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No guards are allowed within three meters of Hanbei’s tent. Hideyoshi would frown at that, if he knew, but he doesn’t, and Hanbei intends to keep it that way. Guards are a nuisance. The speed at which the lanterns exhaust themselves is a nuisance. The slight breeze through the tent flap that chills him far more than it should is a nuisance. Everything seems to be a nuisance, these days, and none more so than the persistent pain in his chest.
Ah, speak of the devil. The brush slips from Hanbei’s fingers and his latest missive is hopelessly marred by a thick black swathe of ink, and by the drops of blood that follow. Hanbei doubles over, coughing, chest seizing. He can’t even reach for his tea in this state, and he’d laugh at that, but it would worsen the coughing even more.
Air returns to him in short sharp bursts, like knives in his lungs. Once he’s no longer seeing double, he grabs a fresh sheet of paper and copies over what he managed to set down before. A fast enough rider should be able to deliver this to Aki by midmorning tomorrow, dawn if he changes horses. Motonari will pay, of course, whether Hanbei is here to collect or not. The thought turns his stomach, and he braces for another fit of coughing. It doesn’t come. Hanbei sighs, sets the scroll aside for the ink to dry. He would quicken the process with breath if he could, but there isn’t time.
The papers rustle nevertheless, when a flap of the tent peels open and a low gust of wind upsets the pages like loose leaves by the roadside.
Hanbei presses his lips together before another sigh has a chance to escape them. Retrieving the papers requires that he stand up, and his legs have been locked in seiza for long enough that they protest any change. Really, can’t some parts of his body cooperate with him now?
A black sandal crushes the corner of a page, and Hanbei doesn’t have to look up to know who intrudes on him.
“Good evening, Matsunaga-kun,” he says. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t rise to greet you; I’m quite busy.”
“So it would seem.” The low light of the tent lanterns gleams on Matsunaga’s claws and the hide of his glove as he stoops to pick up the paper. He gives the calligraphy an amused glance, then waves the page and lets it drift back to the floor. “That you’ve maintained this level of efficiency is truly remarkable.”
Hanbei’s shoulder lifts, the faintest intimation of a shrug. “Lord Hideyoshi deserves no less.”
“A pity that soon he will have it no more.”
He’s all too aware, now, of how close the blood- and ink-splattered page rests to Matsunaga’s sandal. He doesn’t direct his gaze at it openly. If Matsunaga has seen, well, he’s seen. “To what do we owe this visit?” he asks; Matsunaga, if given half the chance, could talk for hours before addressing the reason for his arrival at all.
Matsunaga smiles, circles Hanbei and leaves the loose pages behind. “Serendipity and opportunity,” he says, as if that explains everything. “I’ve become aware of something in your possession that I intend to acquire.”
“Ah. Do tell.”
“All men die,” he says, behind Hanbei now, “and all things crumble to dust. But the pleasures of this earth, attained in our fleeting moments upon it in the forms we are given, are as unique and...inspiring, I should say, as the men who experience them. Such a singular man as you must understand that, Takenaka. You have led a life, longer than some, shorter than many, and call its moments your own. And you treasure them, do you not?”
“Yes,” he says, “though perhaps I’ve spent fewer of them than I ought to in contemplating philosophy.” Hanbei doesn’t need to look at Matsunaga to know where he is -- the chill spreading behind his back gives that away.
“You’ve spent your life in pursuit of what you desire,” Matsunaga says. “Who am I to fault that?”
“As you say. If I may return to your initial request, however…”
“My, you’re in a dreadful hurry.”
Hanbei’s lips thin. Is it really so obvious? “Lord Hideyoshi is within mere strides of unifying this land. Who am I to slow his progress?”
“And who are you to speed it along?”
“His strategist.”
“And at this rate, his strategy shall outpace him.” Matsunaga does not sigh: his breath is brusque and short, more like a laugh. “They say that in those who live to a grand old age, it is tragedy when the mind fails while the body persists. I imagine it must be the same for an army.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you treasure your life?”
“What an intriguing question.”
“There are some who value not the state of being, but what their lives allow them. Prosperity. Pleasure. Pursuit of their goals, if they are called like you to some ideal. Others cling to life in fear of its absence, like a monkey to a branch too high to assure a safe landing.” His claws idly scrape against each other, as if he’s cleaning under them with nothing else to hand. “I don’t take you for one of those fools. Your life is precious to you not on its own merit, but because of what it enables you to accomplish.”
“Is that what you’ve come here to discuss, Matsunaga-kun?” Hanbei asks, and somewhere in the pit of his stomach, receives the distinct feeling that the answer is yes.
“Yes,” he says, and stands just out of sight. “Your life, and what remains of it.”
He will not say get on with it, not as such. “I assure you, I have the matter in hand.”
“Then why this haste?”
His mouth twists up at the corner. “Because of what it enables me to accomplish.”
Matsunaga half-circles him again, stands close enough to Hanbei’s low table that no matter what Hanbei looks at the shine of his armor fills in the corners. “I never took you for an impatient man.”
The words needle at the back of his skull. He chooses to ignore them. “Shall I take that as a compliment?”
“Take it however you like. The value of my words is yours to determine.”
“Very well.” Matsunaga, it seems, will reach the point when it suits him and not a moment sooner; until then, Hanbei might as well return to his work. Poor manners it may be, but it’s equally poor manners to keep one’s host waiting in this fashion, so Hanbei has no reservations about reaching for his brush again.
Matsunaga kneels on the other side of the table, the tails of his coat flared out behind him. He rests one hand on the corner of the table, right by the inkstone, and drums his fingers against it. “If you cherish your accomplishment so dearly, why not savor it?”
“I’ll savor it when Lord Hideyoshi’s vision for this land is fulfilled,” he says. “Until then, I will not grow complacent.”
“And should your goal elude you?”
Hanbei gives the question all the consideration it deserves: he ignores it.
As Hanbei writes, Matsunaga reaches along his side to the fallen scrolls, and picks one up. The splashes of blood are still fresh enough to mingle with the ink, only half-dry, and Matsunaga’s amusement is palpable. He says nothing either, this time.
Well, Matsunaga’s presence is hardly apt to put anyone at ease, but Hanbei has worked under worse conditions. He’d rather not brazenly pore over any diagrams with Matsunaga looking over his shoulder, but he can finish this dispatch to Aki, and begin on his instructions to the garrison in the east.
(Not long ago, Hideyoshi sat by him as he wrote these. He kept his gaze outward, through the open door of their room -- his mind set on the horizon, while Hanbei worked diligently behind him. Of course, Hideyoshi is in the field now, and there’s no time for that sort of leisure anymore.)
“And if these were the last dispatches you ever sent,” Matsunaga asks, “would you still value your life?”
Hanbei’s throat closes. He doesn’t dare drop the brush, not yet; one doesn’t make such quick movements when being stalked by a snake. His sword is to his right, under a blanket. Ever so slightly, he shifts his weight to that side. “This possession of mine that you intended to acquire -- it wouldn’t happen to be my life, would it?”
Matsunaga laughs, low and coarse. “Certainly not. What value would I place on that?”
“I can’t say,” Hanbei says, blinking, and is momentarily distressed by the truth of that statement. He endeavors not to show it.
“But there are moments and experiences you will have, and never have again,” Matsunaga goes on, “and those are worthy treasures. To me, at least. Perhaps to you as well.”
“Is that so.”
“Your haste destroys you, Takenaka. To feel you crumble and struggle and rush would be precious indeed.”
He wastes precious seconds deciphering that, and the realization, when it comes, nearly makes him laugh. “Are you soliciting me, Matsunaga-kun?”
“Yes,” Matsunaga says. “I intend to be your last.”
Ah, he means to say, but the word sticks, and he’s left instead with his lips parted around no sound at all. There’s no point in asking why, unless Hanbei wants to invite more speeches. He still hasn’t relinquished his grip on his brush.
“To savor the final earthly delights of a man who means to outrun his own death; to feel his desperation in the face of pain he forces himself to ignore; to experience life as he lives it, hastening toward its climax and its end yet heedless of it; and you, Takenaka, who guards that secret as if it’s worth more than the breath it takes to keep it; I’ll take them all.”
“Why, Matsunaga-kun,” he says. “This is almost flattery.”
He reaches across the table, cups Hanbei’s cheek in his hand, and trails his gloved thumb over Hanbei’s lip. It reminds him of the way one might assess a horse, checking its teeth for health. When Matsunaga draws his thumb away, the smear of blood on it glistens wetly, more than Hanbei would like it to. Matsunaga rubs it between his fingertips, flicks the droplets aside as though the poison within them were barely worth regard.
“And that,” Matsunaga says, “is almost trust.”
“I have no need to trust you, when you trust yourself so thoroughly.”
“If you trusted yourself to achieve your goal, you wouldn’t rush it so.”
“My dear man,” he says, and masks the effort the words take -- but what doesn’t take such effort, these days -- “I thought you meant to seduce me, not talk me into my grave.”
Matsunaga laughs, and leans over the table to say, “Why should I hurry you? You have one foot in it already.”
Well-riposted, he has to admit, if only to himself. The scratching inside his chest swells to something more than the usual, and he slows his breathing before it turns into anything worse. Matsunaga cups Hanbei’s jaw, then scrapes his fingers lower, loosens Hanbei’s kimono and bares his chest. The claws are like ice. Hanbei refuses to shiver.
“Haste,” Matsunaga says, “makes as much waste as delay.”
“I do know the aphorism.”
Deftly, Matsunaga slides the table away, and closes the distance. “Then why not practice it?”
“Why indeed,” he says; if he can’t wield the edge of his blade with the same proficiency he once did, the edge of his tongue will do as well now.
Matsunaga jerks Hanbei’s obi undone, and shoves him down onto the tatami. The straw prickles Hanbei’s neck, but Matsunaga’s claws are a much more present threat, tented on Hanbei’s throat. Like this, Matsunaga towers over him, but stature alone is hardly enough to impress Hanbei. But the cool touch of his glove, however impersonal, is more care than Hanbei has taken with himself these past few months. Matsunaga smiles, as appraising and amused as ever, and the low lantern light glints on his teeth.
“How wonderful, to reap the fruits of your neglect.”
“Neglect seems rather dire,” he says, before the import of the words has a chance to sink in. He thinks, instead, of the work that needs to be done after this interlude, of the supply lines to the south and how best to guard them if Takeda does manage to slip the noose tightening around Kai.
Matsunaga scrapes his claws, rather gently, along the bare ridges of Hanbei’s ribs. That touch, thankfully, isn’t enough to set off another fit of coughing. “I’ve seen charred corpses with more on their bones.”
The image sharpens unpleasantly behind Hanbei’s eyelids. He resists the impulse to look down at himself. He still prepares his face in the mirror every morning, brightening his cheeks and adding color to his lips; he knows what he looks like. “That’s a rather grim forecast.”
“And inevitable,” Matsunaga says, trailing his thumb on the bare jut of Hanbei’s hip.
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?”
“Will you struggle?” he asks, and Hanbei would call him earnest were it not for the flash of fire in his eyes. “Will you cling to a goal unattained? Hurry, and race, and grasp for your prize, and at the very end cry anything but yes?”
Why must he always drag these things out? Hanbei sighs, and chooses to read the surface of his words. “You assume that I work for my ends, Matsunaga-kun.”
He loosely cradles Hanbei’s cock and smiles. “Toyotomi will want for you.”
Of all the times for his throat to seize -- oh, damn this body of his. Heat spreads, down his chest and across his hips. “That isn’t his way,” he manages, at last, and without any blood flecking his lips in the process. (He thinks. He chooses not to verify his guess.)
“What? Not to place a value on what belongs to him?” He strokes, as lazily but inexorably as the current of a river. “I wouldn’t presume his attachment to you as anything but advantageous, Takenaka, but you are one of a kind.”
Speech grows more difficult, with Hanbei’s breath and hips hitching at Matsunaga’s attentions. Blood pounds almost as insistently in his head as it does in his groin, and it blurs the edges of his vision. Matsunaga murmurs, “Exquisite,” and Hanbei closes his eyes, turns his head to the side.
But Matsunaga’s clawed hand snakes up Hanbei’s chest, settles on his jaw again, and folds hard over his mouth.
Hanbei’s eyes fly open of their own accord. He twists his head again, to free his nose, at least, but Matsunaga’s grip won’t be broken so easily. There were rumors, Hanbei remembers, of how he once strangled a man to death in midair. He’d rather not dwell on that. His chest tightens, contorting, and his heels scrape a layer of straw off the tatami. He catches sight of Matsunaga’s fist, still curled around his shaft -- the rest of his skin seems even paler, set against that.
And Hanbei still can’t breathe.
“Do you feel it nearing?” Matsunaga asks, low and out of rhythm with his touch. “Which is closer to hand, your goal or your death?”
He can’t well answer with Matsunaga’s hand blocking his mouth, though Hanbei doubts Matsunaga expects an answer. A faint roaring fills his ears, and the sourness of smoke and gunpowder and whatever else stains Matsunaga’s gloves floods the back of his throat. It’s enough to choke on -- but he mustn’t choke. He mustn’t thrash. Thrashing isn’t strength at all. There’s another way out of this. His chest is burning. It would be so much easier if it weren’t. But Matsunaga coaxes the heel of his palm past Hanbei’s lips, and strokes, faster now, and none of this is easy.
“One can’t help but admire your persistence,” Matsunaga goes on, head tilted languidly to the side. “You’re like a fish swimming upstream.”
Hanbei digs his nails into the tatami, his teeth into the heel of Matsunaga’s palm. But all that does is make Matsunaga smile, and slur his approval, and work his hand faster and harder.
A fresh wave of pain spasms through his lungs, and Hanbei coughs hard enough to throw Matsunaga’s hand off.
He doesn’t stop coughing, even after Matsunaga’s hand moves away from his face to tangle in his hair. Blood curls out the corner of his mouth, scatters on his chest and shoulder, but doesn’t touch Matsunaga, doesn’t even dissuade him.
“You’re overexerting yourself, Takenaka,” he says. “Do you truly want this to be over so soon?”
Hanbei’s throat is too raw to answer.
Matsunaga tightens his fist in Hanbei’s hair, and works his cock pitilessly. Hanbei comes, not that it brings him any relief, and the heat that sears his chest is much stronger than the surge of his groin. Matsunaga withdraws his hand, glove streaked white and dripping, and wipes it on a fallen scrap of paper nearby. The ink is dry, and his come is not, but both darken the page.
Slowly, Hanbei uncurls his fists from the tatami. His fingers protest. He wipes away the blood before he bothers with the rest, and can’t escape the feeling that some of it remains.
Matsunaga rises, taking the crumpled paper with him. “You’re in no state to do that again.”
The exhaustion settling deep into his bones would appear to bear Matsunaga’s assessment out. “Then will that be all?” he asks.
“You say that as if your time is worth nothing to me.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s worth a great deal to you.”
“More, it would seem, than to you.” And with that, Matsunaga turns to take his leave.
Hanbei doesn’t bid him farewell. Given the circumstances, that’s permissible. He adjusts his kimono and reties his obi with care, so as not to stain the cloth. When that’s done, he cleans his hands, traces the shape of their bones. It isn’t difficult to do, with how sharp they are under his skin.
An ache follows the weariness, low and persistent and as deep. Sex used to leave him invigorated: sore, yes, particularly with Hideyoshi, but refreshed, his mind clear and his senses alert. Now -- now his body would very much like him to rest, and he has no more time to rest now than he did before. Less, even.
If haste makes him wasteful, he’ll simply have to force himself to be more thorough than before, that’s all.
Hanbei doesn’t know how much time passes as he rewrites the dispatch and starts the next. The tentflap opens, and Hideyoshi’s presence shadows the moonlight, blocks out the distant sounds of the camp.
“Hideyoshi,” Hanbei says, and rises to greet him; his body can register its complaints later. “You’ve returned sooner than I anticipated.”
He nods, slowly. “Are you nearly done?”
“With this set of orders, yes. I’m waiting for some of our scouts to arrive from the south; they’ll have news of our campaign in Kyushu.” Then it’s back to his desk and maps and dispatches until the last of their enemies’ banners fall. And they will. It’s only a matter of time. Black dots swarm at the corners of his eyes, and he tries to blink them away quickly, before he draws Hideyoshi’s notice.
But Hideyoshi has already noticed the drifting papers, the blood on the tatami. He kneels, and Hanbei is thus expected to sit as well, so sit he does, and works for several moments in silence.
He sets down his brush, and Hideyoshi’s hand covers his, traps it against the desk. “Wait,” he says.
“Hm?”
“Rest, until the reports from Kyushu arrive.”
“Hideyoshi…”
“Rest.” It is an order.
“Very well,” Hanbei says, and leaves his desk and Hideyoshi’s hand. “Do you intend to stay?”
“You are not the only man in this army who can receive reports. I will wait here.”
Hanbei nods, unrolls his futon and lays down on it, facing the dark corner of the tent and burrowed under his warmest blanket so Hideyoshi can’t see him struggle to breathe. But Hideyoshi is here, and the Toyotomi will triumph, and in his fevered dreams Hanbei seizes victory. Its touch is as warm as Hideyoshi’s hand, and he vows that that will be the last thing he ever touches.