so…” He smacks his forehead. “So our idiots both happen to be named Fai. What. The. Hell.”
“I guess so,” are the only things I could say. I am too confused to be angry like he is. “So stop thinking I had been cheating or whatever the hell you call it on your Fai.”
He colors again, and I don’t know if it’s because I said, “your Fai” or because I’m calling him out again. Probably both.
“No,” he mutters. “It can’t be.” He now looks equally lost and even pained as I am about this entire ordeal. “Tell me your name, now.”
Despite all the seriousness and chaos going on right now, I find myself laughing and shedding some few tears as result, which I entirely blame on post-sex hormones. I’m laughing and crying shakily though, because I never realized that we never gave each other our names, when we could have at the bar from the start, until now.
“Fuck, you’re right. We never introduced each other.” I take some deep breaths, because there’s still in no hell’s way I want to look so fragile in front of him, even though we just had a serious fragile night now that I think about it.
“I’m Kurogane.”
But instead of him obligingly telling me his name in return, I find that he’s dumbstruck again. It’s actually getting on my nerves.
“Say something back, you know!” I find myself being impatient once again. But wait…if we both know and deeply care for a Fai, then…
“Don’t tell me…that your name…is also Kurogane,” I say.
He nods his head dully. I think I completely lost it.
“You bastard!” I start pounding on his chest. “You. Better. Not. Be. Messing. With. Me!”
“Oi!” He grabs my hand to stop my rather senseless beatings. “I told you I always say what I mean. I wouldn’t lie.”
I just stare at him. It’s sheer wonder we just went through a rough and passionate evening and now we’re just sitting here on my bed, both still fully naked, and both dumbly realizing just exactly how much we have in common. “This is creepy. How the hell is it that we both have the same names and know someone with the same names as well?”
Kurogane sighs. “It’s not an easy thing to explain, but long story short, I now understand why we happen to know each other so well.”
Maybe, maybe I’m starting to get it, but I don’t think I will fully ever understand. “Because we’re the same and yet we’re not?”
“Yeah…”
“Does this mean,” I dare to ask this. “That what happens to the Fai’s we know could be the same?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he admits. “Though frankly, it’s up to what we choose. And I should head back to the place we’re staying at.”
Kurogane gets up and starts putting on his clothes. I’m still letting his words sink in. He seems to know more about this than I do…but if I’m him and he’s me but I’m still just me and he’s still just him, then I trust him. It’s simple and it’s not. And yet both of us are calm, even though according to this strange theory we had just, to put it bluntly, fuck ourselves and yet not at the same time. There are far worse things to get your head into, I think. No, the only thing that is still in my head - had always been in my head, but didn’t really know until now, is coming back to me thanks to him, thanks to us - is Fai.
“I’m still going to find her. I will find her.” I let him know at the same time I’m pulling a long shirt over me. “Even though it sucks, so,” I take in a deep breath, “you, too, do what you got to do, Kurogane.”
“Tch, what else, idiot?” he says, but nonetheless we both chuckle at how we just throw that word around.
He comes over back to me where I’m still sitting on my bed, knees curled up, and sits down on it. Kurogane combs my hair with his fingers, but we both know it’s nothing more than newfound mutual respect and understanding. “Yes, it’s difficult,” he acknowledges, and I know it’s something that he wouldn’t normally say; what I normally wouldn’t say as well. “But still, never give up.”
Tonight, we may have ran away from the painful aspects that dealt with our Fai’s and nearly lost ourselves and get corrupted. But in the end, we had found each other and essentially help recharge the other because really, the best support we got is us ourselves despite how horrible everything else is. So long as we hang in and rely on ourselves for moral support, we can’t get swayed otherwise. It’s strange to think about considering what just happened, but I won’t think too much about it. But we’re still hanging in there, barely though, but still hanging nevertheless, and that’s what is important. So I look at him squarely in the eyes again and likewise reach up to ruffle his hair in return.
“You too.”