Falling

I had never imagined that I would eventually come to this point. There had just been some vague notion of Aya-chan laughing and walking and dancing again, of sunshine and not-pain and Takatori dead and gone and the world perfect. Like a dream, which leaves you once you wake up, leaving you grasping for the last threads of its beauty and blinking fading impressions into the sunlight through your window as you sit up in bed. Just enough to let you face another day, another hospital visit with an imouto lifeless in bed, just when the dream seemed more impossibly far away than ever, in a nightmare prison where the dregs of the dream taste like ashes in your mouth and blood on your hands.

Now, I stood on the other side of the dream, blinking at the sunshine, and wondering how I had ever gotten there. Wondering even more at the life I now led, when I had only expected death. Wondering when the pain had transmuted into a kind of peace.

When friendship had turned to love.

No longer in the flowershop now, my own role vacated for my sister, who filled it better than I ever had. Not doing much of anything now, during the days, since the pay from Kritiker has always been high, and Aya-chan's medical fees have been paid. So I am more and more with him, during the nights...During the days.

Discovering peace again.

Discovering, with him, how to laugh freely, which he has somehow never forgotten. Discovering how to play. The other day he taught me how to dance. And he's still teaching me how to love. To spend slow sunny afternoons in bed, exploring the lines and dips and hollows of his skin, like velvet and warmer than the sunlight. The tiny golden freckles on his neck and shoulders like the sun-kisses Aya-chan always claimed they were, which I had never believed until I traced them with slow fingers on one of those sunny afternoons, satiated and too lazy to do anything but explore my discovery. She was right. She usually was about such things.

He's even dragged me out to play soccer, usually culminating in me watching him play with the children, then tussling in the grass as though we were still one of them, breathless and green-stained and laughing, until we sprawled in the crushed lawn with the sweet cut-grass smell all around us, hitching with remnants of laughter until even those died away.

He brought me flowers the other day, long-stemmed red roses, and when I just stared at him, he blushed. He still does that, even after months of being lovers, and I still find it amusing and adorable and so purely Ken it aches in my heart when I see it.

Then he tossed two tickets to a play I had muttered about wanting to see two weeks ago and forgotten about at me and, still blushing, told me to be ready and in a tux by seven and turned away. He was totally unprepared when I almost tore his shirt offpulling him back like that and wrapped my arms around him, just holding on. Like we were the only two left in the world, and the only thing anchoring me from spinning into darkness was him.

In the darkness of the theater, Robin Goodfellow prancing about on stage playing with the lives of mortals as a child with a toy would, I held on to his hand as he reminded me what it had been like to be Fujimiya Ran, absorbed in the actors on the stage.

Wealthy and untroubled and a good, dutiful son. I stood on the other side of the nightmare and held on to him, the incarnation of my dream, strange emotions tearing me inside as I watched the lovers on stage, sweet and wild and happy and angry all at once, with a thousand other emotions I could not put a name to. I suddenly wanted to touch him, in the darkness, slide my hand from his, down the velvet of the chair and into his lap.

I wanted to reassure myself that I was here, that he was. I wanted be sure that he would never leave. He was surprised, of course, when I stood up, ignoring the annoyed hisses of the people behind me, and urged him out of his seat, pulling him out of the theater and almost running to the car. Out of the corner of my eye, golden-amber sparks in his eyes as he looked at me, but not saying anything because he trusted me. I stepped on the accelerator almost savagely.

I didn't bother to turn on the lights in the apartment, just leading him through the darkness. We stopped by the bed, my fingers already fumbling for the buttons on his dress shirt, and he stood, not moving except to slide the jacket off my shoulders, unknot my tie, obediently lifting an arm when I told him to in a voice I didn't recognize. Nor did he protest when I pushed him down, deep into the bed, arranging him in the moonlight that streamed in from the window so I could see his face, his eyes, which widened suddenly when I ran my hand up along the inside of his thigh, hands already fisting in the coverlet.

I savoured the sight of him like wine, velvet skin made silver in the moonlight sliding over muscle, arching against my hand as I cupped the heat between his spread thighs, already straining against me, the choked, gasping sound he made, eyes already glazed and drifting closed, heavy-lidded and dark.

His pants were open, I slid one hand inside to grasp him as I covered his invitingly open mouth with mine and tasted him. He was beautiful, writhing on the covers as I touched him, pulled him into the air and fisted him, stroking, a little harder and rougher than usual, lashes shadowing his eyes, asking in gasping breaths for more, harder, please Aya, god...

I straddled his thigh, my other hand stroking down his skin onto mine and I touched myself, already harder than I thought was possible, eyes open and fixed on him as he trembled and shuddered and arched under my hand. I gentled my strokes up and down his length, lightly gripping him at his base, and waited until he looked at me, met my eyes, then pumped him hard once, twice, watching eyes go blind and body drawn into a tight bow on the sheets, fingers tearing into the bed, a tight, choked scream in his voice, spilling over into my palm, all liquid heat and dark ecstasy. I lost track of where he ended and I began as it pushed me over the edge, still staring into his eyes.

Lowering shaking limbs against him, kissing him again, sharing breaths and tasting each other. He kissed my shoulder, licking at the sweat there and looked up at me, silver reflections in his eyes. Watching time stop. Hanging by a moment against the darkness.

Note: Yes, the play is Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. It fit.