Fic - Saiyuki Gaiden: Novation
Fandom: Saiyuki Gaiden
Theme: Ch-Ch-Changes
Title: Novation
Author/Artist: Avierra
Warnings: eventual sorta dubcon (but not in this snippet)
Pairing(s): Kenren/Tenpou
Notes: fandom favorite bonus, WIP, Points for Kenren
If nothing else, Heaven was a reliably anticlimactic place: day in and day out of sakura blossoms drifting on spring breezes while flights of long-tailed songbirds trilled in crystalline blue skies. Most kami seemed to enjoy that sort of thing, but the eternal sameness of it all got under Kenren’s skin like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and he more and more frequently found himself wondering just how often and to what extent he could render his own special brand of judiciously-couched insolence to Commander Goujun before he was busted for insubordination. And how many deliberately unsubtle innuendos he could murmur in Konzen Douji’s shell-like ears before Konzen threw a punch at him; and also how many times he could take part in a bar fight in his favorite watering hole before they permanently kicked him out. He even considered how often he could flirt with the Bosatsu before She got bored of him. That last hadn’t happened yet, but that might be just because their paths didn’t actually cross that often.
He was bored. He was restless. It was affecting… things. So, despite some judicious down-time in his favorite den of iniquity, the arrival of a baby-faced private telling him that he was immediately summoned to the office of Tenpou Gensui didn’t actually come as much of a surprise to him. Sure, he had another nice warm bottle of his favorite baijiu calling to him. And sure he was yet again in the process of pondering how best to liven things up and keep himself from going crazy (or maybe crazy-er) in an environment that he was pretty sure some ancient, gnarled kami had carefully constructed to soothe temperaments much less volatile than his.
That last train of thought was turning into something a lot closer to introspection than he cared to undertake, and with more frequency of late than he cared to admit.
But duty called and all that, and maybe after all he was a little glad of the interruption. He grabbed his bottle and rose, perhaps a little more unsteadily than he had expected. Maybe, probably, he had been there a bit longer than he had thought.
“Later, darlin’,” he said to the waitress assigned to his table. She pouted at him- pretty girl with a pretty pout-- but he threw down some coins on the table and staggered out. Yeah, he definitely had been there awhile longer than he had thought.
***
Tenpou glanced up from one of the ancient texts spread out across the only surface in his office that he conscientiously kept clean and free of his usual debris of ash and cigarette stubs. Still, Kenren had just fucking cleaned the whole office two days ago, and already the area around the desk was a fire-hazard of paper spills, scrolls, books, weird things he wasn’t even sure what they were, and other assorted Tenpou crap. He heaved a mental sigh, fell onto Tenpou’s ratty couch, more or less of his own volition, and reached for his pack of cigs. He’d had a long day, albeit a long day of drinking in one of Heaven’s seedier dives, and a stress-free smoke sounded pretty good right about now.
He had been peremptorily summoned, which actually wasn’t much like Tenpou come to think of it, but he and Tenpou had never much stood on ceremony with each other in any case. “Hey there. So. What’s up?”
“General,” Tenpou greeted Kenren. His tone was bland, and he reached over to a fairly thick pile of papers on his desk and riffed the edges. “Apparently the squad is a bit restless.” He stared at Kenren over the top of his glasses, and Kenren couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or amused. That was usually a bad sign, because most of the time it meant that Tenpou was merely biding his time and assessing weaknesses.
He stared back, his expression as virtuous as he could make it, and wondered, not for the first time, how even someone as generally oblivious as Commander Goujun could think Tenpou’s careful, studied, vagueness was genuine. Konzen Douji sometimes seemed to see under that placid mask, but as far as Kenren could tell, nearly everyone else seemed to think Tenpou was some sort of freakish cypher. Tenpou was a consummate conman, and Kenren, of all people, knew from conmen. But far be it for Kenren to spoil Tenpou's fun. Everyone made their own entertainments in this best of all possible Heavens.
But Tenpou was waiting for him to answer, probably longer than he had expected. “General?”
Gods, Kenren was so far off his stride lately. He shrugged and lit up, taking a deep breath of some much needed nicotine, gesturing thoughtfully with the cigarette. Apparently he was getting called onto the carpet. He could play this game, even with Tenpou. He was a master of this game, as a matter of fact. “‘If victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened.’” He almost managed to make that sound not completely assholish.
Tenpou smiled as if delighted- his teeth showed, even-- and Kenren mentally took a step back, wishing for not the first time that he didn’t have such a big mouth. He didn’t actually want to get into it with Tenpou, bad mood or not. And sure, he was being provoking and insubordinate, but not really all that much more than usual. But this was Tenpou in shark mode: his superficially serene smile was all predator-smelling-blood-in-the-water. Kenren wished he could clearly see Tenpou’s eyes behind those thick lenses.
Still, he tilted his head and regarded Kenren thoughtfully. “‘Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons, and they will follow you into the deepest valley.’ It saddens me, General, to have to be the one to tell you that some of your “beloved sons” have been quite naughty and are apparently in dire need of a spanking.”
Kenren’s mouth quirked up at that, and he considered the mental image with some appreciation.
Tenpou’s thumb riffed the edges of his stack of papers again. “There appears to have been an altercation between First Squad and, hmmm. All the rest of the squads. In front of the officer’s mess. It seems to have put Shien and Enrai right off their feed.” Tenpou pushed the stack of paper over to Kenren. “And we can’t have that, can we? I’ll leave these complaints for you to deal with. Again.”
“Yeah, yeah. I dealt with the first set already. Whiners. They wouldn’t be complaining if their squads had won the scrum,” Kenren said, taking the stack and dropping it on the couch next to him. He didn’t bother to look at it. He almost always handled Tenpou’s paperwork anyway, so it wasn’t exactly a punishment for him to deal with this either. He already knew what it said, but it was just another annoyance to add to the list on this wonderful, wonderful day.
“Perhaps not,” Tenpou said, and the tone of his voice jerked Kenren’s waning attention right back to his face, “but being accosted in the corridor is growing tiresome. And I would greatly appreciate it if you refrained from telling them ‘to try not to suck so much’ this time.”
Kenren grinned and took another puff of his cigarette. So much for that idea. Tenpou smiled back, and it was finally a real smile. “Look, I know I’ve been... distracted. I’ll get over it. I’m getting over it.” Kenren corrected himself hastily when Tenpou paused. “And I’ll get the men squared away. Sorry about that.” That all sounded so lame, but Tenpou just nodded.
“Fortunately, to that end, I’ve been thinking we could all do with some field exercises. It would seem everyone is full of excessively high spirits. So you and I have a mission Down Below.” One long, ink-stained finger pointed at a spot on the scroll he had been reading, and Kenren leaned over Tenpou’s desk to look at it. It was a map, a really, really old map, stained and tattered and with drops of something splattered over it. Pretty gross, even for Tenpou’s usual reading fare. He didn’t recognize many of the symbols, stylized to the point of incomprehensibility.
“There’s an interesting mix of terrain here that I believe the men can put to good use, but we should check it out first.”
“How old is that map? Everything will probably look completely different by now,” Kenren protested. He wondered where Tenpou had even come across something that ancient and frankly disgusting, but he’d probably been trawling around in the Heavenly Library again and “borrowed” it.
“Mmm, I think it’s a few hundred years old. Interesting document; the dialect is quite odd and it’s proving to be quite a challenge. I wonder...” his voice trailed off, but he didn’t finish the sentence. “Oh, and there may be some youkai in the area to the west here.” Tenpou’s long fingers pointed to a darker smudge on the map. “At least, I am fairly certain that’s what this symbol means. But I can’t imagine they’ll pose much of a problem. If there are, monitoring and reporting on their activities would undoubtedly be an excellent idea.” Tenpou frowned down at the yellowed, cracked edges, tracing one of the ancient, inked lines-- a road maybe. It was hard to tell from where Kenren sat. “Do you think I should try to analyze its age?”
“No, I think we should find a more recent map.” He stubbed out his cigarette and sat back.
“Well, that’s why we’re going Down Below, General,” Tenpou said very patiently, and Kenren finally got it. This scouting trip meant getting out of Heaven for a few days while the two of them breathed real air and got real dirt on their uniforms. It also got Kenren away from the jaundiced gazes of his fellow officers. In any case, if everything panned out, a week or three of war games and field exercises would cheer everyone up, so there was that too. It was a gift from Tenpou, and Kenren couldn’t help but feel a little guilty because he knew very well that lately Tenpou must have been ingesting an entire ration of shit on Kenren’s behalf, especially if that git Enrai was one of the complainers. Shien was okay, a decent guy, but he was probably out of patience. Kenren needed to pay better attention to the men; his own restlessness was making him sloppy and neglectful. It shouldn’t have become such an issue for them, and most especially not such an issue for Tenpou.
Theme: Ch-Ch-Changes
Title: Novation
Author/Artist: Avierra
Warnings: eventual sorta dubcon (but not in this snippet)
Pairing(s): Kenren/Tenpou
Notes: fandom favorite bonus, WIP, Points for Kenren
If nothing else, Heaven was a reliably anticlimactic place: day in and day out of sakura blossoms drifting on spring breezes while flights of long-tailed songbirds trilled in crystalline blue skies. Most kami seemed to enjoy that sort of thing, but the eternal sameness of it all got under Kenren’s skin like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and he more and more frequently found himself wondering just how often and to what extent he could render his own special brand of judiciously-couched insolence to Commander Goujun before he was busted for insubordination. And how many deliberately unsubtle innuendos he could murmur in Konzen Douji’s shell-like ears before Konzen threw a punch at him; and also how many times he could take part in a bar fight in his favorite watering hole before they permanently kicked him out. He even considered how often he could flirt with the Bosatsu before She got bored of him. That last hadn’t happened yet, but that might be just because their paths didn’t actually cross that often.
He was bored. He was restless. It was affecting… things. So, despite some judicious down-time in his favorite den of iniquity, the arrival of a baby-faced private telling him that he was immediately summoned to the office of Tenpou Gensui didn’t actually come as much of a surprise to him. Sure, he had another nice warm bottle of his favorite baijiu calling to him. And sure he was yet again in the process of pondering how best to liven things up and keep himself from going crazy (or maybe crazy-er) in an environment that he was pretty sure some ancient, gnarled kami had carefully constructed to soothe temperaments much less volatile than his.
That last train of thought was turning into something a lot closer to introspection than he cared to undertake, and with more frequency of late than he cared to admit.
But duty called and all that, and maybe after all he was a little glad of the interruption. He grabbed his bottle and rose, perhaps a little more unsteadily than he had expected. Maybe, probably, he had been there a bit longer than he had thought.
“Later, darlin’,” he said to the waitress assigned to his table. She pouted at him- pretty girl with a pretty pout-- but he threw down some coins on the table and staggered out. Yeah, he definitely had been there awhile longer than he had thought.
***
Tenpou glanced up from one of the ancient texts spread out across the only surface in his office that he conscientiously kept clean and free of his usual debris of ash and cigarette stubs. Still, Kenren had just fucking cleaned the whole office two days ago, and already the area around the desk was a fire-hazard of paper spills, scrolls, books, weird things he wasn’t even sure what they were, and other assorted Tenpou crap. He heaved a mental sigh, fell onto Tenpou’s ratty couch, more or less of his own volition, and reached for his pack of cigs. He’d had a long day, albeit a long day of drinking in one of Heaven’s seedier dives, and a stress-free smoke sounded pretty good right about now.
He had been peremptorily summoned, which actually wasn’t much like Tenpou come to think of it, but he and Tenpou had never much stood on ceremony with each other in any case. “Hey there. So. What’s up?”
“General,” Tenpou greeted Kenren. His tone was bland, and he reached over to a fairly thick pile of papers on his desk and riffed the edges. “Apparently the squad is a bit restless.” He stared at Kenren over the top of his glasses, and Kenren couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or amused. That was usually a bad sign, because most of the time it meant that Tenpou was merely biding his time and assessing weaknesses.
He stared back, his expression as virtuous as he could make it, and wondered, not for the first time, how even someone as generally oblivious as Commander Goujun could think Tenpou’s careful, studied, vagueness was genuine. Konzen Douji sometimes seemed to see under that placid mask, but as far as Kenren could tell, nearly everyone else seemed to think Tenpou was some sort of freakish cypher. Tenpou was a consummate conman, and Kenren, of all people, knew from conmen. But far be it for Kenren to spoil Tenpou's fun. Everyone made their own entertainments in this best of all possible Heavens.
But Tenpou was waiting for him to answer, probably longer than he had expected. “General?”
Gods, Kenren was so far off his stride lately. He shrugged and lit up, taking a deep breath of some much needed nicotine, gesturing thoughtfully with the cigarette. Apparently he was getting called onto the carpet. He could play this game, even with Tenpou. He was a master of this game, as a matter of fact. “‘If victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened.’” He almost managed to make that sound not completely assholish.
Tenpou smiled as if delighted- his teeth showed, even-- and Kenren mentally took a step back, wishing for not the first time that he didn’t have such a big mouth. He didn’t actually want to get into it with Tenpou, bad mood or not. And sure, he was being provoking and insubordinate, but not really all that much more than usual. But this was Tenpou in shark mode: his superficially serene smile was all predator-smelling-blood-in-the-water. Kenren wished he could clearly see Tenpou’s eyes behind those thick lenses.
Still, he tilted his head and regarded Kenren thoughtfully. “‘Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons, and they will follow you into the deepest valley.’ It saddens me, General, to have to be the one to tell you that some of your “beloved sons” have been quite naughty and are apparently in dire need of a spanking.”
Kenren’s mouth quirked up at that, and he considered the mental image with some appreciation.
Tenpou’s thumb riffed the edges of his stack of papers again. “There appears to have been an altercation between First Squad and, hmmm. All the rest of the squads. In front of the officer’s mess. It seems to have put Shien and Enrai right off their feed.” Tenpou pushed the stack of paper over to Kenren. “And we can’t have that, can we? I’ll leave these complaints for you to deal with. Again.”
“Yeah, yeah. I dealt with the first set already. Whiners. They wouldn’t be complaining if their squads had won the scrum,” Kenren said, taking the stack and dropping it on the couch next to him. He didn’t bother to look at it. He almost always handled Tenpou’s paperwork anyway, so it wasn’t exactly a punishment for him to deal with this either. He already knew what it said, but it was just another annoyance to add to the list on this wonderful, wonderful day.
“Perhaps not,” Tenpou said, and the tone of his voice jerked Kenren’s waning attention right back to his face, “but being accosted in the corridor is growing tiresome. And I would greatly appreciate it if you refrained from telling them ‘to try not to suck so much’ this time.”
Kenren grinned and took another puff of his cigarette. So much for that idea. Tenpou smiled back, and it was finally a real smile. “Look, I know I’ve been... distracted. I’ll get over it. I’m getting over it.” Kenren corrected himself hastily when Tenpou paused. “And I’ll get the men squared away. Sorry about that.” That all sounded so lame, but Tenpou just nodded.
“Fortunately, to that end, I’ve been thinking we could all do with some field exercises. It would seem everyone is full of excessively high spirits. So you and I have a mission Down Below.” One long, ink-stained finger pointed at a spot on the scroll he had been reading, and Kenren leaned over Tenpou’s desk to look at it. It was a map, a really, really old map, stained and tattered and with drops of something splattered over it. Pretty gross, even for Tenpou’s usual reading fare. He didn’t recognize many of the symbols, stylized to the point of incomprehensibility.
“There’s an interesting mix of terrain here that I believe the men can put to good use, but we should check it out first.”
“How old is that map? Everything will probably look completely different by now,” Kenren protested. He wondered where Tenpou had even come across something that ancient and frankly disgusting, but he’d probably been trawling around in the Heavenly Library again and “borrowed” it.
“Mmm, I think it’s a few hundred years old. Interesting document; the dialect is quite odd and it’s proving to be quite a challenge. I wonder...” his voice trailed off, but he didn’t finish the sentence. “Oh, and there may be some youkai in the area to the west here.” Tenpou’s long fingers pointed to a darker smudge on the map. “At least, I am fairly certain that’s what this symbol means. But I can’t imagine they’ll pose much of a problem. If there are, monitoring and reporting on their activities would undoubtedly be an excellent idea.” Tenpou frowned down at the yellowed, cracked edges, tracing one of the ancient, inked lines-- a road maybe. It was hard to tell from where Kenren sat. “Do you think I should try to analyze its age?”
“No, I think we should find a more recent map.” He stubbed out his cigarette and sat back.
“Well, that’s why we’re going Down Below, General,” Tenpou said very patiently, and Kenren finally got it. This scouting trip meant getting out of Heaven for a few days while the two of them breathed real air and got real dirt on their uniforms. It also got Kenren away from the jaundiced gazes of his fellow officers. In any case, if everything panned out, a week or three of war games and field exercises would cheer everyone up, so there was that too. It was a gift from Tenpou, and Kenren couldn’t help but feel a little guilty because he knew very well that lately Tenpou must have been ingesting an entire ration of shit on Kenren’s behalf, especially if that git Enrai was one of the complainers. Shien was okay, a decent guy, but he was probably out of patience. Kenren needed to pay better attention to the men; his own restlessness was making him sloppy and neglectful. It shouldn’t have become such an issue for them, and most especially not such an issue for Tenpou.