Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Into The Void ❯ As I Feel, You Feel ( Chapter 16 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

By: MellyN

XxXx

Into the Void

By: Melissa Norvell

Chapter 16: As I Feel You Feel

XxXxXx

Rubio sat out on the rooftop by himself. He felt completely alone and had his head buried in his arms. He'd spent all of this time grieving and still the pain was always fresh in his mind. The silver-haired man could never forget Angora no matter how hard he tried. It was as if her image was burned into his brain and the scar stayed with him, holding him captive. Slowly raising his head up, his trembling hand held out a ring with a bright green stone as the center piece. He uttered the woman's name before the ring jumbled out of his hand. It could not hold itself still.

The golden object tumbled onto the roof. Sorrow-filled eyes watched in dismay as it bounced all the way down the slant of the roof and soon disappeared over the edge. The distraught man ran a hand through his silver hair in dismay.

"You dropped this…" He could hear that familiar monotoned voice call to him. Quickly turning, he saw Valentino holding out a gloved hand with the ring sitting in his palm. Him…Always him…The sight of him made Rubio feel an uncontrollable rage. What did he think he was doing? He swiftly smacked the other man's offending limb away as the ring was sent back down the rooftop.

"I'll get it," Valentino told him and turned to retrieve the ring but his hand was caught by the darkly-clad man below him. His eyes slowly looked back to see Rubio holding on tightly to his hand. His grip was tight and he uttered his name in a shaky voice as the assassin let out a small noise of confusion. Why was he holding him back?

"I have to know…"

"…Yes…"

"Why the hell do you care about me?" Rubio looked at the man. "Tell me the truth. Don't play mute with me or look at me like you don't hear me. You've got no choice. It's just me and you. No distractions and no people." His voice sounded serious and even caustic in tone.

"Alright," the assassin settled as he ripped his hand away and sat a person's space in-between them. His distant act was soon halted as he was pulled close to the other man. Their shoulders touched. This was surprising since Rubio wasn't usually the type to do something like this.

"Wha-?" Valentino started to question but was cut off by Rubio.

"Don't you dare distance yourself from me," he commanded.

"You're being forceful tonight. You could have asked. I would have moved over," the black-haired man was as curt as ever.

"What the hell do you want from me? You're like an enigma that eats at your skin and makes you crazy. Why won't you leave me alone?"

"I'm trying to save you. Don't you get it?" Valentino leveled him with a serious look.

"Well stop, okay!? Just stop!" The man let out the reply in an emotional outburst.

Valentino was silent.

"You're not my friend! You're not my team mate! You're not my anything! Go the hell away! Don't you understand that? You're like a stubborn dog that doesn't get the point. I can beat you, kick you, burn you, try to kill you and you won't go away. What's wrong with you? Do you like pain? Do you enjoy being treated like crap by other people? Don't you have a soul? A heart? Feelings? You're so…dead! Dead, dead, dead!" Rubio shouted in a fit of rage. He couldn't believe that Valentino had the nerve to just be so submissive to everyone around him without reason.

Valentino was about to show him what having feelings meant. No matter what he did, Rubio always was the first to put him down and degrade him. He was always the first to push him away and the first to disagree with him.

He looked him in the eyes as he spoke for the first time with what little emotion he had in his being. "What's up with you, Rubio? I try to start over with you and you reject me. I try to redeem myself and you're hovering over me like an overprotective parent. You move when my defenses are down, waiting for me to fall, waiting for me to be weak and pathetic! You wait for me to give in to you! Why? Why do I have to be helpless before you care? Are you so pathetic that you need someone weaker and more pathetic to lean on? Or are you looking for someone gullible to run over and push around! You…You say you hate me but you don't as much as you'd like to admit. You're ashamed, ashamed that you could have a potential friendship with someone who you once pitied. Rather than tell me- God forbid you wanted to be my friend-You must just shut yourself off, growing crazy from wallowing in your own emotions! I thought it was because of Angora or that I was getting in your way, so I did what I thought would punish myself by further ruining my life. You're manipulating me into thinking it's me when it's really you! You let me stay in my delusions and keep thinking that! You threw me away! Pathetic as I am, I come back to you, admitting that you had good reason to hate me and that I was the true source of your misery! Then you rejected me again! Then you act all hurt when something goes well for me! Well fuck you Rubio! You selfish, obsessed, bratty bastard!"

Rubio was taken aback by Valentino's sudden outburst. He'd never known the man to even let out an emotional look, much less the paragraph that he'd just lay upon him. This was definitely something he would have never expected from the silent man. All he could do was blink with widened eyes.

"You piss me off…I can't believe you," Valentino finished and turned around, ripping his gaze from the stunned man's.

A moment of silence passed between them before the silver-haired man instructed him to turn around.

"I'm tired of being your dog, Rubio-sama. You never even thank me. You call me your hero and then you take it back?" His eyes narrowed. "How dare you…"

"Okay, that was mean of me. I meant it sarcastically," Rubio tried to reason.

"Which part?" Red eyes looked back to the stunned man,

"The part where I took it back, I can't deny that there's been tension between us."

"I…"

"You what?" Rubio leaned in, trying to see the side of the man's face from over his shoulder.

"Maybe I hate you…" The man nearly had to force the words to come out of his mouth. Valentino knew that he didn't feel that way but Rubio had crossed the line and he could take it no longer. He didn't want to be treated this way, especially by someone who was as important as Rubio.

"Why do you hate me? Because I hate you?"

"Because…" Valentino cast a nearly emotionless look to the roof underneath of him. All that was present within his red eyes was a hint of sorrow. "Because we came from the same place and you turned out better, you are the good-looking man that all of the women like. You always had a girl friend…my only friend was a casket and weaponry. Ibuki-sama never did anything to you. He always spared you." Admitting that he was jealous of Rubio's good fortune was hard but he felt as if that was the most opportune time to tell him. If he hadn't then, then he would have missed his chances forever. "You…You were lucky. You always got the good side. The five days I was watching you and Angora was the worst. I wanted to kill myself. I hurt…but you don't care." He dismissed. Rubio had probably liked the fact that it hurt him, especially since he hated him.

"I think you don't care about me sometimes," Rubio admitted.

What an insensitive son of a bitch! Valentino was about to give him another piece of his mind.

"How dare-"But his sentence was cut short as he found himself face-to-face with the silver haired man. Their lips were merely centimeters from touching. Valentino's eyes widened upon taking this fact into his head.

"Okay, so I do care about you. You got me. You fascinate me. The more I think about you, the more I like you," Rubio said softly as he moved in closer to his face. "…and yet…" He then frowned. "I hate you."

"What?" It was Valentino's turn to be confused by his sudden change in mood.

"You're such a pretty boy but you're also a great fighter. You're my hero and my villain. You're a machine, yet you can be human. You're dead, yet alive and I thought zombies were a cheap form of a villain. Heh, not you….You always keep me confused with your constant riddles…yet you piss me off with your constant truths. You can hate me and I can hate you…but it can go the other way around too."

"You might want to back away because you aren't homo-" Valentino began but his sentence was cut short by the gentle brush of Rubio's lips against his own. He closed his eyes as he accepted the kiss. In a way, this is what he wanted. He had only wished that it lasted more than five minutes.

"I don't care right now," Rubio's voice was trembling from the amount of emotion that he felt.

"What are you trying to say? Do you like me or not?" The assassin had to know the answer to his question before things got any further.

"You call me obsessed. At least I'm not some jealous, insecure, cold-hearted…"

"-Killer, right?"

"Why?" The emotional man asked as he slid down the assassin's black clothing and rested his head on his chest. After a few moments of examining his trembling form, Valentino could hear sniffling and slight sobbing. Rubio was weeping. The mechanical man uttered his name and wrapped his arms around him securely, holding him tightly.

"Look! Whatever I did…I'm sorry…Let's try to start over," Rubio sobbed.

"Are you sure you're not going to act schizophrenic on me?" Valentino asked.

"Pretty sure, I'm going to work on it, so bear with me a few days. I know the fighting isn't good for the team or either one of us. I guess I didn't want to think of you as anything else then a killer. No matter how much you said you understood. I just can't see how you do."

"But I do."

"How? How can you know?" Rubio lifted his head up and looked into Valentino's eyes.

"Every woman I was ever with in a romantic way had died," the assassin explained.

"How many women have you been with?"

"Four."

"Four? Well what happened to them?"

"My first girlfriend was Ayatetsu Aiko," Valentino informed.

"Hey, I knew her, she was the woman who had short, light blue hair and always wore a sad expression," Rubio told him as a flashback of the woman flooded his senses and he was sent into the past for a brief moment in time.

A woman with short, pale blue hair and large brown eyes looked to the ground. She had a sorrowful expression and looked as he she could cry any moment. Even if she was a terrorist, she looked frail and almost as if she shouldn't fight at all.

"Hey, I was supposed to tell you that Ibuki-sama wanted those missiles directed to the east-huh?" Rubio stopped upon noticing how sad she looked.

"Right," her voice was nearly on the verge of trembling.

"Are you alright?" Rubio blinked in confusion. He was a little worried about someone in that condition being able to launch missiles.

"Fine…"

"You always look so dejected about something…just thought I'd ask," he didn't want to be nosey but he couldn't just let the situation lie as it was. He had to approach her about it.

"I'm perfectly fine," the girl lied. "I'll point them back to the east. Thank you…"

"What happened to her?" Rubio looked into those same mechanical eyes that he had such feelings for.

Valentino was silent a moment before speaking of the situation as he vividly recalled the events of a few days after the incident Rubio had spoke of.

'How are you?" Aiko greeted him. She held a sad smile on her face. Out of all of the people on base, only he could cause her to feel joy.

"Taking a break, what about you?" Valentino asked.

"Ibuki-sama wants to see me. Hey, I'll come back over here afterwards and we can talk, okay?" She asked and he agreed, giving her a small kiss before she headed off to see the boss.

Two shadows spoke to each other down the hall. One was a female and the other of a distinguished older man.

"You can't do that, Ibuki-sama! I forbid it! His life isn't yours to destroy and neither is mine!" The female shadow spoke before she was violently grabbed by the wrist. "Ah! What are you doing?"

"Your last mistake is talking to me like that…now die!"

A shot was fired and a blood-curdling scream could be heard throughout the base. The scream was very familiar and brought Rubio up out of his seated position. The man ran down the hall as fast as he could, trying desperately to get to Aiko as soon as possible but upon getting there he was far too late.

Her form lay on the ground motionless. Blood poured from the back of her head. The assassin ran over and knelt beside of her. He looked upon her with saddened eyes as he gently picked her form up and held her close to himself as silent tears leaked from red pools.

"So…You do know…" Rubio hadn't known what happened until now. He didn't even know that Valentino had known Aiko.

"I've told you think for a while. You believe Ibuki-sama's words over mine."

"He did have her killed…"

"Yes…He's not just done it to you. I have two more who died in the same fashion: Chizu Hisa and Maiko Ruri. Both were killed by Ibuki-sama. The first one was executed point-blank and the second one was experimented on and tortured," the assassin informed. Rubio's eyes shone with sympathy for the other man's misery. All this time, Valentino had felt his pain fourfold and he'd never known it.

"Right in front of me, it was part of my punishment for failing my mission. You're lucky…"

"How am I lucky?" Rubio retorted. "I've been tortured before."

"Really? How come I've never noticed?"

"Okay freak, you have problems," the silver haired man retorted. He acted like Rubio never suffered for anything he'd failed on and it was completely untrue! Rubio had been tortured his fair share.

"Ibuki-sama seems to like you," Valentino said simply.

"Tell that to my old scars."

"I've never seen them."

"They faded away for the most part but it doesn't mean that they weren't severe when I had them." Rubio defended himself.

"Mine will never fade away…Too many to be counted," Valentino remarked. In an odd way, this calmed Rubio's tears at least a little. Arguing with him about his pain was better than arguing with him about other issues that were far worse them these.

"You really understand…"

The assassin was silent as the sniveling man below him slowly wiped his tears away. Suddenly, he felt someone soft and lukewarm touch the side of his face and gently wipe away his tears. It was Valentino. He instantly looked into those once void red eyes to find that they had a little emotion left in them.

"It's never easy," the assassin told him, his voice in a foreign and almost kind tone.

Rubio gasped a little then put his hand on the side of Valentino's face with a thumb placed lightly under his lips. "I think we can work things out."

Valentino's breathing was a little shaky with the emotion that he felt. For once he was the unstable one but not in a way that made him feel psychotic. It was in a way that made him feel strange and light-hearted. It almost made him feel as if he could be human. A tiny portion of his chest where his heart was located tingled and he felt a lump in the pit of his stomach.

"What are you so nervous about?" Rubio noticed the assassin's shaky breathing.

"Nothing," he replied in a breathy tone.

"What? You think I'm going to kiss you or something?"

"Of course not, why would you?"

Rubio kissed him on the cheek below his eye and near his nose. The other man closed his eyes, submitting to him. He hated to admit it but these were the feelings that he had longed for and they couldn't have felt more right with anyone else.

"Rubio…Why?" Valentino said, barely above a whisper.

"Shut up and enjoy it," Rubio whispered seductively as he pulled away, inches from touching his lips.

"Quit using me."

The silver haired man only chuckled in response. A response that sent that familiar course of anger trailing through his veins and made him want to strike him. He didn't find this matter funny at all. He said that he wasn't going to let Rubio use him and he'd be damned if it happened.

"You son of a-" The red and black clad man drew his fist back in an attempted punch but his hand was caught by the other man, who wore a sly smile on his face.

"Tell me Valentino, what do you think about me?" He asked coyly as if he had some sort of advantage over him.

"Don't screw with me," the black-haired man warned.

"What if I am?"

"You'll be sorry…"

"But what if I'm not?" The tone sounded grave and it had managed to catch the assassin off guard for a few moments. Then his red eyes narrowed and cased their vulnerability inside of a wall of anger.

"Don't make me throw you off of this roof."

"You're-Ah!" Rubio began but could never finish the sentence because he was nearly punched in the face. This threw him off guard and since he had been grabbing a hold of Valentino, the both of them went rolling down the steep side of the roof.

Inside of the house, a small child was gazing at the stars and commenting on how pretty the night sky was. Then the child could see two male forms fall past it and screamed in fright, calling out to his mother and running into the next room.

"Jack ass…" Valentino lay on his back on the ground below. He then arose.

"Why did you do that for?" Rubio rubbed his injured head.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

Valentino turned slowly and began to walk off before he was tackled by the black-clad man behind him. It had been so fast that it all seemed like a blur to him. Before he knew it, Rubio was on top of him, staring into his eyes once more. The silver-haired man towered over him like a predatory animal.

"You're not getting away. You can't walk away."

"Why do you need me?"

"I don't know," Rubio's words were confused. Not even he knew the answer to this question. He simply knew that he needed the assassin but not what for.

"Do you want to know the truth?" Valentino leveled him with a serious gaze.

"About what?"

"I need you as well," he closed his eyes in defeat.

"Why?"

"Because you need someone right now. Someone who doesn't hassle you. I know that Sari and Vincent can get under your skin and the only reason I get under your skin is because of what I did in the past. If we had known each other in the past, maybe we could have been friends."

"We are friends, from now on."

"Don't force it on me."

"I'm not," Rubio crawled off of him and the two sat on the ground. A moment of silence passed between the two of them before either one of them spoke. Then Rubio decided to break the conversation with a simple 'hey'. Valentino said nothing in reply but acknowledged him by looking at him.

"Come on; don't be so touchy about yourself," Rubio said.

"Me?...Touchy?" Valentino asked with a cock of his head.

"Okay, okay, eating my words. You're not so bad…" Rubio admitted.

"…"

"Would you quit being silent?"

A sigh was emitted. Rubio had a feeling that it was as close to talking as he would get.

"At least you said something. Well, this wasn't according to plan," Rubio sighed to himself. Nothing had been going the way he had predicted at all today and this little turn of events was no exception.

"I know."

"You say that to everything," Rubio replied. It was so typically Valentino to come up with a response like that.

"Okay, I won't talk."

"I'll slap you again."

"It doesn't hurt."

"I never meant it to. I just wanted to snap you into reality. You made me mad," Rubio was beginning to grow irritated with him again but it was only slight. In verbal conversations, he never seemed to be on the winning end. It seemed like Valentino had a smart ass comment to everything.

"Look, we've both been through a lot, so let's try to put it behind us," the black-haired man thought that forgetting about all of their fights or coming to terms with them would be for the best. If neither one of them moved forward then things would only get more complicated in the long run.

Rubio agreed. They stared at each other for a few moments in time. Each of them speechless, no movements were made and they dared not to do anything in the slightest. All around them, an unforeseen tension seemed to build. It literally made Rubio's feeling tremble. It was as if it were forcing him to say something unspoken. To say something that had been locked away in the deepest part of his mind.

"I-If you want, I can…you know," he stuttered. He finally released the one thing that he'd been holding back…or at least trying to hold back for quite some time now. Rubio had taken time to notice just how stunning the white light of the moon had made Valentino look. His jet-black hair shone with a mystical type of radiance that nearly seemed unearthly and the white tones made his eyes shine with kaleidoscopic beauty. His skin was a shade paler which made him look more pale, more supernatural and handsome.

He had shown with all of the presence of a black knight.

"No, I don't know," Valentino looked a little confused by his earlier remark.

"I can…" Rubio tried once more to tell him but he just couldn't. He couldn't find the will power to tell Valentino what he'd been feeling for that brief moment in time. No matter how beautiful those red eyes were, he was powerless to say anything with them staring him down like that.

"I can't say it with you looking at me like that," he scolded out of fright, which made the mystical man turn his gaze away. The assassin could feel hands being sat upon his shoulders and turned around to see what exactly the other ex-terrorist had been planning to do. He was then face-to-face with Rubio. The silver haired man was nervous and leaned in with trembling lips to brush his with the pale ones of Valentino in a tender and vulnerable kiss. Red eyes widened at this. Never once had Valentino thought that the other man would dare kiss him, but here they were as real as anything, sharing a kiss under the glassy moon. He succumbed to the feelings within him that told him that the moment was only right and began to softly kiss him back. It had to be gentle. Anything else would scare him too much and cause him to turn away.

As soon as Rubio felt the other return his gesture a course of panic ran through his form and he pulled away from the kiss.

"There," Rubio muttered, "sorry for the remark, the kissing you thing and the rest of that. You don't seem like this type of person but don't tell anyone about this."

Valentino agreed, a slight blush tinted his cheeks.

"Now, come on fruit cake. Let's get back to Ryouzonia," Rubio told him with a playful smile.

"I'm a fruit cake?" Valentino arched an eyebrow. Like Rubio had any business insinuating that he was gay after what had just happened.

"Yes, because you liked it."

"…"

Then the silence hit the silver-haired man. "Did you?" He cast a confused glance at the assassin.

"It doesn't matter," the stoic man shrugged it off, as he did most things.

"It does."

"Not to you."

"It matters to me," Rubio didn't know why but it mattered the most to him at the moment.

"Let me guess because you kissed me, right?" He shot him a glare.

"No…I just…want to know," the other's voice seemed nearly feeble and incredibly shy.

"You pulled away when I kissed you," Valentino seemed offended by this. He didn't need someone calling him a fruit cake for their own homosexual actions and furthermore pushing him away when he decides that he finally wanted to show some feeling back.

"Why would you want to? I've been a jerk to you."

"I don't know. You're not gay, so why did you do it?"

Rubio blinked, "I don't know."

"So it doesn't matter," Valentino had more then won this argument before it even started.

"I guess not…I just wanted to know," Rubio's voice seemed subdued and he actually gave in to the other man and seemed a little hurt that he didn't believe him.

"It doesn't matter," the dark-haired man tried to push the subject farther away by letting it die.

The other male sighed in defeat. "It's been a long time since I've kissed anyone," Rubio wasn't about to let this die so easily.

"Me too," Valentino agreed.

"You know…you are a pretty boy."

"What's that supposed to mean?" The assassin didn't understand the logic of that random statement. What relevance did it have to anything?

Rubio blushed, and then the other man blushed and turned his head away. The silver-haired man began to walk away and Valentino walked beside of him. The two men were quiet as they walked side-by-side down the dark alley ways under the night sky. Both of them refused to look at the other.

This was very awkward.

"Do you like the night?" Existing in silence for this moment in time was too uncomfortable so Rubio tried to bring up a subject that both fit the atmosphere and didn't lead back into any conversations about love.

"Yes, it's my favorite time of day."

"I like evening."

"Verge of darkness…" Valentino said voidly and looked at Rubio who arched an eyebrow. He could then feel his hand being grasped tenderly.

"Can I?" The assassin asked in a somewhat shy voice.

"Uh…" This made Rubio nervous. "Can you what?"

The assassin moved in close to his head. "Can I…kiss you?"

Rubio had been stunned by the question. The killer was being bold tonight but he could not tell him no. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and every inch of his body was screaming for him to kiss the other man, despite what few protests his brain had been throwing out as a last defense. He leaned in and allowed himself to reach the other's lips as he received a gentle kiss. Rubio reached a hand up and sat it tenderly on the dark man's chest and wrapped his other arm around his neck. Arms were then wrapped around him in turn.

The two of them shared a five minute kiss under the moonlight and finally pulled back and gazed into each other's eyes, attempting to read any emotion held deep within them that was being unspoken by their lips.

"Some one's lying about something, because this isn't right. We're not supposed to be doing this," Valentino told him.

"Okay you're right. Love has no gender," Rubio admitted. With that statement, he felt a weight being lifted from his chest. It was as if all of his burdens had been freed for that moment in time.

"What are you saying?" The assassin blinked at him.

"I-it was a nice kiss."

"I could never do this with Sari and feel comfortable."

"I thought you liked her."

"Not like that."

Rubio was panting a little; his breath was stolen temporarily from the small moment of passion.

"It wasn't bad…"

"Not the word I'd use to describe it."

"So…"

"What's not right about this?" Valentino tried to avoid the silence.

"Everything, we should be fighting…damn you, it's your fault," Rubio teased the other man.

"I know, I killed Angora and I put you out of your job and made you go against Ibuki-sama…"

"When I look at you now, Angora doesn't matter as much as she used to," Rubio told him and gazed straight into the other man's eyes. More than anything, he wanted Valentino to know that it was a true statement. He wanted the other man to believe that. He wanted him to believe that he could be faithful.

"I know you didn't like her," he deduced.

"Why does that matter?"

"It doesn't," Rubio ran a hand through the other man's hair, feeling the silky strands as they flowed around his large hand like silken bed sheets on a king's bed. "It's just that…certain things in you remind me of her. Hope that doesn't bother you."

Valentino narrowed his eyes, "figures."

"But she was nowhere near the kisser you are, if that counts," Rubio knew he was offended and tried to make him feel at least a little better. He had the feeling that he shouldn't have said that but he didn't want to lie to Valentino. After all, it would just make things worse between them.

"Thank you, Rubio-sama."

"What?"

"Rubio-sama…"

"At least it's not sempai."

"No, -sama is a better honorific for you."

"Fair is fair, Valentino-sama."

"I've never been called -sama before," Valentino felt a little flattered by the honorific.

"Okay, I'll call you -kun if you don't like -sama."

While he liked being referred to as something high, he knew he was not so he settled on -kun. It was a friendship level and wouldn't cause much questioning in the group.

"No more fighting," Rubio told him.

"It seems we've kissed and made up."

"You could say that," the silver-haired man blushed slightly.

"We should go."

"Yeah, everyone else probably thanks we're killing each other again," Rubio nearly joked about the comment. He'd figured that everyone came to the worst conclusions when the two of them went off together.

"Let them think it," Valentino said. As long as they had a cover, they could do this again. It could be their secret.

"I don't care either…Just don't tell Vincent…Or Sari…or anyone else about the kiss," Rubio looked more and more unamused with listing each name.

"It's none of their business."

"Well, this has been an odd day."

"No joke, I never expected this."

"You know what, Valentino-kun?" Rubio looked to the other man, smiling.

"What, Rubio-sama?"

"We're dumbasses."

A small smile crept to the assassin's face. "We probably are."

XxXx

Upon reaching Ryouzonia's doorstep the two of them decided that walking in with their hands together was a definite mistake so Valentino let go and they each said their good nights. They kept it professional in case anyone had been up and seen them already and the two of them walked in the door, headed for their own respected rooms to get some well earned rest.

To Be Continued…