any time spent with you, anywhere, is worth it.

[protential]

Hey. Hey, Kamo. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Hikaru's voice is persistent, like a troublesome dragonfly, buzzing in and out of range again and again. He's too weak to do more than lightly smack Kamo across the face, and it's kind of disgusting, really, considering how his hand is covered in grey slime.] Hey, idiot, wake up already. And you're telling me I'm the one who's been overdoing it...

[Perhaps he did end up overdoing it, this time, though. He's fairly sure several of his ribs are broken, and one of his ankles, too, and there's blood--his blood, judging by its color--streaming down one side of his face. Behind him, the blackened, still-burning landscape is all that's left of the meadow where they faced off against the latest warrior of the youkai. Only this patch of ground still has any life to it, protected as it was by Kamo's magic circle. Unfortunately, through some odious trick on the youkai's part, Kamo wasn't able to finish placing his runes or reciting the sacred incantation. The psychic backlash was severe, just this tsunami of dark energy, threatening to overwhelm everything in its path... That's why Hikaru had to finish what Kamo started, although he probably should have called in some reinforcements first. He's just grateful the enchanted sword is as powerful as it is.]

You're being a real pain, you know that... shit, shit, ow...

[Kebiishi are supposed to be better than this, stronger than this, but Hikaru is struggling to focus past the hot, radiating pain. It feels like an entire mountain has been dropped on top of him, and then some. He turns over, then, sitting beside Kamo's prone body, his arms behind him and his legs straight before him, his breaths coming in very shallow intervals. If Kamo doesn't wake up soon (he has to wake up soon), Hikaru is going to have to carry him all the way back to camp, and he doesn't know how he's going to manage that just yet. Not a great situation to be in.]

Comments

[protential]

[Given no other choice, and with drastically ebbing strength, Hikaru yields to the firm insistence of Kamo's hand. He stays flat on his back, and instead he tries to pay attention to what Kamo is doing and what he's saying as he does it. According to castle gossip, the practitioners of this ancient magical art are discovered at an early age, their gift manifesting in any number of ways. Hikaru has never asked Kamo what his early life was like for him, what training at the shrine must have been like, mostly because he doubts Kamo would tell him... but he has wondered about it a lot. Sai told him that Kamo is the youngest onmyouji in a whole generation to reach this level of skill. Maybe several generations. Maybe ever. And now this same once-in-a-millennium onmyouji is tending to a bodyguard's wounds like it's what he was born to do.]

What are... meridian lines...? [Kamo might have mentioned them before, but Hikaru wasn't paying any attention; he isn't exactly the most educated person, either. Letters, numbers, religious precepts, whatever--it's all kind of impossible for him to grasp. His eyes glimmer brighter, a bit feverish, the onset of an infection, as he watches Kamo's hands move over him and then above him. He's expecting whatever Kamo is doing to hurt, like someone shoving their hands inside him, like a combat surgeon with nothing there to lessen the pain... but it's literally painless. It's the opposite of pain. The pain is being taken away by those hands, and by those... fireflies, it looks like...

Hikaru's eyes widen as the fireflies come into view, twinkling like a spray of stars in the sky. They're very beautiful. Kamo, himself, is also... He's also... Hikaru whispers the bare truth of it, an oh followed by so amazing, feeling himself relax from his head all the way down to his toes. His eyes fall shut involuntarily, his breaths a little deeper with every new breath he takes in. His heartbeat rebounds by degrees, too, reasserting itself, no longer being drained dry by patches of internal bleeding.

Right now, Kamo is literally saving his life, and it's the nicest thing anyone has ever done for him. Hikaru isn't afraid to die--of course not--demon-hunting investigators don't last long in the field--but that doesn't mean he wants to go just yet. He wants to look at Kamo's face for a while longer, so he's wincing his eyes open again.]

Mmm, I think it's... feels like it's working, to me...

[ashlar]

Don't speak so much. You don't need to speak. Don't you want to rest? [A little hoarse, with the quality of autumn leaves... Akira's voice is like a hinge in need of oil. But he's sliding open regardless, his silk screen pulling back to reveal more of his heart. That silk has been painted with pure white flowers, but as it folds away, Akira's eyes are deeper, darker ponds. Whatever lurks, lurks low. Whatever swims hasn't quite surfaced.

Despite his admonishment, he's considering his words carefully. He says,] Your meridians are pathways of energy. They direct—through you—they direct... [He shakes his head, and then he plants his hand, palm flat, against the ground, close to Konoe's shoulder. He's leaning above Konoe's face, but he's reaching, with his other arm, down near Konoe's thigh.] This route, [he murmurs,] is the meridian of your liver. [Even while speaking, he knows this is a mistake. Setting his eyes upon Konoe's face has made Akira unable to take them away. His fingers are trailing upward, through the air—through this line of energy.] The pathway leads up here. Now... for now, when I touch you here, I am feeling the circulation of your blood. [Akira frowns, and his fingers curve around the shape of Konoe's pelvis. Then he finds the dip of Konoe's rib cage.] As I do this, you'll bleed less, and less, and...

[Konoe is whispering, sighing, settling. Konoe's eyes close, and a particularly bold firefly passes in front of Akira's face. Its blink is a fleeting thing, and then Konoe is looking at him again. Akira finds that his lungs feel full of water, in that resurgence of eye contact. His hand, unpaused, travels further up the liver meridian, covering the expanse of Konoe's throat. This route encircles the mouth. It winds its shape, then carries on up to the eye, and feeling the surfaces of that energy would be suitable enough. But, at last, Akira's fingertips meet Konoe's actual skin; he touches the space beneath lips that only now are regaining color.]

It is working.

[This is quiet, and carries a line of preemptive regret for what he'll do next: Akira slides both of his hands onto either side of Konoe's face, cradling his head. His thumb rests beneath that eye of the meridian, and he strokes there slowly.]

You're stupid, but you're not impossible. You are going to be fine.

[His fingers dip from the liver meridian to that of the gallbladder. Its lines vein all throughout the head, and gently touching certain points there should help with rattled injuries. He says often, to Konoe—You're impossible! Hands thrown up, eyes rolled heavenward, hair mussed in a frustrated frazzle... In this ruined field, his brow is pinched, his hair is disheveled, but Akira is holding Konoe's head with hands gentle like the truest of priests. The only horror of his hands is how they are too duplicitous in their yearning to stay sacred.

The fireflies are beginning to rise higher into the air, away from either of the men in the grass. They curl away with the lingering wisps of smoke from burnt landscape.]

If you can sit up, sit up.

[Akira's hands have healed many. He learned how to trace the energies of a person's subtle body when he was much younger, when every path of the spirit seemed far ahead of him. Even when he first explored these routes of being, his hands were not compelled to caress the temples of the wounded. To be tender, he finds now, is different than to be merciful on its own. Tenderness is a shameful indulgence, when his own deficiencies led to the necessity of mercy in the first place.]

[protential]

[Too late, much too late, Hikaru remembers the dire warnings given to him by the high priest of the temple. He was an older man, wrinkled with memories, exacting, and definitely imposing; he was an intimidating figure to deal with. His eyes were akin to shards of ice, and they only seemed to harden as looked upon Hikaru and appraised him from a far-off place. This high priest told him that, under no circumstances, would he be allowed to come in contact with Kamo in any way. They were to engage in the minimum of conversation, even. It was made clear to him that he could not, and he would not, do anything to distract Kamo from his divinely appointed mission. Hikaru was only there to defend Kamo from that which Kamo couldn't defend himself from.

Their first night on the road together, Hikaru infuriated Kamo by suggesting fallen stars didn't mean anything at all. In his view, there were no messages up there for the priesthood to read--no sign posts from the heavens on high. It was merely random chaos, and not even chaos that they could make sense of. He went on to question the purpose and ambitions of the Division of Divination and Supernatural Affairs, and he claimed that he could defeat all of the youkai without Kamo's help. Needless to say, their partnership almost didn't survive the months that followed, even after their first successful exorcism together. But Hikaru did do his best to abide by the other edicts, like not interrupting Kamo during prayers, and not touching him at all...

The cool skin of Kamo's hands feels like a silken tapestry wrapped around an ancient, expertly forged sword. Hikaru can feel the wisdom and experience and incomparable artistry within those fingertips, and he knows now why he was not permitted to do anything like this. To be touched by such blessed hands is to be touched by the incarnation of his own Creator. There's no question about that. No question at all. He has never once had a religious experience that he knows of, but this is something that must qualify as one, surely...

Instead of trying to sit up, Hikaru lifts one of his own hands--he can see the scars across it, the scrapes, the thick and ugly calluses. These aren't hands that deserve to settle anywhere near to Kamo's, he knows. But he's lifting one of his own hands, to press that hand on top of one of Kamo's, where he can hold it in place for the time being.] I always wondered... [His smile is the kind that gets away from him, favoring just one corner of his mouth.] ... what it would be like, to be... taken care of by one of your kind. [By you, is what his half-lidded eyes are saying. They're too dark to be called green, but they're not quite a brown, either. Just a color that belongs to the earth spread below.] It's less of an ordeal than I thought it would be. [And by that he means it feels really good. He would be perfectly content to lie here for the rest of the night, cradled in these hands, instead of making their way back to camp.

But he doesn't intend to demonstrate any more weakness than he already has, especially in front of the person he's charged to protect. He takes a deeper breath, as deep as he can get it, and then steadily, if shakily, begins to push himself up and into a sitting position. His whole body still hurts in general, but the pain is more like the aching of muscles after an exceptional workout, rather than doing battle with yet another embodiment of evil.]

You won't have to carry me back there, if you'd just, ergh... give me... a moment...