-A ~Heart to Joy~ side story
--references to events in Heart to Joy chapters 3, 4, 5.
He smiled. "You nervous?"
The other man did not immediately answer. He looked down, his body language singing of uncertainty.
Guibu touched his shoulder. It was trembling slightly, though the rest of the other man was tense and still. He needed to be warmed up first. Guibu's hand traveled from the shoulder to the head, and he lifted the other's chin up so that their eyes met. He leaned forward, so close that he could see his own reflection in the other man's brown eyes.
Guibu placed a light kiss against his forehead. "Ashanti was right about you," he said in a low voice. "You're gorgeous."
The other man spoke when Guibu pulled back, and his words were rushed together. "Violet eyes and red hair? Are you a member of the Zogt clan?"
Guibu kissed the other's cheek and slowly wrapped his arms around him, pulling him closer. Though he found the question rather intrusive, he knew that the one before him meant no offense with his comment. The other was simply nervous. It was often the reaction for someone's first time, especially with a member of the same sex. "I'm not. My mother may have been, though I doubt it." He kissed his ear softly before whispering into his ear. "What do you want me to call you?"
"Narcasse."
"Narcasse. You have a pretty name, Narcasse." Guibu paused, his hands moving across Narcasse's back. "I'm assuming Ashanti's already told you mine, but if not, it's Guibu."
---
He was ten, and alone.
He tried one last time to wake the woman beside him. "Mom? Mom, wake up. Please."
She did not respond. Her violet eyes were open, and staring at nothing.
He stayed with her body, that night, huddled next to her, like they had always huddled together nights before. But this night there was no roof over their heads and her body was cold.
The next morning, he pulled on her red hair. When she did not respond, he knew that she was dead.
He wandered by himself for a while after that. Then he grew hungry. He tried to steal from one of the bread-sellers in the market, but he was caught and beaten for it. The baker threw him down the street. Eventually he got up and moved again. This time he was able to steal an apple.
His actions caught the attention of some of the other locals and they had a word with him. They were unhappy to have an outsider stealing from their area. He told them that he was just hungry. They understood and asked him his name.
"It's Guibu."
They took him in after that.
--
Narcasse was no longer tense. In fact, he was responding quite nicely. Guibu kissed him, forcing his tongue into the other's mouth. He kissed Narcasse's neck, and then started to move lower, brushing his lips over his collarbone. He moved forward and leaned his weight against the other, pushing him onto the bed. He kissed Narcasse's lips once more.
Narcasse broke it off. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Guibu stopped. "Isn't that a question that I should be asking you, not the other way around?" His hand reached under Narcasse's shirt. "I mean, you were so tense earlier, being so nervous and all. And it is your first time. Are /you/ sure that you still want to do this?"
Narcasse hesitated, though his breath was still rapid. "I'm not...I'm not sure. I'm in love with someone else--"
"Then pretend it's him making love to you, not me. I won't be offended." Guibu grinned. "Call his name out as loudly as you want." He kissed Narcasse again, but found that the other was now, once again, very tense.
Words. It was what loosened him seconds ago, kept him distracted as Guibu touched him.
"What color is his hair?" Guibu started tugging at his clothes.
"Black. The color of a moonless night."
Guibu smiled. A poet, no less. "And his eyes?" Guibu asked, as he moved lower.
The questioning worked, and Narcasse was relaxed. "Blue."
--
The first person he slept with had black eyes, not blue. He could no longer remember what the other's name had been, he just remembered the experience: painful but pleasurable. He decided that the money he had earned for it, while not bad, was not worth it. Sex was too intimate, too close. He did not like how someone who was a complete stranger had been with him, leaving him vulnerable.
Guibu concentrated on becoming a thief after that. He was good enough at what he did that he did not have to sell his body again.
Still, he never forgot that experience. The man with the black eyes. How easy it was to make him moan, how the man had tried to pay for another night afterwards. Sex was a kind of power, a kind of tool.
The money he had earned from that night was enough to buy him a decent meal. He spent it on a second night in that same tavern as his first experience, followed by a dinner.
There, a musician sang a ballad about a thief who seduced a princess and carried her off.
Music enchanted Guibu. He listened to the entire song, especially to the lyrics. He reflected on his own experience and realized that the song was true. Sex had a kind of power, and perhaps he could escape using it. He was trapped here, trapped in this life, trapped in this place, but maybe he could leave.
He was a decent thief but he went to the brothels to learn additional skills.
--
Afterwards, Narcasse slept.
Guibu watched him. He never slept near a stranger, even if he was exhausted, as he was now. It was a stupid thing, to sleep near one that he did not trust. It was the quickest way to lose any material possessions. Narcasse must have grown up some place where he did not have to worry about others stealing from him.
He slipped out of the bed and pulled his clothes on. Then he looked through Narcasse's clothes, which had been so carelessly discarded on the floor. As he had seen earlier that night, Narcasse's money bag was hanging in visible sight. Guibu picked it up and slipped it into a hidden pocket inside his shirt.
When he was finished, he carefully slid back into the bed. Narcasse did not wake up.
Guibu studied him. Narcasse was very pretty. He /had/ been in love with someone else, just as he had told Guibu. He had called the other person's name out earlier -- Duren or something similar. It made Guibu pity him, slightly.
A one-sided romance was never pleasant.
--
"I love you."
Guibu smiled when he heard the words.
"I love you so much," Lord Mantris declared. He wrapped his arms around Guibu's waist, pulling him close, so close that Guibu could smell the sweat on the other's skin.
Guibu hugged him back. "I love you too," he said.
It was true, to some extent. He loved everyone that he slept with, and then stopped loving them the morning after. He was no longer afraid of the intimacy that sex brought, now he even found it a little comforting. It made him feel closer to the rest of the human race, when otherwise he felt distant.
It was a lie, to some extent. More than Lord Mantris himself, he loved what Lord Mantris represented.
A chance to escape the streets.
The only time he had meant those words had been when he was younger, much younger. She had stolen his heart and then laughed at him, telling him that he would never amount to anything more than being a street rat, a cockroach for others like her to step on, just as she had stepped on his heart and broken his dreams.
/"Did you really think that I would love someone like you?"/
/"My Lady, I..."/
/"It tickles me when you call me by that. I *AM* a noblewoman, so it *IS* how I should be addressed. But having someone as filthy as you address me by such terms is almost insulting because it implies that you are a station above what you are right now, a station that you will *NEVER* reach. You are and always will be nothing more than street trash. Haha! You were amusing like a pet dog, but nothing more."/
He had never loved anyone with the same depth ever since.
"I love you," Guibu whispered again into Lord Mantris' ears, because he knew how much the words pleased him. "I love you. Take me away so that we can always be together."
He spoke the hollow words once more, the cheap words that cost him nothing: "I love you."
---
He touched Narcasse's hair.
Narcasse shifted. "Darun," he muttered.
Ah, that name again. It was Darun, not Duren. Not that it mattered, since Guibu doubted that he would ever see him again.
Guibu wondered what Narcasse was dreaming about. He was often haunted by a dream of a person of great beauty, so beautiful that he was always gripped by awe and wonder whenever he gazed upon the person. He was not clear of the beauty's sex, in fact he never remembered the details of the face or anything of the like. These were the only things he remembered from the dream: a sense of belonging and acceptance, and thinking that the person he was with was the most beautiful in the world. He dreamt of others, of course. Some of them seemed to be very important. But the only one he ever remembered was the beauty.
He remembered when he had first seen Narcasse. Walking in robes that were supposed to be a disguise even though they were so clean and new that anyone could tell already that he did not belong in that part of town. The people he traveled with-- Kharlan, whom Guibu had seen around the woman's brothel before. The other man that he had been with, tall and broad-shouldered, dark hair and handsome.
Narcasse had caught his attention because of his beauty, and for a moment Guibu had remembered his dream. But the strange feeling passed and Narcasse was simply a fool who kept his money where it was visible for the whole world to see. A customer for the female brothel, a fool that Guibu easily stole from.
Fool or not, Narcasse had connections. Somehow Ashanti learned that Guibu had stolen from Narcasse. Worse yet, though she did not know Narcasse well, she liked him well enough. She extracted a favor from Guibu in exchange for keeping her discovery to herself and well, here he was now, carrying it out.
Not that he particularly minded. He enjoyed practicing on gentry. Practice only perfected skills, whether they were to be used in the bedroom or to make music.
--
Limtam the minstrel was eyeing him again, and Guibu considered his options. He had escaped his neighborhood, but for how long? How long would Lord Mantris keep him as a lover? He had no illusions about the fidelity of nobles. He had made the mistake of falling for one before, and would not repeat it. He did not want to be trapped, helpless, waiting for when Lord Mantris would leave him.
"As Lord Mantris is away and I have been hired to entertain the both of you, how about I play you a song?" the minstrel offered.
"Limtam," Guibu whispered softly, moving close to him.
Limtam gulped.
Guibu spoke in his ear. "Why don't you play me a love song? 'The Thief's Bride'? I can sing along."
As Limtam began to play, Guibu leaned against him, listening. Then he sang with Limtam, word for word, note for note.
"You have a lovely voice," Lord Mantris' minstrel told him.
Guibu smiled with genuine pleasure. "Thank you." Then he leaned close and kissed the other on the lips. When their kiss ended, Limtam was breathless. "Guibu, we can't. Mantris will be--"
"We can leave together." Guibu kissed him again, a hard kiss, the kind that the male prostitutes had taught him, the kind that left others weak, too weak to argue. "You're a minstrel. I can help you. You said I have a good voice. Let me sing with you. Teach me music. We'll earn our living together.
"Teach me the skills. I want to learn." Words he had said so many times before. To the others on the street to learn how to steal money. To the prostitutes to learn how to give others pleasure. To the minstrel now, to learn how to earn a living.
He had once said the words to Lord Mantris, to learn how to love again. It was the only skill he had never mastered.
--
He walked Narcasse back to the palace.
They did not speak. Very few of his one-night lovers spoke to him afterwards. Narcasse was probably embarrassed and worried about his reputation. Normally Guibu did not associate with them afterwards either, but he loved any excuse he had to look at the palace.
The Ekubatana Royal Palace, majestic and beautiful. Guibu vowed to himself, as he had vowed every time he saw the palace, that one day, he would perform there and he would seduce others for the sheer pleasure of it.
Narcasse cleared his throat, and Guibu prepared himself to leave. It would be an embarrassing dismissal, like always, and he had no desire to make their parting any more awkward than it already was.
"Yes?"
Narcasse hesitated, then looked him straight in the eye. "Thank you."
Guibu blinked, surprised.
"Thank you for the lesson...Master Guibu."
For a moment, Guibu was speechless. No one had ever thanked him before. It had always been him thanking others, him begging others...
Narcasse's lips upturned into a slight smile, and Guibu saw him as beautiful. "It is one I will never forget."
And for one crystal moment, Guibu wished that everything was different. That he had fallen in love with Narcasse instead of feeling so hollow, that they were together instead of their time being a temporary setup, that Narcasse loved him instead of this 'Darun'. That he could wrap his arms around Narcasse and not be pushed away.
He felt eyes watching him and he looked up. On the gate wall, watching them, was a male figure he had seen before. And Guibu knew that he must have been the one called Darun. He looked back at Narcasse and tried to tell him the truth.
"Don't let go of him, Narcasse. This person that you love. Even if he doesn't return it. Even if he cares about you only as a friend, as an associate, it's enough. Love is love, whether or not it involves acts of the flesh. The love between two brothers or two friends is no less weak than the love between two lovers. Even if he does not love you back. The act of loving someone is difficult, as difficult as finding a love that is genuine. So if you that's truly how you feel about him, if you truly love him, don't let go."
--
The next time he saw Narcasse was two years later. He finally earned a good enough reputation as a minstrel that he was invited to perform for Prince Arslan's sixth birthday as his debut at the Royal Palace. The performance went off without any problem, and based on the response from the crowd, Guibu guessed that he would be invited again, someday. His goal had finally been reached.
After his performance, he went to get a drink. Narcasse met him at the refreshment table.
And though the recognition was clear in his eyes, Narcasse introduced himself as if they had never met before, as they had promised each other two years ago. He invited Guibu to join his group of friends and he accepted the offer. He soon found himself in a circle of intellectuals, introduced personally to each of Narcasse's friends. He was surprised that none of them were named Darun.
Narcasse was different. He was more self-assured, more arrogant, and more bitter. Given their brief acquaintance with each other before, Guibu knew that he probably did not know Narcasse well enough to judge him as having changed. But Guibu could detect the slight undertone of bitterness in his voice that he did not remember being there before, though Narcasse acted as jovial as the others of his party.
Later that evening, Narcasse invited him back to his room. Seeing no reason to refuse, Guibu accepted. Narcasse was, after all, beautiful, and Guibu liked beautiful people.
The wine they shared was good, the sex even better. Narcasse had learned a lot in the last two years, and he readily showed his skills off to Guibu. He did not cry out Darun's name either, as he did the first time.
Afterwards, Guibu rested his head against Narcasse's chest, waiting to hear the other's breathing slow down, signs that Narcasse would soon be resting. But Narcasse did not sleep. He simply kept his arm wrapped around Guibu, holding him quietly. And Guibu realized that Narcasse had not listened to his advice, two years before.
"You lost him, didn't you?"
Hesitation. "Yes."
"Ah," Guibu said. He understood now why Narcasse did not sleep. It was the same reason he was still awake, even though he was tired.
He closed his eyes and wished that he could trust another person long enough to keep them shut.
----------------------------------------------
notes:
Some Shadow's Sacrifice readers may wonder why Guibu is so different from this story to the next. The answer is: this story takes place when Guibu was much younger, and in the time in-between the end of this story and the anime, he changed. This was actually my own question when I thought about integrating the two. I'll probably either write a separate story about it later or explain it in future chapters of Shadow's Sacrifice. For now, this is just a convenient back story for me to use for him, to explain why he is such a player. See more about this on the really long author's notes about Shadows.
Update: Sept 2004: The answer is now in it's sequel fic, "The Minstrel's Memories", which officially ties in the universes of My Heart to Joy and Shadow's Sacrifice.
for comments to Karma, send e-mails to: [email protected]
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