The Death of Romance by Venatus_Fraus

Prelude

Disclaimer: I do not own any of R. Takahashi's characters. I do, however, own this sad little story, though, and many others like it. I get the inspiration for them from my sad little life. >.<

A/N: For any of you who would like to know, Chapter four of Tightly strung is almost ready. I have been grinding away at it. It is 13,698 words long and I still have more to write, so I may have to break it into two chapters. Okay....'almost' may be sort of presumptuous. But, I am slaving.

Seriously.

But the Muse, (Bitch!!) waved me off of it two days ago and handed me this with that "Cleveland or bust!!" look on her face. I tried to keep going, but she followed me all the way to Barnes and Noble and wouldn't even let me shop. So here it is, unedited, and containing Sessh flavored citric acid.

P.s.: Complain about my lime and I'll cry & yell mad swears at you. They are hard to write. No pun intended.

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The Usual....

" ... "- Speaking

'.....'- Thinking

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The Death of Romance

By Venatus_Fraus

"Romance is bullshit, Baby. It's a dream that makes people unhappy when they have to wake up. Romance'll make you want to sleep forever."

-Anita Gail Barrett Head

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It hummed.

'Rattle and Hum'.

The fluorescent light hummed above the porcelain bowl where he had washed his face every morning of his collegiate life. Since freshman year, this had been his sink. He looked at himself every morning in this mirror at 4:35 am. He brushed his hair in front of it. He didn't shave here, because he did that in the shower between 4 and 4:18 am, while everyone else slept. He was a creature of habit. Routine. It was a necessary trait for a person of whom a certain standard of achievement and behaviors were expected.

And the things that were expected?

To be modest, it was a very high bar.

And how that bar was reached, no one really cared. Tashio merely meant for his standards to be met. It didn't matter how. He never offered advice on the subject...

He passed out ultimatums.

'My breath sounds so loud, like breaking waves....'

The nude, pale figure in the mirror tensed feeling an odd pressure settle over his heart like an attack of nerves. Showtime.

The light above the sink continued to sing it's siren-like song, like a precursor to the activity it ushered in. Everything in the room, all things in the path of the light, enjoyed the sickly glare of being bathed in its ultra-artificial radiance. This ailing landscape was laced with gray shadow, dangerous sinister patches of area that the light couldn't find. What hid there? What lived in places where the light couldn't get?

'Maybe I do. Maybe this, and that over there, are meant to be my domain. Maybe this wet, frightening space is meant for me.'

"That would suit.."

'It's my jungle', he thought. 'My strange place of solitude and comfort.'

He loosened his grip on the tumultuous thoughts rolling through his mind, the pain and the immense pressure, the suppressed desire, and the rages and sadnesses they had birthed after so many years of breeding inside his chest. He sank the razor into the pale, resilient flesh of his forearm.

The skin flayed back and open and just as quickly the crimson elixir of his being blossomed out to meet the open air. It rounded of oddly before spilling over to run down the underside of the outstretched appendage before dripping to the floor. He stilled his erratic breathing, concentrating on the wet warmth of it.

He listened to the sound of it dripping as it fell to the floor. It was as loud in his mind as a war drum.

Then the tears, relief and misery- also wanting to run free and escape- came; they ran softly and quickly down the nearly gaunt cheeks of his pristine face. So hot, tears. Hot like a fevered child, or a woman's sex; things that required urgent attention were often hot, it seemed. And if urgency were required, he would supply it. This was who he was. His function was to become whatever was required, at the moment when it was required. He was exact. Without fail or fault.

Taisho's eldest son could be nothing less. Urgency.

'Faster, then.'

Another cut, quicker and yet as unerringly precise- perfectly congruent- joined the first.

'Will this ever end? Is there ever going to be a time when it can stop? When I can rest, can breathe...can live??'?

It was running now, dripping like a red rain to the floor, popping on the cold tile. His heat being extinguished by the lifeless chill. Six more rapid slices were made. The air grew heady with his blood scent. The pain was nothing, but the bright red scent made alarms ring in the back of his mind like the warning bells at a railway crossing.

He looked down at his arm. Eight.

'Eight. My assigned number. Like an eight ball, which is what I must be. A closer, a finisher. A bad-ass. A god. A stud. A valedictorian. A winner. And it never ends, never does. This struggle will go on and on forever. And I am so sick of trying to be all of these things. I am so sick.'

'This will never, never, never, never end, not ever, I will have to fight forever and bleed forever and obey forever never fail I can never fail never fuck up oh please dear CHRIST let me make the mark because I am not allowed to miss it...'

"Not ever."

The mask in the mirror didn't falter or twitch, but the honey colored eyes flared wildly with upset, and panic. Fear. Usually the fear was swallowed up by the blood. It brought calm. But not this time. This time the fear was eating him up. The fear and the panic, both vying desperately for escape. They made his heart pound so heavily that he thought he might pass out, or throw up.

'How long can you hide? How long can you fight like this, all alone?'

He hated those scared eyes. Hated the torn up arm. This school and his family and his life. He wanted his mother and her arms, someone to tell him that he was doing a good job. Just an embrace and a few kind words.

'But I have nothing! She is gone, so long ago, and there is not anyone.'

'I am alone. Only my responsibilities dwell with me'.

'Alone'.

That realization was what did it. The terror suddenly seemed to burst like a blister and run, coating him within and without in it's needy clutches. It was like a careless lover, who bit and sucked too hard, not caring about the marks they left behind. He fought the scream rising in his throat as the small part of his logical brain railed at him from the corner it has shrunk into.

'Yes, good job, Sessh! Scream! Scream and then someone will run here and find you. You won't be alone anymore. But that will hardly bring comfort...can you even for a moment imagine what your Father's reaction will be upon being notified that his son, his eldest child and heir, was found having a naked fit in a bathroom, trying to slice his arm off. Can you even imagine? Scream and your life won't be worth mentioning. If it causes you so much pain that he doesn't care to do anything but throw tasks at you, imagine what he could do if He really wanted to hurt you. If he cared to try... '

The truth did little to calm him, though.

The scream still itched to be released, as the feelings inside him continued to unfurl. His rationality continued to bellow, and it only added to the heady sense of self –loss that he felt. He would be swallowed, swallowed!! There would be nothing to find when they got here, nothing, he would be gone. Swallowed whole by this storm inside of him.

The razor clattered to the ground as he continued to fight, and the hum of the light seemed like the voice of some angry God rattling, growing in it's intensity, along with the voices in his head and the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. Everything, too much at once.

'I am losing it, I am losing....'

His body spasmed, and something inside broke loose. Taking the momentary lapse in feeling, he instinctively pulled his hand to his mouth and bit into it hard. His arm seemed to develop a mind of it's own, and tried to get away. But he held fast. Fangs and dull teeth sliding farther into the muscle. His head wagged back and forth, like a dog with a chew toy and the flesh tore and bone shattered beneath the grip of the pearlescent clamp that gripped them.

The scream wrenched itself loose, but became lost in the fray. It's birth almost caused him to choke on the mouthful of blood he held.

Falling to his knees, he swallowed and tried to not to sputter. His heart calmed, slowly, and the voices quieted themselves into a chorus of whispers.

Gingerly, he forced himself to slowly unclench his jaw so that he could pull his teeth from the wound. There was a nauseating smacking sound as he pulled from the already healing flesh. He looked at the laceration in wonder, and then at his nearly healed arm.

The blood on the floor.

The Razor.

The cold of the floor brought a shiver to his tortured skin, tightening it, and causing goose bumps to spring up all over him.

Suddenly he felt so tired, and so sad.

'So fucking done.'

He picked the razor up, cradling it in both hands, like a new discovery or a treasure. He began to cry so hard that he shook. It was so ugly, and scary. It was shameful.

He looked at the strands of long silver hair, fallen over his shoulder as he bowed here sobbing. They were soaking in blood.

'Is this what I have become?'

'Or is it what I have always been?'

Sesshoumaru jerked awake in the half-light. He had left the blinds open and the orange glow of downtown seeped in. He pressed his hands against his face, feeling the clammy sweat that the dream had left behind. He had been having it every night lately. And sometimes, during the day, his mind would resurrect it at odd moments.

He hated remembering it. College had been the only part of his life since childhood that had held any happiness for him.

And strangely enough, the happiness was what drove him to the once –a-month madness in the communal bathroom. The happiness made him realize that the rest of his life was bleak. Complete shit, actually.

He had always been ashamed afterward. It made him feel like some whiny ingrate; He was one of the richest men on the planet. He was powerful, ruthless. Commanding. He had been blessed with absolutely every advantage that anyone could hope for. Gifted with beautiful healthy parents, he had had more sex appeal at twelve then most men ever garnered in their whole lives and excelled in athleticism without any real training or practice . He was extremely intelligent, amazingly diligent, and had an iron will. He was born into a position of great prestige, and had inherited every trait that he needed to assume said position. He wore expensive clothes, ate expensive food, and went everywhere by limo. What right did he have to complain about anything? It was ridiculous.

There were people in alleyways twelve blocks from this giant Tower that he commanded his Father's company from that were eating food from garbage cans, for the fucking love of God!

He realized that he was already straightening his tie. His body had been moving the entire time he was thinking. It was something that his Father had taught him. "Think while you move." "Do not remain Idle." "The first thirty minutes of a Man's morning routine tell you exactly how far he will go in life." Tashio had a million different ways to say the same thing. Perhaps that was why he was so talented at turning human beings into obedient machines.

Sesshoumaru Ieto looked around the small living quarter that attached itself to his suite.

Through a small corridor just outside the door of frosted glass, was his behemoth office with another corridor that led to the boardroom. Beyond his office there was the receiving room, where Jeanette's desk was. She was like an air traffic controller, his personal assistant. She doled out his time to some of the wealthiest, most influential people in the business world, and kept them in holding patterns until he was ready for them to land, if something went wrong. She passed out the currency of his life on thick, creamy appointment cards from an executive stationer in London.

Things rarely went wrong, though. Sesshoumaru had built his routines, his staff and his career very tightly. He had, in essence, been preparing for this since he started school.

But today...something was amiss.

He looked back at the bed. He didn't remember making it, or showering. He couldn't recall straightening the room, but knew he had. And now, he was standing here tucking in his shirt, with his tie thrown over his shoulder so that he wouldn't get it caught. He was nearly ready, and ahead of his normal schedule even.

Suddenly he smelled something wonderful. Cinnamon coffee and some sort of fresh pastry. The music of Ghost in the Shell filtered gently through the air, as if it were calling him out to join with wherever these smells had come from.

Sesshoumaru finished tucking in his shirt, and his hand grazed over his standard a.m. erection. The flesh jumped at his touch and he sighed as his abdomen contracted in anticipation. Buttoning the low-riding slacks, and tugging up the zipper, he gazed down at his crotch. Patting it affectionately he allowed a rueful chuckle to escape. "Poor old boy. I almost forgot you were down there."

He heard a laugh behind him and turned to see Jeanette propped up against his bedroom door.

"Did you need something, Jeanette?" He asked the Auburn haired woman. Jeanette had worked for him since she had moved to the city to start college six years ago. She was a loner. She had her own moral code, never flinched at anything he did or said, and lived exactly the sort of Devil-may-care existence that he had always secretly yearned for. But even though she was aloof most of the time, there was something vibrantly real about Jeanette. Which was probably why he almost always held up no guard around her.

She was a woman that he probably could have fallen in love with, had he been around before she decided that she no longer believed in the principle. But that was far and away. She had told him often enough that romance and true love were fairytales. He generally nodded in the affirmative, and went back to business.

He really had to wonder sometimes, though. About the fairytale thing...whether she really believed that. She always developed certain softness (he secretly thought it was hope) whenever she caught him in one of his more whimsical moments.

Which, he thought with slight irritation as he stared at her form folded into the doorjamb, she seemed to have an evil genius for.

She smiled, that slow secret 'ah-ha-I-caught-you-being-normal' smile. The soft one. And her voice came out just as sweet and soft as that smile...live honey.

"Was that Humanity I just witnessed, Ieto?" There was no malice, none at all, in her voice and still the comment burned. It made him think of the dream, and the bed that might as well have made itself. He couldn't remember how the sheet felt in his hand. It was wrong.

Jeanette smirked. "And here I thought you were on a campaign to stomp all non-cyborg impulses out of your system entirely. Doesn't look like that's going so well for you." Her eyes narrowed on him slightly.

He tried to tamp down the confusion and the questions he knew she saw in his eyes. Clearing his throat, he lifted his chin a notch, making his voice even drier than usual. "You're early."

She held her position, and wet her lips. "You're hard."

His heartbeat picked up. She had never initiated this before. No woman ever had. It made him felt over-exposed, but not in an entirely unpleasant fashion.

"I am."

She began to move slowly toward him. "Open your pants, Sesshoumaru."

He leaned his shoulder blades back against the wall, and let his hands move lazily over the fastenings. He wanted it to be slow, and it had never been slow. Not even with this person that he cared for, this young woman who catered to his needs, whatever she felt they might be.

It wasn't love, but it was close enough. It would feel a lot like love, and that was more than he had ever anticipated.

He wrapped his hand around himself, and began to slowly pump the length of his hard sex. She went down on her knees on front of him, unbuttoning her shirt and her hand went behind her for the clasp of her bra.

"No..." He used his free hand to still the action, taking away her hand and allowing his fingertips to graze the flesh before brushing the straps from her shoulders and tugging the soft shelf of material just below the underside of her breasts. "Not all the way...just a little bit. Just enough to see ...touch."

He could smell her getting wet, and it made him feel...visceral "Where do you want me, Jeanette?"

She moaned softly and let her mouth fall slightly open. He pushed himself in watching her full lips stretch into a perfect 'o' as he cupped the nape of her neck, cradling her to him tightly and tenderly as he bowed his head to one side to watch. He pushed until her lips were clasped about his thick base. His free hand found one of her nipples, and began to tug and release it, to twist and bother it, as he stood away from the wall and began to pump into her mouth.

His actions were slow and deep, tinged with a selfishness that made the act so dominant that it would have seemed crude except for his agonizing slowness.

He fucked her mouth with a brand of slow deliberation born of the heaviest of needs, and couldn't hold back the snarling growl when he saw the hand that she was using to toy with her sex suddenly cup and squeeze, then move as if to bring her fingers under the silk covering it.

He pulled her head back suddenly and looked down at her with a gaze full of feral authority. His voice was thick, but if it had been thicker she could've understood the meaning in this action.

He brought his thumb up to rub it back and forth across the wetness of her bottom lip, still scowling at her. "Don't...you...dare." She made a whimper in the back of her throat and her eyes looked big and liquid, as if she might cry.

He didn't know where it was coming from; just that he suddenly felt so greedy and so hungry. "Hands flat, on top of your thighs." He gripped her beneath the chin rather roughly, and leaned slightly toward her as if he were talking down to a small, slow child. "And if I see you move them, even once, I'll take off this belt and you'll be standing behind your desk for the rest of the week. Do I make myself clear?"

Her arousal spiked sharply enough to nearly make his head swim as his lungs seemed to try to drag the scent into his body. The pleasure of it was so great. A tightening in his abdomen brought him back to himself. He caught himself, fisting the base of his ravenous flesh and brought the head to rest against her bottom lip where his thumb had been before. His eyes narrowed even further and her pushed forward lightly. She obediently opened for him, and he ran it in to the hilt, immediately breaking into a strong pattern of steady thrusts. He felt Jeanette adjusting herself to the onslaught, and saw her claw into her thighs as if they were the only objects in the universe that could keep her anchored to the ground. Her brow was furrowed and the muscles of her arms twitched, but she kept her hands in place.

The harsh moans spilling from her throat told him how much she wanted to move them, but she stayed put. He slowed for a moment, to release the breast he had begun to fondle and stroked her pale temple. "Good little girl."

Sesshoumaru picked up his pace again, and groaned as the mouth that held him sucked at his length hungrily. "Almost, baby. I'm so, so close now..." His head lolled back as be brought himself into the home stretch of the thing, feeling the wall of muscle above her sweet mouth clench itself in readiness.

His lips pulled away from his fangs in a grimace of near-pain, each suck harder than the one just before, each thrust more careless. Hotter and hotter, until he could feel the first tingles. His head felt like it was full of buzzing insects, and her body felt like it was convulsing against his hands. The scent of her arousal was as devastating as the pleasure that was steadily rising up to take him, and the salt in the air told him that she was, indeed, crying now.

Weeping with want...

Fisting tightly into her hair, he began to buck fiercely, as everything became too tight. "You'll still be swallowing..." he panted to her darkly. "Swear to God, you insatiable little bitch, you'll won't even be finished swallowing me when I start fucking you." The sweat on his body felt cold on top of the flash of incredible heat that hit him and a roar of absolute abandon ripped itself from his chest as he vice-gripped her head between both of his hands, and let go inside of her.

Jeanette Bennett Stood at the wall of glass behind her desk, watching the dawn roll in. She heard him dressing just beyond the corridor, in his suite. They had showered together (as if she hadn't been worried enough about him to begin with), and she had remained under his spell the entire time. She had finally told him that she couldn't anymore, and he had softened, and let her out to dry off.

What she really wanted to do was sleep. For, like, a year.

After the incredibly nasty things he had promised her while she was on her knees collecting the worse carpet burns of her life, he had fallen into a chair in front of his great, open balcony doors, and pulled her down into his lap, her back spooned against his chest, onto his still pulsing erection. He didn't even take the time to undress her, just merely pulled her panties aside and sheathed himself. His thickness had hurt for a moment, but she had been too ready for him to even care.

She remembered how she felt him pulsing within her as soon as he buried himself inside. The hot moans he made. She had felt him, and realized that she was still swallowing. And that he had not even finished coming before he moved to satisfy her. Gripping her waist he had begun to lift and drop her, as he drove up inside from underneath. He continued to bounce her on his lap, lost in this wild fit of mystery passion that he had pulled out of his ass.

She heard the clank of a heavy belt, and drawers opening.

'What has gotten into you, Sessh? This, all of this lately....you're nothing like yourself. I don't know if I should be overjoyed or alarmed'.

First of all, Seshoumaru Ieto was intimate with no one. As far as she knew, he hadn't taken anyone but her, since their first time. She had thought he was very handsome, and she was curious about what he had to offer. She was expected to bring order and convenience to his existence so it hadn't seemed so far off that she should try to satisfy a few of his urges. She ordered in his meals, took care of his dry cleaning, and got him off if he seemed inclined to get off.

But, when it had actually occurred it had been nothing like she expected.

He had proven to be just as efficient in bed as he was everywhere else. He was always fair (he generally took about twenty minutes and made sure she got off first). But it was always a very cold affair. He initiated, and she submitted, he was noiseless save his breathless pants, and he would then step back, tell her thank you and offer her the first go at the shower. She had almost cried the first time he did this, because it had seemed so wrong. She never said anything, but she always thought it during their perfunctory trysts. That this wasn't really him. This was an extremely subdued version of what he was. In her fantasies, he was everything she had expected him to be. Everything she knew he could be.

He was exactly what he had been a few hours ago.

But where had it come from?

When someone on the kind of leash he had been on broke free, wasn't there an explosion? A warning of some sort to the world around them? A loud, thundering crash as all of the things holding the semblance of order together broke apart?

Lately, he had seemed so edgy, and so distracted. He would zone out, and his eyes would glaze with fear and sadness. After years of teasing him to get a life, and days upon days of trying to breathe some life into his rigid lifestyle, she was seeing what she knew were results, of some sort.

But they frightened her. They were too quiet. Too slow.

Suddenly she had the feeling that it was as if Pandora's box had been opened, and from this air-conditioned mausoleum where the sleeping devils had lain sealed they were suddenly slinking out into the wide world, amongst the slumbering masses. The unwarned escape of something that promised to wreck havoc.

Today.

After all of the tense moments of the last few months....she had more than just a hunch that today, whatever had been slowly cracking apart inside Sessh Ieto was about to break.

"Showtime." She murmured to the empty room.