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The rooftop is windy.
Yue…or Yukito—they can’t really tell which one of them is out right now—lifts his head. Long, pale hair brushes over Yue’s—they know for certain now, as long hair brushes along dark robes that swirl at their ankles—forehead as another gust of wind buffets the dark city. The moon is full and bright overhead, and Yue finds comfort in this fact, as his power is always strongest during the full moon. Yukito, deep within Yue’s chest, also is pleased by this, but for much for sentimental reasons.
It’s almost entirely deserted on the top of this building, save Mistress and someone shrouded in darkness beyond the light of the city below. The three of them must be far up, for the light barely touches the recesses of the rooftop, and many corners where utilities and air conditioners cast shadows are in complete darkness.
Yue can only hear his own breathing and the wind whistling past his ears. The noise of city traffic far below is hushed, and it’s so intangible that when he tries to listen, it slips by like water in a stream.
“Please, stop!” Mistress—Sakura, she always insists he call her—cries. It rings a little too loudly in Yue’s ears, as if she were standing right beside him, but she’s far away.
Ah. That must be why he’s here. The third person must be the person they’ve been pursuing these past months, the one creating havoc all across Tomoeda. Yue’s magic rises instinctually to his skin, and he feels on guard, edgy.
Something’s…wrong. A little off. Yue doesn’t know why, or how, but a prickling sensation is running up his arms and making his body feel a little too large for his skin. He feels unnaturally…tight—stretched.
He doesn’t have time to think about it, because Sakura cries out again, and Yue makes a move towards her. The light above the roof access door casts its glow onto her face as she makes a move towards him, and the look on her face freezes every cell in his body.
She’s terrified. Shaken and broken and stripped apart in a way that Yue has never seen before. He’s seen her frightened of imagined ghosts, nervous about utilizing a new card, but this is…different. Yue wants to run to her, but both of her hands are thrown out to him, as if warding him off. She wants him to stay here, so he will, but he keeps a close eye on the shadows.
“Let him go, please!” She cries again.
Yue strains his eyes in the dark, trying to find who this figure is holding. The figure is amorphous, big enough to be a singular person or two, pressed together. The fact that he can’t see is a little alarming to Yue, as his powers of the moon usually allow him to see clearly in the dark. But, just like the noise of the city below, it’s blurry—not constant.
“Touya! It’s okay—stay awake! Please, let him go!”
Touya.
Yue straightens immediately, shot through with a cold arrow of panic.
Touya.
The enemy has Touya.
His heart beats unnaturally fast and loud in his ears, and the rush of blood quells all other noise. Yue would like to say that his immediate concern is for Sakura, both her own safety and her happiness. Touya, he knows, is very important to Sakura, and acts as her second parent. Or, he wish he could say that his concern is for Yukito his host, as Touya means life to him—love, companionship, laughter. But the concern, worry, anguish crawling up his throat is entirely for himself.
Touya means as much to Yue as he does to Yukito in these past months. After years spent behind Yukito’s eyes, Yue did not expect Touya to live up to the romantic pedestal that Yukito has placed him on. Admittedly, he was both right and wrong. Touya has a pimple underneath the right side of his chin that’s been there for months (and it drives Yue crazy), he drools a little when he sleeps, and he hides his deep, genuine concern and care for others underneath a layer of feigned indifference and snark.
But.
Touya gave his power—his ability to see his dead mother again—away when Yukito was dying without question. He checks on Sakura and makes sure she eats enough and gets enough sleep before tests. He works hours-long shifts every day to supplement his father’s income. As soon as he knew about Yue, he respected his boundaries and wishes and accepted him as part of—and entirely separate from—Yukito immediately.
And, after weeks of talking about it with Yukito and Yue both, Touya kisses him. As Yue, and not Yukito. He kisses him under the moonlight, in Yukito’s backyard, and cradles Yue’s head between his hands as if he is just as delicate and precious as a human. He laughs into Yue’s mouth when Yue, flustered beyond recognition, begins to glow. And Yue gets to taste Touya's laughter as he presses it back onto his tongue.
That’s why, when Yue hears a wordless, hoarse noise of pain from Touya, Yue’s wings snap out without thought. He goes to move forward, but finds, to his crippling horror, that his legs won’t move. They’re rooted to the cold rooftop, and no struggle will move them an inch.
“He’s not a part of this!” Sakura yells, but she is still far away, close to the enemy. “Yue! Let him go!”
The blood in Yue’s body freezes. For a terrible, interminable second, the only thing Yue can perceive is the whistle of wind past his ears.
Yue looks to his right.
His own pale arm, cloaked in the white sleeve of his own robe, is clenched tightly around Touya’s neck. Touya’s entire body is dangling in the air, held aloft by Yue’s strength alone. Touya is barely struggling, holding both of his hands over the pale one at his throat, but he offers no resistance. Yue’s mouth opens in a horrified scream, but nothing comes out.
Yue can’t move at all.
He tries desperately to open his hand, to unclench his fingers, but every effort is futile. The arm doesn’t feel like his at all, but horrifically, it is. Yue alone is squeezing the life, the light, from Touya’s eyes. He can feel Touya’s warm pulse jackrabbiting against the iron grip of his own fingers.
He knows what his body feels like, and this isn’t it. This feels like a spell, or a curse, or…Yue looks up, and the figure in the shadow is gone, and the space where it was is empty. Yue tries to think if there was ever somewhere there at all, but any cognizant thought is quickly chased out of his head.
“Yue! Please!” Sakura’s voice is closer, louder, shredding Yue’s eardrums, and Yue wants to cry in relief.
Yes! Sakura! Please! He wants to say. Hit me, knock me over! Break my arm, get my hand off of him. Please!
But Sakura does none of these things, and when Yue tries to look at her, his head is frozen in place now, too. He can only look up into the face of the man he loves as his face turns unnaturally ruddy as blood is trapped, unable to flow.
I’m killing him.
Yue’s nails, always sharper than Yukito’s, dig into the back of Touya’s neck, and cut the skin. Warm blood spills over his hand, searing hot against his cold fingers.
Touya is mouthing something, Yue realizes. The same few words over and over. Yue focuses on his mouth, and wishes more than anything that he could scream as realization makes his stomach roil.
I love you. It’s okay. I love you. It’s okay.
Yue wonders hysterically, wildly, if the words are for him or Yukito, but he knows that they are for both of them. As if summoned by the mere thought of him, Yue feels Yukito climb to the surface of their consciousness. The noise of agony that he makes in their head is inhuman.
Yue’s arm blinks out of existence for a fraction of a second, replaced by Yukito’s longer one, before becoming Yue once more.
Touya’s body begins to twitch convulsively as his body shuts down, and his legs swing. His mouth stops moving, and Yukito catches one last glimpse of warm, glossy brown before his eyes snap shut in pain.
Yukito?
Yukito realizes that he is indeed himself, hair no longer brushing his ankles but across his forehead. And then they’re Yue again, and his robes snap in the wind.
The line between Yue and Yukito has always been carefully delineated, and while they can hear and see what the other can if they choose to, they have always been entirely separate entities. But now their lines are blurring, smudging over in critical parts, and neither of them feel whole or embodied.
But clearly they are, as YueYukito’s hand tightens on Touya’s neck. His legs are twitching frantically now, and a kick lands on YukitoYue’s side. They can’t feel it.
Touya’s eyes snap open, bulging grotesquely from his skull. His mouth gapes open in a desperate bid for air.
The hand tightens. Sakura screams.
Touya’s neck snaps to the side with a deafening crack under a palm. His head falls forward obscenely, dangerously, unnaturally, and the skin of his neck warps. His dead eyes stare unblinkingly into theirs.
~~~~~
Yukito jerks awake, screaming.
He can’t hear anything but the roar of blood in his ears and the repeating, dull crack of bone breaking. Before his mind registers it, his body is moving on its own, out of the bed he’s in and standing up.
His mind catches up a second later and the soul-stilling terror of his body acting without his mind—again, god, again—is enough to send him to his hands and knees, retching. He’s trembling with cold shivers, and the ice in his skin is bone-deep.
A warm hand rests itself gently on his back, and Yuki leans up into it desperately.
“Shh, hey, it’s okay, Yuki, you’re safe.” Touya’s voice rumbles, rough with sleep. Yuki whirls around so quickly that it sends his stomach heaving again.
Touya is kneeling on the ground in front of him, hand still outstretched from where Yuki had been seconds before. His sweatpants are wrinkled, and the plain t-shirt he wore to bed has a loose collar that shows his collarbones. His hair is wildly disheveled, and the corner of his mouth is slightly wet from where he had been drooling in his sleep. He wipes at it now, big brown eyes still probing Yuki’s form gently. He reaches forward again, and Yuki jerks back, scrabbling backward until he hits the wall and unmade futon pushed into the corner.
“Don’t touch me,” He snaps, panicked, but what he really wants to say is Don’t let me touch you.
Loud footsteps thunder up the stairs, and Yukito and Touya both turn their attention to the room’s door that swings open. Hallway light spills in, so bright that Yukito’s eyes water. The tall figure of Mr. Kinomoto looms in the doorway, chest heaving. His eyes sweep over the room. Yuki wonders distantly what kind of sight they make.
Touya is kneeling on the ground in front of Yuki, who has pressed himself into the far corner of the room. Yukito sits on top of the unmade futon that Touya always unpacks whenever Yukito comes over. They never use it, but the showmanship of implying that they still sleep in different beds is unspoken and familiar. Yukito hopes that Mr. Kinomoto does not notice that Yukito clearly hasn’t been sleeping in it tonight, because he can’t handle anything more complex than breathing desperately at the moment.
After determining that no one was grievously injured in his second-long assessment, Mr. Kinomoto demands breathlessly,
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Yukito hears a door down the hallway open and smaller feet padding near. Mr. Kinomoto turns, closing the door slightly to block the view of the incoming person.
“Sakura, go back to sleep, everything’s okay.”
“I heard…screaming,” Her voice is small, and she hesitates slightly, as if unsure that “screaming” is the word she wants to use.
Yukito realizes that all eyes are on him. He flounders for a second, trying to find the words, and only finds shame for having causing undue stress.
“Yes,” he starts, speaking loudly for Sakura’s benefit in the hallway. “I’m sorry—it was a nightmare.” He meets Mr. Kinomoto’s concerned eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Yukito can’t manage to look at Touya yet, but he can feel his stare on the side of his face.
“Well,” Mr. Kinomoto says, looking at the both of them again, “as long as you’re sure you’re both alright. Can I get you some tea, Yuki?”
Yuki feels a fresh bite of anguish curl in his stomach, and fights the urge to hide his face. Being met with so much concern and care after committing such a terrible act—even if imagined, only thought—sets all of his nerves alight.
“No, really—“
“I’ve got it!” Sakura interrupts sharply, and her shadow dims the light from the hallway as she rushes past. The only sound that accompanies the tense silence that follows is her small feet hitting the stairs as she runs.
“Yuki,” Touya says, and his voice is so much a whisper that Yukito is convinced he can feel rather than hear it. A warm hand touches his shin, close but not overwhelming, and it takes every ounce of his willpower to reject the comfort and move away.
Mr. Kinomoto seems to realize that the moment has shifted to something…different—tender—and moves to excuse himself.
“I’m glad you’re both okay, boys. I think Sakura will be up again—do you want me to tell her not to?”
Yuki can once again feel Touya’s eyes on his face, searching for an answer, but Yukito turns his head away.
“Um, yes please.” Touya supplies, eventually. With a nod, Mr. Kinomoto closes the door, and the loss of light blinds both boys to the darkness that falls.
Moments pass.
“Why won’t you look at me, love?” Touya asks, and the endearment almost causes Yukito to lose all resolve.
Touya absolutely detests nicknames, and could always been seen rolling his eyes when the couples in their school hallways called each other sickly sweet terms. After being forced to accompany Sakura and Tomoyo to the movies to watch a period romance, he had come home in feigned agony. When he dramatically retold his own death via historically accurate costumes and kisses in the rain, he let it slip. He called him love. At Yuki’s incredulous expression, he rolled his eyes, and said, It was in the stupid movie. But, Touya looks up at him then, brown eyes bright and unsure, we’re in love aren’t we? He had said it so simply, as if anything about them was that black-and-white. Maybe it was—maybe they were just allowed to be in love. The name stuck (probably due to the fact that Yuki rewarded him with a kiss every time it passed his lips), and Touya used it exclusively when he was exceptionally happy, or exceptionally sad.
But Yuki can’t speak.
He tries to get air into his lungs, but his deep breaths quickly lapse back into gasps for air as Yukito’s eyes adjust to the dark and he can see Touya’s close, concerned face. His dark eyes are bright, but the longer Yuki looks, they dull and hood and die.
“N-Nightmare.” He mumbles, “Sorry.”
Touya shifts, leaning his body weight forward.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks. Not “Are you okay?” (because he can probably tell that Yuki definitely isn’t) and not “Do you want to go back to bed?” (because he can definitely tell that Yukito won’t be sleeping again). Yukito curses the fact that he is so open to Touya, that he can read everything on his face.
Yuki stands to break their connection—the pull that makes him almost fall forward into Touya—turning around to stare out the window.
It’s a full moon.
Yuki feels a stirring in his chest, and knows it’s Yue. Whenever the moon is full, Yukito feels primed to explode—invigorated and full and bright. It feels wrong and inappropriate while the aftereffects of his fear and anger and anxiety still rot in his lungs.
His hands automatically wrap around the windowsill, dull nails rubbing over the woodgrain.
“It was…Yue,” Yukito said, finally. Touya stands and crosses the room to stand behind him. “Yue and I. We were…He was on a roof and we hurt you. Badly—Touya, so badly.” Yukito’s eyes filled with tears and he tried to blink them away. “And Yue couldn’t stop—he couldn’t—“
“Can I talk to Yue?” Touya asks. Yukito fights back his instinctive flinch, heart racing again. He tries to calm it, but he can only see Yue’s hand, his nails, his fingers crushing the life from Touya’s eyes.
He feels Yue poke at his mind, a cautious press. Yue wants to talk. Yukito’s hands shake as he presses them to the windowsill. He tries to find his own gaze in his reflection in the window, but can only see Touya’s body dangling, limply. He digs his nails into the sill.
“I-I don’t know.” Yukito bites out, “if I can trust him with you right now.”
He knows immediately that it’s the wrong thing to say. Touya grabs his arm roughly. Yukito feels a sharp snapping in his skull as Yue’s shock, hurt, anger roil tempestuously. He didn’t even mean it—he trusts Yue implicitly, both with Touya’s and Sakura’s safety everyday. Guilt and shame consume him for being so selfish and irrational. But Yukito…is so afraid.
“Wait, please,” Yuki calls, trying to chase Yue, who’s retreating so far down into Yukito that he almost can’t feel him at all. “I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t. I’m so sorry. I—“
Yuki chokes as a sob bubbles up in his throat, and he doesn’t know if the tears are entirely his own.
“Yue,” Touya says, grabbing Yukito’s arm other arm gently and turning him towards him. “We love you. I need to talk to you, please.”
Yuki can feel Yue’s hesitation. You’re right, he hears Yue say, I shouldn’t be near him. If someone could make me do that—
His voice cuts out.
“Hey, no,” Yuki chides, trying to pull himself together. He’s not the only one hurting, as much as it feels like it. It didn’t start as his dream. He needs to be here for Yue. “You need to talk about this. If anything happens—“
Touya’s hands tighten on Yuki’s arms in protest, a warning. Yuki shoots him a look, but purposefully tries not to read whatever thoughts lie behind his eyes.
“Sakura and Kero are right next door.” Yuki finishes. “I trust you—we trust you.” He grabs Touya’s hands in his own, and hopes that he can’t tell how they’re shaking.
Yuki can feel Yue slowly rise to their shared surface.
And Yukito is gone.
~~~~~
As soon as his transformation is finished, Yue crosses the room, away from Touya and his warmth.
Touya likes to fondly complain, sometimes, that Yue is too cold. When they’re pressed together in bed, Touya demands that he put socks on because his feet are “damned freezing.” Yue knows that it’s true—as the moon spirit, he’s familiar with the cold. He never really minded it. Clow Reed never commented on it, but Yue has really come to resent his creator for making him so. Touya makes it clear that he doesn’t truly mind—he trails slow kisses along his icy shoulders, breathes warmth into his frozen palms, holds him close to his chest even on winter nights. But Yue knows it must make him uncomfortable.
His coldness, now, feels like a sin—too coarse, too sharp compared to Touya’s sleep-rumpled warmth. Yue doesn’t deserve its comfort, and as he stands on the opposite side of the room, the cold has never felt so isolating.
“You don’t have to come over here if you don’t want to,” Touya says, “but I need you to know that I love you, and I trust you not to hurt me. I’ll wait as long as you need.”
Touya, the boy with so much love to give that it spills through the creases in his palms, the divots of his body, the curves in every notch of his spine, the tips of his hair, the spaces between his teeth, just gazes at him in silence, waiting patiently for Yue to feel comfortable.
Even in Touya’s silence, there’s so much love that Yue thinks he might choke on it.
Touya has always been the protector, the caretaker, and Yue feels sick with guilt that he has become another responsibility.
“I…” Yue starts, but can’t find the words he needs. He’s never been particularly talkative, but now he aches desperately to find the words to soothe the crease in Touya’s brow. He clears his throat.
“We were on a roof. It was windy. And cold.” Yue struggles through the retelling of his dream, mentioning the dark figure and Sakura’s fright. He tells him that he choked him, strangling the life from him. Yue feels his arms cross around his chest, as if he were holding himself closed, as if he might split open.
“M-My hand closed.” Yue says, trying to retell just the facts, but can feel his hands, where they are pressed against his ribs, shake. “And I killed you. I snapped your neck.”
Yue’s eyes are on the ground, and he doesn’t dare look up. Touya is so compassionate and kind with both of them, that he knows one of two things will happen. Either Touya will comfort him, placating him in a way that he doesn’t deserve, or his compassion will have a limit, and Touya will be unable to forgive him. Both options are unbearable.
“Well, that’s stupid.” Touya says.
Yue, startled, looks up at him sharply.
“W—You…What?” Yue stammers, a truly unfamiliar feeling in his mouth as his tongue soaks up all rational reply.
“That’s stupid.” Touya repeats, looking entirely unshaken about the fact that Yue just murdered him in a dream a few minutes prior. “That would never happen.”
Yue blinks at him.
“You don’t know that.”
Touya shakes his head.
“No, I do know that.”
Yue is trying not to get exasperated, but is failing. He knows firsthand how irrational and stubborn his human can be, but its presence here—now—when the atmosphere was so different seconds ago is jarring.
“Tell me, Yue,” Touya shifts forward. “Did you want to hurt me?”
“No,” Yue says immediately and hurt. “No, I would never want that.”
Touya holds up a calming hand, but keeps his promise of not invading Yue’s space.
“I know, I just want some clarification here.” Touya does not look away from Yue’s eyes, and he—feeling guilty and unworthy of it—finds comfort in the steady brown. “There was another person there, right? Besides Sakura. Someone who took control of your body.”
Yue feels his body tense.
Touya, ever perceptive, nods.
“And you think it’s him.”
Him.
Touya might as well have dropped a time bomb into the room. Yue can do nothing but stare as it ticks between them, unspoken and about to cause inevitable, devastating destruction.
Him.
Clow Reed.
The name never spoken, always heard. The name that sits between them in the silence sometimes, that curls around Yue’s tongue and settles itself into Touya’s frown lines.
They should probably talk about him, but they never do. Yue has seen the manga in Sakura’s room, pages full of inked couples who fall apart over exes and misunderstandings, but feels inept and confused whenever he actually looks into Touya’s eyes that he loves so deeply.
Clow Reed is the only reason Yue is here to love him at all, at the end of it. Clow created Yue’s beating heart and created an entire other consciousness to hide it behind. His hands shaped the wings that flutter restlessly at his back now, the mind that directs him, and the hands that find Touya unerringly every time they reach out.
Clow Reed had designed him and Yukito so entirely, that they often both wonder what is Clow and what is…them. Where he starts and ends. The thought terrifies them, because Yue knows from experience and Yuki can feel through memory that Clow is…not good.
Yue didn’t know this until he met Sakura—endlessly bold and kind and reassuring. She wanted to keep and protect Yue, and let him exist as himself. More friend than master. More friend than…Clow.
Yue could live with most of it if he hadn’t loved Clow Reed—if at the beginning of his long and storied existence, he didn’t live and breathe to love Clow Reed. But he had. He had fallen for the mage’s wit and depth. He had fallen for the stormy, intelligent eyes that could look at you and see every fear you ever had, everything that made your heart race. Yue had even fallen in love with Clow’s tempestuousness—the rolling bouts of joy and fury, despondency and doubt —that made every second feel hard-won.
Sakura believed that the worst monsters were the ones that destroyed. Yue knew from experience that the worst monsters were the ones that created.
And did Clow ever create.
He created recklessly, dangerously. He would craft new consciousnesses—living beings—from seemingly nothing, and play with them until he was bored. Every day was a new “test,” a new examination of the things he had created.
Yue had thought that he could bear Clow’s recklessness as long as he was different, as long as he was more than just a puppet to be bandied about. It had taken him years in Clow’s bed to realize that he was not.
This is why the dream makes Yue’s hair stand on end. He knows exactly what kind of tests Clow loves to devise, to pick apart and examine and ruin what he has created. Tests that would wrap his hands around Touya’s throat and make him unable to break his hands away. The shadow in his dream was not a nameless villain. It was one that Yue could never escape, one that could control him—and would try to—for the rest of his existence.
“Yes,” Yue admits, ashamed.
“Then you have nothing to worry about.” Touya is trying to reassure, but his carelessness only sets Yue’s teeth on edge. At his silence, Touya continues. “We have essentially the perfect anti-Clow Reed Defense Force.”
“Oh?” Yue can hear Yukito chuckle softly in the back of his head.
“If you think Kero is going to let Clow Reed within a mile of you, you’re dead wrong.” Touya says, matter-of-factly, a slow grin taking over his face. “And even if he wanted to, Sakura would zap his ass into the next reincarnation.” Yue can’t help but smile at the thought of Sakura being vengeful enough to consider it. “And if she didn’t feel like moving that day, we have a veritable army of cards that love their new Master enough to rally behind their Guardian.”
Touya slowly lifts a hand up, beckoning.
“And if that doesn’t work, you have me.”
Yue, helpless to do anything else but be drawn to him, complies.
His cold fingers brush Touya’s and the subsequent tingle rolls pleasantly down Yue’s back. Touya reels him in, pulling him to stand between his open legs. Yue complies immediately, carding pale fingers through dark hair and over a rumpled t-shirt as Touya buries his face in Yue’s chest.
“And you have me.” Yue vows quietly, leaning down to whisper the words in Touya’s dark strands. The large hands that hold Yue close tighten around his waist.
Yue has been around the world. He has seen mountains erode and seas formed and kingdoms turn to ash. He’s met millions of people and slept under a million roofs, but no one and no thing has felt quite as warm—as perfect and safe and real—as this person. This house. These people.
Touya pulls at his waist, and Yue allows it, following Touya until they are side by side on the bed. The bed is much too small for two grown men, especially when one of those men is not a man at all, but Touya still finds room for him against his body, fingers tangling in Yue’s long hair as he pulls him down for a kiss.
By necessity, when they lie together, Touya is pressed between Yue and the wall, legs tangled with his and Touya resting with his head on Yue’s collarbone. Yue can’t stop the flutter that travels up his wings at the touch of Touya’s mouth, and his feathers make a soft sound when they rub together over the side of the bed.
The kiss is soft, chaste, but Yue tries to press his unspoken oath into his mouth regardless.
You, you, youyouyou. Anything. Everything. Always.
Yue has known loyalty before. There was a time many years ago where he would have killed for Clow Reed at his barest suggestion. But this…this feels so much more heady, more real and tangible than anything before.
Perhaps the fact that it was reciprocated. As Yue curls his wing over the bed, securing Touya even more tightly across his chest, the answer was clear. His wings cast a million silver spots across his cheeks, a facsimile of the freckles that Yue worships so well.
Touya closes his eyes, a hand spreading against the space where a heart should be beating in Yue’s chest. Trust. Complete, blind, total trust.
Comfort. Ease. Even now.
Yue feels Touya’s deep breaths spilling across the starved bones of his collarbones.
How? How could it be this right? How could anything feel this right?
Yue feels a warm diffuse in his chest and knows it’s Yukito, reasserting his approval and devotion. Two people—one created for him, one found by chance.
Yue closes his eyes, although he has no need for sleep, and lets the quiet rhythm of Touya’s breaths send him away.