Chapter Text
The disturbed waters break across the looming ship’s wooden sides, rocking it back and forth, but not deterring it from its course.
It is not the first ship of its kind--large and with horizontally shingled square sails--Tendou has seen in his waters, but it is the first that does not so much as waver when he opens his mouth and releases his song.
The music dances over the water and travels as a stowaway on the wind. The lyrics are in a language indiscernible to human ears, a soothing inaudible pitch, but some things don’t need translation. The promises, suggestive and explicit both, are clear as the droplets that cling to Tendou’s crimson feathers like dew. He knows they must reach the raised area under a small roof where Tendou can make out a single human form, steering the massive trade ship.
And still, it does not waver. The person at the helm does not so much as flinch.
Tendo cocks his head and blinks his paper lantern eyes. A smile curls up his face, corners brushing each high cheekbone. With a traveling shake, from his hair down to the talons of his feet, water sprays off of him, landing on the already sea-damp rock he sat crouched on. His fluffed up feathers stand off his body like goosebumps, ready for flight. With a single push of his long legs, he is thrown into the air, tossed about like a plaything of the fickle island winds.
Ultimately, though, he and the winds are on friendly enough terms. They throw him closer and closer to the ship, dropping him onto the side. His long pointed fingers scramble with high pitched screeches along the fresh orange paint and up a support beam until he’s climbed into a comfortable position on top of the puce roof, crouching over the helmsman.
Only then does he feel the man glance up at Tendou’s perch, though Tendou knows he is hidden from view, one hand disengaging from the helm to rest on the handle of the tachi in his sheath.
“Ooooo,” Tendou says, “Are you gonna cut me up, samurai?” he asks. The man’s stoic face, as Tendou can see it from above, does not move, and he does not answer. Tendou tilts his head and licks some tangy sea salt off the feathers of his wrist as he assesses his newest meal.
The man is taller and broader than Tendou, exceedingly large for a human. Unlike many of the other samurai Tendou has led to ruin, this one is still wearing full armor despite being far out at sea. The rivets in his black chest plate gleam purple, the ties that keep it secured and knit together the shoulder pads looking like vines of dark wisteria intertwined with his body. His face’s stern demeanor is enhanced by the metallic hanbo of the same color that secures his throat and chin.
Perhaps the reason he is not even trying to look at Tendou is that he cannot turn his head at all. Tendou lets out a screeching laugh at the thought, though he knows from experience it is not the truth. Even at this alarming sound, the man does not waver.
The interesting parts of the human, Tendou decides, are above the hanbo and below the waning moon horns of his helmet. His sharp and intense eyes burn at the horizon, resolved on the goal of still far-off lands. Tendou licks his dry lips, salt stinging along the cracks.
“Hey, so far from home, and you’re still wearing full armor? Don’t ya know you can take it off? Nobody will say anything about it.” No answer. “Hmmm. There’s a superior below deck hiding with the rest of the crew, ain’t there? That’s why you hafta wear it. I should go check!” He baits, tightening his talons on the edge of the roof so he can rise into a stooped standing position, arms hanging down past his feathered knees.
“My armor is a burden and pride I am prepared and willing to carry. I will not remove it for the sake of comfort,” the man replies, as Tendou knew he would. This samurai, the only one on the deck of a ship crossing siren-infested waters, has been tasked with the protection of the rest of the crew and whatever merchandise they are hauling below. Like all those before him, he believes he will do whatever it takes to complete that task. Like all those before him, he will surrender that duty for the sake of the desire Tendou’s kind promises and never delivers on.
“How responsible! How noble! I wonder how fast you’ll drown in it!”
The man still does not so much as flinch, and Tendou finds himself a bit impressed.
“I have no intention of entering the water. You will have to return empty-handed, monster,” he says instead.
“Ooof, right where it hurts!” Tendo puts his clawed hand to his heart and swoons backward as if hit by one of the arrows in the quiver across the man’s back. “I have feelings, ya know, and a name! Speaking of which, what’s yours?”
Silence.
Fair enough. He’s rarely been to the Japanese mainland, but Tendou knows they knew enough of the yokai not to be giving out their names without thought. He’s never had a conversation with a genuine Japanese sailor, though, not in his waters. They’ve never lasted past his song.
Not wholly accurate, Tendou supposes. There was one man, the one who had been enthralled by his song at first, but his desire for his partner had ultimately won out over Tendou’s musical spell. He’d lost his cargo and portions of his ship but saved most of his crew. Tendou had congratulated him while the man clung to the deck, helmet knocked aside and hateful brown eyes glaring out from under dripping brown hair. His not-so-human partner, an oni perhaps, had ultimately saved his life.
This man, though, he is alone. He doesn’t stand a chance. So Tendou sees no harm seeing if there is any more entertainment to be gotten in conversation.
“I guess that was rude to ask, huh, without giving you mine? Hmmm, I know. You can call me Sa-to-ri!” Tendou also knows better than to give a human his proper name, though this is one he identifies with well.
The man’s eyebrows furrow.
“You are not a satori,” he says.
“Ah, but I can read your mind like one!”
The man’s lips flatten.
“That’s mean; you don’t believe me. It’s the truth, though. Kinda.” To an extent, anyway. Sirens are not so much the mind readers satoris are, but their intuition is beyond comparison. They can pick out and piece together desire like a hawk plucks fish out of the sea. It is not often an incredibly fulfilling venture, though. All humans are the same. “I can prove it!”
The man’s shoulders draw back in alarm, hand fully unsheathing his tachi as Tendou opens his mouth and sings his familiar notes. It is, Tendou knows, too late.
At this distance, his well-worn song-- promises of base desires, pleasure, control, domination, sex--is a direct guide into Tendou’s open arms and, soon after, between his sharpened teeth. He weaves it through the air with the sensuality of a silk ribbon, notes twirling across those steely eyes and slipping under the plates of that heavy armor, promises, a flash of hot skin, promises, a breathy voice against his ear, promises, the complete docile submission of a partner.
No longer concerned about being seen for the deformed monster he is and mistakenly breaking the immersion, Tendou hops off the roof and allows his feathers to catch enough wind to land him on the painted red railing. The human will reach for him and overbalance, tumbling into the bright azure depths of Tendou’s hunting ground.
When the human finally turns to look, though, it is not with clouded desire, but with calculating suspicion, still holding his sword and estimating the difference between its reach and Tendou's perch.
Their eyes meet. The samurai’s assessing gaze tears over Tendou’s scraggy chimera body, sun-darkened skin covered eternally in the harsh salt rocks that scratch under his red feathers, and mouth and teeth stained with peeling blood.
The song does not draw him in, and so in this moment, the man sees Tendou in a way no non-bewitched human has and lived to tell--lived to judge. He is seeing him in a way that betrays the ethereal allure of a siren song as nothing but the hasty trappings of beauty covering an ugly soul.
Tendou has made a mistake. The intense subtropical sun burns along his skin, but it pales in comparison to the chilling burn of those eyes, like a sword made of ice through his stomach, more potent than the one the samurai holds could ever be.
Next thing he is cognizant of, the winds are battering Tendou, sea spray stinging like iron arrows against his cheeks as he puts distance between himself and his cold humiliation.
…:::*:::...
The next time Tendou sees the ship, he stays on his favorite sawtoothed rock and considers the form this lone samurai makes against the empty sea.
Pushing the past out of his mind, he stands tall and breathes in the heavy hair, lungs drinking in the energy that fuels his voice. This time, he tries a new song, not about power and sex, but pure and honest about lust and desire. Most humans he’s entranced are fans of the former, but some crave the latter, a sexual partner and not an object of desire. It is the natural change in tune his song would have taken had he not miscalculated so erroneously the first time. He had simply assumed from the rich armor and proud features that a man of power would desire a surrender of will.
This altered song dances differently, not like silk ribbons but like the fire that flickers behind half-lidded eyes and licks fiercely at willing bodies, searching to devour. Tendou sways as he sings with it until his own body is burning.
The ship does not waver.
…:::*:::...
Love is a creation of the hormonally unstable meat that rests between the ears of creatures who have yet to discover what hormones even are, much less that they are slaves to them.
That is what Tendou believes, anyway, even if some of the others--the sirens that hunt in packs of twos or threes, the oft paired vetallas, the ancient Scylla and Charybdis--say otherwise. Regardless, he is not above singing a song that promises this impossible thing if it means entrapping the human that continues to slip through his clutches.
The music that twirls around him this time is an old balled, an ancient one of his people that sees little use. If domination is a silk ribbon and lust a fire, love sounds like a ribbon awash in flame. It burns low and steady along the delicate threads, renewing the earth that grows the trees where the silkworms do their work. Tendou sings of new things, of regrowth, of intertwining yourself with another using a rope that does not chafe and heat that does not burn.
Tendou promises his lonely samurai a passion and romance that will fill the empty half of the man’s soul, if only he could reach Tendou’s island. It’s not so far, not for fulfillment, Tendou promises. Look how welcoming the waters are, cool and pleasurable on this hot summer’s day, if only you would jump in. You will make it, and at the end you will find something humans have claimed to fight a thousand wars for. It is a lie so deep and underhanded that even Tendou feels a moment of pity in the empty caverns of his humming heart.
The sound of creaking wood like the bellow of a whale replies to Tendou’s song. The ship is tilting, and Tendou crouches in half anticipation for the meal soon to be caught by the spider’s web of glittering light that crisscrosses the water’s surface.
The ship corrects course.
No matter how Tendou screeches after that, it does not waver.
…:::*:::...
There is nothing to be done about it. Tendou has exhausted all the stock human desires he has a song for. This man does not crave powerful domination nor pleasurable desire nor even actualizing love. He has made three trips across Tendou’s waters without so much as being inconvenienced by the siren’s presence. The only way to put a stop to it is for Tendou to stop generalizing and use his bragged of powers of perception to find the true desire of this samurai’s heart.
Past humiliation thrown to the less cerebral birds than himself, the next time the light of his eye catches the well-protected merchant vessel, Tendou flutters into the air. Landing on the roof and peering over the edge, he can see how the samurai puts a hand to his tachi once more. There is something less urgent about it, though. He has heard three of Tendou’s songs, has seen the unappealing awkwardness of his true face and lived to speak about it. Whatever threat Tendou poses does not seem quite so intimidating now.
“Soooooo, not so into sex, are you, samurai?” No answer. “Hey, it’s okay. I totally get it, believe me. I’ve never got what humans are on about with it, ya know? But humans are strange creatures with strange desires for sure. I guess only they can understand.”
Silence.
“You’re really the strong and silent type, ya know, samurai? Not like the guy who tried to cross before you, a real talker he was, but I guess it worked for him. Maybe I need to go below deck to find someone good to talk to!”
Tendou waits, again feeling that unpleasant nip in the cavern of his heart.
“Oikawa-san spoke of you,” the man says after a wave crests along the boat’s side, covering them in mist. “A monster with the voice and appearance of temptation that sunk his cargo and near drowned his crew.”
“Oh! So that was his name. Are you sure you’re comfy just giving it out like that to a monster?”
“The knowledge is of no worth to you. He will not be sailing this route again. I have been deemed the more fit protector.”
“Ooof, confidant, aren’t ya?”
“That is a statement of fact.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t like that.”
“He has declared us rivals.”
“Ha! What a good time. He came close to resisting, I guess, but I still got him with my first song. He wants that control so badly I can tell he tasted it. It was unlucky for me his monstrous lover was there, or he wouldn’t have been able to share that fun little story at all.”
“To whom do you refer?”
“Ya know, the oni he’s totally fooling around with.”
Silence again, but this one more expectant. Tendou cranes his head over the roof’s edge, tilting a little to the side to see under the helmet how the helmsman’s eyebrows have drawn together.
“I guess they’re hiding their relationship, huh? It’s the one that’s always next to him with the wild hair,” Tendou clarified. The tense face relaxed, perhaps a bit too much.
“Iwaizumi-san is an oni?” His voice is as straightforward and level as always, but the surprise is discernible to Tendou’s musical senses in the hesitance of the underlying bass.
“Whoops, was I not supposed to say that? Was it a secret, too? Hey, don’t tell, okay?”
“That would be irresponsible.”
“Hey now, that’s not fair. They’ve been together for a while, and he isn’t hurting anybody, right?”
“No.”
“So it’d be pretty messed up to out him like that. Think of what they’ll do to him on the mainland. That’s not fair, and I’d feel super bad about it. Don’t tell, please?”
“... Iwaizumi is a righteous man. I will consider it.”
“Thank you! But you know, you owe me a name, now. I gave you information, so now you have to give it back!”
“I did not enter any deal with you.”
“I guess not, but that’s bad form! How untrustworthy! Comeon, samurai, just one name? What can I do with just your family name? It’s too impersonal for anything really effective.”
“I am the protector of my family name. I will not betray it to a sea monster.”
“Now that’s just mean. I’m really not into the cursing business; I just eat what comes my way. Cross my heart and hope to die! How about this, a deal with a monster is binding, you agree?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then, I swear that if I receive your family name, I will do nothing to harm any other carrier of the bloodline. From now on, they will have safe passage across this sea.”
The wind pulls Tendou’s hair back from his forehead, and he can hear the way it whistles across the samurai’s heavy armor.
“That’s a good deal, take it!”
“I will consider it,” the man says.
“Boo, no fun.” Tendou raises his head to the horizon and, with a shiver across his frame, realizes he is reaching the limits of his own territory. Any further and he will be subject to a fight with something not so easily swayed by a sweet melody. “Well, I gotta take my leave,” he says, “but first…”
This song has the quick-pace of a tanto dagger slid between shoulder blades, and the bitter warble of a defeated friend. It captures that moment of proving oneself, proving ability and proficiency, and, most of all, superiority. It is a song of conquered rivalry that cuts through the chinks in any armor.
It takes only a few notes for the helmsman to unsheathe his sword and hold it at the ready. Tendou stops his song.
“Ya, I didn’t think so, but it was worth a try,” he admits. “But I guess the rivalry was more Oikawa’s idea, huh?” Tendo stands and stretches his arms towards the sky. He shakes out each of his legs, talons clicking on the roof. “See ya next time!” He jumps.
The sky has only just taken hold of him when the wind manages to deliver to him a gift nearly too heavy to ride it.
“Ushijima.”
Tendou bares his pointed teeth at the sun.
“See ya next time, Ushi-chan!”