Copyrights: This story is by and ©right; Nicole Cheung (AKA pyg princess, etc.). Fanfic, etc., etc., etc., Clover by Clamp, etc., etc.
Inspired By: Trilly again. ^^ And some smutty other-fics by other-[BETTER]-fficcers. Hey baby.
You also have to know that Lan is a Clover genetically engineered by the government, and programmed to die within 5 years of leaving the laboratory. This doesn't take place in the laboratory.

Please read 'Butterflies: the Pheremone Conspiracy' first. Or after. Not strictly necessary but it precedes this. And it's cuter.

Vespertine

Chapter 1 - Body

By Pygmalion Princess

       

He had asked, rather uncertainly, whether he could keep the window open -- just a little, for the night, and then smiled gratefully when the answer was “yes, of course”. Their temporary quarters were stiflingly small, consisting of no more than a small, square living room-slash-kitchenette, an even smaller bedroom and a microscopic bathroom. Lan found the environment more than slightly uncomfortable to while waking hours away in, and quite impossible to fall asleep without at least just a little fresh air.

The crack he had wedged open was so small that the wan silhouettes of butterflies still seeking their mates outside only battered gently, harmlessly against the tiny flux of artificially chilled air, unable to intrude into their displaced domesticity. However, it had been enough to let the shift in air pressure occur, silently easing the shut door open just wide enough to reveal a strip of living room to the boy that should have been asleep. It was this narrow portal that he watched with solemn large eyes, darkened and hardened to granite gray with concern that had driven a rosy blush of memory out of his pale cheeks.

The symphony of deftly compressed keys trickled soft through the otherwise near-silence of the chill-conditioned air, feverish pace of blurring white fingers synchronised with ribbons of pale green text rapidly flowing across the flat LCD monitor. Translucent diagrams sprouted, shattered and reformed above the console, the shifting light casting technicolor ghosts into the shiny silver strands that dangled over the typist's visor-shaded eyes. The visor, which closely resembled a pair of completely opaque sunglasses with a little fancy wiring to hook up with a computer, along with long practice, easily disguised any facially expressed emotion that the man attached to the task he tirelessly slaved away at. For Gingetsu, hours chased hours down the throat of cool solitude in a barren room rented under a forgotten alias, in the dead of the night while his home lay in ruins miles away.

Lan had occasionally wondered what his guardian could possibly be doing in the darkest hours of the night, trespassing the wee hours of the morn while he slept like a kitten in his bed. Work, Lan had always presumed. Work, he was sure even now, had filled most of Gingetsu's sleepless nights. Yet tonight, the strings of mutilated DNA spinning on glowing axes in the air didn't really look all that relevant to global security, and the structural diagrams the man was downloading didn't exactly appear to be the floor plans for a new house.

The boy regarded the back of Gingetsu's head with a frown growing on his face, under the blanket that covered up all the way up to the high curves of his cheek bones. Which slid off after a moment, in cautious silence that proved to be rather futile when the floor chose to creak gracelessly under his furtive step. The holos froze, blurred and vanished, the screen went dark and wires slid away from their holds on the temples of the silver-haired man's visor. The older man simply sat with his back to the boy that crept up to the open door and let himself into the living room, perhaps wondering how much Lan had seen -- while, of course, he would be completely sure that it had been far too much.

Lan preferred not to intrude into Gingetsu's private business, out of fear that the man would revoke his guardianship and leave him to the paws of less desirable military company, and numerous other emotions that mere logic, words and flowery vocabulary could never do justice to. However, when massive threat was engaged for his sake?

“I couldn't sleep,” he told the silver-haired back of his guardian's cranium, biting his lip out of some entirely inappropriate sense of guilt. When this failed to provoke any sort of reaction besides further immobility from Gingetsu, Lan swallowed bravely and fumbled onward. “Gingetsu--?”

“...”

“... they...”

The visor glinted to the side of the metallic sheen of close-cropped hair, denoting the movement of the man turning his head where one would have missed it. “It's my decision. They,” the rickety chair growled slightly, legs dragged over the floor an inch or two as its brawny occupant turned to stare straight at Lan. Well, through the visor, anyway. Gingetsu's face looked so young. He would have been classically handsome with the straight nose and generously proportioned mouth, and strong features tempered faintly with a princely sort of refinement to the lineage, were it not for a pallor thrice as stubborn as one's average albino, and a permanent state of expressionlessness. Lan had never seen his eyes before; no one had. “don't know.”

...Yet. The boy wondered if the older man had realized that Lan knew that they had stuck a bomb in Gingetsu's head. Or if the man knew that Lan couldn't get it out. The seamless fusion of his own biology with the world of cybertech occurred easily enough, and the world of computers, electronics was his to command. However, the flesh of another was a barrier that his powers could not trespass without causing harm.

“Do you want to come over here?”

Nodding, Lan walked halfway across the very small floor -- about one step, before realizing there weren't exactly any other things to sit on in their rented space: Gingetsu's chair was the only piece of furniture that had come with it, and he wasn't sure that a repeat of the activities recently transpired was a really all that appropriate form of... communication, under the circumstances.

Of course, this tentative resolution was obliterated when the man's cool fingers slipped around his smaller ones, head canted under the windswept curtain of silver hair. There was no verbalised question, or inquiry expressed on half-masked features, not even a persuasive squeeze on the captured hand. Steeling himself against something that wouldn'tve really made sense if he'd been thinking about it, Lan took another light step and ended up bumping knees with the seated man, and ended up staring at the cold spot of floor between his bare feet shyly.

“You look tense.” Gingetsu had never teased him as far as he could remember, but honestly. Sneaking a peek upward through dangling black bangs, however, the boy perceived that there wasn't the faintest hint of mirth on the silver-haired man's visored features, even if that didn't mean much. “Want something to drink?”

“It won't help.” And it didn't come even close to what would.

“You can have the bathroom for awhile. I don't need it.”

It took Lan a moment to register what, exactly, Gingetsu was insinuating that he should do. When it did, the boy's cheeks went blood scarlet under the dangling tips of his hair, stone-hued gaze averting, his stomach tightened painfully above the rapidly wilting evidence of Gingetsu's suspicions and he began to retreat. He was unduly interrupted in mid-step when the hand laced into his own did tighten, effectively bringing him to a pause. He settled onto the flats of his feet, staring at the half-open doorway into the darkness of the small bedroom, watching the dancing butterflies beating softly on the clear pane. A murmured apology fell muffled to deaf ears: he didn't want to hear it, but he stayed, trapped arm spanning the distance between the two of them. While the crimson glowed bright, and burned slowly out on his face, the older man shifted most subtly in his seat: the silence was getting to him. Ironic, though as per usual, Lan felt a touch of regret.

“...What if I did it?”

In this long moment, the boy's pride was so far compromised that his brain failed to absorb what, specifically, Gingetsu was offering to do. Certain other parts of his biology, however, apparently had an excellent grasp of the situation from whatever his subconscious had managed to absorb and responded accordingly. When he turned, he swayed lightly as if he had only just begun to find the relative darkness of the room disconcerting, stepping halfway back to Gingetsu before stopping again. He felt the pale skin of his own face strained as he rested his eyes on the older man's face, the strong jaw and visor streaked at regular intervals by pale green thrown over by some blipping computer light. He found himself wondering out of some brief spate of undoubtedly childish fear, if Gingetsu would throw him out of he refused, and then shook the thought off the next moment with shame. Despite what Mr. Kazuhiko said, Gingetsu wasn't that kind of man.

Mr. Kazuhiko talked too much.

The boy permitted himself to be drawn onto the silver-haired man's lap, settling against the unfamiliar cradle of solid flesh and government-issued clothing that Gingetsu had not exchanged for pyjamas yet. It was soft. Despite his sudden conversion to animation, Lan's mind seemed to be lagging a few seconds behind of these events, slowing to a half in processing while his skin felt uncomfortably warm beneath the sudden surge of his own pulse. He regarded his hands spaced on his lap shyly, only to glimpse the circumstances rather literally arising under the loose cotton of his trousers.

And nearly leaped out of them when he felt Gingetsu's other hand drifting featherlight toward his stomach. His breath wasn't coming as he stared down at the long-fingered hand frozen, spidered across the flat of his belly half into the gap beween the buttons bridging halves of his pyjama top. The air that streamed invisible across his belly was cool. The man's fingertips were points of sword-calloused heat on his skin.

“I don't have to if you don't want to.”

“What do you want?”

Possibly the question startled Gingetsu, not that his neutral silence meant anything. It was simply not one that Lan had ever heard anyone ask the man before, but one he had only just noticed that the older man asked him all the time. It made him more than a little ashamed -- that he had never thought to ask before, earnest curiosity mingling with residual nerves on his pale face as he attempted to twist around. Finding that rather uncomfortable, he moved his frame somewhat awkwardly, leg bending and poking, but with a little helpful handling from the silver-haired man still silent, rearranged until he was straddling the older man's lap -- and went rather still, realizing how close the other was though his voice remained steady, storm-gray eyes wide. “What do you want, Gingetsu?”

He came to the vaguest realization that the blood blushed to his neck under his shirt collar was rather uncalled for at the moment, and perhaps had something to do with the Gingetsu's face hovering an inch from his own. Gingetsu had used Lan's toothpaste tonight. When silence was all the response he received, he inquired gently, “Ne?

“Gingetsu?”

There was no gaze to avert, masked by the electronic scopes, though his silver-tressed head was canted downward slightly, one hand still caught up in the Lan's fingers and the other halfway into the shirt. The thumb was pushed against the slender muscle above the contorted boy's stomach, scraping down the smooth concave into Lan's belly button -- greeted there with a squirmy shiver, before Lan's free hand caught him. Gray eyes were wide in the dark, solemn and silvered almost like the hair that dangled over the opaque sheen of Gingetsu's visor.

“..........”

He wasn't the type to know, was he? Not for the poetry of a dream, or a clumsy portrait of something beautiful and not even necessarily happy he held in his mind's eye. Not enough to spare a few simple words: not even one. Like happiness.

Even Suu had thought about happiness.

Perhaps that was what Gingetsu meant when he said he did it like it was nothing.

A subtle realignment in the man's jaw let Lan know that something wasn't right, and furthermore, the threat emanated from Gingetsu himself. Startled, the black-haired boy widened his eyes, and then switched them over to the side to scan the computer screen uncertainly, pale hand tightening on the one clasped warmly to his stomach while Gingetsu, perhaps, debated the way to most pleasantly deliver his displeasure.

“Some people don't want pity, OK?”

He looked back, shocked. Perhaps a little guilty. “But I don't --”

With a swift pull, Lan's hand was suddenly emptied of the other. He blinked at Gingetsu as the man ran strong fingers through his raven hair, a gentle, prickling tug at his head under thick sable strands. A gentle push tilted his head toward, and he slid lightly on the older man's lap, turning with an inconvenient strawberry blush to meet the kiss with his eyes closed. Gingetsu's lips were soft and felt drier than they would have been if they had caught Lan's on most other days, though the soft gust of breath that tickled his nose was a great deal warmer. The kiss was nothing more than a prolonged touch of lips for several long moments, relatively tentative.

Inevitably the boy leaned, sinking bonelessly into the broad chest opposite almost exhaling his blush along with a soft sigh. Gingetsu's fingers, the ones in his hair, slacked and fell away somewhere, forgotten instantly when the hand cupping his belly pushed all the way into his pyjamas from the opening between two consecutive buttons. The arm was trapped by the cloth when it reached the curve of his side, bending to slide closely around his torso between the fabric and silken skin and stop almost full circle around him above his hips. Under his clothes.

It felt good. Heat radiated into the room from under the soft folds of his pyjamas until he felt like he was acclimating the entire apartment, and he wanted to stay, like this despite the escalating weight shifting between his legs as he moved. The unseen mouth on his grew warmer, pressure felt when he could no longer distinguish between the separate temperatures of their bodies, and then a pleasantly warm wave fuzziness as Gingetsu lazily nibbled on him, toothlessly, with just the malleable velvet of pale lips. When Gingetsu's mouth slipped off and left the cool flux of air in its wake, Lan lifted his chin and sightlessly nosed the air immediately in front of him for the kiss that had moved while the uniformed body under his hands hadn't. Hmph.

Gingetsu's head couldn't have possibly disappeared, could it?

He began to crack his eyes open and compose some sort of protest, when he felt the thin edge of the visor graze the line of his jaw, and immediately dropped his head, only to have it nudged back up by the soft-haired bulk of someone's head under his chin, with a soft click of his teeth going together as he reluctantly stayed his hungry mouth up. The long arm around him shifted, tightening despite the protest of his fastened nightclothes. Several buttons were popped open as it pulled him closer in and kept him still, lassoing his upper body neatly around the middle with tingling goosebumps, all the way from the little breezy gap where the shirt opened to the fingertips spread over his side. The sculpted contours of someone's nose and mouth, Gingetsu's by default, buried themselves in the crook of his neck, the man's steady breathing fanning out as tangibly soft as feathers onto his chest from that one spot, the notch where collar bones met.

The few rather long, slow breaths blew over his skin and made the cloud of dry, permeating heat around his throat and chest thicker. Damp, but not as damp as the slippery little tip of muscle that rolled wet at the base of his throat, dipping into the little hollow above the juncture of collar bones. Lan's spine and eyelids twitched and his head lolled back on his neck just slightly, a low, shapeless sound left his lips before he bit into it and tightened his grip on Gingetsu's uniform.

The long arm shifted around him, tightening under his nightclothes -- buttons now popped open, and lassoed his ribs with tingling goosebumps.

“I feel dizzy.” Lan's voice sounded funny as well. Rather cracked, much less of a pubescent voice break than something heavily blistered out under the sun. Buttons were being pulled open in sequence as the older man's spare hand hooked down into the fabric at Lan's back, dragging the collar open from the boy's bared neck and slim shoulders. Gingetsu's mouth, not smiling because it never did, was uprooting goosebumps all over his lower throat and upper chest in breathy quiet, sometimes just skimming over loopy paths shaped to Lan's body -- or at least the parts of it that lay within the borders of Gingetsu's attention, accenting the gentle, seemingly aimless caresses with the sporadic flick of a kitten-pink tongue.

Needless to say, the man did not reply.

The boy's world began to grow heavier. It was contracting, tightening dense against the restraint of his pyjamas pants, clenching almost painfully in his stomach. It pulled at him floorward, sinking with gravity, as the grip around his body loosened to let him sling backward by tiny degrees to give Gingetsu easier access to his searing skin, now half-stripped out of his shirt. The garment was hanging off his forearms and clinging around his waist just barely by one button, leaving his shoulders and most of his torso completely naked, periodically dappled green by the computer lights. The older man's vague silhouette was regularly flung onto the featureless ceiling above, which Lan could see albeit muzzily now that he'd opened his eyes.

Gingetsu's lips and tongue were travelling along the shallow rift between musculature down the middle of Lan's chest, switched from just touching over to kissing, only very lightly puckered. When the little chocolate-colored nub of his left nipple caught a tiny kiss, an involuntary shudder ran through his slim body and his back nearly doubled itself over on Gingetsu's arm, pushing up into the silver-haired man's soft mouth. His gut felt so tight it hurt, and the room was too hot for the tingling sheet of goosebumps that blanketed half of his bare chest. “--Gingetsu--”

He nearly hiccuped on his breath when he felt the smooth enamel of teeth pinch the small brown stud in between the hard edges. Gripped dexterously by nothing but an arm around his waist and that little nub, Lan quivered like a leaf. His jaw worked slowly, incoherency spilling soft from his lips as his back bent itself into an almost painfully tight arch. It threw a jolt in through the nipple captured by Gingetsu's teeth, and a sharp bolt of something like agony through his belly and below. His hands pulled on the silver-haired man's shirt, helplessly, he squirmed when the teeth released him to encircle it wth a slick tongue, hips jerking once to grind the rough bulge stiffening in his pants into the hard breadth of Gingetsu's belly when the older man began to suckle. A thin line of sweat travelled into the boy's eye.

Lan whimpered.

“Don't like it?” The abrupt release -- of the mouth anyway, followed by a breeze of exhaled wet air over his chest tore another spasmodic shudder out of Lan's shoulders, bare feet dangling above the floor kicking once and quite unable to gain the leverage required to alleviate some of the tension coiled at his lower torso. He lifted his head with some difficulty, blinded the unkempt drag of inky hair over his eyes until his guardian smoothed them away with his mouth, for lack of a spare limb.

Gingetsu's features were -- almost as neutral as usual, still half-masked but by shadow now as well and highlighted faintly with timed flickers of green. His lips were wet, reddened with pressure, and Lan was finding it increasingly hard to breathe; his heels swam aimless circles in the air.

“N-no. I do.”

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