UNEXPECTED by Aenisses Thai
All rights to Fushigi Yuugi belong to Yuu Watase, Shogakukan Shojo Comics, TV Tokyo, Studio Pierrot, and Pioneer Video.
This is a companion piece to Shunyata Ryuen's "Expecting," an adventure about the consequences of a spell cast on Tasuki by a mysterious sorceress. The plot of Expecting is used here with Shunyata's permission; all rights to that plot belong to Shunyata Ryuen.
The rights to this original storyline, text, and dialogue are mine.
This story is rated "M"—restricted from those under age sixteen—for sexual situations and language.
Additional caution: Although all interactions in this story are technically heterosexual, the transgender nature of the plot may cause discomfort to readers who dislike yaoi (male-male) relationships. Therefore, do not read if you are opposed to anything other than standard heterosexual interactions.
Chapter 1. Flashpoint
All right, first thing: if you ain't me, you better not be reading this. I mean it. If you value yer nosy little ass, you better put down this scroll and run for it, 'cause if I'm alive on this earth, I'm gonna flame ya till yer nothin' but a pile of flaky gray ashes! That goes double for you, Nuriko—I'll kill ya, seishi strength or not!
On the other hand, maybe I ain't around anymore, an' you think you can get away with prying into a man's private thoughts. Though you might be wonderin' why I ever wrote this down, if I'm so goddamn pissed at the thought of anybody readin' it.
Well, maybe I wrote it just for myself. You see, there's things that time does to ya, and one of 'em is makin' ya forget the little things. Oh, sure, you remember the main events of your life, but you forget the small things that make the memories real—like the way things looked and tasted and…felt.
I don't wanna forget the small things about this. That's what makes it worth…well, everything. Without the little things, this ends up soundin' like one of those freak-ass perv stories that drunken shitheads listen to with their drinks in one hand an' their dicks in the other. That's Not What This Is!
So what is it then? Well, maybe if you shut up an' get the fuck outta my way, you'll get the chance to find out!
But listen, you're not gonna know what I'm talkin' about unless you know my other story. No, not the "All-Glory-and-Honor-to-the-Piss-Almighty-Suzaku-Seishi-Who-Saved-Our-Fuckin'-Asses" story; every asshole an' his brother knows that one. I'm talkin' about my story, the one that only a few of ya know; the one that starts out a little…weird.
No, I'm not gonna go through everything that happened in that story! Fuck, ya think I wanna keep yappin' about how that goddamn sorceress put a spell on me, turnin' me from a perfectly happy, ordinary, super-heroic kinda guy into a freaked-out spaz with a big pregnant belly full of baby? Ya think I wanna remember how shithead Tamahome found out about it, only to get us kidnapped by a buncha slavers, then escaping and gettin' us lost with no money an' no idea how to get home again? Ya think I'm eager ta relive the whole fuckin' wunnerful Birth Experience, which is only a little less fun than passin' a watermelon through your asshole?
Fuck, no! I ain't tellin' ya nothin'!
Oh.
Guess I just did.
Fine. Then just shut up and listen.
This story starts with me an' shithead Tamahome stuck in the barn where we had to take shelter when I gave birth to the baby. Except Tamahome wasn't bein' a shithead for once. In fact, he hadn't been a shithead for a long time; not since the adventure began, to tell the truth.
He was bein'…somethin' else.
Now don't get me wrong. It's not like he didn't piss me off on a regular basis; sometimes just hearin' him breathe was enough to stand on my last nerve. An' this business with makin' us pose as husband an' wife made me wanna flame somethin' every time I even thought about it! But look, I gotta be fair an' admit that Tamahome was just tryin' to protect me. In fact, this wasn't his fault at all; he was, if anythin', the innocent bystander in my own disaster story. He woulda been justified in desertin' me at any time in the whole goddamn cluster-fuck—but he never did.
Not once. Not when I was stuck in a fight with those fuckin' scum-shit slavers. Not when that fucker on the ship tried to have his way with me. Not when we were stuck in the middle of Butt-Fuck Nowhere with nothin' to eat and no place to sleep.
Not when I went into labor in this isolated old barn, with no one to help but some plow beasts and…him. Oh, I screamed an' I puked an' I wailed like the damned, begging for death just to stop the pain! If I was him, I woulda turned tail and run—but he stayed right by me, cleaning my messes and wiping the sweat off my face an' making me believe that I was gonna live through it. Truth be told, I don't think I woulda made it—not without him.
So how was I supposed to feel when he placed that squirmy, warm miracle in my arms an' smiled down at me like I'd done something special…when he was the one who looked like Suzaku's own angel come down to earth?
Okay, now I'm startin' to sound mushy and gushy and girly-britches—but I don't care, 'cause right then, I was all girly-britches! I mean, c'mon, getcher head outta yer ass; how the hell do ya think a fuckhead bandit like me is gonna pop a bonafide perfect baby outta his body if certain…changes hadn't taken place? It's enough to make the horses laugh, to see how much I'd changed.
But Tama never laughed at me; well, not after that first time. 'Course, he mighta been afraid that if he laughed, he'd start me on one of those goddamn cryin' jags; either that, or get whacked with the nearest hard object. At that time, even I couldn't tell whether I was gonna bawl or belt him over the head if something pissed me off.
The next few days after the birth passed in a blur. I was obsessed with just looking at my little girl and counting all her fingers and toes and marveling at the way she wrinkled her nose in her sleep. Yeah, I know you got questions, but here's the thing:
I didn't.
I didn't care that this was impossible; I didn't care that a baby couldn't be made from a spell and carried by a man. A man who'd been turned into a woman. Whatever. I just knew that she was mine, mine, all mine…an' maybe Tama's, too. I mean, I did ask him to name the baby, an' he ended up namin' her Yugetsu after his mom…but that's not the only thing I'm talkin' about.
Ya see, a baby's a fuckin' awesome thing—but also goddamn tiring, which don't seem fair when you just went through a fuckin' eternity of labor. Tama, though, took over whenever I got too tired to cope: rocking little Yu-chan and singing dumbass Konan songs, cleaning her up, an' me as well. I wasn't so lost in the glow of new parenthood that I didn't realize that he was the one who had cleaned all the blood off the bottom half of my body, an' made sure I had a cup of water nearby at all times, an' even went out an' caught somethin' that he made a thin soup outta. Hell, I don't care if that something was a goddamn rat; that soup tasted better to me than anythin' that ever came outta the Imperial kitchens.
Tama also explained to me about waiting for the milk to come in, an' he kept me from panicking about that thin yellow stuff that came outta my chest till the real stuff showed up.
Okay, I know that I been avoiding sayin' exactly how—and where—I'd changed. Look, this ain't easy for me; you think that you'd do any better? But I said that I was gonna tell all the small stuff, so here goes.
Thank Suzaku, the equipment on my chest hadn't changed that much. I mean, the pecs were a little bigger an' the nipples more prominent, but that was it. It mighta been the gods' mercy that kept the spell from landin' me with a pair of giant boobs, which probably woulda been the last straw that sent me screaming off into the sunset. There's only so much change a man can take.
As for lower down: now with the baby born, the good ol' watermelon was outta the way, which finally left my view clear to…what I didn't wanna see. Nope, I wasn't looking down there, no way, no how. Even though my stomach went flat again with the freak-ass speed that was typical of my spell-pregnancy, I made sure that I didn't take a close look at what wasn't there. Seeing is believing, an' I didn't wanna do either.
My hips were still guy-narrow, though, thank the gods—that's all I woulda needed, getting saddled with a bubble-ass! But I could feel that the joints were still loose, the way that they loosened up so I could push the baby out. Weird shit.
I hadda face it: I made one weird-lookin' woman. Ugly, really, by Konan standards. Tall, gawky, with big hands and feet, small-to-nonexistent boobs, guy-hips—an' yeah, let's not forget the fangs. About the only thing that looked womanly on me was my hair; it grew like fuckin' weeds, long and thick till it was hanging halfway down my back. Irritated the shit outta me.
I wondered what Tama made of it all.
I'd been doin' that a lot lately: wonderin' what Tama was thinkin'. It freaked me a little, the way it mattered ta me. I mean, since when did I give a shit what he thought? Well, all right, there was all that stuff I already told you about, but it really started on the night of the baby's birth, when I screamed and wept, and he was the one thing that stood between me and black despair. Afterwards, in that moment when he handed me little Yu-chan, and I looked at him an' thought about the way he'd been there for me through the worst of it all…well, I loved him, all right? But you know, it was just all those crazy birth juices or somethin', like the way women in my village would fall for the healer that helped them through a bad time.
It wasn't real. It was gratitude, not love. Or so I kept tellin' myself. Except…well, from then on, it mattered what Tama thought of me. That's all.
So here it was, days later, the wind still howling outside our stable while we waited for the storm to die down, an' for me an' the baby to become strong enough to travel. I stole a secret glance at Tama from under my eyelashes (and when did I fuckin' learn ta do that?). He was gazing dreamily into our small fire, his dark hair fallin' over his eyes and gleamin' in the dim light—and suddenly I was struck by how somethin' as stupid and simple as firelight an' the smell of cowshit could make a place seem like home.
I looked down at Yu-chan at my breast. She was finally asleep but still latched onto the nipple. I slipped a finger into her mouth to get her to release, causing her to make a little cat mew of protest as she sucked on empty air.
Pulling my shirt closed, I grinned as I laid her in the makeshift cradle-manger. "Yeah, ya little shit," I murmured, "Still eatin' in your sleep. You're just as greedy as your Aunt Miaka."
I looked up suddenly and caught Tama staring at me. It surprised me a little; did I do somethin' wrong by makin' fun of Miaka? But he wasn't lookin' at me like he was mad or anythin'.
He was lookin' at me like I was the fuckin' miracle instead of the baby.
My eyes widened in response, and suddenly he flushed brilliant red.
I can't explain exactly what happened in what order next; it's still kind of a jumbled blur. I know that I finally realized that his gray eyes held tints of violet. I know that I wanted to get closer to see exactly what colour they were, an' maybe figure out why he was lookin' at me that way. I'm not sure who moved first, but the one thing I know for certain is that we met in the middle.
See, we're pretty much the same height, an' I think we were both moving a little fast, so that's why our mouths met first. I'm not saying that it was a mistake, though—'cause ya know, that thing our tongues were doing took away that excuse.
Not ta mention the way his hands were wound through my hair and his heart hammered against mine, an'…oh yeah. Pressed hard against me, practically drilling inta my thigh—no mistake there.
But look at me listing this stuff like I was standing there taking notes. Oh, no. Tama was not in this alone.
Ya know that I've been a dumbass guy almost all of my life, an' like all dumbass guys, I kinda believed that since girls didn't have that nice, fun, sticky-out equipment that we did, they also didn't feel things nearly as, um, hot as we did, either.
Live an' learn, Tasuki; live an' learn.
I felt like there was some Imperial fireworks display going off 'bout six inches south of my belly; a fireworks display that was racing up my spine and exploding again behind my eyes. I couldn't seem to catch my breath or feel my knees, but the thing that I did feel was this hungry, urgent ache between my legs, making me practically scream with need. Goddamn it, I hadda have him now!
At that moment, we had to break the kiss in favor of getting air—but Tama released me and stepped back at the same time. I coulda punched him, I was so pissed!
"Get back here, you asshole!" I growled, and tried to pull him against me again.
He held me off, though, his forehead glowing with his ogre power. "Wait, Tasuki, I have to say something…"
"You're gonna ruin this by talkin,' aren'tcha?" Right at that moment, these stupid thoughts flashed lightning fast through my brain. He's changed his mind; he doesn't want you; you're a freak of nature, and now he's gonna run off screamin' into the night! I couldn't help it; the fuckin' tears welled up in my eyes.
Tama looked more stricken than if I had sent him flying with a left hook. "Tasuki, please, I'm sorry—"
"Just shut the fuck up, all right?" I was even more humiliated by the fact that I'd started sobbing. Ah, Suzaku, have mercy on your suffering servant, an' just strike me dead right now! "I know what you're gonna say already. Blah, blah, blah, we're friends and seishi brothers, an' let's not ruin that and all that crap. An' oh yeah, don't forget our priestess an' that commitment, not ta mention the current price of tea in Kutou! An' all those reasons are just ways for you to avoid sayin' that," my voice rose out of control, "you can't stand the thought of touchin' me again, 'cause I'm such an ugly-ass FREAK!"
I didn't really say that shit out loud, did I? Oh, fer fuck's sake, Suzaku. Black hole, under my feet, right now. Please.
I didn't have much time to continue my mental argument with Suzaku, though, because suddenly Tama was right there in my face; no, in my mouth, kissing me so hard that my sobs turned into hiccups. He kept right on kissing me till I calmed down a little and started thinkin', Well ya know, I coulda been wrong about that last part.
Finally that breathing thing couldn't be ignored anymore, so we broke off the kiss again, but this time he held onto my face like I was gonna fly up and start doing loopy-loops around the barn if he didn't keep me in his grip. Dunno how he got that idea.
We panted for a few seconds, Tama regaining his breath first. "Do you have any idea of how damn hard it is to shut you up?" he gasped, his eyes blazing into mine. "All I wanted to do was ask you a simple question, and the next thing I know, you're singing an entire opera! When are you going to learn that you can trust me?"
That silenced me with shame. He was right. I was actin' like a complete ass, which ain't a stretch for me, I'll admit…but he didn't deserve that. I blinked hard a coupla times—no, no fuckin' tears or anythin' manipulative like that—and looked down.
"I trust ya, Tama. I trust ya…with my life."
His fingers trembled on my jaw, but he kept his voice steady. "Good. Then listen up, and don't you go ruining things with talking too much! All I wanted to ask was…"
His voice faltered, so I lifted my eyes to see what was wrong. That oni sign was glowing so bright, it looked about ready ta burst into flame, and his face was just as scarlet, whether from the light of Suzaku or his own embarrassment, I couldn't tell. Tama didn't flinch away from me, however; he just kept starin' into my eyes like they held the answer to everything. His voice dropped, though, breathing a whisper so soft I could barely hear him.
"…are you sure?"
I frowned, not understanding. "Am I sure?"
"Are you sure that you want…this? Um, us, I mean. I mean, it's only been a few days since…the baby, and I don't want to…" now his face was burning brighter than the oni sign, "…hurt you."
Ya know what they say 'bout hearin' choirs of angels singin'? Well, it's all true, an' I almost looked up into the rafters to see where they were hidin' out.
This was it, then. This was really gonna happen, 'cause miracle of miracles, he wanted me!
But it wasn't gonna happen if I kept him hangin' there, waitin' for my answer with a world of agony in those eyes. I tried to hurry and reassure him that, Hell yeah, I was ready with bells on!
Here's what came outta my mouth, though. "Uh, sure. I mean no. I mean, you won't hurt me. Ya know, with the spell an' all, I'm just as good as new, 'cept I've never been like this before, I mean, ya know, a woman…"
Oh, shut the fuck up, Tasuki!
Ya gotta understand—I'm a fuckhead bandit. Never been raised to be a proper young lady, 'cause, hell, I was a guy! So what I did next, I know that no proper lady would ever do…but fuck it.
See, he was still pressed up against me, an' the evidence of how much he wanted me was right out there for the world, or at least me, to see. Now, he didn't have the same advantage in my case, an' as I saw it, that wasn't fuckin' fair. So I reached down an' untied my trousers, then grabbed his hand and put it right where he could feel me, hot and slick against his fingers.
I guess he got the message, 'cause things started happening pretty fast. We were all over each other, grabbing and kissing wildly and tearing each other's clothes off. There always comes the moment, though, when everything comes to a complete stop—yeah, there it was. We were kneeling before each other, naked, kinda hesitating as to what to try first, when the thought crossed my mind (and what the fuck was I doing thinkin' at a time like this?)… Anyway, the thought was that I wished I could magically make the fire dwindle, maybe all the way down to embers, so that the light wouldn't be so…bright.
I don't know if my thoughts showed that clear on my face, or if I moved an arm to cover some of my weirder parts…or if Tama was some kinda mind-reader, 'cause all of a sudden, he reached out and grasped my arms, holding them at my sides.
"Don't," he said, his voice as soft an' smooth as Imperial sake, making these weird little shivers run through my body. "Don't be ashamed, Tasuki."
Oh sure, easy for him to say. Look at him—he's fuckin' perfect, the bastard. Makes me sick. Well, no, actually; not making me sick at all. But my freakish body, on the other hand….
"Stop it." His hands moved gently up my arms, trailing across my shoulders and finally coming to rest feather light on my face. His thumbs traced the line of my jaw…an' it felt like he had me under some kinda spell or something, 'cause even though he was barely touchin' me, I couldn't move a muscle. Shit, I could hardly breathe! All I could do was keep starin' into those gray eyes, losin' myself in their depths until I felt like I was floating in a violet-flecked sky.
"You're beautiful," the whisper floated up to join me. "You're as beautiful now…" his fingers suddenly trembled on my face, and I heard a different tone in his voice. It almost sounded like fear.
"…as you were before."
My eyes snapped back into focus at that. Wha..? Tama thought I was beautiful before any of this shit went down? Was he yanking me or somethin'?
But no, he looked too scared to be saying anything but the truth. And I don't know what happened to me, but for once I was able to push my own questions aside in favor of taking care of him. I looped my arms around his neck and leaned forward, brushing my lips against the midnight hair at his temple.
"It's okay," I whispered into his ear. "Everything's okay."
And it was.
To be continued…
This is a repost and re-edit of a story I first posted in June 2005. I have completed the story and hope to keep posting on a regular basis. For any readers who might be wondering about the status of my previous story "Wounded", I have nearly completed the final chapter and hope to update in the next week or two.
Thank you for reading.
Aenisses 13-November-2005