written for feiya, because i'd mistaken a throwaway pairing request as an actual one. possibly the only yoshida/susumu fic in existence, i really wouldn't know.
[peace maker kurogane]
I.
There is a theory which goes like this: the act of observing changes the thing that is being observed.
II.
It gives Yoshida a dark twist of pleasure, quite unlike mere satisfaction, when he slides the window open
and catches the ninja off-guard. The face that stares back at him is far too young, too childish in shock.
( Yoshida prefers to think of the spy like this, as a nameless figure rather than as Yamazaki Susumu - to
think of him by the name that they have discovered would be to cheapen something about all of this, this
shadow-play of observer and the observed. )
In that moment, even the way the light falls is perfect.
The dark eyes are wide and unguarded. By the time the ninja leaps away from the window ledge, Yoshida has
already seen enough.
***
Later, when he speaks to Suzu, Yoshida means every word he says. That night he wonders what that face looks
like when it is not smudged by shadows, when it is lit by the sun and not by flickering lantern-light; what
it would look like when touched by sleep instead of surprise. The ninja's fingers would be long and slim, he
thinks, calloused but no less lovely when they move.
The young man is neither fire nor steel, yet there is something about him more compelling than either of
those things. Tonight the sake is bitter on Yoshida's tongue. He sips it, all the same, and wonders.
III.
Most of Yoshida's life has been a war, and in wartime one cannot afford distractions. Yoshida understands
this in a way Suzu cannot, and it has helped him forsake attachment. This does not explain why, on certain
drowsy afternoons, Yoshida finds himself imagining a dozen different voices for a face he has barely glimpsed
before; it does not explain why he sees the same dark gaze in his dreams, night after night, nor why he wakes
to the swiftly-fading memory of smooth skin and uncertain grace.
In his dreams, he has stolen kisses that he knows he will never have. The ninja's pale lips are cold, and
always taste like blood.
(
geocities.com/rainblurred)