02 - [X/1999 + XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN] an appetite large enough (for foul play)
Rating: R
Characters: Chase, Kamui, sideline from Nataku
Fandom: X/1999 and Xiaolin Showdown
Summary: Chase likes to get to know his food first before swallowing it down.
Notes: Arsonists are horrible. And I love them dearly for putting up with my obsessions.
With Chase it's always different. I know this because I have ten fingers clawing at my arms when I lean up to kiss him gently like he's a girl, breaking him like he's a girl, for fuck's sake, he snarls (and he always had such a brutal mouth -- ), and my laughter is a little pained when he digs the claws into my skin and pulls the skin away from bones and sinew, if he could. I'm bleeding, and this isn't the first time in the night, in so many other nights. He's strong, we both know this, and he's demonstrated it to me countless of times. Which is why I have perfect rows of bleeding marks on my arms and a bitten lip; for my arrogance, he says, but doesn't add anything as my blood stains his tongue and he swallows it down greedily, and we both know why. Blood runs down on my chin as I laugh. "It's nothing like that," I reply, not that it matters to him, but I know I'd better calm him down because his eyes have narrowed to those lovely slits and he's baring all thirty-two sharp teeth at me like he's ready to grab my throat with his mouth. (He always is.)
Chase is lean, but toned, and I'm all sleek, subtle curves because shadows don't need anything more than a plane to dance on and become corporeal, even for a moment. This is what I know: that this body is not entirely mine, it has always been on loan, it has been on loan to me until the Final Day. This is what I also know: that in less than three hours I have been scratched and bit and marked on my wrists and on my shoulders and on my throat. Blood pools on the hollow dusky corners of my shoulderblades and on the base of my throat. It runs from my cut lips down to my chin. I am a cup, bleeding, outpoured; the room is warm, has always been warm because Chase hates the goddamn cold, and I am covered in thin layer of sweat. My lips are partly open, gasping for breath, breathing in the warm air like it's a drug.
He draws a box over my chest where my heart is and then slowly stabs in one of the corners with a practised nail. I hiss and clutch the covers with a fist and make no other sound but my laughter, and it echoes oddly in the room. Chase looks at me with cold eyes as he cuts through my skin, eyes hard like amber and just as old, watching. Observing. Taking note of how I writhe in pain but never scream. I am practiced in breaking and destroying as he is, he's not the only one who's got tricks up in his sleeves. "Look at me," he commands, and I obey, because I am a mirror and an echo. I am also a boy, but that is neither here nor there. (The correct term is probably 'was'. In taking my name I have surrendered the right to anything else.)
Two things happen when I look at him: one, my smile is a slit across my face that is just as sharp as his claws and he crushes it brutally with his mouth. Two, on his bed, I am a doll cut open and dried, and in his eyes I am left writhing in the stress of his regard.
Being human's inconvenient at times. I know, because it gets stressful whenever I go and assume my roles. In this city I can't even keep up with the amount of masks I've made in order to survive, because I can never present the same face to anyone else. The beauty of doing this is that I am a shifting, agonizing amalgamation of voices that aren't actually me. I am drowning in masks and I am all of my masks and I am the thousands of people who lived, loved, and died. Reflected. Refracted. I am never the same. Even in my dreams I am black and white, I am rust, I am the blunt end of a knife.
I lie down on his bed exhausted. My eyes are half-lidded, staring at his ceiling. For a moment there isn't a sound except for me breathing, gasping for air. I can't hear Chase breathe, he's more controlled than I am when it comes to these things, when it comes to a lot of things. But not always in control. He hates it when I know he slips, he hates it when I point it out to him. The truth is this: when he's more relaxed, he has a softer edge on him, and it's very interesting to see. He also looks like a girl. I tell him this. His eyes flash, his hands curl into talons.
I am insolent, arrogant, and everything else youthful that defies him. His fist lashes out, traps my throat between his fingers, claws ready to crush them in his hands. I flash him a brilliant smile. "If it's any consolation," I add, "you look prettier than any of the girls I've seen around." This doesn't make Chase happy; I've stroked the wrong side of his ego, and I'm going to pay for it. His nails are digging through skin and drawing blood, and I'm probably not going to survive this if I continue. but I am brash, I am too fucking arrogant for my own good; it comes from being Kamui, from being a shadow that everybody fears, from being the prophecy that prophecies hide. Not fearing anything but yourself. Not fearing anything but the endless cycle of death and rebirth, never satisfied with the faces that you take, always coming back for more.
I reach a hand to stroke his face, and he grabs it, bites the stump of my ring finger hard enough that when he spits my hand out, there's a ring of blood and it is red, furious in pain. I nearly choke, my lungs screaming for air as he clenches a fist; then, deciding that he'd like to save me as dessert for next Tuesday when he eats out, releases my neck. I flop back down on the bed like my strings have been cut. Somehow it feels refreshing.
I sleep sideways. This is apparently interesting to Chase, who for some reason decided to stay on my side, watching my body curved, naked, beneath the sheets. And then he goes, "not enough. Move your legs over here," he commands, and I raise an eyebrow in interest and do as he says. "What are you trying to summon?" I asked in jest. Chase smiles, it's never a nice smile, it's a dangerous smile, and that's exactly what I want to see. "Trying to teach you a bit of culture," he responds loftily. "Though I doubt you'd have the brains for it, considering your generation."
In one of his quieter, more talkative moods, chase draws a curved line from the side of my head to my ankles and tells me this: I am a totem. I am a piece of sculpture carved by the hongshan as a pale imitation of what I was supposed to be. I cannot be a dragon because I shrug off my shell too easily and whenever it is convenient for me. I cannot be a dragon because i am too young, and i like to stay in his bed; and you cannot be a dragon if you're always face down on the sheets groaning, writhing, moaning in some unholy mix of pleasure and pain, because then you never ascend. And I cannot be a dragon because I am a bottomless pit of nothing, empty of anything and never filled; never satisfied. You cannot ascend, he teaches, if you keep letting yourself be consumed. Ashes do not rise; they fall and scatter in the wind. Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. The history is lost on me.
"I cannot ascend anymore," I said, laughing, "because I was never who I am in the first place."
"But that was then," he replies. "You cannot tell me that you are bound with the same fate here as you were where you came from. You cannot tell me you that you aren't given a choice to decide for yourself what you will be, because you have been, but you are too arrogant to notice otherwise." He scowls, and leans down to bite hard on my shoulder. When he withdraws there's a line of blood on the corner of his lips. "Arrogant brat. And you are an idiot, as well, for not knowing how close you are to death if you keep antagonizing me like you do."
I laugh. "As it is with everything about you, man." Sandalwood perfumes the air like a dancer and I move my hand through air, gracefully, slithering around his waist and very much unwelcome with the way his claws grip my wrist. I am never satisfied. Neither is he, and we both turn and descend. In his den I am the first to let go. I inhale the perfumed air and as I lie down exhale a sigh of relief. Inhale, exhale. I close my eyes and evaporate back into nothingness.
In the morning when I wake up, Chase is gone, and all the covers on his side are neatly arranged in some precise order, like any wrinkle that disturbs his side will disrupt the flow of the universe. I rise. I don't tidy up my side, but I do notice that there's streaks of blood all over, like I've been busy trying to paint an existence I'm too unsure to acknowledge at all. I move to the window, blind my eyes with the sun reflecting across the desert in merciless light. Chase is an early riser and he's disgusted at me ruining his schedule and at himself for delaying it more than he should have. Me, I prefer it when the sun's out and I'm just lazing around in his balcony in the heat wearing nothing but my pants; propped on a beach chair with arms spread wide like a dead bird, or a man mistaken for the saviour of our sins. Every day is a funeral. Every day is a rebirth.
Kazuki comes out, sees me from our balcony. "Papa," he calls out, and then frowns at the map of scars and dried blood that decorates my sullen, stubborn flesh. "You are injured," he whispers in quiet anger. Eyes flash mercilessly from behind his pale bangs, innocent, wide-eyed, wrathful. Vengeful. I laughed. "It's nothing," I replied casually. "I just went to an eat-all-you-can. It got a little violent. You know how it is, when people are starving and want to be filled." Somewhere I know he's watching. Somewhere I know he's hungry. I throw my head back, and expose my neck to the burning sun, my smile a perfect slit across my face. The little gestures are lost to the silent world.
Characters: Chase, Kamui, sideline from Nataku
Fandom: X/1999 and Xiaolin Showdown
Summary: Chase likes to get to know his food first before swallowing it down.
Notes: Arsonists are horrible. And I love them dearly for putting up with my obsessions.
With Chase it's always different. I know this because I have ten fingers clawing at my arms when I lean up to kiss him gently like he's a girl, breaking him like he's a girl, for fuck's sake, he snarls (and he always had such a brutal mouth -- ), and my laughter is a little pained when he digs the claws into my skin and pulls the skin away from bones and sinew, if he could. I'm bleeding, and this isn't the first time in the night, in so many other nights. He's strong, we both know this, and he's demonstrated it to me countless of times. Which is why I have perfect rows of bleeding marks on my arms and a bitten lip; for my arrogance, he says, but doesn't add anything as my blood stains his tongue and he swallows it down greedily, and we both know why. Blood runs down on my chin as I laugh. "It's nothing like that," I reply, not that it matters to him, but I know I'd better calm him down because his eyes have narrowed to those lovely slits and he's baring all thirty-two sharp teeth at me like he's ready to grab my throat with his mouth. (He always is.)
Chase is lean, but toned, and I'm all sleek, subtle curves because shadows don't need anything more than a plane to dance on and become corporeal, even for a moment. This is what I know: that this body is not entirely mine, it has always been on loan, it has been on loan to me until the Final Day. This is what I also know: that in less than three hours I have been scratched and bit and marked on my wrists and on my shoulders and on my throat. Blood pools on the hollow dusky corners of my shoulderblades and on the base of my throat. It runs from my cut lips down to my chin. I am a cup, bleeding, outpoured; the room is warm, has always been warm because Chase hates the goddamn cold, and I am covered in thin layer of sweat. My lips are partly open, gasping for breath, breathing in the warm air like it's a drug.
He draws a box over my chest where my heart is and then slowly stabs in one of the corners with a practised nail. I hiss and clutch the covers with a fist and make no other sound but my laughter, and it echoes oddly in the room. Chase looks at me with cold eyes as he cuts through my skin, eyes hard like amber and just as old, watching. Observing. Taking note of how I writhe in pain but never scream. I am practiced in breaking and destroying as he is, he's not the only one who's got tricks up in his sleeves. "Look at me," he commands, and I obey, because I am a mirror and an echo. I am also a boy, but that is neither here nor there. (The correct term is probably 'was'. In taking my name I have surrendered the right to anything else.)
Two things happen when I look at him: one, my smile is a slit across my face that is just as sharp as his claws and he crushes it brutally with his mouth. Two, on his bed, I am a doll cut open and dried, and in his eyes I am left writhing in the stress of his regard.
Being human's inconvenient at times. I know, because it gets stressful whenever I go and assume my roles. In this city I can't even keep up with the amount of masks I've made in order to survive, because I can never present the same face to anyone else. The beauty of doing this is that I am a shifting, agonizing amalgamation of voices that aren't actually me. I am drowning in masks and I am all of my masks and I am the thousands of people who lived, loved, and died. Reflected. Refracted. I am never the same. Even in my dreams I am black and white, I am rust, I am the blunt end of a knife.
I lie down on his bed exhausted. My eyes are half-lidded, staring at his ceiling. For a moment there isn't a sound except for me breathing, gasping for air. I can't hear Chase breathe, he's more controlled than I am when it comes to these things, when it comes to a lot of things. But not always in control. He hates it when I know he slips, he hates it when I point it out to him. The truth is this: when he's more relaxed, he has a softer edge on him, and it's very interesting to see. He also looks like a girl. I tell him this. His eyes flash, his hands curl into talons.
I am insolent, arrogant, and everything else youthful that defies him. His fist lashes out, traps my throat between his fingers, claws ready to crush them in his hands. I flash him a brilliant smile. "If it's any consolation," I add, "you look prettier than any of the girls I've seen around." This doesn't make Chase happy; I've stroked the wrong side of his ego, and I'm going to pay for it. His nails are digging through skin and drawing blood, and I'm probably not going to survive this if I continue. but I am brash, I am too fucking arrogant for my own good; it comes from being Kamui, from being a shadow that everybody fears, from being the prophecy that prophecies hide. Not fearing anything but yourself. Not fearing anything but the endless cycle of death and rebirth, never satisfied with the faces that you take, always coming back for more.
I reach a hand to stroke his face, and he grabs it, bites the stump of my ring finger hard enough that when he spits my hand out, there's a ring of blood and it is red, furious in pain. I nearly choke, my lungs screaming for air as he clenches a fist; then, deciding that he'd like to save me as dessert for next Tuesday when he eats out, releases my neck. I flop back down on the bed like my strings have been cut. Somehow it feels refreshing.
I sleep sideways. This is apparently interesting to Chase, who for some reason decided to stay on my side, watching my body curved, naked, beneath the sheets. And then he goes, "not enough. Move your legs over here," he commands, and I raise an eyebrow in interest and do as he says. "What are you trying to summon?" I asked in jest. Chase smiles, it's never a nice smile, it's a dangerous smile, and that's exactly what I want to see. "Trying to teach you a bit of culture," he responds loftily. "Though I doubt you'd have the brains for it, considering your generation."
In one of his quieter, more talkative moods, chase draws a curved line from the side of my head to my ankles and tells me this: I am a totem. I am a piece of sculpture carved by the hongshan as a pale imitation of what I was supposed to be. I cannot be a dragon because I shrug off my shell too easily and whenever it is convenient for me. I cannot be a dragon because i am too young, and i like to stay in his bed; and you cannot be a dragon if you're always face down on the sheets groaning, writhing, moaning in some unholy mix of pleasure and pain, because then you never ascend. And I cannot be a dragon because I am a bottomless pit of nothing, empty of anything and never filled; never satisfied. You cannot ascend, he teaches, if you keep letting yourself be consumed. Ashes do not rise; they fall and scatter in the wind. Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. The history is lost on me.
"I cannot ascend anymore," I said, laughing, "because I was never who I am in the first place."
"But that was then," he replies. "You cannot tell me that you are bound with the same fate here as you were where you came from. You cannot tell me you that you aren't given a choice to decide for yourself what you will be, because you have been, but you are too arrogant to notice otherwise." He scowls, and leans down to bite hard on my shoulder. When he withdraws there's a line of blood on the corner of his lips. "Arrogant brat. And you are an idiot, as well, for not knowing how close you are to death if you keep antagonizing me like you do."
I laugh. "As it is with everything about you, man." Sandalwood perfumes the air like a dancer and I move my hand through air, gracefully, slithering around his waist and very much unwelcome with the way his claws grip my wrist. I am never satisfied. Neither is he, and we both turn and descend. In his den I am the first to let go. I inhale the perfumed air and as I lie down exhale a sigh of relief. Inhale, exhale. I close my eyes and evaporate back into nothingness.
In the morning when I wake up, Chase is gone, and all the covers on his side are neatly arranged in some precise order, like any wrinkle that disturbs his side will disrupt the flow of the universe. I rise. I don't tidy up my side, but I do notice that there's streaks of blood all over, like I've been busy trying to paint an existence I'm too unsure to acknowledge at all. I move to the window, blind my eyes with the sun reflecting across the desert in merciless light. Chase is an early riser and he's disgusted at me ruining his schedule and at himself for delaying it more than he should have. Me, I prefer it when the sun's out and I'm just lazing around in his balcony in the heat wearing nothing but my pants; propped on a beach chair with arms spread wide like a dead bird, or a man mistaken for the saviour of our sins. Every day is a funeral. Every day is a rebirth.
Kazuki comes out, sees me from our balcony. "Papa," he calls out, and then frowns at the map of scars and dried blood that decorates my sullen, stubborn flesh. "You are injured," he whispers in quiet anger. Eyes flash mercilessly from behind his pale bangs, innocent, wide-eyed, wrathful. Vengeful. I laughed. "It's nothing," I replied casually. "I just went to an eat-all-you-can. It got a little violent. You know how it is, when people are starving and want to be filled." Somewhere I know he's watching. Somewhere I know he's hungry. I throw my head back, and expose my neck to the burning sun, my smile a perfect slit across my face. The little gestures are lost to the silent world.