Dress Me In Silk
Hisoka-kun -- they still call him that, and he's still not sure whether to take it as acceptance into the group or yet another acknowledgement of his youth -- is hiding. The room is small and dark, and he could reach out to either side and touch the stacked folded kimono and obi, feel the silks and brocades against his hands. The air is dry and smells of herbs which he doesn't recognize.
He came back here to Kyoto to be certain that Muraki was gone. This was not something where there was the option of uncertainty, of deliberately closing your eyes and saying maybe or perhaps or I'll leave it be for today. This was cut into him. He had to know.
Watari's medical texts talk about levels of injury; the skin, the subcutaneous tissue, the organs below. Muraki's cuts had gone deeper than the skin. They felt as if they went all the way to the bone. That night on the ship when they had played poker, and Muraki had looked him in the eyes and smiled, his whole body had burned with it. Muraki was in his body, in his flesh and blood -- that dead body reanimated, that shinigami body given life by the mercies of Hell -- and he couldn't cut the other out.
As his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, he begins to make out some of the patterns on the piled folds of silk. The room is a maze of shades of light and darkness, lines crawling elegantly across the width of a robe until they are brutally cut off by the garment's fold. On the edges of his vision, the silks seem to heave and billow before stilling themselves again as he turns to look.
Hisoka forces himself to breathe deeply, and listens to the sound of feet outside. Voices calling, high and sweet, trained to giggle and coo and flatter for who knew how many years. Have you seen him? Did you see someone? Was there someone there to see?
Careless of him to let himself be seen.
I thought I saw someone down by the pond among the flowers . . .
He'd had to know, hadn't he?
Muraki defines his life just as much as ever. Before, he'd had to know who killed him. Now he . . . just had to know. Was the doctor alive? Dead? Still thinking those endless thoughts that somehow mingled desire and pain?
He had to know.
Hisoka shivers, and wraps his thin arms around his body. He rarely feels warm, however much clothing he wears. There's always the chill of that eternal night, with the bloody moon pinned in the sky and watching him coldly, the cherry petals crushed beneath him like smooth silk as Muraki forced him down and held him there and . . . how strange it was, how very strange, that such things could be hidden from the mind. One would have thought that they would be as tangible as the scars which laced the body.
It was common sense that made him duck into this small storage room, rather than expend energy to make himself invisible or return to Meifu. It would give him more time to investigate, and besides, what if Muraki were here? What if Muraki felt his presence, and came looking for him?
fingers on his skin, fingers on his soul
Hisoka concentrates on the present. So much safer than the past. Better to be dead than alive, if this was death and that was life.
The place is full of memories. They beat about him like butterfly wings, pressing at the edges of his control, like the brushing of a partner's hair against his body.
It was been a mistake to come in here, but like all such mistakes, it's a little too late to be realising it. Hisoka-kun is a stupid boy . . .
stop saying that, stop being there, stop being next to me and saying it in that dark voice which goes through my body and makes me want to curl up and struggle and do all those things which you proved were no damn use
. . . and Hisoka-kun is always going to be a boy now . . .
some people would want to live forever, but you and I both know that life must end in death, boy
. . . and, and, and . . .
He's kneeling among scattered kimonos now, the folds of silk spilling around him like a darker form of water, a thicker kind of wine, the shades rippling over the ground like bruises. He doesn't remember pulling them down around him, but the fabric is soft against his skin as he balls his hands into fists, warm against his lips as he tries to muffle his breathing.
Silk against his face. Hair as soft as silk. Skin as soft as silk. Two people in the room with him, standing where he lies, and tension between them in a tight cord, heat rising and burning in their eyes.
Too late now to let this memory be. The room is heavy with it, like some old perfume, and it will show him what happened, and nobody will save him.
"Tsuzuki," he whispers into the folds of silk, but nobody answers him.
The past closes around him, and he is another man now, taller, long hair falling unbound in a dark weight of silk over his shoulders and down his back, robe sensuous against his skin. He narrows his eyes as he looks at the other in the room with him, waiting for an answer.
"Tsuzuki," Muraki says, voice like a touch against the skin. "That is part of what it's about, yes." He has shed his white trenchcoat, and stands there in simple jacket and shirt and trousers, clothing unsullied white.
Oriya has drawn the other man in here so that they can speak out of the hearing of his geisha. There are seven women dead already, blood spilt and bodies carved open, and still his childhood friend looks at him with those distant eyes and does not see in any way that can be explained to another person. He reaches across and puts one hand on Muraki's wrist, as though the contact could make a bridge between them, but all there is now is flesh and blood and cloth. Nothing more.
"I am not trying to interfere with your project," he says, "but you go too far."
Muraki smiles at him. The curve of his lips is sweetly familiar. "There is no such thing as going too far," he replies. "There's always another cliff to fall from. There's always another edge to be pushed over."
"Don't push me." This time there is steel to his voice.
and Hisoka remembers the touch of swords in the garden at night
Muraki shrugs. His free hand reaches behind him to touch the folded silk of a kimono -- one hand in front, one behind, as though he is balanced on some edge of his own. "Who did this belong to?" he asks, but he already knows the answer. Oriya can see it in his eyes.
"One of the women you killed." Oriya cannot make his voice other than seductive. He has lived too long like this, shaped like a bonsai tree, warped to suit environment. "Nobody wears a dead woman's kimono."
and Hisoka lies there among the silks of women who died at Muraki's hands
Muraki shrugs. "They were nothing to me."
"They were something to me." Anger builds in him. He controls it. Hold, then strike.
"And am I something to you?" The question is all malice, meant to slide in like a knife. Always it goes this way, always he bends like a willow, always he submits and lets the other take a familiar control. They are two parts of the same soul, an older and a younger brother, and the younger must always give way and submit to being known and controlled. But this time there is a rare anger burning in him, and this time he no longer wishes to follow familiar paths.
This time he wants to push Muraki over the edge. There's always room to fall.
and Hisoka looks through Oriya's eyes at Muraki, and Muraki knows what's happening, and Muraki is smiling, and it's just another game of dolls
Oriya's fingers tighten on Muraki's wrist until he feels bone. "Yes. But it's different. After all . . ."
He kisses Muraki. And this time he's in control, he's the one controlling the moment, and he feels Muraki's mouth warm and soft and wet, tastes chrysanthemum tea, feels the other helpless in that moment of shock, and it rouses him almost unbearably.
". . . I'd never do that to them."
Muraki's visible eye glitters. He catches his breath. "Do you think I'm your woman?"
Oriya brings his free hand up to stroke Muraki's face. The other man's hair is as fine as silk. "There's always another edge to be pushed over," he says, and wonders at the sudden feeling of control, as Muraki submits to the touch. He brushes a finger against Muraki's just-kissed lips. Words come to him unbidden, cresting like a wave. "Are you going to bend for me?"
"Or?" A breath of a word.
"Or do I have to make you?"
it's so easy to believe that you're really in control, Hisoka thinks, when you're just playing the game that he wants, but it's only because he lets you
but you want to believe
but I want to believe
Muraki's eyes fall as though in compliance, and Oriya releases the other's wrist so that he can slide Muraki's jacket back from his shoulders and let it fall to the ground, strip his shirt from him -- such a parade for a few pieces of clothing, such a churning of tight excitement as he bares the other man like a toy, a doll, his own doll this time. He cups Muraki's face in his hands and kisses him again, then lets his hands move down to the other man's neck where the pulse throbs against his fingers, but still not enough, not enough . . .
"Do I have to make you?" Muraki murmurs into Oriya's hair.
Easier now with the provocation to spark anger again. Easy to sweep a pile of kimono from the shelves, and throw Muraki down into the tangle of silks. The room is suddenly heavy with the scent of spice from the disturbed folds of clothing, stronger than the smell of human sweat, stronger than the smell of human flesh.
Muraki lies there in the tumble of dark fabrics, body pale and perfect against them.
my doll this time, Hisoka thinks, my toy, mine to use, mine to hold, mine, my own
Oriya parts the silks of his own robes, and kneels down beside Muraki, pushing him onto his front, one hand in the small of his back to hold him down. The other man's face and arousal are muffled in the tangle of kimono. He can barely hear Muraki's breathing as he delicately traces one finger down the cleft between his buttocks, moves precise fingers over the tight dark ring, slides one finger inside and watches the other man jerk and shiver. Yes, that's it, that's right, he's the one in control now, he's making Muraki move to his will, he's the one making the other whimper and gasp and knot his hands in the silk.
yes
He's the one using Muraki this time.
yes
He's the one who's finally taking Muraki, buried deep inside him, his own hair falling like a thick curtain and brushing against Muraki's face as their bodies arch together, wrenching Muraki's arm up behind his back so that the other man can't reach down and give himself relief, listening to Muraki's desperate breathing, those tiny catches in the throat, those half-whimpered noises, himself clothed and whole and in command, Muraki naked under him and helpless.
Hisoka's body shudders
It's the thought of that control, that helplessness, that brings him to a shuddering climax inside the other man's body.
They lie together, still for a moment.
Muraki moves underneath him, shifting to turn his head and look up at Oriya, and that untouchable smile still curves his mouth, still shines in his eyes, natural and unnatural alike, and there is nothing between them, nothing at all, and it was just another game, and Muraki likes to make his puppets dance, he can reach into their hearts and pull the strings and whisper in their ears and they will do whatever he wants, and they won't even realize that they're doing it, and like Oriya now, they will burn to do it again even as something in them dies with the knowledge of it.
Hisoka is crying, long slow tears that run out from between closed eyelids and stain the silks, and he lies very still
Muraki holds Oriya in his arms. The master cradles the broken doll.
Ghosts of memory fade like veils of cloud and are gone. Hisoka lies among the silks, face very young, skin as pale as ivory. The kimono are spread around him like a butterfly's wings in bright washes of impossible colour.
Oriya is a shadow at the door, a pen-and-ink sketch of long dark hair and folded dark robes, watching the boy silently. Addicts know each other. Dolls recognize something of each other in the wide eyes and the pale skin and the tilt of the head, the pose of the limbs, the shadow underlying every expression, every thought.
They just have to wait until he returns again.
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