I didn't get to respond to all of the reviews as my sister thought it would be nice to clean my inbox for me. All the same, I loved them quite a bit! :)
Title: Bargain
Pairing: Tyki/Kanda
Rating: R?
Warnings: Men touching sexually, Kanda winkling out of his mind, Tyki being evil, etc…
Disclaimer: -man and all characters therein belong to Hoshino-sensei.
Summary: Tyki's kindness is another form of cruelty.
iAuthor's Note of Doom: When you read this, please take note that it is not – no matter how much it might start to look like one – a love story. In another universe were Tyki and Kanda weren't on opposite sides of the war, it might have been at least a one sided love of a sort, but it isn't here. So please keep that in mind when you read this – it will be more evident in later chapters.
Yes, chapters. Because this has turned into something of a character study with plot./i
--
Kanda knew that he wasn't iwell/i the next day, even if the fever was gone. His arms still felt weak, his legs still felt heavy, and his eyes quickly became tired if he didn't rest them on occasion which, for some reason the samurai could not entirely understand, Tyki allowed him. There had been breakfast and lunch today, meals that the Japanese man had nearly forgotten existed, and a fresh glass of water whenever he reached over with his free hand to get some. And he was left alone – truly alone – for three hours after noon, left to meditate and think and listen to the absolute stillness of the basement, not a cricket to accompany him. The silence unnerved him at first, until he settled himself against the bed and closed his eyes, letting himself sink into the most comfortable position possible while laying on his back.
After that, meditation came like second nature, and brought a level of calm that nothing else could. Silence was more or less the same anywhere, though underground rooms lent themselves to the kind of stillness that only came from the earth itself, solid and impossible to break without reverence. The sound of his breathing became quieter and quieter until it was lost in that natural nothingness, drowned by the all but deafening quiet. His heartbeat did the same. And then there was only his mind, only the events of the last few days causing a ruckus in the far corners of his mind.
It wasn't something he could shut down, either. Normally, when it came to thoughts of life and death, the events surrounding either of his could be flatly ignored by his mind – it didn't matter away. He didn't worry about it. Living on borrowed time made it hard to worry about anything he couldn't fix within the hour.
But this was different.
The Noah had done all sorts of things to him, hurt him, ifucked him/i, had laughed at his inability to fight, his weaknesses. Had used that stupid metal muzzle he called a bridle. And yet, even though the Noah kept him tied or cuffed to the bed, the samurai had experienced no unnecessary pain outside of the initial warning – fingers wrapped around his heart, squeezing the life out of him. Sickness had brought medicine. And warmth and comfort. The news that Kanda had not slept or eaten properly in days had brought food and the opportunity to rest. Complaining about a nickname had more or less stopped its use, though it tended to slip when Tyki was thinking of a sexual encounter or meant to point out something unpleasant – like Mugen.
Mugen. That was a can of worms that Kanda couldn't yet open. Not until he saw his sword again.
As far as Kanda could see, however, this enemy was presenting him with a chance. It wasn't much of one, it could indeed all be a lie to make him give in and then suffer, but it didn't seem to fit. Not with how the Noah's eyes had been, looking down at him, not seeing him, seeing only what it was that he was set on doing, only Kanda's reactions. In that moment, when Tyki had forced his hand on Kanda with the excuse of making the samurai sleep, it was as if nothing differentiated the Portuguese man from any forceful individual. He went further, but that was it. The emotions behind his actions, somehow, were still human.
By the time that thought came to mind, Kanda was too relaxed to jump at the brush of fingers on his jaw, the tickle of a thumb on his lips. Without argument or even changing his train of thought he let the digit tilt his head back a bit and open his mouth as if in preparation, slow, delicate. The kiss didn't surprise him and he took part in it shyly – he wasn't sure of himself, wasn't sure of his decision not to fight this battle – but managed still to, for the first time, brush his tongue against the Noah's willingly. An obvious shudder took the older man and he withdrew, Kanda cracked his eyes a little, the better to see Tyki's reaction.
The Noah eased himself down on the bed and, with just the touch of a finger, released the restraints on the Japanese man's wrist. He sat there and simply looked down at Kanda, expression unreadable, and pulled his hands to himself, letting them dangle between his knees. Nonthreatening. Passive. The Noah was being docile.
Kanda could do little but stare.
"What was it that made you change your mind?" The question wasn't very loud, but it might have been a thunderclap to Kanda's silence-adjusted ears. He didn't show that it was, however, he only pulled both of his hands under the covers with him the way he had before, rubbing at his freed wrist.
It took a fair two minutes before he could make himself speak with any level of confidence in his voice. "I haven't," he whispered, and didn't turn his eyes away. "Trust is something you gain, not something you can threaten out of me. You haven't…" A pause to find words, in which his hands fidgeted awkwardly under the blankets, fingers picking at his too larger shirt, "I… you've treated me better here than the Order would treat you if they had you. I doubt anyone but Moyashi would even offer you a bed no matter how sick you were or whose fault it was, and he has the most against you. Maybe it's stupid to explain it that way, but I don't see another way to, not without trying to understand your reasoning." He stopped then and narrowed his eyes at the slightly gaping Portuguese man, almost glaring. "What?"
Tyki continued to blink for a moment, head to the side, eyebrows brought together in an expression of mild disbelief. "I think that's the most you've said to me since I brought you here."
"Che."
"It's not a bad thing," Tyki corrected at once, a little smile tugging his lips upward, just enough to be seen. His right hand fluttered outward for a moment before it settled on the mattress, suddenly not comfortable just itouching/i, suddenly timid, and Tyki leaned on it, just enough to say that he was. "It just surprised me. I never expected you to say anything to me but curses."
"I never expected you to kiss me."
Tyki laughed softly, leaning more on his hand, bringing their faces closer. "Then tell me, Kanda," his face was very close, soft eyes focused on the dark, black-blue of the samurai's, refusing to let his gaze wander. "Does this new trust you have in me end at kissing?" He cocked an eyebrow but leaned in before Kanda could protest, taking his mouth without question. A small sound of protest seeped through the Japanese man's lips but he didn't push the larger man away, didn't bite, and only paused before he reacted to the intrusion of another tongue beside his own. His eyes shut. There were fingertips on his collar bones, healed, before one hand slipped into his hair and the other went trailing down the length of his throat, then pressed flat against his chest, curving on his shoulder.
It took all of the courage Kanda could muster to pull his hands out of the covers and touch the man above him. No sooner had his fingers found fabric that he pulled his head back to pant, and
Tyki's mouth went creeping down his neck.
The hair under Kanda's right hand was soft, the skin under his left warm. The caress of lips on his throat, the slow, unsure shift of weight above him, the tender return of that mouth to his – he didn't know what to do about any of it. It was too languid, too undeniably not unpleasant, too igood/i. Kanda fisted one hand in the Noah's hair and the other on his shirt, a sudden rush of strange, confused emotions welling inside of his chest. Something burned behind his eyes and the room – or what little he could see of it with his eyes hooded – blurred as if under water, warmth trickling down the sides of his face.
Tyki stopped kissing him for a moment and simply looked at him. A hand hooked around the back of the Japanese man's neck, and another pressed to the hollow of his right hip. The second hand came up after a moment and once again flipped Kanda's bangs from his face, the same as they had from the beginning.
The samurai looked back blinking, and waited.
"Do you even know that you're crying?" Tyki's voice wasn't loud enough to convey much of any emotion with the words, but it was obvious he was not being condescending, but rather the opposite. Surprise made his expression brighter, concern dulled the light of his eyes, and something like regret worried at the edges of his mouth, wrinkling the skin there. Kanda didn't feel much of anything looking at him, just the sense that this, somehow, wasn't a lie. The Noah was curious. Where someone else might have presented a mask for the moment, Tyki just wasn't.
"No," Kanda responded with equal honestly. "I don't feel anything. I haven't… felt… anything since…" He looked down and then up again, eyes once again glossed with tears. What was he saying? What was he doing with this iNoah/i? He was Kanda – he didn't talk about his feelings, not if he could help it. "I don't…"
Tyki shushed him and moved forward, but not to kiss again – instead he pulled the young samurai against him, ignoring the little sound of surprise in the boy's throat, and turned his face into the side of Kanda's neck.
Kanda was unmoving against him, though his spine went ridged for only a moment, then relaxed as if by will alone.
The Noah bit his lower lip before he spoke very lowly, whispering into the Exorcist's ear as if the walls were listening. "I'm sorry."
Kanda went stiff again. iNo you're not. You're not sorry. If you were sorry you—/i
"Would you like to stop for today? Until you see your sword? Mokkun was it?"
"Mugen," Kanda corrected against the Noah's shoulder. "I don't care."
That made Tyki draw away a little, as if in an effort to see, but a hand pressed lightly to his chest and he stilled, seemingly uncertain. Being touched wasn't something Kanda was used to, even on a platonic level, so the Noah breathed in and returned to how he had been, conveyed the idea that it was mostly Kanda keeping him there. "You don't care?" He echoed, and began to stroke the knotted length of the samurai's hair, almost tenderly.
"If you stop," Kanda clarified, and the hand he placed so timidly on Tyki's shirt wandered to the lowest button and began to twirl it, almost indifferently. He wondered for a moment if it was brain trouble, if the fever had completely ruined the person he had been, but he didn't think so. This was just what the he was like when someone forced away the anger and the cursing: shy and awkward and unsure of himself, like a half bloomed rose, beautiful and yet showing only half its worth.
-- -- --
The Noah couldn't stand the thought of letting things remain as they were. "Forgetting for the moment what it is that we are," he breathed against the smaller man's skin, "You may cry, if you feel that you must. I believe I would, if my rapist had done all of the things I have done to you. Asking this of you… asking you to lay with me again… it's unbearably cruel, isn't it? But I can't just ilet/i you go. That would be entirely under satisfying. That does not affect you, however. So cry. If you find me to be uncaring and cruel, then please, don't make this into resolve to kill me with, I want—" He stopped the words before they could go on, iknowing/i what they were and knowing equally that he could not admit them, not here, not when the dark seemed so far away. It was a death wish, if not something more painful, to say those words that begged to be said in the moment, to echo in this small room rather than in the dark confines of his mind, over and over, a near silent promise he didn't know the true meaning of.
iTo live
through this so I can find you again.
Because even if I don't
know you, even if I have only seen you when you raise your sword
against me…
I just have to see you then.
When we can
sit down to tea, if you like it, and touch each other without fear of
what might be touched.
Like human beings./i
Kanda made a sudden, deep sound of denial and his hand closed on Tyki's shirt, around the button. A second followed, louder than the first, and the Noah realized gradually that these, these half broken wails of negation, were badly strangled sobs. The humiliation, the pain, the fear, the anger – all of it was in that sound, as well as the weakly balled fist that thumped him repeatedly in the stomach, lacking force. Tyki could not follow thoughts that well, he wasn't like Road in that regard, but he didn't need to. He needed only to rock the boy to know what he was feeling, and to shift a bit closer to know what he wanted.
It took nearly an hour, but Kanda inevitably cried himself nearly to sleep, his eyes devoid of tears though he continued to convulse on occasion, or bark a little sound of displeasure from his lips. It made the Noah see just how young he was – eighteen or nineteen – as fragile and terrified as a six year old, though with better reasoning abilities. For that reason Tyki guided him slowly back against the mattress and held him still. He was only slightly startled when the nearly silent Exorcist forced himself into Tyki's chest, like the sleepy child he so resembled. Tyki let a little sound of amusement seep through his lips as he buried them in the Japanese man's hair, pressing firmly to his scalp.
"This never happened, understand?" Kanda growled in a voice that hardly wanted to function, more or less devoid of anger. Tyki smiled at it and turned his face sideways in order to press his cheek into the younger man's in place of his lips.
"Of course it hasn't. Nor will it ever," he responded, and felt Kanda nod a little against him.
"Good."
-- -- --
Perhaps it was the headache, or the warm pair of arms hooked around his shoulders, but either way, waking did not make Kanda want to move. He was on his side for once – he never slept on his side – tear-sore eyes pressed to the crisp fabric of Tyki's shirt, hands bundled next to his chest in a mess of sheets and fingers. He'd cried. He remembered it distinctly, sobbing all of his emotions out, the way he would have before he had learned to meditate on each of them and look at them from the inside out, defusing each one systematically until there was nothing left but maybe anger. Now though, even if it was Tyki Mikk beside him, he didn't feel the ache of inothing/i or the burn of unsettled emotions, he just felt iempty/i: a blank slate, waiting for someone to lift the chalk and scrawl across his heart, or a pure white piece of paper lacking even in dog-eared corners. Like this no urge for violence filled him, no internal drive to kill the man beside him. There was only a distant sense of something like warmth, and the feeling that it didn't matter away, he could go back to sleep if that was what he wanted.
Where his face was on the older man's body allowed him to feel the beat of Tyki's heart in his right cheek, and it soothed him. The subtle stroking of fingers through the ends of his hair did the same – they nearly matched in rhythm.
Thump. Stroke. Thump. Stroke. Thump. Pause.
"Are you awake?" The question was hardly a whisper, just above his head. He had the feeling that the Noah could see his eyes but didn't answer – things were comfortable in this moment, changing them would likely send his mind reeling once again. Silence proved to be an acceptable answer. "I suppose I can stay a bit longer then. Dinner is not until late tonight." The comment was more the Noah talking to himself than to Kanda, but the Exorcist didn't mind it – the fingers began to stroke again, matching pace with the larger man's heartbeat once more.
His mind remained blank. He didn't even wonder what he would do if it was all some terrible lie. He just slipped his left hand over Tyki's ribcage, feeling it expand under his fingers, and closed his eyes again, most of his face and chest pressed flush against the Noah.
iIt's just because he's warm. I just want to be warm./i
Tyki continued to stroke at his hair, slowly, one handed, fingers dragging down the length of Kanda's back.
Tyki began to hum softly, following a tune that didn't quite make into his voice at that low of a whisper. Kanda frowned, not knowing the melody, but didn't react otherwise, slightly surprised by the song.
It went on for a time, and did not gain volume, indeed they grew quieter, and the hand in his hair slowed considerably, shifting down his hair until finally, at the end, it stopped.
i"Quem
tem o nome de mae
nunca
passa sem cantar;
Cantas
vezes a mae canta
com
vantade de chorar…"/i
The Noah grew very still, and Kanda ventured to look up at his face only to find his eyes closed, his expression the picture of sleep, leaning half on the pillow and half on the metal bars of the bed frame. Seeing that, Kanda understood. A lullaby. The last lullaby he had heard was Lala's, and that hadn't been at all like this – Latin, sad, meant for someone else. He felt suddenly very awkward having heard either and shifted; just enough to bring Tyki's eyes open to meet his gaze.
Tyki didn't speak, continued the stroking of the Japanese boy's hair without word. Kanda let himself relax at it, no longer even remotely worried about who or what it was that he was resting against.
"Kanda," the softness of his name made him think he could continue to remain as he was regardless of it. "Are you alright now?"
The samurai closed his eyes and nodded, unwilling to move away. He took a moment to swallow and think of words before he started, fighting with how he meant to phrase his thoughts. It was difficult, especially being he did not usually pay that much attention to thinking, but he managed. "Forgetting what we are for the moment…" he whispered in a very tired sounding voice, "I might be."
Tyki smiled at him softly, eyes that same dark shade of chocolate that they were during his most humane of moments, grinning with his lips. Gently his fingers curved around the side of Kanda's cheek, expression unchanging, and he leaned downward, but stopped before they were close enough to brush lips. Instead he studied Kanda's swollen eyes, his mouth, the gauntness to his cheek bones, and then finally kissed the center of the younger man's forehead before leaning away.
The Japanese man looked up at him without understanding, eyebrows pushed together in question.
"Did you want me to go on, Kanda? Or should I take you to see your weapon?" Tyki seemed to take note of how Kanda tilted his head slightly upward, mouth slack, the dark gems of his eyes half covered with their lids, nearly seductive. He spoke again before that sultry expression could decide for him. "If you wish it, I will leave for the day. You have been through enough that a long night's rest might—" Kanda was shaking his head, though what at Tyki could only guess, his face unchanging. "What would you like?"
iTell me what you want and I might—/i
"You will stop if I want you to."
"Yes."
"And you swear to me that Mugen is fine."
"You can see it, if you don't believe me."
Kanda went quiet again, eyes downcast, before he lifted his face and gradually, not having the slightest inkling of what he was doing, placed his lips on Tyki's throat. Breath caught in the older man's windpipe and he moved down the bed frame, turning slightly as he went. He didn't pin the Japanese boy this time, instead he guided him upward, kissing softly at his jaw, lapping at the underside of his chin. They were small but intimate touches that Tyki found returned to him in a shaking, inexperienced way, the blankets still dividing half of them. The Noah found the smallest little curve of the samurai's throat and pressed his teeth to it, thus drawing a half-muffled whine from Kanda's lips. He worked slowly and only with what he had at the moment, dragging his fingers over the exposed flesh of the Japanese man's neck, touching his hair, nibbling at the soft skin of his earlobes, sucking at the bump of his Adam's apple.
The younger man gave up returning those touches and simply laid his head back, fingers tangled in the Noah's clothes.
It was entirely different, and not only because it was partly consensual this time – different on a fundamental level. Kanda was surprised that he didn't feel guilty or disgusted with himself when a breathless, formless plea escaped him, louder than he would have liked. He did not grow tense at the slow, casual touch on his stomach, lifting the too large white shirt that hung over his slim frame at a gradual pace.
Tyki kissed him again, more forcefully, and slid his palm up the inside of Kanda shirt, pressing flat at his stomach and then drumming up the sides of his ribcage, then around behind him, arching him away from the mattress. The younger man whined at the press of fingernails on his back, not hard enough to leave marks but enough for him to know there was potential. He closed his eyes to it as the motion was repeated, this time with an open mouthed kiss pressed to the hollow of his throat.
The blank ceiling showed him nothing but the same wooden pattern that he had come to memorize and somehow, as his shirt left his chest over his arms and landed in a too large heap beside the bed, that made him smile. Perhaps it was that he wouldn't have minded watching himself push the Noah lower, wouldn't have cared to see himself lead the larger man back to pull his legs from beneath the covers, or maybe it had nothing to do with the amount of control he had. Maybe it was just that this, the tongue on his right nipple and the hands on his back, his own pulling at the Noah's shirt, made him feel something that, after the emptiness, reminded him of happiness.
Maybe it was excitement. Or a combination of both. Whatever the case, he pushed his mouth to Tyki's bare shoulder when the opportunity arouse, and let his fingers gently touch the skin under the Noah's shirt, tickling along the bottom of his stomach. Without much thought – or any thought – Kanda pressed his right palm over Tyki's heart, feeling it beneath his hand.
With a sharp intake of breath the Noah pulled away from the collar bone he had been nibbling, eyebrows pressed together in an expression of pain. At once Kanda withdrew his hand, moving it to the Portuguese man's shoulder.
"I didn't—"
"It's fine, Kanda. Just a sore place," Tyki explained, and the sound of his voice seemed to break the strange spell that had settled over the younger man, who pulled back into himself a bit, no longer touching with his mouth or wandering with his hands. Tyki did not particularly mind and sat back again, straddling the boy's legs, eyes turned down to his hands. He began to pick at his shirt buttons. "You weren't there, in the Ark when that happened. The room had already collapsed." He was halfway finished when the Japanese man wiped his mouth on the back of his right hand and leaned slightly forward, as if to study what he might reveal. "But I'm sure they told you what happened when the Walker boy tried to kill the dark in me."
"Che." There might have been a hint of amusement in the sound. "Lavi – the younger Bookman – has a scar."
"Just one? I'm losing my touch."
Kanda didn't answer that with anything but a forced rolling of his eyes, which Tyki found undeniably fitting.
The shirt was cast aside, dropped on top of Kanda's, and the white, cross-shaped scar over Tyki's heart exposed for the Exorcist's eyes. The shape was perfect. The skin around it looked almost welted, raised with irritation. Tyki watched as Kanda stared at it and slowly, as if drawing a parallel, looked down at the Ohm over his own heart before looking back again, dark eyes frowning, though his mouth remained in a line. His lips parted and then closed again, words lost to him for the moment. At length he tried again; shy once more, his hands folding themselves together very gently. "Is it killing you?" He finally managed, and his eyes went down again, hiding the emotion that threatened behind his eyes.
"No, it isn't." Tyki shook his head, reaching out to touch the mark on Kanda's chest. "If it was… would that be ironic? Does yours not keep you alive?" He traced the shape with his fingertips, dancing outward and up the side of Kanda's shoulder, following every mark and stroke of the symbol as if he found some meaning in it besides what was there. Under his touch the samurai shivered, eyes falling shut.
"It has saved me from long recovery times and wounds that likely would have been fatal, but…"
"But?"
"I will not live to see this war end." He said the words so confidently, so surely, that Tyki was left blinking at him, his expression one of utter incomprehension. His fingers stilled and the Japanese boy looked down at them, a strange sort of pain in his eyes. "There isn't much more my body can take before I heal at the same pace as a normal human, and even then it will become even slower. By the time the war is over, I won't heal at all. I will die slowly. And I likely won't find the person I—" He had said too much in reciting the nature of his blessing and his curse, and shut his mouth only to find Tyki's pressed against it, and the hand on his chest moving up behind his hair. A surprised sound escaped him but he didn't push the Noah away, not even when the older man let his mouth fall away and his face pressed to the side of the Exorcists shoulder.
Tyki's right hand gathered Kanda's and gave it a squeeze that neither of them really knew the meaning of. "If… this war will kill you then…" Teasingly he pressed his lips to the skin of Kanda's throat again and was unsurprised when the younger man leaned into the brush as if in invitation. "Will you promise that I will be able to see you before the end of it?"
"Why do you care? It might be you that kills me."
"I told you I had to have you, Kanda. I never told you I only wanted to have your body."
The samurai looked down at the Portuguese man with disbelief in his eyes, which swiftly turned first to anger and then to confusion, the entire time his mouth was pulled into a soft, thoughtful frown. Realization blossomed across his features last of all, forming his perfect mouth into a circle and lifting his eyebrows, the fire that had burned in his eyes returned again – though it was distinctly different than it had been – the fire of understanding.
"You want…" Kanda's mouth formed the words very uncertainly, as if saying them too quickly would make them truer than they were. The thought, the reality of what the Noah wanted, was too idifferent/i than what he knew. "To make…"
i"Yes…"/i Tyki breathed, his fingers on the Japanese boy's chin, "I want to make love to you in a way I've never wanted to with a woman. It may not be real, you might hate me, but what else can I do? Let you kill me? No… I would never live to see that decision forgotten, no matter how many times I am reincarnated. So this…" He tilted Kanda's head back and the younger man's mouth stayed perfectly open, waiting, and expectant, his eyes fluttered to half shut, fingers curled on Tyki's hips. It was all the Noah could do to keep from kissing him then. "Will you let me do that, Kanda? If you cannot pretend, I won't ask that of you. But if you can let me—"
"I told you," Kanda broke in softly. "You will stop if I tell you to, I will have Mugen is back, I'll go home. If that's the deal you have for me, then…" He blinked his eyes closed again, hiding whatever confused emotion that was behind his eyes. "It doesn't matter why you want to do what you do, or what you think can't happen, or what I want – it's a deal. Just fucking do it so I can get the hell out of here."
The words, for what Tyki could tell, were laced with confusion and pointed with anger that he doubted either of them could explain – perhaps aimed more at the situation than the Noah who held him. Still, they might have been the pointed blade of a knife in Tyki's chest, cutting deeper than Mugen might have. "Yes…" He pressed his mouth forward, taking Kanda's, and tilted the smaller man backward into the pillows, perfectly conscious of the way the Japanese boy gripped the sheets in his hands as if suddenly uncertain. It didn't matter if there wasn't love between them – the Exorcist knew that there was more to it than an animalistic desire to breed or an evil intention to hurt, and that knowledge alone was enough to make him indecisive. A step, even if he never took the next one.
Kanda became compliant. The lips on his throat made him roll his face to the side, exposing more of him, and the Noah took the unspoken invitation wholeheartedly. Kanda's body – from the very tips of his toes to the top of his head – shivered at Tyki's lips on his throat, his collar bone, and then his chest, swirling down to his nipples. The older man was very kind to them, licking and rolling them between his lips, avoiding use of his teeth, while his left hand pushed first to the flesh of the Japanese man's stomach and then, slowly, down to the space between his thighs. The Exorcist stiffened but didn't protest the fingers that moved across the fabric of his borrowed white pants, he only closed his eyes and turned his head away.
"Should I stop, Kanda?"
The samurai wordlessly shook his head.
Tyki smiled up at him and moved lower, kissing along the top of the younger man's one remaining garment. "Just a bit ago you were enthusiastic about this… whatever has changed your mind?"
The boy closed his darkly colored eyes but his expression said what his voice did not: it is idifferent when this might mean something/i. For that reason Tyki moved upward for a moment, long enough to lay what he to be am impassioned kiss on the younger man's lips, and slowly, shakily, pull away.
Kanda turned and looked at the Noah, not understanding. They had made a deal, hadn't they? Why would the Noah back out when he was so close to what he wanted? It seemed illogical to Kanda. As he watched, Tyki touched the top of his head as if to soothe him, and then let his hand fall, fisted on the mattress between them.
The Noah gave him a strange, tender smile, and moved back into that same, docile position he had taken up before, with his hands hanging between his knees. There might have been regret in his eyes, for what Kanda could see of them. "You may go tomorrow." Tyki whispered, then turned his face away. "With your Innocence and your coat – everything you came with. Just… rest until then." He pushed himself to standing and took two steps before Kanda's voice sounded very softly behind him.
"Is this some kind of joke?" The samurai pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them – like a six year old – before throwing his head back in something like an arrogant toss of his mane. Like a stallion, perhaps. Tyki looked at him just in time to see it and frowned, the bridle coming to mind once again. "You're just letting me go? After you said that it wouldn't satisfy you if you did, you're just… going to put me back as I was." There was fear in his eyes, painfully clear, and Tyki looked away again, gaze resting on the cords that still dangled from the iron of the bed frame.
"Yes." It was the simplest answer he could think of.
i"Why?"/i
The Noah's expression did not change at all. "Why do you question my good will?"
"Because you're a fucking Noah, idiot. I'd be stupid if I didn't."
Tyki blinked. It had yet to occur to him that being a Noah made backing out a deal something akin to a threat. If he dropped his half of the deal the Exorcist would no longer trust him, no matter what he attempted to do or say to make it otherwise. It was senseless logic. Tyki closed his eyes and sighed, raking a hand through his hair. "When you look at me, you will always think of Noah," he explained very quietly. "When I kiss you, the thought of what my intentions are outside of evil, outside of instinct, those things frighten you. As you are… I might as well tie you up again and have my way with you, you won't tell me to stop no matter what I do."
"That's not— "
"It is true." The Noah said forcefully, and he watched Kanda flinch at the words, exactly as he had expected. There had been a hint of annoyance in his voice, just enough for the boy to hear and react to. "If you are set on upholding your end of the bargain then I suggest you spend a bit of time coming to terms with it. I will not—" Tyki shook his head, hard. "Just trust me, Kanda. I do not have it in me to hurt you anymore."
Silence settled between them like old honey, thick and opaque. Tyki watched the samurai flounder for a moment before he covered his eyes with the heels of his hands and pressed them, unable to stop a sudden shiver. What was going on the young man's mind, what made him force his chest into his knees, what made him look up at last, eyes wild with confusion, the Noah could not even guess at. He could, however, understand the emotion that coated the frightened teen's voice when he spoke. "Then don't leave me here," Kanda hardly breathed. "In the dark where I have to ithink/i about what you want from me, don't just… leave me here." He seemed to want to hide for a moment, to curl up under the blankets and disappear, all of the pride he had missing from his demeanor entirely. It was more than just a plea not to be left alone in the dark – it was an offer of trust. Smaller than what Tyki wanted, yes, but a token all the same. "It… gets cold." He finished, which was obviously an excuse for his show of weakness that would have – in a different situation – made the Noah smile.
Instead he moved forward to pick up the Exorcist's discarded shirt and drape it loosely over Kanda's shoulders. When the boy didn't react, the Noah sank down on the bed once more, gliding his fingers down to the smaller man's hands. The slightly catch in Kanda's throat did not go unnoticed.
"If that's true, I will have to touch you to keep you warm, Kanda."
"Che." It seemed as if Tyki hadn't heard that sound in a very long time. "I'm just…" For a brief moment, Tyki thought the samurai was going to cry again, but then he closed his eyes and stopped short. His fingers twitched slightly on the palms in his hands. "Confused." The word was a sliver of truth and trust between them. And yet, that was as far as he could go. He did not ask for clarification on whatever confused the Exorcist, nor did he continue to simply sit there, immobile under Tyki's touch. Kanda leaned slowly forward, until his weight rested just a bit on the man in front of him.
Even though Tyki knew Kanda was wrong, he nodded. "Then would you like me to keep you warm until dinner? I must leave you alone for that, unfortunately." His left hand carded slowly through the boy's hair, catching random tangles that he unknotted as he went. The Exorcist sighed.
Unwilling to voice the word, Kanda simply touched Tyki's stomach with his fingertips and closed his eyes. Very quietly, after what felt like a small eternity, he swallowed before he opened his mouth in an effort to start words. "You said… that if I told you what I wanted, you might give it to me." He mumbled, but the hand sliding down his back did not change and the skin under his hands did not move away. Tyki just listened. "I want you to tell me what makes you not want to hurt me."
The Noah sighed through his nose. Kanda shivered. Tyki didn't pull back at all. "In the last two weeks I have seen many sides of you, Kanda. The anger you present to the world, the weakness that you seek to hide, fear that you cannot ignore, sadness, confusion, relief – you are not a doll, no matter how much you look like one. It would be a joy to break you, but it would be unfair of me to try when you are so very close to it all on your own." He paused long enough to turn the boy's face up to him and slowly, smilingly, kiss the skin of his cheek. "I have asked you for something that, even if you want to, you cannot give me." Tyki's voice had fallen to a whisper, very low, and it was obvious by the color of his eyes that he was thinking about that at the moment. Thinking about Kanda bent to his will, perfect, groveling, following unspoken commands, offering himself wholeheartedly – the feral smile that took the Noah's face made the samurai shiver.
-- -- --
The smile served as a reminder. No matter how nice or good or human this man had acted, how close he came to seeming to icare/i, he was still, in the end, evil.
Kanda suddenly felt far too close to the Noah.
"Get out." The words were little more than a breath of wind but there was anger and hatred and pride in them, so thick the Portuguese man simply sat still for a moment at it. Kanda's head snapped upward and he snarled, pushing the Noah's arms away. "Stop ifucking/i touching me and the hell out! Leave! You isick/i fuck!" The samurai threw a punch that didn't land, kicked with feet that met with nothing, he scratched, bit, and threw himself at the older man completely furious with himself. "You think I'll sit here and play your godforsaken game of trust?! Bullshit! I don't care if you dress it up with your stupid words about what you think you know about me or pretending it's consensual – you want me to let you rape me!" No sooner were the words out of his mouth that he found himself spread eagle against the stone floor, pain tearing through his skull. For a moment it was a mystery to him how that had happened, and then there was a hand in his hair, dragging his head into a very forceful if unpracticed fist.
The room rolled around him as his face was pressed hard into the stones beneath him, his right arm twisted against his back.
"I do not want to do this, Kanda. Are you sure it is what you want?"
"You disgusting, shit-eating, cun—ikuh/i!" He was cut off by the feel of fingers sinking into his back and skirting along the nerves in his spine, a sensation that sent pins and needles dancing through him, pain searing up the back of his head and down his legs. Kanda's left hand, next to his face, clawed and twitched against the stones without him willing it to. His lungs refused to respond to him. The hand in his back moved upward, spreading the agony from the base of his neck and then downward, bringing fresh tears burning to his eyes.
Tyki said something to him, very softly. It was lost in a sudden, angry twitch of the Portuguese man's fingers.
The moment the Noah let go, the Exorcist coughed, gasping, and attempted to move away on feet and hands that were unwilling to follow his mental commands. His legs couldn't hold him. Tyki's fingers tangled in the fringe of his hair and yanked him onto his back with only the slightest of effort, which left Kanda staring at the ceiling, panting and fighting feebly as the larger man's weight settled onto his chest.
"I will only ask you one more time, Kanda, and then I will drag you upstairs and destroy your Innocence in front of your very eyes." Tyki seethed at him when he had the boy by his wrists, effectively stilling him but for what remained of the aftershocks in his nervous system. "Are you icertain/i that this is what you want? You want to fight me tooth and nail, pointlessly, when all I want from you is honesty?"
Kanda took a long moment to regain his breath, tear-streaked cheeks red with fury. "Che. Honestly? I'll inever/i want you to fuck me, Noah. I don't give a damn what you threaten me or my Mugen with! You think I can just start to ilike/i you?! Fuck! I can't even like the idiots who fight beside me, what the shit makes you think iyou're/i any different?!" Before he could think about those words, before he could rephrase them, a mouth smashed into his, hard and forceful. There was no point closing his mouth to a tongue that could literally slip ithrough/i his teeth and lips so he took it, kicking his feet and lifting his arms at the man above him, fighting with all he had. When the hand on his left wrist let go he reached up to take a firm hold of Tyki and, if he could, thrust him away.
Fingers brushed under his chin just as his own found flesh and pushed with as much force as he could muster. Tyki did not move. The height difference between them was not that extreme – four or so inches at the most – but the Noah weighed more than Kanda could lift from that angle in his current state, so his force ground his own shoulder into the floor, inevitably bruising him. The shirt that had been draped over his shoulders was bunched under his back, serving to do nothing about the icy chill seeping into his skin. That cold contrasted with a sudden, flurry of heat in his loins, brought on by the soft touch of teeth on his lower lip.
He was going to be sick.
The Noah let him breathe for a moment and another line of curses escaped the samurai's mouth, each one fouler than the last. With his left hand he punched at the larger man, continued to throw himself into igetting away/i as panic began to settle over his mind, memories eating away at his logic.
And then Tyki was pulling away, looking down at him with an expression that was almost pained, anger evident in his eyes. The Portuguese man seemed to tower over him for a moment, his eyes burning gold, hands clenched at his sides. Kanda remained on the floor between the man's feet for only a short moment before he scampered away, sliding on hands and feet that were yet unrecovered from what the man had put them through.
Something metal dragged behind Kanda, loud and scathing, and he turned back in time to watch what looked to be a ten foot long steel pool as it smashed into his side, driving the air from his lungs. He crumbled. With little more than a wince and the iwhoosh/i of air from his chest, he sagged against the gray stone floor in a gasping, coughing heap, tears of pain burning in his eyes.
Tyki pulled the Exorcist up by the hair until he was kneeling and narrowed his eyes at him, regret and anger and the desire to kill burning uncontrollably in his graze. He growled at the young man and dropped the rod to the floor beside him. His fingers were so knotted in the boy's hair that when he yanked backward, a few strands slip with his grasp more easily than one would have expected. "You will be punished for what you have said to me, iHime-chan/i." There was venom in the nickname. "You don't trust me to let you walk away, you can't trust me to fuck you, to keep you warm – I will not give me a reason to. Do you know what it is that I am going to make you do?"
Kanda, his arms wrapped around his aching ribcage, looked up at the Noah and narrowed his eyes into dangerous, fiery slits. "I don't give a fuck what you ithink/i you'll make me do."
Tyki smirked. "You have your choice of gags," he said very softly, and he sank to his knees, pulling the Japanese man's hand away from his chest regardless of how much he held it back. "You can put the bridle on and hang iPau-de-Arara/i for the evening…" Kanda's hand found itself pressed against the warm seam at the crotch of Tyki's pants and the boy's gemlike eyes burst open, his mouth gaped. "Or you can suck ithis/i until I tell you to stop."
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Am I an ass for ending it there? ;3 Well, as you can see, this story has taken on a life of it's own. I think it will have two more chapters or so, which I will post as another chapter to this story – because, though Scold's Bridle can stand alone, these cannot.
Thoughts? Ideas? I'd love to hear from you guys. :D
