Every Pairing Under the Sun

Author's Note: Yeah, this is going to update pretty quickly. Quicker than You're Mine, at least. Why? Because this is basically my 'training ground'. Some concepts here you may see more fleshed out in YM. Some concepts are just going to stay half-baked ideas.

For the people who give me the full-fledged ideas with their suggestions and reviews, I thank you ahead of time. :)

I was really torn between HaoxHoro and FaustxManta for this chapter, because both are really tough to flesh out and construct without taking everyone utterly out of context and etc. However, I finally settled on Hao/Horo because it's more difficult. Faust/Manta will probably be upcoming, because that's pretty difficult too. Hao/Anna is on my list, but rather more behind, because it's easier for me. It will be coming about Drabble 4 or 5 if I don't get more difficult ones. :flashes a grin:

(Order I'm going in: Faust/Manta, AnnaxLyserg (something even harder than HaoxHoro! O.O), YohxRen for the madness, YohxOC (not a fangirl, but an actual OC), RenxAnna, YohxHoro, MarcoxLyserg, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao. Eight lined up already… whee…)

Note: Following drabble (or fribble, a fic-drabble, because I just can't write short things) contains vague spoilers for Team The Ren's first Shaman Fight in the Patch Village. If you don't care for that sort of thing, move along with you.

Edit: I was going to write this a certain way, and then I read Bare, by Memphis Lupine. I don't particularly care if it had flaws (I didn't see any), to me it was perfect. What I read of it, what I saw of it, was beautiful.

This fic, despite being wholly different in themes and characters involved, is based on that one-shot, and despite the fact that said Lupine may never see this, I thank her for writing it. Oi. You people. Go read it and fill your plebian minds with fleeting inspiration.

Warning: Drabble Three features a veryOOC!Depressedbutindenial!HoroHoro and a SlightlyOOC!Hao. Thank you and enjoy.

Disclaimer: I own Shaman King about as much as I own you. That means that the day I purchase Shaman King, you all shall become my slaves and I shall take over the WORLD!

..Ahem.


(What might have been, but was not, and thank the Great Spirits for that.)

Drabble Three: Between Fire and Ice

They were celebrating.

It was reasonable, of course, that they should celebrate their first victory in the tournament; the first, Ren had claimed, of many.

It was reasonable that Ren should have sent Chocolove out to battle against the Boz and the guy who had the accent that distorted his words and enrichened them. Everything was so damn reasonable that he wanted to hurt it, hurt them, simply for the pure glorious illogic of it.

Now he breathed in the ingrained chill of night, twisting slightly so that the breeze brushed every inch of him and daubed him with the early cold of the evening. His people had lived side by side with the low temperature, grasping it and using it with an ease that came to them naturally, never understanding the illogic that lay beneath it and came easily to him now as his bitterness was blustered away.

Now he grinned, faintly and with boyish ferality as he bounded from the ledge to the streets, taking to the pathways with a furious, blinded speed. The wind roared its fury in his ears, striking him, pushing him back, but still he pressed on determinedly, hearing not its fury, but the echo of his heartbeat through his ears.

The streets were deserted at this time of night. No one to see the best beloved of the Ainu, the grace of Nature that might save them all, running as though he had nowhere to go.

-

Before he knew it (and did he know it, even now?), he was on the plateau, nameless, one of the many that seemed everywhere and nowhere at once in the Patch Village. Breathless, feeling exhaustion winding about his bones, he collapsed into the dust with careless gracelessness. He had always been gawky, and didn't care any longer when people noted that lack in him. He had more than enough to make up for it, and when he was Shaman King there would be no one to speak against him.

An elbow trailed listlessly through the dust, buttressing a profile of honest lines as blunted and sharp as hail. His eyes stared blankly at the moon, but if he saw it, that tiny glimpse was more than he saw anything else. If he saw the light, it was only because he was blinded to the darkness and the growing figure garbed in a snapping white cloak that moved through it as though he were part of it.

"The night is beautiful, isn't it?"

breaking up the darkness

the silence

the shadows watching them disintegrate into jagged pieces sharp enough to cut

"Yoh?" Even as he said the name, he knew that it was wrong – the bright, lighter sensuality to this voice was not that of the boy who had been his first opponent. He was not certain that he knew this voice at all. But…

ages and ages past must have known bright flashing like a dagger knife can cut

caressingly

with its rounded edge and

leave wisps of blood in its path

Delighted silver laughter slipped through the air, throaty, a stranger's tones in a familiar, beautiful voice. "Wrong!" The shaman said amusedly, and suddenly he was on the boulder a few feet away. "Will you guess again?"

Though the face was gilded by moonlight and was Yoh in all the petty physical ways that mattered, he knew that it could not be. Always brash, never subtle, he replied instead, "What are you doing here, Hiei?"

The other winced, but only faintly, so that the gesture appeared illusory and Horohoro wondered if he had seen it at all. "Hao," He said, a little more sharply than usual. "It's one character; not that difficult to remember."

"Not that difficult for people who care what it is. Go away." All traces of even the faint joy in victory had left him, and now he found himself coldly annoyed, distant from his emotions in a way that he had never been. It would have been frightening for him if he had cared for it, but he did not.

A faint, catlike smile, almost invisible in the darkness, though he saw it anyway. "I will, if you want to be alone."

I do. He said – or meant to. But the words took up residence in his throat and would not leave, lingering long after they should have been dead weight in the air.

"I thought so." Hao said, and a hand scraped lightly against the rocky surface to his side. "Come," he said. "Sit." And in the midnight blindness, the blue-haired boy did not think to disobey.

He sat and they were silent a moment, and though he was not one of the fools that mistook silence for peace, there was the faint edge of enjoyment to the moment that soothed his pain away. The other boy was so quiet as to be not there at all, and if he was not there, then there was nothing to complain of.

But eventually all mortals speak. And Hao was nothing if not that.

"Where are your friends?" Though the question was subtle, the words beneath were not; to Horohoro they blazed as clearly as daylight, etching like fire into his mind as they coursed through his veins. The other shaman did not say where are your friends so much as where is Yoh what is he doing why is he not getting any better?

"Shut up." He said instead, substituting in place of a less polite – and possibly anatomically impossible – suggestion. He closed his eyes, wishing that the other boy would quiet again and let him think, think until he finally came up with a thought.

A peal of laughter rang through the night. It sounded against his skin, vibrating in a manner that was not entirely unpleasant. "You remind me of someone, Ainu." The rich voice said silkily, indulgently. "And to think I had thought you weak…"

He shrugged again and tried not to let that suggestion eat away at his thoughts and poison them, though they did all the same. "Everyone thinks so." He said. "It does not matter."

"To them?" He could hear laughter again, strained and barely contained, in the other boy's voice. "Or to you?"

"Either!" The temper he had kept barely under control was fraying again, and with it, the anger that he kept determinedly hidden deepened. "Why can't you listen when I tell you that it doesn't matter!"

"Who doesn't it matter to?"

"No one! Anyone!"

Lips curved into a smile – lips so familiar that he could have sworn they were his own. "But there you're wrong." The shaman murmured, and smiled. "It matters to me."

Anger roiled briefly before subsiding again. "Trying to annoy me?"

"I would say succeeding more than trying."

"Well," said the Ainu, "go try somewhere else. I'm not up to these games. Nor do I want to be."

"Don't like these games?" Hao asked, with a voice like silk and raw fur still dense with sweat from the spirit that had only briefly departed. "Then shall we try something else?"

The blue-haired boy glanced up sharply, and in his gaze was the notation of faint alarm, that he had begun to understand the hypnotic spell of the other shaman and was only beginning to struggle to break free from it. But already it was too late – the other boy's lips met his own in a collision too gentle to contrast the sudden upheaval of his thoughts.

There had been no girls at home, in the village where he dwelt, that had caught his interest. Idly, occasionally he had wondered what they must be like, those soft buxom curves with which they flirted and flounced about. But that was all that they had been – idle wonderings that had never waked fire behind them.

This had fire – a roaring flame into which he fell and drowned and was seared a thousand times over before fading into ashes that would flutter away upon the wind.

Raising his head blearily, he stared into eyes that were dark and unsympathetic, hooded with amusement at his plight.

"What was that about?" He said, a little wonderingly, fighting the urge to trace the curves of the shaman's cheek even as he battled against a steely calmness to summon anger – or at least a confused indignation – into his demeanor. There was no tenderness there… but it had been his first kiss and he was still a little dizzily wistful at the memory of it, the property that was now only fleeting reminiscence.

Hao merely shrugged, smiling lithely, mildly. "Did you enjoy it?" He asked in stead of that response, but knew even as the words left his lips that there would be no reply.

He stood stock still for a moment, still more awkward than usual. And before his senses could return to him, he turned to run, stumbling slightly in the dark as he darted away, fleeting like the first snowflake of a coming storm.

And as the Ainu scrambled from the plateau, the fire shaman allowed himself a faint smile. Grasping a fold of his clothing and lifting it to his lips, he blotted the kiss away with a light, ingrained disgust.

-

The next night, when the moon had thinned slightly, Hao turned and glanced into the darkness. Though there was nothing to be seen, a faint smile traced its way upon his lips, stumbling like a blind man in a bramble maze.

"I did think that you might come."

"Were you certain?"

"Relatively."

And there were no more words to be spoken; only a physical need that had been honed to a dagger-sharpness that was, as the night wore on, alleviated.

-

"Baka Ainu!"

The exclamation was lost before ever it touched his mind, though it passed through his ears cuttingly enough so that he turned to glance at the speaker. A deadened gaze surveyed the irate Chinese shaman who stood in the doorway, then glanced past him as though he had not seen him there. And it was that which irritated Ren further.

"The whole damned Patch is talking about it!" He roared, striding from the midst of the doorway impatiently, bearing down upon the blue-haired boy with the strength that he had once thought his father to encompass. "How Hao is seducing away the shaman to his cause – quite literally! And that he's started the whole thing with you. Two weeks ago." Irritation firmed his hands and directed their path as he clenched them into rounded, childish fists. "Tell me if it's true! I know you've been odd for the past two weeks, but it can't be that." He shook that away as though wanting to disbelieve in it even as he recognized it as the only possibility.

Angrily he shook the unresponsive shaman's shoulders, as though agitating him would stir his soul again. "Tell me!" He said again.

And from the impassive depths of Horohoro's eyes, a response formed.

"Are you jealous?" His voice was dulled steel, unpolished but still sharp enough to cut.

Molten gold was sliced into two tiny slits as the Chinese shaman glared at him impotently, though the pupils had shrunken, taken aback. "Jealous of what?" He speared the Ainu boy with three words, keeping him still and present to listen when he was unwilling. A pause. "He's mad, crazy, thick-headed... mad."

"He's not."

"He's mad and you know it. You have only to look into his eyes to see that he's not all there. He's obsessed—" An arrogance made hot by his irritation slid from his words as he said this, as though this obsession were more than the mere ambition that he himself harbored, "Obsessed with the idea of becoming Shaman King. He'll kill for it; strike down whoever's in his path."

"You killed." Horohoro said coldly with a voice like the winters through which his people had endured. He turned away, but over his shoulder, he said, "For your entry into the Shaman contest, you killed, Ren, and have you ever regretted that? Have you ever mourned properly for the officiant you murdered?"

He did not look back to see the other shaman stiffen, breath caught up and lost in his thoughts. Nor would he know that when he slammed the door, the motion was enough to stir a single drop of liquid salt and splash it onto the ground.

-

"They don't like you."

"None of your friends do; not even the precious, amiable Yoh does. And have you ever thought that they might have their reasons?"

A careless shrug; boyish fingers raked indifferently through the soft blue of his hair. "Does it matter?" He countered.

A gaze made cruelly apathetic by too many centuries of life studied him momentarily. "To you I suppose it doesn't." The brunet said, so softly that the wind whipped it away almost before the Ainu had time enough to hear it.

"Damn straight." He was exultant again, smirking, smiling casually, though only Hao could see how fragile the façade was, how only one word in the right (or was it wrong?) pace would be sufficient to crumble it. Riding the high, before it faded and he was allowed to fall, he leaned over and skimmed light kisses across the other boy's jawline, experience he learned in only a few weeks that passed like days.

Lips harsh and dry, he brushed them carelessly, coarsely over the other boy's skin before encountering lips as familiar to him as his own – perhaps even more so.

Surprisingly, it was Hao who held back, desisting coolly, with casual manipulation. Thumbs pressing lightly into the hollows where his collarbones and the demesnes of his shoulders clashed, he held the blue-haired boy away, studying him with amusement and a distant smile.

"Tell me." He whispered, and his breath was so close that the Ainu felt it sweep his skin, searing like wielded flames.

Tell you what? He wanted to ask, but knew better than to feign ignorance. Pressing all his weight against the immovable barrier, he murmured against it – so close and yet so distant – "I want you." Perhaps only Hao was the one to see how he hung his head briefly, how the strongly held gaze allowed the lashes to flutter and fall like closed gates – gates that had been broken and conquered.

Loosing his grip upon the other boy gradually, he allowed their lips to touch again, a brief, chaste embrace that did not suit him as passion did, though he wore it with the same grace as he did everything else. It lasted only a moment, through no fault of HoroHoro's.

When that moment had gone, he broke away again.

And smiled.

His smile was the cruel twist of a blade, where the light was bent and warped into shapes it had not intended. It said much about the beauty of broken things, and of the tiny shard of Horohoro that the fire shaman wore like a jewel, glinting and precious and immovable from his possession. And when Yoh called his companions together again to form the intricate design that friendship had bound them to, the blue-haired boy would not be among them.

Hands twirling intricately to wind about them the voluminous beige of his cloak, he pivoted upon one foot and left the clearing without further notice. A whisper escaped him, faint as the streaks of dawn that crossed the skies.

"And whoever said I wanted you?"

---

Author's Note: I even copied Memphis Lupine's way of separating her sections… -.-; Ah well, it suited the simplicity; read and review?

soccer-cutie67: If he weren't so evil, he'd be less attractive. :P So yeah. It evens out.

Monon: MarcoxLyserg.. a slightly harder one, though not too hard. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

Unbreakable Itako: I have ideas for it already. Pity Lyserg ahead of time; he's probably going to need it if the drabble I have in mind comes out right…

Frances Gray: Faust/Manta coming right up.

Kawaii Koneko92: I'm not too fond of Hao/OC myself, considering the fact that I've only seen two fanfictions on it so far and both of them have been horrible, mind-boggling Mary-Sues. I don't mind Mary-Sues as a generality if they're well written, but these two were not.

Inulover4eva: No it wasn't you… I didn't think you were that much of an airhead. ;)

asn water: RenxAnna it is; I've always wondered slightly about it ever since I saw the end of episode 62. And now I have the opportunity.. although not necessarily an idea yet.

Garnet-chan: Adore them. :P You have a brilliant simplicity that's very appealing. And yes, I've got those two in line to be written sometime during the next month or so…

Aww, but fribble is so much more fun to say! :(