"You didn't have to cancel the trip on my account," Bra mumbled, curled up in a miserable ball in the backseat, her neck bent at an awkward angle against Soshiki's thigh.
Tatsuki bit the corner of his mouth, knowing that she and Soshiki honestly weren't fond of each other and not just playing at it like children, though they did make a strained effort to get along for his sake and Pan's. Whatever the case, it was adorable.
And it was just what Soshiki needed.
Pan shook her head as she leaned up against Soshiki's door, her hands stuffed into her pockets and her head dipped through the open window. "Yes we did, Bra. You're sick." The older girl started to protest, but Pan tugged a hand free of her jacket and reached through the window, brushing hair from her best friend's face, like she would a sister's. "You need your health, Bra. We have finals in a few weeks, you know that."
Bra sighed, reluctantly giving in, and proceeded to ignore her. He had to admit that she had a point, the hot springs hadn't been too far away and probably would have done her a fair amount of good. But she'd passed out as soon as his brother had eased himself into the car beside her, and they'd all agreed that it would be best to just head home and let her rest in peace.
Pan stuffed her hand back into her pocket and shook her head sadly, her eyes probing the side of Bra's face. "Alright…we're going to go get some warm drinks and see if we might find something to help you settle your stomach. We'll be back as soon as we can, k?"
Soshiki gave her a half-hearted salute, looking pointedly at Tatsuki.
"Run the engine for a few minutes if it starts to get too cold," Tatsuki instructed, pulling his keys from his pocket and handing them to his brother through the window as Pan eased away from the door. "We'll make this as fast as we can."
Soshiki nodded, his grey eyes piercing his older brother's barriers. "Don't push yourself, Brother."
Grinding his back teeth, he nodded and turned, motioning to the convenience store with his head. Pan nodded and fell into step beside him as Soshiki cranked the window up.
"You think they'll be alright?" she asked quietly, looking back over her shoulder worriedly. "I mean, they don't even get along that well when they're united against something with a hundred other people!, let alone when-"
"They'll be fine," he assured her. The black pavement of the parking lot sparkled up at them, and he set a hand briefly in the small of her back, steering her around a patch of ice. The contact seemed to comfort her, her shoulders relaxing as she finally turned around to watch where they were going. "Soshiki knows when to push and when to pull. If she's honestly sick, he'll play nursemaid for as long as she's willing to let him."
A small giggle escaped her, and he smiled, reaching up to discretely tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Self-consciously, she pulled her hands from her pockets and ran her fingers behind both ears, as if searching for more rogues that had escaped the tyrannical hold of the blue bandana she wore. He reached forward as they stepped under the store's canopy, pulling open the door for her. His breath caught in his throat at the icy bite of the handle, and he coughed a few times as it turned around and tried to force itself out. Pan looked at him worriedly as she slipped past him into the store.
He waved her off.
"Soshiki's been awfully worried about you lately," she mumbled slowly, a guilty look passing over her features as she stamped her boots on the mat inside. He let the door fall shut behind him and joined her in the ritual stomping. "Has your asthma been that bad lately?"
He shook his head as they finished, and followed her to the far end of the store, where she seemed to instinctively know the health care products would be. He smiled to himself as she turned out to be right. She zeroed in on a bottle of generic cold medicine, lifting it in two hands to read the back for just what generic colds it covered.
"Sheik's just trying to protect himself from an old childhood fear," he replied. "I've been fine."
She blinked and looked at him as he knelt beside her. An army of Tylenol looked pleadingly towards him for help as it squared off against a squadron of Advil.
"You're talking about your mother, right?" she asked quietly, her fingers tightening awkwardly around the bottle of red liquid. He nodded idly, studying the shelf above the Battle of Aspirins, picking up a small tube of Dramamine.
"Mmm. Mom died when we were little. He was only three or four, so he really doesn't remember, but I know he remembers that it'd been a really terrible winter that year, long and cold with an insanely late snow-kinda like this year. She'd come down with pneumonia shortly after Christmas, and her lungs filled with fluid. We'd been having a snowball fight during the first good snow a few weeks later, after she'd come home from the hospital. She came out to watch us, and for one reason or another, her asthma flared up and she had an attack. She died two days later." He set the tube back down and draped his arms across his knees, shaking his head with a sigh.
"We've never really been close to our father; after our mother died, he sent us to live with her parents in America until we were old enough to take care of ourselves; he couldn't stand the fact that we looked so much like her. We were never close to our grandparents either; they were a pair of old twits who were so ancient they weren't aware of what we were doing with ourselves. And Dad's parents died off when he was still in high school. So, essentially, I'm the only family Sheik has.
"He's terrified of being alone, of being abandoned. I am too, so I don't care that he's so protective. Because, honestly, I'd have probably gone out and played shirts and skins baseball in the snow and followed our mother by now if he weren't around to stop me."
He laughed quietly to himself, planting a hand on the knee of his jeans and pushing himself to his feet, but his laughter died as he turned to face Pan. She was standing as still as stone, her eyes locked on the dark silhouette of his car at the far end of the parking lot, under a street light. Her face was pained and worried, her hands tight around the bottle she still held.
"Pan?" he murmured, reaching up and tugging lightly on her bandana. "Pan, you ok? What's…"
"It's easy for me to forget that people can die from something as simple as a cold," she whispered, lifting a hand to push a stray hair from her eyes. "Everyone I-I-I mean, all you really hear about anymore are the gruesome deaths. Gang fights, car accidents, gunshot wounds… There's always the occasional 'died of old age' in the news, but they seem so rare…"
A sharp pang akin to guilt shot through him and he weakened, quickly wrapping his arms around her waist and gruffly pulling her back against his chest, crushing her to him. She started at the contact before melting back into him, letting him hold her against whatever thoughts were running through her overworked brain. He clamped his eyes shut, as if he could will the world to look away, ducking his face against her ear and neck.
Neither of them moved for what seemed like eternity, a small voice in the back of Tatsuki's head screaming at him to let go of her before something happened, before one of his old 'friends' saw them and decided to do something about it. But for once, he chose to ignore it, taking a deep breath before finally trusting himself to speak.
"I'm sure Bra's fine, Pan," he whispered, pushing his nose into the hollow between her ear and her jaw line. "She said so herself, she was just carsick."
Pan shook her head, her hair tickling his neck. "I've never seen her like that, Tatsuki…never. She was…she was downright delusional, like she was hallucinating. She's been coming to school with bruised eyelids, like she's been clenching her eyes shut for hours, and she falls asleep so easily in class, her grades have been slipping for the last week…and you saw her this morning, when she opened the door? She looked like her entire world had been brutally raped and ruined."
Tatsuki turned his face from her, pressing his ear against her neck, listening to her heartbeat. His eyes landed on a curious display that brought a blush to his cheeks and he coughed lightly.
"Pan…I'm not," he paused to cough again, not quite sure how to ask what was broadcasting itself across his brain in neon lights.
"Tats?" She turned to look at him, her cheek cold and flushed against his forehead, her eyelashes catching in his hair.
"I'm not suggesting anything," he managed finally in a tight voice, keeping his chin on her shoulder and his face hidden by his blond bangs to conceal his embarrassment. "But, it's possible that…do you think that, maybe, Bra's pregnant?"
He felt her blink several times before shifting her gaze to the display of condoms he was looking at. She stiffened immediately, her tired brain trying to process his question.
"I mean, well…look at it this way," he explained quietly, hiding his voice from the other people in the store. "She looked devastated this morning right? And ok, she was carsick, but the girl has a pretty strong stomach-everyone in both of your families seems to-but still…and you said she's been off and has been more and more distracted for the past few days…it…it sorta kinda sounds like…like morning sickness…"
Pan stood there, her mouth slightly agape for several moments, before snapping to attention and shaking her head fervently from side to side. "She couldn't be! I mean, well, yeah, I know she's not a virgin, but…I mean, she'd tell me! Right? And…anyways, she and what's-his-face-Sagara-they broke up months ago! And Bra isn't the type to have a one night stand with anyone…hell, I don't even think she slept with Sagara…"
"It's possible she doesn't know…" Tatsuki murmured to himself, flinching as Pan half whirled in his arms.
"But-but-you just said that…I mean, if that's the case, then why would she-"
"Shhh," he interrupted, lifting his head. "I was just asking-I didn't actually mean it." He lifted a hand, wrapping it around hers and the bottle she was clutching in a death grip. The poor thing was bulging at both ends, looking like it was about to explode and shower medicated red rain down on everyone and everything in the store. "C'mon. Let's get some drinks and get outta here. Bra and my brother are probably popsicles by now."
*
Soshiki settled back against the seat, watching as Pan and his brother moved quickly through the snow towards the bright beacon that was the warmth of the convenience store. Beside him, Bra grumbled something and raised a hand to rub at the back of her neck, pulling his attention back to her.
A corner of his mouth quirked up into a private smile, and he gently curled a hand under her face and cupped her cheek, lifting her head and pillowing it on his thigh. A muscle in her jaw twitched once as if she thought to tell him off, but as her neck popped and her spine straightened, she sighed and relented.
"I was fine," she mumbled tightly, balling her fists, her knuckles just visible beyond the cuffs of his jacket.
He smirked quietly, pulling her bangs from her face as Pan had a few moments before. She flinched at his touch, as if she had expected a physical blow. "Then why haven't you moved back?" Bra remained silent, letting out a heavy sigh through her nose. "That's what I thought," he answered himself, sliding his hand under her bangs to feel her forehead. "You do realize you've given yourself a fever…right?"
She remained silent, ignoring him, and he sighed himself, pulling on the shoulder of his leather jacket so that it wasn't so tight around her arm. Planting his elbow on the edge of the door, the window cold against his skin, he rested his chin in his hand.
It had started snowing again, lightly this time, the flakes drifting so gently from the skies that he could probably count them if he'd wanted to. Draping his arm across her shoulder, he settled in to wait.
He played absentmindedly with her hair, wrapping it gently around his fingers and pulling it away from her face, running his fingertips through it. Two kids at the other end of the parking lot were chucking snowballs at each other, their mother laughing as she stood nearby loading groceries into the trunk of her car. He smiled sadly to himself, blinking as he felt Bra stir. He looked back at her, watching her eyes open slowly.
"Do you really have to do that?" she mumbled flatly, glaring at the back of the seat in front of her.
He blinked again, running his thumb back and forth across the ends of a lock of hair. "Do what?"
"That. Play with my hair. You've been doing it all day."
He blinked, the action finally lodging in his consciousness. For a minute he didn't say anything, simply turned his gaze back to the children playing outside. Their mother was ushering them back into the car, fussing over loose scarves and lost mittens, brushing snow off of their shoulders and hats. Soshiki smiled and tugged lightly on Bra's hair, the memory connecting to some hidden memory deep within him.
"My mother used to do it whenever I was sick. It's about the only thing I really remember about her." He let go of her hair and let his hand dangle over the edge of her shoulder, planting knuckles against his temple and looking down at her. "Does it really bother you?"
"Everything you do bothers me, Flunkie" she grumbled, shaking her head as she levered herself into a sitting position and curled up against her window, hugging her knees to her chest, her face hidden from him. She was silent for a while, so quiet that when she did speak, he almost missed it. "My brother used to do that whenever our parents were fighting and I couldn't sleep."
He forced himself to keep his mouth closed, hoping that maybe she would shed some light on whatever "trouble" she was having at home. But she remained silent, tracing the embroidery on the left front pocket of his jacket, her fingers lazing across the phoenix's tailfeathers as if committing each one to memory. He watched her curiously, remembering the first time he'd worn that jacket, and wondering if she realized everything it stood for. What it was.
The moments dragged on, the silence bouncing back and forth between them, taunting him, daring Soshiki to break its neck, but he kept his mouth clamped tightly shut. If she wanted to be stubborn, she could be stubborn. Stubborn bitch.
He snapped his face back to the window, immediately choking on his tongue at the view. Coughing, he tried to bite back his laughter. The two children playing in the snow had turned into two teenagers, though the game these two were playing wasn't exactly anything their parents had intended to teach them.
Unable to keep from sniggering, and thoroughly disgusted, he shook his head with a grin. "You know, that's the last thing I'm sure any of us wanna see."
"See what?" Bra mumbled flatly. He rolled his eyes and rapped lightly on the window with his knuckles before setting them back against his temple.
"Them."
He felt Bra stir behind him, shifting on the seat to peer over his shoulder. "Who, Pan and Tatsuki?"
"Yeah…right," he snorted, and shook his head, tapping on the window again. "Them."
She shook her head as she leaned over his lap, cupping her hands around her eyes and peering through the falling snow to the couple that had parked themselves in a snow bank.
"'Them'," she mimicked, using a voice sounding like it belonged to a rooster on steroids. She shook her head. "You make 'them' sound like this terrible disease."
"They are," Soshiki cried, peering out with her, trying to get a better glance at the couple as they teetered on losing their precocious balance. "Seriously! The last thing anyone wants to see when they're alone is another couple acting all mushy lovey-dovey and shit. Not to mention, that is down right disgusting."
"They're in love, you idiot," she spat, turning to glare at him. The glare seemed more out of habit than anything, though.
"Um…Bee? That's right there? That's lust, honeybuns. And you can't watch that and tell me it's not disgusting. I mean, that's the kind of thing that makes me say some people just shouldn't try to breed."
She shook her head, watching as hands disappeared into jackets that didn't belong to their respective bodies. "Everyone has the right to have someone," she replied, her voice exhausted, rolling her eyes. He laughed a moment later as her eyes tripled in size and she pawed frantically at the window, wiping away the condensation from her breath as she tried to validate what she thought the two outside were doing.
Soshiki turned to look himself, and almost dumped Bra on the floorboards as he whirled around, pressing his face against the glass next to hers. He wasn't exactly sure what they were doing due to the bulk of their clothes, but something told him that it was something that should be done behind closed doors. Nice solid doors that were soundproof and that could repel angry fathers.
"Ok…yeah…some people really shouldn't be breeding," Bra squeaked, her breath coming in short pants, trying to force air past the shock that had embedded itself in her chest. He shifted automatically, pulling her closer to him as she tottered on the edge of the seat, ducking so that she could peer over his shoulder. Instinctively, she wrapped an arm around his chest, both of them trapped in morbid curiosity by the free show the two in the parking lot were giving for anyone who wanted to stand in the cold and watch.
"Ok, that's just gross." Soshiki swallowed thickly, pulling a hand from the window to flip some of Bra's hair away from his ears.
"Have they come up for air?" she breathed, awed, her hand tightening around the back of his shirt.
"Their faces are probably frozen together at this point, I mean-ah, that's not righ…dude! No! I don't want to-"
They fell into shocked silence, clutching at each other as the couple in the snow made it quite clear as to what they were doing. Bra and Soshiki held their breath, eyes wide, unconsciously clutching at each other, as if trying to pull each other and themselves from the window.
"How deep is her ear?"
"How long is his tongue?" Bra replied, both hands fisted in his tee shirt. A moment passed and his breath hitched, his hands grappling with Bra's as he tried to dig her nails out of his side. "Do you think they're even aware of the fact that the entire city can see them?"
"Do you think they care?" he hissed incredulously, turning his head to look at her. She blinked at looked at him in turn, their faces uncomfortably close. Her hands relaxed, letting go of his shirt, her claws retracting from his spleen. Then she laughed, quietly, turning away, her hair falling like a curtain between them.
Slowly, he became aware of the position in which they sat, and he chuckled quietly as well, turning to ease back into the seat as she slid back, her arms pulling across his shoulders as she settled into the seat next to him.
"Are we really that lonely?" she laughed quietly, hugging her knees. His own laughter faded slowly; on impulse he reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear so that he could see her eyes. A moment of peace settled in between them, a rare time of harmony that he had every intention of exploiting to the fullest.
"Is that what's eating you?" he asked quietly, pulling on his pant legs.
"Not really, no," she whispered, turning her face away. Her arms tightened around her knees, her hair falling between them once more. She looked pale in the streetlight thrown into the car, one thing that he'd always been able to catch about virtually everyone.
The other thing was when someone was lying through their teeth.
He hesitated before hooking his arm around her shoulder and tucking his fingers under her chin. "Bee, look at me." She resisted at first, but for the first time since he'd met her two years ago, she didn't shove him off or try to make him feel like a pervert. She just reached up self-consciously as he turned her face, pushing her hair from her eyes. She was drained now, not panicked like she'd been earlier; quite frankly, he wasn't sure which was more disturbing: walking dead Bra, or dead Bra walking.
"Then could you tell me?"
She sighed heavily and shook her head. "You'd kill me."
He smiled, a quiet, sardonic chuckle escaping his throat. "I'm making an extreme effort to be nice here, Bee. So could you please-for like, ten seconds-pretend that you like me and let me take care of you?"
She jerked her chin from his fingers, turning her head to burn a hole into the floorboards with her eyes.
He sighed. "I won't kill you, Bee."
"No…you'll probably just laugh. And then you'd kill me."
Grinding his teeth, he counted to ten. When that didn't work, he started to think of how many ways he knew of to strangle a person; when he reached fifty-six, he stabbed the thought to death. The silence in the car was unbearable, but not as unbearable as not knowing what was going on with her. Forcing a deep breath out through his nose, he ducked his face next to hers, prodding at her cheek with his nose.
"Bra, I promise. I won't-" He paused to catch her chin with the fingertips of his free hand, pulling her face to meet his eyes. Keeping his fingertips on the side of her chin, he rested his forehead against hers. "You really don't have to tell me if you don't want to, Bee. But one of us is going home with you tonight regardless. Pan, my brother…or you can learn to trust me not to hold this over your head for the rest of our respective lives. It doesn't matter to me."
Panic shot back into her eyes, but she didn't let it show. "What's it to you?" she spat, her expression growing fierce despite her terror.
"I've seen one girl too many tear herself apart over something she didn't want me or anyone else to know, a secret she kept for a brother. I'm not going to sit and watch it happen again, Bra. Pan doesn't need to know what it feels like to see her best friend do that to herself."
Bra fell quiet, bit her lower lip. Her eyes probed his, grew vulnerable; she was fighting herself over something that he just didn't know her well enough to understand. She took a deep breath and clenched her eyes shut, subsiding against him, her face pressing against his and catching him off guard.
"You," Bra choked out, her hands gripping at her jeans. "It…you. You."
"Alright," Soshiki whispered back, pressing his palm against her cheek, giving her a gentle squeeze. Footsteps crunched through the snow outside, but he paid them no heed, too busy trying to figure out why Bra was going to trust him, her arch nemesis, with whatever what gnawing on her liver. Something wet slid down the tender skin under his left eye, and he opened his eyes, confused as to why Bra would be crying.
"Hey, what's wrong? Bee…hey, you were fine yesterday…what's got you so…"
The front doors on either side of the car clicked open and he cut himself off as a rush of ice swept into the car, a bitter reminder that Bra still was wearing his jacket. Whatever conversation Pan and his brother had been having ended with a quick bark of air, followed by a shrill exclamation of "What in the seven hells?!" from a female voice he'd never known could jump so many decibels.