Possible spoilers for episode seven, but nothing major

Possible spoilers for episode seven, but nothing major.  A few more about Tsuzuki's past, but most people know those anyway.  Ah yes...These *are* Muraki's thoughts, and on Tsuzuki, no less, so please don't expect a lot of kind, fluffy things.  MurakixTsuzuki, but I wouldn't call it yaoi.  It's more shonen ai in my book, but I guess it all depends on your point of view. 

This story takes place in the middle of episode seven, or in the third manga arc.  Most of the dialog is taken directly from the anime, though in one case I added a few words to ease transition.

Simple Games A Yami no Matsuei ficlet by Ginzai

* * * *

"Once you start hiding, you keep on hiding

Until you feel you're safe and sound

Once you start watching, you keep watching

Until you're tied up and your spellbound"

-My Favorite Headache

* * * *

He trembles beneath me, and I find his fright amusing.  A simple game, ne, Tsuzuki-san?  That's all any of this is...A game set with you and the little one and all of these humans as players...and despite the fact that I set the stage and manipulated those involved into participating, not even I know all the rules.  Your simple appearance changed everything.

I truly did not expect to see you here, Tsuzuki-san.  However, let it not be said that I am unable to move with the times, to twist my plans as situations change.  My mother said I was like a cat, always able to land on my feet.  You remind me of a cat, Tsuzuki-san...Asato.

Your eyes are wide as I move even closer, taking in the heady scent of the sakura and the sea and something else, hints of the little one and the wine I gave you still in your system.  Roses, from my bouquet, and underneath all of that, your flesh gives off the light fresh smell of tulips.  You are an ikebana arrangement in yourself, Tsuzuki-san.  Do you even know how to go about this, Tsuzuku?  Irony fills both our lives, yet I didn't expect to find it here.  Born over half a century before me, yet I am much more practiced in this art than you. 

Games...That was how all of this started, even before I saw you arguing with the stupid American guards.  A simple game, ne?

"Tsuzuki-san, ne.  Why don't we solve this over a game of poker?  But let's make it more interesting...instead of using chips we'll use something else to bet with."

"..Something else?"

"Hai.  Perhaps your body would do."

"What are you suggesting?!"

"Game, it's a *game*.  Or are you afraid I'd beat you?"

Of course you are.  You haven't won against me yet.  Have you, Tsuzuki?  You can't.  Oh, you can run, and you can summon your gods, and dispel my monsters, but you can't win.  Not this game.  Not when I control everything.  Not when you still have to know...  You are still so ignorant, and yet you don't question my abilities or myself.  Not even to know how I knew the heart flush you held in your hands, my winning cards besting yours without even seeing them. 

You remind me of myself, before my fall, but ever so much more innocent, more determined.  More repressed.  I was weak, Tsuzuki, but you...you have an inner strength greater than any I have seen before.  Your weakness is that you don't want it.  You fight it, shuddering away from its eternal nature even more that you do my gentle touch.  I wonder why.  It is something to determine.  Like so many of your secrets...

I will learn them.  You have done something to me, Tsuzuki, had done it even before I first saw the grainy black and white photograph of your tortured visage secreted away in my grandfather's files.  Something about you drew me close, something in the anguished look of your eyes and I wanted you then.  Wanted you for what you could teach me, with your mortally immortal body, unable to die, unable to age.  When I saw you for the first time in the church the feeling intensified, making me almost unable to breathe.  It hurt...a strange contraction in my chest as I realized that I was looking at someone like me, a being tainted the touch of darkness that I knew all too well.

The attraction bloomed and it frightened me with its intensity.  By then I wanted you in a different way.  Not just as an instrument for revenge against a man dead, but to taste, to possess.  I swore I wouldn't, swore that I would simply look but not interfere.  However, when I see you, see your lithe body and glowingly bright eyes and strange, saddened innocence, I can't help myself.  It is a hard realization for one whose survival was based on self-control alone, but you are far more addicting than wine, Tsuzuki.  One look and all I craved was a single touch, a touch and all I craved was a single taste.  One taste, and than I was lost.

Do they see what I see, looking into your eyes?  Beyond that veneer of light that fools even yourself, I would imagine...Making your eighteen-year-old body look so much older, tricking it and yourself into forgetting a lost eight years...You have fascinated more than one generation of Muraki's.  My grandfather took such meticulous notes on you, even before you were lost to us.  He was as obsessed as I am in watching you.  I suppose that it runs in family. 

Do you know what rests behind your gemstone bright gaze?  The darkness that hides even in the brightest soul?  We are both descendents of darkness, Tsuzuki.  The difference is, I embrace the darkness within me, and it strengthens me, heals and protects me.  You run from it, hiding in the arms of your organization.  They can't protect you from the darkness, Tsuzuki Asato.  No more than they can protect you from me.

You blushed when I offered you the roses, did you know that?  It makes me wonder about the validity of your denials.

My lips touch your neck and you shudder lightly, bright violet shielding itself behind a fringe of darkest brown lashes.  You do feel it, don't you?  One hand creeping up to rest on my shoulder, not pushing away, not struggling, but trembling to grasp at the fabric of my jacket.  Unwittingly pulling me closer.  I smirk at that, moving against pale, pale skin, my smile lost in your hair.  You want this as much as I do, and are horrified at the thought.  My darkness calling to your own...your own to mine.  Something in you is being pulled forward by my caress, and until you know what that is, you can't escape.  Can you, Asato?

You're shaking, Asato.

I want more...the clothes that you are wearing far too much of an impediment to my hands.  I want to touch, to taste, to bury myself in your sweet bright darkness...To find it and draw it out, and even the ever-present thoughts of revenge are lost for the moment.  I move upwards, moving to capture your lips...How would you taste, Asato?  Like apple pie, I'd imagine, and I hover for a moment, thinking about it.  Sweet... 

Asato…

Your fingers tense on my shoulder as I near my goal.  You don't trust me, do you?  I can't say I blame you.  I wonder what it would take to make you trust me…Probably something I can't give.  I wait a moment, but your fingers haven't yet relaxed themselves, haven't fallen back into the state they were before...and they are starting to push.

You are not ready yet, Asato.  I can sense your darkness fleeing, lost again in the sweltering roll of suppressed memories.  You are coming back to your senses and unnerved to find yourself in such a position.  Pushing you any further at this point would be a mistake...but a grand one to make.  Much as I want this, want you, want to taste and smell and lick and touch...To take it too far would be to lose you all together.

And then some other Muraki would take you.

I can't allow that.

"Not so fast."

Ah yes...the boy.  He had tasted sweet too, Tsuzuki.  But he didn't have that same thrill of darkness that you do.

"I challenge you, Doctor."

A thought...that child, challenging me?  Even in his new Shinigami body, he can't defeat me.  He tried, do you remember?  But your feelings are changing; my pull on your soul vanishing like shadows as you focus all your attention on your "rescuer". 

Ah, Tsuzuki-san...Much as I would like to continue this game between us, I have taken it to its limits this round. 

"If I win, you take back your dual with the dealer."

I turn my head to look at him, glancing over one shoulder and noting absently that your hand is slightly unfocused under the line of my glasses' clarity.  The boy's pretty features are tight and set in a hard line.  He looked prettier before, but all in all, he has changed remarkably little in four years time.  Fear flits behind the anger in his eyes, and I raise an eyebrow to it.  All this time and still nervous about me?  Such a child.  What will be the prize if I win, little one?

"You...You came to rescue me?!"

Your voice is delighted, and that...upsets me, somehow.  You act as though you hadn't desired my touch a mere moment before.  Be honest with yourself, Tsuzuki-san. 

Still, the rules from before hold.  Irritating as the intrusion might be, it is welcome.  After all, it is far better to take you when I can keep you, rather than to hold you for only a single night and have to release you in the morning.

Besides…while force can be fun, I would much rather you be willing.

I turn my attention back to the boy.  "Alright.  I agree to that.  After all," and this I murmur to you, "They say anticipation is half the pleasure."  Something inside me laughs as you jerk back and moan.

I leave you, pulling away from the hand that still unconsciously clutches me, and turn to face the little one again.  This game I will lose, for at this point, the price of winning is too high.

I don't mind it, the loss of this evening's enjoyment, not when I think about what the future will bring.  While I would have enjoyed myself, indeed, enjoyed myself a great, great deal, it is the other game that we play that is more important.  This evening's hand of poker was merely a subset of that other, all-consuming game, one that we will begin again tonight.  After I allow the boy to defeat me, that is.

It is said that anticipation is half the pleasure, Tsuzuki-san.  However, I grow tired of this game we play...Anticipation is well enough, but I have been waiting for far too long.  I am ready for the other half of the pleasure, Tsuzuki-san.  Are you?

I hope you are, Tsuzuki-san.  I don't know how much longer I can wait.

author's notes:

Ne, ne.  Muraki's a pervert, innit he?  I kinda like him regardless…Show's my taste. *sweatdrop*

YnM doesn't belong to me, but I love it anyway.  This is my first YnM fic, but please don't hold that against me.  I know the story and characters fairly well at this point, and their relationships are fascinating.  The odd connection between Tsuzuki and Muraki makes me wonder...Having just watched episodes 7-9, and the all the interaction between Muraki and Tsuzuki was very interesting.    Muraki definitely wants into Tsuzuki's pants.  -.-;; But does Tsuzuki want Muraki?  I would say no, but he does spend a suspiciously large amount of time chasing after the good doctor, blushes a good deal when he is around, and seemed upset when he thought Muraki was dead.  And he does have that certain deer-in-the-headlights reaction which makes one wonder…  All the same, though, I don't think the two of them will be hooking up any time soon.  At least, I hope not, for Tsuzuki's sake.

Poor Tsuzuki.  He is my absolute favorite character in YnM, and he tends to suffer more than any of the other characters in the series.  He doesn't get a break in my stories either, it would appear.  I guess I just like angst too much to let him off the hook.  *sweatdrop* Not that I think he has any room to complain.  Compared to Draco and Seiji he's getting off remarkably easy.  ^_^

Also…as a note of explanation, Muraki never refers to Hisoka by name, from what I can tell, in either the manga or the anime.  It's always 'little one' or 'brat'.  Muraki is his last name, by the way.  His first is Kazutakai, if I recall correctly.  His grandfather's first name I don't remember, but he was probably known as Muraki-sensei in the twenties, just as everyone's favorite ice cold bastard is now.

I love the song "My Favorite Headache", but I don't have the foggiest on who sings it.  Kinda embarrassing… ^^;; 

23-9-01