Title: The Word Of Your Body
Author: Nina/TechnicolorNina
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!: GX
Pairing/Characters: Past-life Jyuudai and Yubel. Teetering precariously on the edge of Jyuudai/Yubel.
Word Count: 2 503
Spoilers: Third season.
Story Rating: Very decidedly PG-13.
Story Summary: Yubel gets a sex change (kind of). Jyuudai has hormones.
Notes: Another past-life fic. Same universe.
Feedback: There may be something out there that's better than a review containing concrit, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. So if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind? Please? Arigatou. (And concrit is cool. Flames are not.)
Special Thanks/Dedications: For higuchimon and the ladies in chat.
Oh, I'm gonna be wounded
Don't feel a thing you wish
Grasping at pearls with my fingertips
Holding her hand like some little tease
Haven't you heard the word of my wanting?
Oh, I'm gonna be your wound
Oh, I'm gonna bruise you
Oh, I'm gonna be your bruise . . .
~ "The Word of Your Body," Spring Awakening
Jyuudai does not know about Yubel's plans, and this is a first. Usually everything they do is done together – this being why Yubel can ride horseback and shoot a bow, and why Jyuudai knows how to piece a quilt – and even when they must be apart, like the summer solstice of their shared thirteenth year when Yubel was sent to some kind of ritual with the other girls with whom they are of an age, they talk daily, almost constantly. And so it is a shock to Jyuudai on several levels when he discovers what Yubel has done this time, and how long it has been in the planning, and just how secretly the whole thing was done.
He has no indication whatsoever until he's in the courtyard behind the palace, marking a ledger for lessons – it will not be his duty to do this task when he takes the crown, but it is his father's belief that every boy should know how to figure more than a game of skip-a-jack or bowlstone – when there is a squawking in the yard that can only be Yubel running through a flock of chickens. Somehow the castle birds only raise that kind of hellish cacophony when it is Yubel terrorizing them. Jyuudai smiles down at his ledger-book, happily awaiting Yubel's presence so he can finish this last exercise of the day, take her to his room to change, and then perhaps they might ride—
"Bensaram, Kai-Yubel," Jyuudai hears his father say, and he frowns down at the ledger. The peace-greeting is the same as always, but there's something about the title—
Kai, he thinks suddenly. Kai-Yubel. Honourable. The title given to a man. Not Ka-Yubel, "honoured," the title his father has used with Jyuudai's childhood playmate since a title was required, in spite of Yubel's legal status as tekhai, the name-son of her family in place of the brother she does not have.
Jyuudai does not wait for Yubel to find him. Instead he closes his book and tucks it under his arm and heads for the courtyard. He wants to know why his father, normally the most discerning of men, has changed an address given almost daily over the course of the past three years.
What he sees—or, perhaps, who he sees—standing in the courtyard freezes him to the spot between the gate and the water-wheel above the moat, shocked. His brain first tries to tell him that he is, perhaps, looking at someone else, someone who simply bears a strong resemblance to his friend. The easy stance, the relaxed shoulders, the tunic and soft-pants above a pair of new leather boots—none of these things are Yubel's. Then the blue-haired person laughs, and the head turns, and Jyuudai cannot deny that these are Yubel's laugh and Yubel's bright turquoise eyes, although what they are doing on a boy's body is beyond him. Yubel sees him, and waves.
"Jyuudai!"
Yubel does not put the formal before his name, the kai samor that the women of the palace use, the one Yubel uses when in the presence of Jyuudai's father, and instead of the perfunctory skirt-drop that is Yubel's answer to a curtsey, she bows to him, left foot in front of the right and her right fist over her heart, that gesture of fealty meaning I swear my oath. Jyuudai raises his left hand, palm out and tilted—let it be so. It's an old ritual, one as natural to him as breathing, but there is something somehow awkward about performing it to his best friend, who has never in her life bent her back before him. Yubel stands, and Jyuudai's father holds out his hand for the ledger-book tucked beneath Jyuudai's arm. Jyuudai hands it over, then looks awkwardly back at Yubel, unsure what he should do now. Usually Yubel would take his arm and they would run off, out the back gate to the beach or up the narrow staircases to Jyuudai's room, or down the broad and steamy paths to the kitchen, but he feels somehow odd about holding his arm out to someone who is treating him as though she has suddenly become a—
Bensaram, Kai-Yubel.
Yubel reaches out and puts a hand on Jyuudai's shoulder. Her hands—no, his hands—are still long and thin, girl's hands, even if they are attached to arms with wider shoulders than Yubel had the sunset before last.
"Let's go upstairs." There is a barely-concealed excitement in Yubel's voice, and although her voice—his voice—is deeper than it was, pitched now in precisely the right place for Jyuudai to not be able to tell if it's supposed to belong to a man or a woman, Jyuudai can't help grinning and letting Yubel turn him in the direction of the gable staircase.
He waits only until they're out of earshot of his father before asking the question that Yubel is asked at least two or three times a week about topics ranging from burning dinner to piercing her own ears with a sewing-needle: "What did you do?"
"Wait." Yubel pushes open the door to Jyuudai's room and slides in. Jyuudai shuts the door and turns around just in time to see Yubel untie the sash around—his?—hips and pull off the tunic it held in place, all in a single smooth motion.
"Look." The excitement is no longer concealed, and has made its way into the realm of glee. Jyuudai does, not sure if Yubel's gone mad or not. Then he wonders if maybe he's the one who's gone mad.
Yubel still has the slim waist and wrists of a girl, but the chest Jyuudai is looking at is very decidedly that of a man. Yubel grabs Jyuudai's hands and presses them to his bare shoulders. Jyuudai's first impression is of warm skin beneath his palms. Then what Yubel is really telling him registers as he realises there are no curves beneath his hands. No, Jyuudai is not looking at a particularly skilled illusion; Yubel's breasts are gone.
"I took takhamin at the Pentarch yesterday," Yubel says, and it's then that Jyuudai stares, wondering what on earth got into Yubel's head this time, swearing an oath at the highest court in Delain to cleave to the takhai status she gained at the age of eight—becoming not both male and female but simply a man, the son of his house. The idea carries with it a sense of loss Jyuudai does not understand; Yubel has been discontented to be just a girl ever since Jyuudai has known him, and logic says he should be happy to see his friend so fulfilled. Instead he feels somehow cheated, as though an intarch's mark on a piece of paper has taken his best friend away from him.
"Put your clothes back on," he says at last, letting his hands drop from Yubel's shoulders. "You're going to freeze in here."
"You're mad at me," Yubel says, pulling on the tunic and belting it. His face looks slightly distressed, and Jyuudai shakes his head.
"It's just a lot to get used to really fast, that's all," he says, wishing he could identify what about this whole thing makes him so angry. "For you, too, I guess."
Yubel shakes his head. "I spent so long in front of the mirror last night Father asked if I was trying to divine in it." A smile crosses his face—one both wide and mischievous. "And then I went running upstairs, and you know what I did? I found that hideous thing the maid put under my dress, and I cut it up, and I burned it." He tosses his head back and laughs. Jyuudai watches, both amused and wistful.
"Aren't corsets expensive?"
"Nobody's going to buy one secondhand," Yubel points out. "And it's not like I'm ever wearing one again." He ties the sash around his hips and picks something up from the table behind the door, sliding it into the space between fabrics at his hip. Jyuudai is somehow amused to realise Yubel is already carrying a dagger. "Even if I end up married to a man for some reason, I'm not going to wear one of those horrible things. I like being able to actually breathe once in awhile. Just for some variety."
Jyuudai blinks. Something about that—
"Yubel, if you're takhamin, you can't—"
"Takhamin, not takham," Yubel answers, although there's no malice in his tone. "I'm not all male." He looks slightly displeased about the concept, and Jyuudai is not so naïve he can't guess why. Even after the solstice ritual Yubel has slept in the palace with him as often as not, and Jyuudai has more than once brought her one of the flat warming-stones the midwives prescribe with a cup of some potent herbal stuff for what they call yakvara and Yubel calls it's a curse all right. Jyuudai has never particularly understood Yubel's tempestuous moods in regard to her own body, but sometimes, when he sees her curled up in a miserable little ball under his coverlet, he can see where she's coming from. It seems like a great deal of trouble to go to just for reasons Yubel calls stupid but refuses to actually explain. Jyuudai makes a sympathetic face even as something inside him he does not understand gives a great sigh of relief and twists something else guiltily in his midsection. Surely he should not care so very much? He distracts himself from that question with another.
"Why—?"
"Because if I'm takham I have to marry a woman," he answers, as though it ought to be the most self-evident answer on the face of the planet, plunking down on Jyuudai's bed. "If I'm takhamin I can still make up my own mind."
"I thought you didn't want to marry a man," Jyuudai says, sitting down next to him.
"I don't want to get married at all," Yubel replies. "But I guess eventually I'm going to have to. I just want to do it my way."
"You're trying to do the whole world your way, aren't you?"
"Yes." Yubel stretches. Jyuudai hears a few cracks from Yubel's back. "And as soon as they tell me I can get back to doing everything I normally do, I'm going to."
"Get back to . . . ?"
"Mm-hmm. I'm supposed to relax for a few days." Jyuudai hears the scorn colouring Yubel's voice, and smiles. Some things, he guesses, will never change. Yubel stands up. "But in the meantime I—"
Yubel crumples to the floor, and Jyuudai scrambles to his feet with a curse, dropping to one knee next to his friend. "Yubel? Yubel!"
He rolls Yubel carefully onto his back, wondering if this is why Yubel is supposed to take it easy. Yubel's head rolls to the side, baring a long expanse of sun-dusked neck, lips parted, eyes closed, hair trailing just a little over his face. Jyuudai reaches out to brush it back, reaching behind him at the same time to get something to tuck under Yubel's head, and then the corner of Yubel's mouth twitches.
"Got ya."
Yubel opens his eyes and looks up from the floor even as Jyuudai sits with his mouth open. Then he starts snickering and sits up.
"I can't believe you fell for that."
Jyuudai continues to stare for just a moment. Then he pounces. Yubel lets out a gleeful yell as they roll across the floor. Then he pins Jyuudai's wrists to the floor, sitting on his hips to pin him down, and grins. It's the first time Yubel has ever gotten a serious upper hand in a genuinely fair fight between them, and although Jyuudai could easily flip the whole thing on its head by jerking his own hips and unseating Yubel enough to get his hands loose, something stops him. Part of it is that today is special—it's far more Yubel's own day than the summer solstice ritual was—but part of it is also some kind of vague sense that if he does, things will not stop at just a friendly scuffle. And so he simply lies still, not fighting, until Yubel sits back with a triumphant laugh (and then he is torn between wishing Yubel would get up and wishing Yubel would stay exactly where he is, neither of those for reasons he can really identify).
"I win."
"Yeah, sure," Jyuudai says, worming his way out from under Yubel enough to sit up. "That wasn't even a fight. You want to say you won, we better go outside first."
It's Yubel's turn to stare—of all the things he might have expected out of his change from woman to man, Jyuudai thinks wryly, being challenged to an actual match by the prince apparently wasn't one of them. Then he starts laughing again.
"Not now. If the healer found out I was fighting you the day after—" Yubel indicates his own body – "I'd really get it." He grins. "But as soon as I'm allowed—"
"Yubel, since when has not being allowed ever stopped you?"
Yubel's grin widens. "I'm making an exception today." Then he gets up onto his knees and leans forward to throw his arms around Jyuudai's shoulders. "Thanks."
Jyuudai doesn't hesitate this time; there is still that strange feeling of loss, but it's still Yubel, really. He just hugs back. "For what?"
There is a long pause. Then Yubel shifts in his arms, and Jyuudai, sensing the onset of squirming, lets go. "I didn't care what people in town said, but . . . "
"Was it that bad?" Jyuudai's history lessons have covered the length and breadth of history for a thousand years, and he doesn't think he's ever heard of anyone ever being shunned for swearing takhamin, but it's not like he pays all that much attention. Yubel shakes his head.
"No. People just acted like I was always this way. But . . . . I was a little afraid you'd tell me to take a horse to Terchath."
Jyuudai stares. It's somehow a horrible thing to hear out of Yubel's mouth. "Why would I ever say something like that to you? You're my best friend."
The smile on Yubel's face is actually—someone must be tempting the gods to play an almighty joke—sheepish as he shakes his head. "I don't know. I didn't tell you before."
"I kind of noticed. That doesn't mean I'd tell you to leave."
Yubel's smile warms and grows wider, and he leans forward to pull Jyuudai into another hug. He presses his cheek to Jyuudai's, that age-old gesture of peace and gratitude, and whispers another thank-you into Jyuudai's ear.
Jyuudai feels Yubel's cheek against his own, warm and just a little windchapped against the very lightest beginnings of a beard not yet dark enough for him to shave.
Suddenly he thinks he understands that feeling, but it's just a little too late.