Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Hokuto is generally pretty easy to track down, even without the keen senses of a kemonotsuki. 

In the case that he’s absent from his usual fishing haunt at the edge of a certain sacred spring (he has gotta cut that shit out, seriously), he’s either hunkered into whichever of Hikagemachi’s gambling parlours haven’t already blacklisted him, idling around the town spending whatever scratch he’s made from one of those parlours, or else starting a fight by subtly pushing his intellectual background or whatever. 

If people look pissed, Hokuto has probably been through recently. 

Sore about losing money? Dead ringer.

Yeah, Azuma is very familiar with all of the signs Hokuto tends to leave in his wake, chummy as they somehow ended up in the past couple centuries. So it’s definitely a little concerning, in this permanently social place, that he hasn’t seen any of them cropping up even once, at least in the usual hubs, for at least a week.

Sometimes, Hokuto has said for himself, he feels a certain need to “eschew the rabble”– or just lay low, in the language of people who aren’t pointlessly pretentious– but in those cases he has never failed to give a heads up to at least one of their little crew. Neither Shisei nor Sana got any confusing words from him to the effect, so Azuma feels that a healthy bit of anxiety may be warranted, here.

At the very least, he certainly hasn’t been murdered. If someone killed the guy, the first thing they’d do is hit the streets to brag and celebrate. The breakneck gossip mill of Hikagemachi has borne zero notice of any local tigers finally getting their toes caught, so it’s probably just safe to assume that he had to make a prompt retreat before he could let anybody know he’d be making it.

Well, Azuma is already in the middle of town at the moment, as it happens, and he’s already got a shitton of leftover pickles from his latest batch in a big old clay jar lugged under his arm and everything. The time could not be more ripe for him to just use his nose, and find out for himself wherever the hell it is that Hokuto disappears to every now and then. 

He has gotta offload more of these goddamn pickles… he made way too many.

It does always take a fair bit of focus, letting himself open his awareness all the way back up to the endless writhing mass of scent trails occupying any given locale. Azuma finds a back street branching off from another back street off the main commercial drag, a poorly maintained little alley full of sweet-smelling overgrown grasses and flowering weeds bursting out the edges of all the ground tiling. He takes a seat among them, closes his eyes, and smacks a mosquito off his cheek. He wonders when they made their way over from the human side– not a whole lot of bugs seem to find the trip worthwhile.

The first full breath he takes, once he’s emptied his head a bit more and taken a moment to just physically experience the existence of his own nasal cavity, is monstrously overwhelming– it always is. An endless number of distractions to Azuma’s more rational mind are now yanking directly on his attention in every possible direction at once, loosed haphazardly all through his brain like little beads scattered to the floor. He quashes the horrible, frustrating dissatisfaction that now comes with simply trying to sit still by letting his foot tap sideways against the street in an aggressive rhythm.

The dry, cool scratch of his pinky toe rubbing the stone over and over again for a minute or two is sufficiently grounding. 

It always hurts, almost, the heightened sensitivity; but it’s also exciting . 

The smell of Hokuto’s recent trail is meandering around right there back on the town’s main road, of course. He can pick it out perfectly clear from the tens of thousands of other repeating, overlapping scents without even thinking: the bouquet of secondhand tobacco smoke sunken into fine furs and fabrics, charcoal ink on treated horsehair, the crisp, pure moisture of Shisei’s grotto home lingering like a cologne, and that one wastefully expensive line of floral oil luxury cosmetics for hair and skin health.

Azuma’s lungs expand in exhilaration and happiness at the familiarity of this unique combination of phenomena cumulatively known to his olfactory glands as “Hokuto”. Moreover, at the relief and security of having just one thing for the dog part of his brain to obsessively follow after. 

He sighs out deep and slow, which only does a little to calm his ecstatically thundering pulse, and lets most of the world narrow back down to its usual vague minutiae. He gets back up to his feet, shifts his jar of pickles more comfortably on his hip, and sets off in pursuit.

The trail’s not too old, judging from the way it’s started to fade– probably only about a week, lining up basically perfect with the last time anyone heard from Hokuto. It leads Azuma around in lazy circles for a bit, between different street stalls hawking food and drinks and dubious treasures, and then predictably ends up at one of the shabbier dice halls unwilling to strictly regulate its clientele. 

It’s impossible to tell at this point how long Hokuto spent in there; probably only a couple hours, judging from the comparative potency of his scent as it jags back away from the building in a straight line. That in itself is already a bit odd, though it hardly stacks up at all to the level of downright strangeness in the single minded shape of his retreat from the establishment.

There’s no scent of blood on the ground, at least none recent enough to match up with the timing– none of the acrid, violent pungency weighing in the air left over from hostile flaring youki, either. It seems unlikely there was a fight, but clearly something happened necessitating a hasty exit.

Azuma doesn’t bother going in to ask around about it. Honestly, he doesn’t care too much for the atmosphere in a lot of the places Hokuto likes to spend his time, or about any of the particulars that led to his absence in the first place, really. Most of what he cares about at the moment are the location of this secret hideaway Hokuto has been so reticent about in the past, whether or not Hokuto’s actually okay right now of course, and also if he wants any pickles.

The trail leads Azuma away from the more densely populated city core in as straightforward a route as the infrastructure will allow. He starts to think he’ll be leaving Hikagemachi altogether, as the buildings only keep dwindling in size and proximity the longer he follows Hokuto’s steps into the more sparsely populated outskirts– it’s when he recognizes the fast approaching scent of a healthy river that he realizes he’s been fooled as effectively as any other would-be pursuer. He quickens his pace up to a jog, and comes upon a modest dock neighbourhood along the shore.

It’s not as if Hokuto’s scent simply vanishes the moment it meets the floating moisture wafting steadily off the water vein running between the slopes built down off the surrounding streets. What it does is far more frustrating: it swells and disperses on the air, mingling freely with the smells of damp muddy earth and soggy wood, and then hitches a ride all the way downstream on the current. 

Azuma doesn’t need to follow this river until wherever it ends to know that Hokuto did not go in the same direction. He mutters some mild profanity under his breath, pacing unhappily along the edge of the embankment. 

A casually dressed youkai kid with a bamboo pole on a shabby little handmade pier on the opposite side gives him a look, but loses interest again quickly enough. Azuma wonders if they caught anything yet today– he can’t quite see what’s in their bucket from over here. He wishes Hokuto was just fishing over at Shisei’s shrine again, instead of disappearing without telling anyone.

The buildings at Azuma’s back are all storage shacks and warehouses, at a glance; visually near-identical in make, nothing more than combinations of walls and roofs slapped together well enough to keep out the elements. The idea of sheltering inside one of these strikes him as a convenient one, but he can tell that Hokuto hasn’t entered any of these specific facilities; they’re all far enough back from the water that he’s confident that he would be able to smell it if he had.

The effectiveness of Hokuto’s escape route is irritating. But the solution, to Azuma, does start to seem a bit obvious after thinking about it for a minute: if Hokuto got to this river on purpose, to make people think he went downstream, then he probably just headed up in the opposite direction, right?

… or maybe it’s some sort of reverse psychology thing, and he did go downstream. Ehh.

Whether his initial hunch is right or wrong, Azuma decides he’ll just stick with his gut. It usually steers him right.

In this case it steers him up river, maybe another hour or so. It’s already significantly later in the day than it was when he first set out, and the sky’s turning orange, casting shimmering reflections off the water. The mosquitos on the bank have been absolutely feasting; he took off his hood and scarf a while back and tucked them away into his outer robe, feeling stuffy after all the walking he’s done, and he can feel that the exposed back of his neck is littered with raised bites. He’s not terribly hungry yet himself, but it’s not as if he’s without food if he ends up having to backtrack and keep searching through the night.

It’s not Hokuto, but he does finally pick up the strong and compelling scent of an unknown something , long past the point of any further lingering sheds or shanty homes or leisure docks casting dotted shadows over the pebbles on the shore. Total wilderness surrounds him now, in a wide plain of pampas grass full of shrill chirping hidden things extending out of sight into both horizons on either side of the water, gleaming almost pale white in the impenetrable brightness of approaching dusk. 

He recognizes the pervading aura that suddenly surrounds him here, in the thick, sluggish atmosphere floating physically through the scenery, caressing like heavy mist in the dead of night; this is a frontier zone, like the forest you gotta travel through to reach Shisei’s hidden domain, imbued down inside the earth itself with all kinds of different arts meant to make you lose your way. It’s absolutely swollen with the same ancient, oppressive, but unthreatening weight of deeply powerful magic, likely over a millennium old. 

It feels familiar; nothing comes immediately to Azuma’s memory, but he feels like he could’ve strayed into the area before. When he was still new to this side of the world, maybe, and spent his years running a bit wild in all sorts of directions. The Phantom Realm doesn’t just exist in one single place once you leave Hikagemachi, after all, and he did stretch his legs quite a bit back then.

Or maybe he never did end up out here? That’s the danger of these places: they just subtly try to claim you like that, smelling like comfortable nostalgia. Looking like you can picture yourself there exactly.

Spurring his mind into a state of alertness, he skids down the embankment, to walk directly alongside the water where he’s mostly obscured by the slope. He’s not too eager to tangle with whatever might be lurking in the grasses out there; he didn’t exactly pump himself up for an altercation when he woke up this morning. There could be beings hiding within the currents too, naturally, but he’s far more confident about his ability to sense something coming from down here at the shore. He keeps walking in the same direction.

Another twenty minutes or so pass, in the eerily unchanging, opaque pale glare of the dusky sky, before Azuma’s luck finally pays off into something promising. He feels it on his skin before he smells it: a faint, distant shift in the sensation of the air touching him, something an ordinary human would never notice in a thousand years. It’s the hint of a draft– a single thin twine of moisture tickling along his cheek, cooler, deeper than the refreshing haze drifting off the river. He pauses, shuts his eyes, and focuses intensely on that feather-light touch.

He catches the smell of cold, almost frigid, tightly packed soil, dark and thick in its concentration. Oh– an underground room!!! With some kinda hidden, grown over trap door, probably! There’s a hint of very old and decaying wood in his nostrils now, not at all distant, with a fresh and bitter combination of weeds and plain grasses that are noticeably younger than the pampas.

Two thick walls of earth bracket him precisely where he stands already, serving as raised floodbanks, extending at their significant height as far as he can tell in both directions. Yeah. This is definitely it– he’s got it almost in his grasp, now. He clutches his big clay jar of pickles tighter in the more tangible, physical grasp of his elbow and hand, and hurries his walk into an eager jog, keeping his eyes alternating between both sides of the river as he goes.

He doesn’t even need to use his nose to find it, in the end; proceeding upstream for only a few minutes longer rewards Azuma with the sight of an unmistakable rectangular outline carved out of the slope on the opposite bank, plain as day, a thin seam of dark earth clearly visible in two neatly sculpted right angles beneath a wild patch of grasses that are shorter than their surroundings. He can’t pick out Hokuto’s smell from where he stands, thirty or forty feet away from the incredibly obvious door frame across the river, but whether or not his query exists over there he has definitely stumbled upon something .

… it’s probably Hokuto, though, he feels. Sure hopes it is.

The only way to find out is to see for himself, of course. Azuma sets down his pickle jar and strips naked, not really eager to spend any amount of time underneath layers and layers of soggy clothing, with a decent number of items stored inside them which are known to activate in water, besides. Careful of the small containers and sachets tucked into his inner pockets and mindful to place them all in the centre of the bundle, he balls up all of his clothes tightly and flings the lot of them on to the far shore. They make it across safely, crumpling into a big pile where they land.

It does feel kinda silly, wading into the water in nothing but his skin while he holds a huge jar out in front of him (careful to keep the lid above the surf, of course). Azuma is pretty okay with looking silly out here with nobody around, though. If anyone is watching, he simply directs a gruff and saucy little thought towards them, hoping they enjoy what they see.

After spending so much time keeping his body in motion today, the cool pressure of the water currents on his skin is wonderfully refreshing. The brisk temperature makes him shiver, submerging up to his chest as he wades across, but pleasantly enough the terrain beneath his feet is nothing but firm mud and some very smooth stones. If there are any fish, or crustaceans, or larger more intelligent things hoping to take a bite out of him in here, they display no interest and waste none of their time risking an encounter. Azuma makes it across unmolested, with no worse inconvenience than briefly having to turn over backwards and kick his way through the deepest water in the middle to preserve the safety of his pickles. Doesn’t even get his hair too wet, besides up to the backs of his ears.

Despite the potential for hidden danger, this is a pretty nice place he’s found himself in. The scenery is pretty-looking, the water is soothing, and the sounds and smells of so much wild nature is an agreeable change of pace from the town. He’s happily surprised at Hokuto displaying some decent taste, for once.

And Hokuto is here, Azuma can now determine with total certainty, impatiently shaking all the water off his limbs and trying to flick it off himself elsewhere with his hands so he can get his clothes back on already. His scent is still effectively covered up by the river and the terrain around his hideout, but it is still unmistakably there behind that door. Some confusing things leak out in the draft alongside it, but none are alarming enough to make Azuma too genuinely worried for the wellbeing of his furtive companion.

Ultimately, he has no recourse but to sit on his naked butt on the shore for a bit to let the air dry him off well enough to get dressed again. On the plus side of this mild annoyance, it gives Hokuto plenty of time to realize Azuma’s here to pay him a visit. He may be the type to stress over hosting properly, considering the status he held once upon his human lifetime. Azuma has no idea what that would be like, personally, but the lingering memories of his own mortal days are still stubborn enough hangers-on to remind him that the woman who was his mother four centuries ago held quite a self-conscious outlook on the topic.

… it’s been at least three hundred and fifty years since she died now, probably. Just based on physical likelihood; he has no real way to check. Once the possession takes proper hold, there’s just no place at all for the orphaned existence that a kemonotsuki represents back on that side of the boundary anymore. Like most of his kind, Azuma had no choice but to leave silently, confused and regretful, without letting himself look back.

He at least hopes she… found someone, after he disappeared, to spend her life with. Instead of staying chained down by her crappy unmarriable kid.

He doesn’t dwell on it much. It’s not like he had a promising catalog of futures for himself, back then; certainly wasn’t gonna settle down with an agreeable girl and make a bunch of babies with her or anything. Even the feeble ghost of that prospect makes him laugh. It’s a pretty funny goddamn ghost, if you’re into the grimly absurd.

Azuma lets himself wonder if Hokuto might miss his human life. He knows his own feelings, Sana is an open book in every last ridiculous thing he does or says, and Shisei is a bit of an exceptional case, in many ways; it’s just Hokuto who keeps these thoughts to himself between the four of them, the way he usually does: with a smooth, fake smile, and some bullshit joke or comment crafted with the purpose of distracting rather than actually imparting anything significant.

He could just say that he doesn’t want to talk about it, and everyone would understand. He’s always gotta posture, though; Azuma’s reached a point of familiarity with the behaviour that it just kinda makes him worry more than it rankles him. This is the main reason that he’s here on this riverbank, presently.

Once he’s decent and upright again at last, he even goes so far as to bestow a couple polite knocks through the scraggly grasses planted into the trap door. They just sorta crunch softly and impotently, but it’ll have to be good enough; he pries the free side of the wood wide open by digging his free hand right into the dirt, impatient to finally ask Hokuto what the hell’s going on with him, and more importantly how he can help. The door and its combined camouflages are heavy enough to be an impossible feat of strength for your average human, and even a fair number of peaceable youkai types. Not a big deal for Azuma, naturally; he’s been around the block and back. Though he generally only uses that eons-old strength on mundane crap of this type in the first place.

He had not much of an idea, really, what manner of sight would greet him beneath all that rotting wood and peat and vegetation. At the very least he did expect Hokuto to be mobile, and conscious, which he is decidedly not; Azuma almost doubts his eyes at the state of total discomposure displayed even in the sleep of this prohibitively fancy man.

It’s the first time he’s seen Hokuto’s bare arms up past his elbows in entire years , is the most distracting aspect of this highly uncommon tableau unfolding before Azuma’s eyes. He lets the huge door behind him begin to fall shut, becoming conscious suddenly of its mass as it nears its makeshift frame once more and catching it before it can make enough noise to disturb the repose of the one who has relied upon it so inexplicably to shield him from interlopers. Hokuto doesn’t even stir. The damp, rich air of the dugout closes swiftly around him and Azuma once more.

Hokuto sleeps on the ground, on the packed dirt comprising the floor of this crude cellar, with no manner of barrier between it and his esteemed self but for the clearly luxurious fabric of his favoured furisode shawl spread beneath him like a meager blanket. Under his head, neck and shoulders, hunched tightly together in his unconscious posture, is the ostentatiously maintained black and white fur stole one would more commonly note perched aloft his shoulders as if it were a proudly dressed hunt (and to those more familiar, recognize as simply a cherished purchase). A pillow , rather than a boastful statement of class and affluence.

What… what the hell ?

The only reason any of Hokuto’s bizarrely humble state is visible to Azuma in the first place within the darkness of this enclosed dugout is the unsteadily flickering light of a single uncomplicated lantern sat by itself in the far corner, constructed crudely from completely unremarkable refined mineral components, almost like it was made b– 

… no. It was made by humans. There’s not even the faintest trace of youki from it, not even from the simplest, most commonplace arts used to facilitate illumination, so widespread and negligibly easy to perform that even the children of this realm wouldn’t blink at it for half a second. The fact that Hokuto is using a human-made lamp is like abstaining from snapping your fingers out of caution against having it overheard. In a location that is already completely deserted, which Azuma was only able to pinpoint himself through a combination of persistent stubbornness and dumb luck. 

“Cautious” barely even begins to describe the level of thorough vigilance taking place, here; the sour palpable scent of fear is choking the enclosed, humid air of what Azuma had assumed would be some manner of hidden safehouse, furnished with all of Hokuto’s favoured pastimes and indulgences, but instead more closely resembles a barren plague hovel from Azuma’s own dismally unforgiving human lifetime. 

It has been swiftly washing over his senses, stifling them, all this while: the cloying, sharp smell of unhealthy amounts of sweat, ripened horribly by the dark and humid environs into an aura of encroaching rot. The smell of sickness.

Except it can’t be.

Like the more powerful and ancient youkai, vetted kemonotsuki such as them both are functionally immortal, more or less. They don’t age past the form they had upon possession. Whatever irascible, bestial vitality they’ve got pumping inexhaustible magic through their veins staves off virtually every other possible manner of bodily degradation that once could have meant their human demise. Grievous, goring injuries heal up perfectly in a matter of hours, and paltry little things like infections and pathogens don’t stand a chance at even grabbing a foothold in the first place.

Yet here Hokuto unmistakably lies curled up into a tight ball on the ground, shivering pitifully in restless repose, so visibly and persistently unwell that Azuma’s mind is starting to empty into nothing but growing panic. Something is obviously very, very wrong.

Before he can work himself up into any truly overwhelming dread, luckily, Hokuto heaves a large and groggy sigh. He starts to gingerly push himself up off the dirt, twisting slowly off of his side.

“Azuma, huh,” he grumbles, the usual sultry baritone of his speaking voice wrecked into sharp, uneven rasping. His hair hangs messily around his face in an unkempt tangle.

“Yeah,” Azuma nods in greeting and confirmation both, shaken easily from his escalating fears by the comforting truth of Hokuto moving and breathing and talking at him, though not without some effort. He’d frozen basically in the entryway, but seeing his friend struggle to bring himself upright, he easily snaps right to his own instinct to offer a hand in aid. He puts down his jar and drops into an approaching crouch, extending his wrist.

At the very first overture of this movement Hokuto’s shoulders twitch hugely, in clear alarm, locking into a broad and rigid outward angle. He still hasn’t even met Azuma’s gaze yet, but at the new proximity of his outstretched palm and fingers, Hokuto gives a brusque shake of his head, with a taut expression. 

As crystal clear of a “don’t touch” as any. Azuma receives the message without difficulty, letting himself fall backwards the short remaining distance between his rump and the ground. He puts his hands loosely atop his own knees, where they won’t be of any more bother to anyone. 

“... You doin’ okay?” he feels himself ask, before he even really thinks about how stupid a question it is, simply lacking any further recourse but to just keep observing Hokuto’s concerningly lengthy efforts to bring himself on to his own feet. 

He just… talks, sometimes, when he doesn’t know what else to do. Because he’s always at least gotta try something when his usual expertise is exhausted. Historically, it’s caused some issues.

It at least gets Hokuto to look at him, this time. Those disarming eyes of his flash to attention, an arresting little glimmer which only fully manifests into good humour when his mouth provides the helpful context of its usual wry, smiling curve.

“ No, ” he laughs- or, makes a highly miserable attempt at one, which is only recognizable to Azuma for what it is due to the number of times he’s happened to hear Hokuto coughing in the past couple centuries, and given him the necessary basis of comparison to spot the difference. It’s still a pretty close thing.

“Guess not, huh,” Azuma concedes, succumbing momentarily to embarrassment and scratching busily at the back of his own neck. All the mosquito bites from earlier are long gone, having healed near instantly; it’s a bashful tic he’s had since he was human. He’s tried, but can just never seem to fully shake it for long.

Hokuto at his most alert would already be needling sarcastically at the gesture, offering the latest overpriced salves from his repertoire to help the apparent skin irritation Azuma has suddenly become so stricken by. Crowding over Azuma’s shoulder, smearing some freezing cold, useless cosmetic procured near instantly from inside his own sleeve just to watch him squawk and squirm away ticklishly, acting like a childish nuisance in general.

Azuma doesn’t necessarily mourn the lack of the usual teasing… but its absence feels strange and disconcerting all the same, as Hokuto executes a very brittle and slow stretch into his full height, wincing visibly as he straightens his back.

Hokuto sighs again, a short and harsh puff of breath, exiting his nose and mouth simultaneously like a poorly concealed gasp of exertion. It very well may be- the way he holds his tall body is extremely tense, as if relaxing any of its parts could risk the whole thing crumpling back to the ground.

“Seems like it’s my turn now to be the infirm shut-in of the group,” he scoffs humourlessly with a rueful smirk towards nobody.

“Oh, knock it off,” Azuma says casually, too unimpressed to even frown. “You’re not fooling anyone with that. Pretending you think any less of Shisei-san for having baggage isn’t gonna help.”

Hokuto frowns sulkily down at the floor, and the way he turns his whole face away without responding displays sufficient guilt to be reassuring. He may look like total roadkill, gaunt and sweaty with dark circles like he’s barely eaten or slept at all in the past week, but using that sharp tongue of his for needlessly petty barbs is the best proof Azuma could have hoped for that this rude and pompous jackass he counts among his lifelong companions is not doomed to a prompt wasting death.

… He still does seem wretchedly, inexplicably ill, though.

“What happened to you,” Azuma urges, giving an emphatic up-down nod at Hokuto’s brittle and swaying posture, which surely indicates his intention to help. 

With a more rational perspective, now that he’s fairly sure he hasn’t just stumbled into performing a deathbed vigil, he feels confident in his ability to puzzle out a fix for Hokuto’s condition once he has a bit more information. It would take some effort, but it’s not as if making each other miserable for fun is something youkai society hasn’t perfected down to a fine art over the ages. Azuma’s been through some shit himself, and he generally refrains from going out of his way to make people seethingly pissed off at him.

–actually, the more that he thinks about it—

“... Did you get cursed?” he ventures, before Hokuto can sass out a response, with rapidly accelerating certainty.

Hokuto had crossed his arms high across his chest in the meantime, restlessly shifting his weight around in likely preparation to begin pacing, but Azuma’s guess forestalls him entirely. He turns his head back in Azuma’s direction, his eyes large and round in clear surprise.

“You can tell? ”

“I mean, it would have to be either that or poison,” he shrugs, unwilling to accept any significant praise for just consulting his own memories. 

Maybe that’s impressive to Hokuto. Who knows. Whatever. The back of his neck feels itchy again, but he ignores it.

“But there’s uh, I guess sort of a smell to curses, generally,” he feels himself begin to babble, ultimately deciding that just sharing some information about his deductive process couldn’t be too embarrassing. “It’s pretty subtle, especially when someone really skilled put it together, but it’s this sorta… weird creeping decay that comes from inside a guy’s body, especially his mouth. Like that old-ass saying about it being the source of disaster, n’ all.”

“There are lots more efficient ways to tell me that my breath stinks,” Hokuto grouses, looking so extraordinarily affronted that Azuma is helpless against emitting a few loud barks of laughter.

“Your breath is not the worst smell in here, man. The whole place is pretty ripe.”

Hokuto merely sighs in frustration, resuming his agitated shuffling. “I’ll admit that I’m pretty nose-blind right now. It feels like I just suddenly started pouring sweat a couple days ago, and it hasn’t stopped .”

He certainly looks like he’s short a few pounds just from water loss, alright…

“You feel feverish at all?”

Now that he’s successfully coaxed some symptoms out of Hokuto, Azuma sharpens his attention to the man’s overall physical state. He doesn’t look flushed at all; the opposite, really. Downright ashen. There’s not a huge surplus of heat in the dugout, either, but it can’t hurt to eliminate a few possibilities. He’s eager to start working on remedies, and every bit of information will help the process along more quickly.

What seemed like a fairly simple question has given Hokuto considerable pause. He’s begun to frown deeply, in a way Azuma recognizes is not towards him or his inquiries but a byproduct of Hokuto struggling to put his thoughts into appropriate words. Something that does not happen often- for better, occasionally, but mostly worse.

“... Not feverish , really, but–” He takes a hesitant pause, casts Azuma a troubled glance, then sighs unhappily again before resuming his tight unsteady circles around the far side of the chamber. His movements are all incredibly stiff, and produce a visible strain on his breathing, hardening his normally languid facial features into tight, tense lines.

Keeping himself physically active doesn’t seem to be doing much good at all for his general state, but… Azuma won’t begrudge anyone the need to fidget when they’re uncomfortable. Rocks in glass houses, or something.

“I- there’s this sort of… burning feeling. Not in terms of temperature, just… a horrible unease inside of me that feels like it’s churning around physically in my blood. Or– maybe not my blood , I don’t–” 

For Hokuto to be starting and stopping his thoughts so abruptly… Azuma legitimately can’t remember the last time he witnessed this incorrigibly self-important braggart sounding so unsure of himself.

“It will fade a little when I move my body around,” he continues at some length, after seeming to abandon his efforts to complete his previous thought. “But doing that makes all my muscles feel like they’re going to just tear apart. When I try to rest I feel worse than when I’m moving, and when I’m moving I feel worse than when I try to rest.”

“You may have noticed,” Hokuto turns his gaze sharply to Azuma again, with a distraught crease beginning to persistently indent the skin between his eyebrows. His smile is little more than a humourless show of his teeth. “But I’ve barely been able to sleep five minutes at once. I can’t even think half the time. I–”

His pacing comes to a sudden halt at the same time as his increasingly frantic words, and Azuma worries for a moment that he’ll need to jump up to his feet and catch Hokuto, from the drastic way he wobbles forward in halting his own momentum. His broad and rigid shoulders tense up to hastily counterbalance, though, and nobody has to put hands on anybody who has already established he does not want to be touched.

Those shoulders sag into a dejected slope before long, and Azuma easily makes out another long and heavy sigh. Hokuto turns back away from the far wall again after what looks like a few seconds spent collecting himself, just quietly breathing. He’s still clearly worked up, but regret has softened his expression considerably.

“Sorry,” he says limply. “Shouting at you is beyond stupid. You’re the first person I’ve seen since– anyways, I’m sorry.” 

Every aspect of him broadcasting miserable exhaustion, he brings one of his hands up to his forehead, pinching and massaging for a fruitless moment before letting it fall again. It looks like it weighs three times what it should.

“I have no idea what’s even wrong with me,” he admits, blinking quickly a couple times while he resolutely stares at one of the walls. “Everything just hurts in a way I can’t describe and I feel like shit.”

“N-nah, hey,” Azuma flusters, his thoughts spinning slightly, for… well, a lot of reasons. Fuck. “It’s cool. I think–”

… he doesn’t know if he should say it.

So, okay. He might know exactly what it is, as it turns out, that Hokuto has come down with, seemingly as a result of someone he crossed manipulating the course of nature a little. The way fuckin’ people just do to each other on this side. 

It’s something he’s gone through, too, though of its own organically occurring impetus. Three times, in fact, within the past four centuries. Most kemonotsuki eventually get put through the paces, and then just continue to get put through ‘em some more, intermittently. It’s considered pretty fuckin’ exemplary if they don’t , and Azuma sure doesn’t have the acquaintance of anybody that freakishly well-adjusted.

The main problem, here… is that nobody ever talks about it .

Not like he can claim to be an exception his own damn self, just floundering uselessly like this.

They’re never gonna get anywhere if he doesn’t ask. Shit. Okay.

“... If I’m wrong it’s no big deal,” Azuma blurts, instantly ashamed of his own spinelessness. He’s certainly got Hokuto’s full attention, at least. Great. “But do you maybe feel kinda, like… stifled? Like you know you have to do something , but you’ve got no clue what it is, and it’s almost literally eating you alive? Painfully?”

“... Yeah,” Hokuto agrees, which is the absolute worst thing he could have done.

“That’s… that’s almost exactly it.” 

One, two seconds pass before a wary frown settles decisively on to his face. 

“How did you know to ask me that?”

Ahhh fuck. 

Fuck!!!

Why did it have to be this , huh? Fuckin’ hell.

Azuma’s brain, stomach and heart all feel like they’re parts of the same doomed carp flopping around on a chopping block while it suffocates. His topical experience and pragmatism, though– and more than the two of those combined, all of his deep and honest regret for the total bullshit Hokuto has been suffering through all by himself, this whole week– calm his nerves in what feels like record time.

He does know exactly what to do, now. It’s hard to feel much relief about it, but the path is definitely clear.

He unleashes a huge sigh, scrubs the back of his neck vigorously half raw, then plunges in.

“I gotta answer your question with a question, first. Sorry ‘bout that. Point is… you’ve probably heard about something called a ‘fusion period’ around, at least once or twice, right? Since you settled in on this side?”

This sucks. It’s nobody’s specific fault, though, really.

To Azuma’s eyes, a huge part of the whole problem, for everyone, is that kemonotsuki tend not to hang with each other much. Call it instinct, or preference, or coincidence; makes no difference. It takes some pretty rare and exacting circumstances to bring ‘em all about in the first place from being regular old humans, so they’re pretty few and far between, too. 

Concurrent possessions, involving numerous divine beasts happening to choose a group of people who already knew each other, has… probably happened? Statistically? Azuma hasn’t heard of anything like it in the past four centuries, at least. 

Point is, every newly born kemonotsuki is pretty much a newly dead human, one who already had their own life and their own kinda social environment they liked best. Just sorta follows that they’ll seek something similar. And on account of being in youkai territory now, beyond the mortal veil, the vast majority of the folk they come to associate with are indeed youkai, born of other youkai, if not ancient primordial nature itself.

So that’s how you end up with youkai, instead of kemonotsuki, being the majority of the first hand witnesses and scribes to problems experienced uniquely by kemonotsuki. And the vast majority don’t feel comfortable trying to disseminate personal information with that level of potential for misuse, in the sort of social environment that Hikagemachi thrives on so brightly with such sometimes-absurdly life-threatening stakes. 

It all comes down to a matter of trust, on the personal scale- and guys like them both tend not to find themselves too flush with that.

“... Once or twice, yeah,” is Hokuto’s eventual reply, after a moment of frowning recollection. “I never heard much context for it, though, or had a reason to ask. People changed the subject to something else once it had been brought up, so it seemed like some unpleasant thing concerning other youkai that they’d just rather not speak about.”

“Right?” Azuma chuckles thinly. He guessed as much. “I thought so too, till I hit my first one.”

“...So then–?”

Hokuto’s significantly more canny than he’d been back then himself, at least.

“Yeah. I guess some animal youkai do have a similar sorta deal. Definitely not the same , though. S’far as I’ve been able to learn, it’s ‘cause it’s an issue directly related to the whole beastly possession thing. Two spirits from different species sharing one human-ish body. Sorta… overlapping their own instincts and needs, and after enough time’s passed, coming up short.”

…So wretchedly canny is Hokuto that his face falls almost instantly into blatant despair upon noting the vocabulary that Azuma has chosen to employ. Wordlessly, he throws his entire shoulder forward into resuming the tight back-and-forth laps he had been charting around the back end of the dugout, at a visibly increased speed.

Azuma balks, his guts twisting guiltily. He is doing a bad job of reassuring the guy. Gotta try something different, and fast.

“H-hey, look,” he stammers, scratching hastily through the short hairs on his nape again, tracking Hokuto’s agitated, desperately tense path as it quickly interrupts itself in abrupt succession, changing direction three times.

The image he evokes is an obvious one, with no benefit to be had from commenting on it, or interrupting it– if he can derive any kind of momentary comfort from indulging the part of him that wants to pace like a large predatory feline, then he should do it. That’s the heart of the matter, here.

Maybe Azuma just got the order wrong. He can explain the nitty-gritty later.

“It’s gonna be okay, Hokuto.” He’s not a deft hand at dispensing comfort, really, to his own estimation… but he means it, from the bottom of his heart. His voice might get kinda weird when he tries to talk about this stuff, but he does really mean it. That should count for something , right? “I promise, it’s gonna be fine. And I don’t break my promises! I’ve gone through the same awful shit three times, and I’m still sittin’ here in one piece.”

“ Three times? ” Hokuto laughs dryly, but he does slow down enough to cast an incredulous glance at Azuma while he says it, which is also something. “I feel like I would have remembered something this abhorrently miserable happening within my own close circle, before now.”

… So Azuma and the others are Hokuto’s close circle, are they. Heh. Feels a little nice to hear out loud. This guy’s always obfuscating who he spends time with, when not the usual three, and it wouldn’t be odd for someone so silver-tongued and capricious to be playing on a lot of different fields. 

“... Well we didn’t know each other yet, for the first two.”

Man , though. Folks are always so quick to forget Azuma’s considerable seniority, just because he’s not constantly lording it over them. Maybe he should start doing that for a while.

“The last one, though– I just took a few days to myself for a bit, a handful of decades ago. It wouldn’ta stood out too much.”

Another sharp glance, another derisive breath of insincere laughter.

“Just a few days?”

“Yeah. If you know what to look out for, you can sorta… feel it start to come on, once you’ve gone through the wringer a couple times. … Well, I guess you can when it happens naturally, at least. I’ll tell you more about that later, it’s not important right now.” Azuma waggles his hand dismissively of his own characteristic rambling, and proceeds to the point he’s been haphazardly aiming for, finally:  “Anyways, there’s a whole lotta stuff you can do to safely see yourself through the worst, and I’m gonna help you with it. If you want.”

Hokuto’s pacing slows considerably, though it does continue for some moments longer. He casts a couple more obvious looks at Azuma, but always turns away again before Azuma can get too good a view of the way his expression keeps wavering. It’s with his gaze still downcast and mostly obscured by his skewed, sweat-matted hair that he finally pauses with his back to the rear wall, entrusts his weight to it, and swiftly plunges down into a seat on the ground.

He changes the width and arrangement of the way he’s crossed his legs in an obviously distracted manner for several more seconds, but it’s only when he turns his head down in the direction of the near corner, and Azuma catches the tight, trembling downward purse of Hokuto’s lips that he realizes just how overcome Hokuto has been by his emotions. An embarrassed flash of heat rushes into Azuma’s face, and he quickly finds something to stare at on the opposite wall.

“You–” Hokuto’s voice cracks sharply, and he swiftly corrects into clearing his throat with a measured cough behind his lips before trying again.  “... You’d do that?”

“I mean… ‘course I would.” Azuma’s heart is acting like it’s gonna explode somewhere up towards the middle of his throat, so he’s pretty glad that they’re looking at different patches of dirt right now. “I’m already here anyways. Though originally I just wanted to see if you were up for takin’ some pickles off my hands, h-haha.”

“... I was wondering what’s up with the jar,” Hokuto comments, with his own very thick and shaky breath of laughter.

“I’ve already pawned off all I can to Shisei-san and Sana, so you’re my last hope for these things, seriously. I already have enough put aside for myself to fill up half the floorspace in here.”

“Because you always insist on using every single one of those dozen gigantic jars whenever you make a batch,” comes the intolerably quick rebuttal.

“Shuddup,” Azuma grumbles, with barely any fight. Because it’s true. They have this exchange every couple years or so. Sana is always thrilled beyond belief to receive large quantities of food he didn’t have to prepare his own self, and Shisei-san has a little old thing called decorum, so it’s always just this jerk pointing out how Azuma manufactures problems for himself outta nothing and being right about it. As usual.

“Just take the damn things. Consider that my condition for helping you, if you gotta.”

Not that Azuma’s help is at all conditional– Hokuto’s gotta know that.

… he does know that, right??

A wary squint back in his general direction catches the shape of his shoulders making a quick shrug.

“Never said I didn’t want them,” Hokuto easily admits. “The ones you made last time were great.”

Azuma snaps to immediate, joyful attention.

“Wait, really?” He can feel the big stupid grin on his own mug, and yet do nothing to dampen it. The natural sheepishness that follows feels like enough of a compromise. “I mean, it’s hard to mess up too bad if you’re just throwin’ everything together with a buncha booze and chili, y’know, but I’m not sure if I used all the same ratios for this batch, like with the dashi and sugar n’stuff…”

Hokuto snorts another quick, quiet breath of laughter. It’s much more natural than the previous few, which is a genuine relief to Azuma.

“Normally I’d offer my taste testing services right away, but I ah… haven’t had much luck keeping things down that aren’t raw meat, lately.” He reaches slightly outwards and gives a smack to the rice bale in his nearest corner, like a reprimand for its contents’ inability to stay obediently in his stomach.

The force is just barely enough to momentarily jostle the integrity of the hollow upper reaches of the structure, which crimp dramatically for a second and then throw something off the top of it, aided by its shape: a high quality scroll of calligraphy fabric, bouncing on to the ground and unrolling for a couple rotations. There’s only the general silhouette of one large character scrawled on to it, completely indiscernible from the way the hand that brushed it was shaking - the strokes all jitter and squirm like millipedes before coalescing into one big frustrated scribble.

Azuma doesn’t comment, as Hokuto plucks the thing up with an irritated grimace. Without winding it up again he simply tosses it aside with a flick of his wrist, and it lands in a loosened heap atop the small pile of other things Azuma isn’t commenting on: a collection of thin bones, looking like they’ve come from rabbits and stoats if he had to guess, with some hollow avian ones strewn throughout occasionally too. They’re all licked thoroughly clean, but still smell quite fresh.

“... I’ve been having to shift forms to go find myself food,” Hokuto scoffs with evident self-derision.

An action that, in every other common circumstance, would be as laughably uncouth as stripping naked in the marketplace to buy yourself a bowl of ramen. There’s a weird amount of shame associated with embracing one’s more animal shape amongst those who have them, even for those like the two of them, who didn’t have to make their own humanoid selves from scratch.

“Hey, no, that’s perfect ,” Azuma beams widely, though– common circumstances, these are not. “You already sorta figured it out, huh!”

Stunned silent, Hokuto blinks largely at him. As if he didn’t naturally stumble right on to something that took Azuma ages of waffling around guiltily to even let himself consider. Smart people are so annoying.

“That’s the main thing , about getting through a fusion period, see: you gotta just let yourself sorta… surrender, maybe? No, not really surrender– just agree , I guess, with the stuff that the divine beast in there wants to be doing. So for guys with hunters inside ‘em like you and me, hunting’s a big one! Small game isn’t gonna do much in the long run for us, but catching and killing your own meals is already a damn great start to–”

Before the enthused flow of his explanation totally overcomes him, Azuma remembers something a little strange that has been sorta bothering him the more he sits with it.

“–hang on a sec, I’m just wondering.” He gestures loosely to that pile of assorted bones, totally devoid of any other scrap of commonly profitable animal leftovers, like fur , for example. “Why are you saving those? If you wanna make a soup stock, you better do it soon. The flavour’s not gonna keep, if they’re just sitting around out here.”

“Why else? I want to see if I can whittle some decent loaded dice, once my motor control’s back to normal,” Hokuto simply shrugs, like it’s the single most obvious thing in the whole freakin’ world.

“... Dude,” Azuma just… sighs , at him, not terribly disappointed, nor terribly surprised.

“Not for me ,” comes the immediate huffing rebuttal, alongside a slight frown. “I don’t need to cheat. I was just thinking I could make a little spare change selling them.”

“Right, right, my mistake.” Knowing a lost cause when it pouts at him blankly like this, he drops the issue without much more of a second thought.

“Anyways– hmh.” Now that he’s had a second to let his more important thoughts gather a bit, instead of just blurting them willy-nilly, Azuma is a little less ecstatically invested in the idea he’d let himself start nurturing: the one where he and Hokuto spend the next half a week shifted together, scenting out a substantial enough creature to be an engaging challenge, coordinating their attack and bringing it down in some glorious display of natural brutality and perseverance.

Shifting tends to be sorta… private. Where Azuma’s at, he’d be totally fine showing that part of himself to the friends he’s determined are the ones he wants to keep, in like… a way that’s not weird, or anything. But it’s a hell of a thing to assume someone else would just be a-okay with.

“I got sorta ahead of myself remembering it just now,” Azuma admits, “but the best time I ever had with a fusion was the time before last, when I just headed way out into the woods back across the other side of the town– y’know, the ones around Shisei-san’s place. They go pretty deep, right?”

Hokuto nods attentively. Azuma already feels a bit bad about the potential letdown he’s winding up to pitch, but offering his own breadth of experience is pretty much the only thing he can do to help here… for more comfortable starters, at least.

“I spent a good four or five days straight as a dog, just nose to the ground in there, following the smell of this huge deer buck, that had just lost the horns it grew over the past decade– they were on the ground, with a bit of fresh blood on ‘em still, even though, get this: they’d already completely petrified! They looked like something that fell off some ancient sacred tree, then spent a good century in the ocean. They were rock -solid, this sorta light gray, and it looked like there mighta been flower buds growing off ‘em at some point, the way there was this sorta woodgrain-like flow to the texture on–”

Creating no interruption besides a very amused smile, and a slightly lopsided lift to his eyebrows, Hokuto lets Azuma continue to babble off-topic for a very mean amount of time. He lets him start miming with his hands , even– spreading them up and out with his fingers stretched, like the massive branch-like protrusions that helped him complete his most memorable hunt– and it’s in the middle of this that Azuma realizes what he’s doing, again.

“I mean–” He drops his hands into his lap as casually as he can possibly manage, folding his fingers together to make sure they stay out of any more trouble , highly aware of the heat in his own face. Fuckin’ Hokuto.

“The point ,” he insists, leveling a mild glare, which receives nothing in return but the same smarmy look as before, “is that I just let my animal senses guide me the whole way. ‘Specially when it came time to actually kill that massive sucker– it did get kinda dicey for a bit there, but I managed to bring it down, and then the whole next day was just feasting as much as I could. By the time I was done, I was totally out the other end of all the worst stuff. God , it felt great.”

It’s impossible not to let himself dwell, just a little bit, in the memory of the encompassing satisfaction that followed those tremendous efforts. Every last part of him, tail to tip, heart and soul, was just so— he was fulfilled, even if only for a little while, in a way that convoluted human endeavours just never offer. It still makes him wistful.

I’d be nice if he could help give Hokuto that kind of uncomplicated, comfortable temporary peace, too. It’s the sorta thing that could be shared, Azuma thinks.

The awkward crinkle between Hokuto’s brows, despite his persistent smile, is more or less what Azuma expected from this sort of suggestion, though. He’s looking a little green, now, too.

“... It’s not that I don’t believe how much it helped you,” he offers, with a contrite and apologetic gentleness to the shredded up rasp in his voice. His easy grin seems to look more like it’s just been frozen in place from before, and needs a chance to thaw away naturally before something more genuine can come to replace it. “It’s just…”

“Ahhahah, no worries,” Azuma laughs, and can tell at least that his own noncommittal manner is real. “I already sorta figured it’s not your number one idea of a good time. Just thought I’d throw it out there on the off chance, y’know. And if nothing else is more appealing, we don’t gotta… You can go do your thing by yourself, and I can just follow you at a distance out there, in case something happens. Anyways. Just keep the idea in your back pocket for now.”

“Sure,” Hokuto chuckles. Without moving an inch, he then regards Azuma with another one of those annoying little grins. “There, I’ve put it away. Next to my bone-carving knife, for later.”

Azuma throws his hands up out of his lap in exasperated surrender to this clever jackass, with a loud sigh.

“Seriously man, you are wasting your material on me.”

… he’s glad Hokuto is acting more like his usual bastard self, though, secretly.

“I think I’ll decide if I’m wasting it or not,” Hokuto declares haughtily.

The more that the implications of his grand old idea start to belatedly sink in, the more Azuma is growing fairly glad to have had it rejected on its face. Namely… the particular kind of intimacy that might come from sharing a hunt did not exactly occur to him.

Rather than the wide, regal face of a tiger meeting him across the steaming hot flesh of their kill, the image that comes to Azuma suddenly is of Hokuto’s usual human-looking self– the one he knows– with dark, thick blood, nearly black, smeared on the underside of his nose, caught on the tips of his bangs, cascading all the way down the rest of his face. Eyes sharp, alight with exhilaration. His tongue emerges, and swipes–

Azuma forces himself to blink, very hard.

“... Yeah. You do that, then,” he responds, brightly aware of the way the inside of his own mouth feels, suddenly. He licks the point of one of his canines, behind his closed lips.

The danger of saying something extremely stupid, if Azuma proceeds with just telling Hokuto about the other strategies he’s employed, feels rather high at the moment. He decides to not take that risk.

Though… it’ll have to come up sooner or later. 

Later sounds pretty good!

“Well,” he starts, taking an internal stock of those real specific old rumours for a quick second longer. “I can’t personally vouch for this one myself, but I’ve heard that fighting helps a lot, too.”

“Fighting?” Hokuto snorts, incredulous. “As in… participating in an argument?”

Azuma is about to scoff at him that this is obviously not the case and that he’s just being a shit head about semantics again, but the thing is… 

“... huh,” he frowns, pinching his chin between his thumb and index knuckle. “Y’know I’m not actually sure. I got this tip like third-hand, so… maybe? I guess if you feel like you need to have some kinda… debate.”

Hokuto only has to open his mouth half a centimetre before Azuma has realized his gigantic mistake, and scrambles almost physically to his feet for the intercept. “Any more than you already do, I mean , jackass.”

Having adopted the intent gaze of a carnivore ready to pounce, despite his alleged distaste towards embarking on a chase, Hokuto slouches back against the wall with an audible click of his teeth. Azuma puffs out a quick breath of amusement towards the mild sourness now curdling Hokuto’s more openly shallow demeanour.

“I dunno what you think I could even stand up to you in a debate about ,” he laughs, tickled by the unrepentant petulance in Hokuto’s posture. “I didn’t go to any fancy normal school back in the day, unlike your stinkin’ eminent self.”

“You just used the word ‘eminent’ ,” Hokuto argues, tossing his hand out loosely in Azuma’s direction, before crossing it back over his opposite arm. 

Azuma’s eyes are helplessly drawn there again, to the surprisingly stout circumference of the limb emerging from beneath the expensive golden thread hem of that pointlessly high quality silk shirt of his. Azuma had forgotten it had short sleeves, obscured by more extravagant layers as it usually is. It would be convenient for him if he could forget again, and quickly.

“You’d do fine. You’re being awfully unfair to yourself.”

“Agree to disagree.” Azuma forces his line of sight back up to match Hokuto’s, before he can be caught obviously staring. What the hell is he doing, here. “That’s what they call an impasse, right? Debate over.”

Hokuto is downright scowling now, though Azuma can easily recognize it’s not a sign of any genuine rancor. His own mood has experienced a nice boost, on the other hand. He grins widely.

“That do anything for your symptoms, smartass?”

“I don’t feel any worse ,” he insists. Azuma can believe it, sure.

“But you don’t feel any better, either,” he suggests. 

Hokuto’s eyes narrow in that intolerably triumphant way, though his mouth doesn’t quite manage to complete its usual flawless smirk.

“Talking with you always makes me feel better,” he… states, and then blinks, realizing immediately that this isn’t quite the checkmate he imagined it.

Azuma’s face becomes so hot so quickly that it nearly feels numb and frozen instead somehow. He may be aware of every one of his own billion pores at once as they simultaneously explode wide open. For not nearly the first time in four hundred long years of deeply embarrassing existence, the language he’s been speaking and keeping active modern interest in just fails him utterly, every last word.

“Um,” he mumbles, and time sort of freezes unpleasantly for the next entire second. 

Thankfully he remembers that he does know quite well how to speak within the following one, and swiftly employs his expertise. “Anyways,” Azuma tells the dirt beneath his legs. ‘Shuddup’ or ‘Can it’ would’ve been the natural thing to say, there, back at the ‘um’. Too late now, dipshit! Every last human and inhuman part of him alike wants to dig a gigantic hole in the ground and bury himself alive in it. Instead he just keeps on sitting and sweating and being red in the face, like an idiot.

He’s already long since come to know and make peace with the fact that he’s a huge idiot though, so it doesn’t take much more time or effort to get back on topic.

“What that rumour is actually getting at is like… physical,” Azuma coughs, “fighting. Being a good outlet, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Hokuto sighs loudly, “probably.”

He already sounds less than enthused. Azuma happens to share this view- he decides he’ll just do his best to focus on their common opinion, rather than the fact that Hokuto absolutely bore full witness to the enormous effect his unintentional ( Was it? Why did he say that???) compliment just had on Azuma’s composure and general state of being.

Whether or not Hokuto will actually let him get away with it is another issue, but… urgh. It’s out of his hands.

“What,” Azuma jokes, or at least intends to– “don’t wanna pop me one in the jaw for interrupting your nap earlier?”

“Not you , no,” Hokuto grumbles, with enough blatant vitriol to give Azuma’s curiosity a significant lead over his lingering mortification. He raises his eyes back up, and they mark Hokuto’s expression shifting into sincere, intent vindictiveness, though clearly not directed at him. 

If he glowers any harder at that wall, the structural integrity of the dugout might be in actual danger soon.

The suddenness and renewed intensity of Hokuto’s foul mood is… surprising, not to mention confusing. 

He’s not talking about himself , is he?

Sure he was crabby and rude earlier, but he already apologized. It’s not like being crabby and rude is terribly out of pocket for Hokuto in far less demanding circumstances, anyways; he was in a snit for an entire month the time Sana had the gall to beat him at karuta. Azuma’s getting downright disturbed, if this guy is developing such an openly self-loathing streak under his own nose.

“If I’d known socking that pretentious waif in his smug face would help me feel better, I would’ve just done it instead of being the bigger person.”

Oh. That does clarify things.

It also serves to remind Azuma: the details of how Hokuto landed himself in his current predicament, and any of the people involved, are things the man in question has not yet elected to share.

Which is reasonable, considering that knowing this stuff would probably not give Azuma any edge in his efforts to determine how he can help with the aftermath.

But he also does just kinda want to know. Sue him.

Especially now that Hokuto has called someone else “pretentious”, holy fuck .

“Who even did ,” Azuma nods at Hokuto, “this, if you don’t mind me askin’.”

If he does mind he can just tell Azuma to fuck off about it, and they’ll get on with things, but… the amount of years Azuma’s been around, there are a number of powerful likely suspects who immediately jump to mind, considering the specific tasteless cruelty at play here. None of them are people you want holding a long term grudge; he may have to try his hand at some far more delicate damage control once the most urgent of Hokuto’s symptoms have been dealt with. 

However they’re… gonna be dealt with. Urgh.

Why is this such a fuckin’ gigantic mess?

In response, Hokuto merely shrugs .

“Didn’t get any names,” he scoffs, like this much at least is a completely foregone conclusion. “Most of the places I go socializing frown on being too free with those.” 

So socializing is what he’s calling it nowadays, is it. Sure.

“Probably youkai, at least.”

This is what finally untethers Azuma’s eyebrows from their concerned scrunch. Up they fly, into the dense cover of his hairbangs, thick and mussed a little oddly from the humidity of his swim earlier and abandoned to their unkemptness upon the discovery soon thereafter of far more pressing issues.

“ Probably ?”, he gawks.

On second thought maybe this is the worst idea he’s ever had. Maybe he really shouldn’t have asked. Every single insubstantial little half-truth he’s gotten from Hokuto so far, and the total lack of concern therein, is already making Azuma so stressed out that he might really dig that hole for himself and climb right the fuck on in.

Hokuto shrugs again , goddamn him.

“You remember that whole tournament commotion, don’t you? The ones who took it all off the rails dabbling in ancient crap were the humans. Those cheeky guys in the Katanashuu have already been using shiki for decades, too. Who knows what else they’ve picked up on doing.”

Fine, this is all technically true and maybe Azuma harbors some misconceptions he oughta examine, but what Hokuto is tacitly saying right now is that he doesn’t care enough to know either way.

Azuma might rip all his own hair out and fling it in this idiot’s face, if he doesn’t keep just clenching his fists on his knees. So he keeps on clenching his fists.

Some of the utter dismay in Azuma’s silence must successfully penetrate Hokuto’s thick skull, because by the time he deigns to provide further information, he’s lost the majority of that combative, surly disinterest in his bearing.

Rather, it’s with rueful sheepishness that he admits: “... The guy who started it was from that tournament, actually. I can’t recall what he goes by, but we’d already bet on dice a couple times before the whole affair- I only just recognized him this time around because he was the one the old fox sent flying so splendidly. You know the fellow I’m talking about, right? Always shirking in uniform to have fun around the town, friendly enough on the surface but an obvious schemer.”

Azuma does know of the fellow.

Uta is the pseudonym he’s taken, and he did go flying quite splendidly.

Far more outrageous than the gall of Hokuto chiding anyone on their duplicitous habits, though, the particular detail of one specific entity that Uta is well-known– and widely avoided – for his tendency to keep company with has Azuma’s heart threatening to stall entirely.

He just… nods.

He feels sick with nerves.

Hokuto frowns slightly at whatever face Azuma has made, clearly unaware that the fact that he’s still alive right now could probably be considered a divine miracle.

With a degree more hesitation, likely due to the sudden sombreness he’s been met with, Hokuto  continues to elaborate.

“Well… I thought it would be fun to test him a little, after seeing the sort of foolery he got up to in his round of the combat. I started playing things a little hard, made some aggressive bets in his general direction, did some goading, and he definitely caught on to it. I never even got to discover how he was going to respond , though, because before any of us saw the first pair of dice, this upright dainty little lordling bursts in like he owns the building and every one of us occupying it.”

And so enters the entity .

Obviously, this story does not end with Hokuto reduced to a grisly smear on the tatami, considering he is the one currently recounting it. Nevertheless Azuma is beginning to feel legitimately faint, from the retroactive, blood-freezing dread of contending with the reality wherein one of his best friends has run even verbally afoul of a being nearly as ancient as the town’s local nine-tailed fox, who has played at ruining entire human countries. Who is easily thrice as ruthless as that whimsical force of destruction.

“Long silky hair, dressed head to foot in all this loud finery,” Hokuto sneers, paradoxically resentful of traits he happens to easily fulfill his own ridiculous self. The typical, shallow hypocrisy does a shocking amount of good for Azuma’s emotional wellbeing- Hokuto would hardly be Hokuto without this wildly careless arrogance, would he.

“Anyways, he locks eyes with this human immediately, and then the human locks eyes with me– ”

“Uta,” Azuma supplies, released from the dreadful tension of his anxiety. That’s still there , naturally, as it always is to some degree, but as in most cases the root cause is not something within his own immediate control or even influence. “The human’s called Uta, I remember the guy.”

It already happened, and dealing with the results comes first.

Hokuto comes first right now. It’s easier to just… put him first.

He sure makes it easy, haha.

“Right, that was his name,” Hokuto remarks, unbothered as usual by such trivialities. “He decides I’m going to be the one to save him from whatever errands this lordling of his decided he should be doing, though– starts hanging all over me, squealing about how we’re two star-crossed souls , who may never have another chance to carouse together in his woefully insubstantial mortal lifetime, so just this once it would be the kind thing to do, letting him off the hook–”

… yikes.

Maybe people avoid Uta for more than just the attention he’s known to garner.

“The lordling is unswayed of course, and makes to just heave this nuisance to us both over his shoulder and take his leave, most likely. I have a duty to the places I patronize, however.”

And it is at this point in his narrative that Hokuto visibly swells with haughty, completely pointless pride, even in spite of the obvious toll all of this fancy talking is starting to take on his beleaguered throat and lungs. 

Azuma’s forehead hits the palm of his hand, and he sighs, enormously. Of course it would be something like this.

“What,” Hokuto croaks suspiciously, then coughs quietly into his fist to clear some of the rasp afflicting him.

“Nothin’, nothin’.” Azuma waves for him to continue. He can clearly see where this tale is going, but Hokuto seems to be deriving some significant petty catharsis from telling it.

It is amazing that this guy is still alive right now. Fuck.

“All I did was simply suggest to this silver-haired boor that he consider a more civilized means of resolving whatever quarrel he had with this errant man of his. In places where sums of money tend to change ownership rapidly and in large quantities, allowing people to just lay hands as they please is a pretty disastrous standard to look the other way from. Am I wrong?”

No, he’s not wrong , but… does Hokuto seriously have no idea who he’s talking about???

“The ‘silver-haired boor’ you’re goin’ off on was in that tournament too, you know.”

“Was he now. I don’t recall any participants matching the description.”

Not even that other surly man with the silver hair, who took less than thirty seconds to offend the great Mizuchi so badly that he forfeited? Hokuto’s working definition of ‘boor’ seems to rely entirely on whether or not the subject has inconvenienced him personally.

“Well, he wasn’t a participant, no. He officiated the damn thing.”

“Could have fooled me,” Hokuto snorts, crossing his arms again with stubborn oomph in clear spite of the pain it causes him. 

“I suppose I should thank him later for his shocking lack of effort,” he smirks, while Azuma feels about five stomach ulcers simultaneously develop, rupture, and instantly heal. “Made it laughably easy to play the bookie back then. All I had to do was show a thimble of enthusiasm, and people were eating out of my hand.”

“ Hokuto, god– goddamn it,” Azuma groans in frantic aggravation. So he did know, and he still just– 

Fuckin’ Hokuto !!! Holy shit!!!

“That’s Karasutengu , you dumbass . You have any idea how bad this coulda gone for you?!”

“So I’m supposed to be impressed by his name?” Matching Azuma’s abrupt displeasure eagerly, he throws back his response like he was just waiting to use it.

He probably was , because he always just– fuckin’ shit–

“Whatever this guy’s done with this big name of his to make you so scared of him, all he did was give me a real long once-over. I thought he was gonna start flirting . It was that kinda look.”

Azuma’s mouth drops open.

“–and before you call me full of shit,  I can at least recognize what I’m used to dishing out.”

Wh–

… 

… huh???

“That was my impression–” Hokuto coughs briefly again, then instead tries to clear his throat at length, but this tack is already beginning to have less of an effect from overuse. Maybe that’s why he’s switched to straight shooting, instead of staying all flowery? Azuma still feels like he just got flipped upside down and belted right in the gut, from the completely unexpected twist in what he thought would be the story of a narrowly avoided murder. 

“But it was ultimately the kind of gambit you lead with when you wanna really insult someone you’re decidedly not interested in,” is how Hokuto wryly finishes his tangent, looking chagrined.

… so… wait.

He woulda been okay with the flirting? With Karasutengu?

Hang on, actually, more importantly–

… Hokuto’s used to winding someone up just to smack ‘em back down… is he.

Azuma feels his heart twist at the idea for some stupid reason. It’s not like he didn’t already know the guy’s sort of a dirtbag.

“After looking like he was fit to eat me alive, the great Karasutengu just made some jibe about how I ‘know what it means to be civilized’ , do I, and poked me in the forehead. Thought he used some kinda pressure point to upset my stomach, or something, but–”

Interrupted by another fit of coughing, Hokuto simply gestures down at his present state to complete the thought, and focuses on regaining himself for the time being.

Feeling regretful and exhausted in equal measure from the turbulence of his own emotions, Azuma waits silently for Hokuto to overcome the worst of his episode.

“Sorry I got you talkin’ so much,” he says, and holds up an open palm right away to forestall any objections. Hokuto watches him shake his head for emphasis, closes his mouth again, and appears to accept the opportunity to rest his voice.

“And, y’know, for freaking out on you like that. And calling you a dumbass.”

Hokuto cracks a rakish smile, and precisely as Azuma has every cause to dread, makes use of his absolutely tortured vocal chords to tell a stupid joke.

“‘ight,” he wheezes, wretchedly. “‘m a smartass. Keep your story st–” 

Predictably, the rest devolves into more sharp and guttural coughing.

“I got it already,” Azuma sighs, exasperated. “Just keep your mouth shut for five minutes, smartass . Consider it a favour you can collect on later, rope me into whatever stupid shit you want, just take it easy for a bit.”

Satisfied by the promise of one carte blanche annoyance, Hokuto nods through his lingering throat contractions and settles back against the wall.

Azuma catches his own forehead again, allowing himself the next 300 seconds to sort through some of the total fucking absurdity he just became privy to.

… It’s not something he’s witnessed directly, but word is that the famously brutal and bloodthirsty Karasutengu has mellowed out in the past century. Azuma never took it any more seriously than he otherwise would, owing to the way modern youkai love circulating dubious nonsense for fun. But a firsthand account from somebody he trusts, (whether or not he should ,) that’s difficult to dismiss offhand as either pot-stirring or wishful thinking.

Because, see, he was there in the Edo period. Guys like Hokuto, who didn’t cross over till generations later, have no real way of knowing with the certainty that Azuma does that in his most fearsome heyday Karasutengu would literally paint the streets red with blood on a hair trigger. 

People that Azuma knew , while thankfully not in much of a positive capacity, were flattened into gore for no other reason than that they were unluckily within the same fifty foot radius as whoever did so much as glance at Karasutengu the wrong way. The deific crow as he most strongly impresses on Azuma’s memory is as inhospitable and unknowable as the bottom of the ocean, and just as liable to crush you beyond recognition if you do not take every single precaution against the mere possibility. The surest way to avoid such a gruesome fate was to just keep your feet dry entirely.

Time has a way of changing things, though, doesn’t it. The humans back on the other side, from what it sounds like, have risked horror and oblivion innumerable times to perfect their little floating armored chariots. Just to lay eyes on the world in the depths, to try and understand it.

It’s indisputable that Karasutengu trades primarily in information nowadays, rather than life and death. He was willing to commentate on that frivolous tournament, and did nothing worse to quell the rabble rousers than send them a few miles away to cool off with a lazy wave of his fan.

… He certainly would never have harbored such a gentle interest in someone mortal in days bygone, that’s for sure. The man who goes by Uta has no idea how remarkable it is for him to be enjoying his current situationship while living and breathing, rather than reminiscing as a forlorn ghost upon the single night of passion he shared with Karasutengu before being duly cannibalized.

Maybe the great tengu finally just succumbed to loneliness like all the rest of them. It’s a common enough story, especially amongst the survivors of that era’s particular tides of violence.

Humans, youkai, and everyone outside and in between still gleefully keep shedding each other’s blood for shallow reasons. They’re still cruel to each other for fun, and for pride, and to make material gain, and all the other usual stupid shit. Azuma’s seen the number of them growing tired with that way of life continue to mount, though. 

By the time he stopped being mortal, Azuma feels he already had more than half his fill of it. Adapting to the way of things past the boundary was hardly much of an ask; just like the world he grew up in, to keep yourself alive and dignified, you dirtied your hands. You didn’t risk real connections, because even if they wanted to last, someone always had something to gain from taking them away. Every scrap of peace and joy was something you secreted away to yourself alone, lest someone else decide they’d like to deprive you, and if they did try, you raged tooth and nail like a beast out of hell to deter anyone else with the same idea.

Maybe when enough people manage to keep their own happiness, it slowly becomes a bit less necessary to go on living that way. Azuma from four centuries ago would never have believed in a version of himself who’d be sitting in a dank cave taking care of a sick friend, with a jar of pickles he only learned how to make to try and get a different friend to spend less time alone.

… How’d he end up dwelling on all this mushy stuff anyways, haha. He can’t remember why he started thinking so hard.

–oh yeah. 

He’s glad Karasutengu didn’t kill someone he actually cares about, for starters!

The easy, laid back day-to-day it took so long for him to obtain would go right out the window if he had to take revenge on fucking Karasutengu, out of every possible culprit.

Ugh. He’s so glad stupid Hokuto is still alive. Jackass doesn’t even know how glad he is.

Stupid, jackass, alive Hokuto continues to recline quietly against his wall, when Azuma decides he’s had enough ruminating. The amount of discomforted fidgeting he’s maintained his engagement in, and the subtly laboured movements of his breast and diaphragm, make it clear that he has not yet succeeded at achieving those five-plus minutes of sleep he’s been questing after.

“I don’t really wanna fist-fight you either,” he states grimly, trusting Hokuto will pick up on the nonsequitur. 

… Four centuries ago, fist-fighting Hokuto would have been exactly what Azuma wanted to do.

He was permanently angry, and just as often wretchedly alone. Just seeing the kind of pretty, smug face the guy’s got would’ve had him throwing a sucker punch at anything even resembling an opportunity, and then, providing the recipient was amenable to tussling, fishing for a… different kind of hotblooded physical contact.

He doesn’t do that shit anymore. He looks for one night stands the normal way, with words and body language and maybe some drinks, instead of fists and hostility. The last time he had to clean a person’s blood out from under his fingernails, the grit felt like it lingered for the next entire decade– he just got sick of it.

Nobody needs to know he acted like that.

Especially not Hokuto.

Azuma sighs deeply, and has the impression that this is what the large majority of his exhalations have been today.

It sure has been a day.

“We gotta figure out something to do, though, ‘cause this isn’t gonna just go away if you wait it out.”

Hokuto’s eyes open at the ceiling, and he slowly, brittly lowers his neck to reveal an irritated frown.

“Damn,” he mutters hoarsely.

“I could tell you were stalling when you got so enthusiastic about telling your story, earlier. C’mon.”

“You know I’d always rather settle things with words than with violence,” he insists plaintively, at further expense to his throat. He massages the outside of it lightly, swallows, and decides to keep talking. Azuma doesn’t interrupt; he already got him to take the one break, and doesn’t trust his chances at pushing for another.

“What happens if I just wait? I’m not going to suddenly drop dead, right? Some sort of…” He grimaces. “Supernatural rut period, or whatever this is meant to be, would be completely pointless if it just killed you.”

… Again, the guy just guesses and hits the bullseye, huh?

Goddamn it.

Well, it’s about time they came around to this anyways. Azuma always knew they’d get here, considering objective factors like ease and comfort, not to mention Hokuto’s general lack of proclivity when it comes to matters of brute force. Doesn’t make it any less fucking awkward to broach, but… tough shit.

He steels himself and shrugs tremulously. Instead of getting facetious, like he’d considered at one earlier point just to spare himself the mortification, he’s realized he’d rather them both just be embarrassed than make this any more unpleasant of a revelation for Hokuto than it has to be.

“You won’t die, yeah.” He takes a breath, and it feels a bit short, but if he pusses out now there’s no telling how long this could take. “If you really wanna just keep ignoring the big guy causing a ruckus in there, though, he’s gonna get fed up and decide to take over.”

Hokuto blanches dramatically, from pallid to corpse-like.

“So… We can keep wasting time for another week, until you shift forms unwillingly, then race off top speed to find something to hunt, fight, or fuck. And considering the amount of people in town nearby willing to get cozy with a charging tiger, you’ll probably end up just making a huge scene and eating someone. But… no, you won’t die.”

Azuma feels himself shaking like a leaf, and knows it came across in his voice right from the start. Hokuto is staring back at him wide-eyed, his expression a slowly shifting kaleidoscope of horror, impotent frustration, and deep, genuine despair.

Even if it does come to that worst case scenario, he won’t let Hokuto get into town. He’ll shift forms right alongside him, and they’ll probably spend the next twenty-four hours, at least, tackling and biting and clawing each other with much deadlier hardware than they’ve presently got on hand. Azuma’s confident he could tough it out, even considering the likely substantial size difference, with everything he’s already survived till now. But neither of them would get away unscathed. 

It’d be better than the alternative, but the pain afterwards, far from only physical, would be dreadful. He doesn’t wanna do that to Hokuto. Telling him about it already feels like a step too close, and for now at least, doesn’t balance at all with whatever grim reassurance it might bring.

Just dwelling on the possibility overcomes him head to toe with guilt.

“... Yeah,” he mutters pointlessly. “It’s… it’s pretty bad if you just wait.”

Hokuto laughs a little, thinly, high-pitched. It sounds more like a whimper than anything.

“Now I really wish I’d punched that lunatic.”

The drastic transition from “lordling” rips a couple surprised yaps of laughter from Azuma himself. It’s closer to the mark, probably.

“Ha! You’d definitely just be a pile of guts on the ground if you tried it, but… he could stand to get his nose busted.”

Sighing loudly, for any possible number of the recent causes he’s been so abundantly given, Hokuto’s features crimp into dissatisfaction.

“Is this Karasutengu really so formidable? You talk like he wields one of the three sacred treasures.”

He’s clearly not as openly murderous as he used to be, no, but Hokuto sure is in quite the position to be casting doubt about what Karasutengu is and isn’t willing to do.

“Just don’t mess with him, man. He put you in this state just for getting between him and his… “ 

… Toy? Sweetheart?

“... Business.”

Hokuto smirks knowingly. The ghastly tint of his complexion, and overall physical torpor, are not wonderful contributors to the convincingness of his incredulous facade.

“Awfully possessive of his business , isn’t he. He seems old-fashioned and small-minded.”

Azuma is beginning to feel a little agitated.

“ Please just leave it, will ya?” 

Hokuto visibly falters, at least somewhat, faced with the legitimately desperate insistence Azuma has poured into his supplicating. He can’t make Hokuto take anyone seriously if he is so clearly dead set on not doing that, but he can ask politely. He’s not about to bust out any dogeza, but he can still make a pretty logical case while he’s at it.

“D’you even want to get in the middle of whatever they’ve got going on? ‘Cause it seems like all you had was complaints earlier, about how that Uta tried puttin’ you there himself.”

It’s aided significantly by the sickly pallor of his skin, but the flush swiftly appearing on Hokuto’s cheeks, and even what’s visible of his forehead, is so stark it could pass for a sunburn.

He clears his throat awkwardly.

“... Guess I better try for a different threesome to get myself all fixed up,” he shrugs, with an unnatural stiffness to his smile and gestures both, which is obviously different in nature from the kind that’s been plaguing him.

Azuma feels his own face reddening again, too.

“You think?” He grumbles, and feels far less accusatory than he had been aiming for.

It’s hard to be too frustrated at anyone, now that the inciting factors of the whole mess have been made clear, and they’re all so… stupid. 

Just all-around stupid, this one.

Hokuto tries for what was likely meant as a brief chuckle, but it mutates into a nasty, gurgling gasp, which brings on yet more coughing. By the time he’s caught his breath again, his expression has taken a markedly more contemplative shape. Straight brows, gaze downcast.

“Hunt, fight, or fuck… huh.”

“Those’re pretty much the choices,” Azuma confirms, easily and honestly matching Hokuto’s glum tone. “If you had a badger or a rodent possessing you, then something like burrowing might be an option and you’d be pretty set in here already, but…”

“Not the case,” supplies Hokuto, perhaps superfluously to them both, but no less relevant.

He makes a small, unhappy noise through his lips. The earth of the wall to his direct right, beyond the rice bale, once more becomes the recipient of his perturbed gaze.

“It, uh,” is what Azuma barely has the opportunity to begin saying, before Hokuto’s wide and quietly desperate eyes, glittering low, ardent vermilion with emotion and dim firelight, are directly on him again instead. His throat squeezes, and his body warms rapidly to the point of sweaty discomfort. 

He swallows some saliva. He blinks.

“It’s not strictly about the… fucking,” he manages. Barely.

Hokuto’s eyebrows lift, just marginally, but it’s enough to send Azuma’s own gaze skittering absolutely anywhere else but that terrifyingly earnest and handsome face. They quickly settle on the lantern, which is kind of dumb because he immediately has to squint somewhat against the glaring point of reflection the tiny flame within casts on its glass cover, but maybe that’s a blessing in disguise. Maybe it’ll be a little more difficult to tell that he is completely, disastrously losing his cool at the moment.

“Animals have a lot of casual, uh, physical intimacy, yeah? Like between mates, and stuff, or whatever. But also parents and kids, or pack members, if they’ve got those. Y’know. Grooming, and napping, and just sorta leaning on each other a lot while they… hang out. That sorta thing.”

A beat of silence hangs.

“So… cuddling,” Hokuto deduces in a bland tone.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess.”

This would be the perfect, natural moment for Azuma to return to elaborating some more on the general topic he introduced in the first place. About how the type of contact between trusted individuals doesn’t necessarily need to be sexual, in order to satisfy the unfulfilled instincts at play.

Like he always just does, though… he keeps talking.

“Cats always get real blissed out when they bathe, though, don’t they! So maybe it’d also work if I just licked the top of your head or something, hah. Maybe that… would feel… good.”

In the single bravest moment of Azuma’s entire violently tumultuous, eon-spanning, stupid fucking life, he does not immediately barrel through the door at his back and run until he hits the fucking seabed.

He instead says, “Anyways,” squeezes his eyes shut as hard as he possibly can, throws his head back at the ceiling like he’s about to just scream , shoves his fingers into his bangs for a brief and vigorous rustle, and then continues to look at an object that is not Hokuto and which features Hokuto nowhere in its periphery. That indentation in the dirt down near his own knee, the one sort of in the wonky shape of a flower, will work.

“You probably… get it. It’s the sorta thing that theoretically can work with just about anyone, if you’re on good enough terms. Like a f… friend.”

Azuma isn’t sure if it’s horrible or great, that Hokuto isn’t saying anything. He’d rather keep on not knowing either way than doing something to get a better idea, like looking at Hokuto.

“Well, I did just say all that,” he grins tensely, at his favourite little patch of dirt. He sure did say some shit alright. “But a lot of the time it does end up turning a bit… frisky. It’s hard–” –nope, not that word, use a different word–  “– tricky , uh, to keep your body from getting excited. If you’re already up close n’ personal, with someone you already like decently enough. If it’s mutual.”

With his heart beating so fast and loud he feels like he’s on the near verge of just puking it on to the ground, Azuma makes the suggestion he’s been avoiding for the past hour:

“I’d be fine with it, but you probably wanna look for someone with a better idea of what they’re doing, ha- haha! Back in town, ah, there’s this place. Did a little bodyguard stint there, so I know the people are legit, but I bet there’s others. Red light sorta establishment. Lotsa privacy. A couple folks, specifically, know how to deal with these… situations.”

He takes one second, just a quick second, to blow some of his nerves out his own mouth.

This is about how he can help.

It’s not about what he wants.

“Hell, they already know me ‘round there. So if you don’t feel like you can leave this hole in the wall you got here, we can figure out how to send word. My word’s pretty good, at this place. There’s for sure an employee or two who’d be willing to come on out n’ lend a hand. As their job, o’course. I guess they already did start doing some house call business recently, too. So it wouldn’t be too huge of an imposition.”

While he certainly feels weird to have used a word like ‘imposition’, and naturally at that, Azuma has started to grow far more perturbed at Hokuto’s total silence. There is absolutely no shortage of things, from the hair licking to the accidental innuendos to the closely guarded details of his early immortal life– things that not even Shisei, who’s likely been around longer than both of their substantial lifespans put together, knows about Azuma– simply begging for either ridicule or scrutiny.

He’s glad, at least, that Hokuto didn’t just laugh right in his face. When he said he would…

… Either way. If they weren’t still in the same cramped little cellar together, emitting breath and body heat and all those other subtle indicators the senses tend to pick up on, Azuma would seriously be starting to think Hokuto had just up and vanished he’s so deathly quiet.

Oddly calm, now that he’s finally just said what he needed to and no immediate friendship-obliterating consequences have befallen him, he raises his head.

Hokuto’s expression, or what he glimpses of it, seems much the same as what it was the moment Azuma most recently lost his nerve: surprised and attentive, with a mysterious but unmistakable kind of gravity. In an unexpected twist of reciprocity, the moment Azuma’s eyes fall upon him, Hokuto is now the one conspicuously jerking his line of sight down to the floor.

It does make the sober dip of his brow all the more apparent.

Azuma doesn’t really know what he expected, but this is… probably not it? He idly massages some of the tension out of his jaw.

“Soooo… there’s another option for ya. If you don’t wanna hunt, or fight.”

To be honest, Azuma had thought Hokuto would take to the idea of that third item, the ‘fuck’, far more eagerly than he apparently has. Or has not.

It’s not in a way that comes off as obviously upset or offended, but the way he just keeps on just sorta… sternly blinking, over there, is definitely quite intent. On what, exactly, Azuma has no reasonable guess.

The best way to find things out is to just ask about them, he decides.

“What’s up?”

Hokuto casts a quick glance, his expression pinching a little bit tighter. Azuma tilts his head to the side, trying to seem… encouraging, maybe? He isn’t sure what encouragement might look like, in this context. This really unprecedented context, between them.

It works well enough. Hokuto opens his mouth, says nothing, closes it, exhales through his nose. 

“Is that… how you’ve taken care of it?” he asks, on his second try.

“Huh?”

“With one of these… employees.”

“Ah. Well…” Azuma’s heart drops a little at the bittersweetness of the memory that most immediately comes to mind.

He didn’t plan to talk about, or even reminisce on this event specifically. The way Hokuto’s looking at him, though; tired, unsure, just overall really… lost. It’s plenty familiar. They’re both already here, frankly talking about this sorta thing. 

Hell with it all. Azuma decides to share.

“My, uhh.” He gathers his thoughts a little more, and finds they still bring him more comfort than sadness, nicely enough. 

“My first fusion period, if you wanna call it that, was a pretty long time ago. Not too many years after I crossed over, right? I think probably less than a hundred, so, you did pretty damn good making it this long without one, by the way. Sana too, for that matter. Ugh, telling him is gonna be– Sorry, uh, that’s not what you asked. Anyway.”

“The mistress of this place I worked for, prim jorougumo, she’d seen pretty much everything under the sun. Figured out somethin’ was off with me before I even realized it, haha. One of the ladies she was takin’ care of at the time was also a kemonotsuki, an’ older than me a fair bit, so I guess she knew what to look out for. The ol’ mistress just kinda took me aside, and had me hole up for a couple days there to rest, made sure I was fed and watered n’ everything. I wasn’t gonna be much use trying to guard anyone’s body.”

“I think I just slept a lot,” Azuma admits, and feels his fingernails softly meet the back of his lightly blushing neck once more, like they’re old lovers reuniting. This is the part where it gets a little embarrassing. 

“Don’t actually remember too much, hahah. I’m sure you know how the pain can get… yeah? What I do remember… she just held me, without saying much of anything. The profession back then was a lot more… awful, and rough on all the people in it. She was pretty used to doing that sorta thing for her people.”

Something Azuma still perfectly remembers, down to the light, soothing scrape of the mistress’ nails, was the way he’d slowly wake to her hand gently stroking across his head. Tears of anguish and frustration in his eyes, bitterly missing the only family he’d ever known. Someone who used to pat his head almost the exact same way, when he was just a little kid with scraped knees and elbows, after picking dumb fights and losing. Someone he still wishes he could’ve said a proper goodbye to. And some ‘thank you’s, and a whole lot of ‘sorry’s.

“But that’s all that happened,” he laughs, and it comes easily enough. It’s almost… nice, in its own way, taking a proper look back at this stuff. He’s a little glad for the opportunity, weirdly. 

“Probably not what you were expecting, right? Y’see what I was getting at now, how it can just be you leaning on someone you trust for a bit. I guess she’s not… around anymore, but.” He sighs. “That’s just how it goes. Left the place to someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Not the kemonotsuki lady, Azuma was pleased to find out. They never got along. 

Listening to Azuma’s maudlin little story, Hokuto’s features have all been slackened considerably by sympathy and regret. He’s bound to have people he misses, too. Everyone does.

“Sorry,” he says, simply. It’s enough.

“Thanks,” Azuma says back, and shows his teeth in a grateful smile. “That help you out at all?”

“... Mn,” Hokuto pronounces. Which is not… substantial.

He’s clearly been bolstered enough to ask more questions, at least. He soon follows with another.

“What about recently?”

“Hm? Oh– ah. Huh.” Right. The time Azuma already sorta mentioned, back at the start of all this weird explaining he’s done. 

His fingernails, on the back of his neck, vigorously. Reigniting their passion. His face heats up again.

“Eh… y’know. I had a sorta casual… thing. With someone. We just had some fun for a few days. You don’t need details , do you?”

Ordinarily it would just be way too much of an ask, to keep on making eye contact with Hokuto while vaguely euphemizing about all the wild, hedonistic sex he had fifty years ago.

But there it is again, that like… something . That sharpness is back, that almost-frown hardening Hokuto’s face, in a way Azuma is positive beyond doubt he’s just never seen the guy wear. It’s not anger– this is not what Hokuto looks like when he’s pissy.

It is bugging the hell outta him.

Hokuto steadily keeps on hitting him with it.

“Someone?” he asks, rather promptly. “Someone I know?”

Azuma blinks. 

“ Huh? ”

This is not… the angle he thought he’d be getting grilled on. 

He’s happy it’s not the other one, if he’s gotta choose?!

Azuma barely knows the guy, beyond all the stuff he can do with his hands. A rowdy, heavy-set komainu man with a good handle on discretion– the type Azuma could just sorta tell after a few shots he had enough in common with that they could have a good time– and that was all either of them needed. They met up a couple more times after, but hardly even used each others’ names much.

“... Nah, you don’t know ‘em.” Azuma lifts his shoulders in a quick half-shrug, feeling a bit wary. This is weird as fuck. “Like I said. Just a casual little thing.”

“Hm,” Hokuto says once more, shortly.

Some odd seconds pass, not quite tense, but nor are they exactly… serene. There’s just a potent quiet between them both. Azuma waits for another bizarre question to befall him, open to at least hearing whatever it is Hokuto might conceivably want to know next about the people he’s had sex with, for some reason, but it never arrives.

“I think… I need a minute,” he simply mumbles, and resumes the more morose aspect he bore before he got all interested suddenly. “To consider my options. As they were.”

“Yeah, go for it,” Azuma easily concedes. He gets a bit more comfortable himself, maneuvers his legs around to bend a different way so they don’t fall asleep. “I’ve been talkin’ your ear off all night about some pretty intense stuff. Least I can do is let ya chew on it for a bit.”

Hokuto gives him a thin not-quite-smile of acknowledgement, his eyes creasing, then quickly succumbs to the distraction of his thoughts.

Azuma observes his own toes, in the meantime. Wiggles the two large ones back and forth a little around the tongues of his footwear.

He hopes he was thorough enough. Hokuto clearly has no issue with seeking clarification, so if he comes up with anything else he wants to know, he’ll just ask, right?

Azuma sure got lucky, back when he was the one needing a crash course. The old mistress was equal parts clinical and frank in her descriptions, and most of the knowledge he’s just passed on came from her. It got a little bogged down by his own awkwardness, and he worries if he wasn’t too severely blunt overall when it came to what the consequences of stalling could end up being. Hokuto looked totally devastated. Ugh.

He’s the one with the real aptitude for speaking. Azuma can talk a hell of a lot, he’s damn sure of that, but maybe half of it averages towards what’s actually useful. Hokuto’s talked himself into some shit, as clearly evidenced by the two of them sitting in this cellar, but he’s almost always managed to talk himself back out of it again too. This time is just sort of a crazy anomaly on all fronts.

Azuma has already decided, after first trying his hand at it here, that he’s not gonna be the one filling in Sana on how all this crud works. Sana has a hard time listening to anyone, and he’s way too similar to Azuma in enough major ways to feel like he’s gotta actually take him seriously, Azuma would wager. That’s definitely how it feels most of the time.

As for Shisei… well, who knows how that might go. Those decades-long hibernations the guy takes seem like they could be a pretty sensible manifestation of his own fusions, making him an old hand at navigating it all, or else nullifying the need entirely. He’s lived nearly as long as the likes of Karasutengu and Mizuchi, so it follows that his knowledge is comparably vast. Sana adores him, too, so maybe he’d sit still long enough to learn the basics, if Shisei was the one conveying them.

The main issue, there, is that the way Shisei sees things is kinda… morbid. Azuma imagines the grimmest portions of all the hypotheticals, the potential for catastrophic violence and destruction, and sees the topic synchronizing mercilessly with Shisei’s bent towards cold-blooded negativity. 

He shivers.

… Yeah, no. It should probably be Hokuto who tackles it.

For him to do that, first he’s gotta get through his own debut in this miserable horseshit, though. Azuma makes a subtle check on the dude, flicking his eyes back over to where he sits. The picture is the same one as before, of fatigued, barely masked distress.

Hokuto’s health looks worse and worse by the moment, the more that Azuma takes in the state of him in this lull of silence they share.  

He’s only gotten more wan and sweaty in all the time they’ve spoken tonight, his exposed skin visibly clammy and ashen even in the glow of warm lantern light. Not even the ostentatious, wide stance he’s sat himself down in, legs confidently spread apart, shoulders set back to thrust forward the slope of his torso, can mask the small flinches of discomfort that spasm outwards from his core on every shaky breath that puffs out of his nose.

He’s in obvious, persistent pain. Azuma’s heart lurches again in awful understanding of the week that Hokuto has spent alone and confused in this damp hovel, feeling his body violently wrestle itself to exhaustion without even knowing why.

“You want me to go hunt something down for you?” he asks, feeling too restless and guilty to just sit on his thumbs now that he’s exhausted all his own best advice. 

Participating in this himself would certainly do its part in alleviating some of Hokuto’s current anguish rather than just keeping it at bay, but Azuma feels like he probably isn’t gonna budge at all now on making sure the guy gets at least a couple hours of decent rest before they set out. If hunting is the method of relief he decides to ultimately pursue, that is. He seems less than keen on the other two. 

Still– even if it’s not a kill made with his own two hands, having him eat something freshly slaughtered will do wonders for curing some of Hokuto’s discomfort in the present moment. Azuma is happy to do that for him. He’s frankly a little bit desperate now to get up and rush off to get started on it.

“ No ,” Hokuto gasps– with a shockingly urgent look flashing through his eyes, pupils shrunken and stark against the bright hue of his irises, brow upturned. He regains himself swiftly, his facial muscles relaxing back into general tired strain, but Azuma absolutely did not miss the severity of  his initial reaction.

“... No,” he says for a second time, purses his mouth tightly closed, and flicks his gaze back over to the clutter of his belongings stacked on and around that rice bale in the near corner. 

“Just… wait a sec,” he entreats, in almost a huff, suddenly showing many more active signs of physical agitation than he has generally exhibited so far in the evening. One of his knees bounces against the earth in a rapid tic, and he can’t seem to settle on where to let his eyes rest anymore. 

“I’m not hungry right now,” he explains. “I’m… I’m still thinking. About what you said.”

Azuma can tell immediately that not being hungry is a total lie, but he also sees the real issue for what it is: Hokuto doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

He’s deeply sympathetic to that, and fully willing to indulge both the pretense and truth alike.

“Gotcha,” he says. “I’ll stay put.”

He has begun to wonder, though, why Hokuto seems so heavily preoccupied by the idea of physical intimacy, still. It’s something he just assumed would be fairly rote for a man who is both attractive and decent, despite a few of the ways he may enjoy spending his time. Maybe he misunderstood? Obviously you can’t tell if a person’s sexually experienced or not just by observing them in commonplace situations, but… there are a number of… hints. Either way, Azuma isn’t gonna judge.

He realizes there are a lot of things that he still just doesn’t know about Hokuto. About his life, and his feelings, and stuff. Considering how long they’ve shared their acquaintance, it’s… a bit of a shame, maybe.

Eventually, Hokuto does speak up again. His voice is more rough and strained with every new time that he uses it. 

(Azuma tries to remember if he’s got any ginger root on him amongst all his assorted herbs and seasonings, at the moment– it sounds painful, and he wouldn’t have to leave the cellar just to make a simple batch of tea, if there’s water stored inside somewhere.)

“You suggested, earlier,” he starts, with a slow and measured diction that demonstrates he is carefully considering every one of his words before allowing them to pass his lips. “That I probably… would prefer to find someone different than you, for that final method you… vouched for.”

Azuma simply nods. He did say something to that effect, yeah. He made an assumption, sure, but it didn’t feel like an outrageous one. 

A ridiculous little daydreaming part of him is gonna start thinking it could be outrageous, though, if Hokuto keeps talking like this, with that tentative look on his face.

In the meantime Hokuto has taken pause again, and wheezed a long, noisy, shaky exhale through his nostrils. His eyes are burning a hole in the ground between his feet. 

He’s been instinctually, physically giving off signs of extreme anxiety ever since Azuma first found him this evening, but the way he’s behaving now has turned downright nervous. Meek, nearly. Completely at odds with the stiff, posturing aggression telegraphed through all the wide movements he’s been throwing about, to make himself larger and offset his obvious vulnerability. There is a simple, if difficult emotional honesty to his hesitation now that is far more genuine and bare in every way, and obviously comes from somewhere much more important.

“Well… what… what if I didn’t? What if I don’t want that.” 

Hokuto is looking at him directly instead of sidelong, finally, still pale and visibly weak, but with a sudden intent heat in his gaze that is markedly different from the nervous frustration he’s been displaying since Azuma entered the cellar. He’s developed a slight, healthier-looking amount of colour on his cheeks.

“You said that you would help me,” he urges, a haggard resolution in the exhausted, wrecked timbre of his voice. 

Azuma feels breathless waiting for his next words, exhilarated by the potential.

“If you just… made a mistake,” Hokuto posits, blatantly unhappy to give voice to the idea, bracing himself unsteadily for what he clearly thinks is a foregone conclusion of rejection. “If you weren’t offering– If that wasn’t the implication… I’ll just… pretend that I didn’t hear it. That’s the least I can do.”

Well… damn.

Holy… 

Holy fuckin’ shit.

Azuma played it off with a quick laugh when he made the suggestion, rambled convincingly for a bit– 

– but he fully intended to make good on his word, when he said what he did.

He was just not expecting to get called out on it.

… yeah.

Busted, pretty much.

He’s kinda goddamn fond of Hokuto. Despite what a dirtbag he always insists on acting like, he’s easy fun to just casually spend time with, and all the huge gaps between his smooth talking, puffed up, scholarly pretense and the genuine, awkward guy he really is are like… way too endearing. 

Who even knows when attraction became a factor in the first place? He was gonna just let it sit, wait for it to naturally gutter out over time… but it looks like that whole scene has sorta blown itself up, now. 

Oops.

Well… fuck it, Azuma just… worries for Hokuto, the way he’s always rubbing people so wrong, for what doesn’t seem like any good reason– just look at where it’s landed him now, dammit!!!

He wanted to be as nonchalant as possible in this situation. The thought of someone taking advantage of the state a bad fusion period puts you in– using a person’s pain and exhaustion and vulnerability, to, to just opportunistically push their own feelings forward, to use that to get to someone’s body – it’s so repulsive that Azuma would rather just rip his own throat out than risk even straying towards the mere idea.

He did what he planned to, when he first realized the nature of Hokuto’s affliction; what he thought would be the best way to protect everyone’s feelings, and dignity. He pitched the idea, changed the subject as fast as possible, and let Hokuto make whatever assumptions he wanted to make about it.

The truth, though… is that he wants, pretty badly in fact, to be the one to help Hokuto himself. He doesn’t want to let anyone else even touch him, not when he’s struggling like this. He wants to make sure his own goddamn self, to the full extent of his capabilities, that Hokuto feels safe and comfortable, and that every little thing is all up to him. That nobody does too much too fast, or the wrong way, or stops paying attention to what he actually wants or needs.

So… he went and put the idea out there. Just in case.

Hokuto has, in the meantime, simply observed the stunned silence that Azuma flounders in while his mind races frantically back and forth between shock, joy, and bitter residual guilt. Azuma sees the exact moment that Hokuto decides that this silence means rejection; his brow crumples, he heaves a quick sigh that expresses an extraordinary amount of sadness in its brevity, and winces the sides of his mouth into an utterly half-hearted attempt at a smile.

“You… should probably go ahead and pretend that you didn’t hear me either, just now,” he tries to laugh. “I mean… If you didn’t mean–”

Aaaagh, no!

“–Shit, no , I–!”

Shit!!!

“ I meant it ,” Azuma blurts, and holds firm, desperate eye contact with Hokuto, to make sure that he knows he meant it. 

… even if it is incredibly, perilously fuckin’ embarrassing, and is making his own face turn itchily hot and red now, too. Gah. Aghhh.

“I just, y’know… figured that you wouldn’t wanna settle for me … hahah.”

He knows it’s an awful habit, putting himself down like that and pretending to joke about it. It’s legitimately just the truth, though, this time: he really didn’t think that someone as, like… cultured, and schmoozy, as Hokuto would even be into a homebody like him. In, uh… the carnal sense.

“I do.” Without a beat of hesitation, without averting his gaze, Hokuto says it again before Azuma can even think to doubt his ears: “I want you.”

It’s… impossible not to believe him. The intent, smoldering glower he holds upon Azuma, and the way he’s unconsciously been leaning further and further towards him the entire time they’ve been approaching this topic – and more than anything, the budding scent of physical arousal thickening in the air of this very cramped room now, that Azuma has been trying so, so hard not to be conscious of, to be affected by– they all point to the truth of Hokuto’s desire. For him, specifically; not simply the idea of any warm body capable of quelling his rampant urges. Someone safe and familiar, instead of someone new and professionally distant.

Hokuto’s striking, focused eyes display a fully conscious awareness and clarity. They behold a foolish and meddling busybody who showed up only half from concern and half to get rid of too much leftover food, and they faithfully convey the sincerity of the simple and audacious lust he’s already given language to.

It’s nice to be desired, usually, yeah. Azuma just never expected that being desired (by Hokuto !!!) would make him feel this happy.

…  and not only just happy.

“Okay,” he decides, swallowing the thick mouthful of saliva that the circumstances have pooled atop his tongue. His heartbeat already throbs with rapid excitement, filling his whole chest with expanding, joyous warmth. He efficiently begins shucking off his outer clothes, slipping the bow out of his obi with an easy tug. “Yeah, okay. You got me, then.”

Hokuto’s well groomed eyebrows arch into surprised crescents, though his line of sight has begun to laze between all of the clothes starting to leave Azuma’s body without sacrificing any of its rapt interest. 

“Really?” he asks. 

“Yep,” Azuma answers. He stands up and kicks off his shoes. His whole body is buzzing with anticipation. He’s so delighted that he could run outside and jump in the river and swim all the way upstream and back.

“Damn,” Hokuto sighs, his posture collapsing forward into a slouch. His forehead plummets into the palm of his hand, he sighs a second time, and glances back up at Azuma through the disarrayed, stringy, sweat-slicked fall of his bangs. His complexion has reddened considerably. “I feel like an idiot. I should have said something years ago.”

How long?

Just how long has Hokuto wanted him?

Azuma is nearly overcome with giddy contemplation, but he keeps it together for the sake of pulling the rest of his jewelry over the top of his head. The state Hokuto’s in at the moment, he can tell that having a bunch of hard beads against his body would be painful. 

He leaves his undershirt and pants on. For now, at least.

“I’m gonna come over there now, okay?” He waits for Hokuto to say yes or no before acting, of course, and keeps on standing where he is. “You should just do whatever gives you the most relief, but, uhh, I do recommend keeping at least some of your clothes on. Skin to skin can get pretty… intense, if you’re in a bad enough way.”

Hokuto is still just looking up at him from that shy low angle, breathing heavily, mouth ajar between his plump-looking lips. His cheeks are flaming red. It’s completely adorable. Azuma wants to lick all of the sweat off his jaw.

“You’re surprisingly frank about all this,” he rasps.

“I guess,” Azuma shrugs, and expels half of a breathless, jittery chuckle. “I just don’t want you to have a bad time. You’ve had enough of a bad time already, right?”

Hokuto’s fist tightens in his own hair, and his eyes grow misty for a second. His chin quivers.

“C’mere already,” he mumbles, glaring up at Azuma with treacherous need.

Azuma quickly bridges the distance between them with two steps forward, and sits on his knees in the dirt between Hokuto’s legs. 

He can already smell the rich, saline, heavy tang of precum from beneath the splaying hems of Hokuto’s yukata– can tell from how strong the scent is that he hasn’t touched himself at all for the past week–  wants to shove his head under Hokuto’s clothes and make him come on to his tongue, so much it’s making his mouth fill up with spit again.

He could go for some of that immediately, if he had first choice of activities. None of this is about how much he wants to suck dick, though, so he keeps the idea to himself.

He stays still where he is, watching Hokuto shuffle nervously on his haunches, fists clenching and unclenching down by his waist but moving no further.

“Look, it’s all up to you,” Azuma murmurs, feeling his own lips stick together. “If you wanna touch me, you can. If you want me to touch you,” he swallows deeply again, “just… lemme know how, and where, and… I’ll probably wanna do it too.”

Hokuto’s chest is rising and falling so dramatically, now, that Azuma feels like he can almost hear the deep fleshy movements of his thoracic cavity. He’s flushed deep red all the way up into his hairline, which gleams with sweaty moisture in the amber lantern light.

“C-closer,” he stammers, quietly. “Just get a bit closer, first.”

Azuma has never heard Hokuto’s voice in this register before, he realizes, stunned by its appeal, as he gets back up on his knees and shuffles forward with them. He thinks he’ll probably never forget the sound of it for the rest of his life. He stops just shy of making contact with the leg Hokuto’s got folded in front of himself, showing skin up past his knee from the way he’s pulled his own clothes loose to get more comfortable. 

… It looks smooth. Does he shave his legs? God, that’s fucking hot. Where else does he shave? Where doesn’t he shave?

Moving slowly, with a visible, aching tremor all throughout his limbs, Hokuto carefully circles one of his arms around the back of Azuma’s waist, avoiding his elbows. At first contact, even through the fabric of Azuma’s undershirt, his entire body jolts like it’s been cruelly hit with an electric current.

“- ng–!! ”

Mindlessly, he groans in bewilderment, jerks, and freezes. Azuma can feel the way his entire arm is now viciously shaking, down to its fingertips, where it clings fast to his clothing like it’s been permanently anchored there with sewing twine. Hokuto’s breath is gasping out of him frantically, rustling the material of Azuma’s shirt with its desperate force and frequency.

This… this is pretty bad.

Until now, Azuma had no truly accurate way of gauging just how far Hokuto’s condition had declined in the past week, beyond observation; he thought that these observations had painted a pretty clear picture, combined with memories of his own difficult fusions. But this kind of reaction is far, far more severe than anything he’s ever experienced himself, even back when he was his most clueless and scared the very first time.

–Hell, it shouldn’t even be possible to be this sensitive after only a week!!

With appalled insight, Azuma realizes that a curse wouldn’t quite be a curse if all it did was accurately replicate some natural phenomena. Regardless of Hokuto’s objectively pigheaded insertion of himself into Karasutengu’s divertissements, Azuma is darkly, riotously angry that this is the level of punishment that shit-eating carrion bird deemed appropriate.

Sitting here being angry at Karasutengu doesn’t really do anything useful, though. At least not at the moment.

“Hey,” Azuma murmurs, down at the top of Hokuto’s head, where it’s level with his own clavicle. A quick shiver of a noise, with a barely cogent sort of inquisitive lift at the end, is the answer he receives. 

He’s so overwhelmed that he can’t even talk right now, can he? This is just… it’s awful. He’s gotta fix this.

“You can just stay where you are, okay? You don’t gotta move. I’m just… gonna raise my arms up, and brace myself on the wall behind you, so I don’t lose my balance here. If I fall, I might end up on top of you by accident, and I really don’t wanna risk touching you that much all at once right now, ‘cause you look– you seem really overloaded. Does that sound okay?”

He carefully observes the top of Hokuto’s head some more, feeling the heat and moisture of his desperate gasping even through the material of his shirt, until he is completely certain of the shaky nod that it performs once or twice, bangs brushing his midriff. He nods back, even though Hokuto can’t see it.

“Okay,” he states. “I’ll move my arms now, then. The rest of me will probably move a little bit too, so, uh… get ready. But I’m gonna try to stay as still as I can. You can just keep hangin’ on, or you can let go, or you can do whatever you want. Alright? Hokuto?”

Azuma has been rambling like this just as much for the sake of his own nerves, as he has been to try and talk Hokuto through what is surely a frightening and embarrassing experience. To his immediate notice, though, the speed of Hokuto’s breathing has been calming, if only just a little bit. 

Just hearing someone else’s voice might be soothing, he realizes, after spending so much time by himself recently. Maybe just talking with him has been helping.

More promptly than before, Hokuto nods his head again a few times.

With the go-ahead, Azuma carefully bends his elbows further outward from the arm Hokuto still has vicelocked around his waist, and starts to slowly lift up his shoulders. Like he knew that it would, the tension created inside of his own body by manipulating its parts creates motion, and at the first minute stretch of his own flesh and muscle, Hokuto whines urgently through his lips. His arm constricts further still, and his abruptly sharp claws gouge further through the wide holes they’ve already poked into Azuma’s shirt.

“Sorry,” Azuma winces down at him, feeling helpless and upset to be exacerbating Hokuto’s distress just by doing so little. Stopping to check in would only be dragging out the process and making even more opportunities for discomfort, so he finishes pulling his hands up to the wall, plants them slowly, and lets his elbows lock.

“Done,” he announces, and just drops his head in between his arms– he wants to keep a close eye on Hokuto until he calms down a bit. 

“I know, uh, I keep repeating myself,” he babbles aimlessly, down at the countless locks of hair sticking up from the top of Hokuto’s head, curling and wild from the rising damp heat of their proximity and their humid surroundings. “But, seriously, I mean it: you gotta just do what you feel like you need to do, here.”

Hokuto’s shoulders are still trembling seismically in exertion, and the arm clutching tightly around Azuma’s waist is bent sharply in its place, the muscles and tissues within drawn hard and tight. The bottom of Azuma’s shirt is halfway to tatters, from the relentless squeeze of Hokuto’s nails as they keep lengthening and retracting in brief flexes over and over– an expression of stemmed youki trying to behave freely, and struggling at every junction. The phenomenon can be physically painful, Azuma knows from his own experience, and yet Hokuto continues to weather it without a sound.

He just stays silent, and to the best of his current capabilities, immobile.

Azuma feels like… he might have a hunch, about some of what could really be going on, here.

He still starkly remembers how awfully his own first experience made his body hurt, and then later in his life, how terrified he had been by the depths of his own physical need before he tried trusting himself to compromise with it.

“I already told you,” he sighs, very badly wanting to reach down and finger through Hokuto’s cute messy hair, and abstaining, because it would definitely add to his current stress. “You can touch me however you want. I’m pretty sure I can take whatever you dish out, but if I really don’t like something I’ll just tell you right away, and we can go from there. I trust you, so, just… do your thing.”

“... Quit hurting yourself,” he adds, taking a gamble, “trying to spare me whatever you think is gonna go wrong, before it even happens. I can handle you.”

It might not be that simple; he truly has no way at all of understanding what Hokuto is specifically feeling, what he is or isn’t capable of, without being in his own skin himself. It might not just be a cut and dry issue of wanting to do something, and consciously choosing not to; Azuma could be talking completely out his own ass.

From what he knows about Hokuto, though– from the stalwart attachment he’s always had to his dignity as a former human, from the mercilessly strict way he’s been denying himself for the entire week, to how the only expulsion of energy he permits himself right now is the way his claws keep flexing, before he remembers to retract them– Azuma feels like he must be on to something, feeling the much more rhythmic and easy pace of the action transmitting through the pull on his clothes.

There’s no other clear indication, right away, that Hokuto has taken his words to heart. For several more silent moments he maintains the burden of his current position, so brittle and tense that the physical strain continues to make him tremble horribly.

… Slowly, though, gradually enough that Azuma doesn’t immediately take notice, the rigid angle of the arm around his waist begins to soften, and follow naturally into the curve of his body. It stays where it is, but it also starts to pull. A bit roughly, and far from unpleasantly, Hokuto’s other arm crosses over it, and grasps tightly up to one of Azuma’s shoulder blades. A couple pricks of sharpness reach his skin through the pressure of twisting fabric. His shirt might just be a goner at this point.

—aaaaah, thank god, seriously– Azuma was really worried he stuck his entire stupid foot in his mouth, there.

Hokuto yanks Azuma forward, crushing his forehead into the middle of his chest. Azuma lets his elbows bend in, happily drawn into the closing circle of Hokuto’s arms. More, and more, and more of their bodies are touching. Hokuto’s collarbone and upper torso, pressed fast against the cushion of Azuma’s belly; his shoulders, starting to bracket more firmly around Azuma’s waist the further his arms extend to tighten his embrace; his shins, even, as his feet sluggishly kick off the ground and he shifts his waist to cross his legs loosely around the backs of Azuma’s knees, just enough so that their bare ankles meet.

It feels really nice. Hokuto’s body is warm, and comfortable, and it’s been kind of a long time, Azuma realizes, since somebody just held him close like this.

He’s not being held by just “somebody”, though. It’s Hokuto: arrogant, and irreverent, and charming, and annoyingly sensual Hokuto, who he’s known for almost half his immortal life already, who he thought he might want to try courting since who knows when and already decided not to, for the sake of their dear and enjoyable friendship. An almost painful, intense and hot kind of glee swells all throughout his heart, at the thought of just who it is nuzzling into his bosom like he couldn’t bear to ever be parted from him again.

Hokuto turns his face to the side against Azuma’s chest, rubbing the gentle slope of his cheekbone in a lazy stripe, taking in a long sigh of breath. The bridge of his nose strokes downward in a diagonal path, and almost ends at one of Azuma’s nipples. He moans on the exhale, loudly, tickling the area with his breath, and the vibration of his deep, scratchy voice. The noise is so erotic that Azuma feels the peaks on both of his breasts harden almost instantly. His hands tighten in the packed earthen wall, copious mud sinking under his tough fingernails. He’s starting to get very excited again.

“You smell so good ,” Hokuto slowly mumbles into the front of his shirt, the pleasure-drunk thickness and insistence of his voice nearly resembling a sob. His whole body has already relaxed immensely, and the soft, giving pressure and weight of all its different parts melting into their contact is starting to make Azuma feel like all of his blood has just come down from a boil; scalding hot, and quick, flooding through all of his limbs and up to his head in thick rapidly bubbling pulses of satisfaction.

“Thanks,” he laughs, feeling Hokuto’s facial features bounce slightly against the unexpected tremors of his mirth, which is weirdly stimulating. 

He imagines his own scent to be something cluttered and confusing at the best of times from all the aromatics he’s always got tucked into his outerwear, but the obvious and passionate sincerity of the compliment is making his brain float with happiness. This whole situation he’s in still feels a little unreal, as marvelous as it is. He wonders if Hokuto feels the same way.

“You too,” Azuma murmurs, gasping a little as Hokuto’s claws graze the skin of his back through his shirt again. Shit , that feels good. He wants to get marked up some more. He wants to get bitten. He wants to get shoved down into the dirt and mounted, with teeth around the back of his neck. “Always thought so.”

It’s true. None of the different components of it stand out to him, really; he just likes it. It’s Hokuto’s, so… he just likes it.

“Mmmnh,” Hokuto responds dopily, grinding his forehead into Azuma’s sternum with enough slow pressure to push him backwards a little. The static from his shirt must have made Hokuto’s hair totally crazy by now. He wants to see what that looks like.

“You feeling any better?” Azuma asks. It definitely seems like he is, in every way, but on top of making extra certain, he also wants to keep Hokuto talking to him regularly. To try and make sure that he doesn’t get too lost in sensation, and risk snapping back from it unpleasantly; also to keep hearing the blissed-out, loose glide of his voice, which is just unbearably tempting.

“Yeah,” Hokuto hums, sounding comfortable and drowsy. He squeezes at Azuma’s back some more, in a slow, thoughtless and uneven rhythm that only sometimes involves the point of his nails. His smooth, broad hands feel incredible, no matter what he seems to do with them. Azuma can feel his hips getting restless, starting to want to squirm up against the pressure of Hokuto’s shoulders caging them in. “You were right. I was being stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were being stupid , come on.” It’s difficult to be terribly frustrated by that, when Hokuto’s body on his body keeps feeling so good.

“ Mmh ,” Hokuto moans sweetly in rebuttal, removing the careworn pressure of his face against Azuma’s bust to start lipping gently at the bare skin on top of his collar. His mouth is soft, and sticky, and so hot. 

Azuma is truly incapable of arguing with that.

“Ugh,” he says instead, shivering happily at the impact of Hokuto’s warm breath on his damp skin. 

His undershorts have started getting tight on him, and are not superbly clean anymore. He can feel his toes flexing impatiently, and his elbows have started trembling a little above his bowed neck, not from exertion, but the general intensity of all Hokuto’s pushy and yet agonizingly careful affection.

Azuma wasn’t expecting himself to be this sensitive at all. It’s definitely been a very long time since anyone else touched him like this; until quite recently, he was so concerned about Shisei that he spent basically every waking moment keeping him company, or else pursuing different ways to make his life easier. He broke things off amicably with that komainu guy not long after his last fusion, so at least four or five decades passed like that, probably. He really is quite the busybody, haha.

Even so, Azuma has never been one to neglect his own needs, either. He’s definitely had enough time on his hands to learn how to keep himself well satisfied, and tends not to let his own urges get pent up for very long before taking care of them– it starts interfering with his mood, and his ability to get more important things done if he leaves it alone for too long, and that’s annoying. Well, he does have a bit of fun with it sometimes too, if he’s got enough spare time and the feeling just kinda hits.

Feeling good alone just doesn’t even compare to having someone else’s body touching yours, maybe. Hokuto’s molten hot, broad tongue sneaking up the front of Azuma’s neck almost makes him scream, it’s so much better than anything he could ever do to himself.

He’s thinking about Hokuto’s mouth really, really hard, now. It keeps roving around every exposed bit of flesh it can get at, leaving noisy, breathy kisses, and toothless nips, and trails of white hot sticky saliva that dry quickly into tense and raw swaths of skin. He wants it all over his body, just, doing anything at all. He wants it on his own mouth.

“ Fuck ,” he gasps, feeling his voice get tighter, knees clenching hard on the ground, as some of Hokuto’s sharp teeth finally graze their pressure over the crook of his neck and don’t bite down into it. “I wanna kiss you so bad right now. Can I? Is that gonna be too much?”

“Mnlhh,” Hokuto responds lazily, around another lingering swipe of his tongue all the way up Azuma’s carotid. 

Almost directly under Azuma’s ear, at the junction of his neck and his jaw, he wetly murmurs: “Yeah. Kiss me.”

It is absolutely tragic that Azuma needs to move away after hearing this. They do need to reposition a little to make it happen, though.

He straightens his back again– he’d wound up bent so far over Hokuto to let him at his neck that the top of his head was almost touching the wall– and the immediate loss of warmth feels a bit heartbreaking. The feeling of Hokuto’s arms loosening and sliding away is downright devastating, but the weight of his hands settling on Azuma’s hips and following them back to the ground is sweet and comfortable. 

… And getting his first good look at Hokuto’s face again is massively rewarding.

In a word, he’s… ruined, in all the best ways at once. His eyes are dark and half-lidded, their lashes clumped thickly together with the risen moisture of his breaths, the handsome brows above them lax and raised as if he’s already been fucked completely out of his mind and sits languishing in the afterglow. Half the bangs on his forehead are slicked completely away by greasy sweat, and the rest are frizzy in places and pushed flat in others and sticking out from his scalp wildly in other others. His lips are brightly swollen, shiny with spit. His complexion is splotchy red almost like he’s been crying, and he’s been sweating so much that there are a few visibly well-traveled trails down from his temple.

His breathing is slow and relaxed, but heavy enough from all the touching to have his lithe chest visibly pitching up and down, the way he’s slumped back against the wall.

It makes Azuma want to stick his hands up Hokuto’s stupid fancy little shirt and squeeze his tits. He wants to know how they feel in his palms. How firm, or soft, or in the middle or whatever.

God, when did he turn into such a pervert , for real… There isn’t enough time in the world for all the dirty stuff he wants to do to this guy.

“You’re so stupidly hot,” Azuma just breathes at him.

Hokuto is very quick to answer, even in this highly ravaged and spaced-out state, as if it’s something he’s said a lot of times before now:  “I know, but thanks.”

“Can it,” Azuma laughs loudly, in delighted surprise at the sheer cheek, realizing that he should be annoyed and instantly failing to get there. “You suck.”

Hokuto grins back at him so brightly that his eyes close halfway, completely without shame, comfortably thriving in his sloppy and debauched appearance.

What a dick. He’s so fucking cute. Just seeing his teeth is making Azuma’s underwear wet.

Hokuto licks the side of his own mouth absently, smearing some more drool around. “Thought you were gonna kiss me,” he taunts. His voice cracks twice as he says it, and he’s completely unselfconscious of this.

“I’m gonna ,” Azuma insists, leaning slowly forward off his knees, and chooses to brace one of his hands in the dirt. He finds an inviting little spot for it right between the languid splay of Hokuto’s hand, and his hip.

Their digits are almost close enough to touching that Azuma is tempted into another quick moment of daydreaming– Hokuto’s fingers are probably unbelievably sensitive right now. He would probably react like he was getting deepthroated to Azuma just using a bit of tongue between his knuckles. He might even cry a little from the intensity. Azuma wants to see that sometime.

Distracted by his own horny imaginings, Azuma had automatically started to reach his other hand up to Hokuto’s face– he just likes getting one in there, when he kisses people– lots of people do!–  but remembering himself, and the conceits of the present circumstances, he freezes.

A searching glance across Hokuto’s expression and myriad other physical tells, as clearly readable as they’ve been from the start, lets Azuma know he hasn’t overstepped. Hokuto simply continues reclining against the wall, his posture loose and open, the single palm he’s got hitched atop Azuma’s hip merely following his body wherever it goes instead of directing it or holding it at bay. 

A small, patient breath sighs from between his wet lips, highly audible at proximity. They’re near enough for Azuma to be able to feel it ghosting faintly over his own mouth. Hokuto’s burning, limpid eyes roam down to the curled fingers Azuma holds tentatively at level with his chin, and then back up, in open invitation. 

The way he does nothing but just look at Azuma, from that same low angle as before, through the mussed and dirty hair falling over his brow, is almost painful in its naked allure. It’s like he practiced that shit in a mirror. Azuma’s chest tightens covetously.

He grazes Hokuto’s cheek with the backs of his knuckles, and almost immediately feels the weight of Hokuto’s entire head leaning forward into it. His chin tilts drastically as he cants into the sensation without heed, eyes fluttering shut, a warm and brainless moan of pleasure falling from his open mouth.

Azuma turns his hand around, catches the full curve of Hokuto’s jaw in his palm, and lowers his mouth onto Hokuto’s.

It’s a brief and gentle kiss. Their lips simply meet each other and linger, with a faint push and pull of slow, sweet pressure, sharing a single breath through their noses. Azuma is the one to back up first, relishing the sticky tug of the flesh on Hokuto’s mouth trying to follow him.

He can see some of the spit streaked down the side of Hokuto’s face from earlier, very clearly, just by following the path of his own lowered gaze when he opens his eyes again. It’s shining, a little. Azuma cleans it away, extending his tongue and dragging it down along Hokuto’s salty and warm skin, curling the tip beneath his jaw.

Hokuto’s breath hitches loudly. Azuma sees his mouth tremble shut, hears him swallow hard , then feels the desperate shove of his face angling sideways at Azuma’s tongue to chase after it with his own. Hokuto sighs greedily into Azuma’s willing mouth, and then gasps into it, at the first contact of thick, slippery friction.

He pursues the sensations wrought from pushing and twining his tongue together with Azuma’s single-mindedly, with eager insistence. The sluggish and lagging seal of his lips; the occasional rough, clumsy bludgeon-and-poke of teeth; the stubborn pressure transmitting all the way through to the back of Azuma’s neck from the strength Hokuto uses to keep their mouths interconnected; Hokuto kisses like it’s the first time he’s done it in ages. There’s very little finesse or elegance– only uncomplicated physical want given leave to rampage.

Azuma happily lets the inside of his mouth be stroked and probed every which way, and does what he can to match Hokuto’s sudden frenzy– which isn’t an awful lot. It has been fifty years, give or take a few, since he last got to be kissed like this. He’s long out of practice, and the hot, slick pressure of Hokuto’s tongue stimulating him so aggressively is slowing his thoughts and reactions into muzzy satisfaction.

He’s warm behind his eyes, and all the way up to the top of his head, and down the back of his neck into his chest and stomach. He can hear Hokuto’s voice, this whisper-quiet, almost reedy octave present within all his impassioned sighs and moans, so close– inside his own mouth !–  and the sound of it is already so dear to him he can scarcely recall the version of himself who wasn’t lucky enough to know it yet. 

That miserable stupid motherfucker, Azuma from a few minutes ago, who already gave up on getting to experience any of these sweet and perfect things. That idiot didn’t know the feeling of Hokuto’s nose against his cheek, or the taste of the divot between Hokuto’s chin and bottom lip, or even the texture of Hokuto’s hair beneath his fingers.

Fuck that guy! Good fuckin’ riddance.

“Sorry,” Hokuto breathes on to Azuma’s thoroughly tingling lips, confusingly, once the pace of his kissing begins to slow. Though seemingly done with the inside of it for the moment, he lingers at Azuma’s mouth with countless hot, wet, lingering caresses from his own that bear no less penetrating sensuality for their change of locale. Every one, with its openly indulgent and lascivious intent, further builds the clenching heat of anticipation tight between Azuma’s legs.

“Normally,” the trail of affections made by Hokuto’s mouth wanders further, and arrives at the end of Azuma’s chin, “‘m better at this.”

“Hh-haha, what? That’s terrifying, what the hell,” Azuma can’t help but laugh in exhilarated good humour, corralled so effectively as he already has been to the near brink of ecstasy just by a bunch of sloppy necking. His entire body is still eagerly squirming into every place Hokuto keeps touching it. “I’m already a mess. This you trying to humble-brag?”

“It’s not,” Hokuto mutters in a sullen little huff, the shape of his lips on Azuma’s cheek feeling suspiciously like they could resemble a scowl. “Just want you to feel good too.”

It’s a little depressing that these words make Azuma’s heart clench so gratefully, but they certainly do. God, he’s been with some actual scum in the past, huh. That might be worth a bit of introspection later.

“... Do you?”

He barely even catches that he’s been posed a question; it’s muffled directly into his own skin, and Hokuto’s devilishly elusive teeth, pressing just briefly enough against his jaw to make his pulse flutter wildly at the possibility of their strength, are a disastrous obstacle to keeping abreast of any conversation.

Azuma wants to be bitten by these teeth, this beautiful mouth, so impossibly much– 

“–ah? Yeah,” he sighs, and shortly thereafter keens gladly at Hokuto’s tongue reappearing at his lips again, granting it a swift welcome from its travels. 

By the time Azuma has physical leave to form words once more, he feels like every last living cell of his own mouth has been teased and played with to the point of total rapture. Using his tongue, and teeth, and lips just to form language, instead of get kissed some more, feels like a deeply unfair deprivation to all of his senses at once– but it also reminds him headily of everything they’ve recently experienced.

“Feels amazing,” he says, superfluously, and feels echoes of the moist pressure of Hokuto’s lips on his own through shaping every syllable. That alone keeps him lightheaded and breathless. “You can tell, right?”

Normally, this is where Azuma would deploy one of his absolute sure-kill moves, to euphoric success. (Sure, it’s been a long time since his last lay, but that doesn’t mean he’s suddenly just forgotten all his best game!) He’d take Hokuto by the hand, and slip it into his own underpants; have him see directly for himself just how hard and wet he’s gotten Azuma with nothing but some groping and kissing. Let Hokuto decide what he wanted to do with that hand of his, while he had it located somewhere promising.

Things would be getting a little messier by now, ordinarily.

The issue, at present, is that Azuma is nearly 100% sure that Hokuto will want to get his dick inside him if he carries on and just plays this like he usually would. He wants Hokuto’s dick in him, too– who the fuck wouldn’t, by now?! 

He can’t have it, though, because, goddamn it, Azuma was not fuckin’ expecting to be in a situation where he’d need to be clean and decent in the appropriate places, generally, for getting Hokuto’s dick inside of him when he set out just to track him down today.

There’s an entire body of clear running water right outside, of course, and it would only take like thirty-forty minutes, tops, for Azuma to get himself all nice and prepped if he just excused himself for a while.

He doesn’t want to excuse himself. There’s absolutely no way he’s leaving Hokuto alone for even a second before he’s worked through enough of his symptoms to get at least half a night’s decent rest. And he’s not gonna torture the poor guy with the prospect of direct penetration when that’s not something Azuma can actually offer him at the moment.

So he keeps his hands to himself. Lamentably.

… Well, no, not entirely to himself. He’s still got his fingers stuffed into the sweaty crop of hairs growing off the back of Hokuto’s neck. Those stay where they are, resting fondly and in comfort.

“Maybe,” Hokuto kisses on to the corner of Azuma’s mouth, on the topic of his obvious enjoyment. “Can’t be completely sure without checking, though.”

The palm he’s had resting listlessly over Azuma’s hip all the while squeezes slowly and intently, then begins to slide further around Azuma’s back and lower over the arc of his rump. His other hand rises from the dirt and comes between their waists, pausing at the tie of Azuma’s loose and billowy trousers. “Lemme see?” His words complete the question, and his motions pause once more.

That impossibly arousing look settles across Hokuto’s features again. Yeah, okay, he has absolutely practiced this one. Cheeky fucker.

Fuck. Goddamn it.

Azuma is so fucking annoyed with himself for not electing at absolute random to clean his asshole this morning.

“Shit,” he grumbles unhappily. Hokuto’s palm on his butt is already so insanely thrilling. He wants the other one back there too. He wants Hokuto to just grab him tight and pound his brains out as soon as possible.

“You can take my pants off if you want, but just… hold on a sec first,” Azuma is forced to insist, and very nearly sobs out loud in utter relief when Hokuto lets the hand he’s got cupping Azuma’s ass stay complacently where he already put it instead of lifting away.

Hokuto patiently waits for Azuma to just say what he’s gonna say, like he’s already been doing this whole time, without either backing off or getting too greedy. He’s being so good. Why’s he being so perfect ? What the hell. Azuma’s gonna start getting choked up soon, if this guy, of all guys, keeps on being so amazing to him.

“It’s not that I don’t really want it, believe me– I just can’t take your cock right now for some uh, practical reasons. You get me?”

“Mm,” Hokuto hums mildly, with an air of general assent. He squeezes Azuma’s ass, slowly, and lets the feeling of exquisite pressure just linger under his stilled hand again in an absolutely maddening tease. Azuma feels himself almost go a bit cross-eyed from the depths of his wildly surging want . If they weren’t both planted squarely on the ground right now, his knees would be knocking.

“Yeah, no problem,” Hokuto then says, idly thumbing at the end of the bow in Azuma’s waist tie, but not yet pulling on it. His eyes lower down there too, and Azuma has the surprising opportunity to dwell on just how long his upper lashes are. He’s shorter than Hokuto, so he’s never had too many opportunities to see this stupid handsome face of his from above. 

… He did already notice, though, quite a number of years ago, how pretty his eyelashes are. It’s nice to look at them again, and up close at that. The new angle is enchanting.

“I can probably come just touching you like this,” Hokuto admits, with far more frank bemusement in his light tone of voice than that husky encroaching need that’s been making his throat rasp. Like he’s just happily surprised, by the magnitude of his own pleasure, than he is at all annoyed or disappointed by what Azuma can’t give him.

Azuma definitely… feels a bit hot in the tear ducts. 

For just a quick second. 

What… the hell.

“Keep doing it,” Azuma whispers thickly in spite of himself, an odd tightness in his throat. 

He feels this monstrously anxious compulsion to get shy, suddenly;  to turn his eyes away from Hokuto’s honest and kind face, so he can pretend not to see the contented attraction in his every feature, and let himself flounder in self-conscious worry like he’s used to doing.

He ignores it. He gazes down at Hokuto’s lovely and talented mouth, and at his gentle, pretty eyes as their warm colour reflects into his own eyes, and tells him, “Keep touching me. You’re driving me crazy.”

“Yeah,” Hokuto breathes, and then grins widely. “Gladly. Here– just,” he clumsily wiggles his legs behind Azuma and winds up sliding an awful lot of his bare skin against the meager barrier of the fabric composing Azuma’s clothing. It almost feels like direct contact. 

“Dammit, I’m trying to get my legs to–” intending to show rather than tell he struggles with his sluggish and uncooperative limbs for a second longer, then gives up and simply asks. “You wanna sit on my lap? Clothes on, but… still.”

“Fuck yeah I do,” Azuma nearly giggles, so sudden and explosive is the crescendo of his heartbeat. It travels quickly down to his crotch and settles there into a powerfully hungry sustained throbbing. 

Nimbly, though with a manic sort of tremor rocketing through every last muscle in his body, he flings his own legs out overtop Hokuto’s in quick successive turn, framing his thighs with the placement of his knees back in the dirt again. Before he can even think about where to put his hands now, Hokuto has slid his back further up the wall behind him, and presently squirms his hips more closely beneath Azuma now that his legs have more freedom to try obeying his intentions.

Hokuto goes for the tie in Azuma’s pants next, giving a firm tug to the end of the bow he’s still had pinched in his fingers the entire time. It doesn’t readily unravel, so with an annoyed grunt that is disastrously cute in the way it makes his eyebrows lower, he must regrettably remove his other hand from Azuma’s posterior to fiddle directly with the knot in the bow, prying his nails into the separate tongues of fabric involved there to coax them both loose.

Azuma just watches him do this, still perched above Hokuto’s lap on his knees, and the sulky look of concentration tightening his expression is just so charming that the second he feels his waistband finally tumble down his thighs, Azuma is gripping both sides of Hokuto’s face to pull him into more deep and lazy tongue kissing.

He would have been fine with Hokuto just ripping his pants off right down the middle, honestly. It’s cheesy, but it would be fun to have his clothes torn straight from his body in the throes of passion at least once. Rationally, he’s thankful at least this one item has been spared from mutilation, though. His poor undershirt’s gotta have two dozen different gaping holes in it by this point.

… Probably still gonna keep it, though. The memories attached to the thing are pretty fantastic now.

An absolutely gorgeous moan into his mouth forestalls Azuma from any further distraction, and both of Hokuto’s warm, sweat-slicked hands stroke in tandem down the sides of his hips with such slow and lingering affection that it feels almost reverent. He shudders happily into their touch, sighing on to Hokuto’s lips. 

Hokuto’s palms travel lower and slide around to the front of Azuma’s thighs, straddling the short hem of his underwear where each leg opening digs snugly into his skin. They squeeze, his thumbs high up the insides of Azuma’s legs, so close to where his hard and aching dick nudges against the front seam of his shorts that it’s almost torturous. Azuma’s hips jump forward and he grinds his sensitive groin into nothing but the wet fabric clothing it, whining openly in superbly rewarding frustration.

Hokuto’s mouth parts from his in a loud, hot gasp on to his chin. Azuma chases after it with his teeth, pinching small bites into both of Hokuto’s lips and soothing over them with his tongue.

“ Nhh ,” he punctuates roughly atop his oral ministrations, as Hokuto’s palms skirt around the back of his waist and take full, hard grip of his behind. His legs seize and tense with urgent excitement. The recognition of the downward pressure Hokuto now exerts into his wrists, beckoning Azuma’s body to meet his own, feels miraculous.

Azuma tries, he really does, to just sit still. He wants to keep simply deferring to all Hokuto’s specific tastes and initiatives. He’s done his absolute best, until this very point, to keep careful track of all Hokuto’s movements and reactions, and just match them all accordingly. He feels like he’s done a pretty decent job, even.

As Hokuto pulls him into contact where he really, truly needs it, though– as the fabric between their sexes flattens and clings, and moistens–  as the restless, firm silhouette of Hokuto’s cock finally becomes known to Azuma, pressing, rubbing up along the entire sopping underside of his own sore and throbbing dick– bludgeoning against the shallow cleft of its swollen, trembling connected folds– he just can’t.

He rocks down on to the friction, harder– more, god more– his eyes shutter, and searing heat blooms deep within his body, pulling it into sharp and wanting nudges forward and back against Hokuto’s clothed erection.

Hokuto yelps loudly, his body seizing into rigid tension beneath Azuma, the grip of all his fingers tightening so hard that the flesh beneath them aches marvelously. His hips stutter and squirm with a disorganized, helpless tempo that clashes with Azuma’s movements into something tight and subdued, leaving them both shaking with dissatisfied, unfulfilled need.

“Ah- Azuma –” he pleads, his voice rising high and thin into another overcome cry. The sound of it is just perfect. 

“You– I can’t, I can’t go slow,” he grits out, urgently, his face wracked taut with frantic pleasure, moaning through every one of his harsh breaths vocally in a clear effort to temper himself. “I just need– I need to–”

“Do it, I’m okay,” Azuma gasps, and means every syllable emphatically. He watches apprehension flicker clearly into Hokuto’s struggling expression as, even now , he fights against everything he desperately wants. That Azuma is giving to him.

… Alright, no, seriously . Enough, already!! Fuck!!!

“You can just use me,” Azuma persists, adamant, impatient, using both his sweaty hands to hold Hokuto’s jaw level and force a period of eye contact. “I mean it. I want it too, I swear. Just fuck me up. If you want me to beg for it, I can do that. You think I won’t?”

Hokuto simply stares at him, wide-eyed awe and bewilderment swiftly overtaking the grave forbearance hardening all his features.

“Hokuto,” ultimately, is all Azuma needs to say to him afterwards. On his way to a “please” is when Hokuto’s jaw tightens further, his eyes fall shut, and he wrenches Azuma further up his lap with a bruising grip on both his buttocks.

The pace he sets is brutally fast, and only increases in its amplitude, but the harsh friction against Azuma’s tender and receptive flesh make the inside of his body clench ecstatically. Comfortable pangs of swelling heat surge all through his hips and down to his toes at every new form taken by the shifting textures of the fabrics that writhe and twist between both their bodies. 

The liberally accumulating moisture inside Azuma’s undershorts has smeared all up and down the throbbing length of his cock, and thoroughly throughout every last little furl and crevice on the connective bits to that– which he avoids dwelling on too heavily most of the time but still starkly feels in this moment, if only in their capacity for physical pleasure– and even all the way back to his asshole. He’s entrusted all of his weight to Hokuto’s hands and arms and hips, allowing them to work brusquely in tandem to simply shove him forward and back as they please.

Hokuto is pulling him right on to his cock, Azuma realizes at great delay, a bit stupidly. 

It’s not inside of him, no. But Hokuto is gripping Azuma’s body, and moving it the way he wants it to move, against his body. Against his dick.

Hokuto is fucking him right now, and doing it hard .

Azuma’s thighs shudder with yearning delight as Hokuto keeps on fucking him. He could come in about thirty seconds, if he just groped around at his front a little. His eyesight blurs as he starts to really consider it.

Hokuto beats him there, without any more notice than a quiet breath held in and kept behind his teeth. He suddenly rolls his hips further upwards, gasping out again harshly, rapid bursts of tension locking his body. The shape of his cock beneath where Azuma sits pulses perceptibly, even through three layers of clothing, and emits a hot and tacky stain of fluid.

Long aftershocks follow at a pace that looks relentless, and surely a bit painful. Hokuto’s brow is furrowed tightly, eyes squeezed shut against the onslaught, trembling in quick spasms as he cries out from the unabating sensation. Azuma, poised as he is to render assistance, simply rides through it all carefully, letting Hokuto hold him as tightly as he needs to.

By the time his body finally slackens and sags, exhausted, Hokuto is all but whimpering. His breaths come out hard and shaking, as the intensity of all the stimulation slowly begins to recede.

“Ah,” Azuma remarks, in brief premonition, before large teardrops begin to pour freely from Hokuto’s eyes. 

Right. This part. He completely forgot about this. Shit.

“Ha- unh?” Hokuto groans, weakly, his lashes fluttering open with some sticky delay. He takes a hand off Azuma’s body and reels it back in gingerly, first to his own chest in a lagging moment of clarity, and then up to his cheek. “What…”

“Hey,” Azuma beckons, and catches Hokuto’s attention. Tears keep rolling quickly down his face, as he beholds Azuma with fragility and confusion. 

Ahh… jeez.

Azuma reaches out and takes his wrist, and gently begins to pull. Hokuto follows it forward without question, completely docile, letting his back leave the wall. He sniffles, quietly.

“Just… c’mere a sec,” Azuma tells him.

“S-sure,” Hokuto says.  

As he dopily continues to cry, and in near silence, Azuma draws him closely into his arms. Without even climbing completely off his lap, he tips them both sideways in a slowly staggered tumble. As they lay prone on the ground he embraces Hokuto tightly, tucking his forehead against his soggy cheek, wrapping his arm around to his back and letting their legs stay cluttered together. 

“It’s those… endorphins, I guess, or whatever the word for that one thing is,” Azuma attempts to describe, once he’s found a comfortable enough position for himself. His own pants are still around his knees, but that’s not really important. “You’re the educated one here, so you probably know the science part of it better than me, at least.”

“This’s normal, though, is what I mean. It’s just the relief, and… gratitude, maybe, of getting what you needed. It’s happened to me too, all the times in the past I’ve gone through this. I forgot about it ‘til now. That’s my screw-up. Sorry.”

“Nfphh,” Hokuto acknowledges, very wetly. He squirms even closer against Azuma’s body, bringing them flush at the chest and wrapping his outer arm over Azuma’s hip, while the other stays folded securely up against his own sternum.

“How you feelin’?” Azuma asks quietly, feeling largely contented and comfortable his own self, but also duly a bit concerned.

“Really good , I think,” Hokuto snuffles, with a bemused little breath hinting at laughter. “Just also crying. … Tired,” he adds.

Good. Azuma was concerned, yeah, but he sorta just had a feeling. Crying can be weirdly nice, sometimes. He remembers it always felt pretty nice to him too, in these situations. Forms of release, and all.

“Think you can finally get some sleep now?” He’s starting to feel a bit overbearing, the number of questions he’s been asking this evening about Hokuto’s feelings and his body and his thoughts, with everything going on. He knows he can come on a bit strong with this stuff, sometimes… the worrying, that is. So he tries not to fuss too much over people, when he can help it.

Right now, though? Can’t help it.

“Nm,” Hokuto mumbles, softly, mostly through his nose, sounding enormously drowsy already. He’s probably not gonna be awake for more than a few minutes longer, at this rate.

It’s so fucking cute when his voice gets all quiet and small like this, god. 

He’s always been prone to displaying these annoying little flashes of cuteness. Like when he gets embarrassed by the way he sounds when he sneezes, or rarely gets lost for words over something for a sec and has a frown about it, or the way his eyes get so round and expressive when he’s surprised. It’s always been a problem for Azuma, one he dealt with by laughing or keeping himself busy or finding somewhere else to be. So he still sorta feels like he has to go run a lap, or go to town with a mortar and pestle on some really tough whole spices for like twenty minutes, to expel all this fondness he’s got exploding through his heart from how goddamn adorable Hokuto is being.

This time he’s allowed to just enjoy it, though. He can just keep snuggling on the ground with this adorable guy.

The big adorable jerk wiggles restlessly after some more lovely moments of sleepy quiet, though, and breathes in heavily through his nose, which ruffles Azuma’s hair, and makes Azuma’s poor heart just squeeze and squeeze some more. He’s so happy he could die a little. Is this really okay? Feeling this happy?

“Wait,” Hokuto slurs, failing to sound terribly urgent in the slow, heavy cadence of his exhaustion. He rubs his wrist up and down sluggishly where it rests on Azuma’s side. “You,” he states, as if it expresses the entirety of his thoughts.

Azuma can’t help laughing. His own breath bounces back into his face against the proximity of Hokuto’s body, warm. 

“Me,” he echoes, “sure. What about it?”

“You helped me,” Hokuto elaborates stickily through his mostly shut mouth, with rather impressive clarity considering how closely he already seems to teeter on the verge of unconsciousness. “ You , though,” he urges, with another slight nudge of his wrist.

Ohhh, okay. That’s what he means.

“I’m fine, ” Azuma grins, and cuddles indulgently up to Hokuto even more. He’s still a fair bit horny, sure, but everything they just did together felt amazing, and he’s surpassingly glad that Hokuto’s finally feeling well enough to be dozing off in his arms now. There’s not an unsatisfied bone in his body. “You really wanna make me come that bad, just do it later. I’m not going anywhere.”

Hokuto says something , possibly in rebuttal, but even with his ears so directly close to his mouth Azuma just cannot make it out from a vague jumble of consonants. Before long, Hokuto sighs again, a long and gentle gust of breath traveling out his nose and lifting the strands of Azuma’s bangs. He says nothing more after that, just breathing peacefully.

Azuma shuts his own eyes too, and simply listens.

He’s kinda hungry now for having skipped dinner, and his pants are around his ankles, but he doesn’t care. For a little while longer, he is not gonna be moving one inch.