Just Desserts
Title: Just Desserts
Rating: R
Warnings: Non-con, voyeurism.
Pairing: Kurama/Karasu (in that order)
Summary: Kurama wants all the sins of insanity carved in his mind and body. Karasu must be punished for his presumption.
Notes: Hiei kind of...forced his way in here. For
mika_starlight . ♥
-
Just Desserts
Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
-
Death was an escape.
He let everyone think that he was fine, that he’d only been shaken by Karasu, nothing more. But, in truth, the demon’s possessiveness, the way he fixated on Kurama and made him hurt was a savage crime against his pride. Youko Kurama would not take that kind of hurt with something as simple as death in repayment. Eye for an eye, that was how he lived.
Kuwabara had commented, once, that Karasu’s death had almost seem too anticlimactic, that it was too simple for him to merely be sucked dry and devoured by that carnivorous plant. At the time, everyone had simply been glad that the threat was gone, and they'd either agreed or were more focused on the next match.
But, deep in the dark corners of his mind, Kurama knew that mere death would have been too simple and clean for a monster like Karasu. He needed to experience pain in the way that Kurama had experienced pain. Kurama, constrained by the laws of the Reikai, had to play human; play nice, play the kinder of the two demons on the Urameshi Team. When it came down to it, however, he still felt little tingles crawl across his skin at the scent of blood.
Hiei hadn’t been fooled in the slightest. Kurama laid plans beneath plans and the surface was never anything but an act, to retain the sanity and trust of others if not to fool his opponents. Hiei was aware of how bad Kurama had been effected by Karasu, he was aware of the fact that demon’s true punishment was yet to come.
He knew that Kurama would never let him go, just like Toguro Ani. He would be trapped, for as long as Kurama lived, tortured. Kurama trusted the fire demon to say nothing about it to another soul, living or dead.Hiei trusted Kurama to remain on his side, to remain loyal to him, as long as he did well by the kitsune. The fox had betrayed him twice, and still they hadn't attacked each other directly. It was testament to the humans' reluctance to see evil, that no one had noticed this. They thought Hiei cared, when in truth, he was wary. Kurama held him under his thumb.
And so, when they all returned to Ningenkai, hurt and recovering, changed each in their own way, Hiei made a point to walk with Kurama when they all parted to return to their individual lives for the time being.
“Will you let me see?” he asked, his hands in his pockets as he walked beside Kurama.
The kitsune didn’t acknowledge him but for the quick glance in his direction, without even moving his head. Wind brushed through the trees in the yard of the house they walked by and fingered at Hiei’s cloak, their hair. Hiei could almost hear Kurama laughing along with the hiss of leaves.
“You want to see him?” he asked, tone level and nothing but fondness and understanding.
Hiei nodded. “I want to see his punishment.”
Kurama did laugh now, a one beat exhalation of air that was pure amusement. “You are not fooled.”
“I know when not to underestimate a kitsune’s pride. He had you on the floor, screaming, and his death was too clean and simple, too efficient. His death was disproportionate to the crime he came close to committing against you."
There was nothing but the sound of cars and the hum of the city drone, their footsteps on the pathway, for a long time.The wind picked up again, and Hiei could hear Kurama's silent laugh again in the way the branches swayed and leaves and grass trembled, reach toward them, as they passed.
“It will take a month before he is constructed again.”
Hiei felt a sense of grim satisfaction spread throughout him and down to his very toes, his fingertips. That was the Kurama he knew. The one he feared, on some level. The demon hidden behind a kind, red-haired smiling face, with affectionate green eyes that held the depth of the worlds and all its wisdom within them.
And all its cruelty.
“I will contact you,” he said, when they had reached Kurama’s front door.
He turned to look down at Hiei, offered a smile and opened the door. Hiei’s after-image had faded long before the door clicked shut.
---
Two months later the sky was roiling. Thick, heavy clouds hung above and Hiei thought it was almost like Makai. There was no rain, yet, but he was expecting it soon. Its scent was heavy in the air and its design was sketched along the dark shapes of the black mass of clouds.
Kurama stood at the foot of the tree he was lounging on.
“You may see him, now that I have had some time with him myself,” he said, hands in the pockets of his orange jacket, looking up at Hiei with that same kind mask that seemed all the more dangerous than the one he had adopted as his time as Youko. The cold, impenetrable gaze of a pure demon on display in the body language and expression was just as powerful defence-wise in Makai as a gun was in Ningenkai.
But here, in this body, Kurama had internalised that danger, turned himself inside out to match this new identity and life of his. But eyes truly were windows to the soul, and it took merely a few words for those large, wide eyes to narrow and become stone cold once again.
Hiei dropped down to stand beside Kurama, who lead him to the nearest train and from that out into the countryside, where there was nothing but forests and uninterrupted silence. The stench of human was considerable less potent here, and the hum of the city quite less of an annoyance. They came to a forest on a hill, one side of which had been carved into a neat cliff face by water and perhaps a mudslide hundreds of years ago. Dead leaves all the colours of dawn were scattered about between stray branches and roots, dead and dying, that poked out of their cover, hard plates of rock rather than soil underfoot. The sky rumbled overhead even here too, but there was no rain, no light past what of the sun that filtered through the darkness of the clouds.
Kurama skidded down the sharp incline of the cliff, Hiei jumping from tree to tree, until they reached a small, carved out section of the hill, an amphitheatre of sorts. A pair old, rusted shackles left by humans years ago caught Hiei’s eyes, tossed to the left of the stone semicircle stage and a spark of anticipation flared inside him. He enjoyed seeing Kurama at his most savage. At his truest state.
There were old roots sticking out of the wall before them, creeping vines as thick as Hiei’s wrist. Kurama walked towards them, rolling his shoulders as he pulled his jacket off and placing it up above on another little incline that could almost be called a shelf. He reached down, brushed fragile human fingers along the roots until they flared to life along with Kurama’s youki, which spread outwards like a shockwave and rustled the leaves at their feet. Like a wave being pulled back out to sea as another gathered, Kurama's power was collected between those two roots.
Kurama stepped back, silent. Hiei tilted his head, watching with keen interest, waited.
The creeping vines were apparently shackles, which wound around the curiously shaping skeletal structure that began to knit together by another once-dormant plant, twisting and twining amongst itself until bones were made and then solidified. The muscles, arteries soft tissues, fluids were brought from the earth at his feet as more and more dead leaves fell from the trees about them, even though it was the height of spring.
Colour came into newly formed skin, though what colour there was bland and sickly, Kurama seemed reluctant to suck enough life from the earth to give Karasu full health, and so the sick creature that formed, while looking like Karasu, was riddled with weakness, hunger and thirst and wasn’t truly alive any more.
It took a moment for the colour to bleed into hair and eyelashes, lips. For a moment he truly did look like a hollow husk of a man, hands bound behind his back with the rigid strength of sentient vines, kneeling before them, stopped from collapsing forward only because of his restraints.
Violet eyes opened, looked up past ink-black hair.
He looked dead, even if he wasn't. Dark circles under his eyes that were as dull and emotionless as ever.
He smiled, but it failed to reach those eyes. "You've come again, Kurama," he purred. "Sucked the life from your precious plants just to bring me back to see you once more. Reikai must be having fits by now, you know. How long has it been?"
Standing before him, Kurama rolled up the sleeves of his white button down shirt and tilted his head in a purely thoughtful way. "Two months," he said.
Hiei watched Karasu closely as his eyes dropped and he shifted himself into a more comfortable position. He sat on his heels, knees together. He didn't try to pull himself upwards, instead remained slumped forward, held by the vines. "Two months," he breathed, as if he didn't believe it.
"Do you remember what happened two months ago?" Kurama asked, his tone taking on that old hard tone.
Karasu looked up at him, actually raising his head this time. "Must we go through this every time, Kurama?"
"Would you have given me mercy?" Kurama replied, tone clipped. He walked up to Karasu, lifted his head by his chin.
Violet eyes flashed red, and Karasu smiled up at Kurama. "Mercy isn't a colour that suits you. You need death, and you'd wear it so well. I can see it."
Kurama's hand blurred and the sound of impact, the crunch of brittle bone, echoed. Hiei smirked.
Karasu spat blood, along with one tooth. It poured down past his lips and chin, dripped to his knees. He laughed, his shoulders jerking, the bones poking at skin as if reaching for escape. "Get under your skin, did I?"
Kurama fisted a hand in his hair and jerked his head up, didn't flinch in the slightest when Karasu spat blood out at him, stained his white shirt. "Is this a familiar position for you, Karasu? At the mercy of another? Just as you were with Toguro?"
Karasu glared, said nothing.
"It's the only thing you can understand. Control. Pain gives you pleasure, whether it's emotional or physical. But frustration, confinement, that gets to you, doesn't it?" Kurama purred, lowering himself into a squat, keeping his hand in Karasu's hair. "You'll never truly die. You'll never get that intimacy with me."
Karasu spat at Kurama again, his face turning blank as he pulled back, tried to pull his hair from Kurama's grip. He looked almost satisfied, for a moment, at the blood on Kurama's cheek. The satisfaction was quickly hidden when Kurama smiled.
"Tell me, Karasu. Have you ever fucked before? Have you ever been fucked?"
That blank face flickered with something for a second and then turned to rage. "Kitsune, you're all the same. All you think about is sex--"
"And you don't? I haven't touched you yet. I've only abused you, beaten you to within a hair's breadth of true death, left you to rot here without hiding you, open for discovery, and still, you laugh. I hadn't wanted to lower myself to your level, but rape isn't your level, is it? Fighting is your sex. Blood is your come." Kurama's lips were trailing along Karasu's cheek and Karasu was straining trying to keep his eyes on him, eyes that were wide, and pupils narrow. His teeth were clenched, shoulders shifting as he twisted his arms against the coils of the vines that held him still.
Hiei took a step back, jumped up into the nearest tree. There was one close by that had a suspiciously close branch and an excellent view of the two demons, he took that one, sat and watched, resting his arm on an up-drawn knee. Karasu's eyes flicked to him, and widened further, as Kurama's purpose seemed to sink in.
"Not such a precious human now, are you? You're still the filthy demon you were," Karasu hissed, jerking as Kurama's other hand trailed along his neck, smearing the blood that had dribbled down from his chin there. He snarled.
"Filthy because I fucked and let myself be fucked? I had quite the reputation, Karasu. My orgies were known far and wide, I used them as a tribute to Inari. On the right days we could summon enough power to make me feel as if I had gained another tail, and with that power, I breathed it into the weapons I wielded and the earth around me. But then, other times, I fucked just because I wanted it good and hard." Kurama shuddered at the memory, moulded himself against Karasu, making the vines pull Karasu back until he was sitting upright.
Keeping one of his hands in Karasu's hair, his other dropped to white thighs, forced itself between them, and gripped at Karasu's flaccid cock.
Karasu's eyes widened even further and he let out an open mouthed growl, tried to jerk his head away from Kurama's lips and the tongue that swiped at his cheek. His legs moved similarly, trying to knock Kurama's hand away, only in vain. Kurama forced himself between his legs, pulled his head back, manipulating Karasu like a struggling fly and he a spider.
"I wonder what happened to you that turned you off this act, made you believe that death, the depression you gained from it, was the only way you could feel pleasure. Inside you're a sad little boy, Karasu," Kurama said, conversationally, like he wasn't taunting a bound man before he raped him, because it was the only way he would listen and learn.
"Will you tell me?" he asked, trailing his lips down Karasu's neck and pale chest to a faintly coloured nipple. He closed his lips over it, sucked at it with a wet sound, and then lathed his tongue over it. Hiei could see Karasu's cock twitch, and the accompanying dismay that flickered through the rage in Karasu's expression.
Karasu, too, had been fooled by Kurama's act. A double edged blade that provided its own defence. Hiei had expected nothing less, yet seeing it in practice was rather surprising. Kurama had trapped him within the plant that brought him back to life, even as he'd thought himself seconds away from death. The plans laid before circumstances even warranted them, the forethought he put into everything, was staggering.
Karasu jerked against the vines, Kurama’s hands, wanting to get away. Hiei could see him trying to think, even as his eyes flew wider as Kurama’s hand slipped from his cock and moved to the buttons and zipper of his jeans instead.
Laughter spilled from him, disbelieving, unwilling laughter.
“I thought you said you didn’t want to lower yourself to my level? Meaning you thought rape was lower than death?” he said, grinning widely, jolting when Kurama’s hand returned to his cock, and teeth nipped at his nipple, soft and almost caring. If it was harsh and brutal, Karasu might have been able to enjoy it, but this tender and slow method of Kurama’s rubbed at him the wrong way, and something in his mind linked it with horror. He didn’t want it. It was bad. Filthy.
“It’s not rape if you want it, and I am gentle. You would just be another body in a long line of faceless bodies that I have fucked. I won’t even remember your name. You’ll be an invalid,” Kurama purred, stroking at Karasu’s cock. He gave a soft sigh when Karasu was fully hard, released Karasu’s head, his hair, in favour of unbuttoning his shirt.
Karasu snarled, furious, but couldn’t do anything more than struggle uselessly and force himself to ignore his bodies reactions, the way it asked for more, more as Kurama teased and manipulated him. Kurama did something Hiei couldn’t quite see, but when he brought his hand back up, it was covered in honey-like liquid. Nectar, no doubt.
“Open your mouth,” he purred, trailing kisses up Karasu’s chest to his neck and then cheek as he pressed his slick fingers against his lips, nudging at the demon’s clenched teeth.
Karasu jerked his head away, smearing whatever it was along his cheek. Kurama’s hand around his cock tightened, twisted, and Karasu howled, his head going back and mouth opening with it. His eyes flashed red, and delight flickered across his face at the pain.
Kurama forced his fingers into his mouth. “Suck,” he ordered, nipping at Karasu’s ear. “Swallow it. It will make you feel good.” He stroked Karasu’s cock, using his millennia worth of skills to override whatever impulse Karasu might have had.
Hiei watched Karasu shiver almost immediately, his eyes fall half-closed. Karasu sucked, his hips jerking up into Kurama’s fist. Hiei lifted the ward above his Jagan with a finger. The eye opened just enough to allow him to peek inside Karasu’s mind. There was nothing but rage and disgust, and, amusingly, fear, despair. There was no sick sense of enjoyment, no hidden plans or games.
When Kurama pulled his fingers from Karasu’s mouth, they were covered in the blood that was still flowing from the place where Karasu’s tooth had once been. He swiped up what had smeared over his cheek with his thumb, had Karasu suck on that, too almost as if drawn to it. Saliva slipped down from the corner of his mouth, mixing with the trails of blood.
When he drew his hand away from Karasu’s mouth, he leaned after it, panting. The blush that spread across his cheeks was perhaps the only colour in him, besides his smeared blood. “What...?” he asked, his head rolling back, hips jerking up into Kurama’s hand.
Kurama was gathering more nectar, of a different type, this time. “It’s an aphrodisiac. I did was you would enjoy this, didn’t I? That you would want it?”
Karasu gave a mixture of a frustrated moan and a furious shout, but it tempered, changed, as Kurama reached between his legs, back past his balls, to slip a finger inside him carefully. Now it was a moan of want, but it flickered between pleasure and rage like a manual tuner on a radio stuck between two stations.
“No one denies Kurama what he wants, after all,” Kurama purred, shifting that small bit closer to him.
Karasu’s back arched and his eyes flew wide suddenly, a cry escaping him before he could stop it. His wide eyes settled on Hiei, and he was too far gone to seem to realise just what was happening. He only moaned at the second finger, writhing in his bonds, trying to get closer to Kurama, to get more. Inside, Hiei could see only confusion caused by the drug Kurama had given him, humiliation and murderous rage.
“Nnnnhh, filthy...”
“Is it?”
Karasu could only pant in reply, then scream as Kurama curled his fingers inside him again. His cock twitched like a hungry thing, denied further attention and Kurama shifted himself into a better position, with Karasu almost in his lap. “Is it, Karasu? Is sexual touch filthy?”
Kurama pulled his fingers from him, and Karasu looked like a child who’s toy had been taken from them. He lifted his head, looked down, his eyes wide, black pools with only a ring of violet around them. “Ah,” he moaned, keening. “No! Back, put it back...”
Hiei smirked, Kurama laughed.
Inside Karasu screeched.
Kurama shifted again, fisting a hand in Karasu’s hair and jerking his head back again, forcing him to bare his throat. Karasu didn’t resist at all, couldn’t, even as Kurama took hold of his cock and lined himself up. Hiei could feel the dam of all of Kurama’s bitter rage break then, the single moment Karasu took him in so easily and moaned brokenly.
Kurama buried his face in Karasu’s neck, clamped onto his throat with his teeth, tightened his hand in Karasu’s hair, and thrust forward viciously. Karasu jerked, wanting to get away and wanting to get closer at the same time. He tried to scream insults, to get under Kurama’s skin again to make it hurt so that it wouldn’t be so repulsive, but all that came out was slurred words and screams.
His breath was forced from him with every thrust, his hair swinging, falling in his face, and he couldn’t even look down to admire Kurama’s face while he held that expression that looked almost as if he were in pain. That was taken from him too, that last thread that could have kept him from teetering on the brink of cracking.
His body screamed, screamed ‘yes’ and ‘more’, and Kurama gave it, but his mind faltered and began to shut down. Something as simple as a fuck, a slightly hard if not careful fuck, wouldn’t have sent anyone else over the edge of sanity, but Karasu had been dancing with madness for so long, his brain so overloaded with mixed signals and painpainpain emotional and physical, couldn’t take it any more.
He cried out his release, and inside, Hiei could see something to the effect of already fractured glass shattering, shards misaligning themselves and falling into chaos.
--
A week later Kurama still hadn’t heard anything from Reikai about Karasu, even as he’d released his soul from the plant that had kept it. Then again, he’d never been told about his spirit being missing for two months either. Koenma was keen to play things close to the chest on this one, it seemed.
Either that, or he had known, but Kurama doubted it. Torture was a crime, be it against a human or a demon. The rules of his parole were very strict, and Kurama had gone over all the fine print. He could kill, even if they were reluctant to go down, but he could not be in a position where he could end them and refuse to do so on the grounds of malicious intent beforehand.
Kurama’s intent certainly had been malicious, he’d put Karasu through as much pain as he himself had gone through, and paid him back for the psychological trauma threefold.
He’d also managed to send a warning to Hiei while doing so.
Messing with his trust, betraying him, keeping things from him, was not wise. Because he could make him suffer even after death, and even the gods wouldn’t be able to save them, or stop him. Betrayal was not something he took kindly, and his methods of repaying it had only become more vicious over the years.
The world saw a smiling, human boy.
A demon stared back at them.
Rating: R
Warnings: Non-con, voyeurism.
Pairing: Kurama/Karasu (in that order)
Summary: Kurama wants all the sins of insanity carved in his mind and body. Karasu must be punished for his presumption.
Notes: Hiei kind of...forced his way in here. For
mika_starlight . ♥
-
Just Desserts
Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
-
Death was an escape.
He let everyone think that he was fine, that he’d only been shaken by Karasu, nothing more. But, in truth, the demon’s possessiveness, the way he fixated on Kurama and made him hurt was a savage crime against his pride. Youko Kurama would not take that kind of hurt with something as simple as death in repayment. Eye for an eye, that was how he lived.
Kuwabara had commented, once, that Karasu’s death had almost seem too anticlimactic, that it was too simple for him to merely be sucked dry and devoured by that carnivorous plant. At the time, everyone had simply been glad that the threat was gone, and they'd either agreed or were more focused on the next match.
But, deep in the dark corners of his mind, Kurama knew that mere death would have been too simple and clean for a monster like Karasu. He needed to experience pain in the way that Kurama had experienced pain. Kurama, constrained by the laws of the Reikai, had to play human; play nice, play the kinder of the two demons on the Urameshi Team. When it came down to it, however, he still felt little tingles crawl across his skin at the scent of blood.
Hiei hadn’t been fooled in the slightest. Kurama laid plans beneath plans and the surface was never anything but an act, to retain the sanity and trust of others if not to fool his opponents. Hiei was aware of how bad Kurama had been effected by Karasu, he was aware of the fact that demon’s true punishment was yet to come.
He knew that Kurama would never let him go, just like Toguro Ani. He would be trapped, for as long as Kurama lived, tortured. Kurama trusted the fire demon to say nothing about it to another soul, living or dead.Hiei trusted Kurama to remain on his side, to remain loyal to him, as long as he did well by the kitsune. The fox had betrayed him twice, and still they hadn't attacked each other directly. It was testament to the humans' reluctance to see evil, that no one had noticed this. They thought Hiei cared, when in truth, he was wary. Kurama held him under his thumb.
And so, when they all returned to Ningenkai, hurt and recovering, changed each in their own way, Hiei made a point to walk with Kurama when they all parted to return to their individual lives for the time being.
“Will you let me see?” he asked, his hands in his pockets as he walked beside Kurama.
The kitsune didn’t acknowledge him but for the quick glance in his direction, without even moving his head. Wind brushed through the trees in the yard of the house they walked by and fingered at Hiei’s cloak, their hair. Hiei could almost hear Kurama laughing along with the hiss of leaves.
“You want to see him?” he asked, tone level and nothing but fondness and understanding.
Hiei nodded. “I want to see his punishment.”
Kurama did laugh now, a one beat exhalation of air that was pure amusement. “You are not fooled.”
“I know when not to underestimate a kitsune’s pride. He had you on the floor, screaming, and his death was too clean and simple, too efficient. His death was disproportionate to the crime he came close to committing against you."
There was nothing but the sound of cars and the hum of the city drone, their footsteps on the pathway, for a long time.The wind picked up again, and Hiei could hear Kurama's silent laugh again in the way the branches swayed and leaves and grass trembled, reach toward them, as they passed.
“It will take a month before he is constructed again.”
Hiei felt a sense of grim satisfaction spread throughout him and down to his very toes, his fingertips. That was the Kurama he knew. The one he feared, on some level. The demon hidden behind a kind, red-haired smiling face, with affectionate green eyes that held the depth of the worlds and all its wisdom within them.
And all its cruelty.
“I will contact you,” he said, when they had reached Kurama’s front door.
He turned to look down at Hiei, offered a smile and opened the door. Hiei’s after-image had faded long before the door clicked shut.
---
Two months later the sky was roiling. Thick, heavy clouds hung above and Hiei thought it was almost like Makai. There was no rain, yet, but he was expecting it soon. Its scent was heavy in the air and its design was sketched along the dark shapes of the black mass of clouds.
Kurama stood at the foot of the tree he was lounging on.
“You may see him, now that I have had some time with him myself,” he said, hands in the pockets of his orange jacket, looking up at Hiei with that same kind mask that seemed all the more dangerous than the one he had adopted as his time as Youko. The cold, impenetrable gaze of a pure demon on display in the body language and expression was just as powerful defence-wise in Makai as a gun was in Ningenkai.
But here, in this body, Kurama had internalised that danger, turned himself inside out to match this new identity and life of his. But eyes truly were windows to the soul, and it took merely a few words for those large, wide eyes to narrow and become stone cold once again.
Hiei dropped down to stand beside Kurama, who lead him to the nearest train and from that out into the countryside, where there was nothing but forests and uninterrupted silence. The stench of human was considerable less potent here, and the hum of the city quite less of an annoyance. They came to a forest on a hill, one side of which had been carved into a neat cliff face by water and perhaps a mudslide hundreds of years ago. Dead leaves all the colours of dawn were scattered about between stray branches and roots, dead and dying, that poked out of their cover, hard plates of rock rather than soil underfoot. The sky rumbled overhead even here too, but there was no rain, no light past what of the sun that filtered through the darkness of the clouds.
Kurama skidded down the sharp incline of the cliff, Hiei jumping from tree to tree, until they reached a small, carved out section of the hill, an amphitheatre of sorts. A pair old, rusted shackles left by humans years ago caught Hiei’s eyes, tossed to the left of the stone semicircle stage and a spark of anticipation flared inside him. He enjoyed seeing Kurama at his most savage. At his truest state.
There were old roots sticking out of the wall before them, creeping vines as thick as Hiei’s wrist. Kurama walked towards them, rolling his shoulders as he pulled his jacket off and placing it up above on another little incline that could almost be called a shelf. He reached down, brushed fragile human fingers along the roots until they flared to life along with Kurama’s youki, which spread outwards like a shockwave and rustled the leaves at their feet. Like a wave being pulled back out to sea as another gathered, Kurama's power was collected between those two roots.
Kurama stepped back, silent. Hiei tilted his head, watching with keen interest, waited.
The creeping vines were apparently shackles, which wound around the curiously shaping skeletal structure that began to knit together by another once-dormant plant, twisting and twining amongst itself until bones were made and then solidified. The muscles, arteries soft tissues, fluids were brought from the earth at his feet as more and more dead leaves fell from the trees about them, even though it was the height of spring.
Colour came into newly formed skin, though what colour there was bland and sickly, Kurama seemed reluctant to suck enough life from the earth to give Karasu full health, and so the sick creature that formed, while looking like Karasu, was riddled with weakness, hunger and thirst and wasn’t truly alive any more.
It took a moment for the colour to bleed into hair and eyelashes, lips. For a moment he truly did look like a hollow husk of a man, hands bound behind his back with the rigid strength of sentient vines, kneeling before them, stopped from collapsing forward only because of his restraints.
Violet eyes opened, looked up past ink-black hair.
He looked dead, even if he wasn't. Dark circles under his eyes that were as dull and emotionless as ever.
He smiled, but it failed to reach those eyes. "You've come again, Kurama," he purred. "Sucked the life from your precious plants just to bring me back to see you once more. Reikai must be having fits by now, you know. How long has it been?"
Standing before him, Kurama rolled up the sleeves of his white button down shirt and tilted his head in a purely thoughtful way. "Two months," he said.
Hiei watched Karasu closely as his eyes dropped and he shifted himself into a more comfortable position. He sat on his heels, knees together. He didn't try to pull himself upwards, instead remained slumped forward, held by the vines. "Two months," he breathed, as if he didn't believe it.
"Do you remember what happened two months ago?" Kurama asked, his tone taking on that old hard tone.
Karasu looked up at him, actually raising his head this time. "Must we go through this every time, Kurama?"
"Would you have given me mercy?" Kurama replied, tone clipped. He walked up to Karasu, lifted his head by his chin.
Violet eyes flashed red, and Karasu smiled up at Kurama. "Mercy isn't a colour that suits you. You need death, and you'd wear it so well. I can see it."
Kurama's hand blurred and the sound of impact, the crunch of brittle bone, echoed. Hiei smirked.
Karasu spat blood, along with one tooth. It poured down past his lips and chin, dripped to his knees. He laughed, his shoulders jerking, the bones poking at skin as if reaching for escape. "Get under your skin, did I?"
Kurama fisted a hand in his hair and jerked his head up, didn't flinch in the slightest when Karasu spat blood out at him, stained his white shirt. "Is this a familiar position for you, Karasu? At the mercy of another? Just as you were with Toguro?"
Karasu glared, said nothing.
"It's the only thing you can understand. Control. Pain gives you pleasure, whether it's emotional or physical. But frustration, confinement, that gets to you, doesn't it?" Kurama purred, lowering himself into a squat, keeping his hand in Karasu's hair. "You'll never truly die. You'll never get that intimacy with me."
Karasu spat at Kurama again, his face turning blank as he pulled back, tried to pull his hair from Kurama's grip. He looked almost satisfied, for a moment, at the blood on Kurama's cheek. The satisfaction was quickly hidden when Kurama smiled.
"Tell me, Karasu. Have you ever fucked before? Have you ever been fucked?"
That blank face flickered with something for a second and then turned to rage. "Kitsune, you're all the same. All you think about is sex--"
"And you don't? I haven't touched you yet. I've only abused you, beaten you to within a hair's breadth of true death, left you to rot here without hiding you, open for discovery, and still, you laugh. I hadn't wanted to lower myself to your level, but rape isn't your level, is it? Fighting is your sex. Blood is your come." Kurama's lips were trailing along Karasu's cheek and Karasu was straining trying to keep his eyes on him, eyes that were wide, and pupils narrow. His teeth were clenched, shoulders shifting as he twisted his arms against the coils of the vines that held him still.
Hiei took a step back, jumped up into the nearest tree. There was one close by that had a suspiciously close branch and an excellent view of the two demons, he took that one, sat and watched, resting his arm on an up-drawn knee. Karasu's eyes flicked to him, and widened further, as Kurama's purpose seemed to sink in.
"Not such a precious human now, are you? You're still the filthy demon you were," Karasu hissed, jerking as Kurama's other hand trailed along his neck, smearing the blood that had dribbled down from his chin there. He snarled.
"Filthy because I fucked and let myself be fucked? I had quite the reputation, Karasu. My orgies were known far and wide, I used them as a tribute to Inari. On the right days we could summon enough power to make me feel as if I had gained another tail, and with that power, I breathed it into the weapons I wielded and the earth around me. But then, other times, I fucked just because I wanted it good and hard." Kurama shuddered at the memory, moulded himself against Karasu, making the vines pull Karasu back until he was sitting upright.
Keeping one of his hands in Karasu's hair, his other dropped to white thighs, forced itself between them, and gripped at Karasu's flaccid cock.
Karasu's eyes widened even further and he let out an open mouthed growl, tried to jerk his head away from Kurama's lips and the tongue that swiped at his cheek. His legs moved similarly, trying to knock Kurama's hand away, only in vain. Kurama forced himself between his legs, pulled his head back, manipulating Karasu like a struggling fly and he a spider.
"I wonder what happened to you that turned you off this act, made you believe that death, the depression you gained from it, was the only way you could feel pleasure. Inside you're a sad little boy, Karasu," Kurama said, conversationally, like he wasn't taunting a bound man before he raped him, because it was the only way he would listen and learn.
"Will you tell me?" he asked, trailing his lips down Karasu's neck and pale chest to a faintly coloured nipple. He closed his lips over it, sucked at it with a wet sound, and then lathed his tongue over it. Hiei could see Karasu's cock twitch, and the accompanying dismay that flickered through the rage in Karasu's expression.
Karasu, too, had been fooled by Kurama's act. A double edged blade that provided its own defence. Hiei had expected nothing less, yet seeing it in practice was rather surprising. Kurama had trapped him within the plant that brought him back to life, even as he'd thought himself seconds away from death. The plans laid before circumstances even warranted them, the forethought he put into everything, was staggering.
Karasu jerked against the vines, Kurama’s hands, wanting to get away. Hiei could see him trying to think, even as his eyes flew wider as Kurama’s hand slipped from his cock and moved to the buttons and zipper of his jeans instead.
Laughter spilled from him, disbelieving, unwilling laughter.
“I thought you said you didn’t want to lower yourself to my level? Meaning you thought rape was lower than death?” he said, grinning widely, jolting when Kurama’s hand returned to his cock, and teeth nipped at his nipple, soft and almost caring. If it was harsh and brutal, Karasu might have been able to enjoy it, but this tender and slow method of Kurama’s rubbed at him the wrong way, and something in his mind linked it with horror. He didn’t want it. It was bad. Filthy.
“It’s not rape if you want it, and I am gentle. You would just be another body in a long line of faceless bodies that I have fucked. I won’t even remember your name. You’ll be an invalid,” Kurama purred, stroking at Karasu’s cock. He gave a soft sigh when Karasu was fully hard, released Karasu’s head, his hair, in favour of unbuttoning his shirt.
Karasu snarled, furious, but couldn’t do anything more than struggle uselessly and force himself to ignore his bodies reactions, the way it asked for more, more as Kurama teased and manipulated him. Kurama did something Hiei couldn’t quite see, but when he brought his hand back up, it was covered in honey-like liquid. Nectar, no doubt.
“Open your mouth,” he purred, trailing kisses up Karasu’s chest to his neck and then cheek as he pressed his slick fingers against his lips, nudging at the demon’s clenched teeth.
Karasu jerked his head away, smearing whatever it was along his cheek. Kurama’s hand around his cock tightened, twisted, and Karasu howled, his head going back and mouth opening with it. His eyes flashed red, and delight flickered across his face at the pain.
Kurama forced his fingers into his mouth. “Suck,” he ordered, nipping at Karasu’s ear. “Swallow it. It will make you feel good.” He stroked Karasu’s cock, using his millennia worth of skills to override whatever impulse Karasu might have had.
Hiei watched Karasu shiver almost immediately, his eyes fall half-closed. Karasu sucked, his hips jerking up into Kurama’s fist. Hiei lifted the ward above his Jagan with a finger. The eye opened just enough to allow him to peek inside Karasu’s mind. There was nothing but rage and disgust, and, amusingly, fear, despair. There was no sick sense of enjoyment, no hidden plans or games.
When Kurama pulled his fingers from Karasu’s mouth, they were covered in the blood that was still flowing from the place where Karasu’s tooth had once been. He swiped up what had smeared over his cheek with his thumb, had Karasu suck on that, too almost as if drawn to it. Saliva slipped down from the corner of his mouth, mixing with the trails of blood.
When he drew his hand away from Karasu’s mouth, he leaned after it, panting. The blush that spread across his cheeks was perhaps the only colour in him, besides his smeared blood. “What...?” he asked, his head rolling back, hips jerking up into Kurama’s hand.
Kurama was gathering more nectar, of a different type, this time. “It’s an aphrodisiac. I did was you would enjoy this, didn’t I? That you would want it?”
Karasu gave a mixture of a frustrated moan and a furious shout, but it tempered, changed, as Kurama reached between his legs, back past his balls, to slip a finger inside him carefully. Now it was a moan of want, but it flickered between pleasure and rage like a manual tuner on a radio stuck between two stations.
“No one denies Kurama what he wants, after all,” Kurama purred, shifting that small bit closer to him.
Karasu’s back arched and his eyes flew wide suddenly, a cry escaping him before he could stop it. His wide eyes settled on Hiei, and he was too far gone to seem to realise just what was happening. He only moaned at the second finger, writhing in his bonds, trying to get closer to Kurama, to get more. Inside, Hiei could see only confusion caused by the drug Kurama had given him, humiliation and murderous rage.
“Nnnnhh, filthy...”
“Is it?”
Karasu could only pant in reply, then scream as Kurama curled his fingers inside him again. His cock twitched like a hungry thing, denied further attention and Kurama shifted himself into a better position, with Karasu almost in his lap. “Is it, Karasu? Is sexual touch filthy?”
Kurama pulled his fingers from him, and Karasu looked like a child who’s toy had been taken from them. He lifted his head, looked down, his eyes wide, black pools with only a ring of violet around them. “Ah,” he moaned, keening. “No! Back, put it back...”
Hiei smirked, Kurama laughed.
Inside Karasu screeched.
Kurama shifted again, fisting a hand in Karasu’s hair and jerking his head back again, forcing him to bare his throat. Karasu didn’t resist at all, couldn’t, even as Kurama took hold of his cock and lined himself up. Hiei could feel the dam of all of Kurama’s bitter rage break then, the single moment Karasu took him in so easily and moaned brokenly.
Kurama buried his face in Karasu’s neck, clamped onto his throat with his teeth, tightened his hand in Karasu’s hair, and thrust forward viciously. Karasu jerked, wanting to get away and wanting to get closer at the same time. He tried to scream insults, to get under Kurama’s skin again to make it hurt so that it wouldn’t be so repulsive, but all that came out was slurred words and screams.
His breath was forced from him with every thrust, his hair swinging, falling in his face, and he couldn’t even look down to admire Kurama’s face while he held that expression that looked almost as if he were in pain. That was taken from him too, that last thread that could have kept him from teetering on the brink of cracking.
His body screamed, screamed ‘yes’ and ‘more’, and Kurama gave it, but his mind faltered and began to shut down. Something as simple as a fuck, a slightly hard if not careful fuck, wouldn’t have sent anyone else over the edge of sanity, but Karasu had been dancing with madness for so long, his brain so overloaded with mixed signals and painpainpain emotional and physical, couldn’t take it any more.
He cried out his release, and inside, Hiei could see something to the effect of already fractured glass shattering, shards misaligning themselves and falling into chaos.
--
A week later Kurama still hadn’t heard anything from Reikai about Karasu, even as he’d released his soul from the plant that had kept it. Then again, he’d never been told about his spirit being missing for two months either. Koenma was keen to play things close to the chest on this one, it seemed.
Either that, or he had known, but Kurama doubted it. Torture was a crime, be it against a human or a demon. The rules of his parole were very strict, and Kurama had gone over all the fine print. He could kill, even if they were reluctant to go down, but he could not be in a position where he could end them and refuse to do so on the grounds of malicious intent beforehand.
Kurama’s intent certainly had been malicious, he’d put Karasu through as much pain as he himself had gone through, and paid him back for the psychological trauma threefold.
He’d also managed to send a warning to Hiei while doing so.
Messing with his trust, betraying him, keeping things from him, was not wise. Because he could make him suffer even after death, and even the gods wouldn’t be able to save them, or stop him. Betrayal was not something he took kindly, and his methods of repaying it had only become more vicious over the years.
The world saw a smiling, human boy.
A demon stared back at them.