Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara or its characters.
A/N: Second in the Loved/Beloved series. You know where to find Loved!
As before, Masamune's Engrish will be in bold type.
Prompt: Middles
Premise: First Time
For the first time in the twenty-one years he had spent on this godforsaken land, Date Masamune regretted not heeding the advice of his elders.
Not that Sarutobi Sasuke would ever qualify as such. Even if he had been righter than right could be, a feat generally accomplished only by Kojuurou.
And everyone who knew Masamune knew that however careful he was about following his Right Eye's guidance on matters military and political, the man may as well spend his time getting the walls of their home to converse with him when it came to the Oushu chief's lone blind spot.
Not his right eye; that position had been claimed years ago, when Masamune was still a child.
Masamune's heart was a different story.
A different life.
A different place.
A different name.
Red.
Vibrant. Bold. Beautiful.
"Red," he whispered, giving voice to the thrum in his chest and ache behind his eyes.
The man seated at the opposite end of the table caught the nickname and not the endearment behind it. He frowned. "I do not feel it is appropriate for you to call me that, Masamune-dono."
Masamune quirked a quizzical brow at him. "Why ever not, Red?"
Yukimura graced him with no further answer than a deepening of the furrow between his eyes.
"Haven't I always called you that?"
"And I have not objected, as it was not my place to."
"And now it is, is it, Red?" Masamune's voice was soft, a sharp contrast to the terse, clipped notes of Yukimura.
"I am the Tiger of Kai, Masamune-dono, no longer a simple vassal. I believe it is time we conducted ourselves as our station befits."
"And what does our position dictate we do? Red?"
An icy glint entered Yukimura's gaze – the gaze once brown and soft and wide with the innocence of years lived unfettered. When he spoke, it was to deliver an ultimatum. "We are clan leaders, Masamune-dono, and I am here to negotiate a truce with you. A truce that should have been reached two days ago. Unless we have results by tonight-"
"And if we don't?" Masamune interrupted, his own temper rising in the face of his counterpart's standoffishness.
"Then we shall have to go to war, won't we, Dokuganryu."
With nary a dismissive glance at his rival, Sanada Yukimura left the room, ignoring the stare of a morose blue-grey eye knifing between his shoulder blades.
Date Masamune did not appreciate orders, unsolicited advice, or ultimatums. Therefore, he gave caution a nasty glare and opened negotiations that night – the final, do-or-die negotiations for truce – with a saucy "Ready to rumble, Red?"
Yukimura pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off a headache-inducing bout of irritation. "Do you lack basic comprehension skills..."
"Fine, whatever. Scarlet."
Yukimura glared.
Masamune canted his head at him, a wickedly defiant smirk lifting his lips at the corner. "It suits you."
"Don't." The Tiger's head was low, scruffy brown bangs obscuring his eyes. Masamune started at the strangely intense objection – he had been expecting his rival to be furious at being teased, but Yukimura sounded genuinely upset.
Abruptly, the younger man got to his feet. Chin still tucked into his chest, he muttered plaintively, "Who am I, Masamune-dono?"
Hurt. He was hurt. Something he had done, the one-eyed man realised with a vague stirring of unease in the pit of his belly, had hurt Yukimura badly. Reaching out with an uncertain arm, Masamune stopped shy of touching the other man. Softly, he asked, "Red?"
And then cursed at himself. It had clearly been the wrong thing to say, for Yukimura was stumbling away from him, standing tall and proud and cold as the steel of his spears. "We're done here."
"But...the truce..." Masamune stumbled over his words, frightened at the harsh change in his rival's stance. He's unrecognisable...where the hell is my red warrior gone?
He would not have the opportunity to find out, he learned, for Yukimura simply spat out an invitation to war, making good on his threat from the afternoon, and dashed to his quarters.
Yukimura slid the door in place, trying not to slam it in the slot. Chest heaving with pent-up aggression, the Tiger looked about with wild eyes, gauging the horror of his final words to the Oushu chief.
That was not how he had intended to bid farewell.
He had not intended it at all.
How did this happen, Oyakata-sama? How did such terrible things leave my tongue? Why did you not strike me dumb before I could say them?
He wished, ardently, that he could scream his prayer to the heavens. But that was not how one prayed – and prayers were all he could communicate to the deceased lord of Kai now. Perhaps he should have kept this set to himself; Takeda Shingen would not have been pleased to know that his protege was ready to wage war on such a flimsy excuse.
Yukimura imagined trying to explain the fiasco to his lord. "I ran Kai into the ground because Date Masamune offended me with his affinity for nicknames."
He could already feel the punch coming.
But it never did come. The dead do not care. Even if they did, Takeda Shingen had never been a dynastic man. He would have been glad to be free of such bother.
Yukimura wished...wished to be free too. Wished to return and apologise, fling himself at the Dokuganryu's feet and beg for mercy. Wished for a new beginning to the night.
He wished because the last thing he wanted to do in his life, was to fight a battle rooted in enmity and anger with Date Masamune. A battle destined to end in death for one or both of them. He could not allow himself to hope for another outcome. If there had been a way out, his lord would have found it.
If there had been a way out, Uesugi Kenshin would not now be a wreck of a man, passing the zenith of his rule in a cloistered monastery because he could not bear the emotional burden that came with killing his foremost rival. In his eyes, Sanada Yukimura had seen the ravaged soul left behind, a soul that now wished that war had never been invented. And when Uesugi Kenshin spoke, Yukimura heard the monotonous voice of a man who simply wanted to die, because his had been the unforgivable hand that Takeda Shingen had fallen to.
I don't want to be that man.
He had not wanted to be that man since his fateful visit to the Uesugi clan leader. That one ghastly visit had been his prime motivation for grasping Katakura Kojuurou's feelers towards a truce with blissful relief.
Fat lot of good that had brought. Now they were going to war whether he liked it or not, because he knew Masamune well enough to recognise that the one-eyed samurai would not, would never back down from such a direct and unreasonable challenge.
I still don't want to be that man.
Neither, he realised with a jolt of pained realisation, did he want Masamune to warp into a ruin of himself.
But the only way to prevent a war now is if one of us is attacked by another general – unlikely at this time of year. Or...
His breathing deepened, shadows crushing the cobwebs in his mind. Then slowed, as the obvious answer was discovered and rejected and tossed about and finally accepted with wholehearted fervour.
Or...if one of us was to die before it.
Silk and linen rustling in the serene loneliness of a night in the mountains, Sanada Yukimura shuffled to the door and took an appreciative sniff of the fresh air, heavy with the scent of plum blossoms.
Then he reached for the red-bound steel of an expertly crafted spear and angled it towards his jugular.
One stab.
A spurt of blood.
That easy.
Pain.
That one word was the summary of the next 5 minutes of Yukimura's existence.
The pain of metal slicing through skin and muscle.
The pain of wood being knocked roughly out of his clenched fist.
The pain of being slammed to the floor by angry, scared hands.
The pain of roughly caring fingers scrabbling near the wound left by his spear, checking for depth.
The pain of a punishing fist to his jaw.
The pain of warm and dry lips pressing roughly to his beating heart, as if in a prayer of gratitude.
He fainted.
He awoke to quietude and a highly irate one-eyed samurai.
"What," Masamune bit out, as coherently as he could between jaws clenched so tight they were almost grinding each other to dust, "were you doing, Sanada Yukimura?"
Yukimura thought this was rather obtuse. It should have been clear where his actions were leading, especially as Masamune had been the one to stop them. No one else would have dared – or cared enough.
It was small comfort. In fact, it was a nuisance. Now he would simply have to wait till he returned home before he could find himself a secluded corner and kill himself properly. Yes, Yukimura decided, home would be safest. No random Dokuganryus sneaking around there, minding everything but their own business.
No Dokuganryus to save his sorry hide from madness, and kiss his heartbeat to revere his life, either. Yukimura could feel something fragile splintering, something he had never given a name to. But he could not allow himself to indulge in the memory of that fleeting caress.
Better this madness, than that one.
Judging by the poorly concealed distress on his rival's face, Masamune might disagree. Well, everyone was entitled to their choices.
Just as Yukimura had already made his.
A fist slammed onto the futon, jerking him out of his sulk.
"I asked you a question. Sanada Yukimura. I. Want. It. Answered."
Yukimura shrugged, then blinked in surprise. "You...use my name."
"Well what the hell else was I supposed to use, after you pitched that hissy fit? Though I have a few in mind." Masamune's expression grew dark with malice. "Sissy. Moron. The Dim Dango. Bloody fool. Bastard."
"Now wait just a minute," Yukimura interrupted. "I must object to that last – my mother was quite thoroughly wed to my father when...when..."
"Shut up!"
Yukimura did so, following the command of Masamune's tone rather than his foreign words.
"Anyone who declares war on me because I called him by a nickname – what a half-arsed, conceited reason – and then goes and tries to kill himself because he's too much of a coward to actually fight the damn war he's about to start is. A. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, BASTARD!" Masamune broke off panting, silently daring the other man to go on and try objecting.
Unsurprisingly, Yukimura did. "I am not a coward, Masamune-dono."
Something about the way he spoke – the total lack of fire and brimstone in his soft voice – not because he was indoors and this was private, but because something had leeched the essence that made Sanada Yukimura who he was, made Masamune pause and study him closely. He had watched over his rival through the hours and dressed the cut on his neck himself, but he had not actually taken the time to look at him properly.
He hadn't been able to bear it. Not the sight of his heart, lying disgraced and suicidal.
He had thought he would die.
He thought he very nearly had died, when he had barged into Yukimura's room to try and calm him, and found him driving his own weapon into his throat. Later, when he was sure that Yukimura wasn't going anywhere, he had been so enraged, so maddened by the apparent abandonment that he had been forced to use all the training of his youth to prevent himself from doing something he would regret.
Like killing the downed Tiger.
Like killing himself, just to show Sanada Yukimura what it felt like to be at the receiving end of such a stunt.
Like pulling his rival into his arms, curling around him with every limb he possessed. Like burrowing his nose into Yukimura's neck, smelling the clean blood that was clotting beneath the bandages. Like wrapping that long, silky ponytail tightly around his wrist. Like holding tight and never letting go.
"How did we come to this," he whimpered now, begging for a straight answer. "What were you...why, Red?"
A pained shudder wracked through the other man's body.
"You never had a beef with it before. I could call you any number of things...you'd just charge at me, screaming your head off, spears waving. What changed?" He was shaking himself, with the anger and confusion he had been holding back.
After what seemed like ages, Yukimura looked at him. "I am Sanada Yukimura. I am the Tiger of Kai."
"...and?"
"Tell me, Masamune-dono...who am I? In your vision, in your scope of this land, who is Sanada Yukimura? Is he the Tiger of Kai? Is he the powerful general he was trained to be? Is he...just..."
"Tell me," Masamune prodded, trying to be patient. Trying to be gentle.
It came then, and it was a pitiful little announcement. "No one takes me seriously, Masamune-dono."
It was an enemy the chief of Oushu had never had to contend with.
"Sasuke's the same. He thinks I'm a child, playing in costume."
Masamune thought of his own retainer, his faithful and stoic Right Eye. No, this was definitely something he had never needed to smack down. He had been given the hereditary gift of a confident carriage and brash charisma. The pure talent for fighting that being half-blind had merely honed to a sharper degree of perfection had made his detractors as well as supporters sit up and take note of him. He – all of him, even the talent for strategy that he rarely bothered to display – was a weapon, and everyone who saw him knew it at once.
So what, he wondered, did they see when they looked at Sanada Yukimura? He's my rival. My equal. My soul. Everything I am, he is. He has to be, or I wouldn't be. It was true, to him. If Yukimura was diminished, then so was he. They were equals, destined to be forever so. He had known it at the first clash of their steel.
That first encounter had taken his breath away and given it back as a mounting obsession.
Consequently, he had never taken into account Yukimura's age, his slender and delicate face, his wide-eyed innocence, his clownish prancing to the tune of countless "Oyakata-sama!s," his endearing straightforwardness, and applied them to a stranger's sight. To his own eye, this man was everything made to fit him and battle him.
To a stranger, he now saw, the boy was just a boy.
To anyone incapable of bringing out Sanada Yukimura's tremendous potential – and that meant everyone save Masamune – the hot-headed brunette would not yet look like the Tiger of Kai. And yet, even as Masamune understood his flash of temper at the teasing and sudden declaration of war, he could not see why Sanada had felt the need to follow up his threats with suicide.
So he asked.
"..."
Masamune leaned closer, concentrating. "What?"
"I didn't want to kill you," Yukimura mumbled again, at an audible level.
Masamune stared at him.
And stared.
And stared.
And stared till the shame on Yukimura's face had faded to general annoyance. Really, the Tiger griped, one would expect such a momentous announcement to be met with a certain...verve, be it in rejection or acceptance. The silent, glazed over stare was starting to creep him out.
Just as he was mustering the energy to whack his rival on the head, Masamune spoke up. In halting, insufferably patient tones, he asked, "Tell me, Red...did it ever occur to you that maybe you would be the one who ended up dead?"
Yukimura sighed in exasperation. Leave it to the Dokuganryu to turn everything into a contest and miss the actual point. "Very well, I could have been the one dying. Could you live with that?"
"What."
"Could you live with my blood on your hands, Masamune-dono?"
"We fight-"
"To kill?"
A screeching silence filled the air around them; the silence of a hundred battle cries and a thousand lives taken and one life – the one life whose blood had been shed and regretted and shed again, but never quite enough to be fatal.
"No," Masamune choked out through raspy throat and dry mouth. "No. We don't."
The tension hung, waiting.
"You were killing yourself because you didn't want to kill me...or be killed."
Yukimura nodded.
"...what makes you care?"
"Uesugi-dono took my lord's life..."
"And what does that damn monk have to do with us?"
"Everything, Masamune-dono. The War God of Echigo...he is now just a broken old monk."
Masamune stared at him, uncomprehending.
"He's just waiting for the end of his days." Slowly, the Tiger sat up, grasping his companion's shoulder for support. "I...did not want either of us to turn into such a creature. We were not made for such defeat, you and I."
"We're still rivals," the Oushu chief said, shock numbing his system, awareness of the warm body using him as a crutch growing in his belly.
"We're not enemies...we can't make that mistake. Oyakata-sama and Uesugi-dono did. Now one's dead and the other might as well be. I...I made that mistake when I so foolishly challenged you to a pointless fight."
Carefully, Yukimura met the Dragon's lone eye. "I don't want to kill you, Masamune-dono. I chose death...because your life is greater than our memory."
And before Masamune could object, reciprocate, or circumvent, he leaned forward in imitation of a young soldier's wife he had seen once, greeting her husband after a long military campaign. Tilting his head to the right, ensuring the angle was perfectly aligned, he pressed trembling, scorching lips to those of the man who was born to be his lifelong equal.
Of course, in due course, Masamune's ardour kicked the Yukimura-obsessed corner of his brain – by far the largest corner to exist in there – and jolted it into action. And that was how when they finally broke the kiss, Yukimura found himself pinned to the futon, lungs bursting for air, and lips tingling with residual lightning.
Masamune leaned down again, before he could register anything more than a leaping sense of delight and incredulity, and captured his lips, nipping and brushing his tongue over them, finally nudging the dazed Tiger's mouth open with a persistent finger to his chin.
Yukimura's world dissolved.
Smooth darkness and slick affection and teasing, curling, aching in yet another battle. Tongue curled around tongue, tips flicking together in a newly discovered rhythm, sending sparks of pleasing pain down their spines, down their limbs, pooling in the fingertips that clutched each other closer. Somewhere, amid the gentle wriggling of their bodies as they plundered for dominance in a kiss neither had ever experienced before, something touched.
Yukimura dragged himself away from the hypnotism of Masamune's lips, gasping. "What...was that!"
"You don't know...?" Masamune wondered if this was Sanada's idea of a joke, but looking back at the loud, extravagantly testosterone-filled life he had led with Takeda Shingen, he was forced to conclude that Yukimura indeed had no idea what went on belowstairs.
Still, it was a theory worth checking. With arch precision, Masamune rolled his hips once. They brushed against each other, twin arousals shielded by thin layers of silk. On cue, Yukimura twisted, gasped as the motion brought them in firmer contact, rubbed in search of a nameless friction, and fell still, shuddering.
"What is happening to me, Masamune-dono?"
Masamune didn't bother to reply, too busy gritting his teeth in an attempt to suppress the lust skating over his body. Impatient in his curiosity, Yukimura shoved him off and sat up, swiftly undoing his hakama to peek inside. "What the..." Is it supposed to do that? A little alarmed, he pulled off the loose pants and discarded his fundoshi as well, completely disregarding the presence of a highly aroused and even more highly amused one-eyed samurai who was eyeing him like a hawk.
Yes...something is definitely not right.
Reaching out with a hesitant finger, he poked at himself, trying to prod it down to its usual limp state.
And moaned.
Jerking his finger back with impossibly wide eyes, he turned to Masamune for help. "Masamune-dono...this is...what just happened...am I sick?"
Masamune shook his head, lips pressed together in stern self-control.
"Then..then...," Yukimura tried pressing the taut appendage down again, prompting a panicked groan of inadvertent pleasure from himself and a desirous one from his voyeur, "is this my punishment for behaving in such a disgraceful manner all through my visit?"
That was as far as he got before strong arms wound round his shoulders and a nose snuffled into the hollow of his clavicle, snorting in near-hysterical chuckles. Biting into the corded skin below the bandage, Masamune managed a weak "So help me, you really are a piece of work, aren't you Red?"
Suppressing the insane urge to bare his neck for further biting, Yukimura frowned at him. "Stop calling me that."
"Fat chance," the Dokuganryu shot back. Tapping a flushed cheek with his fingertips, he murmured, "Look...you're blushing red." The same fingertips travelled in a slow, straight path to Yukimura's chin, down his throat and danced around his nipples.
He twitched, reached out and grabbed those wandering torture tools. Angry brown eyes met a teasing blue-grey one, demanding an explanation. Masamune sighed, smiled in whimsical surrender and pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose.
"You love me, Sanada Yukimura. That's what this is."
"Love..."
"And I love you, that's what it is too."
"Love..."
"Problem?"
"...I do not love you the way I loved Oyakata-sama."
Masamune sighed again. "And I don't love you the way I love Kojuurou...and that's all good because anything else is plain strange."
"Then...love? We are not family, nor friends, Masamune-dono."
It wasn't that Yukimura was that foolish – he did know of love, as love was and could be between two perfect strangers. He simply didn't know of the intimacy that came with it. That this was something important, whatever was happening between their bodies, was apparent. The urge was too strong, too eager and hungry for fulfillment.
But the whats and hows and whys and wherefores of the fiery current between them were tripping him up.
A word came to him, from an old classic he had read, one of the rare pieces of literature to be found in the otherwise scholarly Takeda library.
Lover.
He whispered it to himself, rolling it in his mouth, tasting the edges. Date Masamune and I share the kind of love that is unique to lovers. We are to be...lovers, then.
"I like it."
"Huh?"
"Being lovers...that is what we are doing, are we not? We are becoming lovers!"
A slow grin took over Masamune's lips. Curving along his jaw, it sparkled with unrestrained, wanton lust and humour and gratitude. "Yeah, we are."
"Teach me how?"
Masamune blinked at him. Yukimura pressed a kiss to his lips again, swift as a butterfly. The world tilted and tossed and he was once again supine, sprawled beneath a nude Masamune who was eyeing his body with lustful interest. Never one to back down, he stared back, raking his gaze over every inch of the body he had fought so many times that he was as attuned to its nuances as he was to his own.
First their eyes met, having looked their fill. Then lips, and hands and chests and then an imitation of their first position. Hips nestled together, Masamune moved, rubbing softly. Slowly. Exquisitely.
Once.
Twice.
A third time, and again, again and again, till Yukimura was clinging to his shoulders, breath coming in aching little pants as the friction titillated, then moved him to a frenzy of desire. Calloused palms smoothed over his torso, tracing the musculature till they brushed over nipples that were hard and soft and almost painfully tender. Sharp teeth nipped at his jaw, lips moist from kisses fluttered over his neck and a hot, squirming tongue touched his nipple.
Yukimura gasped. Arched. For an indelible moment, Masamune kept still, letting the edge of the heat fade to pleasant warmth. Sucking gently, he waited till his companion was threading his fingers into his hair, pressing his mouth closer.
"Please...please..."
"More?"
Trembling at yet another pass of tongue and teeth over his chest as they crossed to his other nipple and latched on with the vigour of a newborn babe, Yukimura nodded, unable to speak through the cries of pleasure rumbling in his throat.
Permission granted, Masamune curled his fingers around his rival's, cradling his hand in a tender gesture of possessiveness. Flashing a wolfish grin at Yukimura, he guided their hands down, letting their arousals brush with the lightest of touches. Flicking his gaze back to the other's face, wanting to trace every instance of pleasure that crossed his soul, Masamune wrapped their combined fingers around each other and stroked.
Yukimura screamed, a wild, elated shout at the shock of sudden contact and the darting, burning, irresistible pleasure that it brought. Encouraged by the abandonment with which the younger man had given himself over to their passion, Masamune allowed his own growls and gasps to spill over, struggling to maintain the steady, massaging rhythm he had started with.
But his body was shaking and Yukimura was writhing and their fingers were grappling, twisting, slipping, rubbing over themselves and each other with desperation and mindless, heedless desire for an end.
At last, by some primitive instinct, Yukimura's hand caught their tips in the hollow of his palm. A groan, sliding and friction and moaning and up and down and grind and a slow, deep kiss with a hard, swift squeeze and then finally, finally twin bursts of pleasure that was simply pleasure. Overwhelming, overflowing, overtaking pleasure that spilled out of their mouths in muffled cries and caressing tongues and held them hostage till they were spent.
There was really no more need for him to wrap himself around Yukimura like the red string of fate, but Masamune couldn't resist prolonging their delirium by snuggling against him, tickling sensitive spots with happy fingers, dropping a kiss here and another there.
The Tiger of Kai revelled in the adoring attention, the first such caresses he had received in his entire life. Not that he had ever lacked love – Takeda Shingen had been a father to him in many ways and Sasuke, for all his flippancy, was a loyal comrade and friend in his off hours.
But there had been no gentleness, no quiet words of simple sweetness, no passion that mingled and harmonised till his soul felt like it belonged to someone else. He slid an arm around Masamune's waist and turned his head, pillowing his cheek against his lover's hair. With his other hand, he mimicked the little touches Masamune was plying him with, grinning as the one-eyed man twitched and grumbled before settling into peaceful half-slumber.
"Masamune-dono?"
"Hnh?"
"Lovers?"
"Red...it's late. Idiot question hours are long since over."
That was a yes, he supposed. But there was another question – a more important one, because it had brought them here, moulded them into two halves of a merciless whole.
"Are we also...still...rivals?"
Because as lovers they were one, but as rival they were equals who could merge into oneness. Because one equation was the other and together they were the sum and balance of their relationship. Because if they had to be one, then they had to be both.
Because Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura never took the middle road to a safe destination, but parried and embraced side-by-side through one adventure after another till heaven was breached.
Because it was important, the only way they could be possible, and he wanted it, and he wanted Masamune to want it too.
"Masamune-dono...are we? Rivals?"
He felt the curve of a smile against his skin and the hum of a low voice zinging through his nerve-endings, unfurling in his heart.
"We always will be, Red."
Please review - it really helps with the muses, and if you'd like to see us write on a certain premise, put it in your review! We'll try and write on it. And don't forget to read Loved by lyrainthedark!