Chapter Text
Day 2: Mirror/Imitation
Suzaku lies on his side, his cheek propped on his first, the sheets tangled at his waist. He doesn’t take his eyes off Julius, barely daring to blink, half-afraid that he’ll disappear. Certainly his grasp on reality is… loose at times. Suzaku doesn’t want to see Lelouch. Not tonight.
Perhaps not ever again.
Julius is familiar, of course, indistinguishable from Lelouch, pale of form, slender, almost alarmingly so. He’s like a wraith as he examines himself in the mirror, naked but for his eyepatch, scouring himself for marks.
“Four bruises,” he needles, finding the last one on the back of his thigh. “I ought to have you whipped, Kururugi.”
“Like you wouldn’t get a boner watching that,” Suzaku retorts.
“Who says I’d watch?”
“As if you’d be able to resist.”
Julius turns towards him, the jewel at his cheek gleaming. “How bold. Disrespectful, even.”
“Come back to bed if you want to be disrespected even more,” Suzaku says.
Julius snorts, perhaps in disbelief, but nonetheless, he makes his way back towards the bed, his narrow hips swaying. “You’re lucky I don’t like you being a doormat in private,” he says, climbing onto the bed.
“Took you a while to come around,” Suzaku reminds him. Those first few times he’d snapped and answered back had been dangerous, he knows - but somehow Julius’ bizarre fabricated personality seems to enjoy it. Perhaps that’s the little bit of Lelouch left in him, the little piece that still loves Suzaku, that enjoys being bullied by him.
“Can you blame me?” Julius asks loftily. “What sort of Britannian allows a Number to talk back?”
A royal one, Suzaku thinks wryly. “I can’t think, my lord.”
“Heh.” Julius gives a devious grin, reaching out to pat Suzaku’s cheek. “Well, I trust you to hold your tongue in better company. I don’t feel like explaining myself to His Majesty.”
“Me neither,” Suzaku says, though he has a feeling Charles already knows - that he knew before, or at least suspected, and that’s part of the reason why he punished them both like this. Perhaps he’d thought - naively - that it might put a stop to it.
Alas, they cannot resist one another. Suzaku wants to hate Julius, to hate Lelouch, but he just can’t. It was barely a month before Julius made his way into Suzaku’s bed and Suzaku, self-loathing, did not refuse him. Maybe this is the version of Lelouch that he deserves.
Julius clambers onto him, straddling his belly, smirking down at him. Suzaku puts his hands on him, pressing his broad fingers to his slender chest and pulling them downwards, settling at his tiny waist. He squeezes hard enough to bruise.
“Kururugi,” Julius warns, arching his back.
“Yeah?” Suzaku retorts.
“Watch yourself.”
“Is that an order, Lord Kingsley?”
Julius snorts, preening. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps I should pound you into the mattress the way you like, my lord.”
Julius bites his bottom lip, dipping his head, letting Suzaku take him as he pleases. He’s full of self-loathing, too, beneath that eyepatch. Suzaku can see himself reflected in that single violet eye, too: White Death, murderer, traitor.
He doesn’t want to see anything else.