This is a PSME 'fic. Two notes:
First, the very first paragraph is a reference to a wicked cute panel in PSME 21, where Jinpachi goes to the hospital window after the chaos is through and Alice and Rin are reunited. He looks up with this disappointed expression and just swears. "Chie." It's like the moment he realizes it ain't gonna happen, buddy. ^_^ Other than that, though, this is 99% in anime continuity.
Second, and possibly more important, this fic is rated R (not X!) for one line involving a slightly graphic sexual innuendo (can you find it?) and PG-13 for the rest, for mature subject matter. It is *not* rated so for any reason having to do with the sexual orientation of the characters. Homosexual love alone is no reason to protect our kids from something. (Please Save My Ellen!! ^_^)
On with the show!
**
CHANGING SEASONS
a Please Save My Earth fan fiction by Jennifer A. Wand
**
"Chie," said Jinpachi. And that was the beginning of the end.
Life went on for the seven scientists of the Moon. High school homerooms gave way to entrance exams, graduation gowns to college dormitories. Sakura screamed her head off and Haruhiko finally breathed easy, as usual, all the way into their twenties. And Moon Dreams were seldom, appearing the way real life does in dreams-- disjointed and closed off, like distant memory. For now, that's what it was.
Jinpachi was over Alice. At least, that's how it seemed. He ran around with a thousand different projects on his mind at once-- saving the whales in his sleep, running the student government in the morning, playing baseball in the afternoon, throwing parties at night. Freckles and red hair were campus trademarks. And what's more, Jinpachi had finally let Issei back into his life.
Little by little, it had become easier to face the sad eyes of his once and future best friend, easier to hear words from his lips without remembering the sudden, bitter taste of them. The depth in Issei's eyes that frightened Jinpachi so was the same that made him so comfortable to be around, so gentle and empathetic. Where lovers make things endlessly complicated, Issei had told Sakura once, friends may tread without fear. And so they did. It seemed to Jinpachi that the ghost of Enju's longing had finally faded from Issei's heart.
It hadn't.
Jinpachi shook himself and adjusted his clammy hand. Did every girl he dated have to have such unbearably sweaty palms? What's more, did they have to insist on such awful movies? His foot tapped impatiently. At least if Issei was with him, he could make some wisecracks without getting shot down. As it was, girls always gave him a horrible look, hissed "This is the good part!" and then wouldn't return his phone calls. It was terribly frustrating. Sizzling romances they never were.
The girl beside him sighed and tightened her grip on Jinpachi's hand. "Ow!" he yelped, and broke free of the vise.
Then her hazel eyes were fire, turning to him with the look of an angry schoolteacher. "Ogura-kun!" she chided. "What's the matter with you?"
I have a crushed hand, he thought. "Nothing-- you just squeezed me-- erm-- a little hard..."
She glared at him dubiously, but settled back into her seat to watch the movie. Jinpachi stared at her incredulously as the reflected light shifted on her face. Keiko had been pretty cute when he first saw her at the gymnastics meet, but he should have given some thought to what she would look like in something other than a skin-tight leotard. She dressed like some frightening reject from cosplay, too much hair and too many frills all over the place, and a great deal of eyelash-batting and silliness. He was on a date with a circus clown.
Fleetingly, he imagined her with a red nose and huge clown shoes. The image was too funny, and he burst out laughing.
The entire theatre shushed him.
Reddening, he sat back in his chair. Beside him, Keiko started to generate a battle aura-- or at least that's how it seemed to Jinpachi. The words in his mind were "sloooowww burn."
Strangely enough, this mood seemed to pass like a fleeting cloud, and she turned to him again, smiling. "Ogura-kun, let me take a look at that hand," she said sweetly.
"Uh-- okay," he said, visibly relieved. He held out his sore palm for her inspection.
She took the hand gingerly in her own, pored over it, and looked back up at him. "You know what I think you need?" she said. Jinpachi shook his head. "This."
Then, quite deliberately and smiling all the while, she proceeded to crush it completely.
A sore-fisted college student kicked a can down the empty street a few minutes later. He frowned at the artificial lamplight that illuminated his face, grumbling to himself about amazon girls in clown suits. He should have told her off. He should have let her know who was boss. But he couldn't-- that damned respectable upstanding student part of him kicked in. The superego. The Gyokuran half, he liked to call it. "Damn!" he shouted, kicking the can high into the air. Wildly, he swung at a nearby aluminum lamppost, yelling as he punched, "Damn Gyokuran all to hell!" The fist connected.
And Ogura Jinpachi walked home with two aching hands.
Issei simply laughed.
"What?" Jinpachi's face was a tender shade of pink. THIS was his best friend's reaction to a tale of lonesome heartbreak, a tragedy of Biblical proportions? "What's so damned funny!"
"You." Issei was draped over his desk in the stark lamplight. He peered at Jinpachi through glittering eyes, a figure out of a 40s movie, lit all in matte. "You're just as bad as you always were. Never satisfied with anything or anyone, and then mad as a hornet when you end up alone." Jinpachi made a funny face, meeting Issei's eyes with a gaze half flustered, half rueful. Issei's stare never faltered. "Think about it. When our Moon Dreams started, you weren't satisfied with just us and Alice. You wanted to find the others." Abruptly, Issei stood up, making a fist and shouting in a rather familiar tone, "My GOD! Don't you know what this MEANS?" Then he collapsed again giggling, leaving Jinpachi to chew on the funhouse mirror reflection he'd just seen.
"You know," said Issei, when the giggles had faded from his system and he could breathe again, "I think that's why you lost it over Mokuren."
Jinpachi started, an old nerve touched. "Say one word about her and I'll..."
"I wasn't going to. Relax." Issei waved away the concern. "All I meant was, Mokuren was like the perfect woman to you. She had everything-- brains, beauty, even the blessing of Sarjelan. Anything that your other ladyfriends lacked, Mokuren had it. She had it all. Finally, you found a woman that was good enough for you."
"One that met Gyokuran's standards," mused Jinpachi. Then he reddened again. "Are you done psychoanalyzing me now? Geez, Issei..."
Issei just smiled. "All done," he promised. It may have taken some time, but he'd learned to swallow this sort of lecture's final words:
"...when all along the right one for you was me..."
**
Slender arms around him. And a voice whispering in his ear. "I'll comfort you. I don't mind."
Heat unfurling in the center of him. "You love her. I know that," whispered the voice. A caress prickled his arms, and his tensed muscles clenched, then relaxed. "But I don't mind. Just let me be with you tonight." Her hand, gentle pressure, on his thigh. Moving up. He gulped. "No strings attached... my darling."
A touch drifting over his... he heard himself groan wildly... with animal release he crushed his full weight against hers...
...and Jinpachi woke up with sheets soaked mostly-- but not completely-- with sweat.
"Kuso," he mumbled, shaking his damp, matted hair out. That was a Moon Dream he really didn't care to repeat. That dream. It was the troublemaker that started it all. Like he really needed to go through that again, he thought angrily. Like he needed to relive all those confusing feelings, the hurt of seeing Mokuren in Shion's arms, and then... the tide of passion that took hold at Enju's touch.
And like he needed to remember Issei's voice the day afterward. "No! Don't remind me," he'd said, his voice a twinge of pain. At the time, Jinpachi had thought that pain to stem from disgust, the same conditioned revulsion he himself had manifested. And maybe it partially was that. But it had also been part yearning, Jinpachi realized. And when he'd tilted Issei's head up to meet his own, he'd seen strange sad Enju in those dark eyes. Willing Enju. There was a flash, a question that Gyokuran couldn't help but answer. And in the face of those eyes once more, Jinpachi had nearly lost himself again.
"What the hell am I thinking?" he said softly. The little voices prodded him back into place. Not with a boy! Not with a boy! Jab! Jab! Jab! Jab!
...his body like flame, trembling and hard, and such sweetness beneath him-- who would have thought that beneath the salty bitterness of tears on those lips, that they would be so sweet? Bodies just right together. A voice whispering a solemn promise: "As long as you need me, I'll be here, my love. I'll never ask anything of you in return. If you need me, just tell me so..."
...and Issei's face looked up at him, eyes glittering...
...and Jinpachi was only shocked that he wasn't shocked.
**
Issei slept fitfully, a slave to the hollow wind. The tapping that roused him was slight, a barely noticable pressure on the windowpane. Sleepily, he sat up, and turned to the door. No, not there, said his groggy mind, so he looked over at the window.
The earnest look on the face of the boy outside awoke him immediately. Jinpachi was balanced precariously on the fire escape, looking wind-whipped and serious. Issei opened the window and let him in, wanting to laugh at the hapless college boy's predicament but feeling strangely unable to. He had the unsettling hunch that Jinpachi was looking at him and seeing Enju.
"Issei," he said, in a familiar tone. The tone he'd used one afternoon, when he'd put a hand on his shoulder...
"What's the matter?" Issei said, shaking, worrying, uncertain.
Jinpachi was silent for a long moment. Then slowly, leisurely almost, he came to sit down beside Issei on the bed. The draft from the open window passed chilly fingers over both of them. Issei felt immersed in liquid pain.
"You might be right," the auburn-haired boy began in a flustered tone. "About me being a perfectionist, that is." He tugged anxiously on his shirtsleeves. "I mean, something doesn't have to be perfect in order to be right, does it?"
Issei could only gasp his name.
"I'm lonely," said Jinpachi seriously. His eyes had a wild, lost look simmering inside their bright orbs. "All the time now, I'm lonely. I don't ever remember being this lonely, in either lifetime. Why don't I know what this feeling is?"
"Because you were the first to go," mumbled Issei. Jinpachi started. "I mean," the dark-haired boy clarified, "Gyokuran was the first to die. You're unique among us in that you didn't have to mourn anyone. You didn't have to see anyone else die. the rest of us..." and his eyes clouded over... "we put you to rest-- we saw Shuukaidou curse himself and his work-- we saw Hiiragi and Shusuran's bickering escalate into all-out battles-- we lived there on that base utterly trapped, condemned to an early death-- unable to escape it or to end it, because Mokuren said we musn't..."
"Issei." On a rush of impulse, Jinpachi clasped the other boy in his arms, holding him tight. Issei trembled and then crumpled, his face burrowing into his friend's collar, gasping for air and reality to combat the overwhelming tide of memories. After a moment, Jinpachi held Issei at arm's length, topaz eyes examining his face. Issei was acutely aware of a current of need flowing between them at that moment. Something raw and red that hurt, but was a part of them both. "Issei," came the familiar, ominous tone from Jinpachi's lips. Now his eyes were clouded with some faraway purpose. "I'm so lonely--"
There was a pause.
"A long time ago..." his breath against his face... "Enju made a promise..." eyelashes brushing against freckles... "that if Gyokuran needed her..." eyes slitting closed... lips parted... "ever..." a kiss so close...
...and a slap across the face instead.
Jinpachi stumbled back, nursing a suddenly swollen cheek. Issei's eyes blazed, and he bristled like an angry tiger. "How dare you?" he hissed, a chilly torrent in his gaze that Jinpachi had never seen before. "How can you dare ask favors of Enju now?" Issei kneeled on his bed possessively, staking out his untouchable territory, his absolute domain. Were Jinpachi to touch it, he knew he would surely crumble to dust. "Enju is dead. Long dead. She's not coming back, adn she's not giving any favors to YOU." Spat. "How dare you? You... idiot! You idiot!"
"Issei..." echoed Jinpachi emptily, hollow eyes and hollow spirit. Never, not in those tortured moments earlier, not when Mokuren broke his heart, not when he knew he was dying, never had he felt so utterly turned inside out. As if someone had taken his soul and flipped it upwards to contort and spin in the hot sun. As if all the ruddy cords that bound him together were being stretched taut, nearly to the point of breaking. His wrists buzzed. His chest demanded air. His mouth could not provide it. He choked on himself.
"I am not Enju!" Issei's hands clutched his head convulsively. Slowly they came down to grab the bedsheets, and his fierce gaze fell with them. Then his shoulders, then his whole wiry frame. He lolled, wretchedly, on the bed. "Don't ask me to be Enju because I am not her!" Jinpachi backed off more, wide horrified eyes filled with the image of a tortured Issei. "How can you be so cruel? How can you ask me that when I've tried so hard..." Tears choked his voice. "It's cruel! I am not Enju!"
Mechanically, not knowing what else to do, Jinpachi moved to the window. He opened the latch and let himself out, leaving the harsh wind to blow and the boy to suffer on his own.
**
Wrenching pain at the bottom of his soul. And a feeling that he had been a user, that he'd used his dearest friend all this time without even knowing it. Tears coursed down his raw red face. "Issei, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Issei." Gyokuran was blinder than a bat, and Jinpachi was even worse. Issei's pale pained face tortured his mind. It lingered like a bad stain no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes and tried to start over. Issei crying. Issei with blazing eyes. Issei throwing him backwards.
Issei smiling.
"How--" Jinpachi started.
Issei raised his palms and Jinpachi's came up to meet them. Gentle touch of flesh, pads of their fingers tickling. Issei's face was quiet ginger to Jinpachi's brash cinnamon. And suddenly he wanted to know how it tasted.
Flashes of memory whizzed by. Talking about their dreams as first-year students. Issei's hand suddenly clamping over his. Jinpachi looked up. Issei finished the sentence Jinpachi started. The moment of recognition. Then, waking up from a dream rather more vivid than he cared to recall. Forcing Issei to meet his gaze. Issei's wounded look and another at another moment, as he turned and ran, crying-- "that's right, I am in love!" And then a rooftop, autumn sunshine, and an assault of bitter ginger lips and cool smooth hands-- and a whisper-- "basically... I am Enju..."
...and then a slap. "I'm not her!"
Jinpachi sat up in bed, abruptly wide awake. He took gulps of air, sweating. The room was dark and empty and suffocating. But amber eyes burned bright into the night.
Finally, he thought, I know just what I want.
THE END
PSME! PSME! PSME! That's all I've got to say. Member of the Mikuro fan club and the Issei fan club, if there is such a thing. Blah blah blah author's notes thank thank thank thank. Thanks to Lianne and Ilana and Sakura-chan, and thanks to Ophelia, and to the Please Save My Earth bunch. And oh, oh yeah... one more thing. (Don't hate me Sakura dear!) This I have to give credit to Richard Lawson for, because he did the same thing in one of his stories. Here we go:
You didn't *really* think I was going to end it like that, did you?
(wicked giggle)
**
The dawn was gray, but the dewy trees smelled of rain, and they motioned slightly to the sun-- come on in! So alive, thought Issei as he sat alone on the riverbank. Maybe somewhere a Sarjellian named Alice is singing their favorite song.
He sighed. It was a strange contentment he felt here this morning, even after having his feelings and his past so exploited just a few short hours ago. But he couldn't blame Jinpachi. He knew that loneliness well. It was the loneliness in Gyokuran's eyes that had first spoken to Enju, and it had taken all of Issei's strength to refuse his plea. But the line had to be drawn somewhere. He would not have Gyokuran-- no, Jinpachi-- see him as Enju when he was now Issei, too. He would not allow anyone to forsake his true and current identity.
But all lines faded into the mist of sweet morning the second Issei felt arms encircling his shoulders.
"I wanted to apologize, Issei." Jinpachi's hot breath scorched Issei's neck, and as he inhaled, he smelled the familiar scent he loved so well. "Forgive me for what I said to you." Issei could only nod mutely, and think in awkward language: this is not in character! "I've been up all night trying to think of a way to--" this is not in character, this is not in character-- "well, I have been thinking-- and all I can say is--"
He stopped, and leaned forward so he could watch Issei's stunned face. Jinpachi's gaze was tender, and carefully he gauged the tremors in Issei's eyes and lips. With a short, sharp inhale, he began again.
"I'm sorry I used your-- no-- Enju's feelings for Gyokuran like that," he said. "It wasn't fair of me, and I'm sorry. I want you to know that it wasn't-- the fact that Enju was a woman, even if you're not-- it wasn't that which drove me-- which made me ask you that question. That is--" he swallowed, but despite his nervous tone, his face was so intent, his mind not to be fazed. He swallowed. "I wanted comfort from you, Issei-- from yourself-- not from any previous incarnation-- because of who you were, of course, but more because of who you are-- and-- what you've been to me." Issei's eyes registered only hesitant confusion. "I think," Jinpachi continued, his voice only slightly shaking, "that you've always been-- more than a friend to me-- but we thought of it in different ways-- and I just never conceived of it like that, you know?
"What I'm trying to say is-- that if you feel-- well, I'd like you-- Issei, not Enju-- or, rather, whatever part of you is Enju, as long as it's also part of you-- I'd like to try-- for you to be with me." He exhaled loudly. "I mean, just try. Because I think the reason I'm here-- at all-- the reason I didn't fall apart somewhere along the road-- is that you were there. And I want to show you that I didn't mean to use you-- that I really do care about you-- a lot-- Issei..."
Issei smiled, tears glistening at the corners of his eyes. "You're not doing this just for me?" he whispered, the smoothness of his tone an antidote to Jinpachi's jerky stuttering.
Jinpachi's eyes were the first to flow over. He shook his head vigorously, tears spilling down his ruddy cheeks. "No," he said emphatically. "I need to try this. I need this-- that is-- Issei-- I need you."
The dark-haired boy, just barely at the breaking point, said in a tender voice, "It's hardly an ideal situation."
"They never are," echoed Jinpachi in the same tone. "But something doesn't have to be perfect for it to be right... right?"
The tears now trickled down pale cheeks as well, and it was Jinpachi who moved in to catch them as they ran across Issei's thin lips. Ginger and sweet cinnamon melded into a smoky cider on the riverbank. A dove flew away. A new chapter began.
*fin*
First, the very first paragraph is a reference to a wicked cute panel in PSME 21, where Jinpachi goes to the hospital window after the chaos is through and Alice and Rin are reunited. He looks up with this disappointed expression and just swears. "Chie." It's like the moment he realizes it ain't gonna happen, buddy. ^_^ Other than that, though, this is 99% in anime continuity.
Second, and possibly more important, this fic is rated R (not X!) for one line involving a slightly graphic sexual innuendo (can you find it?) and PG-13 for the rest, for mature subject matter. It is *not* rated so for any reason having to do with the sexual orientation of the characters. Homosexual love alone is no reason to protect our kids from something. (Please Save My Ellen!! ^_^)
On with the show!
**
CHANGING SEASONS
a Please Save My Earth fan fiction by Jennifer A. Wand
**
"Chie," said Jinpachi. And that was the beginning of the end.
Life went on for the seven scientists of the Moon. High school homerooms gave way to entrance exams, graduation gowns to college dormitories. Sakura screamed her head off and Haruhiko finally breathed easy, as usual, all the way into their twenties. And Moon Dreams were seldom, appearing the way real life does in dreams-- disjointed and closed off, like distant memory. For now, that's what it was.
Jinpachi was over Alice. At least, that's how it seemed. He ran around with a thousand different projects on his mind at once-- saving the whales in his sleep, running the student government in the morning, playing baseball in the afternoon, throwing parties at night. Freckles and red hair were campus trademarks. And what's more, Jinpachi had finally let Issei back into his life.
Little by little, it had become easier to face the sad eyes of his once and future best friend, easier to hear words from his lips without remembering the sudden, bitter taste of them. The depth in Issei's eyes that frightened Jinpachi so was the same that made him so comfortable to be around, so gentle and empathetic. Where lovers make things endlessly complicated, Issei had told Sakura once, friends may tread without fear. And so they did. It seemed to Jinpachi that the ghost of Enju's longing had finally faded from Issei's heart.
It hadn't.
Jinpachi shook himself and adjusted his clammy hand. Did every girl he dated have to have such unbearably sweaty palms? What's more, did they have to insist on such awful movies? His foot tapped impatiently. At least if Issei was with him, he could make some wisecracks without getting shot down. As it was, girls always gave him a horrible look, hissed "This is the good part!" and then wouldn't return his phone calls. It was terribly frustrating. Sizzling romances they never were.
The girl beside him sighed and tightened her grip on Jinpachi's hand. "Ow!" he yelped, and broke free of the vise.
Then her hazel eyes were fire, turning to him with the look of an angry schoolteacher. "Ogura-kun!" she chided. "What's the matter with you?"
I have a crushed hand, he thought. "Nothing-- you just squeezed me-- erm-- a little hard..."
She glared at him dubiously, but settled back into her seat to watch the movie. Jinpachi stared at her incredulously as the reflected light shifted on her face. Keiko had been pretty cute when he first saw her at the gymnastics meet, but he should have given some thought to what she would look like in something other than a skin-tight leotard. She dressed like some frightening reject from cosplay, too much hair and too many frills all over the place, and a great deal of eyelash-batting and silliness. He was on a date with a circus clown.
Fleetingly, he imagined her with a red nose and huge clown shoes. The image was too funny, and he burst out laughing.
The entire theatre shushed him.
Reddening, he sat back in his chair. Beside him, Keiko started to generate a battle aura-- or at least that's how it seemed to Jinpachi. The words in his mind were "sloooowww burn."
Strangely enough, this mood seemed to pass like a fleeting cloud, and she turned to him again, smiling. "Ogura-kun, let me take a look at that hand," she said sweetly.
"Uh-- okay," he said, visibly relieved. He held out his sore palm for her inspection.
She took the hand gingerly in her own, pored over it, and looked back up at him. "You know what I think you need?" she said. Jinpachi shook his head. "This."
Then, quite deliberately and smiling all the while, she proceeded to crush it completely.
A sore-fisted college student kicked a can down the empty street a few minutes later. He frowned at the artificial lamplight that illuminated his face, grumbling to himself about amazon girls in clown suits. He should have told her off. He should have let her know who was boss. But he couldn't-- that damned respectable upstanding student part of him kicked in. The superego. The Gyokuran half, he liked to call it. "Damn!" he shouted, kicking the can high into the air. Wildly, he swung at a nearby aluminum lamppost, yelling as he punched, "Damn Gyokuran all to hell!" The fist connected.
And Ogura Jinpachi walked home with two aching hands.
Issei simply laughed.
"What?" Jinpachi's face was a tender shade of pink. THIS was his best friend's reaction to a tale of lonesome heartbreak, a tragedy of Biblical proportions? "What's so damned funny!"
"You." Issei was draped over his desk in the stark lamplight. He peered at Jinpachi through glittering eyes, a figure out of a 40s movie, lit all in matte. "You're just as bad as you always were. Never satisfied with anything or anyone, and then mad as a hornet when you end up alone." Jinpachi made a funny face, meeting Issei's eyes with a gaze half flustered, half rueful. Issei's stare never faltered. "Think about it. When our Moon Dreams started, you weren't satisfied with just us and Alice. You wanted to find the others." Abruptly, Issei stood up, making a fist and shouting in a rather familiar tone, "My GOD! Don't you know what this MEANS?" Then he collapsed again giggling, leaving Jinpachi to chew on the funhouse mirror reflection he'd just seen.
"You know," said Issei, when the giggles had faded from his system and he could breathe again, "I think that's why you lost it over Mokuren."
Jinpachi started, an old nerve touched. "Say one word about her and I'll..."
"I wasn't going to. Relax." Issei waved away the concern. "All I meant was, Mokuren was like the perfect woman to you. She had everything-- brains, beauty, even the blessing of Sarjelan. Anything that your other ladyfriends lacked, Mokuren had it. She had it all. Finally, you found a woman that was good enough for you."
"One that met Gyokuran's standards," mused Jinpachi. Then he reddened again. "Are you done psychoanalyzing me now? Geez, Issei..."
Issei just smiled. "All done," he promised. It may have taken some time, but he'd learned to swallow this sort of lecture's final words:
"...when all along the right one for you was me..."
**
Slender arms around him. And a voice whispering in his ear. "I'll comfort you. I don't mind."
Heat unfurling in the center of him. "You love her. I know that," whispered the voice. A caress prickled his arms, and his tensed muscles clenched, then relaxed. "But I don't mind. Just let me be with you tonight." Her hand, gentle pressure, on his thigh. Moving up. He gulped. "No strings attached... my darling."
A touch drifting over his... he heard himself groan wildly... with animal release he crushed his full weight against hers...
...and Jinpachi woke up with sheets soaked mostly-- but not completely-- with sweat.
"Kuso," he mumbled, shaking his damp, matted hair out. That was a Moon Dream he really didn't care to repeat. That dream. It was the troublemaker that started it all. Like he really needed to go through that again, he thought angrily. Like he needed to relive all those confusing feelings, the hurt of seeing Mokuren in Shion's arms, and then... the tide of passion that took hold at Enju's touch.
And like he needed to remember Issei's voice the day afterward. "No! Don't remind me," he'd said, his voice a twinge of pain. At the time, Jinpachi had thought that pain to stem from disgust, the same conditioned revulsion he himself had manifested. And maybe it partially was that. But it had also been part yearning, Jinpachi realized. And when he'd tilted Issei's head up to meet his own, he'd seen strange sad Enju in those dark eyes. Willing Enju. There was a flash, a question that Gyokuran couldn't help but answer. And in the face of those eyes once more, Jinpachi had nearly lost himself again.
"What the hell am I thinking?" he said softly. The little voices prodded him back into place. Not with a boy! Not with a boy! Jab! Jab! Jab! Jab!
...his body like flame, trembling and hard, and such sweetness beneath him-- who would have thought that beneath the salty bitterness of tears on those lips, that they would be so sweet? Bodies just right together. A voice whispering a solemn promise: "As long as you need me, I'll be here, my love. I'll never ask anything of you in return. If you need me, just tell me so..."
...and Issei's face looked up at him, eyes glittering...
...and Jinpachi was only shocked that he wasn't shocked.
**
Issei slept fitfully, a slave to the hollow wind. The tapping that roused him was slight, a barely noticable pressure on the windowpane. Sleepily, he sat up, and turned to the door. No, not there, said his groggy mind, so he looked over at the window.
The earnest look on the face of the boy outside awoke him immediately. Jinpachi was balanced precariously on the fire escape, looking wind-whipped and serious. Issei opened the window and let him in, wanting to laugh at the hapless college boy's predicament but feeling strangely unable to. He had the unsettling hunch that Jinpachi was looking at him and seeing Enju.
"Issei," he said, in a familiar tone. The tone he'd used one afternoon, when he'd put a hand on his shoulder...
"What's the matter?" Issei said, shaking, worrying, uncertain.
Jinpachi was silent for a long moment. Then slowly, leisurely almost, he came to sit down beside Issei on the bed. The draft from the open window passed chilly fingers over both of them. Issei felt immersed in liquid pain.
"You might be right," the auburn-haired boy began in a flustered tone. "About me being a perfectionist, that is." He tugged anxiously on his shirtsleeves. "I mean, something doesn't have to be perfect in order to be right, does it?"
Issei could only gasp his name.
"I'm lonely," said Jinpachi seriously. His eyes had a wild, lost look simmering inside their bright orbs. "All the time now, I'm lonely. I don't ever remember being this lonely, in either lifetime. Why don't I know what this feeling is?"
"Because you were the first to go," mumbled Issei. Jinpachi started. "I mean," the dark-haired boy clarified, "Gyokuran was the first to die. You're unique among us in that you didn't have to mourn anyone. You didn't have to see anyone else die. the rest of us..." and his eyes clouded over... "we put you to rest-- we saw Shuukaidou curse himself and his work-- we saw Hiiragi and Shusuran's bickering escalate into all-out battles-- we lived there on that base utterly trapped, condemned to an early death-- unable to escape it or to end it, because Mokuren said we musn't..."
"Issei." On a rush of impulse, Jinpachi clasped the other boy in his arms, holding him tight. Issei trembled and then crumpled, his face burrowing into his friend's collar, gasping for air and reality to combat the overwhelming tide of memories. After a moment, Jinpachi held Issei at arm's length, topaz eyes examining his face. Issei was acutely aware of a current of need flowing between them at that moment. Something raw and red that hurt, but was a part of them both. "Issei," came the familiar, ominous tone from Jinpachi's lips. Now his eyes were clouded with some faraway purpose. "I'm so lonely--"
There was a pause.
"A long time ago..." his breath against his face... "Enju made a promise..." eyelashes brushing against freckles... "that if Gyokuran needed her..." eyes slitting closed... lips parted... "ever..." a kiss so close...
...and a slap across the face instead.
Jinpachi stumbled back, nursing a suddenly swollen cheek. Issei's eyes blazed, and he bristled like an angry tiger. "How dare you?" he hissed, a chilly torrent in his gaze that Jinpachi had never seen before. "How can you dare ask favors of Enju now?" Issei kneeled on his bed possessively, staking out his untouchable territory, his absolute domain. Were Jinpachi to touch it, he knew he would surely crumble to dust. "Enju is dead. Long dead. She's not coming back, adn she's not giving any favors to YOU." Spat. "How dare you? You... idiot! You idiot!"
"Issei..." echoed Jinpachi emptily, hollow eyes and hollow spirit. Never, not in those tortured moments earlier, not when Mokuren broke his heart, not when he knew he was dying, never had he felt so utterly turned inside out. As if someone had taken his soul and flipped it upwards to contort and spin in the hot sun. As if all the ruddy cords that bound him together were being stretched taut, nearly to the point of breaking. His wrists buzzed. His chest demanded air. His mouth could not provide it. He choked on himself.
"I am not Enju!" Issei's hands clutched his head convulsively. Slowly they came down to grab the bedsheets, and his fierce gaze fell with them. Then his shoulders, then his whole wiry frame. He lolled, wretchedly, on the bed. "Don't ask me to be Enju because I am not her!" Jinpachi backed off more, wide horrified eyes filled with the image of a tortured Issei. "How can you be so cruel? How can you ask me that when I've tried so hard..." Tears choked his voice. "It's cruel! I am not Enju!"
Mechanically, not knowing what else to do, Jinpachi moved to the window. He opened the latch and let himself out, leaving the harsh wind to blow and the boy to suffer on his own.
**
Wrenching pain at the bottom of his soul. And a feeling that he had been a user, that he'd used his dearest friend all this time without even knowing it. Tears coursed down his raw red face. "Issei, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Issei." Gyokuran was blinder than a bat, and Jinpachi was even worse. Issei's pale pained face tortured his mind. It lingered like a bad stain no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes and tried to start over. Issei crying. Issei with blazing eyes. Issei throwing him backwards.
Issei smiling.
"How--" Jinpachi started.
Issei raised his palms and Jinpachi's came up to meet them. Gentle touch of flesh, pads of their fingers tickling. Issei's face was quiet ginger to Jinpachi's brash cinnamon. And suddenly he wanted to know how it tasted.
Flashes of memory whizzed by. Talking about their dreams as first-year students. Issei's hand suddenly clamping over his. Jinpachi looked up. Issei finished the sentence Jinpachi started. The moment of recognition. Then, waking up from a dream rather more vivid than he cared to recall. Forcing Issei to meet his gaze. Issei's wounded look and another at another moment, as he turned and ran, crying-- "that's right, I am in love!" And then a rooftop, autumn sunshine, and an assault of bitter ginger lips and cool smooth hands-- and a whisper-- "basically... I am Enju..."
...and then a slap. "I'm not her!"
Jinpachi sat up in bed, abruptly wide awake. He took gulps of air, sweating. The room was dark and empty and suffocating. But amber eyes burned bright into the night.
Finally, he thought, I know just what I want.
THE END
PSME! PSME! PSME! That's all I've got to say. Member of the Mikuro fan club and the Issei fan club, if there is such a thing. Blah blah blah author's notes thank thank thank thank. Thanks to Lianne and Ilana and Sakura-chan, and thanks to Ophelia, and to the Please Save My Earth bunch. And oh, oh yeah... one more thing. (Don't hate me Sakura dear!) This I have to give credit to Richard Lawson for, because he did the same thing in one of his stories. Here we go:
You didn't *really* think I was going to end it like that, did you?
(wicked giggle)
**
The dawn was gray, but the dewy trees smelled of rain, and they motioned slightly to the sun-- come on in! So alive, thought Issei as he sat alone on the riverbank. Maybe somewhere a Sarjellian named Alice is singing their favorite song.
He sighed. It was a strange contentment he felt here this morning, even after having his feelings and his past so exploited just a few short hours ago. But he couldn't blame Jinpachi. He knew that loneliness well. It was the loneliness in Gyokuran's eyes that had first spoken to Enju, and it had taken all of Issei's strength to refuse his plea. But the line had to be drawn somewhere. He would not have Gyokuran-- no, Jinpachi-- see him as Enju when he was now Issei, too. He would not allow anyone to forsake his true and current identity.
But all lines faded into the mist of sweet morning the second Issei felt arms encircling his shoulders.
"I wanted to apologize, Issei." Jinpachi's hot breath scorched Issei's neck, and as he inhaled, he smelled the familiar scent he loved so well. "Forgive me for what I said to you." Issei could only nod mutely, and think in awkward language: this is not in character! "I've been up all night trying to think of a way to--" this is not in character, this is not in character-- "well, I have been thinking-- and all I can say is--"
He stopped, and leaned forward so he could watch Issei's stunned face. Jinpachi's gaze was tender, and carefully he gauged the tremors in Issei's eyes and lips. With a short, sharp inhale, he began again.
"I'm sorry I used your-- no-- Enju's feelings for Gyokuran like that," he said. "It wasn't fair of me, and I'm sorry. I want you to know that it wasn't-- the fact that Enju was a woman, even if you're not-- it wasn't that which drove me-- which made me ask you that question. That is--" he swallowed, but despite his nervous tone, his face was so intent, his mind not to be fazed. He swallowed. "I wanted comfort from you, Issei-- from yourself-- not from any previous incarnation-- because of who you were, of course, but more because of who you are-- and-- what you've been to me." Issei's eyes registered only hesitant confusion. "I think," Jinpachi continued, his voice only slightly shaking, "that you've always been-- more than a friend to me-- but we thought of it in different ways-- and I just never conceived of it like that, you know?
"What I'm trying to say is-- that if you feel-- well, I'd like you-- Issei, not Enju-- or, rather, whatever part of you is Enju, as long as it's also part of you-- I'd like to try-- for you to be with me." He exhaled loudly. "I mean, just try. Because I think the reason I'm here-- at all-- the reason I didn't fall apart somewhere along the road-- is that you were there. And I want to show you that I didn't mean to use you-- that I really do care about you-- a lot-- Issei..."
Issei smiled, tears glistening at the corners of his eyes. "You're not doing this just for me?" he whispered, the smoothness of his tone an antidote to Jinpachi's jerky stuttering.
Jinpachi's eyes were the first to flow over. He shook his head vigorously, tears spilling down his ruddy cheeks. "No," he said emphatically. "I need to try this. I need this-- that is-- Issei-- I need you."
The dark-haired boy, just barely at the breaking point, said in a tender voice, "It's hardly an ideal situation."
"They never are," echoed Jinpachi in the same tone. "But something doesn't have to be perfect for it to be right... right?"
The tears now trickled down pale cheeks as well, and it was Jinpachi who moved in to catch them as they ran across Issei's thin lips. Ginger and sweet cinnamon melded into a smoky cider on the riverbank. A dove flew away. A new chapter began.
*fin*