Unseen Seamonster

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:51:44 GMT

[nick / name]: Lys
[personal LJ name]: bringmepie
[other characters currently played]:

Father Abel Nightroad :: Trinity Blood: whofelltoearth
Auron :: Final Fantasy X :: delightfulirony
Natsu Dragonil :: Fairy Tail :: imusteatit
Son Gohan :: Dragonball Z :: satancompels
Sumimura Masamori :: Kekkaishi :: stillwaterrun
Urahara Kisuke :: BLEACH :: vivememorleti
Uzumaki Naruto :: Naruto :: icouldnotkeep

[e-mail]: lysandra.sylier@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: pochirabume, y!m: shinjiteeth

[series]: Baccano!
[character]: Claire Stanfield | Vino | The Rail Tracer
[character history / background]:

Claire was raised with the Gandor brothers, and as such, is a part of the family. Claire is now an assassin named Vino--Italian for "wine"--earning the name because of his predilection for mutilating the bodies of his victims beyond recognition, which usually leaves him covered in a thick layer of blood. He works undercover as a conductor on the Flying Pussyfoot, and later happily takes on the persona of the vengeful "Rail Tracer" monster. Claire believes that the world is a show put on for him, and that he has complete control over it. He proposes to Chane at their first meeting, and is now searching for her in Manhattan.

(lifted from the Wikipedia article, which doesn't have a link to the specific entry, for mod convenience)

[character abilities]:

As a former acrobat who excelled in his field, Claire's strength and flexibility are at the peak of human ability. Additionally, he is a well-trained killer, and his physical prowess and experience when combined with his unwavering confidence and mental instability have led him to become what is possibly the most successful assassin and serial killer of his time.

[character personality]:

Based on first appearances, Claire Stanfield is polite and formal, a respectable young man. He seems well-bred, well-spoken and well-educated, likely the result of his education as an affluent youth and his time spent around the Gandor brothers after his own family died. Perhaps the first appearance is true enough—he is well-spoken and well-educated, even when committing filthy crimes, covering every surface with blood as if it was soaked in a fine red wine.

Red; the color of passion, the color of power.

Claire has, though somewhat warped, a strong sense of personal justice and a code of ethics. Apologies are necessary, a clear understanding of the wrong committed. Pity and compassion are sentiments reserved for the strong, those who have no chance of dying. Claire can kill anyone he wants to, at any time he wants to, because believing that he can do whatever he believes he can do, believing that he is strong, Claire can do anything. Because he is able to, Claire treats the world at large with pity, kindness and compassion, those things which he reserves only for himself. Only his marks, job-related or more personal, are treated as a proof of his own strength and existence, as sacrificial lambs for the slaughter. He makes them die, and he makes them die in whatever way he wants them to.

Claire is deeply psychotic, deeply megalomaniacal. He believes he can never die, that the world is his to control; a long, long dream that he is watching and that he has sovereignty over.

In this world, only Claire is immortal. Everything else that exists, the supposed immortals that he has such a surprising wealth of knowledge about, just needs to be reminded that Claire can make it forget how to come back to life, that it may or may not even really exist. Everything else can simply die—feel pitiful, feel humiliated, feel inconsequential, be devoured and die.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: The end of the anime, episode 13, as he leaves to later search for Chane Laforet.

[journal post]:

Hello again! Sorry to bother you, but I’ve heard that there is an underground train system, a subway they called it, in this city. Is this true?

I’ve been looking for a job, and I think I have a very respectable set of credentials for a position working in the subway.

I would also love to get any temporary work anyone has to offer. I’m a reliable mechanic and extremely efficient and friendly.

[third person / log sample]:

Vino was in a very good mood. He was on his way to Manhattan, to find his fiancée, a beautiful woman, a strong woman. He would marry her. There was no question about it in his mind-- he would marry her, because he desired to. His influence on the world was total, far beyond simply being an arbiter of life and death. She would marry him. He would make her want to.

The room was covered in the blood, making it seem cooler, earthier. The metallic smell was strong, and Vino’s nostrils flared, the corners of his lips curling just slightly as he leaned in closer to the face of the man he was brutalizing, the victim—no, not a victim. He was a sacrifice made to bring more control into the world that belonged to Vino.

He pressed his lips softly to the man’s sweaty, clammy temple. So terrified. They were always so very terrified, but, of course, they were weak. It was one against everything else in the world of the weak. They weren’t like Vino. The burly man struggled slightly beneath Vino’s form, summoning his last energy, trying to flee for his life. He had to laugh at the display, the dried blood that covered his neck and streaked up the side of his face from the torture he had been administering cracking and flaking away.

He took a minute to scratch at it with short nails, ignoring the whimpers below him. The man could wait for death. He had no luxury to rush Vino into finishing him. He took his time, as always, killing in the way he had decided he wanted to in this instance. Slowly, he had worn the man down, because Vino had decided to do this slowly and had decided to spare no mercy, no pity or compassion. He was a crook and a womanizer. Not a man who belonged in Vino's world, simply useless. He would die for Vino. Painfully, as a celebration.

Vino was in fact particularly creative with this current mark. Vino was in a very good mood this evening.

He had proposed to a very beautiful woman. A week ago he had proposed to the daughter of Huey Laforet.

The mark, near-death as he was, broken and humiliated and disempowered, had the audacity to make noises—disgusting, guttural noises, frothy. Blood and saliva were mixing in his mouth. It was distracting, irritating.

Vino ripped the man’s lower jaw off with a flick of his wrist, like a python striking.

“Be quiet now, like a good lamb.”

Sat, 31 May 2008 21:54:03 GMT

SAKURA-CHYAN~

I heard you were dressed up really girly today. Does this mean you're finally going to ask me on a date?

♥

[third person / log sample]:

Life was full of ironies. Naruto was enacting one of them at the very moment, silently sliding into Konohogakure's Uchiha compound, warm spring air as familiar and buttered as a leather glove against his cheeks, slight breeze rustling his stiff blond hairs like so many whiskers. He caught the lock from the door in the fleshy palm of his hand before it could fall, soundless. It was discarded irreverently by the door-frame and Naruto reached out with tremulous hands, tentative. To think that they called him a troublemaker years ago, when only now at the age of sixteen was he actually getting good at sneaking around. Uzumaki Naruto, not Konoha's noisiest ninja; Konoha's most unpredictable.

The dust and pollen of Konoha's spring was thick beneath Naruto's feet, padding lightly, treads leaving marks that looked to Naruto inhumanly out of place. Was it the right decision to come here? To disturb this place? Of course it was, he mentally chided himself with irritation-- don't change your mind now. You've wanted to do this-- since you learned about Sasuke. You've wanted to do this for what may as damn well be forever. Sasuke had told him, when he fought with Naruto at the Valley of the End (when Naruto broke his promises), that they could never understand one another. There was a gap neither one could ever cross. Naruto had never had anything. Sasuke had lost...everything.

Naruto just wanted to have a look. He just wanted to see the home that produced Uchiha Sasuke.

And so Naruto stood, having sneaked into one of the unkept parts of the compound, one of the parts which hadn't been touched since That Night, eyes adjusting to what seemed an even darker darkness than the dark outside. The musty smell bothered his nose, and it was while he was rubbing it that Naruto noticed the black marks on the wall across from him that could have been mold-stains. But they weren't. That dark mark, Naruto's mind registered with a strange sort of horror that always had a tendency to occur to him when the reality of a tragedy struck him (the bridge, with Haku, Naruto's mind wandered through the years momentarily), it was the rusty stain left by blood spatters when they had ceased to be spatters years ago. He pressed his hand roughly against his mouth, suddenly feeling claustrophobic, and salt bit at the corner of his eyes, one tear hanging un-dropped like a coma as a mouse ran over his bare toes. It stopped to stare at him.

"M'not crying, it's just allergy season."

He couldn't stay there any longer, not with the things it made him comprehend, or the un-thought sympathies it made him feel. The moused moved on, ignoring his existence, and soon did Naruto, leaving the building immediately and only looking back over his shoulder one or twelve times.

Maybe Sasuke was right. Maybe they could never understand one another. But maybe even someone who had nothing to lose could know why it was unfathomable to lose everything.

Is it can be fanfic tiem?

Thu, 01 May 2008 06:25:06 GMT

IT'S TRINITY BLOOD SPEEDWRITING because Lore made me want to.

You know the drill guys.

Give me the following, I give you fic. I might steal them and turn them into full-lengths later.

Bible quote:
Character/pairing:
Rating:
Other notes:

L Lawliet app

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:18:40 GMT

NAME: Lys
JOURNAL: ketsumetsu
EMAIL: lysandra.sylier at gmail.com
AIM: pochirabume
WIKI NAME: ketsumetsu
CHARACTERS: Abel Nightroad | nexexmachina

CHARACTER NAME: L Lawliet/Ryuzaki/etc
FANDOM: Death Note
CANON: L will be taken from canon after he touches Rem's Death Note, the end of chapter 53, Scream.
WHAT THEY LOST: L will lose all of his memories of Yagami Light completely. He will retain only memories of the serial murderer Kira, and not Kira's connections to Light.

PERSONALITY:

L is a sore loser.

Perhaps this is why he believes what he does about justice; that justice is absolute, that there is always justice in a situation. L is not a man who enjoys pluralisms or shades of grey. If a situation is ambivalent, then justice will be done when the situation is cleared of its ambivalence. Someone will be right and someone will be wrong, L just plans to make sure the right side is the lawful side-- even if this means unlawful detainment or even torture to get the information which will lead to insight and eventually to the Truth.

There is always a winner and there is always a loser. Something is either just, or unjust. When the just side wins, justice is achieved. When the just side loses, the results are unjust. This is why L must always win; L is on the side of justice. Justice shall be done. Perhaps L is a liar, and perhaps he could even be considered slightly evil, if you're a person given to those such moral judgments about a man's character, but in the end, justice shall be done.

The means always justify the ends.

L is paranoid, wanting to keep himself away from harm, wanting to put something between himself and experiencing the world at all times. He requires a filter so that his opinions and meticulously made observations and re-observations and summations of the situation don't become polluted through personal emotions. He does, in fact, believe his life to be more worthy than the lives of others around him in some ways. He knows he is more intelligent, more able, more ready to find justice than others. This, he would claim, is not ego or a maladjusted personality, but merely a statement of the truth. L is very smart, L is very dedicated.

L is a sore loser.

THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:

There was no way any man in the world could view every piece of news information produced in the world at one time, absolutely no way. This chagrined L and always had. Because one couldn't see everything it was imperative to see everything possible, as often as possible, and to see it without distraction. To maximize one's generally insignificant waking time. L sat seemingly listlessly, d e l i b e r a t i n g, flipping through channels on one monitor while the other newscasts remained silent on their dutiful stations. The closed captioning ran along with its pleasing white letters in pleasing black boxes.

And then Matsuda's voice came, breaking the silence, breaking the pleasing black and white flow of information. Something about baseball, he was speaking about, making idle chitchat. Idly. L sighed and ran the pad of his thumb over his bottom lip, stopping his channel-surfing task. It was absolutely imperative for him to maximize his time. This required minimized distractions.

He should turn around and shout.

Turn around and shout.

Turn around.

"Matsuda." L's face remained unmoved, stared with wide, dolorous eyes at the bright screen in front of him. They were dry, but it was a bad time for L to move from his seat. He was in a perfect position, no part of him too tight or too loose, blood pressure...even. Muscles relaxed. Moving now could cost him valuable time. He'd had a lot of pineapple and papaya that day, they had useful enzymes in them, and more importantly he enjoyed the flavor, it put him in a good mood, but pineapple was acidic. If he sat in the wrong position, he would get heartburn.

To be avoided.

"Yes?" The other man looked up from his magazine, startled. L didn't bother to look at Matsuda, he knew the confused expression the man's face would be wearing, could see it in the back of his mind even if he wasn't able to see it reflected in reverse in the glass of his computer monitor. Valuable time. Wasting it.

"I don't like to be interrupted."

FIRST-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:

Hello.

My name is John Stuart Mill. I just arrived here ten minutes ago and heard noises which resembled speech coming from this parchment diary. If I am correct, and those persons supposedly leaving messages in this diary are living and sentient persons and not just pre-recordings, if you can interact with me, please, explain the situation to me.

You would have my appreciation.

Is this...

Magic?

SECOND JOURNAL SAMPLE:

[Hope this has more of a distinct voice. This entry is 'private.']

He is here somewhere. Kira, the serial killer. He is here, somewhere, and he is active.

Relax. Consider those that have been 'killed' by Kira so far in this place. They are clearly experimental choices, based on Kira's last activities. If this is the case, and I am nearly completely positive that it is, I feel pity for them. Their crimes were negligible, even by Kira's usual standards.

Still, their crimes were public. Which proves that Kira is...

Relying on the same sources of information that I am.

I am winning.

Auron App

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:51:26 GMT

[nick / name]: Lys
[personal LJ name]: ketsumetsu
[other characters currently played]:

Natsu Dragonil :: Fairy Tail :: imusteatit
Father Abel Nightroad :: Trinity Blood :: whofelltoearth
Urahara Kisuke :: BLEACH :: vivememorleti
Sumimura Masamori :: Kekkaishi :: stillwaterrun

[e-mail]: lysandra.sylier@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: shinjiteeth [y!m] pochirabume [aim]

[series]: Final Fantasy X
[character]: Auron
[character history / background]: Wikipedia link here.
[character abilities]: Wikipedia link here.
[character personality]: There had been a time when Auron was faithful, faithful to his religion and to authority, but then authority had tried to tell Auron who he should care about, who he should love. There was a man who accepted him, despite his selfish decisions, a man who also had made selfish decisions. When that man died, the last shreds of Auron's idealism died with him. He was left with only infinite cynicism and promises so heavy to bear so as to keep a dead man from finding peace (or perhaps peace had never been what a man like Auron had wanted). His experiences left him with a hatred of his former religion and a singular guiding viewpoint:

There is no authority but yourself. There is no reality but the one you create. The world is your story, your story revolves around you; be responsible if you must, be foolhardy if you must, but your decisions in life are yours and yours alone; make them without any regrets.

Although his viewpoints in general could be considered selfish, Auron is by no means a selfish man, and never has been. He puts his responsibilities to others before his own, the comfort of others before his own. He is a rough man, and while well-educated and certainly capable of social graces, knowing always more than he seems to share, he prefers to leave sociability to 'living' society. While brusque, he is level-tempered and caring, fond of animals and children. While cynical, he doesn't disdain naivete in others.

Their mistakes are their own to make.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]:

[journal post]:

To the newcomers:

This world is yours now.

Please, do whimper more in public. It's easy enough to tune out once you've heard so much of it. Do nothing and nothing will come to you.

Alternately, you could stop your whining and make the most of the situation that you've found yourselves in. That's what I would do, but then, I'm not you.

[third person / log sample]:

His flesh was beginning to grow cold on one side of his body. He couldn't feel it, he knew that it was growing colder only because the snowflakes that fell from the cloudcover of the high peaks of Mount Gagazet would land on the bared flesh of his shoulder, melting more slowly than flakes that would land on his face.

The snow was so pure, so high up on the mountain. Beautiful, but horrible, deadly. Lady Yunalesca had been that way, so beautiful but with a stinging message, that they were worthless, that Braska and Jecht had had to die, and Jecht only to be reborn into a hundred years of sorrow as Sin. Yunalesca had told him with her flawless face that there was no way to overcome the cycle, only to roll over to their fates without argument.

It had been too much. It had destroyed Auron, that idea of hopelessness, and he had struck out at the Lady Yunalesca.

She left him to crawl down the mountain, broken, an irony, as Braska would have put it. He could so easily have left himself to be taken by the mountain, but there were promises that Auron had made which he planned to keep. The length of his sword dug itself into the permafrost as he dragged himself up slightly, eyes scanning the boulders around him. He'd heard a noise-- the fiends that would have been following his thin trail of blood would be upon him soon enough.

Leaning on the katana, he saw the wolf-like fiend staring at him from around the corner. His injuries be damned, he should have no problem killing the thing, even if he knew it had at one point been a man much like himself, struggling on that mountaintop in Spira. He would have to kill them, though, kill them for their own good and to make it easier.

Auron had made promises. One day he would help Spira to destroy Sin, Braska had said he would defeat Sin, so he would, and Sin was Jecht. Auron took a shaky breath and laughed low at the fiend, lip curling up in newfound cynicism.

"I'm sorry. I can't let you do that. I have promises to keep, and the only one to decide when I am going to die is going to be myself."

Writing Sample

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:02:07 GMT

Karasumori.

It was a piece of land with power, power more intricate and dark than any of them could possibly imagine, even Masamori himself who had access to more information about the land of Karasumori than the other members of the Sumimura and Yukimura guardian families, the power to create and destroy, to begin and end-- he abhored it. It lay beneath him, forty feet below, as he suspended himself in the air to watch over it. The night breeze rustled the branches of a tree and a small, fish-like ayakashi floated from it. Within a few days, Karasumori would change it-- give it power, give it the means to whatever it wanted. Karasumori served them in that way. Masamori let the small thing float on its way, though. It was his brother's responsibility to be that land's master and the legitimate successor. He cared for his brother, and he cared for his family-- both of them. He did not care for the duties of long-dead ancestors.

Masamori's unfortunate duty would come later. He adjusted his scarf around his neck, discouraging the chill that was running along his spine.

Karasumori was a sleeping monster. There would come a day when it would wake and raise its head, and in that moment Masamori would break it into pieces and remove it from this world.

He hated monsters.

natsu app

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:00:21 GMT

[nick / name]: Lys
[personal LJ name]: ketsumetsu
[other characters currently played]:

Huang :: Darker than BLACK :: anddontbitch
Sakamoto Tatsuma :: Gintama :: canicrynow
Katsuragi Yako :: Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro :: deviluknow
Abel Nightroad :: Trinity Blood :: whofelltoearth

[e-mail]: lysandra.sylier@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: shinjiteeth on Y!M

[series]: Fairy Tail
[character]: Natsu Dragonil
[character history / background]: here
[character abilities]: &here
[character personality]:

Natsu Dragonil was raised by dragons. This is important for a few very large reasons, the first of which being that creatures as large and powerful as dragons tend to be very set in their ways. They're stubborn. They don't budge easily. They do what they do and they're going to do it, so there. This is because when you're as powerful as a dragon, you know, capable of causing a great deal of property damage, people tend to not be able to put up a very good argument against your opinions.

He's of a sunny disposition, however-- he's an optimist, perhaps fatally optimistic. There is no mountain too large to move, after all-- you just need to figure out a better way to apply your lever. Maybe all you need to move a mountain is a rocket-powered lever, right? That sounds like it would work, doesn't it? Natsu is proof positive of the veracity of the expression 'ignorance is bliss.' He's almost always genuinely happy. Please don't ruin it for everyone.

Basically, if you don't argue with Natsu, you're not going to have any problems. If you argue with Natsu, you're going to have problems.

Unless of course you're arguing on a train.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: After the Gray backstory arc, in the late 40s of the manga.

[journal post]:

THAT.

WAS SO.

AWESOME!

I figured there would be mages here from other worlds, but I didn't expect them to be so...AWESOME. You just wish you could be that awesome, Gray.

[third person / log sample]:

Natsu smiled. He smiled because he'd gotten the job done for Fairy Tail and he'd gotten the job done right. He hadn't gotten paid much, barely enough to even eat, but Natsu had in good faith that things would work out, because they always did. Always. Especially because Natsu also had in good faith that Mirajane really kind of liked him-- he was a winsome youth, so of course she liked him --and there was just no way in the world a girl like Mirajane would let him starve, even for a day. That Lucy might, but the majority of the time, Natsu didn't consider Lucy a girl.

Lucy, Natsu considered as he reared back and kicked the stone he'd been skipping for miles now a few more feet down the road, was more like an overbearing older sister that he never had or wanted, and sisters were pretty much not girls. Just because you smelled like a girl didn't necessarily mean you were one.

He kicked the stone again.

At least that stupid Gray hadn't been along this time. He'd been along almost every time recently, moping things up and being...himself-- Natsu was just happy to get away from it, the constant whining that came with that guy. The way he tagged along lately, it was almost like he was starting to like Natsu, which just didn't fit with how Natsu understood the universe to work.

Stupid Gray.

He kicked the stone again.

Natsu was going to be a day late getting back to Fairy Tail to announce his win for the team, but that was okay-- it was a day well spent, not having to take the stupid train back to the guild. Stupid train. (Stupid Gray.) Natsu was determined not to let it ruin his good mood-- now what was he thinking about before again?

Oh, that's right. The mission he'd decided to take. The one he totally kicked butt at. He squinted up into the sky, vision momentarily obscured by Happy lazily floating by on the warm breeze. The weather was warm and his mood was just right.

It was a good thing Natsu, then, that he was going to be a day late. Makarov wouldn't be very happy when word got to him faster than it did to Natsu about all the collatoral damage he'd caused kicking metaphorical butt.

poly writing sample

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:41:51 GMT

Nails thick and chitinous dug into the soft pale flesh of the vampire before him, more claws than anything else. Talons for a bird of prey. Such a waste, that spilled blood, they whispered in his consciousness, but Abel ignored them. Only forty percent of them were awake anyway, easy enough to over-ride even though he was getting near his limit, thirsty. There had been too many battles recently and he'd taken too many wounds. If he didn't...indulge himself now, the next convenient time might prove to be completely inconvenient. The vampire in his arms shuffled as he paused, staring angrily up at him, face full of some strange kind of near-death sedation, whites of its eyes large with realization.

That's right, Abel sighed as he moved his hand to press against the vampire's jaw as it worked, trying to form words. The Vatican really was raising a monster.

The neck snapped with a bright sound at the pressure of Abel's palm a second later. He dropped his head to the neck, pausing only a second before shoving his teeth in and feeling the slow spread of warmth. The blood was sluggish coming out of the wound-- he'd played around with this one too long, but it had deserved it. It would be easier to feed on it by letting the Crusnik draw it into him. He relaxed against the dead body. Nearly finished.

A noise came from nearby and Abel dropped the corpse hastily, shoving it away from himself as his hair drifted back down around his shoulders, the nanomachines dissolving back through his pores.

Esther's spritely heel-tapping.

She crossed the room with gingerly steps. He shoved the second pair of gloves he kept in his deep pockets onto his hands quickly, blotting away at the coppery remnants of the blood on his lips, tasting like the wind on Mars. Esther looked all the way up at him questioningly and Abel's mood turned quickly, shrinking. That look in her eyes...faltering trust.

"You don't need to see this," he sighed, "that's what's left of those vampires that kidnapped the children we've been sent to look for. I take it you took care of securing said children?" Her brilliant blue eyes stared harder, drilling a familiar hole into his neck, the one his spine seemed to leak out of around her.

"Father Nightroad, it's all through your hair."

"Ah-- what?"

A gloved finger pointed. Abel reached a hand around to pull his hair back together with an extra black ribbon snatched from the pocket where he kept the gloves. He could feel it-- sticky with gore. His mind raced for excuses like it was late for a train.

"It was a very close-range gunfight, Esther." He laughed lightly at her, the smile watery at the edges as his fingers ran through his hair, trying to clean it.

She offered a laugh back that might as well have been his Balm in Gilead.

Gintama ficlets

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:35:46 GMT

Gintama ficlets, still in need of expansion and re-write, from a prompt request I made a bit ago. Reposted here for someone. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

"Do you know why I'm here, you pathetic bastard?"

Tatsuma didn't know why the man was doing this, not in the concrete anyway. Like that Takasugi, Tatsuma knew that this man was a former comrade in arms, a good one. The last time he'd seen him, he'd had a tail of hair like a banner and sharp, angry eyes. He was one of those hitokiri fellows.

The fingers around his neck tightened and the plectrum struck the three strings of the shamisen, yanking the razor-wire around his neck, cutting in. He was only afforded some comfort where the fringes of his thick hair got between his skin and the biting wires. The man tilted his tinted glasses up, tilted Tatsuma's down and staring down with those cold eyes.

"Because he wanted you all dead. All of you, and you're the last, only because you won't put two damn feet on the ground of your own motherland for more than a minute."

Tatsuma laughed at that, a harsh laugh at the confirmation that they were dead and he was the last one, that once again Gintoki had let him go a little further ahead through his own sacrifices. Gintoki had let him run away without looking back. The laughter popped the blood clot in his nose and it started bleeding again.

Worse when Kawakami Bansai reached down and punched in again, knuckles feeling just as sharp as the first time. Tatsuma struggled a little as the smaller, stronger man leaned down closer, hand working beneath the loose flaps of fabric that barely covered the man's chest, damp breath on the cuts along his neck and the welts from the positions they'd been when Tatsuma had first been ambushed and dragged away to the field he was lying in now.

Trapped and strangled.

"You aren't very entertaining for me, either. You're too boring. You're that song that only ever gets played once on the radio, a pathetic opponent, you know, so since you can't give me a decent fight..."

The finger rolled harshly over Tatsuma's nipple, erect with fear and the panic attack threatening to bubble up from his chest. There was no use trying to get away if they were going to lose, their country would be destroyed by Takasugi. There was no use in being hopeful. Bansai's hot, pointed tongue drew across the high arch of Tatsuma's cheekbone, brushing away tears that were by now falling uncontrollably, sudden claustrophia overwhelming the man.

"Let's hope you at least last for a little while giving me something else."

Shinpachi could have turned on a light, he could have, but even after all these years he always thought to walk across the room and light the oil lamps before he flicked the switch on the wall. The moon was out that night, too, big and round with its light falling through the window of the single bedroom of the Yorozuya Gin-chan, where he slept over on night such as this when business kept him up late.

He could have flipped the light switch. He should have. As Shinpachi stood, he heard a faint crack from below and, looking down, feeling on the tatami, discovered that the crack had come from his glasses. Shinpachi picked the mangled things up and pocketed them in his white yukata, whirling around to wait in the kitchen until Gintoki got home. His face collided with a warm, wide, naked strip of chest.

The smell of alcohol was strong, as was the smell of sweet red beans and spicy cologne. Shinpachi winced, trying not to gag at the sudden forceful smells as he looked up and stuttered.

"G-g-Gin-san! You were out drinking again! I thought you said we didn't have the money fo-- and Kagura! Ka. Gu. Ra. How can you just leave a girl that young alone by herself at night this late? Do you do this when I'm not he--"

Gintoki cut him off with a broad, heavy hand shoved over Shinpachi's mouth, one that smelled cloyingly of more of that sweet sake and sweat. He could see it in the man's expression; this wasn't sweet, misguided drunken Gin-san. This was Gin-san when he was irritated about something.

"Ah, yeah, I know, Shinpachi. But she can take care of herself and I can take care of myself, so just shut up and go back to bed."

He wobbled against Shinpachi's shoulders, which, as much as he did practice his kendo, were nowhere near as experienced or broad as Gintoki's. Shinpachi wobbled more, because he never was very fond of this side of the man, no matter how infrequently it was uncovered by the wind like some fossil of the past.

"I think you should go to bed, Gin-san. I think I'm going to go home and check on my sister..."

"Nope," Gintoki said, before leaning roughly against Shinpachi's chest and wrapping two arms around his back, hot even through the fabric of the white yukata, even through the loose fabric of Gintoki's own. Hot from all of the alcohol. "Your glasses are broke. Saw you put them in your pocket, so you should probably just..." He hiccoughed softly. "Probably just stay here for the night. Something could happen to you otherwise."

Shinpachi struggled against the arms slightly, confused, but certainly not afraid of Gintoki. He was a man with a particular kind of spirit, something that, no matter the circumstances, Shinpachi could trust wouldn't let the man do any real wrongs against another person.

Shinpachi trusted Gintoki implicitly, even when the man moved the hand on Shinpachi's face to his back and pressed his rough lips against Shinpachi's soft ones and ground out a message, a mood, one that told Shinpachi that for the night, Gintoki wanted to be the one that Shinpachi worried about making home safely. He kissed back, softly. The kissed became more encouraged, moved down the side of Shinpachi's neck and left pink little strawberry-marks on his skin where the other man nipped. This was okay, wasn't it? They did this all the time when Gintoki was a around Shinpachi's age, an older samurai and a younger one would--

Shinpachi trusted Gintoki implicitly when he lifted the back of Shinpachi's short white yukata and dragged his pale blue boxers down with a sharp pull, like a sword being unsheathed. The sweaty, sake-soaked hand made its way to the roundness of Shinpachi's ass and kneaded, callouses brushing across soft, young skin.

Gintoki made a deep, indulgent noise in the back of his throat and Shinpachi fisted his hands in the soft black material of his shirt.

Fanfic // Gintama // GintokixSakamoto

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 04:35:11 GMT

Title: Returning The Favor
Author: Lys
Characters/Pairing: Sakata Gintoki/Sakamoto Tatsuma
Rating/Warnings: NC-17, set during Joui period.
Status: One-shot for jamiefawkes

He didn't know how much longer he could do this.

Tatsuma truly, honestly didn't. He could protect himself in a general sense-- he'd even been told multiple times that he was more than decent with a sword. But oh, he would never be excellent at it. He was happy that he would never be excellent at it, because that would suggest some kind of willingness to stab at another alien. Being. Man. It's not like they were fighting salmon or something. The Amanto soldiers still had feelings; even if they were set to take the land away from all those living in Japan, they still had feelings. Tatsuma raised a gangly hand in front of his face as he leaned heavily against the pine-wood doorframe of a house the Japanese soldiers had recently 'cleaned' of invaders. His palms were dry, blood and soil rubbed into the lines of them. He still didn't think that this was the place for him, still in his teens, never having actually dreamed of going into a real fight for his country. It wasn't as if he was some hatamoto samurai or something. He was just a nice country boy, like most of them.

The grimy hand made its way to his neck, rubbing at an itch that lingered over a shallow slice on his throat that was tingling as the nerves healed. The shallow ones, they always hurt the worst. That had been a close one, his death only prevented by some act of luck as he stumbled backward into a ditch away from the blade of an ax. A heavy pat on the shoulder, metal of his gauntlets scraping off of more metal, startled Tatsuma into jumping and turning to see who or what it was.

He didn't reach for his sword out of habit or nerves, though. He was no hatamoto samurai.

Gintoki's broad smirk greeted Tatsuma and he relaxed, the hand on his shoulder rubbing in small, soothing circles. Gintoki moved away, tossing a bedroll into the corner of the empty room of what must have, a year ago, been an expensive house. Probably a politician's. Somebody with a big, long name.

"I think everything around here is dead that hasn’t gotten the hell out," Gintoki said plainly. "So we should be fine to sleep together tonight."

"What--"

"Without a sentry, I mean. I think the other group has one, so we won't need one of our own to stay up and lose any more goddamn sleep."

Gintoki’s heavy arm threaded around Tatsuma’s shoulders, guiding him away from the wall and toward a pile of over-used, under-washed bedding, away from the outer walls. Even when they were being loose, Tatsuma sighed. Even when they were being loose about safety, Gintoki still worried. He supposed he was pretty lucky for ending up with the guy, even if he was, well. Kind of a nutcase sometimes. Tatsuma dragged his heavy iron helmet off, tossed it away and worked at the chest-guard next, blue eyes trailing to make sure that Gintoki followed his lead. The younger man’s armor came off, followed by socks. Both of them continued in silence until they were left in their stained uniforms. They found their way into their bedrolls and as started to rain; the nasty sort of rain that didn’t come in drops but drooled down from the sky in a depressing mist, making everything uncomfortably damp within hours.

The rainy season would be coming soon.

Tatsuma woke hours later, in the dark, chest heaving and oily hair even heavier against his forehead with sweat and the humidity. His hand fluttered to his chest, sliding beneath the folds of his yukata and pressing over his heart. It beat harshly against the skin there. Another nightmare. He had them on occasion, especially nights when he managed not to sleep suddenly and deeply—there was little opportunity for dreams during wartime—when his subconscious was still active. Images of the charred remains of his friends from his home village, destroyed without a hope by the ultimately superior weaponry of the Amanto.

They should have made him angry, but no. Tatsuma was seldom angry about the situation he was being forced into, all this death and dying, only disconnectedly sad.

He heard Gintoki clear his throat somewhere from behind him and turned to stare over his shoulder, smoothing back thick, curly hair. The other man had eyes that weren’t drowsy like his own but fully, worryingly alert. He stood slowly and lifted himself onto his knees, shuffling across the tatami to take a closer look at Tatsuma. Gintoki’s eyes were strangely bright.

“You were shouting in your sleep.”

“I’m fine, Gintoki,” he cut off, “Just go back to bed and leave it alone.”

Gintoki didn’t go back to bed and most certainly didn’t leave it alone. He was in front of Tatsuma before he could object, cool, dry palm spread across the span of his forehead as if checking for a fever. When Tatsuma stared up at him, Gintoki’s eyes were still sharp and dark and alert, but the hand was strangely comforting. He could feel his heartbeat settling beneath his own hand.

“I’m fine. Leave it alone.”

A heavy weight settled across his shoulders, pushing his back against the thin bedroll and tatami again. Gintoki’s fingers, the nails needing a cutting or a biting or whatever would do, dug lightly into the flesh of his shoulders beneath his yukata. He tried to press back up against the hands and the weight of the other man’s legs spread across his thighs, but Gintoki always had been the stronger of the two in the few years they’d known one another.

He gave one last tug before giving up and laughing nervously.

“Tatsuma,” Gintoki said seriously, and Tatsuma’s laughing grew louder.

“Gintoki, haha, w-what are you doing? I really don’t need forced to go to bed, you know, it’s not like I’m five or something. I’ll be alright on my own.”

He might have continued his protests, but the dry hand was clasped firmly over his mouth, salty where it brushed against his tongue.

“Settle down, you big whiny baby,” Gintoki’s smooth voice whispered, the one hand still on Tatsuma’s shoulder moving to brush lower, press the fabric of his yukata open to match the sagging material of Gintoki’s own white one. The rough fingernails, with their need of a cut, brushed against the exposed flesh of his chest and his back arched as much as it could, pinned by the weight of a young samurai. The hand fell away, pressing uncomfortably against Tatsuma’s too-thin hip. Since when had either of them had a decent meal?

“You’ll sleep better if you’re relaxed. Just let me--”

“G-Gintoki.” Tatsuma couldn’t seriously believe that his friend was—well, he could seriously believe it under other circumstances, but Gintoki? He’d always seemed, when they were fighting, so…above worrying about little things like sexual frustration, sleep… nutrition. Sometimes Tatsuma could see the truth in that name the other samurai soldiers always called him; Shiroyasha. And Gintoki certainly did have some of the prettiest hair Tatsuma had ever seen, but a demon, well. That was something he personally found debatable.

“Haha-ah. You’re not seriously thinking about, you know, are you?”

“Ah, Tatsuma. At your age, you really should be able to talk about sex without referring to it like a fourteen-year-old-girl.”

He sobered up then, staring with narrowed, confused but ultimately complacent eyes at the other man, who was slowly working Tatsuma’s robes open, rubbing over slightly-defined muscles which should have been a bit more respectable, had Tatsuma ever been the type to take something he didn’t want to do seriously. Gintoki’s lips pulled into a smirk as he understood that his suggestion, practically a demand, was being acquiesced to. Tatsuma laid still and silent until he felt one of Gintoki’s knuckles brush against the waist of his grey pants. He jerked.

“Gintoki…are you sure about this?”

The white-haired man shook his head, making a disgusted clucking noise in the back of his throat before leaning down, low, face inches away from Tatsuma’s, strange violet-colored eyes flicking from Tatsuma’s own down the plane of his bared chest.

“I seriously don’t think that’s a question you should be asking me.”

Tatsuma barked out a single, unsure laugh and bit his lower lip. Gintoki dragged his pants down with a single stroke of his hand, smirk growing wider when he realized that Tatsuma was, conspicuously, fully prepared to cooperate with him despite whatever he may have said. He fell forward again, crushing his lips against the other man’s even while he had his lower lip trapped below a canine tooth. Gintoki took the semi-erect cock and stroked a calloused thumb over the tip before dragging the foreskin up and down once. Tatsuma tried to keep his face from growing hot; it grew steadily hotter the more embarrassed he was about his own embarrassment. He couldn’t even bring himself to chuckle at the situation as Gintoki drew away from the kiss and stared curiously down at him in the chilly early morning air.

The rain grew heavy, beating down on the clay tiles of the wooden country house.

Eventually, Tatsuma shifted beneath him, reaching one hand up to yank down Gintoki’s white yukata, revealing well-made shoulders and the respectable biceps of a man built to hold a sword. Gintoki frowned and shuffled in confusion, grip sliding from Tatsuma’s cock as the other man sat up straighter on his elbows, laughing loudly at him.

“T-Tatsuma…”

“If you’re going to do this, you bastard, you’d better do it the whole way and do it right, or god help you I hope you get yours struck by an arrow tomo—“

He was surprised when Gintoki cut him off, covering his mouth with his own, crushing thin lips against Tatsuma’s and grinding his hips across the thighs below them, making it obvious that Gintoki was more than prepared to do it and do it right, god help him. Tatsuma bit into Gintoki’s soft bottom lip and reached an arm around, grabbing for his own growing erection as his friend moved above him, fabric shuffling and hands grabbing at what they could find, kneading muscles that were sore and tight from the weather and the stress and the lack of sleep. One of Gintoki’s hands found its way to Tatsuma’s bigger one, swatting it away. He ripped his mouth away, panting for breath in the humidity. Tatsuma’s fingers twitched. As uncomfortable as the thought had initially been, he really wanted Gintoki wrapped around him again.

“Ah—“

“Not complaining now, are you? You big sissy. You worried about doing it with another guy?”

Gintoki brought a hand to his mouth, wetting his palm with his mouth before sliding it along the bottom of Tatsuma’s hard-on and stroking hard, once, twice, three times before his frowning face broke out into its smirk again. Tatsuma sighed beneath Gintoki, trying to form incoherent noises into a response, because there was no way he was going to let someone who acted so purposefully ignorant as Gintoki did most of the time get away with calling him a sissy.

“I’m not a—a sissy.”

Fingers threaded through Gintoki’s hair as Tatsuma gasped and arched, distracted from his train of thought for the few seconds that the hot, rough contact slid up and down his erection. How long had it been, after all, since Tatsuma had been able to do this even to himself? It was too embarrassing in large groups, had even been too embarrassing when it was just him and Gintoki and sometimes Zura, sitting in a corner and quietly pulling one off. He knew Gintoki did it, as embarrassing as it was to acknowledge. He’d had no shame in doing anything of that sort in front of others, but, well.

The fingers were playing him much more easily, with much more skill than he would have expected from some messy, probably never to be spoken of again sexual encounter between brothers in arms in the little chance they were afforded by a quiet night. Maybe it would be regrettable in a few days time, a few weeks time, but it felt nice for right now. He might even be willing to return the favor.

Gintoki leaned forward and wrapped his lips around the dirty, greasy skin of Tatsuma’s neck, digging in with sharp little teeth and scraping a bruise above the cut that was already there. The salt from the other man’s sweat stung where it fell onto the wound and he bit his lips, holding back a whine. He was worried what might happen if he made too loud a noise. Would it discourage Gintoki?

Would it encourage him?

“So we’re just doing this…,” he finally pushed out, “We’re just doing this because it’d have to get done eventually, right? This isn’t, well, haha, it doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

The hand tugged harder this time and Tatsuma threw his head back, thick hair catching in the tatami. That might have been the wrong thing to ask, then, and when he was able to look up, Gintoki’s face was serious.

They awoke hours later, roused by the movement of other members of their company in the distance, Gintoki first and Tatsuma to follow perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes later, long enough for the other man to be dressed and ready, leaning against the frame of the sliding door and regarding Tatsuma with his heavy-lidded eyes. Tatsuma stretched slowly and stood, sliding his pants back up, frowning at the realization that they were even more in need of being laundered than the night before. The bruises that littered his chest joined the scrapes and scratches from crawling through mountain-side pine brush and taking shots and jabs from enemies. He could feel one on his chin from last night, when Gintoki had gotten rough. Tatsuma dragged his robe shut and stood, stumbling, to look for his armor.

What the helmet wouldn’t hide he could just blame on the war, though.

“Morning,” Gintoki called nonchalantly from the doorframe.

Tatsuma laughed and wavered as he tied the grieves onto his legs.