A/N: Holy crap, it's been almost three weeks. Or maybe almost four. My grasp on time sucks--probably the reason why this chapter is so late. I finally got over my writers' block, for all those that care about the author. :) The chapters should be coming out a lot faster, but due to the excess amount of work due to the current time period being, oh, well, second semester, I've got around three projects and one process essay due in a matter of weeks (which really isn't enough). So, there's my big excuse for running away. :)
Disclaimer: Yes. I own Tsubasa. It's just that all of the little kiddies can't take this over the bloody eyes and the trading of body parts and such-- -CLAMP chokes me- Uh. Nevermind.
Enjoy.
Chapter Four--Drunken Memories
Nine Years Ago, January
"Yuui. It's been a long time." Fai looked up to the unfamiliar name but familiar voice, and then to Ashura. Promptly, he dropped his pen, the clatter being the only sound in his room. He was fourteen that day. Even though he didn't know his real birthday, Ashura gave it to him. A treasure--January 5. He was expecting some card in the mailbox, but Ashura himself appearing…
Gathering his wits about himself, Fai leaned down to grab it, shooting a tentative smile in his shocked face's stead. "Ashura," he greeted shyly. "It's been eleven months. I thought you were supposed to be in Concord for another one."
Ashura gently smiled back at his surprise. "We finished up early. Did you miss me?"
"Of course," Fai said, delight spreading across his features.
Ashura gave a chuckle, his breath frosting in the cold winter air. "I suppose you're right."
"Hey! Ashura's back!" The voice piped from beyond the large window. Gretel rushed inside and jumped the longhaired man.
"Who's this?" Ashura asked Fai confusedly, hugging the girl back nonetheless.
"Gretel," Fai said nervously. Would Ashura object to having a child in his home? "She's an orphan, and well--I just thought that--"
"Of course, Yuui," Ashura said, smiling his gentle smile. "How did you become friends with her?"
"Well…" Fai smiled back, relieved. Ashura wasn't mad at all. Ashura was home.
He explained everything. Gretel made her own insertions from time to time, and Fai would smile. He felt like his face was breaking, he was smiling so much.
Ashura just smiled in return.
"Hello, Yûko," the voice was smooth over the phone line. Just like it had been, so long ago.
Yûko Yanahara's eyebrows furrowed. "Hello, Fei."
"Are you seriously intending to go through with this lawsuit?"
The implications were written all over that statement. In the laws of interference, she was the only one who could and he knew it. If Fei was given what he wanted, just like that, there would be no end to the chaos.
Yûko was worried. That, at the very least. Fei was the type of man to use whatever means to achieve his goal.
She had liked that about him at first.
"Yes."
This lawsuit involved more than Clow Reed's heir.
She heard the line go dead in her hands. Just like it did a long time ago.
Yes, it involved much more than that.
"Xing Huo," Tomoyo nodded. The woman was at least three years older than her, and she had reviewed every case the other attorney had won. Which was all of them.
And then, they were all in defense of the accused.
Drug Abuse--three day trial, accused found innocent.
Murder--four day trial, accused found innocent.
Rape--six day trial, accused found innocent.
Theft--five hour trial, accused found innocent.
And it continued like that, a long string of victories in almost record times. Each tape had the woman attacking the weaknesses of the prosecutor's case, no matter how small. Even one, with an Amish woman being the opposition, Xing Huo made her look guilty of false accusation.
"Tomoyo Saotome," the older woman replied with a clipped voice.
She was deep in Reed's territory. Tomoyo would have preferred to meet outside of the man's influence, but a camera was clearly focused on them. A ploy for intimidation, Tomoyo thought--the man wasn't a multi-millionaire and had the most sophisticated technology in the world. The camerawas for intimidation--it was just that the real ones were too small because they played at two thousand frames per second. Whoever heard of a marketer with such sophisticated tech with a big and bulky frame?
It was the reason she couldn't afford to let a single mistake show, because it would be on tape. And Xing Huo would see it.
"I would like to request a plea-bargain." Her voice was level and calm. She wasn't sweating that much.
"Specifics are needed on that front, Ms. Saotome." Xing Huo's voice was robotic.
Tomoyo almost twitched. Usually, there would at least be a mild geniality about this situation. Attorney and attorney, lawyer and lawyer--cynicism and a sense of personality were almost required or they would lose their minds in their line of work.
Xing Huo was like a damn boulder.
She continued as if it was expected for the other woman to reply like that. "Yûko retains custody of Sakura; however--"
"Denied."
Tomoyo blinked.
Dammit.
It was a simple case of who had the papers and who didn't. Tomoyo rubbed at her temple. At this rate, she was going to get wrinkles before she was even married. The pretrial had been completely one-sided. The judge was an impersonal man that had a pinched look to his face, no family--and probably a bachelor that was just ogling Xing Huo's assets. How did a guy like that get to be a judge? She had only badgered him enough for a two-week prep period.
The blank document on her screen blinked at her menacingly.
So, since Fei obviously had the papers, it was now a matter of who was more suited to take care of Sakura. Hopefully, the jury had more of a conscience than the judge.
It was time to dig up some blackmail.
The workload was actually easier than his other school, surprisingly enough. They had already settled down, and it was still only around four hours each day. Without distraction, around three hours. Even more shocking, when the blond actually had work, the guy didn't stop working every other minute like the ADD idiot he was.
Kurogane stopped typing for a moment to look out the window. It was raining again. October. He sighed and turned back to the computer. The essay was due the next day, and they demanded the concrete detail and commentary crap… Ugh.
"Kuro-chuu." The blond wasn't squealing. It was just his name. A nickname, nonetheless, but…
Kurogane sighed again and rested his chin on his hand. "What?"
"Are you going to the drinking party tonight?"
Why would he? "No."
"Hmm? I guess not. Kuro-tan's the type to be the chaperone instead of have fun…"
He twitched, but it was too tiring to blow up at every prod at his pride that the blond posed. And he had to do this stupid essay…"Whatever." He straightened his back and started typing again.
"Kuro-chan?"
He paused. "What?" He continued typing.
"Can you come with me?"
He paused again. "Why?"
"I want to see Kuro-pon get drunk."
…What the hell type of reason was that? Dammit, at this rate he wouldn't even finish the body paragraph, much less the whole essay.
Stoically, he continued typing.
He was stopped two words later. "Kuro-chama?"
"What?"
"Please?" The voice was in the puppy-dog mode.
Kurogane weighed the benefits of finishing his essay against the idiocy of going to a drinking party. At this rate, the idiot would keep on interrupting his line of thought. It could drag down his grade by five percent if he didn't turn it in, and the professor didn't accept incomplete essays. He was already at the brink of a B, and a low GPA wouldn't get him to where he wanted to go. There was also that job interview at that vendor's place the next day. Well. He wasn't going to get drunk, anyway, so it shouldn't be too bad…
"If you shut up until it's time to go, then I'll go, dammit," he growled.
Really, he didn't even want to start thinking of what he had just signed himself to. He might regret it more than he already did.
It was twenty minutes in and Kurogane was regretting it. Already, the blond was going around like he was drunk (which he highly doubted), and it was so damn loud--
"Kuro-sama!! Come drink with us!" The blond appeared in front of his face, a faint flush on his face. Then again, there was always a flush--the guy's skin was so pale that any exertion would make it go pink.
But how the hell did he keep on popping up from nowhere?
"No."
"Ehh? Why not?"
"It's stupid." There were various groans from the drunkards (primarily Fuuma,, Shougo, Sorata, and some random underage kids Maru and Moro).
"Ehhh? Kuro-sama can't beat me in a drinking contest, then!"
…Yeah, right.
"I didn't know this was a competition," Kurogane smirked. As if he would back down against the idiot.
Two shot glasses were set down in front of them. "Whoever loses pays," Touya said, grinning.
Kurogane didn't have the money on him.
Then again, he wasn't going to lose.
He grabbed the shot glass and downed it in one go, setting it on the table once he was done. Ugh. It was bitter stuff. Exactly the reason why he didn't drink.
The blond drank it slower than him, but then the bartender had poured the next shot, and Kurogane was ready to drink it. Even if it tasted disgusting, he wasn't one to lose.
And, well, money was on the line.
They went on like that for the next ten shots, the overall generic quality of the drinks making it hard to swallow again and again. He felt tipsy, but he supposed Tomoyo's hardcore drinking style was passed onto him. For some reason. Even if they weren't family.
The incoherency--the second reason why he didn't like drinking.
Eleventh shot, and the blond was slurring like crazy.
Twelfth shot and the blond passed out, his head thunking into the table with the grandeur of a dead horse falling over.
He won. And the idiot thought he could actually beat him.
Cheers erupted.
"Fai pays, Fai pays!" the underage kids chimed, sending slight pinpricks of pain through the haze of drunkenness.
Not much of a win when he felt like he was getting a little headache. Nevertheless, since he was sitting right next to the guy, he reached into the blond's pocket and grabbed the wallet. A little weird to go into some other guy's pants. But whatever.
Flipping open the wallet, he brought out a hundred dollar bill cushioned in the other bills there (seriously, how rich was the guy?) and handed it to the bartender.
More cheers as the guy slipped it into his pocket, grinned, and brought out a fresh case of beer.
The party eventually moved elsewhere as they mobbed the alcohol.
Still a little bit out of it, he spent the next ten minutes looking over the blond's wallet. His sense of equilibrium was off, and it kept on distracting him as he fumbled with the thing. There was nothing special in it--a driver's license, basic ID cards, a few hundred dollars… Why the hell would someone have this much money at a drinking party? He could get mugged.
He closed the wallet a little clumsily, missing the buckle for it a few times before it clicked. The alcohol must've shot his normal functions to hell.
Heh. Shot. Ha.
…Apparently, his sense of humor was shot as well.
"Hey, Kurogane, take Fai home will you?" Shougo grinned, slapping a hand on his shoulder.
What the hell? This guy was seriously drunk if he was treating him like a buddy. Ngh.
The sentence processed through his mind a moment later.
"Hell no--" he started, taking a moment to find his voice, but Shougo's ears seemed to not have heard him as he continued.
"I doubt any of us are going to be able to lug another person's ass back after that free ticket. Thanks, 'nd bye!"
…And then he was left with the blond, wallet in hand like nothing else.
Oh, fuck.
He swore there was a grin on the idiot's face.
"Kuro-chan is so nice."
With a start, Kurogane realized that the idiot was finally awake. He was driving them back grudgingly, making sure that the Shougo guy's face was carefully fixated in his mind. He would get something for this, he was sure.
Back to the matter at hand, he was speaking in Japanese.
Japanese.
He would have never thought the blond even knew any remotely Asian language with the Caucasian looks. Maybe the guy just spouted off some random syllables that his receptors took as a language he knew.
Maybe.
So he replied in a low growl, "It's not like I was just going to leave your sorry ass there."
The guy laughed and replied with a tinkle: "I never knew Kuro-chan thought of me like that."
He flushed, but the idiot was in the back seat, so it wasn't as if he could see.
…Yeah. The idiot was bilingual. Great. Another language to humiliate him in. But it shouldn't have come as a surprise to him--the guy clearly referenced the "chan" and "sama" jokes…
Whatever.
"You know Japanese?"
The guy's tongue was as free as the wind, it seemed. "I lived in Japan for elementary. Moved here when I was fourteen."
Kurogane realized that this was the first thing that he'd heard of the blond's past. Or of Japan in the blond's past.
"Why?" He didn't really know why he cared. He blamed it on the alcohol and the flashing lights. This was the last time he ever would wear sunglasses to avoid crashing.
At the lack of reply, he glanced at the rearview mirror to make sure the guy was still awake. He didn't need to be talking to himself.
The look that was focused on the back of his head made him flinch. Even if he was emotionally stunted and quite frankly apathetic, he knew the look was painful. Sad. Helpless. --After all, he had seen the same look on his face when he was in the bathroom, throwing up because he couldn't get rid of the image of his dead mother out of his eyes.
Only her head, the one that was still talking after it had been taken off of her shoulders. The one that smiled like it always did and said, "I love you". The one that had been drenched in blood that was both not her own yetwas from the bullet--
He pulled off the road violently, slamming on the brakes as he simultaneously opened the door, rushing out before the car even reached a full stop (he had already put the car in park, anyway) and threw up for all he was worth.
Nausea rolled over him in waves, each one ending up in a pile of acid on the cold asphalt, splattering and looking disgusting as he could only try to stay in control.
"Asshole! Don't stop like that!" Distantly, Kurogane's mind registered the insult, and he vaguely remembered lifting his middle finger to point in the general vicinity of the voice.
He gagged on the last bit of nausea, spitting it out as he breathed heavily.
Fucking alcohol.
"Kuro-chan? Are you all right?" Slender hands tentatively rubbed at his back and supported him. Involuntarily, his body relaxed into the hold, but now that his head was clearer, he could actually think straight.
He was never going to drink again. Too many drinks induced too many images that he'd rather not remember. Drinking to drown out the past? Drinking made him remember, goddammit.
"Yeah. I'm fine," he growled, still letting his head hang down, partially because he was still trying to get his bearings straight and partially because he sure as hell didn't want to swallow back the stomach acid that tasted like crap in his mouth.
Abruptly, a paper towel was offered in front of his face.
He stared at it for a moment, thought process sluggishly trying to make sense of the situation.
He had run at least two meters away from the car. How the hell had the idiot been able to get over here that fast if he was dead drunk? And he had paper towels to clean him up with.
Those were questions he'd have to answer later. But for now, he took the towel and wiped his mouth, getting rid of the disgusting residue and standing up straight. The hands left immediately, and the blond took a step back.
He glanced at the guy's face. "Thanks."
A cheery smile. "You're welcome, Kuro-chuu!"
He let the name slide.
Walking back to the car, he started the engine again as the blond chose to sit in the seat beside him instead of behind.
There wasn't really anything to say, but a barrier had been breached, and they both knew it.
A/N: More tonesetting. Yay. (And yes, I have been trying to update for a day. FF kept cutting out on me.) And yes, Japanese in this story will be in italics.
Feed the hungry/starving/dying/hemorrhaging/bleeding/emaciated author:)