Too Late

"You accepted Euphie's proposal."

Suzaku turns to face the question disguised as a statement, to face Lelouch in his clubhouse bedroom. Nunnally wanted to "see" Suzaku in his new Knight uniform so he brought it to change into it after their dinner, but the sibling that isn't blind wasn't nearly as impressed or admiring.

Lelouch wore a modest smile but it didn't reach his eyes.

"She's a good-hearted person, and… I want to help her however much I can," Suzaku replies with a fond smile. "She could… I believe together we can accomplish something good. Make things better than they are."

"…Is that so?" Lelouch stands beside Suzaku as he sheds his Ashford coat but his voice sounds as far away as another planet.

Suzaku gazes at the ex prince, feeling his chest sink in all that distance.

"Lelouch…" he tentatively starts, "…you trust her, don't you?"

Amethyst eyes flutter over the question stringing between them as if uncertain how to read it.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…" Suzaku doesn't want his eyes to waver, but he can't seem to stay on the target of Lelouch's sharp gaze. "We don't have to be our demons," he murmurs as his stare weakly dips to Lelouch's lips—

That frown slightly when he stiffens, "What?"

"We can't outrun our pasts, but, it doesn't have to control us, right?" Suzaku's eyes can't follow the Britannian that walks around out of sight, behind his back. "Eventually… we can break free. But you have to want to…"

"What are you on about? Suddenly sounding so philosophical…" Lelouch teases and his low voice is a bedeviling hook reeling Suzaku closer.

Rather than Suzaku reeling Lelouch closer like when there were kids up that hill…

"Do I sound strange?" Suzaku faintly grins, feeling his resolve falter as his waist is arrested in the taller boy's hands—

Pulled back to seven years ago when they were just pupae in an ocean of sunflowers.

—and he's enclosed in Lelouch's arms. A heart beating against Suzaku's back after he's reined flush against a warm body.

"Only like an ill-fated hero doomed to some ironic tragedy," Lelouch quips, the hot flood of his breath spilling over Suzaku's skin and into his blood with tingling anticipation.

"Ill-fated, huh?" Suzaku quietly asks under a breathy shudder while Lelouch sucks his neck like a vampire. A visible bite sure to linger.

.

Lelouch's hands peel Suzaku so effortlessly and without hindrance. The Knight uniform tailored to fit Suzaku's body with pride unravels to lifeless piles on the floor until his bare, susceptible skin is vulnerable for Lelouch's appetite. Commanding hands pull all of Suzaku's strings with the pleasuring pluck of long fingers that caress his every contour and stroke inside him while regal lips claim his. Dark kisses mark all over his body in hot blooms by teeth that couple with the ravenous violets glimmering in the dusky light and Suzaku gasps under all the rippling fire.

Until it swallows him whole.

His breath is stolen by Lelouch's thrusting hips after he's entered. Suzaku's body rolls under the writhing passion a secretive boy keeps tightly locked, except with a childhood friend. It boils and tosses Lelouch's cool mask off like a lid on a stewing pot as it wades over and into Suzaku in sizzling pleasure. His open knees are pushed toward his shoulders as he's taken—seized by a thrown-away prince that quickly learned how to make Suzaku melt into craving moans. Lelouch was not, is not a blushing maiden waiting to be taken. He is the man who conquers.

Suzaku doesn't want to think of a sakura-haired maiden.

Not about her angelic face.

Or her kind heart.

Suzaku doesn't want to think about a masked man.

Not the seething of royal violets.

Or a bitter heart.

Suzaku switches his hands from fisting the sheets to cling and hold the boy between his thighs closer, not far away, when a twirling climax finally unreels from his body. Lelouch's name unknots from Suzaku's tongue as the pleasure wrings him—a call captured and eaten by a tongue that twines with his as his body is deeply filled by Lelouch's possessive climax.

Suzaku tries to not wonder at what could be.

.

"You wish things could be different…" Suzaku slowly speaks under the shroud of a dead sun, somewhere between a question and a statement. "But do you really think Britannia is beyond saving?"

Lelouch is cushioned by his pillow as he relaxes against the bed rail, petting the messy curls of Suzaku's head lying on his chest.

"Short of obliterating the palace and entire capital?" Lelouch's voice rumbles like a brewing storm in the ear Suzaku has pressed on his chest, over his pumping heart, while it sarcastically slides over his other, open ear.

"Is violence the only course?"

"It is an efficient one. When that's the only language your enemy knows."

The Japanese lad is quiet a moment as fingers continue to gently thread through his hair.

"I don't want to see it change you," Suzaku softly says, imploring.

"See what?"

"Rage."

Lelouch's fingers stop petting.

And Suzaku can feel all the stolen comfort and fond nostalgia begin to slip away into a crack spreading under them.

The crack that's been slowly spreading them apart.

Like a hissing capsule that was supposed to contain poison gas.

"And what am I without rage?"

Suzaku lifts his head to join their eyes, "You are more than that."

"Just as you are more than your guilt?" Lelouch sardonically, ruefully asks through a razor smile.

Making Suzaku frown.

"It's not too late…" Suzaku murmurs, wondering why he feels weaker when he should feel stronger. He wants to drape himself like a bridge over the separation that shouldn't be there so Lelouch can walk over and join him on the same side, without falling.

Lelouch's fingers tilt Suzaku's chin up, "It is getting late in the evening, Suzaku," he says with insidious words that don't stitch the crack so much as chip away at the edges. "Do you plan to stay with me?"

Suzaku follows leading fingers, "…Are you saying you'll let me leave?"

"I don't want to," Lelouch responds against Suzaku's lips in that low voice that pours into the Knight's chest like molten metal, "but it's your choice."

A kiss closes the tiny gap between their lips. A temporary seal.

.

.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Underneath the split—cracked mask of a self-serving vigilante shouldn't be Lelouch.

Lelouch wasn't supposed to have two faces.

Lelouch isn't—wasn't supposed to be a vicious murderer.

Euphie shouldn't be—

Lelouch isn't supposed to be in the sights of Suzaku's gun, aiming one of his own.

They aren't supposed to be this way.

They aren't supposed to be dragging each other into the abyss.

They're supposed to be closing it, together.

Suzaku was supposed to stop him but—

.

.

All along… maybe, it was already too late.