Notes: 1 hour, handwritten. A departure from the usual style, not too sure how it turned out. (:
This pairing is extremely difficult for me to flesh out—the sheer impossibility of their relationship as anything more than platonic (the cannon het doesn't help) makes writing in-dept, exploratory pieces a challenge. They're just not very feasible (not much time together, plus the fact that one of them holds a death grudge against the other…) but I love writing about them anyway. :D
Love, and not-love
It had been raining that day. Through the last vestiges of dusk the rain came, violently and vehemently, a grey wintry deluge that pelted the earth and gave root to the seeds of its sorrow. Melted ice and black slush lined the streets. Kenshin and Saitou had sat across each other in a tavern, and they had ended up in the same bed. How it happened Kenshin couldn't say, perhaps he really didn't remember; as the unwillingness to open up the cauterised portions of his mind stopped him and the intervening years slowly eroded the last strongholds of his memory.
It hadn't been pleasant, it hadn't been romantic—no one would be quicker than themselves to acknowledge hat there was no emotion behind it, just need pure and simple, just their bodies taking control as their minds passed the lull between fights on autopilot. That was all it was and all it would ever be—Kenshin couldn't fathom any incident like that (not with all the ensuring embarrassment and anger) ever happening again, not when Saitou harboured every intention of dicing him every time they so much as met. It was so uncomplicated, and so straightforward—a linear track through convoluted paths—there had been no question of what road they would take. When Saitou rolled off the futon and finished doing up his pants and shirt Kenshin told himself, yes, that's easy. Saitou didn't look back as the door banged. Some of the rain seeped through the ceiling in damp spreading patches, and Kenshin turned over and went to sleep.
It was nearly a year before they met again. The revival of their non-ambiguous and clearly defined relationship signalled nothing new and they fell back into whatever routine they had preciously established with ease. As Saitou clamped his teeth down on Kenshin's shoulder and stifled a groan, Kenshin winced and unconsciously withdrew, tightening his grip on the other man's wrist. In the spaces that they had fenced up—clear demarcations of what could be touched and what could not be—they let the other move around, navigating round this half-formed, nebulous tie that they pushed and strained yet took unwilling care not to break.
When he looked back Kenshin wondered why, at the very beginning, he did not just quash all possibility with a flat denial, why the instinct to pick up the katana and defend himself from an enemy hadn't been there, hadn't sent alarm bells ringing loud enough to wake all the dead inhabiting the corners of his mind. Why, when he thought about it, why hadn't Saitou made the first move to swoop in for the kill, why had he (why had they?) chose instead to exchange mistrust for vulnerability: no conditions, no catches, no strings attached.
He thought of the first time they'd done it, with the rain beating out its mellow rhythm on wood, erratic as the pulse that ran through his veins, The air had been chilly and thick; dense grey dampness that made his breathing laboured. The floor had been hard and uneven, the futon lumpy, the patched over blanket barely giving warmth as it lay pooled at his feet. It felt like losing himself, disorientation washing over him like when he awoke from one of his nightmares. They had barely spoken then, even, (what more of now?) and the silences were filled in only by the pattering rain, soothing their awkwardness and emptiness like balm.
Tomoe had come and Saitou had Tokio; the two women in their lives that both had loved and both would have died for. White plum blossoms still reminded Kenshin of love, of loss and regret—flowers that bloomed with the rain of blood, ultimately quenched by it, stems cut and petals trampled beneath sandalled feet. How ironic, he thought, for him to have promised to defend her with his life, if she would die by his hand in the end. Sprung from the corpse of his conscience—flower that lingers even after death.
He became a rurouni, a wandering samurai, a broken man searching for his soul. Through his travels he found peace, found a place to all his amidst the tangle of past and present, found the last point of his journey. He tried to leave once, but he went back, and never left since. It was home—he belonged there. His weary travellers' feet halt in their footsteps and rest their tired soles. Kenshin remembered how in the beginning nothing seemed consequential except justice; what sacrifices he had made to barter death for peace, as if it had really mattered, as if, by his hand, he would change the world.
Perhaps he had.
When the Meiji era rolled round and got into full swing (it must have been ten years already) his dreams from the Tokugawa ceased. It was summer then a hot sweltering afternoon that scorched the earth and made the air blistering and unbearable. Kenshin was at the river fishing for the nights' dinner; empty pail at his side and bamboo rod between his hands. The arching branches of a nearby tree offered some respite from the heat. At the water's edge ants burrowed deep into the sandy bank, scuttling across the ground. Red dragonflies hovered near the lake, drawing wide, lazy circles, skimming the surface of the water. Footsteps on the bridge made Kenshin look up. He caught sight of Saitou and smiled, careful to keep the line steady.
It wasn't hard to imagine that when Saitou crossed the remaining distance between them in a few confident strides Kenshin was very surprised, enough to drop the line and stare wide-eyed and gasping for a few seconds at the man who had spent a large proportion of his life trying to kill him. It had always been clear-cut; no questions asked, no answers volunteered, no attachments, no involvement. All that hadn't changed with the years and there was no reason to start changing now. The acrid, butter taste of nicotine and tar was unpleasant in his mouth—not intolerable, though— and he briefly wondered dif the tea he had in the morning was also faintly discernable to the other man under the musky taste of cigarettes. It was as simple and as uncomplicated as it had always been—did it ever make a difference, he wondered, this careful segregation of lust and love? Did it preserve his sanity?
As he was pressed back against the baking grass, elbows digging uncomfortably into moist warm earth, he smiled in half-comprehension and relief; he might love Tomoe, possibly even Kaoru, but for Saitou, it didn't matter at all: what they had was respect and some sort of friendship, (even it was unconventional by any standards), and that made all the difference.
Lying back and looking at the sky, Kenshin resisted the urge to grin silly. Saitou quirked an eyebrow, but just settled for grunting. It didn't matter; the rurouni had the right to be dumb if he wanted to.
The End