Chapter Text
Lord Minamoto-no-Hiromasa, third rank, former imperial prince and currently dressed in his shabbiest robes, dithered in front of the brothel.
He’d been doing that for the last quarter of an hour or so, and it was starting to dawn on him that he was being ridiculous, which did nothing to improve his mood. So he decisively shook his hands out of his sleeves, straightened up, strode in the direction of the unassuming building across the road… and turned on his heel back into the deep shadow of the sprawling willow. He resolutely pretended that the snigger from a passing merrymaker had nothing to do with him.
It wasn’t as if he was going to see something he’d never seen before, he scolded himself, and if he had to be honest, he’d always wondered what exactly went on in places like that one. Takemaru obviously wasn’t coming back, so what else was he to do? That’s right, there was nothing else to do, and so there he was.
But now that he was there, he was suddenly terribly conscious of how his clothes seemed to scream ‘dressed-down nobleman pretending too hard to be seventh rank’, how much gold and not enough sword he was carrying, and… and just how much he had never done anything like this before.
Across the road, the very plain sign that simply read Ugetsu-ya was almost lost in the hot and humid evening dusk now, but it still managed to stare at him in silent mockery and judgment. Possibly of his manliness. He glared back at it, huffed like an affronted ox, adjusted his hat decisively and stomped towards it again.
This time, he managed to get all the way to the front doors, right on the tail of a party of probably-noblemen, albeit of the sort who would normally need his permission to so much as look directly at him. But nevermind - they were a psychological way in, and took the staff’s attention away from him with their bustle.
In the anteroom, he took his time with his light straw sandals, and by the time he was ready to go into the main hall, he was all alone. Gentle koto music carried from that direction, together with a waft of reasonably high-quality incense, and it should have been soothing, but it wasn’t. Not really.
And yet, he took a deep breath and slid open the door. There was the hall behind it, and in the middle of it was a raised dais…
On it sat the most beautiful man Hiromasa had ever seen in his life.
He stopped at the door, and felt his eyes widen and his breath catch in his chest.
He blinked, and even shook his head a little, half-expecting the vision to have been a trick of the lantern light - so incongruous was such beauty in such a place. But no, there he was, made of flesh, blood and temptation. Hiromasa suddenly forgot what he was even doing there, and just stood looking at him.
The man wasn’t even… underdressed, or painted, or even doing anything provocative. He simply sat next to the koto player, relaxed, one hand propped on his raised knee and absently toying with a closed fan. He was dressed like a nobleman, his robes made of good quality silk, and as perfectly prim and proper as if the man was about to dine with a minister. The only concession to the Ugetsu-ya’s trade was the fact that he lacked the outermost layer to his clothes.
Hiromasa was halfway to the dais before he was even conscious of what he was doing. He had no idea how this place worked. He had no idea who could be watching from the labyrinth of standing screens and gauzy curtains surrounding the dais on all sides.
All he could see were the breathtaking fox-like eyes that turned to him with mild curiosity as he advanced. The quick once-over under long eyelashes that seemed to take his measure made his face feel hot in a way that the boldest courtly advances hadn’t done in many long years.
And then his toes painfully connected with the dais and he almost collapsed on top of the pair of them. The koto player didn’t even seem to notice him, and the man looked at him with just as much interest as if he was a moth fluttering around the lanterns illuminating the scene.
“Good evening. Er. What do I call you?” came out of Hiromasa’s mouth, with all the grace of a fifteen-year-old drunk page pawing at a lady’s skirts, and he immediately wished he had never left his lovely willow, or even better, his home.
“Is it not customary to introduce oneself first, my lord?” the man said mildly, cocking his head just a bit to look up at him.
“Er…” Hiromasa replied intelligently. What kind of voice was that for a man this delicate and exquisite? It was low, deep, as melodious as the finest musical instruments at court. It made the night feel too sultry, even for the middle of summer, and Hiromasa’s hand almost reached to undo his outer robes.
“Ah, shall I guess then?” The man’s eyes flashed in the awkward silence, and he assumed an expression of deep consideration. The fan tapped against a full, perfectly bare lower lip the color of peonies and blood.
Hiromasa started to protest, not wanting him to think that he was trying to play at being mysterious, but the man beat him to it.
“Lord Minamoto, third rank.” It was said with perfect confidence. “Could have been emperor, but for cruel intrigue and political machinations. Has a great city estate.”
The blood turned cold in Hiromasa’s veins.
He wanted to grab for the sword he didn’t carry, but all he could do was stare at the man he was certain he had never met before in his life, and yet… How was it possible… Did he know…
The placid, almost solemn expression of the man broke with the first gush of a deep, full-chested laugh. The fan, indigo and gold, snapped open just in time to hide everything below his sparkling eyes, but his shoulders shook gently, and the laughter rang through the entire hall. The woman at the koto next to him giggled charmingly as she played, and ghosts of answering laughter carried from behind shadowed screens and curtains.
Hiromasa swirled around, bewildered and with a thudding heart.
“All of them are, my lord,” the man said behind his fan, voice alive with amusement. At Hiromasa’s confused glare, he clarified, “All of the men who come to places like this say they are Minamoto princes of the highest rank and distinction, just as they are all bursting with tales of their very sizeable…”
Hiromasa’s eyes widened in horror of a completely different sort.
“...city estates,” the man finished demurely and folded the fan away with a gesture worthy of the finest palace dancer. With the exception of his eyes, his expression was back to its perfect placidity, unlike Hiromasa’s, whose face, he felt sure, burned like a beacon.
This wouldn’t do. It just wouldn’t. He summoned every shred of haughtiness his bloodline and breeding afforded him, pulled himself up, reached into his clothes, and tossed a large golden token in front of the lounging man.
“I’m buying you,” he announced, relieved at how cold and unperturbed he managed to make it sound. “This ought to be more than enough.”
The man, perfectly undisturbed, regarded the gold where it had dropped heavily on the tatami, but didn’t make even the slightest move to touch it.
“It will have to do,” he said at length, toying with his fan. “Alright then, so be it.”
Hiromasa pursed his lips at the suggestion that such an amount of gold merely ‘will have to do,’ or that the man had any actual say in the transaction, but he held his mouth closed. He had already made enough of a fool of himself.
The man’s eyes traveled languidly up Hiromasa’s entire body while someone, probably the owner, hurried over to them, bowing and saying something he didn’t pay attention to. The brazenness of the look made him bristle and preen in equal measures, and then it also made him angry at himself for preening.
He tried to look down his nose at the man, but instead their gazes met and locked on each other, neither willing to look away first. This time, despite the otherwise cool and polite exterior of the mysterious man, there was a predatory glint below his long eyelashes and something in his slow smile put Hiromasa in mind of a wild animal that had just smelled blood.
Hiromasa shivered, helpless to loosen the knot of anticipation in his belly, but not above admitting its existence to himself. This was going to be a strange night, and he just hoped he wasn’t in over his head.
His guide, an eerily beautiful woman who had introduced herself as Shirabikuni, led him up a discreet flight of stairs, and then down a very dimly lit corridor to a set of thick double doors splendidly painted with a cockfighting scene. She bowed, ushered him in, and then shut the door in his face without a word.
It made Hiromasa feel distinctly like one of the painted cockerels that had just been tossed into the cage of a fox, and when he turned around, it was with a gulp.
The cage, that is, the room, was actually quite well-appointed. It smelled of fresh tatami and surprisingly high-quality incense, and the light of bronze lanterns caused interlocking shadows to play over standing screens painted with understated scenery. In the depths of the room to the right, there was a suggestion of mosquito nets, and thus that’s where the bed had to be, but the screens mercifully hid it from view. All in all, Hiromasa had been in worse boudoirs at the palace, he concluded with approval.
“It must be true what they say of noblemen of high rank, then,” a low, amused voice said, and Hiromasa jumped out of his skin and almost knocked over the nearest screen.
“What do they say?” he asked, bewildered, popping from behind the unfortunate screen to look down at the demurely kneeling man.
“That the interior of their lovers’ chambers causes them much more excitement than the interior of his or her nightclothes,” the man informed him from behind his fan, patterned like summer storms.
Hiromasa felt that even if he explained how that was, in fact, a sign of refinement and not funny at all, the man might not take that very seriously. So instead, he just glared silently down at him, still safely half-hidden behind the screen.
“You’re not my lover,” he said, wondering where his earlier hauteur had gone off to.
“Oh, my lord, but just wait until you see how elegant my handwriting is,” the man took another jab at him, fox-like eyes sparkling.
Hiromasa bit his tongue once again. He could just picture the obnoxious smirk that had to be hiding behind that fan, and that was what finally goaded him into stepping inside the nest of soft light and elegant trailing curtains that the man sat in, waiting for him. Hiromasa crossed his ankles and sank down facing him.
The man gave him a mildly worrying encouraging look and uncorked a plump jar of sake, pouring it into two cups on an elegant bamboo tray. The smell tickled Hiromasa’s nose, and he was glad to receive one cup - it was just what he needed to steady his nerves. After a silent, simple toast, he was also happy to discover that the sake was very, very good. He even allowed himself a contented smile.
“Ah!” It escaped him before he could stop himself.
There was a butterfly in the room, and it had just landed on the man’s hat. It flittered its wings a few times like tiny azure fans and settled there.
“That would be Mitsumushi,” the man said. “Please, don’t pay her any attention.”
“She’s your pet?” Hiromasa blinked in surprise.
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” the man waved a hand, sounding almost affronted. “She’s perfectly free to go anywhere and do anything she likes. She simply happens to like being around me, and I enjoy her company in turn. That’s all.”
“You talk about her as if she’s more than a butterfly.”
“I just generally find this a very good way to conduct relationships, with butterflies or otherwise,” the man smiled softly.
It was the first genuine smile Hiromasa had seen on him, and it was breathtaking. As light as it was, it seemed to illuminate his entire face, to breathe life into its ivory perfection, to make tiny crow’s feet appear next to the fox eyes. With some shock, Hiromasa realized that he was looking at the face of a man who laughed often, and who smiled sincerely. It made him want to draw out more such smiles.
And then he remembered himself and the reason he was there. His now empty sake cup clacked sharply on its tray when he set it down, and he scowled.
“I didn’t come here to drink sake and talk about butterflies,” he said, tucking his hands in his sleeves.
“I’m aware,” the man said, the old teasing amusement tinting the smile, and he elegantly slid closer to pour more sake for him.
It smelled very good. And he was confident that he could drink anyone under the table, so it’s not like he was in any danger if he had just a bit more before he got to what he had come here for. He had probably paid for that sake anyway, he reasoned, and snuck out one hand to take a sip.
“In that case, my lord, what would you like to do to me tonight?” the man asked conversationally, and Hiromasa’s sip promptly went down the wrong way.
“My, my. A first-time visitor, is it?” the man asked just as conversationally as he daintily handed him a handkerchief and calmly watched him choke and try to catch his breath.
“Y-you can’t just go and spring that on a man out of nowhere! What kind of professional are you!?” Hiromasa protested behind the handkerchief, sincerely hoping that the flush of his face would be attributed to the coughing, and not to the parade of things he could do to him that had manifested in his mind’s eye at the question.
“Should I send you a letter with a poem about stately pines instead, my lord?” the man asked with a whiff of mountain cold.
“What you should do is… is…” Hiromasa belatedly realized that he had no idea what a man in his line of work should actually do. “You should figure it out! That’s part of your job, isn’t it!?”
“Oh goodness, if it isn’t an actual prince we have here,” the fan snapped open again. Hiromasa was learning to dread the sight of it. “Expecting someone else to do all the work, and not willing to so much as articulate his desires clearly.”
“Hey! That’s not true at all!”
“Is it not?” The man’s eyebrows delicately twitched with breathtaking arrogance. “Then tell me, my lord, why are you here?”
The question instantly cooled Hiromasa’s rising temper and made him cautious. It sounded a bit too much as if the man knew the answer. And if he did, of which Hiromasa felt fairly certain, he had to get him to talk about it…
“I came because a friend of mine comes here,” he said, carefully rearranging his sleeves, and it wasn’t untrue. “Lord Takemaru. I think you know him, don’t you?”
“I do not,” the man shook his head, and Hiromasa thought he detected interest in his voice. Which probably meant that he was lying.
“Of course, I understand that you can’t talk about other clients. But…”
“And I understand that your lordship is… hesitant to discuss these matters frankly,“ the man said, with more attentiveness than he’d shown him the entire evening. “But surely, you can at least tell me which aspect of this establishment made it popular with your friend. What did he recommend it for?”
“Well. I mean.” Hiromasa blinked. It had never occurred to him to ask what was special about the Ugetsu-ya. “Apparently, it’s generally a good place.”
“Good for what?”
“Er. The obvious?”
“Which is?”
Hiromasa knew that he was way in over his head. He could practically feel the currents rushing over him. He didn’t have the first idea what the man was driving at, and he knew he was woefully bad at dodging, so there was nothing for it, really.
“Men,” he said, waving a sleeve vaguely in the other’s direction.
“Men,” the man repeated.
Hiromasa shrugged, completely lost at sea now. Distantly, he felt amazed at himself for managing to lose the initiative every single time to this man.
And in order to make the humiliation complete, the man’s shoulders shook gently, and once again, he was laughing at him behind the dreaded stormy fan. Of course he was. Hiromasa emptied his entire cup in one gulp and grabbed the sake jar with a glare, pouring for himself, and only for himself.
“What’s so funny? You’re a man, aren’t you?” he asked, and wanted to kick himself for how petulant it came out. Damn that man, this was all his fault, somehow.
“You don’t have the first idea what this place is, do you?” the man returned the question, voice still brimming with amusement.
“So why don’t you tell me?”
“I think you should go home, my lord, and stay away from here for the foreseeable future. I’ll tell Shirabikuni to reimburse you on your way out,” the man said mildly, folding the fan down. He even had the gall to sound outright… kindly. Patronizing.
“No, I want you to tell me,” Hiromasa said sharply. “You can also tell me what you did with lord Takemaru, while you’re at it.”
“I believe I told you that I do not know him,” the man’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t believe you.”
“A lover, is he?” the beginnings of a cocky smile crept at the corners of the red lips.
“I said he’s a friend. And I’m sure that you must know what’s happened to him.”
“Then he is a friend who lied to you, my lord,” the man said, the infuriating smile reaching full bloom. “Go home. Forget all about the Ugetsu-ya. There’s nothing you can do here, other than walk blindly into things you do not understand and endanger yourself and others.”
“And what are you, then?”
“Pardon?”
“Why don’t you lie to me too, like you say he did? It would be easy,” Hiromasa said with a glare and his hands tightened into fists in his sleeves. “Who are you, if you’d neither lie to me, nor tell me the truth?”
“Shame on you, my lord.” The smile turned sharp, and the blood-red lips revealed just a hint of glinting teeth like fangs. “You should know better than to look for the truth in a place like this.”
It did things to Hiromasa, that predatory smile. It unbalanced him.
“I might, if I knew what ‘a place like this’ even is. So there. Tell me.”
Bright black eyes like precious stones regarded him from deepening, curling shadows as a breeze stirred the standing curtains and the embers of the bronze lanterns.
“Is that so. Let me show you, then,” the man said and rose to his feet. The butterfly on his hat flapped its wings and fled into the deep darkness beyond the screens.
Hiromasa’s heartbeat picked up, but he didn’t move. The fox-like eyes never left his even for a second, keeping him suspended in a moment of indecision between pushing the insufferable man away and asking after his friend again, or… or giving in and finding out firsthand whatever it was that those red lips would reveal. He knew which one he wanted, of course, but that wasn’t what he had come here to do.
Before he could make up his mind, the man sank to his knees right next to him, thigh brushing against his through their too-thin summer silks, close enough for Hiromasa to feel his heat and even his scent under the expensive incense, all the more so as he leaned in, chest almost touching Hiromasa’s, and oh, he smelled so good…
“Now think of what you really want from me, my lord,” the low voice purred right next to his ear, hot breath tickling the slightly damp, sensitive skin on Hiromasa’s neck. One arm looped below Hiromasa’s, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw two fingers come up to the red lips.
None of that really registered, however, because the man had leaned in to his shoulder and that revealed his neck, his graceful, vulnerable throat with the prominent Adam’s apple, with the slightest sheen of fresh summer perspiration on the soft skin… just there, ready for Hiromasa to taste it.
All of it seemed to daze him, intoxicate him more than the sake had done. There was a murmur below his ear that he couldn’t understand and his arms felt heavy as he tried to raise them and return the embrace of the man. His whole body felt heavy, really, even his eyelids. He closed them and breathed in the tantalizing scent. It wasn’t necessary or even polite to see a lover, of course, but he had wanted so much to look at the man as he… as they…
The world was spinning. Firm hands held him up when he couldn’t do it himself anymore, and he felt terribly sleepy as he leaned into an anchoring firmness. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t asleep and all of this wasn’t some sort of fantastical dream, after all.
But no, that scent was real, and better than anything he had ever dreamed up. It stirred instincts that usually lay slumbering somewhere deep beneath the courtly veneer, and they were what he followed when he turned and planted the gentlest kiss he was capable of against a soft throat pulsating with heat just beneath his lips.
He thought he heard the whisper of a moan, little more than a breathless gasp, before the world tilted sideways and he sank into a warm, dark abyss. The last thing he felt were strong hands carefully laying him down, and then the lonely sensation that they had left him…