☆Wish Upon A Star☆

☆~Chapter 17~☆

The waves' crashing and the wind's soft blowing were the only noises heard in the two-story bungalow that Arthur had built on top of the safest cliff in the coast to share with his now bigger family when the two youngest teenagers were at school.

Yao, who had never been to the coast before, spent hours staring at the ocean, at how it spread wide before his eyes, towards the horizon. His adopted brother had never shared such an enthusiasm for the sea, which reminded him, by what Yao said Kiku had told him before he forgot, of another life he had been forced to stop living, his short life with his biological family.

"I was born far away from here, even further than the ocean. I was born in Europe, in a big island where the rain is upon the sky every day,"

How many mornings had Yao spent like this? Cuddled up to his saviour, the British psychologist that had saved him and his family, wrapped up in a thick blanket and listening to his stories while his gaze got lost in the immensity of the sea, while Arthur's gentle hand caressed his back and side under his clothes.

"My father died in a battle against the French when I was very young. My mother had to marry her husband's brother to raise me properly, in a beautiful cottage in the outskirts of Scotland, with my four cousins,"

A warm cup of tea rested between Yao's evercold hands, his breath softly blowing against Arthur's neck when he jokingly complained about how it tasted nothing like the true Chinese tea he was used to. Yao had changed so much after his experience with Ivan. Arthur, as the psychologist he was, helped Yao through the trauma, and easily molded his young mind into normal circumstances again. Those mornings of relax were the best part of Yao's therapy.

"I went back to England to visit my grandparents every summer. I met my two best friends there. An annoying Spaniard and an even worse French boy, which I couldn't help but blame for my father's death, and my pitiful life with my older cousins,"

Sometimes, Arthur's hand wandered over Yao's abdomen and chest, making the Chinese boy shiver at the feather-like caress. He knew what the older man wanted, but he also knew that it had to wait.

"I noticed that behaviour in myself and quickly discovered that I wanted to vow my life to psychology. My uncle paid for my studies in Boston, all the way across the Atlantic, and for a home my pregnant mother and I moved to while I finished high school and started my career in America. I was only fifteen then,"

Then, Arthur's lips connected to Yao's in a tender kiss, his embrace turning warmer and his cheeks becoming redder. Arthur told Yao that he loved him, and Yao returned the words with a smile.

"Matthew was born in Nunavut, in the holidays we spent in Canada the year we moved to the New World. My uncle had given us so much money, for us to finally leave him and his sons alone in Scotland. They never liked us. In Boston, my mother worked as an office cleaner. There, he met a profitable businessman she fell in love with. And that's where Alfred came from a few years later,"

Yao would never stop thanking Arthur everything he had done for them, but the price he had to pay for it felt heavier and heavier every day that passed. The man's hands holding his waist felt rougher, and so did every move he made into Yao. But he knew that he couldn't say no to him; he loved Arthur and, over all, he loved Kiku. If paying with his own body would make Kiku's life better, he would.

"Around ten years passed, and the businessman killed my mother. At that time I was preparing a research investigation on how childhood traumas affect someone's adult personality. And that's why I moved to your village with my brothers, to fulfill the investigation and to hide from my second step-father."