Fic- Saiyuki - Door to Dreams
Fandom: Saiyuki Gaiden
Title: Door to Dreams
Author/Artist: Devikun
Warnings: some allusion to death (not a main character)
Pairing(s): 10K
Notes: For the Battle #4 challenge prompt: Death
Okay, I am tin roof rusty like you would not believe and this fails in so many ways I don't even want to talk about it, but I really wanted to write something so please forgive me. I actually did write this for the Death theme, although it strikes me that it almost suits the At Last theme too. You'll see.
Anyway it's nice to be back even if it's not my best. And I still have to catch up on stuff everyone else has been writing in this great comp!
Points to Gojyo!
PS - SO rusty I forgot both the LJ cut AND the subject heading on the first post. Sorry!
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When he came through the door for the last time, he did it the hard way. He hadn't had much of a choice, and to be honest, he hadn't much cared for it. He was pretty sure it had hurt, although he didn't really recall how much. It didn't make him want to do it again, though. He was happy where he was, and for a long time, or so it seemed, he wandered, he lived. He slept in fields and barn-houses and gutters. He was greeted by beggars and snubbed by princes and played with children and swam in lakes with only the birds to see. And he saw the door in every one of them, and when their time came to go through it, it was always the hard way too.
Maybe they didn't have much of a choice either.
He'd asked someone about that once, a while ago; this nice old lady who had taken him in despite her little farm and her seven children and her thirteen grandchildren and her two great-grandchildren. He'd been sitting in her kitchen while one of her grand-daughters was in the room upstairs, giving birth to another great-grandchild, and he'd been able to feel the door almost the second the woman had started screaming.
He'd made to get up then, and the old woman had reached over and stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm, and he hadn't understood why, and he'd said so. She'd looked at him not like he was crazy for asking, but with a kind of sad compassion that made him find somewhere else to settle his gaze. It had landed on the great-grandchildren, one of them so young it could only throw its arms and legs about in haphazard directions, and scream, and smile, and belch and shit. But the tiny nails on its hands and feet were perfect, and he'd been able to see in its eyes a kind of ferocious hunger to take in everything, all at once, and never ever stop. And he'd known then, that's why it was the hard way. The pain passed. It was forgotten, and all that was left was what had been given to them by coming through it.
And as he'd sat in that kitchen with this old woman and her grandchildren and her great grandchildren, and waited and listened, he'd wondered what he'd gotten, and where it was, and why he couldn't see it, and he'd realised with a start that had made the foundations of the house creak briefly that he had gotten something. All he had to do was find it.
It was late when the birthing woman's screams had started to grow thin. The children were asleep, the adults quiet. The old woman had nodded, sadness in her eyes, and he'd risen from his chair, climbed the stairs, walked through the crowded bedroom to the birthing woman's side, and laid his hand upon her belly.
She'd breathed in, sighed out, and the baby had finally slid from her, easy as you please. Someone had snatched it up, tipped it upside down and given it a good smack between the shoulder blades and it had coughed out and started crying. It was a good cry, a healthy cry, but he hadn't paid it any attention, because his hand had still been on the woman's belly and the door had been there, right there. He hadn't been able to see it, but it had been there, and the woman, after so many hours fighting, had sighed and slipped silently through it while no one else had been looking, and he had whispered a blessing as the door closed behind her.
He'd gone back downstairs then and picked up his pack and told the old woman that he was sorry he hadn't been able to do more. He'd thanked her for the meal and the bed and she'd taken his hand, and kissed the backs of his knuckles, her lips paper dry and fervent, and said that it was all right. He'd nodded, and leaned down and kissed her upon the brow, and when he'd left her, Kenren had, for the first time since he'd come through the door the hard way, understood that there was something that he'd come through for.
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He didn't know how or why he had forgotten, but as soon as he realised, everything changed. His wandering became less random. He began searching. He passed over mountains and through towns, spoke to people and demons in equal measure. Sometimes they saw him for what he was and sometimes they didn't.
And then, one day, he met two dogs on the road. Well, they were hounds, really. They stood at the end of a road that went through a town and didn't, as far as Kenren could see, go anywhere else. They had dark coats and bright eyes and large nostrils and could have taken each of his arms in one bite if they wanted to.
"Well," he stopped in front of them and said. "You weren't precisely what I was looking for. Do we have a problem here?"
"No problem," the one on the left said blandly, blinking.
"But he'll want to see you," added the one on the right, with what he supposed it thought was a reassuring doggy smile.
Kenren shrugged. "You guys need to work on your invitation delivery," he said, but they just ignored him, turned and started walking, so he followed. They walked for a bit, and he carefully only watched the road under his feet, until he was brought to a gate - not a very big one - and since there was nowhere else to go anyway he didn't hesitate to raise his hand and give it a push. It gave easily, and opened onto a beautiful garden in front of a fairly non-descript house. He patted the hounds on the head on the way through and grinned when they growled and made a half-assed go at biting him.
"Well," he said when the house's occupant met him in the garden. "Fancy meeting you here."
"And you," Enma sighed, and put his hands on his ample hips. "What the hell am I supposed to do with you?"
Kenren tried to look suitably respectful, since that probably wasn't a rhetorical question, but he suspected he mostly failed.
"Don't know, to be honest," he answered. "But I'd be suitably appreciative if we discussed it over a drink. I haven't had a decent drink since I left."
Enma rolled his eyes and sighed again. "I bet you haven't," he huffed. "Fine. Come on in then. I've got a barrel from last season I've been saving for a special occasion."
Kenren dropped his bag by the gate and grinned.
"I'm a special occasion?"
Enma turned and started heading into the house proper.
"Not yet, but you play your cards right and you could be."
Kenren laughed. It felt like he hadn't done it in years.
"Flirt," he chided, and followed.
+++++++
You'd think the God of Death's home away from home would be depressing, but Enma's house was light and airy and Kenren liked it quite a bit. It suited Enma, and Kenren said so. Enma handed him a cup, filled to the brim with freshly poured sake from his stores, and took a seat.
"It makes for a nice change, yeah," he agreed, and Kenren didn't need to ask from where.
"So," he said after he'd taken a barely polite gulp of his drink. "You mad at me?" He paused when he actually tasted the sake.
"No, I'm not mad at you," Enma sighed, taking a sip from his own cup. "What would be the point of that?"
"Well," Kenren shrugged. "I thought, you know, what with skipping the usual steps and all that…"
"Saved me some work, I suppose," Enma shrugged back. "Rattled some of the higher ups."
Kenren laughed, not completely humourlessly. "I bet."
"Left the place in a bit of a mess. Not that that was entirely your fault, I suppose."
"Not entirely," Kenren agreed, and he could feel the question on the tip of his tongue, just itching to leap free.
"He's here," Enma said, and for a moment, he almost sounded kind.
Kenren blinked, all thoughts of dissembling falling away to insignificance. "You've seen him?"
"No," Enma said. "But I know where he is. If you want to know. It wouldn't even cost you anything."
Kenren narrowed his eyes at him. "What's the catch?"
Enma arched an eyebrow but otherwise didn't look particularly offended. "No conditions on my part, I promise," he sniffed. "It's just… Well, it may not be all you hoped for."
And suddenly Kenren was annoyed. "How would you know what I hope for?"
Enma rolled his eyes and leaned across to refill Kenren's cup. Kenren leaned in and let him.
"Please," he reprimanded lightly. "Remember who you’re talking to. Of course I know. It's one of the supposed perks of the job. So, do you want to know?"
Of course he did. "Of course I do."
"I'm happy to hear that," Enma said, although he didn't exactly look it.
++++
Kenren left one hangover later, with a promise to come back. Enma was lacking for decent company, or so he said, and his door was always open, or at the very least unlocked. Kenren had laughed at his joke, smacked him on the arm, and then leaned in and kissed him on the mouth and told him thanks for the hospitality. Then he'd gone back to the gate on the other side of the garden, picked up his pack, pushed the gate open and stepped out onto the road. The dogs weren't anywhere to be seen, a fact for which he was somehow glad.
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South, Enma had said. About as far as you could go before you couldn't actually walk any further. Kenren went that far, and what he found when he got there was an ocean. The weather was mild and the breeze was warm, and there didn't seem to be all that much in any direction, wet or dry, except hills of sand and grass like an old man's thinning hair, and gulls, and rocks, and clouds and sky.
He wasn't disappointed. After all, it wasn't like he was on a clock or anything. And it looked like an okay place to rest, so he found himself a tree - not hard, since there was only one - and propped his pack up beneath it, and stretched out and lay his head down. Then he folded his hands across his chest and let the warmth and the sounds of the waves and the birds lull him into sleep.
And after a while, he woke up again, and there was the tree above him, and there was another tree, and that tree said, "Hello. What are you doing all the way out here?"
Kenren looked up and blinked, and said, "Tenpou. I've been looking for you everywhere."
"Oh," Tenpou said, sounding only vaguely surprised. "Is that my name?"
++++
"I don't know," Tenpou said when Kenren asked him how long he'd been here. "I can't remember," he said when Kenren wanted to know how he'd gotten here. "I didn't see any reason to go anywhere else," he said when Kenren asked what he was doing here. "I like it here," he added.
Kenren looked at him, standing there in the little kitchen of his little cottage, and remembered what Enma had said, that he might not like what he found.
"Do you remember anything at all?" Kenren asked finally.
"I remember how to make bread," Tenpou offered. "Would you like some lunch?"
Tenpou, to Kenren's knowledge had never learned to make bread. Unless he'd read it in a book, come to think of it. But Kenren was kind of hungry.
"Sure," he sighed eventually. "Thanks."
Tenpou looked relieved, and turned immediately and began moving about the kitchen. Kenren stood and watched him, and eventually he took a chair at the little kitchen table and watched from there. Tenpou had that same slightly absorbed way of doing things that he'd always had, but now instead of fetching scrolls and marking books and signing documents, he was making Kenren lunch with bread he'd apparently baked.
"It's not much," Tenpou said finally, as he put the food down on the table in front of Kenren. "Anything I don't grow or make here comes from the local markets a couple of hours away."
"It's fine," Kenren answered, and actually it did look fine. He reached over and snagged a piece of bread and then a piece of fruit and then dragged both through the edge of the soft cheese in the middle of the board and shoved the lot in his mouth. The bread was rough, but flavoursome, and the sharpness of the cheese warred briefly with the sweetness of the fruit before he swallowed.
"Good," Kenren grunted, and reached for some more. "Having some?"
Tenpou smiled at him. It wasn't a smile Kenren really recognised on his face, but it was a good smile all the same.
"I've already eaten," Tenpou said softly, and watched for a moment while Kenren chewed happily on a piece of peppery meat. He got up, went over to the bench and came back with a jug and two cups, and poured the contents of the jug into the cups and handed one over to Kenren. Kenren took it gratefully, and when he went to wash down his food with a mouthful, found it was a sweet, light, cold tea.
"So," Tenpou began, cradling his own cup in both hands in front of him but not drinking. "How do we know each other? Are we friends?"
"The best," Kenren agreed. "But where we were, we both had to leave. It wasn't doing any good for either of us to stay there."
"I don't recall," Tenpou murmured, sounding a little as if he were trying to. "Have you been looking for me all this time?"
Kenren paused for a moment, but it wasn't like the truth would hurt him, or either of them really.
"In a way," he said. "My way. I thought, if I just kept moving, I'd find you eventually."
Tenpou blinked at him. "And you did."
Kenren smiled. "And I did."
"Would you like to stay?" Tenpou asked. "That is, I think I'd like it if you did."
"Don't have anywhere else to be," Kenren said. "Besides, your side porch looks like it needs fixing."
"Yes," Tenpou agreed. "I suppose it does. Do you know how?"
"Not a clue," Kenren grinned and Tenpou laughed, and that was something else that seemed to have changed about him, because he'd never laughed in Heaven.
"Well," he said, still smiling. "I'm sure between the two of us we can work it out."
+++
It was surprisingly easy after that. Kenren had no desire to talk about what they'd been before, and Tenpou had no memory of it, and together they eked out a quiet existence in the cottage in the dunes. Kenren fished, started making plans to build a boat so he could go out further. Tenpou traded the vegetables and flowers he grew for other things they needed, and occasionally tutored some of the town children in reading and writing. In the evenings, when the weather was good, they walked along the beach, or sat on the porch; or when the weather was bad, they secured all the doors and shutters and sat closer to the fire and read and drank the beer that Kenren was brewing. They talked about what they wanted to do, and it was always small things, little things.
"I want you to meet a friend of mine," Kenren said one day. "I think you'll like him."
"All right," agreed Tenpou, peering critically at the cutting he was trying to strike from some plant one of the townspeople had given him.
"It's a bit of a walk," Kenren added. "Is that okay?"
Tenpou turned and looked at him. "Yes," he said.
"Cool," Kenren. "Leave in the morning?"
"That's fine," Tenpou said, and went back to his horticulture.
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Tenpou was positively animated on the road. When Kenren laughed at him, he just ignored him. He named just about every plant they passed, and more than a couple of times Kenren had to just park it by the side of the road while Tenpou veered off into the wilderness in search of something specific Kenren had almost no interest in. It was almost like old times.
"Here, try this," he'd say when he appeared again, and present Kenren with some piece of something, which Kenren would hope wasn't poisonous even while he put it in his mouth.
"Stringy," Kenren would provide, or, "Bit sour, but juicy," or "Peppery. Be nice on baked fish," and Tenpou would look immensely satisfied, and fetch out the plant diary he was keeping and start writing in it even while began walking again. More than once, Kenren had to pull him out of the path of a ditch or an oncoming vehicle. He'd wave at the cart driver and the driver would look at him and look at Tenpou with his attention on his book and would shake his head and wave back and continue on.
Finally, they reached their destination. Kenren knew, because there were the dogs again. He eyed them suspiciously, but they didn't say a word, just turned and started walking. Kenren followed, dragging Tenpou, and in another short while, there was the gate again, and the garden, and the house, and Enma.
"Oh!" Enma said. He was dressed in dungarees and a big straw hat and his feet were covered in dirt. He seemed to be digging up last season's flowerbeds. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon." He stood up and brushed the dirt off his hands and Tenpou looked around him, his eyes practically alight and said, "What an absolutely wonderful garden you have!"
Enma smiled bright enough to just about put out the sun, and by the time he'd hustled Tenpou inside, Kenren following almost like an afterthought, he was already regaling Tenpou with the names of his dahlias and the varieties of japonicas he was growing and Tenpou was already asking for some cuttings and telling him about what he'd managed to do to improve the soil where he was living.
Kenren lowered himself into Enma's sofa, and watched them and smiled, and eventually one of the hounds came over and plopped its chin down on Kenren's thigh and whuffed out a sigh.
"Yeah, I know, bud'," Kenren said, smiling, and scratched it between the ears. "It's a bit of a dog's life, but it's really not all that bad."
The dog whuffed again, but it seemed to agree.
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They stayed the night. Kenren couldn't say he'd ever spent overnight in the Underworld, although technically he supposed he wasn't, but still, it was close enough.
Tenpou and Enma talked well into the early morning. Kenren had no idea what about. He went to bed eventually, the hounds - who seemed to have befriended him out of sheer neglect - with him, one of them close enough for him to hug, although he didn't try. In the morning, they were gone, and Tenpou was awake and sitting in his bedroll next to him, watching him.
"Hey," Kenren greeted, voice rough with sleep. "Have a good night, then?"
Tenpou stared at him a little long. "Yes," he said finally. "I did. Thank you."
"No thanks required," Kenren said. "It was as much for him as you. I thought you’d like each other."
"Last night," Tenpou said. "After I went to bed. I dreamed about you."
Kenren shifted himself up onto his elbows, grinning. "Something good, I hope," he joked with a smile that he'd been giving Tenpou for a while but so far hadn't been getting much of a reaction to.
Tenpou didn't really react this time either, something else that hadn't changed all that much from before.
"It was, actually. I dreamed that you and I were sitting under a tree. A cherry tree. You were sitting close and your shoulder was warm and pressed up against me, and you were laughing, and there was someone else there. Maybe more than one person."
"Sounds nice," Kenren agreed. "No cherry trees around here though."
"No, I know," Tenpou said. "But I think I was happy, and it felt like it was for the first time."
"Oh," Kenren said, because there wasn't anything else he could say. He remembered that day. It had been a first time for him too, not happiness, but something else.
"Shall we go home?" Tenpou said.
Kenren nodded. "If you want to."
++++++
In contrast to the way there, Tenpou was quiet on the way back. They'd left Enma with his effusive blessings and a basket full of cuttings he guaranteed would grow. Kenren had no doubt they would considering the garden - and gardener - they'd come from. As long as they didn't do anything hokey, like cry under a full moon or scream bloody murder when picked, he supposed he would count himself lucky.
When they got home, Kenren set about setting up the seedlings in the greenhouse he'd put up around the north side of the cottage, and the task occupied him so thoroughly, he didn't hear Tenpou until he turned and found him standing in the doorway.
He opened his mouth to ask if he wanted something, but before he could, Tenpou was across the wooden floor and putting his hands on the sides of Kenren's face and then he was kissing him, soft and warm and so sweet that Kenren, if he hadn't already, might have thought he'd just died.
"What-" he said, and when his voice wobbled a little, he swallowed and tried again. "What was that for?"
Tenpou smiled, and took the cutting tray from Kenren's hands and put it aside, and then put his hands back on Kenren's face and kissed him again. "Because I wanted to," he said. "In my dream. But I didn't and now I have no idea why."
Kenren wet his lips as the words sank in.
"You wanted to kiss me then? That day you were happy?"
"Yes," Tenpou sighed, his thumbs brushing gentle across Kenren's skin.
"I wanted to too," Kenren confessed. "I've always wanted to."
Tenpou smiled at him, sweet and indulgent. "How could you? It was just a dream."
"It was," Kenren agreed and leaned his forehead against Tenpou's. "But we're finally awake."
"Yes," Tenpou said. "We are."
Title: Door to Dreams
Author/Artist: Devikun
Warnings: some allusion to death (not a main character)
Pairing(s): 10K
Notes: For the Battle #4 challenge prompt: Death
Okay, I am tin roof rusty like you would not believe and this fails in so many ways I don't even want to talk about it, but I really wanted to write something so please forgive me. I actually did write this for the Death theme, although it strikes me that it almost suits the At Last theme too. You'll see.
Anyway it's nice to be back even if it's not my best. And I still have to catch up on stuff everyone else has been writing in this great comp!
Points to Gojyo!
PS - SO rusty I forgot both the LJ cut AND the subject heading on the first post. Sorry!
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When he came through the door for the last time, he did it the hard way. He hadn't had much of a choice, and to be honest, he hadn't much cared for it. He was pretty sure it had hurt, although he didn't really recall how much. It didn't make him want to do it again, though. He was happy where he was, and for a long time, or so it seemed, he wandered, he lived. He slept in fields and barn-houses and gutters. He was greeted by beggars and snubbed by princes and played with children and swam in lakes with only the birds to see. And he saw the door in every one of them, and when their time came to go through it, it was always the hard way too.
Maybe they didn't have much of a choice either.
He'd asked someone about that once, a while ago; this nice old lady who had taken him in despite her little farm and her seven children and her thirteen grandchildren and her two great-grandchildren. He'd been sitting in her kitchen while one of her grand-daughters was in the room upstairs, giving birth to another great-grandchild, and he'd been able to feel the door almost the second the woman had started screaming.
He'd made to get up then, and the old woman had reached over and stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm, and he hadn't understood why, and he'd said so. She'd looked at him not like he was crazy for asking, but with a kind of sad compassion that made him find somewhere else to settle his gaze. It had landed on the great-grandchildren, one of them so young it could only throw its arms and legs about in haphazard directions, and scream, and smile, and belch and shit. But the tiny nails on its hands and feet were perfect, and he'd been able to see in its eyes a kind of ferocious hunger to take in everything, all at once, and never ever stop. And he'd known then, that's why it was the hard way. The pain passed. It was forgotten, and all that was left was what had been given to them by coming through it.
And as he'd sat in that kitchen with this old woman and her grandchildren and her great grandchildren, and waited and listened, he'd wondered what he'd gotten, and where it was, and why he couldn't see it, and he'd realised with a start that had made the foundations of the house creak briefly that he had gotten something. All he had to do was find it.
It was late when the birthing woman's screams had started to grow thin. The children were asleep, the adults quiet. The old woman had nodded, sadness in her eyes, and he'd risen from his chair, climbed the stairs, walked through the crowded bedroom to the birthing woman's side, and laid his hand upon her belly.
She'd breathed in, sighed out, and the baby had finally slid from her, easy as you please. Someone had snatched it up, tipped it upside down and given it a good smack between the shoulder blades and it had coughed out and started crying. It was a good cry, a healthy cry, but he hadn't paid it any attention, because his hand had still been on the woman's belly and the door had been there, right there. He hadn't been able to see it, but it had been there, and the woman, after so many hours fighting, had sighed and slipped silently through it while no one else had been looking, and he had whispered a blessing as the door closed behind her.
He'd gone back downstairs then and picked up his pack and told the old woman that he was sorry he hadn't been able to do more. He'd thanked her for the meal and the bed and she'd taken his hand, and kissed the backs of his knuckles, her lips paper dry and fervent, and said that it was all right. He'd nodded, and leaned down and kissed her upon the brow, and when he'd left her, Kenren had, for the first time since he'd come through the door the hard way, understood that there was something that he'd come through for.
+++++++++
He didn't know how or why he had forgotten, but as soon as he realised, everything changed. His wandering became less random. He began searching. He passed over mountains and through towns, spoke to people and demons in equal measure. Sometimes they saw him for what he was and sometimes they didn't.
And then, one day, he met two dogs on the road. Well, they were hounds, really. They stood at the end of a road that went through a town and didn't, as far as Kenren could see, go anywhere else. They had dark coats and bright eyes and large nostrils and could have taken each of his arms in one bite if they wanted to.
"Well," he stopped in front of them and said. "You weren't precisely what I was looking for. Do we have a problem here?"
"No problem," the one on the left said blandly, blinking.
"But he'll want to see you," added the one on the right, with what he supposed it thought was a reassuring doggy smile.
Kenren shrugged. "You guys need to work on your invitation delivery," he said, but they just ignored him, turned and started walking, so he followed. They walked for a bit, and he carefully only watched the road under his feet, until he was brought to a gate - not a very big one - and since there was nowhere else to go anyway he didn't hesitate to raise his hand and give it a push. It gave easily, and opened onto a beautiful garden in front of a fairly non-descript house. He patted the hounds on the head on the way through and grinned when they growled and made a half-assed go at biting him.
"Well," he said when the house's occupant met him in the garden. "Fancy meeting you here."
"And you," Enma sighed, and put his hands on his ample hips. "What the hell am I supposed to do with you?"
Kenren tried to look suitably respectful, since that probably wasn't a rhetorical question, but he suspected he mostly failed.
"Don't know, to be honest," he answered. "But I'd be suitably appreciative if we discussed it over a drink. I haven't had a decent drink since I left."
Enma rolled his eyes and sighed again. "I bet you haven't," he huffed. "Fine. Come on in then. I've got a barrel from last season I've been saving for a special occasion."
Kenren dropped his bag by the gate and grinned.
"I'm a special occasion?"
Enma turned and started heading into the house proper.
"Not yet, but you play your cards right and you could be."
Kenren laughed. It felt like he hadn't done it in years.
"Flirt," he chided, and followed.
+++++++
You'd think the God of Death's home away from home would be depressing, but Enma's house was light and airy and Kenren liked it quite a bit. It suited Enma, and Kenren said so. Enma handed him a cup, filled to the brim with freshly poured sake from his stores, and took a seat.
"It makes for a nice change, yeah," he agreed, and Kenren didn't need to ask from where.
"So," he said after he'd taken a barely polite gulp of his drink. "You mad at me?" He paused when he actually tasted the sake.
"No, I'm not mad at you," Enma sighed, taking a sip from his own cup. "What would be the point of that?"
"Well," Kenren shrugged. "I thought, you know, what with skipping the usual steps and all that…"
"Saved me some work, I suppose," Enma shrugged back. "Rattled some of the higher ups."
Kenren laughed, not completely humourlessly. "I bet."
"Left the place in a bit of a mess. Not that that was entirely your fault, I suppose."
"Not entirely," Kenren agreed, and he could feel the question on the tip of his tongue, just itching to leap free.
"He's here," Enma said, and for a moment, he almost sounded kind.
Kenren blinked, all thoughts of dissembling falling away to insignificance. "You've seen him?"
"No," Enma said. "But I know where he is. If you want to know. It wouldn't even cost you anything."
Kenren narrowed his eyes at him. "What's the catch?"
Enma arched an eyebrow but otherwise didn't look particularly offended. "No conditions on my part, I promise," he sniffed. "It's just… Well, it may not be all you hoped for."
And suddenly Kenren was annoyed. "How would you know what I hope for?"
Enma rolled his eyes and leaned across to refill Kenren's cup. Kenren leaned in and let him.
"Please," he reprimanded lightly. "Remember who you’re talking to. Of course I know. It's one of the supposed perks of the job. So, do you want to know?"
Of course he did. "Of course I do."
"I'm happy to hear that," Enma said, although he didn't exactly look it.
++++
Kenren left one hangover later, with a promise to come back. Enma was lacking for decent company, or so he said, and his door was always open, or at the very least unlocked. Kenren had laughed at his joke, smacked him on the arm, and then leaned in and kissed him on the mouth and told him thanks for the hospitality. Then he'd gone back to the gate on the other side of the garden, picked up his pack, pushed the gate open and stepped out onto the road. The dogs weren't anywhere to be seen, a fact for which he was somehow glad.
++++
South, Enma had said. About as far as you could go before you couldn't actually walk any further. Kenren went that far, and what he found when he got there was an ocean. The weather was mild and the breeze was warm, and there didn't seem to be all that much in any direction, wet or dry, except hills of sand and grass like an old man's thinning hair, and gulls, and rocks, and clouds and sky.
He wasn't disappointed. After all, it wasn't like he was on a clock or anything. And it looked like an okay place to rest, so he found himself a tree - not hard, since there was only one - and propped his pack up beneath it, and stretched out and lay his head down. Then he folded his hands across his chest and let the warmth and the sounds of the waves and the birds lull him into sleep.
And after a while, he woke up again, and there was the tree above him, and there was another tree, and that tree said, "Hello. What are you doing all the way out here?"
Kenren looked up and blinked, and said, "Tenpou. I've been looking for you everywhere."
"Oh," Tenpou said, sounding only vaguely surprised. "Is that my name?"
++++
"I don't know," Tenpou said when Kenren asked him how long he'd been here. "I can't remember," he said when Kenren wanted to know how he'd gotten here. "I didn't see any reason to go anywhere else," he said when Kenren asked what he was doing here. "I like it here," he added.
Kenren looked at him, standing there in the little kitchen of his little cottage, and remembered what Enma had said, that he might not like what he found.
"Do you remember anything at all?" Kenren asked finally.
"I remember how to make bread," Tenpou offered. "Would you like some lunch?"
Tenpou, to Kenren's knowledge had never learned to make bread. Unless he'd read it in a book, come to think of it. But Kenren was kind of hungry.
"Sure," he sighed eventually. "Thanks."
Tenpou looked relieved, and turned immediately and began moving about the kitchen. Kenren stood and watched him, and eventually he took a chair at the little kitchen table and watched from there. Tenpou had that same slightly absorbed way of doing things that he'd always had, but now instead of fetching scrolls and marking books and signing documents, he was making Kenren lunch with bread he'd apparently baked.
"It's not much," Tenpou said finally, as he put the food down on the table in front of Kenren. "Anything I don't grow or make here comes from the local markets a couple of hours away."
"It's fine," Kenren answered, and actually it did look fine. He reached over and snagged a piece of bread and then a piece of fruit and then dragged both through the edge of the soft cheese in the middle of the board and shoved the lot in his mouth. The bread was rough, but flavoursome, and the sharpness of the cheese warred briefly with the sweetness of the fruit before he swallowed.
"Good," Kenren grunted, and reached for some more. "Having some?"
Tenpou smiled at him. It wasn't a smile Kenren really recognised on his face, but it was a good smile all the same.
"I've already eaten," Tenpou said softly, and watched for a moment while Kenren chewed happily on a piece of peppery meat. He got up, went over to the bench and came back with a jug and two cups, and poured the contents of the jug into the cups and handed one over to Kenren. Kenren took it gratefully, and when he went to wash down his food with a mouthful, found it was a sweet, light, cold tea.
"So," Tenpou began, cradling his own cup in both hands in front of him but not drinking. "How do we know each other? Are we friends?"
"The best," Kenren agreed. "But where we were, we both had to leave. It wasn't doing any good for either of us to stay there."
"I don't recall," Tenpou murmured, sounding a little as if he were trying to. "Have you been looking for me all this time?"
Kenren paused for a moment, but it wasn't like the truth would hurt him, or either of them really.
"In a way," he said. "My way. I thought, if I just kept moving, I'd find you eventually."
Tenpou blinked at him. "And you did."
Kenren smiled. "And I did."
"Would you like to stay?" Tenpou asked. "That is, I think I'd like it if you did."
"Don't have anywhere else to be," Kenren said. "Besides, your side porch looks like it needs fixing."
"Yes," Tenpou agreed. "I suppose it does. Do you know how?"
"Not a clue," Kenren grinned and Tenpou laughed, and that was something else that seemed to have changed about him, because he'd never laughed in Heaven.
"Well," he said, still smiling. "I'm sure between the two of us we can work it out."
+++
It was surprisingly easy after that. Kenren had no desire to talk about what they'd been before, and Tenpou had no memory of it, and together they eked out a quiet existence in the cottage in the dunes. Kenren fished, started making plans to build a boat so he could go out further. Tenpou traded the vegetables and flowers he grew for other things they needed, and occasionally tutored some of the town children in reading and writing. In the evenings, when the weather was good, they walked along the beach, or sat on the porch; or when the weather was bad, they secured all the doors and shutters and sat closer to the fire and read and drank the beer that Kenren was brewing. They talked about what they wanted to do, and it was always small things, little things.
"I want you to meet a friend of mine," Kenren said one day. "I think you'll like him."
"All right," agreed Tenpou, peering critically at the cutting he was trying to strike from some plant one of the townspeople had given him.
"It's a bit of a walk," Kenren added. "Is that okay?"
Tenpou turned and looked at him. "Yes," he said.
"Cool," Kenren. "Leave in the morning?"
"That's fine," Tenpou said, and went back to his horticulture.
++++
Tenpou was positively animated on the road. When Kenren laughed at him, he just ignored him. He named just about every plant they passed, and more than a couple of times Kenren had to just park it by the side of the road while Tenpou veered off into the wilderness in search of something specific Kenren had almost no interest in. It was almost like old times.
"Here, try this," he'd say when he appeared again, and present Kenren with some piece of something, which Kenren would hope wasn't poisonous even while he put it in his mouth.
"Stringy," Kenren would provide, or, "Bit sour, but juicy," or "Peppery. Be nice on baked fish," and Tenpou would look immensely satisfied, and fetch out the plant diary he was keeping and start writing in it even while began walking again. More than once, Kenren had to pull him out of the path of a ditch or an oncoming vehicle. He'd wave at the cart driver and the driver would look at him and look at Tenpou with his attention on his book and would shake his head and wave back and continue on.
Finally, they reached their destination. Kenren knew, because there were the dogs again. He eyed them suspiciously, but they didn't say a word, just turned and started walking. Kenren followed, dragging Tenpou, and in another short while, there was the gate again, and the garden, and the house, and Enma.
"Oh!" Enma said. He was dressed in dungarees and a big straw hat and his feet were covered in dirt. He seemed to be digging up last season's flowerbeds. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon." He stood up and brushed the dirt off his hands and Tenpou looked around him, his eyes practically alight and said, "What an absolutely wonderful garden you have!"
Enma smiled bright enough to just about put out the sun, and by the time he'd hustled Tenpou inside, Kenren following almost like an afterthought, he was already regaling Tenpou with the names of his dahlias and the varieties of japonicas he was growing and Tenpou was already asking for some cuttings and telling him about what he'd managed to do to improve the soil where he was living.
Kenren lowered himself into Enma's sofa, and watched them and smiled, and eventually one of the hounds came over and plopped its chin down on Kenren's thigh and whuffed out a sigh.
"Yeah, I know, bud'," Kenren said, smiling, and scratched it between the ears. "It's a bit of a dog's life, but it's really not all that bad."
The dog whuffed again, but it seemed to agree.
+++++
They stayed the night. Kenren couldn't say he'd ever spent overnight in the Underworld, although technically he supposed he wasn't, but still, it was close enough.
Tenpou and Enma talked well into the early morning. Kenren had no idea what about. He went to bed eventually, the hounds - who seemed to have befriended him out of sheer neglect - with him, one of them close enough for him to hug, although he didn't try. In the morning, they were gone, and Tenpou was awake and sitting in his bedroll next to him, watching him.
"Hey," Kenren greeted, voice rough with sleep. "Have a good night, then?"
Tenpou stared at him a little long. "Yes," he said finally. "I did. Thank you."
"No thanks required," Kenren said. "It was as much for him as you. I thought you’d like each other."
"Last night," Tenpou said. "After I went to bed. I dreamed about you."
Kenren shifted himself up onto his elbows, grinning. "Something good, I hope," he joked with a smile that he'd been giving Tenpou for a while but so far hadn't been getting much of a reaction to.
Tenpou didn't really react this time either, something else that hadn't changed all that much from before.
"It was, actually. I dreamed that you and I were sitting under a tree. A cherry tree. You were sitting close and your shoulder was warm and pressed up against me, and you were laughing, and there was someone else there. Maybe more than one person."
"Sounds nice," Kenren agreed. "No cherry trees around here though."
"No, I know," Tenpou said. "But I think I was happy, and it felt like it was for the first time."
"Oh," Kenren said, because there wasn't anything else he could say. He remembered that day. It had been a first time for him too, not happiness, but something else.
"Shall we go home?" Tenpou said.
Kenren nodded. "If you want to."
++++++
In contrast to the way there, Tenpou was quiet on the way back. They'd left Enma with his effusive blessings and a basket full of cuttings he guaranteed would grow. Kenren had no doubt they would considering the garden - and gardener - they'd come from. As long as they didn't do anything hokey, like cry under a full moon or scream bloody murder when picked, he supposed he would count himself lucky.
When they got home, Kenren set about setting up the seedlings in the greenhouse he'd put up around the north side of the cottage, and the task occupied him so thoroughly, he didn't hear Tenpou until he turned and found him standing in the doorway.
He opened his mouth to ask if he wanted something, but before he could, Tenpou was across the wooden floor and putting his hands on the sides of Kenren's face and then he was kissing him, soft and warm and so sweet that Kenren, if he hadn't already, might have thought he'd just died.
"What-" he said, and when his voice wobbled a little, he swallowed and tried again. "What was that for?"
Tenpou smiled, and took the cutting tray from Kenren's hands and put it aside, and then put his hands back on Kenren's face and kissed him again. "Because I wanted to," he said. "In my dream. But I didn't and now I have no idea why."
Kenren wet his lips as the words sank in.
"You wanted to kiss me then? That day you were happy?"
"Yes," Tenpou sighed, his thumbs brushing gentle across Kenren's skin.
"I wanted to too," Kenren confessed. "I've always wanted to."
Tenpou smiled at him, sweet and indulgent. "How could you? It was just a dream."
"It was," Kenren agreed and leaned his forehead against Tenpou's. "But we're finally awake."
"Yes," Tenpou said. "We are."