Saiyuki Reincarnation Fic - The Wheel
Aug. 16th, 2005 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
new_kateTitle: The Wheel
Author: Newkate
Fandom: Saiyuki
Rating: this part overall is NC-17 for m/m smut, spandex and 5's POV being the dirtiest POV ever.
Notes and warnings: Reincarnation fic. Multiple pairings. Completed, in four parts.
Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hibem.
Part One: Shift
Part Two: Dance (Ch. 2)
Ch. 1
Gene got to his table, knocked over the “Reserved” plate, sat down, let out a breath like surfacing from under water. The acoustics of the place were weird, I guess the staircase blocked a lot of the sound, and here we could actually talk normal, without straining our voices over the music.
Gene’s hands did their customary dance of cigarette-getting. The routine was so practised and sleek that it looked like one smooth movement. Pat the pockets, get the pack, drag one of the sticks out with his teeth, light up and have that first endless drag while pocketing the supplies. After the exhale his eyelids drooped a little, shoulders loosened; he pulled the ashtray closer and went back to sucking the smoke in as if it was cool, refreshing water.
He’d been a smoker for as long as I’d known him, I actually watched him go from two a day at the age of fifteen to a carton a week he was on now. He constantly stank of ashes, everything – clothes, hair, skin, breath. Sometimes when we slept together he woke me up in the middle of the night with loud, long bouts of coughing. His fingertips were stained yellow and tasted bitter whenever I had them in my mouth. Somehow, over those nine years, I learned to like that, but still, if the big baby needed his pacifier so much, I had something better for him to suck on.
I toed off my shoe and stuck my foot under the hem of his jeans. He shook it off but didn’t kick me, which meant he was in a flirty mood, so I licked my lips and leaned closer.
“Hey, Mr Sykes, wanna dance with me?”
“Only as much as I’d like to set my own head on fire,” he said, flicking off the ashes. “When did you last see me dance, lackbrain?”
“Hello, two week ago, at you dear auntie Kassandra’s birthday party. Don’t you remember what happened after all that singing and falling off the stage you did? You got up, screamed ‘Ballads!’ and danced for half an hour.”
“With you?” he asked, pretending it wasn’t his ears turning bright red.
“Sure! Have you ever danced with anyone else, my cherry?”
“Asshole.”
“Lightweight. Oh, it was lovely, you were all over me like a slender willow. And then you ran off to beat up a girl who grabbed your butt.”
“Now, fighting I remember,” he nodded, “Shit, that was a woman? Those boobs looked appallingly fake.”
“Yeah, they were. What? I had to make it up to her for your rudeness. Not like I was getting any action out of you anyway.”
“Do you actually believe you dick will fall off if nobody uses it for five minutes?”
“No, but why tempt fate,” I shrugged and leered at him across the table, remembering how sweetly dazed he looked when really drunk and about to pass out. That was almost worth riding out his mean drunk stage. “So how about the next song? If it’s something nice…”
Before I got to finish, the next song started, and I knew from the first beats there was no chance. Gene moaned and clasped his hands over his ears.
“I hate this shit.”
“Of course you do. You hate everything by Village People.”
“Yes, but this song,” he shuddered in revulsion, “Is special. It really touches me. I want to kill something every single time I hear it.”
All intrigued now, I listened to the words, but they were standard uplifting fluff:
Together we will go away
Together we will leave someday
Together your hand in my hands
Together we will make our plans …
“Fuck, fuck,” groaned Gene over the chorus. “I hate this song. I hate this place. I hate this country. Did you know, that couple we heard about lost their court case. Marriage license denied. No marriage for homos.”
“I didn’t think they’d win. Why this burn to get married anyway? Not like one of them is knocked up, eh?”
“No, genius, it’s probably a financial scam – if you have a dependant, you could claim more benefits. Doesn’t make it any less valid, of course, marriage is all about legal issues and money-grubbing, but I’m appalled that we are denied that option.”
“Yeah,” I nodded sadly, mulling it over in my head, “If Dave and Colin were married, Dave would be set for life now, no way that step-bitch would be able to protest Colin’s will. Hell, they wouldn’t even have needed a will, Dave would get everything anyway.”
“Shut up about Dave already, he’s only twenty nine and he has a steady job, he’s fine. I’m talking about me! Who are these fuckers to say I can’t get married if I wanted to? It’s my civil right!”
I sighed and tried for my most patronizing tone: “You can get married, Gene, as long as it’s to a woman. If you can find a chick crazy enough to agree to that.”
“Yes. It’s just like freedom of religion as long as you’re Christian. Sickening. That’s it, I’m going to get married, let’s see them try and stop me. I think I have enough money to throw at the problem,” he leaned back, thoughtfully puffing the smoke out, and I simply gaped at him, trying to figure out if that was another one of his bad, bad, painfully unfunny jokes.
“It’s such a shame you can’t have a white wedding,” I said, trying to annoy him into making sense. “You’d look lovely in lace.”
“I’m serious, Todd,” he drawled with a smile I intensely didn’t like. “I’m going to marry you or die trying. Preferably the former. It sounds like more fun.”
“Me? Why me? Why the hell me?”
“Better the moron you know,” he said, smug and condescending.
“Listen, you prick,” I couldn’t quite figure out why this was pissing me off so much, maybe it was the fact that he dared to plan my life like that, like he owned me. “If you think I’d ever agree to participate in your scam or cry for attention or whatever… ”
“What’s the big deal? You are pretty much married to me already. You live with me, spend my money, sleep around… Hey, you took my virginity. Least you could do is marry me.”
Oh. He was joking after all. I relaxed in the chair and threw a good leer in his direction: “Yeah, good times. But remember, it wasn’t my idea in the first place, I was pressed into – okay, lemme rephrase that…”
It was probably for the best that I never got to finish that line.
“Excuse us, may we join you?” said someone behind me. The voice was smooth, velvety, polite and soft, like cat’s paw with all claws retracted, teasing, gentle, playful almost, close to my ear, so close that I thought I felt warm breath on my cheek. I jumped and earned a dirty smirk from Gene who noticed, of course, the sullen prick always noticed everything. He looked at whoever that was - sideways, quick glance, like they didn’t merit any more from him. If there was one thing Gene was great at, that would be the gentle art of making you feel like you were something stuck to the sole of his shoe.
“No,” he said shortly, and then did a double-take. “What the… Who let a baby inside my club? Oh, heads will roll.”
“I’m eighteen!” protested a different voice, high and squeaky. “Here, look at my ID!”
“I assure you it’s not fake,” said the first guy again, smiling, by the sound of it, and this time his voice went deeper and actually tickled me in places, lightly, like a soft painting brush. I didn’t want to look at him, it was bound to be disappointing, but I couldn’t resist, even trying to resist wasn’t an option.
After all, it’s always better to know, right?
So I turned my head to look, and he was standing there, eyeing me, wearing a simple, pleasant, good-natured little smile. When our eyes met, that smile slipped down a notch, and then he suddenly beamed at me so brightly like I was the first ray of sunshine after a week of rain.
Oh. Oh, fuck.
I clenched my teeth to make sure my jaw wasn’t hanging open. Gene kicked me under the table – shit, I must have looked truly pathetic – but I hardly felt it and didn’t even have the presence of mind to get him back.
That guy was… There is no way to describe it right. He was good-looking, yeah, tall, slim, graceful, shoulders straight and broad, hips deliciously narrow, and I really needed to stop thinking how good it would feel to grab them and pull him closer. So I looked back at his face and couldn't remember how or why I'd looked away in the first place.
Sometimes, when you think of what could have been or jack off in a shower or just daydream on a bus, you have those fantasies, half-formed and pointless: ideal world, ideal date, ideal fuck. Ideal face, something that’s not possible, that you’ll never see. And here I was, staring right at it, and thinking only one thing – boy, I had such weak imagination. The reality was better by far. Also, no matter what Gene said, God totally existed, because if Gene’s face wasn’t enough proof of that, now we had another bit of evidence. No way could this just accidentally happen through random mixing of genetic material and such. No freaking way.
He was wearing the wrongest outfit ever: beige pants, tweed sports jacket, striped dress shirt, tie. Glasses. It was so inappropriate that it looked downright kinky. He had a sleek Ziggy-mullet going on, only with the fringe overgrown and hanging over his eyes, and that had to be on purpose, because it made me shaky with want. I needed to brush that hair back, to pull those glasses off, to have a good look at his huge pretty eyes, to figure out what colour they were. In the dim light of the club what much I could see from here was mostly black of his dilated pupils.
“Hello,” he said with a little awkward giggle. “I’m Holden York, nice to meet you.”
He reached out his hand and I wanted to grab it and let him drag me - wherever, really – but then somehow my brain heroically did that thinking thing and I realised he was offering a handshake. His palm was dry and cool when I took it, and I held it gently, squeezing only a little, until his eyes rounded like he was reminding that he asked me something.
Oh, right.
“Todd Kemp. And that blond asshole is Eugene Sykes, manager of this dump.”
“Watch your mouth in front of the possible minor,” said Gene, carefully studying an ID card. “And you are welcome to find a classier place to offend with your presence.”
“This club is very nice,” said Holden politely, “I was worried it would be a little too much to take in, but the atmosphere is rather mild and pleasant.”
“Yeah, I know, sickeningly vanilla,” I nodded. “But that’s Gene for you. It's a good thing he’s not choosing the music himself, or we’d be grooving to Pink Floyd all night.”
“I have the tapes upstairs,” said Gene. “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
He tossed the ID on the table and sighed: “Looks real. Enjoy your stay, Mr Adams.”
“Rishi,” said the proud owner of the ID, and I finally noticed him.
He could be eighteen, but sixteen would be my first call. Short, wide-eyed, fresh-faced, pretty much with a neon banner “V-I-R-G-I-N” flashing on his forehead. Round chipmunk face, pert boy butt. Touch of clear lip-gloss, and he clearly wasn’t used to make-up, because his pink tongue kept coming out and carefully licking at the sticky stuff. Or that could be purely Gene-induced licking of lips. Looking at Gene did that to people.
“Oh, how rude of me,” said Holden. “This is Rishi Adams, my former pupil and a good friend.”
The boy was cute, and the eyeliner and artfully spiked hair really worked for him. Whatever Holden taught him, it wasn’t fashion sense, because he was dressed normally, in tight paint-splatter jeans and short-sleeved sparkly shirt, open to show off a golden necklace and quite a lot of his smooth hairless chest. It was almost a pity I never went for teenage boys, even back when I was one myself. Neither did Gene, as far as I knew, so that Rishi could drool over him all he wanted, it wasn’t happening.
“May I have this dance, Mr Sykes, please?” asked the boy in super annoying mouth-breathing shrill voice, sounding like some hungry orphan from that Christmas Carol movie. Gene twitched and gave him a look he used to terrify and emotionally cripple, but the stupid kid just kept smiling searchingly, eyebrows raised, so hopeful that I really, really wanted to smack him on the head. That’s not how you did things with Gene, but I wasn’t about to start sharing hints and tips. Took me years to figure him out, and I was keeping it all to myself, thank you.
“I don’t dance,” said Gene. “I’m not here to have a good time. I’m not available. I don’t like you. I think this covers it. If you as much as look at me again, I’ll get your ass thrown out of my club. Go away.”
The boy opened his big whiny mouth again, but before he could earn the wrath of Gene, Holden put a hand on boy’s arm and gently herded him away. Just as they were getting swallowed up by the crowd, Holden turned back and gave me another one of his smiles, apologetic, warm and friendly one this time. I was on my feet before I knew it.
“Don’t,” said Gene, and I froze on the spot, because that was the first. Ever. I wasn’t sure I could handle the shock.
“You actually mind?” I asked, totally stunned.
“I don’t like that guy,” he said, squinting in the general direction of where Holden should be. “There’s something off about him.”
“Fine, nobody’s forcing you. I like him.”
“Sure, you like anything that moves,” he shrugged and looked away. “Just don’t come crying to me when he’s through with you.”
I wanted to say something biting back, like – if I’m not picky, what does it say about him, or, yeah, what kind of moron would come seeking comfort to a lump of ice, or something, but my brain was already busy thinking up lines to try on Holden, so I just gave Gene the finger and started pushing through the press of dancing bodies looking for the inappropriately dressed hot guy.
Next Chapter
Author: Newkate
Fandom: Saiyuki
Rating: this part overall is NC-17 for m/m smut, spandex and 5's POV being the dirtiest POV ever.
Notes and warnings: Reincarnation fic. Multiple pairings. Completed, in four parts.
Betaed by
hibem.Part One: Shift
Part Two: Dance (Ch. 2)
Ch. 1
Gene got to his table, knocked over the “Reserved” plate, sat down, let out a breath like surfacing from under water. The acoustics of the place were weird, I guess the staircase blocked a lot of the sound, and here we could actually talk normal, without straining our voices over the music.
Gene’s hands did their customary dance of cigarette-getting. The routine was so practised and sleek that it looked like one smooth movement. Pat the pockets, get the pack, drag one of the sticks out with his teeth, light up and have that first endless drag while pocketing the supplies. After the exhale his eyelids drooped a little, shoulders loosened; he pulled the ashtray closer and went back to sucking the smoke in as if it was cool, refreshing water.
He’d been a smoker for as long as I’d known him, I actually watched him go from two a day at the age of fifteen to a carton a week he was on now. He constantly stank of ashes, everything – clothes, hair, skin, breath. Sometimes when we slept together he woke me up in the middle of the night with loud, long bouts of coughing. His fingertips were stained yellow and tasted bitter whenever I had them in my mouth. Somehow, over those nine years, I learned to like that, but still, if the big baby needed his pacifier so much, I had something better for him to suck on.
I toed off my shoe and stuck my foot under the hem of his jeans. He shook it off but didn’t kick me, which meant he was in a flirty mood, so I licked my lips and leaned closer.
“Hey, Mr Sykes, wanna dance with me?”
“Only as much as I’d like to set my own head on fire,” he said, flicking off the ashes. “When did you last see me dance, lackbrain?”
“Hello, two week ago, at you dear auntie Kassandra’s birthday party. Don’t you remember what happened after all that singing and falling off the stage you did? You got up, screamed ‘Ballads!’ and danced for half an hour.”
“With you?” he asked, pretending it wasn’t his ears turning bright red.
“Sure! Have you ever danced with anyone else, my cherry?”
“Asshole.”
“Lightweight. Oh, it was lovely, you were all over me like a slender willow. And then you ran off to beat up a girl who grabbed your butt.”
“Now, fighting I remember,” he nodded, “Shit, that was a woman? Those boobs looked appallingly fake.”
“Yeah, they were. What? I had to make it up to her for your rudeness. Not like I was getting any action out of you anyway.”
“Do you actually believe you dick will fall off if nobody uses it for five minutes?”
“No, but why tempt fate,” I shrugged and leered at him across the table, remembering how sweetly dazed he looked when really drunk and about to pass out. That was almost worth riding out his mean drunk stage. “So how about the next song? If it’s something nice…”
Before I got to finish, the next song started, and I knew from the first beats there was no chance. Gene moaned and clasped his hands over his ears.
“I hate this shit.”
“Of course you do. You hate everything by Village People.”
“Yes, but this song,” he shuddered in revulsion, “Is special. It really touches me. I want to kill something every single time I hear it.”
All intrigued now, I listened to the words, but they were standard uplifting fluff:
Together we will go away
Together we will leave someday
Together your hand in my hands
Together we will make our plans …
“Fuck, fuck,” groaned Gene over the chorus. “I hate this song. I hate this place. I hate this country. Did you know, that couple we heard about lost their court case. Marriage license denied. No marriage for homos.”
“I didn’t think they’d win. Why this burn to get married anyway? Not like one of them is knocked up, eh?”
“No, genius, it’s probably a financial scam – if you have a dependant, you could claim more benefits. Doesn’t make it any less valid, of course, marriage is all about legal issues and money-grubbing, but I’m appalled that we are denied that option.”
“Yeah,” I nodded sadly, mulling it over in my head, “If Dave and Colin were married, Dave would be set for life now, no way that step-bitch would be able to protest Colin’s will. Hell, they wouldn’t even have needed a will, Dave would get everything anyway.”
“Shut up about Dave already, he’s only twenty nine and he has a steady job, he’s fine. I’m talking about me! Who are these fuckers to say I can’t get married if I wanted to? It’s my civil right!”
I sighed and tried for my most patronizing tone: “You can get married, Gene, as long as it’s to a woman. If you can find a chick crazy enough to agree to that.”
“Yes. It’s just like freedom of religion as long as you’re Christian. Sickening. That’s it, I’m going to get married, let’s see them try and stop me. I think I have enough money to throw at the problem,” he leaned back, thoughtfully puffing the smoke out, and I simply gaped at him, trying to figure out if that was another one of his bad, bad, painfully unfunny jokes.
“It’s such a shame you can’t have a white wedding,” I said, trying to annoy him into making sense. “You’d look lovely in lace.”
“I’m serious, Todd,” he drawled with a smile I intensely didn’t like. “I’m going to marry you or die trying. Preferably the former. It sounds like more fun.”
“Me? Why me? Why the hell me?”
“Better the moron you know,” he said, smug and condescending.
“Listen, you prick,” I couldn’t quite figure out why this was pissing me off so much, maybe it was the fact that he dared to plan my life like that, like he owned me. “If you think I’d ever agree to participate in your scam or cry for attention or whatever… ”
“What’s the big deal? You are pretty much married to me already. You live with me, spend my money, sleep around… Hey, you took my virginity. Least you could do is marry me.”
Oh. He was joking after all. I relaxed in the chair and threw a good leer in his direction: “Yeah, good times. But remember, it wasn’t my idea in the first place, I was pressed into – okay, lemme rephrase that…”
It was probably for the best that I never got to finish that line.
“Excuse us, may we join you?” said someone behind me. The voice was smooth, velvety, polite and soft, like cat’s paw with all claws retracted, teasing, gentle, playful almost, close to my ear, so close that I thought I felt warm breath on my cheek. I jumped and earned a dirty smirk from Gene who noticed, of course, the sullen prick always noticed everything. He looked at whoever that was - sideways, quick glance, like they didn’t merit any more from him. If there was one thing Gene was great at, that would be the gentle art of making you feel like you were something stuck to the sole of his shoe.
“No,” he said shortly, and then did a double-take. “What the… Who let a baby inside my club? Oh, heads will roll.”
“I’m eighteen!” protested a different voice, high and squeaky. “Here, look at my ID!”
“I assure you it’s not fake,” said the first guy again, smiling, by the sound of it, and this time his voice went deeper and actually tickled me in places, lightly, like a soft painting brush. I didn’t want to look at him, it was bound to be disappointing, but I couldn’t resist, even trying to resist wasn’t an option.
After all, it’s always better to know, right?
So I turned my head to look, and he was standing there, eyeing me, wearing a simple, pleasant, good-natured little smile. When our eyes met, that smile slipped down a notch, and then he suddenly beamed at me so brightly like I was the first ray of sunshine after a week of rain.
Oh. Oh, fuck.
I clenched my teeth to make sure my jaw wasn’t hanging open. Gene kicked me under the table – shit, I must have looked truly pathetic – but I hardly felt it and didn’t even have the presence of mind to get him back.
That guy was… There is no way to describe it right. He was good-looking, yeah, tall, slim, graceful, shoulders straight and broad, hips deliciously narrow, and I really needed to stop thinking how good it would feel to grab them and pull him closer. So I looked back at his face and couldn't remember how or why I'd looked away in the first place.
Sometimes, when you think of what could have been or jack off in a shower or just daydream on a bus, you have those fantasies, half-formed and pointless: ideal world, ideal date, ideal fuck. Ideal face, something that’s not possible, that you’ll never see. And here I was, staring right at it, and thinking only one thing – boy, I had such weak imagination. The reality was better by far. Also, no matter what Gene said, God totally existed, because if Gene’s face wasn’t enough proof of that, now we had another bit of evidence. No way could this just accidentally happen through random mixing of genetic material and such. No freaking way.
He was wearing the wrongest outfit ever: beige pants, tweed sports jacket, striped dress shirt, tie. Glasses. It was so inappropriate that it looked downright kinky. He had a sleek Ziggy-mullet going on, only with the fringe overgrown and hanging over his eyes, and that had to be on purpose, because it made me shaky with want. I needed to brush that hair back, to pull those glasses off, to have a good look at his huge pretty eyes, to figure out what colour they were. In the dim light of the club what much I could see from here was mostly black of his dilated pupils.
“Hello,” he said with a little awkward giggle. “I’m Holden York, nice to meet you.”
He reached out his hand and I wanted to grab it and let him drag me - wherever, really – but then somehow my brain heroically did that thinking thing and I realised he was offering a handshake. His palm was dry and cool when I took it, and I held it gently, squeezing only a little, until his eyes rounded like he was reminding that he asked me something.
Oh, right.
“Todd Kemp. And that blond asshole is Eugene Sykes, manager of this dump.”
“Watch your mouth in front of the possible minor,” said Gene, carefully studying an ID card. “And you are welcome to find a classier place to offend with your presence.”
“This club is very nice,” said Holden politely, “I was worried it would be a little too much to take in, but the atmosphere is rather mild and pleasant.”
“Yeah, I know, sickeningly vanilla,” I nodded. “But that’s Gene for you. It's a good thing he’s not choosing the music himself, or we’d be grooving to Pink Floyd all night.”
“I have the tapes upstairs,” said Gene. “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
He tossed the ID on the table and sighed: “Looks real. Enjoy your stay, Mr Adams.”
“Rishi,” said the proud owner of the ID, and I finally noticed him.
He could be eighteen, but sixteen would be my first call. Short, wide-eyed, fresh-faced, pretty much with a neon banner “V-I-R-G-I-N” flashing on his forehead. Round chipmunk face, pert boy butt. Touch of clear lip-gloss, and he clearly wasn’t used to make-up, because his pink tongue kept coming out and carefully licking at the sticky stuff. Or that could be purely Gene-induced licking of lips. Looking at Gene did that to people.
“Oh, how rude of me,” said Holden. “This is Rishi Adams, my former pupil and a good friend.”
The boy was cute, and the eyeliner and artfully spiked hair really worked for him. Whatever Holden taught him, it wasn’t fashion sense, because he was dressed normally, in tight paint-splatter jeans and short-sleeved sparkly shirt, open to show off a golden necklace and quite a lot of his smooth hairless chest. It was almost a pity I never went for teenage boys, even back when I was one myself. Neither did Gene, as far as I knew, so that Rishi could drool over him all he wanted, it wasn’t happening.
“May I have this dance, Mr Sykes, please?” asked the boy in super annoying mouth-breathing shrill voice, sounding like some hungry orphan from that Christmas Carol movie. Gene twitched and gave him a look he used to terrify and emotionally cripple, but the stupid kid just kept smiling searchingly, eyebrows raised, so hopeful that I really, really wanted to smack him on the head. That’s not how you did things with Gene, but I wasn’t about to start sharing hints and tips. Took me years to figure him out, and I was keeping it all to myself, thank you.
“I don’t dance,” said Gene. “I’m not here to have a good time. I’m not available. I don’t like you. I think this covers it. If you as much as look at me again, I’ll get your ass thrown out of my club. Go away.”
The boy opened his big whiny mouth again, but before he could earn the wrath of Gene, Holden put a hand on boy’s arm and gently herded him away. Just as they were getting swallowed up by the crowd, Holden turned back and gave me another one of his smiles, apologetic, warm and friendly one this time. I was on my feet before I knew it.
“Don’t,” said Gene, and I froze on the spot, because that was the first. Ever. I wasn’t sure I could handle the shock.
“You actually mind?” I asked, totally stunned.
“I don’t like that guy,” he said, squinting in the general direction of where Holden should be. “There’s something off about him.”
“Fine, nobody’s forcing you. I like him.”
“Sure, you like anything that moves,” he shrugged and looked away. “Just don’t come crying to me when he’s through with you.”
I wanted to say something biting back, like – if I’m not picky, what does it say about him, or, yeah, what kind of moron would come seeking comfort to a lump of ice, or something, but my brain was already busy thinking up lines to try on Holden, so I just gave Gene the finger and started pushing through the press of dancing bodies looking for the inappropriately dressed hot guy.
Next Chapter
