Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

Intimate Rivals	By : Salysha Category: +S through Z > Tekken Views: 5835 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Tekken or any of the characters in it. I do not make any money from writing this story.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Chapter 4: Mokujin

It was morning when Jin stirred. He woke to find himself propped up on his side, squeezed comfortably between the mattress and the wall, warm and snug. As he opened his eyes, he found Hwoarang lying next to him on his stomach, one arm resting over the bedside and one leg precariously close to follow suit. He faced the other way, sound asleep.

Jin amended his posture a little, careful not to disturb the sleeping man. They weren’t touching, but the bed contained them both only with effort, and Hwoarang was close to falling off. A surge of mischief tempted Jin, as he pictured what just the slightest nudge would do. A small smile ensued upon the visual, but the thought, he instantly quelled; impish malice had no excuse. Still, when had he last felt playful?

Watching the Korean who professed to be his rival brought the prior developments to Jin’s mind, and he was reminded of Hwoarang’s kindness. He had had a nightmare and woken Hwoarang, and yet, Hwoarang had shared a bed with him, and more. Hwoarang was still sharing a bed with him. Thinking about the gesture threatened to break Jin’s calm: the spell would be broken once Hwoarang would wake up, and they’d slip from comfort to new planes of awkwardness. At least he owed it to Hwoarang not to disturb his rest yet and not try to get up.

“Jin?”

He had woken Hwoarang after all--fidgeted him awake. Resigned, Jin knew it was time to pay the piper. “Yes?” he breathed.

Hwoarang moved and propped himself up a little. He lifted his outstretched arm in an effort to wake it and stretched his lithe form. Jin remained immobile to give him some personal space, but Hwoarang soon gathered himself together and lifted himself up to look at Jin. “Morning.”

Morning? “Morning.”

“You should’ve just hopped over or woken me.” Propped up on his elbows, Hwoarang hung his head down with a yawn.

“I just woke myself,” was all Jin could bring himself to say.

“Sleep okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” With another yawn, Hwoarang picked himself up and rose, sitting on the bedside, soon to rise to his feet. Jin watched in confusion as Hwoarang went to his luggage as any other morning to find his things for the day. He had thought he there was an issue where there was none; Hwoarang was remarkably unfazed by waking in the same bed as he. In fact, he was nothing short of friendly. Relief washed over Jin, just as concealed by his outward serenity as the other movements of his mind. Jin pulled himself sitting up on the bed and leaned against the headboard. He bent his feet up and leaned against them. He would rise soon, too. The thought was not entirely unpleasant; he felt prepared to accept the day, come what may.

Hwoarang, for his part, had found his clothes and toiletries and was prepared to see himself to the bathroom in the corridor to get dressed, just as he did every day. He paused to that thought; was it time to stop being so prudish? “Hey, do you mind if I change here?”

Jin looked up from the bed--a little surprised, it seemed--but he shook his head. “No, not at all. Go ahead.” He faced the other way and left Hwoarang shuffling with his clothes.

Jin thought it was safe to turn when he heard the belt buckle clash, but he turned too soon and caught a flash of Hwoarang’s bare ass; the redhead had merely been straightening the pants and dusting the denim off. Jin quickly turned away, red-faced.

Hwoarang finished getting dressed and okayed Jin’s turning, frowning a little when Jin seemed ill at ease. Maybe he was crossing lines, after all, and Kazama preferred the polite detachment over doing roomie things. Then again, he was reading much too much into every single move either of them made. As soon as he’d woken up and realized where he was and how and whom with, he had realized things could get awkward, especially if Kazama got defensive, and had decided he had no reason to fret. Nothing was awkward unless he made it so himself; Kazama wasn’t one to cause trouble.

Too many damn thoughts, too early. Nothing useful. In the end, Hwoarang simply gathered his gear for the day. “See you later,” he said and let himself out. Jin was left alone, still unsure of everything, but then he caught the big picture: Hwoarang had stayed with him through the night and been nice upon waking up. In all his being, he had shown nothing was out of order. They were okay. Jin couldn’t help a smile--one rarely seen on his face until of late--play on his lips briefly.

--

The fight was on, and the crowd was going wild. Hwoarang had joined them and was leaning on a wooden beam, eyes fixated on the arena. Jin was fighting Julia Chang. His gaze swept over Julia: a good rack, a nice pair on her, a great ass....

Not very interesting.

But then there was Kazama. Every move precise, controlled, exuding power. Dangerous to the bone, and out to win. Holding back so much, it was almost painful. It wasn’t the girl’s fault; she did what she could, and she landed good moves on him. She read the game and varied her attacks, but Jin blocked her unwaveringly, waiting for his moment. The attacks might as well have landed on a brick wall; they barely shook him, but they tired the opponent. Hwoarang could understand why Kazama didn’t finish it through aggression; it was still a she, in the tournament of her own will and skilled just the same or not, and she was still much more fragile than he....

Not all had similar ideas. Some fighters got off on a sadistic pleasure for damaging anything in their way--man, woman, animal, or animated being--but Kazama was one of the decent ones, looking for a gentle way to end it when brutal strength wasn’t needed. It was still early on in the tournament, and they weren’t tired; they could still afford the path of some resistance.

Julia landed a strike, and Jin’s head snapped back. The hood of his sweatsuit fell off, as did the chivalry. Jin launched into a series of moves, so close in tow they almost blurred into one fluid movement, and Julia was forced to back down across almost half the arena.

Hwoarang frowned. Those moves.... Was he losing his mind? He stared at Jin intently. No, he was sure of it. That wasn’t the Jin Kazama he had fought and tied with. Somewhere down the line, Kazama had changed his style. The observation rattled him; how had he not known? Fascinated now, he observed the fight that would end any second. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. He was so keen on studying Kazama, he almost missed someone taking a place by his side.

“He is good, isn’t he?” a voice came, and Hwoarang found Ling Xiaoyu looking at him sullenly.

“He is,” Hwoarang said neutrally, but he gave Xiaoyu an almost friendly glance. He knew he should apologize to her, even if the day before had been her own damn fault. An actual apology was out of the question, but there were other ways to make amends. “Did you find the bear?”

“Panda!”

“Well, did you?”

Xiaoyu frowned. Was he being sincere or just being a prick? She couldn’t tell.... But when Hwoarang looked at her like he really wanted to know, she said, “Yes.”

“Good.” Hwoarang nodded and turned to the arena just in time to see Kazama pull himself stock-still, only to deliver a vicious blow that sent Julia flying backward. “You have matches already?”

“No! ...What?”

Hwoarang sighed inwardly. So much for being nice. “When do your games start?”

“Oh... tomorrow.” Xiao verged on indecision, but then she asked, “And yours?”

“Tonight.”

The match ended in a knockout, and the paramedics were already rushing ahead with a stretcher. The winner, forgotten, faded to black and wished for a getaway.

Hwoarang saw Jin turn his head to his side and say something; he wondered what. The on-site screens revealed little, and the subtitles were only available for the home audience. Hwoarang turned his attentions back to the present. “Good luck,” Hwoarang said, startling Xiaoyu, who then responded in kind with a timid of smile tugging at her lips. He had a match of his own to prepare for. Xiao followed suit, as he left with a last look thrown in the distance.

At the arena, cameras were turned off, and the paramedics left with Julia. “Forgive me,” Jin repeated in a low, pained voice. “I had no choice.” Solitary now, he turned to look at the audience, but he couldn’t see anything except for a faceless mass. He had thought someone particular had been watching him, but there was no one there. Shuffling his feet heavily, Jin turned to leave.

--

Time to play the game.

The flow of adrenaline had been building steadily through the day, and it culminated to this moment, ready to burst out in the open any time. The anticipation of the fight was a stimulant so powerful, Hwoarang felt like he was counting heartbeats now, burning to cut the edge of the rush he knew he had yearned for.

Hwoarang cracked his knuckles and fought to keep his emotions at bay. Before him, his opponent stood still and waited: Mokujin. Another “Jin” there.... Hwoarang scraped the thought and made himself focus. He had gotten the tree.

That was no reason to get comfortable. On the contrary: Mokujin was the dark horse. The tree remained immobile, dead wood, but the outset of the battle was going to reanimate it. Whose style was it going to emulate? Hwoarang adjusted his gear and waited, measuring his opponent with his eyes.

The ring of the bell cut the torturous wait. It was time. Hwoarang demonstrated a punch and bowed at his opponent, a stern look on his face. He took a fighting stance.

Mokujin sprung to life. It punched in show and, with a swoosh, launched two successive kicks high up in the air, before mimicking Hwoarang and landing in a stance.

Hwoarang’s jaw dropped. Those looked like taekwondo kicks, not unlike the ones he had demonstrated on Steve Fox only days earlier. The tree was him!? He couldn’t be positive, but then the game commenced. In his stupefaction, he let his guard down, and Mokujin made for an offensive. As a strike of iron hit Hwoarang in the face, he realized with horror that it was taekwondo, but it wasn’t his....

--

Hwoarang paced back and forth in the garden. The night had descended, and it engulfed him willingly, just as he embraced the darkness. He’d lost it; he’d lost it; he’d.....

Hwoarang stopped mid-strife and swayed on his feet. His hand shook like a leaf when he brought it to his mouth and stifled a sob. He wouldn’t lose it; he wasn’t going to break.... His heart pounded like crazy, loud as the sound of blood rushing to his ears, and the tightness in his chest threatened to choke him. His eyes stung with saltiness, but he wasn’t going to lose it; he wasn’t going to cry....

The garden was dank, but it was dark and he was solitary: that was all that mattered. No one was there; no one would come here and find him like this. The ragged breaths threatened to overtake Hwoarang again, but he forced himself to stay lucid. He was hyperventilating. He had to calm down; he had to go inside sometime. Nothing was wrong, as long as long as he didn’t show it; no one would know.... They hadn’t kicked him out; he was still in.... The judges had ruled in his favor; he had been let off with a warning.... He would be fine, if he didn’t lose it now.

His breathing calmed eventually, but the salty sting refused to leave his eyes. He tried to blink them clear. This wasn’t going to break him.

He had kept it under control for two years: he hadn’t allowed himself to think about it, hadn’t said a word, and hadn’t once shown that something was amiss until today, when that thing had attacked him.

Baek Doo San. Hwoarang couldn’t bring himself to say his name out loud, but his breathing cracked with emotion. Baek was long gone, and that piece of shit dared pose as him?

The episode was a blur: he remembered from the fight that horrible moment when he had realized he was fighting a being that had robbed his master’s identity and desecrated his memory. He had flashbacks of sitting on top of that thing, pounding its wooden face incessantly, hit after hit, heedless of the damage he was inflicting upon himself; the bell had sounded, and there had been screams that had told him to stop, or so he assumed; there had been several pairs of hands that had finally pulled him off, and he had fought against them vehemently before being overpowered and forced down.

There had been a meeting afterward, where they had decided what to do with him. He hadn’t understood much of it, and he remembered even less of it now. Had his opponent been a human, they would have had to react and take him off for violent conduct. Even the King of Iron Fist Tournament had rules. As it was, they had dragged the wooden dummy off the arena and shrugged it off with a slap on the wrist. They had called it “entertainment value” and deemed it high. That comment had broken through the haze, and it still stung.

As Hwoarang mastered his breathing again, he became aware of his injuries. His hands.... Dread crept into his mind. The dried blood on his knuckles, still scratching against the gauntlets with each little move, made his hands tremble, and a spasm of pain ran through his arms, intent on traveling to his heart and bringing it more ache. He hoped he hadn’t fractured anything, that he had only bruised and chafed them, and it was the fatigue that now intensified a normal ache to almost unbearable agony. He wouldn’t be able to continue if he had damaged something this early on.

Thinking about fighting brought the original pain back, and he struggled with himself. He had controlled himself for two years, accepted without a word the loss he couldn’t change, but the dam was threatening to break. The more he tried to suppress the overpowering emotion, the stronger it grew. He had to get his mind elsewhere.

He lunged a full-force kick at the tree he had been standing under.

It worked. Next thing he knew, his ankle was on fire and his foot radiated agony. God, it hurt! His breathing hitched, and he could barely keep on his feet. His entire leg emanated the kind of pain that took everything else off his mind and made the distress melt to nothingness. The leg refused to support his weight or cooperate, and he wavered on the other one.

“Why did you do that?” a quiet voice came behind him.

The voice and the arrival of its owner were like a dagger in Hwoarang’s heart. Not you. Not this. Not you, when I’m like this. If he just kept his back turned, maybe Jin would go away and leave him alone. That was the fantasy world; this was the real one, and he had to speak up. “The fuck are you doing here?!” Hwoarang hated the tearful tone he wasn’t able to mask in full.

“I was looking for you.”

“Why?”

“I was worried.”

Jin said the words simply, neutrally, without accusation, and that drained the last of the hostile energy Hwoarang was desperate to hold onto to keep it together. Maybe he could yell at Jin and make him leave, pick a fight and be left alone, but he doubted that would work. Nothing was working for him. “Go away,” he muttered.

A more acute pain wrested his attention. He might as well give up the pretense. Hwoarang dumped himself on his rear on the cold, damp ground and pulled his knees up, resting against them heavily, hoping a more comfortable position would allow him to ignore the nasty twinges. He looked at the ground straight ahead, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blue pants invade his line of sight and a glimpse of gold shine through the dark. Jin sat down a little distance from him and pulled his feet up, resting his arms on his knees. “What are you doing?”

“Keeping you company.”

“I don’t need any.”

“Maybe I need some.”

Hwoarang felt like laughing hysterically. This was too absurd. The impulse to laugh madly died, and, defeated, he hung his head down. Maybe if he waited long enough, Jin would vanish, and he would wake up to discover that this had been a vivid nightmare.

The night was still, as were they. Chill had begun to creep to his bones when Hwoarang finally raised his head – and found Jin beside him, wordlessly looking somewhere past him. The dark eyes flashed at him and met his briefly before Jin averted his gaze and studied the tree.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

Hwoarang was tired. “--are you here?”

Jin’s lip twitched as to a private joke, however a grotesque mockery of Hwoarang’s misery, but all he said in that mesmeric voice of his was, “Wouldn’t you be?”

Mind games. Kazama was playing some sort of mind games with him, and he wasn’t up to them. His head pounded, and he was sore all over. And... “Shit,” Hwoarang choked and grabbed his ankle. It had been burning steadily, but now the twinges were coming in waves. He felt sick. He pressed onto the side of the ankle hard and willed himself to wait it out. As he opened his eyes, he found Jin crouching in front of him, supporting himself on one knee, leaning forward. Now, his expression was definitely worried.

“Let me help. Please.”

Hwoarang didn’t even know what to reply to that. Jin waited for him to give sanction, but when none came, he simply took Hwoarang’s foot in his hands and straightened his leg. Hwoarang hissed, but he was too tired to push Jin off.

“I’m just going to take a look.”

Hwoarang wanted to scream bloody murder, but Jin ignored him and removed his shoe and sock despite the protests. Hwoarang sank onto the ground on his back; could this get any more humiliating? Jin Kazama inspecting his fight-soaked, filthy foot, while he couldn’t find the strength to fight back? His self-made purgatory was crossing all the lines.

Jin was examining the ankle, seemingly unaffected by its state of unwash. He pressed a thumb into the sole of the foot and ran it across the sole’s length.

“Wrong place.”

Jin shook his head. “Everything affects everything.” He took a firmer grip and sat on the ground, pulling the redhead’s foot in his lap and disregarding his reluctance easily, and started massaging the foot from the toes up.

Hwoarang had to admit, it felt good. He couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that the right thing to do would be to kick Jin off and lick his wounds in private, but the firm touch and the confident ministrations really felt good. Even his ankle--which he was sure he had sprained or killed altogether--accepted the attention, and the painful burning turned into a mild tingling, which he took for a good sign.

He struggled up and to a sitting position, leaning back on his hands, and his foot shifted a little in Jin’s lap. He tried to catch Jin’s eyes, but Jin only raised an absent-minded brow at him, and he decided he could accept the gracious care just a little longer. As Hwoarang leaned back, his hands gave a nasty reminder of their existence, and he struggled up, shifting again, until his undamaged foot was bent on the ground and able to support him upright. He brought his hands ahead of him and started peeling the gauntlet off.

The hand didn’t look as bad as he had thought. It looked like it had been through hell, but all the joints moved and nothing was bruised too badly. His knuckles looked like he had run them through a thorn bush, though. He tried to see if all his fingers still responded to command.

“Is it bad?” Jin asked and looked at his hand sideways.

For the briefest moment, Hwoarang thought Jin was going to take it and virtually leave them holding hands, and he was prepared to jerk his hand away. Of course, Jin did no such thing because it was all in his head. “I’ll live,” Hwoarang said ruefully. He massaged the knuckles and realized belatedly that Jin was still working on his foot. “Umm, thanks. I think I’m good,” he said and shifted.

Jin inclined his head and put his foot down carefully. Hwoarang moved for his footwear.

“You shouldn’t put anything on it. It’ll swell.”

Hwoarang scowled. “I’m not walking around without any damn shoes.”

Jin sighed. He rose to his feet, waiting while Hwoarang stuffed his foot back into his boot. He then offered a hand to Hwoarang, pulling him up as well. He brushed his clothes off. “Can we go now? My ass is freezing.”

This time Hwoarang couldn’t help it: he did laugh. The laughter was brief and spontaneous, and it was genuine. He hadn’t even thought the pure and innocent Jin Kazama knew words like “ass.” Jin’s expression was delightfully smug, too. Looked like he’d been wrong about the guy on more than one account: Kazama wasn’t half bad. “Yeah, mine too,” he said with a grin. The grin turned into a wince as he laid weigh on his foot, and the change earned a slight frown from Jin.

“Can you walk on that foot?”

“Yeah....” Hwoarang grit his teeth and took slow steps. “I didn’t think that through, did I?”

“No,” Jin agreed, undeterred by Hwoarang’s answering glower. Side by side, they made their way over to the house that had long since quieted down for the night. Jin gentlemanly adjusted his pace to Hwoarang’s, who couldn’t help a slight limp. They made it over to their room, where Hwoarang responded to Jin’s offer of the bed by flinging himself down on his spot on the floor and throwing in a solid refusal. Minding their own business, they settled for the night.

Enormous thanks to Gypsie for the proofreading!

Originally published March 28, 2009.
- 3
- 4
- 5
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Intimate Rivals