Chapter 42

"Kamidana"

"That tickles," Shini alerted him, scrunching his nose and flashing a half-smile, unable to spread it completely, as Heero's hand was holding his face still. While the slightly cool tip of the pencil traced along one side of his face, he squinted the eye of the opposite open slightly to peer at the amusing look of concentration on Heero's face. The bead of sweat out of sheer focus was just moments away, and his lips had tightened up over his half-bitten tongue poking out like a manga drawing.

Blue eyes flashed at him, almost frustrated, from beneath that concentrated brow. "That's not helping, Shin," Heero muttered, still almost furiously concentrated on drawing the kanji correctly on the dancing surface that was the edge of his husband's smile. When the Angel of Death instinctively turned to face his voice, drinking up his face with a familiar, curled grin, he clutched his chin and turned it back. He'd only halfway finished the sign for death. "Stop moving, please. I'm almost done."

The pink of Shini's tongue poked out in a raspberry. "It's hard to stay still," he managed out, before Heero pinched his mouth shut.

"Talking's still moving," he reminded him, stopping to pick at the dulling edge of his writing utensil. Somehow, the validity of this plan seemed all too faint and flimsy, inscribing symbols for a makeshift religious purging on a Shinigami who had the supernatural training equivalent of demon preschool—and inscribing in black eyeliner, no less. But flimsy plans were more realizable than ones that did not exist.

The mortal sighed and pulled back. He'd never wrangled a overly-eager group of children before, but he'd seen it done before and recognized the gleam in Shini's eyes. "Okay, if you really want to make yourself useful," Heero said, capping the pencil and shoving it in his back pocket, "you can check the bag again to make sure we've got everything and we know what to do. When we get in there, we may have only a few minutes to get started. Right?"

"Right!" Shini yipped happily, with the joy lighting up on his face and twisting the curls of shadow and kanji inscriptions written there.

He snatched up the half-crumpled paper bag of supplies they had purchased that morning in preparation for the blessing of a home shrine, a kamidana. Purchased, in the sense they meant fully in their heart to do so, but Heero had left his wallet at home—the new battle zone—and Shinigami had faded energetically in and out of light with objects in hand instead. He hadn't told Heero that he'd frightened the daylights out of some poor stock boy in the process, though. He didn't need to add a trouble to his already tense shoulders.

Heero glanced up and down the street with a low caution not matching the calm, residential area as birds sang to the sun and distant radios lulled. Shini's bare toes danced along the cooled chrome of Youkai's tailpipe, parked nearby, as they sat on the curb, a block away from their home, simply watching it in suspicion.

Shini ruffled excitedly through the bag. In a better mood, Heero would have cracked a joke about a kid at Christmas, or an American in a fast food restaurant, at which Shini would have simply tilted and made a cute sound of confusion. Now, his face and neck and hands inscribed in makeup, and hair tied back, except for the long ear tails fluttering on his chest, he was prepped for immortal battle. And he still grinned cutely.

"Do we have everything we need?" Shini asked.

Heero took one more, cautionary glance, looking for whatever might be the brother of Death, a glint of wings, or grin of a blade, before snorting and half-smiling. "You're the god. Aren't you supposed to be omnipotent?"

"Teishu, you're being glib." When Heero responded by blinking in surprise, the Angel of Death smiled back fiercely. "It's my word for the day."

All he received was an arch of the brow for that. "You have a word of the day." He seemed to be reiterating it to the air to see if it felt the same half-amused frustration.

"I gotta make better English," Shini slung back, and felt the warmth of Darkness swirling up in his heart as Heero took on a proud, clean white glow, even beneath the stark sunlight.

"Alright," Heero lapsed, and touched shoulders with Shini as he peered into the bag, his dark bangs sticking to his face in the heat. "Rope?"

"Yep."

"Alright. Food for the shrine?"

The Shinigami stirred the objects around the bag, digging for the groceries they'd lifted with good intentions. "Sake… salt… water bottle… and…rice?"

"Good. The vase?"

"Yep."

"The evergreen?"

Shini blinked momentarily, an instant giveaway that they'd forgotten it, but he glanced over each shoulder before fixing Heero with a warm, violet gaze and popping out of sight. Heero simply reacted by blinking once at the empty space and snatching the brown paper bag out of the air to prevent it from crashing to the ground. And, in another blink, the Shinigami reappeared with a slick sound like a lollipop leaving sealed lips. "Thank you, 'Ro," he said brightly, taking back the bag with a kiss.

Clenched in his fingers laid three richly green pine branches, the eternal evergreen used to invoke deities. When placed in the house and properly blessed with—even if said supplies were cheap, rushed versions purchased more on a schedule than by religious standards—the Shinigami would have dominion over the house, able to control its spiritual atmosphere and hopefully drive all unwanted spirits with a simple command.

There would be no more lazy nights and mornings sullied by a looming brother, no more embarrassing and unneeded love lectures, no more threats of love potions and spells. Shini grinned into Heero's mouth at the tempting thought, and excitement drove him to push the bag out of Heero's hand and lick his lips as they kissed, love sparking off him in trails of Darkness.

Unfortunately, Heero remembered the mission at hand and prematurely interrupted them, pulling away. Cinnamon-taste and a narrowly suppressed lurch of lust barked at him to reunite them, under punishment of hormones, but he overrode the thought—at least for the time being—for the sake of the mission. What good was it to kiss, out in the street, in the sight of anyone who happened to walk by? "If we're ready, we should go," he said, and Shini's smile warped again into a devilish smirk.

"I can make it so no one can see us, you know, Heero," he answered.

"I'd prefer to be in my own home again, Shin."

The smile simmered to a gentle smirk. "Fine," he said. "Then let's go get my brother the hell out of our house."

Heero nodded, and leaned forward again so the Shinigami could wrap his arms around him and will them both through space and time.

---

For a second, Heero was light and a hiccup of energy, and then he was himself again, falling into a body of bone and fleshy veins he'd always known. His body rematerialized, tugging him back into it, and immediately flooded his brain with alerts of motion and pain to come. Shini had brought them back too high in the air and they collapsed to the floor of the hallway—Heero on bottom, landing neatly on his face.

"Shin—" He groaned angrily. But, when he felt the god roll gingerly off him and squeak a quiet apology, the anger was gone. In its place boiled a sense of urgency and calm energy he hadn't felt since days learning military procedure from his father.

"Heero, sorry!" Shini squeaked again when his husband recovered.

"No time—get going," he said, waving him off as he snatched up the bag of supplies. He tensed on the balls of his feet, one hand steadying him as if he were ready to break for a finish line. "Draw him off."

The Shinigami nodded and popped off into nothingness again only to reappear at the top of the stairs, filling the air around him with black. Filling the water with blood and hoping the sharks would follow it.

Heero slid into the living room as quietly and quickly as he could while clutching the brown paper bag. It inevitably rustled as he moved, and he squeezed it as if he could suffocate all the offending noise from it. He resisted the urge to watch over his shoulder as he circled around the couch and into the corner with a small bookshelf.

There was someone in his home. And he was just as capable as Shini—if not more. Capable of being anywhere at any moment the whim took him with nothing more than a willing thought. Heero was also quite sure, considering the Shinigami's mother, that being a god of Love was little indication of temperament in this situation.

He was pissed.

He lurched up and knocked the books and stacked papers off the top shelf with a swipe of his free hand. A cloud of dust blew up in fury and the papers slid and fluttered. The complaints fell on deaf ears, as Heero set to work with an equal sense of furious speed. He dumped the contents of the bag onto the cleared shelf, which came up to his chest.

The windows on the opposite wall let in generous rays of light, the long rectangles of light created by the panes reaching out towards him in a slow, steady motion he didn't notice. The evergreen, vase, rope, and cheap containers of sake,rice, and salt rolled and scattered about on the flat surface before Heero wrangled them up, knocking a few over again in his hurry. Without pausing, he sucked in a sharp breath and let it evenly back out through his nose, calming himself even as he went, gaining control to speed through the curve.

It had to be light, quiet, and high. Heero grimaced slightly. If he wasn't being stalked by a god in his home, unaware if he were being watched at that very moment, he might have installed a shelf specially for it. But he was being stalked—hunted, even—and home improvement wasn't an option.

So, kicking the papers away from the make-shift shrine as he went, Heero ripped open the bag of rice, exposing it to the air, and fumbled to pop the lid off the sake bottle. Not concerned with beauty, he threw the salt across the top shelf and then sprung backwards, snatching up two pieces of paper from the floor and turning them to their blank sides.

He pulled the eyeliner pencil from his back pocket and scribbled 'Shinigami' in the clearest kanji he could muster at the moment. He hesitated, then added '13' beneath it just to be sure. The plan would only work if the blessing was accredited to the correct one, he knew. He snatched up another piece of paper. All that was needed was the word 'kumo' hung on the rope, which would create a metaphysical patch of sky above the shrine, disabling anyone to 'walk over it', and have control or domination over it.

And, in a moment of victory, knowing he was just a few steps away from finishing and forever fool-proofing the house from every ghoul and goblin who thought he could poke his nose in, he allowed himself to smile and think. Imagine Shini's eager smile, his arms hanging loosely around his shoulders, kissing his neck—

It was then that the pencil tip broke and Heero felt someone appear in the space behind. Someone not made of Darkness and smelling forever of cinnamon.

"Shit—" He managed out, whipping around before the intruder interrupted him.

Cupid smirked and tilted his head, his bow already drawn and his smirk following the shaft of his arrow towards Heero. "Hello," he said. "This is just too, easy, you know."

Heero attempted to dodge the shot he knew was coming, but it landed with a sick thud just below his shoulder.

And a moment before sleep settled in on him, as thick and sweltering as blacktop on a summer's day, he thought to himself, 'He looks nothing like Shini…'