Consent

Crushed beer cans clinked between their feet, reeking of fermented rice. Kurama leaned away from the stench, keeping his eyes on the cheap faces and numbers collecting in the center of the table.
“Wait!” Botan tossed her arm across Kuwabara belligerently. She meant to stall him. Instead she knocked him off the chair they were sharing.
Like an upset cat, Kuwabara wailed, thudding onto his ass, then tipped his nose up, self satisfied as if he’d chosen to scoot into the air. He motioned politely for her to go on. Botan announced, “Kurama’s counting cards.”
Her slurring suggested the reaper indulged in more than corporeal intoxication, Kurama thought. He stopped arranging his hand and looked about. No one else was marking the thrown cards nearly as closely. “Is that against the rules?”
“No,” Botan admitted. “But it won’t be as fun. We want to go so fast the game degenerates to chaos, pure instinct! If you count the cards so you win each time, there’s no point.”
“And you piss everybody off.” Kuwabara bellowed, laughing, his cheeks red already. He was keeping right up with Botan, can for can. “It’s not like you get anything if you win, you know.”
“Oh, my apologies.” Kurama grinned into his hand. After a moment he looked up with his brow quirked. “Calculating probability is frowned on as well, I’d assume?”
“Let it go, man,” Kuwabara chuckled, moving to Keiko’s side on the floor.
She leaned over against him, giggling, “You think too much.”
Kurama turned his eyes to his cards. Their friendly chaos warmed him. “That’s true.”

Karasu missed the television and Bible in the otherwise typical hotel room. He sat alone in his new room on the edge of the bed and examined the large, empty space. The furniture seemed cheap and small. Sakyo’s influence, no doubt, industrial and functional.
He had no suitcase. He created his clothing as needed. However, he did carry a small metal attaché, which he set on the table. Inside were a few potions and a heavy silver brush of some sentimental value; it was carved with lilies that bloomed thick and wide like lover’s friendly thighs, and the pale bristles were full of hairs that were not his. Samples.
He opened the clasps and took out the brush. The rest could keep, but after that encounter in the hall, he wanted to check his memory. He liked lovers with long hair, and here were all shades. Most were black, but they shone different cores, prismatic and each lit with a different memory. There were a few white, even shades of blue and green, and one blond, a singular man. And as he suspected, but one other red, not so deep or pure.
He lay the brush down and looked up to see his reflection in the bureau mirror. He eliminated the offensive image. He knew his own beauty; he did not need to see the banality of his movements, musings and yawns.
Before he improved the rest of the room, he sent a creature to close the curtains and lock the door. Toguro might criticize Karasu’s ‘overuse’ of power, but one only attained quest class with constant practice.
Excess was his crass observation of mastery, fed by his miserly once-human Puritanism.
Karasu was sure Toguro’s gifted power could never match earned strength. Karasu could improve, while Toguro was static thing, only as strong as what he was given. There could be no more training, no more improvement. Karasu had impetus, passionate obsession, while Toguro was so emotionally dead he was barely alive in his immortal, titanic shell.
In the dark, fuming and proud, Karasu changed the carpet to a cold tile. The walls took on the sheen of the foil encrusted papers of the Sun King’s sitting rooms in France, centuries ago. Back when architects had taste.
His shoes clicked as he turned.
The bed, the bed. That was always the centerpiece.
He shut his eyes, rubbing his thigh. A four-poster, dark stained cherry wood, twisted up and shining with polish. Black and velvet hangings and bedding. A single white pillow, an accent. And on it, a bloody rose in full bloom…
His eyes snapped open. He saw his dream formed before him and scowled.
One bright flushed rose on the bed, it seemed such an easy thing.

It was no trouble for Kurama to stay guarded and satisfied when he was with such good friends, playing cards, drinking and laughing. Those smiles were easy, coming uncontrolled and welcome.
But once everyone slept, Kurama could not distract himself with humanity. He could see the weight they bore at this tournament. A loss would be catastrophic; death would only begin the consequences.
Yuusuke would have snorted, saying, “They survived plenty long without us. They’ll just gank someone else back from the dead and truck along. They’ll get a raccoon who uses dandelions – that’ll be your replacement!”
Kurama smiled, just hearing the boy’s voice in his mind. But Yuusuke wasn’t here in the dark, like he hadn’t been at the fight or the confrontation in the hallway.
Kurama sat on his bed, picking at the covers. Karasu.
It was an option to fight someone else. The fox in him urged sleep and retreat to a safer opponent. Hiei was better suited to the match with his speed - Karasu was not a particularly quick thinker; Hiei could cut him down easily. And the stone warrior Bui would be simple for Kurama to snare and erode, stone eaten apart by living roots.
Maybe. And perhaps Kurama could forget the haunting offer.
Youko slithered with mischief, but counseled him to stay. It was not wise to stir up hornets’ nests so close to the confrontation.
Still, Karasu was likely harmless. He seemed irrational, but perhaps was a remarkable lover. He seemed willing, open-minded, imaginative in violence at least. He had a delicate touch, superb control, and an aesthetic’s eye. Those fingers certainly knew human physiology and its senses. Fear, surprise. If he drew those from prey so easily, perhaps pleasure was no challenge.
Kurama bent over, smothering the lurch inside his human body. The burn made him shiver. He murmured, “That’s enough. Stop it.”
Shuichi was terrified of the demonic fights in the stadium, and at the same time thrilled and arrogant at the wins. He had grown confident and daring because he was doing the impossible, clever enough to pull a win out of anything, powerful enough to have all the options he could dream of and still live.
He was young. Shuichi now had a teenage body and all that came with it, and Kurama had not bothered to find a lover in the past few years that he’d become interested.
Now Shuichi settled on this as another conquest, just dangerous enough to be exciting in a stupid, testosterone fueled way. Gambling his body and life, he didn’t see the difference between delivering himself to the ring tomorrow or the bed tonight.
If anything, tonight should have less risk, Kurama admitted. He gets nothing if he kills me in private, except the satisfaction. And he can have that in the ring.
Yoko urged him to be reckless; he was sure Karasu would not kill him before the match - yet if he tried, Kurama would be close enough to rip his throat. And if Kurama learned something from his enemy, it would give him a better chance at killing Karasu with energy left over. That was a necessity. There was no way this tournament would end neatly in the ring.
I need help, Kurama admitted. Somehow, he had become the only prudent force in his mind. Usually, his human nature drove him to inactivity, for Shuichi was a gentle homebody, and Yoko’s reason kept him careful.
Kurama usually had to rile them up, forcing his ambitions and drive on them. Now they were both against him.
This is Karasu’s power, he thought bitterly. Dividing me against myself—no, unifying me, until my desires unbalance me in his favor. It’s shameful, to be so easy to manipulate.
Go. Go. Both taunted him.
This will end badly, Kurama protested. Karasu is not a trustworthy lover. And what will others do to me when they find out? It’ll be embarrassing.
Hiei will laugh. The humans will be awkward, but will forgive. Karasu will be dead.
You are causing difficulties for me, Kurama muttered, rising gloomily. I will regret agreeing to this. Hopefully not the moment before he stops my life.
Kurama walked to the mirror.
He turned slowly, looking himself over. He saw a sleepy eyed drunk student, whose demon wrecked genes had reacted spastically to produce unnatural gaijin tones, verdant eyes and carmine hair, still human in a gym t-shirt printed with his school name in crackling letters and plaid boxers underneath. He looked like a half-breed, away for a sports game with his school.
Considering who and what he was, the plainness of his appearance made a hilarious dichotomy. The only things that gave him away were his solid, round shoulders and calves, muscled like armor.
Kurama sighed.
What should I wear then, beasts?
It doesn’t matter, Yoko purred. You won’t be long in it.
His human side was embarrassed already, the poor virgin. Yoko, infinitely more experienced, stirred up intense, obscene memories: claws, fists, and horrid lusty, lengthy lovely tortures. Kurama felt it should have resulted in a stand off, but his body ruled his humanity. Shuichi was fascinated by Yoko’s luscious promises.
This is the way schizophrenics begin, Kurama thought, dividing their minds into voices and tendencies. Negotiating with them.
He stripped bare, pulled on the silk clothes he’d set out for the next day, and set off quickly through the halls.

Karasu stepped out of the bath. The cool water had numbed him and his body felt smooth and intactile as glass. To feel nothing was relief and horror at once.
His eyes fell on the hair brush, the heavy curling silver.
His hands burned suddenly. He remembered the pounding blood of the were-human’s neck in the hall. The fleshy tower, stalk to the mind, and his hands around it ready to twist, and oh, how the fighter knew it too! The young man had held so still. Aware of the danger, aware of his own inferiority. Frozen like a frightened animal. Prey, listening, but hardly meek.
That heat. Karasu groaned, his flesh waking in waves of pin pricks that tugged him to rise like fish hooks, dragging him up to a blinding light and death. Damn Kurama’s corruption – he could see that pale skin flushed even to the scalp, the half hid band pinning the bush of red back and out of his eyes. Such luminous skin, the blood heat meltingly tangible. The hair like apples, sweet cherries and strawberries, like everything succulent, moist, and lingible.
“My mind is too much on red,” he whispered, fingering the brush’s antique curves.
I have to sit down, Karasu ordered himself. Sit and read. Vision training. He will be doing the same, but with focus made only fiercer with threat, while I dawdle in these fantastic dreams.
He dressed, still feeling that coarse, untended silk slipping though his fingers. He could not focus.

A knock disturbed his meditations. Sakyo or Toguro, come to check their investment.
“Come in,” Karasu said, too quietly to be heard at the door, more for his own wry amusement. He manifest a creature like a hand and sent it to open the door.

The scent of sulfur and charcoal blew over him immediately as the door cracked open. Power crackled inside the room. Kurama forced his eyes up. He had to see Karasu’s first expression.
Karasu dumped his chair aside, standing. His energy flared, shocking in its ferocity and strength, like the pressure wave of an atomic bomb.
Kurama lifted his hands in placation. “I am no assassin!”
The other man did not entirely relax. “Then why are you here?”
Kurama stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “I was under the impression I was invited.”
“The invitation is rescinded. I am not for play tonight.”
He looked upset and feral, with eyes as inhuman and egoist as a hissing opossum. There was nothing in him now like the overwhelming magnetism Kurama had encountered in the hall. The mouth the mask had covered was thin lipped and unremarkable, except in its sneer.
“Why smile?” Karasu asked, collecting himself enough to speak in that smooth, collected lilt Kurama remembered. “You’re a mouse before a hawk.”
The man obviously disliked aggressive lovers. Surely if Karasu had entered his rooms instead of the other way around, Kurama was sure dark charisma would not have fled with such awkward anger left in its wake. It was a miscalculation.
Kurama walked into the room and lowered himself to sit on the bed. Leaving his hands in his lap, his body language open and vulnerable, only his direct gaze marred the total compliance. He gave his nicest smile, the kind he used at school when he needed a favor from a teacher, a smile that begged indulgence. It was a clean smile that did not reach his eyes. No agenda could be read in it, just physical youth. Vibrant potential. After all, Karasu did not want him happy, but willing and attractive. Young and needy. Worth taking. No trouble.
Karasu kicked the chair upright with his foot. He was a man concerned with appearance; he wanted to erase evidence of his surprise.
Kurama picked at the bedspread, giving him time to recover while he begged, “Karasu. Please don’t send me away.”
“Why?”
He was suspicious. That wasn’t good. A truth then: “No one touches me.”
“I can’t imagine that.” The response came involuntary as a laugh.
“My friends are afraid of me. I am not human. I kill without showing remorse. I barely feel it myself. I feel – already dead in their dull world.”
Karasu stood silent by his chair. He reached behind himself to toy with something on the desk.
Kurama went on: “You were right in your prophecy. I must know you. Curiosity, lust—can’t you forgive that of me?” He joked, holding out his arms in a cautious preen. “I may be a half-breed but I’m not bad to look on.”
“Maybe. A half breed, human kitsune, is that it?”
“You knew, surely?”
“I knew something.”
He is too cautious, Kurama frowned, thinking. I will catch him as he caught me.
He sulked, biting his lower lip to a glistening red, catching his breath to force blood to flush his cheeks. His hands smoothed firmly over his thighs, tightening the silk; then, with an embarrassed squirm, he stood to hide his erection.
He heard Karasu exhale slowly, calculating.
Kurama let his voice break. He made as if to leave. Then he turned back, eyes fierce. “I should have known better. I do not trust a human when he brags of his prowess with my body. Why I believed you had any glamour or skill, I can’t imagine.”
Kurama whipped around and grasped the door handle, hearing Karasu’s footfalls closing in, and jerked it open.
A hand on Kurama’s chest flung him back. The door slammed shut inches from his face, with Karasu’s five fingers spread over it.
Satisfied, Kurama backed into a table, stationed decoratively – disturbingly - with dead roses under an ornate mirror, the flower carcasses so decayed they had become grey, colorless. Kurama felt his ass bump the cold granite and felt backwards towards the vase.
Karasu followed him, bringing himself the width of a fingernail to the boy’s body and pausing.
Kurama felt the taller man’s breath stirring his hair and hesitated.
Where to touch? Where to touch…
He let the backs of his fingers drag down Karasu’s stomach, feeling hard muscle under the soft silk. Karasu smiled, flattered at his admiration.
Kurama inhaled deeply. Demons had such a scent when they were aroused. Like amber and almonds, the stale intoxication of the ancient old world where the kingdoms flowed together in a gathering dusk, a twilight where humans cleared spirits out with the leaves each year and devoted themselves to the care of monsters in hopes to be spared.
The old land always smelled best.
Karasu moved his hands up the young man’s shins, stroked his knees and began to pull them apart. He reached back behind Kurama and swatted the vase off to the floor. The pieces vanished in a hiss of steam. Kurama slid back up on the cleared table.
Neither spoke.
A single shuddering breath slid past Kurama’s lips. He could barely stand the contact. The human in him was balking and near tears. This was not a normal courtship; the memory would cause trouble for Shuichi. But Kurama brought his hands up Karasu’s body, ignoring the protest. It was obvious that he would not leave the room easily at this point.

He compromised by sitting upright on the table, letting Karasu close in. He spread his thighs slightly. The demon was pleased and wound his hands in the red locks, the sensitive hairs at the back of his neck. It was their way, the demons’ way, waiting and cautious. In Kurama the act built up softness, warmth, a shiver of trust and intimacy.
Eyes closed, Kurama reached to Karasu’s face, fingers stumbling blindly up his jaw. For Shuichi’s sake, Kurama looked the man in the eye. Then he bent forward and lay a kiss on the demon’s pale lips.
Shuichi would be familiar with this, and comfortable. Kisses like movies say. Sex where the camera pans up to the ceiling and the lovers wake later, smiling and draped in sheets.
Karasu was like stone under the light brush.
Kurama sat back, licking his lips. There, he said. Shuichi, it is nothing to be afraid of.
Demons did not kiss, never on the mouth. They kissed in a biting style on the neck or especially deep on the shoulders, but never the face; it is not worth the scar. A direct gaze was unusual too, as it showed familiarity, presumption; it existed in foreplay of course, but it was an insult.
Karasu’s face was frozen, deciding.
Kurama brought a finger up to trace the fine hair of his brow, trying to act like it was nothing, no insult. He wondered how forgiving the crow would be of a half breed’s faux pas.
The man smiled, raising his hand opposite Kurama’s, mirroring the sweet gesture.
If Yoko had not been sleeping, purring, he would have sensed the tension, the draw back. He would not ignore the shifted weight.
As it was, Kurama’s only warning was when Karasu twisted his hair and jerked his head away.
Kurama gasped and opened his eyes to see a moment’s flash of sneering lips, sharp clenched teeth and a close, closed fist.
The blow connected to the rib of his cheekbone. There was barely any pain, but blank spreading compression. Hair tore; a slow burst of panic woke in him. Blackness behind his eyes. Kurama saw nothing but felt his hair fall loose as the hand slid free. His head fell forward, chin jutting, and he opened his mouth to cry out--
But Kurama gasped. Karasu’s opposite hand, the one with blushing knuckles, came forward to twist into his hair, binding tighter than before, readying for the second punch. Kurama’s eyes flicked in fear.
Protect me! Hold him back!
The second fist, drawing back, was stopped suddenly by a spray of green leaves.
Karasu growled, astonished. A stiff, thick curl of thorns ran up Kurama’s shaking wrist—his hands were still open, trembling fingers still framing Karasu’s thin face. The vine wreathed Karasu’s neck, fanged thorns at the jugulars, arteries, spine and trachea like a circular saw’s teeth turned inward. The barbed rope ran down Karasu’s raised arm and wrapped over his fist. If the hand advanced, the movement would pull the vine tight and sink the thorns. Karasu would sever his own throat and spine.
Karasu opened his fist gently. The vine curled around his fingers as he hissed, “Play nicely.”
Kurama had to swallow before he could speak, and his blink drove tears over his lashes. The pain of the punch had begun to sock into him like a migraine. “It was instinct.”
“Pull it back.”
The vine shook, but did not retract. Kurama’s answer was cold, was rational. “No. You’ll kill me.”
He flexed his hand in the red hair. “I told you as much.”
Kurama pulled his hands back slowly, as Karasu released him and put his hands in his trouser pockets. The vine slid away, vanishing in the white sleeve. Kurama touched his throbbing cheek.
They sat a moment, silent. After a loss, Karasu did not want to free his prey. Kurama did not need any more research. He knew how to beat the man and that was enough. It was easy to guess from the crow’s fury at the kiss: he was only comfortable and only dangerous when he was in control.
Kurama smiled, letting an old cruelty enter his face.
Karasu snarled, frightened. “Get out.”
“I can find the door.” Kurama slid off the table. The man moved to let him pass.

As he approached the door, there was a buzz of power. Kurama ignored it, reaching toward the knob.
A sound like a snap, like a gunshot. Fire ripped through his fingers; this time the pain was immediate. And intense.
Kurama’s hair blew back like a flame, then fluttered back over his shoulders and eyes as he fell to one knee, clasping his burnt, shattered fingers to his chest. Suddenly, he recognized the panting screams as his own voice. With effort, he curbed them to bitten groans.
Karasu’s laugh was close, though he had not moved. His voice was soft, but when Kurama looked, he was across the room back at his desk. Yet his fingers explored the meetings in planes of Kurama’s body, drawing slow and fiercely deep lines. But he sitting with his head on the heel of one hand and a quill held in the other. “Why don’t you leave?”
Madness, Kurama thought. Is it his power or my pain that makes the world seem so rudely impossible?
Kurama’s vision blurred. The touch handling him grew stronger. A pleasure was taking hold, lurching through him, growing with each wave, each spurt. It did not lessen the tears on his cheek or the pain of the sizzling gore in his hand.
“Teach me to leave,” he choked. “And I shall oblige gladly.”
“You dissemble, then expect me to take you at your word.”
“You confuse sensation and cause it. But you will not raise the death instinct, not from me. Without submission, you cannot kill.”
“Silly fox. Flower. Dear.” Karasu’s dark humor purred. “I do not intend to kill you…tonight. I am a mercenary. I have a job. This is, this is, this is - rehearsal.”
Kurama felt a phantom of touch lift his chin, lips against his. But instead of a tongue, the next sensation was a firm rod of flesh slipping through his pursed lips. He shook his head and yelled, doubling over. There was nothing there.
“And if I enjoy my work…so much the worse for you. But,” he stood, heels clacking ominously as he approached. “If you tire me, soothe me, I will not keep you till morning.”
“If I do not?”
“I will give you as many chances as you need.”
“That is all I ever asked.”
“That and my weakness. Be assured you will not leave until I know yours.”
“I never hid them well.”
“Forbearance. Fear. And you do not take pain like your teammates. They do not feel the pain which you experience fully, piercingly, and you taught yourself to tolerate it so that you could compete at their level. That sensitivity…is most interesting.”
“A sweet toy for you, I suppose.”
“If I could lay hands on it.”
Heart throbs and pain punctuated every thought. The wild knots of healing ki shot through his hand, looking for places to begin the restoration and dismayed at the lack of material.
Kurama breathed. “I will bind my magic if you will bind yours.”
“You have no bargaining power.”
“I will not kill you in defense if you will respect my weak constitution and do not kill me in play.”
“I already promised the latter.”
“Then do not cause me injury,” Kurama murmured. He put his head to the ground, feeling ready to pass out. The icy tile comforted him. “I will hold back for that.”
“We have a pact.”

Karasu was up and neared him in quick snapping steps. He twined his fingers in the red hair and dragged him across the swirling floor. He grabbed the back of his tunic and flung him on the bed.
Kurama curled to protect his hand, gulping air. Rolling slightly, he heard the man speak deliberately:
“I will bind your hands. You will bind your magic. I will cut off your clothes. You may go ahead and spread your legs.”
Kurama pleaded with his prudence and wrestled back a panic.
“Now.” The crow ordered.
He slid one foot to the side, watching his shoe slid over the velvet, crushing a light trail.
Karasu laughed. “That is quite precious, false virgin.”
“Did you want a whore?”
Karasu shook his head, slipping the buttons from his shirt. Black peeled over white skin as he murmured, “I wanted you. Forced into the dirt like…”
Kurama’s tensed legs began to tremble. Relax, he admonished fiercely.
“Bruised petals.” Karasu sucked on the words, letting his shirt slid to the ground.
The demon leaned forward, lifting a knee onto the bedspread. Fine black hair hung over his shoulders; Kurama had seen like strands only on a few of the highest concubines in Razine’s court, centuries ago.
A scent like black currants flowed over him. God, what a scent. Kurama’s body, against all pain and all logic, twisted with heavenly reaction.
“Bruised petals…” Kurama murmured. “Sweet words, had they issued from a lover’s mouth.”
The crow’s face fell jagged, his brows knit, and before Kurama could beg pardon, he leapt forward. He dug his nails into the hangs of white cloth on Kurama’s waist. He lowered his teeth to the yellow brocade and ripped a scrap out.
“Keep your human nonsense down your throat.”
In the most ancient tongue he knew, Kurama spoke a coupled line of the Red Pines scroll: “Nothing splits dull life from the body after time hardens semen to amber. Only the young sun can fracture itself inside, trapped unwilling in power, aged.”
Karasu chuckled. He heaved his shoulders and tore his arms backwards, slashing the brocade down Kurama’s waist and thighs. “Learned, are we?”
Kurama yelped, his hand twisting into the bedspread. He panted and grit out, “It seems we must negotiate the term ‘injury.’”
A sharp scent cut through the air as red blossomed over Kurama’s skin. Karasu sucked on his nails and slid his hand inside the ripped silk. “It was a question of pressure. I expected another layer of cloth here. But you have more kitsune in you than I expected. Did you fight, so naked?”
His fingertips strayed over Kurama’s abdomen and nestled in the curls they found. “Do you like the freedom?”
Kurama lay back, shutting his eyes to the exploration. The hand moved on, massaged. It grew to rhythm and lifted Kurama’s hips.
“Your body; my charmed doll. Now part thy lips…” Karasu snarled and slid his tongue briefly into Kurama’s open mouth. The fox caught it, watching beyond his lashes as the man’s eyes snapped open. He sucked the tip of the man’s tongue, nibbled his lips, bit and tongued the tender corners of his mouth. Then the fox pulled away.
“Do you…” Kurama prompted, begging.
“I like it.” Karasu looked impressed. Kurama felt perverse pride. “What other human lecheries have you learned?”
Kurama grinned, then balked, grabbing onto Karasu’s arms. The statue like hand, cool and impossible stong, had covered his genitals with a firm, undulating pressure. But then it slid, pinching him. “What—“
“Don’t you want to be prepared?”
“You surprised me.” Kurama forced himself to relax, to let the intruding finger worm into him. He shivered.
“I will say the same to you, little doll, sweet puppet.”
“Use my name.”
“Half breed bitches do not need names.”
“Use my name or I will kill you.” It was simply, suddenly true. The kitsune woke and manifest in a cold, clear tone of solid power.
Karasu swallowed, “Kurama.”
Then he buried his face, his teeth, into the young man’s shoulder. He ripped and spat brocade and silk, then bit down again. His fangs sunk deep into the muscle and he sucked, tugged.
Kurama felt arrows down his right arm.
“Please go lightly!” Kurama’s voice was faint. “You promised to remember.”
Karasu’s eyes rolled up to meet his. He was blood crazed.
Kurama made ready to sit up, his arm sending tremulous messages of panic. He tried to relax, but only tensed, preparing for Karasu to tear out a chunk of gory sinew from sheer spite. “You are careless in your taking.”
Karasu let go to answer. His lips drew away with a sucking sound and messy strings of salvia and blood. “So be it.”
He ran his five nails back from Kurama’s hairline and grabbed him by the scalp. Had the meaning of the gesture not been so obvious, Kurama may have guarded his throat. But as it was, he relaxed.
He let Karasu guide him to the side of the bed, then lowered himself to his knees on the floor before Karasu could toss him and risk further damage to his seeping hand.
The black haired man rolled his hips.
Through his trousers, his flush endowment rubbed against Kurama’s cheeks and eyelashes.
Kurama laid his good hand gently on the back of the man’s knee.
There was a familiar sense of dreaming, that such gestures came so easily; instructions from centuries before, when such a thing was done just as it was today, and often on a floor of similar cold stone.
Karasu used both hands to grip Kurama by the hair. His fingers rubbed strands back and forth, appreciating the texture and thickness; more so, he appreciated the control. He made no move to free his erection, only bumping it against Kurama’s lips.
“Please,” Kurama spoke with irony, his green eyes turned upward, pretty and false as spun candy. “Let me taste you.”
Karasu sneered, exhaling. “Persuade me, rose.”
Kurama trailed his fingertips along the backs of Karasu’s knees, up his thighs to the line of his buttocks, and slithered his hands between the man’s thighs.
The broken hand lay useless in his lap, screeching pain through a blanket of endorphins. This would be difficult, he thought. Easier if I could use plants without upsetting him.
Karasu grew impatient at his fumbling, unsure strokes. “Kurama…do you know your mistake?”
Kurama sat back. Frustration should be an ally, he reminded himself, as it wastes time before dawn. “I don’t know what you want.”
“At least in my ignorance, I still know my abilities.” He used his nail to slice off his trousers and tilted up Kurama’s chin, till the head of his erection lay on Kurama’s bottom lip. “I suppose you still have yours, though.”
Kurama thanked him. He eased his mouth over it, glad the man’s form was nothing inhuman. Barely wide as three of Kurama’s slim fingers across and as long than his hand, half erect, the proportions suited Karasu’s build.
They will also suit mine, Kurama thought, pleased. Anticipating how gloriously their bodies would fit, he felt irrational gratitude towards the old crow, despite his stupid games. He licked the head carefully and handled Karasu with engaged reverence, sliding his fingers up and down the length. He rubbed the fine curly black hairs with his fingertips, lightly pinching and scratching.
Karasu seemed pleased and kept talking, combing his nails through Kurama’s hair in a way that woke mischievous ideas from his scalp. “You must have so many fears. You think of everything, so you include even in fears the fact that billions of people don’t know you, don’t care about you, are in competition with you…could one day have power over you. I bet it makes you neurotic.”
Kurama led his fingers to the soft skin behind Karasu’s scrotum, flush and tense as a large plum, and he pulled his mouth off sloppily to answer, “I find my peace.”
“In the company of others?”
“Sometimes.”
Karasu bent, as though he would kiss him, but he only looked intently, close enough Kurama wondered if their eyelashes would tangle.
“I have never enjoyed others,” the crow said.
Kurama found that plausible, but what to answer? “I can reconcile you to the idea.”
“Unless I am using them to further my own means.”
“We all use each other; why make those distinctions? Besides, how could becoming intimate with an enemy possibly benefit you?” Kurama said it though he could think of a thousand reasons. He was just flirting, it was chatter. This is why Shuichi is a loner, Kurama thought, sulkily: compulsive misdirection in intimate situations. It’s like I cannot tell the truth, I don’t even know it anymore.
“It heightens my desire to kill. And frightens you. I enjoy both.”
“Surely should you engage in this, your body will only long to preserve my life, and proximity?” He hoped.
“Aren’t you confident.” Karasu was quiet a moment, toying with a red curl. Then he said, “I think not. You are too logical. You could not understand me.”
“No, I wouldn’t dare,” Kurama laughed, feigning frivolity. “I suppose I am too enamored with biology to think of defying it.” Chatter!
“Continue.” Karasu leaned back. He seemed to be enjoying a certain curl near his temple, wrapping it again and again around his finger. “Deeper.”
Kurama measured his breath and began to let his lips slide over, minding his teeth. It was easy; human teeth were much duller than foxes’. He watched, pausing every third time to stop and lap at the underside of the head, petting the heavy balls, massaging the stem with his thumb while he breathed.
“Very professional, for a half-breed.”
Kurama guarded himself from the comment and only nodded.
“Did your fantasies teach you about bedding a demon?”
“I had other lovers.”
“Many?”
“When I was very young, I was stupid enough to look for an ideal and passed quickly between disappointments. When I was older I learned that a friend was worth far more, and I stayed with one or two for years.”
“You are honest. You don’t like to lie, then.”
“No.” He did not add that there was little danger, as one of them would be dead soon. Besides, he had said nothing that could not be guessed at. Such development of taste was common.
But Karasu was quiet. “You must have been a treasured pet. Or, forgive me, a valuable…companion.”
Kurama realized that the crow was much younger than he initially thought. Young and single minded. An idealist. “In such relations, one becomes an extension of the other, an extra hand or eye, an unseen ally. We cherished one another, but it was not so explicit as that.”
To himself, Kurama had to explain the passion of demons. Demons made love like cats made kills, endless approaching and releasing, postponing for hours. It was like dining on a splendid tiered meal, and between bites when one’s mouth was free, it showed good breeding and character to converse on philosophies, logic, or battle.
Karasu did not bat an eye when pausing to converse and did not lose any of his steeled arousal for the hesitation, but Shuichi had reached the limits of human patience and was dying to orgasm, flee, or faint.
Kurama shifted his weight to compensate, trying to calm the persistent child. He pressed the back of his wrist to his groin, but the breaks in that hand throbbed.
“Your lovers were allies.”
Kurama’s eyes flicked up, moving down the shaft. He licked his harassed lips. “Yes. Similar.”
“Then the circumstance of our meeting is tragic.”
“We would not live well together. Your dominance of territory and my unwillingness…it would only be a year of tonight, and then I would escape and you would not miss me.”
“You have been through many to see so clearly.”
“I speak quickly; it does not follow that it is wisdom.” He ran his tongue over the Karasu’s erection, smooth and pale as marble. He did not wish to speak any longer.
“Your demon half. It was brought out in the earlier fight?”
Kurama crouched and straightened up on his knees, dragging his head up the man’s thigh like a cat rubbing its ear. He turned his face up, imploring, “Does it matter now? It’s gone. It’s only me.”
Had Karasu been older, perhaps he would have had the experience to see how the silly questions and protests of a lover were always plaster over some threat. Romance stemmed ultimately from impatience.
As it was, Karasu feared nothing, not the blithe lies or the easy surrenders. He grinned and took the fox by the elbows, lifting him to throw him back on the bed.
Kurama leapt into his arms, thrilled. The old crow noticed and laughed at his enthusiasm. He spun and threw the young man down, tossed Kurama’s legs apart, and climbed up on his knees. He hiked up Kurama’s thighs and fell over him. His forearms thudded to either side of the red hair and he hunched over his face, baring a crisp wide smile.
Their skin scraped and slipped. Kurama did nothing. He did not want to slow Karasu by inspiring comment. But he was enjoying the moment, more than he had in years.
“Make me a promise.”
“Anything.”
“Before you leave, I want one long hair.” His fingers teased Kurama’s scalp. “You won’t have to break your word over that.”
“Of course. It’s yours.” How trifling. Perhaps a trophy?
Karasu reared back, his nails glowing long and red. He crossed his arms and slashed down, tearing through Kurama’s white slacks. He grabbed and ripped them off, baring Kurama’s skin to the chill air. Then the nails were gone and his fingers were mining deep inside Kurama’s body, the other hand spread over his chest to slow his torment, pin him quiet to the bed.
Kurama’s spine coiled under the touch. His breath worked into a heaving pant that was bringing him quickly to rhythm.
Karasu touched his hair and muttered, “I wish you were a full demon. Your color would be so much more intense.”
Kurama smiled, concentration broken. “H-human skin doesn’t hold light very well.”
“Yes. You are dusty…clouded looking. Worn out.”
“At least I am young.”
“That is most tragic. I cannot imagine you growing old. I don’t think I will let you.”
Kurama smothered his fury in a slow exhale. “Try it.”
“Is that a plea or promise?”
The hand disappeared. For a moment, the fox shut his eyes and knew nothing but his own noisy breath and the heat in his groin. He didn’t want to know, he wanted to be safely in the dark tent of his eyelids, hidden, though his body was nailed down with yearning.
Then Karasu slithered up, his body rasping over Kurama’s heat moistened skin. He licked Kurama’s chin delicately.
Keeping their eyes bare inches apparent, he snuffed Kurama’s breath out with his hand.

The fox stopped himself from trying to draw in air, forced his diaphragm still. Karasu watched. In the first moments, the green eyes were nonchalant, the brow smooth. He seemed almost ready to sleep. But Karasu was patient. His free hand toyed with the bell of Kurama’s ear, handling it like a lucky stone. He kept his weight poised over Kurama’s chest, pinning him.
A minute passed.
Karasu put his chin on Kurama’s chest. Looking up like that, his eyes were childish, adoring.
Kurama shut his eyes. The blink was just slightly slow.
“You are thinking,” Karasu murmured, black hair falling to blot out his eyes. “How long until my lungs begin to ache?”
Kurama moved his eyebrows, trying to indicate, ‘That’s loosely correct.’
He was calculating the point at which the oxygen deprivation would begin to kill off cells. He was reminding himself that it was the build up of carbon dioxide that was causing the impulse to gasp, and that alone was not damage.
“Then you will add time onto it.”
Kurama pretended surprise and began to shake his head no and struggle, anticipating his next guess.
“And you will pretend to be running out far sooner than you are, in order that when I play with you and tease your breath, which you know I will love to oblige, you will be in no real danger.”
Kurama shook his head furiously, eyes widening. He craned his neck to free himself.
Karasu folded his other hand over the first and kissed where Kurama’s mouth would be, under his hands.
Kurama moved slightly, estimating the lay of Karasu’s weight. The crow had probably decided already when he would let go; he would look for some predetermined sign: tears, unconsciousness, perhaps ferocity.
First, though, to fake faking. The game was easy: Karasu would try to stop his breath until the last second before killing him while Kurama, who did not trust him to be correct or err on the side of life, would try to get him to let go slightly sooner.
That simple summarization calmed him enough to plan. Kurama shook Karasu’s shoulder, then tried to stretch his hand over his opponent’s face and push his head back to break his balance and grip. The crow let go enough to pull Kurama’s good hand off, twisting the wrist hard and pinning it down.
The weaker broken hand could not grip or hit and he simply ignored it.
“Relax.” Karasu crooned. “Don’t fight; I’ll snap it off.”
Kurama tried to loop Karasu’s ankle, to buck him off to the side, but the crow rode his thrashing with a lewd groan and hung on.
Nothing martial worked. The crow had the mastery of a wild beast, born into balance and dominance. Kurama whined in his throat like a dog, hoping that Karasu would at least be more aroused and distracted.
His lungs were fire and his chest began to heave on its own instinct.
“Relax. Enjoy how intense death is. How powerful the inevitable decay.”
Kurama longed to scratch him. He yelled out, the sound buzzing, smothered. The vacuum choked him.
He calmed himself suddenly, glaring into Karasu’s eyes.
A small vine uncurled, lacing around Karasu’s wrists, a warning.
Karasu sighed. “One more moment.”
Kurama blinked and was still. Then the vine tightened.
Karasu lifted his fingers and sat up. Kurama gasped, body arcing into the air. He rolled over, coughing.

Karasu traced his shoulderblade. “How’s your vision?’
“Absent.”
Karasu hefted Kurama’s head up, sliding an arm up between his shoulders and supporting his neck.
Kurama let himself be pulled into the man’s lap. He was blind as a stone from oxygen depletion. Yet he was not afraid.
Long legs surrounded him.
He felt shameful pleasure in the comfort of being handled. Kurama sighed, letting his head drop to Karasu’s chest.
Karasu licked the peak of his hairline and leaned down. “You can’t convince me that experience didn’t interest you.”
“My curiosity is satisfied.” He was hoarse from the strain.
“Like your interest in me?”
“Taste for, not interest in.”
Karasu smiled. “Prissy.”
Kurama’s breath returned in cycles. The pain of his hand, the punch, the bite, it was all magnified and exhausting.
Karasu waiting, fondling him.
Kurama tried to make something coherent: “Humans do not have time for intimacy anymore. Love making used to be scalding, peeling back dull shields to touch the others’ soul. Without making love, one did not reach the depths of awareness possible. Now it is only a means to a sexual spasm, a bandaid for alienation, like a cigarette burned to pepper an otherwise wasted life.”
Karasu played with Kurama’s good hand, massaging.
Kurama realized he was expecting more. He continued, “You speak of death and fear and pain as ways to illuminate experience. They aren’t alone, but humans neglect to examine them. It is new to be around a demon who also knows these things.”
“New,” Karasu chuckled.
Kurama smiled, trying to cover his tracks. He should not have said “also.” Karasu must not suspect his real nature, his ability to transform. He knew how to keep Karasu from killing him, but not how to kill the old crow. Arrogance? Misinformation? Such weak weapons were not that to which Kurama liked to entrust his life.
“Talk more.” Karasu thumped him with a finger. “I like it.”
Kurama whined, “Play with me. My body hurts for you.”
Karasu blinked slowly. He traced his knuckle down Kurama’s shin, watching the young man’s muscles twitch under the skin. He smiled at the ruddy, curly hairs. Youth gave Kurama a kind of golden fleece, that ginger haze. “Do not manipulate me with immature needs. I do not lay with children.”
“Then do not discipline me like one or pontificate on proper behavior.”
“The longer the wait, the deeper the passion. And I wish to wait.” Karasu clapped a hand sharply over the boy’s ass and squeezed.
Kurama scoffed and hid his face.
“Talk.”
“No. You want to be difficult? So can I.” He sulked, helpless with Karasu’s hands kneading him.
Karasu licked his lips, reclining. “You came to me.”

Kurama’s vision was returning. The world, which had been a night burned with invisible bright touches suggesting shapes and gestures, was coming back in sputters. He blinked and fixed his eyes on Karasu’s face.
The violet eyes had a sick kindness to them, like the owner of a python might show a newly bought rabbit. Kurama wanted to groan, feeling the twists of the man’s body settle about him like the snake, the fierce pressure still pleasureable in this masquerade murder.
“Can you see now?”
“Some. That was unpleasant, Karasu.”
“Noted, carefully,” Karasu chuckled. He twirled his finger in the torn threads from the guts of Kurama’s gold ao dai. He touched Kurama’s bare hip, then pulled the length of the garment from between his legs. He leaned down and stroked the boy’s cock, rippling his thumb under the head. “So soft.”
Kurama found it very hard to sit still. He trashed his pride and let his hips rise, pumping into the man’s hand. “Tighter. Tighter. Hold me hard. I don’t want to get lost.”
The crow smiled, leaning down to taste his swollen strawberry-headed cock.
Kurama swallowed sharply and his breath drew loud, crying out. The liquid mouth overwhelmed him; he lay back, falling out of the crow’s lap in a heap. The man’s knee dug into Kurama’s back, but he didn’t care.
He whimpered as Karasu pulled away, sucking sloppily. “No -”
His tongue flickered one last time over the slit and Kurama’s knees jerked up. It was nearly ticklish, the unbearable good of it.
He covered his face as Karasu stared. He was the ingenue here.
“How pale,” Karasu teased, drumming his fingers under Kurama’s scrotum. “And rosy.”
“Shut up.” Kurama’s toes curled up as he winced.
“Is it that you don’t like being underestimated or that you don’t like yourself?”
“What, I have too many weaknesses for you to choose?”
“I want,” Karasu said, looking over the limber, thin body. “To see if your chest is as pale as the rest of you. To see the color of your nipples.” He grabbed two fistfuls of Kurama’s clothing and tried to rend it, yanking in different directions.
The thick brocade ripped down the seam and Kurama yelled to stop him. “I beg you – wait!”
“What for?” The demon squeezed him. Pleasure burst inside him, rising, like one filled cup flowing into another.
He choked, forced to think even as orgasm flooded his mind. “Wait…”
Kurama feared the crow would force the cloth over his tortured hand. He smiled and moved his hand quickly to undo the blue cord frogs that pinned the brocade across his chest. “Let me.”
Karasu laughed and dragged him back over his lap, flipping him on his stomach. Karasu wiggled his fingers between Kurama’s legs, pressing the cloth into his ass.
Kurama shifted to protect his hand and shoulder and torn stomach, which was pressed against Karasu’s thighs.
The crow pressed an elbow down on Kurama’s skull. He grabbed the hair at the back of Kurama’s neck and bit, kissed and sucked up the crest of the boy’s spine, before hissing, “I’m going to break your neck like a dog tomorrow. And you know what I’ll wish? For the carcass. To play with.”
Kurama flung himself away, tumbling onto the floor. Karasu grabbed an ankle as he fell, yanking to skid the body close.
He put his foot in the center of Kurama’s chest. The fox was sure he meant to stomp his face in, but the man only reached down, sliced through his jacket and lifted Kurama up by the throat.
Kurama staggered to keep with him, to keep the razor nails from pressing his skin. His head spun.
Karasu tilted his chin and smiled. “Look at me, precious rose. Am I not the perfect complement to you? Your lovely white skin and my adoration. You were meant to bleed and I was meant to slaughter.”
“Loyal to fate?” Kurama whispered. “I pegged you an iconoclast.”
Karasu blew him a kiss, and Kurama’s head cracked against the ornate bedpost.

The crow’s image bleared in and out of his vision.
“Enough preparation. Let’s see.” His hand trailed up and down Kurama’s side, counting each rib with a sharp pinch. “All in order.”
He put a hand on Kurama’s throat to pin him and reached down, catching him under the knee.
He pulled Kurama’s leg up, until he could slid his shoulder under the bend of boy’s knee. Kurama quivered, rearranging his muscles to allow it. He pretended it was for some martial purpose. Breathe, relax, he told himself.
They exchanged short looks, suspended like some mobile designed of limbs. Kurama felt the cold distance between their groins and wondered why the crow was not taking advantage, rutting against him like a dog. Kurama’s leg began to twinge suddenly, and Karasu ordered, “Up as straight as you can, little gymnast.”
Kurama straightened his lifted leg. He pointed his toes like the dancers in ballet, flexing the muscles carefully. He gasped. His foot slid straight from the ankle in a delicate line, thin blue veins winding along and higher, the fading press mark from the elastic of his sock. As Karasu pushed, Kurama lifted hard enough that the muscles in his abdomen began to shiver, until finally, stretched nearly perpendicular to the tiles, his whole leg began to shake and he was forced to lift up on the ball of his other foot and began to bend at the knee to accommodate.
“No further,” Kurama said.
“You’re quite flexible.” Karasu draped that leg over his shoulder and pressed in, wearing Kurama like mink, stroking his find. “Like an athlete.”
“Like a fighter,” Kurama grit out. Karasu had seen him in the ring, so he would have perfect understanding of the level of play Kurama could engage in.
Karasu dug his thumb in the arch of Kurama’s foot. He moved with atrocious penetration through a constellation of energy points. Kurama’s knee buckled – the pleasure laced down to his arousal, completing the flush and shock that the sensual technique was designed centuries before to induce.
Kurama panted and ducked his head, regulating his breath to counteract the potential cardiac damage that the game tended to cause in weak bodies.
“Still alive? Good. Now, watch me.” He locked eyes with Kurama. “I want to begin…hang down, so your hands touch the ground.”
Kurama was angry enough to hesitate. When there were the hundreds of decent positions, why this? But he did it. Spreading his feet, he crossed his arms and bent over at the waist. His legs shivered slightly and one knee gave out for an instant, but when he stretched, his elbows were only a finger’s length from the floor. He thought, I wanted this? I could be asleep now in harsh bleach linens.
“Lay your hands flat. For balance.”
A hard slap came across his flank.
Kurama braced his good palm on the tile. His feet pushed out, ready.
Karasu worked his fingers deep into the muscles. He squeezed the youth’s buttocks together, then apart and grabbed Kurama’s hips with ferocious nonchalance.
Kurama tried to stay bent, a tripod of limbs, blood rushing to his face. He felt the man’s cock trace over his ass, leaving a wet line, a wavering arc like the plume of smoke in the sky.
Karasu patted the bar of his cock over Kurama’s tailbone. Yes, Kurama wanted to say, I know! I know what’s there.
Karasu’s nails dug into the boy’s hip.
He entered an inch. One dry, impossible stabbing inch.
Kurama panted – the pain in a human body, avoided in most situations by reptilian responses and instinct, was much more difficult to mitigate with breath or image than a kitsune’s.
He collapsed, pulling off Karasu and falling to his knees. The ache brought shock all the way to his teeth. He brought his bloody hand up to his chest, crying out quietly, heaving short staggered breaths.
The crow followed him down. “You don’t like this part.”
“Wait,” Kurama insisted. “I’m not loose - ”
A finger traced his skin. “And yet somehow, it will feel the same to me either way.”
“Crow – wait!”
Hands gripped down, firm on the bones of his hips through his skin. He may as well been pinned with ribar.
Karasu repeated the short thrust and release. “There. Now we’re getting somewhere nice.”
Laughing, he continued to pump, a brief beat between each thrust. He muttered into the pauses:
“Oh, that must have shaken you. Here’s a little more. Getting used to it? Oh…not yet. Wait…not y—there. That’s a good boy. You like that. There’s a quick one. What a tight ring.” He pushed his finger in, massaging the low chakra with two fingers from the other hand. “Pop.”
Sometimes he would feign and simply press the head of his cock to Kurama’s skin. The slim shoulders twitched up regardless.
Kurama locked himself in some deep corner of his mind, thinking. He wondered in Karasu viewed others in the school of Francis Bacon, who nailed dogs’ feet to boards and removed their vocal cords to keep them from protesting their own vivisections, who viewed others like biomechanisms whose pain was a meaningless, valueless reaction to be studied and explored without empathy. Perhaps Karasu saw him, Kurama, as an automata whose screams were no more than nuisant clock chimes.
Should he endure this because he was petite, because he was pretty? Why could he not be the predator? Could he be so cruel? He imagined it, taking Karasu - who would probably be so amused as to let him try.
“Handsome,” Karasu said, running his hand up to Kurama’s neck.
No. There was something deep to his torture, Kurama could see it like a dragon’s shadow coursing under the flickering glare of a river’s surface.
“Karasu…did someone…ever do this for you?”
The crow paused. “Shut up.” He pulled out and shoved his finger into his hot cavity, making Kurama writhe.
The crow’s finger moved with a terrifying speed and irregularity, compared to the predictable round thrusts of his cock. The movement was gross, like a worm thrashing. Kurama lost control of himself and bolted away.
Karasu shoved him and lifted his foot. Kurama fell on his bad shoulder to protect it from any strike, but the crow only wanted to kick apart his feet.
“Show me.”

The fox spread his legs into a beautiful, wide v, one foot flat and the other angled. The chill of the tiles seeped into his skin, pricking his nipples. He pouted and watched the crow through low lashes.
It was a well practiced pose, but Karasu was no more amused than if he’d seen a dog roll over.
He took off his slippers. There were fine socks underneath and Kurama could see the curve of each toe. The man took a step forward, balanced, and drew one toe along Kurama’s thigh.
The fox sneered, but soon gasped. The man lifted his foot and used his toes to grip and pet Kurama’s more sensitive flesh. Karasu explored, poked, slid, pulled and rubbed. Finally he fell into a steady, pulsing step.
It was nothing rare in eroticism for a demon to tread on another in a sheer, simple dominant expression. It was rare for the other to enjoy it so. Karasu sniggered and Kurama’s face turned dark with humiliation and pain, and joy. He strained but couldn’t hide the hitches in his breathing. Finally he covered his face.
Karasu praised him, “Good, good Kurama! Too good, isn’t it.”
His prey gave in, sobbing aloud, letting the full rush of the strange tactic raise his arousal, ready and dripping.
“You’re a beautiful thing, the way your legs fold in loose like that…you don’t dare to shut them, but by curling you’ve only succeeded in baring more.” He pressed his toe into Kurama’s bud.
The other flinched and rolled to his side, getting up. “Stop. Don’t laugh at me.”
Karasu stared, then grabbed him by the shoulders. Kurama froze, curling his chin to his chest and bringing his guard up, as if he were a kit grabbed by the scruff neck.
“You ask me to stop? Me?” Karasu shook him hard enough to make his heartbeat jolt, laughing when Kurama grimaced and grit his teeth and could not meet his eyes.
Karasu threw him toward the bed. “Now, to the hilt.”
Kurama dug his feet in to stop but was shoved forward, tripping. He gripped the bedspread and buried his face, letting his thighs slid down till his knees caught him against the icy floor. His insides stung like he’d been packed with molten glass. He crept out of the barriers he’d made in his mind to examine to damage. Finally, he gulped a breath and began sobbing earnestly, pressing the sound into the mattress.
It was a relief to do it.

Karasu hiked his thighs up. Kurama pushed up on his forearms in time to turn and watch as Karasu spat onto him.
Detaching from the sight, from the cool splatter, Kurama turned forward and braced, feeling a hard fingertip run a wet line along his buttocks and inside. He thought only of the cloth rubbing against his forehead.
The crow embedded himself in a full, long stroke. It plowed through the tender channel, ramming in, and Kurama wrenched his spine up, twisting away and screaming. There were raw nerves in the tears in his flesh; he felt each one scraped and shrieked. Karasu dug his hands into the thick muscle of Kurama’s thighs, catching the fine hairs.
Kurama clawed, gathering more fabric into his fists, even the weak broken one, trying to distract with more pain, controllable pain. He was astonished at the pathetic strength his own body compared to the ferocious grip Karasu used to tame him. How much worse would it be in the ring?
Waves of fear tore his thoughts from any semblance of plan.
Karasu ran his hands up to the fox’s hips and back. He began to massage. Kurama inhaled and pulled his shoulders up, pleasure tightening him. Bearing pain had at least been noble. Kurama was lucky foxes had no pride, none at all. His face was soaked.
Karasu began helping himself, lifting Kurama’s ass, opening him further as he drove in. Kurama felt the strain and whimpered. He asked quietly, pressing his thumbs into the dimples at the base of the young man’s lower back, “Who would you lay with, were you not with me tonight?”
Kurama wiped his eyes and lifted his head. “I have no preference.”
“No preference! Any cock is good enough? I’m insulted.”
Kurama hung on. Cloth scraped his moist skin as the crow jolted his body forward.
“Eventually your lust would draw you to one of them,” Karasu said reasonably, dichotomous to his punching hips. “Which?”
Kurama tried to force a silence, but Karasu leaned forward and cracked him in the head with his fist. Kurama blurted, “No one! I have no choice.”
Please, he wanted to say, I don’t exist, don’t notice me. Please, take no notice.
Karasu pulled the red curls away from his face. There would be no hiding.
“Surely you’d prefer the largest…” his finger tickled Kurama’s neck. “Yet the other is more of a match for you…though the third is a demon, and that is something, despite his stature.” He considered the pornographic pairs in his mind as he rode its victim.
“Who would you lay with?” Kurama asked.
Karasu thrust.
Kurama choked, whimpering. “Be-besides me.”
Kurama coughed when he could breathe, glad for the respite as the crow considered the question. That thick, fullness threaded into him – it was awkward, strenuous, aching. It made his throat clench.
“Your captain is the other beautiful creature. Such responsibility and status for one so young. I like a story like that. I like killing heroes. And you are such a hero, little halfblood.”
Kurama smothered a keening laugh. Anxiety made the situation vividly hilarious. “I don’t think they’ll be showing this on Disney.”
Karasu ignored that. “But had I not you…the little one could bear endless pain. It would be a trial to force a willing suck from him. He makes no deals.”
Kurama watched his burned, broken hand as he was driven back and forth across the sheets, wanting to guffaw – fuck Hiei, who washed his hands every time each nigh and morning, Hiei who arched his back like a startled cat when Botan even winked at him? The thought of it!
“Wouldn’t you like to see,” Karasu growled, clawing his back. “Your pretty brunettes’ lips all puffed and rosy from being suckled and bitten, from encircling my cock…”
Kurama finally chuckled, imagining Hiei’s face at the bare suggestion. He’d have to relay this story back even if he had to pry Hiei’s hands off his ears. “Maybe.”
Karasu trilled, delighted. “Good boy, good child.”
Sick of the slow, selfish fucking, Kurama fixed him coldly with the corner of his eye. The crow wanted depravity, mined and quivering sick admittance? He should not have challenged a kitsune to that game.
Kurama sneered, “Are you in yet?”
There was no answer, only a pause.
Do not bore a fox, Kurama thought, adding “Can’t you go any deeper than that?”
“If you wish, you despicable - ” He dug his claws into the root of Kurama’s left thigh. As he pulled his legs up and apart, Karasu scraped his knuckles across Kurama’s spine and forced it down in a sharp arc.
Kurama shrieked and turned his face to the sheets, face contorted. He regretted the game instantly. He stretched his hands, wrinkling the sheet.
“How’s that?” Karasu brought his hand to Kurama’s flank in two sharp, condescending pats. Jostling Kurama’s thighs even wider, he gave tapped two fingers between his shivering shoulder blades. “You’ll feel this head knocking against the roof of that conceited, pretty mouth.”
He grabbed the joint of Kurama’s neck and shoulder, jerking the small body back as his hips snapped forward. Karasu twisted and rocked, hitting the same bare, whole spot inside. Kurama cried out, jumping weak sparks of cheap ecstasy like a dead thing, muscles still shot with bioelectricity.
No one, never touched that far, never…it was so far and strange within him.
“Deep enough?”
Kurama counted his breaths, gasping.
“Let’s try again – you liked that. Ah.”
“No, no!” Kurama begged. “I was lying. I’m sorry – “
Karasu drew in and shoved back, delighted to see the redhead’s form kaleidoscope, twisted into a new arrangement each time Karasu punched forward. “That’s better. And again – good.”
Kurama cringed, pulling his knees up. It felt a little better when he moved with the thrusts.
“No running.” Karasu held himself inside then, a ferocious warm pulse, a soothing ache and a hideous weapon. He grabbed Kurama’s feet, digging his thumbs in, and teased, “Tell me…tell me how good it feels…crossing that threshold.”
It hurts, hurts, Kurama whined silently. “Didn’t know you could reach it,” Kurama said, his words half lost. He pressed his forehead hard into the bed.
“Sweet one.”
The voice was so suddenly close that Kurama jumped. “Karasu?”
“Do that again. That human thing. With your tongue, that makes me feel like stroking your cooling heart with my bare fingertips.”
“The…the kiss?”
“Yes, little one. That.”
Kurama dropped his shoulders and situated his elbows to bend around. He barely managed to keep his expression as some muscle deep within him panged in agony, but Karasu rolled his hips and brought all the knowledge the crow needed for that shrill laugh.
Muscles split along the boy’s spine like faults cracking through ice.
“Lean down,” Kurama whispered.
Karasu slid his eyes over him and held up a hand instead. Pursing his lips, he simpered, “Make do.”

Kurama felt a tear slip his hot eyes and could not help it. He ignored it instead, putting out his tongue and drawing a clean line up the demon’s palm.
Karasu drew back, startled at the acute sensation. The boy smiled tremulously and the crow flexed his palm before grabbing Kurama’s face.
He shoved three fingers in the boy’s mouth. Kurama tried to back up and Karasu reached down to the back of his tongue, pinching down with his thumb and grinning, insisting, “What is it in there that causes me to feel so?”
Kurama opened his eyes full on him and angry, drawing his lip back to show sharp canines.
The crow’s grip forced him to wag his head. Karasu protested, “Why, I didn’t even – “ and slammed his hips forward. Kurama retreated, whimpering, letting his hair cover his eyes. His thighs trembled.
Karasu moaned, taking his hand out of the boy’s strained mouth and stroking his slicked finger down the tip of Kurama’s nose. “I didn’t hurt you. Oh how sad - did I break you?”
The only think to break here is your pride, Kurama growled to himself. He made his voice light, mocking the man: “Karasu, I’m disappointed. However deeply you’ve touched my body, it’s an empty wound. After a few prods, the endorphins dull everything you do. I can’t feel you anymore.”
Four lines of fire swept up his thigh, where Karasu, infuriated, scored his flesh with his nails in a single dragging blow.
Kurama saw the whole room snap keen with survival senses, before he recognized the vertigo, the nausea. He exaggerated it and shut his eyes. “Careless, Karasu. I’ve lost too much blood to stay conscious. Suppose I’ll see you in the morning.”
Karasu moved away, out of his body. There was sudden blessed emptiness, wholeness, relief. Kurama wailed, the joy was so great.
“You haven’t lost nearly that much blood. Don’t feign, not to me. If that’s your sad limit, admit it, but know I’ll finish whether you’re conscious or not. If you go limp while I hold you, I’ll wear you in half before you wake again!”
“That’s so romantic,” Kurama muttered dryly.

Karasu lay on him while he rested. Kurama tried to swallow the taste of skin. He was exhausted. The cold began to settle on his sweat and chill him. He counted his breaths and tried not to think what that would look like, his unconscious body swinging with the crow’s stabbing. He pressed down panic, imagining the match.
“That was too deep for you,” Karasu crooned. “Such a delicate babe, Shuichi.”
“Where did you hear that name?”
“The demon you killed called you that. Shuichi.”
“That name is meaningless on your tongue.”
“Raw and yearning for another reaming, Shu-tan? Then keep baiting me.”
Kurama could not bring himself to answer bravely; his insides throbbed and begged him not to provoke the crow’s attack.
The crow smiled and played with his hair. He got off the bed and returned with a hair brush. It was an old fashioned silver thing, heavy – a weapon, easily. But the crow held it careful, without intent.
Kurama turned. “My tangles bother you?”
The crow began to pull the brush lightly over his hair, holding the head of the instrument in a strange way, rather than the handle. “It’s disgusting. You’ll have dredlocks.”
“That might be alright.”
“It would help me drag you around.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
Kurama noticed they were both acting as if they’d have another night alive. Both expected to win and see the moon rise again. Karasu must know something – more than Kurama did.
The man arranged his hair with pleased glances, like a photographer for a deranged pin-up shoot.
Kurama let his wretched, wrenched body rest for a few minutes.
Karasu reached between Kurama’s thighs, drawing his fingertips in soothing, instantly arousing angles.
He trembled. “A moment, please, to let me catch my breath?”
He squeezed gently, saying, “I’d rather see you suffocate.”
Karasu straddled him and struck him twice in the head with a loose fist. Kurama jerked to guard, shouting, “Let me go!”
“What?”
“L-let me go. You’ve had your satisfaction with me.”
“Don’t you want yours?” Karasu drew his hand down. He grasped Kurama’s member with long nails. “I’ll be so gentle.”
A small glimmer of pain came was audible in Kurama’s pleas. “Karasu. Please. You’re intelligent. You know I regret coming here. It was foolish of me to challenge you. I’m sure you have a catalog of my failings now – you can afford to - ”
“You are one of the most pathetic demons I’ve bothered to bed. I’ve never met one so tremulous and mewling.”
Kurama acknowledged it. “You can always let me leave. Save this game for tomorrow.”
Karasu tugged on Kurama’s cock, dragging a pinch with his forefinger and thumb down the length. “At least if you had stayed aloof, I might have been curious, years later.”
Karasu nicked his cock with his fingernail and the fox begged, “Karasu!”
“You’re not worth a notch on my bedpost. You’re a piece of waste cloth to wipe myself with, something I won’t remember after it’s destroyed. You have a nice face, but there’s nothing remarkable about you.”
Kurama forced himself to nod.
Karasu’s head hung above his own. “I’m still full. I’m going to empty myself in you. Pretend you love me for that long.”
Kurama lips formed agreement.
The man laughed. “I hate virgins. Or whatever you are. Malleable, sweet trash.”
Kurama nodded again, turning his face away, blinking hard.
His fingers toyed between Kurama’s thighs.
Kurama strained under him, overpowered and immobile. The man pinned his hurt hand by the fingers, so that any movement crunched the splintered bones.
“Hold still, lovely.”

Kurama remembered freeing a young fox from a leg trap. He’d watched the vixen limp off grateful, aware the injury would eventually kill her. Wild forests are not pleasant to anyone, especially the crippled.
Tonight, he would be limping naked through halls filled with intoxicated demons. He would be smelling of sweet internal blood. What would happen would happen.
Then the next day, the fight would take place.
His ears shook with the calls of the crowd. That so many people could have the same opinion on his life astounded him. It made him almost famous. Kill him, kill kill kill…
Karasu rolled him over, squeezing his palm over Kurama’s scrotum without pulling a hair. He began to massage him, rolling him in his hand.
Kurama groaned. When he tensed, his flesh thrilled around Karasu’s constriction.
Karasu pressed his brow between his eyes, rubbing delicately until Kurama relaxed his expression. “There now. I like fair skinned lovers. Your blood is so close to the skin. Look at yourself.”
The crow’s idiocy was as draining as his touch. “In an insipid mortal world, you’ve managed to make me feel something. Disgust.”
The crow’s claws were precarious on him. Karasu had his face inches from Kurama’s. Kurama breathed in the crow’s smoky exhaled breath and flinched.
“What does it take to make you mine? So sensitive and still miles away.”
“I’m told I fall easily for small affections.”
Karasu took Kurama’s smashed hand and brought it down, rubbing circles on the boy’s chest. He moved himself carefully, cock waiting inside the tight hold of the ningen body, a curious luxury for him. Even without thrusting, the boy’s body clenched lightly, as though there were the light hands of a pianist playing over Karasu’s throbbing veins. Live bodies and their fluttering automatic functions fascinated the crow. Even dumb flesh could recognize intrusion and push and beat at it as futilely as the mind guiding it.
Hard enough to curl like a bull’s horn, the bend of Kurama’s body opposed him. Karasu pulled out halfway, until the head of his cock pulled up naturally against the roof of Kurama’s body.
Kurama tried to bring his good hand off the bed to hide his eyes.
“Put your hand on my back.”
Reaching awkwardly, Kurama lay his hand on the demon’s ribcage. If the bones hadn’t shifted under the skin, it would be like touching a doll. His plastic skin was no hotter than the air around it. Kurama felt like he wasn’t touching anything.
“There. You haven’t touched me in a long time. Not since your sweet human kisses.”
Shuuichi’s first, Kurama thought, then gasped, locking eyes with Karasu as he jammed himself in and up. The hard knob found the tenderness inside him, causing jolts of arousal to shoot through him.
“You know why it is so natural to like long fingers, fox?” Karasu pinched the boy’s nipple and sucked two fingers deep into his mouth. He offered them to Kurama, who hesitated until the crow lifted an eyebrow. The red head leaned forward, taking the fingers in his mouth and letting his lips and tongue gild them.
Pulling out, Karasu slid his two fingers inside and combed upward. He found that pressure inside, the nerves on the other side of skin, and pet them.
Kurama’s hips leapt. Karasu kicked the fox’s feet off the bed so that he could not get such leverage, and went again.
Kurama’s hand gripped the crow’s hair. It was like nylon, impossibly strong. The man was made of firmer stuff than humans’ filament. To be cheated and dominated by his own body! – Kurama cried out against it as the crow’s fingers began to flicker, knocking against him, building ecstasy. He could see his own flushed flesh in the crow’s hand.
The crimson glazed eyes were on him as he lifted up on his elbows, but his own were unfocused. He let his head fall back, displaying the length of his bare throat to the demon. Karasu chuckled. He began to tighten his grip on the base of the human cock, preventing his full erection.
Kurama caught his glimpse and smiled. He was no stranger to prolonged strategy. Though it was far too intense to manage in this body, he could keep back his submission. He could be teased, wailing, or he could lie passive, heart exploding as the precipice was reached.
“You are like blank, fine silk, ready for any artist’s painting.”
Kurama let a sound escape, gasping.
The crow worked the boy more quickly and firmly, holding pleasure tight on him, harnessing relief. Kurama’s breath came out with a high whine. But Karasu would not order him to beg until he was sure the boy would, and with such responses…
“You are a great instrument, capable of absorbing such euphoria and keeping your mind.”
Kurama bit at his thumb, then dragged his hand over his chest. Even without the touch, his nipples stood pert and flushed, his back a shivering arch, breath trapped so that his ribs carved through. Karasu took joy in the tremendous expression in the boy’s body. It was his own work; he was proud.
Kurama’s head tilted forward, chin low. His eyes glimmered, a forest under anguished brow. Curls stuck to his face in dark red arabesques.
He was hungry for finishing and his legs spread for Karasu’s hands.
The demon was glad for it, but testing the boy’s tolerance for this game was not showing the limit to his natural concentration.
“How many seconds would it take for you to get through the door, right now?”
Kurama grinned, open and amused. “As many would remain in my life.”
Karasu smiled. He clamped his hand onto Kurama’s member in some divine grasp and pulled upward, pressing in and letting everything free to flood from him.
Kurama’s scream was drawn from him, but he hollered like some innocent, feeling his own mess splatter over his face and chest.

Milking the turgid remains, Karasu played in the white stuff. His graceful fingers pushed wet up the boy’s trembling stomach like a snowplow. He scrubbed at Kurama’s nipple with the pads of his fingers. “Look at you. An annoyance in a soft bed, smoothing into a pearl. This is your first coat.”
“It’s early morning, Crow.” Kurama found himself more belligerent after being pleased than when he was hurt.
“Barely been here an hour, pet. We’re going to keep doing this for five. Youth’s stamina.” He pinched at the boy’s lower lip. “That’s a good expression on you.”
He wanted sleep. “Lay back; be tyrant of your bed and let me serve you.”
“Gratitude comes so easily to you.”
“Efficiency.”
Karasu squeezed Kurama’s worn cock harshly, causing the boy to writhe up, knees clamping around the crow’s waist. “Do you like pain?”
Kurama breathed to calm himself, then his hand darted out, stroking the crow’s throat in suggestion. “Yes. Yours.”
Karasu slapped him, hard enough to knock him sideways onto his broken hand. Kurama smothered a keening whimper. His knees shifted up as he rode out the sting, and Karasu let them close, pinning his fist around the boy’s cock.
“One quick way to take you out in a burst of blood – rip this off.”
His eyes traced a rustle of leaves to Kurama’s ugly expression. The boy’s hand was held out in a claw, the vines twisted out to cover them both in briars.
“I was teasing.” He slipped his hand out and smacked Kurama’s bared ass. “You panic too easily.”
He watched the vines retreat. Kurama hide his hands, though it was probably obvious by now that there were seeds were under his nails.
“I didn’t imagine you preferred eunuchs, Karasu. So little to harass.”
“Perhaps I welcome the chance to show creativity.”
Kurama made a face. He’d seen nothing new tonight except the speed at which the crow bored.
The crow crawled up, lying atop him with a face that caricatured love. He picked at the wound in Kurama’s shoulder, drawing short, steamed breaths as the boy bore it. Laying his ear on Kurama’s chest, he crooned, “You know, I can tell by the way your heart races and slows that you adore my voice.”
Kurama’s eyelids flickered shut; he didn’t want to look up sarcastically and start another round.
“It’s deep, so like your father’s, am I right?”
“My father’s dead,” Kurama snapped. “So perhaps that’s the connection.”
“I sound like death to you,” he said, purposefully misunderstanding. “That’s only natural. I suppose you’ve dreamed of it a hundred times,” he lowered his voice, mimicking Kurama’s smooth, emotionless patter: “I come at him straight, use the whip, he moves left…I follow, right, I attack; he dodges. I recover – then, Kurama, you realize that the difference in our speed is so great, that I would already be behind you – “ He moved up kissing the boy’s neck with a wet breath before whispering, lips grazing the shell of his ear. “Giving you those last few pleasures.”
Kurama’s smile was forced from him.
He and Hiei both tended to smile, avoiding eye contact, when they were forced to touch the cold wet wood of their own coffin.
“Do you imagine me? You aren’t as stupid as you’ve acted tonight. You must prepare for your fights, planning while you watch to gauge speed and motive. What did you think of me when you watched?”
“I found your style tacky.”
The crow lifted his face over Kurama’s. “Tacky. You conniving slut.” Curbing his temper, he scratched a thin line through Kurama’s jaw, bringing a beaded thread of blood. His nail was so sharp, the boy didn’t feel it till the crow licked him. “You have enough elegance about your own bumbling style that you must recognize mine. So I’ll forgive the lie.”
“Do,” Kurama condescended. The crow’s weight was making him more aware of the damage in his body. The man’s touch seemed be imprinted on him, as though he were wet clay. His ass stung and felt humiliatingly empty, his prostate still buzzed, his lank cock felt shredded. Shuuichi was silent in him; present, but experiencing nothing beyond shaken disbelief.
Karasu growled. “I want to thrust my fingers through your skin. Work your muscles from the inside like a puppeteer. Bouncing squeezing puppet.”
He pressed on the wound and Kurama grabbed his hand.
“That would be injury.”
“What do I care? What can you do against it?”
“Leave me fit or you will never see me in the ring.”
“It’s worth it.”
“You can take that up with Toguro.”
“I do want to fight you. I do so enjoy fighting with those I find so delicious.”
“A few seconds ago, you called me a worthless virgin.”
“You are a terrible lover. A fascinating rape. And you will die like an angel.”
Kurama fumed. Why should he be targeted so, and no one else – it wasn’t fair or honorable. A slender body did not make his less of a fighter, nor increase his interest in lovemaking. He shoved the man off, brutally.
Karasu laughed. “Pet, are you finally angry?”
He sat up, edged off the bed and put his feet on the cold floor. “I do not wish to sleep here nor to show up tomorrow in torn clothes.”
“You will fight me?”
“I will kill you. Slaughter you.” Kurama sneered, setting into his trousers. It was hard to manage with one hand. The crow sat up and smoothed the cloth onto his body, feeling the warm planes of the boy’s groin through the fabric.
The ache inside him bled with friction. Kurama limped and grabbed the man’s shoulder for balance, trying to hold still while the pain died down; it was less embarrassing than to collapse at his feet.
Karasu held him, delighted. Pinching the skin under his hands, he embraced him and dragged Kurama back onto the bed. “Poor, lovely boy. Does it hurt you?”
“You hurt me,” he said, pushing away.
Karasu mounted him, forcing his neck down, pulling out his arm. He tightened his body to Kurama’s as the boy groaned, face ground into the bed.
Pulling the thick red hair away from the boy’s ear, he leaned in, nearly laughing out the words. “I am no human, with the stamina of a fly. I am not finished with you. Lay down and stay.”

The last words were an order and Kurama collapsed, quiet to it. But he felt the end coming, and a blind rush to confrontation built in him.
The man’s hands rubbed him. There was a creak and Kurama felt the weight changing. Then a cool, slimy intrusion. He cried out, jerking up, only to wrench his shoulder and collapse, tears springing.
“Calm down.”
“What are you doing?” Kurama cried out.
The man moved up and drew a cool, wet line with his tongue over Kurama’s cheek to answer. Then he was gone.
Tongue, Kurama thought. He let his legs slide under the man’s guidance. Karasu licked at him, peeling him loose with his fingers before probing inside. The tongue reached long inside him, disturbing, soothing except when it reached tears.
“How does that feel, rose?”
“Alright…hurts.” Kurama said. Then his mind caught up and he twisted around.
The man pulled away and the feeling stopped. Violet eyes shimmered behind those courtesan lashes. “Want to watch? I’ll move a mirror.”
“No…how…” Memory slipped from him. Had the feeling really continued when the crow spoke?
He lay back.
Soon it was no question. Whatever stroked him inside, it was no tongue, not even a demon – so long, twisting and delicate, tickling the walls of his rectum.
Karasu crawled to the headboard to watch.
Kurama cried out, leaning back and seeing nothing. “What is this?”
“My power. I can make you feel whatever I suggest. I don’t need to touch you.”
It was obviously a lie. Everything on his face said it. But he touched the inside of Kurama’s knee and said, “You are bound, tangled in sheets,” and even though the cloth never moved, he felt it restrict him like irons.
Kurama concentrated. He was not bound - there was nothing there! But mind games wouldn’t fool the sensation and sight should have disturbed the illusion. It was something else. “What did you do to me?”
“What won’t I do to you? It’s a shorter list.”
“I feel what is not there. You alter my sense, but – there’s pressure. What did you do?”
Karasu was silent. He drew a finger around Kurama’s throat. “You will only feel what you long for, pet.”
Kurama gasped – something tightened around his throat like a noose. It jerked him down, smashing his face into the bed, and would not let him lift up. “What is this?”
“I didn’t realize you wanted to be collared so badly – “
“That’s a lie!” He howled, nearly snapping his neck, pulling against what was not there. He began coughing against the pressure.
Karasu began to tease his feet, wiping his hands over them lightly until arousal tempted him with an unpleasant rush.
“What else do you feel?” the crow asked, pretending curiosity.
“You know!” Kurama shouted, clawing at his throat.
The man disappreared, humming. Kurama heard a hollow thud, like a metal box, and a click. Hinges. A clang, chopping off the sound as it shut.
“Let’s get some oil. I’m still tender after that rough ride you gave me,” Karasu mused.
Kurama yelled once more, thrashing. “You said you would bind your powers!”
“Let’s renegotiate.”
“No!”
“You come again – hard. So do I. And once you are so satisfied by it then you give me one of your human kiss. Deal?”
Kurama howled, “You treacherous liar, we had a deal!”
The slippery tongue feeling drew away, and Karasu bit his lower back as he situated himself behind. “You look so thin from back here.” He rolled Kurama’s ass in his grip.
Kurama thrust his head around, facing away as much as he could.
There was a squelching sound. When his hands returned, Kurama could feel the glaze of oil being spread over his back. More rubbed over his groin.
“You want to come again?”
“Get off,” Kurama snarled.
“Then it’s my turn. So generous of you.”
Kurama tried to focus forward, wondering when they broke the table against the wall, what the thread count of these milk-smooth sheets was, whether he could wipe the itchy drying semen from his stomach.
He whimpered openly as Karasu entered him. “I want to go home…”
“Pay attention,” Karasu snarled, grabbing his hips and thrusting.
It was as if the man’s cock were covered in sandpaper and Kurama without skin inside. The oil only let him go faster, sink deeper.
Karasu’s voice was near his ear suddenly. “Do you want me to rouse you? I could fit a finger in here.”
“I’m sure. Don’t trouble yourself.”
“No trouble. This cum’s going in your beautiful hair. There’s no more room in here. You’re full…” He rubbed a small circle on the middle of Kurama’s back, then dug his thumbs into the boy’s hips. “I love these dimples.”
“What?”
He touched two places on the boy’s buttocks.
“Please. Let me go after this.” Kurama groaned as the man twisted sideways inside him. “It’s enough.”
“Hang in there, Kurama. You’re nearly a third of the way done with your night. What a trip you’ll have to tell the boys about. Who are you rooming with?”
Kurama sighed. “We have private rooms. The humans are together, so that the women can have a place.”
“How kind.” He picked up speed. Flesh slapped into his own with wet cracks, Karasu slamming into his thighs, balls bouncing against Kurama’s groin. The fox keened, tearing at his own hair.
Karasu slapped him.
Kurama heard it more than felt it and snarled, “Stop it!” as though he were correcting a dog.
Karasu laughed. “What?” He slapped him again.
“S-stop it.”
Another slap, this time stinging. Kurama put his head down.
“I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t lazy.”
“What?”
“Help me ride you.” He groaned. Leaning forward, he wrapped Kurama’s hair around his hand like a rope. He grabbed the flesh on Kurama’s side and pulled him away as he pulled out, then wrenched on the hair and skin as he snapped his hips forward.
Kurama’s neck curled, choked back by the leash; the man’s nails tore into his side; and the slamming piston took his hips forward so hard and suddenly that his back popped.
“Karasu!”
He was going at the boy like a landslide and finally shouted out is brief ecstacy. The bounds fell away and Karasu dragged himself up onto the bed, turning on his back and laughing, cock purple and spent.

Kurama winced, drawing his knees in together, tightly. He felt the grease trickling out, onto his thighs. He sat down, putting his ass on the soft sheets.
“That’s service,” Karasu breathed. He beckoned, moving his hand in a come hither motion. “You promised.”
Kurama rolled his eyes.
The mans whistled at him. “Foxy. Kit. You come hard. And love it. And give me a human kiss. Do it or I’ll burn your face.”
“What do I care.” Kurama eyed the distance between them. He pulled his knees in, knowing he looked like a child but wanting the comfort. He felt it protected his hand, his genitals, his soft stomach and the guts inside. “It’s yours to see, scarred or whole.”
“I’d never touch it,” he whispered.
Kurama wanted to let the man know that he was a good fighter – maybe one of the best in the group. Not the strongest, not the fastest, but he could take any one of them and skin them in a heartbeat. He never lost, he’d rather die. He wanted to tell the man, who was looking at him like a free mint on the hotel pillow, to suck on and bite and forget. It was a stupid insecurity but nevertheless real.
“Come here.”
“I refuse. I’ve been here long enough.”
“It’s not even eleven. Come here.”
Kurama blinked. He couldn’t be ready to perform again. What, did the man want to hold him?
“I want to play with you. Sit between my legs and lean back.”
Kurama moved slowly into place. He felt his focus slipping from puzzle solving to survival; there was no solution here, only wait.

Shuuichi was anguished with this lack of control. Odd memories flickered through him: children asking if he were a half, parents insinuating that his mother slept with an American. Before he was nine, human life was already a nightmare; retraining himself was all there was to keep him living. Run, hide, fight smarter. He was lonely.
At nine, people began to look. Shuichi was strangely foreign, yes, but well shaped. He would be tall. He was polite and wealthy. Above all, he was brilliant, inquisitive, mature. When he entered high school, there were propositions.
“Red,” Karasu crooned. His fingers ruffled through the boy’s pubic hair.
Shuuichi had been surprised, of course. To be so hated and suddenly so exotic. And still hated. Sought after and hunted. Hated.
“Lie against me.”
Kurama nearly fainted at the scent of his skin. He rested his head against Karasu’s, putting his chin on the man’s shoulder. Their chests stuck with sweat. Karasu clapped his hands over Kurama’s ass. He sighed, happily. “Come on boy. Don’t you do anything?”
The fox felt their dicks touch and was only too glad to move away. The man grabbed his hair though and guided him to his nipple. Kurama licked, obedient as a kitten, suspended by his scalp.
The locker room was forever embarrassing. Boys he knew to be straight snapped pictures with their phones. He found photos on the school computers, his face covered as he pulled on a tee shirt, but the rest exposed. Red hair. People showered next him when there were empty places further away. In gym, a girl in a higher class pretended to fall so that she could grab onto his shorts. He felt like public property at school. The over handled mascot.
He tried to treat them delicately; they were human kits after all, no more than babies. But in the end, he couldn’t do anything to discourage it except go straight home after the bell. Then they found his alley, so he stayed in the library until they locked the school and climbed out the window.

“You’re trembling.”
Kurama shrugged. He was thin, and he had no pain tolerance suitable for his – extracurricular activities. He could function through anything, but not quietly.
“You look miserable, pet. I suppose you asked for it though. Do you always put yourself in these situations? Is it enticing, to be trapped?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Karasu moved his head lower. “I promise you, Kurama. The first fight. I’m going to tear you apart before your human team. Shred you. They’ll have to mop you off the stage. And when you fall, it will be to the cheers of all Makai.”
Kurama felt the man’s skin with his hands. If he was going to die, he should enjoy these last hours. If Karasu was going to die, he should enjoy Karasu these last hours. “Are you finished?”
Karasu touched a finger to Kurama’s lips, then to his own, smiling.
Kurama brushed his hair aside. “Then let me do it.”
Karasu let his hands drop loose. He was innocent evil Peter Pan, who killed and forgot, and he took curious notice of the youth who leaned over his legs to give him a thimble.
Kurama drew in, pretending the man were a girl he knew at school; the fox was not immune to a fascination with the human custom. He put his hands on the man’s throat and pulled them up into his hair, massaging. The body under his fingers was like marble, harder than any human skin, but he didn’t notice. He pressed his lips to Karasu’s once and again. His tongue lapped the crow’s pale lip into his mouth and he suckled it, moaning. He scraped it with his teeth and pulled off, then kissed again, on the corner than in the middle and whispered, “Open your mouth. Part your lips and teeth a little. It will feel more genuine.”
Karasu, eyes glittering and swelled black, obeyed.
Kurama tickled the crest of the roof of his mouth, flicking his tongue across.
Remembering, Karasu tried to copy, pushing his tongue under Kurama’s front teeth. Kurama retreated and bit gently, rubbing his tongue up against the crow’s.
Karasu pulled back, his fingers coming to wipe the corner of his mouth.

The fox slipped off the bed. He looked strange to the crow then, ethereal and natural as a luna moth, delicate and wonderful standing there. He held onto the bedpost as he gathered his clothes.
The man chuckled, touching his lips. “Strange how you can feel it afterwards.”
“Pleasure has consequences,” the fox said. His knees trembled. He sat down so that he could slip on his loose tunic.
The crow watched as Kurama shook his arms through the sleeves of the torn ao dai, working with one hand.
“Wear that tomorrow.”
“I think not.”
“It will please me. I’ll kill you cleanly.”
“You ripped it.”
“You’ve sewn it up before.” The crow eyed a thick stitch, low near the hem. Kurama ignored the observation. Karasu crooned, “That must be a favorite. Tell me, is it lucky?”
“Don’t be stupid.” Kurama said, although that was what was largely what he was relying on to get to the door, and the only optimistic hope that could make him wake tomorrow for the final round.
“Well, all the good fortune you have inside that rag, you’ve spent tonight. I suppose the memories will tug at my heart tomorrow, when I’ve cut off your legs and I remember your face that height before, slurping my cock. Do you think the stadium will be interested in your fetishes? If you’re still alive when you hit the ground, I’ll put you on your back and share.”
“Die,” Kurama snarled, holding his trousers up where they’d been slit. He made a clasp with a thin vine.
“Think of me when you go. Although, I suppose it will be hard not to. Kurama.” He lay back on his bed. “I’m going to think about you all night. And tomorrow, everyone will know why.”
“No one here has an opinion that matters to me.”
“I’m going to kiss you during the fight. Like a human.”
“That will be difficult.” Kurama kicked his feet into his shoes. “I’m going to tear you into pieces to small to see, let alone kiss.”
“Goodnight, honey.” He trailed his hand down the boy’s arm.
Kurama made the mistake of looking into his eyes. There was that blood shimmer again, red as stained glass, glinting hatred. His shivered and pulled away, making for the door.
But his anger enticed him to call back, “Enjoy your last nightmares, crow.”
“Kit,” Karasu leapt off the bed. Grace and horror that came with his speed, which was beyond comprehension.
Kurama grabbed the table he had pressed against earlier, cowering against the wall.
Karasu stopped. He brushed a curl of hair from Kuram’s cheek and put out his hand. Kurama looked down.
Karasu was offering him a cut rose. The red of the fat petals startled him. It must have been on the bed under them, though Kurama hadn’t felt the thorns, for Karasu had not touched the desk.
On the second glance, the flower was bleak and desperate: its bent petals were hanging and falling from the stem. One leaf was crushed and there were dark pressure scars along the stem.
Feeling intense pity, Kurama took the flower, hoping heal it.
There was light, and sound. Gunpowder.
Karasu’s arm was around his neck, choking; his laughter rang. The door opened, catching Kurama in the face. His balance wheeled, and the crow flung him. He hit the opposite wall of the hallway and crumpled.

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