Living with Gilgamesh is nothing like living with his wife. She was a grey mouse of a woman, so quiet and unassuming it was easy to forget she was still around. Perhaps that was why she survived as long as she had, because Kirei rarely took notice of her.
In contrast, Gilgamesh is demanding. He installs himself shamelessly in Kirei's life, in the bright, high-ceilinged apartment in Rome that his wife had chosen and called home and that Kirei had kept for the greater privacy it afforded compared to the Church-provided boarding houses.
He thought perhaps he would feel caged in with Gilgamesh there. He thought Gilgamesh would get bored of observing him, and was prepared to finance Gilgamesh's travels, his no doubt extravagant whims, whatever it took to keep the good will of his tether to life. He thought wrong.
They leave Japan behind together.
The day their plane touches down Kirei sits in a meeting, in a twilit study with an avuncular Cardinal he knows slightly, a change of pace after so many meetings with his own father on sun-bathed terraces. Gilgamesh thought it a tedious formality and Kirei gave every appearance of agreeing with him, but he supposes deep down within him some hidden, early-instilled respect for the Church had still survived. Who would see him for who he is, a still glistening monster now fully emerged from his cracked chrysalis, if not the one who's been overseeing the Church's executioners for decades? But even that unexpected spark of respect gets sniffed out this day.
"Are you back already? I didn't notice you were gone." Gilgamesh says instead of a greeting, one side of his mouth curling up most infuriatingly. "They didn't put you on the rack, I take it."
He's sunning himself on the balcony floor, opening one eye a sliver to regard Kirei with contented boredom before closing it again. Of course there was no rack, no suspicion, just an offer of a short respite from his work in deference to his supposed grief over his father's death. The Church was very pleased with Kirei; everyone who mattered agreed Emiya Kiritsugu was at fault for the fiasco the Grail War had turned out to be, while Kirei had acquitted himself admirably in the wake of the deaths of both his father and his mentor. It was all so sickly amusing.
The only thing they objected to was Gilgamesh, of all things. It was perfectly understandable for Kirei to feel responsible for his former Servant, the Cardinal declared. A degree of attachment was only excusable under the circumstances, he allowed. No one could wish to deprive Kirei of companionship at this difficult time, as long as he didn't forget his duties, and the Cardinal had every confidence that he wouldn't.
It's useful to know Kirei has achieved such a position in the Church that they are willing to tolerate his apparent dalliance with a man.
He watches Gilgamesh dispassionately, for long, stretching moments. Being stared at doesn't unnerve Gilgamesh, not when it's Kirei doing it. He takes being watched by Kirei as his due, not as an imposition by a lesser being. This is fortunate because Kirei wants to puzzle him out, something about Gilgamesh irritating and intriguing in equal measure, like a scab he can't stop picking.
"No. It is as you said, they suspect nothing," he admits once he realizes he hasn't answered. "I don't expect I should meet opposition from within the Church in the foreseeable future."
Gilgamesh snorts in bored derision, a shockingly crass sound from someone as beautiful and self-possessed as he is, and rises gracefully to sit with his back to the corner of the latticework railings. One of his legs is bent at the knee, the other stretched until the bare foot brushes the side of Kirei's trouser leg, seemingly accidentally. Neither of them moves to separate.
"What of me?" Gilgamesh asks. "I imagine they had something to say about my presence."
"The subject didn't come up," Kirei lies, as easily and smoothly as always.
Gilgamesh tips back his chin, the sun glinting off his hair, and regards Kirei with mocking, half-closed eyes.
"Didn't it, now. That's lucky."
That's the closest either of them comes to discussing their living arrangements.
Gilgamesh drinks or spills all of Kirei's wine in two days, samples a bottle before moving on to the next one, leaving them strewn about like green sentries, some of them fallen and leaking crimson blood on the carpet like noble soldiers who'd sacrificed their lives in their master's defense.
After the battle in Fuyuki city they walked back together among the rubble and smoke - the spoils of Kirei's war, much like Gilgamesh himself. Once, Kirei helped him down a pile of debris, feeling strangely courteous with his hand extended to Gilgamesh, direct gaze spoiling somewhat the otherwise flawless illusion of subservience. Gilgamesh had laughed then, throaty, warm and amused and Kirei hadn't disliked the sound.
Behind the church where he'd taken sanctuary the street was free of destruction, but the horizon was alight with distant fire and wreathed in smoke. Kirei watched it, mesmerized.
"So besotted," whispered Gilgamesh, and then. "Follow me."
And Kirei did, up the cracked steps and through the creaking gate, Gilgamesh's tattered makeshift mantle billowing behind him and trailing soot like fairy dust. Someone had cleared away his father's body in Kirei's absence, wiped away the blood, leaving the floor shining with sterility. Gilgamesh stopped over the exact same spot where the corpse had lain and let the cloth covering him fall to the ground, the folds of blood-red pooling there in a passable imitation of the real thing.
Gilgamesh knew the way to the hidden staircase, the stone-lined corridor where he and Kirei walked now side by side, and startled a sister so badly she dropped the cup of milk she'd been carrying and crossed herself at the sight of Gilgamesh's nakedness. The milk stained her black habit like sperm. Kirei leered at her and she fled as if the Devil himself was at her heels.
Alone in the dank bowels of the church they passed through an ancient door smelling of rotting wood, into a bathroom. The air was so cold their breath hung about their mouths in fluffy white mist, as if their souls were being driven out of their bodies, still weakly clinging, reluctant to part.
Gilgamesh sat on the stone lip of a bath tub and stretched one long, golden leg towards Kirei. For a moment, Kirei thought he was expected to lick it clean. He could imagine himself doing so, running his wriggling tongue along its surface in supplication, tasting the soot and dirt clinging to it. For no reason at all he was reminded of his marriage. But then he shook the idea, and knelt and washed Gilgamesh's feet with his hands, nothing as ridiculous as his thoughts had been.
Nowadays their roles are reversed more often than not, Gilgamesh dragging Kirei to his white, gleaming bathroom and pouring wine over his head, both their heads, still laughing. The wine stains their hair, invisible on Kirei's black vestments but showing on the colorful shirts Gilgamesh favors, decorating the pristine white tiles with shapeless splashes of color. What his housekeeper must think, Kirei thinks with a shade of amusement.
A disconcerting number of changes follow in short order. Gilgamesh shamelessly commandeers Kirei's bed, the one in the guest bedroom not measuring up to some unfathomable standard. He rifles through the furniture and treats Kirei's weapons as toys. The rotary phone ends up in pieces twice in a week, because Gilgamesh finds the idea that he must jump at some wretched worm's beck and call just to make the noise stop infuriating.
One day Gilgamesh disappears for a few hours, only to come back with the ears on his newly resurrected body pierced and bearing the most hideous crucifix earrings. Worse, he angles for compliments and sulks for days when Kirei doesn't deliver. The earrings stay off for the most part, but a few days later the downstairs neighbor pounds on the door demanding to know why Kirei's guest has been pouring parquet polish on his geraniums.
Kirei's next assignment arrives much too soon. He hasn't gotten Gilgamesh housebroken at all. He can't refuse, and it's a simple one, the retrieval of a stolen artifact and the identities of the buyer and the go-between arranging the theft.
Gilgamesh calls him in the middle of an interrogation, asks to listen in once he finds out how exactly Kirei is occupied. Kirei positions the phone on a shelf nearby, carefully angled to catch every whimper, then gets back to work. It's more fun after that.
It's a week later and Gilgamesh opens the front door wearing one of Kirei's cassocks as a dressing gown. Unbuttoned. With nothing underneath.
A passing neighbor drops his keys on the landing with a clatter. Gilgamesh doesn't budge from the door a few seconds more, long enough to make a point, and only then moves aside to let Kirei in.
"I hope you left at least one clean set. I need to go in and report tomorrow," Kirei says evenly, setting his bag down by the coat rack.
Gilgamesh slips past him to sprawl on the sofa. It's a tiny, ornate thing in the style of some dead French king or another, and the spread sides of Kirei's cassock cover it completely. It gives the illusion that Gilgamesh is falling backwards into an abyss, or being carried away on the wings of a great black bird.
"Considering how I occupied myself in your absence, I doubt you'll find a single clean one," Gilgamesh says, inspecting his fingernails with seeming indifference. Kirei serves as his entire court and his sole audience now, and Gilgamesh doesn't like being left on his own, even if he understands Kirei must keep his position in the Church. All of a sudden his expression shifts to one of malicious delight. "You should wear one of them anyway. Not like any of the crusty old goats would notice."
Kirei thinks of himself walking the hallowed halls and shaking the revered hands with the spillage of Gilgamesh's dissolute body on the inside of his clothes, and suddenly it seems like a great idea.
He only realizes he's smiling when his gums start to feel uncomfortable in the air, too dry.
While Gilgamesh takes being served as his due, he doesn't like to interact with those he deems too far below his notice. Thus Kirei finds himself playing guide as well as jester on some days, doing his best to distract Gilgamesh outside for a handful of hours before they return to find the mess has been cleaned and their possessions put away in their absence.
"I want to pet a lion. Buy me a lion, Kirei," Gilgamesh orders once.
So they go to the zoo.
Gilgamesh approves of it, from the twin statues of predator cats lining the entrance as if about to pounce down on visitors, to the giant domes of steel and glass housing the birds of prey and the reptile terrariums where he seems mesmerized by the giant snakes and their glossy coats. The snakes hurriedly slither away when Gilgamesh lingers, perhaps rightfully worried about a possible future as a pair of boots.
But then Gilgamesh really does try to pet the lions and Kirei feels forced to intervene, and the ensuing incident leaves several zoo employees cross, scratched and rather unwilling to listen to Gilgamesh's argument that the lions hadn't minded the treatment.
Rin is in a Church-run boarding school a couple of hours from Rome. It looks good on paper; she is Kirei's charge, after all, and he needs to keep her close. But really, the real reason is that she hates it there, far away from her mother and sister and having to depend on Kirei's approval for the most trivial details of her life, from the amount of her pocket money to the kind of books she's allowed to read.
She tries to run away at regular intervals. They catch her every time, of course, but Kirei's still expected to make an appearance and a token attempt to make her behave. He doesn't mind, Rin's pain and resentment are always entertaining.
The school is all stiff propriety and starched collars, institutional grey walls faintly smelling of mashed potatoes and artificial citrus-scented detergent. It's an all girls' school, of course, the pupils kept on a tight leash, so Kirei isn't surprised by the big-eyed, interested glances he and Gilgamesh attract.
It always starts the same way, with Rin sitting straight as a board on a hard wooden chair and wearing an expression to match, determined to show Kirei how strong she is and how much she hates him. It ends the same way, too, because for all her rage Rin isn't sure her hate towards Kirei is justified, and it eats at her. An enemy she could deal with, but an old student of her father who doesn't care about her yet tries to do his duty is too much. Kirei always finds a way to wound her, make her doubt herself and think her father wouldn't have approved of her, and make it seem not deliberate.
He finds himself invariably pleased after each visit, and one time Gilgamesh leans in right in the middle of the front steps, close enough to generate rumors but not cause a scandal, and says, "Feeling parental?", and Kirei realizes with surprise that he is, actually.
He's looking forward to seeing what Rin will become under his tender care.
Kirei dreams of Fuyuki city sometimes. Not about the city in ruins, though that had been lovely, but of the way it was the night Kirei had his grand epiphany, the way it looked to him after he'd returned Matou Kariya's broken body to his family house. The slick, dark, rain-washed streets of the city, fresh and labyrinthine and full of possibility. In the dream he's not so much walking as watching them float past him. He looks up past the soft, orange glow of streetlamps to a bluish full moon, feeling pleasantly light-headed. When he lowers his gaze he's in Gilgamesh's arms, Gilgamesh's eyes reflecting the moonlight, Gilgamesh's fingers stroking his jaw and hair.
"I will rend all knowledge into you," Gilgamesh promises, close to Kirei's skin.
He rips Kirei's jaw off and tears his head in two like a ripe fig and Kirei wakes up hard and gasping in his sweat-soaked sheets.
The heavy, plush curtains sway ever so slightly in the wind wafting through the pulled open door of the balcony. The weak evening light doesn't filter inside, and the living room's sunken in velvety dusk. Kirei keeps on cleaning his knives in the dark, while Gilgamesh goes on enjoying the jar of lavender honey Kirei had brought him after his latest mission. The ploy had been a success, the tribute mollifying Gilgamesh completely.
The smacking, licking noises he's making should be even more irritating in the dark. Everything about Gilgamesh should be irritating Kirei more than it is. Kirei should be fantasizing about killing him, at least, even if he can't go through with it because of their connection. But he doesn't. He also doesn't want to kill Gilgamesh, not truly. He forces himself to contemplate the possibility, now, Gilgamesh's body writhing in the throes of pain, muscles straining and tendons stretching to the point of tearing, while Kirei takes his time with him. He thinks about running his fingers across Gilgamesh's supple skin dotted with pearly drops of sweat, of rubbing his lips along Gilgamesh's fluttering eyelids and reaching out his tongue to taste his tears of agony.
He jolts out of his reverie then, suddenly uncomfortable.
It occurs to him that he's not even close to knowing himself, and before he knows it he's speaking without any consideration.
"I fear you may soon regret throwing your lot in with me, King of Heroes," he says, and his voice echoes oddly in the darkness. "I may turn to be a rather poor student of my own nature."
There's a beat of utter, unpredictable silence, and then Gilgamesh laughs with clear delight.
"I'm not bored quite yet," he says. "A poor student you might be, but your ignorance has its own compensations."
"What do you mean? What compensations?" Kirei asks, inexplicably breathless. It feels like the conversation has shifted all of a sudden from idle speculation to a momentous occasion, like many of their previous assignations tended to end up. He feels he is on the cusp of a great discovery, following a narrow path lined with bottomless ravines where one wrong step could cost him everything.
"I have met many men who drew pleasure from the pain of others. That in itself is perfectly commonplace, nothing to intrigue me. They all thought it was natural, logical, that it made them superior, even, and none of them needed anyone to teach them about their own desires. When you have no regard for others, you have no concern for morality. But you," Gilgamesh says, and by the sound of his voice Kirei can guess he's gotten to his feet and moved closer. "You tried to follow a path free of sin for years, decades, and even now you know what gives you pleasure and seem to accept it, you call yourself a dog for your desires. If it's truly in your nature, to do evil, why think of it as evil at all?"
Gilgamesh is very close now, so close that when his fingers encase Kirei's wrist and give a tug, Kirei isn't startled.
"Come on," says Gilgamesh. "I want to go out. The world awaits, and you did promise to be my fool."
The touch is gone, but Kirei can still hear that low, amused voice, beckoning.
For a moment, he stands poised between it and the silence surrounding him.
Then he follows.