A/N: Happy Birthday, Vega Sailor! I hope you enjoy this.

For other readers: concrit most welcome, as are any other comments. Flames are funny.

xoxoxoxoxox

Violet, Velvet, Vodka, Silk

xoxoxoxoxox

There are moments in every life that seem apart from the everyday ones, moment that shine and have physical presence. They are few and far between, but when they happen the world shifts on its axis for the one who is willing to see.

OooooO

Seeing him again was like a blow to Inutaisho's gut. It was so unexpected, so startling, that he stopped right in the middle of the busy street and stared like he'd lost his mind.

How long had it been? A thousand years? Ten? Or maybe just a moment?

He hadn't changed, not much at least. The hair was the same. That was how Inutaisho recognized him-- in a sea of black, the flash of vibrant purple was like a neon sign in a one-horse town. Downtown Tokyo noticed but said nothing, in the true, eerily polite way of the Japanese people. They had seen stranger things in the bowels of the living city.

Just as it had been a millennia ago, the hair was still tightly bound back in disciplined braids, clawing across his skull and whipping down his lean back.

The next thing Inutaisho noticed was the suit. He had only ever seen him in anything but ancient, traditional battle costume, so the tailored business wear was a shock. It looked wrong, somehow, like it was cut and pasted onto his warrior's form. And where was his sword?

Inutaisho looked down wryly at his own sharp attire and smiled a little. Times changed, but people didn't.

"Sensei," he whispered, slowly recalling the syllables of the long-unused word like brushing the dust of a wine bottle to read the label. Treasure. "Sensei!"

The roar of the creature-city drowned him out, and the slash of glorious violet kept moving away, away, away.

Inutaisho could not move his feet.

VvvvvvvvvvvvvvvV

He stirred his vodka with a toothpick and stared sightlessly at the silver-flecked granite countertop. There were many reasons the Midoriko was his favourite pub, and memory not the least of them. Everything here reeked of recollection, even the particular shade of red velvet used to upholster the booths

her blood was that colour, that colour exactly

and the smell of vodka on his breath, subtle but stinging to his demon senses

steam and searching fingers, learning, learning the slick surfaces

and haunting strains of shamisen music curling from the speakers

delicate nails like little seashells plucking, caressing

they all spoke of the lost loves of his long and jagged life.

He came here often just to remember, even though the remembering wounded him all over again. Here, it was like they were there with him again in some facet, though never again whole and laughing as they had once been.

Mai.

The music was hers, it had always been her favourite thing in the world. He'd often wondered if she loved the shamisen more than him, loved the sounds her own soul made better than those his made when playing her. There was no resentment, only faint regret that he had not been enough. She had deserved to have enough, more than enough. There had never been another more worthy.

He listened to the music and did not cry as she sang through his memory, smiling and so far away.

Izayoi.

The colours were hers. She had been radiant and glowing, every shade of life in existence. Flowers had been her greatest joy, and he had used to love watching her play in the garden for hours, dancing through the warm grass and laughing for no other reason than sheer joy at the colours all around her.

When she had died, the first time, her blood had been just that shade of crimson velvet that softened the edges of all the sharp blackness the room was constructed of. It was his favourite place in the world because it reminded him of her death... and subsequent rebirth, pale and gasping but alive, and cradling their squalling in-between child in her trembling arms.

He let his vision lose focus and smiled at the blur of vermilion against the black. There were no more tears.

Sensei... oh, Ryuukotsusei.

His first and last and in-between love, the only one who had never left forever. The dragon did a lot of leaving, to be sure, but he always, always came back eventually.

The vodka was his, the stinging clear elixir that made memories gain solidity and reality lose its teeth. The gentle teasing edges of it's fog belonged to Ryuukotsusei, and that was the greatest reason Inutaisho kept coming back. The Midoriko served really great vodka. The recipe was almost unchanged from when he'd first tasted it, tens of centuries in the past.

Inutaisho took another sip and relaxed into memory. Reality faded.

OooooO

Perhaps it was because of that ever-shifting border between past and present that Inutaisho did not understand the significance of what he saw at first.

The pale face and dancing green eyes belonged to a memory, but they were dissonant to it. The edges weren't quite right, didn't quite jibe with what shape he knew they should take. He furrowed his brow and tried to make the jigsaw fit, but it was broken and he failed again.

"Inutaisho," the memory said, and smiled in a way that spoke of too many emotions to count in his dazed state.

"You're a memory," Inutaisho replied with a confident smile. "I remember you."

The memory of Ryuukotsusei laughed and smiled with brilliant teeth. His fangs were longer than Inutaisho recalled them to be.

"Come on, you drunken sod, let this 'memory' take you home then. You're in no shape to be out and about."

And with that, the shockingly substantial vision wrapped an arm around him and hoisted him easily to his feet. Inutaisho's nose collided with the memory's throat and found that the scent was different, too. It spoke more of offices and crisp white paper than steel and hide and heavy cloth.

They staggered through the still-busy streets and it occurred to Inutaisho to wonder how a vision could catch him when he stumbled with such graceful strength.

"You're not really here... are you?" he asked, curiosity lending clarity to his speech.

The dragon smiled. "Of course I'm here. What do you think is holding you up, thin air?"

"I don't know. But you aren't here."

They reached a small apartment building in a rich area of town not far from the bar. The apartments were spacious and luxurious in a sparse, tidy way that characterized the city perfectly. Square footage in Tokyo equated to wealth, and there was rather a lot of that despite the lack of decoration.

The apartment had only two rooms: first, the enormous greatroom, which had a kitchen, dining area, and oval bedroom encompassed in its broad expanse, and secondly the bathroom, which featured an truly prodigious marble jacuzzi.

"Impressive lodgings," Inutaisho commented. They were better than his, though not by much. "My imagination wants to believe you've done well for yourself, I suppose."

Ryuukotsusei snarled in frustration. "Do you still believe you're just having a liquor-dream?"

Inutaisho pulled away to stand on his own shaking feet. "Of course," he mumbled. "There's no logical way for you to be here again after all this time. You should be on a different continent... weren't you going to Africa?"

"I did, that was hundreds of years ago, Inutaisho," Ryuukotsusei whispered. "What have you done to yourself? Has time lost all meaning for you?"

"Nothing is real but my memories," he murmured dreamily, swaying. "All of this is just an illusion." He ignored the inarticulate snarl from across the room, clinging to his tenuous belief that nothing could touch him anymore.

Ryuukotsusei's eyes hardened."Does this feel like an illusion?" he growled then, and strode forward to pull Inutaisho's face to his own.

Their lips collided.

When something elastic that has been stretched nearly beyond recognition is released, the force with which it returns to its true form is one of the great powers of the universe, and that power was present in all its glory.

Inutaisho had almost forgotten what it felt like to be with Ryuukotsusei, the man who had saved his life once and who had never stopped saving him since then. It was passion and flame, but also contentment and peace. The travails of the world always became surmountable when his beloved brother of the blade was with him. It had been far, far too long.

Helpless in the face of a flood of emotion that had not had an outlet for a thousand years, he draped himself across his dragon's shoulders, fingers tangling in fine dark braids and desperate lips seeking what they had been denied for a crippling length of time.

Strong arms, unwithered by the advent of technology, bound him in an iron embrace that still remembered swords and castles.

"I am here," the dragon growled into him. "I always return, you should know that by now."

"I was afraid," Inutaisho whimpered. "What if you didn't? What if you really were only a memory? I could not bear to think I had found you again, only to realize later that you were still gone after all. Can't you understand?"

"Oh, I can," Ryuukotsusei whispered, teasing a delicate pointed ear with his tongue to Inutaisho's whimpers. "I did the same thing when I saw you in the street the other day, because I couldn't bear being wrong about it. I've missed you so much, it would kill me to gain hope and lose it again so quickly."

"Please," the moon-haired dog demon moaned. "It's been so long, and I've been so broken. Fix me, sensei!"

"You're not broken, only bent," the dragon admonished, but as he said it he pressed Inutaisho slowly back towards the enormous futon. It was covered in the same, the exact same shade of red, only this time in silk.

Inutaisho surrendered and fell backwards into its cool embrace. Tokyo winters were humid, but a blessed relief from the sweltering heat of summer. The silk and their sweat made it feel just like swimming in shaded water. Red water. Like blood.

In the pool of crimson silken blood they twined about each other, remembering things long forgotten and creating new, sharper memories. They were not gentle with each other, not this time-- their fangs drew blood, and their claws, and their fingers left shadow-violet bruises on glowing flesh.

When they were with women, there was always the need to restrain themselves, to hold back for fear of hurting them. There was none of that with each other, and so they punished each other for the long separation and the sins they saw reflected in each other that really belonged to them.

They pierced each other, taking turns at pinning the other helplessly to the crimson silk like pale butterflies stuck with pins. It was a dance of primal depth and fury, and they had long been masters of it.

The Tokyo sky glared impassively through the wall-length windows as they healed each other, tearing wound after wound in bleeding soul-flesh.

And when they were finished, gasping for breath and weeping into a mass of silver and violet unbound hair, there was nothing left to fix.

"It would have been better if you hadn't come," Inutaisho groaned, already terrified of the dragon's departure.

"You're lying," Ryuukotsusei answered back, whispering into the crevices of his soul.

And he was.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

A/N: InuT/Ryuu love is the shiz.