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ms0milk · 3 months ago

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firework breathing, fifth form.

tengen uzui(s) x bounty hunter of sorts

no cw whipped tengen and the wives try to recruit the love of their lives using all means available. thank you @ltadoriyuujl for making this request for the @ficsforgaza initiative! to say I had fun with this one is an understatement 2.5k

Vigilante justice had repercussions, and before you would have said you were amply prepared. Law enforcement had no chance of keeping up with you. That’s what happens when you don’t believe in monsters. You could make all the noise you’d like in a hunt and their incompetence only served to soothe, always looking for the humans on their wanted posters. Bounty hunters cowered when your blade cleaved through the throats of demons and theirs hacked pitifully at the creatures happy to consume them.

A looted sword and penchant for timeliness, what fight couldn’t you weasel victory from? The answer was rhetorical until a letter arrived on scented paper, where, buried under three pages of classical poetry there lay a clear and calligraphed, 'Marry me.' Signed, Uzui Tengen.

“Saw your kill,” Tengen gleamed at dawn outside the shop that kept you good and fed on steamed buns. “Just as flashy as they say.”

“Next time someone has something to say about me, kindly change the subject.”

To call him persistent was an understatement. The Uzuis were old money with old traditions and older practices. Their mansion sat behind flowering hedges and wisteria vines on the stream at the lip of the forest, just too far to receive visitors and just close enough to rub the opulence in the whole town’s face. You quite liked your little life, the little apartment above Old Man Tatsu’s udon shop, the reward money that came in little pouches when you rolled bountyheads across the sheriff's desk. Though you had to be fast. Their expensive criminals had a habit of disintegrating.

“Are you Kinoe?” He’d ask as you shopped for dry goods. Obnoxiously tall and draped in silk for every color of the week, the master of the mysterious house was never too far from the hunter in her linen haori. “Who's your master?”

Sometimes a wife would come and when Makio accompanied you she would drop coin into the merchants’ dishes before you had the chance to pay for yourself, “Stop asking her so many questions.”

“Women like to talk.”

“Not to you.”

And so gifts started arriving shortly after. Clothes and ribbons, a barley pillow of purple silk, perfumes, ceramics– your one room above Tatsu’s udon shop was soon so laden with treasure you worried it might fall through the floor. “Leave it here,” Hina whispered to couriers from the staircase outside your apartments.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” you yawned in the doorframe, wrapped in a padded red hanten. It was one of your many new treasures. Hina smiled wide at the insinuation and you could see even through sleep, all the notes she took behind bright eyes. Three more jackets came that autumn and the fourth was delivered in person.

You slid a cloth down the bladedge of your sword after a hunt. As always, your weapon had burst from the arc over your head and with shattering speed through the back of the creature’s throat, but it found your scent the second the rattling strike touched its flesh. It twisted this time and caught the blade at a notch in its neck before losing its head. Every swipe of the cloth down your sword was filled with the apprehension of it catching on a crack in the blade.

In the cold candlelight, there was a grunt and then a hand in your apartment window. You startled when the hand started to talk, and gripped your sword from the cover of blankets. “Don’t pounce, princess.” Tengen’s voice was at least better than the snarl of a demon. His head peeked over the frame. Two lilac eyes grinned at you.

“Little late for a climb, Uzui.”

“S’cold,” he grunted and his head dropped below the frame for a moment before his hand gripped the sill and the rest of him followed, swinging over itself into the room. His mountainous body landed without a sound and he smiled, white hair framed by moonlight, “brought a gift.”

You thought he might be referring to himself before he rummaged through his haori and pulled a twine wrapped bundle out from under his arm. You rolled your eyes, “How do you know where I live?”

“You know where I live.”

“You want me to know where you live,” you crept forward to accept the package, “you’ve practically spelled my name out with your hedges.”

“Did you like that?”

He crouched a respectful distance away from where you startled back into blankets and settled on his knees. He and his family moved like cats in the night. They appeared exactly where you expect them and still it was always surprising. “Why do you work so hard for my attention?”

“I want more than your atten–”

“Mr. Uzui.”

He bobbed his head in concession and shifted his legs underneath him so that the white muscle of his thigh glowed through the drapes and folds of his long pretty robes. He pulled one knee up and rested like a king against your simple wooden window. “Who taught you?”

“Taught me what?”

“The sword.” He pointed with a painted nail to the weapon you kept tucked against your chest.

You shook your head, “No one, I just– I found it.”

“And so you hunt demons for fun?”

You smiled through the sarcasm, “For money.”

“Is there much money to be had in bounties that disintegrate?” He loved to thread a reel between endearing and irritating and that evening was no different. He watched you like an acrobat on a line.

“And what do you know about hunting, Sir?”

“Why do you think the strong ones stay away from this town?” Strong ones, was a horrifying thought and for a moment you forgot to stay cool across from the sudden and fleeting stoicism of your patron. Tengen’s eyes darkened, his broad hands flexed like a fist would be more natural. “You’re safe here. Protected.”

“That’s not necessary.”

And his facade changed with a nod of his head. The smile returned under summer eyes. “I hear you fighting, you strike like fifty firecrackers– a roman candle–” You jerked your hand to your lips in a signal to keep it down, which he did, and leaned forward with a simmered voice, “Your breath is like a firework. Like nothing I’ve ever heard.” It was as if the sound followed the command of its master and cupped your jaw where he’d like to. Worry about your chipped sword was as far away as ever. Your life was warmer with the Uzuis in it, if not just slightly more embarrassing. He raised an eyebrow, “Have you studied the poets?

One picture of your apartments could inspire a whole comedy performance. Cold and wooden and upholstered with jewels that could buy the building five times over. If he started sending poetry you might have actually had to pay taxes. Tengen waited, happy and handsome, for your response as you stared. Could you have ever guessed grabbing the sword of a fallen soldier as your village crumbled around you would have led to this?

“In pale moonlight,” he urged and leaned farther towards you, drawing his knuckle over your fingers at sword hilt, “the wisteria’s scent…”

You steadied yourself through the waves of goosebumps that came from his touch and his gaze, closer than he was before. “It’s late, Mr. Uzui,” you managed and closed your hands around his to keep it from wandering farther. He sighed through a smile and drew back slowly to stand.

“Then I’ll wish you goodnight, Mrs. Uzui.”

You pursed your lips and he laughed like a windchime, lightly, his warmth and perfume spilling from his chest as he drew a thick haori tight around himself. “I’ll show myself out.” He stood and crossed your room to pull open the door.

“No,” you startled again and covered your own mouth at the volume. He turned to you, grinning, surprised, and it took everything you had not to grin back behind your fingers. His flamboyant dress was already enough, townsfolk didn’t need any reason to speculate on why a man who dressed like a successful pimp was coming from your rooms at midnight.

Tengen flashed one more obnoxious and knowing smile before crossing back over his dozens of gifts and stepping through your window frame like there might be a staircase waiting outside. “As you wish.”

He dropped with your heart and your sword clattered to the ground and you dove to see, surely, a broken puddle of a man two stories down. But the master of the flamboyant mansion only dusted his shoulders off with his landing and turned back up to watch you from below. As always, every proposal of his was punctuated with a deep bow.

See how he likes it, you grumbled, brimming with renewed frustration. Just a few weeks later and it was supposed to be a simple night. The edge of town reeked of blood that day, the blood of fresh kills and wild animals, all day it lingered on the shadows that touched the forest. A new demon was always easy to track because hunger is easy to smell when you’re quiet. You were the loudest thing at twilight. You hushed the moss underfoot and bobbed between branches. Simple. Night. You would have been easy to smell too if demons weren’t too gluttonous to realize humans can reek of bloodlust.

In the clearing ahead where iron mingled in the fog, stood a woman where, by all accounts of your tracking, the creature should have been. Uzui’s Suma stood alone, pregnant beyond imagining, and dropped her kunai in the grass when you stumbled into the open. She wailed when she saw you and sobbed immediately to the tune of, “s’not fair!” and “wanna propose too!” as she waddled closer.

Like gifts that much– lucky I’m even delivering this one.

You spent the better part of two hours walking her back home, sword raised and mind racing at all the ways you might strap a pregnant woman to your body and walk a little faster for the both of you. She apologized sixty-seven times and kept track herself and when you finally approached the back gate of her home, she labored over her belly to pull the latch open. No key, no guard, no Uzui. No supervision! No protection! No worried greeting at the door–

You gripped tighter at the vines on the side of the house and pushed higher. Your feet found purchase in wisteria so solid it must have been a hundred years old, farther, higher towards the window at the corner of the mansion that Suma pointed you towards. You hissed and pulled yourself the last two feet to the windowsill.

“Uzui,” came out as a grunt.

“M’lady,” he smiled. You edged yourself into the room with an arm braced over the sill. Tengen rose from his desk to meet you. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Bite me,” you grunted and regretted immediately and slung your other arm inside, ignoring all the retorts such a man might have to that.

He settled on, “Happily,” and offered you a hand. Suma had pointed you to her husband’s office before drifting towards the pantry for a snack. The room was modest, tatami mats and a paper door, and a low desk on the floor long enough to fit his long legs. Western paintings were hung satisfyingly asymmetrically in what would otherwise be a very traditional room. A coal brazier glowed beside the cushion he used as a seat.

You tried your best to do without the hand but when footing gave way and your chin dipped below the window, he snatched you up by the bicep. The temperature difference inside was dizzying.

“Long night?”

“Understatement,” you shivered in the new heat. Your shoes and scabbard suddenly seemed too dirty inside such a pleasant home and a bit of your fire faded. You sat on the lip of the widow and pulled your legs up beside you. “You–”

“Yes?” Tengen cocked his head, smiling always smiling. His loose white hair fell in locks over his shoulders.

“Your wife was wandering demon-infested woods until just a minute ago.”

“My Suma?” You thought he might ask which one and had prepared a thousand scathing retorts, but he only watched your anger fall from you cooly, “she wanted to impress you.”

“By dying?”

“She killed your demon didn’t she?” You opened your mouth too quickly to realize you hadn’t processed the thought. Tengen massaged a hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. He almost looked normal like this, in a pretty house, in a warm room glowing by firelight. The cold of the night nipped your back in breezes. “Did it work?”

“Did what work?”

“You impressed?” He chuckled and settled himself on the floor beside the window. He knelt beneath you, elbow on sill and cheek in hand. “Do we impress you?”

You rolled your eyes but didn’t fight a smile, “You all do something to me, but impress it not the word.”

“Do you think of us?”

“Naggingly.”

“You worry?”

“Not anymore,” you sucked your teeth and pushed his head off balance with a finger to his forehead. “She really scared me, you know. All those months pregnant and alone like that.”

He grumbled something like, not alone, and, mice were with her, which you chose to ignore because Tengen Uzui took up your rough fingers in his. Whatever face you made he couldn’t see. He brought the knuckles to his lips and kissed your ring finger just once before releasing you. “My wives are capable. They don’t need permissions and they don’t need escorts, but know they are cherished by me.” You watched him, fingers lingering in the warm space. “They want you, I want you. Want to cherish you.

The sincerity, the lack of laughter, made your ears hot. His lilac eyes set to swallow you. “Mr. Uzui–”

“Tengen.”

“Tengen–”

“Mrs. Uzui?”

“No,” you giggled and rolled your eyes. He rose to his knees and made to guide you inside but you rested two hands on his broad shoulders to settle the advance. You turned and tucked your legs back out the window, “It’s late.”

“Then come rest.”

“Mr. Tengen,” and the voice came out so much softer than you meant it to, “In pale moonlight.”

He clenched his own jaw at that as if to keep himself from pouncing. The veins in his hands rose on the sill instead of around what he so badly wanted. “The wisteria’s scent..”

“Comes from far away.” With your last murmured words and a smile, you dropped back into the vines and floated to the garden floor. He stared after you from the second story as you took a theatrical bow and called back up just once, “G’night princess.”

Next time then, he agonized behind his own smile, pink climbing up his throat like a spell. In the hallway outside of his office, the wives groveled amongst each other in piles cursing their husband’s lack of charm.

"In pale moonlight the wisteria's scent comes from far away." -Yosa Buson, 18th c.

#thank you so much as always love!#and thx for your patience #and thank you 18th century poet yosa buson #tengen x reader #kny x reader #uzuis x reader #ficsforgaza

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