Fic-snippets - PoT and Saiyuki
Apr. 16th, 2008 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firstlightSome bits of writing. I did these after poking from Anj on various occasions, mostly as timed challenge things... not always posting the whole things, just snipping out little bits and pieces. But yeah, I never shared any of this with anyone but Anj before. Here. Have some stuff.
1. It's the winter when there are searchlights on Oxford Street masquerading as Christmas lights; he talks to people on his course and finds out more about them than they find out about him, drinks with them, walks the streets with them late at night and pretends he belongs while keeping just enough distance from everything and everyone. He sits in Hyde Park late one night with a girl whose name he can't remember and doesn't listen to what she's saying about her life or her feelings or what the fuck ever; just watches the lights swinging back and forth in a long line, raking across the clouds, and wonders what his old friends would think of them and the conversations they could have sitting here together, a series of in-jokes, everyone more or less on the same wavelength. The things they wouldn't even have to say.
2. A new town every day, arriving with the daybreak and going to ground - that's how it goes lately, or as good as.
"It is simply common sense," Yagyuu says, and Niou knows this is technically true. If no-one knows you then you don't have to keep up a cover story for long periods of time; they can drift, living in the twilight, travelling in the dark, sleeping in the day. It's convenient.
They don't have a direction or an aim; that's how it feels. Maybe their aim is movement, and the point is the journey not any sort of destination. Sounds like crap to Niou, but maybe it's the kind of justification Yagyuu would come up with if he pressed the point.
Some days it feels as though they have been everywhere. Everywhere is home, nowhere is home. In the end there's barely a difference. Yagyuu gets sharper by the day, walks with intent, and Niou drifts along behind as his wake because Yagyuu is Yagyuu, and he never could look away from the bastard, even before.
"You seem fascinated with me," Yagyuu murmured. "You watch me constantly. How am I supposed to interpret this?"
"Fascination's one way of putting it," Niou told him with a sharp smirk. "Maybe I just don't trust ya as far as I could throw you."
"Is that true?"
"Truth is relative."
"Relative to what?"
They don't fit anywhere. Maybe when Yagyuu decides that he fits somewhere then they'll stop, but probably not.
He's decided he doesn't give a shit.
They can keep drifting forever for all he cares. The practicality of barely existing to the world isn't the point, but it's a useful side effect.
"No-one'd know if we died," he says late one night or early one morning, under fading stars, staring upward. His feet kick up dust on the path as they walk, a track behind him, I was here. Yagyuu barely leaves an imprint on the land.
"How morbid," Yagyuu murmurs, perfectly mild.
"Hey, just a thought. Maybe we're already dead, and we just didn't notice yet."
"Niou Masaharu," Yagyuu tells him, "you are entirely full of shit."
The word shit sounds so alien coming from Yagyuu's mouth. He says it like Niou would.
They find a place to sleep as the sun breaks the horizon, and Niou dreams that he is the only person awake in the world but that something is still following him. The sun is bright overhead, no twilight, no dawn half-light, but he knows no-one anywhere is awake. He feels something strange, and it takes him a long time to identify the feeling as loneliness.
By rights, he thinks when he wakes up in the afternoon to stillness and the soft sound of Yagyuu's breathing, he should have gone nuts by now with no-one to talk to but Yagyuu most of the time.
Maybe he has, and doesn't know. It's like the thing with death; how would you tell? Then again, maybe there was never enough sanity there to have damage done to it.
3. Memory is a peculiar thing. Sometimes, Yagyuu finds, the little details stick and the things that should be important vanish without trace. He remembers moments clearly, but not where they fitted into sequences of events: photographs of the past, although he has never been much of a photographer.
He cannot forget how dry Niou's lips felt, but he doesn't remember why they kissed. The moment when it happened simply exists in isolation, no context. Who were we back then? he wonders sometimes, and then who is Niou now?
Who am I now?
Maybe he isn't him at all. Maybe, all these years, he has been Niou being Yagyuu.
Maybe his memories of his childhood are hazy because it isn't his, and he only has the snapshot details that Niou (who is really Yagyuu, in this train of thought) shared with him on lazy, sunny afternoons in another life. Little details, to help them understand each other.
Just for tennis. Because everything was about tennis back then. And if it wasn't, then you could pretend, and it was an excuse for almost anything.
Or did he make that up?
He has things left, old addresses written neatly by photos in a yearbook; nothing there for Niou, but pressed in his address book is a napkin from a cheap noodle shop near Rikkai University with words written on it in Niou's unique scrawl. He's kept it just like that instead of transferring it into a proper book and throwing away the napkin because...
Well, just because, really. There are few things in Yagyuu's life that he cannot rationalise, but he allows himself one or two.
The biggest one is Niou himself. Or was. Niou can't precisely be said to be a part of Yagyuu's life any more. Just another memory. A wicked smirk, wild hair, words that could very nearly draw blood and a serve that more than once actually had. A kiss, and a hundred touches. Moments of contact which retain perfect clarity.
4. "I don't know if anyone's family is actually as fucked up as they claim," the guy says. "I mean, everyone has some crazy uncle or shit like that, right? Don't mean your whole family is the weirdest thing ever."
Gojyo stares into his beer glass and doesn't comment. What the hell do you say? Actually, my mother tried to kill me with an axe once and only didn't succeed because my brother killed her. Oh, and he was having sex with her. But she wasn't really my mother, I mean... she was his mother, but...
And that's even without that other little detail about crossbreeding.
Yeah. Great conversation point. It'd be a good one if you wanted to clear some space at the bar, maybe, but somehow he doesn't really feel like trying it.
Weird, that urge to not get stared at like a freak. It's bad enough when people comment on his looks in what they think are innocent ways.
And then there's Hakkai.
Attractive, brittle, actually I used to have sex with my sister Hakkai.
He's kind of amazed Hakkai is even still alive. For the longest time he figured Hakkai - Gonou - was just waiting for the right moment to die, that he maybe didn't dare to keep living. Although putting it like that implies a whole lot more weakness than Gojyo has ever mentally associated with Hakkai.
Hakkai isn't weak, but sometimes he needs...
Gojyo has been staring into his drink for way too long, and thinking way too hard, in a slightly circular way which is probably the alcohol's fault. Way better idea to just drink up and head home before he gets drunk enough to actually start talking about shit or throwing punches. Neither would lead to great things.
"Gojyo?" a voice murmurs beside him, and he almost jumps out of his skin because christ, he didn't hear Hakkai moving. His senses are pretty good, even after a few drinks. Freakish.
"Ah! Hakkai. Hey," he says, trying not to look like someone who was just thinking about anything suspicious. "Drink?"
"Not much point," Hakkai tells him, shrugs, smiles oh so politely.
"What're you doin' here?" Gojyo asks, slouches against the table, propped up on his elbows.
"I decided to take a walk and found myself down here," Hakkai says, which is possibly Hakkai-speak for 'I am following you to see if I approve of your late-night activities.' Or maybe something less creepy. But then, Hakkai is pretty creepy, and it's probably unhealthy to be quite so fond of the guy.
Well, if Hakkai's guilt is allowed to talk then it really is. But Hakkai's guilt needs shooting, so hell with that.
And I have another Saiyuki one, which is a bit longer, but I've decided I should try to finish that one off and make it into some kind of coherent story. More on that another day.
1. It's the winter when there are searchlights on Oxford Street masquerading as Christmas lights; he talks to people on his course and finds out more about them than they find out about him, drinks with them, walks the streets with them late at night and pretends he belongs while keeping just enough distance from everything and everyone. He sits in Hyde Park late one night with a girl whose name he can't remember and doesn't listen to what she's saying about her life or her feelings or what the fuck ever; just watches the lights swinging back and forth in a long line, raking across the clouds, and wonders what his old friends would think of them and the conversations they could have sitting here together, a series of in-jokes, everyone more or less on the same wavelength. The things they wouldn't even have to say.
2. A new town every day, arriving with the daybreak and going to ground - that's how it goes lately, or as good as.
"It is simply common sense," Yagyuu says, and Niou knows this is technically true. If no-one knows you then you don't have to keep up a cover story for long periods of time; they can drift, living in the twilight, travelling in the dark, sleeping in the day. It's convenient.
They don't have a direction or an aim; that's how it feels. Maybe their aim is movement, and the point is the journey not any sort of destination. Sounds like crap to Niou, but maybe it's the kind of justification Yagyuu would come up with if he pressed the point.
Some days it feels as though they have been everywhere. Everywhere is home, nowhere is home. In the end there's barely a difference. Yagyuu gets sharper by the day, walks with intent, and Niou drifts along behind as his wake because Yagyuu is Yagyuu, and he never could look away from the bastard, even before.
"You seem fascinated with me," Yagyuu murmured. "You watch me constantly. How am I supposed to interpret this?"
"Fascination's one way of putting it," Niou told him with a sharp smirk. "Maybe I just don't trust ya as far as I could throw you."
"Is that true?"
"Truth is relative."
"Relative to what?"
They don't fit anywhere. Maybe when Yagyuu decides that he fits somewhere then they'll stop, but probably not.
He's decided he doesn't give a shit.
They can keep drifting forever for all he cares. The practicality of barely existing to the world isn't the point, but it's a useful side effect.
"No-one'd know if we died," he says late one night or early one morning, under fading stars, staring upward. His feet kick up dust on the path as they walk, a track behind him, I was here. Yagyuu barely leaves an imprint on the land.
"How morbid," Yagyuu murmurs, perfectly mild.
"Hey, just a thought. Maybe we're already dead, and we just didn't notice yet."
"Niou Masaharu," Yagyuu tells him, "you are entirely full of shit."
The word shit sounds so alien coming from Yagyuu's mouth. He says it like Niou would.
They find a place to sleep as the sun breaks the horizon, and Niou dreams that he is the only person awake in the world but that something is still following him. The sun is bright overhead, no twilight, no dawn half-light, but he knows no-one anywhere is awake. He feels something strange, and it takes him a long time to identify the feeling as loneliness.
By rights, he thinks when he wakes up in the afternoon to stillness and the soft sound of Yagyuu's breathing, he should have gone nuts by now with no-one to talk to but Yagyuu most of the time.
Maybe he has, and doesn't know. It's like the thing with death; how would you tell? Then again, maybe there was never enough sanity there to have damage done to it.
3. Memory is a peculiar thing. Sometimes, Yagyuu finds, the little details stick and the things that should be important vanish without trace. He remembers moments clearly, but not where they fitted into sequences of events: photographs of the past, although he has never been much of a photographer.
He cannot forget how dry Niou's lips felt, but he doesn't remember why they kissed. The moment when it happened simply exists in isolation, no context. Who were we back then? he wonders sometimes, and then who is Niou now?
Who am I now?
Maybe he isn't him at all. Maybe, all these years, he has been Niou being Yagyuu.
Maybe his memories of his childhood are hazy because it isn't his, and he only has the snapshot details that Niou (who is really Yagyuu, in this train of thought) shared with him on lazy, sunny afternoons in another life. Little details, to help them understand each other.
Just for tennis. Because everything was about tennis back then. And if it wasn't, then you could pretend, and it was an excuse for almost anything.
Or did he make that up?
He has things left, old addresses written neatly by photos in a yearbook; nothing there for Niou, but pressed in his address book is a napkin from a cheap noodle shop near Rikkai University with words written on it in Niou's unique scrawl. He's kept it just like that instead of transferring it into a proper book and throwing away the napkin because...
Well, just because, really. There are few things in Yagyuu's life that he cannot rationalise, but he allows himself one or two.
The biggest one is Niou himself. Or was. Niou can't precisely be said to be a part of Yagyuu's life any more. Just another memory. A wicked smirk, wild hair, words that could very nearly draw blood and a serve that more than once actually had. A kiss, and a hundred touches. Moments of contact which retain perfect clarity.
4. "I don't know if anyone's family is actually as fucked up as they claim," the guy says. "I mean, everyone has some crazy uncle or shit like that, right? Don't mean your whole family is the weirdest thing ever."
Gojyo stares into his beer glass and doesn't comment. What the hell do you say? Actually, my mother tried to kill me with an axe once and only didn't succeed because my brother killed her. Oh, and he was having sex with her. But she wasn't really my mother, I mean... she was his mother, but...
And that's even without that other little detail about crossbreeding.
Yeah. Great conversation point. It'd be a good one if you wanted to clear some space at the bar, maybe, but somehow he doesn't really feel like trying it.
Weird, that urge to not get stared at like a freak. It's bad enough when people comment on his looks in what they think are innocent ways.
And then there's Hakkai.
Attractive, brittle, actually I used to have sex with my sister Hakkai.
He's kind of amazed Hakkai is even still alive. For the longest time he figured Hakkai - Gonou - was just waiting for the right moment to die, that he maybe didn't dare to keep living. Although putting it like that implies a whole lot more weakness than Gojyo has ever mentally associated with Hakkai.
Hakkai isn't weak, but sometimes he needs...
Gojyo has been staring into his drink for way too long, and thinking way too hard, in a slightly circular way which is probably the alcohol's fault. Way better idea to just drink up and head home before he gets drunk enough to actually start talking about shit or throwing punches. Neither would lead to great things.
"Gojyo?" a voice murmurs beside him, and he almost jumps out of his skin because christ, he didn't hear Hakkai moving. His senses are pretty good, even after a few drinks. Freakish.
"Ah! Hakkai. Hey," he says, trying not to look like someone who was just thinking about anything suspicious. "Drink?"
"Not much point," Hakkai tells him, shrugs, smiles oh so politely.
"What're you doin' here?" Gojyo asks, slouches against the table, propped up on his elbows.
"I decided to take a walk and found myself down here," Hakkai says, which is possibly Hakkai-speak for 'I am following you to see if I approve of your late-night activities.' Or maybe something less creepy. But then, Hakkai is pretty creepy, and it's probably unhealthy to be quite so fond of the guy.
Well, if Hakkai's guilt is allowed to talk then it really is. But Hakkai's guilt needs shooting, so hell with that.
And I have another Saiyuki one, which is a bit longer, but I've decided I should try to finish that one off and make it into some kind of coherent story. More on that another day.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-17 06:51 am (UTC)Baaaaaaaasically, everyone in Saiyuki who has a family has a terminally messed up one. Everyone. XD