Sterling

 

I didn't want to hurt you
but you're pretty when you cry...
I didn't want to fuck you
but you're pretty
when you're mine...
I didn't really love you
but I'm pretty when I lie...
"Pretty When You Cry," VAST

 

"Stop crying, Yuki."

I realized my voice probably sounded very cold to him, as if I didn’t care about what I had just done and the state of distress I’d put the young child in. He clung to my knees, weeping into my lap, and I patted his back for a while, saying nothing. I couldn’t apologize. It would mean nothing to a seven year old. I couldn’t take up for Akito either, because in my mind I could feel the buzzing irritation, the anger rising for what he’d made me do. All of Yuki’s friends, their memories erased, had no memory of him now. No memory of their time spent with him, no memory of his sweet boy’s smile and clear laughter, of games they’d played or secrets they’d shared. He was essentially alone now. And all he could do was cry to me, when all I could do was obey orders. It infuriated me. It was infuriating that Akito, a mere child himself, could make me do something so hurtful to someone else. Yuki didn’t understand why it had to be done. And I barely understood it myself.

"Here . . . Yuki." I lifted his face carefully and wiped his tears with my sleeve before gathering him in my arms and rising to my feet. He was so light, weighing nothing. I didn’t know the first thing about children and how to comfort them, but a dim distant memory told me rocking would help, and so that’s what I did until Yuki’s sobs had quieted and he rested his head on my shoulder, somewhat soothed. "Let me take you home."

His home wasn’t far from mine. His parents were worrisome people and I knew they were probably upset and wondering where he was. They used to trust me with Yuki. Now I didn’t know if they’d ever trust me again. When his mother answered the door her face was very pale and drawn, her violet eyes troubled. She reached for her son and I handed him over gratefully, my chest tight with regret and my body warm with anger. I could never replace Yuki’s friends, I could never repair his heartbreak, I could never ease the worry this would cause his family. I had been forced into a position of responsibility that I did not want to take. I couldn’t blame my birth. There was nothing I could do about that. The only thing left for me to blame was Akito and his snide commands, telling me what to do and who to do it to. His pre-adolescent voice, soft as a girl’s, telling me why it was for the better, when he didn’t know the difference between better and worse himself. My power should be my own, that’s what I had been telling myself. It was mine to command. Not his. It wasn’t fair he made me feel this way, on top of everything else I felt. On top of being cursed, needy, lonely, hungry, because he was dying everyday it gave him the right to control me? Didn’t he know we are all dying? That every single day that passes, every single tick of the clock, brings us each one closer to death? His arrogance has blinded him apparently. As my hands clenched into fists I stuffed them into my pants pockets, the rage and regret growing hot behind my eyes.

"Hatori-kun, thank you," Yuki’s mother was saying, bowing to me slightly, but I couldn’t answer her. What was there to say? You’re welcome? It was no problem, wiping your son’s friends’ memories. It was too easy really. Call on me again, when you need use of my power.

My power. A power I have no control over. None whatsoever.

I bowed to her, low and straight with arms at my sides, then turned to go. I didn’t walk back to my house, however. I went toward Akito’s, where he lived alone in darkness and solitude, whispering to the song birds that congregated in his bird bath and on the sakura trees outside. I couldn’t remember the day Akito was born. I was five at the time, and self-absorbed as most five year olds are. The only things I cared about then were books and my friends – Shigure and Ayame. I was too busy learning and keeping to myself, to our exclusive group, to notice when Akito came into our lives. He just appeared one day, made himself known to me, as if he had always been. And he made his presence felt that way, omniscient and powerful, lording over the rest of us Juunishi simply because it had been his birthright to do so. I resented it more and more everyday. I resented that a boy five years my junior could have power over me. I resented his arrogance and his detachment from the rest of us. I resented his delicate, childlike beauty. I resented his very birth.

I’m not sure what happened to Akito’s parents. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant. Most abandon their children, others become fiercely overprotective. Still others grow ill with the pain of having a cursed child and the daily struggle of trying to love that child unconditionally. Those usually die from their grief, and in the end the child is always alone. Any one of these possibilities could have happened to Akito. It didn’t make me feel any pity for him. I didn’t pity myself, who had lost parents and was triple cursed – Juunishi, a Juunishi form that was laughed at by other Juunishi, and a power I didn’t understand and wasn’t allowed to call my own. I could show Akito no mercy. He had never shown any of us mercy, so why would he deserve it?

The large house in the center of the Souma property loomed before me in the dusk, appearing empty and forlorn. A few paper lamps burned in the hallway, barely enough to light my way as I made my way toward Akito’s room, not quite sure what I was going to do or say once I reached him. It was something else that urged me on, my anger and my helplessness. It was the desperate need to vindicate my helplessness that drove me, the need to regain some shred of control. Even though as I slid the shoji screen open with a deliberate thrust and saw him standing in there in the dark, with no lamps lit, staring up at the starlight from his porch, I could feel myself slipping farther beyond my own constraints.

He was looking at me before I even got the door open all the way. He was small, a tiny figure cloaked in the dark, his yukata loose on his bony, prepubescent frame. He hugged himself, as if I had caught him naked, and regarded me cooly despite the obvious suspicion on his soft face.

"Hatori-kun?" His voice was smaller than he was, barely carrying as I shut the door behind me. It hadn’t deepened, hadn’t even started to break. It was smooth and pure, a child’s voice. A child. A child who told me what to do. A child who wielded me like a tool to do the things he had no comprehension of. A fucking child.

"I did what you told me . . . Akito . . . san." It pained my vocal chords to use the honorific, but I used it because he is the head of our family, even if he is younger than me.

He smiled at me, as if greatly satisfied to know how willingly I obeyed him. It lit a fire in my stomach, that smug smile. Curling the corners of his pretty lips, sparkling in his wide and much too innocent eyes.

"Thank you." I couldn’t believe he was thanking me! What a disgusting thing to thank me for! I just destroyed another part of Yuki’s already broken life! And he thanks me?

My fists started to tremble with rage. I wasn’t sure if I could keep it hidden in the darkness of the room, but Akito didn’t seem to notice. He just motioned me toward him, turning his back to me as he looked back up to the stars. "Look how beautiful the sky is tonight."

I stepped toward him carefully, anguished by my own footfalls and how I could not keep my feet from moving. I didn’t want to get closer to him. I was afraid to get closer, even though he was smaller than me, even though he was just a boy. But I realized once I stepped up beside him, staring at his profile in the veiled moonlight, that was exactly the reason why I was afraid.

His fair skin was slightly radiant, which I found odd considering his frail constitution. His dark hair just barely grazed his eyes, which were open in wide appraisal of the night sky, wondrous and glistening a reflection of the stars. His pert mouth framed the tiniest smile, truly innocent. I could smell him in the night air, a sweet jasmine scent that seemed entirely too feminine and adult for a boy of twelve. He noticed me staring and turned his face to me, his smile widening for a brief second and his eyes narrowing as it touched their corners, and I was truly lost.

"Hatori-kun," he said to me suddenly, his expression becoming painfully serious with something like concern. "Is something wrong?"

My face contorted. I narrowed my eyes at him. "How can you ask such a ridiculous question? I just erased the memories of six children, all of whom were Yuki’s friends! All because you ordered me to. Why wouldn’t something be wrong?"

He just stared back at me, lips parted just slightly, and the space between was blacker than the night and warmer and more inviting. "It had to be done. The secret – "

The secret! I was so sick of hearing about the goddamn secret. We knew we were cursed, we didn’t need to be reminded of it. It was enough to live with it, enough to be lonely, needy, hungry all the time. "Ah yes, the fucking secret. How could I forget?"

I slammed my hands on either side of his head, pinning him against the wall on the porch, glaring down at him. "Do you even care about those kids? Do you even care about Yuki’s feelings? My feelings?"

The shock and fear on Akito’s face remained still for only a moment before it transfigured into his smug expression, an expression that said he knew best. "Of course I care," he retorted, brow furrowing with contempt at my behavior. "We have to protect the family at all costs!"

"At the cost of the family itself!"

"Being sheltered is better than being condemned! You’re a freak, Hatori! Yuki is a freak! We’re all freaks! We disgust people!"

I closed my eyes and turned my head away, but kept myself leaned toward him. His small voice was high pitched, but even when heated it remained small. I could feel my nostrils flaring with suppressed anger and hurt. So I was a freak? So we all were? "That still doesn’t give us a right to control people. To mess with their minds. It gives you no right to tell me how to use my power."

Akito’s mouth slipped into a snakish grin, and he didn’t look so much like a boy anymore. He looked very predatory and cunning, but my size kept me from feeling like prey. My age and my current position kept me from feeling as though I were being stalked. Obviously, I was still clueless at seventeen.

"No right to tell you how to use your power?" His voice was quiet, but its edge was subtle like a razorblade disguised as an ornamental hairpin. "I have every right to tell you what to do. I’m the head of the family. It’s my job to protect us. And it just so happens your job is to listen to me."

I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached, knowing I couldn’t keep my anger in check anymore. I grabbed the front of his Yukata, pulling him hard toward me and shaking the snaky grin off his face. His eyes went wild with panic momentarily before he reached his hands up to grab onto my fist, his lip quivering as he tried to form words from fearful silence.

"You think you can tell me what to do? You think I will always do what you want me to?"

My voice was low and hushed, breathed into his face as I steadied my other hand on his tiny hip. I had him lifted on his toes, his body trembling with muscle strain and panic.

"Hatori . . .?"

I squeezed his hip hard, pressing my thumb down over the ridge of his pelvic bone, and he whimpered, struggling away from the pressure and not succeeding. His eyes were squeezed shut tight, his legs thrashing. A slow smile lit my face as I finally began to feel a minuscule shred of control come back into my power.

"You’re going to have to learn, Akito," I went on, putting my face right down into his, "that we are not always going to come when called."

His breath was stuttering against my lips, his entire bony frame shaking. His eyes seemed luminescent in the dark, filled with that amazing fear that gave me back my confidence. I touched my tongue to his lips, tentatively tasting the soft flesh, tracing their smooth, open outline with my tongue-tip before slipping it inside and against his. His breath hitched as I pulled him up and closer to me, cradling the small of his back as I kissed him. His tongue was warm and slick against mine, but dead to the touch, not responding at all to the careful caresses. For some reason this angered me even more, even though I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it, knowing that I would regret it anyway when it was over, I let the anger take me.

I kissed him harder, ravaging his mouth, tasting his teeth and his gums and uvula. I let go of the front of his kimono and put my hands on his waist, able to encircle his tiny waist whole with both my hands. I let my eyes slide open just enough so that I could see him, and I found that he was looking at me, watching me with those scared rabbit eyes that were rimmed in silver and so pretty in the starlight.

I jerked his belt off. In one violent motion it was snapped from his waist, the Yukata falling open around his skinny body. At last his panic factor kicked in again and he pushed his hands against my chest, trying to scream though my mouth wouldn’t let him. I held him fast with my hands, ignored his fists on my chest – it was like the rapid beating of a butterfly caught in a jar, so fragile the more it fought its captivity the more it hurt itself.

I pushed him back inside, into the shadows and out of light’s sight, and lifted my hands to push off his robe. He immediately broke away from me though, letting out a hoarse cry as he tried to turn and run, but I caught his arm and yanked him back harshly, suddenly worried that maybe I had hurt him. I held his wrists in my hands and forced him to his knees, going down on my knees with him. He was crying in earnest now, the tears barely flickering silver as they rolled down his cheeks, trembling with his terror and sobs.

"Hatori...." he wept, but I refused to be swayed by his child-cries and pleas.

"There’s nothing you can do to stop me," I told him, the control I had over this situation coursing through me like a drug, taking me over, poisoning my mind. Possessing my body. I was getting hard just from looking at his pretty crying face. He was so pretty when he cried.

I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his, tasting the salt on them and inhaling his shallow breaths. "How does it feel," I asked with my mouth against his, "to be the one without control?"

"Ha . . . Hat . . ."

I silenced him with my mouth again, forcing him onto his back. His kimono splayed around him on the floor, pooling like blood from his back, his naked body exposed to mine in the dark. I pressed myself between his legs, keeping his wrists pinned above him, and rubbed the sullen ache between my legs against his. I could feel it through my pants, limp and small, warm but not very. I pulled away just to look at him in his moment of defeat, his narrow little chest with its tiny nipples the color of white rosebuds, his sternum and his ribs visible, his angular hips and the sparse thatch of hair surrounding his small cock. He had a long way to go to becoming a man. And I knew I had a long way to go to get saved. But right then, in the heat of that moment, I didn’t give a damn.

I released one wrist to touch him, tracing my fingers from his collarbone and down his chest, grazing over a tiny rosebud nipple and along his ribs, down his waist and over his hip bone to his thigh. His sex stirred just slightly, and I took it in my hand, smiling to myself. He didn’t try to fight me. It seemed he had resigned himself to me. Looking at his face I saw his eyes were open and watching me, the tears flowing freely. The heavy clouds over the moon chose that moment to move aside, pale white light falling through the window just above us and across his face, lighting his eyes and his tears with pure light.

I decided to waste no more time. I undid my pants and pulled my erection out – incredibly hard just from the thought of taking control of this arrogant kid who thought he could rule my life. I hiked his legs up, balancing one on my shoulder, and steadied myself at his entrance before shoving inside, past an impossibly tight ring of muscle that threatened to clamp off all circulation. But it was an exquisite feeling, almost too much, his ass clenched rough and tight around me.

"Hatori!" Akito sobbed, covering his eyes with one arm, as if he couldn’t even look at me. I wouldn’t be able to look at me again after this, I was sure, but I went on with it anyway. I kept telling myself he deserved it. I kept telling myself he’d never shown us mercy, so why should I show it to him? I repeated this to myself as I withdrew and thrust in again, hard, moaning out loud because he felt so good I couldn’t help it.

He’d lifted both hands to his face and was sobbing into them, his chest heaving with each sob that escaped his lips. I pulled both his legs up onto my shoulders and steadied myself with his hips, thrusting in and out repeatedly at a relentless pace. He was like a dream – tight, so tight, so much tighter than anything I’d experienced before. And for that moment in time it was all mine, mine to misuse and fuck for as long as I wanted. It was my power, my moment of absolute control. Until it suddenly went wrong.

I noticed that Akito had lowered his hands and was now watching me again. His eyes, the color of twilight, were wavering silver, and when he blinked slowly two huge tears rolled down the paths the tears before them had made. He was no longer sobbing, just staring at me mutely, his body jerking with each thrust I gave. I tried to overlook the strange expression on his face, instead trying to concentrate on the feeling of him around me and me inside him. But then his hands moved down, sliding down his stomach and past the spattering of dark hair that would thicken over time, and he cupped his hands over his penis, drawing them up the underside slowly before softly speaking my name.

"Hatori . . ."

I wanted to stop what I was doing and stare in shock, but I couldn’t. It felt too good to stop, and I knew if I did I wouldn’t finish what I had started. But Akito’s eyes were closing, his back arching ever so slightly off the floor as he stroked and rubbed himself, his cock hardening before my eyes until he was pumping it in rhythm to my thrusts, skin against skin and skin on skin the only noise besides our heavy breathing and the hum of the crickets outside. He moaned softly, writhing his head and shoulders, pumping his cock harder and trying to angle his hips up to meet me. The control I’d had in taking him was suddenly no longer dominance. We were suddenly equal, sharing pleasure, giving and taking freely, and there was nothing I could do about it. He had beaten me again, reversed the roles, my power draining the louder he moaned and the faster he stroked himself. He moaned my name, helpless and libidinous as he squirmed beneath me, his legs slipping off my shoulders and suddenly clamping around my waist, pulling me harder against him and farther inside him.

He opened his eyes again and looked up at me, his lips already open before groaning, "Hatori," and coming all over his stomach. I watched it spurt thickly from the tip of his prick, something inside me dying before I came, leaving everything inside him – my power, my control, my independence, all his again. Never really mine.

I pulled away and scooted back on the floor, regarding him darkly, as if he were some sort of disease. He sat up carefully, wincing a little, and stared back at me pitifully, his eyes almost mocking in their inquisitive modesty. His pouting, swollen lips and tear-gilded lashes, along with his mussed hair, gave him the appearance of a young, ravished angel. I felt like a misunderstood devil, even though there was no misunderstanding to it.

Akito tilted his head slightly. "Hatori . . . is something wrong?"

I couldn’t even form the words, nor the expression. He would always come out of everything intact. He would always see to it that it happened that way. That he got his way, no matter what.

He crawled forward on hands and knees until he was sitting in front of me, eyes searching my face for something, but I had no idea what. Did he want me to apologize? Did he want me to question him? I had no idea. I would never be able to read him. I would never be able to say no to him.

He put his arms around my shoulders, holding on lightly as if afraid to hold on too tight. I felt the tears coming to my eyes, the tears of confusion and hate and anger and helplessness. I covered my face with one hand to catch the sob before it escaped, and as I shook Akito held on a little tighter.

"Don’t cry, Hatori-kun. It’s alright."

I cried harder, not understanding. "Are you forgiving me?" Said pitifully, full of disbelief.

"Of course." He paused, then went on thoughtfully, "You’re so beautiful, Hatori-kun."

"I didn’t want to hurt you." I shuddered, feeling foul.

"You didn’t hurt me. You didn’t hurt me at all."

A sob tore from my chest, and I wrapped my arms around him just to hold on to reality, but reality had been soiled. I could feel his come seeping into my shirt, growing cold even pressed between our two bodies. I pressed my face into his bony shoulder, wishing suddenly he would grow up faster so this would be less wrong. I didn’t know what to say to justify my actions, what to say to deserve forgiveness. All I could say was, "I love you."

Maybe I meant it, in some strange and twisted familial way. Maybe I knew the path it would lead me on. It was all I knew to say, the only thing that seemed to make sense to me in that warped moment of clarity. But when I said it, he put his hands on the back of my head and leaned into my body instead of just holding on, as if a great relief had settled over him and made his body that much lighter.

I watched the moon through the window over his shoulder, the heavy clouds returning to eclipse its face, shadows slowly creeping along the floor and up our bodies to hide us in darkness once again.