This chapter is just to highlight a little bit of Hao's past. Can't all be about Yoh ya know. =] Just a little injection of backstory for you here. I felt like this was really needed in order to show Hao's reflections and change.

I told you all I'd update soon as I could. It's here! Thanks so much for all your support guys. You know I love you all.

Hao: Crash Down, Spin Round.

I've always been different.

When I was young... and here I'm talking three, four years old, I was placed under the care of Westwood Side County Psychiatric Hospital. My parents left me, and I have no recollection of them whatsoever. I'm not sure I'd really want any, to be perfectly honest. I grew up in wires and reports. Drugged up to my knees in disorder and mayhem; I spent my time alone.

After I was discharged, I was placed in a halfway house, where I floated in and out, passing through family after family. Eventually, I guess my reputation must have preceded me, because I stayed there. I was a bad child. I would do anything to cause drama. I skived school. I started fights that I never lost. I smashed windows, stole from houses and generally wasted my childhood being a criminal, when I know, that if I'd have actually tried, I could have been so much more. The halfway house became my home until I left with the nicest family possible. Toshiya, my Father, was a strict but caring man who provided much needed discipline in my life. My Mother, Shauna, was elegant, a brilliant cook, but was a perfectly sculptured shoulder when I needed something to cry on. They shaped me into what I am today. Even though I have my fair share of flaws, I am now a damn sight better than I was. And they showed me what a family was.

What follows is a shitload of heartache.

My folks were in a smash up on the motorway.

'Dad' died at the scene.

'Mom' was rushed to hospital, where I got there just in time to suffer the touching goodbye. She gave everything she and her husband had ever made to me, to help me start my own life. The first decent people I'd ever met were stolen from me by what originally started as a car chase.

Since then, my heart has healed in such a way that it now feels no attachment. I was afraid of feeling something, just in case it left me again. I can't connect. I am the very suggestion of cold.

Oh, I was skilled. I'd given girls multiple waves of orgasms with just my mouth. I'd made guys beg for me on their hands and knees. I'd humiliated them, and they'd loved it, because it was me. They were sharing the one everyone wanted.

There's no need to be modest when it's factual.

And I enjoyed it, until the aftermath awakened and I opened my post ecstasy eyes to affection and hope.

This is what scares me.

Do I want to know why my own parents gave me up? Of course the thought has crossed my mind. I wonder why they gave me to such a place, rather than placing me in someone else's hands. I suppose it was only natural to think such things, being brought up without them.

I closed my eyes. My brain hurts to think about it. This is why I prefer to fuck and drink my problems away. It's hard to think about your past when you're lost in the moment.

I couldn't count them on my fingers. It went beyond that. I remember every face, but I probably wouldn't recognise them in the street.

There are some girls that leave the canteen crying when I walk in. Boys tend to go the bathroom, or make any excuse up to avoid me.

When I first saw Yoh, I didn't think anything of him. I didn't approach him with any intentions. When we started talking, in the loosest sense of the word, I wanted him in the same fashion I'd wanted everyone else. The infamous Hao's 'fuck now, never call again' complex. I'd wanted him.

And yet he didn't seem to fall for it. He was closed off, cautious. It was harder than I thought. Now that it comes down to it, I think being with Yoh has changed me. I think that now, if we fucked, it wouldn't be fucking. It would be, dare I say it, making love. I didn't know that meaning of that. I think it would be me, reaching for the phone in the morning, dialling his number, making sure he wasn't the one to leave me behind. I was doing the chasing.

Seems a little strange now.

I reach over and pluck the phone from its cradle, dialling Yoh's mobile number and lolling back into bed. When it went straight to answerphone, I knew he must have it switched off.

I threw it to the end of the bed and rubbed at my eyes. This was killing me. I'd never worried about anything. Except, maybe... just a few times. Times I can remember.

"It's a test, Hao. Don't worry, it'll only hurt for a second."

"But..."

"Sush Honey. Now, put this between your teeth."

"No! Why?"

"It'll stop you biting your tongue dear."

I only have a few clear memories of that institution, but those I do have still give me nightmares today. I suppose some people in there had it a lot worse than me, so I'm not complaining. It wasn't too bad. Except that one nurse. The one with red hair and a vicious smile. She hurt. She made me hurt too.

Still, something wasn't quite right.

"Fuck. Whatever."

I slid out of bed and shoved my feet roughly in two thick socks. I padded down the stairs, my fingertips grazing the cool wall to my right.

"Fuck you! That's mine!"

"I'm hungryyyyy!"

The mental sigh escaped my brain and rolled off my lips. Although I was glad of the rent from these two, sometimes, I just wanted to knock their heads together. Horo was on the floor, Ren's hand twisted in his hair, the blue haired boy letting out muffled yelps obscured by the slice of toast dangling from between his lips.

I left the room. The last thing I needed to deal with today is these idiots.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I remember moving into Thornhouse: Halfway house when I was seven years old. My room was not much smaller than a shoebox. I shared it with another boy, older than me, Ryu. Ryu used to vanish at odd times during the night; used to crawl out of his window and slide down the drainpipe. Always said he was meeting somebody. He kept a tiny black wallet in his pocket that I wasn't allowed to touch. Told me that he'd throw me out of the window if I ever went near it, to steal his money. Funny thing is... he kept his money in his pockets...

I caught him out on the streets, when I had been breaking and entering at nine years of age. He was with another man, aged and balding, white hairs sprouting from his nose and ears. I was excited to see him, outside the house. He was probably the closest thing I could pitch as a friend. Maybe even an older brother figure. But... as I got closer, my gut turned over inside of me. I knew this was a bad situation. I knew because my instincts told me, and my instincts were never wrong. Of course, I never knew back then that this was because of my shaman powers.

I tried to get him to come home with me... to come back to the house. I pulled at his clothes, trying to persuade him to leave.

The old man grabbed my shoulders, shouting something to Ryu, who stood in fear before tugging me away, eyes wide and hands shaking.

At the time, I was young, naïve, carefree, (almost).

I know now that Ryu was a drug addict. Those late night outings? They were meeting in which he sold himself to pay off his addiction. That old man was a client. That old man thought I was like Ryu.

I was nearly raped that night.

It brought me closer to Ryu in a way I had never imagined. I started giving him the money I was stealing for him to get his fixes. I became an enabler. He taught me tricks to get through doors, cars and windows.

Yet he never offered me the drugs. He kept that shit as far from me as possible. It created too much temptation. I took his black wallet when he was out, shook out the powder. Cut it up, just like I'd seen him do. I took the cut straw and took one little sniff.

What I experienced that night changed my life. I wanted to be high, all the time.

When Toshiya and Shauna took me in, I went to great lengths to conceal my secret. I was weaned off, bit by bit by the overpowering fear that I would disappoint them.

The past always feels shameful when I look back on it like that. But I stopped being an addict. I overcame my drug abuse and instead, became a master in abusing hearts.

I went from junkie to slut in less than three months.

I remember my first woman. Jackson was my best friend, my next door neighbour. Charlotte was his sister. She was powerful and beautiful, legs long and tanned, hair a dirty blonde, breasts big and supple. We got drunk one night, started fooling about. I was her first too. We never dated. I made her orgasm twice and she got me off, all safe of course.

My first boy? Well, that's more complex. At first, I rejected him again and again. I was so sure I didn't like guys.

His mouth around my erection sure made me sing a different tune.

He was mine after that. He slept with no other. I slept with plenty of other people... I didn't do relationships after all, but he was always there. He would drop everything to come back and get fucked by me. Anything. I showed up at his nephews christening in a suit and he caved, told his Mother he'd be back, that he had something important to do with school to catch up on.

He missed out on his nephews christening for me to take him behind the church, knees shaking and fingernails scraping against mossy brick. He stuffed his shirt into his mouth, so his Mother wouldn't hear on the other side of the wall. It only made me fuck him harder.

I was shameless. I suppose I still am, slightly.

I picked up the phone again. It went to voicemail.

I paused.

"Yoh... I know you are having a hard time. I need you to call me. I'm worried about you."

I sighed loudly. A rush of static is all that could be heard at the other end.

"Just..." I trailed off, closing my eyes tightly. I was being pathetic. I hadn't seen him in three days and I was being like this. Like I couldn't let him go. Like I didn't want to.

"Call me."

I didn't know whether to say it. Those three words might ruin this message, push him further away.

Since when I have I not taken risks?

"I love you, you know."

I hung up. Wait. Shit.

I rang back.

"It's Hao by the way."

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-Gives cookies and roses- Thanks for reading you guys :D Have my love.