thebastion | [Day 205] It's the end of the world, get drunk

Entry tags:

!npc

[Day 205] It's the end of the world, get drunk

Who: Georges and anyone about
Open: Open
When: 205 sometime in the afternoon
Where: Around the Monument
What: The Cael way of celebrating everyone not dying involves booze, so drink up! (Fun fact: the Cael way of mourning may also involve booze.)
Format: Any
Warnings: Drunken shenanigans, likely. Also feel free to treat this like a mingle thread and not just talking to Georges! (Although he'll try to chat with everyone if he can)

So, just to double check: A cure has been found? Everyone's recovered? No one's dead? It's safe to leave the house now? Excellent.

With this fact well known, one can find Georges starting off his morning not hanging about the bar (as is his custom as the only bartender in the Bastion) but in fact setting up something in front of the Monument. Tables, chairs, some blankets to sit on when those inevitably run out... There's also something of a makeshift bar area, a variety of liquor in fascinating bottles set up along with some glasses.

Everything is all finished up around the afternoon, and Georges goes behind his little makeshift table-bar to cup his hands around his mouth so he can yell-

"DRINKS ON THE HOUSE!"

...What do you mean he technically never makes anyone pay for booze at the end of the world? Just come up and have a drink, Georges will be happy to recommend something. Or maybe bother someone else having a drink?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Seimei…" the lightest of frowns before stepping around to settle astride his lap (Distance? Screw distance), arms coming to rest on Seimei's shoulders again with a sigh.

"…like always, you say a lot, but you don't actually tell me anything." His fingertips slid up to stroke at the base of his neck. "Am I going to have to read your mind, my love? Is that what has to happen here?"

He took Seimei's glass gently with one hand - not withholding it so much as holding it for him - as he leaned forward to rest their foreheads together for a moment, closing his eyes with a low hum and a sigh.

He was pretty sure he knew the reasons behind Seimei's behaviour, but he wasn't about to just ambush him.

"Well, you were fine before - and mostly during - the quarantine. And I can imagine that you're delighted the both of us are safely out of there. So it has to be something between the two. Between my visit then and our being released. Which means it's something to do with the sickness…" He opened his eyes inquisitively. "…am I warm?"

"Please, do not," the onmyoji whispered hoarsely, dark eyes lowering and turning away, hands careful not to touch where they would normally wrap around the boy. His unease was obvious, his discomfort clear in the rigidity of his posture.

"I have had too much time to think. I cannot keep my promises, Kaoru. I do not know how. I made them with the best intentions - I made them out of love - and then I betrayed them. I do not deserve you, and that has been made painfully clear to me. I have not seen your brother but I can only imagine the venom with which he thinks of me by now. And with good reason. He was right...I was wrong."

"That's a lie. That's not true, my love."

Which of the statements Kaoru was contradicting was unclear. Quite possibly all of them. He did not withdraw, remaining balanced in Seimei's lap, but he did lean back slightly, his hand settling on Seimei's shoulder, the other one palm-up with his glass.

"Seimei, you didn't cause this. Nobody blames you for this, and if I thought Hikaru did, I would be knocking some sense into him. No one could have predicted this."

"Even if I did not cause this in its entirety I was still partly responsible," he insisted, gesturing vaguely to nothing in particular.

"Moreover, I did break my promise. I do it constantly. I worry you. I cause you grief and pain. I hurt you in ways I cannot help. Is it not better to break my promise once than to do it again and again, dishonoring my vow and disgracing myself before you and your brother?" Seimei asked, the strain of his confusion and frustration coloring his words.

"I do not know what to do, Kaoru," he whispered, his face distraught, dampness glittering on his lashes as he struggled, willing himself not to further disgrace himself by weeping. "I just...want to be good to you. Now I question my every motivation and cannot see myself as anything but a dangerous burden."

"Responsible for what, though, Seimei?" That had him setting the glass down, the other hand going to his shoulder, both giving a gentle squeeze, "And the alternative, what would that have been? Locking all of you out there to die? We would never have done that. I could never have done that." His thumbs rubbed circles, tenderly.

"I need you to understand, my sweet - Love is always portrayed as this blissful thing but it can hurt just as much. I know you want to protect me from everything, and that's okay that you want to do that, just... Seimei, it's not always going to be possible. There are things that are outside of anyone's control, and I know that's hard for you. And when things like this happen you'll feel like you failed, like you need to be blamed. But I have no blame here for you. It wasn't your fault, none of this was your fault. As long as you're trying. I'm more resilient than you realise."

"I am not stupid or naive," he protested weakly, frowning around the boy and lurching for his cup to drink more, because it felt sensible. More sensible than anything else, anyways.

"I know love hurts. Love hurts more than anything I have ever experienced in my life. It is blissful. A blissful sort of agony that rends as much as it soothes, and I do not question my love for you, or yours for me. This is not about that. This is about promising never to hurt you or let harm come to you. I swore I would not be the cause of your pain but...you weep. You fret and you worry and I cannot stay sedentary in my home forever just as I cannot expect you to stay safe and protected and never leave. I cannot - I will not - control you...but neither can I protect you," he murmured, his pitch rising, feverish and frantic at first, only to die out, consumed by sudden melancholy.

"I promised your brother things I could not fulfill. I went out as I do, when you did not want me to, as always. I came back carrying a blight. I may not have been the only one, but I was part of it. I poisoned the Bastion. It nearly killed you. Kaoru, what have I done that has not endangered you or caused you pain in some way? It isn't your resilience I question...its why it has to constantly be tested that condemns me."

"What about your tears, my love?" A quiet sigh, stroking Seimei's hair back gently. "You can't just cancel yourself out in all of this. What about the pain that I've caused - you can't pretend that I haven't. Does that get cancelled out, just because it was me?"

Where to even begin answering Seimei's question? He knew full well that he wouldn't have managed in the Bastion without Seimei's support. Seimei couldn't just ignore that.

"You gave me shelter. You gave me a home. You supported me, protected me, even when I dragged you out onto the Skyway when you didn't want to go. You made me feel whole. You think one mistake is going to wipe out everything else you have done? It can't. It couldn't. It was an accident, Seimei, even Hikaru understands that."

Edited 2014-07-26 02:47 (UTC)

"I do not matter to me," he stated with simple determination, as though the fact were so glaringly obvious and reasonable that anyone else should understand and feel the same. He shouldn't matter. He was a strange old creature from a bygone era in love with a boy that represented, in his life, all of the good and bright and new things. Kaoru was worth protecting, he was not. His feelings only mattered insomuch as they applied to Kaoru - his love, his affection, his devotion. The things that would be given to the boy. Things that could enrich another life. But Seimei's needs were second place. Seimei's desires only relevant in regards to the boy.

When they came at the detriment of another?

"It could have been anyone," he murmured miserably, staring at the fluid in the bottom of his cup, dark eyes deeper and blacker than ever before, mirroring his feelings. "If I had not come into your life as I did, you could be happy somewhere else. You could have your brother and I would not be this complication that I have become. I want you to have your brother without me in the way. That is what I am: in the way," the onmyoji insisted with a soft note of the strain of one trying desperately to make someone else see something out of their line of figurative vision.

"Always you have to think about my feelings, endlessly you have to divide your time, but I do not want you to have to do that. I want you to have your brother and feel whole again. I cannot give you your old life and your old world. I cannot protect you from everything, much as I wish I could and I cannot keep the promise I made to your brother. What value have I if I do little more than break my word time and again? That I love you was not enough. It should be...love should be enough, but there is so much more. My heart, my soul...they seem like such flimsy things. Brittle and valueless," he murmured, looking up briefly to gaze at the boy with a soft sigh.

"I only wanted to love you and give you all that I have...but I am so afraid now," Seimei said, hardly above a whisper.

"I am powerless, Kaoru. I cannot keep my word, I cannot protect you from everything and I cannot stand the separation. I feel that I am only endangering you," he muttered, Hikaru's words prickling at him, dragging him further into the sort of sorrow that twisted one's belly into nauseating knots.

"You were dying there beside me. Whether it was my fault or not matters little. You were dying and there was nothing I could do. You were weeping and I had not the strength even to speak. What of the next time, Kaoru? What am I to do, when love cannot change anything?"

"But you matter to me." He couldn't help but skirt around the way that Seimei's admission had cut him. It hurt, to hear Seimei value himself so little. If he wasn't going to treat himself preciously, Kaoru had to be the one to do so.

"Whenever I object to you seeing us as anything other than equals, it's because you are just as precious to me. Because it's just as important to me that you don't hurt. That you be happy. Is it so wrong that I want for you the things you want for me?

The life you would send me back to... has it occurred to you for a moment I might have outgrown it? I came here missing a part of myself and... there will always be a space for Hikaru in my life, of course there will. But after I came to this place, I adapted. I grew. And that hole I arrived here with... the very nature of that hole changed."

He held his tongue for a moment, straightening, tucking back a lock of his hair and trying to compose himself. He knew his emotions were written clear on his face, but he would not show tears, even thought he could feel them coming. Letting them fall would be the worst thing he could do in this situation. He couldn't let Seimei hurt more than he already was.

"You speak like you break your word time and time again but... that isn't true, my love. It would be one thing, if you didn't care about your promises at all, if you thought it too much bother to even try to keep them. But that's not the case, is it? It was one time. One time, one accident, does not rule out a thousand kept promises - all the times you came home safely, all the times you kept me safe..."

The hand still on Seimei's shoulder slid down his back, smoothing Seimei's robes as it went. His other fell to rest on Seimei's chest.

"...you have to let me protect you, sometimes. Let me shelter you sometimes. Listen when I say that the rest doesn't matter - not even Hikaru matters, Seimei, I'll deal with him. You and I are all that should matter to you and I. This heart and this soul, my love, they are the most valuable things of all. If they don't matter to you, entrust them to me."

He wanted to believe, and maybe that was why a little piece did. A little piece that hid in the back and pleased with him for sense - perhaps it was even the drunken part, pickled and willing to say things he might otherwise have kept secret. The breath he released came on a shudder, Seimei folding in on himself as he dropped the cup and its meager contents to wrap his arms around the boy instead. That was more important.

He croaked some ugly sound, sobbed noisily and buried his face against Kaoru, angry with himself for being emotional, furious at himself for letting anything show, for being so weak. Things the boy loved anyways. Kaoru stood by when the onmyoji was bitter and stern, when he was happy and cordial. Much as Seimei loved Kaoru for all his foibles. Why he himself was too blind to accept it he couldn't understand. He only knew he was still filled with regret and sorrow.

It might never go away, the echo of Kaoru's voice cracked with the illness, the weak grasp they had; kisses pressed to glass. Those memories might never pass, but they had then and there. Everything else...

"I cannot bear a part of you hating me," he admitted quietly, hiding behind the thick mass of his hair. It was one thing for the redhead to see him in such a state, entirely another for anyone else. "Hikaru is...he is such an important part of you." For Kaoru had said as much, spoken of their shared mind, their completeness, their oneness. Things Seimei didn't imagine he could ever experience with anyone, despite having it there, plain as day, for him to see for himself. Living without the boy was rapidly becoming unimaginable.

"If he hates me, what am I meant to do? I don't expect him to care for me at all, but the idea that he might come to loathe me...I cannot be the thing that creates a rift between you. Time and space and circumstance certainly, but not me."

His hands released Seimei's heart, one sliding into his hair and the other pulling the onmyoji into his chest. The fallen glass didn't matter - nothing else mattered except for the man in his arms, as he pressed kisses to his temple and the top of his head, seeking to soothe even as his own tears fell.

"I could never hate you, my love. Not even the smallest part of me could hate you." It would take an act of terrible cruelty on Seimei's part to make it happen but he knew that to be something Seimei could never be capable of towards him.

"And Hikaru never could either, not knowing how important you are to me. I know he is standoffish and rude - but he'll come around. I promise you, he will. I know it's so hard on you, my love but you have to understand - he expected he would be here from the beginning of this. That he would grow to like you at the same time as me - that when We eventually happened it would come around as a natural deepening of our relationship. He never expected to be thrown in at the middle of things. He's trying to get his head around it, and it will take time, but it will happen. I know him, and that's how I know. So you have to believe me."

He sighed, listening and hearing at last, his miserable self-pity fraying at the edges and unraveling, the veil of his fears slipping away to reveal the collected onmyoji underneath. He was still brittle, still frightened by the very real near loss of his sun and stars but the crippling negativity surrounding it was rapidly fading in light of a simple fact: he could no more turn away from Kaoru out of love than he could imagine cutting off his own limbs or giving up the spirit part of himself. The boy was simply a fixture in his life he could not fathom doing without.

"You stupid boy," he muttered suddenly, expression stricken with the sort of grief one could only experience if they knew real love as he reached up with both hands, gripping Kaoru's face firmly to slant his lips across the redhead's. He didn't care, in that moment, who was watching or who might see; propriety hardly seemed important when a mercurial shift in mood meant accepting that one's life was no longer just their own to do with as they pleased. He had to accept the bad with the good, there was no turning back - not ever.

"I am not letting this - all of this - change anything, anymore. My house, my love - born together or not as you two were, in a way, I was here first. I am weary of playing second string just to appease someone who may never be satisfied. Never before in my life have I tried so hard to ingratiate myself to someone, and to what end? The only person I need to please is you..." he whispered, pressing another kiss to the boy's lips, then another.

"Forgive me my weaknesses, Kaoru. I am...not always a clever man."

"Your stupid boy." He brushed his lips lightly against Seimei's as he corrected, then leaned in for a kiss. It was a little difficult keeping his balance - in his position his feet couldn't reach the floor or find purchase elsewhere, so his arm settled on Seimei's shoulder for a little support.

"Hikaru and I, we're twins, Seimei. We'll be all right. He'll be all right. You don't need to hold yourself back anymore. You don't need to worry about him." He touched his nose to Seimei's for a moment, "Just be my Seimei. Just... be." He smiled, tugging down his sleeve to gently dab the tears away from Seimei's cheeks with a still slightly shaky laugh. "Evidently whatever brought us together had an interesting sense of humour. Two idiots together really shouldn't be crying this much."

Kaoru needn't have worried about balance in the first place - unless it was Seimei's drunken swaying that did it - since the onmyoji had a secure grip on the boy and didn't seem inclined to let go. If anything he was infinitely more willing to touch him than usual.

"I know I am not an...easy man to deal with. I have more rules than most people seem to, more things that keep me from doing what others seem to find simple. That does not mean I have no wish to do other things. It does not mean I have no desires of my own that boil up and threaten my composure. I simply...I have my beliefs and while they may not always make sense or even be right they are what I have," Seimei attempted to explain, shaking his head slowly.

"I wanted you to be able to have us both without conflict, but I believed that in the end, it was more important I was not selfish; your twin is more precious and I have less right to your love. That has not changed...but perhaps it is okay to be a little selfish. Perhaps it isn't wrong to want someone so much. I ache for the very sight of you, Kaoru...I do not think anyone will understand the depth of my love."

"Your beliefs are important to you - I understand this, my love - and if I did not respect them, I wouldn't be deserving of you." For all that he poked and he prodded, he was well aware of this. "They're a part of your time, of where you're from - there's nothing wrong with that, Seimei. They're part of what makes you you: there is no need to apologise. Just as it's okay to have desires, okay to act on them, if that's what you want… but holding back is okay as well…"

Kaoru's patience for the ones he loved was nothing if not infinite.

"You have every right to my love, Seimei. Yes, Hikaru is precious to me. But so are you. A different kind of precious, yes, but just as precious to me." Brushing light kisses onto Seimei's cheeks, first one, then the other, then the first again, unable to stop the kisses now they had started. His fingers slid into the hair at the nape of Seimei's neck.

"…I love you. I missed you."

"I thought I lost you," he admitted softly, ignoring everything else, hands gripping Kaoru tight enough to hurt before he relaxed his grip enough to bury his face between the boy's neck and shoulder.

"This place seems determined to taunt me with the possibility. That time in the bog, and now the plague. Kaoru...I do not think I will ever be able to truly put into words just how much I need you," the onmyoji whispered, sighing softly and moving to scrub at his face with his hand, angry with himself for all the crying he'd done. Mercy, but had he ever been so pitiful?

"I want to go home," he said abruptly, looking up with the black eyes and staring hard. "I want to go home, I want to lock the doors and I want to be alone with you. I just want to sleep in my own bedding and I want to hold you. Please."

"But you have me. You do." He swapped his hands and assisted Seimei in clearing the tears away with his other sleeve and with his lips. He had a tendency towards a strange kind of tunnel vision, sometimes, a tendency to focus his attention in on just one person. It used to be Hikaru - he could snap-focus on Hikaru and ignore everything else, and it was one of the little things that made their act for the host club so convincing.

But long before Hikaru had come to the Bastion, it had become Seimei that Kaoru was able to lock his focus onto. And when his eyes caught Kaoru's like that, it was even harder to resist.

Why would he even want to?

"If you're ready to go, let's go." He gently pried Seimei's hand away and held it to his lips, forcing him to desist from rubbing at his face like that. "I'm ready to go, if you are. I missed you. I want us to just… enjoy, for a while, being relieved that we're both well and we're both here."

They didn't have to tackle all of the plans they're made right away. But just lying together, enjoying one another… even just being able to hold one another… that was certainly something the two of them could manage.

"I am. I want to, now," he stated with firm resolve, wrapping his arms around the boy and rising, setting Kaoru on his own two feet as quickly as he could without either of them tottering over. Standing proved that he was - against all odds - quite drunk. The world rushed up at him and his head sloshed dangerously, prompting him to close his eyes and rest his face against the redhead's shoulder.

"Perhaps a soak in the bath," he muttered, unwilling to admit that the spirits he imbibed were responsible for anything. "Will you help me with my hair?" Seimei asked after a moment, raising his head once he'd steadied himself enough to continue.

Kaoru had no problem with Seimei drinking ordinarily - it was another holdover from his time, and he knew Seimei could handle his sake well. But he wished Seimei had taken more care with the new Caelondian booze - compared to what they were used to, it was quite another thing. Kaoru himself had only had sips here and there, so he wasn't being hit quite so hard by it.

He couldn't help clucking his tongue slightly, though, as he steadied Seimei with his own arms. Perhaps there was a good reason he was often looked upon as a mother hen.

"A soak in the bath sounds wonderful." He nodded, guiding them away from the party, away from the noise and people and onto the path for home, his arm sliding around Seimei's waist so he could keep him close. "And then we sleep in our own bed tonight…"

Seimei wasn't about to get into a discussion about how he'd wanted to be drunk, because he'd stupidly believed he could convince himself to let Kaoru go. To walk away and go back to the way things were before. Even thinking about it made him panic in his inebriated state and he could feel tears welling up again, inspiring him to move behind Kaoru and simply wrap his arms around the boy. He said nothing, hugging him tightly from behind and hiding his face in red hair.

Undoubtedly the boy could hear and feel the soft sobs, but the onmyoji didn't want to speak. He had all the proof and comfort he needed - the only things he failed to recover were his wits and dignity in the process.

"Shh... It's okay..."

He knew they didn't need to talk anymore, but he couldn't allow Seimei to weep whilst saying nothing himself. His hands lifted to hold Seimei's arms around himself gently, if awkwardly, and continuing to lead him down towards the house and releasing him only to open the door and slip off his shoes in the genkan.

"...come with me," he murmured softly, pressing a light kiss to Seimei's forehead and preparing to lead him again through the house, "And I'll run your bath..."

Seimei followed without speaking, releasing Kaoru once he started to move again and simply keeping close, expression distant and thoughtful. When they got to the house and the redhead spoke again the onmyoji barely heard at first, seeming to rise out of a haze. Sliding his feet from his own boots and glancing at the boy he sighed with an apologetic look. he knew he'd been strange, overbearing, emotionally tumultuous. It wasn't a comfortable place for him to be in the least but he couldn't help it.

Opening himself so much to someone else in his life had changed things for him irrevocably.

Nodding once in acceptance of the gentle command the black-haired noble paced quietly through the house and around the main hall towards the massive bathing room, grateful for his more-than-human metabolism as thealcohol ran its course. That meant a fairly early bount of hungover regret, but it also meant he wouldn't be such a wreck for as long as he could have been.

"I...am sorry, Kaoru," he said after a moment of standing in the room, fidgeting with his robes. "I know I have been terribly bothersome...I am always at a loss."

He simply smiled up at him from where he had knelt at the edge of the tub to run the water.

"You are no bother at all, Seimei." Cetainly not compared to the Hikaru and the Host Club, at least. It was a daily fact of life at Ouran, and he had long since accepted it. "Even if you were, you know it wouldn't really matter to me either way. I love you - that means I'd be happy to be bothered by you, and that I'm happy to guide you when you're not sure..." He rose, reaching to a shelf for a bottle of oil and scattered a few drops into the bath before turning back to Seimei, stilling his hands again. "And when neither of us is sure, we figure it out together, right? So you don't need to apologise anymore."

He hesitated, freeing a hand to comb through Seimei's hair.

"...will you let me help you with your clothes?"

"Of course," he answered, tilting his dark gaze to Kaoru curiously before lowering his head into a raised hand and rubbing at his face. He felt so out of sorts, so troubled still despite his full disclosure. A large part of him was relieved to be free of the consuming guilt but he still wondered if he wasn't being selfish.

"I do not deserve you, my Sunset Prince. I have never deserved you. I do not think I ever will. I will spend all my days paying for this wonder and the toil will ever be the most rewarding thing in my life. I wish I knew what to do to make every day as perfect for you as imaginable."

"It's lucky you don't get to decide that, then, isn't it?" He hummed softly, leaning in to kiss Seimei lightly on the mouth - nudging the onmyoji's hand out of the way, if need be, anything he could to try to take that troubled look from Seimei's face. "If it was left up to each of us, where would we be? Thankfully, I'm the one who decides whether you deserve me, and I'll make you believe as I do - that you do - one day. I'll convince you, just wait."

His arms settled on Seimei's shoulders as he swayed deliberately on the spot just… watching him for a few moments before nodding decisively.

"Mmm. Food after we bathe, I think. I know you're tired, but you need to eat something."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject