Only Human

Urei Sachi

'I have seen, I have been

-Cynthia Alexander, Comfort in Your Strangeness

---

Haruhi was pretending to sleep when Kyouya came into her room.

He stopped ten centimeters away from her, just close enough to see the steady rise and fall of her back, and far enough to walk away as if nothing had happened. But he didn't. He was silent for a whole minute, his eyes fixed on her body, and Haruhi knew when he turned his eyes away, because it didn't feel like a hundred daggers were being plunged into her back ever so slowly. Kyouya had that effect on most people.

He tilted his head to the side slightly and narrowed his eyes. "I am not kind," he began, his voice overwrought and trembling, and Haruhi wondered just how he could maintain his self-control even when the tension in the air was too thick and suffocating. It smothered her more than the pillow she hugged to death could be capable of; she had never handled rigidity easily. She supposed Kyouya's life had been like that since forever. It was disturbing to know that his childhood had always been strained.

"I can't get through to you, can I?" he asked softly, not trusting his voice enough for him to raise it a little louder, for fear that it would crack slightly. "No matter what we do or say, there's not enough for us to fix this, to fix everything."

Haruhi didn't know why Kyouya didn't outright order her to get up. It was either he didn't notice that she was very much awake, or he was pretending not to be aware of it. She wasn't damn good at feigning anything, except maybe cluelessness when the need for it became apparent, so she supposed that it was better this way.

"And you know what's worse? It's the knowledge that this can't be fixed, that not even your warmth can get to me. I don't know what scares me more…"

Kyouya faltered, and Haruhi just waited.

But Kyouya didn't say anything else.

He turned his back to her and raked a hand through his hair with the suaveness he was always known for, but his shoulders were tense and his hand trembled slightly, as if he wanted to reach out and touch something… like her.

So he retreated from the room like a wounded soldier bent on fighting to the death but unable to go on because his legs were broken and his body was numbed from the cold, the pain, the blood, everything.

Haruhi saw his reflection from the window, but she could not understand what was going on. That was not Kyouya. That was only a dream, an imaginary illusion that perhaps she had dared to summon.

And they always said that dreams replicated what you wanted the most.

Haruhi contemplated this for a minute, until she decided to close her eyes and pretend that nothing had happened.

She didn't understand what he was trying to tell her, but at least he had made it known to her that he was, in fact, just like her. She appreciated such a bold, daring move, because she knew all too well how much it had cost his pride to say those kinds of things. It was nice to know that something had changed.

He was only human, after all.

---

END

---

unbeta-ed and un-edited.

---

Yes, I did write another KyouHaru. :D