written 14-June-2004
archived 24-Sept-2004
Title: Nocturnal Admission
Author: datenshiblue, a.k.a. bonne
Fandom: Shaman King
Rating: PG-13?
Spoilers: no
Warnings: hints of shounen ai, wet dream, implied violence
Description: Ren-centric fic.
Nocturnal Admission
"Ren?"
"What?"
"What is that?"
"....that's from training."
"Un."
~ * ~
"Ren?"
"What?"
"Does it hurt?"
"If I paid attention to little things like that I'd be a baby like you."
"Aa. You're probably right."
~ * ~
"Ren..."
"What?! When are you going to shut up and enjoy the bath?"
"I'm enjoying it now. I was just wondering..."
"What?"
"It looks like the marks you had on your arms when we came to China to rescue you."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed."
"Is your Pappa...?"
"Yoh, if you insult the honor of my family I'll kill you."
"Aa. I know."
~ * ~
As usual, Ren lay down when everyone else did, and as usual, the minute they were asleep, he was awake, sitting in the open window, looking out at the sky.
You couldn't really see the stars well this far into the outskirts of Tokyo, but the moon would have washed a lot of them out anyway, it was full tonight.
Restlessly, his amber eyes turned away from the window and back to the moonlit room. 'They' in this instance was actually 'he'. There wasn't anyone else staying over on this occasion, Manta had to be at home for some family event. So the 'boys' sleeping room was empty save for Ren perched in the window, and Yoh, sleeping curled on his futon.
Ren watched the other boy breathe for a while, and then got up and put on clothes and slipped out.
He hadn't planned on going home again so soon. He was supposed to stay for a few days. He'd agreed to cook Chinese for Anna's dinner tomorrow. It was that or do housework, and Tao Ren didn't do housework if it could be avoided, though Anna was formidable enough that acceding wasn't dishonorable.
Nevertheless, he was going. He avoided assiduously thinking of it as running away in the middle of the night. But that's what it was.
And it appeared to be a clean getaway. Though he half expected Yoh's voice to catch him as he mounted his warhorse in the yard, no voice came. Leaping into the air, Ren didn't notice the face that watched him from an open window, Yoh's normally placid expression slightly furrowed with concern.
~ * ~
Even using Shaman power it took him a day to reach home. The valley was deserted and empty, and he expected nothing less. Entering the huge house, he went to his bedroom and went to bed as the sun climbed in the sky. Night was his time, and though he had no problem training or functioning in daylight, a nocturnal time schedule was an easy and comfortable habit to return to.
The house was silent and empty, and nothing disturbed his sleep. Even had his sister been home, she had her own wing, as did his mother and grandfather.
But when the light started to fade in the sky, his sleep shifted into dreaming. The dream was like the others, painfully, seductively vivid, full of images and sounds and sensations that had never troubled him before until recently.
He hadn't run fast enough or far enough to escape a certain face, a particular voice, not in his dreams.
Warm arms that circled his shoulders easily, a soft voice with a lazy accent, warm breath against the skin of his neck.
This time the dream went further than it ever had before, not stopping with the recall of memories, but elaborating on them. The softness of breath on his skin became warmer, the smiling, heavy-lidded face closer, and then another person's breath slipped past his own parted lips...
With a soft moan, Ren twisted a few times in his sleep, hands fisting in black sheets. Other phantom touches carried the dream forward, his body reacting with heat and an intense ache, and a throb that pulsed harder and harder.
With a soft cry, all his strength seemed to leave him in a small, wet explosion that brought a wave of pleasure that submerged his nerves and left him gasping.
Sitting up, panting and shocked with wakefulness, he felt the stickiness in his lap and looked down, his face darkening.
Filthy. It was filthy.
~ * ~
Showering in icy water and scrubbing his skin until it was tender, Ren toweled and dressed, and then, unable to return to sleep, or think of anything else to do, he went down to the training room.
After hours of training, he was slippery with sweat, all his muscles ached, and Bason was starting to look at him with that annoyingly mothering expression. Snarling at his spirit guide to shut up, though the ancient Chinese warrior hadn't actually said anything, Ren left the training room and began to prowl the castle.
And his steps eventually brought him to his father's door.
En had withdrawn from the world, and no longer waited in the main audience hall. Even his wife didn't attempt to talk him out of this. The Tao family was what some people might consider a trifle cold-blooded, though they were not without human feeling. Extremely repressed might be closer to a family diagnosis.
Ren stood silently outside of his father's door, refusing to knock.
He stood there for an hour.
Then two.
Three.
Finally his hand lifted, and just as it did so, the door opened silently on its own.
Standing framed in the open portal, Ren's gold eyes fixed on the figure beyond. Not the father he had always known - that En had been a furyoku construct, maintained for years. The real figure of his father was not a giant, but the man's eyes still burned. A lifetime bearing the hatred and the pain of the Tao family had indelibly marked him, and with more than the mysterious tattoo on his back.
Swathed in his robes, he regarded Ren, who stood in the doorway as if reluctant to come inside.
"What is it, Ren?"
There was no immediate answer as Ren scowled and looked away. His father knew why he was here. The same reason as last time. Something that could and had driven him to his father, believing that no one else could understand what troubled him, or help.
"If you insist on visiting the Asakura boy, you bring this on yourself," En said in answer to his son's scowling silence. "Tell me what you want."
Still looking away, Ren muttered two words.
"Say it louder."
When Ren obeyed, it came out as a snarl. "Help me!"
"Why don't you ask your sister for help, I'm sure she would do anything she could to ease your trouble."
"DAMN you!"
En smiled. "Jun can't help you, can she? You come to me because I can. You are still, after all, my son."
Ren simply stood, scowling so severely that he almost trembled.
After a long moment, En walked with a gliding step towards the boy framed in his doorway.
"Very well. You ask for my help, rudely, but you ask. And I didn't teach you to make pretty speeches so it will do."
Stopping next to Ren, the former head of the Tao household looked down.
"Tell me what you are."
The low voice that answered was deep with anger, but beneath it, a note of confusion. Almost, of panic. Nothing else could have driven him to En.
"I'm filthy."
"Then you will need to be cleansed."
~ * ~
There was no need for the animated dead to guard the dungeons of the Tao castle, and they were as empty as an unused grave.
The stairs downward were as familiar to Ren as the way to his own room. On one side, a corridor turned off to the necromancer's workshop of the Taos, where bodies of the dead were made to walk and spirits of the damned were harnessed.
In the other direction, the stairs continued down.
The moment they reached the bottom of the stairs, En grabbed his son by the neck, the grip punishing, shaking the boy until his bones rattled.
Ren hung limply from the grip like a cub in its mother's jaws, taking no serious injury from the shake because of it. He'd been trained not to resist. In every other moment of his life he'd been conditioned to fight up to and beyond death, without even thinking of surrender, but here, he did not resist. He'd only resisted once, and that occasion should have been the last he'd spent here.
And it had until that night when he'd gone to En, silently standing outside his father's door, unable to even express what drove him there. But En was a wise man, wise if cruel, and he understood what troubled his son. This was his answer.
Pulling his son up until his feet left the floor, he locked a collar around the boy's neck and then grasped his arms, bringing Ren's hands together above his head. Chains that already hung from the ceiling were wound about Ren's slender, but tensile wrists.
"What is your sin?"
"I'm filthy." Ren's tone was low and devoid of expression. It almost seemed calmer, less tense.
"How does it manifest?"
"There was a dream."
"What filthiness did you dream?"
This answer took too long in coming and the sound of leather whistling through the air and smacking into flesh broke the silence.
There was no cry from Ren. He hadn't cried as a result of physical pain or injury since he was four.
"What did you dream?"
The boy's breath was slightly labored, however. But here again, when he spoke, there was almost a timbre of relief to it.
"I was with someone. We talked. We... lay together. We... touched."
The sound of leather in the air and on skin was the prompt to continue.
"He... I... touched my mouth... to his mouth..."
The impact was furiously louder, and a soft grunt escaped as air was forced out of the boy's lungs by the impact.
"You liked this... you enjoyed it, didn't you?"
"....yes...."
Nothing for a while but the sounds of leather in the air, on the skin.
"Then what happened?"
"... the rush... the wave... the little death...."
"You covered yourself in filth."
"...yes..."
~ * ~
Hours later, En left his son hanging in the chains. He didn't believe he had eradicated the taint. It was in his son too deeply, like a poison that stays in the organs of a body, building slowly until it kills. The cleansing was temporary. But it was all he could do.
Eventually a servant took the boy down and carried him to his room. They did not bathe or tend to him, such coddling was not for the Tao heir. He wouldn't have known what to do if it had been offered.
When he could crawl to the bath, he bathed himself. When he could stand, he dressed. When he could walk, he went downstairs and ate.
~ * ~
Three days later, Tao Ren returned to the Asakura house. He carried the fixings for an elaborate Chinese meal.
Anna accepted his apology and kicked Yoh out of the kitchen so he could cook. After the meal, he was invited to stay.
For a moment it seemed as if he might refuse. But there was always a moment like that.
Yoh, who had been watching his friend closely all evening, under typically droopy lids, waited with endless patience until Ren agreed to stay.
He said nothing as they soaked in the warm water of the hot spring. Really, there were few marks to see. The Tao family were necromancers for three thousand years, the boy healed quickly.
There were still a few bruises on Ren's wrists, already slightly fading.
Yoh didn't remark on them. Manta had come over to partake of the Chinese meal and the two of them kept a pleasant conversation going, neither put off by Ren's habitual lack of participation.
Not until late, late that night, when Manta was fast asleep...
Sliding his fingers around Ren's arm, Yoh lifted it to the moonlight.
"Ren?"
"What?"
"What is that?"
"....that's from training."
"Un. Ren?"
"What?"
"Does it hurt?"
"If I paid attention to little things like that I'd be a baby like you."
"Aa. You're probably right."
Not loosening his grip, Yoh pulled the Chinese boy out of the room and eventually out of the house and into the garden in the back.
Frowning, Ren submitted to this, puzzled by the unusual actions.
Next to the little pagoda in the garden, Yoh stopped and leaned against the small building's wall.
"Ren..."
"What?"
"Have you ever been kissed?"
Golden eyes like saucers stared at the sleepy-eyed boy.
"Kisama! What kind of disgusting question is that?"
"A simple one. Have you?"
"No! Of course not!"
"Do you mind if I'm first?"
Half expecting to be thrown across the garden, Yoh pressed his mouth to Ren's, ignoring his friend's pole-axed expression.
~ * ~
"Ren?"
"What?"
"...it's not filthy."
"...."
~owari~