Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ In the Forests of the Night ❯ too waffle for words ( Chapter 3 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

The skylight in the bedroom ceiling glowed pale as the first
hint of morning shone through. Enishi quickly shut the
hallway door, blocking out the golden hue of the lamp behind
him. Restored to shadow, Kaoru lay curled in bed like a rose
folded from grey velvet, her hair thrown across the pillow as
the silk leaf beneath the blossom. He sat on the side of the
bed, easing his weight down slowly to avoid jolting her, and
drew back the blanket's edge to bare her shoulder. After a
moment, her brows furrowed slightly and she burrowed further
down into the covers to stay warm. He repeated his former
action. So did she.

Unless he woke her up, she'd end up bundling herself down off
the foot of the bed, all wrapped up in the sheets like a
gyoza. She looked so peaceful, though, and she'd been so
tired out when he finally put her back to bed last night--
well, this morning, really, and not that many hours ago--
that he couldn't break up her sleep in good conscience. He
couldn't leave her here either, though.

Perhaps a bluebird gyoza wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Carefully, he tugged the covers free from the mattress and
wrapped her up in them. As he was gathering her into his
arms, though, she finally blinked her eyes half-open and
pawed against his shoulder through the layers of cloth.
"Mmmph?"

Oh, crikey. It was so close to the sound she made when lying
exhausted under him-- or over, or next to-- and just starting
to crawl back onto the beach of consciousness from under the
waves he'd drowned her in. He considered extending the
metaphor even more gratuitously to keep distracting himself
from the urge to dump her onto the bare mattress right now
for another go. Instead, he staunchly turned away from the
bed, pried the door back open with his foot, and carried her
down the hallway. "Morning, sweetheart. Wakey wakey--
anything in particular you'd like for breakfast? Coffee? Tea?
Me?"

Was she going back to sleep again? That was terribly
unflattering. No, she was just thinking it over. "Frozen
toaster waffles?" she finally suggested.

"Don't believe I have any, but I'll see what I've got if
you'll sit tight." He set her down on the countertop, which
he truly regretted was the wrong height. It had been so
lovely to have a good view of her for those few minutes. She
fumbled around inside the blankets to make sure of the
surface, then curled up on her side again while he checked
the fridge and pantry. The help did a fair job of keeping
everything stocked, but he hadn't been bothering with much
besides Tomoe's old favorites. "Plenty of rice, of course.
Sealed bricks of soft tofu. Some sort of stuff that claims to
stay crunchy in milk and is a part of this complete
nutritionally balanced brekky."

"Does that mean it's one of those healthy cereals?" She
sounded sleepily disappointed.

"Dunno. It shows fruit cut up on top, so the flakes can't be
that good to start with. Have we got milk? Yes, but we have
no bananas. Strawberries? Fancy those?"

"Strawberries are good on waffles, too."

Fondly, he thumped the cereal box on her head before setting
it beside the sink, where the freshly rinsed berries were
dripping in their basket. "No waffles. You'll just have to
live with that."

"Waffles are good with a lot of things," she insisted. "Maple
syrup, honey, jam, chocolate...."

"Love, there are no sodding waffles in this house. Never will
be, neither, if you'd rather have them than yours truly for
breakfast. Won't catch me letting you throw me over for a bit
of frozen pastry, I can tell you. 'Sides, you could put that
sort of sticky sweet stuff on anything and make it taste
good. Anchovies. Natto. Me." Her lids finally flew wide open,
two windows of blue sky brightening the day. "Oh, now who's
my pretty owl-eyed girl, then?"

She had a wonderfully dazed look of reminiscence. After a
moment, she said faintly, "Natto?"

"All right, I'll admit that's a bit much. But we can't all
taste as nice as you, or no one would ever get anything done.
Believe you me, I know I'd just lie around in bed all day,
curled into knots trying to lick myself." He picked up a
strawberry, held it pointing upright, and ran his tongue
around its tip. Her mouth dropped open. He popped the
strawberry into it.

It was such a bloody damn shame there wasn't time for this
right now. He retrieved the tea tray from the main room and
loaded it up again in the kitchen. "Now, you sit tight, and
I'll take this upstairs and then come back for you."

By the time he'd dropped off the tray and returned, she was
curled up again with her eyes shut tight and the decapitated
strawberry hull lying next to her mouth. It wasn't a very
good impression of being asleep, but he let it pass.
Reversing the fine tradition of room service, he carried her
to her breakfast and left her there.

---

After a few hours, the maids finished their weekly cleaning
and he sent them back out. They'd be back in the afternoon
with fresh supplies and clean laundry, but for now, it was
safe to unlock the stairwell again. Enishi walked up softly,
guarding against either waking Kaoru or giving her enough
warning to ambush him, depending.

She was still in the nest of covers, almost exactly where
he'd set her down. At some point she'd woken enough to tuck
away most of the cereal and whatnot he'd left on the tray,
but they hadn't given her enough energy to stay awake. As he
sat beside her on the futon, he noticed a few breadcrumbs
clinging to the corner of her mouth, and leaned closer to
lick them away.

He hesitated. She'd been crying, and crying hard. Her poor
little face was puffy and raw from the linen napkin clutched
in her hand. When he pulled it free, it stayed in a crumpled
lump, damply stuck together from the inside. But she hadn't
raised enough of a fuss to be heard from below and she'd
settled down on her own, so perhaps it was out of her system
now. Delicately, he licked up the crumbs after all.

To top off her breakfast, he'd set out a stack of little
jars, each with its own sort of sweet goo that she might
like. He wasn't sure what half of these things from the
pantry were, but they were all labelled with sugar or corn
syrup as their main ingredient, except for the flavored honey
spreads. Whichever one she'd put onto her bread had a subtle
caramel perfume, ethereally milky and sweet. A thin smear of
it shone on her cheek, too, and he went after that as well.
Before he could clear all of it away, she made one of her
wonderful sleepy noises again. It sounded good enough to eat,
so he nibbled at its source, from lips to throat and
downward. She twitched awake, startled. "Ow," she said
accusingly.

His face felt slightly dented from her twitching his glasses
into it. He rubbed the tender line under the wire frames as
he sat back. "Ow yourself. Ready for another beautiful day?
Come on then, rise and shine, pretty owlet."

Shoving tangled hair out of her face, she stayed half-curled
and just looked at the hand he was offering to help her up.
"I don't have any clothes left. Not even your jacket."

"Want it back?" Helpfully, he held it out to her.

"Um. Do you have anything else I could wear? Something that
you're not already wearing right now," she added quickly,
foiling him from disrobing further.

Clever girl. Drat. "I'm sure I can rummage around for a thing
or two while you're in the bath."

Her expression resembled discreet horror. "The bath? Again?"

"Well, you do look a bit mussed, but if you'd rather not, I
spose it would save us both the worry of getting you sweaty
again."

She wrapped the covers tightly around her as she tried to
stand. "I'll take another bath. Downstairs, right? Ow," she
said again, stumbling.

He caught her on one arm. "Easy now. Got your feet tangled
there?"

"Not exactly." Her caramel-glazed cheek blushed into candy-
apple red, but she didn't offer any further explanations, and
she eased herself back down to the futon.

With a supreme effort, he succeeded at suppressing an
explosion of mad macho glee. Only a faint snerkle of smugness
escaped through his nose. "Tell you what," he gallantly
offered. "I'll pop you into the bath up here, so I won't have
to balance you down the stairs and back."

The tub in the next room had a continuous current of warm,
clean water, so it only took a second for him to unlock the
door and make sure nothing embarrassing was sloshing around
in it-- no clumps of hair in the grate, no rubber duckies.
The second after that, he spotted Kaoru trying to squirm her
way toward the stairs, still cocooned in the covers. He
smacked the part of the cocoon that looked like her bottom,
and got another rendition of the little growl in her throat
that had welcomed him early in last night's proceedings.

"Upsy-daisy, now." Cheerfully, he hoisted her over one
shoulder, carried her into the next room, and shut the door
behind her before returning down below.

---

This was so incredibly aggravating. She could tell he knew
exactly where her muscles were sore, not to mention just how
they'd gotten that way. And he'd locked the door behind her
again. How many keys could he possibly be carrying around,
especially since his pants didn't have any pockets? Even the
door over the upper end of the stairs had been locked when
she tried it after breakfast, and there was a set of locks on
the near side as well. She'd considered trying to use the
latter, but decided it would just make him mad, and he
would've broken through eventually anyway.

Unlike the modern edifice of chrome and porcelain she'd used
before, this room was constructed of relatively rough-hewn
wood, just like the one the futon was in. This upstairs zone
was practically a completely different place from downstairs,
even more of a contrast to that luxurious elegance than the
simple tea nook had been. And this bathtub was basically a
big barrel with iron bands and thick bamboo pipes, even
though there had to be some complicated plumbing that ran all
this warm water around.

But she wasn't in any mood for sustained architectural
analysis. There didn't seem to be anything like soap or
shampoo up here, so this was just meant to be a soaking tub--
oh, there was the actual washing stuff in the corner, stacked
on a low stool near a faucet. Well, at this point, she
certainly didn't care about keeping his tub clean. Wincingly,
she got out of the covers, up the short set of steps to the
barrel's edge, and into the water, leaving her hair draped
over the side so it would stay dry.

To her relief, the tub was much more comfortable on the
inside than it had looked on the outside. She could adjust
the water level by tweaking the bamboo tubes up and down. The
raised seat was moveable too, and putting it in front of the
inflow tube made for a nice water massage against her
shoulders.

She felt steadier now than the first time she'd been awake.
It was the breakfast tray that had made her feel weirdly
shaky. All she'd expected had been the cereal he'd talked
about. Sure enough, he'd brought up the box and left it with
a cereal bowl and spoon, the rest of the strawberries, and
one of those packages of heat-treated milk that could stay on
the shelf forever. But he'd also bothered to set out the
other things from the cereal box's front picture: juice,
bread, and stuff to put on it. Okay, so it wasn't that big a
deal, but it was the sort of thoughtful detail that Kenshin
would've covered too. And when she sorted through the little
jars of stuff, one of them turned out to be dulce de leche.

A month or two before, Sano had made an incredible mess by
demonstrating his way to make dulce de leche, which involved
ignoring the warning label on canned condensed milk. After
the can exploded, all three of them had to frantically wipe
and rinse everything in the kitchen before Kaoru's mom and
Yahiko got home. Eventually, Kenshin found a safer recipe,
though as he'd pointed out, it would have been difficult to
find a more dangerous one. Dulce de leche was one of the few
things he'd ever successfully taught Kaoru how to cook, once
he convinced her that there wasn't any good way to get around
stirring a big pot of sweetened milk for several hours on low
heat. Especially not trying to boil off all the liquid
quickly on really high heat.

The required patience had become more appealing once Kenshin
started standing close behind her to lean against. But all of
that was when he was still willing to let that kind of thing
happen, which hadn't been for a while now. And she might have
a long wait before he'd ever do something like that again,
much less catch up to Enishi. But last night hadn't made her
fall in love with Enishi, any more than before they'd even
met. So why had she ever thought that sleeping with Kenshin
would've proved or changed anything at all about the way they
felt for each other?

---

Enishi contemplated the contents of the downstairs bedroom's
wardrobe. He would've like to air out some of Tomoe's other
things, but those long dresses would tumble past Kaoru's
toes. On the other hand, Yumi had worn her own clothing a tad
short, snug, or both, so they'd likely be just the right fit
now.

When he peeked back into the birdbath, Kaoru was soaking with
a vengeance, nearly up to her nose again, and edged even
deeper down when she saw him. She certainly didn't look as if
she wanted company in the tub. With an inward sigh, he merely
waved at her, traded his armful of fabric for the pile of
covers, and shut the door again.

It was well into the morning, and he was feeling restless.
Normally by this time, he'd be tending to business at the
Yoshiwara, letting Wu shuttle the maids around and keep watch
on them. Jineh's latest pranks had been taking priority over
work for the past week. But now Enishi couldn't stray too
long or far to look for him, what with wanting to keep an
eye-- and perhaps a few other parts-- on Kaoru.

But perhaps he'd earned a vacation of sorts. Ironically, he'd
spent more attention on this place before he moved in than
after. Ever since losing Tomoe, he'd felt taunted by
everything he'd brought here to make her happy. He slept and
ate here, but it wasn't home without someone to come home to.
Still, it was a lovely place after all, now that he looked
around. Might as well take a break to explore its potential
for fun.

---

When the music started up, Kaoru nearly jumped out of her
skin, much less the tub. She'd been lost in a deliberately
blank daze, half-asleep again, but there was no way she could
keep that up now. It had been the start of some classical
piece, but she'd never known something like that could be
played this loud. The noise might've been enough by itself to
send the water around her into Jurassic Park ripples, even
without her splashing half of it out with shock.

The volume went way down suddenly. It was coming from some
distance away, filtered through the walls. Dripping her way
to the door, she wrapped a towel around herself and checked
out the rest of the stack. The bathrobe was much too big for
her, so she ignored it. The other clothes definitely had
Yumi's look to them. There was a flippy miniskirt that
would've been even more mini on Yumi, plus an adjustable
crop-top which offered Kaoru the choice of keeping either her
shoulders or her belly-button covered, but not both. She
reconsidered the bathrobe, but decided it wouldn't offer any
more protection than the kimono had in the first place. It
wouldn't be that much warmer than what she'd already put on,
or much harder for him to take off her.

He hadn't locked her in this time. Was he expecting her to
come find him again? She didn't want to, but it probably was
a good idea to get dressed and see if she had another chance
to get out. The stairs weren't locked now either, but the
front door still was. There weren't any sharp metal objects
around at all, her own clothes were completely gone except
for her hair-ribbon, and Enishi wasn't anywhere in sight. But
his long leather coat was still hanging beside the front
door, where he'd dumped off the bedcovers, and music kept
playing from the speakers hidden all over the house. It
didn't make sense that he'd put on a CD and then just leave.
Besides, those covers were right up against the door, so it
hadn't been opened since they were put down.

Upstairs again, the folding screen to one side had a thin
beam of light behind it that she hadn't noticed before. She
hadn't thought to check whether these wall panels could slide
back and forth, but obviously they did. The other side of the
wall was a slightly larger room with a hearth sunk into the
floor, and the light was coming from the smoke vent above
that. After that, a hallway led past a few more rooms, and
then suddenly, she was outside. She'd thought she smelled
fresh air coming through the smoke vent, but it had seemed
weirdly warm and, well, green. Yesterday at sunset, she'd
been in a slushy winter ditch. A few hours after that, she'd
been getting an unexpectedly thorough tour of various modern
design features, from closeup looks at silk-pile carpets and
hardwood cabinets to wider- angle surveys of ceiling beams
and overhead light fixtures. Now she was in the courtyard of
an old-fashioned wooden house, staring out at a pond that
rippled with water-lilies in full bloom. The entire house was
encased in a glass dome, like an inside-out paperweight with
the snow on the outside. And at the pond's edge, Enishi was
playing with his watou.

That instant crystallized all of the differences between him
and Kenshin. Enishi's sword practice looked more like a lynx
on catnip than any sort of formal training routine. As with
Kenshin, his weapon seemed to be a natural extension of his
own body. But while Kenshin treated both of those things as
an unwanted burden, Enishi took active delight in exercising
them to their fullest extent and beyond. It wasn't that
Kenshin was any less skilled or brillliant with them, but he
didn't have any joy in their mere existence the way Enishi
did. And that was what made her finally recognize the music.

This part of it had had been playing in Evangelion when the
guy with her name lost his head. The chorus was singing in
German, but she knew what the words meant anyway.

"Joy, thou source of light immortal, Daughter of Elysium,
Touched with fire, to the portal Of thy radiant shrine we
come.

"Thy pure magic frees all others Held in custom's rigid
rings; All throughout the world are brothers In the haven
of thy wings."

When the symphony was over, he ambled over to the deck, where
he leaned his sheathed watou and mopped a towel over his
head. "Come out to listen to a bit of the old Ludwig Van? Or
did you have something else in mind?"

Not her mind, no. But her body had other ideas when it
recognized his presence, and for the first time, she began to
be really afraid of him.

---

Kaoru looked even better now that she was rested, fed, and
washed up all over again. The green and violet of Yumi's
clothes played up those lovely eyes, as clear as an azure sky
of deepest summer. However, their expression hinted that he
wasn't looking his best himself. "All right then," he said,
draping the towel around his neck. "Reckon as the bath's
waiting for me now, hey?"

It didn't look as if she'd used the soap at all. This
actually made him even happier to think that she'd kept her
own private perfume in place, with nothing but warm clean eau
de Kaoru left on her skin. He gave himself a good scrub,
though, and rinsed himself with cold water until every single
hair stood upright. Leaping into the tub after that was a
wonderful relief, and he lolled back at ease, watching his
glasses steam up again.

He couldn't recall when he'd last felt this good. Maybe the
brief time he'd spent with Tomoe in their flat before she was
stolen from him, but even when she was asleep, he'd never got
half as far with her as with Kaoru. His own pretty bluebird,
singing as sweetly as any nightingale under the starry sky--
was she tame yet, or would she still peck at him to fly free?

On cue, the bathroom door edged open. He'd left his watou out
there to test her, but its blade didn't come flying out at
him. In fact, she didn't show as much as a fingertip or an
eyelash. "Um. Should I take this tray back downstairs? I
don't know where your dishes and stuff should go."

"You can leave them as they are, pet. If you're fretting for
something to do, the koi out there would likely welcome
what's left of the bread. Just don't fuss them with lemon
curd and butter, or they might think you're making a meal of
them instead of giving them one."

"Oh. Okay." The hair-thin gap closed shut again. She sounded
both listless and edgy somehow, he thought. Perhaps she was
due for another feeding as well.

Well, he'd spent enough time basking here already. Another
pass with fresh towels, and then he shrugged his bathrobe
onto damp shoulders and followed her trail of breadcrumbs
back to the courtyard. "What do you say to another round of
miso soup? Or do you fancy something else this time?"

"Soup sounds fine," she said in the same tone as before, but
when she turned from the pond toward him, she went all owl-
eyed again and as colorful as a ringneck parakeet: green
skirt, violet blouse, blue hair-ribbon, and rose-blush face.
Cor. He'd got a bit lazy about remembering to actually tie
his bathrobe closed, hadn't he?

He distracted her attention upward with what felt like an
unconvincing "I meant to do that" grin. Firmly tying the
sash, he pressed, "Just soup? Don't want a bit of fish or
daikon pickle to go with it?"

Quickly, her face returned to normal, but she sounded a bit
more lively now. "I'm not really hungry again yet, but
thanks. I'll just try some of whatever you're having for
lunch."

"I'm not hungry either, just wondering why you seem out of
sorts. You all right, then?"

"Yeah, I guess so. It's just-- I'm still a little tired,
that's all."

Her blush had returned to full bloom, but she looked forlorn
enough that he felt guilty for even thinking about
snickering. "Get on back to the futon then, and finish
resting up. Take all the time you want, love. I'd forgot how
much sleep you might need, but go on ahead if you have to."

"You forgot? Don't you have to sleep too?"

He shrugged. "I can get by without it if need be, though it
does feel nice. Just like eating. Or a few other things.
Didn't Battousai teach you anything about us at all?"

"He's... different." Her whole body drooped as she swayed on
her feet. When he held out his hand, she took it without
looking at him, and let him lead her back inside.

---

Enish had brought out another set of blankets and tucked them
around her, then sat by her side stroking her hair until she
really fell asleep again. That must've been hours ago, from
the way the light had changed. In the morning, it had been
merely reflecting off the inside of the dome down the smoke
vent in the next room. He'd left the wall panel open and
moved the folding screen aside to improve air circulation, so
now direct sunlight was shining straight at her. Obviously,
he'd known exactly where it would fall, since the screen had
been placed just right to keep the sunbeam from hitting her
face. Kaoru desperately hoped that he would stop being this
nice to her when he came back.

Not that she wanted to be roughed up or anything like that,
but it had felt so much easier to deal with him last night,
when he'd been all impersonal virtuosity or romping play. But
now he was acting almost as if he liked her. Not just the
ordinary kind of like, but the really heavy-duty liking like.
How could she keep viewing him as an enemy if he refused to
act like one?

And that was even apart from the whole problem of enjoying
her predicament more than what might be deemed prudent, as
Hiko might put it. She did felt kind of guilty for giving in,
but she wouldn't've had any chance at winning or maybe even
surviving a solid fight with Enishi, so she could mostly
rationalize that part of it to herself as living to fight
another day. And maybe Kenshin didn't even care what she did
anymore, ever since their last argument.

Mostly, she had a vaguely sick sensation as if she'd been
force-fed too much chocolate. Sure, it was something she
liked, but she hadn't wanted it right now, and she'd been
given more of it than she could deal with all at once. In a
way, Enishi reminded her of Elmyra from Tiny Toons, the
little girl who wanted to have pets but kept squeezing them
too hard, killing them with too much love.

Her only consolation was that it wasn't morning sickness.
Yumi and Tomoe didn't have their periods while they were
possessed, so that probably meant Enishi and Jineh were
shooting blanks. Not that she ever wanted to get close enough
to Jineh to find out. She didn't even really want to know
about Enishi, but it was a little late for that.

Jineh and Enishi... that reminded her of something. Last
night, before everything went to hell, she'd figured Jineh's
lair was guarded by zombies because he'd gone back to teaming
up with Enishi, who was all Mr. Being John Malkovich Flesh-
Puppeteer Extraordinaire. But Enishi was out to get Jineh
too, so she'd ended up being grateful to him for rescuing her
from his own zombie attack squad, hadn't she? She would've
recognized him immediately if he'd been carrying his watou,
but he'd had a katana with him instead-- a katana that was a
lot heavier than she'd expected, and which he'd never taken
out of its scabbard or even touched without wearing black
iron gauntlets.

He'd helped Jineh torture her mother and kill her father,
months before. And last night, he'd set out to ravish her
with the same cool determination that must have underlaid
their raid on the dojo. The same hands, the same deft skills,
the same intimate knowledge of where the veins and nerves
would surge-- all of those had helped him take Kaoru, just as
he'd taken the sakabatou. So now he had both of them.

She had no idea if he'd kept the silver sword all along and
took it with him to kill Jineh, or if he'd sent in the
zombies to help him steal it again, but that didn't matter.
He had it now. Somewhere. And she was going to get it back
from him. Somehow. The sakabatou had killed Enishi once
before, more than a hundred years ago. There wasn't any
reason why it couldn't do it again. Was there?

About an hour later, when she'd had time to think this over,
he unlocked the stairwell again. He'd changed out of his
bathrobe into a fresh outfit that was almost identical to his
previous set of clothes; the main reason she could tell the
difference was that these didn't have embarrassing stains on
them. "So you're awake again at last, little blue-eyed owl.
Made some rice balls if you want some. Otherwise, they're
going into the fridge to pour tea on for snacks tomorrow."

"Could I have some with tea now?"

The prospect of feeding her again perked him back up to full
voltage. "I'll bring them up with another treat or two. Back
in a tick." She rubbed her eyes and sat up; by the time she'd
found her hair ribbon and rebooted her ponytail, he'd come
charging back in, carrying the increasingly familiar tray. It
was getting to be just like deja vu all over again. Tea, rice
balls... and waffles?

They looked waffly, with ice crystals clinging to their
crevices like half-melted butter. "Frozen toaster waffles?"
she asked, to make sure.

He shrugged modestly. "You asked for them special. I brought
you all that sticky stuff again, too."

"They're still frozen?"

"Yeh. Like you said, right?"

"Um... do you have a toaster?"

"What's that?"

"You know. You put bread into it and toast comes out."

"Yeh?" He looked thoughtful. "Where does the bread go?"

She stuffed a rice ball into her mouth as quickly as
possible. When she felt capable of opening her mouth again
without spraying rice everywhere, she gasped politely, "Thank
you very much for the waffles. I'll save them for dessert."

He'd been serenely sipping tea all this time, but now he set
his cup down and grinned. "Got you there, didn't I?"

She fell over sideways, giggling hysterically. He reached
around the tray to tickle her; when she squirmed away, he sat
up on his knees, leaned forward, and simply fell on top of
her.

---

Well, that had been a surprise. Here she'd been all happy and
laughing again, but the moment he touched her, she froze and
tried to flatten herself down into the futon like a rabbit
under a hawk's shadow. He backed off, leaning on one elbow
beside her and hoping to smooth things over. "Turns out these
waffles won't fit right in the toaster downstairs, that's
all," he said casually. "Nor they won't take to the microwave
or the oven. Reckon we can just wait for them to defrost, and
then maybe crisp them up a bit on the stove, hey?"

She was shivering a bit as she nodded. She'd been so brave
and feisty the night before; why would she be so rattled now?
There was only one explanation that made sense to him.

"Kaoru, love. Is that something Battousai used to do? Pounce
over you and hold you down?" She nodded again, a single jerk
of her chin. It still seemed odd, though. "But you said he
hardly touched you at all. What'd he do that for, then?"

Her mouth opened, but at first there was only a tiny gasp for
breath. He had to lean as close as breadcrumbs to hear her
whisper. "It was when I tried to do more with him than he'd
let me. So then he'd push me away and hold me off."

Enishi closed his eyes, trying to suppress his sudden rage.
It all made sense now. Should he tell her? If he didn't, he'd
explode.

"So that's what the little lizard was after with you. He
wanted to keep you caged away until he could change you into
one of us, and then he'd have Tomoe all over again." She
didn't understand, did she?

"Tomoe, my dearest sister, my dulcet dove-- she was a virgin
when she went to him. Do you know what that means? Every time
he was with her, he tore her open, and she healed back up
over and over again. I would've tried to make her happy
without doing that, but she never gave me the chance, and now
it's gone.

"Pretty bluebird, you'll never have to fear that now. I've
saved you from all of that. Push you away, did he? You can
hold me as tight as you like; I'll never let you go."

He drew her against his shoulder, waiting for her shivers to
subside. It took a while before he realized she was crying.
During the past few years, Tomoe's sobbing wails had echoed
off the walls of whatever refuge they'd found, but the only
things that gave Kaoru away were the hot tears soaking into
his jacket and an occasional sharp sniffle. Despite her near-
silence, though, she was clinging to him so tightly that it
was nearly painful.

"Tell you what," he offered, cradling her in his arms. "I was
hoping to rock you to sleep some other way, but I don't think
you'd rest easy with that just now, would you?" She shook her
head. "So if you'd rather, I'll let you do whatever you like
to me, if it'll help at all. What do you say to that?"

---

The jacket's smooth brocade had that subtle soap-scent all
over again, like Earl Grey tea in a sandalwood box, and
Enishi's voice was a comforting rumble through it. Kaoru
wished he would just drop dead from self-induced toxic
niceness. She wished she'd never let Kenshin walk away. She
wished she'd never met either of them and was just having a
friendly argument with Megumi about whose turn it was to have
a date with Sano. What could she say? What could she possibly
say that would make anything better at this point?

Was Enishi right about Kenshin, or had Kenshin just been
afraid to cause her as much pain as he'd given Tomoe over the
years? Would Battousai really have surfaced just from her own
influence? What did any of it matter now?

If she had one more chocolate truffle shoved down her throat,
so to speak, she was going to be even more of a wreck than
before. So this really would have to be her opening to start
prying the sakabatou away from him. She sniffled again, and
got a soft linen handkerchief tucked against her face.
"Blow," he said gently.

She blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and sniffled one last
time. "What do you want me to do?"

"For now, just lay your head down until there's more of a
smile on it." He was stroking her hair again, with long
smooth motions as if sharpening a sword. "After that, if you
can't think of anything that would make you feel better, I'll
have to see to it myself."

"I mean, what kinds of things would you like?"

His shoulder tensed into alertness beneath her cheek. "Do you
want to, then? So you can wash out your fear of Battousai
once and for all?" He really didn't understand how she felt
about Kenshin, did he? She nodded anyway. "Phwoar," he said,
or something like it. "Best way to find out that sort of
thing is by experiment, I always say. Start whenever you're
ready."

Tentatively, she reached out, tracing the contours of his
torso through the double layers of his shirt and jacket. He
had longer bones than Kenshin, of course, and his chest was
broader and deeper, built by the same extra burden of the
watou that bulked up his arms and shoulders. After a minute
or two, she glanced up at his face. He was watching her, not
surprisingly, though with an expectant look she hadn't quite
seen before. It worried her. "Should I be saying stuff to
you?" she asked.

"Anything in particular on your mind?"

"Well... it's just that you always talk to me, so it feels
weird for both of us to be completely quiet."

She'd halted her explorations, and he wriggled impatiently to
prompt her to resume. When she did, so did he. "Doesn't look
as if you can keep your mind on business and hold a chat at
the same time. I was all prepared to just lie back all quiet-
like and think of Okusofodo-- very green and pleasant land--
but if you'd rather, I can talk enough for both of us. Used
to be a bit of a joke with us in the old days. I remember one
night when I was warming up Yumi, and Battousai yells over
from his corner, 'Shut up, Enishi! We're trying to sleep over
here!' And bless her heart, Yumi yells right back, 'Well, so
am I!' Changed her mind quick enough, though."

Kaoru giggled, surprised, then quickly stopped in case he
might get insulted. But he didn't seem to mind, unless that
was what his odd little smile meant. "There now," he said.
"The chat does seem to put you at ease, or at least it lets
your mind go wandering off a bit. And your hands."

"Oh!" Startled, she twitched away, but he caught her wrists
and pressed them back against his chest.

"No need to get all shy about that. It's not as if I haven't
already done the same to you and more. In fact--" His smile
widened, but didn't get any less odd. "Tell you what, I'll
sweeten the pot for you. Anything you do for me right now,
I'll do for you twice over when you're done. Reckon you must
have an idea already of what sort of thing you like, so
that'll give you a place to start. Deal?"

"Um. How do you know when I'm done?"

He shrugged. "When you say so, I spose. If you want to make a
game of it, I'll even promise not to put anything over on you
until my turn comes around. All right?"

"I guess so." She fiddled with the knotted loops of his
jacket fasteners uneasily for a while, until he poked her
arm.

"Let me guess-- you've got a new rule for the game? Won't
move ahead unless I keep talking at you, is that it?"
Actually, she kind of liked that idea. She didn't say it, but
he must have read it from her expression. "All right," he
continued, "let's see. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers. Antidisestablishmentarianism. The rabbit on the moon
pounds mochi." Once he trailed off again, she stopped
unfastening his jacket. "Hah. You're a cruel wench, you are.
Besides, you know I'm going to stop making sense after a
bit."

"That didn't make any sense to start with."

"What do you want from me, the whole bloody Kojiki? When
heaven and earth began, three kami appeared in the Plain of
High Heaven, each by their lonesomes instead of in pairs: Ame
no Minakanushi, the kami of the center of heaven; then Takami
Musubi, the kami of the life-force up high; then Kami Musubi,
the-- ow! You know that just means I'm going to smack you
upside the head twice over when it's your turn, pet."

"You were just showing off, anyway. Besides, I didn't smack
you that hard."

"Yeh, but I get to smack you twice as hard. So there." He
beamed with the virtuous sheen of divine retribution.

She snorted at him, but the only way she could escape that
infernal smugness on his face was by getting out of his field
of vision. The least alarming way to do that, from her point
of view anyway, was to simply lay her head down on his chest
again.

As warm and light as his heartbeat against her face, Enishi's
hand came up around her shoulders. "It's not as bad as all
that, is it? Or are you still afraid I'll do something nasty
to you? I won't, I promise, not unless you want me to." His
other arm squeezed her waist with the hint of another tickle.

"You said you wouldn't do anything until I say you can," she
reminded him. "What if you like something that I don't, or
the other way around?"

His fingers defiantly wiggled in the general direction of her
belly-button."You'd best plan accordingly then, hadn't you?
Want to play, or are you calling it quits already?" He was
already starting to roll her over onto the futon, but she
pushed him down as she sat up. "That's more like it," he
said. He fluffed up the pillow beside him and lounged against
it. All he needed was a bowl of cheesy poofs, and he'd look
just like Yahiko sprawled out for his daily dose of cartoons.

She went back to lightly tracing his chest through his
clothing, to the soundtrack of a running murmur of approval.
"That's lovely, those little circles with your fingers. You
can press a bit harder, if you like. Even use your nails a
bit if you fancy." His jacket and shirt made things easier
for her because she could tell herself that she wasn't really
touching his body, even though its outlines were firm and
solid through the layers of silk. When he'd first started to
touch her through Tomoe's kimono, though, that diffused and
slippery caress had been almost more devastating for her than
anything that followed.

His breath hissed inward as she followed his suggestions, and
he made that low purring rumble that she could feel through
his whole body. "Does that mean you liked it?" she asked.

The rumble stopped. Alarmed, she met his eyes again; they
were narrowed behind the faint haze of steam inside his
glasses' lenses. As she started to withdraw again, his hands
shot forward to seize hers. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" She made a few futile tugs, but he wouldn't let
go. However, his answer was less sharp.

"You needn't use that tone with me, that's all. The way you
asked me that, it breaks my heart. Sounds as if you're
pleading with me to say yes, but expecting me to say no and
hurt you something dreadful. You're not with Battousai any
more, love. You don't have to be afraid of him now, not ever
again."

What was he talking about? All she'd done was unconsciously
echo the same way Kenshin had always asked her, whenever
they-- oh. Oh, no. Kenshin....

Somehow, she managed to hold herself together under Enishi's
merciless pity. What had he just said? "Never? But... you
said you were going to send me back. So he'd know what you'd
done with me."

"Did I?" His tight grip had melted into a caresss.
Thoughtfully, he said, "I spose I did, at that. You must've
thought I was some kind of monster. But you needn't worry
about that again. Didn't you hear me just now, before you got
all frolicsome? I couldn't send you back to him, not now that
I know you. If I was Battousai and you came back to me this
way, I'd kill you."

"But Kenshin wouldn't--" She stopped herself, but he just
shook his head.

"You told me what a bloody git he's been to you already, so
I'm keeping you safe and away from him. And now let's get
back to happier things, why don't we? Your pretty little
hands were here and here, if I recall rightly, and I
certainly did like it. Go on, then, that's right."

Numbly, she went back to what she'd been doing, keeping her
attention on her hands so she wouldn't have to look at Enishi
any more. But this wasn't about her, was it? Even if Kenshin
turned into Battousai and killed her, Hiko or someone else
could still use the sakabatou to get rid of the demon
forever. Enishi had that sword somewhere. All she had to do
was find out where, and get it out of here. After that, her
obligation to her father's legacy and to Kenshin would be
complete, and it wouldn't matter what happened to her.

Her reverie was broken by Enishi rubbing his cheek against
her wrist. He must not have shaved this morning; in direct
light, the short silver flecks glittered like a sprinkling of
sugar over his skin. "Hey, stop that," she said.

He mock-growled. "Can't help it, bluebird. You're such a
luscious little tease, you know that? Here I am with my
jacket half-undone and ready to be ripped off, and all you're
doing is a bit of fingerpainting through it. But I'll get you
back for it later."

"Well, what do you want already?"

"If you can't think of anything yourself, your turn's over."

She pushed him down again. "All right," she sighed. "Hang on
and I'll come up with something."

"Reckon as I've come up with something already," he
protested, waggling his hips at her. Exasperated, she got up
and sat on them. Oh boy, he wasn't kidding, was he? And he
really seemed to like being sat on, too. Not that it didn't
feel kind of nice for her, too, but she couldn't afford to be
distracted while he was letting her have the upper hand. If
that was the right way to put it.

"Stop that," she repeated. "Or I get to wiggle at you when
you're trying to do stuff."

That just sparked a wicked gleam. "That a promise?" She
swiped at him to make him lie back again. At the last second,
he dropped out of the way instead of letting her scratch him.
"Or maybe you don't want me to do anything else to you
besides this sort of thing, is that it?"

She was getting a little better at interpreting his grins.
This one reminded her of the crescent moon in winter, with
sharp, cold edges. If he didn't think she trusted him, he
wouldn't trust her. Leaning forward, she pulled open another
jacket fastener with her teeth. "You're not saying anything
that's helping me out. Aren't you going to hold up your end
of the deal?"

"That's more like it. Mmm, you've such lovely hair, all
smooth against my face. Must've let it fall into your mouth
while eating breakfast-- tastes like honey, or whatever mess
you put onto your bread this morning. Hope you didn't use it
all up, coz it's making me a bit hungry too. So you do
remember some of the things I did for you last night, don't
you? Even nicer through my shirt, holding in your sweet warm
breath against my skin, oh yes."

Oh. So that was why men had nipples. Obviously lactation
wasn't everything. She skated her teeth up one of them
through the silk, and his back arched up to follow the
motion. "Ah, harder, sweetheart, make me feel it. Let me know
I'm not just dreaming you, leave your mark on me to find in
the morning."

He exhaled a sharp protest when she stopped, but didn't try
to pull her back. His hands were gripping the futon cover
tightly, but all he did was lie there, tensely watching her.
When she unfastened his shirt, spreading it open with his
jacket, he relaxed a bit, but only for a little while.

Despite his encouragement, she didn't really want to bite
him, so he'd have to settle for the rest of her mouth. The
combination of soft kisses and gentle swirls of the tongue
seemed to make him happy enough. She had to concentrate on
keeping her knees gripped tightly around his legs so she
wouldn't slide completely off the slippery brocade of his
pants, though he helpfully held onto her waist to anchor her.
For a change, she tried making her tongue rigid and pointy,
and flicked it quickly back and forth. He made a really weird
noise she couldn't hear clearly, because she'd automatically
squealed as he tried to launch her into space with his hips.
The only thing that saved her was a tight grip under his
ribs, and she still left red scrapes around them as her
fingernails slid up.

His arms pressed tightly, holding her close against him, and
his whole body was shaking with his heartbeat now. "Kaoru,
sweetheart. Pretty bluebird, my own sweet love. Will you let
me touch you yet, or are you still going to have your way
with me for a bit longer?"

"Mmphl," she said into his neck. He loosened his hands,
already trailing them up to cradle her face, but she shook
them off. "I'm not done with you yet, so stay there."

His glasses were sliding off his nose. Disconcertingly, he
reminded her of Hiko as he looked at her over them, and then
he took them off and set them aside, waiting. His gaze dipped
down to where she was sitting on him. If she couldn't think
of anything else to do to him above the waist, there wasn't
going to be anywhere else to go but below it.

Well, he liked her hair, didn't he? She tickled him with the
ends of it. He sounded almost plaintive. "You can give me
more than that, can't you?" Maybe, but what was he going to
do if she did something he couldn't copy? She had the sudden
urge to find out.

She untied her ribbon to liberate her ponytail, which was
already gathered over one shoulder. Leaning forward, she
smeared the entire mass of hair over his torso, rubbing it
all across him. He'd been right, Kaoru thought, he did stop
making sense. "Oh bliss," he breathed, "Bliss and heaven! Oh,
gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. My own precious bird
of rarest-spun heaven-metal, like silvery wine flowing in a
spaceship," and so on.

What would he do next, start yodelling? Sitting back up, she
twisted her hair into a rope and whipped it hard against his
chest. She saw a burning turquoise flash, and then everything
went flying.

Or at least she did. The next thing she knew, she was pinned
down into the futon, with her top thrown over her face.
Enishi wrenched the scrap of cloth over her head, keeping her
arms pinioned with it as his sugar-sprinkling of stubble
rasped against her breasts. She cried out in a confusion of
pain and desire. "You deserved that," he growled. "You
deserve everything I can give you and more. Anything you
want, just tell me, as long as you do that again."

"It's not your turn yet," she managed to say. He jerked his
head up with a hard predator's stare before the shadow of
rationality returned to it.

"You're right, pet." Reluctantly, he sat up. Still half-
stunned, she stayed sprawled to the side and watched him take
a deep breath. "One," he said, and took another.

"Two." He looked at her. She looked at him.

"Three." Leaning back toward the tray, he finished his cold
tea.

"Four." After setting his cup back down, he picked up a
handful of the little jam jars.

"Five." Testing each jar in turn, he twisted their lids until
one of them easily flew open.

"Six." It was the dulce de leche she'd used this morning,
wasn't it?

"Seven." He wasn't going to put it onto that half-defrosted
waffle, was he?

"Eight." No, he was just dipping his finger into it for a
taste.

"What are you counting?" she asked, and started to wrestle
her crop-top back down into place. It didn't want to. Stupid
spandex.

He glanced down at her, but didn't explain. "Nine." Setting
the jar into his empty cup, he poured out hot fresh tea from
the pot to surround it, stirring the softening contents with
a chopstick.

"Is this another game rule that you forgot to tell me, or are
you just making this up as you go along?"

"Ten." When he lifted the chopstick from the jar, the dulce
de leche clung to it and flowed down like bronze-colored
silk.

"Or is this some kind of time-out?"

He removed the jar from the cup, dried the exterior on the
hem of his jacket, and finished ripping her clothes off.
"It's time for me to enjoy my little blueberry waffle," he
said, and poured the milky caramel all over her nooks and
crannies.

It was warm and sticky and about to get licked completely off
her, wasn't it? There went his clothing, too. With a last
attempt at salvation, she protested, "You said you were just
going to do everything I did, except twice."

"So I did," he agreed. "But I didn't say when." Slowly and
thoroughly, he rubbed his body all over hers until they were
both thinly coated. "Do you want to go first, or do you want
to take your turn between both of mine?"

-----

La la la. La. Parts four and five to follow after several
more Edodale chapters, which may actually catch up to the
start of this. I've added chapter-title notes for FotN to the
set for Edodale, though there isn't much to them.

As in part 2, Enishi shares his taste in music with the
protagonist of Stanley Kubrick's movie _A Clockwork Orange_.
("Singing in the Rain" wasn't in Burgess's book; supposedly
it was just the only song Malcolm MacDowell could manage.)
The English lyrics cited here were found at
http://www.freeradical.co.nz/content/40/40adams.shtm , as
well as various other websites with minor variations; I don't
know who the translator is. It's one of the nicer rhyming
translations, though it only covers the first two verses. But
that's probably quite enough anyway.

Enishi also happens to steal various lines from the same
source: the phrase about the "azure sky", and his whole odd
paragraph about "bliss and heaven", though they've been more
or less altered from their original contexts. Minor
linguistic research seems to indicate that I'm giving him a
rather northern-England sort of dialect, what with "love" as
a casual endearment, the syntactical presence of "reckon" at
all, the double-modals mentioned at the end of Edodale 16,
and other things like that. This convergence is almost
certainly purely accidental on my part, produced by an odd
mental goulash of Monty Python, occasional childhood exposure
to Appalachian dialect variations, and a book of Australian
slang. Though maybe it isn't all that accidental, as
apparently a significant proportion of Appalachian emigrants
originated from northern England, and I have so totally
digressed here.

I can't recall whether I first saw the venerable toaster joke
in Charles Schulz's _Peanuts_, Bill Watterson's _Calvin and
Hobbes_, or possibly both. I am happy to disclaim all
personal responsibility for it.

Many thanks to Firuze Khanume for her continuing infusions of
Enishimania, as well as her recipe for dulce de leche. Yum.
And renewed apologies to Jason M. Lee, if he hasn't passed
out onto the keyboard by this point already.

Incidentally, I'm hoping to make Kaoru at least sixteen by
the time FotN begins. While the factual age of consent in
California is actually eighteen, sixteen is adequate in many
other states and countries (see
http://ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm for a handy
reference chart), and when it comes down to it, Enishi is not
a character likely to be concerned much with legal niceties.
(I'm not even sure what his age is here-- biologically
somewhere between nineteen and twenty-six, plus about six
chronological years, not counting the long gap when his dust
was floating around in bits.) But Kenshin was fifteen when he
started out as Battousai in RK canon, and Buffy was fifteen
when her first Watcher found her in the movie, and so
everything started right there. Honestly, I wish I could've
thought of some non-annoying way to pad out the Edodale
chronology to make her a more decent age by this point, but
spacing out the major fight scenes to equinoxes and solstices
just doesn't make sense in the way that the full moon does
(awooooo). At least we know Buffy's birthday takes place
sometime during the school year, so I'm clinging to that.