Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Smoking Could Kill You ❯ Chapter 1

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

DISCLAIMER: Kyoko Tsuchiya and Project Weiß hold the copyright over all names, likeness and rights of Weiß kreuz. All these characters and materials are used without permission, and I'm not profiting from this piece of fan fiction.

Author's Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. The opinions and observations as expressed by the characters in this piece of work, should not be construed as opinions and observations shared by the author.

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Smoking Could Kill You
By Jacque Koh
June 2003
@>;-'-

"Smoking could kill you." I can't count the number of people who have said that to me, starting with Asuka. And you know what? At that time, I couldn't have cared less if it did.

It started out as a casual thing, you see? Something to do with friends when you're at a bar and don't feel like breathing someone else's smoke, or something to do so that you're not out of place with the crowd. I'd light up. I never used to smoke more than a pack a week. Than Asuka had to die on me...

Yeah-it became a sort of death wish after that; Started smoking about two sometimes three packs a day. If it got me closer to the grave I was grateful. When you gonna learn, heh, Kudou? I just kept sucking on those cancer sticks, and drowning my sorrows in alcohol, warm bodies and smoke. If the smoking didn't kill me, than the alcohol would probably have pickled my liver, or I could pick up something noxious with the one night stands... Heh, the best-made plans of mice and men... I picked up something with a 'someone' who slept in my bed all right. I just never expected it to be a chance for love again.

Slender, pale, with a cherry red top and equally addictive; Hell, yeah was I addicted to the newest member of Weiß. Just being in his presence could fill me with smothering heat and give me heartburn worse than any combination of alcohol and smoke I know. Gods, I wanted Fujimiya Ran and it took me a long time to worm my way into his affections. Along the way, I gave up a few bad habits.

The casual sex went out, of course. I didn't want to have any intimate meetings with his katana for cheating on him. The regular boozing went out too. I sure as hell wasn't going to waste any time drunk out of my skull or passed out when I could be conscious and spending quality time with my sweetie.

I never stopped smoking though, and I felt bad about that. How ever much Ran wanted me to slow down, I just couldn't kick the habit. Oh, he made my life an agony with his refusals to kiss me or snuggle if I smelled of smoke. I don't believe I've ever brushed my teeth or taken quite that many showers in my life. And no matter how I've tried to persuade him that my bed was so much softer and more comfy, Ran would never budge. Said my apartment smelled too strongly of smoke and gets his sinuses going. So unless I want to spring for a room at a love motel we always end up at his place on his hard-as-rocks mattress. Worse-- I. Can. Not. Smoke. In. His. Apartment. That would get me thrown out post haste.

It must have meant that I really loved him to put up with all that nonsense. And let me tell you, I'd invested far more time courting Fujimiya Ran than I'd spent on all the girls I've ever dated in the two years before I met him. He was a keeper and I was not about to let him slip out of my grip.

'When you gonna learn,' heh, Yotan? I wanted him, I had him and was so dang certain that we'd be together for as long as we both lived... 'Lived' is an operational word, isn't it? I thought we had it made when Kritiker offered to let Weiß retire and we all jumped at the chance to walk out and join the simple masses. After all, no more Weiß meant no more missions. No more missions meant no more risk that either one of us might be seriously maimed or killed. And by that time, my death wish was already smothered and forgotten under the love we had. After Weiß retired, it was totally inconceivable to me that we'd ever part. Yotan-- When yer gonna learn that some threats to life don't have to take a direct route?

I'm supposed to be the bloody PI and I missed all the clues. Dumb ass... Never did think to wonder why Ran's family was so small, did I? Just him and his sister; no aunts or uncles, cousins, grandparents; A mighty small family. Oh no, why would *I* give much thought about family? After all, my father was a visiting Gaijin who didn't give a damn for my mother. And mom's family didn't want to have anything to do with the half-breed. Ol' Kenken didn't fare any better in the family department either; What? He was abandoned at the orphanage for being someone's illegitimate offspring. And let's not talk about Omi's messed up family.

Gods... I still remember cuddling with Ran one evening when he suddenly started talking about being the last Fujimiya. Gave me a few grey hairs, he did. Made me wonder if he was trying to ease me into a break up so he could marry some broad and bring more little Fujimiyas into the world.

Did it surprise me to hear him talk so disparagingly about his genes? Cancer-prone, he told me. None of the relatives he knew died of old age. Of course he was worrying about what Eszet had done to Aya-chan and whether or not it was for better or worse, or if she might come down with some incurable disease later because of something the experiments triggered. And what did I say? Heh, something real 'sensitive' about him being more likely to develop a brain tumour from stress and worrying too much over his little sister. A work of art, I was. Had him sitting up and whacking me with a pillow for mocking him.

I still remember his words to me then; telling me that he was more likely to die from lung cancer because of second hand smoke. I should have got a clue then, shouldn't I? I should have fucking woke up to smell the roses.

American statistics say that about two percent of lung cancer deaths are directly related to second hand smoke. Guess who was so lucky...

Gods, I couldn't believe I was so blind to miss seeing the telltale signs. They were all there right before my eyes. The persistent cough that wouldn't go away; the fever and extraordinary long recovery period from that cold he caught... Stubborn kitty refused to see a doctor about it. It was like he developed some sort of phobia for hospitals and clinics from the amount of time we've spent in them due to our previous jobs, and when he used to visit Aya-chan at the Magic Bus while she was in a coma.

I only managed to bully him into setting an appointment with a clinic because I dragged in the big guns and got Omi on my side. The man could never refuse the Chibi. I suspect it's because he reminds him too much of Aya-chan, and if you've ever watched her you'd know she was the true master in twisting Ran-niichan around her little finger. Pity it was too late. Had the first heart-stopping scare the morning of the appointment when he woke up and suddenly started puking blood.

Fuck... The doctor confirmed that it was lung cancer and had him admitted immediately. I saw the accusation in everyone else's eyes. I'd given the love of my life lung cancer...

Two percent. The odds were fucking two percent... and Ran was one of the lucky ones.

You don't know how much I prayed and cried over what I had done. I'd spend hours by his side holding his hand or rubbing his back while he weathered the worse of the effects from chemotherapy... Ran was suffering so badly because of me. He never blamed me though. But that's 'cause he was always so dang possessive of his guilt. He kept telling me that it was his weak genes; the cancer-prone genes that decimated his family. He tried so hard to convince me that if it wasn't lung cancer, it would have been something else.

Fuck... Just when I thought we were all safe. When I was so sure we didn't have our lives on the line any more, the world up and slapped me across the face for my sins. When you gonna learn, heh, Yotan?

No shit I gave up smoking. Didn't care one bit what that would do to my mind or body to go cold turkey on the smokes. I couldn't light up again without thinking of Ran as he sat in bed clutching the bedpan to him like his long lost friend and hacked out his lungs. Couldn't stop thinking about how pale and grey he looked after the surgery to remove one diseased lung. How sick he was for so long with the follow up treatment where the doctors would bombard his body with poisons to kill the lingering cancerous cells while trying to save the remaining lung. I couldn't stop thinking-- of how-- of how it was my fault...

Omi and Ken? They were saints for putting up with me through all this. I spent all my energy looking after Ran. They looked out for me and made sure I didn't do anything stupid.

Oh, I was a certified nutcase in those weeks and months following Ran's diagnosis. Small mercy that he was out of it a good deal of the time and wasn't conscious enough to worry about putting up with 'Crazy Youji'. My nicotine withdrawal was not pretty. I'm sure I scared our two friends a time or two. I probably should have kicked the habit in stages. The withdrawal pains wouldn't have been as horrendous. But, I couldn't bear to even look at another cigarette again, much less smoke.

Every time I weakened I looked at the growing bundle of hair I got from Ran. The chemotherapy was of course making him shed worse than a cat in summer. It came out in clumps. No matter how gently I combed and washed his hair, it just kept dropping. So I collected it. I started weaving a little bracelet with his hair and keeping that near me for those days when he'd throw me out of his apartment to get some fresh air, or to generally take care of myself too.

In spite of everything, he worried about me. Yeah, worried about me as if he weren't the one who was sick and who needed help just to stand long enough to take a piss. Ran worried about the dumb ass that got him sick... Yeah, okay, to be fair I worried Ken and Omi too with my nicotine withdrawal pains.

I tried about everything. Nicotine patches, gum, acupuncture; I tried anything to stop the shakes and keep myself from climbing the walls. No matter how bad it got though, I refused to touch those cancer sticks again. Gods! I was such a mess. It was a good thing I wasn't violent.

Omi and Ken are still out with the jury on whether it was good or bad, but I became something of an obsessive, compulsive neat freak. Yeah, me. I needed something to do and with the cancer treatment, Ran's immunity was so low infection was always a worry. So I cleaned.

I scrubbed his floors, did the laundry, sterilised his bathroom, and polished his kitchen counters. Hell, it wasn't just Ran's apartment. I did mine as well. And when that wasn't enough I started on the Koneko's backroom, then the store room, and the old mission room and-- Get the picture?

I became a worse neat-nut than Ran and Omi combined. I think I freaked out Ken when I suddenly asked him if I could clean his apartment too. He wouldn't let me come within three feet of his door, and that was saying something since he was Ran's neighbour.

At the least, it amused Ran. He wasn't above rubbing my nose in the fact that I now noticed how all my stuff reeked of smoke. It was good that he could find something to laugh at. He worried about everything. About Aya-chan putting her studies on hold to come back from Paris to spend a semester with him. About his medical bills, which we weren't about to let him bear on his own; Omi, Ken and I would not allow him to refuse us dipping into our own stash of cash to take the burden off him. We had a fortune amassed from our jobs with Weiß, and unlike us, he had a dependant to take care of. Actually, I wanted to pay it all myself, after all-- it was my second hand smoke which laid him low. Omi and Ken vetoed my suggestion. Said it was a family's duty to share in the burden.

The expenses still bugged Ran though, especially when it seemed like there would be no end of treatment and tests in sight. He got me very angry with him one afternoon when-- he started talking about updating his will... It got me yelling at him. Yeah I knew he was tired of all the tests. He was tired of being nauseous all the time. Of being short-of-breath all the time... Of feeling so god damned weak and needy and-- I knew-- I knew he was scared...

I made him promise me that he'd never give up. That if he dared to die on me, I'd go to the tallest building I could find and jump. He had to live, 'cause he was living for both of us.

We got a reprieve... Ran survived the full course of chemotherapy. And-- his cancer moved into remission... I hoped to God that meant someone up there decided I'd finally learnt my lesson and was a good boy now.

"When you gonna learn?" Fifteen months ago, God damn it! When I spent a morning in the bathroom holding Ran's hair out of his face while he puked his guts out. I learned!

"Smoking could kill you." I can't count the number of people who've said that to me. I learned my lesson, and I've been clean since the morning when I found out that I almost killed my soul.

Ran's hair grew back eventually. And I selfishly made a pact with him that if he didn't cut it, I wouldn't revert to the untidy slob I used to be and continue being the neat-nut I became while I was taking care of him and kicking my addiction. You should have seen the expression on his face. I had to assure him that I wasn't talking about the obsessive-compulsive, cleaning demon that was buzzing around his apartment in the early days of his confinement. I was impressed that he was aware enough to notice when he was so out of it from the drugs then. I must have really been a frightening cleaning freak.

Of course that meant I'd be stuck with cleaning duty almost all the time, but I didn't mind. Ran's hair eventually grew long enough for me to play with and I was content. And every time I washed, brushed or braided his hair, I'd remember the days when chemotherapy made him lose it. And I'd feel glad that he's healthy now.

The hair he had lost during that time now hangs in a cord around my neck, carrying the cross he had given to me early in our relationship. When I'm away from Ran, it's my reminder of what I'd nearly lost.

There was a time when I didn't care if I lived or died. Now I do care, and I also care not to lose the one who had brought meaning to my life.

"Smoking could kill you." I know. It nearly cost me my love and my second lease of life. So I listened, and I learned.

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