Containment Arc
Please Note- This fic has been rated Mature for a reason! It contains graphic sexual references/conversations, homosexual sex, drug use, violence and loads of swearing and generally grown up situations. Please adhere to the age of consent for your country. I take no responsibility for those who don't.
I do not own the copyright on these characters. I get no money for writing about them. It's purely an act of worship (and lust) so please don't sue me. I don't have any money anyway.
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When the sirens wailed and the lead grills slammed down over the walls Schuldig took his hands from my throat and even I froze with horror. Slowly our eyes travelled down to the smashed flask on the concrete floor, at the whispers of vapour still clinging to the shattered glass.
“Ah,” Schuldig remarked.
It had all started so well. Weiss had been shutting down an illegal lab. It had been manufacturing strange and vicious poisons and selling them to the highest bidders. The building had no real security (or so we had thought) and we had dealt, terminally, with most of the staff before we stumbled upon an unsuspected, inner lab. It was a small room filled with tables on which stood glass flasks with sealed lids. Presumably this was the place that held the really nasty stuff. Yet it all looked so innocent. The contents of the flasks looked clear and clean and oddly pretty, gasses of various colours swirled gently at the bottom of them. Omi couldn’t help himself; he picked one up and shook it gently resulting in a right royal bollocking from Ken.
That was when Schwartz arrived. It turned out that Schwartz approved of the facility, had used it many times in the past, and were not happy at all to find it in bits. Plus they were late to the party which always made them ratty. In the heat of the ensuing battle Omi and Ken were forced out into the corridor by the rest of Schwartz and only Schuldig and I remained in the lab, circling each other like angry wolves, indulging wholeheartedly in our sincere desire to kill each other. Unfortunately this led to our becoming distracted and managing to break the flask, resulting in the room’s total lock down and our current predicament.
I looked around at the lead panels now lining every inch of the lab. No possible way in or out and even if there had been I wasn’t prepared to carry this thing into the city. And as Schuldig pointed out, whatever we had released into the air was obviously deadly enough for even mad scientists to take time out from crying, “It lives!” to establish containment procedures.
Not a good sign.
“Why aren’t we dead yet?” Schuldig asked.
It was a good question. Surely any bio toxin worth the name should have killed us in seconds. However a horrible thought had occurred to me. The contents of the flask had signally failed to kill us so far leaving only one alternative. It was a more complex and unpleasant poison than that; its purpose was to agonise and prolong. After all, these were mad scientists we were dealing with. I suddenly wished that I had killed more of them. I wondered what imaginative tortures we were about to undergo.
“I would be grateful Aya, if you could refrain from such thoughts.” Schuldig muttered while he sorted through the many papers on the desk looking for anything that might suggest that we had merely released the cure for optimism or something.
I suspected that Schuldig didn’t give a rat’s arse what I was thinking. He just loved to remind people that none of their thoughts were private when he was around. But still I smiled to myself because, despite himself, there had been a tiny note of concern in his voice. I had never expected anything but total and chilling self confidence from the German. As soon as I laughed at him inside my own head Schuldig lost his temper, growled angrily and reached for my throat again, his fingers curved like claws. Before I could move or he could connect with my skin the phone on the desk rang. We both started at the reminder of the outside world. Schuldig paused impressively in mid lunge and calmly lifted the receiver.
“Yes?” He said. I could hear a frantic babbling on the other end of the line. “Yes, Nagi, we had noticed,” more babbling, “Well, torture him! Do I have to decide everything?....Oh, they do, do they? Hmmm....Yes, yes, I’ll tell him.” He hung up and visibly relaxed his fighting stance.
“And how is Nagi?” I asked sarcastically. That little brat had always given me the creeps. Yohji often referred to him as the Anti-Omi.
“Nagi says that they can’t get through the panels. When I confirmed their suspicions as to why you could have smelled his relief that it’s me in here and not him. Loyal isn’t he? Your self righteous soldiers want to rescue you which to their annoyance means also rescuing me so they have called a truce and located a not quite dead scientist (not very thorough are you, when I leave people they are most definitely dead) and are currently pummelling him for an antidote.”
“There probably isn’t one,” I said, leafing through a red folder which seemed mainly to be invoices, “Why would they bother with such heavy safety shut down in if it was something easily cured?” It felt wrong to be in Schuldig’s presence and not to be trying to kill him. It was a learnt response to his green eyes, his red hair, that accent. My hands kept twitching.
“Oh well,” Schuldig backed up against the wall and leaned casually, his hands in his pockets. There was something ineffably casual about him; I suspected that he would lounge in a bored manner in the face of an apocalypse. “We’re probably going to die then,” he continued, “I wonder when we will start to feel it.”
“We could just kill each other now and get it over with?” I suggested, offhandedly. I yearned to take my sword to his smug face and slice it off, although to be truthful he wasn’t looking particularly smug right then. He looked disappointed, as if he hadn’t expected his life to end like this. I felt the same and that was certainly the first feeling we had ever had in common. I would far rather die with his blood all over me than by the slow creep of microbes. “What do you say?” I repeated, smiling what Omi calls my ‘twisted smile’, “I’ll kill you if you’ll kill me?”
“Nien,” Schuldig took a packet of cigarettes out of his coat pocket and slid one out, “I can’t be arsed.”
He offered me a cigarette and I shook my head. When he lit up the smell reminded me of Yohji. I wondered what Yohji would say when he came back from the coast to hear that I had succumbed to a fucking flask. It was embarrassing.
“He’ll be heartbroken you know,” Schuldig drawled in that infuriating, ‘I know everything about you’ way that he had, “He wants to fuck you. A lot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I spluttered, “Just because you are a relentless pervert doesn’t mean that everyone else is.” I sat down in one of the labs metal chairs. There didn’t seem much else to do. I ached to injure Schuldig in some way but I was reluctant to endanger the truce outside. I wasn’t entirely sure that Omi and Ken could take the remaining members of Schwartz alone. We should never have attempted this raid without Yohji.
“Relentless pervert, I like that,” Schuldig blew a lazy smoke ring and we both watched it drifting. “I am right though,” he insisted, “Yohji has many wicked little thoughts about you. Even when he is fighting! He day dreams about tangling his fingers in your hair and pulling you against him and,”
“Shut up.” I snapped. I was blushing and my guts squirmed uncomfortably. I had never imagined that Yohji might...I had my own lusts battened down so tight that it had never occurred to me. He did stare at me a lot and once when we were spectacularly drunk he had fallen asleep on the sofa with me in a heap of arms and legs, his head on my chest, and it had been awkward in the morning. Still I hadn’t suspected...I wondered if Yohji would cry when he was told of my death. I knew that Omi would cry but he cried at everything. He cried at soap operas.
“You are an incredible cynic for a supposed good guy, doubting Omi’s sincere little feelings like that” Schuldig commented, “And you seem pretty blasé about dying.”
I shrugged, “You talk too much.”
“You think too much, “he shot back, “anyway I consider it well worth my last few moments on earth to fuck with your head. I want to have a go at that wall you have up.”
I tensed but couldn’t resist asking, “What wall?”
Schuldig smirked and sucked on his cigarette in a way that I found unsettlingly obscene.
“That one that you have put up in front of all your desires and human instincts,” he said.
“Ha!” I spat contemptuously, “that’s just psycho babble.”
“Normally I would agree with you. I fucked a psychiatrist once; he said I was narcissistic, maniacal and sociopathic with distinct violent tendencies. Moron. I told him he wasn’t even halfway there! But I am not a psychiatrist. I actually am inside your head and that wall is there, plain as day. There are things that you have hidden so well, even from yourself that even I am curious. What terrible urges are you hiding? What can shame you so much?”
“There would be no point explaining. The concept of shame is beyond you,” I told him, bitterly. This was not how I wanted to die, with a psychopath deconstructing my mind. If there was a wall then I approved and was grateful for it. It had let me get this far in life without giving up completely. It gave me control. That was all I had ever wanted.
Schuldig laughed softly.
There was a long silence. I was sick with tension. I knew he was rooting about in my mind, turning over secrets and nightmares. If we were going to die anyway I shouldn’t care what he did but I felt defiled, as always, by his rapacious curiosity. I tried to think of impersonal things, things that would bore him or trip him up on his journey. I concentrated hard on the beige folders on the desk in front of me, tried to fill my mind with them but he only chuckled to himself. So I attempted to dismiss the reality of his invasion by going through the papers. I half hoped that there would be one entitled, ‘This is the Antidote.’ But there was nothing but admin, timetables and client lists (that included some prominent businessmen that I had thought better of).
The phone rang again and I answered it. Omi’s worried voice greeted me.
“How are you feeling?”He ventured, in that tragic voice people always use with the terminally sick. It was not encouraging.
“Fine so far. Not dead yet.” I told him, coolly. Schuldig was lighting another cigarette but I knew he could hear every word we said, one way or another.
“That’s...good, “Omi, said desperately. “We haven’t got an antidote yet but our informant gave us quite a lot of information before he, you know, died. Both Schwartz and Weiss are working on it. Um.”
“Yes, what else is it, Omi?”
“Well, it turns out that the toxin you released started life as a behavioural modifier for the army. It was supposed to make soldiers more obedient by making them feel...good in terrible situations. But it had too much success in that...ahem...area so they turned it into a poison. The problem is that the original effects are still present and so you are going to start feeling...um...”
“For God’s sake, Omi, what? Does it turn people into psychotic murderers, because I am in here with Schuldig. How will I tell?”
“OK, it’s going to make you feel really, and I mean really, horny.”
For an appalled moment words failed me utterly. I could hear Schuldig laughing.
“You mean...turned on?” I mumbled.
“The test subjects, the soldiers, apparently they just jumped each other.” Omi’s voice was saturated with embarrassment. Schuldig was laughing so hard now that he was struggling to breathe.
“Can I please kill Schuldig?” I hissed into the phone.
“Not if you want Schwartz to help us get you out and treated. Don’t give up, it works slowly. It won’t kill you for hours yet. There’s still time.”
I hung up, muttering balefully to myself, “Why couldn’t they just make anthrax like normal people.”
I couldn’t bring myself to meet Schuldig’s eye but I could hear him sniggering.
“What a way to die!”He exclaimed, “Fantastic. I can’t wait to see you lose it.”
“You will be losing it too, so don’t crow so loud.” I grunted.
“Perhaps but that doesn’t scare me the way it scares you. I can think of worse ways to go.”
“Lay a finger on me and I will bite it off,” I grated.
His green eyes twinkled at me suggestively.
“I wonder how long it will take,” He mused, “Before you can’t stand it and beg me to touch you.”
“Hopefully I will be dead by then.” What horrified me more than anything else was the reality that as soon as I did feel it he would know. You couldn’t lie to this man; you couldn’t hide anything from him. My heart beat in sickening dread.
“I think I will push the process along a bit,” the red head murmured evilly, “Shall I tell you all the things that Yohji wants to do to you? Where he wants to kiss you and lick you and just how much he wants you to love him? I almost feel sorry for him. He wants you so badly and it’s never going to happen. You didn’t see it because you aren’t a finished person, are you? You aren’t really alive. He is happier with all his unrequited aching than you with that howling wasteland in your head. Even Omi is more real than you. He at least noticed that Yohji wants you.”
I couldn’t help my head snapping up in surprise. Schuldig grinned at me. He was thoroughly enjoying himself at my expense.
“You thought Omi was an innocent, didn’t you?” Schuldig smiled, “God’s above, you idiot. Don’t you remember being sixteen? All Omi ever thinks about is sex. Weren’t you ever like that?”
Schuldig knew of course that I had never been that comfortable about sex. I’ve never been attracted to the idea of being unable to stop myself, of being out of control. I never saw the appeal of being reduced to animal urges.
“Animal...” Schuldig echoed, “Nice imagery you have there.”
He ran his eyes over my face caressingly, lingering on my lips. A strange feeling blossomed in my belly, an ominous heat, an impossible physical treachery. Schuldig’s lips parted a little and he drew in his breath sharply. Everything seemed to slow down, to still. I was aware of him like I had never been aware of anyone. I could see the pulse beating faster in his throat, felt my own speed up to match it.
“I think it might be working.” He said softly.
The burning in my blood was growing and I was aware, painfully aware, of the trembling, the shuddering, of my legendary self control as it threatened to give. I gritted my teeth against a siege of mental images which I would have liked to believe Schuldig had put there, but which I was almost certain were home grown. I had to keep it together. I had to endure this feeling, these urges, because the only other person in the room was Schuldig and it didn’t bear thinking about.
Except that I couldn’t stop thinking about it! My body was full of fire and my mind was full of pictures. I clamped my hands over my face and stared into the dark, trying desperately to order my thoughts, trying with every ounce of will not to think about his mouth or his body or how it would feel.
“Christ!” Schuldig exclaimed, from the other side of the room, forcing me for reasons that were unclear to take my hands from my eyes and look at him. Schuldig had stood up and he was steadying himself against one of the tables, gripping it with white knuckled fingers. His eyes seemed to bore right through my clothes. Suddenly I was very afraid and that is not something I often feel. I wasn’t afraid of him but of myself and what I needed. I could almost feel him touching me.
“They weren’t kidding about this stuff were they,” Schuldig managed, his breath coming in agitated little bursts. He was visibly shaking.
“We have to cope with this somehow.” I insisted, but I soon realised that I had left my chair and was edging closer to him. I couldn’t stop myself; my thus far reliable, calm, carefully trained body was completely AWOL and not its usual obedient self at all. It was betraying me. I was stood very near him now. He held onto the table desperately as if he would fall down otherwise and fall forever. My conscience was screaming at me through the haze of desire, ‘This is Schuldig! He is everything that you despise; he is everything that sickens you!’
But the mad scientists had done their work well (or badly, depending on your point of view) and the toxin was powerful. It showed me some unpalatable truths, held them up like caught, skinned animals. I suddenly saw what had been there all along.
Schuldig was beautiful and I wanted him. I had always wanted him.
There was a breath while Schuldig processed this information which, I could tell by the expression on his face, was equally surprising to him. I was fleetingly proud of a mental wall that could hold back a Schwartz telepath but such self congratulating melted when he said,
“I’ve wanted you too.” He seemed to have to force the confession out but once he had he smiled, “I blame Yohji. I should never have gone exploring in his head. All I found was you.”
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My arms went around him and held him tight. The way his body was pressing against me, firm and warm, made me want to run, to get out of this room somehow. He scratched his fingers down my back and my fear was mounting. This was wrong and sick and destructive but somehow...familiar. I felt like I knew him when he pulled out of the kiss and looked at me. Strange, broken thoughts drifted in my head, about what might have happened if we had met another way or in another time and place; if we had had different lives I could have belonged with him. I saw the thought reflected in his eyes.
I wondered if I could stand this, knowing this.
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Afterwards I bit my lip. What had happened here? Even with my inexperience, even with this twisted situation I knew that this had been something more than sex. This was something infinitely bigger and more disastrous.
It was probably just as well that we were about to die.
Wordlessly we lay down on the cold floor and shivered under the pile of clothes. We clung to each other and started to feel warm, marvelling at this strange, fragile moment. I could feel his breath against my chest. I wanted to save him, wanted him for myself, for always. No man was a monster, no matter what monstrous things they do. There must still be a person inside him somewhere that I could find.
“Don’t,” he said, “It’s too late.” The total lack of hope in his voice made me want to shake him, shout at him, and make him into someone else. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t too late. He could change. I could change. I couldn’t ignore the heart crushing recognition that we should have been together, that we were meant to be together, that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Too late,” he said again, jaggedly like a broken doll, “Too late.”
We lay there silently for a while. He ran his hand gently on my chest, tracing patterns into my skin. Slowly I said,
“Let’s...go to sleep.”
There was a brief hesitation. He had heard Ken’s warning as well as I had. Then he sighed, as if relieved, and kissed my shoulder and replied,
“Yes, alright. The only thing to do really.”
I closed my eyes.
I woke in hospital without any idea of how I had got there. People in bio suits were moving around. One of them saw that I was awake and lumbered over. It spoke through its tiny voice vent.
“You are going to be fine.”
“Who found the antidote?” I asked. I was finding this hard to believe. I wondered if this was a Weiss doctor or a Schwartz one.
“I believe that one of your colleagues beat up every single corrupt businessman in the city until one of them admitted to being a client of the lab and gave him the antidote. You have loyal friends.”
“And the...other one? The other patient?” I realised that there was an oxygen mask on my face and that was why my voice sounded strange. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say his name.
“Oh, he discharged himself yesterday. Against doctor’s orders, may I add? Cocky little bastard.”
The doctor departed, grumbling, and I lay back. I wasn’t surprised that Schuldig’s front had gone up again so quickly. It was a matter of self preservation for him to deny everything that had happened in that room. The next time we met he would probably try even harder than usual to kill me. What I had seen and what I now knew wasn’t something he could tolerate. I didn’t blame him for it.
I stayed in hospital rather longer than was necessary. I couldn’t stand the thought of facing the others. They must know by now that we had been found naked and curled up together. How would the rest of Weiss ever respect me now? My carefully cultivated image was shot and it would take many months of withering, emotionless hard work for me to begin to get it back. The wall in my head would also have to be reconstructed. It wasn’t a matter of choice. I had to do it or I would crack up in the face of reality.
When I eventually let them discharge me it was Yohji who picked me up. I had already realised that it must have been him who, recalled from the coast, had beaten up half the city in order to save me. Only to find me in the arms of one of the people Yohji hated more than he could even articulate. We sat in the car and Yohji was steadfast in avoiding my eye. I wondered which feeling was winning in him, jealousy or disgust.
“I saw him last night.” Yohji blurted abruptly while taking a corner at worrying speed, “He was drinking himself sick down town. He was completely out of it. I don’t think he even saw me.”
I didn’t speak because I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Why him?” Yohji demanded as the car rattled down familiar streets. His jaw was tight with anger.
“It was just the toxin,” I lied, “He was just the one that was there.”
There was a pause while Yohji parked the car. I was quite surprised that we had got home alive. I could see him thinking that if he hadn’t been away it could have been him with me in that sealed room. It was eating at him. But his eyes still held a certain hope.
“Just so you know,” He told me, “I love you. And I can wait.”
He got out of the car then and didn’t bring it up again.
I went indoors to be greeted by piles of flowers and cake and a bashful Omi and Ken. Everyone seemed determined not to mention what had happened. I was just Aya, back after a short stay in hospital.
But all the time I was looking at Yohji and thinking, ‘too late, it’s too late.”
I do not own the copyright on these characters. I get no money for writing about them. It's purely an act of worship (and lust) so please don't sue me. I don't have any money anyway.
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When the sirens wailed and the lead grills slammed down over the walls Schuldig took his hands from my throat and even I froze with horror. Slowly our eyes travelled down to the smashed flask on the concrete floor, at the whispers of vapour still clinging to the shattered glass.
“Ah,” Schuldig remarked.
It had all started so well. Weiss had been shutting down an illegal lab. It had been manufacturing strange and vicious poisons and selling them to the highest bidders. The building had no real security (or so we had thought) and we had dealt, terminally, with most of the staff before we stumbled upon an unsuspected, inner lab. It was a small room filled with tables on which stood glass flasks with sealed lids. Presumably this was the place that held the really nasty stuff. Yet it all looked so innocent. The contents of the flasks looked clear and clean and oddly pretty, gasses of various colours swirled gently at the bottom of them. Omi couldn’t help himself; he picked one up and shook it gently resulting in a right royal bollocking from Ken.
That was when Schwartz arrived. It turned out that Schwartz approved of the facility, had used it many times in the past, and were not happy at all to find it in bits. Plus they were late to the party which always made them ratty. In the heat of the ensuing battle Omi and Ken were forced out into the corridor by the rest of Schwartz and only Schuldig and I remained in the lab, circling each other like angry wolves, indulging wholeheartedly in our sincere desire to kill each other. Unfortunately this led to our becoming distracted and managing to break the flask, resulting in the room’s total lock down and our current predicament.
I looked around at the lead panels now lining every inch of the lab. No possible way in or out and even if there had been I wasn’t prepared to carry this thing into the city. And as Schuldig pointed out, whatever we had released into the air was obviously deadly enough for even mad scientists to take time out from crying, “It lives!” to establish containment procedures.
Not a good sign.
“Why aren’t we dead yet?” Schuldig asked.
It was a good question. Surely any bio toxin worth the name should have killed us in seconds. However a horrible thought had occurred to me. The contents of the flask had signally failed to kill us so far leaving only one alternative. It was a more complex and unpleasant poison than that; its purpose was to agonise and prolong. After all, these were mad scientists we were dealing with. I suddenly wished that I had killed more of them. I wondered what imaginative tortures we were about to undergo.
“I would be grateful Aya, if you could refrain from such thoughts.” Schuldig muttered while he sorted through the many papers on the desk looking for anything that might suggest that we had merely released the cure for optimism or something.
I suspected that Schuldig didn’t give a rat’s arse what I was thinking. He just loved to remind people that none of their thoughts were private when he was around. But still I smiled to myself because, despite himself, there had been a tiny note of concern in his voice. I had never expected anything but total and chilling self confidence from the German. As soon as I laughed at him inside my own head Schuldig lost his temper, growled angrily and reached for my throat again, his fingers curved like claws. Before I could move or he could connect with my skin the phone on the desk rang. We both started at the reminder of the outside world. Schuldig paused impressively in mid lunge and calmly lifted the receiver.
“Yes?” He said. I could hear a frantic babbling on the other end of the line. “Yes, Nagi, we had noticed,” more babbling, “Well, torture him! Do I have to decide everything?....Oh, they do, do they? Hmmm....Yes, yes, I’ll tell him.” He hung up and visibly relaxed his fighting stance.
“And how is Nagi?” I asked sarcastically. That little brat had always given me the creeps. Yohji often referred to him as the Anti-Omi.
“Nagi says that they can’t get through the panels. When I confirmed their suspicions as to why you could have smelled his relief that it’s me in here and not him. Loyal isn’t he? Your self righteous soldiers want to rescue you which to their annoyance means also rescuing me so they have called a truce and located a not quite dead scientist (not very thorough are you, when I leave people they are most definitely dead) and are currently pummelling him for an antidote.”
“There probably isn’t one,” I said, leafing through a red folder which seemed mainly to be invoices, “Why would they bother with such heavy safety shut down in if it was something easily cured?” It felt wrong to be in Schuldig’s presence and not to be trying to kill him. It was a learnt response to his green eyes, his red hair, that accent. My hands kept twitching.
“Oh well,” Schuldig backed up against the wall and leaned casually, his hands in his pockets. There was something ineffably casual about him; I suspected that he would lounge in a bored manner in the face of an apocalypse. “We’re probably going to die then,” he continued, “I wonder when we will start to feel it.”
“We could just kill each other now and get it over with?” I suggested, offhandedly. I yearned to take my sword to his smug face and slice it off, although to be truthful he wasn’t looking particularly smug right then. He looked disappointed, as if he hadn’t expected his life to end like this. I felt the same and that was certainly the first feeling we had ever had in common. I would far rather die with his blood all over me than by the slow creep of microbes. “What do you say?” I repeated, smiling what Omi calls my ‘twisted smile’, “I’ll kill you if you’ll kill me?”
“Nien,” Schuldig took a packet of cigarettes out of his coat pocket and slid one out, “I can’t be arsed.”
He offered me a cigarette and I shook my head. When he lit up the smell reminded me of Yohji. I wondered what Yohji would say when he came back from the coast to hear that I had succumbed to a fucking flask. It was embarrassing.
“He’ll be heartbroken you know,” Schuldig drawled in that infuriating, ‘I know everything about you’ way that he had, “He wants to fuck you. A lot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I spluttered, “Just because you are a relentless pervert doesn’t mean that everyone else is.” I sat down in one of the labs metal chairs. There didn’t seem much else to do. I ached to injure Schuldig in some way but I was reluctant to endanger the truce outside. I wasn’t entirely sure that Omi and Ken could take the remaining members of Schwartz alone. We should never have attempted this raid without Yohji.
“Relentless pervert, I like that,” Schuldig blew a lazy smoke ring and we both watched it drifting. “I am right though,” he insisted, “Yohji has many wicked little thoughts about you. Even when he is fighting! He day dreams about tangling his fingers in your hair and pulling you against him and,”
“Shut up.” I snapped. I was blushing and my guts squirmed uncomfortably. I had never imagined that Yohji might...I had my own lusts battened down so tight that it had never occurred to me. He did stare at me a lot and once when we were spectacularly drunk he had fallen asleep on the sofa with me in a heap of arms and legs, his head on my chest, and it had been awkward in the morning. Still I hadn’t suspected...I wondered if Yohji would cry when he was told of my death. I knew that Omi would cry but he cried at everything. He cried at soap operas.
“You are an incredible cynic for a supposed good guy, doubting Omi’s sincere little feelings like that” Schuldig commented, “And you seem pretty blasé about dying.”
I shrugged, “You talk too much.”
“You think too much, “he shot back, “anyway I consider it well worth my last few moments on earth to fuck with your head. I want to have a go at that wall you have up.”
I tensed but couldn’t resist asking, “What wall?”
Schuldig smirked and sucked on his cigarette in a way that I found unsettlingly obscene.
“That one that you have put up in front of all your desires and human instincts,” he said.
“Ha!” I spat contemptuously, “that’s just psycho babble.”
“Normally I would agree with you. I fucked a psychiatrist once; he said I was narcissistic, maniacal and sociopathic with distinct violent tendencies. Moron. I told him he wasn’t even halfway there! But I am not a psychiatrist. I actually am inside your head and that wall is there, plain as day. There are things that you have hidden so well, even from yourself that even I am curious. What terrible urges are you hiding? What can shame you so much?”
“There would be no point explaining. The concept of shame is beyond you,” I told him, bitterly. This was not how I wanted to die, with a psychopath deconstructing my mind. If there was a wall then I approved and was grateful for it. It had let me get this far in life without giving up completely. It gave me control. That was all I had ever wanted.
Schuldig laughed softly.
There was a long silence. I was sick with tension. I knew he was rooting about in my mind, turning over secrets and nightmares. If we were going to die anyway I shouldn’t care what he did but I felt defiled, as always, by his rapacious curiosity. I tried to think of impersonal things, things that would bore him or trip him up on his journey. I concentrated hard on the beige folders on the desk in front of me, tried to fill my mind with them but he only chuckled to himself. So I attempted to dismiss the reality of his invasion by going through the papers. I half hoped that there would be one entitled, ‘This is the Antidote.’ But there was nothing but admin, timetables and client lists (that included some prominent businessmen that I had thought better of).
The phone rang again and I answered it. Omi’s worried voice greeted me.
“How are you feeling?”He ventured, in that tragic voice people always use with the terminally sick. It was not encouraging.
“Fine so far. Not dead yet.” I told him, coolly. Schuldig was lighting another cigarette but I knew he could hear every word we said, one way or another.
“That’s...good, “Omi, said desperately. “We haven’t got an antidote yet but our informant gave us quite a lot of information before he, you know, died. Both Schwartz and Weiss are working on it. Um.”
“Yes, what else is it, Omi?”
“Well, it turns out that the toxin you released started life as a behavioural modifier for the army. It was supposed to make soldiers more obedient by making them feel...good in terrible situations. But it had too much success in that...ahem...area so they turned it into a poison. The problem is that the original effects are still present and so you are going to start feeling...um...”
“For God’s sake, Omi, what? Does it turn people into psychotic murderers, because I am in here with Schuldig. How will I tell?”
“OK, it’s going to make you feel really, and I mean really, horny.”
For an appalled moment words failed me utterly. I could hear Schuldig laughing.
“You mean...turned on?” I mumbled.
“The test subjects, the soldiers, apparently they just jumped each other.” Omi’s voice was saturated with embarrassment. Schuldig was laughing so hard now that he was struggling to breathe.
“Can I please kill Schuldig?” I hissed into the phone.
“Not if you want Schwartz to help us get you out and treated. Don’t give up, it works slowly. It won’t kill you for hours yet. There’s still time.”
I hung up, muttering balefully to myself, “Why couldn’t they just make anthrax like normal people.”
I couldn’t bring myself to meet Schuldig’s eye but I could hear him sniggering.
“What a way to die!”He exclaimed, “Fantastic. I can’t wait to see you lose it.”
“You will be losing it too, so don’t crow so loud.” I grunted.
“Perhaps but that doesn’t scare me the way it scares you. I can think of worse ways to go.”
“Lay a finger on me and I will bite it off,” I grated.
His green eyes twinkled at me suggestively.
“I wonder how long it will take,” He mused, “Before you can’t stand it and beg me to touch you.”
“Hopefully I will be dead by then.” What horrified me more than anything else was the reality that as soon as I did feel it he would know. You couldn’t lie to this man; you couldn’t hide anything from him. My heart beat in sickening dread.
“I think I will push the process along a bit,” the red head murmured evilly, “Shall I tell you all the things that Yohji wants to do to you? Where he wants to kiss you and lick you and just how much he wants you to love him? I almost feel sorry for him. He wants you so badly and it’s never going to happen. You didn’t see it because you aren’t a finished person, are you? You aren’t really alive. He is happier with all his unrequited aching than you with that howling wasteland in your head. Even Omi is more real than you. He at least noticed that Yohji wants you.”
I couldn’t help my head snapping up in surprise. Schuldig grinned at me. He was thoroughly enjoying himself at my expense.
“You thought Omi was an innocent, didn’t you?” Schuldig smiled, “God’s above, you idiot. Don’t you remember being sixteen? All Omi ever thinks about is sex. Weren’t you ever like that?”
Schuldig knew of course that I had never been that comfortable about sex. I’ve never been attracted to the idea of being unable to stop myself, of being out of control. I never saw the appeal of being reduced to animal urges.
“Animal...” Schuldig echoed, “Nice imagery you have there.”
He ran his eyes over my face caressingly, lingering on my lips. A strange feeling blossomed in my belly, an ominous heat, an impossible physical treachery. Schuldig’s lips parted a little and he drew in his breath sharply. Everything seemed to slow down, to still. I was aware of him like I had never been aware of anyone. I could see the pulse beating faster in his throat, felt my own speed up to match it.
“I think it might be working.” He said softly.
The burning in my blood was growing and I was aware, painfully aware, of the trembling, the shuddering, of my legendary self control as it threatened to give. I gritted my teeth against a siege of mental images which I would have liked to believe Schuldig had put there, but which I was almost certain were home grown. I had to keep it together. I had to endure this feeling, these urges, because the only other person in the room was Schuldig and it didn’t bear thinking about.
Except that I couldn’t stop thinking about it! My body was full of fire and my mind was full of pictures. I clamped my hands over my face and stared into the dark, trying desperately to order my thoughts, trying with every ounce of will not to think about his mouth or his body or how it would feel.
“Christ!” Schuldig exclaimed, from the other side of the room, forcing me for reasons that were unclear to take my hands from my eyes and look at him. Schuldig had stood up and he was steadying himself against one of the tables, gripping it with white knuckled fingers. His eyes seemed to bore right through my clothes. Suddenly I was very afraid and that is not something I often feel. I wasn’t afraid of him but of myself and what I needed. I could almost feel him touching me.
“They weren’t kidding about this stuff were they,” Schuldig managed, his breath coming in agitated little bursts. He was visibly shaking.
“We have to cope with this somehow.” I insisted, but I soon realised that I had left my chair and was edging closer to him. I couldn’t stop myself; my thus far reliable, calm, carefully trained body was completely AWOL and not its usual obedient self at all. It was betraying me. I was stood very near him now. He held onto the table desperately as if he would fall down otherwise and fall forever. My conscience was screaming at me through the haze of desire, ‘This is Schuldig! He is everything that you despise; he is everything that sickens you!’
But the mad scientists had done their work well (or badly, depending on your point of view) and the toxin was powerful. It showed me some unpalatable truths, held them up like caught, skinned animals. I suddenly saw what had been there all along.
Schuldig was beautiful and I wanted him. I had always wanted him.
There was a breath while Schuldig processed this information which, I could tell by the expression on his face, was equally surprising to him. I was fleetingly proud of a mental wall that could hold back a Schwartz telepath but such self congratulating melted when he said,
“I’ve wanted you too.” He seemed to have to force the confession out but once he had he smiled, “I blame Yohji. I should never have gone exploring in his head. All I found was you.”
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My arms went around him and held him tight. The way his body was pressing against me, firm and warm, made me want to run, to get out of this room somehow. He scratched his fingers down my back and my fear was mounting. This was wrong and sick and destructive but somehow...familiar. I felt like I knew him when he pulled out of the kiss and looked at me. Strange, broken thoughts drifted in my head, about what might have happened if we had met another way or in another time and place; if we had had different lives I could have belonged with him. I saw the thought reflected in his eyes.
I wondered if I could stand this, knowing this.
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Afterwards I bit my lip. What had happened here? Even with my inexperience, even with this twisted situation I knew that this had been something more than sex. This was something infinitely bigger and more disastrous.
It was probably just as well that we were about to die.
Wordlessly we lay down on the cold floor and shivered under the pile of clothes. We clung to each other and started to feel warm, marvelling at this strange, fragile moment. I could feel his breath against my chest. I wanted to save him, wanted him for myself, for always. No man was a monster, no matter what monstrous things they do. There must still be a person inside him somewhere that I could find.
“Don’t,” he said, “It’s too late.” The total lack of hope in his voice made me want to shake him, shout at him, and make him into someone else. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t too late. He could change. I could change. I couldn’t ignore the heart crushing recognition that we should have been together, that we were meant to be together, that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Too late,” he said again, jaggedly like a broken doll, “Too late.”
We lay there silently for a while. He ran his hand gently on my chest, tracing patterns into my skin. Slowly I said,
“Let’s...go to sleep.”
There was a brief hesitation. He had heard Ken’s warning as well as I had. Then he sighed, as if relieved, and kissed my shoulder and replied,
“Yes, alright. The only thing to do really.”
I closed my eyes.
I woke in hospital without any idea of how I had got there. People in bio suits were moving around. One of them saw that I was awake and lumbered over. It spoke through its tiny voice vent.
“You are going to be fine.”
“Who found the antidote?” I asked. I was finding this hard to believe. I wondered if this was a Weiss doctor or a Schwartz one.
“I believe that one of your colleagues beat up every single corrupt businessman in the city until one of them admitted to being a client of the lab and gave him the antidote. You have loyal friends.”
“And the...other one? The other patient?” I realised that there was an oxygen mask on my face and that was why my voice sounded strange. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say his name.
“Oh, he discharged himself yesterday. Against doctor’s orders, may I add? Cocky little bastard.”
The doctor departed, grumbling, and I lay back. I wasn’t surprised that Schuldig’s front had gone up again so quickly. It was a matter of self preservation for him to deny everything that had happened in that room. The next time we met he would probably try even harder than usual to kill me. What I had seen and what I now knew wasn’t something he could tolerate. I didn’t blame him for it.
I stayed in hospital rather longer than was necessary. I couldn’t stand the thought of facing the others. They must know by now that we had been found naked and curled up together. How would the rest of Weiss ever respect me now? My carefully cultivated image was shot and it would take many months of withering, emotionless hard work for me to begin to get it back. The wall in my head would also have to be reconstructed. It wasn’t a matter of choice. I had to do it or I would crack up in the face of reality.
When I eventually let them discharge me it was Yohji who picked me up. I had already realised that it must have been him who, recalled from the coast, had beaten up half the city in order to save me. Only to find me in the arms of one of the people Yohji hated more than he could even articulate. We sat in the car and Yohji was steadfast in avoiding my eye. I wondered which feeling was winning in him, jealousy or disgust.
“I saw him last night.” Yohji blurted abruptly while taking a corner at worrying speed, “He was drinking himself sick down town. He was completely out of it. I don’t think he even saw me.”
I didn’t speak because I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Why him?” Yohji demanded as the car rattled down familiar streets. His jaw was tight with anger.
“It was just the toxin,” I lied, “He was just the one that was there.”
There was a pause while Yohji parked the car. I was quite surprised that we had got home alive. I could see him thinking that if he hadn’t been away it could have been him with me in that sealed room. It was eating at him. But his eyes still held a certain hope.
“Just so you know,” He told me, “I love you. And I can wait.”
He got out of the car then and didn’t bring it up again.
I went indoors to be greeted by piles of flowers and cake and a bashful Omi and Ken. Everyone seemed determined not to mention what had happened. I was just Aya, back after a short stay in hospital.
But all the time I was looking at Yohji and thinking, ‘too late, it’s too late.”
