“'Taku,” he muttered, barely audible, braced on fingertips for action.  He leaned partially from the open metal vent, peering left and right.  This moment was ripe for action.

And such a *shame* no one was around to play!

Yohji jiggled his dead headset.  Bombay wasn’t around to assist.  And due to some anti-frequency jamming devise, he was cut off from the Siberian.  Maa, ii ka.  Yohji gave a rippling graceful shrug.  He brushed back a golden-brown wing of hair and withdrew into the ventilation shaft again.  He grinned, a bit pleased with himself.  Whatever means Ken had chosen to infiltrate this virtual fortress, it surely wasn’t as good as the method he, the Balinese, had taken!  He pictured Ken mopping a hallway somewhere and smothered a laugh into the heel of his hand.  Some people just had more *finesse* than others.

He backed up to a room he’d cased earlier.  It looked like a maintenance closet; a decent place to touch down.  Then once he’d heard the inevitable results of Aya’s mission, it would be time to join the fray.  These guys might be assassins, fine.  They were no match for Weiss.

Yohji wasn’t always proud of what they did, but he knew their competence was the highest.  They were hand-picked by Kritiker, after all.

The metal shaft was low and he nearly banged his head thrice before backtracking to the spot he’d eyeballed earlier.  Yes.  This was the place.

With utmost care, Yohji unscrewed the vent.  He remained still for long heartbeats.  Waiting.  Eyes probing the shadowed corners of the room.  Small and empty; it was as it had been earlier.

Yosh’!  He dropped into the room below, muscles bunching, sliding the vent back in place as he dropped as a token sign of normalcy.

He eased the door open, cautious and slow.  Flat uncompromising pressure met the back of his neck, paralyzing and painful.

“Shit,” Yohji coughed, a minute explosion of breath.  Stars bled away from his retina, eyes swimming shut, leaving him only...

He wants to break something.  He wants to string up something living into quivering pieces and know it dies.  Like hope. Everything dies.

Everything changes, and that’s what is the sting now.  There’s no control over change, and in the end with a twist of ultimate entropy, everything that ever existed to one person topples away.  Leaving just one thing.

Nai.

Yohji parted his lips; spoke to the ceiling.  “Nai.”  The word rippled against the silent spaces, a drop flung into still waters surrounding him, vanished in an instant with no trace of passage.

Nothing.

Like what he’d been able to see, at that time.  Blackness so thick against his eyes that he’d started seeing things just as his brain giving him something, anything.  Some form of sensory input other than... Yohji flinched from that.

He lay half-braced against the wall, draped on the wide windowsill to flick ash from time to time, watching the drift of smoke, disappearing as if it had never been.  How could there be a framework for justice when in the end, life followed that smoke, a fire extinguished and then just gone?  Where was there *meaning* in that?  His lips quirked, resembling a smile.  It wasn’t.  Why should anyone bother to daily labor against weighted scales, trying to restore a balance that only existed, there but beyond reach in the minds of the aggrieved?

Yohji lifted a hand, fine-boned and strong.  It had been useless to him when he needed his two hands and supposed skill to save a woman.  Useless, even, in saving himself from the greatest violation a man could endure.  And not being a woman, this irredeemable dishonor could not be atoned for in seppuku.  And so this became nothing, too.

They’d been tied behind him, when he was taken.  He had been careless and captured and deserving of chastisement, maybe.  But Aya hadn’t cared about any of that; if a way existed out of the situation, it didn’t matter.

He took another drag and exhaled it out the window.  He was secure only in his hate for himself.  His purpose here in Weiss was undercut by the pretensions that had led to this - he was unable to uphold the very values he professed.  And the meaning of life was so much utter garbage.  This savage system of justice only tipped in time to take vengeance for victims.

Yohji was a puppet who danced to this.  He could not save even a single life.

So at the end, his mask could be peeled away to reveal the nothingness in him, too.  Not one life was in his power.  Not one woman in her likeness.  Justice was a hollow mockery and he, the tin soldier.

What now?

Yohji crumpled the empty pack in his fist and tossed it towards the door.  It fell short - it always did - but only joined the clutter that was making a pattern of entropy in the whole room.

Trying to tempt his appetite in the past three days, Omi had brought up trays.  Yohji only wanted coffee and cigarettes.  As afternoon deepened, it was beer.  He wasn’t hungry and it didn’t matter if he got thinner.

Maybe no one would want him. Maybe that was good.

Swept in tidal dark thoughts, Yohji barely heard the knock.  With the same level of awareness, he ignored it.

Yohji had longed for synchronicity.  What body didn’t?  It was why he dated so much, to try and fill up the void.

That lacking, he wanted something to jar apart his world and make him feel alive again, if only for the hurt.  Pain was immediate and intimate and connected you closer to your own flesh than even sex.  Yohji wasn’t sure about love because it came with complications, but sex was quick and easily found and you forgot, for awhile, that death came right behind. Especially for them.

There had been a lot of pain.  He didn’t want to be touched right now; even the simplest of touches was too intimate and in this time, thinking too much, he didn’t want meaning in Ken’s hand on his shoulder or Aya’s - no, NOT Aya!

Aya’s words drifted to him in snatches, part of the tide in his head that wouldn’t let go.  *You make me sick.  Get up; you’re useless this way.*  No, we can’t have that.  A useless Yohji.  Aya had no patience for broken things.  And if he himself had broken it, that was something he couldn’t see.  Aya was locked in terrible purpose and nothing could pry him loose until it had rolled over him, and by then the essential Aya - the former Ran - would have been consumed.

But there was an iron core to Aya, an unyielding center that made him capable of anything.  It made Yohji sick and it fascinated him too.  There was no pity in Aya when he killed, no remorse or sense of anything but his sword and the terrible purpose that drove him.  A dark part of Yohji had lusted to see that side; to be taken apart that way.  Yohji was a man in transition.  To where, he was unsure.  To hell, maybe.

Maybe it had been a case of being careful what you wished for.

He’d GOTTEN it.  Aya had taken him apart at the seams, with that first painful thrust.

The knocking on the door hardly stirred him.  Yohji wasn’t a man alive; he was gulping nothing and there was little relief.  There was something inside him that scared him.  He wondered in circles how it would feel again, being fucked, feeling the slow hot sting of entry and being filled up again.  For awhile.  Maybe it would be tender this time.  Maybe it would be brutal again and he’d like it, this time.  It was a dangerous state, this wanting, so he stayed locked up in his room with the burn of coffee and cigarettes for company, instead.

“Go away,” he lifted his voice.  Like the crumpled pack, it probably fell short of the door and his uncaring was equal.

The door burst open and the knob banged into the wall, chipping plaster.  Aya stood there breathing hard, his eyes chips of glass that sought him out where he huddled on the windowsill.  Yohji was still unmoved.  He was a fucking rock.  Nothing could budge him and Aya could blunt his edge on him, for all he cared.

But Aya was quiet and it made Yohji uneasy.  Anything but silence, dammit.  Silence was being alone with his thoughts.  With Aya’s breath rasping in his ears it was worse than being alone; it was being isolated.

“Let me guess.  I’m useless?”

He flung the words out to get something there, even hostility.

“I’ve had enough of your attitude,” Aya’s voice was cold.  “That’s the third day I’ve filled your orders and the sixth tray Omi brought back untouched.”

“I make you sick.”

Aya didn’t even pause.  “They won’t say anything.  They’re feeling *sympathy* for you.”  The word twisted in his mouth; gained savagery.  “It’s wasted on you.  You’re already sick with pitying yourself.”

“Is that so?” Shock forced amusement from his voice.  Taciturn Aya was speaking to him this way?  Since when could anything but vengeance rouse him to such a pitch?

“Yes, that’s so.”  Each clipped word was aimed at him.  It would be easy for him to ignore him, and satisfying to infuriate him further.  He hitched himself around and caught sight of the glittering slits of eyes.  Aya wanted to hit him, he was sure.  It stirred interest in Yohji.  Being fucked, being split open, was a powerful preoccupation.  Aya’s anger was like a prelude.  He wanted him to...

“Go away,” Yohji whispered, hand lifting in a gesture of dismissal.  Smoke filtered over his knuckles.  He turned away, swallowing, seeing Aya’s jaw tighten.

“You’re disgusting,” Aya’s thoughts only told him what he’d been thinking about himself, Aya.

Yohji’s mouth quirked.  “Maybe you’re thinking of yourself.”  He saw Aya’s mouth tighten and couldn’t stop the rest of it.  “Maybe you just want to fuck me again, hmm?”

Aya took four steps forward, sharp color rising in his cheeks, a hand lifting to crack the hardest blow possible over Yohji’s cheek where the bruises were still fading in green-yellow blossoms.

“Can’t do it?” Yohji taunted, when the hand faltered and fell to his side, fisting.  “You did it just fine the other day.  No second thoughts.”

“You’re still alive,” Aya reminded him, mouth thin.

“Yes,” Yohji turned back to the window, spine popping a protest.  *That’s the problem.*  It might have been easier to die than accept this violation.

“Idiot.”

The tone was rife with disgust as Yohji’s arms were wrenched tightest behind his back, further than the bindings held him, straining his sockets.

“Careless idiot,” the other man agreed, delivering another casual fist to Yohji’s battered ribs.

Caught off guard by the blow he couldn’t see, he reeled in the grip of his captor and felt more thick fluid rising up his throat.  Who knew if it was blood or bile?  Hysterical laughter smattered over his senses but he didn’t dare release it.  Laughing would run the risk of even more severe beatings.  Yohji lost the urge to laugh as he was wrenched around by the hair, and dumped savagely on the floor with another fist planted to his face.

They had already hit him.  A lot.

Yohji wasn’t sure where he was.  He only knew he’d woken up with his arms trussed painfully behind him, a boot toe prodding his ribs.  Kicking.  Flarebursts of pain along his ribs and thighs. And he didn’t know the faces of these fuckers, because he’d woken up with a strip of cloth tied over his eyes.  It was too thick to peer through, so tight, no hint of light seeped to his starved vision.

“Dumbass must’ve tripped six or seven alarms in the ventilating system,” nameless voice number one smirked.

Well, what kind of paranoid fucks wired the *ventilation system* in their temporary housing? Yohji fumed.  These guys weren’t going to be in this base for more than another day or two. And they hadn’t been here long.

“Sixteen,” a new voice proclaimed.

“Seiki-san,” the first two chorused.  Yohji felt another kick lift him up and he coughed, metallic liquid gathering at the corner of his wide mouth.  Briefly he wondered if his nose was broken.  It was definitely bleeding.

“Enough for now,” the new voice said, sly.  “We have something... special... planned for such a pretty piece of meat careless enough to fall into our hands.”

“Can we?” the second voice was eager.

“Disgusting,” the first voice muttered.  It was punctuated with another sharp kick.  Shit that HURT.  Had they broken any bones?

“No,” the Seiki voice said decisively.  “He’s for an initiation.”

“New guy gets all the luck,” the second voice was retreating.  They were leaving?  Yohji felt a brief stab of relief.  Or was that a rib?

“Dose him, first,” Seiki instructed.

...Dose...?

“He’s awake.  He twitched,” the first guy said.

“Do it now, then.  Even better if he’s awake and can’t do shit,” Seiki sounded sickeningly pleased with that.

“Hai, Seiki-san.”  Yohji felt hands grabbing him, rough on his clothes and he twisted, trying somehow to escape whatever it was, only receiving such a hard punch to the cheekbone that he lay stunned.  He felt a prick in the bend of his arm.  The voice was quieter now, rife with loathing.  “You sick fuck.”

Fuck.  Yohji’s thoughts were already fuzzing over in a manner almost like being drunk.  Not quite, but almost - he was lucid, and he could feel the aches and pains all over his body in awful clarity and detail.  And he couldn’t move a muscle even to groan voluntarily.

At least, he reasoned, it must be Aya who was this new guy.

The Abyssinian would know what to do.  They’d get out of this.

“Now get out,” Seiki’s voice snapped.  Yohji remembered now.  He was the one Aya was ‘applying’ to in this hellhole; some number-two guy.  Footsteps were crisp in his ears, retreating, the sound of a door opening and closing.  Then slower footsteps.  Yohji’s body lurched, helpless as a beached creature paralyzed without water, as the tip of a shoe prodded him again.  It dug into an already-formed bruise like an explosion and a wheeze escaped him.

“Too bad,” the man murmured.  “Maybe we can get our turn...after...”

Yohji was confused.  Did they mean to torture him?  He couldn’t really talk; there were better drugs to get him to spill information.  Sodium pentothal was something they’d used before, he knew.  These sick bastards meant to torture him for the sheer pleasure of it, it seemed.

Seiki would be bringing Aya here.  Some kind of test of loyalty.  Yohji lolled as Seiki prodded him again, chuckling softly and a fierce hatred flared up in his breast.  What Seiki *didn’t* know was that Aya would be the one to get him out of this.

“We’ll be back,” the voice promised, a leer evident even to Yohji’s blinded vision.

He’d be waiting.  He had no choice but to wait.  His arms pinioned, he couldn’t even make use of the fine coils of wire in his watch.  He didn’t have lockpicks, and his arms were bound tightly anyhow.  Shit, they *hurt.*  The drug, whatever it was, enabled him to feel every ache and pain quite clearly, while not being able to move worth shit.

Experimentally he tried to roll, to get himself into a better position to try to wriggle free of his bindings.  Tensing, moving - no, he was *not* moving.

Maybe he dozed off.  Maybe time was distorted to his blinded, hazed senses.  The next thing he knew consciously was the opening of the door and the quick eager voice, “in here.”

Relief was golden against his eyelids.  Aya was here.

For a long moment there was nothing.  His time sense was distorted, Yohji decided, as the squeak of shoes started up, breaking wide the strained silence and each footstep was drawn out, lingering in his ears.  His other senses were sharpened, and time was running slow.  What the hell... what kind of drug was this?

“This way.”  The voice carried an underlay of excitement.  Sick, Yohji thought; the other man had said something about Seiki being a sick fuck.  Yohji felt his stomach drop.  Aya wouldn’t torture him.  But to get to Hou’oh - how would it happen, if Aya refused to torture a captured spy?

‘Mission’ was a buzz word to Aya.

Yohji relaxed as another layer of awareness was peeled from him.  His mind was completely disconnected from his body now, except for the pain.  He thought if he could’ve laughed, he would have.  The pain was the only thing that let him know he was still real.  And he had the feeling the smallest touch would be magnified into something more.

There was something.  His skin prickled.  It was like earlier, when he could feel the man bending close to his body, but couldn’t see to place him, of course.  He struggled to open his eyes.  Nothing but slivers of darkness greeted him; it made his eyeballs ache and he dragged the lids shut again.

“What’s this?”  Aya’s deep voice.

Aya!  Yohji felt himself twitch, so strong was the relief that moved him.  So.  He couldn’t consciously will himself to move, but an involuntary spasm - kami, he’d never been happier to hear Aya before.

“This?”  A pause.  Footsteps.  Yohji couldn’t even grunt as a kick stabbed at the center of his chest, but then he was struggling to breathe, arms wrenched painfully underneath him as he rolled onto his back again.  The familiar sense of choking; blood and spit clogged his mouth.  Seiki continued, oblivious to it.  “Is an infiltrator we captured.”  The man sounded gleeful.  Sick.  He was sick.  “Damn clumsy fool made it too easy for us.”

“Now, listen here!” Yohji objected, but only in his own mind.  He was still struggling to take shallow breaths filtered through his own saliva.  Blood-foam flecked his mouth.  *I wasn’t THAT careless,* Yohji thought resentfully.  *So I didn’t go in as Maintenance crew.  I figured that would be riskier in a building full of assassins - and who knew they’d booby-trap the fucking ventilation system!?*  Rage was so strong in him he almost jerked again, but he channeled the movement into clearing his mouth.  Breathing was more important than a futile expression of anger.

Aya’s voice was cold response.  “What has this to do with me?  I came here to meet-”

“Hei, hei.  You’ve got a one-track mind, you know that?”

Yohji could’ve choked on a snort.  Everyone knew that Aya only had room in his mind for one thing at a time - and that thing was always his mission.

“Saa.... You can't just start working for Hou'oh like *that*!”  The snap of fingers was explosive to his ears.  Yohji realized that even though the men were probably at least three feet away, their words sounded loud to his ears.

If possible, Aya’s voice iced over even more.  “What more is there?”

“This is the most important test.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. This is the part where we discover how willing you really are to serve under Hou'oh. You must be willing to obey his every order, as delivered through me.”

Queasy sensation was flooding Yohji, where only pain had gnawed before.  *Sick fuck. Sick fuck.*  The words repeated endlessly as Seiki’s voice spoke, dark undercurrents almost visible to this heightened, visionless place he was in.

“Wakatta.”  Aya was neutral as ever.  Against the sparking darkness he could see the carved-motionless expression of the redhead’s face.

“You agree to do as Hou’oh wishes?”  Darker and darker.  Seiki’s tone was positively foul.  Then he continued, after a silence that must’ve been Aya’s assent.  “This-”

PAIN!!!

A white hot NOVA was flaring through his head.  Dimly he felt pressure against his temple, another shoe, his entire consciousness collapsed around the pain bursting in white-crackling red fireworks against his throbbing eyelids.

Through it all, a detached portion of himself noted he hadn’t even twitched.  The drug was worming its way through his system, detaching voluntary response completely.

“-properly punished for his impudence in attempting to breach our complex, as well as his contemptible incompetence in being caught at it.”  He caught the tail end of Seiki’s words.  Nausea was clogging his throat, reflex to intense pain, and he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

“And?”  Aya’s voice was like a lifeline, Yohji grasping at the reliable frigidity in his teammate’s words.

Movement.  In a quick jerk, his head was wrenched up by the hair. More pain, the quick tug at his scalp nothing in comparison to the nova-burst crushing from his temple.  Yohji felt his mouth fall open, unable to control the movement.  “It's a pretty face, yes?”  A finger rasped over his skin, the slickness of some fluid, probably blood, tracking down his cheek.

The first inklings of logic were beginning to storm his brain.  *Sick fuck.... pretty face...*  Disfigurement?  He could feel everything.  They could torture him and Seiki would know he’d feel everything, imprisoned in his own flesh.

A handful of hair yanked his head up again, stretching his neck up.  Hurting, putting more pressure on his constrained, blood-starved arms.  “Such a lovely face to have nothing behind it.”  The voice dripped with disdain.  It made a rush of anger flood his already-crowded head, tingeing the pain with red-edged sparks.

He waited for Aya to say something.  He had the feeling he’d be waiting awhile.  Meanwhile his neck was stiff from the painful angle.

His head hit the floor with a soft thud, almost a relief from what he’d been feeling.  Seiki was moving away from the distance of his quiet, still-eager voice.  “Well, we can show appreciation of the one, if not the other.”

“We?”  Aya, monosyllabic as ever.

“Here.”

Pause.

“What is this?”

Disbelief.  “You’re kidding, right?”  A harsh bark of laughter roiled the air.

Aya’s silence was palpable.

“Ah! Mou, ii! Haven't you ever had sex?”  A scraping sound; Seiki’s movement.

Yohji’s mind went still.  Sex?  What about sex?

*...sick fuck...*

The fear and mingled loathing in their voices as Seiki entered the room.

*We have something... special... planned for such a pretty piece of meat careless enough to fall into our hands.*

*...disgusting...*

*CAN WE?*

Yohji was cringing.  No.  No. No.  That was truly sick enough to have him doubled over with nausea, if he were capable of moving.  The thought of a *man* putting that *there-*

Not that he hadn’t thought about men before; everyone did but it was just a phase, right?  A straight man wouldn’t just accept this kind of sex.

Aya’s voice again, a cold line connecting him to his only hope.  “Does that question have anything to do with my placement in Hou'oh's business?”  Aya wouldn’t do it.  Aya wouldn’t torture him, so he certainly would find some other way around this.  Rape wasn’t Aya’s style.

“Not exactly.  Imagine!  No, that condom is a part of his punishment and your final test. I figured you'd know what to do with it. After all, Kami-sama only knows where *this* has been!”

Yohji felt the kick that rolled him back onto his side and was almost grateful.  The blood seeped out of his mouth and he could breathe again, even if movement was impossible.

A condom.  The nausea returned.  Seiki had given Aya a condom, from the words that had passed between them.  It was almost laughable under other circumstances - Aya didn’t know what to do with a condom!

“I'm supposed to use this.”

Any other time.... Yohji felt laughter bubbling up inside of him, unreleasable.  Though the tone was flat, Yohji knew his teammate.  Aya sounded so confused.

“Yeah, when you fuck him.”

Yohji’s wince was internal.  But now he was on secure ground.  Aya wasn’t going to do it - Aya couldn’t; the man was an icicle, incapable of sex.  Yohji seriously doubted he even masturbated.

“Why would I want to do that?”  Confusion was gone; ice-hard Aya was back.

“That’s your last test, bucko.”

“It is.”

“That’s what Hou’oh commands.”  The breathless quality of eagerness was back.  Seiki was truly disturbed.  “You either do this and join his ranks, or you're dead before you've left this building.”

Yohji strained to open his eyes again.  He wanted to see Seiki’s face in the instant before Aya cut him down.

“And if I do this thing, you'll bring me before Hou'oh?”  Aya actually sounded contemplative.  Good, good...lull him into a false sense of security.

“You've sure got a hard-on for Hou'oh. What gives with that?”

“I won't work for someone who hasn't met me face to face at least once.”

“Maa, maa. I gotcha. You're sumthin' else, you know?  I already told you; after this last test, you get to meet the big man himself! Don't worry so much!”

They were still talking.  Yohji was barely listening.  It was hard to stay connected to the here-and-now when he was blinded, cut off from his body, the only tie the pain that was still pounding from head and bruised body and aching nose.

“...good to go now.  Get a move on.”

Time had blurred again.  Yohji struggled to regain concentration.  He could feel someone kneeling over him.  That was Seiki’s voice, so the man was still alive.

Yohji felt a hand on his zipper.  It was the first moment of belief.  He bucked desperately, a landed straining fish, movement manifesting in a shudder that jerked his entire body.  He gasped, inhaling blood.  Male fingers were tugging at his now-open fly.  Aya’s fingers stripping denim down his thighs, dragging them down.  Aya was doing this.

Aya was... Aya was going to *rape* him.

Yohji coughed into the toilet with Omi’s face hovering above him, worried.

“They hurt you; I’ve got to-”

There was nothing left to heave.  He wiped at his mouth with the back of one hand, the other waving Omi away irritably.  “No, you don’t.  Get away, to the shop - tend the shop, Omi.”

It was morning.  Late morning, he thought; his time-sense was still befuddled by the drugs that had worn off for the most part.  He looked at his hand and curled it into a fist.  The fingers moved slowly.  But they moved.

“But you-”

“The shop!”  Yohji’s stomach lurched again.  Omi’s face was so fresh-scrubbed and earnest, camouflage paint gone.  Staying would only spoil him.  Seeing Omi’s pained eyes light on his injuries would be more than either could bear.

“Okay.”  With wounded blue Omi retreated.  “I’ll bring a tray up later.”

*I’ll have the door locked, later.*  Yohji wiped his face with water from the basin.  He moved down the hall to his bedroom.  A slice of Aya’s cold face leapt out at him though a narrow gap of door; it clicked decisively shut even as he felt himself pale.

*You’re really going to do it?  Just like that?*

*You said Hou’oh ordered it.*

Yohji made a swift retreat.

Behind him in the hallway, a red head leaned around the door frame, slitted violet eyes fixed on the man who was doing his best to disappear.

Hot tears against a white cloth rendered dark, so closely wrapped to bind the eyes.

Pain and sparking shocks to the regular, rhythmic rock, being pushed forward-

“Che! Man, you can't have enjoyed that!”

“It wasn’t about enjoyment...”  Aya, again.

*Ite! Itee yo!!*

“It was about completing the test.”  Aya.  Had.  Taken.

*DAME YO!*

Yohji’s eyes snapped open on darkness.

*Yada... Aya... iie... Aya, yada yo!*

It hadn’t mattered, his pleas made even through the thick screen of drugs that inhibited his body’s responses.  He knew Aya must have heard him.  Aya was his teammate, his - he’d thought - his friend, and still...

Yohji turned on his side, hand fingering the tattoo on his upper arm through thick sweats.  He’d been stupid to trust even in such a situation.  The mark on his arm was witness to his own shame and this, only a reminder.  He remembered sleeping naked.  Now, with Aya down the hall, a locked door and thick sweats didn’t seem enough.  He even kept the window latched, stupid as it might seem.

Aya had done it to him only a few days ago.  He might want more.

A flurry of knocking on the door startled him; made him raise his head.  “Go away!”  He wasn’t hungry.  He didn’t want to talk about it.  He was fine.  He wasn’t scheduled to work today.

“If you don’t open up, I’m busting right through.”  Ken’s voice.

Yohji had every light burning in the room, but it was strange how he was still focused on other senses.  Ken’s voice, the slightest sound from the hallway, cool sheets under his hands and the tangled hair he hadn’t yet bothered to wash.  *I am not ashamed,* Yohji repeated to himself yet again, *I just can’t bear to face Aya without killing him.*

“I mean it!” Ken insisted.

With a sigh, Yohji rose and drifted over to the door, opening it just as Ken was backing up to put his shoulder to it.  Ken halted with a strangled noise and glared up at him.

Yohji looked down at him.  “You’re short.”  He pulled his hair back with a tie.

“Not funny,” Ken gritted.  “Why’d you send Omi away?  He came back downstairs with that tray he made for you, saying you wouldn’t even open the door.”

“I didn’t ask him to make it,” Yohji countered.  “Are you finished?”

“Hardly,” Ken growled.  “What were you doing in that room, Yohji?  You were supposed to get into the base of operations like I did, as Maintenance crew.  I had to sling you over my shoulder and run like hell when we had to get outta there with only ten minutes between us and a host of assassins.  Aya wouldn’t even grunt beyond agreeing that you’d been captured.  But *why?*”

“Forget it,” Yohji snarled back, “it’s over.”  *And none of your business!*  Over Ken’s surprised, shocked eyes he shoved the younger man over the threshold and slammed the door shut on him.  Yohji leaned heavily against it as he locked it.

“Yohji?  Yohji!!”  Pounding resumed.

“Go away, Ken.”

With weary steps he retraced his path to the bed, and pulled the blankets up over his chin.

Outside, Ken regarded the door with a bewildered expression, fists falling to his sides.  He backed up a few steps, then turned and hurried down the hall.  A door cracked open a few inches, triangular face peering without, mask of indifference firmly in place.  Once Ken was gone, Aya stepped into the hallway.

With clear-burning eyes Aya stared at the door.  He hesitated.  Then moved forward with purpose.

Panicked, Yohji tried to buck again.  Surely this wasn’t happening.  Aya couldn’t actually intend - why hadn’t he stopped?  No, there HAD to be some other way!  But his body was still not responding and Aya was pulling his briefs down now, drawing a shivering sensation as the silky material moved down his thighs, almost sensuous.  He couldn’t move so it was expressed as a thrill down his spine.

He inhaled sharply, throat catching on a mouthful of mingled spit and copper.  Aya’s hands turned him onto his side.  In the grip of helpless coughing, he spat more blood, feeling ultimately vulnerable with his penis exposed and lax against one thigh.  Thankfully, Aya’s hands did not touch *that.*

His mouth moved with more force, now cleared.  “Aya, iie-”  The words sounded numb and weak.  “Yada yo, Aya...”

Only to be ignored once more, as ungentle hands flipped him onto his belly.  His exposed ass was in the air, a begging position, his arms still constrained behind him with his face shoved against the floor.  In this position even without his senses locked it would be hard to speak.  In the grip of this moment all he could do was wait for something to touch him, even while his mind screamed out against it.  No matter how sluggish his body and words were, he could feel every single thing and understand every word directed at him!  And he did not want this!

Yohji swallowed.  He heard a zipper behind him; his eyes were open and screaming against the darkness as he imagined all-too-clearly what was emerging from tight jeans behind him.  A quiet rustle; from long experience Yohji heard the sound of a condom unwrapped.  Only this one was intended for use on *him.*

He gagged and felt blood and bile mingle at the back of his throat.  If he bit his tongue Aya would have to stop - or, his eyes widened in fright, it might hurt more as Aya continued despite his choking.  Helpless tears streamed from his eyes and he hated himself for it, the weakness of crying.  It wasn’t something a man did.

Neither was this.

Aya’s body was braced above him; he could feel it and the breath pouring against his cheek.  He had one last moment of suspended disbelief as something hard, a round cock head, nudged into the crease of his naked buttocks.  The condom was moist with a bit of lubricant.

UN!!

Yohji’s whole body tightened around the point of entry.  It was burning pain; it was an intruder, expressed as an urgent need to go to the bathroom.  He whimpered, not even hearing the sound escape his lips as with another rough thrust Aya impaled him, pushing in all the way.  Denim scratched his bare rear as lean hips pressed against him.  A thin sound was hanging in the air and Yohji was astonished to realize that sound *had* broken free from him.

Then the rocking started.  The stiff penis inside him pulled out partially, then slammed back in.  Yohji couldn’t move beyond the impetus he was given, his body shoved forward in a series of painful thrusts.  Aya’s breath panting above him; Aya’s hard cock pushing into him over and over and giving him this motion.  He rocked forward and couldn’t even cry anymore, eyes wide and sightless.  Everything was dark.  Fire pierced into him with each thrust.

He heard Aya gasp into his ear and stiffen.  Yohji’s eyes slid closed; he felt moisture on his cheeks.  His face ached dully, bruise pressed hard against the floor.  Aya was coming inside him.  He felt the quick little jerks of Aya’s climax, denim-clad hips digging deeper into Yohji’s ass with each small movement.

So quick.  The pain was hardly anything to the knowledge of violation.  Yohji felt every inch sliding out of him.  Aya’s cock was still hard and he hoped desperately that Seiki *sick fuck* wouldn’t suggest another round.

“Y-you’re done already!?”

Yohji was pulling away.  His body was still in the same position, arms tight and painful behind his back, pants and underwear halfway down his legs, bruised cheek wedged against the floor.  But now the drug was taking him someplace else.  Someplace to match the pitch-black world that greeted his eyes, and left him with only touch and sound and pain.

Touch and sound were toppling away.

*You’re still alive. You’re still alive.*

With a trembling hand Yohji lifted his cigarette to his lips.  He could feel Aya behind him still, a silent presence with his mouth etched in frowning lines.  Glowering at him for something that was his own fault.

He stubbed it out on the windowsill and turned.  “Why are you still here?”

Aya’s mouth was set.  “Ore... ore wa...”

“At a loss, huh?”  Yohji wanted to stand and slam him against the wall; he wanted to hurl Aya out of his room, screaming at him for every inch that had pressed into him without his permission.  He wanted to kill him for the sick fascination that rose inside of him, the disgusting part that wondered what it would be like if Aya did it to him again.

That was the worst part of it.  These three days he’d been imagining Aya touching him again.

Wanting it.  The hardness that had pushed into him and stolen everything else away, for a few brief strokes.

In Aya’s violet eyes he could see the same thing.  That knowledge.  The narrow gaze seeing him bent over.

With a sharp pivot, Aya presented his back and moved to the door.

Yohji lurched off the windowsill, moving like a limb-flailing puppet, strings cut.  He made it first and slammed the door shut.  Aya halted, eyes widening, mouth even more grim.

“Admit it.”

“Get away from the door.”

“Just say it.  What we both know.”

“Get AWAY!”

“SAY it, Aya, or-”

“Get away or I’ll-”

“You’ll *what!?*”

They screamed at each other, flushed and furious, Aya’s ice-hard control shattering under the weight of the singing in his blood, the exhilaration that had seized him before; the knowledge that he could do it again...  Yohji goading him to that point, unable to submit to what he wanted but willing to push and push and push until Aya took without asking.  Again.

Aya slammed him against the wall.  “Or I’ll do it again,” his low voice hissed in Yohji’s ears, furious.

Yohji’s green eyes went wide and he froze.  Aya was too close.  On a deep level he calculated that if he shook his head, Aya would stop.  So he arched against the body so close to his and a throaty murmur he’d only used on girls before emerged from his mouth.  “Is that the only thing you can think of?  You’ve got to fuck me to shut me up?”

Aya’s eyes narrowed to slits.

Bingo.

They tussled furiously and Aya twisted him around, slamming him up against the wall again.  Yohji grunted.  He shut his eyes tight.  Aya was wrenching his arms up, pinning his hands behind him in a painful grip.  “Hanase,” Yohji growled.  He felt Aya’s free hand groping in front of him and his eyes jolted open on bare, dirty wall.  Aya wasn’t supposed to touch him there! “H-hanase!!”

With a twist, Aya unbuckled Yohji’s belt and pulled it loose.  The leather strip dangled from his fist like a strangled snake.  Then, methodically, Aya began to bind his arms behind him, shoving Yohji’s chest more firmly against the wall when he struggled.

“Stop - Aya, s-stop...”

Aya’s breath came fast and harsh against his ear.  His hand was moving, grasping at something.  Yohji’s breath hitched in his throat as a strip of cloth descended over his eyes, unnecessary when his eyes were shut so tightly.  His teeth gritted.

“You bastard...”

Yohji felt himself dragged over to the bed.

“Aya - Aya, what happened to him!?”

Through hazed lids he saw Ken’s earnest face, brown bangs, wide mouth.

“Just take care of it, Ken.”

“Aya, what happened to Yohji?  He’s bruised all over - wrists are chafed - pupils dilated; what the hell!?  He was supposed to get in the same way I did...”

“Just *tend his wounds.*”  Aya’s voice went steely.

Yohji’s eyes fogged out on Ken’s righteous indignation.

*Well done.*

There were no words.  Yohji felt he would fly into pieces if Aya spoke to him *now* but then, Aya never was much for words.

Efficient as ever, Aya positioned him on the bed.  His face lay against a cool-smooth rumple of sheets, making the cloth over his eyes slip.  It didn’t matter.  His eyes were closed so tightly anyhow.  Behind him, Aya’s hands moved over his arms, checking the bindings.  It was a looser position than Seiki’s underlings had bound him in, but still he was incapable of freeing his arms.  Aya made sure of that.

He expected to feel his jeans peeled away next, but instead Aya’s weight left the bed.  Rummaging noises; drawers opened and closed.  He almost wondered, then *knew,* what Aya was looking for.

It wasn’t the same as last time.  The pain wasn’t as sharper.  There was no odd distance between body and mind and he felt almost scared as he identified the pulse in his body as peculiar yearning, not fear.  The same ashamed cravings that had made him barricade himself in his room.

The mattress settled beneath him, creaked, and now Aya’s hands were at his jeans again.  Yohji groaned; his forehead arched against the sheets as he shook slowly.  Quickly hands unbuttoned his fly; the same steady fingers pulled at his jeans and stripped them down tanned muscular thighs.  Yohji made a hoarse noise and hitched up the bed, away from the grasp of demanding hands and what he knew was coming.  No... no... he was a man, dammit, and he shouldn’t want this and it shouldn’t be happening!

An arm clamped around his waist and a faint curse reached his ears.  He wasn’t drugged now; Aya was finding out that it *wouldn’t* be the same, not this time.

Yohji wriggled again when he heard the zipper splitting.  Breath catching and sobbing in his throat, he tried to - to get away, to get anywhere, seeing the length in his mind’s eye, knowing what was behind him and there was no escape, not because he was tied up and drugged like the first time but because this was what haunted him, and only in feeling it again was there any kind of release.

“Aya... stop...”

Stop what?  Stop making him relive it?  Wonder with every other breath how it would be to feel it again?

Aya’s engorged cock rolled in the crack of his rear before settling over the closed pucker that Yohji was trying to will to stay closed.  A cool dribble of liquid followed.  He could feel immediately from the sensation of the round head rubbing against him that Aya had dispensed with the condom, this time. Did it make Aya excited, hotter, knowing what he would leave behind in Yohji?

He wanted it.  He didn’t want it.  At least Aya wasn’t vacillating.

Up ‘til now it had been like play-acting, two men tussling in the dark, but he was contracted in another sharp instant of reality.  For a moment he was back there on the office carpet, face shoved against the floor, Aya mounting behind him while the drugs took his body another way.  His voice became shrill with panic.  “Aya - no - Aya, STOP!”  Then he couldn’t breathe and tears were wetting the blindfold, again, as thick hardness pushed into him, invading him.  Again.

Yohji gasped and then he felt it.  Rocked forward, split open, a quick instant of pain and then something was blossoming inside him.  Something that didn’t hurt so bad but felt very, very good with each lunge of Aya’s rangy hips.  A whole new source of pleasure was coming from this, from Aya’s length buried inside him and shifting steadily.  He shook his head harder.  “Dame!!”  Because it shouldn’t feel so good but it was what he’d wanted.

This time those hips went on forever.  With each thrust, he was shoved sprawling against the sheets, unable to catch himself.  He groaned and twisted and Aya’s hands grabbed his waist, riveting him in place.

He could feel it.  The crest that swept him during fucking - but, his hysterical mind grabbed the thought, he was on the wrong end of this pleasure and his body didn’t care.

Aya jerked against him.  The scratch of denim rubbed almost gently against his bare buttocks, once, twice - then Aya shoved into him again, hard, a strangled noise reaching Yohji’s ears.  Yohji’s face altered.  If Aya had seen - no, he had no real emotions left; he’d already proved it with his actions the other day.  Desperation locked onto Yohji’s face as he felt his own climax spattering the sheets; fear and not the pleasure one might expect.

Aya pulled out, leaving him numb and stunned.  After awhile he felt his bonds being loosened.  Yohji lay slumped on the bed a long time after the door snicked quietly shut.  He was still in shock.  Not from what Aya’d done.. not.. it was...

This time, he’d come.

“You make me sick.  Get up; you’re useless this way.”

Yohji turned his head and exhaled smoke.  “Get out of my room.”  His fingers clutched the cigarette to still their trembling.

“Are you just going to lie here, then, and let the rest of us cover your shifts?”

Green eyes glittered at him in fury.  “Get the *fuck* out, Aya.”

The lean man glared at him, mouth thinning to a grim line.  He pivoted sharply and left a wake of scorched dignity behind him, shutting the door with a slam.

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Yohji whispered, closing his eyes.

He got up and turned the lights out.