“Captain, no,” cries his father’s baby cousin* who looks forty-five instead of thirty-two (Kamui expects it’s because of him).
“Captain, yes.” No one understands the exchange except a few of the Yato who’ve had the misfortune of witnessing their captain shamelessly thirst for seemingly unattainable men at the oddest times (like that one time Kamui murdered a man in cold blood and then presented his corpse to his shrieking consort before asking said shrieking consort for some food and permission to court).
Kamui can’t help it. It’s not often that he has the urge to make love to someone, but when the inclination does make an appearance, he takes it seriously. After all, repression and denial caused Housen to become a shut-in with an elaborate cage built for a woman who didn’t even want him. The thought is so ugly that it makes him want to puke up his twenty-seventh plate of lasagna.
Sure, Yato were astonishingly invested in their incredibly shitty love lives, but Housen kept a woman in a caged city, for hell’s sake, and look where that got him. He was touted as the most powerful Yato for far too long that Kamui’s surprised someone didn’t come for his throat earlier for being that unbelievably stupid. Keeping a person in a cage? Not asking for consent? Kamui inwardly tsk-tsks. In the end, Housen was all brawn and no brain- dead without anyone to love him, and the girl whose Achilles heels he’d snapped was now living with her fellow moon and they were raising a child together.
Not that Kamui would ever have children. He’s sure they’d grow up trying to kill him just like he’d tried killing Baldy. Not a good image. He wants his future to shine with blood, not get bogged down by it. Flesh was to be relished, not wasted.
Shinsuke isn’t a dumbass. As daft as the other members are, Shinsuke is light years beyond all of them in both the beauty and the brain departments. Kamui knows that he knows Kamui’s been bitchy towards members of the fleet, and that when they spar, Kamui presses too close, lowers his eyes, lets his fingers drift gently across Shinsuke’s face even when they’re supposed to be fighting until one of them is too exhausted to move. Kamui does it on purpose and Shinsuke knows it.
His thoughts drift to his useless father and his mother next as Gunslinger Moron makes her seventh attempt at jumping Shinsuke’s silent form. Kamui remembers that Mommy and Baldy were together until she died, and from what Kamui’s contacts tell him, Baldy has yet to take another lover. Kamui sneers and that’s when he senses Abuto and the other Yato stiffen. The Kiheitai have yet to take notice of his changes in his expressions, but his men and his darling, one-armed uncle are all on high alert.
His mother was incredibly beautiful. Even when she was wasting away, her loveliness remained. Baldy may be useless, but at least he was loyal. He had every right to be. Kamui’s mother was someone worth being loyal to.
Kamui hears Shinsuke rise from his seat and straighten his back, and all thoughts of Mommy and Baldy disappear.
“We have a strategy summit tomorrow afternoon. Make appropriate arrangements for a long day, and remember to add yakult bottles to the evening menu. Thank you and goodnight.”
His chair barely scrapes the floor as he gets out and tucks it in before disappearing to the deck. Gunslinger Klutz attempts to make follow but Hentai Man makes a comment on how discombobulated her breasts are, and suddenly there’s a full on fight while the rest of the table quietly finishes their dinner.
Mommy would have laughed and Baldy would have blushed with that hideously smitten look on his face and Kagura, tiny Kagura, she would have giggled and smashed mashed plums against her mouth in an effort to devour them.
But there’s no Mommy, no Baldy, and no Kagura. It’s him, Abuto, his surviving Yato crew, and members of Kiheitai. There’s him, and then there’s Shinsuke. There’s him, and then there’s Shinsuke’s pipe. There’s his libido and Shinsuke’s quiet demeanor.
Baldy once let it slip that he and Mommy had a shotgun wedding. What was it that he said?
Sometimes love starts in the bed, Abuto.
Ah. Baldy had been encouraging his dear uncle to make a move on one of the Yato he’d managed to feel some type of way about. Kamui recalls that he was eavesdropping because he was curious. Mommy had been asleep with tiny Kagura and he was too hyper to conk out like his Mommy and baby sister, and so he’d peeked in on his father and dumb uncle’s private conversation.
Not everyone has that kinda luck, Abuto had deadpanned.
Kamui remembers that by that point he had turned away. It was a boring conversation, it seemed at the time. Everyone knew Mommy and Baldy got married while she was pregnant with Kamui, but the kicker was that they had also fallen in love.
Kamui is being a bitch and he made it obvious enough that earlier in the day, he went as far as to offer Shinsuke a plate of food at breakfast. A Yato offering someone food. A Yato. Offering food to someone they weren’t related to or currently fucking. Kamui was courting and he knew Shinsuke knew, but the only way to confirm was to ask.
I’d like to join you tonight. Do I have your permission?
In typical Shinsuke manner, he puffed out some smoke from his pipe and shrugged. Sure.
Kamui decided that’s all he needed but he knows, deep down, that it’s not enough. Mommy and Baldy fell in love after they found out Kamui was growing in her belly and got married thereafter, but Kamui couldn’t put a baby in Shinsuke’s stomach. Shinsuke was also a brooder, quiet unless it was necessary to speak, and proponent of the Mind Your Damn Business school of thought. Kamui knows that whatever they do tonight or any other night will be nothing more than sex and a warm body to sleep next to.
Unless.
“Sometimes love starts in the bed.” Knives and forks clatter as they fall to the table. Gunslinger Woman gawks. Hentai Man absently strokes his chin as if in deep contemplation. Abuto visibly sighs again. “What?” Kamui scratches his full stomach. “It’s true.”
Baldy may have been useless, but at least he had found love and maybe, just maybe Kamui could convince Shinsuke that Yato men were much more than bloodhounds with no brains. After all, there was a reason why Housen was dead and why his once caged bird now lived happily ever after with her moon and their son.