~Oneshot Collection: Loved~

Shadow Vision

He has been waiting for death for one hundred days. It has been that long since the infection began, spreading black and furious and final around his bloody arm; that long, since he last stood on his own two feet, since he last bore the weapons he had become known for, since he had last felt like a whole man, a whole person.

The time before that hundred days, before the suffering and the agony that had inflicted worse torments on his mind than on his body – that time runs before his eyes now like a hazy, shuttered dream. He wonders if it had actually happened, if it is really his life he is remembering, or perhaps just the fever, the terrible fever that sweeps over him like waves of fire -

Fire, bright and dancing in his eyes, dancing like a thing alive, consuming the ruins, the bodies, the night.

"You're so slow -"

"I'm slow? Ha -"

"You sure are – and look at this – this mess!"

Silence between them, full and deep, neither of them laughing, then both of them laughing, laughing in the midst of death because they are alive, laughing in the midst of destruction because now, here, in this moment, something new is waiting to be created from the ashes.

Rain falls out of a darkening, stormy sky. The downpour is torrential; the flames among the ruins are quenched.

But not the burning of the One-Eyed Dragon; not the burning of his Tiger youth.

He grasps at the vision, at the memory, at the image fading before his eyes; it is gone, like wisps of smoke, vanished like all that is tangible of his life. The men who supported him, who stood around him – they are gone now, trying to make peace with the war that is his lands, peace with the violence that is spreading with the rumor of his indisposition. Of its ultimate and final permanence – of the inescapable, inexorable pull of his mortality.

The lands and powers and titles that were his – they are lost now, lost to weakness; if a miracle of the kami were to heal him now, it might not matter. What troops, what servant, would follow a defeated man?

No...he had come to the one battle he could not win, the one fight in which he was stripped of all confidence and all power; a defeat to which he would succumb, like all other men. He was mortal, after all – he was not meant to endure, he was not the sea or the sky -

The sky, the stormy, stormy sky.

The rain fell on them, washed blood away from their hands and faces first, and then, as they turned to each other, as they stared and then rushed and reached and fumbled, lips pressed together; the sound of the water in their ears, the sound of heartbeats in their ears; the feeling of hot flesh cooling under the flow of rain, the slickness of wet silk and wet skin beneath.

Lightning, explosive – the electric signals of Yukimura's nerves, tempered for pain, lost in ravenous pleasure.

Thunder, roaring – Masamune, mounting his lover, his hands rich with their gifts, their teasing, their touch deeply slow.

His tongue follows the path of many small droplets of water that cling to Yukimura's skin – and there are many, so many that Yukimura's moans of everywhere and more gain him only the torment of that feeling, again and again.

They are both samurai, both warriors, neither content to let the other claim a victory. Yukimura learns quickly and applies everything he learns – the dance of fingers on nipples, pinching, pulling, rolling, rubbing lightly, so lightly just over the very tips...

The pulsing sensation of those fingers on his erection, the lucid want in Masamune's eyes, the shifting throb of pleasure between his thighs, the gasp that tells him he has done exactly the right thing, reaching out to equal that pleasure for Masamune -

He arcs in his bed, legs spread, waits for more and more, feels the pleasure and the warmth and the rain fading, leaving him, drawing away like morning dew, like mist. The world is a blur when he opens his eyes, a whirling shadow of disoriented concern. He sees shapes like men and furniture consumed by shadow and fire, watches the patterns on kimono that come to close rupture and run out of reality.

He hears voices, and some of them are familiar, and some of them are not, but the more familiar the sound is the more he aches inside, wanting silence, wanting solitude, wanting this world to go back where it came from and leave him alone with his dreams and his desires.

In a single lucid moment he looks up and sees quiet sorrow on the face of his closest friend, his many-years companion, sometimes guard, sometimes guide, sometimes follower on a sorrowful road – always an advantage. Always a friend...but that was not enough -

It was not enough. It could never be enough, and when Masamune is finally hovering over him, blunt, rigid flesh prodding at the virgin entrance to his body, shivering with want as Yukimura is shivering with want – it is everything he wants, everything he has ever wanted, and that first invasion, the smooth pressure, the sensation – the sensation -

His hands clutch at the earth over his head; his body tightens and turns and he wails and begs for more, for deeper, for harder, for rough, rough, rough and love, love, love. He feels Masamune's mouth moving across his throat, down, his breath hot, panting, precious. He feels rhythm, passionate, perfect, cannot restrain a gasp, a moan, a cry that becomes a wail when Masamune prods something inside him, over and over and over.

His climax is sudden and sharp and intense, and he feels drained and desirous and there is a twitch, a pulse of fresh, overwhelming lust because Masamune is still inside him and the night is just now beginning, the moon just now rising -

It is a crescent moon now, thin and dim, like a pair of cupped hands spilling night across the sky. It wavers in his vision, vision that dips into blackness and then resolves itself like disturbed water returning to stillness. The intensity of his memory fades, brushes itself back from the world.

For the first time in one hundred days he sees clearly, sees a face he has missed for so long now, it seems...

Firsts and lasts have blurred together in his mind, but he knows that Masamune is dead, knows that intimately, can still feel the shock of the moment it happened like it was yesterday, like it was now. The blood – the kiss.

The words.

"I waited for you, Red. Now it's your turn to wait for me."

"Is that why you're here? Is that what it all means, anyway? You – I waited for you just like you said -"

Moonlight fades and blends with sun and shadow. At his bedside, it is his Dokuganryu, sitting for a moment, smiling, and then standing and holding out a hand. Without thinking, Yukimura reaches out, and the pain of his terrible wound is a vanishing dream -

And one hundred days, and all that came before Masamune.

A vanishing dream.


Prompt #4: Insides

Premise: One of them is dying over the long term, and knows it.

A/N: A bit angsty, a bit unreal...Masayuki for the win!

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