Every Pairing Under the Sun

Author's Note: I may look like I'm being unproductive, but that's only because my drabbles this week were too short to put on So I stuck them in my fic-journal, as per usual for me. If you want to read my other things, they're there. The link's on my profile.

List: RenxAnna, RenxNichrome, KororoxManta, HaoxSquirrel, HaoxAmidamaru (YohxSpirit of Fire bonus. :P), HaoxManta,YohxRen, YohxOC, HorohoroxManta, YohxHoro, HoroxRen, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao, YohxAnna.

Yes, I know, I stuck RenxAnna ahead of everything else. I had a good idea for it. Hopefully it shall be funny.

I mean, if you enjoy having Ren with a box of chocolates impaled on his pointy hair.

Warning: I may interrupt it at any time to throw in a Chocolove/Tamao. If you don't like that, keep it to yourself. You don't want to hear me rant about how much Chocolove is ignored. For once – just once! – I'd like to see so much as a one shot dedicated to Chocolove. Possibly his romantic exploits, but also Chocolove. I mean, people whinge that Ryu and Faust are ignored. Chocolove doesn't get so much as a scene in most fics!

And when he does, his jokes are terrible. Worse than usual, I mean.

Disclaimer: I don't own Shaman King. Woe. Alas.

WARNING: The drabble ahead IS rated for suggestivity and sensual themes. (Not R, but just barely within the boundaries of PG-13.) If you don't like that sort of thing, refrain from reading it, as it shall doubtless only make you sick.


Drabble Six: A Greater Darkness

- I -

He had said, I wish I could be strong. and had cried those free-flowing tears until he had realized that the arms that held him were not anymore sympathetic than the world had been to him, this green-haired boy with the smile all in pieces.

He himself remembered holding him away, feeling the fluidity of the bones beneath his callused touch, saying If you wished it enough, you would be.

Adding You do not want it enough.

He remembered the sleekness of green strands beneath his touch, how they went through his hands like water and slid away.

He never could keep what he loved best.

- II -

He does not remember anymore how first he came to Jeanne-sama (or was it that she came to him?). He only knows the X-Laws; they who have made all of his life worth dying for.

He hates Lyserg, sometimes, for what he does to him, cups the evidence of his desire and grits his teeth because one hand isn't enough to hold it, he needs two and he's holding on so tightly and suddenly there is a release into dreadful ecstasy that is sin and delight at the same time.

He would gladly give up his life for the cause of the X-Laws, the X-Laws who have made his life worth dying for; except for Lyserg.

Lyserg, who makes his life worth living.

- III -

He did not understand at first, huddled almost clinging with a child's embrace to the gun that had been thrown out of the Iron Maiden. Marco liked things in black and white and what was so easily understood that it came out in vivid streaks.

The Iron Maiden had made it so clear, the division between black and white so much that the lines blaze and they cut him, purged him, rid him of all that was unworthy. She made love comprehensible; a beautiful thing that would redeem the world after its filth had been cleansed away by fire.

Lyserg made things dark again, drawing a child's finger across the bright line that divided Marco's light and dark so that they smudged and came together, forming tiny pools of gray in which he drowned.

The road to Hell, he remembered, is paved with good intentions.

And he could see every ion of those good intentions in a pair of wide green eyes, beautiful and hateful because of what he saw in them; redemption without purity, freedom without purpose.

- IV -

Hatred, he thought once, did not suit Lyserg – those exquisitely young features distorting into something old, the roots of which reached back into an antediluvian age that he could no longer fully remember. Too quick, too passionate.

Too infectious.

- V -

I need to be strong, he says, but this time says it differently, with hatred and with a strength that hurts Marco even as he smiles. It is the beginning of knowledge, the passage of plucking the apple from the tree and consuming it, seeds and all.

Stay with us. He replies, though he means stay with me, stay with me until I fade and die. Jeanne-sama is strong enough for all of us. You do not need to be strong.

I need to be. I will be. I will suffer everything that Jeanne suffers if only I may gain it.

Will you truly? He should have known the answer long before it left his lips.

And Lyserg replies: I will.

- VI -

The first night that he came, Marco was afraid that he might break him, and then have to explain the matter to Jeanne. But how to explain it to she who had never been tempted? (He did not understand the saint's temptations of breaking down, though he did now, with more clarity than ever he had when only dreaming his chaste dreams.) How to explain the need for Lyserg, caught somewhere between his lust and his heart, coalescing to become stronger than he could stand?

He did not explain it, to himself, to Lyserg, to Jeanne. But took him every time he came.

- VII -

He abhors how Lyserg looks at Yoh, how he wavers a little from his purpose; uncertain and unsanctified, a little whiter each time so that, towards the end, he looks like the resurrection of unholy bones.

Unholy bones, thinks Marco, that are my revival. And does not know in which sense of the sentence he means the words.

- VIII -

He remembers a man with sunlight hair and glasses, and a mind that would never understand this need, a mind filled with its own pompous righteousness and the arrogance of serving Jeanne-sama. He remembers faith that never needed love, and diligence that never needed prompting.

Wearily, a little wearily, he wonders where that man has gone now, and why his mind is dark with silence every time as he plunges into ecstasy.

- IX -

Out of guilt or some other emotion (he brushes off the thought that it is guilt; guilt is for the unsanctified, not for Marco of the upstanding X-Laws who shall save the souls of the world), he tries to alleviate the pain for Lyserg. The boy holds himself stiffly each time, coming in darkness and going away like a dream, though no dream has ever showed bruises in the morning.

He tries to count to ten, holding his breath to keep himself still and await Lyserg's pleasure too. But then he loses count and track, and falls into darkness alone.

- X -

X is for ten as well as for the X-Laws and their cross thrown askew, and sometimes he wonders if it isn't more than that – if his cross wasn't slanted a long time ago, and if it isn't Lyserg who has shown him some measure of truth at last.

He leans against the younger boy in slumber, takes off his glasses to clean them, watching the moon explode into blurs of color and ivory. Yellow so bright as to injure the eyes falls across his forehead, strands that no lover's touch will ever stroke away.

Beneath his back, he catches a sigh, a stirring, and then, a timid voice, threading through the air like a mouse's touch.

"Will my penance make me stronger, Marco-sama?"

He lies between his teeth, standing between Lyserg and everything that he has ever wanted, feeling the clench of sin even as the stirring of pleasure reminds him of his reasons.

"Yes." He says. "In suffering, there is strength."

He tilts the boy's head up, fingers clenching his chin with firm knowledge. "Believe in me." He whispers, but even as he says it, can see the stirrings of doubt and betrayal in the summer-green eyes where, he hopes, winter shall never come.

The desires of sin were quenched; substituted with the clenchings of a different kind.

Marco never could keep what he loved best.


(end)

Author's Note: Odd, I know – the next one shall be an off-beat comedy. Er. With romantic overtones, of course. I hope. You hope.

hastens on to reader reviews before she can be shot-

Garnet-chan: -gasp- Sacrilege! Besides, you know that Hao would never sully his hands by actually strangling the squirrel. I'm thinking of something quick. And hot. And as for your pairings… (I can't believe I took you seriously and put them there. They're on my to-do list. Gah.)

PrismaticMage: Hope you enjoyed it. I would have written something a little calmer and perhaps a little less scary, but Marco…

wasn't cooperating. –eyes the tied up Marco- Er. I have no idea how he got that way.

Kawaii Koneko92: It's there, it's there; calm down! –prods- And thanks. :)

Inulover4eva: Who're you calling little? –puffs up-

asn water: Yep, you can, but there'd be no point seeing as how I only intend to do RenxAnna and it's already up there. :D Don't mind, do you?

KimBob: Currently, it's down as HoroRen, but if I get an idea, it may change. Depends on a LOT of things.

Unbreakable Itako: :D Thank you! –feels all, you know, special and stuff- I love Anna, and try not to drag her out of character too much, so that's good.

Squirrel Fraulein: No killing? Aww… -misery- How about torturing? Is torturing open?

Nekoian: I find it odd that no one's ever thought of a HaoxManta before, seeing how they interact in the show. Hm. Thanks:)

love-chibis: Aah, you are a minor-character's fan. I immediately love you. –glomp- Although it's going to be tough, considering how little I know about Nichrome's personality…

A challenge. –waffles-