bonnefois | [31_days][august fifth][Yami no Matsuei]tempering

The title is something of an idiotic pun – temper means of course, anger, but also to refine metal by repeated force and reheating/cooling. Companion to brick laying, one by one

Title: tempering
Day/Theme: August 5th / Make up for that one: a courageous heart, a bare blade, and a long and
yellow bow.
Series: Yami no Matsuei
Character/Pairing: Tsuzuki, Hisoka
Rating: at least in the PG- region.

Tsuzuki arrived with his head in the clouds, before the realization of sunk in being defeated before the battle even started. (He was too young to die, Tsuzuki thinks.
At sixteen he should be making mistakes and still thinking life was endless. Reveling in boring classes and going on dates, feeling each day, living. He shouldn’t here. )

It is simply a fortress, too tall to scale and too thick to penetrate with blind force. The stones are thickly hewn, there’s barbed wire on the outsets, rows of thick spikes. Steel and wood and stone, the plains around are barren. The moat below is deep and murky, the bridge creaks under his feet. (“it’s not different from how I treat anyone else” Hisoka says – but it should be different somehow, Tsuzuki almost says, but stops. It’s not that simple.)

The defenses are ironclad. A battalion could try for months to reach the core and fail. Tsuzuki leans on the stones, they don’t give to his touch, he runs over fingers over metal and the heat escapes into them. There are not cracks here, just solid defense. (“Hisoka’s face is a blank mask, rarely expressing any emotion but anger. Sometimes when their rooms adjoin, in hotels with two beds close together he hears things, dreams and nightmares. Sees his partner begin to shudder and writhe, the marks crisscrossing his body seem to grow darker in the moonlight, turning into a glaring, dead color. He always wakes Hisoka, a shake on the shoulder. “Did I say anything?” Hisoka always says. “No” Tsuzuki always lies. “I’ll make coffee” )

So he waits on the outsets, in cold. Encamping in a peaceful siege. Sometimes the drawbridge opens, ever so slightly. Tsuzuki knows if he lays his hands on the rough feel of the wood, Hisoka’s hand is that much closer.