30-Kisses Fic: Overflow (TRC, Kurogane) G

[ciircee]

30_kisses Theme #27: Overflow

Please Note: chelle_sama will have another 'kiss' going up on her journal before the end of the day.

Also: My Kurogane/Fai AU at 31_days now has another part which is here.



Disclaimer: CLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMP.
Dedication: To Chelle-sama. Because she's WEAK! WEAK!

Overflow

Souma found him in the men’s bathhouse. Normally she wouldn’t have entered but she’d been summoned there in the hopes that she, above anybody, could roust him without having to resort to Her Highness.

She didn’t bother to knock, knowing that Kurogane would have heard her on the steps even if he hadn’t been expressly told that, if he didn’t remove himself from the baths, she’d be on her way in short order. “Kurogane?”

He was standing in the center of one of the long, smoothly tiled baths and wearing only a tightly wrapped towel about his waist, but he wasn’t going about the business of bathing. The tub had been drained and the drain had been ripped wide open. The tiles around the drain were missing or cracked and those farther out were caked with drying mud. “I’m not coming out,” he said shortly. “Not until I find it.”

It was on her lips to ask what ‘it’ when she noticed. Age had crept up to both of them but her senses were still keen. It was only the fact that Kurogane generally kept the long, silver chain and its token under his clothes and hidden from sight that made her miss its absence at first glance. She glanced back at the door. Getting Kurogane out would be impossible, something that even Her Highness might not be able to do. Still, she tried for form’s sake. “The others would like a bath, Kurogane.”

“Too bad. If it’s not in here, I’ll dig up the drains on the others until I get it back. It’s under there somewhere.”

Obviously the other men were listening at the door. “It’s just a wing nut!” somebody shouted and Souma had to tackle Kurogane to the floor before he went out and killed the first person he laid eyes on. It wasn’t only anything.

Why are you wearing a wing nut on a chain?” She asked, wondering what those other worlds had done to her friend.

“It’s not just a wing nut,” Kurogane explained patiently. “It’s a souvenir.

“A souvenir?”

“From Fai. We were looking for feathers, wings have feathers, and we’re both crazy to have gone on that journey. His word for crazy is ‘nuts’.” She must have looked confused because he shrugged. “Well, I had the choice of the wing nut or a kiss, so I took the wing nut.”

“And you wear it on a chain?”

“If I didn’t, it would get lost. He’s probably put a spell on it so that something stupid would happen to me if I lost it. Fai is crazy like that.”


Looking down at him, his hair almost more silver than black, scrabbling at the gaping hole he’d made in the tile, Souma felt for him. “Kurogane,” she said quietly, “if it’s gone and nothing bad has happened, maybe he doesn’t mind so much that you’ve lost it after all this time.”

Kurogane’s shoulders tightened. “Fai would mind,” he growled. “He’d never let me rest if I lost it.”

She reached out to touch him. “Kurogane…” He jerked away from her and slipped as he did so. Souma gasped and tried to grab him, to keep him from falling, but he’d moved beyond her grasp. She watched him fall, losing the towel before landing butt first in the mud and toppling to rap his head on the formerly-intact tile. His eyes were open but he was entirely still. “Kurogane!”

He blinked and then sighed. “I told you so, Souma.” He reached straight up and she followed the movement of his hand to one of the overflow drains near the rim of the bath. Something glittered there and, with one gentle tug from Kurogane, the silver chain and battered wing nut toppled out with a faint popping sound. “I told you,” he said again, his hand falling to rest on his chest. “I told you.”

For a long moment she looked at him, completely nude except for the mud and she didn’t know whether to laugh at the picture he made or to cry because laying there, his fingers clenched around that old thing he called a ‘souvenir’ and his fist pressed over his heart, he was far more naked than a man who was simply lacking a towel.