my first real piece of Endtimes fluff.
Yes, folks. You read the title right.
This is fluff. For Endtimes. More specifically, for the Thick as Thieves b-side, which isn't really a b-side anymore and could function better if considered canon, which it probably is by now with the way I talk about it and plot for it and make soundtracks for it and stuff.
But anyway. Fluff. @_@
This was named for a song by Elbow, and it will probably have companion pieces in the future. Cross-posted to Reuk, by the way.
Alistair woke up at the same time Hikaru did. He opened his eyes and watched the young man cross the room in the fading shadows of the night, moving among the pockets of silver littering the floorboards. The Bladian took his clothes off as he watched, hardly aware of the fact that the Seer was awake. The white flannel something slipped from that slim pair of shoulders and fell, shapeless, at his feet. His skin was near perfect in moonlight, broken only by the patterns of his scars.
The knives in the belt strung somewhere on the wall slipped out from their leather hilts the moment Hikaru stretched his hand out towards them; he toyed with one absentmindedly as the others spun themselves into a curtain around him and followed him out the door. Alistair got up after Hikaru’s footsteps faded from his ears.
The idiosyncrasies of Zangyaku’s Wolf were little else but routine now. Alistair’s whole being was irreversibly attuned to the boy’s unpredictability, and there was no way to turn the process around. Another hour chasing sleep was better spent making sure that someone who needed it more got some. Then Alistair stopped rationalizing this and started putting his clothes on. He could already hear Ganymede in his head, laughing at him.
Laying down for the father, are you?
Alistair left the room.
In the brief period he had spent in Zangyaku after his resurrection, the one thing Alistair had learned about the oni-tsukai was that they did not know what sleep was; their rather colorful host of guardians didn’t either, but that might have been because they weren’t human in the first place. Alistair passed a host of tree spirits playing cards with one of the junior oni-tsukai as he pondered on this. The group took notice of him just before he could vanish around the corner.
“Oy, niichan!” the kid waved his hand about in the air. A full house of Jacks and a straight from ten. “Got money on ya? How about joining us for a round?”
“Not interested. Thanks.”
“Take care of our leader, Seer,” one of the tree spirits murmured, in a voice like the summer’s wind through leaves. The other two bowed their heads together in agreement. Alistair waved over his shoulder as he disappeared.
There were no dark corners or deserted hallways in the residential compound. Personnel spoke in hushed tones only because the ghosts were out and noise distracted them from doing the tasks that their summoners had given to them. The patrol groups moved in and out, leaving the compound prepared to deal out death and returning with the satisfaction of fulfilling their duty. Being among the oni-tsukai was like walking into a portal leading to the past, back where dressing in kimonos and carrying swords around were the norm. This was the War with Darkness that Mitsuoumi Shinta had armed himself against, and his youngest son carried on with it in his stead. He did not walk alone.
“Wanderlust again, Alistair?”
“No. Hikaru.”
“I thought so.” Kasumi Aoi smiled at him as she stepped out from the laundry room, bearing a stack of folded bed sheets. “It must be two in the morning by now… how is he?”
“Well enough to drag me from bed, apparently.” He followed the woman into the next room, knowing that she would not let him assist her even if he offered. “I’ll need the usual things when I get back.”
“Leave a message for it with the guardian at the North Gate. Tell her if you and my leader plan on getting up in time for breakfast also.”
Alistair was not certain when it had started, only that he had woken up one day and everyone in the compound seemed to have reached an agreement on who he was, and what his position was in their organization. The Seer was the outsider who, six years ago, nearly killed their leader and broke him beyond repair on several accounts. Nothing could change that, as Feränen so kindly reminded him with every opportunity that he was given. But something had changed, with his rebirth and the hard years Hikaru had spent on the Path. It was not something anyone could put to question, or hope to explain, Zangyaku, being the kind of organization that they were, collectively decided upon wasting no more time on it. Whatever could protect their leader from the Fall was enough for them. Whatever could make him happy was even better.
The Seer had never been to this part of the compound, and until that point all it had been was a shadowed grove of trees that he caught sight of every time he looked out from the window of his room. Now, as he drew near, he saw the unearthly plants that considered the grove their home, and the way the place seemed to draw in shadows and stillness. The silence was a shroud over the grove, perfect and reverent. He remembered, from overhearing one phantom guardian speak to another, that the place was called Amida’s Passage. Ghosts could hardly enter there, for fear of crossing to the other side.
Alistair crossed from the night into a deeper darkness, following the fairy lights that flickered among the trees. When he first heard the song, he thought he was imagining it. The tune struck him as familiar, even though he was sure he had never heard it before. It was as though the everlasting regret of the sacrifice of a million souls through the ages was given wings through music.
Will-o-the-wisps danced about him as he broke into the clearing, weaving whispers about him. Alistair looked up and forward, following a pathway woven of pulse energy and stars that lead up towards a sickle moon swimming in the black ink of the sky. The water flowers sprinkling the surface of a lake whose stillness was unnatural seemed to possess their own glow beyond the milk white waxed from the moon.
“Did Kasumi tell you that you’d find me here? She always did know where to look whenever I’d go missing.”
Hikaru stood waist-deep in the water, bathed in the shift of glow and shadows from the will-o-the-wisps painting light across the darkness and over the surface of the knives spinning slowly in the air around him. The rest of his clothes had been abandoned at the water’s edge. In the moon glow and the beads of water glistening on his skin, the largest of the wounds upon his back looked like the hollow shadow of wings.
Alistair leaned back against one of the trees, folding his arms across his chest and looking, just looking, at the young and sensual creature before him. Hikaru could have been some sort of angel bound to Earth to him if he didn’t know any better. There was beauty to him even in his silence, and grace to him even though he wasn’t moving. He was and always would be a boy to Alistair regardless of the years that would stretch themselves out between them. The boy who could kill him with a smile.
Alistair decided to speak before his voice failed him.
“You’ll catch a cold like that.”
Hikaru’s laughter fell soft and hushed against his ear. “Does it really matter?” Zangyaku’s Wolf murmured, turning his gaze towards the stars. “It will be over soon. I used to love coming to this place,” he added, following Alistair’s silence. “It’s funny. I thought I would hear Setsuna’s voice in the trees if I listened hard enough.”
Alistair was walking into the water before he could stop himself. He reached out and took Hikaru into the circle of his presence, quelling the Bladian’s trembling with his warmth. There was something powerful and perfectly mysterious in being fully clothed, holding a naked boy in one’s arms. He was aware of Hikaru’s fingers as they traveled the length of his arm, aware of the drumming beat of the boy’s heart as it pumped out more for the Bladian to bleed away. He was aware of everything. When he reached down and slid his hand atop the skin of the other’s belly, he knew that Hikaru was aware of everything too.
“Are you all right?”
The response echoed low, traveling on the wings of emotion.
“I am now.”
Space no longer meant anything. They were a tangle of dampness on skin and two lips meeting, working to have a taste of breath and each other’s mouths. Sensation was in the pieces of a whole that came to Alistair as he and Hikaru grasped and explored each other, marking time in movements and whispers. There were his fingers threading through Hikaru’s hair as though touching a cloud. There was his name murmured into his ear, the moment he did something to Hikaru that he knew the other liked. Their need for each other was unchecked and raw, more real and vulnerable then than it would ever appear at any other moment. Watched by no one but the blessed dead, they sank into the water when their closeness didn’t feel like it was enough, and whenever they came up for air both of them wished that they didn’t have to.
“She was right,” Hikaru laughed, falling breathless against Alistair’s supporting grip and loving every bit of it. “You’d follow me anywhere.”
“Who?”
“Satsuki.”
Those violet eyes gleamed up at Alistair as the name fell into place with the unspoken hope that it belonged there with them. Alistair took Hikaru’s hand and brushed the boy’s fingers against his lips, assuring him that it did.
“Do you think we have forever?”
“Maybe.”
They were kissing again, sweeping all the words away. Hikaru smiled up at him again when they were finished, tracing the features of his face as though etching it unto his fingers, his memory. “Who would’ve thought,” he murmured in wonder as he followed Alistair’s cheekbone down to his jaw, “that the Seer would be the optimist between the two of us?”
“Satsuki must have known.”
“Mm. Yeah. She knows everything.”
They went back without agreeing that they had to; it was simply something that the both of them knew. Hikaru walked along in his pants and Alistair’s coat with nothing else beneath them. Alistair barely minded the fact that he was as dripping wet as Hikaru was. The north guardian looked about as amused at the sight of them as a spirit would allow herself to be. “Breakfast in bed for the both of you then, Hikaru-sama?” she rasped as they walked through the gates of the residential compound.
“Naturally.”
“We’ll need the usual soon,” Alistair murmured as he passed. “Have someone bring it to the room.” The guardian bowed low, vanishing only after the two of them were long gone.
Alistair and Hikaru had the pleasure of disrobing each other once again when they reached their rooms. Showering became another mutual action, as did the small nothings that happened in the stall. Alistair nearly allowed Hikaru to drag him into bed for more of that before he stiffened his resolve and remembered what he had talked with Kasumi about.
“Easy.” The Seer was only able to pull his face about an inch or less from Hikaru’s, and that hardly left enough space for the restraining hand he placed on the other’s chest. They were still close enough to fully breathe each other in. “You’re sick, and the bandages need changing.”
“They always need changing.”
“All the more reason to slow down.”
Hikaru’s laugh was nearly noiseless as Alistair turned away, leaving him to fall back among the pillows and sheets. The Bladian watched the Seer as the latter walked to the door, where he could see the shadow of a member of the Fourteenth Division holding a med-kit, which Alistair opened the door long enough to retrieve. He held unto his silence as he let the older man fuss over him, moving only when Alistair told him to and in the way Alistair told him to. This was happiness, he decided, when he caught sight of the warmth buried in the Seer’s eyes and felt the gentleness padded in those callused fingers. It was something real and tangible. Something that wasn’t going to float away from him, or melt away into another jagged nightmare from the Song. Something that was really there.
Alistair must have heard his thoughts, for the Seer paused in what he was doing to look at him. “What is it?” he asked, his voice echoing low with concern. Hikaru responded by reaching up and pulling the Seer back towards him. It almost hurt him to smile.
“Nothing. Maybe I just don’t want this to stop.”
In the long, sweet kiss that followed, Hikaru knew that Alistair didn’t want it to stop for them either.
Companion pieces may or may not follow in the future.
This is fluff. For Endtimes. More specifically, for the Thick as Thieves b-side, which isn't really a b-side anymore and could function better if considered canon, which it probably is by now with the way I talk about it and plot for it and make soundtracks for it and stuff.
But anyway. Fluff. @_@
This was named for a song by Elbow, and it will probably have companion pieces in the future. Cross-posted to Reuk, by the way.
Alistair woke up at the same time Hikaru did. He opened his eyes and watched the young man cross the room in the fading shadows of the night, moving among the pockets of silver littering the floorboards. The Bladian took his clothes off as he watched, hardly aware of the fact that the Seer was awake. The white flannel something slipped from that slim pair of shoulders and fell, shapeless, at his feet. His skin was near perfect in moonlight, broken only by the patterns of his scars.
The knives in the belt strung somewhere on the wall slipped out from their leather hilts the moment Hikaru stretched his hand out towards them; he toyed with one absentmindedly as the others spun themselves into a curtain around him and followed him out the door. Alistair got up after Hikaru’s footsteps faded from his ears.
The idiosyncrasies of Zangyaku’s Wolf were little else but routine now. Alistair’s whole being was irreversibly attuned to the boy’s unpredictability, and there was no way to turn the process around. Another hour chasing sleep was better spent making sure that someone who needed it more got some. Then Alistair stopped rationalizing this and started putting his clothes on. He could already hear Ganymede in his head, laughing at him.
Laying down for the father, are you?
Alistair left the room.
In the brief period he had spent in Zangyaku after his resurrection, the one thing Alistair had learned about the oni-tsukai was that they did not know what sleep was; their rather colorful host of guardians didn’t either, but that might have been because they weren’t human in the first place. Alistair passed a host of tree spirits playing cards with one of the junior oni-tsukai as he pondered on this. The group took notice of him just before he could vanish around the corner.
“Oy, niichan!” the kid waved his hand about in the air. A full house of Jacks and a straight from ten. “Got money on ya? How about joining us for a round?”
“Not interested. Thanks.”
“Take care of our leader, Seer,” one of the tree spirits murmured, in a voice like the summer’s wind through leaves. The other two bowed their heads together in agreement. Alistair waved over his shoulder as he disappeared.
There were no dark corners or deserted hallways in the residential compound. Personnel spoke in hushed tones only because the ghosts were out and noise distracted them from doing the tasks that their summoners had given to them. The patrol groups moved in and out, leaving the compound prepared to deal out death and returning with the satisfaction of fulfilling their duty. Being among the oni-tsukai was like walking into a portal leading to the past, back where dressing in kimonos and carrying swords around were the norm. This was the War with Darkness that Mitsuoumi Shinta had armed himself against, and his youngest son carried on with it in his stead. He did not walk alone.
“Wanderlust again, Alistair?”
“No. Hikaru.”
“I thought so.” Kasumi Aoi smiled at him as she stepped out from the laundry room, bearing a stack of folded bed sheets. “It must be two in the morning by now… how is he?”
“Well enough to drag me from bed, apparently.” He followed the woman into the next room, knowing that she would not let him assist her even if he offered. “I’ll need the usual things when I get back.”
“Leave a message for it with the guardian at the North Gate. Tell her if you and my leader plan on getting up in time for breakfast also.”
Alistair was not certain when it had started, only that he had woken up one day and everyone in the compound seemed to have reached an agreement on who he was, and what his position was in their organization. The Seer was the outsider who, six years ago, nearly killed their leader and broke him beyond repair on several accounts. Nothing could change that, as Feränen so kindly reminded him with every opportunity that he was given. But something had changed, with his rebirth and the hard years Hikaru had spent on the Path. It was not something anyone could put to question, or hope to explain, Zangyaku, being the kind of organization that they were, collectively decided upon wasting no more time on it. Whatever could protect their leader from the Fall was enough for them. Whatever could make him happy was even better.
The Seer had never been to this part of the compound, and until that point all it had been was a shadowed grove of trees that he caught sight of every time he looked out from the window of his room. Now, as he drew near, he saw the unearthly plants that considered the grove their home, and the way the place seemed to draw in shadows and stillness. The silence was a shroud over the grove, perfect and reverent. He remembered, from overhearing one phantom guardian speak to another, that the place was called Amida’s Passage. Ghosts could hardly enter there, for fear of crossing to the other side.
Alistair crossed from the night into a deeper darkness, following the fairy lights that flickered among the trees. When he first heard the song, he thought he was imagining it. The tune struck him as familiar, even though he was sure he had never heard it before. It was as though the everlasting regret of the sacrifice of a million souls through the ages was given wings through music.
Will-o-the-wisps danced about him as he broke into the clearing, weaving whispers about him. Alistair looked up and forward, following a pathway woven of pulse energy and stars that lead up towards a sickle moon swimming in the black ink of the sky. The water flowers sprinkling the surface of a lake whose stillness was unnatural seemed to possess their own glow beyond the milk white waxed from the moon.
“Did Kasumi tell you that you’d find me here? She always did know where to look whenever I’d go missing.”
Hikaru stood waist-deep in the water, bathed in the shift of glow and shadows from the will-o-the-wisps painting light across the darkness and over the surface of the knives spinning slowly in the air around him. The rest of his clothes had been abandoned at the water’s edge. In the moon glow and the beads of water glistening on his skin, the largest of the wounds upon his back looked like the hollow shadow of wings.
Alistair leaned back against one of the trees, folding his arms across his chest and looking, just looking, at the young and sensual creature before him. Hikaru could have been some sort of angel bound to Earth to him if he didn’t know any better. There was beauty to him even in his silence, and grace to him even though he wasn’t moving. He was and always would be a boy to Alistair regardless of the years that would stretch themselves out between them. The boy who could kill him with a smile.
Alistair decided to speak before his voice failed him.
“You’ll catch a cold like that.”
Hikaru’s laughter fell soft and hushed against his ear. “Does it really matter?” Zangyaku’s Wolf murmured, turning his gaze towards the stars. “It will be over soon. I used to love coming to this place,” he added, following Alistair’s silence. “It’s funny. I thought I would hear Setsuna’s voice in the trees if I listened hard enough.”
Alistair was walking into the water before he could stop himself. He reached out and took Hikaru into the circle of his presence, quelling the Bladian’s trembling with his warmth. There was something powerful and perfectly mysterious in being fully clothed, holding a naked boy in one’s arms. He was aware of Hikaru’s fingers as they traveled the length of his arm, aware of the drumming beat of the boy’s heart as it pumped out more for the Bladian to bleed away. He was aware of everything. When he reached down and slid his hand atop the skin of the other’s belly, he knew that Hikaru was aware of everything too.
“Are you all right?”
The response echoed low, traveling on the wings of emotion.
“I am now.”
Space no longer meant anything. They were a tangle of dampness on skin and two lips meeting, working to have a taste of breath and each other’s mouths. Sensation was in the pieces of a whole that came to Alistair as he and Hikaru grasped and explored each other, marking time in movements and whispers. There were his fingers threading through Hikaru’s hair as though touching a cloud. There was his name murmured into his ear, the moment he did something to Hikaru that he knew the other liked. Their need for each other was unchecked and raw, more real and vulnerable then than it would ever appear at any other moment. Watched by no one but the blessed dead, they sank into the water when their closeness didn’t feel like it was enough, and whenever they came up for air both of them wished that they didn’t have to.
“She was right,” Hikaru laughed, falling breathless against Alistair’s supporting grip and loving every bit of it. “You’d follow me anywhere.”
“Who?”
“Satsuki.”
Those violet eyes gleamed up at Alistair as the name fell into place with the unspoken hope that it belonged there with them. Alistair took Hikaru’s hand and brushed the boy’s fingers against his lips, assuring him that it did.
“Do you think we have forever?”
“Maybe.”
They were kissing again, sweeping all the words away. Hikaru smiled up at him again when they were finished, tracing the features of his face as though etching it unto his fingers, his memory. “Who would’ve thought,” he murmured in wonder as he followed Alistair’s cheekbone down to his jaw, “that the Seer would be the optimist between the two of us?”
“Satsuki must have known.”
“Mm. Yeah. She knows everything.”
They went back without agreeing that they had to; it was simply something that the both of them knew. Hikaru walked along in his pants and Alistair’s coat with nothing else beneath them. Alistair barely minded the fact that he was as dripping wet as Hikaru was. The north guardian looked about as amused at the sight of them as a spirit would allow herself to be. “Breakfast in bed for the both of you then, Hikaru-sama?” she rasped as they walked through the gates of the residential compound.
“Naturally.”
“We’ll need the usual soon,” Alistair murmured as he passed. “Have someone bring it to the room.” The guardian bowed low, vanishing only after the two of them were long gone.
Alistair and Hikaru had the pleasure of disrobing each other once again when they reached their rooms. Showering became another mutual action, as did the small nothings that happened in the stall. Alistair nearly allowed Hikaru to drag him into bed for more of that before he stiffened his resolve and remembered what he had talked with Kasumi about.
“Easy.” The Seer was only able to pull his face about an inch or less from Hikaru’s, and that hardly left enough space for the restraining hand he placed on the other’s chest. They were still close enough to fully breathe each other in. “You’re sick, and the bandages need changing.”
“They always need changing.”
“All the more reason to slow down.”
Hikaru’s laugh was nearly noiseless as Alistair turned away, leaving him to fall back among the pillows and sheets. The Bladian watched the Seer as the latter walked to the door, where he could see the shadow of a member of the Fourteenth Division holding a med-kit, which Alistair opened the door long enough to retrieve. He held unto his silence as he let the older man fuss over him, moving only when Alistair told him to and in the way Alistair told him to. This was happiness, he decided, when he caught sight of the warmth buried in the Seer’s eyes and felt the gentleness padded in those callused fingers. It was something real and tangible. Something that wasn’t going to float away from him, or melt away into another jagged nightmare from the Song. Something that was really there.
Alistair must have heard his thoughts, for the Seer paused in what he was doing to look at him. “What is it?” he asked, his voice echoing low with concern. Hikaru responded by reaching up and pulling the Seer back towards him. It almost hurt him to smile.
“Nothing. Maybe I just don’t want this to stop.”
In the long, sweet kiss that followed, Hikaru knew that Alistair didn’t want it to stop for them either.
Companion pieces may or may not follow in the future.