.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
"Pretty Boy… are you planning on crouching out there all night?"
Kaoru froze like a child caught stealing rice offerings from a kamidama. The breath stalled in her lungs; then, heat climbed her neck in a slow, humiliating wave, and every instinct told her to bury deeper into the shadow and pretend she had never existed. Maybe he didn't mean her; maybe he was delirious; maybe—
"C'mon," came the second line, this time from much closer and irritated, just on the other side of the canvas. "No one's watching."
Her ears burned, and the wave of heat flushed across her cheeks. Of course he knows. The Six Eyes, Kaoru. Damn it. She closed her eyes and let her forehead dip toward her knees, then cursed him, cursed herself, and cursed whatever kami had decided to hand a man like him the ability to perceive a cursed energy signature ten ri away. She should have known better; there was no hiding from that gaze.
With all the grace her upbringing had beaten into her, Kaoru exhaled once, straightened her spine, and gathered what remained of her dignity. Then she sank into her own shadow. The tent lantern light folded around her as she rose from Seijiro's shadow in a ripple of cursed energy, arms crossed and chin lifted high enough to imply she had not just been crouched outside like a bulgar. Then, as if nothing ever happened, she took three deliberate steps back from him.
Seijiro didn't turn. He kept scowling toward the flap she'd been hiding behind, offended that he had been forced to address canvas instead of her face. "Took you long enough," he muttered with an aggravated voice.
He still didn't look at her. He wanted her to stew. Unfortunately, she did.
Kaoru took a deep breath and finally looked at him. And immediately regretted it. Seijiro was, for reasons that escaped her, bare from the waist up, silver damp hair loose and spilling down his back. Bandages were wrapped loosely across his chest, and he still looked exhausted, fever-warm. Completely unguarded and... annoyingly luminous in the low candlelight in a way that felt intentional because it probably was.
The bastard looked fully aware and so smug about it.
Ksoru's eyes snapped upward toward the ceiling with a forced frown, but too late, the damage to her mind was done. Why is he half-naked. Why is the candle placed just like that. Has he arranged this on purpose? Her throat went dry as her eyes flicked down, then up, then down again before her brain caught up with her face.
Externally: composure. Internally: treason.
This is fine. Completely fine.
"So?" he called lazily. "Come sit or stab me. Pick one."
Her mouth opened before she could stop herself. "I just came to check if you were alive."
That earned her a glance over his shoulder; his eyes met hers, glassy and fever-bright. "Well, you're late. I already had a full scolding and one round of cursed healing. Still standing. Mostly."
He gestured vaguely at the bloodied bedding, at his very-much-alive, very-much-not-decently-dressed self. Then, with too much melodrama, he collapsed back into the blood-stained nest of linens with a groan, slid a hand over his eyes and the other resting on his stomach, fingers tapping absently. He felt undone and done, and he felt he looked like that, too. The leftovers from Payo's Reverse Cursed Technique still buzzed through his system, leaving heat crawl beneath his skin where it had fought against Masanari's corrosive cursed energy. His thoughts still lagged half a second behind his mouth. And Kaoru, damn her—
Kaoru had the audacity to sneak into his camp, and was now standing there with that expression she wore when she was absolutely worried and pretending not to be, the one that flattened her frown into indifference so aggressively it circled back around to concern. And she had the audacity to look irritated about it? By all means, he should have been the one to be irritated. Instead, he felt warm in ways that had nothing to do with fever and, to his horror, more than a little to do with her.
Feels like being drunk on bad sakè.
Kaoru's gaze dropped to his chest again, where bandages were still stained with dried blood. The wound wasn't closed properly yet, and Masanari's corrosive cursed energy still webbed at the edges of the injury, probably, given that his breathing was still shallow and his skin still flushed with fever. She narrowed her eyes; she didn't need the Six Eyes to tell he wasn't okay.
"That doesn't look healed," she said coolly.
"Payo'll finish it eventually," Seijiro mumbled. "You don't need to—"
"I'm not worried."
Too fast.
He peeked through his hand with one eye, watched her watching him. Ah. She was really worried. It shouldn't have mattered as much as it did; that was inconvenient, and it wasn't helping since it was too hot in the tent, and he couldn't breathe properly, and he couldn't think straight, and—
And now I'm thinking about things I shouldn't be thinking in a situation I shouldn't be thinking them.
Finally, he pushed himself halfway upright, dragging a hand through damp silver hair; he fixed her with a pointed look that was far too focused for someone allegedly still delirious. "What," he murmured, "are you hoping to get out of this, Kaoru?"
Kaoru blinked; Seijiro really had the bad habit of throwing back at her her own words at the worst timing.
"I mean," he went on, gesturing vaguely at the tent, at himself, at the absurdity of the situation, "you snuck through two layers of camp, probably lied to Hattori-dono, which, by the way, is spectacularly stupid, and all of this for...?"
"I didn't come to spy, if that's what you are saying—"
"Didn't say you did."
Dead silence.
Her mouth tightened, and her hands uncrossed from her arms, dropping at her sides. The expression she settled into was deliberately blank, as her mind raced for an answer. She didn't know what she had expected when crossing the camp. All she knew was that she hadn't been able to sleep after that arrow went through him. She told herself this was reconnaissance, ensuring he wasn't bleeding out alone while everyone assumed the heir of the Six Eyes would handle it, one last check that he was breathing, talking, and annoying.
So... why was she still here?
She moved without answering him, slowly lowering herself onto her heels in front of him; the gesture felt smaller than it should have been for someone of her rank, wrapping her arms around her knees like a child. Her fingers flexed against her sleeves when her eyes fixed on the bandage at his chest, instead of his face.
Ridiculous. She just needed him to know she hadn't stood aside and let it happen, that she hadn't planned with Masanari to kill him like that. That was all.
Seijiro straightened slightly, not because of pain, though the injury still looked rough, but because Kaoru was doing that thing where she stood closer than she seemed to realize, and he had no energy left to pretend to be unaffected. His eyes flicked to her face, then away again with almost suspicious speed. She didn't notice; Kaoru Zenin never noticed when someone looked at her like she mattered.
Kaoru tilted her head, examining the wound where Masanari's arrow had passed clean through him; she still remembered the sound and the heat of his blood when it struck her cheek. "Wow," she said lightly, nodding toward the stained bandage. "He really almost got you. You're lucky he missed anything important."
"Oh, believe me," Seijiro replied dryly, "he never misses. Corrosive cursed energy, typical Hattori-dono, always has to be an overachiever. I get the full experience, but Payo slowed it down. I'll be fine."
Her gaze stayed a second too long. Then she looked away abruptly. "I know," she said too quickly. Too flatly. "I said I'm not worried."
One silver eyebrow lifted. "Didn't say you were."
"I'm not."
"Alright."
A pause.
"Then stop smirking."
His mouth curved wider on instinct, because he caught the twitch in her cheek again—that microscopic betrayal—and committed it to memory. "I'm not smirking," he lied, smirking.
Kaoru turned her head, scowling at nothing in particular, but the twitch deepened before she strangled it back into submission. Seijiro catalogued it under: Kaoru Zenin, heir to a lineage of rigid, humorless warlords, visibly flustered. Rare. Potentially lethal. And he was dangerously far too aware of how much he liked it.
Her hands tightened around her knees, then steadied when she spoke again. "I didn't plan it with Hattori-dono," she said. "The arrow, I mean. I didn't know Hattori-dono would shoot then. I wasn't trying to distract you, but… I did." A measured pause. "And that's on me." She let the world set before speaking again, gaze fixed somewhere near his shoulder rather than his eyes. "So, I'm sorry."
Seijiro blinked. Apologies were not Kaoru Zenin's native language; it was awkward.
"I thought I had control of the situation," she added. "I didn't."
"I knew," he said softly. He rubbed at his jaw, trying to erase the tension. "I knew it wasn't you even then, somewhere under the pain." He gave a single shrug. "But I had an arrow in my chest, so… took a second, you know." He meant it; even bleeding, even furious, he had known. He looked as her shoulders eased a fraction and she visibly fought a small smile tempting to form. "I should apologize too."
Her eyes snapped up back to his.
"For your shikigami, I mean," Seijiro clarified. "I just saw cursed energy and reacted. I didn't even see what it was until it was gone."
Kaoru inhaled once. "You weren't wrong," she said after a moment. "Well. You were." A little childish tilt of her chin. "But I understand it. Instinct."
Seijiro frowned; that wasn't the point. "Did it hurt?" he asked.
She flinched nut her pride straightened her spine immediately. Chin lifted, eyes on his. "Only a little."
He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, studying her. He gave an exaggerated pout. "...Liar."
She answered with a shrug and the faintest twitch at her lips. "I had worse."
"Oh yeah?" He grinned again. "Worse like... being raised by Takahiro Zenin? Pretending to be a man when you're very obviously too pretty to pull it off?"
Kaoru choked a laugh before she could stop it. "You thought I was a eunuch," she shot back. "Let's not pretend you had excellent perception."
He hummed. "Still not entirely convinced I was wrong," he said.
She rolled her eyes, and then, to his horror, she laughed for real. Not the controlled huff she used in court or the polite exhale she weaponized in negotiations, but a real laugh, unfiltered and stripped of war. For a second, she didn't look Zenin-dono, nor a clan head. Just a girl.
Seijiro caught it like it was a falling star.
Kaoru. Laughing. Close enough to reach. Dangerous. I hate this. He dragged a hand down his face. She should not be allowed to laugh like that while he was feverish, half-dressed, and operating at half-capacity. He didn't know what to do with that, only that he was definitely not lucid enough to be trusted with this.
Reset. Change subject.
"So," he said, clearing his throat, aiming for casual and landing somewhere very far from it, "how's your side of hell?"
Kaoru exhaled, her laugh dying quietly. "Not good. Hattori-dono still hates you with a passion."
Seijiro made a sound in the middle between a laugh and a groan. "Good. I'd be offended if he didn't."
"And…" She hesitated, and that caught his attention. "No word from Nagoya-go," she went on. "Over a month since we left. I've sent messengers, but... nothing."
He stilled. That, he hadn't known. And now, Kaoru was watching him very carefully, as if testing if he knew something. Hoping—maybe—that he might, or dreading he was hiding something from her. He wasn't, of course, but he was the Gojo heir; if something big had happened to another great clan, he would have surely known.
"Oh," he said. Not a brilliant response, he must admit. He recovered a second later. "They're probably being cautious. 'Nobu's like that, stoic to a fault. Doesn't take risks with communication and knowing him, he's being harassed by the Thunderbrat and your cousin's atrocious calligraphy."
Kaoru's brow pinched. "Or," she began, voice narrowing, "maybe word got out. Maybe someone found out about the Mitsuboshi no—"
Seijiro reached forward instinctively and pressed a finger to her lips to silence her. "Don't say that here," he warned. "Not in a Gojo camp."
She went very still as her breath hitched faintly against his fingertip. Then she nodded once; message received. No mention of the Mitsuboshi no Yari. No matter how quiet the night, some things were too dangerous to name.
The contact lasted a moment too long before, somewhere outside, a guard called a shift change, startling them. He withdrew his hand slowly and absolutely did not think about how soft her lips had been.
"Alright," Kaoru said after a moment. "No more talk of the war."
Seijiro leaned back on his hands and drew in a slow breath that didn't cool anything. He closed his eyes briefly, and a hiss slipped through his teeth; the heat under his skin hadn't faded, and his nerves still felt overexposed. That was unacceptable. He needed distance; emotional, physical, preferably geographic.
Anywhere Kaoru wasn't.
Unfortunately, she was still kneeling less than a foot from his bare chest. He tried to center himself, tried not to think that she was still there and that if he tilted forward, he could count her lashes; he was, for the love of all that was decent, regrettably still human.
Damn it, Pretty Boy, get out of my head, get out of my space.
Apparently, Seijiro's silence was the wrong silence since Kaoru misread it, as she always did when it mattered. A cue to leave. Her posture stiffened, and her pride reassembled itself in real time. He saw it the moment her weight shifted forward and her hand broke contact with her knees as she rose with that effortless grace he'd always resented a little.
She was leaving.
"Right. You're alive," she said, voice clipped. "I should go now. This was reckless anyway."
Wait—what? Seijiro's brain lagged behind his instinct. No. Not yet. Not when this almost felt... normal, not when tomorrow would rip them back into opposing lines, apart like every day of their life.
"No—" It escaped before he could stop it. His hand shot out and caught hers just tight enough to mean wait.
Her momentum faltered mid-rising, and Seijiro regretted it instantly. The sudden motion tore at his chest, and pain flared white-hot as his not-quite-healed wound screamed in protest again. His breath hitched as a fresh line of blood seeped beneath the edge of his bandage.
Kaoru yelped as she was pulled back down. "You—idiot—" She lost her balance and dropped to her knees in front of him, and oh—
To Seijiro's horror, now she was even closer than before. Far closer. Their knees touched, and her hand—still humiliatingly caught in his—had braced instinctively against his chest to steady both of them.
They both froze; then she glared at him because that was always her first instinct when he was being an idiot. Then her expression shifted again as her fingers pressed against his bandaged skin. "Seijiro," she muttered in disbelief, eyes narrowing on the blood-stained bandages. "You're burning up." Her eyes snapped to his face in alarm. "You said the corrosion was gone—"
"It is," he ground out, fighting to regulate his breathing. He hated the rasp in his voice. Hated how short his breath felt with her this close. "Don't worry. I'm fine."
She frowned. "This is not 'fine.' You're boiling."
Seijiro couldn't hold her gaze. "Side effect of Payo's Reverse Cursed Technique."
Kaoru ignored him and reached forward anyway, fingers brushing his forehead. It was a brief and clinical touch, but it wrecked him. Seijiro jerked slightly at the contact, too aware of every place she was touching. Her hand was too cool, and the contrast made the heat in his body spike again.
She withdrew, muttering under her breath, already forming a hand sign. "Don't move. I'll summon the Round Deer," she said. "It'll finish the job—"
"No." Seijiro snapped, grabbing both her wrists before she could complete it. Her mouth opened in protest, but he cut her off. "What's the plan, destroy the tent and alert every single sorcerer in the camp? You are not summoning a massive Zenin shikigami inside a Gojo encampment in the middle of the night," he hissed. "I'm fine."
"You clearly are not," she shot back, struggling to free her hands. "Let go."
Seijiro didn't, because the second he did, he knew she would stand and leave, and he wasn't ready for that. "It's not the poison," he muttered, words tangling slightly. He chuckled to cover for it. "It's just too hot. Ridiculous how it's this hot in autumn, don't you think?"
Kaoru stared at him flatly. "Oh kami. You're half-dressed and delirious. You are not fine."
"I'm not delirious, I'm—" He stopped himself; no, absolutely not finishing that sentence. Kami help him; he was not explaining this, how her wrists were cool, then warm under his hands. Or maybe it was him. He couldn't tell anymore.
She narrowed her eyes. "Seijiro, this is not the time for pride—"
"Will you shut up?" he snapped, leaning forward before he could reconsider.
Kaoru went still. Then, she exploded. "Excuse me?" She shot back. "Did you just tell me to shut up?"
"You're too loud," he bit back, yanking her wrists just slightly closer. "Stop talking unless you want me to explain to my entire command why Zenin-dono is straddling my blankets at midnight."
"I am not straddling—"
"You are on my blankets," he shot back. "You're kneeling between my legs. They'll think either I'm being assassinated or seduced, and frankly, I don't know which is worse."
She froze and finally looked down; realized; then color flooded her face instantly in a beautiful red. "You insufferable, pigeon-headed lunatic," she hissed. "I was trying to help you, what the hell is wrong with you—"
Seijiro inhaled sharply enough that her voice cut off mid-syllable. Her hands finally stilled in his as he stared at her. "What's wrong?" he repeated, incredulous.
He could make a very detailed list, actually. For a start, their faces were inches apart; his fingers were still wrapped around her wrists; his injury throbbed like a drumbeat; fever still crawled under his skin. And she was here, still here.
Wrong was the tent. Wrong was Kaoru kneeling this close. Wrong was the fact that she hadn't killed him, hadn't left, and was still here. Wrong was—
His frustration tipped. "You," he said, grip tightening despite himself, "are what's wrong with me."
Kaoru Zenin, who had endured poison, humiliation, betrayal, and nineteen years of living in a body that did not belong to the world's expectations, fell silent at that. Her brows drew together, not in the combative way, as she looked at him like she had never seen him properly until now.
Seijiro knew he should have released her wrists; Kaoru knew she should have kneed him in the stomach and moved back. Neither happened.
"You. You're impossible, and unbearable, and somehow you're my problem." He let out a sharp, humorless, and uneven breath. His cursed energy flickered erratically, off-tempo, too bright in some places and too thin in others, throwing his entire system out of balance, while hers, by contrast, was coiled tight and always too precise. "From the first time you opened your damn mouth in Kyoto. You and that stupid hair and your flawless summonings and that smug expression you make when you're pretending you're not worried, except your cheeks give it away every time—"
Her eyes flickered uncertainly. "I do not have a tell—"
"—and your lectures like you're better than everyone," he went on, talking over her. A brittle laugh slipped out of him. "Which you usually are, and that's frustrating. You're the reason I can't think straight, and you're making everything worse."
Kaoru opened her mouth, but no, he wasn't done. Seijiro was rambling, he knew he was rambling, and for a second he hoped he could just drop there unconscious.
"You show up, you turn everything upside down, and then you disappear. Like that night at the hatago. You just go and vanish on me." His grip tightened unconsciously around her hands. "And then you sneak into my camp in the middle of the night to check if I'm still breathing. Like it's nothing. Like you care."
A fraction of a pause.
His voice dipped. "And the worst part is, I think maybe you do."
Utterly still, Kaoru blinked very slowly. Once. Twice. Her fingers curled in his grasp. That perfect mask she always wore slipped enough for her to look, for once, like a girl; then, in the smallest voice he'd ever heard from her: "Maybe I do."
Kaoru stiffened the moment the words left her mouth, and her eyes widened just a fraction too late, as if she'd fired an arrow and only realized mid-flight where it landed.
Everything inside Seijiro stilled; even his cursed energy, out of control until then, recoiled inward.
Oh.
He had nothing clever to say, for once, so he didn't say anything at all. He only vaguely realized as he slowly released her wrists, only to bring his hands up and cup her face, palms cradling up the line of her jaw. Thoughtless and completely past sense.
Kaoru had half a second to register him leaning in before instinct kicked in; her mind shifted to survival mode, drifting into a strange, dissociating clarity.
Kissing, she thought dimly, is not supposed to be like this.
Of course she'd been educated. Extensively, actually.
Kaoru was the Zenin heir, and the world believed she was a boy, and boys of her rank were expected to do what boys of her rank did: take a wife, produce heirs, and continue the lineage as if their blood was the only thing that mattered in their lives. Kaoru had been trained in war, politics, alliance-building, reproduction; everything reduced to duty. And intimacy, in that curriculum, was not romance but a transaction, a mechanical and efficient obligation. She had studied it with the same focus and interest she had brought to siegecraft and Sunzi.
When she was fifteen, they'd taken her to a brothel for appearances. Necessary step, her father's men had called it. A proof and a box to tick, so no one asked the wrong questions about the Zenin heir's too delicate body. After all, a young "man" of rank in the bloom of adulthood was expected to visit such places and even prove himself there.
In hindsight, of course, her father had known. It had probably been a trap, another humiliation designed to force the truth out of her by making her confess with her own hands what she'd been hiding since birth.
Kaoru remembered it too clearly: lanterns too red, perfume too sweet, drunk retainers laughing too loudly and shoving coins at women as if paying could be mistaken for virtue. They'd clapped her shoulders, congratulated her, called her "Zenin-sama." The courtesans had been kind enough, she supposed. They'd smiled at her face, too delicate for the role she played, and cooed over the soft-spoken Zenin-sama, so courteous, so composed, so gentle compared to their usual, rough-handed clients. They had called her beautiful, promised to show her "how a man should be pleased."
Then one of them kissed her without warning because it was expected, and Kaoru let it happen because refusing would have been a confession.
It had been… fine.
Kaoru hadn't hated it, but she hadn't wanted it either, and it hadn't meant anything. She'd thought, in that distant, academic way that had always kept her alive: Ah. So this is a kiss. Damp. Slightly awkward. Understood. Filed away.
Harunobu had extracted her before anything could proceed; an invented emergency, a look at her that said you owe me, and a grip on her wrist that didn't let go until the lanterns were behind them. After that night, he made sure it never happened again. And so Kaoru grew up believing she understood intimacy: a task like any other duty a "man" must perform. Which made the present moment deeply inconvenient, because she was realizing, with humiliating clarity, that she had gotten it all wrong and had not understood anything.
Because this—
This was what a kiss was supposed to feel like, and this was not mechanical or calculated. This was heat and breath and impact. It was wrecking her from the inside out before her mind could assemble a strategy; it was a terrifying certainty that she would never be able to catalogue anything about Seijiro Gojo neatly ever again.
Ah. Right. Seijiro was kissing her. Maybe she should focus on that.
Seijiro's mouth had crashed against hers as if they were still fighting, detonating a year and a half of tension in a single, reckless second.
Kaoru made a startled sound, a half-protest that died instantly as her fingers twitched toward her katana; her brain, blessedly, caught up before muscle memory could commit and finish the motion that would behead him.
She tried to pull back and misjudged the angle, dropping hard onto one hand as the world lurched under the moment. Seijiro followed, thrown off-balance by her and the injury in his chest, collapsing into her space with all the clumsy inevitability of two people who had no business surviving this war, much less surviving each other.
Her palm slammed against his chest to... to push him away? To pull him in? Kami help her; she wasn't even sure anymore. Everything in her had become too loud, because now his mouth was too hot against hers, but even as her eyes went wide—startled, angry, panicked—her body didn't pull away.
And when he kissed her again, her lips parted, and suddenly she was kissing him back. She didn't remember choosing to; it just happened.
When Kaoru—carelessly—lifted her hands on the back of his neck and accidentally brushed too close to the injury, Seijiro groaned against her mouth. She hated how good it felt, that little sound. She wanted more. Kaoru broke the kiss just long enough to mutter something that sounded like idiot, then pulled him back down again with more force and didn't stop until he hissed, breath breaking, as pain from the injury flared through his haze.
And that's when they pulled apart fast, breathing hard and staring, noses still touching.
From where she was braced, hands still curled behind his neck as if she didn't trust herself to release yet, Kaoru blinked, startled. Her lips felt swollen, but her thoughts were worse. Seijiro wasn't having it any better; he blinked down from where he hovered above her, panting, arms braced beside the sides of her head, shaking with the effort as if he didn't know what to do with them, and maybe that made two of them. There was blood on his chest again, darkening fabric where the bandage had failed.
The position wasn't proper; it wasn't appropriate; it was, objectively, suicidal.
"S—Sorry," he started hoarsely. "I didn't mean to—"
Kaoru stared up at him, dizzy, utterly wrecked. "You didn't mean to?!" she echoed.
He winced, scowled, shifted carefully, grimacing at the pull of the wound. "Okay," he admitted with a grunt. "Maybe I meant to. A little."
They hovered there, stuck, for too long in a fragile, ridiculous standoff of two generals pretending they had control when neither of them did. Her eyes dropped to his mouth; his dropped to hers. He leaned in an inch; she leaned back an inch.
Seijiro stilled instantly, visibly forcing himself to stop. His knuckles went white where he held his weight, not because he wanted to be dramatic, but because he was trying not to make this worse. "Say the word, and I'll stop." His mouth twitched into something that tried to be a grin and failed into half-devotion. "Kami, Kaoru, I'm trying very hard not to be a bastard about this. If you tell me to stop, I'll stop. If you tell me to kneel—" A breath, a self-mocking exhale. "—I'll ask which knee."
That shouldn't have made her heart kick against her ribs like a trapped bird, but did anyway. Somewhere in the fog, Kaoru remembered what the world had taught her: men initiated, women endured. That was how it was supposed to work; that was the order, especially for families like theirs. Except—
Seijiro wasn't taking; he was waiting for her to decide. He was also pathetically hoping.
Kaoru swallowed, blinking up fast at the wrecked fool who had called her Pretty Boy for a year straight, feeling something dangerously close to tenderness; pupils blown wide, skin flushed, hair damp. Unfair.
So unfair that, for once, Kaoru didn't think about duty, or about war, or even about Nagoya-go's silence or Tokugawa's plans. Nor about her father's last words, still a splinter in her brain. She sat up, muttering a string of half-curses, grabbed Seijiro's stupid, infuriatingly beautiful face between her hands, and kissed him again, harder.
It would be a lie to say Seijiro was not hoping for this outcome, so he welcomed it. He made a sound—part gasp, part groan—and dropped closer, careful of the wound even as he clearly stopped pretending he didn't want this.
That noise, to Kaoru's horror, made her smile. Power. She had known power in battle, in politics, in the way the elders behaved when she spoke, but this kind of power over a person? She had never known it like this.
"You're still burning up," she muttered against his lips.
"And you're still not helping with that," he managed, breathless.
Before she could retort, he dipped his head and bit down on the juncture of her neck, hard enough to leave a mark, and tore an indignant little gasp from her. The sound had him pause, as if he'd remembered something rational. Somewhere, far back in his mind, a single, lucid thought surfaced: Ah. Yes. We are not making it to dawn without regretting this.
...Well. A problem for his future. As he lifted his head again to return to her lips, Seijiro ignored the rational thought entirely.
Kaoru had lost count of how many times she should have stopped it.
She had spent her whole life moving like a man, speaking like a man, shaping herself into the shape of a son her father demanded, with history like a collar around her throat. And now she was, with the Gojo heir of all people above her, her kosode dangerously slipping open and her legs parted just enough to cage him in as his mouth dragged slow fire lower and lower on her collarbone.
Maybe that was why she didn't pull away; she was not thinking like a man. And in a faraway place in the rotting hell, her father was probably dying a second time.
Before both of them realized, his hands found her again—careful and not careful at once—as if he feared she might vanish if he didn't hold her, tracing her curves with such absurd reverence that she was sure he could hear her heartbeat. She could hear it, pounding in her ears so loudly she thought it might crack her skull open. She sucked in a breath, startled by herself, and Seijiro—complete idiot that he was—murmured something under his breath that sounded truly idiotic, something about divine punishment.
Then, his hand fumbled lower with her kosode without her realizing, slipping it lower down her shoulder, and there—
The bandages flattened her breasts.
Kaoru's hand shot up, catching his wrist in a hard, shaking grip. For a fraction of a second, Seijiro froze and braced for her to shove him away, bolt like a startled deer, and rebuild the wall with a violent knee right between his legs. It would've made sense, he supposed.
Instead, Kaoru went very still; then, deliberately and clumsily, as if she was angry at her own hands, she slipped her kosode down her shoulders herself. She found the knot in the layers of linen at her chest, the same layers she had tied every day since she was old enough to understand that survival had a specific flat shape. She hesitated only for a second, then yanked; the bandages fought her at first, stubborn like everything else in her life that never came undone easily. Finally, the linen unwound, falling in a soft pile around her waist. She lifted her chin at him as if it was nothing, as if she hadn't just unraveled a whole lifetime of denial.
Or maybe she was daring him not to make it weird or saying something stupid.
Seijiro, for his part, was clearly trying, desperately, the world's most idiotic act of honor, to not look down. It would have been the first miracle he'd ever performed without cursed energy. Then, he failed instantly. It wasn't about skin and breasts, not really. It was about the choice. For the first time after twenty-four years, since his father's coldness, since his mother's madness, since people looked at him and saw a weapon, an heir, the Six Eyes, the prodigy, someone was choosing him just for the person.
His hands settled at her waist and swept up, fingers splayed across bare skin he hadn't earned but couldn't bring himself to let go of.
"You—"
"Don't you dare call me Pretty Boy right now," Kaoru snapped, barely coherent, cheeks scarlet despite her best efforts. Then she immediately cursed herself; why had she said it like that?
"I wasn't," he muttered, already half in love with how her voice pitched under pressure; except he absolutely was about to. "You're beautiful, actually, not pretty. My bad."
In a smooth motion, his arm snaked around her, wrapped fully around her waist, pulling her flush against him, skin to skin, dragging her into his lap with a motion that made his injury scream. He didn't care; he would bleed for this. He followed the line left behind the line left behind by the linen bandages, kissing down the curve of her neck to the hollow of her collarbone, to the curve of her breast, before grabbing her face again, tilting her for a deeper kiss, feeling her nails scrape down his spine.
Kaoru gasped against his lips, brain dizzy as her entire body was suddenly, acutely aware of itself; of him; of the fact that there was skin, and heat, and... Oh, right. Breasts. Mine, she thought vaguely. Sometimes she forgot she actually had them.
Seijiro pulled back just enough to murmur in a haze, "Are we—?"
"I swear, Seijiro," she muttered back with indignation, "if you make me think right now, I will finish what Hattori-dono started."
A pause. Then Seijiro, suicidal by nature and committed to proving it: "You're such a bully," he gasped, reverent. "That's hot—"
Kaoru grabbed his jaw and kissed him again, swallowing the rest of his sentence, because she could hear the stupid in his throat before it became words. She shoved him down flat on his back, and he let her.
Seijiro let out a startled sound and almost lost it right there, but was not surprised when she straddled him in a single movement. The last time he'd seen her from this angle, she'd held a blade at his throat, and she was properly dressed. Now her hands were empty, she wasn't dressed, and somehow she was way more dangerous.
"Don't get it wrong," she scowled down at him, trying to sound composed with that glint of pride that Seijiro liked a little too much. "You're not in charge,"
"I—" His voice cracked as he stared up at her as if he could lose a war and still be grateful for it. "I'm going to hell for this," he muttered helplessly, slowly sliding his hands over her again. "Great way to go, by the way, right between your—"
Kaoru punched him hard in the side. Seijiro laughed through it and called her beautiful again anyway. And somewhere—far away, in Nagoya-go—Harunobu sneezed violently.
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
The first thing Harunobu knew of the disaster was being throttled awake by a brat.
"Oi. Oooi. Get up, old man," Hajime barked, entirely too loud for the hour and entirely too close to Harunobu's sleepy face, fingers tugging at his collar with the ungentle urgency of a boy who had never learned the meaning of respect for rank.
Harunobu came awake swinging and cursing, half-blind with fury. His hand shot out on instinct, seizing the scruff of the offender and hauling him nose-to-nose before his vision had even cleared. "Hajime," he grunted. "This better be something worth dying over, or else—"
Hajime didn't so much as flinch. He dangled in his grip like a disobedient cat, arms limp, expression flat. "Geez. Southern towers," he deadpanned. "Everyone's screaming about something. They even woke the little lord up."
Harunobu blinked. Tatsuhiro-sama? Dragged out of bed at this ungodly hour? The last of the sleep evaporated as his stomach dropped first, and his mind focused after. "And you," he snapped, shoving Hajime aside and reaching for his outer robe, "couldn't start with that instead of strangling?"
Hajime blinked innocently and shrugged. "You were busy trying to murder me," he replied mildly, adjusting the uneven knots in his hair as if this was an inconvenience and not an omen. "Old men shouldn't sleep so deeply."
Harunobu barely resisted the urge to kick him. Then, in quick succession, out of habit because he was used to Kaoru expecting him to move in three seconds when asked: boots on, flank leather armor on, cloak fastened, katana belted. He urged himself out of his quarter and moved across the engawa, Hajime trailing behind at a lazy jog, Nyoi slung over one shoulder like a walking stick rather than a weapon that could crack bone and electrocute you.
They crossed the inner courtyard as the first ugly red smudges of dawn crept over the tiles, painting everything in the wrong light. The pressure in the air was the first wrong signal; the second was the fact that the entire estate should have been quiet and half-frozen in that hour between night and morning. Instead—
Noise. Orders barked too fast. The clatter of men grabbing armor with one hand that trembled, and bows and katana with the others. And above, already halfway up the watchtower, Tatsuhiro clung to the wooden railing.
Not in fear. In pure terror, the kind that reaches marrow.
Hajime was the first to notice. He squinted upward, tilting his head. "Why's he looking like he saw a ghost?"
Harunobu didn't answer; uneasy at the pit of his stomach, he took the steps two at a time, and at the top, the world rearranged itself like a slap to the face.
The southern horizon was burning.
Flames in a wave of movement, torches bobbing, rumors of cavalry, foot soldiers, banners bleeding pale into the mist, and an oppressive weight in the cursed energy that blanketed the valley, so thick that Harunobu could taste it. Heavy as a funeral bell.
For a half-second—one clean, desperate half-second—Harunobu allowed himself to hope. Maybe it was the Eastern Army, the joint forces of Zenin banners and Date cavalry from Edo, with Date Masamune at the front already setting something on fire just to announce himself.
Too fast, he hadn't been notified, but—perhaps. Then his eyes adjusted. South; they were coming from the south, not north. The banners were wrong, the formation was wrong, not that of an allied army approaching a friendly stronghold.
It was an army, and they were already too close.
Hajime, frowning, followed his stare, and then he saw it too. "Oh," he said simply.
Harunobu did not speak; instead, he turned slowly, taking in the courtyard below. The first calculation hit: numbers. The second direction. The third, and this one landed like a blade at his neck: composition. Before him were not soldiers, nor sorcerers: women, children, farmers, elderly retainers, household staff, young pages.
How many were fit to fight? A dozen fighters from the Kukuru unit who could hold a line; maybe a couple of trained sorcerers; the rest—
His throat tightened once, but he swallowed down the thought.
Best case: they close the gates, barricade the inner court, and ration supplies to brace for siege. Winter was coming, and no army wanted to waste months in frozen mud. They had to hold until the Eastern Army forces arrived from the north, then Date Masamune would take the problem in hands. Worst case: this was a purge waiting to happen.
Harunobu straightened. No time for disbelief, no time for panic. Panic was contagious, and authority had to be louder. He tallied priorities with the ruthless efficiency of someone who had already staged every scenario in his head multiple times:
The Spear.
The Heir.
The Estate.
In that order.
Meanwhile, he could hold the line and hope for the Eastern Army to arrive in time and find someone still standing. "You," he barked at the nearest too-young attendant. "Close the southern gate and reinforce the inner wall with spikes. I want a bow in the hands of every single farmer in Nagoya-go now; I don't care if they hit something, even by accident. And if anyone breaks rank now, I break their legs."
Men moved because he gave them something to move toward. Good.
Harunobu turned to Hajime, who was squinting at the approaching forces like he was trying to solve a particularly stupid riddle. "You—" Harunobu jabbed a finger into his chest. "You take Tatsuhiro-sama to Lady Reika's old quarters. You know what's hidden there."
Hajime's brows lifted a fraction. He did know; he wasn't an idiot, not when it mattered, and Harunobu couldn't be everywhere all at once. "You mean the creepy weapon?" he muttered, shifting Nyoi over a shoulder
Harunobu didn't correct him. "If anyone comes looking," he went on, meeting Hajime's eyes directly, "they do not find it. And if Tatsuhiro-sama gets so much as scratched—"
Hajime tilted his head, lazy as ever. "You'll kill me. Yes, yes."
"I'll rip your fingernails out one by one."
Hajime shrugged. "Got it." He grabbed Tatsuhiro—still frozen in horror—by the sleeve and yanked him into motion. "You heard the old man. Move your noble ass, little lord," he told Tatsuhiro flatly. "Unless you enjoy watching your estate burn."
Tatsuhiro stumbled after him, looking once, fearfully, over his shoulder. "Wait! 'Nobu?" he asked, small and shaken.
Harunobu drew his katana in one clean motion, and the blade caught the ugly red light. "I'll do my damn job." No comfort or reassurance. The boy didn't need lies. "Now go."
He watched them descend the tower with Hajime dragging Tatsuhiro along like an irritated older brother rather than a bodyguard entrusted with an entire bloodline. Ridiculous and effective, but Kami help them; that feral boy was strong, and if they kept fighting, they might survive the day.
Once they were gone, Harunobu exhaled once, and with a jerk, he ripped a strip from his sleeve. He bit the tip of his finger hard enough to draw blood, ignoring the sting, and scrawled a rushed message across the rough fabric:
Fire in the garden.
He shoved the blood-written scrap into the hands of a young boy barely old enough to hold a sword. "Reach the north gate and ride north on the Tokaido. Find Date-dono, give him this. If they catch you, burn it before committing seppuku. Trust me, you don't want to stay alive if they catch you."
The boy nodded too fast as fear mixed with purpose flashed on his face. Then, with a clumsy bow, he ran. Harunobu turned back to the southern wall; from this height, the approaching force looked like a tide of sparks rolling toward dry grass.
No wonder no word had come from Kaoru, after her first missive; no wonder silence had stretched. Whatever was happening in the south, on the Iga border, someone had made sure that the Zenin were caught in a trap. Perhaps it had begun the moment Kaoru left; perhaps earlier than either of them was aware.
Harunobu rolled his shoulders once, cracked his knuckles, and adjusted his grip on the hilt of his katana. Behind him, the estate was a mess of men, women, and children of the Zenin clan moving like a beehive stirred. And now they had minutes. Maybe.
Nagoya-go will fall.
That was a fact. But he didn't waste breath on regret or fear, because Kaoru had entrusted him with the boys and the place, and be damned if he let anything burn down her home without a fight and saving as many lives as possible.
He only allowed himself one selfish thought, absurd, petty, and unbecoming.
Thank the kami, Kaoru-dono isn't here to see this side of hell.