Wonderland [X/1999, Kamui/Kotori, R]

[grungust.livejournal.com]

Title: Wonderland
Author/Artist: grungust
Rating: R
Warnings: Underage sex, possessiveness
Word count: 2129
Summary: Kamui tries to be a patient, understanding boyfriend. He's still working on it.
A/N: Prompt - X/1999, Kamui/Kotori: dreams, first time - It was almost too perfect.

He makes sure not to hold her too tightly in her sleep.

It happened, once, and he felt a staggering surge of guilt burn through him. She wasn’t harsh or defensive about it, which only made it worse, in a way. It reminded him of how understanding, how gentle she was—and how bitter he felt and how unfair this all was and…

Stop it, Sorata had told him. Oh, he hadn’t said it so forcefully or bluntly, but the general sentiment was there. She’s a lot stronger than you give her credit for, Kamui.

There was a truth in that, he supposes. No one ever expected her to wake up ever again after the shock of his aunt’s brutal death, so that the second sword might live. When that fabled recovery happened, they said she would never be the same, always a broken bird who chirped out a broken melody. When she recovered even from that, Kamui learned to stop listening to what the “experts” had to say.

No one had any right to say anything about Kotori. Only Kamui understood her.

Which is why Sorata’s interference had come as a rude awakening. What right did he have to tell Kamui how to treat Kotori? He told the young monk off, and thought it the end of his troubles.

Then Aoki, in his own gentle way, inserted himself into the situation, taking Kotori to the park to meet his wife and play with his daughter on the second day of her newfound lucidity. All of this happened while Karen ran interference, crippling with him sweet but embarrassing questions about his burgeoning romance. It wasn’t until two hours later that he realized he’d been duped. He stormed off to find Kotori, only to get road blocked by Yuzuriha, whose own brand of unwavering optimism had defanged him. He couldn’t bring himself to throw any poisonous barbs at her, although he certainly did his damnedest to divert her attention onto something (someone) else.

When he finally found her, after running himself ragged around the CLAMP campus (there would be no end to the lectures, about reopening his injuries or a need for rest or whatever else), she was all smiles. He was relieved, and yet he almost felt a little betrayed. Kamui had so thoroughly convinced himself that he was Kotori’s last foothold that he hadn’t even considered the notion that the other Seals might take it upon themselves to welcome Kotori into their fold just as they had done with Kamui.

He wanted to cry. He wasn’t sure if they would have been tears of frustration or happiness.

He didn’t actually do that, of course, brushing off the moment. Aoki, more perceptive than Kamui would have imagined, found a reason to slink off with his family, leaving the alone. They sat. They talked.

And somewhere in the painful, confusing mess, she admitted that she wanted to take things slowly. She cared very deeply for him, but she wanted to make sure that whatever happened between them came about as a natural ebb and flow, rather than a rush to what they thought was right in a bald-faced attempt to carve some pleasure out of each other’s flesh.

Again, not quite in those words, but that was the spirit of their conversation. Kamui was more than a little thrown off by that. He suppressed the urge to break Aoki’s legs for the audacity of talking to Kotori about sex, but he later found out his anger was unnecessary. Aoki had simply told Kotori to be honest with Kamui, not to hold anything back around him, because she was his strength and his passion. To hide anything from Kamui—whether the good or the bad—was to rob him of something he needed in every sense of the word. He adored Kotori in all that she was, for better or for worse.

Besides, Karen had been the one to have the sex talk.

But that was a moot point by the time she walked out of a doctor’s appointment one sunny Wednesday afternoon (a checkup for her heart) to find Kamui waiting across the street, hands shoved into his pockets, leaning against a bicycle. He had come to pick her up. He didn’t make a big deal out of it and he didn’t even mention her condition. I just wanted to see you, he said.

She suppressed the urge to melt into a puddle and instead needled him about skipping class.

Oh, yes, spending her days with the likes of Yuzuriha and Sorata had done wonders.

By the time he stopped sputtering, she decided to let him be a big, strong guy for her. Kotori sat in the bike’s seat while he walked the bike back to the girls-only dorm where she had come to live since the tragedy. She missed the shrine—missed it palpably, missed it miserably, missed it utterly—but she also missed the small pleasures of consistency, of friends and loved ones, which were in such short supply these days. Besides, she still kept in touch with her old friends from her previous high school, even if she didn’t see quite as much of them. It was the best of both worlds, she decided.

And it could get even better, she decided.

Kamui hadn’t had anything planned. He had no lustful designs on Kotori that afternoon, no matter how much Sorata would later proclaim (very, very loudly and in very, very public places). Still, things headed in that direction. She invited him inside. Having set foot a few times before in the female domain, Kamui wasn’t on guard.

So when she started kissing him for dear life the moment the door clicked shut behind him, he was a bit taken aback. Oh, yes, they had kissed before, but mostly as little pecks when they caught each other in the halls or when they said goodbye to each other after dinner (they almost always ate with Yuzuriha, Sorata, and Arashi to make the world’s most surreal dinner party).

He didn’t quite know what to do when Kotori decided she would try out this strange, wonderful thing called “French kissing.”

Somewhere between fully clothed and pants tripping him up at his ankles, a painful fact dawned on Kamui. He did not have any condoms.

Five, sputtering minutes later, he finally used something resembling words to tell this to Kotori, who was as aghast as he was. They wisely chose to put the moment on hold. Kamui sprinted back to the male dorm to take a very cold shower.

It was a few days later when they jumped each other on the couch. This time, Kamui had protection. He also had enough romanticism not to deflower a woman on the couch.

He carried her to the bedroom like a newly minted groom carrying his bride across the threshold. The promise the two had made to each other a long, long time ago made that image eerily appropriate. Then he remembered someone else had been there in those days and he buried the thought.

He didn’t need to think about the past when he could think about his future with Kotori.

It was almost too perfect.

It wasn’t quite perfect, of course. There was no shortage of tears or blood. Kamui tore her with his entry, but she tried not to dwell on it. Kotori was happy, in a way, that she could prove that she had waited for him. She just felt bad about biting him so hard in her surprise that she drew blood. Kamui didn’t mind. If she bled for him, the least he could do was bleed for her.

It was romantic, in a twisted sort of way. Only two terrified, young people who are hopelessly in love could really find something lovable in breaking each other’s skin. Or maybe not. Maybe Kamui’s mind should just shut up and enjoy the moment.

Beyond the injuries and the bizarre thoughts spinning through young minds, it was done to perfection. Kamui and Kotori got to experience their first time with someone who respected, admired, and adored them. There were no hang-ups about sexual adequacy because, really, they had no idea what they were doing. They had secondhand information from Sorata’s imagination or Yuzuriha’s magazines (Karen had opted not to comment, feeling it would be unfair to virgins), but most of that went right out the window as soon as they started gracelessly sliding off clothes.

Looking back, Kamui feels a bit embarrassed with how he carried on in his confusion, his complete lack of “technique,” his twisted priorities in how sex “should” go. But it’s okay, he decides. Kotori was every bit as bewildered and out of her element. It was okay that they were awful. The other one couldn’t tell. All that mattered was what they thought, what they said—You’re so beautiful, Kotori/Oh, Kamui, I’m so happy—and the way they could just lay in silence when it was over.

Actually, Kamui wouldn’t stop apologize for breaking her hymen, but once she got him to shut up about that, they were fine not saying anything.

That was the night he held her too tight.

He had put most of his clothes back on after the deed, equating nudity to sex. Kotori, more comfortable with her body, hadn’t bothered. She fell asleep in the crook of his body without so much as a stitch of clothing to shield her modesty. She settled for her long hair and her overprotective boyfriend. She would let him worry about her. He seemed to enjoy it, with how much of his time he spent doing it.

Kamui’s arms closed around her so tight that it woke her up. She pointed this out as gently as possible and drifted back to sleep, trying to pretend she didn’t notice the awkward tension thrumming through him.

He pushes it out of his mind. That night is already three weeks gone. He and Kotori have explored the possibilities of sex many more times and with many more ideas of how to go about doing it, but the end result is always the same. She falls asleep in his arms and he savors the moment.

Kamui struggles with how hard to hold her. You’re smothering her, Karen pointed out one evening. She was on Kotori bodyguard duty. Don’t give me that look. She was very gentle with the two of them, like the mother they had both lost, so it came as twice the surprise when she was so blunt. Yuzuriha had a laugh at that. She likened him to a spoiled child receiving a much-deserved scolding.

He pushes this, too, out of his mind. Kamui wishes he could hold her forever, but you can never hold a dream. And that, really, is what Kotori is. She is every childhood fantasy and foolish hope fulfilled. She is his everything. He hasn’t told her he loves her. On one hand, he wants to take things slow, like she said. (But wait, we’re sleeping together, right?) On the other, it’s so painfully obvious that he doesn’t have to say it.

The dream is slipping through his fingers as she shifts in her sleep.

He will lose her, whether to the madness of what she sees even now, or to the cruelty of the Seven Angels, or to her own sweet, weak heart. He will lose her, and there is nothing he can do about it.

So he lets her be strong in her own way. He basks in the dream as long as she will let him. If he can’t shut her away from the world, he will build himself something, with each brick a memory of her.

So he holds her, not too tight, because that will cause the dream to end too soon. But he never lets his grip grow too weak, for fear the dream will float away.

Kamui holds her as best he can, with her body curving into his shape, his moon shape, his crescent shape, his pensive shape. He smells her hair and strokes her skin. He will listen to the things she tells him—the things she wants to tell him—when she wakes up tomorrow. Then he will hold her more, while she cries softly for a future that may not be so undetermined (not that she will ever say this aloud).

Kamui threads her honey-blond hair through his fingers. Kotori shifts in her sleep, turning away from him in such a way that the corn silk slips out of his grasp. She looks troubled, even now. He knows better than to wake her, so he does the only thing that is in his immense power to do.

He holds her.