Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ My Shinigami, My Hamburger ❯ Happy Bivouac ( Chapter 20 )

Chapter 20

"Happy Bivouac"

After they’d stepped out of the supervisor’s office, after Heero’d freely offered the secretary an apology for his rude behavior with a traditional Japanese bow of respect, the Shinigami mimicking the sentiment beside him with a grin, he still couldn’t quite grasp what the hell had just happened. He had been sure that he had lost his job one moment, snapping at the innocent Shinigami, and in a split second, all that had changed and he’d found himself back in good with his supervisor. As they walked, Heero kneaded the metallic key between his fingers, as if it would eventually wear down and reveal the answer to him. Shini tagged along close behind, still clutching the photograph and happily swinging it and waving to the employees through the windows of their doors as they passed. He nearly tripped over one of the boxes, not paying attention, as they came to the end of the hall. Heero was already unlocking the door as Shini stepped in line behind him and flashed the offending cardboard box a sour bit of tongue. He pushed it open, but did not move for a second.

"Something wrong, Heero?" the deity asked cautiously, titling his head to the side so he could see around the mortal’s shoulder. "Hm?"

"Nothing." He brushed the concern off casually and leaned over to snatch a box from of the top of the nearest stack, nudged the door open with a hip, and went inside.

The studio was reasonably sized, for being located deep within the city of Tokyo, that is, and was just as was to be expected from this particular young mortal. It was pretty simplistic and organized for an artist’s workshop, and even though the room had been rooted and all the items inside boxed and moved outside, it was still pristinely clean. Heero never bragged about his artistic side—Hell, he never really thought of himself that way; he never was as erratically genius as what he thought real artists were—so he prided himself more on being organized with his work. The walls were white and pristine, and the cupboards and sink pressed against one wall had been painted a solid, classic black and weren’t cluttered, if you had looked before the stuff had been removed. The door to the darkroom, which had actually been a large storage closet before Heero’s conversion, was the only part of the room actually decorated, tacked with some of the favorite pictures he’d ever bought. Beneath the picture of a girl highlighted in the Shibuya crosswalk inscribed with an infamous Basho poem, the one about looking like a stranger in one’s new clothes, hung a tiny sign engraved with the kanji for "knock first."

The one window in the room, facing an expanse of Tokyo skyline and a neon billboard sign that flashed at night, was uncluttered with curtains and let in the charming glow of the cloudy morning.

Heero set his load down on the nearest table and began unloading it, an assortment of photographs grouped together by paperclip piling up lopsidedly. His gaze was focused intently on his work, no matter how menial it was, almost trying not to acknowledge that the Angel of Death that had been following him around for the last few days, unbeknownst to the rest of the human race. Said deity seated himself on his desk beside the box, flowing into this position so easily it was as if he were floating half the time, and promptly began to snatch groups of prints out from the sharpie-marked box while the mortal was taking from the opposite side.

The Shinigami flipped through them almost rapturously, black and white after black and white. They not only fascinated him because they were photographs, something that was still new and novel to him, but because they were very good. Being raised in Hell did not leave for much mainstream mortal exposure, so Shini’s mind had yet to be spoiled by the flashy, gaudy colors of television and gratuitous, glitzy American cinema and he could appreciate them for their subtle, humble beauty. Heero did not go for the automatic photograph; he did not hunt through Tokyo’s streets scrounging for newsworthy snapshots that could garner attention and fill his pocket with quick cash, though he could have, with the rate of murders and assaults growing as of late. He could have lured the cutest girls to his lens, seeing how they flocked to blue eyes, but he’d never done it. For days, he’d go about the streets, looking for whatever pulled a string in him. He never had listened to what anyone told him was made a good print, what was buy-able—he spent rolls of film on one single temple, knowing very well every person in Japan had seen enough of shrines and wouldn’t bother to buy another picture of one, but not caring either way. It wasn’t his camera, and many times he’d had to borrow film and equipment and other things, but he was as sure as Hell never going to know what other people thought was beautiful. He only had a vague sense of his own appreciation of beauty, only as well defined as anybody else’s, and it was all he cared to listen to.

The first picture he’d ever taken had been of his father sitting on the younger, polished motorcycle, with his mother laughing and playfully shoving his shoulder. The lighting wasn’t perfect, and it was off-center—he’d twitched at the last moment—but he would never have changed it for anything.

Besides, maybe, to get his parents back, he thought.

"He does not know what that man thinks, or how he could say your pictures are not good enough, but he disagrees with him," the Shinigami was saying brightly, still peering through the piles he stole away from the box. "Your photographs are better than that man could dream to do, he bets! He’s only jealous, that’s why he tried to—what was it? Roast you?"

"Fire, Shini," Heero murmured absently, his fingers moving mechanically as he started to turn to put away the photographs in the drawer where’d they’d been before being evicted. "He wanted to take my job away. That’s called firing someone." He shook his head a little. "You were just sitting out there listening, weren’t you?" he muttered to himself, and the Shinigami did not catch it.

"But they do not actually put you in flames," he said distinctly. "That’s a ridiculous name, then, no?"

"I suppose." The mortal gave a little tired sigh as he turned around, casually took the photographs out of Shini’s hand, and put them in the drawer as well. He’d have to get around to finding a place for them soon. "It’s just what they say. No one really thinks about those things anymore. It’s just become something we do so much we don’t notice how strange it can be."

Shini’s gaze rested on Heero’s back as he stood at the drawer, tiredly standing there for a moment. Sitting on the black-countered island near the cupboards, the God of Death innocently rested his chin in his palm, propping his elbow on top of his knee, still watching his arranged husband work. His eyes traced him as he walked back to the island to pick up the emptied cardboard box, drop it to the floor beside him, and casually kick it to a corner, where he’d pile the rest of the boxes inevitably. Heero seemed to take another listless pause, just staring out at the rest of the studio, and the deity tilted his head.

"Why did he not fire you?"

Heero snorted to himself and glanced up. "Why were you outside the door, when I asked you to stay put?" he asked in return, lifting an eyebrow at him.

"Because he followed you," he answered shamelessly, smiling warmly, with all the blind loyalty of man’s best friend. The ironic thing he was to grow up to be man’s worst enemy: Death incarnate. "Now," he urged, "tell him why you were not cast in the flames, Teishu?"

"Stop saying that name in public," Heero said immediately. When the Shinigami’s expression seemed to bow like a pup caught beneath his master’s reprimanding, pointed finger, and he pouted a little, he sighed again. "People aren’t all used to you being here in the first place, paired with the fact that you look like you just walked out of a medieval nightmare—" At that point, Shini looked puzzled and glanced over his jet-black silk cloak. "—and they’re really not used to seeing two men married, or even mentioning it."

"But Heero, we are not two men—he is Shinigami, no man at all!"

"It’s better for them to think you’re a man, rather then them know the truth," the mortal muttered, and Shini nodded in agreement, though he was still squinting a little over his husband’s medieval comment. Heero went back to the door, nudged it open with his foot as he walked, and picked up another box of his evicted equipment to bring back to the island and set beside the deity perched there, cross-legged and his hands clasped over his ankles. He wore a pair of Heero’s old ratty, mustard-colored sneakers, the opposite of the divine garb he wore, and the shoelaces were undone down to the last few holes, nearly falling out. He was opening the box when he said, to answer the Shinigami’s first question, "And I think Takamura honestly thought I was married to you, so he gave me back the job. He’s a little ironfisted when it comes to me paying rent for the studio, but he’d never deprive a man of his means to provide for a family. Though I don’t know how the hell he bought it…"

"See," Shini beamed, his demonic tail twisting in the air joyously as it peeked out, "he was good for something, wasn’t he!"

Heero snorted in a mild laugh, then turned a half-skeptical look at the deity. "Sure, but you’re not going to make me do all this work myself. That’s not what spouses do here on Earth, Shini," he informed him, jerking a thumb toward the door cluttered with the cardboard structure as he pried a box of clean photopaper open and making the Angel of Death groan in complaint. When Heero gave him a look, pinning the responsibility on him with his eyes, Shini returned with a stubborn look and grudgingly twitched his mouth, in the same manner Heero remembered Iria had back in the storage shed in America. A moment later, a cardboard box was compelled by a tiny ball of Darkness shoving it to slide a few feet into the studio and stop near the mortal’s feet. It wasn’t a complicated stunt, by any stretch, as the deity had yet to realize his full ability, waiting for a demonic pubescence that was impossible to determine.

"There, he helped." The victorious grin spread and a tip of tongue flashed at him.

Heero couldn’t get him to keep working, though. The deity was smugly set in his belief that he’d done enough of mortal work for the day, his face possessed by a impish smile, and would teleport silently from one side of the room to another whenever that blue-eyed stare would fall on him, skeptical of how much he’d really contributed. So, that’s how it came to be that the Shinigami was standing on the counter of the island, while Heero was trying to delicately untangle the contents of the box of negatives, which had apparently been packed by an ape of a man. He was casually strolling, the sneakers discarded to the tile flooring, across the cool marbletop, relishing the feeling of the cold stone on his perfectly human-looking toes. Heero was sitting on a stool he’d pulled up, grumbling in surly impatience at every knot of film he came across, wondering how in Hell someone had managed to make such a mess out of his things. He did not approve of the deity standing on the island, but as soon as he tried to catch him, Shini would simply became nothing but air and reappear out of his reach and resume his former position as soon as his arm was no longer outstretched. "Innocent, my ass," was all he had to mutter to himself.

"Ne, Teishu," the Shinigami started up, breaking off from a casual narrative of his wonders on mortal ways that had become the background noise of the room for the last ten minutes, "What were you doing in America, anyway?"

"Stupid American game show," he answered. "Stupid decision, really. But I wanted the money they had to offer, and sitting with ghosts that I knew didn’t exist for two nights seemed like easy cash."

"But they are real." Shini grinned, walking along the edge of the marbletop, outstretching his arms for balance and his tail whipping and twisting at his heels as well. "He hopes you know that by now."

"I’ve learned my lesson, if that’s what you mean," he muttered back, hunched over while he pinched through a delicate mess of negatives. "I wanted the money to buy my own equipment, to rent out my own studio, away from the city, but things didn’t go the way they were supposed to."

Shini snickered while he lifted a foot in the air to balance himself precariously on the edge, flexing his toes in the air. "You did not think you would really summon something at all, huh?"

Heero had been eyeing the Shinigami secretly as he walked around the edges of the island, glancing up from the knot he was loosening to watch his humanlike feet. His demonic tail pulsated at his ankles, flicking back and forth to help keep his balance. "No, I just didn’t think anything borne of shadows could be just as troublesome a child," he retorted. With that, his hand snatched out at the deity’s tail, twitching like eager bait, and he yanked forcefully, pulling the Shinigami so he flopped suddenly down onto the tabletop. A half-growl, half-yelp—a grewlp—came abruptly out of his mouth, but he snapped it shut to give his husband a disgruntled stare over his shoulder.

"Don’t walk on the table," Heero told him, with a hint of humor that was unmistakable. "Then you won’t have to get in trouble—Hey!"

Shini’s tail whipped away from where it’d flicked his nose and he stood up off the table, giggling, his good mood already restored. Before he moved away, off to fidget around the room some more, he flicked his tail again and Heero swatted it pointedly away from his face. After a second, he let his hand down again and a smirk managed its way to surface over the disgruntled expression.

Most of this time that day was spent unloading his boxed-up possessions and imitating the original organization he’d had to all his equipment and prints. They’d even cleared out his darkroom, save for the major machinery, which wasn’t his to own to begin with. He finally came across the cardboard box that held his favorite camera, one he’d managed to already put a down payment on, hoping to one day own it solely. While he had been working, the Shinigami had soon run out of ways to successfully bother his husband when he was engrossed with a task at hand and went around, using curiosity to sate his restlessness. He’d ruffled through cupboards, teleported into the vents and reappeared on the floor, sneezing profusely, and tried to find spiders to take a pet in all corners of the room.

He now was playing a game of memory, something he never explained whom he’d learned it from, with old sets of doubles. Flipped over, the Shinigami had thirteen pairs of photographs from a disposable camera, taken long ago of the housefire that happened near Heero’s home a year and a half ago. He sat on the clean, white tile flooring and adjusted the block of overturned pictures with a content grin. Black silk robes spilled out around him like a pool of liquid night as he sat cross-legged on the floor, trying to decide with which to begin. Heero was still sitting on the stool, making checks on his camera, and occasionally would glance up at the Shinigami, watching for a moment as he either flip a picture back over, puzzling, or laugh and toss the pair over his shoulder in victory. Occasionally became intermittently, and that in turn became regularly. This continued until Heero had quit paying attention to the camera and watched Shini’s game and the various expressions that went across his face. He had to peer over the island to see the God of Death squinting intensely over his gameboard, halfway through.

He picked up a picture and didn’t bother to glance at it. Apparently, he’d been searching for the match for it for many turns. His fingers hovered over the plain white backs intently, wavering. A flash of pink tongue appeared pinched between his lips, so concentrated that he didn’t notice Heero staring.

He was so engrossed in the game he began to feel uncomfortable under the heavy cloak that kept his wings hidden from mortal view and after a while, forgot himself and shrugged it off. It slid off his body without a noise and pooled around him, freeing his divine appendages to stretch out as they pleased. Even though he had seen them before, he found himself repressing an astonished gape as he watched.

The glossy white tiles reflected a watery, blurred image of the great midnight black wingspan, not nearly as beautiful as the actual wings themselves. Shini barely realized what he was doing, still so intently trying to pry his memory and pull up a match, and Heero did not realize that if the door was to open at that moment, their secret was blown, and only stared. He watched the fabric of the loose white tank top stretch to allow the angelic wings open up completely and the good lighting brought out a sublime shimmer on the feathers, darkly violet in color. They were arched in the air regally, displaying each of the perfectly formed flight feathers, like an eagle crouched to spring from it’s perch, and the auxiliary muscles that held them, gave them strength, tensed and pulsed beneath the Shinigami’s skin, bulging against the shirt.

Shini lifted one of the photographs and tried to decide if was the same picture he sought, or just one of the very similar ones that frustrated him. He was blissfully unaware of his moment of beauty and of his husband’s rapt expression.

Heero felt his fingers clenching around the weight of the camera and lifted it, an action so automatic and natural to him it felt like simply opening up his eyes. He lifted it up to one blue eye and shut the other, capturing an image of the Shinigami in the glass and a second later it clicked—picture taken. Shini noticed the noise, still holding the little photo in his hand, and turned his head toward the mortal. Heero snapped another, this time centered on his face, and let the camera drop hesitantly, finally realizing what he was doing. Shini, too, was just grasping that he had taken off the cloak that hid his identity, but far more interested in his Teishu and the camera he held.

Someone knocked. Heero jumped almost vertically off the stool, startled.

"Package for you, Yuy-san," the man behind the door announced, finding it open and pushing it open. "You left in your box this morning. I noticed it when I passed by. Did check at all?"

His heart abruptly buried itself in the top of his throat, and he was too late to stop the man from wondering in on the Shinigami, his Hellish beautiful wings bore to the air. Shit, shit, shit, went the panicked mantra in his head.

"N-no, Ibudo-san," Heero hurriedly replied, recognizing the man’s voice as the older photographer from down the hall, who’d also rented a studio from Takamura in the crowded Tokyo metropolis. He tried to meet him at the door and prevent him from stumbling upon a Shinigami sitting on his floor, but he knew he couldn’t quite make it.

He chuckled nervously and even before the grey-haired Japanese man could get fully in the door, the younger man was taking the package gratefully. "Thanks," he said offhandedly, trying to shut the door on the other photographer without outright slamming it in his face. But in the end, that’s basically what he ended up doing. He could hear the old man’s concerned voice on the other side.

"Yuy-san, something wrong—?"

"No, just fine," he replied hurriedly, locking the door and whipping his head up to see where the Shinigami was, the camera held in one hand, the strap flapping back and forth from the sudden movement. The poor, unexpecting man’s voice faded off with a few bewildered mumbles as he traveled down the hall again, but Heero was too busy trying to figure out where in Hell the Shinigami had gone to pay attention. The photographs were still scattering in the air from some abrupt wind and settling to the floor. The deity’s pitch-black silk cloak was rumpled in a pile. There was no sign of him at all.

Heero’s heart was finally descending from inside his throat; maybe he hadn’t been spotted at all.

"Shini?"

He started silently, hearing something fall out of a cupboard against the wall. The mortal turned in time to see a few small boxes get pushed out as the Shinigami stuck his head out tentatively. "Can he come out of here now?"

Heero sighed and leaned against the counter. Unfortunately, the excess adrenaline did not leave his body with his long breath, and Shini clumsily teleported out and ended up sprawled on the floor. He chuckled nervously and brushed the long strands of hair out of his face, ruffling his feathers as he laughed. "That was close," he said. "But he kind of enjoyed it."

"I’m glad someone did," Heero muttered, walking over to pick up the dislodged items. "That was too close, Shini. You should be a little more careful. We’d both be in a Hell of trouble if you were seen by the wrong person."

"Ah," the deity drawled, handing the box to his husband, content to cross his legs and remain where he sat. "Nothing bad happened—we were lucky today! Why not be happy?"

"Because my head’s just about killing me now," Heero answered, smirking a little. "I’ll be happy when you learn to stop being such a handful."

As the mortal walked up to the counter, beside where the Shinigami sat on the floor, his wings shivering against the polished wood as he tried to keep them inconspicuous, the divine watched him stretch up to put the dislodged things back where they’d been before. The ruffled shirt that Heero wore raised just enough, and Shini grinned secretively. "He can learn," he answered, his half-lidded eyes tracing his husband’s movements as he walked off to pick up the cloak off the floor.

As he turned, Shini could not draw his hungering gaze off the mortal’s compelling shoulders and the enticing physique that advertised itself almost tauntingly, even through the loose shirt he wore. Heero would frown like he had no idea how exquisite his face was, walked like he knew nothing of his perfect legs, dressed like he didn’t know how well blue jeans accentuated the curve of his ass. Shini had not forgotten what had first drawn his eye to Heero Yuy, a lonely, beautiful mortal, and what kept his mind entertained with off-color fantasy.

Limbo had never been an entertaining place to the Thirteenth Son of Shinigami, seeing how he had never been mortal, and therefore had never died, and never worried about his heavenly status. He did not have any reason to be in that place of lingering for souls not yet oriented to an afterlife other than he had no other home to stay at the time. His mother Iria could not be with him the entire time to carefully monitor each of his often troublemaking moves—she had a business of love to run and was notoriously self-absorbed to boot—and he was alone or sleeping for most of his time there. Shini tried and tried to speak with the human souls that resided there, in anticipation of their heavenly ascent or their dark descent. But they were often too busy to waste their time with him, or too depressed to pay attention. So, in turn, Shini was left alone, left to his own devices of entertainment. Sleeping had remedied that problem most of the time, but not even he could sleep forever, seeing as he would eventually run out of dreams after months and sometimes years had passed in mortal time. So one day, he’d snuck past the fence that kept the Watching Pools separate from the rest of Limbo.

Watching Pools were small, circular windows to the mortal realm in the floor of Limbo that appeared as if reflections on the other side of a pool of water. They were kept from the transient souls, as they might be tempted to look back on the realm they had left and double their regret, but Shini had never been one to follow the rules, or look for them in the first place. He’d slipped by only for a while—after that, they’d barred them off from even the Angel of Death, and he’d been forced to find new entertainment—but it had been worth it.

He’d just happened to sprawl out in front of the window overlooking the Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, scrolling casually along, giving a few to all the assorted men and women walking and weaving amongst each other. And he’d seen one in particular, who’d glanced up to the sky as he’d walked, inadvertently staring up at the Shinigami who stared down simultaneously. It was the blue eyes that made him look twice, and by the third look, Shini’s interest had been fully absorbed. A silent transmission, the image of the mortal man, twenty-two years old, turned away and began to trudge along the white crosswalk lines. But the sight of his face had already been burned into the Shinigami’s sight and he leaned closer over the edge until his nose bumped the surface. Brushing the stinging stuff off his face, Shini tried to see through the ripple that he’d accidentally caused, but as soon as the surface calmed he saw nothing of the blue-eyed mortal, only a mass of people crossing.

He’d been obsessed, from the moment after that, with the Watching Pool that lay over the crosswalk, and often had to dodge the authorities in Limbo to return to his spot to keep his watch. His mortal would not reappear all the time, but the few times he did catch another glimpse, his face would light up like a candle.

It’d been another two years mortal time before Iria had been able to track down the blue-eyed mortal in Shibuya Crossing, at her son’s enthusiastic begging, and give Shini a name for the face. And after she had watched him carefully, bringing a report to her overjoyed son week after week, decided he could stay with his blue-eyed mortal. A few months later, as Heero Yuy crouched in a dark hallway of a rundown, haunted manor, Shini found himself face to face with his new mortal husband, and the rest was… well, a few days ago.

The God of Death, realizing slowly that Heero had walked off, blinked out of his reverie. "Teishu?"

"You know I said I didn’t want you calling me that," the mortal answered, though his voice came from far off. The door to the darkroom was slightly ajar as he went about replacing all the things that had been snatched out of it, containers of developing solutions and the lines stretched from corner to corner where Heero had hung his newest photos with clothespins.

"You can drop the honorifics, Shini. I’m not older than you, and I’m not immortal, either. Besides, I have a perfectly good name of my own," he said, nudging a bottle of fixer into the cabinet below the counter in the darkroom. He could see that the Shinigami stood at the door from the shadow he cast, now wearing his cloak to conceal his Deathly wings.

"You just do not like to be called Teishu, do you?"

"Yeah, it’s a little strange," Heero replied with a little amused snort, as if the answer was an obvious one. To the average mortal young man, to suddenly be endowed with an unearthly husband was definitely not a usual or mundane thing, and the amusing thing was that the innocent Shinigami thought nothing of it. The ironic fact that this harbinger of Death was an effervescent, half-grown troublemaker was amusing, too.

Shini tilted his head, still peering into the darkroom cautiously. "He’s only trying to be nice if he says it. Do you really dislike him saying it? Or is it strange to you because other people think it’s strange?"

Heero suddenly turned around, surprised by the unusually insightful comment from the usually mischievous, youthful deity. He hesitated, taken off guard by the question and cautious to answer carefully. By no means did he want to lead the Shinigami on about anything, realizing that he had the innocence of a child, though it was often clouded by a mythical lustful demeanor inherited directly from his mother. But he just couldn’t bring himself to be as straightforward and blunt as he had other times. The last thing he wanted was for Shini to burst out bawling again—he couldn’t deal with tears.

"Uh—" He hesitated to answer a little longer, as the Shinigami had disappeared from the doorway to the unlit darkroom and he turned his head to the side, wondering where the hell he’d gone now. "Shin—?"

"Is there some reason he cannot call you Teishu, when you are his?" The deity’s voice suddenly came from behind him, and Heero turned his head again to see the teleporting Shinigami sitting on the counter where he’d been working only a second ago, perched between the sink and the shallow tubs of fixer fluid with a careful expression on his face. The illuminating red light in on the wall over their heads gave his violet eyes a red wine tint that was almost as intoxicating as alcohol itself.

"Now, h-hold on a second," Heero stuttered out, still a little uneasy about the deity’s ability to randomly appear where ever he chose. His face was taking on a certain color, though not completely from surprise or disagreement. "Who ever said I was yours to begin with?"

"But you are, aren’t you?" the innocent expression puzzled at him, tilting his head. "Okasan showed you the paper that said you were his, did she not?"

"Yes, but—"

Shini continued, his puzzled face growing cuter and cuter as he became more confused. He lifted his hand, and in the cast of the red lightbulb, a bright, crimson line glowed, winding from the Shinigami’s hand to the mortal’s. "And you can see the ribbon, can you not?"

Heero sighed, a little ruffled and still disturbed by the heat in his face, and set down the stack of paper he’d been organizing down on the counter, on the other side of the sink. The deity watched him, nervously toying with a strand of his hair, eyes glued on his face. It didn’t really help the flush in his face. "Yes, Shini, but that doesn’t make me yours, not by any stretch," he explained firmly.

As soon as Heero had finished speaking, Shini opened his mouth again, a little distressed. "But you are his husband!"

"For now, I guess," he mumbled at first, then looked the confused deity in the eyes. "But that doesn’t make me your property, Shini. I’m not yours. That’s not the way marriage works here on Earth. You’re not the property of your spouse."

Luckily for Heero, the forerunning tears in the Shinigami’s eyes had subsided a little, though his brows still remained wrenched together in rather charming confusion. "He’s not saying you are his housewife or anything, Teishu—"

"I know you’re not." By now, the accumulation of the heat in his face and the uncomfortable question poised by the God of Death had gotten to Heero and he itched suddenly for a little breathing room, noticing that the darkroom felt considerably smaller when occupied by two rather than one. "And you don’t have to worry about it, since you’re leaving in a few days. Now, that’s all I want to say about it. It’s done. And don’t call me Teishu."

Shini pouted a little, blowing a lock of hair out of his face with an unsatisfied puff of air.

"Come on, it’s close to lunch by now. I’m starving. If you can promise to behave, I’ll get you something to eat."

Remaining completely still on the counter, even stilling the sinuous curling and unfurling of his whip-like tail to the side, the young Shinigami just stared in return with those red-wine eyes in the light of the darkroom. After a few moments silent deliberation on something, he did not open his mouth to answer his mortal husband, and only managed out a quiet, semi-defeated nod. Heero was about to turn and lead the way out of the darkened room when he felt breeze moving past him from inside the small space and was suddenly face to face with the God of Death and his intoxicating eyes. The puzzled expression was gone; a more dangerous consideration ran across his face.

"Heero," he purred quietly, rolling the sumptuous ‘r’ sound of his name in his mouth as if trying it for the first time, like tasting a fine chocolate. The mortal shivered, feeling his breath on his face. "You know, he likes your name just as well, he does," he murmured. He tried it out again, wrapping his voice around it as a caress. "Ne, Heero?"

"Shinigami, don’t—" Heero tried to reprimand him, discourage that same subtly impish smile that had preceded the bathtub incident, but the sentiment somehow lost its momentum and quit in his mouth. He was concentrating more on just how close the deity was creeping toward him.

"Don’t what, Heero? He did not quite hear you."

The deity giggled at him, flashing an irresistible smile, and the unsuspecting mortal felt the sharp, clear edge of reality blurring, softening.

"Stop that—that thing you’re doing! The illusion—knock it off…" His voice had begun to sway with his muddled mind, the Shinigami’s body so close scrambling his rational thought like a magnet to a computer.

He laughed again, low, throaty, as he remained mere inches from the mortal’s face, just tall enough so that he could make Heero tilt his head slightly to meet his gaze. The deity remained unchanged even as the mortal knew that illusion was seeping into his mind and he began to breathe deep the smell of saltly ocean air. Bemused, a part of his mind smiled to itself. It smelled like an old memory of a summer day spent on a misty Hokkaido shore. The rest of the room had gone an unnatural but comforting black, save for the full color of the Angel of Death pressing against him, compelling him to forget all his worries and just confide in him.

Shini nudged his husband’s shoulder gently. "Stop this, stop that! Stop having fun, Heero says!" He did it again, more forcefully, and Heero could have swore he felt himself falling backwards into what felt like summer grass beneath him, bedded thick under his back. "Heero is very bright, but if one always listened to what he said, would they ever have any fun? No, they wouldn’t, because he is afraid of the thing!"

He drew his brows together, mildly puzzled, but in a most enjoyable way, looking up at the Shinigami from the grass. "Am not," he murmured in weak protest, while Shini followed him to his position, lying idly in a sleepy kingdom of grasses and budding wildflowers. The same blurry, sublime smile split his face gently as he crossed his arms on his husband’s chest and rested his chin there, peering playfully down at him. He arched an eyebrow.

"Oh?" he drawled, shifting so his body lay lightly against Heero’s, legs intertwined. In this illusion, he had shed the thick, black cloak and his divine wings stretched lazily. "Suddenly you are brave?"

"I am not afraid of fun," he protested drowsily again. "I’m not. Just let me—I’ll show you I’m not…"

"He believes you," Shini said with a laugh, watching Heero’s stubbornness persist, even as he felt so languid and peaceful and his body refused to let him work itself up into stress. Leaning closer to his mortal husband’s face, his hair, much better kept in this daydream, spilled out over his shoulder and formed a curtain around the one side of his face. "But are you still afraid of him?"

Heero sleepily tried to look stormy as he protested again, but only made the God of Death laugh again, rumbling through his body as he lay with his husband. "I’m not afraid of anything," he mumbled drowsily. "Except… ‘cept maybe being alone, being lonely like how he used to be."

"Then you’re not afraid of much, are you?"

He shook his head enthusiastically, still frowning drowsily to prove his bravery.

Shini gazed lushly down in return; lips still tilted in a smirk. "Then why are you just lying there?" he whispered, unfolding his arms so that they rested to each side of his head, in the thick, summer grasses of the illusion lying around them. "Eh, Heero?"

The mortal suddenly felt the impulse to lean up, to meet that teasing smile and discover with his lips what was so amusing, and moved from underneath the Shinigami. But as soon as he did, Shini smirked, and took a step back—tearing the hypnotic illusion of a haven asunder and pulling all the edges of reality back into their usual, sharp relief. The mischievous look was practically beaming as Heero staggered a little, no longer believing he was lying in some secluded utopia but knowing he was standing in his darkroom, with the edge of the counter digging into the small of his back. He blinked more than twice, trying to regain his focus, trying to recall his level head and clear the haze of a freshly fading lust from his eyes. "Wha—?"

Shini smirked smugly, turning on his heel and heading out of the darkroom, tail twisting and flicking contentedly. "We should go get something to eat, Teishu. You look famished." He laughed, in conspiracy with himself.

It took a little more concentration than normal for Heero to regain his head so that could figure out what the hell had just happened.

AN: Sorry about the last post--something messed up while I was loading and all the commas and stuff were replaced by numbers and shit. Not really the grammatical effect I was going for. ^_^ From here on in, this particular arc isn't all fun and games. Yeah, that's right. The fun part of every story, the climax. Well, as long as I don't end up writing another unplanned chapter (jeeze, that makes it sound like a pregancy, doesn't it?), we'll be getting into the meat of the first arc of MSMH. Man, ever chapter longer and longer still. Quite the draining habit of mine. Oh, well. I feel it's time for some changes. I'm not gonna care whether chapters go past quotas and I'm gonna cut my hair and listen to more KQ92. Anyway, I just realized that, aside from the cruel fact that it always snows during a weekend here in Wisconsin, never a school day, it's Kurt Cobain's birthday. It would have slipped my mind had I not dropped by Link Worshiper's site quick today. ^_^ Does that make me a bad person? No, only swinging a golf club at my sister does... and yet I cannot stop. So, happy birthday, Kurt, and thank god if you don't have to swallow horsepills thrice daily, like I do. Sinus infections suck. Well, it's better than thinking I'm going deaf. Anywho, that's it, and ciao.