Bleh, I was going to continue it a little more where I left off but I thought it made a better ending to the chapter the way it was. Kinda dumb...I don't like where thi is going.

A Place In my Head - Chapter 2

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I stood topless in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror, making a face as I hooked my finger in the bags under my eyes and pulled out. Morning's sucked and I certainly looked the way I felt. My hair all mussed up from the too small bed I had been forced to sleep on and the pain in my shoulder blades down to the end of my spine made my posture look… interesting. It was a good thing I lived alone in the hills, because I didn't think I would ever have the heart to make somebody look at me like this every morning. A shower would morph me into a presentable human being.

With that conclusion, I slipped out of my shorts and reached into the shower, feeling around blindly for the water knobs. The steam rose quickly and violently because I liked my showers hot, very hot, plus I believed the heat invigorated the pores making some kind of spiritual connection with your soul. Actually, I didn't so much as believe it as I had heard it on one of those late night infomercials, but if it was good enough to be on television at three thirty in the morning… well, I had my reasons.

The water felt extremely good for some odd reason. It wasn't that I hadn't showered in a long time because I had, I was a squeaky clean boy. It was probably just where I was, in the city, around people. I knew that I could go outside anytime I chose and no matter where I looked there would be a friendly face, with a welcoming grin, some bright young eyes, or calming old wise ones. I really didn't care much for seclusion, it was a sense of comfort and a constant presence of that comfort.

I hummed a song to myself that I heard on my radio alarm clock as I lathered up a dime size drop of hand-soap into my hair. In my rush out the door after Omi's unannounced call I grabbed everything that was within an arm's distance on the way to the door. It smelled a little like lemon's and alcohol but I didn't mind, it served it's purpose just as good as anything else. Despite the loud noise the water made when it hit the fiberglass of the tub I heard the gentle click and pressure of air being pushed back as a door opened.

Not thinking anything of it, I lathered an old washcloth with the same aforementioned soap. That's when I noticed goose-bumps rising up all over my skin and my brain finally let me know that it was in fact extremely cold in the shower. I looked around, a little anxiously perplexed, my eyes looking straight at the shower knobs, they were still set on hot and the steam seemed to be filling the room by the very second, making it a little harder for me to see.

The soap in my hair was running down my face and burning my eyes but I belittled it, simply wiping it from my eyes with the back of my hand. With the other hand I tore back the shower curtain, looking with squinted eyesight at the mirror across from me. The steam rose up against it's base, rising up and curling out in a monotonous motion while the rising moisture fogged up the top and the corners. It was all so hazy though that I actually found myself searching for the door with my eyes, refusing to come out of the shower like an animal being set free after three generations of captivity.

The steam had engulfed my vision by so much I felt lost in a snow storm and dressed in all white. I could barely even see my hand as I waved it in front of my face, trying to bat out some of the liquid air. Inhaling made me cough now because the air was so dense and the lack of oxygen in my mind made it go spiraling into circles which caused my knees to weaken. A loud pop startled me and I screamed, I looked up and saw I was hanging onto the moldy shower curtain, the plastic stretching itself in my grip and the rings hooking it to the pole snapping under my weight. Then like an angel floating out of the steam, or it was more like the steam was moving out of the way, a figure approached me within my perfect line of vision. In a gust of stupidity, and lack of mobility my knees gave way and I was lying on my back in the bottom of the tub, the water pounding on my face.

Like a blind man, cast in darkness his whole life, reaching out to light, I looked up confused, scared, and hopelessly at the figure that bent over me as I hung onto the curtain, my link to the physical world. There was a loud whirring sound all around me, it was deafening and the shadow moved in, it's large, slender hand being placed behind my neck and another one reaching behind my head towards the knobs. The water stopped hitting my face but I couldn't feel the difference, the loud static noise still pounding on my sensitive eardrums. I looked into a pair of eyes, shining over me from the morning light that filtered in through the small bathroom window. They gleamed a brilliant purple. I had found my voice, but sputtered as I opened my mouth. "Aya?"

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"Wow, Ken, you definitely raised the bar on this one, even in your book." Came the comment from Yohji. I groaned, loudly that I nearly deafened myself. There was a sharp pain in the back of my skull, and two hazy shadows focused into view.

"Wha' 'appened?" I questioned wearily, trying to prop myself up on my elbows. A soft but threatening hand pushed my back down, pinning me to what felt like my bed. There was an intelligent 'hmm' and I looked to my left to see Omi looking down at a book on the bed beside me.

"I've heard of this before, but very rarely." He deducted, I was growing impatient with his grunts and wanted answers now because it has been awhile since I've felt this much pain and found myself lying on my back like an unfortunate patient to a crazy surgeon. "I guess the molecules were to tightly packed making the air dense but kept enough movement and friction against each other to stay in a gaseous state. That and the heat contributed to the energy." Yohji's face saw my confused expression and he glanced at Omi before addressing me. "So much steam in such a little bathroom no wonder you-"

"Basically, you must have the skin of a dragon because your shower was way too hot and the steam made the air too thick that you almost drowned in say… liquid air." Yohji interrupted bluntly with a hint of an attitude. "Oh and as for the pain, in your state you must've collapsed in the shower, knocking your head on the knobs."

"But the water didn't feel hot." I mumbled almost incoherently. The other two didn't seem to notice.

"Your real lucky, Ken." Omi's voiced chirped. "If Aya hadn't seen the steam from under the door and been stubborn enough to barge in then you could've suffocated, or bled to death. Either way it wouldn't be-"

"Aya's here?" I shot upwards at a ninety degree angle, knocking Omi's protestant hand out of the way. I heard the young Weiss grunt angrily at the rate that people were interrupting him. Yohji cocked an eyebrow at me and pointed to a chair in the corner of the room. Sure enough the stoic redhead was looking at me questioningly, his head resting on his fist and his legs crossed casually, his eyes dull purple slits cut into his head. "Gee, thanks, Aya." I mumbled out, blushing as one of his fine red eyebrows rose.

Aya stood up, and I gulped but he headed for the door, resting one pale hand on the handle. "You need to be more careful." With that he opened the door and stepped out of my room, without a greeting, without a smile, without any acknowledgement that I had shown up on the Koneko's front door like a lonely, long lost kitten. But then again, he was Aya, what did I expect? For him to jump up and down and clap and cheer and give me a hug? No, because anyway, my head hurt way to much for me to care

"Look, Ken." Omi grabbed my attention. "Yohji and I have a lot of preparing to do. If… When you feel better, feel free to come down and help. Until then, there's some aspirin and hot tea on the table, okay?" I nodded. It felt slightly weird as the parental figure roles switched before my eyes and Omi's form stood up and walked out towards the door, Yohji following.

"Get better, champ." Yohji winked and shut the door behind him. Real cute. Something churned inside my mind that I was becoming nothing but a burden within the Weiss society. Aya's stony and impatient look only added to my withering self-esteem as it was, but I remembered something Omi told me some years ago, not to let whatever it was Aya said get to me because whatever Aya said was only an opposite reaction to his true thoughts. I still have never quite figured out exactly what Omi meant by that and I probably never would.

Plus with a headache like mine it just wasn't worth it. There was just something extremely weird about the way Aya looked from the time I saw him in the bathroom, glowing with an eerie aura and a ghostly light shining in his eyes. His face was as expressionless as usual but the look made you really think there was something going on behind his face. Instead the Aya I saw in my room was dignified and somewhat angry with me and it glowed from the inside too, because when Aya was angry, he wore his heart on his sleeve, and it was dripping with ice.

TBC