9:11h.

Kenji jerked backwards, surprised at the contact. Max's vivid eyes blinked open, shameful, coals igniting in the verdant depths as he bowed his head, as if waiting for a strike to rain upon his face from Kenji's hand. The cool palm in question instead trembled in a bitter, fearful joy, at once confronting only newly realised emotions with the soft promise of Max's kiss, then settled, familiar, upon Max's cheekbone, rouged with rushing blood.

"Max..." Kenji whispered, his throat tight, suddenly dry channel for his friend's name. The boy mentioned backed off, edging away, before parting his lips in a fervid explanation, a desperate gleam in the shadowed eyes, darkened with some dirt and dried tears.

"I'm sorry. It won't happen again," Max flared, shoving Kenji's hand away.

As Max stood, Kenji pled quietly, "Please Max...don't run. Not again."

Max turned his head, and met the unexpected water threatening to rise in Kenji's gaze. He fell to the bench, his careless hand brushing at the fervent memory of the Japanese youth's thin lips.

"Why did you run?" Kenji asked carefully, leaning forward to peer into Max's face. The American jostled his chestnut flame of hair over his forehead, unwilling to lift his eyes. He shook his head, then ceased the movement, and sighed.

"I was afraid. Of you, of my past...of myself," Max murmured the last. Kenji almost looked hurt, the glitter about his eyes sparkling against tense sorrowed skin. Max caught his room-mate's expression, and continued on.

"Of you, and your reaction...I am a fag, huh? Kissing other boys...I'm sorry I did - I shouldn't have, you're straight, but - fuck it! I'm gay; I hate it 'cause of that bastard, but I'm gay. He probably made me like this, just so I could bloody suffer!" Max grumbled, holding back sobs in his taut voice, a bleak melancholy settling over his features as if smoke from the pain in his breast, burning dully with aching throbs, as if instead of breaking, his heart was resigning itself to embers in an ashen death.

"I don't mind. That you are gay, I mean," Kenji stated quietly, stroking the rough fringe of his long hair. Max shivered, then his eyes peeked through ragged bangs, hope lighting a clean white flame within his pupils. Kenji watched sadly as doubt clouded the purity of delight.

"How...how can you? I hate it! I hate myself!" Max glared, not wishing to accept Kenji's words without further promise of...something. Kenji's expression showed nothing but startled, innocent confusion, turning to pained sorrow.

"No! Don't hate, Max, not you, don't hate yourself...its not wrong, its not unnatural, he didn't do this to you. You just are the same..." Kenji glanced away, as if guilty, then continued, "- the same as many other people. Its okay." Max eyed him, biting harshly on his lips before quivering and diving into Kenji's arms. The surprised Japanese wrapped his arms about Max's back slowly, rubbing the thin shoulder beneath Max's worn black T-shirt to calm the heated tears leaking from his friend's countenance.

Max closed his eyes, breathing in the clean, sharp soap-smell of Kenji's soft sweater, tempered with a spicy undertone form his skin. The cloth pressed against his face, a small stretch of Kenji's flesh visible at the neckline, centimeters from where Max's visage was turned into Kenji's shoulder. A small smile burned across his thin, pale lips, tentative relief slowly charring his insides with cleansing joy.

It was okay. Kenji had said so. He didn't care that Max was gay, he didn't mind that he had been raped. Kenji was his friend; he wanted to help him. He made him feel clean, as if his quiet touch could erase the foul acid scars that burnt still where he had been brutalised. Kenji seemed to purify, in turn washing away the filthy memories of the rape.

It didn't hurt that Max adored Kenji regardless. The other youth was beautiful, his adornments of makeup and jewellery, at once feminine and yet so male upon the clean-cut student, as if the Japanese's attempt to hide his masculinity behind glitter and lipstick only enforced it's reality further. Yet behind the beauty was the beloved mind of his room-mate, that he had come to know dressed in boxers at 3h, during long study sessions, and playing basketball in the few moments stolen side from Kenji's meticulous academics. That mind, verily, that soul had seen him at his darkest, dirty and drunk, the stench of whores and smoke upon his breath, yet had taken him home when any other would have left a fouled creature like himself.

Perhaps he loved him. The thought frightened him, sorrowed broken memories of a man who swore love, yet caused the cruelest pain upon Max's body. He knew that Kenji could not lie, regarding his innocent blunders with girls, and would never say the words held sacred in jest or manipulation.

Therein lay, however, the worst problem. Max could lose himself in fantasy that Kenji had responded to the kiss, that he also hid deep affection within the heart beating beneath Max's dry mouth, yet there had been no liquid reaction, no soft press of Kenji's against his own lips. There only been startled surprise, and icy shock, frozen glossed lips immobile against his in the desperate kiss.

Max sighed, and nuzzled Kenji's sweater, feeling slightly silly for enjoying the cool hands stroking his tense back, and the soft cloth against his heated cheek. Then, at a slight tug on his hair, he looked reluctantly up.

Return to Fire and Water: A Story Arc

This page and all works within are copyrighted 2001 to Engel. Don't steal.