Scattered Pages and Blood-Ink

“Is there any purpose to this or do you just want to paint pretty little patterns all over me?” Kuronue complained, twitching a bit when the tip of the brush passed over a particularly sensitive spot at his neck.

The design already covered his most of his neck and flowed down his back, decorating his spinal column, circling around the abrasive skin and underlying muscles where his wings connected to his skeleton, extending from his shoulder blades. The pattern was an intricate mess of what looked like illegible scrawls of another language and soft curves shot through with harsh spikes. The pattern was elegant indeed, to a certain extent, and he had to marvel at Youko’s skill in being able to paint such perfect patterns on his skin from memory as he was.

But he’d offered no explanation. Simply: come here, sit down, stay, don’t flinch. Then Youko punctured a hole in Kuronue’s skin with one of his nails and worked the blood from it, spilling a small amount into the bowl placed before his crossed feet. He’d mixed the blood in with the ink and dipped a long bristled calligraphy brush carefully into the black abyss and then painted his lower lip, down his chin, neck, stopping at his collarbone to move back around to his spinal cord and wings. And now he was back up at his neck, re-tracing the dried patterns and adding the words of a language he didn’t know.

Youko’s face had been impassive the whole time. A stone wall of concentration and mere tolerance for Kuronue’s bored rambles. He hadn’t said a single thing other than orders: Turn this way, flip over, sit still damn you.

Kuronue sighed and placed his chin on his fist only to have it snatched away and his fingers decorated with the strange patterns too. Flowing up each of his fingers, joining at the knuckles, turning into a chaotic mess of that other language and perfect lines of clean black ink.

The bat was annoyed.

“Hey. Are you even listening?” he scowled, then raised his eyebrows as Youko moved back a little, dipped the tip of the brush in ink and then started painting his nails.

“You never shut up do you.” It wasn’t a question.

He scrunched his face up and bolted his eyes closed when the brush passed between his fingers, connecting at his wrist and spilling around to the top of his hand once more. “No I don’t. Especially when someone tries to be all hush-hush about painting weird shit all over me. If this is some of curse or something that will mentally scar me, I’d rather you tell me now so I can knock you out and wash it off.”

Youko chuckled, his eyes hidden behind long white eyelashes as he reached over to take Kuronue's other hand, painting an eerily exact copy of the first hand. “It’s nothing to drastic. Just youko magick.”

Honestly, Kuronue should have felt nervous right here. But he didn’t.

“Nothing that’s going to leave me pregnant or supporting another limb? No second or third heads?” He tested, narrowing his eyes a little, watching Youko purse his lips a little in concentration as he turned the now finished hand over and placed the brush back into the bowl.

“Not this time.” He said, smirking a little as he looked up at Kuronue.

“’Not this time’ he says.” Kuronue twitched again, only this time because Youko was undoing the leather straps at his waist, and undoing the fabric with a fluid ease born of practice, just as easily as he’d removed Kuronue’s vest.

“Hey! Whoa- whoa! Hang on! What are doing?” He snapped when the youko tore open his leathers, exposing him, and then pulled his leathers of completely, slipping them past the stunned demons feet with relative ease.

“Continuing the sigil.” Youko replied, rising into his knees and dipping the brush in the ink once more, sliding it against the edge of the bowl to rid some of the unwanted excess. Then, placing a hand on Kuronue’s thigh for balance, he leant forward and started the pattern once more flowing from Kuronue’s belly button and continuing down in one solid line. Down, down, down.

Kuronue clenched his teeth as the ink dried, leaving trails of cool wetness. The touch oddly teasing. He watched the brush circle around his cock and then rise again, intricate lines and swirls escaping from the baseline, moving out across his abdomen.

Then he blinked and forced back a moan as Youko grasped his cock, running his thumb over the head, squeezing gently. Kuronue had already been fighting back arousal, but now he gave up completely and let himself give in to the youko’s ministrations.

But still…

“What are they for?” He was a little short of breath, speaking when enduring the liquid pleasure in his veins was a little hard, but his curiosity was greater than his libido.

Kneeling between Kuronue’s knees, the youko allowed himself a slight smile as he leant forward and placed the tip of the brush between Kuronue’s eyes then continued up to his hairline. His other hand still toyed with Kuronue’s cock absentmindedly, leaving Kuronue even more restless and twitchy than before.

In the youko’s mass of furs and cloth Youko called a bed, Kuronue reclined against the pillows, his head resting against the wall. His lips parted slightly in pleasure as Youko leant away for a moment to place the bowl and brush away from reach. The youko returned, forcing his legs closed and climbing onto his lap wordlessly. Still stroking Kuronue’s cock with fine long fingers, tipped with long nails.

“It’s a ritual.”

Kuronue cursed. “Am I going to get eaten? Should I be running?”

Youko shook his head, then his touch left him and he began to pull his own clothes off, revealing the dark patterns leaking through pale skin as if drawn on a long time ago. They were faded, although Kuronue swore he had never seen the obvious patterns before, as faded as they were. Soon after Youko pulled off his tunic and pants, it began to bleed through from pale skin to marred designs of scrawls and faded swirls. All the same as Kuronue’s except for each line running up his limbs. From the tip of a single toe of each foot, and a single finger on each hand, running up his shin and the tops of his thighs, his forearms and biceps, to connect to the other swirls at abdomen and neck. Kuronue would bet that if Youko were to turn around, the same patterns that flowed around his wings would encircle the youko’s long tail.

They stared at each other for a while, then Kuronue returned to running his eyes over the patterns, touching them very faintly with the tips of his fingers. Youko’s were strange; it was almost as if this was the seam of his yoki, forcing it to stay inside him. The lines burned the tips of his fingers slightly when he ran his fingers over them.

“What are they for?” he asked, looking up to Youko.

“As I age and my power grows, so do my tails. Long ago I placed a curse on myself to stop me from ascending to become a star once I reach my ninth tail, as all other youko’s do. I have no desire to become a servant of Inari, to sit and survey like a good boy. With this,” he held his arms out a little, obviously gesturing to the both of them, “I can stay in Makai for as long as I live, and when I die, I will go to Reikai. I’d like to see if I can escape even their walls.”

For the first time in a long time, Kuronue could see why many called Youko evil.

He looked like it. Looked like a crazed villain with a diabolical plan. Only the difference was that he had won. Even Kuronue new enough about youko society to know that such a thing was unspeakable. It was blasphemy and sacrilege for him to have marred his body with these marks and chained himself to the earth.

No wonder the other youko’s were so disgusted with their renegade brother.

Kuronue’s mouth was dry. “And what do I have to do with it.”

Youko’s expression of triumph faded quickly, and he lifted his hand to stare at the dull markings. “They need renewing.”

“How did you do it the last time?” He felt like he was asking too much.

The youko paused, thinking back, honestly trying to remember who it was he’d sealed the ritual with. Then, once he remembered, his eyes drifted back. They were laughing. “My youngest sister. I hated the bitch ever since she was able to talk, always going to the alpha-male, whining. Telling him everything I did.”

“You killed her?” He asked, because it was normal in Makai for sibling rivalry to be solved by death.

“I did. She was too young and weak to withstand the ritual.” Youko laughed, tipping his head back, exposing the swirls at his throat. “She died and I went back to the skulk saying that she’d been taken by an avian demon, that I’d tried the best I could to save her… That was the first time I ever tasted my mothers cunt.”

Kuronue raised an eyebrow. “Your sister dies so you fuck your mother?”

He shrugged. “The alpha-male wasn’t there to comfort her. I’d already passed them all in terms of potential for power. This was after Mother and I met for the first time. I was ready to leave despite my young age, I was restless. I wanted to fuck things up in a big, big way. In the end I got what I wanted and I was kicked out of our skulk when the alpha-male discovered I’d fucked his favourite wife and killed his daughter. I was free. I am free. By being kicked out I was free from them perusing me as they would have if I had run away.”

Kuronue was torn between wishing his own family had been that simple and feeling sorry for Youko. Neither were really appropriate. But hey, he wasn’t human. Who cared if Youko was an incestuous asshole. Not Kuronue. They were partners in crime and they fucked too, morals weren’t part of it.

If there was any relationship between them it all it was only Youko’s blind possessiveness of things he deemed his, and Kuronue’s unwillingness to loose such a good thief for a partner. Of course the sex was good too, that helped.

“So why am I painted too?” He asked, also slightly curious as to why Youko was telling him so much. It was like he was an open book now.

“The ritual has to have someone to siphon the collected energy into, I need both yours and my yoki in order to activate and transfer your markings,” he placed two fingers at Kuronue’s collarbone, “onto me. Then a little more yoki to seal it completely.”

He still didn’t get it. “And transferring them would…?”

He looked slightly irritated that he had to spell it out, but Kuronue didn’t care. “I’m renewing the markings. Renewing the curse.”

“So it wears out?”

Youko nodded and leant forward a little, bringing his face closer to Kuronue’s, placing his hands on his shoulders. “Every five hundred years.”

He wanted to ask but he new he would sound stupid. “…will I die?”

That made Youko laugh. “Depends how strong you are… I am the only one who has ever survived the curse.”

Kuronue couldn’t think of anything to say. He just stared at Youko as he watched him, golden eyes flickering back and forth ever so slightly, fingers kneading his shoulders lightly.

His first thought was to kill him. To not let him go through with it.

But Youko’s lips were against his, and his fingers were sliding against his cock again, slick with lubricant somehow (Kuronue had long ago given up on trying to figure out how many things happened when Youko was around.) Things began to blur, and he was apposed to it, because; shit, if a youko couldn’t survive how the hell could he?

But this felt too good. Always had. That in itself had to be magick. It had felt good last time and the time before that, so this time would be the same if not better, right? The pleasure was as good as a chain, keeping him under Youko’s thumb. Not that he wanted to leave anyway.

He was far too fond of the way Youko always kissed him just that bit more feverishly when he moaned into his mouth, or finally gave in placed his hands on the youko’s hips, slipping them down to slide his palms along his ass and pull him up against him. He was fond of the way Youko gasped and lowered his eyes when he wrapped both of their hands around their cocks too. And the way he would tilt his head just a little to the side when he moaned, hair in his eyes and lips parted.

Kuronue was a strong demon. And with strength often came knowledge, but not always. He was a cautious demon, aware that it was all too easy to over and underestimate things. He had confidence that by now, he should have at least have the capacity to survive this ritual of Youko’s. It wouldn’t make sense for Youko to kill him when things were perfectly fine for the both of them right now.

So he didn’t put any effort into any more of his protests, not when Youko’s hand was over his, their cocks sliding against each other, distracting pleasure overtaking everything. It was intoxicating. It was beautiful.

He didn’t complain when Youko lifted one of his legs up and trailed two fingers passed his entrance. Only stared right into the eyes that were staring back at him and the faded lines spilling from his lips and decorating his pale skin. The crystalline hair, clinging to pale, pale skin.

He screamed later, when Youko was inside him and fucking him hard, whispering things in that other language into his throat, his breath husky and hitching ever now and again. Pausing to breathe, to grunt, to pause so that he could even remember to murmur the words. Kuronue was lost and simply didn’t care what happened to him at this point.

Orgasm was fast approaching, building and having him scream and claw at Youko frustrated when all he did was pause and force him to stay there for the longest time while he trailed fingers along his jaw and forced him to look into his sharp golden eyes.

Truthfully Kuronue was to delirious to realize at this state that half of the pleasure was youko magick rising and humming in the very air around them, attacking Kuronue first, infecting him with the curse which would break all ties and renounce faith. It wouldn’t last long in Kuronue, that was what Youko had done wrong the first time, he’d left it too long and he’d lost track of what happened then. The ritual had left her as nothing but a corpse, rapidly decaying, all sustenance sucked dry from her and flesh torn.

But Youko had been full as he never had been before, and radiating the most pleasant aura. Drunk on the aftershocks of the specific brand of potent magick. He’d been released. Free.

It was like that now, he felt the hunger for that perfection that Kuronue endured, and the odd belonging and damning sensations that the magick gave that was so addictive it was sparsely used by youko’s at all anymore lest they forget themselves in the potent practice. It came soon enough, as orgasm acted as the drawing force, pulling the life and magic from the convulsing body below him into himself, flowing through the sigils and right to his core.

Immediately he felt the difference. Not just the magick, but the curse itself. Cutting him off from what connections had gradually leaked back over the years. If he had left it any longer he would have been able to communicate with his furious elders. Something which he did not desire. His business was none of their concern.

He was staring down at the bedding over Kuronue’s shoulder, eyes wide, panting. The newness inside him feeling like both a hole in his being and a welcome sudden fullness all at once. He wanted to scream and pull his hair out, to ram his head against the wall, to dig his nails into the struggling body below him.

But no the body was gone too soon, leaving him even more empty and he couldn’t rid himself of the heat, and the rage. He clawed at the bedding below him before he stood and attacked the first thing that he came into contact with.

Then he was on the ground again, lying on his back staring up into blue eyes, struggling furiously. Uselessly. He was too uncoordinated, couldn’t tell up from down, who he was, who the one above him was, what his purpose was. He howled and screamed wordlessly, anything to pass by the slowly fading sensation of fullness inside him.

He came to his senses when Kuronue backhanded him. The both of them panting harshly, somehow across the other side of the room on the hard floor.

“Asshole.” Kuronue breathed, rolling off him when Youko blinked and smiled at him. Noticing the claw marks.

Well, he was close to perfecting it. It wasn’t the quickest nor easiest way of perfecting and building a resilience to youko magick, but at least he could hit two birds with one stone this way.

Kuronue was angry. “You killed your sister after the ritual, didn’t you?”

Youko took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Unwilling to move from his place on the floor. He was comfortable here. “It was like a drug.” He admitted, laughter in his hoarse voice.

Kuronue walked out without another word. For whatever reason Youko didn’t know, nor care.