I HAVE BEEN GONE FOR SOOO LONG! Ah, God, it feels good to be writing again. I had so much poetry and short fiction and playwriting to do for my Creative Writing course this year, since I'm majoring in it, plus I started an original anime project I'm calling MNIPMaus. I started failing all of my classes sometime around January, so I figured that I should lay off the FanFiction until I could get some free time. Phew!

But just when I thought I was catching a break...

It turns out the summer is going to be no better than the school year, since I have two jobs and people are constantly asking me to sleep over or attend some stupid event. And I still don't have a girlfriend. How sad.

The saddest thing about this story is the song that it is based on. This song, originally one of my favorite songs off the album "Disclaimer" by Seether, has been successfully turned into one of those annoying songs you hear every half hour on commercial radio stations.

Yes, that's right, I based this dumb story off "Broken" (as you can probably tell from the title, ha ha...) and now the song is lame and I have become disillusioned with it. I know a lot of you are going to hate me for saying this, but Amy Lee ruins everything. There seems to be quite a large Evanescence fan base here, so aside from that comment I will keep my stupid mouth shut.

Nonetheless, I will finish this! In one more chapter, I do believe. Cool. Then I can FINALLY work on The Warmest Dream, which I have wanted to do for the LONGEST time!

This chapter may be slightly corny, but it gets good around the end, trust me! I wanted to make this a lemon, but once I got to chapter 5, I realized I was going nowhere in that direction, so I gave up on that thought. I still want to write one, though, so expect one in the future... I think. ;.; I'm so bad at lemons! Oh well, on with the story! Yay!

BRRRRRRIIIIIINNNNGG!

The bell for the end of the last class rang, and half the students nearly knocked over their chairs in their mad scramble to get out of the room. Kouji merely scraped his own chair apathetically back across the dirty floor, hating the stupid sound it made in response.

He wanted to look forward to going to Takuya's after school, but he couldn't. He cursed Akero under his breath as he stood up. This was all that stupid dickhead's fault. All he really wanted was to spend the night over at Takuya's and feel happy loved for once in his goddamn life, but no. That prick had to ruin everything for him.

As Kouji made his way to exit the room, his Language teacher cleared her throat and spoke up.

"Kouji," she said, "can you come here for a minute?"

Kouji wondered briefly what would happen if he said no and walked out of the room. Instead of that, he nodded and dragged his feet over to the teacher's desk.

"I got a little concerned today when I was grading your test and I saw that you had received the lowest score in the entire class," she said, "This isn't at all normal for you."

"Yeah, I know..." Kouji replied half-heartedly. He could see what was on the way, and it wasn't very good.

"Is there anything going on that I should know about," the teacher asked, her brow creased worriedly, "Anything I might be able to help out with?"

Kouji shook his head, "No, I'm perfectly fine... that test just wasn't on one of my strong subjects..."

The teacher looked perplexed, "Are you sure?" she asked, "You were doing fine up until today."

"I just wasn't all that focused today."

It wasn't until after he said this that Kouji realized that he had just confirmed the teacher's suspicions. He took a panicked look at her face and saw that she was looking at him with the same concerned look as she had been before he had spoken. After some time she sighed in defeat and sent him on his way.

"Well, if you ever do have any problems, Kouji, you can always tell me, okay?"

"Uh-huh," Kouji said, trying to walk quickly through the door without looking like he was avoiding the teacher. He could feel her eyes on him as he walked down the hall and turned the corner to the stairs.

What was he supposed to do now? From that encounter, he could guess that he had probably failed his Language test, and he couldn't expect his father and stepmother to be too glad about that. The problem with Akero and Meru was starting to affect him more than he had thought it would. Why had he not listened to Takuya in the first place? He hadn't been thinking too clearly after everything that had happened that day. With Kouichi being beaten up and Takuya finally telling him how he really felt, he had already had enough on his mind. Now the situation was irreversible.

Perfect.

For the first time in years, Kouji felt overwhelmed to the point of wanting to cry.

He loved Takuya. There was no doubt of that. He also didn't want to endanger himself or his family any more than he already had by hanging around Akero and Meru. He had to protect Takuya and Kouichi. They were the people who should matter most to him in this situation. Even if it meant endangering himself, he had to keep them safe.

Stupid protective instincts.

There was no reason for him to hurt Takuya. Akero and Meru were crappy friends anyway. Kouji knew that. He just didn't know what the consequences of crossing them would be.

'Ah, fuck it,' he thought as he walked down the seemingly endless steel stairs, 'I'm probably gonna get beaten up either way. Might as well help out Takuya while I'm at it...'

Kouji pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and was immediately greeted by a wall of water.

It was raining, something he had not been able to tell from inside the building for some reason. He sighed and blew his dampening hair out of his face, wondering why he hadn't packed an umbrella, or at least a hoodie. Or his bandana, which he had oh-so-conveniently not worn today. He thought of his warm, dry bed as he stepped over the threshold and into the torrential downpour outside the school.

"Oh... dammit!"

Something about Kouji's last thought had just reminded him that he was supposed to go over to Takuya's house after school. (A/N: That's just a little perverted...) Now he didn't even know where his boyfriend was. He turned to go back into the school, just in time to see the door slam solidly shut before him. Kouji felt a huge feeling of despair sink into him, as if the raindrops soaking through his skin were the messengers of depression. He resolved to give up and walk home in the rain.

Kouji began to walk, dragging his feet through the endless worm-choked puddles that seemed to be just wide enough to stop you from stepping over them. He was now in a mood that was completely the opposite of the one he had been in that morning, and it was all thanks to that jerk Akero. For every puddle he stepped in, Kouji imagined that he was shattering the blonde boy's face, and the worms were all the tiny little fragments of Akero's tiny little brain.

Something red in the by the side of the road caught Kouji's eye as he went to cross it. For some reason that was unknown to him, he drifted almost unconsciously towards it.

The object turned out to be a very wet red and orange shoe, much like the type that Takuya wore most days. Kouji's heart twitched slightly as he pulled the tongue of the shoe out. Like a kindergartener, Takuya still wrote his name in his shoes, just in case he was absent-minded enough to forget them somewhere.

There, on the bottom of the tongue, was a clearly written name: Kanbara Takuya.

Kouji almost ran into a car as he jumped off the curb in surprise. What was Takuya's shoe doing out in the middle of the road? Takuya didn't even walk home the same way as Kouji did. Shouldn't he have been still at the school anyway? And most importantly, why had he just left the shoe at the side of the road, rather than picking it up again? Why had he been in such a hurry?

Somehow Kouji had to stop the nagging questions that were now probing his brain. His stomach began to shift uneasily, and he got the feeling that something wasn't right, along with an impulse to go back to the school. He largely ignored it, since he had been having that feeling on and off ever since Akero had talked to him in the hall. Before Kouji even attempted to realize what he was doing, he was half-jogging back to the school, Takuya's soggy sneaker still grasped in his hand.

The school building rose up ominously in the heavy rain, and Kouji felt very insignificant running along its edge. He barely even knew why he was running in the first place, other than that it had something to do with Takuya and the sneaker he had found in the street.

Something wasn't right.

He wished he had just run out of class with the mob of students, rather than making himself easy prey for the Language teacher. Instead, he had probably confused poor Takuya and made him think that he had stood him up. Kouji felt a forceful rage rise up inside him, and he turned it against himself. He was to blame for whatever had happened to Takuya, and something had happened. He at least knew that much.

"No..."

Kouji's ears seemed to prick up at the desperate sound of a voice from somewhere nearby. It was hard to identify exactly whose voice it was, with the rain and all, but it from the sound of things, the voice was coming from an alcove next to the exit of the stairwell Kouji had come out of not five minutes before.

"Don't! I don't know!"

Other voices became audible as Kouji drew closer to the alcove. His stomach gave a hideously painful lurch when he realized that he recognized the first voice that he had heard coming from the alcove.

"Takuya!" Kouji exclaimed. He burst into the alcove, the other boy's shoe still clutched tightly in his hand. Takuya was shoved into a corner of the alcove. Standing over him were three other boys, one tall and blonde, the other two black haired.

"Kouji!" Takuya said, his voice almost on the edge of breaking.

The tall blonde boy turned around. As Kouji had already guessed, two of the three boys who were standing over Takuya were Akero and Meru. (A/N: I hope that made enough sense... for some reason it was a little confusing to write. )

"Dammit, that took you long," Akero said, "We thought you weren't going to show up."

"How was I supposed to show up when I didn't know where you wanted to meet me at!" Kouji protested, "Hell, I didn't even know we were supposed to do this today!"

"We aren't doing this today, Kouji. You're doing this today," Akero said. His voice sounded aloof and almost cruel. It set a small spasm through Kouji's body to hear it.

"Well how the hell was I supposed to know that!" he said, "You never told me ANYTHING! You just said that you wanted me to beat him up!"

"Kouji..." Takuya whispered, his eyes wide with shock, "Do you mean me?"

"Yeah he means you, faggot. Now shut up while me and my friend are talking!" said Akero. Kouji was raging inside. Akero was getting it all wrong. Akero couldn't see what was right in front of his face. An image of Akero's face with a pickaxe sticking out of it flirted around his head.

"But Kouji, you said..." Takuya said. A moment later, one of the dark haired boys had kicked him in the face, and he cried out in pain, "You said you loved me!"

Kouji was close to tears. He couldn't stand seeing Takuya that helpless against two people who were probably stronger than he was, being fed lies by a stupid homophobic jerk who didn't, even after Takuya's outburst, realize what was going on between the two boys.

"Kouji? Love you? That's the funniest fucking thing EVER!" Akero said, bursting into a fit of laughter, "Minamoto never loved anyone! He fucking hates faggots like you, too! That's why I'm letting him beat the crap out of you today! He's our friend, and he's gonna do what we say!"

'This is stupid,' thought Kouji, 'Akero's being the stereotypical cocky jackass. Why should I do anything he says?'

"Hey, Takuya," Kouji said in the most comforting tone he could manage. He almost gasped in shock at how harsh his voice was. Instead of sounding reassuring, it had come out with a razors edge.

"Kouji... I thought... we..." stammered Takuya. A tear sparkled down his cheek. "You lied? You said you loved me..."

"Shut up! This is between me and Minamoto, Kanbara! Shut your gay face!" Akero shouted. The black haired boys proceeded to kick Takuya in the face again.

Kouji clamped his jaw shut. Anger coursed through him in every direction. The raindrops that landed on him felt faint and distant. Suddenly, he realized that he wasn't in control of his own body anymore.

As if through someone else's eyes, he saw himself clench his fist and punch Akero hard enough to send him backwards into the wall.

"YOU shut up! It's YOUR fucking face I should be smashing in, not Takuya's! YOU better stop lying to yourself! Can't you see what's right in front of you? I could NEVER do ANYTHING to hurt Takuya! I love him, and you're never going to be able to do anything about it!"

The two black haired boys ran over to Akero, who sat recovering against the wall as Kouji seemed to re-enter his body. He shook his head violently to clear it and discovered that he had been screaming directly into Akero's face. His throat hurt rather badly.

"Kouji?" said a small voice behind him. Kouji turned around to find a very confused looking Takuya.

Poor guy. The whole situation was probably too much for his head to take all at once.

"What, Takuya?" This time his voice came out how he had wanted it to before. He rolled his eyes. That figured.

Unfortunatly, the mixed message that Kouji had just sent only confused Takuya even more.

"Do you still love me or not?"

Kouji blinked. How could he have let Takuya think, even for this short of a time, that he no longer loved him?

"Of course I love you," Kouji said, walking over to Takuya and helping him up (well, more accurately, he stuck out his hand. He still wasn't used to being that caring. XP) "I don't even know why the hell you bothered to listen to that asshole." He motioned over towards Akero.

"But it sounded like you were really going to hurt me," Takuya said, "I thought you had just tricked me into going out with you so that you could beat me up or something..."

"You're too goddamn paranoid," said Kouji, rolling his eyes again and taking Takuya by the hand. They walked out of the alcove and along the side of the building.

"But," Takuya protested, "It sounded like..."

"Hey! Give me SOME credit. I'm not a total asshole!"

Takuya covered his mouth with his free hand and laughed, "Not usually..."

"Hey, jerk, never! I'm NEVER an asshole, okay?"

For a minute it was like they were just best friends again. Except for the fact that they were holding hands, they might as well have been. It was a good feeling, thought Kouji. Everything was okay again. With a stupid feeling, Kouji realized that he was still holding Takuya's shoe. He looked down at the other boy's feet and saw that he did indeed have only one shoe on.

"By the way, Takuya, I found this..." He held up the shoe. Takuya's eyes widened.

"My stupid shoe!" he exclaimed as he grabbed the sneaker, "Where the hell was it?"

"By the side of the road on my route home..."

"Oh... hm. I could've sworn I lost it somewhere else..."

"Hey Takuya?"

"Hm?"

"Why were you walking my route? Why not your own?"

"Oh!" Takuya said, "See, I waited for you after school in the entrance hall, but you never showed up, and after like ten minutes I thought maybe you forgot or you just didn't really want to come over after all, so I went to go to your house to see if you were there. That's where Akero and Meru and this other guy were coming down the street, and they hit me a couple times and then dragged me over to that place back there. My shoe pro'lly fell off when I was trying to get away..."

Kouji frowned, "What made you think that I would just forget about you like that?"

"Well... you know..." Takuya hesitated, "You weren't really into anything at lunch, so I figured maybe you just wanted to be left alone..."

Kouji remembered the way Takuya had kissed him at lunch. He really hadn't been into it, but that wasn't Takuya's fault. It was all stupid Akero...

"That wasn't because of you, Takuya," he said, "I was just thinking about something Akero had said to me earlier that day."

He explained about his confrontation with the blonde boy in the hallway, and how it had thrown off everything he did during the day. Until now, it hadn't really occurred to him that he had been really out of it for the entire rest of the school day.

"That stupid jerk," said Takuya, "What made him think that you were actually going to do what he said?"

Kouji shrugged, "He probably thought I was like him. But I'm not."

"No shit."

They walked in silence for awhile. As they were crossing the same road that Kouji had found Takuya's shoe in earlier, he thought of what Takuya had said when Kouichi had arrived at the house, his face bruised and bloody. He wondered how he could have kept denying to himself that Akero and Meru were the ones who had beaten up his brother. Why was he such a jerk? This was all his fault.

As they neared Kouji's house, Takuya spoke up.

"What's bothering you, Kouji?"

The dark haired boy snapped out of his thoughts, "What makes you think there's something bothering me?"

Takuya shrugged, "Meh. I dunno. You're not any more quiet than usual, but it's just a different kind of quiet..."

Stupid Takuya. Someone other than Kouichi shouldn't have been able to sense that he wasn't feeling alright. Kouji resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going to be able to avoid Takuya's ability to tell what was wrong with him.

"I should have listened to you when you said Akero and Meru were the ones I had to be worried about. Then this whole thing never would have happened."

Takuya looked shocked and stopped dead.

"Did you just admit that you were wrong?" he asked hopefully.

Kouji shoved his hands into his pockets grumpily.

"No."

"I think you did," said Takuya, the beginnings of an enormous smile plastered on his face, "You finally admitted that you were wrong about something!"

"No it didn't," said Kouji. He regretted telling Takuya anything. "Just can it and keep walking."

"Fine... but I think you did," said Takuya, skipping along next to Kouji and swinging their hands.

They arrived at Kouji's house about five minutes later. Kouji made to go inside.

"I'm going to ask my stepmother about going over to your house, okay?"

"Right! I'll wait on the porch."

"Alright."

Kouji turned to go inside, but was stopped by a hand on his back.

"Hey Kouji, wait..."

The dark haired boy sighed as he turned around.

"What, Taku—"

Before he could finish, Takuya had spun him around kissed him, his arms wrapped around Kouji's waist. At first he was too shocked to even think about moving, but soon after, he let himself go, letting his hands flow down Takuya's body until he reached his hips.

"Takuya..." he whispered as they parted for air, "I love you."

Takuya beamed excitedly, "Me too, I mean... you too... I mean..."

"I know," said Kouji. He lowered his forehead to touch Takuya's and stared into the pair of brown eyes that were blinking up at him. Slowly, he closed his eyes and brought his lips to Takuya's once again.

All at once, the door opened, and Kouji's stepmother stepped out. She cleared her throat, leaving the two boys to cling to each other in surprise.

"Ah! Hi, I..." Kouji stammered. His stepmother shook her head, a small lilting smile on her face. (1)

"Don't bother with explaining, I'd already known for ages," she said.

Kouji blinked rapidly.

"How...?"

His stepmother smiled.

"I'll never tell. And yes, you can go to Takuya's today... just don't do anything too inappropriate..."

With that, she walked back inside and shut the door.

Kouji let go of Takuya's hips, frowning.

"Stupid crazy woman."

"She can't be that bad!"

Kouji glared at Takuya. Any ordinary person would have wilted on the spot, but the brunette just kept yammering...

"I mean, she didn't scream and yell and kick things and ground you for a month because you're dating a boy, right? Kouji? Right?"

"No," said Kouji, "But it's damn scary the way she seems to know everything like that..."

He decided to just forget about it. They walked away from the house and down the street, and Takuya put his arm around Kouji's waist for comfort.

Everything was—well, for now anyway—completely done and over with, and Kouji had someone that he loved and never wanted to let go of. The weight of Akero's request had since lifted off his shoulders, and everyone he needed to protect was safe.

The feeling he had gotten when he punched Akero was all coming to him now, as if he had only done it a few seconds ago. He was better than Akero; the blonde boy couldn't do anything to hurt Takuya or Kouichi now. He recalled a line he had read in a manga a few months before.

"When a person is protecting something that is dear to them, they can become as strong as they need to be." (2)

Yeah, he thought, wrapping his arm around Takuya's shoulders, that was pretty much dead on.

To be completely wrapped up in the next chapter! Yay, only one more chapter of my crappy writing!

Sorry about the corny end to this chapter. I got writer's block! What did you think? Have my Creative Writing courses helped me to become a better author? (I had hoped so, but after writing this I'm beginning to think otherwise...) Despite my usual self hatred, I will admit to one thing: this chapter is better written than the other five. Only one more to go! Oh I'm so happy!

Footnotes:

(1) I realize that I didn't use the word "lilting" correctly, but hopefully that is O.K. with you guys.

(2) That's from Naruto! Go Haku! Most of you probably know that already... eep! Fireworks! Loud! Scary! Sudden! O.o Help meeeee... At any rate... I'm not sure if I got the quote completely right, but I hope it's at least pretty close. Yay Haku.

Goodbye! Have a happy life!

I will do "Thank-You's" to all my reviewers in the next chapter! See you all soon!