Work Text:
There are emotions that make one burn. Rage, for one, is the most familiar, and most affordable to Mizu. Other kinds of burnings, such as the burning in which bodies collide and collapse, have cost her so much she can only afford to be burnt once. Yet here she is again, on her childhood home’s floor covered in soot and dirt, panting, laughing, burning so brightly.
Taigen is beneath her, his breath shallow and hot in her face. His heart hammers frantically through his chest to her chest. Mizu’s own breath must smell like fish dumplings. Taigen’s face is getting better, his worst bruises have faded from mottled purple to yellowish green. The cut on his lip has healed. She suddenly, dangerously wants to touch him, feel his hot breath in her mouth, teeth on her lips. She blames it on the burning forge.
Taigen tries to wiggle under Mizu’s hold like a trapped, panicked animal. Their roughhousing must have opened a few wounds of his. She squeezes hard around his wrists to remind him who’s on top. He stills immediately.
Neither moves. Mizu becomes hyper-aware of her surroundings. The steady crackling of firewood, its warmth, its light. The slow ache of her muscles. Sweat on her spine. Soot on her hands, face, the floor, which has tainted both of their clothes from rolling around, sleeping on it for weeks. Her katana lies broken in the corner. Fowler is well on his way. Akemi is—
She feels something dig into her thigh.
This is wrong, Mizu reasons, but Taigen is giving her that wide-eyed look, as if just as stunned as Mizu is, his eyes nearly completely dark in the firelight—this is so wrong—then it softens to a tentative searching, the answer of whatever he seeks must be lying where her lips are—she should get off of him right now—because he cranes his neck up—don’t—and kisses her.
Mizu kisses back with everything she has, which is very little—her lips clumsy and her tongue inexperienced, awkwardly nipping at his lower lip before he pushes his tongue into her mouth. Taigen kisses like he wants to suck her in. Mizu can only offer teeth, clashing against his, and spit, escaping her mouth and running down his cheek.
The moment she lets go of his wrists he flips her, hands clawing away at her haori, tugging at her scarf. She stops him before he could go too far.
Taigen looks up to her face, rapidly blinking lust away. She appreciates that he doesn’t force himself on her. He looks somewhere between bewildered and hurt.
“I will be the penetrator,” Mizu says.
“Let me see you?” Taigen pants, winces from his wounds, the tail of his sentence arches like a question. A spark of his usual annoying, arrogant self cracks the tender facade. “Are you insecure or what?”
Mizu says nothing. It’s better to let him think as such. She just hopes she hasn’t hurt his ego by proposing him playing the receiver. “Wait here.” She says and gets up.
He is uncharacteristically obedient.
There are spare bandages for her chest Ringo left next to her sleeping mat. She grabs some. Taigen’s eyes are heavy on her nape. She turns to look at him, thinking. “Come back here,” he urges.
“So impatient,” she smirks, but walks over to him nonetheless. Her doing what he told makes him forget he’s supposed to be upset. Taigen is still hard where he sits, but he pays it no mind, instead sliding his hands up the back of her thighs to squeeze her ass when Mizu comes to stand over him, resting his cheek on her left thigh, smiling up at her. Then he notices her crotch.
“Mizu, you’re not—”
She puts two fingers to his lips and takes a step back, her thighs and ass tingling with fading imprints of his touch. “Close your eyes,” Mizu says, and puts the strip of bandage over his eyes.
Taigen makes an aborted gesture with his hand as if intending to claw the fabric away, “Mizu, what—” then he understands, chuckles, revealing sharp incisors. She suddenly wonders how it’d feel if he bit her like the wild dog he is. “Ohh, I didn’t know you’re into this.”
Mizu huffs a small chuckle of her own, wrapping the bandage twice over his head as if his eyes are two big gaping wounds she’s trying to keep from bleeding. Once she’s sure he can’t see absolutely anything, she slips the end into the gap between two layers of fabric to secure it, and steps away once more. But even blindfolded, Taigen can sense her departure as he grabs her legs, nearly tripping her.
Mizu quickly balances, mildly annoyed. She presses her lips together, inhales and crouches to his level, pecks him sweetly on the corner of his mouth. “Just a second, I promise.”
When Taigen finally lets go of her, Mizu makes her way to her travel sack, rummaging for a small, long bag. She loosens its string to reveal a dark, shiny, elegantly curved wooden length. She smooths her hand over the fine wood grains in the well-shaped head and shaft and balls—even thoroughly washed, she can still smell herself faintly on its fibers—then brings it back to where Taigen is. She can’t bear to keep him waiting.
He already stripped in the time she took to retrieve her harigata, leaving his fundoshi for her. Despite being beaten and starved, Taigen is strong and muscular, the exact type of body Mizu had relentlessly prayed to grow into as a kid. Now, the sight of him elicits both distant jealousy and uncontrollable lust from her. Mizu comes and kisses him, touches his jaw, his neck, his bare chest, stomach, feels gooseflesh break out and muscles roll in response. She squeezes his pecs and pinches his nipples like a man would a woman, slaps his hands away when he tries to do the same. Taigen sighs into her mouth when she slides his fundoshi off his hips, jumps when she caresses his cock. He comes on her hand.
Mizu laughs and wipes her hand on his thigh, earning a shiver. Taigen is left speechless for a couple moments, his mouth agape like a fish; when his voice comes back to him, he stutters out an apology, cheekbones flushed bright red as if they have been fucking for hours rather than barely starting. Mizu thinks it’s so hot that Taigen craves for her so badly he came at the lightest of her touches. She kisses the prominent bridge of his nose to reassure him: “it’s fine, ‘Gen, I liked it.”
He gets even redder. He swallows and his cock jumps. And he pulls her face down to kiss the breath out of her, smiles victoriously when she gasps and moans, as though it’s payback for her laughing at him. She breaks away gasping for air, he catches her and they dunk under again, then she pulls away resolutely, chuckling, and moves behind him. That seems to startle him for some reason. “Mizu, wait! Have you- have you ever done this with a man?”
Mizu almost says yes . “No,” she says at last.
“Do you know how it works?”
Her hackles rise slightly at that. Does he think she doesn’t know what she’s doing? “Well, I penetrate you in your hole—”
“No, I mean— do you know how to prepare a man before you take him?”
Mizu does not know she has to prepare a man before she takes him. She thought his arousal was enough. She sheepishly strokes his back, mindful of his wounds. “I don’t… Show me?”
“Alright,” she can hear the smile in his tone; she smiles, too. “Do you have oil of any kind?”
Her mind draws a blank. Mizu knows people cook with oil, but she can’t recall eating anything other than congee here in this forge; some of Ringo’s liniments have a viscous nature, but she would rather save them for her next fight. She wishes she could lubricate him with her own slick, ember-hot and drooling between her legs; she almost moans out loud just thinking about it; and she could pretend he produces it himself—
She jumps at sudden pressure on her arms, up her shoulders, neck and to her cheeks—Taigen, having turned around while Mizu was lost in thought, is patting her blindingly, seemingly reaching his goal when he stops and holds her face, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. He has learned not to touch where it’s important. “You think too much,” he mutters so close to her lips. She shudders. He’s making it really, really hard for her not to give in and bare herself to him, just to feel more of his fingers on her skin. “Spit will do. Not the best option, but I’ve done that before, I can do it again.”
Mizu pushes him away by the chest, dodges his lips. She can give him her softness, but can’t bear it when he gives it back, can’t take it when she knows something crucial to his fate that he doesn’t. “Okay. Turn around.”
Taigen grins and gets on his hands and knees. His hole is dark in color and furred with hair. Mizu is tempted to bury her face there, maybe kiss it like she does his mouth, but she has a better idea.
Mizu reaches over and holds her palm under Taigen’s chin. “Spit for me.”
He does as told, a vein popping on his right forearm, accentuated by the firelight, the skin marred by cuts. It stuns her every now and then how close he actually came to death for her sake. Mizu carefully balances the liquid on her fingers as she slides them into him. The squelch is so filthy. She has to squeeze her thighs together to counter her own arousal. As Taigen moans and begins to thrust back, Mizu stays his hips; “don’t hurt yourself,” she warns him, but he foolishly does anyway.
He’s burning inside, like there’s a forge in him also. Like when she’s inside herself. Mizu picks up a steady rhythm, thrusting in and out of him with a finger, kneading his ass—likely the only place unharmed in his entire body—with her other hand.
She glances at her harigata and thinks it’s definitely bigger than her one finger. She adds another. Taigen’s entire body jolts, he grunts loudly. Mizu stops immediately. His back muscles ripple, shiny, slippery with sweat where she lays her hand on in concern. The sweat must be bad for his wounds. “Taigen, are you hurt?”
Taigen can only pant, then he rasps, “a- again… do it again.”
Mizu nods, even though he can’t see it, and tries her best to replicate her last thrust. He screams this time. Mizu thinks she’s touched a sensitive spot of his. She aims for that spot again and again, smiling at the sight of her rival-friend-lover coming apart beneath her. It's truly beautiful.
When she hits the bundle of pleasure inside him with the third finger, and when her wrist begins to ache, Taigen orgasms. His whole body tenses, strung tight like the shamisen’s strings, then slowly relaxes, pliant like hot soba as he collapses to his elbows. The firelight paints the broad expanse of his back in shadowy valleys and warm-colored, sweat-slicked hills; dried blood crusts begin to bleed anew. Mizu removes her fingers and massages his hips, whispers in his ear, “are you okay?”
Taigen is unable to speak, as he seems to be after an orgasm—Mizu prides herself on making him orgasm twice without using her harigata as of yet—he can only nod. She retreats to her favorite place behind his rear, pleased to see his hole beautifully stretched, spits on it, lines her wooden cock with it and pushes in.
Ever since Mizu came to know her cock—having bought it from a teahouse on her quest to slay Violet—it has only ever been inside her, a solution to her desires on her loneliest nights, after the only person she’s been intimate with died. But now that it’s inside Taigen, Mizu surprises herself with how much she loves the idea of pleasuring others with it, or maybe she just loves pleasuring him.
Taigen cries out at the stretch. Mizu starts slow, then goes faster as he gets accustomed to her shape. This is probably the closest to being a man she could ever be, and she gets unexpectedly high on the feeling. Keeping her pace, Mizu angles the base of the harigata to her crotch so it hits her clit with each thrust, her long-neglected desire finally fulfilled making her sigh.
Mizu can see Taigen clenching around her hardness, can feel the exact moment he notices something is wrong—the harigata lacks the give a real cock has—he turns his head, confused, blindfolded still, and calls her name. Mizu shushes him gently. Do not ask.
Unsatisfied, and rebellious, Taigen reaches behind blindly with his left hand. Mizu is spiked with a short, ant bite-like surge of panic that he might not find what he seeks, that he might realize—
She puts on her most commanding voice and says, “Do not touch. You are not allowed to.”
He groans, breathes hard, and asks so quietly the forge could swallow it all, “Can I at least hold your hand?”
There are emotions that make one burn. Only one can serve her purpose. “…Yes.”
His hand is clammy around her sooty one, squeezing hard like he doesn’t ever want her to go.
Mizu can only imagine how vulnerable it leaves him, not being able to see, not being allowed to understand what is being done to his body. A samurai’s first requirement is eyes as sharp as a falcon. To compensate, she leans over and presses her face to the cleave of his spine where he’s least broken, kisses his bare back, tastes the salt and blood on his skin, kisses every scar and freckle; her left hand—firm in his grip still—reaches forward and hugs him around his waist, keeping the tiniest of distances lest she irritate his wounds, and, most of all, lest he learn the shape of her body even with layers of clothes and wraps between them, holding him to her one last time. Taigen whimpers happily. Kohama has seeped through his clothes into his flesh; now he smells like fish beneath the stink of sweat. She wonders if someone more familiar with the village’s coast like he is should be more susceptible to its smell. Mizu’s own flesh, when she’s here, has only ever smelled like woodsmoke, and coal, and steel.
“Mizu, please—” he says again.
Mizu untangles her hand from Taigen’s—which he initially protests, then reluctantly obeys—and probes two fingers at the seam of his lips, insisting him to part his mouth, slipping in around the wet, coal-hot shape of his tongue, shutting him up. She peppers more kisses on him as silent apologies.
Mizu can feel it coming, a wave taking form down at the tips of her toes, building as it travels up her legs and the sides of her torso, crashing into her core. She screams and collapses on him and yanks her cock out of him. Taigen chokes. Mizu’s skin goes numb and her eyes roll back, her vision whitening out while the violent spasms take over.
When she comes back to her body, it’s Taigen’s screaming that startles her away from him. “-izu! Fuck! Fuck! Put it back in! ” She moves her harigata out of his frantic reach by a hair’s breadth and quickly shoves four fingers into his hole, her heart calming upon watching him keen and sigh. “I’m not going to get- ah- fucking- ah- pregnant, Mizu. I want-” Mizu lightly bites and kisses one of his asscheeks apologetically, as his words instantly scatter and break, “-inside me- you- come-”
“I know, I know,” she comforts.
“No you fucking- don’t- oh- hgnnnnn ,” the force of his orgasm wrenches the rebuke out of his mouth, sparing Mizu the silence she would have to offer otherwise—Taigen’s blind trust and demand she give him hers burns Mizu to death. She fingers him through his release until there is nothing left to be released, briskly cleans her harigata with her clothes and runs to put it back in her sack before he recovers.
Mizu intends to free his eyes, but as soon as she nears, Taigen trips her and scoops her onto his lap, careful not to touch her areas, and sucks on her swollen lips, pressing open-mouthed kisses all over her face and neck. Mizu thinks through words that will destroy everything they have shared in the past hours, days, weeks, her lips ironically on his still.
She touches the bandage over Taigen’s eyes, wet from his body, which will soon be on her body. The idea is oddly intimate. She will miss him for at least some time. He squints and blinks several times upon her taking it off, his eyes hazy, but quickly clears when he focuses on her. It takes everything in her not to cry. “Mizu, you were…” he grins, breathless, “that was amazing.” He briefly looks like he has questions, but then blinks them away and tightens his arms around her waist instead, “let me fuck you next time.”
The fire crackles. Outside, the songbirds sing.
She must be looking at him very strangely, because Taigen loses his smile and asks, “Mizu, what’s wrong?”
He’s loyal and stupid. She holds the silence for a minute, revises her speech, lets him think there will be a next time, lets him dream whatever it is between them could warrant a future, the mere idea of which she’s about to squash with her next words.
There are emotions that make one burn. Only one can serve her purpose.
She tells him about his princess.