Disclaimer: I do not own Yami no Matsuei.

How Did This Story Come to Be?: This is a Gift!Fic for Christmas/Hannukah/Yule/etc. When asking my flist what they wanted in a fic, ehrenyu requested a TsuSoka Christmas fic, "fluffy but not lame". distorted_r seconded the suggestion, and added a request that I include my "personal kink" that I've talked about on LJ before. Finally, eggdrpsoup said I could write anything I wanted, but it was quite obvious she wanted pr0n. And thus, the fic was born. I was originally intending for it to be an epic one-shot, but I haven't finished it yet and want at least part of it to be in time for Christmas, so here is the first section. It's not the shortest one.

What's With All The Catholicism?: It's long been a theory of mine, based on Books 2 and 4 of the manga and episodes 3 and 6 of the anime, that Tsuzuki was raised Catholic. Ehrenyu requested that the fic be set at Christmas, and since I'm going to be an Interfaith minister and am obsessed with religion, I figured I'd work Tsuzuki being raised Catholic in here.

So What Do Those Religious References Mean?: In order:

1) A venial sin is a non-serious sin, or one done without full knowledge thereof. It's contrasted with mortal sin (killing, stealing, adultery, lying, and dishonoring your parents), and the eternal sin of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, committed in seven different ways: Despair (believing you will never be granted Grace), Assumption (believing that you already have or do not need Grace), Impenitence (refusing to feel guilty over your sins), Obstinacy (refusing to seek God), Resistance (refusing to adhere to what you "know" is true), and Envy (of another's spiritual welfare). Ironically, I'd argue that both Tsuzuki and Muraki have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit: Tsuzuki with Despair and Muraki with Impenitence.

2) See my fic "Oni no Ko" for details on their move from Ageo to Tokyo; the story's the same. I'm including how Tsuzuki's mother died in this story, but skipping the "Forbidden Love" storyline, because it's too big a concept to be handled here.

3) I made Saya a Christian based on the fact that she's spotted wearing a crucifix in Book 8, during the Valentine's Day Body-Switching story. I'm not sold on the idea, but it's a fun theory.

4) Tsuzuki doesn't eat sweets for forty days in the spring because he gives them up for Lent.

5) The Maria Kannon is a Madonna and Child statuette disguised as the bodhisattva Kannon with an unidentified child.

6) I'll assume you know what Grace is, as well as Mass and the sacrament of Confession that I mentioned earlier in the text.

7) Despite its lack of hype, Easter is the most important holiday in the Christian religion, not Christmas.

8) St. Teresa of Avila was a nun who experienced ecstatic union with God, and wrote about her experiences. The problem is that spiritual and sexual ecstasy are very similar (religious experiences can even be triggered by orgasms), and her works used language that could be construed as highly sexual (it's even called "Bridal Mysticism" FFS), so a 13-year-old's mind would naturally go straight to the gutter, I think. Quote: "I saw in [the Seraphim's] hands a long golden spear, and at the point of the iron there seemed to be a little fire. This I thought that he thrust several times into my heart, and that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew out the spear he seemed to be drawing them with it, leaving me all on fire with a wondrous love for God. The pain was so great that it caused me to utter several moans; and yet so exceeding sweet is this greatest of pains that it is impossible to desire to be rid of it […]"

9) St. Mary's Cathedral is a church in Bunkyo, which is in Tokyo Prefecture. The building Tsuzuki would have gone to was destroyed in WWII and rebuilt in 1964.

10) Not Catholic, but Nakir is an Islamic angel associated with judgment. I Japan-ized his name and made him the angel present at people's individual judgments.

What Else Do I Have To Know?: I'm combining the anime and manga (as usual). I place the Kyoto storyline at early November of 1998, which means the story takes place on and around Christmas of the same year. Our boys are physically recovered but obviously not back at work.

He'd been trying. It had only been a month and a half since Kyoto, but he'd really been trying. He'd sworn to himself that the crippling self-loathing that sat on his shoulder like a parrot had to go. Hisoka wanted him around and as long as there was that lifeline, Tsuzuki was not going to let go of it. There was no earthly good in going back to rock bottom.

But his subconscious was making it hard to convince himself that he wasn't a worthless, terrible person. There was nothing unusual, he knew, about dreaming of making love to the person who'd been your personal savior in more ways than one. There was something unusual—worse than unusual—about fantasizing of tying a rape victim to a bed and pretending that Hisoka would enjoy it. That it wouldn't bring to mind (and be akin to) Magical Barbed Wire or dying before turning seventeen.

And worse, that it wouldn't make "You're in no position to judge me" absolutely true.

Also, Tsuzuki was pretty sure it was some kind of venial sin to evenly mentally refer to an ordinary person as a "savior". Especially in a church.

Most of his spiritual upbringing had been conducted at his mother's knee. Fear had kept the family's Christianity hidden until they relocated from Ageo to the more open-minded, or at least less nosy, Tokyo. Formal Mass was foreign to him, and as far as he was concerned, no priest could ever replace his mother. As life went on Confession became agony. After his death he refused to step foot in a church unless it was part of his mission.

He'd kept some things on, of course. No one except Saya knew why he didn't touch sweets for forty days in the spring. He kept his mother's prized Maria Kannon on a shelf in his bedroom. Sometimes he even said Grace. And he definitely knew that Easter was the more important holiday. But it was December now, dammit, and he couldn't control his inexplicable urge to go to church any more than he could control his sexual imagination.

A terrible combination. This was worse than when Ruka had nicked a copy of St. Teresa of Avila's autobiography from their father's library for them to read when he was thirteen and she fourteen, and ever since he'd never been able to look a nun in the eye without thinking of "this I thought that he thrust several times…"

Hisoka must have thought he was crazy when he refused to be the one negotiating with the nun for Otonashi's diary.