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Title: rain down fire on my blue sky
Fandom: Full Metal Panic!
Genre: Het, Angst
Word Count: ~1500
Pairing: Sosuke/ Kaname
Rating: R
Warnings: Weird angst, effing with canon, nonexplicit sex
Notes: Fills the 'Mechanical/Technological' square of my kink_bingo.
Summary: Kaname loves Sosuke, she just might love his Arm Slave more.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue.
When she was seven, Kaname wrote a neatly-penned letter to herself of ten years later, putting down all of her hopes and dreams, expectations of an older self.
I hope I am at the top of my class.
I hope I am the president of the student council.
I hope I have many friends. I hope I have a boyfriend
So far, she has achieved all of these, even the last one. What’s not on the list, however, is getting shot at, getting kidnapped, having horrible experiments run on her body, putting all of her friend’s lives in danger, getting rescued by a secret government agency, being told that she had secretly powerful mind-powers …
These days, it’s all Kaname can do to feel safe. Constantly on the run, constantly looking over her shoulder. For the past year, Kaname has associated Sosuke with that term - safe - as if it means anything anymore. She clings to him and pushes him away, runs from him and hopes he will follow.
In the frenzy of battle and the knowledge of this might be the last time, she needs him with an urgency that skitters under her skin, that burrows deep inside until she falls completely, inevitably, in love.
With him she can keep her strength, even though she feels so weak on the inside. She kissed him for the first time because she was so relieved to feel anything, clinging to his body as they leaned against his smoldering Arm Slave, his right arm wet with blood, her ribs streaked with bruises. The hot metal calmed her as she made Sosuke press her back against it, tugging him closer until she could imagine them melting together, glowing in the night.
The first time they fucked was in the cockpit, grinding against the black leather seats and staining them with sweat. It wasn’t as frantic as it sounded. Sosuke was gentle and through in his caresses, constantly asking for confirmation from Kaname on whether she was in pain.
And afterwards, tangled close together in the space designed for one, Kaname thought that it might have been the safest she had ever felt, cradled in machinery and the scratchy wool of Sosuke’s uniform. No matter that outside it rained bullets and enemy troops swarmed in constant threat of breaking their cover.
At the time she thought it was Sosuke’s voice in her ear, promising to protect her forever, that made her heart beat slow and sweet. She fell asleep to the scent of metal and gunpowder.
It went on like this, their love. Kaname justified it to herself in the urgency of the moment, stealing kisses between exploding shells. They had sex slow and shuddering when they had the time, fast and desperate when they didn’t, broke each other into pieces with their frantic, silent promises.
Stolen seconds, cradling Sosuke’s face in her hands, his hair smelling of smoke. She snuck into his bunkers at night, and they made love to the whirr of war machines, fucked to the rhythmic shrill of alarms.
The fighting aged them quickly. Real life seemed far behind. Kaname stopped wondering if her mother would be ashamed of her lost virginity, if her father would approve of Sosuke as a son-in-law, if her friends would look her in the eye if they knew. It was too tiring to be ashamed of her lust.
And the moment of her life which she would remember forever was when Sosuke’s Arm Slave plucked her off the ground and cradled her in its hands, hot metal closing around her body like a cage. Though the cracks of its fingers she could see the ground rushing by as they fled over land carved with bullet holes. She had never felt such fear. She had never felt such exhilaration.
That was when she began to suspect. But the gears of circumstance turned too frantically for her to follow that train of thought. Everyone was too preoccupied with staying alive to wonder if the one they loved was really the one they loved.
The ending of it all was spectacular, a fight she wasn’t allowed to participate in, except in spirit, where she guided Sosuke forward with the desperate force of come back to me, you bastard, come back.
“It’s over.” She will forever remember Sosuke saying these words, and she grabbed him and poured tears all over his shoulders. Relief that the body she held in her arms was still whole. And a shameful, fleeting sense of regret that everything had ended.
Everyone is still celebrating a few days later. Kurz and Melissa lead a round of drinks at a local bar where Sosuke and Kaname are still too young to consume alcohol. Everyone is speaking of home, and Kaname wonders at her melancholy. She plays happy for Sosuke, who seems to take her at face value. At least he seems as uncomfortable in this kind of atmosphere as she is.
After about an hour, he grabs her hand and asks her if they can leave. She agrees with relief. As they slip through the crowd she catches Kurz’s eye and fancies that he understands. But then he winks and she knows that he doesn’t.
“I’ve … rented a hotel room,” Sosuke says with his usual lack of emotion, although Kaname can read him much better now and sees the slight hunch of his shoulders, the touch of color on his cheeks.
“Yes, yes, okay.” She is fervent, tells herself that she needs this. They have touched in the days after the ending of it all, but it hasn’t felt right. Perhaps now it will.
The hotel is more expensive than she expected. They are welcomed in respectfully, even though Kaname feels as if everyone can see right through her. The trip to the room is made in silence. Sosuke is still nervous, checks around every corner, his hand on the small of Kaname’s back.
She wonders, in a moment of delirium, if Sosuke would do this the rest of their lives. Live as though he still had to protect her.
In the room, the sheets are white and folded back into an ironed triangle. The walls are a light mint color. The curtains are drawn. Kaname knows that she has changed when she helps Sosuke sweep down the room for weaknesses and possible exit strategies, unable to feel settled until their safety is confirmed. As much as it can be, for as much time as they are given.
They undress and argue briefly about the lights. Sosuke wants them on, he really does, and Kaname acquiesces more out of surprise than anything else.
It feels awkward in the moment before they touch, and the feeling of unsettled need doesn’t pass even as Sosuke kisses her. Tonight he tastes of tea, no gunsmoke or blood. The room feels too silent. She wants there to be a whirring, humming accompaniment to their motions, as if somehow what they are doing is less without the threat of death, the thin layer of metal protecting them from the outside world.
She begins to complain about the lights, says they make her feel as if she’s being watched. Sosuke listens to her arguments with an inscrutable expression and complies. Lately all he seems to be following are her orders. But it makes her feel wretched, like she has deprived him of something they both needed.
In return she sucks him the way he likes, and he is surprised and anxious up until the moment he comes into her mouth, and after, when she spits into a tissue. He loves her, he is grateful, she can read this in the worried way he cups her shoulders. He wants to reciprocate.
Later, she hushes him, laying her head on his chest, Now I just want to feel you.
He accepts that, allowing himself to slip into an unusually heavy sleep. She can feel him fighting it at first, waking in fits and starts, groping for her until she calms him, calms him, and finally he moves no more and breathes deep.
Kaname slips out of bed, dressing quickly. She betrayed him, betrayed his love for her with the sleeping drug she slipped into his tea. If he wakes without her near …
But this is a test she has placed for herself, a chance she must take. Tonight, she will go to the Arm Slaves locked under the bunker, quiet and still. She sees them in her mind: the tragic gods of war, frozen in action, locked in time.
Perhaps she is a monster to desire burning metal on her skin, the shattering of bullets, the horrors of battle. Or perhaps she truly does love Sosuke, and the haze of adrenaline will disperse to uncover a bond as wide as it is deep.
Either way, she thinks, she must know.
Kaname turns back once more to see her lover, her Sosuke curled so fragile in the bedsheets. In the morning, if she is by his side, she will marry this man and shred her dreams of dawns that burn like fire, the twist of gears under her fingertips, riding in hands large enough to cup her around and offer her to the sky.
And if not, well. She never deserved him in the first place.