#kazimir29

The man blinks as though Sukeroku has thrown cold water on him. 'Why, it's you. I'm sure Kiku will have time.' He shuffles through the papers on his desk before standing up and showing him into a private waiting room. 'He's been rather down, you must understand. Though it hasn't affected his earnings in the least.'

Sukeroku flushes. 'You mean...'

'There's a certain eroticism to sad eyes, young master,' the clerk says, and Sukeroku clears his throat and turns away. It's his fault that Bon's been sad, and he knows it. This elderly clerk knows it. Probably the entire geisha district knows, at this point. He tries not to look up when some shikomi pass by outside, giggling about the festival tonight. Tonight! This is his chance.

-

'I am far too tired to go to any festivals,' Bon says. He's wiping his make-up off carefully, dabbing at his lips and cheek with a wet cloth. 'I've just returned from an entire day at the opening of a new tea-house and am not in the mood for the rabble.'

'The ol' razzle dazzle,' Sukeroku says, and grins when Bon rolls his eyes. 'Come on, it'll be fun.'

Bon soaks the cloth in a small wooden pail. 'No.'

'I want to be with you,' Sukeroku says, and he meets Bon's eyes steadily. 'I mean it.'

There's a silence. 'I won't give up my work for you.'

'Neither will I,' Sukeroku says. 'You have your work and I have mine. See? It works out just fine.' 

Last month Sukeroku had come in, drunk off his ass, and caught Bon holding an ear pick with a client in his lap. Sukeroku had seen red, and long story short it had ended with Sukeroku being thrown out of the establishment on his ass and Bon refusing to meet him for weeks after. 

Sukeroku grins, and rests his chin on the hilt of the great sword he still carries around. ‘But there would be no one to protect you.’

Bon doesn’t miss the Imperial Palace. He does miss the finery and the brocade gowns, and the soft laughter of elegant court ladies. He doesn’t miss the bowing or the scraping or the fearful looks the maids give him. Here, in the countryside, the maids are stout and red-cheeked, and their laughs echo through the small compound. 

The ground beneath Bon is no longer the firm stone of a courtyard. When he steps outside, it is in mud and grass, and the palace is on a gently sloping hill. The lake in the garden is a real one fed from higher up in the mountains, and most days Bon has no reason to close the heavy wooden doors that lead into the palace. 

Nobody wants to kill an abdicated royal.

He thanks Miyokichi privately. A concubine that had risen through the Emperor’s ranks rapidly and usurped the Empress, she had been gentle with Bon when the old Emperor died.

‘You could rule,’ she offered, but Bon had declined. He had no desire to, and thus Miyokichi had ascended to Empress. He had stayed on twelve more years until her son that turned eighteen. After that, he had requested to be sent to the small Summer Palace in the west, far away from the capital.

He had been a very poor fit for the job of Crown Prince, at any rate.  

‘There is no one to protect me from,’ Bon says haughtily, and turns his face away from Sukeroku’s grin. This oaf of a bodyguard had insisted on coming along, and in his eyes Bon can see the hope for what they could finally have together here.

Sukeroku follows him out into the garden, past the willow trees weeping softly into the lake. ‘From mosquitoes, my lord.’

‘You are a silly one,’ Bon says, and sits down on a stone bench. Sukeroku remains standing, looking down at him. ‘It’ll be quiet here for a very long time. It’ll be boring for someone as hot-headed as you.’

Bon is inordinately fond of Sukeroku. They’d been paired when they were sixteen, a royal and his bodyguard, and they’ve been together ever since. Now, Bon’s hair is greying, and Sukeroku is growing thick around the belly. 

‘It doesn’t matter how many quiet years pass,’ Sukeroku says easily, and sits down close enough to crowd Bon to one side of the bench. ‘As long as I can be by your side.’

When Bon had accepted his apprenticeship to the local shrine, he hadn't expected--well, this. But one could argue that Sukeroku was unexpected in a great many ways. He was a frivolous little fox-god, and his bushy red tails peeped out from under his ratty robe ever so often. Bon had heard tales of the former deity of the shrine that Sukeroku had been sent to replace, and wonders why she hadn't stayed.

'She was beautiful,' head priest Yakumo had sighed. 'Almond-shaped eyes, dainty feet, and white tails. And you never saw her lounging about either. Hardworking and beautiful.'

Bon had listened carefully, and then turned to stare at Sukeroku, who was listening in from behind the head priest.

Sukeroku winks at Bon. 'Eh? Well?'

'You're not even technically a deity,' Bon says. 'Just a messenger.'

Sukeroku rolls onto his back midair and grins wolfishly at Bon upside-down. 'But messengers can have sweet lips. All the better to pass a good tale or two on to the gods, see? To reward hardworking villages with very pretty shrine attendants.'

'Perhaps one kiss,' Bon says, just to see the surprise on Sukeroku's face.

Sweeping is dull, especially in a stone courtyard. The torii gates up to the shrine are worn, and the village is too small to offer much in the way of upkeep. There are wild grasses constantly encroaching on the little temple from all sides, and some days they are thankful that there is rice to eat.

But Sukeroku kisses gently as can be, and Bon's never kissed before but he knows to close his eyes and tilt his head upwards. It's infuriating how much taller and broader Sukeroku is-- he creeps closer to adulthood every year, and Bon has heard him boast to Head Priest that he's 810 years old now, thank you very much, won't be taking orders from anyone!

He reaches up and tugs Sukeroku closer.