MAKING A NAME
Jin+Yukimaru, Samurai Champloo, yaoi, angst, lemon
For trixie


The morning light was pale and thin as it slipped through the blind, appearing on the thin sheets in staggered stripes, making strange, alien shadows of the bodies asleep there.

Jin stirred, waking immediately as he always had. He knew within seconds there was no danger, nothing to trouble him. Yet. He sat up slowly, the sheet sliding down his nude torso and barely covering his lap, though he had no shame to spare for his nakedness, not in his own bed.

He didn’t look down at the body beside him but he was aware of it. Not suddenly, for it was ridiculous to think he would have been taken by surprise. The body had been there all night; he had invited it there in the first place. But he thought about it carefully, as if he were only now looking at its full character.

A slim, androgynous form, buried into the cool cotton. Jin couldn’t see its face. Wasn’t particularly bothered to. The body itself had been entertaining. Thinking back, he remembered it had been a boy, which was less common than the women, but not unheard of.

But something was still wrong. Dissatisfaction nagged at his body; melancholy lay low in his mind, like a persistent indigestion. He sat back against the wall, his hands behind his head. He had rarely felt content in the morning, and it was intriguing to examine why. The exercise was somewhere between challenge and pain.

The body beside him gave a small, sleepy moan. It sounded almost childish. Jin sought to blur the purpose of the day into a sweaty night as often as he could. Plenty of bed mates were willing to come to him, wherever and whenever he asked. He had no vanity about his looks but that didn’t seem to matter. He was a mystery; a cipher. He could attract without any conscious effort. They wanted to make a name for themselves in some way other than battle. Fuck the warrior; bed the man who walked on the outside. Create your own fable – carry the intertwined tale of sex and drama throughout the rest of your mundane life. He wondered wryly if his performance lived up to their expectations. He didn’t despise these people, in fact he pitied many of them with a gentle tolerance. But he had no time of his own to expend on their lives.

Jin knew in his heart what the issue was. They were all the wrong kind; the wrong type; the wrong weight.

The companion last night had been a tender boy and very willing, twisting against Jin with a sensual familiarity that told Jin he had done this many times before. He panted and sighed, and his hands patted at Jin’s robes with fascination. When Jin undressed, he laid his sword aside of course, though it was never far from his hand. The boy’s eyes had followed every one of his movements, as eager to see the glint of the legendary blade as his mouth was eager to suck on Jin’s cock.

But the boy had been wrong from the first moment Jin took him into his arms. The smell of his skin was wrong; his hair was the wrong colour, the wrong texture; his movements clumsy. His limbs had spread easily, the bony hips thrusting up to ask for Jin to penetrate him. Sinking into him had been pleasant and a much needed relief. But when Jin took the full weight of the boy’s body against his, he felt the disappointment shudder through him.

He’d held another body in his arms once, and it had been the right one. He’d taken the full weight of a falling man, a man whom his own blade had penetrated; a man whose eyes had widened with pain and anger and brave resignation; a man who’d whispered to Jin his own desires. Yukimaru. A man whom Jin had killed. The right man.

Jin would have liked to hold that body in other circumstances. He had sparred with Yukimaru, laughed with him, argued with him. He should have seen the loyalty in Yukimaru’s eyes – and he should have shown the younger man the love in his own. Jin stretched gently under the sheets, remembering the swift, sensual courage of the young warrior. He remembered the sounds of their blades meeting, sparks rising with each expert blow. His mind’s eye recreated the spin of their bodies, the aggression in their eyes, the controlled pant of their breathing.

The pain was harder to bear than the challenge, though he fought them both.

Jin glanced at his hands, knowing he wouldn’t see anything except sweat on his palms, but still expecting to see the shine of blood in its place. Then the body on the floor coughed gently and a slim, mischievous hand slid under the sheets over his thigh.

Jin felt an answering throb in his groin, knowing it was an instinctively physical response but welcoming it regardless. He slipped back down on to the floor and rolled the waking boy over on to his belly. A soft giggle greeted him as he parted the cheeks of the boy’s ass. It may have been the wrong body but it was there for him, ready and willing and alive.

It was the right distraction.


End