Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Chains ❯ Guide Me ( Chapter 66 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Miko No Hoshi 
Anime/Manga: Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Romance / Drama | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 01.26.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 260 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Romance / Drama | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 01.26.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 260 | Status: Work In Progress
Chapter Sixty-Six: Guide Me
Aya came to consciousness slowly, curling more tightly around himself before he roused enough to figure out why he was cold. Once he got his eyes opened, it took another moment to place the room, awash in intense moonlight and viewed from the strange angle. He had fallen asleep lying sideways across the bed, curled up like a cat on top of the comforter.
Night had fallen, bringing the full moon to glow blue through the open blinds and chilling the room. He wasn’t used to it, not when he slept under the covers half on top of Yohji who was always so warm.
Refusing to dwell on any matters that had tortured him through the day, he pulled back the blankets and crawled under, quickly curling up again as the cool sheets fell around him.
~*~
Dreams came and went, entangled with memories. He woke up again and again in the cold room, shaking, trying to figure out where he had fallen asleep and who was going to punish him. Well before morning, he had all the lights turned on, and sat wide awake with the blankets pulled up around him.
Gradually the room lightened, and Aya turned off the lights, settling back in his nest to watch the first rays of the sun trek across the floor as they fell through the slatted blinds. He jumped when someone moved in the hall, heart instantly racing, but no one came in. And Yohji didn’t come.
It was the first morning he’d woken up without the blonde. Usually, Aya would get up early, go practice, and come back. If Yohji was still sleeping, and most often he wasn’t, Aya would shower and return again. By then Yohji was always up. Aya would get his underwear and socks, and then Yohji would hand him something to wear for the today before he left for his own shower. A few minutes later, he would come back, get ready, then they would go downstairs for breakfast before work.
But Yohji wasn’t there.
Aya sat still for a while longer before he turned to look at the clock. It was almost nine. Suddenly determined, he shucked off the blankets and went to get cleaned up.
~*~
He didn’t realize what he was hoping until he stepped back into the bedroom. Some part of Aya’s mind had thought Yohji would be there, patiently asking him whether he wanted to wear this or that or telling him that he looked nice in whatever it was.
It didn’t matter, he told himself. He couldn’t count on those kinds of things; they might have been an act, something to lure him in, to get him attached to the man. Even in his own head that rang false, but he tried to cling to the idea, hoping it would make Yohji’s absence hurt less.
As soon as he thought that, there was a surge of fear that Schuldig would come, and he found himself backing towards the wall before he got a handle on it. Shaking his head, Aya tightened his grip on his towel and walked resolutely to the closet.
Opening the door on his half, he looked at the collection of clothes hanging there, clothes Yohji had bought him. It was suddenly overwhelming, and he had to step away. He went to his drawer instead, pulling out a pair of black boxers and a pair of socks and setting them on the bed. Taking a breath, he went back to the closet. It was just clothes; he could do that. He wasn’t a complete moron.
Aya took out a pair of jeans and, after a few minutes of consideration, a soft, blue sweater. He added a long-sleeved white t-shirt to go under the sweater; maybe he wouldn’t be so cold once he got dressed.
He had stripped off the wet bandage in the bathroom and avoided looking at his sore arm; he didn’t want to see the three marks there. Quickly, he dropped the towel and pulled on the t-shirt followed by the boxers; next were jeans, socks, and sweater. Yohji usually did his hair, but he stood in front of the mirror and smoothed it down himself. He didn’t touch the jar of stuff the other usually put in it, eager to get away from the reflective surface.
Dressed, he took a few minutes to make the bed. Yohji always seemed surprised when he did that, but the blonde had never complained, so Aya always tried to have it made. When that was done, he sat down again, unsure what to do next.
~*~
The door had barely closed behind the customer when Ken gave in to his earlier impulse to swear.
“Shit.”
Saying it aloud eased a little of his tension, but not enough. At a quarter past ten, it was already painfully clear that it was going to be one hell of a Monday.
With Omi off to school, he had opened the shop by himself. He had been a good sport about that, understanding that Omi had to go and Yohji and Aya were working on their, uh, issues. But he had barely flipped the sign when three customers hurried in and demanded on the spot orders; one of these he could have accomplished, maybe even two, but dealing with three picky customers had been enough to put him on edge. This had led to him breaking a flowerpot, and while cleaning it up, he had knocked the broom into a hanging fern and knocked it down and spilling dirt on his recently cleaned floor.
Barely recovered from this mishap, Ken had gone to check the order slips only to find there were no less than eight, and only two of them were bouquets. He could handle bouquets, mostly, and , if the gods were in a favorable mood, maybe the simple rose arrangement. The other five were clearly beyond him, and if Yohji didn’t bother to show up (which he might not), Ken was going to be royally screwed.
After dealing with yet another customer, an older lady who made his first three arrivals seem patient in comparison, Ken was ready to lock the door and hide in the greenhouse. He leaned over the counter, the yellow slips spread out before him, mocking him…
Then the door opened, not the front door, the good door, the door in the back that meant he was going to have some help.
He expected Yohji, most likely in a foul mood and possibly hungover; he didn’t expect Aya.
The boy lingered just in front of the door he had quietly closed behind him, watching Ken warily as he twisted his hands around one another. He was pale, his complexion verging more towards sickly than it had in the last two weeks, and he had dark circles under his eyes. Ken gave a fleeting thought to Aya being unfit for work, but then he looked back to the order slips and decided to keep his mouth shut.
“Hey,” he greeted, a little unsure how to deal with the redhead when he wasn’t accompanied by Yohji. They kind of came as a pair, Yohji navigating daily tasks for both of them. As far as the Koneko was concerned, Yohji usually showed up in the morning, Aya behind him; they would both help open the shop, then Yohji would sort through the order slips and dole out assignments, leaving the easiest for Ken and, recently, splitting the more complicated things between Aya and himself.
Aya seemed equally at a loss as to how to proceed and watched Ken with what he thought was suspicion, but there was nervousness too. He kind of reminded Ken of one of his soccer kids, Shin, a shy boy with glasses who was a little shorter than the others and would linger on the sidelines if not encouraged. Shin barely said two words to anyone his first month on the team. Then during a scrimmage he had fallen down and scraped his knee pretty bad; Ken had been the one to pick him up and get a bandaid and a tissue to wipe his nose with. Somehow he’d proved himself to the little boy that day, and they’d been friends ever since; Shin had started talking and was getting to be one of the better players on the team. The thought made Ken smile, and he waved Aya over.
It took a second, but the boy came, standing a good foot from the counter, but attentive.
“You want to work on some of these?” Ken asked, gesturing to the order slips.
Aya nodded.
“Okay, here, how about this one?” he lifted the slip, stepping closer to Aya so the boy could read it. Aya tensed, and Ken thought he might pull back, but he didn’t. “This is for lilies for Hamami-san. See this? That means it’s in a glass vase, and here, that means it’s a medium-sized on, so, uh, about this big.” He gestured with his hands.
Again, Aya nodded. The silence was disconcerting, but Ken pushed on.
“You know where the vases are, and the flowers are, well, you know—here.”
He handed over the slip, and Aya was careful not to let their fingers touch as he took it. Silently, he turned away and headed for the cooler.
Within ten minutes, Aya had gathered his materials and was hard at work at the back table, more at ease than he had been since he entered the shop. No longer paying attention to Ken, he seemed to be in his own world. Not about to disturb him, Ken snagged a few roses from the cooler and brought them up to the counter to work.
~*~
“You’re my savior, you know that?” Ken asked. “I would never have gotten this done by myself.”
Aya looked at him, then ducked his head. Well, that wasn’t quite the response he’d predicted, but Ken had given the boy two good hours of silence, and if he didn’t talk a little, he was going to go crazy. People weren’t meant to be that quiet.
“I’m glad you came to work,” he tried. Aya didn’t even look up, intensely studying the surface of the table.
Moving yet another of Aya’s arrangements to the cooler, he found himself amazed at the quality of the work. The lilies were beautiful, and the carnations arranged in an appealing way that Ken was sure had something to do with art and stuff. They looked fancy. Settling in the chair across from Aya, Ken told him so.
“Have you done this before?”
“Not really,” Aya answered quietly, the first words he’d said all morning. Ken took it as a good sign.
“Wow. When I first tried it, I completely mauled the flowers. You must be a natural or something.”
Aya didn’t answer, but he found the boy looking at him; he didn’t know whether to be grateful for or unnerved by the serious stare of purple eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“You…you don’t like it?”
“What? The shop? It’s okay, but, come on, there’s lots of things I’d rather be doing then trying to make flowers look pretty.”
This, apparently, made no sense to Aya, at least if one could judge by the confused expression.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the worst job. Omi kind of likes it, and Yohji,” he stopped when Aya tensed at the name, eyes instantly back on the table. Damn. Unable to resist putting in a word on his friend’s behalf, Ken risked his help for the day, and forged ahead. “I know you’re mad at him—I mean, who wouldn’t be, he was a total—
he did something stupid, but Yohji’s not like that.”
He watched, curious, as Aya twisted the fingers of his right hand around his right forearm, belatedly recognizing the nervous gesture.
“Hey, uh, don’t—”
He stopped again when Aya started at the command, hands instantly still in his lap and eyes hidden under his ragged hair. His back was stiff, and there was the slightest tremble of his shoulders. It wasn’t scared, no, Ken knew scared; it was cautious, maybe, worried, like he thought Ken was going to…
“I’m not, Aya, hey, I’m not gonna…I mean, you know nobody’s gonna hurt you here, right? Aya?”
There was another nod, not the least sure. Ken didn’t like that. Aya shouldn’t be scared of him, not after all this time
“Nobody’s gonna hurt you here. We’re the good guys…sort of,” he smiled. “At least we try to be. And none of us wants you to get hurt, especially Yohji. He’s tried so hard to make it easy for you. I mean, I know it’s not easy, but he tried.
“He got drunk and did a dumbass thing. There’s no excuse for that, but…that’s not Yohji. He’s a good guy. Look, he brought you here, right? He spent all that time looking after you? Do you know how much shit that got him into?”
Aya looked up again, staring at him through the fall of his hair.
“He put a lot on the line for you, Aya. If Kritiker had decided you were a threat or something, Yohji would’ve—it wouldn’t be good. But he didn’t mind. He just wanted to help ‘cause that’s the way he is.
“He acts like he doesn’t care, but he’d risk himself in a heartbeat to save somebody that’s hurting. He’s,” Ken coughed, trying to clear some of the roughness from his voice, “He’s taken a bullet for me, and he’s one of the two people I trust with my life. I know he screwed up, but he did a lot of good before that. Doesn’t he deserve another chance?”
The bell on the door jingled, and Ken jumped up to go answer it. He was, though, unable to resist turning back for just a second.
“Think about it.”
~*~
It was almost three when Yohji made it into the shop, tired and frazzled.
He had spent most of the night tossing and turning on the couch, listening to every noise and trying to figure out what Aya was doing. Then his body gave up and he slept for a while, reluctant to return to the waking world where he had to deal with everything.
The third time he’d woken up, it was after one in the afternoon, and his suddenly traitorous body had refused to let him stay still any longer. So slowly he’d gone about the tasks of straightening his makeshift bed and getting a shower, dreading going to his room where Aya was waiting. He hadn’t wanted to see the dark look in the boy’s eyes, that haunting mix of confusion and expectation.
But Aya hadn’t been there, and that scared the hell out of him. He had barely managed to tug on some clothes and brush down his hair before rushing out the door. He had checked the kitchen first, then the gym, and after a quick foray back through the living room, had been almost panicked by the time he went out to check the shop.
Ken looked his way as he burst through the door.
“Is he here?”
“Aya?”
“Yes! Aya! Damnit, where did he—”
“He’s in the greenhouse,” Ken shook his head as he answered, either amused or aggravated by Yohji’s display of concern. “It’s almost time for school to be out.”
Right. The girls.
Yohji sighed and tried to get himself under control. For all his sleep, he felt exhausted, and he couldn’t think straight, not when Aya was so much on his mind. His instincts told him to have a shot of something strong to fix it, but thankfully his brain stepped in and put a stop to that idea. So he pulled on his apron.
Seeing he was ready to work, Ken took pity on him, giving Yohji the details he wanted without making him ask.
“So, he worked on the arrangements for a while, then washed some of the windows. I, uh, stopped him before he finished ‘cause it looked like he was gonna fall off the step ladder.”
Yohji nodded. Aya was probably still light-headed from the blood loss, not to mention affected the stress of the whole thing.
“Then what?”
“Well, we were pretty much done in here, so I let him go work in the greenhouse.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep, and we did it all by ourselves, too,” Ken added in a rather sarcastic tone, waving his hand at the collection of finished arrangements.
“And nothing caught on fire?”
“Not a damn thing.”
~*~
Yohji pulled down the shutter and locked it, surprised that he felt better than he had before. Ken had put him in a good mood despite himself, and it never hurt to have a dozen girls fall all over him. But whatever positive feelings he had been building came instantly crushing down on him when he turned around to find Omi staring at him. That wasn’t the fun teenager look, or even the house mother look; it was Bombay, serious and only slightly tempered by the mundane surroundings of the shop.
Yohji opened his mouth to defend himself on instinct alone, only to be cut off.
“You didn’t talk to him?” the younger boy accused, standing directly in front of Yohji. There was a moment of strange hilarity as he had to look up to try to stare Yohji down, but it thankfully passed without incident. “How do you expect this to get better if you don’t?”
“Don’t what?”
“Talk to Aya!”
Yohji wanted to tell him how difficult it was, how he was ashamed, how he couldn’t look Aya in the eyes. He wanted, needed Omi to understand that he didn’t know how to act with Aya now, how their arrangements had fallen through, and, most of all, how he was afraid the boy wouldn’t want to talk to him ever again. What came out was a long sigh.
“Yohji,” Omi’s voice softened, but only enough to buffer the underlying steel, “Do you realize how serious this is? Do you realize what he tried to do?”
Yohji didn’t want to talk about that. In fact, he never wanted to think about it again. But Omi was forcing the issue, and he had to nod in acknowledgement before the other continued.
“How do you think he’s feelings right now?”
~tbc~
Converting /tmp/phpxhoOFV to /dev/stdout
Aya came to consciousness slowly, curling more tightly around himself before he roused enough to figure out why he was cold. Once he got his eyes opened, it took another moment to place the room, awash in intense moonlight and viewed from the strange angle. He had fallen asleep lying sideways across the bed, curled up like a cat on top of the comforter.
Night had fallen, bringing the full moon to glow blue through the open blinds and chilling the room. He wasn’t used to it, not when he slept under the covers half on top of Yohji who was always so warm.
Refusing to dwell on any matters that had tortured him through the day, he pulled back the blankets and crawled under, quickly curling up again as the cool sheets fell around him.
~*~
Dreams came and went, entangled with memories. He woke up again and again in the cold room, shaking, trying to figure out where he had fallen asleep and who was going to punish him. Well before morning, he had all the lights turned on, and sat wide awake with the blankets pulled up around him.
Gradually the room lightened, and Aya turned off the lights, settling back in his nest to watch the first rays of the sun trek across the floor as they fell through the slatted blinds. He jumped when someone moved in the hall, heart instantly racing, but no one came in. And Yohji didn’t come.
It was the first morning he’d woken up without the blonde. Usually, Aya would get up early, go practice, and come back. If Yohji was still sleeping, and most often he wasn’t, Aya would shower and return again. By then Yohji was always up. Aya would get his underwear and socks, and then Yohji would hand him something to wear for the today before he left for his own shower. A few minutes later, he would come back, get ready, then they would go downstairs for breakfast before work.
But Yohji wasn’t there.
Aya sat still for a while longer before he turned to look at the clock. It was almost nine. Suddenly determined, he shucked off the blankets and went to get cleaned up.
~*~
He didn’t realize what he was hoping until he stepped back into the bedroom. Some part of Aya’s mind had thought Yohji would be there, patiently asking him whether he wanted to wear this or that or telling him that he looked nice in whatever it was.
It didn’t matter, he told himself. He couldn’t count on those kinds of things; they might have been an act, something to lure him in, to get him attached to the man. Even in his own head that rang false, but he tried to cling to the idea, hoping it would make Yohji’s absence hurt less.
As soon as he thought that, there was a surge of fear that Schuldig would come, and he found himself backing towards the wall before he got a handle on it. Shaking his head, Aya tightened his grip on his towel and walked resolutely to the closet.
Opening the door on his half, he looked at the collection of clothes hanging there, clothes Yohji had bought him. It was suddenly overwhelming, and he had to step away. He went to his drawer instead, pulling out a pair of black boxers and a pair of socks and setting them on the bed. Taking a breath, he went back to the closet. It was just clothes; he could do that. He wasn’t a complete moron.
Aya took out a pair of jeans and, after a few minutes of consideration, a soft, blue sweater. He added a long-sleeved white t-shirt to go under the sweater; maybe he wouldn’t be so cold once he got dressed.
He had stripped off the wet bandage in the bathroom and avoided looking at his sore arm; he didn’t want to see the three marks there. Quickly, he dropped the towel and pulled on the t-shirt followed by the boxers; next were jeans, socks, and sweater. Yohji usually did his hair, but he stood in front of the mirror and smoothed it down himself. He didn’t touch the jar of stuff the other usually put in it, eager to get away from the reflective surface.
Dressed, he took a few minutes to make the bed. Yohji always seemed surprised when he did that, but the blonde had never complained, so Aya always tried to have it made. When that was done, he sat down again, unsure what to do next.
~*~
The door had barely closed behind the customer when Ken gave in to his earlier impulse to swear.
“Shit.”
Saying it aloud eased a little of his tension, but not enough. At a quarter past ten, it was already painfully clear that it was going to be one hell of a Monday.
With Omi off to school, he had opened the shop by himself. He had been a good sport about that, understanding that Omi had to go and Yohji and Aya were working on their, uh, issues. But he had barely flipped the sign when three customers hurried in and demanded on the spot orders; one of these he could have accomplished, maybe even two, but dealing with three picky customers had been enough to put him on edge. This had led to him breaking a flowerpot, and while cleaning it up, he had knocked the broom into a hanging fern and knocked it down and spilling dirt on his recently cleaned floor.
Barely recovered from this mishap, Ken had gone to check the order slips only to find there were no less than eight, and only two of them were bouquets. He could handle bouquets, mostly, and , if the gods were in a favorable mood, maybe the simple rose arrangement. The other five were clearly beyond him, and if Yohji didn’t bother to show up (which he might not), Ken was going to be royally screwed.
After dealing with yet another customer, an older lady who made his first three arrivals seem patient in comparison, Ken was ready to lock the door and hide in the greenhouse. He leaned over the counter, the yellow slips spread out before him, mocking him…
Then the door opened, not the front door, the good door, the door in the back that meant he was going to have some help.
He expected Yohji, most likely in a foul mood and possibly hungover; he didn’t expect Aya.
The boy lingered just in front of the door he had quietly closed behind him, watching Ken warily as he twisted his hands around one another. He was pale, his complexion verging more towards sickly than it had in the last two weeks, and he had dark circles under his eyes. Ken gave a fleeting thought to Aya being unfit for work, but then he looked back to the order slips and decided to keep his mouth shut.
“Hey,” he greeted, a little unsure how to deal with the redhead when he wasn’t accompanied by Yohji. They kind of came as a pair, Yohji navigating daily tasks for both of them. As far as the Koneko was concerned, Yohji usually showed up in the morning, Aya behind him; they would both help open the shop, then Yohji would sort through the order slips and dole out assignments, leaving the easiest for Ken and, recently, splitting the more complicated things between Aya and himself.
Aya seemed equally at a loss as to how to proceed and watched Ken with what he thought was suspicion, but there was nervousness too. He kind of reminded Ken of one of his soccer kids, Shin, a shy boy with glasses who was a little shorter than the others and would linger on the sidelines if not encouraged. Shin barely said two words to anyone his first month on the team. Then during a scrimmage he had fallen down and scraped his knee pretty bad; Ken had been the one to pick him up and get a bandaid and a tissue to wipe his nose with. Somehow he’d proved himself to the little boy that day, and they’d been friends ever since; Shin had started talking and was getting to be one of the better players on the team. The thought made Ken smile, and he waved Aya over.
It took a second, but the boy came, standing a good foot from the counter, but attentive.
“You want to work on some of these?” Ken asked, gesturing to the order slips.
Aya nodded.
“Okay, here, how about this one?” he lifted the slip, stepping closer to Aya so the boy could read it. Aya tensed, and Ken thought he might pull back, but he didn’t. “This is for lilies for Hamami-san. See this? That means it’s in a glass vase, and here, that means it’s a medium-sized on, so, uh, about this big.” He gestured with his hands.
Again, Aya nodded. The silence was disconcerting, but Ken pushed on.
“You know where the vases are, and the flowers are, well, you know—here.”
He handed over the slip, and Aya was careful not to let their fingers touch as he took it. Silently, he turned away and headed for the cooler.
Within ten minutes, Aya had gathered his materials and was hard at work at the back table, more at ease than he had been since he entered the shop. No longer paying attention to Ken, he seemed to be in his own world. Not about to disturb him, Ken snagged a few roses from the cooler and brought them up to the counter to work.
~*~
“You’re my savior, you know that?” Ken asked. “I would never have gotten this done by myself.”
Aya looked at him, then ducked his head. Well, that wasn’t quite the response he’d predicted, but Ken had given the boy two good hours of silence, and if he didn’t talk a little, he was going to go crazy. People weren’t meant to be that quiet.
“I’m glad you came to work,” he tried. Aya didn’t even look up, intensely studying the surface of the table.
Moving yet another of Aya’s arrangements to the cooler, he found himself amazed at the quality of the work. The lilies were beautiful, and the carnations arranged in an appealing way that Ken was sure had something to do with art and stuff. They looked fancy. Settling in the chair across from Aya, Ken told him so.
“Have you done this before?”
“Not really,” Aya answered quietly, the first words he’d said all morning. Ken took it as a good sign.
“Wow. When I first tried it, I completely mauled the flowers. You must be a natural or something.”
Aya didn’t answer, but he found the boy looking at him; he didn’t know whether to be grateful for or unnerved by the serious stare of purple eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“You…you don’t like it?”
“What? The shop? It’s okay, but, come on, there’s lots of things I’d rather be doing then trying to make flowers look pretty.”
This, apparently, made no sense to Aya, at least if one could judge by the confused expression.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the worst job. Omi kind of likes it, and Yohji,” he stopped when Aya tensed at the name, eyes instantly back on the table. Damn. Unable to resist putting in a word on his friend’s behalf, Ken risked his help for the day, and forged ahead. “I know you’re mad at him—I mean, who wouldn’t be, he was a total—
he did something stupid, but Yohji’s not like that.”
He watched, curious, as Aya twisted the fingers of his right hand around his right forearm, belatedly recognizing the nervous gesture.
“Hey, uh, don’t—”
He stopped again when Aya started at the command, hands instantly still in his lap and eyes hidden under his ragged hair. His back was stiff, and there was the slightest tremble of his shoulders. It wasn’t scared, no, Ken knew scared; it was cautious, maybe, worried, like he thought Ken was going to…
“I’m not, Aya, hey, I’m not gonna…I mean, you know nobody’s gonna hurt you here, right? Aya?”
There was another nod, not the least sure. Ken didn’t like that. Aya shouldn’t be scared of him, not after all this time
“Nobody’s gonna hurt you here. We’re the good guys…sort of,” he smiled. “At least we try to be. And none of us wants you to get hurt, especially Yohji. He’s tried so hard to make it easy for you. I mean, I know it’s not easy, but he tried.
“He got drunk and did a dumbass thing. There’s no excuse for that, but…that’s not Yohji. He’s a good guy. Look, he brought you here, right? He spent all that time looking after you? Do you know how much shit that got him into?”
Aya looked up again, staring at him through the fall of his hair.
“He put a lot on the line for you, Aya. If Kritiker had decided you were a threat or something, Yohji would’ve—it wouldn’t be good. But he didn’t mind. He just wanted to help ‘cause that’s the way he is.
“He acts like he doesn’t care, but he’d risk himself in a heartbeat to save somebody that’s hurting. He’s,” Ken coughed, trying to clear some of the roughness from his voice, “He’s taken a bullet for me, and he’s one of the two people I trust with my life. I know he screwed up, but he did a lot of good before that. Doesn’t he deserve another chance?”
The bell on the door jingled, and Ken jumped up to go answer it. He was, though, unable to resist turning back for just a second.
“Think about it.”
~*~
It was almost three when Yohji made it into the shop, tired and frazzled.
He had spent most of the night tossing and turning on the couch, listening to every noise and trying to figure out what Aya was doing. Then his body gave up and he slept for a while, reluctant to return to the waking world where he had to deal with everything.
The third time he’d woken up, it was after one in the afternoon, and his suddenly traitorous body had refused to let him stay still any longer. So slowly he’d gone about the tasks of straightening his makeshift bed and getting a shower, dreading going to his room where Aya was waiting. He hadn’t wanted to see the dark look in the boy’s eyes, that haunting mix of confusion and expectation.
But Aya hadn’t been there, and that scared the hell out of him. He had barely managed to tug on some clothes and brush down his hair before rushing out the door. He had checked the kitchen first, then the gym, and after a quick foray back through the living room, had been almost panicked by the time he went out to check the shop.
Ken looked his way as he burst through the door.
“Is he here?”
“Aya?”
“Yes! Aya! Damnit, where did he—”
“He’s in the greenhouse,” Ken shook his head as he answered, either amused or aggravated by Yohji’s display of concern. “It’s almost time for school to be out.”
Right. The girls.
Yohji sighed and tried to get himself under control. For all his sleep, he felt exhausted, and he couldn’t think straight, not when Aya was so much on his mind. His instincts told him to have a shot of something strong to fix it, but thankfully his brain stepped in and put a stop to that idea. So he pulled on his apron.
Seeing he was ready to work, Ken took pity on him, giving Yohji the details he wanted without making him ask.
“So, he worked on the arrangements for a while, then washed some of the windows. I, uh, stopped him before he finished ‘cause it looked like he was gonna fall off the step ladder.”
Yohji nodded. Aya was probably still light-headed from the blood loss, not to mention affected the stress of the whole thing.
“Then what?”
“Well, we were pretty much done in here, so I let him go work in the greenhouse.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep, and we did it all by ourselves, too,” Ken added in a rather sarcastic tone, waving his hand at the collection of finished arrangements.
“And nothing caught on fire?”
“Not a damn thing.”
~*~
Yohji pulled down the shutter and locked it, surprised that he felt better than he had before. Ken had put him in a good mood despite himself, and it never hurt to have a dozen girls fall all over him. But whatever positive feelings he had been building came instantly crushing down on him when he turned around to find Omi staring at him. That wasn’t the fun teenager look, or even the house mother look; it was Bombay, serious and only slightly tempered by the mundane surroundings of the shop.
Yohji opened his mouth to defend himself on instinct alone, only to be cut off.
“You didn’t talk to him?” the younger boy accused, standing directly in front of Yohji. There was a moment of strange hilarity as he had to look up to try to stare Yohji down, but it thankfully passed without incident. “How do you expect this to get better if you don’t?”
“Don’t what?”
“Talk to Aya!”
Yohji wanted to tell him how difficult it was, how he was ashamed, how he couldn’t look Aya in the eyes. He wanted, needed Omi to understand that he didn’t know how to act with Aya now, how their arrangements had fallen through, and, most of all, how he was afraid the boy wouldn’t want to talk to him ever again. What came out was a long sigh.
“Yohji,” Omi’s voice softened, but only enough to buffer the underlying steel, “Do you realize how serious this is? Do you realize what he tried to do?”
Yohji didn’t want to talk about that. In fact, he never wanted to think about it again. But Omi was forcing the issue, and he had to nod in acknowledgement before the other continued.
“How do you think he’s feelings right now?”
~tbc~
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