shadow_piper

A gift for Kane-sama, who has been very kind. Thanks for listening and being super-awesome. This emo American teenager appreciates it.

I hope you like, no matter how un-beta'd it is. LOL. It's too early for me to care much right now. {hug}



Ashura/Yasha 50 Sentence Challenge

1) Comfort:
Even though he had quite the comfortable bed back in his room, he had to admit that waking up on his tea room floor had its perks.

2) Kiss:
The first kiss was an act of desperation, a silent plea for him to stay, not to go, and die, and break his heart into a thousand bloody pieces, but when he announced the next day that he was still leaving, Ashura grew silent with barely checked disappointment and anger, and would blame the entire incident on one too many drinks.

3) Soft:
Yasha could rarely be called out for being overly-passionate; here love existed in those cliché butterfly feelings and other soft ways of portraying deep affection.

4) Pain:
The wounded finger was caught up almost immediately and pressed to Yasha’s lips to staunch the bleeding, while the vegetables lay forgotten and un-chopped on the counter.

5) Potatoes:
After many years of potatoes and dried foods, Yasha was relieved to be back in the hands of a more refined cook, no matter how smug a certain someone was about it.

6) Rain:
He who dodged bullets and survived dynamite blasts managed to catch a cold while walking home in the rain and couldn’t quite dodge as a fist connected with his arm; Ashura was positively furious.

7) Chocolate:
Smiling innocently, Ashura just happened to mention that because he was a confectioner, he knew exactly 103 different ways to enjoy chocolate syrup.

8) Happiness:
As he crawls into bed, Ashura muses that true happiness comes in someone to kiss you good morning, goodnight, and all the empty spaces in between.

9) Telephone:
Within five minutes of having left the house, Yasha’s phone buzzed with desperate urgency, and he spent the rest of his walk assuring Ashura that no, he wasn’t leaving for good, and yes, he would be back in time for lunch.

10) Ears:
Yasha likes to hear Ashura speak, likes to hear him sing little clips of old standards, but he mostly enjoys when the younger in close enough to whisper, the words of the secret and his breath warm in his ears.

11) Name:
Having heard that “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, Ashura delights in coming up with names for his beloved that should never leave the house.

12) Sensual:
Ashura had a way of simple moving that made other people’s eyes shift conspicuously from their Sunday papers, and Yasha wondered if the younger man knew that there was something behind the counter that people were interested in more than his pastries.

13) Death:
Ashura was not unafraid of death; death along with distance would take him away all over again.

14) Sex:
Such carnal thoughts were something that Yasha tried hard to avoid, because Ashura deserved so much more than that, to inspire love and reverence, but sometimes the lithe young man made that task harder than it should have been.

15) Touch:
“How sweet. You two are always touching,” the hunter said with a playful glance towards his not-so-willing date, and with a slight blush, Ashura realized that this was true.

16) Weakness:
Yasha’s biggest weakness was one little pout from the younger man, but he was also the reason for his greatest strength.

17) Tears:
Even sitting close to his soldier now, Ashura can remember the sinking sensation of feeling as dry and bare as desert sand, but somehow still able to wring enough tears from his eyes to fill an ocean.

18) Speed:
Before he even had one foot out the door, Ashura bounded across the threshold in order to push lunch into Yasha’s hands, lovingly wind a scarf around his neck, and stand on his toes to press a quick but searing kiss to his lips, before smirking and returning to the counter.

19) Wind:
“Fine, take all I have an then just fly away,” Ashura thought bitterly as the birds he fed caught the wind to some far away place, but he didn’t want them to hear those words on the off chance that they’d never come back.

20) Freedom:
He could have anyone he wanted, Ashura reasoned, and had the freedom to choose, but even though he was gone, and his heart ached, all he ever wanted was Yasha, and had no choice in that at all.

21) Life:
“Dude, you need a life. Get yourself a girlfriend or something,” Ryouou commented, and Yasha silently found it sad that he was agreeing with the loud-mouth recruit straight out of high school, at least on the point of needing a life.

22) Jealousy:
He wouldn’t call the feeling jealousy, but he certainly was not pleased with the older women who practically hung off of the older man every place they went.

23) Hands:
Ashura’s elegant hands were the kind perfect for playing pianos, swishing pens, and creating pieces of art; Yasha was fortunate enough to discover that they were perfect for holding as well.

24) Taste:
Ashura tasted nothing of sugar, chocolate, or vanilla, or anything cliché like that, but of sweat, a little of cooking oil, and that singular taste that belongs only to skin, but it made him no less exotic.

25) Devotion:
“It’s a wonder he’s not dead” the doctor said gravely, carefully cleaning the ruined eye. “He must have someone to go home to.”

26) Forever:
It was only at times where fingers intertwined, cheeks brushed, and gentle smiles linked them across a crowded room that death and distance seemed to lose their grip, and forever seemed more reachable.

27) Blood:
After all the blood was shed, Yasha had feared that he would return a cold person, but it seemed to dissolve and melt away with a clever smile and a “Welcome home, soldier.”

28) Sickness:
Only after observing the devastating effect that Ashura seemed to have on men and women, even at a young age, was Yasha able to convince himself that he might not be completely sick.

29) Melody:
Often times Yasha regrets how solemn the new Ashura is, because he can still remember when dancer’s steps accompanied the lilting melody he still hums when he thinks no one else is watching.

30) Star:
The Northern Star stood ever fixed in the sky as guide to travelers of the world as they made their ways home, bright and solitary in the sky, but Yasha fleetingly wondered if it was ever lonely up there by itself, and if it was still waiting for its own companion to find its way back into the inky starscape.

31) Home:
Only when long fingers dug themselves into the fabric of his hakama, full lips trying to smile through broken sobs, did Yasha realize, yes, he was home.

32) Confusion:
Ashura laughed at the uncharacteristically dumbfounded look on Yasha’s features not because the later didn’t understand the innuendo, but because he most likely didn’t believe that such a think could come from Ashura’s mouth.

33) Fear:
During the day, the confectioner was as bright as sunshine, but nightmares of a place far from his little shop made the nerves beneath his skin cold with dread long after he’d woken up screaming.

34) Thunder/Lightening:
As a teenager Ashura was bold and feared absolutely nothing, especially not thunder, but if Yasha would hold him, he didn’t mind pretending.

35) Bonds:
A wise witch once told him that with every meeting, a bond is formed, but how was Yasha to know that such a strong one would be made when he first locked eyes with a privileged, but unhappy child?

36) Market:
The answering machine replays Yasha’s message from just minutes before he arrived home, and Ashura stands rigid, absolutely loathing himself for making a trip to the market.

37) Technology:
Being an ‘old man’, Yasha didn’t do well with email and the like, but his letters were always several pages long.

38) Gift:
When Yasha arrives in a new place, he tries to find unique gifts to send back home, and always manages something. However, he reflects a bit ruefully that Ashura is no longer a child who would delight in such small things, and what can he send a man who has everything?

39) Smile:
He’d never liked young children, even when he’d been a child himself; Ashura would never
know that his first smile towards the older boy would cement him as the exception to Yasha’s rule.

40) Innocence:
Ashura never felt as though he’d been innocent, at least not since his father passed, but in an odd sense, he wanted to be so that Yasha wouldn’t have to work so hard guarding him for nothing.

41) Completion:
Sometimes when it was late and the older man was asleep and Ashura’s mind was buzzing with a thousand thoughts, he’d take to memorizing his beloved’s features in fine detail, and just about when he thought he’d neared completion he’d drift into slumber, causing him to start again from the beginning the next night.

42) Clouds:
“If the world were made of candy, clouds would definitely be marshmallows,” the middle-school student stated, nodding in such a way that assured Yasha that Ashura would one day make a fine connoisseur of the culinary arts.

43) Sky:
The sky was everything just beyond the reach of his fingertips, but when they were together, coins were like small moons in their pockets, clouds as easy to wipe away as fog on a mirror, and the only time the stars ever shifted was to get a better view of the love story playing out below.

44) Heaven:
For all of his supposed sins, Yasha was pretty sure heaven wasn’t an option, but it was overrated in his opinion and couldn’t compare to what he already had.

45) Hell:
Hell was the first official-looking government letter, which could only be opened hours later with trembling fingers.

46) Sun:
Yasha was captivated by the dual natures of the one he loved, cool and mysterious by night, but he liked best was when the sun caught the red highlights of his black hair and glinted from the strands of copper and gold in his eyes, seemingly setting Ashura ablaze.

47) Moon:
Koi scales through off tiny, silvery rainbows as its swim interrupted the moon’s reflection in the water, and Ashura, whose only company on this night was the fish in his pond, could only take comfort in the fact that wherever he was, he would be seeing this moon too.

48) Waves:
Tears pricking the corners of his eyes, Ashura leaned heavily against the counter as he fought a wave of nausea; a newscaster calmly reported that a suicide bomber had blasted a bus and its passengers to smoldering pieces, and all he could think was, “Oh God, please, no.”

49) Hair:
Throughout his school years and later during his adult career, Ashura always put his foot down when the authority insisted on a more “gender appropriate” hair cut, though he had to admit that he might not have been so adamant about it had Yasha not always been so fond of that long hair.

50) Supernova:
When the golden-eyed child was still very small and unable to recognize that it was the unhealed scars of a crumbling life speaking, he asked a lot of “what ifs”: what if we’re hit by a tsunami, what if a meteor falls or the sun explodes? His friend, still very much child himself and having no real answer, always replied that he’d be there and would protect him, and no matter how silly that might have sounded, those words were always enough.