Title: Himitsu

By: Sei-chan-1999

Summary: The untold story of Sumeragi Subaru and Shirou Kamui in another Universe; a connection, fated to die all too soon, that took glory for a few moments in the sun before being consumed by the darkness.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. All rights to Clamp. This same disclaimer applies to all future chapters too.

Warning: The whole story takes place in the AU world. The only things I maintained from the original canon are the characters and their honorifics because X wouldn't be X without them.

An AU X/1999 and Tokyo Babylon Multi-Chapter Fanfic.

XXX

Chapter 1-Himitsu

He went shopping for clothes.

Stopping at the branded clothes store with the halogen lights hissing through the glass in the rain, he remembered a time when he'd walk past the display stands of fake people clothed in rich suits and mannequins in fashionable dresses, carelessly looking at them for a few seconds while he waited for a light to change or a taxi to pull up.

This time, he walked in, his white trench coat billowing a little behind him as the blast of the cold air conditioner from inside mixed with the lukewarm but wild breeze of the rainstorm outside.

He sneezed.

No sooner had the door slid shut than a female assistant was nearly on top of him.

"Do you need a towel, sir?"

He did need one, his hair was sopping wet and he was dripping liquid onto the marble flooring of the brightly lit boutique but managed to shake his head firmly and then winced as he sprayed both of them with the rainwater.

"No thank you."

He left her there in a vain effort to find something suitable and end this nightmare before it escalated any further. He became uneasily aware of the fact that he was attracting a lot of unwanted attention from most of the girls who worked in the stare; they were all eyeing him and he shut his eyes for a minute to calm himself down. They didn't know what he was here for.

Sumeragi Subaru. Shopping for designer clothes. He was hardly able to believe it himself.

He stood there at a slight loss, looking around the shop that was practically empty and couldn't help thinking that if the country were socialist, the existence of such extravagant places like these would be a crime against humanity. Not that he had any right to make observations like that, with a monthly paycheck that could've fed everyone in his apartment.

His phone vibrated.

He always kept it on silent mode, out of courtesy, except for those few months when he'd find his phone in ridiculous places just minutes before he left for work and he'd have no time to inspect it for tampering so during a meeting or session with a client hours later, when someone called, his office would be filled with the deafening noise of a farting crowd or thousands of screaming women and burping babies.

Now, it was back to silent.

He picked it out, flipped it open with his mouth since his other hand had fallen asleep in its pocket and took the call.

"Arisugawa-kun? Is anything wrong?"

What a stupid question. What else could go wrong after everything?

The person on the other side coughed uncomfortably.

"Sumeragi-san? I just called to see if everything is all right. I apologize for disturbing you."

"Please don't. I was about to call you anyway."

"What is it?"

"Sorata, what do I buy?"

He let the long suppressed desperation leak into his voice, dropping the formality and told himself that it was a few more hours and then, he'd be back in his apartment, with the whole thing finally closed. Just a few more hours.

"Um, well, that's kind of hard. Where are you now?"

Subaru could imagine the teenager scratching his head as he thought it out.

He told him the name of the shop and listened to him have a cardiac arrest on the other end.

"I'm paying for it," Subaru added resolutely when the teenager tried to protest.

"Subaru-san, with all due respect, Kamui-"

"I'll see you in twenty minutes. Will you help me make it faster?"

He heard the resigned sigh and waited.

"To be honest, Subaru-san, I have no idea what to tell you to get. He would wear a dress if you were the one who bought it."

Subaru coughed, choking on his own saliva as his body quickly aborted something that might have been laughter or a sob.

Then, he understood the deeper nuances under the humor.

"You mean, Kamui…"

"Yes."

He kept silent for a few minutes, rethinking the whole relationship during the course of a few seconds and hating himself every second for having been so willfully blind.

"I'll see you soon," Subaru said finally and cut the call.

He finally chose black jeans and a cuffed white shirt that he held up against himself to test the length and then went for one two sizes smaller. He added a pair of light-up sneakers and finished it all off with a black tie, which had been the thing on his mind from the beginning.

For the first time, he felt glad his salary was that high.

XXX

He met Sorata at the door to an exhibit room and wordlessly handed him the shopping bag. He was drenched and it was already nightfall, even though the time was barely seven.

The tiny studio lights built into the ceiling added a wave of contrived cheerfulness to the depressed atmosphere that radiated from practically everywhere and Subaru wished he could knock them out and stand in total darkness instead.

"What did they do up till now?" he couldn't help asking, using his sleeve to futilely dry his hair and feeling it stand up in adolescent spikes.

Sorata stared at the floor, drawing invisible designs onto the speckled tiles with one dirty heel of a sneaker.

"Paper sheets," he replied with a grimace.

Subaru stared and barely registered the sight of a suited middle-aged man who came forward to take the bag. As Sorata moved to give it to him, Subaru made up his mind and quickly reached between them, blocking Sorata as he did so. He rudely whipped out the sleek black tie from within the bag, rolling it around his fist and met the other's stare defiantly.

The man blinked at him curiously while Sorata raised an eyebrow. Subaru turned away, pretending to look at something else until the stranger's footsteps receded.

After a while, the silence got unbearable.

Subaru pulled the tie out of his pocket and smoothed it against a wall, working the wrinkles out of the slippery strip and waited for his breathing to return to its normal pace. Sorata stared absently at the tie for a few minutes and then turned away.

"How is Arashi-san?" Subaru asked, to be polite, to pass the time, to do anything that would get rid of the sick feel of superglue in his mouth and lungs, making him so numb inside. Sorata began to say something when the stranger returned and bowed politely.

"In here, please," he guided them down the hallway. Despite its reputation and the people it housed, the place was grand and majestic, with the feel of a museum or a modern cathedral instead of what it really was. The hallway was a black and ugly tunnel, with its true nature lined with soft carpets, dark glass cases and subtle lights as a disguise.

They stopped outside a heavy wooden door. Its bottom was shielded with plastic so it scraped the edge of flooring that spilled out from inside the room but it still didn't keep in the frigid breeze that curled around Subaru's ankles, chilling his skin even through the material of his jeans.

The man caught sight of the tie.

"Would you like me to take care of that for you, sir?"

Subaru felt Sorata's warning glance at the back of his head but ignored it.

"Thank you, but I'd prefer to do it myself."

The man studied him almost sternly and Subaru addressed the teenager instead.

"Are you coming with me, Arisugawa-kun?"

Sorata shook his head.

"Arashi and I are done. It's your turn."

He silently thanked Sorata in his mind and flung open the door to the bluish and sterile world beyond. He let it close behind him, sealing him into isolation and breathed in the smell of death that no temperature could ever really cover up.

Sumeragi Subaru went over to the raised metal table in the centre of the room and pulled down the sheets concealing the body on it.

A breathtakingly ethereal teenager lay under the white material, his eyes closed, dressed in the same clothes Subaru had bought earlier that evening.

His expression was much too calm for Subaru's liking, missing the customary scowl, the triumphant smirk or flustered bewilderment he had gotten used to seeing. Surprisingly, the teenager looked smaller and thinner than he had in life and maybe, despite what science said, there was something that left a person's body after them.

Kamui Shiro had been murdered three nights ago.

XXX

Author's Note:

Well, here it is: my first SxK multi-chapter fic. I've never done this before and read a lot of other AU fics to get a decent idea of how to develop my own ideas. So, any criticism/ advice/ comments would be gratefully accepted. As of now, I think I know where to take this but am working on it when I can.

By the way, the title 'Himitsu' means 'Secret' in Japanese.

Oh, and as always, please read and review. I'd do the same for you anytime. Leave questions in the reviews or message me.

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