Disclaimer: Gravitation isn't mine. I don't make a cent off anything that I do here. None.

"Get out! Get out!"

Shuichi whimpered slightly as Yuki loomed above him, the rage painting the writer's face into a mass of etched lines and making him appear larger than life.

Yuki quivered with anger and restrained violence as he advanced upon the singer. His eyes were cold, baleful, wrathful flecks of rock set deep within his face and the normally smooth lines around his mouth were twisted and ugly as he railed. His words were molten.

"Get out of my apartment, you little bitch! I don't care where you go, just get out. You make me sick." A few strands of blonde hair reached around his face and clung to Yuki's dry lips flecked with saliva, but with hands clenched into fists didn't move to brush them away.

Yuki was terrifying.

He was a fount of malice. Right at this moment he didn't give a fuck about what had passed between them, or how many soft endearments they'd whispered late at night with half-laughing smiles and sets of long legs twined about each other. He was utterly consumed in the fires of his own rage and it seemed like from afar he watched himself burn.

"GO! Go run home to mommy if you want."

Shuichi flinched, leaning as he was against the wall, his lover endlessly tall above his cringing form. He seemed to be biting his lip.

Yuki could see it in his mind, though his conscious mind seemed empty. Shuichi here was the enemy and the goal was to have the brat out of his apartment. His words were like blades puncturing the bag. He was a master swordsman.

"No make-up fuck, you little shit. Go back and howl at the moon with that wretched voice of yours. Sounds like my cat singing into a tin can, the way you grunt into the mike. You sound like shit. "

The tooth biting into Shuichi's lip dug deeper, as if it were his head he were burying to avoid the awful onslaught of Yuki's wrath.

"I-It wasn't--" He uttered quietly, to himself.

"Wasn't what?" The tone felt like a whiplash. Shuichi jerked. He heard.

It couldn't go on. Yuki had crossed the line. He was into sheer sadism now, mindlessly pouring out all the negativity that collected in a thick crust around his heart onto the only thing that could hear him. He was, Shuichi knew from previous fights, reaching the point where he would become hysterical.

And then he was truly a monster.

"It-it wasn't my fault!" His own courage surprised him. Shuichi felt a brief moment of pride that he had stood up for himself, right before his personal space was very suddenly invaded by the taller man. Yuki's chest pressed against his, the older man's breath hot and expression ugly, caging Shuichi in a prison of flesh against the wall. Shuichi's head banged against the wall.

Yuki's biceps tingled faintly under the rush of adrenaline and halted movement. All his body wanted right now was to hit something and stop this annoying chatter. Just hit and wouldn't the pain lessen? Wouldn't the pressure ease, if only in the slightest? The chips of stone flicked down to the cringing boy before him.

Do it, hissed an ancient, reptilian corner of his brain selfishly. Do it.

His palms tingled now, too, his head felt restricted by a band and as light as air. It would be easy to just do it. Didn't Shuichi deserve it? Look at him cower and quiver like that. It simply fed the bonfire roaring in Yuki's chest and head, obscuring with a thick, black, poisonous smoke his love for the smaller man.

His chest heaved as his hand slowly, inch by inch, raised, flat and ready to deliver a punishing, head-ringing slap.

Shuichi's eyes widened disbelievingly as he saw the muscles first twitch under the black shirt Yuki wore and finally move the entire limb. His own chest tightened and his head spun. They were on the precipice here, and this feeling of vertigo was a severe warning. The man's clothes crinkled against his bare belly. Shuichi's breath shuddered over his lower lip, the tooth suddenly tearing free and blood spilling down and into the valley of his chin.

It was a floodtide in Yuki's mind, a hammering, yammering insistence to do something, anything, to stop his heart from exploding. There was so much pain there that it screamed to be shared, to be poured into everyone's drink so that at the very least, they might all die together. It called for an end to the loneliness in any way possible. His lips peeled back from his gritted teeth.

"No."

The word was uttered so close and so low in Yuki's chest that Shuichi wondered haltingly if it was meant for him.

It was a struggle to lower his hand.

A tear draggled down from the corner of Shuichi's eye as he hardly ventured hope, afraid as he was that any moment it would be dashed to pieces. "Yuki..." he breathed, mind numb at the strangling self control his lower employed.

It felt like the floodgates in his head were about to burst, and the tension in the room was released as the blonde man crumpled from his position of rage and hate down to his knees. It won't help, thought Yuki, knowing that the devil in the back of his mind lied. Lied. Striking Shuichi, killing his teacher, the pain would increase exponentially like infinity tied to infinity.

"Lie, he whispered raggedly, hands clenching into those fists on the carpet. The fires still burned, though now they didn't spread. For the moment, Yuki had himself under control. For the moment, he breathed.

In....

Out...

Hold the fires at bay...

He was burning on the insides, scorched a hideous black, but he refused to let the flames touch his precious, beautiful Shuichi. Let his heart char to ash, let it all go. But never, ever hurt the one beautiful thing in his life.

A sob strangled unwillingly out of his mouth as he crouched, back rounded, at Shuichi's feet.

A hand gingerly stroked along the raised ridge of his spine, "Oh, Yuki..." the fear was gone from Shuichi's voice now. That same sweet forgiveness as the hand petted his back spreading cool comfort along his flushed skin. And then the hand slid further, around his middle and drew Yuki up from his broken hunch like one would draw a broken winged bird into the healing light of the day.

The cat-like eyes were cast down and away, too fearfully ashamed to face his lover, even as Shuichi gently embraced the man, letting the contact ease the tension held in the wire-tight body beside him as if through osmosis.

For now, it was all he could do. Forgive and rebuild, but make the stronghold of their love better than before the tempestuous quakes. It happened. This was Yuki. This was the man Shuichi had accepted when he'd confessed his love. Perfect?--Hardly. But Yuki made the effort, and that was enough for now.

"I...I would never..."

"I know."

Shuichi licked his ruined lips and tasted blood.

-fin-