Yasha kills for a full year straight when he goes on his first rampage. Spirits, humans, field beasts, he doesn't discriminate. He tips over lanterns in fields and storehouses, watching oil pool out in dark tides, fire spreading swiftly behind it. Bones splinter; families crawl. He flicks intestines like swollen udon noodles with his spear, watching them slither and burst. He cups the heavy, soft heads of infants in his palms and sends them rolling along the road, severed neatly from their necks.
Everything dies.
He slaughters for four seasons cycled, and ends at the height of summer: an anniversary of empty significance, celebrated by no one. Around him in the fields, insects scream in the tall grass. Bile and tissue coat his legs and arms, drying in clumping wads, turning his clothing into stiff, ruddy sheets.
It's glorious and ludicrous and painstakingly thorough - and he laughs, hysterically, because none of it matters. Not the killing, not the amusement, not the deaths and sorrow. It's like pissing into the ocean and thinking your fluids matter. No matter what a single person does, they'll never match up to the sublime cruelty of life itself, with all its decay and diseases, starving bellies forced to fight for the next moldy scrap, gluttons walling themselves in their castles and pretending not to hear the pleas outside.
None of Yasha's atrocities even merit the label. The world itself is the worst killer of all.
The monks he murders afterwards don't know him, but they know what he is, and they're always the fastest to accuse.
"Cursed yaksha," they spit, shuddering around the spear planted in their guts. "How far from the teachings you have fallen."
Sometimes they don't even survive long enough to say that much, sputtering and choking on the blood filling their mouths. He scowls at their cooling faces, kicks them over so he doesn't have to see the resentment lingering behind, inscribed on their eyes.
"You idiots," he growls at the corpses, glad they're not alive to hear him. "It doesn't matter if I follow the teachings or not. This world is a shithole either way."
Boring. Pointless. Not a single one of them smiles and accepts it like a good monk should, shrugging away the temporary loss of their mortal forms in acknowledgment of eventual rebirth. Death reveals the hate inside each and every one. He skewers and spits them all like fish, sloshing their innards across the floors of their pristine temples. He leaves them rotting in wells and streams to pollute the water, strewn about like splintered dolls, and steals the offerings on the way out.
Even that's all useless though, and Yasha knows better than to count up his kills like a trophy worth crowing over. He's not stupid enough to think that anything he's doing has one whit of significance. He's not about to deny one set of illusions simply to replace them with his own.
There's no value in any of it, except to pass the time.
He's more selective after his first year, picking the wilderness along the coasts for his hunting grounds and never sticking to one place for very long. Sometimes he goes inland, wandering; sometimes he comes across remote villages tucked up in the shadows of mountains and the forks of streams, families hoping to scratch out a living. If they don't notice him, there's no reason to start anything; he picks through their storehouses and moves on, spearing the watchdogs if they make too much noise, gutting the occasional couple out for a late-night tryst.
Other times, someone spots him. Other times, people kick up a fuss. Yasha stumbles across spirits that demands reasons for him being there, angry that he's intruding on their territory. The fights always find him.
He kills, and keeps moving, and reminds himself that this is as good as anything else in this world.
Aobozu shows up just as Yasha's finishing up one village, all nice and neat where there was plenty of time to clean out house after house, working steadily through all the farmers who thought to come after him bravely wielding their worn-out tools. He drowns them with the ocean on dry land - a freezing tide that lashes out from his spear and leaves them clawing for air - and then drowns the bodies in their rice fields, still covered in tidal salt.
He's dragging over the remains of what he hopes is the last one when he hears a jingle, cold and clear in the evening, rippling out through the silence. One ring. Two.
Yasha turns his head towards the sound and waits, eyes narrowed, listening to the methodical pace of each step.
The monk remains unhurried as he makes his way through the shattered homes, finally coming to a halt in the center of the field road. "So it was you who brought this destruction, Yasha." He turns in a slow, futile scan of the village, confirming only what they both already know. "You killed everyone."
"Sure as fuck did!" Yasha responds cheerily. He tightens his grip on his spear. "You ready?"
They hit a standstill all too quickly, sea tides cutting weakly due to Yasha's exhaustion, Aobozu's own energies more focused on protection than death. Staff and spear keep each other at a distance, fencing back and forth in test of the other's reach. Yasha isn't lucky enough to take one of the monk's limbs, or even a few fingers - but it's good exertion anyway, just right to finish off the day's work, even if Aobozu hasn't come up with any new tricks in the meantime.
They both pause in unspoken agreement to catch their breath as the sun slides low enough in the sky to make them squint, the light reflecting painfully off Aobozu's staff. Yasha took a nasty crack across his temple early on in the fighting; he can already feel it swelling, throbbing hot in an unpleasant headache that reaches all the way through to the back of his skull.
"You always pick and choose what you want to hear from the teachings," Aobozu pants as he slumps against the remains of a fence. His hat has been knocked off; his hair is disheveled like a broom whose bindings are already split. "And then you claim they are false, even when they would give you exactly what you demand."
"Aren't you always the one saying, 'the reflection of the moon isn't the moon itself'?" Yasha retorts, throwing the quote back right in Aobozu's face. It's one of the man's favorites. It's also one of the best ones to mock him with. "If the lectures actually work, why are people still getting reborn and still screwing each other up, and still getting away with it? Even you know that all that preaching isn't enough," he laughs, knowing how his smile is simply bared teeth, breathlessness covering up nausea. His head is splitting. "You're proof of that all on your own. Your hands are covered in just as much blood as mine."
Aobozu hauls himself upright enough to shoot Yasha an attempt at a stern look, which is somewhat ruined by the way his robes have been ravished by Yasha's spear. "I don't murder."
"Dead's still dead." Yasha braces his spear against his knee, touching his fingertips gingerly to his head wound. The edges of the rice fields seem fuzzy; he winces at the pain. "Going to try and actually kill me today?"
It's a question he doesn't always ask, even though it hangs between them, perpetually unsolved. Yasha can never tell. Each fight is a fresh gamble, rolling the dice to see if Aobozu has finally resolved himself to not stopping until Yasha's dead - instead of just driving him off, or losing so badly that Aobozu's the one limping away to heal instead.
Aobozu pauses, hesitates, and then finally shakes his head in a resolute frown. "No," the monk announces. "There's someone else coming for you."
He doesn't think much of it - capital sending out some soldiers, maybe, a handful of archers. Calvary, if he's lucky. Some riders really hate it when they hear their horses scream.
But the only person who shows up the next morning is a single court onmyōji, with no grand parade or attendants to advertise his presence, no weapons or even a shikigami visible at his side.
Yasha's still lingering in the village, picking through the supplies that he can carry easily on the road with him: food, some cloth for bandages, coin. His head is still aching, but he hasn't died from it yet, so he figures it's safe enough to sleep through later. If he doesn't wake up again, then he'll have nothing to worry about anyway.
In the heat, the bodies are already starting to bloat.
He's half-groggy from staying up all night, muscles lax and reflexes sluggish. That's the excuse he gives himself for not doing more than arching an eyebrow when the human comes to a halt only a short distance away and remarks, "You didn't eat them."
"Yeah," Yasha smirks, stifling a yawn. "I didn't. Makes it worse, right? If I lied and said I was going to carve them up for dinner afterwards, then at least I'd have a reason." Sarcasm drips like acid, etching his tongue. "Filling your belly, staying alive - oni do it all the time, but that's what oni do, right? Living things have to eat. Tell yourself that, make the excuse all on your own so you can back down and save yourself the fight. But you don't get to pull that same shit with me."
He's being chatty. He knows he's being chatty; it's been a while since he's has someone living to talk to for longer than a few minutes of screeching pleas and burbling tears, and Aobozu - well, Aobozu never counts.
But this human doesn't rise to the bait. The only reaction is a nod of his head, and then a contemplative tap of the fan against his palm; he doesn't spare the corpses a second glance. "What do you eat, then?"
The first trickle of uncertainty squirms its way into Yasha's chest. He ignores it. "Piss and shit and pride, of course," he claims, extending his arms around him at the carnage, the corpses' bowels open and leaking, stinking up their homes and roads and fields. All the weak humans who couldn't last long enough to make something of their lives, dying weak. Dying easy. "Everything you see here is mine. Are you offering to be my meal instead? 'Cause I'm getting bored, which means it's going to get a lot more interesting in the next village over."
Again, the threat simply brushes by the man, as if he's merely an elegant hallucination, unconcerned about dying due to not existing in the first place. "I've come here on business, I'm afraid. My name is Abe no Seimei. I'm assuming you're the yaksha who's been gathering a stack of bounties on your head," he adds, having the audacity to chuckle softly now. "If not, you're surely competition."
The eeriness of the man's nonchalance finally succeeds in hauling Yasha's bravado to a full halt; he makes no secret of his suspicion as he squints, wondering if it's all an act, that a pack of shikigami might be working their way around to attack him from behind instead. "And what are you planning to do about it?"
"I could seal you here." Somehow, Seimei manages to make the reply sound reasonable instead of an impending death threat. "Inside a rock, or as part of the earth under our feet, or into a katashiro so I could bring you along with me. Even if I don't, then another onmyōji will come eventually. If you keep this up, then the capital will ask for you to be destroyed for good, without even a chance to be banished to the Netherworld instead."
The warning is pointless. Yasha barks a laugh, a terrible sound that cascades into several more before he can control himself. "Of course they will. Why should I care?" he shrugs. "Both sides are going to die in the end, human and spirit. I'm not going to whine and squeal about it."
But Seimei suddenly steps forward, tapping his fan against his palm, and Yasha finds a startled stutter of fear at the sheer confidence in the onmyōji's gait. "I have a better offer. Come fight as one of my shikigami instead. You won't be allowed to kill humans, but there's no end of other battles to be had. The distress between this world and the Netherworld has weakened so many barriers that hostile spirits are coming across and setting up camps all over the country. You'll always have something new to keep you occupied and travelling, and as many opponents as you wish."
The deal isn't bad, Yasha has to admit. Spirits always put up a better fight than humans; can't even work up much of a sweat until you get at least a dozen farmers, and even then, only if they run. Still, he doesn't like being owned on principle, temporary or not. "Give me one good reason why I should let you use me."
Seimei's fan whispers against his palm as he pulls it away, holding the instrument quiescent by his side. "Because you don't have anything better to do, do you."
It's a statement, not a question. From anyone other than Aobozu, it would be exactly the kind of mocking challenge that would ignite the rest of the conversation into a full-out fight, one where Yasha could gladly dispense with all the formalities and get straight to the bloodshed. But there's a strangeness in Seimei's face, a pitiless gentleness that Yasha's never seen openly from anyone before - as if Seimei can see exactly why nothing is better, and isn't contesting the logic.
Yasha stares.
"The fuck you know," he says flatly.
But Seimei's continuing to glide forward, step by step, filling up Yasha's vision, overriding all reality by the sheer fact that the man's already within striking distance - and Yasha almost neglects to react in time, stunned by disbelief. Habit forms his response for him. With a snap of his wrist, he puts up the spear warningly in a fluid arc of motion, the point hovering just a hair's breadth away from Seimei's eye.
Seimei finally pauses at that. Then - as if this, too, were simply another graceful shift in a choreographed dance - the onmyōji reaches up and sets the folded weight of his fan against the spear's shaft, just beneath the head. It's barely any force, but Yasha watches as Seimei applies the faintest pressure, sliding the fan down as it turns the weapon aside, a sleek stroke of wood against wood. He steps even further into range now, inside the reach of the spear, into the risk of Yasha's hands. Only when he's face-to-face with Yasha does he stop, as if they're both having an actual conversation, like two merchants haggling out a fair price.
Faced with the impossibility of a human standing next to him without trying to attack him in the process, Yasha blurts the first defense that comes to mind. "You can't tame me."
"And what would be the purpose of that?" The corner of Seimei's mouth twitches, and then curves up in unabashed amusement. He smells like blood and smoke and cypress wood, sweet and lingering. "Is that what you've been chasing after, all the way out here?"
There's nothing to be said in reply; Seimei's words don't make sense together. They slide away when Yasha tries to apply them to himself, unable to assert a proper denial, as if the question's taken refuge in some invisible place inside his mind, infesting him before he could strangle it en route.
Left short of any scorn, Yasha founders. "My half of the terms, then." Only after he speaks does he realize he's already agreed. He rolls his head from side to side, stretching out his neck to draw attention from the half-step he takes away from the onmyōji, a physical retreat from confusion. "Fine. You know a monk named Aobozu? Is he yours?" When Seimei only raises an eyebrow curiously - yielding no other comment - Yasha continues, brisk and blunt. "Never make me fight alongside him. That's it."
Yasha shrugs, no malice or investment in it. "We'll kill each other, but that's all. Good enough for a deal?"
Seimei takes the time to weigh the ramifications, rather than agree too hastily, making slight nods to himself as he constructs and deconstructs scenarios in his mind. "If that's all you require, then the conditions are fair. I can keep to my side of the agreement, if you can promise to do the same."
Fair is the right word for it. The deal is non-committal enough on both sides; Yasha can ignore the humans he comes across for a little while, and there's no real penalty to what Seimei's laid out. Like everything else, it's only temporarily. It'll pass. This human can't be any different than anyone else: full to the brim with his own ambitions, and equally easy to open up with a knife, assumptions and innards spilling equally into the dirt. Yasha will put up with the onmyōji for a month - a season at most - and then murder him and be done with it.
As Yasha sweeps his spear up over his shoulder, however, a thought strikes him. "How will you know if I misbehave, unless you're not here watching every moment?"
"Oh," Seimei promises mildly, "I'll know."
This world is one of suffering, Aobozu used to like to remind him, back during summers when they'd both dodged all other responsibilities to hide out at the nearest river. Aobozu would prop himself under the nearest tree with study scrolls in his hands, and Yasha would drowse in the water, baking himself in the sun and current, eyes closed as he felt the liquid running through his hair, sleepily absorbing the patient beat of the other man's words: steady and rhythmic like a wooden fish being drummed, pulsing to the tide of his own blood in his veins, both of them forgetting the flow of time. It is filled with countless pains that can never be erased.
Well.
Yes.
The worst part is, the onmyōji does know.
He leaves Yasha with a scroll and a duty written inside - already neatly rolled up and prepared, as if Seimei just walks around all day with jobs literally up his sleeves to bait helpless spirits into - and a coin purse for the road. Yasha waits until Seimei's gone before he open it, figuring he'll just toss the message into the nearest pond and keep the money for himself, wandering until the contract either breaks on its own, or explodes around him with the onmyōji's fury.
But out of curiosity, he unrolls it anyway, scanning down the words. Some of the characters are hard for him to understand; he struggles with their shapes, trying to recall dusty lessons on how to pick through the radicals until he can at least guess at the meanings. From what he can tell, the onmyōji wants him to head west, seeking out a kasha that's been so hungry for human corpses, it's started to prey on any body it can find - regardless of how much virtue that person held in life.
Not bad.
He finishes the job easily enough - kasha are good sport, agile in wit and equally fast to chase after - and is only a few days back on the road when a pipe-fox shows up, fresh scroll and a coin pouch clutched in its paw. They squint at each other in mutual suspicion. Yasha thinks about vivisecting the kudagitsune, just on principle, but the fox puffs his tail as if he can smell Yasha's plans taking shape - which he probably can, foxes are canny bastards anyway - and Yasha knows better than to try and break open the bamboo by force. It'd take hours to crack the shell of it, or set it on fire. Not worth the effort.
So he takes that job and sees it through. The next assignment that shows up - brought to him by an even more clever fox this time, a woman who refuses to come any closer than the length of the road itself, leaving the scroll and money held in place on the ground with a stone - sends him to scare off a pack of satori who had set themselves up as bandits on a merchant road. This time, the route leads north, letting him pick between either cutting through a swamp, or detouring for a week in the lowlands.
He clears that one out, and then the one after that, too, his own inertia carrying him along as he sails from destination to destination. Seimei's good on his word, keeping him in motion constantly; Yasha squints at the man's neat brushwork as he reads off destinations far outside of his normal wanderings, sending him all across the country.
Then, one evening, as Yasha's watching the moon creep slowly through the sky, he decides it's time.
He strikes out in a random direction the next morning, the contract-tie a mere hum in the back of his mind, like an infected cut that he's trying to convince himself will heal any day now. Yasha gives the man at least a sevenday before he bothers to notice the deviation. Powerful onmyōji tend to have many shikigami; weaker ones do too, overconfidence being universal. Abe no Seimei can't possibly pay attention to them all.
By the third day, Yasha's discovered a fat nest of imps tucked into the woodline of a cluster of hills: a jewel just south of the capital, waiting to be burst. He slaughters each one he comes across, starting with the scouts and working his way inwards. They're sleepy, lazy from eating fish from nearby ponds, and not at all prepared for an attack.
It's easy work, like butchering half-grown boars whose tusks haven't matured yet, squealing and spraying their blood. The relaxation of it gives Yasha plenty of opportunity for his mind to wander. Seimei will stop him - he'll have to stop him. Even though Yasha's only killing spirits instead of humans, he's still gone off task. If the onmyōji ignores this now, Yasha will simply keep escalating further, until Seimei will be forced to act. Maybe the onmyōji will use spells of command, or cut straight to pain without any lead-up. Yasha doesn't have any real idea yet of how Seimei's violence would manifest. Whenever he thinks about it, all he can see is the beat of Seimei's fan, slapping against the man's palm in patient rhythm: confident, controlled strikes.
Maybe that will be how Seimei disciplines him. A show of authority after beating Yasha half-senseless, breaking Yasha's fingers so they can't even grip a spear anymore, and then Seimei would place the fan warningly across Yasha's lips before pulling his arm back for the strike. Maybe Seimei would prefer to hit him slowly, stacking bruises like stones in a wall, strategically placed like a shōgi defense. Maybe it'll be fast lashes of the man's wrist, stinging Yasha each time it looks like his attention is wandering: a swift, scornful retribution, meant to drive the message home permanently.
Seimei's no better than anyone else. Even he'll betray his own principles as soon as it suits him. The only thing Yasha has to do is offer an opportunity.
He finishes off another imp leisurely, satisfied at the cleanness of the cut that severs it in half along the belly. He's about to bring up his spear in a swing that will neatly decapitate the only one left remaining when he feels Seimei's attention suddenly focus on him so tightly that it's like the grip of a giant's hand around him, crushing Yasha's breath out of him even as he jerks to attention.
The summoning yanks him out faster than he can even think to resist, flinging him onto his back as his spear tumbles out of his hand.
The circle he lands in is weak, rough; it's barely big enough to fit him, and the lines aren't even working as a decent barrier. It was scrawled in the dirt with a stick, an impromptu and hurried thing that barely holds itself together through the power of its owner alone. If Yasha wanted to, he could make a go of breaking it on principle, just to feel it shatter around him like a shelf of pottery, fine craftsmanship ruined into garbage.
But there's someone else standing in the circle with him, their geta scuffing the barrier lines with the careless confidence of a person who knows they don't need them in the first place. It's Seimei, wearing an expression of no greater vexation than if he were examining a particularly interesting autumn leaf. He gazes down at Yasha with all the impassivity of nature itself, neither interested nor disinterested, as a mountain might consider the valleys below before shearing off half its peaks into a landslide.
Instead, Seimei reaches down a hand towards Yasha, waiting patiently for it to be taken. "Can you stand up?"
Yasha stares. The onmyōji's alone; he's not dressed formally, or even for traveling. He must have been out on a walk or some other errand by himself, away from his home territory and any defenses that would have been wise for a practitioner to assemble before summoning a hostile spirit impromptu.
"What the fuck is this?" he manages. Automatically, he fumbles for Seimei's hand without meaning to; then the onmyōji's strength is pulling him up to his feet, steady and implacable until Yasha's upright again physically. On the inside, he's still reeling. "Shouldn't you be destroying me right about now?"
Seimei waits until Yasha gets his balance before taking his hand away, showing no revulsion as he does. "Spirits are as vital to the natural order of things as every other creature," the onmyōji remarks. "Trying to change the world by eliminating anything you don't want in it simply makes that world emptier and emptier, until the only thing left to kill is yourself."
Riddles come too easily to Seimei's mouth; he doesn't look like he was raised in a monastery, but someone's taught him how to keep up. "Bullshit," Yasha retorts, incited as quickly as if he was facing off against Aobozu himself. "The point of this world is to be free from it. You don't fix it. You don't stay. If you're anything close to a good person, then you fly off from the cycle of reincarnation and stop sticking around. Only the assholes stay." Like me, he wants to add, but eats his own bitterness in time. "You want balance? Not going to happen. This world isn't here to get better. That would defeat the purpose. Why balance a world that you're meant to leave? That everyone's supposed to leave?"
A faint arch of the onmyōji's eyebrow: Seimei is undeterred. "We all find new ways to die every day." At last, he gives Yasha a long, assessing glance from head to toe, visibly gauging the carnage by guessing at the stains left behind. "What compelled you to seek out this particular method out?"
The question's uncomfortably personal. Just like that, Yasha's suddenly out of patience already, uninterested in letting Seimei make something significant out of what should have been simple, just a straightforward outburst that should have been reacted to in kind. "You hoping to hear some kind of cheap story where I'm just a little wounded kid who never grew up, right?" he scowls. "Someone to pity, something you can find compassion for? You want me to make it easy on you. Screw that. You want to punish me, hurry up and do it, I'm getting bored of this shit."
Simply voicing the demand brings back a jumble of everything he'd braced himself for: scorn, dismissal, Seimei sneering as Yasha's broken into useless pieces on the ground. That should be what happens; Yasha's prepared for it. Yet even as he says it, Yasha can feel something cringe inside his chest, like a starving dog that can't quite contort successfully away from the lash. Maybe he'll just have his spear taken away from him, maybe have a spell put on him so that if he tries to wield it whenever Seimei's not around, his arms will cramp and bleed. Maybe have his sight blinded, his tongue bound, his will locked down to an empty mind, purged of all conscious thought.
But Seimei merely reverses his fan deftly in his grip so that he can use his fingers to straighten the length of Yasha's coat, clearing it of debris. The outer slats slide in an arc before Yasha's eyes; the wood is shining and dark. He wonders if the feel of it is as polished as a well-worn staff, if it's soaked up the oils of Seimei's skin over the years, shaped smooth by the onmyōji's touch.
"You can rest up at my courtyard for a bit," the man suggests, terrifyingly reasonable, as if the blood coating Yasha is merely some off-color rain that caught him in a downpour. "Shall we head there now?"
There was a breaking point, of course, years ago. There's an anger that lingers behind. But grief is yet another thing that the teachings say to let go of, and it was one of the first things that Yasha devoured in himself, chasing it down and tearing the roots out so thoroughly that he ripped through anything that was even remotely related, anything that kept saying, why is this happening, and then, why is it still happening, why doesn't it stop?
In the gap left behind, what remains in its place is a thing that doesn't belong to any of those words anymore. It's properly detached. It takes up mass inside Yasha's chest, but that's all. It doesn't have a word for it now, so it doesn't have any words at all. Events exist as basic bare facts, statements that have no relevance on who he is now, no relevance at all.
A tree rots. A stream dries up. A village is crushed under mud. No one gives a damn; it doesn't matter to anything. An entire herd of deer spirits are hunted down, their flesh systematically harvested for body parts to make into human medicines. Five villages burn with disease and the nobles send their soldiers to fence them in until the last embers of plague die out, emaciated bodies staggering in the roads between hovels as their flesh becomes black with flies, insects crawling over them and laying eggs in their open sores. No one gives a damn.
Everything is worth killing. The one who cares the least, wins.
Being stuck in Seimei's estate is the worst kind of waiting, like knowing the enemy is massing on the next hill over, but you're unable to bring the charge to them. Only stillness remains. You waste your time in breathing, sweat sticking your clothes to your skin, sun itching as you drown in the urge to throw yourself directly onto enemy swords simply to force them to reveal their hand.
At first, Yasha figured that this was going to be a lead-up to some kind of elaborate intimidation or bullying to convince him that obedience was required if he wanted to keep breathing. But no, no, the onmyōji treats Yasha like he's the one coming home after getting heroically wounded in battle to convalesce, giving him his own room and a change of clothes and plenty of water, plenty of time to rest. It's so stupid, so pointless, that Yasha doesn't have the energy to even kick up a fuss. He lies flat on his back in his room and stares up at a ceiling that has no inscribed wards to lock him in, and doesn't understand why his eyes want to squint, irritated and frowning, his mouth twisting up into a misery of expression that has no reasonable cause.
Yasha's not a victim of anything. He's not suffering like some tragic hero of fate - at least, not any more than anyone else is. Which is really the problem: everyone's in agony, everyone's getting messed up, getting preyed upon and having to eat others in order to keep themselves alive. Pain is the basic definition of life, as well as most manifestations of death. If anything, Yasha's got a head start on avoiding it.
But he's not a victim. If he is, it would be because he once believed in something else, some illusion that was taken away and hurt him in the process - and Yasha knows better than to fall for that.
Coming to Seimei's home was a mistake.
The first night, Yasha skips dinner on purpose, even though he can hear all the other shikigami assembling in the main hall. Hunger leaves a gnawing hole in his stomach. He grips his belly with his fingers, irritated with the distraction. Once everyone's finished and have gone their separate ways for the night, he'll go scrounge through the kitchen and look for something that might still be palatable, something out of the scraps. He's done it before on his own, in the villages. He knows he can make a decent meal out of it.
He sprawls on the walkway that runs outside his room while he waits, listening to the distant laughter and catching the occasional scent of food trickling by on the breeze. He's in the middle of debating leaving the estate entirely in search of something to break when he hears the click-clack of pottery in motion, dishes rattling like an insect's chitter. Two of Seimei's paper dolls come into sight from around the corner, precariously balancing covered bowls in their hands. They scamper towards him - one of them bracing a pair of chopsticks on its tiny arms as it tries not to let them slide to the ground - and wait expectantly in front of him, tottering under the weight until Yasha finally reaches out and picks up the first dish. As carefully as if there were a thousand centipedes packed inside, he lifts up the lid to gingerly squint at the contents.
The first bowl is plain rice, filled to the brim, hot and steaming. The other contains rich, thick chunks of vegetables, simmered in what smells like basic spices. Only vegetables - nothing else but that and water, careful and clean.
There's no meat in any part of the meal.
"Hah," he says: a dry, coughing sound that has all the framework of a laugh and none of the humor behind it. He waits for a moment, expecting another joke; maybe some shikigami put them up to it, maybe they're watching to see how Yasha reacts. "You get lost bringing this to some kind of monk?"
But the dolls only wait and wriggle impatiently, clearly bound to their delivery, and no one else appears when Yasha squints around at the yard.
"What a waste," he makes sure to say aloud as he takes both bowls from them at last, picking up the chopsticks as an afterthought. "Now I have to find somewhere to throw this away."
There's a grain of rice sticking to the second doll's ribbon, and - now freed from its burden - it tries to futilely swipe at its head, swaying and dancing as it's unable to reach with its stubby hands. Yasha snorts. He swaps the chopsticks to his other hand so he can reach down and pluck the rice away, rubbing his thumb against the ribbon to clean up the smear left behind, and then flicks it to hang straight again.
"You walk around covered in food like that," he declares, "then something's going to eat you, and Seimei will start up rumors that it was me. Go on, get out of here," he adds, swatting at both dolls as they hop away from his fingers, finally running away and leaving the food behind.
Yasha picks up the rice bowl in his hand, feeling the heat seep through to burn him. He waits until the dolls are fully out of sight, and then he wolfs the food down ravenously, fast enough to scald, great gulps of it settling into his stomach and filling every inch of him with warmth.
Seimei's estate is different than he would have expected from a court onmyōji without a clan. Seimei himself is nothing like what he should be. There are no fawning courtiers, no elaborate shows of power calculated to impress the nobles and earn higher ranks in court. Yasha figured he'd be locked away in a shed somewhere, or be forced to play at scraping and bowing as a servant while Seimei flaunted his authority. It would only be a matter of time before the onmyōji would expose himself over time to be like everyone else: self-serving, self-interested, painting pretty lies like hypocrite priests who talk about love while having none.
Instead, Yasha's a guest. They're all guests, all the spirits wandering in and out of the courtyard, even the ones who aren't contracted shikigami. The greatest danger Yasha would face here would be losing his mind while waiting to be released from confinement - but Seimei predicted that too, calling him into a study filled with paperwork one afternoon, and gesturing to a table covered with work requests.
"Pick out the ones that catch your interest," the man suggests, and Yasha does.
He sorts through the scrolls that he can understand the fastest - discarding the ones written either too ornately, or scrawled by people barely more literate than he is - and settles on one job that looks like a straightforward kill, a hunt for some umi nyōbō which will offer him a good fight. They can't drown; they can't drown him. It'll come down to whichever one side is sharper. The outcome will be vicious. Brutal. Perfect.
Seimei scans over the details, and then, bafflingly, makes a satisfied nod. "It's three days of travel on foot each way," he remarks, wisely not suggesting Yasha hitch a ride on a farmer's cart, or share a carriage with another shikigami. "I'll make sure you have enough funds, in case anything comes up on the road."
With that, the man simply rolls up the scroll and ties it shut, offering it over without any sign of argument.
Even though he had been the one to choose it, Yasha doesn't take the paper immediately, waiting for any sign that Seimei's about to set some additional plan in motion - like setting Yasha on fire the instant that he touches the scroll. "That's it, then?" he can't resist asking. "You're just going to let me go out again?"
"With one difference," Seimei admits, and Yasha braces himself. "I want you to come back after every job is complete, and tell me about it."
Again, that mismatch between what Seimei should do and reality itself. There's no need for a report; Yasha can't imagine that Seimei plans to give him any kind of tactical advice, and the onmyōji's already shown that he knows if Yasha goes off target. If the whole thing is some sort of buildup to an elaborate humiliation, then Seimei would be doing this in public - not in the privacy of his study. "Seriously?"
Seimei continues to hold out the scroll without wavering. "Yes."
Confusion keeps Yasha from pressing further. He escapes without promising anything - Seimei, perhaps sensing Yasha's bafflement, allows him to snatch the paper and retreat - and slips out into the main yard, letting the noise of the day draw him in. The estate is already filled with spirits going about their own chores; several of them are gathering their own travel supplies by the front gate, chatting eagerly as they review their plans. Others ferry packages back and forth from the warehouses, weaving between spirits practicing their skills in friendly spars, and those simply betting on the odds.
In the far corner of the yard, however, Yasha catches sight of a familiar shape, picking it out from the crowd easily despite all the color and chaos. Aobozu's conversation partner takes him a minute to identify, but the sword gives her away: it's Yoto Hime who's sitting beside the man, both of them speaking quietly with their heads lowered together, keeping their distance from the noise of the day.
Common sense keeps Yasha from intruding. He waits until the monk is finished first, staging himself insolently by the pond where Aobozu will have no choice but to pass by. He dabbles his fingers in the water while he waits, alternately teasing and spooking the tiny fish; they're too trusting, which means someone's probably been feeding them into complacency. Aobozu spots him early after making one final bow to Yoto Hime - Yasha can tell when the monk glances up and visibly hesitates - but forces himself to continue walking doggedly forward, staff jingling until he finally reaches the pond and slows to a halt.
The monk gives a loud, long sigh; then, without waiting to be invited, he pushes off his hat and takes a seat besides Yasha, staring at the pond.
Yasha abandons the fish he'd been hassling in favor of turning his attention to the monk. "Old habits die hard, don't they? Just look at you over there, thinking you can still be a teacher."
Only after he says the words does he realize he didn't mean to. Aobozu doesn't flinch, but his expression goes tight and strained. Like ink seeping slowly across a painting to ruin it, old emotions crawl into his face, pulling at the corners of his eyes and the line of his mouth. All the reactions are still there, merely weathered and aged from the years - and Yasha looks away quickly so that he doesn't have to watch Aobozu pack them all away again carefully, like lining up infants in a mass grave, a steady process of convincing himself that he doesn't care about each one.
Eventually, the monk takes a long breath: inhale, exhale, done. "I see you're continuing to pervert the doctrines, Yasha."
The man already sounds detached again, calm and properly controlled. Yasha attempts a grin, knowing the shark-sharp edges of his expression. "Says the monk with blood on his hands. How long was it again before you started growing out your hair, Aobozu? What other rules have you violated since?" He leans forward conspiratorially, tilting his head as he studies the monk in what he hopes is a rude enough challenge. "What would you like to have violating you?"
Aobozu draws in a visibly exasperated breath. "I can't kill you here," he intones, as if it's a new prayer to be added to the rest, another bead on the string. "Master Seimei has requested peace within his courtyard."
Counting his victory there, Yasha smirks, and eyes the fish again in case they've swum in finger's reach. Even without blood being spilled, it's still satisfying to get Aobozu talking, prying him out of his meditative silences. "It'd be pretty peaceful afterwards if you did. Why else would Seimei make me come here? Must be hard for you to pass up this opportunity. You could just stab me in my bed."
Aobozu gives him a long look that verges dangerously on concerned. "Neither I nor Master Seimei want you dead."
Yasha snorts. Well, good for you, he wants to say, packing the retort as full of disdain as he can, like maggots overfilling an eye socket - but somehow the words don't come out, the sarcasm doesn't manifest, even when he sits there trying to wrench it out of his throat by force. His second response - guess that makes two of us, then - is just as bad.
"Doesn't matter, does it?" he finally compromises, punctuating it with a one-shouldered shrug as he scratches his shin nonchalantly, faking his way back to normality. "Shouldn't be so attached to me. It'll screw up your following the Path. Not like violence isn't already doing that to begin with." He clears his throat. "Just so you know, I probably won't be back for at least a week with this job Seimei dumped on me. Good thing, I can't stomach how dull it is around here. Guess there's a bunch of kappa out kidnapping women again, trying to get themselves brides. Don't know, don't care, Seimei just says I have to make sure they stop."
Thankfully enough, Aobozu accepts the change of topic, switching onto it with equal speed. "And the humans they've captured? Will they become casualties too?"
Yasha smirks, rolling his eyes and making sure that Aobozu sees it. "Why the hell should I care if they live or die? If they escape, good for them. They're not worth my attention."
They both fall silent there, unable to speak around the rules of their own making, the restrictions that keep them from seeking both answers and questions that they know shouldn't matter. Even hating the quiet, Yasha can't dispel it. There's nothing he can say that he should want to say; there's nothing that would make a difference. There's just the two of them, rudderless, in a world that encourages them to drift.
Finally, Aobozu manages to speak. "Is this... able to make you happy, Yasha?"
Yasha feels his teeth start to bare themselves before he he can hide it. He turns the motion into a half-hearted laugh, a sound that barely qualifies as mockery. "Happiness is temporary, remember? And you're not supposed to want it either. Chasing happiness is just another way to screw yourself up." He snatches up the nearest pebble and flicks it into the pool, not bothering to jerk back his leg as water spatters up from the impact. "Well, I already don't give a fuck about anything, so from where I stand, I'm way ahead of you and your begging bowl. Why are you here, anyway? Afraid that if you don't have a master, you'll go out of control? Rack up a body count to lose track of, just like me?"
He's half-hoping Aobozu will say yes, mostly because it's been a long time since he's seen the monk seized by passions - a long, long time since Yasha's seen that much emotion at all from him, except for the flickers he can still tease out, each provocation a triumph.
But Aobozu only turns his attention back to the pond, caught in his own inner thoughts. "I don't think I can leave yet," he admits, his mouth puzzled, tightening in that wary confusion that Yasha knows is typically reserved for a koan whose answer seems too pat. "Master Seimei asks little of me. Sometimes we speak, or share tea as we discuss different interpretations of the teachings. He allows me to travel and uphold my beliefs. But every time, I find myself coming back here - back to him, back to this place, as if each cycle begins and ends at his courtyard gate." In a rare moment of restlessness, the monk reaches down, turning his staff so that the rings no longer dip precariously close to the pond; it jingles in protest at its rescue. "Even with all these travelers, there remains a quiet here which I have not found anywhere else. Perhaps Master Seimei offers me another chance at resolution through it," he adds, shifting his gaze suddenly over to Yasha again. Sunlight reflects off the waters of the pond, dancing over his face. "Perhaps I am not the only one."
There it is again: that stupid need to frown and clench his fingers for no good reason at all, feeling a grimace trying to manifest on his face, an echo to the contortion in his chest. Yasha jerks his eyes away from the pond, away from Aobozu; he stares bleakly at the courtyard with all its glamour and life. Beyond the walls of Seimei's estate lies the capital. Beyond that waits forests and fields and other towns, all interchangeable once the surface is stripped away, all filled with the same kinds of people, in equal parts hopeless and helpless.
"Just let me fucking go, Aobozu," he says, barely a whisper. The bubble of Seimei's courtyard is serene, but Yasha knows it for the illusion it is too: there is no place safe in the world. Safety is a deception and a dependency. A lie, designed simply to make you crave it. "Let all of this go, and get the hell out of this world while you still can."
There's one of Aobozu's lessons that Yasha still remembers, only halfway - like a summer haze that can't be pinpointed exactly, floating between spring and autumn with no year or month to mark it.
He recalls most of the details, at least, the ones that matter. It had been a tale of a master and a student who had been caught in some cave somewhere during a downpour, as monk stories always go. They weren't the only ones who had visited the shelter: some other traveler had used the same cavern some years ago as their deathbed, so long ago that only their skeleton remained, and even that had been gnawed at and pulled apart by scavengers. There had been only one bowl between both monks, so - after paying his respects - the master had picked up the empty skull, and had eaten his own share of rice from it.
The younger student had been horrified. He'd kicked and protested for hours until his master had told him, You are sitting in a cave where a man has died. And yet, you are the only one who is sitting there right now.
That had been Yasha's favorite one.
He doesn't remember the story perfectly - only the feeling of it, the familiar rise and fall of Aobozu reciting back the words, the contentment of already knowing how the conclusion would turn out - but if there's anything he's learned by now, it's that he doesn't have to.
What lies at the heart of his memory is Aobozu's soft voice, equally sleepy as the monk patiently shared the lesson about how even atrocities are attachments as well, how it's people who force their own significance onto objects and acts. How taboos are constructs, perceptions that reflect back the person who enforces them, and not innate to nature itself.
How in the end, bones are merely bones, and it's only people who grant them any value at all.
Aobozu doesn't tell him that story anymore.
He remembers planning to break the contract quickly. It had always been meant as a passing amusement: fight a few things, follow the more interesting leads that Seimei offered, and then burn the entire estate to the ground on his way out. All the roads in the wilderness lead in equally endless directions. Yasha could wander into the forest, or follow the nearest river down to the ocean. Maybe kill a few mermaids, entire schools of fish spirits. Entertain himself in escaping Arakawa's rage on the way back inland.
But Seimei's been true to his word about keeping him busy, and the worst part is the variety of different tasks that the onmyōji is involved with, as if every single village in the nation depends on the man simply to keep waking up in the mornings and putting their clothes on correctly. Yasha doesn't even mind getting sent out to find missing children anymore, or investigate rumors of ghosts in abandoned shrines. None of the places that Seimei sends him to are safe, and Seimei never forces him to partner up with anyone who doesn't give Yasha a wide berth, letting him fight on his own without attempting to interfere. It's easy to ask for. Seimei always lets him decide his own limits.
Afterwards, when he comes back to the estate, Seimei sets aside time to receive him in one of the studies, just the two of them. They speak until Yasha runs out of words, rambling about anything that crosses his mind as he steals food off Seimei's plates to disguise his meal choices, both of them talking loose and easy into the night. He eats his fill. He takes his pay. Then he picks the next job that interests him, and goes out to do it all over again.
Each time Yasha finishes up, it's a little easier to return. Seimei's courtyard is something to look forward to, a constant bastion waiting at the end of the road - letting Yasha inside its barriers and wards like he belongs, welcoming his presence each time. And every time he thinks about that, he also thinks about the way Seimei has always looked at him, impassively serene and refusing to be affected by all of Yasha's threats: as if the man is a living incarnation of the world itself, unbothered by all the horrors people have performed because it's never actually cared about them in the first place.
It's not a home. Yasha doesn't have one. He doesn't want one, and no one he knows would want him there anyway. He can't offer anything that people might desire, and he doesn't - he can't want anything, he's made a lifetime out of not wanting anything from anyone, only taking what he can seize for himself, never craving anything he'd be dependent on others for. Never attaching, never expecting, never letting himself become attached. It's the only way to make sense in a world where murder has as much weight as breathing, where everything is sharp and glistening like barnacles, slicing up your hands even as you grasp desperately for any hold to keep from being swung out by the tide.
It's the only way to survive in a world where everything is broken and yet still so full of desire, where you're told to open up your veins for the sharks to taste even as you claw at them in hopes of saving your own life.
He can't do it. He can't survive alone in a world where everyone and everything good goes away, and only assholes like him are left behind.
The trap of it crawls into him, latching into his thoughts. He can't help but feel that Seimei knows what's going on - that Seimei is letting him spin and spin, a malicious smiling bodhisattva that must be taking pleasure in Yasha's confusion. The man's very presence is an illusion; the only way to keep to sanity is to ignore illusions, but Seimei refuses to be brushed aside. Seimei glides through the chaos that surrounds him like no monk that Yasha has ever met in his life, full of serenity that never surrenders, sleek power compressed into the line of a lacquered fan. He's an object of desire, a locus that stands like a lighthouse, drawing all manner of spirits to his side.
But desire is deception. Despite all his honey-mouthed allusions towards balance and order, Seimei doesn't fix the world. He just breaks it further, ripping up Yasha's confidence and control. He's no different from anyone or anything else, and Yasha shouldn't expect anything otherwise, he should be beyond expectations - except that he keeps watching the man, drinking in each gesture like wine, glutting himself in hopes of exhausting his own appetite. He watches Seimei, and he knows all the other shikigami do it too, with a hunger in their eyes that he hopes isn't reflected in his own.
He thinks about disobeying for real in a way that can't be overlooked this time, of forcing the onmyōji's hand by murdering as many humans as he can find, as fast as he can slaughter them. He could get at least ten before Seimei could even draw a circle. Twenty, if they were packed tight. He thinks about Seimei finding him in the remains of a village again; he thinks about Seimei fucking him among the dead, pushing him down in a hovel spattered with fresh blood. Seimei could take him hard, from behind. He could pin Yasha's arms to the crudely-hewn floorboards so that splinters would dig into Yasha's hands with each shove of the onmyōji's hips, where everything would hurt in a hundred different ways as the empty eyes of corpses stared back at them: a mockery of all propriety, all formality, all illusions.
He thinks about Seimei whispering let go into his ear with each rough thrust, and Yasha having no choice but to obey, allowing the world to finally claim and ruin the rest of him at last, reminding him that there are no surprises, and no reason to long for anything.
He gets his chance by making it, by beating it into existence, rather than waiting meekly for an opening that will never come on its own. It's the only choice he has. It's the only method he knows.
The next time he's called into Seimei's study to go over the list of jobs, Yasha waits until the onmyōji mentions the one that he's planning on attending in person - and then snatches up that scroll, letting it crumple and tear in his hand, wadding up the paper into his palm.
"You don't need any other guards," he announces, tossing his chin. He tightens his fist, crushing the paper as thoroughly as he can in case of another shikigami getting the bright idea of trying to reading it themselves. "Just me."
Seimei lifts an eyebrow, assessing and curious all at once. He hadn't flinched once at the violence, as if already aware of its limitations before Yasha even struck. "As you wish."
The task is appropriately petty - just some pest extermination and the closing of a rift that had started to creak open - which is why Seimei had been willing to go without anyone else to begin with. It's not a proper slaughter, but they're at least alone on the road back, without the other onmyōji or even the kitsune to bother them. It's the perfect opportunity. Yasha won't find anything better.
They pass by a village. They pass by two. Each time, Yasha scowls and clenches his teeth, trying to work up the strength to tell Seimei that they should make a detour, some excuse about wanting to stay the night. The queasy feeling in his chest only gets worse the longer they travel, working their way inevitably back towards Seimei's home, where all the comforts of food and shelter are waiting like the dependencies they are. He feels sick inside, coiled up with a rage that has nothing of the purity of real anger. He can't remember if there's any other place to plan an ambush; he's not ready, he's not ready, but the world has never cared about that either.
"That's far enough," he decides arbitrarily in the middle of the next forest they cut through, trying to rally his defiance at last. They've been following the road for hours; the air is cool with moisture, hinting at a stream nearby. If Yasha kills Seimei here, he can dump the body in any number of places before moving on. "I think we've both had our fill of this."
To his credit, Seimei stops immediately, giving Yasha his full consideration. There's a moment before he speaks, a flicker of that same incisive regard, as if Seimei has also instantly assessed the range of options for corpse disposal. "Do you wish to leave my service?" he inquires, betraying nothing in the polite thoughtfulness of his voice. "It is your decision to make."
Other masters wouldn't have even asked. They would have commanded Yasha to keep walking, spiteful in the face of their authority defied; they would have called him to heel with a spell, given him an ultimatum in the chaos, something to push against. By flinging the question back to him, Seimei has offered a different alternative instead - he's offered control of the moment to Yasha, rather than claiming it for himself.
Yasha knows what he should do. He's engineered everything to get them here together. He wants this chance and doesn't at the same time, like a child turning their face away from the very sun that they had clawed their way out of a shallow grave for, choking on dirt in their mouths and their lungs, only to cower from their own succor.
"My decision is that you should fucking fight me," he declares, feeling his voice weaken even as he shouts, swinging his spear up in a wild arc. It's a clumsy motion, slapping the blade against the branch above him, shredding a leaf; he swipes it down again as a warning, hoping that he's postured enough. "I know you can! Stop holding back, and show me what you can damn well do."
But Seimei is already in motion, surprisingly fast; he strikes with the confidence of someone who has no fear of being struck in turn. The onmyōji's already inside Yasha's guard before the second swing. His fingers are on Yasha's jaw. His breath is against Yasha's skin, and then he's kissing him.
It's a soft pressure, delicate. Seimei's mouth brushes barely against his, a warmth that offers instead of dominates, as if the man were simply feeding one of his shikigami in a gentle affection. The feel of it shuts everything down in Yasha's thoughts. It tastes like heresy and hypocrisy and everything Yasha knows better than to accept, and even as he feels his fingers dropping to his side, he can hear his throat make a yearning noise: an unformed plea that doesn't know what shape it should take, only that it can't bear being suppressed further.
He lets go of his spear. It hits the dirt, and he forgets it.
It's been so long since anyone's touched him like this. Years. It's been years since he's had anything even remotely close, since there's been anything other than someone colliding with him in battle, angry and intent only on hurting him as much as they can. Seimei's proximity is like fire on his nerves, waking every single one of them up to remind him of how badly they've been starving. It feels like every square of his skin has been consumed by a hunger perpetually humming in the background, a constant pain that Yasha has worn for so long that he forgot it could even be hushed at all, that it wasn't simply part of breathing, of bleeding, of life.
He reaches for Seimei instinctively, grabbing at the man's arm and hip, anything that's available to grip. The raw need of it is overwhelming, roaring up out of his body without any conscious ability to stifle it, and immediately Yasha knows he'll never stop wanting this, even as he makes a helpless moan and leans into it, as if Seimei is a force of nature and all Yasha can do is let it wash over him, numbing everything in its wake. It allows no room for anger, for rage, for confusion - there is nothing but the grace of a storm, of a tsunami so elegant from a distance that fishermen can lie to themselves about how fast its approaching, how much of their lives it will destroy when it lands.
He shudders when Seimei pauses and pulls back - but the man doesn't withdraw entirely. Instead, he checks Yasha's face carefully, like a physician might, careful and clinical in case of a madness or plague that must be measured. "Is this what you need in order to stay healthy, Yasha?" Strong fingers brace the side of Yasha's neck, holding him steady. "I promise not to pass judgement if it is. That knowledge is safe with me. If you want this, you need only say so."
Temptation shivers through him, only barely held at bay. Yasha opens his mouth - and can only breathe through it, helpless and panting.
"I can't," he grits out, barely able to voice even that much. Seimei's touch hamstrings his thoughts. He can't answer around it because he's built his entire survival around not answering: because not answering that request is the only thing that makes enduring this world possible instead of cutting your own throat. Because needing leads to wanting, leads to pain, everyone knows that, and if Yasha starts doing anything different, anything other than floating through the world and acting only on instinct, then he'll drown inside his own soul and never find his way out again.
He grits his teeth hard as hard as he can, biting down on the agony that's rising up to choke him as efficiently as blood in his lungs. It's as if everything inside that nameless gap in his mind has turned vengefully into acid, manifesting despite all the denials of its existence. It doesn't care that it lacks any labels. It has the power to hurt him anyway.
For a moment as it crests, all Yasha can do is close his eyes and burn.
Then - carefully, like a stray breeze that's wary of dashing itself to extinction - Seimei's hand moves down along Yasha's body, tracing along his stomach, taking the initiative rather than force Yasha to continue standing trembling and trapped. Fingers explore the knot of Yasha's belt; he gasps in surprise and relief as he feels Seimei tug carefully at the ties to loosen it. At the noise, Seimei eases forward, pressing carefully in encouragement on Yasha's hip so that they both back up, step by step, until Yasha can feel the roughness of the tree behind him. He leans against it willingly, bracing his weight so that Seimei can finish pulling his clothes open, feeling the fabric slide open in a slow surrender.
It's like everything he had hoped for and nothing like it at all. Seimei's fingers quest tentatively through the unraveling of Yasha's clothes, finding him already half-hard. The first stroke is slow and steady, pulling Yasha back to reality. Yasha groans into it, Seimei's hand coaxing him along; the man takes Yasha more firmly in his grip as Yasha shifts against him, turning to give Seimei a better angle to grip him with.
"I don't want this," he claims, even as he bends his head and bites Seimei's shoulder, hard, hearing the man make a swift inhalation. He makes the first eager nudge of his hips, his body willingly asking for more on his behalf now that Seimei's already coaxing it. "I don't, I don't."
"All right," Seimei murmurs soothingly, his fingers tightening their pressure until Yasha makes an appreciative grunt. "I hear you."
It's already too much. It's not just Seimei's hand that feels good - it's everything, as if Yasha's entire body is all too ready to climax just from the brush of Seimei's hair against his neck, the yielding shape of Seimei's mouth. The edge of his sleeve dipping against Yasha's belly. The smell of his skin. Every scrap of stimulation is enough to overwhelm Yasha's senses, and yet he can't get enough as Seimei works him over, the man's hand beginning to speed inexorably up, matching the rush of Yasha's breathing.
Yasha hears his throat betray him with a whimper.
Then the rest of his self-control goes, just like that, and he's clutching at Seimei desperately, expecting to be shoved away in a refusal that never comes. His nails dig hard into the man's arms and back, tangling in the ornate robes. His hips twitch against the friction of Seimei's fingers, one of his feet shoved against Seimei's calf as Yasha bows his head against Seimei's shoulder, pressed up everywhere he can reach even as it makes it awkward and fumbling for Seimei to keep working him. Distantly, he can hear his voice making small, needy cries. He presses his face into Seimei's shoulder in hopes of smothering the sounds, burying his weakness against the man's body, as if he could conceal himself forever behind the curve of Seimei's arm, a small and hungry sea-thing that will die upon exposure to the air.
Yet Seimei only brings up his other sleeve in a long flourish, cupping the back of Yasha's head. Like a heavy curtain, the cloth blocks out the sun, wrapping Yasha inside its protection. He's invisible behind it, all his vulnerability hidden once more, guarded by a firm warmth that allows Yasha to cling to it as desperately as he needs to. It's a kindness that should be malicious, which should be cruelty from anyone else, and instead is something else entirely that Yasha can't help but crave.
Even as he comes, Yasha knows he's not ready for it to end, and the ache of that knowledge feels like a fresh blade in his body.
He feels himself panicking to keep hold of the moment even as it slips away, as if all his willpower has been slammed against the stones of a jagged coastline with only driftwood scraps remaining. He should know better than to hope. Greed takes him anyway. He digs his fingers into Seimei's arm, struggling to catch his breath before the onmyōji can reject him.
"Don't make this all that I get," he insists, hoping still that Seimei will go the rest of the way after all, right here in the dirt with nothing to cushion them. He wants the act of it as an action: he wants the blood and tearing and refusal of his body's muscles, the drenching of pain that will clear his head and bring him squarely back to reality, the mingling of agony and satisfaction at being proven right. If he can only seize proof that Seimei is an illusion, then Yasha can walk away and keep walking, wandering forever with no reason to look back ever again.
But the onmyōji grants him none of that. As remote and unaffected as ever, he simply lifts his hand to his mouth and licks it clean of fluid with tiny, careful flickers of his tongue. Only after his skin is spotless does Seimei finally drop his arm, considering Yasha steadily.
"That would hurt you," the man answers quietly, his tone walling off any further argument. "This isn't the right time for it. You need to be in a better place first."
Yasha slams his hand back against the tree, grimacing at the sting of bark against his skin. He can't stand the thought of begging further, but he can't stop. It's like a test each time Yasha crosses the man, only to find the world shifting around him in an imbalance of hope and fear. It's like a test, and Yasha knows all about tests: he knows them because he fails them.
Seimei breaks the world, but the world was broken already. And if everything is doomed to failure anyway, then maybe - just maybe - Yasha loses nothing by being lost to this.
"I'll kill you," he says, desperately, aware of the ragged panting of his own breath, for once not knowing if the words are a threat or a warning. "I'll fuck you up."
Seimei's mouth makes the tiniest curve in the corner, smoothing down Yasha's coat in an absent stroke of his hand. He arches an eyebrow with the same calm implacability as the ocean, unforgiving even as it gives.
"If that's the desire which is most important to you right now," he agrees, setting a finger against Yasha's jaw - gently, so gently that Yasha can't bear the pressure of it, already wanting to turn his face into its touch, "then that gives us a place to start."