Every Pairing Under the Sun
Author's Note: I really should be updating You're Mine, but unfortunately I seem to be having a writer's block time. I got stuck halfway through the chapter, and due to the fact that I don't want to make my readers read complete crap, I'm taking a very brief break from it (about three days), and put my crap here instead.
What is here?
Here is about the least innovative idea you've ever heard: drabbles featuring every pairing under the sun. Both to bring out some creative ideas (creativity would be required in getting certain pairings together), and to break a block.
First pairing of the week… blame it on Garnet-chan, whom I've never met, talked to, or known in any other form other than 'have seen', but who is a brilliant writer, and whose Hao/Yoh fics I read shortly before deciding to do this. So yeah, Hao/Yoh for the first drabble.
..And yes, I realize that she's doing the same sort of idea for one of her fics. However, hers has dignity, and probably, sanity. So go read hers, and if you have spare time leftover, come back and read mine. (It's called Kirei na Kanjou.)
Feel free to put out a request for the next pairing, however. As long as it's not something like Kororo/Silva (look at the height difference!) I'll try.
..I may even try for Kororo/Silva. But you'd probably have to get me drunk first.
OC pairings are also requestable.. I guess…
Disclaimer: I don't own Shaman King, or else they wouldn't be being translated into English so bloody SLOWLY.
Set in an AU universe, not dissimilar to You're Mine
(A/N: Slight OOCness ahead. I'm tired and this was written in twenty-six minutes exactly.)
Drabble One: Orange Flavored
Even when they had been young, the three of them had been together. Master Yohmei would come across them in the grounds occasionally, two dark heads bent together with a third golden-haired head. Oftentimes, they were quarreling, although one could hardly accuse the meek, easygoing Yoh of quarreling, and Hao was as easy to battle with as a glass wall.
And when the blonde had stormed off, leaving a raging storm of bitter, cutting words to tear Yoh to pieces, he had always been the one by to gently mend them again, with clumsy fingers and a cupid's bow mouth that had not yet learned how to speak tactfully. He had been present on the earth a thousand years or more, but it was a new thing to him to speak truths that would not hurt and burn his mark into another's mind. It was a new thing to him to speak to a part of him that should have known all that he had to say.
And yet all the memories had been resolved contentedly. Anna had always returned to them, placid with the iron-cold calm that would become her trademark as they aged together. Yoh would always be roused from his dream of raucous tears. And Hao would always be in the background again, lips twisted into a fine mockery of adult amusement as he watched them together, fitting in the manner of puzzle-pieces that had never known a day apart.
He was content in being the mender; he, who had broken so many hearts and dreams on his way to the present. He was content in waiting for Yoh to grow in strength, for Yoh to gradually find his way to the path that would lead him to his brother.
But mending cannot forever satisfy those who have learned to break…
---
Anna had not asked for him at breakfast, but had sat in a stony silence, surrounded by brooding thoughts of her own that Hao was not interested enough to break through. That had been his first clue that not all was well.
But even if she had been tranquil with arrogant ease, he would have suspected something – Yoh was his other half, and the person that he knew best of all. Every ion of his routine had been ingrained with such precision into the long-haired shaman's mind that he could no longer recall a time when things had been anything but so. The visions of a thousand years past had not faded from his mind – he was still as sharply ambitious than ever. But ask him to recall his companions from a thousand years past, and their countenances were blurred with the incomprehensibility of faded memory.
He had no room in his mind for their presence now. They were dead, and had been for too long, while Yoh was delightedly, vibrantly alive.
And to reach that luminescent presence, he had only to reach out…
---
A gentle brush of the shoulder drew the other's attention. Dark eyes that were rimmed with crimson sorrow, but were without the sullen resentment of humans, stared up at him guilelessly, with a swoop of helplessness that Hao had never learned to acquire. "I'm fine." Yoh said immediately, and tried to smile, though his lips were too parched for that stretch, and cracked to reveal tiny fissures of blood.
"Hai." His brother agreed blandly. "If by fine you mean completely distraught. What's happened this time?" But even as he spoke, he was stepping back, hands immediately folding behind his back in a gesture of expectancy. He had never been the kind to support the weak; no matter how many advantages the feeble acquired, if others could match it, they would become weak again. And though Yoh was his brother, the half that had been severed from him at birth, he would do no less than this.
Only the dark-haired shaman himself felt the pressure as four half-moon nails sliced into his palm in an attempt to contain himself, to force himself not to help as Yoh struggled slowly to his feet, devoid of tears, now; hollowed.
"Nothing's happened." The features that he knew as well as his own bore a tired expression, a weariness that was wholly unlike the buoyant Yoh that the world had grown to love. "Nothing at all. Anna's just a little more disappointed than usual… and… and she…" The breath he drew into his lungs was shuddering, tentative. Though Hao was impatient for the knowledge that haunted his twin's eyes, nevertheless, he was more tactful now than ever he had been when he was young, and he was silent.
At last, Yoh broke the silence again, with a statement that astonished the other shaman.
"They're considering switching her engagement with me to you instead."
"Hai?" He forced himself to say casually, and felt an amused smile lilt up to his lips automatically. "That's foolish of them. How do they know that I even…"
"Even what?"
The returned smile was wicked with a slow, honeyed malice. "That I even swing that way?"
A momentary burst of confusion overcame Yoh's gradually recovering composure before he comprehended the metaphor and smiled slightly, weakly. "Found someone already, have you?"
"Found someone?" The other was momentarily startled before recovering with abrupt composure. "You could say that…"
A sigh escaped the slightly younger brunet's lips as he glanced with forced blitheness towards his brother. "That's good. At least one of us's happy." An involuntary jerk brought him to glance at the steps, and inadvertently, he winced.
None of his actions, however, escaped Hao's eyes – and the astute mind behind the dark hair comprehended immediately, bitterly. "You… love her?"
"Who wouldn't?" The dark-haired boy replied softly, though his eyes never left the stairs. And his brother was put in mind of a puppy in the rain, waiting while growing soaked to the bone, waiting in the middle of an intersection simply because his master had paused there and had told him to "stay". He would wait forever, if necessary, always in the rain, chilled to the bone; always waiting…
Brusquely, he rose, moving to pull out the contents of the drawers until he found the tiny metal container necessary to his present purpose. "I wouldn't, for one. I'm not so much of a fool as to let Anna have something as delicate as my heart. She'd tear it apart just to see how and if it worked." The words were spoken amusedly, but they were meant with a wholehearted fervor that seemed unlikely in one as composed as he.
"..It sounds silly when I think about it…" Yoh admitted, offering a faint smile to the one who had always been his caretaker. "But I wouldn't mind so much if she were the one doing the tearing."
The hand that gripped the metal container convulsed for a moment, contracting about the tiny rounded thing in his palm and subtly squashing it. "I suppose so." He forced himself to say lightly. "If I were in love.. it wouldn't matter how many times I was torn, so long as, if they were torn, I could mend the pieces again." As Yoh flashed him an inquiring look, his smile became abruptly wicked. "What a pity that I'm not; many people love romantics." Fumbling with the lid from the tiny container, he pulled it off, revealing a scented chapstick-like concoction within. "Hold still." He directed the other boy, who did so obediently. A deft finger wiped the necessary amount from the unmarred surface before touching it to his twin's lips gently.
He could sense the stilled pressure within the other brunet's body as his breathing slowed, growing quite still in order to ease Hao's task. And even this lightest of burdens was sufficient to content him with the world again…
"There." He said in satisfaction as he completed his task. "I'm not sure if this is flavored too or not. I think I asked for orange, but the container doesn't say."
"It doesn't matter." Yoh responded with a smile, eyes curving into closed semi-circles of contentment. "Thank yo—mmph!" For unexpectedly, his lips were sealed… with the touch of another's.
Oddly, Hao's lips fitted easily over his own, as though they were the two puzzle-pieces that had always been apart but had been newly discovered to fit together… Dizzyingly, he thought he could see the flash of colors that had not yet been invented on the inside of his eyelids, glowing brilliant, variegated hues that made him lightheaded with confusion.
Distantly, he was aware that the other boy's lips had left his own, and that Hao was gazing at him with something akin to satisfaction.
"Definitely orange-flavored." The faintly older shaman confirmed with an iniquitous grin as his brother's eyes refocused upon the real world. "Get better soon, Yoh." With a brotherly pat on the younger boy's head, he strode out of the room.
Leaving, admittedly, a rather confused Yoh behind. But then again, Yoh had always been confused.
Author's Note: About 15x too long for a drabble.. x.x; But oh well. Review? Or at least tell me what pairing should be up next?