Author's Notes.
This is a bit of an Alternate Universe, mainly because of the borderline shounen-ai obsession I've inserted here. 'Texhnolyze' is an anime with plenty going on for it, with a beautiful 'end-of-the-world' background and interesting characters.
I've placed the vocabulary list at the end.
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"Silk Tie" isn't quite complete, but as I believe there are far too few Texhnolyze fics out there, it is going up. If you've any suggestions for this lowly writer, you're very welcome.
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Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of characters, settings, or any and all parts of this piece of fiction that bears any resemblance to the lovely anime, Texhnolyze.
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Silk Tie
by letmeupme
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Toyama never really changed expression.
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So Ichise wondered why Toyama seemed to truly smile sometimes, without ever moving his lips.
But there it was. Just like after the time at that harbor, and when Ichise almost said goodbye to the living world for not knowing when to Reigi, and when the Organo first broke out into this frenzy.
Whether it was Toyama expressing some perverse pleasure at Ichise's mishaps, or the violence, Ichise never knew, but he did know it seemed somewhat satisfied, and somewhat amused.
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Seeing that same non-smile felt disconcerting combined with hands that really knew what they were doing.
Slightly callused from handling a sword, the skin seemed paper thin and was cool to the touch. You could feel the bones, their structure through that skin, and like their owner, Ichise found them somewhat tolerable.
Ichise vaguely wished that the boss's mistress had had hands like Toyama.
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Sometimes Ichise felt that Toyama's non-smile was a way of rewarding others for behaving well. Like you might smile to a mongrel you'd picked up off the streets. There you go, now you've learned to shit where you ought to, you don't stink the place up as much, do you?
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Even then, Toyama could have been touching his dog, with that strangely gentle, mocking caress that seemed to go on and on.
Dogs can be petted, dogs can be kicked.
Never let it be said that the street-wise don't need companionship. If you've survived long enough to be street savvy, you've had your fair share of being petted and kicked, and would know enough to impart the same care to others. Toyama Haruhiko, he was like that, too. He'd probably had the same education as Ichise.
Toyama, unlike Ichise, had a difficult relationship with authority.
He'd learned to fear it. If you steal food from the table, you get punished.
He also craved authority, somewhat. That's where Toyama got his crazy. Maybe it was a 'if you can't beat them, join them' kind of thing.
No matter his fighting skills, no matter his street smarts, Toyama's nonchalance was merely a façade to combat the abusive aspect of his desire.
Unlike a lot of the crazies around there, Toyama seemed to wish that the façade was his true face. That he felt no fear, that the Cheshire grin he wore day in day out was simply a reaction to the thrills and chases that came along with being an aspiring yakuza. Ichise noted that the sentiment seemed genuine.
Ichise also didn't give a damn about such fears, nor did he usually care about those who craved and shivered in their boots about the meager power pie to be shared in their wonderful little shit-hole known as the underground city Lux. But he respected Toyama, and that was enough. He'd seen the fear all around him as his fucking motherland, Lux cherished and reared the tiny wolf in him, as a child, and he knew enough that sometimes, for fucked up guys like Toyama-
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Wet flesh lapped at the moisture beading on his upper lip.
"Do you like that?"
As he moved lower, and lower,
"Does it feel good?"
"Does it feel any different to what you've had in the past?"
"I've always been told I'm exceptional at giving head, but terrible at being on the receiving end. Does that make me a passive seme, or an aggressive uke?"
Holding Ichise down from what had been beginning to be an exceptional kiss, he grasps Ichise's hands and their pressure points with a deceptively soft touch and brings them to his face.
One long moment later, Ichise's hands are freed, and his neck is held hostage, disallowing movement as Toyama plunders his mouth.
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-they loathed that which held it over them. They'd try and try to get out under it, and that usually, for fucked up guys like Toyama, it could work out as in a bullet in the back of the head.
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"I appreciate your hands, Ichise-san. One bears scars appropriate to your fighting style, and the other has a surface as immaculately.. clean as your ethics."
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Ichise tried wondering, sometimes.
Wondering how fuckers like Toyama came to be fuckers, and how one downer like himself could possibly contemplate trying to fucking save a fucker who seemed to be barreling closer and closer to that bullet every day,
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-and then he left wondering behind. He'd once seen the words "Alice in Wonderland" written on a cover of one of the books in a medicine man's bookshelf. Stood to wonder that a pot dealer would fill his shelves with things that sounded stupid and intimidating at the same time, and it stood to logic that a pot dealer would own enough books to fill a bookshelf. Books were things of the old world, of the world Above, and were so hard to come by they had nothing to do with to-be fuckers and downers.
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"I knew you to be stoic and to the point, Ichise-san, but do you always have to give your opponents such a hard time? That sweet little flower girl will never like you if you act like such a boor in front of her."
Toyama then stopped smiling, stopped talking, and despite the small jab at the young prophetess he revered for her straightforwardness and innocence in the twisted city, Lux, Ichise lost track of time in Toyama's touch.
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Definitely aroused, the next time Toyama spoke, he crooned.
"What if I told you I hated your guts, and I intended to finish the job once I'd taken what I wanted?"
A slight accent that he must have lost upon his ascent in the yakuza accentuated Toyama's speech. The slip in his usually impeccable vocabulary seemed vulgar, somehow more so than the daily slough that pours out on the Lacan streets.
"My family, my father. My fellow street rat brothers. They all believed that physically violation is what makes a pussy. Do you think so, too? I'm not so sure nowadays. You with your big muscles and guns. It doesn't take much to lower your guards, it sure doesn't take much more to slit your throats. Ain't anyone shown you when you began your worthless lives of breathing, shitting sewage? I'll show em violated. It don't need to hurt, it don't need to die, it don't need money, it don't even need–"
The hands touching him grew more insistent, and the sight before Ichise grew at once more vivid and distant. Almost fervently working towards an unseen goal preparing both Ichise and himself, Toyama seemed to be released from the rules and the culture that bound him day to day. Ichise felt both hot and cold, and perhaps for the first time in his life-
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He cared.
He cared without the reverence, admiration he felt for Onishi-san, he cared without the sorrow and the regret he felt for his parents, he cared without the anger and the ugliness he held for the men in the city.
He cared for the pettiness and the façade, all the different tired, sorry interiors, the shivering uncertainty and the strength that pushed them to live another day.
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. Vocabulary:
Lux – A chaotic underground city, Lux, which is governed by yakuza and has an almost primitive feel for its violence and crime. Lux is also known for producing the weed that affects the immune system, allowing for the denizens of Lux to 'technolyze' their body.
Gabe / Ran - A rural village of Lux. It is said that the inhabitants descend from the historic leaders of Lux, and members of the Organo are seen seeking council in the anime. They protect their lifestyle with zeal, and they worship Ran, a young prophetess who sees the future. Gabe is different from the rest of Lux, in that it has a structured (non-chaotic) , albeit medieval environment.
Texhnolyze – The technology used to attach and incorporate artificial limbs to a human body. Its uses range from classic prosthesis to accessorizing oneself as one would with a tattoo. Considering that the city claims its many opposing mafia clans as its governing force, a metallic middle finger that can lengthen and sharpen at will would certainly come handy in everyday life. Texhnolyzed people are prohibited from professional fighting, and there is even a Luddite force called the Union that sees Texhnolyze as a threat to the mind and body.
Lafia – A flower of a type of liverwort that can only be grown in Lux. It disrupts the immune system, and is used in texhnolyzing.
Organo – A board of Mafia leaders that preside over Lux, including an Onishi and a Kohagura, under which Ichise and Toyama work, respectively.
Lacan - A quickly growing group of youngsters who contest to Organo's iron rule, they gather under a sole rule, freedom.
Class – A mysterious governing power from Above, which seems to have more monetary funds and clout than the Organo.
Above – As opposing to the underground city Lux, which is easy to enter from the Above, but is nearly impossible to leave. In the ending chapters of the anime, the Above, which is previously imaginable as a rich, affluent land with a population of upstanding citizens, is exposed as a clean, sterile land with a dying civilization and its ghosts. The Class, thought to be of the Above, are seemingly a different political entity, and are also dying out.
Shapes – Persons that have been Texhnolyzed from neck down, in accordance to a destructive political ideology introduced by a surviving member of the Class. The resulting robots are very uniform with clean lines, making for somewhat unsettling scenery.
Fraher – A perfectly fictional unit for measuring, even in the world of Texhnolyze
Saigo no – Japanese for "My last (piece of)-."
Sead – A glutinous, repulsive drink whose merits lie in its accessibility and alcohol content. Like Fraher, a word made for solely this story.