>From nodoka@storyanime.com http://www.storyanime.com HARIGATA A Rurouni Kenshin lemon by Nodoka Rurouni Kenshin copyright Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Sony etc. Megumi opened the shoji and stared out over the garden. Moonlight cast sharp shadows onto the pristine snow. Overhead the sky sparkled, black velvet spangled with gems. The cold ate through her kimono. The silence ate through her soul. She'd forgotten how cold an Aizu winter could be. In Tokyo, she didn't have to choose between freezing and suffocating... /*Not really suffocating,*/ she told herself firmly. /*There's plenty of air. You're being ridiculous.*/ She closed the shoji, then opened it again, just a little. She couldn't sleep in a closed room. Without fresh air, without the little noises of rustling leaves and night breezes, it was like being closed up in Kanryuu's mansion again, and the dreams came back. Nightmares of being trapped. Of being forced to make Spider's Web. Of Kanryuu's voice crooning vileness in her ear, of his hands on her, of the pleasure he got from hurting... but it was too cold with the door open, so she closed it again. /*Maybe I can keep the nightmares off another way.*/ She opened the compartment of her wooden pillow. Her hand closed around the object hidden inside. She'd bought it in Tokyo, but had hardly used it then. But since returning to Aizu, there had been more and more nights when she needed its help to get to sleep... It was a way to treat sleeplessness and nightmares, a medical technique, like kyuu or hari-ryouji. Not... not a sign that she needed a lover. *Not* a sign that she missed him. Men were like Kanryuu, like the doctor she had lived with before. /*What you do in the clinic isn't enough to pay for your keep, Megumi-chan. I expect you to share my bed too.*/ Controlling her, using her. Even now, crawling through her nightmares if she couldn't breathe, with their rancid breath and their sweaty hands... Men were to flirt with, to challenge, to manipulate. And if she couldn't sleep... there was this. A cylinder of smoothly-polished wood, carved a little at one end, a little less than a shaku long. She untied her sleeping robe and felt her nipples contract as the chilly air touched them. She caressed them with cool, smooth fingers. Sensation rippled through her. /*It would feel even better if the hands were warm. Not soft, sweaty hands like theirs, but rough. Callused and warm and gentle...*/ she stroked herself with feather-touches, imagining his hair coarse and stiff against her skin... her touching grew more insistent, she scraped her nails gently over her body, trying to imagine they were his hair, his hands, his teeth... The harigata was cold against her most sensitive place and she moved it back and forth, delighting in the contrast between its chilly touch and the heat of arousal washing through her. He would be hot... she wanted more than her own hands and the wooden shaft could give her, she wanted big, warm, rough hands on her body, she wanted the heat of his mouth, she wanted his body pinning her to the futon and piercing hers, his member no less hard than the thing in her hands but searing hot, deep within her, again and again until the heat became unbearable and something inside her gave way and her entire body turned to fire, she felt in her toes and her fingertips and the roots of her hair... She was cold. Blindly she pulled up the quilts and huddled under them. Even with extra covers, she wanted to be warmer. She wanted to curl up against his warm, stone-hard body and feel his arms around her, listen to his deep voice murmuring endearments, smell him... he'd smell of sweat and stale smoke, rough smells, rough like him. Rough and honest and too elemental to control. I could run to Aizu in a day, he'd said. /*Why didn't you come here?*/ She had been so furious when Kaoru's letter arrived, so disappointed. /*You'd have been safe. Nobody up here would give the time of day to a Meiji cop. But no, you had to go off and see the world.*/ "Sanosuke no BAKA!" she screamed aloud, and flung the harigata across the room. It clattered against the wall and fell with a thud to the tatami. Hot tears squeezed out from under her closed eyelids and cooled quickly on her cheeks. She burrowed under the quilts; it was even stuffier under there than in the chilly, closed room. She had forgotten how long the nights were in Aizu. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC. My lemon-writing alter ego Nodoka finally finished something, short as this is. There are others in the works... I had a mental picture of Megumi throwing a harigata across the room in frustration and yelling "Sanosuke no baka!" and that's where this originally came from... but then the manga happened, and I moved the thing to Aizu, and "Calm After the Storm" sent my mind off on a tangent, and well... it turned out a bit darker than I intended. Kyuu is moxibustion; hari-ryouji is acupuncture. Harigata's a much nicer- sounding word than dildo, ne? Aizu is considerably north of Tokyo, hence the colder winters (present-day Fukushima Prefecture markets itself as a place to ski). A shaku is a traditional unit of length, about equal to 1 foot. Megumi will be having a lot of nights like this one...