Disclaimer: This fanwork is based on characters and situations created and owned by Minekura Kazuya. No copyright infringement is intended or implied, no profit made.

Practical Self-Reliance

"You know, I couldn't have designed this uniform better if I'd had you for a model," Tenpou beamed, his hands seeking to remove said uniform with rather single-minded dedication.

Tenpou, Kenren had long since discovered, didn't fish for compliments, so much as find one lurking nearby and bludgeon it repeatedly before dragging it back home to gnaw on at leisure.

Persuasion

"Fuck..."

Kenren looked up, a wicked little smirk curving the corner of his mouth. He slid his hands up the length of Tenpou's thighs, curling fingers over the loose fabric of his pants and tugging them down over thin hips. Pressed a soft kiss to the valley where hip turned to abdomen, tongue tracing a trail across the smooth expanse of skin. Glancing up again, he let his breath feather over the hard length of Tenpou's cock.

A tiny grin replaced the smirk when Tenpou's hand combed into his hair, gripping tightly and tugging him forward, a demand growled into his name on Tenpou's lips.

"Soon, I promise," Kenren mimicked Tenpou's own statement of a few hours before, and stood up.

Tenpou snarled, giving Kenren a look that was a precise mixture of ire and pout. "Fine. Heat the damn bath, then."

The Gift

Well, what the fuck was he supposed to do with this, now? Kenren held it up again, twisting it in the light, his brow furrowing as he watched it get no better from any angle. Just who the hell did they expect to wear this thing? There was enough chain attached to efficiently truss a grown man, for the love of...

He spared a moment to reflect on the pleasant images that came with that thought, as well as the immense satisfaction that indulging it would bring him.

"Isn't it cute?"

Fuck. There was nothing for it. No one did the kicked-puppy look like Tenpou (something that only Kenren and one other person in all of Tenkai knew he could do, let alone did), and Kenren would inevitably crumble in the face of it; he always did.

"Fucking Tenpou," he grumbled, looping the chain around his shoulders. He fiddled with it for a while longer, trying a few different configurations before he found one that worked, and was comfortable. Grimaced a little when he looked in the mirror, and reached immediately for his duster. Maybe that would help.

It did, oddly enough, though nowhere near as much as Kenren had hoped; the metal skull-thing (he had no idea what it was supposed to be) sat in the middle of his chest, the open edges of his uniform framing it and hiding most of the chain. He sighed heavily and finished getting himself together. Drills in thirty minutes, he still had to get to the grounds, and he was already going to have to add time, in order to make up for the five minutes the men were going to waste laughing at their General.

But Tenpou would smile.

Ties

Kenren had never quite figured out why, of all things, Tenpou chose to wear a necktie. No one else in Tenkai ever wore one, and it wasn't as if Tenpou even wore one properly, for crying out loud. His tying of the damned things seemed to amount to a kind of absent winding of string around his neck and knotting it so that it hung in a vaguely downward direction. The only explanation was that neckties were of Lower World.

Or so he had thought, until he decided to clear out the little closet in the back corner of Tenpou's office.

Kenren pulled the door open with a creeping sense of dread; if he'd found a bird skeleton among the books, there was no telling what the fuck was going to come tumbling out of this closet.

Nothing happened. Nothing fell, or tumbled, or slid, or shifted or...anything that Kenren had grown to expect of any previously unexplored space owned by the Marshal. Cautiously, he reached inside, pulling the string dangling from the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. There were shelves inside. From floor to ceiling, shelves. On the shelves were many, many different things.

Most of them were from Lower World, all of them looking rather abused, all of them fixed up in a distinctly Tenpou way - with neckties. There were dolls with necktie bandages, miniature chairs with spindles and rockers tied on, sheaves of paper with neckties wound around them... There had to be hundreds of them, all neatly placed side-by-side on their shelves, dust thick on them. Except to the right of the door, where there was still a little space, and a few items that hadn't had time to gather much. And one, single tie that sat all by itself, clean. Kenren reached out and picked it up, the only tie in the entire closet that wasn't attached to anything.

Except that it was. Kenren turned it over in his hands, recognising the pattern on the silk, immediately identifying the dark stains that meandered over it. Raised a hand to cover the place on his arm where a youkai blade had bitten, having glanced off his ribs. Kenren folded the material up and placed it back on the shelf.

He'd have to buy a lock...

Never Again

Oh, for the love of....

"Tenpou!"

After a moment, the Marshal poked his head round the corner of a bookcase, eyebrows raised in inquiry. "Hmm?"

Kenren set his jaw, taking a deep breath before he dared to speak. "There something you'd like to tell me?"

Tenpou's head tilted slightly to the right, his brow creasing as he blinked at Kenren. "...Nothing I can think of just now, no. Why?"

He watched Tenpou for a long moment, eyes narrowing as he studied him. Sighed heavily when it became clear that Tenpou meant what he said, and reached for the paper that sat on the desk in front of him. Kenren pinned Tenpou with a Look as he lifted the corner of the paper...and the blotter underneath came up with it.

"Ah," Tenpou said, offering a sheepish grin, one hand rising to rub at the back of his neck, "I needed to seal that map we found on our last trip down to Lower World to a backing, and your desk was already clear..."

Kenren lowered the paper and its blotter companion back to the desk. "I see."

Tenpou shrugged apologetically (and ask anyone how the fuck that was even possible), and as usual, Kenren subsided. Just a little bit.

"Next time you get sealant all over my desk, the next thing it'll seal will be your pants."

Tenpou's mouth quirked up, but he did a creditable enough job of hiding it that Kenren just let it slide. "Understood, sir," he drawled, and Kenren decided that if he was going to have to prevent Tenpou's pants from coming off in the future, he'd best make the most of taking them off him right now.