Cat and Mouse

Night was a black shadow draped over the city and the sky was filmed over with powdered gray charcoal. Clouds blocked any hope for a star daring to shine onto the neon and fluorescent city suffocating in its own artificial light. Still, Yohji squinted up at the sky, hoping to see a sign of burgeoning moonlight, a bright star, anything to illuminate the dark on the roof of this skyscraper high above the ubiquitous glow of Tokyo’s insomniac midnight.

"There’s the face of a man that’s contemplating his own death."

Yohji whirled blindly, whipping out a short length of wire to catch anything standing in the impenetrable blackness in front of him. Panic-stricken, he wiped at his face. Blind, blind, blind… Was it his own eyes failing him, or was Schuldig playing with his aberrant psychic powers and turning Yohji’s senses against him? His eyes burned and watered and darkness tunneled around him, giving him a narrow pinpoint of sight. He was looking through the wrong end of the damn telescope and it made his vision blurry and uncertain—made it impossible to find the Schwarz bastard that flitted around in the shadows as fast and restless as a fly.

"You can’t see a thing, poor blind Weiß." This time the voice came from his left and he turned again, squinting desperately and striking out with his wire again.

"One blind Weiß, one blind Weiß," sang a shadow, "see how he runs, see how he runs."

The voice shifted, coming from near and then far as Yohji frantically tried to follow it in the darkness. If the Schwarz had his sight, then Yohji could not rely on his ears to guide him, but it was his only choice. Dammit, Yohji hated to feel so helpless.

"Always be prepared, little Weiß," hissed Schuldig. "You are not the only one that benefits from shadows."

Shit, Yohji thought succinctly, clawing again at his useless eyes as if he could physically force the telepath out of his mind. He fought for calm and tried to pull in all the wild strings of panicked thoughts, searching for his center—but the niggling, cold strand of fear that itched at the back of his neck and skull was hard to ignore.

"You appear distressed," the voice breathed just behind Yohji and he swirled quickly. His wire shot out and met resistance for a moment before going slack—for an instant he had had Schuldig. Yohji smiled grimly into the darkness.

"Nice, little Weiß. You bit flesh on that one. Maybe the little mouse knows how to use his tail, ne?"

Yohji did not reply, he just listened for the rustle of clothing, the drawing of breath that would signal an attack. He was off balance, though and his body was betraying him left and right that night. He could feel Schuldig’s movement, knew the fucker was creeping silently around him, but he simply couldn’t find him.

A rush of air on his face alerted him only a moment before a sharp blow to his temple brought him to his knees and even as he reached out blindly to catch his attacker’s legs Schuldig kicked Yohji hard in the left shoulder and knocked him flat onto his back.

"Fu—" Yohji had time to gasp before Schuldig’s weight settled solely on his upper body, a knee digging into his chest and pressing on his windpipe, and the cool metal of a serrated knife sunk its teeth into the soft flesh of his throat.

Oh God, finally, Yohji thought in a burst of shock, awe and indignant anger as the blade slipped painfully on his neck and opened a thin, burning slice. He was going to die, half-blind on top of the First Bank of Tokyo office building in an entirely unplanned struggle with a psycho that was after himself and the rest of his teammates for no obvious better reason than spite. Yohji had been out for a good time that night; catching sight of the Schwarz bastard had been pure luck. Bad luck, as it seemed now. When he didn’t return home that night, the others would just assume that he had found another, more attractively occupied bed to spend the evening in than his empty one in his second-floor bedroom.

Fuck, really, he thought, almost coolly even as his eyes widened frantically with the intention of seeing more than the narrow pinpoint of his vision would allow.

Warm, damp breath against his cheek; the fucker was bent way over with his lips just brushing Yohji’s left cheek.

"Poor little mouse," Schuldig purred.

"Not a mouse—Weiß," Yohji muttered defiantly, struggling to get it out around the pressure the other put on his windpipe.

"Yes, a mouse," the faceless voice said, and Yohji had the distinct impression that the bastard was smiling. "A mouse, and I am the cat, having fun with its prey before finally devouring it."

Yohji tried to turn his head a little but the knife pressed too painfully into his skin. "Didn’t anyone ever teach you, ng," Yohji grunted breathlessly, "not to play with your food?"

Laughter. Glad you’re amused, asshole.

Cool fingers tickled the flesh of his jaw line and Yohji cringed. Then, horrifyingly, he felt a silky stroke like a snake over his buttocks and then up his spine—but Schuldig’s hands were still on his chest and Yohji was pressed flush against the roof floor. Schuldig was using his deviant psychic ability to grope Yohji; an intrusive tendril of perverted thought curled into his mind and he railed against the invasion.

The knife against Yohji’s throat slipped slightly as Schuldig chuckled.

"You struggle, Weiß. That’s good, good. I like the feel of you moving around me. When you resist, your mind tightens up and squeezes." He grabbed a handful of Yohji’s midriff-baring black shirt and twisted it as he spoke. His laugh slithered inside Yohji’s chest.

Wild panic rushed back in to obliterate Yohji’s powers of logic. Schuldig’s pawing in his brain was obscene, molesting him with thick, deeply plunging fingers of thought that lusted after his fear. Yohji remained still under the threatening pressure of Schuldig’s knife, but his mind pounded against walls and ran blindly from the pursuit of foreign thoughts.

"Your eyes are so wide, Yohji," Schuldig whispered on his cheek and he started at the sound of his name on the German’s lips. "But you’re always so…heavy-lidded, your eyes hooded—hiding from the world. What’s opened you up, pretty Weiß? Is it fear? Is that what it takes to break you, Weiß? Is that all that it takes?"

And then the sensation of Schuldig’s passionate, eager lust changed to violent dread imposing itself on Yohji’s psyche. It so inured itself in the narrowest corners of his mind that it became his own and he lost sight of the lines between his thought and that which Schuldig forced upon him.

Yohji was frozen not just with cautiousness befitting a man with a knife at his throat, but with the paralysis of a lost child in the hands of the devil. Yohji’s thin, gray-blurry sight failed and went black—scared blind.

"Mm," Schuldig sighed and his tongue lapped warmly at Yohji’s lips, past them to his teeth and the wet flesh inside. "Tastes good."

A small, shackled piece of Yohji growled and tore at the stifling wrap of enforced fear that held him helpless. His throat tightened and tried to speak; he could only let out a high, thin moan.

Schuldig echoed his moan obscenely and laughed. "I’m not going to kill you tonight, Weiß. You taste too good to me. I want to take my time eating all the sweet, sugary bits left. I’ll sink my teeth into you and savor every bite until I’ve consumed all your thoughts and your mind is no longer yours—and then I’ll lick my fingers.

"I’m going to eat you, Kudou."

Yohji drew all his strength, fought the crippling fear and could only make his hands curl into half-fists, rigid claws like the stiffened muscles of rigor mortis.

Schuldig sighed like a sated lover. "Mm, a taste," he whispered and again his tongue was on Yohji’s mouth, parting slack lips and sucking wet, pink flesh. A stab of thought into Yohji’s defenseless mind and he cried out as Schuldig quested unseen between his thighs and worked him with hot, moist, invisible hands. Burning arousal gave him a painfully sudden erection and lust worked its way up through his body with the electric shock of lightning.

"Nooo," Yohji moaned in a voice that sounded damp with tears, though his eyes were wide and dry. To have his mind stolen and controlled by this bastard was nightmarish in its fantastical depths—his brain gripped in the fist of a mad psychic—but to find pleasure in the midst of it and have his body react as if he desired the invasion was a shame so intense it fell over all sane borders into the unreal. Yohji forgot his blindness as Schuldig’s closed fist on his mind snuffed out all of his senses—he went suddenly mad with horror.

Distantly there was laughter but it was too far away to be registered. What was near was the feel of hands and lips on his inner thigh, stroking and sucking hard on the flesh to leave a mark. There seemed to be hands everywhere, more than one man could possess, but Schuldig was not a man; he was a monster.

The far-off laughter turned to angered curses and the caresses stopped—the hands pulled away. Metal clashed against metal above him and the bright beauty of sparks appeared as a shower of light even for sightless eyes. More noise and shouts and the pounding of footsteps. Schuldig’s voice in his mind, I’m going to eat you, Yohji. I’ll come for you again as soon as I get hungry.

Then, abruptly, Yohji could move, think and feel again. Sounds rushed at him like screams as his senses awoke again and it was like emerging from deep water. He gasped for air and threw his head back, noting the tickle of blood flowing down the side of his throat from the cut left by Schuldig’s thirsty blade.

"Yohji?"

Hands on him again, but these were gentle, not eager and the voice and touch were familiar.

"Omi?" Yohji called in a raised voice because he was blind and felt that he had to bridge a great distance to reach his teammate.

"Yohji-kun, what’s wrong, can’t you see me?"

Light hit his eyes suddenly, painfully, and then he could. The edges of his vision were tainted, blurred like a puddle of purple ink on water-stained print. But the center of his vision was bright, clear and filled with Omi’s concerned face. Yohji wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands and sat up too quickly. Ignoring the rush of dizziness, he nodded.

"Yeah, of course I can see you. Now where did the Schwarz fucker go?" he growled, looking around defiantly with a show of bravery that he did not feel and anger that he could not channel into action. Schuldig’s teeth were still in his brain; in the turmoil of his mind, he was cowed.

"Ken and Aya chased after him," Omi said, voice only slightly less worried.

Yohji covered the relief on his face with resentful fury. "Oh sure, run off my kill just when I had him where I wanted him."

"Looked like the other way around."

Yohji whipped around and looked up as Aya and Ken emerged from the roof door and walked behind a wall of heat waves towards Omi and he. Ken still wore his bugnucks but the blades were retracted; Aya had sheathed his sword. Yohji clawed at his eyes again; when he looked up, his vision was more clear.

Omi took one look at them. "He got away." It wasn’t a question.

Ken, who was glowering at Yohji and looked to be about to add more to Aya’s cool observation, scowled and turned to Omi. "Yeah, well you try tracking after that bastard in a stairwell. Seventy-five floors, and you know Schuldig’s speed. He vaulted over the rail on seventy-one and disappeared with a smile." Ken’s scowl deepened and he glared at Omi. Omi, not seeming to care one bit, turned back to Yohji.

"Are you okay?"

Yohji tightened his lips and secretly considered the question. He wiped absently at the wet spot on his neck where he itched and took a deep breath. He held the breath in his lungs and sat in complete stillness for a moment while he concentrated briefly on his body. Nothing was in dangerous amounts of pain, he knew he could stand if he tried and he did not feel that he was about to faint. With those criterion satisfied he opened his eyes and replied, "Yes."

Omi appeared unhappy with that answer but Yohji was too jumpy to sit under that glare and subject himself to a medical examination given by the kid up there on the roof of the First Bank of Tokyo’s Headquarters skyscraper. He stood in one movement and Omi hopped up beside him.

"Yohji, your throat’s bleeding," Aya remarked quietly.

Yohji paused in scratching at the itch on his neck and glanced at his hand. It was red with blood.

"Yeah," he said softly, feeling the intense echoes of the crippling fear Schuldig had forced on him. He rubbed the blood between thumb and forefinger. "Schuldig had a knife."

"And you let him get it on you?" Ken scoffed disdainfully. "Let me see. Get your hand out of the way."

Yohji shook himself as he tilted his head back and looked at Aya over the top of the brunet’s head. The redhead was staring silently out over the city from the short stone lip of the roof. His face was set in a slight frown and he was fingering the hilt of his sheathed katana.

"Don’t jump," Yohji said in a slightly shaky voice. He frowned and reached into his trench coat’s right pocket to remove a cigarette and lighter.

Aya looked over at Yohji and cocked an eyebrow, then turned wordlessly back to his vigil. Yohji sighed and then yelped as Ken did something to his neck that stung.

"Hey, watch it!" Yohji admonished as he lifted trembling hands to his mouth and sucked on the head of the cigarette while lighting it. He inhaled deeply and let the smoke numb his brain a little, and burn away the shameful palsy in his hands.

"Well, it looks—" Ken paused and coughed as Yohji blew out a long puff of smoke into his face, "it looks like there are no major arteries clipped so it should take you at least an hour to bleed to death. Plenty of time for you to go back to whichever sleazy joint you spotted Schuldig in."

Yohji smiled and took the handkerchief Omi offered to press against his cut. Enough time, indeed. The disapproval was loud in Ken’s voice—the guy was a Puritan, no question. Who else could be so violently opposed to having fun? Ken constantly berated Yohji for the simple, understandable act of going out to relax and possibly get laid once in a while. Ken would probably be satisfied with Yohji only if he stayed in staring by the hour at a computer screen all night like the kid. The ex-soccer player and all-around bossy brunet did not share Yohji’s opinion that "no work and all play makes Yohji a happy, healthy boy."

More importantly, Yohji needed the pounding blast of club music and the bitter-sweet burn of alcohol that would erase his brain and allow him to de-rez for a while. The stink of Schuldig was all over him; sludgy waste in his mind and maggots crawling over the flesh of his thighs and crotch like a hundred little shit-eating lovers.

"Nah," Yohji said, fingering the cut and forcing his voice to be light and uncaring. "It’s small. I’d say I’ve got a few hours if not more."

Omi sighed and glared at Ken. "You’ll be fine, Yohji, the bleeding’s already slowed down. Still, we should get back and put a bandage on it."

"At any rate, we should get away from here," Ken said, glancing over his shoulder at the neon-bright city below.

At Ken’s words Aya moved from the edge of the roof and preceded them to the door. Yohji followed and left Ken and Omi to trail after them.

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