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Because of the rigors of his work Kirei often finds himself travelling long distances to carry out cases and perform his duties for the church. Typically he had his plane tickets paid for but he doesn't get much from the comforts of first class or the wonders of far off lands. Though occasionally he may find a moment of good humor in the tear drenched pleas of a wayward mage he gets very little from his work.
Gilgamesh doesn't seem to believe him when he tells him as much. He seems convinced that Kirei's trips are specifically designed to leave him bored to death. Then again most of Kirei's actions can supposedly be traced back to Gilgamesh, if he's to be believed.
Their normal routine of drinking and conversation that usually follows Kirei's trips is broken one day. Just after Kirei returns from a month long trip.
"Six weeks," Gilgamesh insists. “You’ve been gone for six whole weeks.” He's laying upside with his head hanging over the couch cushions and his legs over the back. Kirei thinks he may be slightly drunker than usual.
"Did you move at all while I was gone?"
"I’m not your pet Kirei. I don’t lay around waiting for you to come home." He gestures towards the small forest of wine bottles that surround him. "And I had to buy my own drinks, didn't I?"
Kirei was pretty sure he'd left Gilgamesh enough wine for several months.
“I apologize for not being at your beck-and-call 24/7." Kirei drops his bags by the door and pulls off his coat.
"Apology not accepted. You will be making this up to me." Gilgamesh swings around so he’s staring at Kirei upright. "Whose blood are you covered in?"
"Mostly vampire blood," he says, starting to unbutton his shirt. "Annoyingly enough I was actually attacked at the airport. I had to sit through a very sticky three hour flight since I couldn't exactly take off my coat without causing some alarm."
Gilgamesh gives him a disinterested hum and pours himself another glass of wine.
"Hopefully the church won't need me again anytime soon. I've should probably have some time off after all this."
"Oh yes definitely." Gilgamesh swirls wine around his glass, watching him but clearly not listening.
"Are you genuinely annoyed at me for being gone for so long or are you just sobering up? It's not very late so I can always grab you some more before I—"
"I've decided that we're going to have sex."
Kirei’s fingers pause on the bottom button of his shirt. “Don’t be absurd,” he says. He pulls it off and tosses it away.
At this a smile finally breaks over Gilgamesh's face. “You mistook my words for a question. I said, I’ve decided.”
Kirei sighs. “Gilgamesh, I just got off a plane, I’ve been running around all night for the past few weeks killing monsters, and I’m much too tired to deal with this right now.”
“That’s perfectly fine. I wasn’t suggesting we have sex tonight. You smell like you just crawled out of gutter.”
“I did a few nights ago. The undead hide in the strangest places. Dare I ask why you want to have sex with me?”
Gilgamesh has to place his wine glass down to stop his laughter from spilling it.
Kirei feels the faint hint of a headache forming behind his eyes. “Fine. A stupid question. How about this then: what if I were to say that I don’t have any particular plans to have sex with you?”
“I’d say that's irrelevant because you will."
“If by some miracle I didn’t—”
“You will,” Gilgamesh says proudly. “And I won't force you either."
"How very generous of you."
"Whine all you want priest but there's no creature, be they man, woman, god, or monster, that wouldn’t sell their very soul for a night in my bed."
Kirei scoffs. "I believe my church would beg to differ."
"Please, we both know the church means nothing to you. Your religon’s absurd vows are void when it comes to me.”
“That's all very nice but—“
“I'm a creature crafted of raw perfection, Kotomine Kirei. The fruit born from a goddess and a king. My being a man means nothing in the face of that. I’ve decided that you are worthy enough to share my bed. Take this for the compliment that it is."
Kirei pinches the bridge of his nose. "Yes, I feel very humbled by your offer. All the same I’m afraid I have to refuse."
Gilgamesh's face falls slowly. Kirei isn't sure if he's ever been rejected by anyone but Saber. He mostly like won't fare nearly as well if Gilgamesh starts throwing swords at him.
But then the moment passes and Gilgamesh smiles once again. "Very well. I can play your little game."
"I would really like to go to sleep."
"I can be a patient man," Gilgamesh continues. "I’ll allow you to keep denying what you want for now."
Kirei turns his face upwards and offers a brief prayer to a God he doesn't believe in.
A week passes after Gilgamesh's declaration and for all intents and purposes, he seems to have forgotten about their conversation.
He's no different from normal and he doesn’t bring up sex once in their short snippets of conversation. Since Kirei’s begun his long absences Gilgamesh seems to have developed a taste for television and exploring the city. He spends most of his time absorbed with either of those or sleeping, which he does a shocking amount.
Despite this lull, Kirei has no intention of relaxing his guard. He’s been expecting that Gilgamesh would come after him sexually for some time—if anything he’s surprised it took so long—and he seriously doubts the man is finished with him. Despite his words, he's never known Gilgamesh to be a patient man. He may be changing up his tactics but there no chance in hell that Kirei's gotten off so easily.
When the changes start they can almost be mistaken for subtle. At least for Gilgamesh.
“Gilgamesh?”
“Hm?”
“What are you doing?”
“I was trying to sleep. Stop fidgeting.”
“Do you mind?”
Gilgamesh yawns and shifts on the couch but the movement only makes his position, laying with his head on Kirei lap, more comfortable for himself. His eyes are closed and Kirei’s exasperated expression is wasted on him.
“Not at all," he says sleepily. "Feel free to continue reading.”
Kirei closes his book slowly. “I prefer solitude when I read."
“Hmm,” Gilgamesh says again. He doesn't move.
Kirei places his book down on a nearby table and starts to move out from underneath him. Gilgamesh’s fingers suddenly tighten with a punishing strength on his thigh.
“Damn you,” Kirei says, sitting back down.
Gilgamesh's "sleeping" face smiles. Kirei wishes that he'd brought a longer book. Past experience tells him Gilgamesh's nap will be very long.
From there the natural progression of Gilgamesh’s advances become less subtle.
By his estimate it's around 4 in the morning when he wakes up, feeling a sudden dip in his bed.
"Please God," Kirei says to the dark. "Tell me you're an assassin here to kill me."
"No such luck, Kirei," Gilgamesh says. Then he yanks Kirei across the bed none too gently and arranges the both of them for his own comfort. It turns out the King of Heroes likes to be the big spoon, he notes.
To Kirei's relief Gilgamesh is not sleeping naked on this particular occasion, though he’s only wearing his silk boxers. Gilgamesh's arms are wrapped around his waist and one of his legs has been thrown over Kirei's.
He makes a half-hearted attempt to pull away only for Gilgamesh to hug him closer. Kirei sighs, and resigns himself to his fate. Gilgamesh's grip, while far too tight, is not unbearable. His body is incredibly warm which is oddly nice in a drafty church.
"You have absurdly soft skin," Kirei says aloud.
He feels Gilgamesh huff against the back of his neck. "Obviously."
It goes on like this for some time.
Kirei blames himself for not establish proper boundaries the first time Gilgamesh got into his space, but now he suspects it's far too late. Gilgamesh makes a point of keeping physical contact with him at every possible opportunity, no matter how inconvenient. After a week it becomes clear that the sleeping arrangement is nonnegotiable and quite possibly permanent for the two of them. Kirei decides he'll make some effort to fix that when the seasons change but he has naturally cold feet and leaves it be for now.
It's not as though he hates the contact itself, he mostly feels nothing about it, but it is horribly distracting to have the man cling to him when he’s doing research or making phone calls. Undressing anywhere near him becomes impossible when Gilgamesh will act as though he’s receiving his own private show if Kirei so much as changes his socks.
All the same Kirei can’t help being impressed by his patience. He thought Gilgamesh would have grown tired of him and moved on but that doesn't seem to be the case. For whatever reason, Gilgamesh genuinely wants him to want him.
How flattering, Kirei thinks, to be the exception to his usual cruelty and selfishness in sexual partners.
“If I wanted you that way then I could simply take you,” Gilgamesh says casually to him one day. “It’d be easy enough. There is nothing in this world which I do not own. But where would the fun be in that? I’d much prefer my favorite dog come to my hand of his own free will.”
“This no longer seems like flattery," says Kirei.
“Move over," a voice behind him in the shower says.
Reacting purely on instinct, Kirei summons his Black Keys and stabs at the figure behind him.
Gilgamesh stares at him calmly, head tilted to the side to avoid Kirei's blades. He hadn't heard the other come in so he must have just materialized behind him completely naked.
"You're hogging all the hot water," Gilgamesh says. His hair is plastered to his face in a very undignified way but there's challenge in his eyes.
Kirei yanks his blades out of the crater now in the shower tiles and steps to the side.
“How long do you plan to continue this stupid game of yours?” Kirei asks.
"That's entirely up to you, my stubborn friend." Gilgamesh sniffs one of his bottles of shampoo and then grimaces at it.
"I think if this were up to me I'd be allowed to shower alone when it suits me."
"My game ends when your game ends. Here," Gilgamesh tosses him a loofah. “Get my back.”
Kirei rolls his eyes. “As you wish, King of Heroes.”
He's cooking breakfast one morning when a question pops into his head.
"How do you reconcile spending so such effort trying to seduce me with wanting to marry Saber?"
Gilgamesh, who is wearing nothing but one of Kirei's shirts and is currently pressed up behind him at the stove, yawns loudly. "I don't understand the question."
"You haven't mentioned the woman you want to marry in months. This seems like a lot of work to put into something as mundane as an affair."
"If you're asking about my commitment to Saber then I assure you; I am very confident in my ability to satisfy multiple lovers. Simultaneously if the situation demands it."
"Right."
"Numerous lovers, Kirei. I have a substantial sexual history."
"Thank you. I gathered as much."
"That's not even including the marriages I spent my youth disrupting."
"Yes, yes, very impressive," Kirei says, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Gilgamesh sits up on the counter to keep himself in Kirei’s line of sight.
"Would you like to know the details of the harem I had during life? Because it was so large that I rarely slept with anyone twice."
"Not to question the wisdom of a king but that's how quite a few diseases spread."
Gilgamesh snorts. "I'm 2/3rd god, you silly man. I don't get sick. Were you fishing for compliments? Asking to see if I'd whisper you sweet nothings and promise to remain faithful to the end of your days? Because you're certainly entertaining Kotomine Kirei but I don't particularly care for monogamy."
"No, I was relatively sure you were much more interested in Saber. But I haven't agreed to have sex with you, much less join your harem."
"All the same, I will save you a seat in it. A VIP one perhaps. Wait." Gilgamesh's voice turns serious. "Have you ever slept with anyone but your wife?"
"No."
Gilgamesh jumps off the counter, his face a mask of horror and pity. "You've only slept with one person your entire life."
"Yes. Try not to have a stroke."
Gilgamesh pulls him down into a hug, throwing his arms over his shoulders. The pats on his back feel a bit patronizing. "That explains so much. You truly are lucky to have me."
Kirei continues drinking his coffee, now bent over and holding the cup over Gilgamesh's shoulder. "You are the most ridiculous man I've ever met."
Waking up to Gilgamesh's hand being shoved down his pants does not remotely surprise him.
"Giving up already Gilgamesh?" Kirei asks, disinterested. They're laying on their sides facing each other and Gilgamesh has all the blankets wrapped around himself. "This certainly seems to defeat the purpose of trying to seduce me."
Gilgamesh yawns. His eyes are barely open and he looks so utterly relaxed that Kirei could almost believe the man was jerking him off in his sleep. "You were poking me in the back and it was annoying me. This doesn't count."
"I'm relatively sure this counts."
"My rules are the only ones that matter, Kirei. And if you're just going to lay there like a dead fish then this doesn't qualify as sex. Would you like me to stop?"
"I don't feel particularly strongly one way or the other."
Gilgamesh lets go of him.
"Okay, never mind. Finish what you started."
"That's what I thought," Gilgamesh says smugly.
Kirei sighs and rolls onto his back. With some surprise he realizes that it’s well past sunrise and the morning is already underway. He never sleeps in so much on a normal day. He's clearly acclimated far too much to Gilgamesh's schedule.
"Not to be rude, but I'm 30 years old. I'd rather not ruin my pants like a teenager."
"How demanding." Gilgamesh scoots down the bed and tugs Kirei's pants past his hips. "But if you insist then I can be generous enough to indulge you."
"I was not at all insist - good god man! Do you have no gag reflex whatsoever?!"
Gilgamesh lets out several muffled noises and does not attempt to stop blowing him.
"Yes, ‘substantial sexual history’. I know.”
"Kirei," Gilgamesh says one morning, a somewhat maniacal grin on this face. The sparkling in his red eyes concerns Kirei a great deal. "How would you like to help me make a small child's day extremely uncomfortable?"
Kirei pauses, only midway through a large stack of paperwork. "I don't follow."
"Your ward. The Tohsaka girl."
"Rin?"
"Whatever." Gilgamesh leans over his chair with his hands gripped tight onto the armrests. "She's just passed the gate and should be here in about 50 seconds. Would you like to give her an incredibly unwelcome surprise?"
Kirei thinks briefly about how handing her the knife that'd killed her father had felt. Against his better judgment he says, "I think I would actually."
"Good." In a very impressive rush, Gilgamesh has all of his clothes thrown off. He grins at Kirei's utterly indifferent face and perches himself in his lap. Because of Gilgamesh's weight he's being shoved uncomfortably into the wooden back of the chair. Without a word he grabs Kirei’s hand and places it on his ass.
Much as he suspected, Gilgamesh kisses the way he does literally everything else; loudly, greedily, and with far too much confidence.
Kirei sits backs and taps the fingers of his free hand along the arms of his chair, mostly ignoring Gilgamesh's tongue in his mouth. He wiggles a little when the pain in his back becomes more uncomfortable and counts down his head.
Right on time, the door opens.
"Hey Kirei, I was - Oh my god!" From over Gilgamesh's shoulder he can see Rin slap her hands over her eyes.
"Good morning Rin. Did you need something?" Kirei asks politely. Gilgamesh turns in his lap but makes no attempt to climb off or put on his clothes.
"You're in a church, you shitty priest!" Rin turns and slams the door behind her.
Kirei holds out for about 5 seconds before he starts laughing. "I think we've traumatized her!"
Gilgamesh leans against his chest, an oddly content smile on his face. "You already killed her father; I don't imagine we can do much worse to her at this point."
Kirei wakes up to the sharp pain of Gilgamesh jabbing him in the ribs. It is, admittedly, not as awkward as waking up to a hand down his pants, but it’s unpleasant.
"May I help you Gilgamesh?" he asks, not bothering to open his eyes. He wonders if using a Command Seal to make Gilgamesh sleep outside would be petty.
Gilgamesh, who is laying half on top of him with his chin poking Kirei in the solar plexus, pinches his face. "It's rude not to look at me when I'm addressing you."
He opens his eyes and glares down at Gilgamesh.
"Much better. As I was trying to say before you started snoring, I very much enjoy your company Kirei."
Being much too tired to follow his line of thought, Kirei offers up nothing but a confused grunt.
"I am saying that you are by far my favorite human being in this time."
"Why did you need to wake me up for this conversation?"
"The realization only just came to me. I assumed anyone would be pleased to have such high standing with the King of Heroes."
Kirei stares up the ceiling, feeling his drowsiness slowly fading. "That is an odd thing to say when I'm the only human you know. But thank you. The sentiment is greatly appreciated."
Gilgamesh watches his face. "No it isn't. You got absolutely nothing from that. You just think I'll snap your neck if you don't accept my affections."
"Actually I was considering a far worse scenario where you prevent me from going back to sleep."
"Tsk. Suit yourself." In the dark Kirei can make out his sulking face.
Gilgamesh doesn't go back to sleep, and because when he's awake his embrace makes breathing difficult, he can’t sleep either. Kirei drops a hand on his head and strokes his hair a bit. He discovered some time ago that it usually knocked Gilgamesh right out. He was very glad to have found an off switch.
Feeling just the tiniest bit vindictive he flicks Gilgamesh's face just as he's falling back asleep. Gilgamesh startles but doesn't seem to know what woke him up.
Curious, Kirei asks, "If you're aware that I get no pleasure from this then why continue?"
Gilgamesh wedges his hands under Kirei and up the back of shirt before shutting his eyes again with a sigh. "Would you have let me do this a year ago? Or stoked my hair until I feel asleep?”
“Probably not. I’m not exactly thrilled to be doing it now.”
"You have no idea what you get pleasure from. I'm certainly enjoying this and it is one of my many burdens as king to enlighten you. And besides, even if you do not enjoy my advances I know you enjoy wounding my pride by rejecting me. There’s no point in denying it."
"I wasn't going to deny it. You're absolutely right."
“I’ve come to know you quite well, priest,” Gilgamesh boasts. "Unfortunately I cannot abide you rejecting me forever and I will have to find something that pleases the both of us. It shouldn't be long; even your unusual tastes are in no way beyond me. In the meantime I rather like having a warm body in my bed."
"By your standards that sounds almost selfless."
Gilgamesh chuckles. "It's either that or I wear you down and you give me what I want out of frustration."
"Ah. That sounds more like you."
Gilgamesh disappears without a word one afternoon while Kirei is in a meeting. This isn't at all unusual so he doesn't pay it much mind. He assumes that he'll be back later that night, most likely very drunk, and then collapse in their bed to annoy Kirei until he passes out. What he doesn't expect is the phone call he gets from Gilgamesh around midnight or the address that the man gives him.
“What are you planning?” Kirei asks warily.
“Don’t be boring Kirei,” Gilgamesh says over the phone. “Just do as I say and we’ll both have an excellent night.”
Bracing for the worst, he drives out of the city.
When he reaches the town that Gilgamesh mentioned he stops looking at his map and checking the numbers on the buildings he passes.
It's pretty clear where Gilgamesh is.
There's a relatively large fire in the center of town, surrounded by a crowd of terrified onlookers. Kirei abandons his car a few blocks away and then makes his way through the crowd. He has to circle the building, and take in a good deal of the chaos around it before he finds Gilgamesh hoovering around a pay phone.
"What the hell is that?"
Gilgamesh is leaning lazily against the phone booth. He's wearing one of Kirei's coats along with a look of immense satisfaction.
He waves towards the fire. “This? This is a hospital that's on fire."
"Tell me you found this by accident and didn't do this yourself."
"Oh no, this was all me."
"How...on Earth did you make the leap from sharing my shower to mass murder?" Kirei asks in disbelief.
Gilgamesh hums thoughtfully, doing a very poor job of keeping a straight face. "What's the expression? Throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks? I was going to save this for your birthday but I was getting bored. I thought I'd spare you the wait and try this out. Do you like it?"
"Do I - no I don't. Obviously not. That was an incredibly stupid thing to do," Kirei says, watching the hospital. The fire department hasn't arrived yet and it looks like the damage is very likely to spread to nearby buildings. The heat is so intense that he can feel it, even from where the two of them stand. Distantly he can hear the sounds of crying and shouting.
"Yes, I know. Would you like to know how many people have died so far?"
"Gilgamesh, that's disgusting."
Gilgamesh approaches, eyes fixed on him. "My god Kirei, you should see your face right now. It’s exquisite."
"This will bring us a lot of unwanted attention," Kirei says. He grabs Gilgamesh by the coat and drags him closer, eyes still on the fire. "If it's discovered that magic was involved in this I may become a suspect."
"What are a few dozen deaths to us?" He touches the side of Kirei's face and leans in to whisper, "If you and I get our wish, the next time the Grail appears a hell of a lot more people will die than this."
Kirei's face hurts from smiling. "What a horrible thing to say."
"This building was rather old. It turns out that their sprinklers weren't wor - "
Gilgamesh makes a muffled sound of surprise when Kirei kisses him. Between his laughter and Kirei's own the kiss is sloppy and uncoordinated. All the same it feels significantly better than their last kiss. Kirei thinks he may even be feeling something close to excitement.
"Ha!" Gilgamesh yells in triumph. "If I’d known you would give in so easily I’d have set something on fire months ago!”