In the Ashes of Jericho
By: Vain
12.25.01
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I don't own Yami no Matsuei or Hisoka or Oriya—Yoko Matsushita does. I simply enjoy covertly borrowing them, tormenting them for my own amusement, and then returning them and sneaking away again. Hehehehehe. Oryia's characterization is based on the anime series, not the manga, hence his perpetual relaxation ( ^_~ ) and this little work of art occurs about two months or so after the Kyoto Arch.
This contains sexual themes, and YOAI (YnM—duh), so if you're a prude, go away. And DO NOT flame me. Flamers are idiots.
Compliments, corrections, and constructive criticism are more than welcome, though. ^.^
Read and review please!
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"To be awake is to be alive.
I have never met a man who was quite awake.
How could I have looked him in the face?"
~Henry David Thoreau
Walden's Pond; 1854
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Prologue:
Beggar's Candy
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It was a whim. A touch. A brush. A faint displacement of the air. And then it was a breath. A whisper. An embrace that didn't invade his mind and leave him feeling scorched inside.
Hisoka never questioned it. He didn't feel as though he should question it or refuse it. There was nothing wrong with it exactly and the other man was so self-effacing and utterly unimposing that it lent a surreal quality to the brief touches. Touches that turned into lingering touches, to brief caresses across the surface of his mind, to embraces and a gentle questioning kiss one day during break.
"You're improving," he'd tell Hisoka. "You're learning to center yourself."
Hisoka would nod, pick up his coat, and go his way. He'd ignore the way his lips burned or the cool tingle on his skin.
The other man's mind did not sparkle like Tsuzuki's. It was not the flood of vitality that was Watari. Tatsumi's solidarity, Wakabe's fluttering light . . . his mind was like none of those. But his mind was also unlike the suffocating dark void of Muraki's mind or the hard, heavy cold so many minds had radiated in his life. It was . . . new. It was pristine in its newness if by no other virtue and so very different . . . It had struck him that first time, through all the other's taunts, through his own fear, and pain, and terror for Tsuzuki and himself . . . it had been like a blade through all that: the sheer . . . wallflower-like quality of his mind.
It attracted Hisoka to him—made him cock his head to the side and simply stare at him for minutes on end. It was not the sad, hungry kind of stares he gave Tsuzuki when he thought his partner was not looking, nor was it the cold scathing dismissal that he granted everyone else. It was an open look of simple curiosity—curiosity the child shinigami bristled to call childish, but had an inescapable innocence about it. Like a boy contemplating sticking his finger into the fragile smoothness of a candle flame.
So he didn't try to stop it. He didn't understand this new thing, these touches that didn't hurt or overwhelm him, this lack of malice, this "intimate" intimacy that had caught him unawares, and—while the emerald-eyed boy was many things—apathetic to his surrounding was not one of them. This living mystery was something of great interest to him, something for which he had only the imaginary land of novels as his reference point, so he allowed the impulsiveness.
The experience of pleasure of touch and the sensations such as the soft curve of a mouth pressed against his own without the messy, agonizing complications of emotion was a blessing. If the rest of the world was a tsunami in his naked mind, then Oriya was low tide in the calmest of tropical islands. Never mind the man's increasing aggressiveness. Never mind the alarming ways Hisoka's body responded to that aggressiveness . . . He hungered for that calm in a way he hadn't known before fate brought them together and the simple indulgence of it was . . . bliss.
And there were no real issues to be resolved, no emotional attachments on his part, and no history. He didn't have to justify himself or bare his soul to Oriya. If he wanted to speak, he did. If he didn't, he did not. And if Oriya wanted to whisper sweet nothings in his ear, that was fine by him. Scanning the other man was not something boy was interested in, nor did he put one ounce of faith in Oriya's words or care for man's motives all that much. If worse came to worse, he was quite capable of defending himself and it wasn't as though the other man could really kill him or anything.
Days came and went and melted into weeks and Tsuzuki retuned to duty, ever under Hisoka's careful eyes. Time passed and whatever discomfort he have felt about hiding the source of his growing fighting prowess receded to the back of his mind. Cases were solved one at a time just as they had been before the fiery violence that had been Kyoto and Tsuzuki was back and getting better. And Hisoka was making sure that he was quite capable of keeping Tsuzuki better and far, far away from the man who had left them in ruins.
"Next time I'll protect you," he muttered as he watched his partner bounce around Tatsumi in search of the last cinnamon roll. "Next time he won't be able to hurt either of us. Ever again."
And in this fashion time passed.
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