Lie To Keep The Smile (Kamendressing, Trapped focus)

[estirose]

I wanted to post this instead of babbling into someone’s PM. It’s more Trapped, reflecting on a need to lie.

 

 

Wataru watched as his brother snuggled with Mio-san and wasn’t surprised that the slight tightening of his Queen’s smile flew right over Taiga’s head.
 

But then again, Mio-san was getting very good at not alarming Taiga. Wataru knew that the only reason she wanted this pregnancy was so that she could pretend that she was with him instead of his older brother, and that she didn’t have to do Queen’s duties, since Taiga had immediately relieved her of them when he found out she was pregnant. She knew his brother well enough that she could wrap him around her little finger with a smile.
 

Which is not how she wanted to be, Wataru was sure, and certainly not how he wanted her to be, but he knew that he had changed that way, too. He couldn’t tell Taiga the truth because Taiga tended to… overreact, like he had when Wataru had gotten the flu that one time (and he was sure it was from another one of him, not that he’d ever said that because he didn’t want to be cut off from his escape, no matter how tenuous an escape it was). It had taken some other hims sitting Taiga down to curb the worst of his excesses, and no matter how much afterwards Taiga had come to him, concerned, telling Wataru that he could tell him anything, Wataru knew it wouldn’t work; it usually took Innocent and Questing, powerful like his brother, to get anything done.
 

He wished he wasn’t such a burden to Questing and Haunting; they both were busy, being Kings, but they could go toe-to-toe with most versions of their brother, because of their rank. Questing especially seemed to have to run interference for him. She was getting tired, he knew, especially with the latest incident. Of course, he had the sense that she came to flee her own world, too, sometimes.
 

“My brother is only anxiously waiting for me to have sex with my Queen,” Questing had said, with a wry grin. “Actual sex. Someday he’ll understand that Mio-san and I are straight… just like you are.”
 

Which might be why she interfered so much with his brother, but it was still a burden. He fingered the small packet of tea that she’d given him, to make sure just in case he had parts that he didn’t know about, he couldn’t get pregnant. He was afraid to ask anybody in his world, after all, just in case word came back to his brother that he was thinking about male pregnancy. That would give his brother ideas, and that would be really, really bad. It was bad enough that his brother – his own brother! – wanted to have sex with him.
 

“Wataru, come sit with us,” Taiga said, and Wataru moved to obey. Like Mio-san, he knew how to hide his true feelings and thoughts.
 

But maybe, just maybe, he’d try to sleep by himself that night.

Crossposted from Ramblings Yet Once More here.