Undertow
"I like curiosities," the Marshal said. The smell of cigarettes was thick in the air, thicker than the odour of cherry blossom outside or the scent of incense in the Bodhisattva's atrium. Piles of books made a maze of the floor, lurking in wait for the tread of the unwary. Despite the open window, none of the smoke left the room; it hung in coils, spiralling over the curious filled ashtray, acrid and bitter to anyone unaccustomed to this peculiarly obnoxious habit.
"Is that why you smoke?" Konzen asked. The book in his hands was a reassurance that the other man had something in common with him. It had been a simple shared glance at one of Heaven's neverending parties, an accidental meeting of the eyes and a recognition of his own boredom and frustrated intelligence being forced to run around a hamsterwheel of etiquette and formal courtesy. Someone who looks just as annoyed as I am, and for just the same reasons. How . . . unusual.
And then the other man had smiled, in sheer unabashed amusement at some utter stupidity droned out by a colleague, and that flash of genuine feeling had stung something.
Call it curiosity.
---
The Marshal had called on him first. He had been most polite, observing all the proprieties, and in response Konzen had refrained from his usual practice of claiming overwork or simply saying that he wasn't in. He would even have arranged tea, if he'd thought of it.
They'd discussed literature. It had been a most proper discussion, nothing that any of the plotters who wormed behind the woodwork of Heaven's courtly bureaucracy could have disapproved of, and nothing that the stratified standards of Heavenly aestheticism might have found improper. Except, from time to time, again he thought he'd caught that glint of humour in the Marshal's eyes, and heard a double meaning in the twist of a phrase. The elegance of the wit intrigued him. The dryness of it all amused him. The cigarette smoke was annoying but not unendurable.
When the Marshal was gone, Konzen threw the window open and breathed in the fresh air, clean and flowering with Heaven's eternal abundance, letting the wind carry away the smell of smoke. Such a petty, human habit to have. Such a careless, filthy, dirty thing. So . . . and at this thought, Konzen's mind drew away in fastidious habitual coldness. Within his sphere, everything was as he had ordered it. The flecks of ash which had drifted loose from the ashtray and were speckled across the corner of his desk were an intrusion. The faint smell of sweat and dirt was an intrusion, a reminder of fleshly things.
He wished that he'd remembered to order tea. It would have been a neat, tidy way to set bounds on the visit. One drinks tea. One talks. When one finishes the tea, the other person leaves. Social etiquette at its finest.
Wine was merely an aid to intoxication, and any sort of intoxication, any association with the senses, was an expense of effort and a waste, a shame.
It was that simple.
He brushed at the skirts of his white silk robe in case there was ash on them too.
And the Marshal had been wearing a battered white lab coat, rather than any sort of proper uniform. Was it some subtle mockery of the system and his status in the system, or was it simply that the other man didn't care?
What a strange concept.
---
It would have been unduly rude not to call on the Marshal in return. Though he usually had no objection to being rude, as the idiots around him generally deserved no less, the Marshal was intelligent.
Also, Kanzeon Bosatsu was bored. Being somewhere else might spare him her sense of humour for a little while.
Also, he was bored too.
---
It was early evening. The moon hung ghostly in the light sky, pale and luminous, washing the colour from the the swathes of blossom in the cherry trees, leaving them as white as Konzen's robe. The Marshal's labcoat wasn't the same pure shade; it was stained at the edges, bedraggled and limp at the corners, marked with nicotine and dust. "I don't smoke because of curiosity," he said, smiling, "though I suppose that it might have started that way. It was a while ago."
"Why?" Konzen looked down at the book again. On War. He didn't recognise the author's name. "It seems an odd habit," he remarked to the book's cover.
"Why?" The Marshal had lost his smile by the time that Konzen looked back up again.
Konzen looked for some answer other than the obvious, something which wouldn't cause offense in its statement. It's filthy. It stinks. It's human. It offends me. It isn't proper to Heaven. "It's such a physical thing," he finally said. "What justification is there for a physical vice which produces nothing?"
"A fair point." The Marshal ground out his current cigarette in an ashtray which overflowed with dead butts. "But then again, what justification is there for a mental vice which produces nothing? Or a spiritual vice?"
"I don't understand."
"Let me try to explain." The Marshal leant forward, interlacing his fingers. They were, Konzen noted with a mild feeling of annoyance, ink-stained and less than perfectly clean. One fingernail was ragged at the edge. "If something is done purely for the sake of pleasure, and produces no actual results of any sort, except perhaps the expense of effort, then what is it? A virtue or a vice? Is reading any better than smoking, or any worse? Is the act of meditation, purely for comfort, actually a virtue?"
"I don't meditate," Konzen snapped.
The Marshal surveyed Konzen with a predatory intelligence. "Then what do you do to relax?"
"I work." He jerked one shoulder in a stiff shrug. "Or this. This is relaxation, I suppose. But I'd hardly call it vice."
"Mm?" The Marshal shook another cigarette out of a battered packet and lit it, pausing for a moment to draw on it till the end glowed, eyes shut, eyelashes dark against his pale skin. "I'm enjoying it."
"That doesn't make it a vice."
"If you say so," the Marshal agreed amiably. He opened his eyes again, and smiled. "But how would you define the exploration of curiosity, then?"
Konzen considered, hands wrapping around each other, thin fingers folded together. "I suppose that depends on where it's going. There is healthy curiosity, and then there is pointless curiosity."
The dying light glimmered on the Marshal's glasses. "Of course," he agreed, voice as smooth as polished wood.
---
This was getting ridiculous. The Marshal was leaning on the corner of his desk again, discussing the peccadilloes of a general in the Eastern Army -- affairs with every woman in sight, apparently, and that was the least of it. Konzen snapped his papers together with an audible thump, setting them down on the desk in a neat pile.
"You could come for a walk outside," the Marshal said, abruptly changing the flow of the conversation. "By the look of that pile, you've taken care of your work for the next week. The fresh air would be a change."
"This," Konzen remarked to the papers, "from the Marshal who was saying earlier how much he wanted to escape from cherry-blossom-viewing parties and the endless spring breezes of Heaven."
"Anh." The Marshal drew on his cigarette. "You were listening." He managed to convey just the right amount of surprise in his tone; not enough to offend, but enough to make it clear that he hadn't expected Konzen to remember, and was flattered that he did.
"Of course," Konzen told the surface of his desk.
"But you don't want to go outside."
"Why bother?"
"You're bored. Is anything inside these walls going to change that?"
Konzen considered. "Probably not."
"Then come outside, or go somewhere else, or do something else. You could even go down to Earth if you wanted."
Konzen blinked at the very concept. "Are you serious?"
"Utterly."
"But why?"
"Because . . ." The Marshal considered. "You might find something interesting."
"It's only Earth." Konzen could taste his own distaste in his words. Physical, fleshly, carnal, a thing of mud and sweat, where short-lived creatures ran through their days like sheets of paper and turned the Wheel and died and lived and died again. "What's down there to interest Heaven?"
"Earthly things." The Marshal took a breath, let smoke drift towards the spotless ceiling. "You've been carefully avoiding them. How do you know for yourself what to think?"
Konzen hesitated. He would have said, Everyone knows, but he could see the glaring fallacies in that argument, and the statement of Heaven has always known that it is superior to anything that Earth could produce fell to pieces in view of the many flaws in Heaven.
"Yes," said the Marshal, breaking in on his silence. "Like that. It's an awkward position, isn't it?"
Konzen grunted.
"Of course," the Marshal continued cheerfully, "some of us find that quite interesting. But really, Konzen. You've spent all your time up here. When it comes to Earth, you're -- well, virgin territory. So to speak."
Surely the other man couldn't have meant anything else by those words.
The Marshal walked around the desk, and patted Konzen reassuringly on the shoulder. The physical contact was unexpected and brief, saving Konzen from the need to flinch away or draw himself up rigidly. "Indulge your curiosity."
"But, Marshal . . ."
"Tenpou," the other corrected him. "If you can manage to call your aunt "that hag", you can manage to call me Tenpou."
There should have been a counter-argument to that, but he didn't manage to think of it before the other man left.
---
He sat on the rock with his feet in the snow, looking down at the slopes of whiteness below him, feeling the bite of the wind on his shoulders and face. The dazzle of the sun was blinding, even to his eyes, accustomed as they were to the light of Heaven.
Perhaps Tenpou was right, and the mortal world did have its own charm. Here, away from people and their disturbances and incompetence, far removed from the smell of soil and sweat, it even had a certain beauty. An endless pattern of gold and white and blue, spreading out as far as the eye could see.
He kicked the snow.
He was bored again, and here, alone with his thoughts, with absolutely no disturbances, no disruptive aunts, no visiting Marshals, no subordinates to disapprove of . . .
. . . it was even worse.
Nothing changed here, either.
---
Tenpou put one hand to his mouth, and coughed. His face held a strange mixture of chagrin and amusement. "I think that you missed my point," he said, not for the first time.
"It was earth, wasn't it?" Konzen retorted.
Tenpou took off his glasses, and began to wipe them with the corner of his coat -- a procedure likely only to make them more dirty, Konzen thought with disgust. His eyes were a soft deep brown, the same colour as the wood of the bookshelves in his study. "It wasn't what I meant at all. Earth isn't a thing, it's a process."
Konzen placed his feet together precisely, feeling the soft leather of the sandals against his skin. The cold bite of the snow still stung his flesh. Even though he had known, he had known that it could not touch him or inflict any mortal pain on him, it had still been a physical sensation. His feet had been cold then. They were warm now. "An irrelevant one to us."
"Us?"
"Kami," Konzen corrected himself. "I suppose it might be more relevant to you than to me, given your work in the Army, but there is nothing down there to interest me."
"Mm." Tenpou donned his glasses again. For some reason, the gesture seemed reminiscent of a soldier donning armor. But the Marshal was a soldier, wasn't he? It was hard to remember that sometimes. "It took you longer than that to decide that my bookshelves didn't interest you."
"That's different."
"How?"
"They're . . ." He broke off. "Books," he finally said. "If there was anything good about the human race, you should be able to find it in there. They can write down their triumphs of philosophy, their little truths, their wars, all the things that interest you."
But Tenpou was shaking his head. "That's not what interests me about them."
"What does, then?"
"Everything that we're not. Growth comes from discovering things you don't know, not going over the same old terrain again and again and again. Their wars, yes, but the other things as well. The things that you might call petty. Violence. Sex. Humour. Little things. Cigarettes."
"That's the worst of humanity." The thought was alarming. What sort of person deliberately welcomed that sort of knowledge, and even tried to understand it? It would be like darkness coiled under the skin. Forbidden things. A wrongness in the veins. "And you spend your time thinking about that?"
"At least I don't hide it from you," Tenpou replied calmly.
"But don't you ever get tired of imagining the worst? Culturing it in your mind and deliberately sampling it just to know? You play through all these things in your mind, seductions, murders, wars, atrocities, obscenities, and I don't believe your face even twitches. It's all equally unreal to you."
"Or equally real."
"That's ridiculous."
"Not really." He smiled. "Do you call this real? This Heavenly existence? Where the cherry trees scent the air?"
"Of course. I live here."
"And your life is real?"
"Of course."
"You say of course a lot."
"Of cou-- What sort of answer do you expect when you ask a question which can only be answered by a yes?"
"I expect you to think." Something like anger glinted in his eyes. "I never thought of you as lazy."
There was a spark in the air between them. Cold, so cold below, but this is what heat feels like . . . He looked up into Tenpou's face, and he felt his stomach twist and knot. His shoulders tensed. No books, no words. "And what do you think of me?" his pride demanded.
Tenpou closed his eyes, then opened them again, but in that moment something drained from the room and was lost. "I think you're an interesting man, Konzen Douji," he said blandly. "I find you fascinating. I want to . . ."
"What?"
"Mm. I have to attend a staff meeting. Tell you later." And he was leaving the room, carrying himself as loosely as Konzen felt himself to be tense, white lab coat snapping behind him as he walked briskly off to wherever he was going.
Konzen sat there and stared at his desk.
---
"Seriously," he said, later, "why?"
Tenpou looked up from his book. "Anh. I wondered how long it would take you to ask a question."
Smoke coiled up from the oddly-shaped ashtray on Tenpou's desk, where a deposited cigarette was smouldering away the last of its life. The litter of scrolls around it was a careful half-inch away from potential flames, but otherwise in a cheerful, casual disorder which made Konzen itch to tidy it.
"I wonder how long it will take me to get an answer."
"Can't you settle for acquaintance?"
"I'm not sure what I would be settling for."
Konzen began to wander nervously around the room in brisk tense steps, picking up books and setting them down again.
"Does your aunt mind you visiting?" Tenpou asked.
"What would the old hag have to do with any of this?" Konzen replied on reflex. His hands were stacking a pile of books, brushing away dust, leaving them ordered. He couldn't help it.
"I thought se might -- whatever. I don't meddle in the affairs of the Bodhisattvas."
"You're lucky you don't have to." Konzen's words were dry with years of annoyance at the mighty Kanzeon Bosatsu, hir countless trailing messes which he would end up tending to or disposing of, and hir constant calm dark stare as se watched him, expecting something that he didn't know how to give.
"It would be interesting, surely," Tenpou mused.
"If you like that sort of interesting."
There was a twist of chain and leather in the open drawer under the pile of books, and at first the eye made no particular sense of it, and then it did, and the mind stopped and halted and would go no further. He slammed the drawer shut, hard, and across the room Tenpou lifted his head at the sudden noise.
"Are you interested in . . ." Konzen broke off. His vocabulary failed him. He knew the words, but they wouldn't make sense together, wouldn't fit with the dark man behind him in any way that permitted conversation.
"I'm interested in a lot of things." The words were still full of that pleasant good humour, as though the matter under conversation were perfectly normal.
Anger gave him the nerve to respond. "I don't understand."
"Don't you? I thought you liked abrogating some areas of responsibility."
Konzen's fingers clenched around the edge of the table, knuckles white with a fury that went bone-deep. How dare, how dare Tenpou claim that he was deficient in his duties. He might dislike the Bodhisattva -- the hag -- and he might feel little but contempt for the functionaries under him, but he had never given less than his best to his work. "You are incorrect," he snapped.
"But there are some things you don't like to think about." Tenpou pulled himself out of his chair, lazily, and moved towards him. "Politics. Human frailty. Dubious things. Imperfect things."
"Those aren't my responsibilities."
"They're part of life. You're alive."
"They're still not my responsibilities," he spat.
"And part of what that's about is not having to worry about things that aren't your responsibilities." Tenpou's eyes flicked to the drawer, then returned to Konzen's face. He leaned against the other side of the table. "Some people like that. Some people find some things easier if they don't have to make any decisions about what's going on." His voice was soft in his throat. "They don't want to want. They want it to be the other person's fault. The other person's desire. The other person's need. Nothing of theirs at all. They're helpless. And so, sometimes the other person is -- understanding about this. But it's not your responsibility to understand any of that, is it?"
Konzen closed his eyes. "Shut up." He couldn't close his mind. "Shut up."
A knocking at the door. A soldier's voice. A message for Tenpou Gensui. He could hear it as a background noise, a hum, a buzz, an irrelevant false note in the background of heartbeat. Tenpou Gensui was needed somewhere. Tenpou Gensui was needed down below. A military matter. But he'd never paid attention to military matters.
"Konzen." Tenpou's voice. He opened his eyes. Tenpou standing there, close enough to him to touch. "I'm required elsewhere. If you'll excuse me?"
"Of course," he replied, formal courtesy answering formal courtesy.
"Perhaps we can talk more later." Tenpou's hand closed on his wrist for a moment, and there was something in Tenpou's eyes that said, yes, like this, fingers against skin, it starts this way and then it went away again.
"Later," Konzen said, and wondered whether or not he was lying.
---
That evening, he heard one of his subordinates mention that the army squad had returned from its mission. So he knew Tenpou would be in his quarters. There was no escape through ignorance. The only two options were deliberate refusal or deliberate self-deception.
We can just talk. It'll only be talk.
All paths seemed to lead the same way that night. He listened to his sandals clicking on the marble corridors, and
Tenpou's hand on his wrist
put his hand against his forehead and
the other man's eyes
his body felt naked under his silk clothing, it had never felt that way before, and
it starts this way
it's only the body he's just a friend it doesn't mean anything important it comes and goes and
I find you fascinating
there had to be a way to separate body from spirit. There had to. He couldn't go on like this.
Do you call this real?
There was no escape through ignorance any more.
---
The moon was barely visible in the sky outside, thinned to a crescent. Stars -- those stars which shine in Heaven, for Heaven has its own constellations -- were impossibly clear and bright, with the distant perfection that Konzen had always enjoyed, but their light was vague and transient, leaving the garden outside in near-darkness.
Tenpou leaned against the corner of his desk. The lamplight lay like gold on the black leather skirts of his uniform, but his face was turned away, eyes invisible behind the opaque lenses of his glasses, mouth a thin line of control.
"Were you expecting me?" Konzen asked. His shoulders were hunched with tension. He made an effort and stood straight-backed, half jealous, half contemptuous of Tenpou's casual, physical ease.
"I was drinking wine," Tenpou answered. He gestured towards the flask on the desk, and the small bowl beside it. Jade, Konzen noted absently. Quality work. And he's put it next to his ashtray. "Did you come to join me?"
"I came to visit," Konzen said, neutrally.
"Then you have to drink." Tenpou smiled.
"I do?"
"You do. I insist." Tenpou picked up the jug, and filled the bowl again. "We ought to do the thing properly, don't you think?"
Konzen swallowed nervously. Again the tug, the draw, the urge to fall in with the pattern which the other man was proposing, the rules that he didn't know, the game that he suspected he had already lost. "You only have one bowl," he said feebly, remembering an earlier conversation. Unhygienic. Messy. Untidy. A physical complaint.
"There are ways round that," Tenpou said. He was still smiling. It shouldn't have made Konzen so afraid. He raised the wine-bowl to his mouth, and Konzen began to relax again. Just him drinking, that's okay, I don't really want to drink, I don't know why I did come in the first place . . .
Tenpou was walking across the room towards him in a quick smooth glide of dark leather and motion.
I don't know the rules of this game
Tenpou raised the bowl to his mouth for another swallow of the wine, then let it drop. The jade shattered on the dark floor, pieces flashing as they spun across the floor, reflecting the lamplight. His foot came down on one of the pieces, grinding it into the floor. Drops of wine stained the scattered papers.
I don't even know what I did to start playing it
Tenpou took Konzen by the shoulders, leather-gloved hands firm through the thin silk of his robe, rocking him back up against the wall. He pressed his lips against Konzen's, parting them carefully, sharing the wine, sharing a kiss, eyes sharp and focused, body there against him, muscle and leather and heat and the smell of sweat and cigarettes and the wine burning in his mouth.
Konzen choked, tried to cough at the taste and at the shocking intimacy, but there was nowhere to retreat to. He knew that he was shaking, no, trembling, a pitiful reaction, a human reaction.
He closed his eyes and returned the kiss. Tenpou's tongue inside his mouth, against his own, an intrusion, something new, something which he had to force himself to hold still and accept. His breath coming short and hard. His knees weak. Having to balance himself against Tenpou, having to hold onto him as Tenpou pressed him against the wall, holding on like a drowning man in a deep river.
Tenpou withdrew, broke the kiss, enough for Konzen to breathe again. "I will apologise if you want me to," he said. "Or I can apologise later." His fingers slid down Konzen's arms, leather gloves pressing through the thin silk gloves, closing around Konzen's wrists.
say something say something say something
Konzen looked into Tenpou's eyes, dark as earthly metal, and said, before he could let himself think further, "Apologise later."
"Anh." Tenpou leaned in again to kiss him, and he hadn't known there were so many nerves in the mouth, enough to make him feel dizzy, to make him burn through the silk at the heat of the other man's body against his, making him tight and hard down there . . . no, too fast, this was too fast, and habitual caution made him try to draw back for a moment, shoulders pressing against the wall.
Tenpou drew back in response. "What do you want me to do?" He smiled, and it was still the same cheerful smile, with eyes as uncompromising as iron, as firm as Tenpou's hands, and Konzen felt his stomach turn over. "Do you want to --"
"No. No, I don't . . ." Konzen tried to move his hands, but Tenpou still held him firmly by the wrists. He wanted to say, I'm afraid, but there weren't any words for that. "This wasn't what what I thought, what I saw -- I don't know, I don't read your books!"
"This isn't about books any more." Tenpou released his right wrist, moved one hand up to brush the side of Konzen's cheek. "You have always looked at me with those cool eyes, so much purer than the rest of Heaven. You don't play our games, don't foul yourself with our politics. So . . ." His hand slipped down to toy with Konzen's collar, and his mouth moved along the line of Konzen's jaw for a moment. "So much like sunlight. Warmth for the heart."
Konzen tried to say something, and then Tenpou's hand was sliding down his chest, down to his groin, and touching him there, and he was arching his back against the wall till his shoulders ground into it, and making noises into Tenpou's mouth as Tenpou kissed him again, and now he had to lean on Tenpou, free arm around Tenpou's shoulders, trying to pull the other man closer to him, through the boundaries of clothing, tighter, flesh against flesh.
"Anh. This way . . ." Stumbling away from the wall into Tenpou's arms, guided the few paces over to Tenpou's desk, bending forward over it, feeling the cool wood against his cheek, scrolls rattling to the floor. Conscious of silk moving against his legs as his trousers were slipped off him, but still more conscious of the hand moving over him there where everything seemed to come together, seeing the world in ridiculously short focus where his face was pressed against the desk, feeling it almost come to a point, almost, and starting to cry out but then biting his tongue and curling up somewhere small inside because he wouldn't let himself break, not in front of anyone, least of all in front of Tenpou. Hearing the other man's faster breathing. The room shouldn't be so quiet, no room in Heaven had ever been this hushed before, this surrounded in a bubble of stillness because they were the only people there --
Something -- a finger probing into him there where, no, the brain knew technically what happened when two men lay together and it had been one more reason for him not to think about it, Tenpou's hand on him stroking him again making him groan, Tenpou's finger inside him, cold and slippery as though there was something on it, moving inside him, his own hands clenching in the papers that still littered the desk, trying to get out the words for no stop but they wouldn't form properly in his mouth, then choking as Tenpou's hand tightened on him again. The whole thing seeming to come together in a way that burned in his chest and made him close his eyes because there was no room for anything except physical sensation.
Something bigger now -- it hurt it hurt oh god it hurt and it -- Tenpou's body pressing against him, Tenpou's voice murmuring something soothing in his ear, blurred, indistinct, rising and falling, the papers tearing in his hands, in and out, he needed Tenpou to, to, there, at last, pulling him out of himself, Tenpou holding him down as he cried out, his body jerking and trembling, the world going a thousand miles away and Tenpou's arm around him but who do I hold onto and so tired, so tired, wanting to curl up and hold onto something and shut his eyes but who do I hold onto and the taste of wine still in his mouth.
---
They were in Tenpou's bed. They had ended up in Tenpou's bed. There were little bits of his memory that were blank, full of physical sensation rather than sight or hearing, and the bed smelt of Tenpou, all sweat and cigarettes and leather. And Tenpou curled up behind him, one arm draped across him, Tenpou smelt of Tenpou too.
"I can't do this," Konzen said into the empty space in front of him.
Tenpou's arm stayed relaxed, Tenpou's breathing was calm, Tenpou's body was still firm against him. "Can't do what?" Tenpou's voice asked, but he knew that Tenpou already understood.
"You can pull me," he said slowly, "and I can come. Or I draw you, you say. And you come to me. But it's not what either of us wants."
Tenpou's breathing behind him, slow and smooth, Tenpou a body he could relax against if he let himself, but then there came the fascination, the fall, the complex patterns of the other's mind, the warmth of his flesh.
"You don't want to have to seduce me," he said, and knew it was true. "I don't want to be seduced. But it's the only way we're going to end up like this."
Tenpou sighed, the first change in his breathing. "I have never been less than honest with you."
"Then don't change now," he snapped.
"Stay till morning?"
Acid coiled in his stomach. "Why?" So you can seduce me again? So I can shut my eyes and have you kiss me and pretend it's all you and nothing of me?
Tenpou shifted his hand to rest on Konzen's shoulder. Skin against bare skin, but nothing more to it than simple contact. "Because I enjoy your company, Konzen Douji."
"That's all?" He wondered what Tenpou's eyes would show, if he were to roll over and look. He didn't move.
"That's all," Tenpou said.
---
Fanfic Page