01. Introduction
"Ah, Kuro-chii, I see you've met my brother," Yuui said, a grin spreading slowly across his face as his lover's brain caught up to the situation at hand.
"What?" the darker man questioned, his gaze swiveling between the blonde man he'd mistaken for his partner, sandwiched against his side and Yuui himself, incoherent with laughter by the door.
"I'm Fai," the stranger said, sticking out a hand to be shaken. "Sorry about all this, but Yuui said you had it coming."
Kurogane pushed aside his confusion for the moment, in favor of running his husband down and throttling the living daylights out of him while Fai looked on, bemused in the extreme.
02. Love
Watching Sakura and Sayora, curled around one another and sound asleep on the ground, and the wizard mere feet away, Mokona perched on his head, Kurogane realized that in his relentless attempts to get home, he had wrapped himself so tightly in this group that he could no longer see where he ended and the began.
He realized that the emotion he had labeled as devotion for all these years might actually be called lover. That, more than anything, scared him senseless.
03. Light
Fai privately marveled at the ninja's eyes, glittering in the dark mere inches away, like embers at the center of a roaring fire. He peered blearily up at Kurogane, his own tired eye fighting to focus in on the ninja's expression, which vacillated between bloodlust and anxiety, focused alternately on Sayoran's rising conflict with what appeared to be himself and the man currently shuddering from shock and bloodlust in his arms.
Fai arched in agony as another bolt of white-hot pain ripped through his skull, a vague, animalistic whimper gurgling out of his throat. His lone good eye slid closed for a moment and he felt a gentle pressure on his shoulder, not quite a shake that would have left him in tortured spasms, but a call back to reality.
His last coherent thought as he slipped into the maelstrom of black and white lightening reverberating inside of his head was that Kurogane's eyes were truly astonishing when they caught the light, like ruby lamps, illuminating the dark underground.
04. Dark
Fai awoke from the dark fog of unconsciousness to a cacophony of pain and the rough threads of an army-issue blanket, those same bright eyes pinning him down, attached to strong hands holding him to the bed, holding down the fire roaring through his veins. He could feel the boiling energy singing through his body, turning the throbbing discomfort in his eye into a fever pitch, driving him to thrash and writhe beneath the other's weight. He howled and bucked to no avail until his protests faded to whimpers and the light in those red eyes finally went out, replaced with a heady tiredness. His body went slack, his mind sliding back into the comforting darkness, away from the eyes that could offer him no comfort.
05. Seeking Solace
Fai turned away from the cold air leaking under the blanket and buried his face in the warm skin of Kurogane's shoulder, humming in contentment.
"Cold, mage?" his lover inquired, tossing a perfunctory arm over the smaller man's shoulders.
Fai shook his head no, a lazy smile on his face. "No, just comfortable."
06. Break Away
"Get back here you thrice damned, son of a-"
"Now, now Kuro-rin, don't get hasty."
"Hasty my ass. You were way back at the end of the pack. How in the hell did you pass me?"
"One word love. Blue Shell."
"That's two words."
"Complaining, complaining."
07. Heaven
"Oooh baby do you know what it's worth? Oooh heaven is a place on earth." Fai chirped, swinging his hips back and forth as he dusted the mantle in their living room.
"Please never do that again," Kurogane implored, standing wide-eyed in the doorway.
"Why on earth would I do something like that?" the magician asked, swinging over to loop and arm over the other man's shoulders.
"Because I might do something ridiculous like spirit you off to the bedroom for some 'quality time' with daddy."
"Hmmm," Fai responded, leaning sideways until their hips brushed together. "You're expression just might be worth it. They say in heaven, love comes first. We'll make heaven a place on earth."
08. Innocence
"What was that!" Kurogane exploded, hurdling over bodies to reach the bloodied magician and the girl crumpled at his feet, unconscious, but otherwise unharmed.
"What was what, Kurogane?" Fai asked, too weary to even formulate a nickname.
"That ungodly explosion just now. Presumably the same thing that killed all these people!"
"Ah," Fai said, "that would have been me."
"I figured that," Kurogane snapped. "Why?"
"Because they wanted to take something from the princess that I couldn't allow."
"And what," Kurogane ground out, "would that be?"
"Her innocence," the mage replied, his eyes focused far off in the ravaged distance.
09. Drive
"Who taught you how to drive you crazy bastard?"
"Your grandmother apparently Kuro-pipi. Really, speed limits are for sissies."
"Sissies determined to live for their next birthdays!"
"This is Mario Kart, darling. The craziest bastard gets the trophy."
"That a challenge, blondie?"
"In your dreams, love."
10. Breathe Again
"Did you never play games in the ice on glass as a child?" Fai asked, genuinely befuddled.
"Mage, we rarely had snow in Nihon, much less ice. When would I have done this, exactly?"
"Right now," his lover declared, taking Kurogane's large, tan hand in his small, fair one and tracing lazy lines on the frosted window pane, drawing hearts and lazy spirals until the frost had melted almost entirely away.
Kurogane chuckled deep in his throat and made to remove his hand, but Fai stopped him, tightening his grip.
"Don't be done so early," he chided. "It's still cold outside."
"But the frost is gone," Kurogane protested.
Fai pulled him closer, until their foreheads touched the glass and their cheeks rested side by side. "We can make our own," he explained, breath fogging the glass with each word. "Just breathe."
A/N: I am so, so sorry. I haven't updated in forever and I feel abysmal. But here are some drabbles in recompense, and that full fic I promised for In Danger I and II oh so long ago, for those of you who remember (and by some miracle still read this, two years later) I finally started it and am now about 1/3 of the way done. If you're interested in it still, let me know. Otherwise, it'll be up when it's up.
Thank you for your eternal patience with this one,
TBR