PROTECT ME: EPILOGUE

[andrew_in_drag]

Title: Protect Me
Author: andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Kaoru x Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: sex, rudeness, swears, boyish attitudes, AU
Chapter: epilogue
Previously: prologue >> one >> two >> three >> four >> five >> six 
>> seven >> eight >> nine >> ten >> eleven >> twelve >> thirteen 
>> fourteen >> fifteen >> sixteen >> seventeen >> eighteen 
>> nineteen >> twenty >> twenty-one >> twenty-two >> twenty-three
Synopsis: “Toshimasa Hara. Even now I sometimes find it hard to decide if his name gives me heartache or a headache…”

As a police officer in Shinsekai, Osaka, Kaoru has seen his fair share of trouble. Chaos takes a human form, however, in Toshiya Hara, a young local who seems intent on showing him that sometimes the right way is not always the good way, and that sometimes the wrong way can be the path to redemption...

EPILOGUE: ONE YEAR LATER


My lover lies in bed next to me, a lock of hair fluttering before his lips with every slow, deep breath he takes. 
He is so beautiful, I can't stop looking at him. 
A year has passed since we first met; it's spring again. The city is coming into bloom, and although we're a long way from the castle park now, we'll find different trees to lie under this year. 
Quite a lot has changed. We're not Kaoru and Toshiya anymore, except to each other: we have new friends who accept our fake names as gospel truth. When they ask us how we wet, me um and ah and lie a lot: Toshiya's favourite story is to say that we met on board a sinking ship. Of course, they don't believe us, but like all good people they accept that there are some things they simply do not have to know; that we, like everyone else, must have our secrets. 
We live now in a different city, a long way from the first. When we left, we took hardly a thing with us, our flight was so hasty, but now we are set up in a little apartment fifteen floors above the traffic and people and danger below. 
And oh, that reminds me: Toshiya never really was afraid of riding in elevators. What ade him blanch that day in the hotel was nothing ore than second thoughts; nothing more, he has told me since, than the realisation that actually, I made him happier than he'd ever been. 

These days, I work as a private tutor, and I'm studying to be a teacher. I'm writing a book, too. Toshiya still designs clothes, but he doesn't need to make them anymore; now, he has two or three seamstresses to do that for him, so he is free to invent. He sells his original designs in the boutique he opened. 
He's becoming pretty successful. 
And life is good. We can both get hoe at the end of the day, leave our jobs at the door and enjoy each other in a way we never could whilst I was a police officer and he was a double agent. We're not even halfway through the list of crazy sexy stuff he wants to try, but let me tell you, we kept those handcuffs. 
And the best thing, by far, is that we're both free. 

You see, I was so scared of prison that I didn't even acknowledge the fact that I was already there - a personal prison of my own making, like barbed wire and bars around my heart; the kind of prison that would have kept two people like us apart forever. 
Assuming that you are happy and knowing that you are happy are two very, very different things. It took the most impossible of romances, a cop and a courtesan, to make me realise that life was just in front of me, well within my reach, if I could only stretch out and grab it—
And I finally figured out what it really is to protect someone, and it's something no job ever could have taught me. Caring for somebody, really protecting them - that's a full-time career. It's something you do when you arrive home safe every evening; when you curl up beside them in bed; when you make love to them. I look at Toshiya now, and I think: I want to hold you forever; I want to wrap you up. 

Next to me in bed, he sighs softly before his eyes reluctantly open; languidly, he drags himself up and settles back against his pillow, smiling at me sleepily. 
"Hey," he says softly, "What are you doing up? It's late." He wriggles contentedly. "I thought you would have been all tired out." 
I hold out my arm and he snuggles in next to me, his hand fanning across my chest possessively. He taps the notebook I hold on my lap, "Still writing your book?" 
I kiss the top of his head, relaxing into him. "Yes, but I think it's almost finished now. I've got my happy ending," I say, and feel him smile against my skin. Daintily, he lays a light little kiss right on my nipple, brushing his lips over the flesh teasingly. 
"Oh yeah?" he asks, "How are you going to finish it?" 
I feel my stomach dip, just as it does so often when I'm with him; his fingers rub soothing patterns over my belly, circling lower and lower all the time.
"I don't know," I say, getting a little breathless as he tugs gently at the waist of the boxers I had worn to bed. "I'm trying to think of a good way to say it." 
"Mm?" he traces a finger over my dick carefully, feeling the flesh begin to flush and harden beneath his touch, "Say what, Karou?"
I shift, trying to stop my hips from jerking upwards into his hand; with those few touches, he is starting to unravel me, reeling me out like a spool, making me feel undone.
"Just that I - ah - I got everything I never knew I wanted. Got everything I never even knew I needed." I beam down at him, feeling his hand still as he listens to me. "And that since I met you, I have been more scared, angry, beaten, kidnapped and just plain exhausted than I've ever been in my life. And..."
"And?" he asks, nervously biting his beautiful lower lip; weak, I can't resist kissing him. 
"And," I finish, "Somehow, out of all that, you've made it so that...you've made me happier than I ever thought I could be. And that the only thing I'm scared of now is the thought of you going away from me, because I have never in my life felt the way..." I hesitate, swallow anxiously, "The way I feel when I'm with you." 

There is a pause. I shrug, growing a little self-conscious as he stares at me, in spite of the arousal flickering at the bottom of my stomach. Something about his hundred-watt gaze can still made me feel like his is staring right in to the core of me; like I have nothing to hide. Slowly, he pulls the sheet off me and crawls between my legs, his beautiful skin completely bare in the moonlight that streams in through the window. No matter how many times I see him like this, it always takes my breath away. It always will. 
"Kaoru," he says gently, "You said it. You said it." 
He stretches forward to kiss me and my notebook falls to the floor, forgotten: the book, now, is finished, and the dream stretches forth into reality - life has, at last begun. This is how we protect each other with our love; this is how we know that it was never really Kyo, but us who were the demons.
We shift our shapes, we hide ourselves; we are the only mischievous guardians of our own pleasure-loving, wandering souls. I'll take him, take care of him; protect him, always. 

THE END

Comments

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

aw, thank you! and thank you so much for commenting throughout - it's meant a LOT to me to have your consistent support!

you've given such lovely comments, too, I don't know how I can ever thank you!

I can't believe Protect Me is finished. Mind you, it's Easter Sunday, so I'm all set to debut my NEW fic later today! xx

[aibashi.livejournal.com]

you're more than welcome! like i said it has been a while since a good chaptered kaoruxtoshiya fic started to be written so i could only comment and basically be addicted to it.

and omg new fic!!!!
so excited, can't wait for reading it.