This is for ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
renegadekitsune, and way, way late. Hope the iceplay makes up for it. These are rated G - NC-17. Consider yourselves warned.
renegadekitsune, and way, way late. Hope the iceplay makes up for it. These are rated G - NC-17. Consider yourselves warned.1.) Considering how horrific the Sha household was, Yaone finds it amazing that it produced two of the best men she knows.
2.) No matter that situation - fighting each other, chained up in a dungeon, bleeding to death while the other frantically tries to keep them alive - Yaone and Hakkai always seem to have these effortless conversations on various educated topics.
Gojyo tells himself he’s not jealous.
3.) She blushes when they have sex. She blushes at other times too, but there’s something so adorable and erotic about her flushing in embarrassment while her hands and mouth and sex are doing wanton things to him.
4.) Yaone is the quietest girl he’s ever taken to bed. She’s not silent, however, and Gojyo is good at listening: after a while, her sighs and gasps are more descriptive than other women’s screams.
5.) As a side effect of Yaone’s reserve, he becomes even more aware of the sounds he makes: he’d groan out her name, and her slight smile of satisfaction combined with the rough timbre of his own voice would send him over.
6.) She’s the only person who has found that spot at the hollow of his hip. She made him come once, just by biting and nibbling and sucking right there, her perfect fingernails digging into his sides.
It was one of the few times he’d ever orgasmed with nothing, no one, not even him, touching his cock.
7.) Yaone doesn’t know how to not be obedient, and it kind of pisses him off. No, actually, it excessively pisses him off.
He was teasing her, once, about how quiet she was.
“How will I know if I’m doing something you don’t like? Come on, you’ve got to give a guy a road map,” he informed her.
Yaone blushed hotly, hissing at him to keep his voice down.
“Well, how am I going to know?” Gojyo said again, and she must be plastered, because she actually gave him a straightforward answer.
“You can’t,” she said, shaking her head and then clarified, “you can do whatever you want.”
“Really, well, in that case,” he leaned close, whispering a couple of suggestions in her ear, getting ready to move quick if she tried to slap him.
Yaone looked at him strangely for a minute, and then shrugged. “If you wish,” she said, and took another sip of her drink.
“You’re drunk,” he informed her, and half forgot about the conversation until two months later when she was very, very late. Like, she mentioned meeting him in Xueyen and then wasn’t there, and he didn’t see her for three weeks. Did she have any idea how inconsiderate that was? And fuck, Hakkai was clearly rubbing off on him if he could even think that word. But yeah, three weeks and she just appears out of the blue like nothing was wrong, 21 days late because that dick who treated her like trash needed a special explosive or her presence or whatever.
“I honestly didn’t think that you would be worried,” Yaone said in this strange voice that Gojyo was hearing a hell of a lot of lately.
So, what, I’m too dumb to know what could have been happening to you in the past month? Gojyo snorted at himself. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, telling himself not to bite on his cigarette.
“I really didn’t,” Yaone said again. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do–”
“Blow me,” his mouth said without any input from his brain at all.
She blinked, twice, and he prepared to roll out of the way of a spear thrust, or dodge a slap or- or something.
He jumped a little when she moved, but she merely knelt down before him, gracefully folding her legs under her, unzipping his pants, and–
Gods, gods, gods.
Her lips and teeth, and how–
He was furious with her, for being so willing, to Kougaiji, to him and why
–can she be so perfect at that? With her teeth just dragging over his skin–
was he the one who was furious when she
–touching him like she didn’t want to hurt him at all, like she–
was the one with a entitled moron for a lord and a worthless jackass for a.. for a...
–doesn’t want to bite down, like he doesn’t deserve....
Gojyo climaxed.
For a minute, there was only the sound of his panting. Yaone, reserved as always, knelt below him, wiping her mouth, eyes on the floor.
His arms were wrapped tightly around himself, and he’d bitten through his cigarette, the bitter taste of tabacco filling his mouth and guilt twisting through his guts like maggots.
“Why are you even here?” he breathed.
Yaone stilled.
There was a long pause, and she tilted her head to look up at him, her eyes big and hurt and then rose to her feet.
She moved so gracefully, Gojyo expected her to be slow, but she was out the door while he was still zipping up.
He caught her at the bottom of the hotel stairs.
“Please let me go, Gojyo,” she said in a thick voice, tears dripping down her cheeks.
“I’m just being a fucking moron,” he said, one hand gripping her upper arm. “I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t - I hate it when you look....”
Yaone brushed her hands across her cheeks, wiping away the tears. She blinked, once, and while her eyes looked wet and glistening, no further tears fell.
“I see,” she said, with what Gojyo thought of as her ‘perfect doll’ look.
“Come on,” he said tugging her back up the stairs. She didn’t resist, and when he had the door closed behind them he set about apologizing in the only way he knew.
8.) Dokugaiji doesn’t know who to be more furious with: the bitch toying with his little brother or the playboy punk screwing his best friend.
9.) “Here. I thought you might - well, I don’t have pierced ears, and... anyway, it’s no big deal, I just picked these up when Sanzo was being a jackass - more than usual, I mean, but we ended up in the desert, and there was this dragon who needed a favor, and then this girl who had, well, anyway, I ended up with these and I just thought...”
They were the most exquisite things she had ever seen. They’d been wrapped in plain brown paper, but even that couldn’t detract or even distract from their beauty.
They were rubies. Two of them, both as big as the top of her thumb, and attached to twists of bright gold.
She slid them carefully into her earlobes and went to go stare into the nearest mirror, twisting her dark hair up so the jewelry hung unobstructed against her neck.
They were like droplets of fresh blood, brilliant against her pale skin. They caught and refracted the light and Yaone felt almost breathless at their beauty and value. She couldn’t even imagine the price of jewels like these.
Yaone gazed at the mirror in wonder.
“I have never seen anything so beautiful,” she breathed, caressing the cool metal lightly.
“Yeah,” Gojyo agreed, and he wasn’t looking at the earrings when he spoke.
10.) For all her sweetness, there are some things that will cause Yaone to lose her temper.
Once, Gojyo was waiting outside for her while she shopped, loitering in front of a boutique .
The proprietress leaned over the counter to peer out the window. She knew what his coloring denoted, and her lips writhed before she said in a low, ugly voice, “I didn’t know they were letting Those Kind walk the streets. He should have been drowned at birth.”
Yaone dropped the armful of clothes she was about to purchase on the floor and slapped the woman so hard she had brusies on her hand the next day.
When Gojyo asked why she was leaving the store with no bags after spending three hours inside, she lied, and still believes he doesn’t know what happened.
He does.
11.) When he moves in with Yaone, Gojyo can’t shake the belief that he’s living someone else’s life. Great house in the kind of neighborhood he’d have been run out of most of his life, well-paying legit job he actually likes (but would bite his tongue off before admitting) the prettiest, sweetest girlfriend a man could want – he’s clearly living the life that belongs to someone else. Maybe Hakkai - it sounds like the kind of existence he’d be good at.
12.) They get their first child by accident.
Yaone was traveling, and she left her dragon in the forest outskirts of a large city. She needed some supplies, and since she’d been making good time, she decided to stop for lunch.
She wasn’t carrying much money on her, but it should be enough for something cool and sweet to drink, and maybe a sandwich or pastry as well.
In the main square, there was a crowd gathered, and in no rush, Yaone indulged her curiosity. What she found made her blood run cold with rage.
“Witness!” a man crowed, snapping the chain lead in his hand and jerking the winged youkai boy at the end of it to his knees, “I have tamed the beastly monsters! Fear not, for-”
Yaone stepped towards him, walking across the invisible line that delineated the audience from this bit of ..... she couldn’t even find words vile enough for him.
“Care, miss,” the man said, “You wouldn’t want to get too close. He’s an animal.”
She was wearing her limiter. He though she was human. She wanted to show him how wrong he was, wanted to rip him apart bit by bit and make him beg, but she knew that if the murmuring crowd around them saw her youkai strength and pointed ears, they’d attack, and while she had bombs strapped to her thigh and would love a opportunity to skewer these ...humans, she couldn’t guarantee the boy’s safety if she did so.
“I want him,” Yaone said. The boy looked up at her with dull eyes, staring at her though ragged, dirty bangs.
There was a pause. Then the slaver chuckled. “Well, I know he looks sweet now, but let me tell you, these little fuckers need a firm hand. I don’t know if my conscience could let me sell him to such a sweet thing as yourself.”
Yaone smiled. I could break every bone in your body, she thought.
She reached into her breast pocket, and withdrew the earrings she’d put there for safe keeping.
“I think this will nicely silence your ‘conscience,’ don’t you?”
The rubies lay in her hand like pieces of the sunset made solid, and avarice flared in the man’s eyes.
“Well, now,” he started, and if Yaone had to bargain with this piece of slime she would lose her temper. She slapped the jewelry into one of his hands, twisted the lead out of the other, and turned to leave. The boy was staring at her with wide eyes, and skittered after her before the chain could tighten.
The humans scurried out of her way as she walked, and that show of deference wasn’t nearly satisfying enough to calm the taste of rage in her throat.
When Gojyo came home, he found his wife on the back porch with another guy draped over her lap.
She was slowly brushing his pale wings with the softest brush they owned, running her fingers through hair the color of new wheat. The boy’s skin was still bright from scrubbing, and he had bandages around his wrists.
Yaone looked up and saw him. She extracted herself and Gojyo realized the boy was asleep.
Yaone had an indescribably look in her eyes when she approached him.
“His name is Tai,” she said. There was a long pause, and then she continued, voice a little frantic, “I couldn’t leave him, Gojyo, I just couldn’t. And I- the earrings you gave me, they were the only thing I had that was close to worth enough.....” she trailed off.
Gojyo looked behind her, staring at the sleeping boy on the deck.
There was a long pause, and then he grabbed her and kissed her hard. “You know I’m crazy about you, right?” he asked her, when she was breathing hard with lust and relief.
Yaone smiles crookedly. “I have hopes,” she said, and he ruffled her hair.
13.) Gojyo’s ex-girlfriends look at Yaone with either astonishment or jealously, and often both. Yaone tries very hard not to feel smug. She fails.
14.) “That’s your girl?” Banri said in astonishment, and whistled through his split lip. “Damn, what the fuck is she doing with you?”
Hell if I know, Gojyo thought, and said with satisfaction, “You need to ask?”
Banri was still staring at her. “Huh,” he said, contemplatively, “do–”
“Even think about it and I’ll kill you,” Gojyo said flatly, and motioned at the bartender for another drink.
15.) The first time Gojyo thinks this thing between them might actually work is on the first day he moves into her house. Well, technically it’s theirs, but there is no way that the cute little two story with bright trim and a garden and a yard and neighbors with very white teeth could belong to him.
When he comes downstairs, far too early, cardboard boxes spread everywhere and the walls bare, he finds her in the kitchen, eating cold pizza.
And, okay, she’s eating cold pizza on a plate, carefully wiping her fingers off after every bite so she can continue putting glasses and silverware and spices away without getting anything dirty, but still.
Cold pizza. For breakfast. And she was eating with her hands.
He smirks at her, and Yaone blushes like he caught her doing something wicked, and he actually thinks that maybe believing she’s going to come to her senses and leave him cold isn’t such sucker bet after all.
16.) Marriage doesn’t change Gojyo at all; he still wins at the gaming table, still flirts with the women, still spends the night with the prettiest girl of all.
17.) Usually, Yaone kisses sweetly, softly, like she has all the time in the world and wants to spend it doing just this. Which is to say, she kisses like a good girl, like the kind of women Gojyo doesn’t date. If he thought about her kisses too much, he’d have to use words like ‘adorable’ and ‘darling’ which is inconceivable because he’d never sound so sugary, even in his own head - especially in his own head. Also, he’d never think anything like that, because someone who kissed darlingly was a hell of a lot harder to replace than someone who’s mouth was merely hot, and Gojyo wasn’t going to ever think a women was irreplaceable, because once you thought that...
18.) Yaone was the only person he knew who could do sums in her head while she was plastered.
19.) Gojyo likes to watch her put on makeup. He looks at her like she’s performing the mysteries of the gods when she braids her hair back into a complex chignon, like she‘s conducting a magic trick when she darkens her lashes with kohl, like she’s painting portraits when she brushes her lips with color.
20.) Gojyo had always liked summer, but with Yaone... yeah. It was often too hot to sleep, but Yaone would always half heartedly try, dragging a old futon out into the backyard. After dark, she’d lie out, staring at the stars and watching the fireflies dance.
“Hey,” he’d say, back from the bar, hair still damp from the shower.
“Welcome home, Gojyo,” she’d say, and damn, he never got tired of that. She’d brought drinks out. Sake, lemonade, soda, vodka, and a massive bucket of ice.
He fixed her a fresh glass, watching as she sipped delicately at the vodka, and then fished an ice cube out. She ran her lips over the ice before taking it in her fingers and dragging it down the glorious column of her throat.
Gojyo watched her, sucking on one of the ice cubes from his drink. When his mouth was nicely chilled, he bent his head, kissing the inside of the leg that she’d propped up.
She tensed in anticipation. He didn’t disappoint. He dragged an ice cube down the inside of her thigh, taking the opportunity to push up the skirt of the casual, summery dress she was wearing. He followed the trail of water he left on her skin with his mouth, kissing up the droplets. He could taste the sun on her skin, the salty tang of sweat, the bitter, diluted sake.
He put another ice cube in his mouth as Yaone lifted her hips, and he shoved her dress higher, all the way to the bottom of her breasts. He ran his fingers along her belly, tracing little loops and smirking at the how taut the muscles of her stomach were.
She undulated softly, her breathing coming soft and fast. He inhaled, and the scent of her arousal made his already hard cock twitch. He crunched on the ice with a predatory smile, and then bent his head, licking into her.
“Oh,” she said, stretching one leg down and running her bare foot along the top of his thigh over the front of his jeans and then, “Gojyo.”
Yeah, as far as he was concerned, she should always say his name like that.
21.) A week after Tai comes to stay with them, Gojyo goes out of town.
Yaone know that he wasn’t doing work for the Temple, because there was no bitching about lazy-ass priests before he left. She ignored the voice that told her this was the beginning of the end, he’d gotten bored with her and it was time to accept that he was going to be leaving her soon. Of course, she had other suspicions as well, but... she kept quiet about those, even in her own head.
Luckily, she had plenty to keep her busy; the apothecary shop, Tai, worrying about Gojyo, practicing her Mongolian, discussing the current state of affairs and planning the next diplomatic mission to the north with Kougaiji, scrubbing the floors when normal people were sleeping...
He was back in three days.
She met him at the bottom of the stairs. His knuckles were raw and his fingers were bloody. There was a scrape across his cheekbone, the start of what promised to be a glorious black eye, and a girl on his back, arms clutched tight around his throat.
She was gorgeous, with long, silvery hair and big, lambent eyes the color of clear springs, but it was her skin that made her so enchanting. It was pale, opalescent, and even in the dim light it positively glowed. The irregular scales dotting her legs glittered in the dim light.
“Hello,” Yaone said, voice low and welcoming as her suspicions coalesced into certainties, “You must be Lehjan.”
Yaone saw the girl’s fingers tighten around Gojyo’s neck.
“This is Yaone,” he said, “she’s cool.”
Lehjan nodded obediently.
“Would you come upstairs?” Yaone asked, “I think there’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Lehjan looked at Gojyo, and then at his reassuring wink, slowly slid off his back and climbed the stairs after Yaone.
When the door to Tai’s room was pushed open, Lehjan gasped and Tai pushed himself up on his elbows, wings almost blue in the moonlight, blinking his eyes open.
There was a moment when the two children just stared at each other and then they rushed together, Tai babbling in ecstatic tones, and Lehjan making these choked sounds that couldn’t decide if they were laughter or sobs.
Yaone stepped back, letting the door fall shut.
Gojyo was smiling at her.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, stepping next to her. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out her earrings. He reached up, and hooked them into her ears, being careful to slide the wires neatly through the holes in her lobes. His fingers left bloody prints on her skin, and she couldn’t care less.
Yaone reached up, stroking the stones and relishing the familiar weight.
“You know I love you,” she said slowly, and Gojyo gave her that joyous, little boy lost smile that never failed to break her heart a little.
“Yeah,” he said in this wondrous tone. “Yeah, I know.”
2.) No matter that situation - fighting each other, chained up in a dungeon, bleeding to death while the other frantically tries to keep them alive - Yaone and Hakkai always seem to have these effortless conversations on various educated topics.
Gojyo tells himself he’s not jealous.
3.) She blushes when they have sex. She blushes at other times too, but there’s something so adorable and erotic about her flushing in embarrassment while her hands and mouth and sex are doing wanton things to him.
4.) Yaone is the quietest girl he’s ever taken to bed. She’s not silent, however, and Gojyo is good at listening: after a while, her sighs and gasps are more descriptive than other women’s screams.
5.) As a side effect of Yaone’s reserve, he becomes even more aware of the sounds he makes: he’d groan out her name, and her slight smile of satisfaction combined with the rough timbre of his own voice would send him over.
6.) She’s the only person who has found that spot at the hollow of his hip. She made him come once, just by biting and nibbling and sucking right there, her perfect fingernails digging into his sides.
It was one of the few times he’d ever orgasmed with nothing, no one, not even him, touching his cock.
7.) Yaone doesn’t know how to not be obedient, and it kind of pisses him off. No, actually, it excessively pisses him off.
He was teasing her, once, about how quiet she was.
“How will I know if I’m doing something you don’t like? Come on, you’ve got to give a guy a road map,” he informed her.
Yaone blushed hotly, hissing at him to keep his voice down.
“Well, how am I going to know?” Gojyo said again, and she must be plastered, because she actually gave him a straightforward answer.
“You can’t,” she said, shaking her head and then clarified, “you can do whatever you want.”
“Really, well, in that case,” he leaned close, whispering a couple of suggestions in her ear, getting ready to move quick if she tried to slap him.
Yaone looked at him strangely for a minute, and then shrugged. “If you wish,” she said, and took another sip of her drink.
“You’re drunk,” he informed her, and half forgot about the conversation until two months later when she was very, very late. Like, she mentioned meeting him in Xueyen and then wasn’t there, and he didn’t see her for three weeks. Did she have any idea how inconsiderate that was? And fuck, Hakkai was clearly rubbing off on him if he could even think that word. But yeah, three weeks and she just appears out of the blue like nothing was wrong, 21 days late because that dick who treated her like trash needed a special explosive or her presence or whatever.
“I honestly didn’t think that you would be worried,” Yaone said in this strange voice that Gojyo was hearing a hell of a lot of lately.
So, what, I’m too dumb to know what could have been happening to you in the past month? Gojyo snorted at himself. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, telling himself not to bite on his cigarette.
“I really didn’t,” Yaone said again. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do–”
“Blow me,” his mouth said without any input from his brain at all.
She blinked, twice, and he prepared to roll out of the way of a spear thrust, or dodge a slap or- or something.
He jumped a little when she moved, but she merely knelt down before him, gracefully folding her legs under her, unzipping his pants, and–
Gods, gods, gods.
Her lips and teeth, and how–
He was furious with her, for being so willing, to Kougaiji, to him and why
–can she be so perfect at that? With her teeth just dragging over his skin–
was he the one who was furious when she
–touching him like she didn’t want to hurt him at all, like she–
was the one with a entitled moron for a lord and a worthless jackass for a.. for a...
–doesn’t want to bite down, like he doesn’t deserve....
Gojyo climaxed.
For a minute, there was only the sound of his panting. Yaone, reserved as always, knelt below him, wiping her mouth, eyes on the floor.
His arms were wrapped tightly around himself, and he’d bitten through his cigarette, the bitter taste of tabacco filling his mouth and guilt twisting through his guts like maggots.
“Why are you even here?” he breathed.
Yaone stilled.
There was a long pause, and she tilted her head to look up at him, her eyes big and hurt and then rose to her feet.
She moved so gracefully, Gojyo expected her to be slow, but she was out the door while he was still zipping up.
He caught her at the bottom of the hotel stairs.
“Please let me go, Gojyo,” she said in a thick voice, tears dripping down her cheeks.
“I’m just being a fucking moron,” he said, one hand gripping her upper arm. “I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t - I hate it when you look....”
Yaone brushed her hands across her cheeks, wiping away the tears. She blinked, once, and while her eyes looked wet and glistening, no further tears fell.
“I see,” she said, with what Gojyo thought of as her ‘perfect doll’ look.
“Come on,” he said tugging her back up the stairs. She didn’t resist, and when he had the door closed behind them he set about apologizing in the only way he knew.
8.) Dokugaiji doesn’t know who to be more furious with: the bitch toying with his little brother or the playboy punk screwing his best friend.
9.) “Here. I thought you might - well, I don’t have pierced ears, and... anyway, it’s no big deal, I just picked these up when Sanzo was being a jackass - more than usual, I mean, but we ended up in the desert, and there was this dragon who needed a favor, and then this girl who had, well, anyway, I ended up with these and I just thought...”
They were the most exquisite things she had ever seen. They’d been wrapped in plain brown paper, but even that couldn’t detract or even distract from their beauty.
They were rubies. Two of them, both as big as the top of her thumb, and attached to twists of bright gold.
She slid them carefully into her earlobes and went to go stare into the nearest mirror, twisting her dark hair up so the jewelry hung unobstructed against her neck.
They were like droplets of fresh blood, brilliant against her pale skin. They caught and refracted the light and Yaone felt almost breathless at their beauty and value. She couldn’t even imagine the price of jewels like these.
Yaone gazed at the mirror in wonder.
“I have never seen anything so beautiful,” she breathed, caressing the cool metal lightly.
“Yeah,” Gojyo agreed, and he wasn’t looking at the earrings when he spoke.
10.) For all her sweetness, there are some things that will cause Yaone to lose her temper.
Once, Gojyo was waiting outside for her while she shopped, loitering in front of a boutique .
The proprietress leaned over the counter to peer out the window. She knew what his coloring denoted, and her lips writhed before she said in a low, ugly voice, “I didn’t know they were letting Those Kind walk the streets. He should have been drowned at birth.”
Yaone dropped the armful of clothes she was about to purchase on the floor and slapped the woman so hard she had brusies on her hand the next day.
When Gojyo asked why she was leaving the store with no bags after spending three hours inside, she lied, and still believes he doesn’t know what happened.
He does.
11.) When he moves in with Yaone, Gojyo can’t shake the belief that he’s living someone else’s life. Great house in the kind of neighborhood he’d have been run out of most of his life, well-paying legit job he actually likes (but would bite his tongue off before admitting) the prettiest, sweetest girlfriend a man could want – he’s clearly living the life that belongs to someone else. Maybe Hakkai - it sounds like the kind of existence he’d be good at.
12.) They get their first child by accident.
Yaone was traveling, and she left her dragon in the forest outskirts of a large city. She needed some supplies, and since she’d been making good time, she decided to stop for lunch.
She wasn’t carrying much money on her, but it should be enough for something cool and sweet to drink, and maybe a sandwich or pastry as well.
In the main square, there was a crowd gathered, and in no rush, Yaone indulged her curiosity. What she found made her blood run cold with rage.
“Witness!” a man crowed, snapping the chain lead in his hand and jerking the winged youkai boy at the end of it to his knees, “I have tamed the beastly monsters! Fear not, for-”
Yaone stepped towards him, walking across the invisible line that delineated the audience from this bit of ..... she couldn’t even find words vile enough for him.
“Care, miss,” the man said, “You wouldn’t want to get too close. He’s an animal.”
She was wearing her limiter. He though she was human. She wanted to show him how wrong he was, wanted to rip him apart bit by bit and make him beg, but she knew that if the murmuring crowd around them saw her youkai strength and pointed ears, they’d attack, and while she had bombs strapped to her thigh and would love a opportunity to skewer these ...humans, she couldn’t guarantee the boy’s safety if she did so.
“I want him,” Yaone said. The boy looked up at her with dull eyes, staring at her though ragged, dirty bangs.
There was a pause. Then the slaver chuckled. “Well, I know he looks sweet now, but let me tell you, these little fuckers need a firm hand. I don’t know if my conscience could let me sell him to such a sweet thing as yourself.”
Yaone smiled. I could break every bone in your body, she thought.
She reached into her breast pocket, and withdrew the earrings she’d put there for safe keeping.
“I think this will nicely silence your ‘conscience,’ don’t you?”
The rubies lay in her hand like pieces of the sunset made solid, and avarice flared in the man’s eyes.
“Well, now,” he started, and if Yaone had to bargain with this piece of slime she would lose her temper. She slapped the jewelry into one of his hands, twisted the lead out of the other, and turned to leave. The boy was staring at her with wide eyes, and skittered after her before the chain could tighten.
The humans scurried out of her way as she walked, and that show of deference wasn’t nearly satisfying enough to calm the taste of rage in her throat.
~~~
When Gojyo came home, he found his wife on the back porch with another guy draped over her lap.
She was slowly brushing his pale wings with the softest brush they owned, running her fingers through hair the color of new wheat. The boy’s skin was still bright from scrubbing, and he had bandages around his wrists.
Yaone looked up and saw him. She extracted herself and Gojyo realized the boy was asleep.
Yaone had an indescribably look in her eyes when she approached him.
“His name is Tai,” she said. There was a long pause, and then she continued, voice a little frantic, “I couldn’t leave him, Gojyo, I just couldn’t. And I- the earrings you gave me, they were the only thing I had that was close to worth enough.....” she trailed off.
Gojyo looked behind her, staring at the sleeping boy on the deck.
There was a long pause, and then he grabbed her and kissed her hard. “You know I’m crazy about you, right?” he asked her, when she was breathing hard with lust and relief.
Yaone smiles crookedly. “I have hopes,” she said, and he ruffled her hair.
13.) Gojyo’s ex-girlfriends look at Yaone with either astonishment or jealously, and often both. Yaone tries very hard not to feel smug. She fails.
14.) “That’s your girl?” Banri said in astonishment, and whistled through his split lip. “Damn, what the fuck is she doing with you?”
Hell if I know, Gojyo thought, and said with satisfaction, “You need to ask?”
Banri was still staring at her. “Huh,” he said, contemplatively, “do–”
“Even think about it and I’ll kill you,” Gojyo said flatly, and motioned at the bartender for another drink.
15.) The first time Gojyo thinks this thing between them might actually work is on the first day he moves into her house. Well, technically it’s theirs, but there is no way that the cute little two story with bright trim and a garden and a yard and neighbors with very white teeth could belong to him.
When he comes downstairs, far too early, cardboard boxes spread everywhere and the walls bare, he finds her in the kitchen, eating cold pizza.
And, okay, she’s eating cold pizza on a plate, carefully wiping her fingers off after every bite so she can continue putting glasses and silverware and spices away without getting anything dirty, but still.
Cold pizza. For breakfast. And she was eating with her hands.
He smirks at her, and Yaone blushes like he caught her doing something wicked, and he actually thinks that maybe believing she’s going to come to her senses and leave him cold isn’t such sucker bet after all.
16.) Marriage doesn’t change Gojyo at all; he still wins at the gaming table, still flirts with the women, still spends the night with the prettiest girl of all.
17.) Usually, Yaone kisses sweetly, softly, like she has all the time in the world and wants to spend it doing just this. Which is to say, she kisses like a good girl, like the kind of women Gojyo doesn’t date. If he thought about her kisses too much, he’d have to use words like ‘adorable’ and ‘darling’ which is inconceivable because he’d never sound so sugary, even in his own head - especially in his own head. Also, he’d never think anything like that, because someone who kissed darlingly was a hell of a lot harder to replace than someone who’s mouth was merely hot, and Gojyo wasn’t going to ever think a women was irreplaceable, because once you thought that...
18.) Yaone was the only person he knew who could do sums in her head while she was plastered.
19.) Gojyo likes to watch her put on makeup. He looks at her like she’s performing the mysteries of the gods when she braids her hair back into a complex chignon, like she‘s conducting a magic trick when she darkens her lashes with kohl, like she’s painting portraits when she brushes her lips with color.
20.) Gojyo had always liked summer, but with Yaone... yeah. It was often too hot to sleep, but Yaone would always half heartedly try, dragging a old futon out into the backyard. After dark, she’d lie out, staring at the stars and watching the fireflies dance.
“Hey,” he’d say, back from the bar, hair still damp from the shower.
“Welcome home, Gojyo,” she’d say, and damn, he never got tired of that. She’d brought drinks out. Sake, lemonade, soda, vodka, and a massive bucket of ice.
He fixed her a fresh glass, watching as she sipped delicately at the vodka, and then fished an ice cube out. She ran her lips over the ice before taking it in her fingers and dragging it down the glorious column of her throat.
Gojyo watched her, sucking on one of the ice cubes from his drink. When his mouth was nicely chilled, he bent his head, kissing the inside of the leg that she’d propped up.
She tensed in anticipation. He didn’t disappoint. He dragged an ice cube down the inside of her thigh, taking the opportunity to push up the skirt of the casual, summery dress she was wearing. He followed the trail of water he left on her skin with his mouth, kissing up the droplets. He could taste the sun on her skin, the salty tang of sweat, the bitter, diluted sake.
He put another ice cube in his mouth as Yaone lifted her hips, and he shoved her dress higher, all the way to the bottom of her breasts. He ran his fingers along her belly, tracing little loops and smirking at the how taut the muscles of her stomach were.
She undulated softly, her breathing coming soft and fast. He inhaled, and the scent of her arousal made his already hard cock twitch. He crunched on the ice with a predatory smile, and then bent his head, licking into her.
“Oh,” she said, stretching one leg down and running her bare foot along the top of his thigh over the front of his jeans and then, “Gojyo.”
Yeah, as far as he was concerned, she should always say his name like that.
21.) A week after Tai comes to stay with them, Gojyo goes out of town.
Yaone know that he wasn’t doing work for the Temple, because there was no bitching about lazy-ass priests before he left. She ignored the voice that told her this was the beginning of the end, he’d gotten bored with her and it was time to accept that he was going to be leaving her soon. Of course, she had other suspicions as well, but... she kept quiet about those, even in her own head.
Luckily, she had plenty to keep her busy; the apothecary shop, Tai, worrying about Gojyo, practicing her Mongolian, discussing the current state of affairs and planning the next diplomatic mission to the north with Kougaiji, scrubbing the floors when normal people were sleeping...
He was back in three days.
She met him at the bottom of the stairs. His knuckles were raw and his fingers were bloody. There was a scrape across his cheekbone, the start of what promised to be a glorious black eye, and a girl on his back, arms clutched tight around his throat.
She was gorgeous, with long, silvery hair and big, lambent eyes the color of clear springs, but it was her skin that made her so enchanting. It was pale, opalescent, and even in the dim light it positively glowed. The irregular scales dotting her legs glittered in the dim light.
“Hello,” Yaone said, voice low and welcoming as her suspicions coalesced into certainties, “You must be Lehjan.”
Yaone saw the girl’s fingers tighten around Gojyo’s neck.
“This is Yaone,” he said, “she’s cool.”
Lehjan nodded obediently.
“Would you come upstairs?” Yaone asked, “I think there’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Lehjan looked at Gojyo, and then at his reassuring wink, slowly slid off his back and climbed the stairs after Yaone.
When the door to Tai’s room was pushed open, Lehjan gasped and Tai pushed himself up on his elbows, wings almost blue in the moonlight, blinking his eyes open.
There was a moment when the two children just stared at each other and then they rushed together, Tai babbling in ecstatic tones, and Lehjan making these choked sounds that couldn’t decide if they were laughter or sobs.
Yaone stepped back, letting the door fall shut.
Gojyo was smiling at her.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, stepping next to her. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out her earrings. He reached up, and hooked them into her ears, being careful to slide the wires neatly through the holes in her lobes. His fingers left bloody prints on her skin, and she couldn’t care less.
Yaone reached up, stroking the stones and relishing the familiar weight.
“You know I love you,” she said slowly, and Gojyo gave her that joyous, little boy lost smile that never failed to break her heart a little.
“Yeah,” he said in this wondrous tone. “Yeah, I know.”
Tags: