Warnings: Yaoi, sexual situations (albeit watercolored) and language. Some spoilers for season two character past.
Disclaimer: Minekura Kazuya owns all that is her Saiyuki.
Notes: Something a little different. Big thanks to J for always reading these in whatever state they're in. Feedback is always appreciated, and thank you.
In the shadows of his eyes
When you live in a world of your own dark, things like candles and lamps and even the light of day become unnecessary. You would not need to notice the shadows by the door to know that someone was standing quietly there, waiting. You would not need the bare glow of the moon to expose the intruder entering inside. You would not need the window to frame his silhouette to understand that suddenly you were not alone.
When you are sightless, there is nothing to adjust, nothing to dilate. And because you have heard him ever since the first heavy footfalls of his boots started down the hall, your face betrays no emotion as he lifts the sheet and slips into the bed.
Shien knew the other god with every instinct that he possessed. He knew Zenon by the sounds he made, both in voice and in body, by the way he smelled, both of tobacco and of gun powder, and the way he moved, both heavy in weight and forceful in intent. He remained still as the other god's hands, calloused and hard, slipped beneath the thin robe he wore to bed.
He was attempting to be quiet as his fingers pushed back the silk from his skin, but everything about Zenon made noise, the rustling of his jacket that he still wore, the clink of metal as he unfastened his belt, his breathing which was growing more and more ragged. Somewhere beneath the sheet, Shien could even hear the other's heart, its once steady rhythm now lost somewhere in the rustling cloth and ragged air.
Shien lay still, only allowing what movement was taken upon by the other in his bed. It was calloused, hard hands that turned him over to his stomach, and long wet fingers that lifted his robe, and then him. He lay there quiet, his lips as closed as his sightless eyes. He did not need to see to know Zenon's need, and his need was for a dark quiet and a warm body. So he lay still and allowed his dark and warmth to be invaded by the noisy other.
It was the sounds of the crows outside that woke him. For Shien, it was they that brought on the dawn and not the morning light that would follow their calls.
The weight on the bed told him that he still was not alone. He shifted over, covering his bare skin with the sheet that had gotten bunched up near the end of the bed sometime during the night. He turned his face away from the window and the calling of the crows and felt the warm, smoky breath of the other god on his cheeks. The breathing was slow and even, and so quiet, it could almost cloak the large body it slipped out from. But Shien could still hear it, and somewhere, he could still hear the bare, steady rhythm of the other's heart. He pressed his head into his pillow, and imagined that the beats were really the calls of the black birds outside his window, a song of life and coming dawn, and he slept.
------
In the depths of his dreams, which were as dark as his days, Shien heard the clink of metal and slowly, he began to wake. The sound of Zenon fastening his belt was his warning that it was now time to rise. He sat up, letting the sheet slip off, and he felt the morning air on his skin, fresh and cool. He did not need eyes to know that the other was now standing still and watching him. Zenon's body, even without moving, somehow caused the rest of the room to react to it, and Shien could pick up on the reaction just as he could tell that somewhere in the castle, breakfast was being prepared. He turned his closed eyes to the left and faced the one watching him.
"Is something the matter?" It was a simple question that held neither irony nor bitterness for his interrupted sleep.
"…Nah." It was a simple answer that held neither truth nor apology for interrupting his sleep.
"Well then, I shall get dressed now. Homura is probably awaiting us downstairs." He rose from the bed and walked naked to the adjoining room where fresh robes would be laid out, put there by the servants that he never needed eyes to know that they moved about behind them.
He knew Zenon was going to speak before the words broke the stillness between them.
"Shien…" His tone held a raspy hesitation that seemed out of place in his forceful, gun powder nature. Shien turned, a robe in his hands.
"Why?" It was spoken so quietly, but in his world of dark, it was all he heard.
"Why what, Zenon?" He held the robe like a promise, tightly and unopened in his hands.
"Why…don't you ever say anything?" A pause, and even softer. "Why are you so damn quiet when I come here?"
He turned around and undid his promise and brought it over his shoulders. "Because that is what you want."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Louder this time. It left an echo like when he would shoot his gun off in the lower halls. "What the hell do you know about what I want?"
He tied the robe around his waist and slipped his whips underneath his sash. "It is because I am quiet that you come here. It is because of that you are able to believe that I am her and not simply another fallen servant of heaven. Is that not true?" He asked without turning.
It was the sound of the door closing and the heavy footfalls down the hall that told him that he was alone. Shien took his fingers and began to comb out his hair. With his other hand, he felt for the string that he knew was lying on the table. Like the sash of his robe, he wrapped it twice around, until everything that needed to be tightly bound was so.
-------
When you are blessed without sight, those around you believe they can do anything. They can remove the money from your belt, or lift the child from your arms, or as in this case, they can slip into your bed uninvited without a single thought of remorse. Your blindness is their freedom to do whatever they so secretly desire. Not that Homura was ever secretive about what he wanted. His ambition was as obvious and as important as any limb on his body, like the arm that lay draped over Shien's naked back.
Unlike Zenon though, Homua never masked his intentions with soft footfalls in the dark. His walk down the hall, his entrance in the room, his pulling back of the sheet- each told of his purpose, his want. Shien knew the Toushin Taishi was gazing down at him and at the thin robe he wore to bed. He looked back with his unseeing eyes and felt the need in the air, heavy and thick, and granted the other his freedom.
And Homura took it, but he was also the lord of their castle, and the one who Shien had pledged servitude to so long ago. So what words were spoken were the orders for him to continue fulfilling his duty, and they were issued in the same way as his orders during the earlier hours of light that Shien could never see.
"Get undressed."
For his was a world of demands in the dark, and there was no difference between the night and the day for him. But he had chosen his place, and it was either to be standing behind with the cape of the Toushin Taishi billowing out before him, or laying beneath, covered in the purple fire which he could only feel, but never see.
But unlike Zenon, Homura never came to him to find the woman he had lost. Instead he came to grasp at his future and at the ones he so needed for his paradise. So Shien lay still as the other's ambition plunged inside him, his face pressed into his pillow while rough hands pushed him down and a rougher voice called out the names of those they chased. Because when you are blind, those around you believe they can do anything.
"You…will…be…stronger," Homura choked out as he threw himself forward. Shien remained quiet, for he knew it was not he who the other god was calling to, but a boy who was probably sleeping peacefully at that moment with the rest of his group. He closed his eyes and felt the soft silk on his face and he moved with the other's rhythm, coaxing his dream, his paradise to finally burst forth.
Later, the cape was pulled from his body and he shivered as the night air attacked his skin. His fingers moved up and down his arms, and he could feel the bumps rise up instantly, like little armies that did nothing but tell him he was cold. He listened as Homura put on his belt and then his boots. Shien lay quiet and waited for what would come next, the closing of the door, but the Toushin Taishi broke their routine. Homura spoke, and in his world of dark, it was all he heard.
"What has happened between you and Zenon?"
He stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"Don't play around with me, Shien. I'm not blind."
Funny words, Homura, for in many ways you are, Shien thought. "I still do not understand what you are saying. Nothing has happened between Zenon and me." Or nothing that would affect your plans, he added silently.
His answer left the other unsatisfied, but not enough for him to be pushed back into the bed. "It better not," was what the Toushin Taishi said, his boots moving away from the bed. "You both are all that I have."
Those were the words left in the wake of the door closing, and Shien lay quiet in the bed as he listened to the heavy footfalls that always walked with all the ambition that filled them.
"But we are not all that you want." he murmured to his dark and to the armies on his skin. Too tired to reach for the sheet that had fallen, he lay back and waited for sleep to come. His last thoughts were of Zenon. He wondered how long the other god had been standing by the door before he had left.
------
It was the smell that woke him. It took a few moments to register that it was not the dark of his dreams he was resting in, but the bed in his chambers, and at the moment, he again was not alone.
He turned his face towards the scent. "Why are you burning lamp oil?"
The other shifted where he was standing, sliding the heaviness around before finally speaking. "Because I wanted to see you," was all Zenon said.
Shien sat up in the bed. He was still naked, the sheet somewhere on the floor. He suddenly felt the armies rise again on his skin, but this time not from the chill. He didn't know what disturbed him more, that Zenon had come and stood while Homura had been with him, or that he was here now standing over and watching him while he slept. And for some reason, knowing that the lamp was on somehow made him feel more vulnerable than the fact that his robe was off. He brought his arms up as an attempt to cover from all that Zenon could see.
"Was there something else you wanted? Because if not, it is very late and tomorrow Homura will want-"
"Don't you tell me what he wants!" Shien couldn't help but pull back from his voice. "I know what he wants. And I know what I want!"
Of course. How could I forget, he thought.
Shien turned away from both him and his lamp, exposing his back. He absently wondered if there were any marks left on it from earlier in the evening. He lay back down, feeling the pillow on his cheek, and waited. What came though was not Zenon's hard, calloused need, but something else entirely, something as strange in his dark space as the oil burning on the table.
The bed sank in from the other's weight and he felt his body being turned so Shien was facing him. He could feel and taste Zenon's hot, smoky breathe, but the weight he expected did not follow. Instead, something heavier came in its place.
"I know what he wants, and I know what I want," Zenon repeated, his voice low. "But what the hell do you want, Shien? What-" He tore at his words as if they were strips of dried flesh, snapping at them with his teeth. "do YOU want?"
Was this another game for me to play, he wondered. Am I his wife now and he, the dutiful husband that would never leave her and her child to be ripped from him? He brought his hand up and felt the cloth, and the chest that it covered. Through it, he could feel Zenon's heart, and he wondered who it was beating for at that moment.
"…I want…" Words so unfamiliar, they felt strange in his mouth, a bitter tea he never thought he was allowed to taste. "…I want…"
It was overwhelming him, these strange words, the weight that hung over him but never fell, the burning lamp that seemed to sear his insides just as it showed all his outsides.
I want my familiar dark. I want the crows to tell me its morning, and I want the weight to tell me its night. I want-
"What?" Zenon's voice, low and aching, pushed him further than any of Homura's earlier ambitions.
"I want to be left alone."
Leave me in my never ending dreams where you can do everything to me, and I can only lay here and be what you want me to be.
He heard Zenon suck in his hot breath, but the heavy footfalls to the door did not follow it.
"Then why," he hissed, "do you leave your door unlocked?"
Zenon's words cursed at him with all their meaning. Liar. You can see. You can see everything.
And Shien knew he was right.
It's not you who's imagining the woman you've lost or the boy you want. It's me. It's me who's imagining them because it's me who wants your heavy feet by my dark door.
He turned his face away and felt the heat from the other's breath and his body and his heart fall into him, and fill the insides of the eyes that could never see. He opened them, and released the weight, and he felt it slip down his cheeks.
"Don't you look away from me!" was what followed and Shien could not help but turn back.
What a funny thing to say, he thought. He swallowed and tasted the weight of his own water. "All I can do is look away from you," he answered. "That…that is who I am."
I am a liar. I am the blind man who sees everything but himself.
"Don't give me that bullshit," Zenon pushed him further. "I know you don't got eyes, but that don't mean you don't got a voice, or a fucking heart." A pause, and Shien felt something wet on his face. "…Or does it?"
He blinked as the weight of the other's water seemed to press him so far, he thought he'd be lost in the bed, but a second later, all of it was lifted, and he heard the scrape of the lamp as it was picked up from the table and the sounds of Zenon's boots walking away.
With every step, he sank further into his dark, but suddenly, it was so unfamiliar, so deep, so cold, so empty, that he instinctively threw his arm out to catch the light that he knew was there, but couldn't see.
I am a liar.
"Wait!"
I am the blind man who sees everything but himself.
"Don't go."
And in my dark, I can do anything so, please-
"Don't go." His hand grasped at the air. "I'll be anything you want. Just don't go."
Softly, the lamp was placed back on the table. The bed sank in beneath him, and the air suddenly grasped his hand back, hard and calloused. He cringed when its fingers squeezed almost hard enough to break.
"Zenon," he gasped out.
He heard a low voice by his ear. "Then be what she can't be. Alive."
He opened his mouth in surprise and in the next second, felt it filled with the other's hot, smoky life.
He gripped tightly to the other's arms and pressed himself forward, his bare chest against Zenon's clothed. He felt the other's fingers at his hair and he arched towards it.
"Is this what you want?" Zenon asked, his fingers starting to pull at the tie that still bound his long hair from that morning.
"…Yes."
"And is this what you want?" He asked as his teeth grazed at his neck.
"Yes."
"And is this what you want?" He asked as his lips fell on both of his closed, unseeing eyes.
"Yes." He breathed. "Yes."
"Then never forget it," Zenon rested his head on his own. "Or I will never come here again."
"Zenon," he whispered, almost afraid to voice what suddenly became so clear to him, even in his dark. "We do not have the luxury of promises because we have sworn ourselves to follow another, and tomorrow could be either paradise…or the end of us."
Zenon paused on his words, and for a brief second, Shien feared that the weight of this truth would be too heavy for both of them to carry on, but then-
"After him, and before the end, I will come here." He swallowed, and in that moment, Shien could hear the other's heart, and in his world of dark, it was everything. "As long as you are alive, I will come here."
And he lay there and wondered, is this what light is like?
"Then I," he said to the light in his dark. "Will leave my door unlocked."
-----
They stayed there until the first crows called and Shien knew without seeing that morning would soon follow. He heard Zenon next to him shift about and then a scraping sound on the table. Shien reached over, stopping him.
"No, leave it on."
"…But, it's getting light out. We don't need it anymore."
Shien paused, and squeezed the other's arm. "But I want it on. I…I like the smell of it."
He could feel Zenon looking at him and then he gave up on the lamp and took him in his arms instead. "Okay. Whatever you want."
"Yes." He pressed his face into the other's bare chest and felt Zenon's skin on his eyelids. He breathed in his smoky, lamp oil scent, and listened to his heart beat, and imagined it was the calls of the black birds outside of his window, a song of life and coming dawn, and he slept.
^^