3.

Title: Gossamer
Pairing: Oshitari/Gakuto
Word Count:
Rating: PG-15…? For implications
Summary: AU – Of lanterns and ricepaper doors.
A/N: Theme was, 'Into every young man's bedroom you gave it up.'

Lanterns -- his earliest memory of that place, hanging over the balconies like glowing, bulbous fruits. Their golden tassels swayed in the late autumn breeze and the night was cold. Quiet too, save the raucous laughter of hot-blooded drunks. And even they were muted, like spidersilk memories of a life gone by.

He remembers so clearly because it made such a pretty picture, the call boy with vermilion hair and stormwater eyes, glaring into the darkness. High above the empty streets, he blazed brighter even than the lanterns, a lotus blooming from the mire. Slender fingers clasped the front of his kimono as the wind tried to coax it open -- there was only time for a glimpse, but the chest beneath was white like the snow that had not yet fallen.

Oshitari was not in the habit of frequenting such establishments. He was familiar enough with the knock of wooden thongs against second-rate floorboards, and the seductive impracticality of ricepaper doors, but the sight of the beautiful boy alone -- pale, abandoned ghost-child, stark against the black sky -- would not usually have driven him to enter.

Perhaps it was the stillness that shot through one's soul on evenings like these, the ache for sake and good company.

Perhaps it did not go beyond the fact that Oshitari saw, and he wanted, and he always received what he wanted, in the end.

Whatever the reason may have been, Oshitari had the boy in his arms within the hour. Thin and bony and smouldering, he was nothing like the geishas, all soft curves and diffidence. His was an awkward grace that had little to do with powder and parasols, and the kimono he wore was plain and too large, the colours long washed out. But with his back pressed against a straw mat and the kimono unfastened, Oshitari thought he was the most precious thing in the world.

Dark shadows flitted across milky skin, still icy from his earlier venture, and Oshitari covered them with broad hands, encasing those narrow hips to rub in the warmth. By now, they had exchanged formalities, shared a drink -- though the boy only pretended to sip -- and held idle, frivolous conversation.

Oshitari could confess that the thought of using a false name did not cross his mind; he intended to make the boy -- Gakuto -- cry out, and where was the satisfaction in hearing the name of a stranger?

The time passed in flashes; the night faded into a whisper of long ago. A sound from beyond the flimsy screen of dancing silhouettes. Gakuto's startled gasp. The rustle of cloth as he moved to sit up, eyes wide. And Oshitari's indignation as he pinned the boy roughly. "Are you ashamed?" Of this. Us. Me. "I won't have it."

Gakuto, little chest heaving, mouth open, lips wet, splayed beneath him like an offering, as if Oshitari were a god. And he was, just as any man at any brothel was. Surely, tomorrow, Gakuto would vanish like a dream, gone to haunt someone else's bed.

Oshitari did not want it, did not like to think of it -- the spark of something that wasn't love for the whore he'd only just met -- but he hadn't any control over that.

So he drank enough of the sight to sate a starving man, to drown the uneasy sleeps ahead. Gave pleasure and was pleasured until his vision turned white and he sank into blindness.

He awoke alone, dressed and slipped out into a misty morning. Wistful eyes watched him go. Perhaps, in the next life…

END