Eldritch Moon, version 1: Blight Moon
There was night in the wasteland. Naoki wasn’t sure how that worked, since as far as he could tell the entire world revolved around Kagatsuchi. But the sky darkened, the air cooled, and though Kagatsuchi shone bright through it all, it went from burning sun to pregnant, luminous moon, so close you could almost touch it.
At least it made knowing when to make camp easy.
The demons knew this place better than he did. Knew where to find food or water and what enemies were good to eat. They didn’t defer to him for this, even though he was their leader. Maybe they knew he was almost clueless on this subject. Maybe they thought it beneath his notice. They went about their business and always made sure he got the best cut of whatever was roasting over the fire.
They hardly ever approached him, though. Except for Dante. But Dante was Dante and wrote his own rules. The others would…not avoid, but merely give Naoki a respectful, half-wary berth, rather like they gave the fiends.
But this night, when they all had fed, when the order of the watch had been established and most of the others had retreated into the dark, the demon Cu Chulainn approached him. “Yes?” Naoki asked. Sometimes this happened; one or another of his followers would approach him after a battle to share some insight or the spoils they’d won from the fallen.
But Cu Chulainn neither asked questions nor offered compliments this time. Instead he reached out and ran gloved fingertips up the glowing lines of power along Naoki’s arm.
Naoki hissed at the scrape of leather along the tattoo. It went straight to his blood, straight to his bones, straight to his cock…. He grabbed the hand. “Don’t do that,” he said, teeth gritted, putting enough strength behind the grab to make his point.
The demon blinked once, slowly, and met his eyes. “Why not?” And then he did it again, with his other hand, spear-roughened leather tracing over Naoki’s collarbone, following glowing glyphs down his arm.
“I said don’t,” Naoki repeated, but it came out breathless instead of commanding, and the magatama curled around his spine shuddered awake, writhing inside him. He didn’t want it to stop, not really — he just…couldn’t afford this weakness. This want.
He could hear the others around him, shifting of cloth and scale and skin. Because they weren’t alone here. Never alone. In this dangerous place, solitude was something only fiends could afford and enforce. And even his army was a half-wild thing, the subtle hierarchy of dominance and politics he was desperately learning by trial and error and newborn instinct. The line between dominance and weakness was so thin…the line between test and offering thinner still….
“I would not hurt you, my lord,” Cu Chulainn murmured, his voice smooth and faintly accented, charming enough that he almost seemed trustworthy. Almost. Except for the gloved fingers still tracing the patterns down Naoki’s arm, where sensitive skin became more sensitive still from the fiend-markings that burned there. “You tense as though I am an attacker, but I bear you no ill will.”
The demons were so hard to read. They could bicker and fight amongst themselves around the campfires, bite and claw and fuck each other in the dark, willing or not, and yet when he called the next morning, they would come to fight beside each other, as much a team…a pack as he could have wished for, even wearing each others’ scars.
Naoki didn’t kid himself that he was exempt from their power games. He’d seen the way they looked at him, when they thought he wasn’t looking and sometimes when they knew he was. Their eyes reflected the firelight like animals’, watching, weighing. He was half-human, and they never forgot that. Though he could fight and win against any of them, he was different. And he was never sure when some action, some word, would ring too strange for them to bear.
His silence seemed to read — this time; like everything else, silence changed its meaning as quickly as Kagatsuchi’s phases — as consent. Cu Chulainn smiled faintly, his hand sliding up to curl around Naoki’s bare shoulder, and stepped closer, so there was scarcely any distance between them at all — just the tense charge in the air, the demon’s magic and Naoki’s own, like a coming storm. Cu Chulainn was taller than he was, like so many of the demons were, but he didn’t seem to be using it to intimidate. Not right now, anyway. He leaned down slowly, and paused with his mouth bare centimeters from Naoki’s. “Yes, my lord?”
The clash of power between them…the too-sensitive rub of leather on the power that ran through his skin….the pound of a nearly-full Kagatsuchi in the back of his head…the rustle and rumble of demonkind around them. It all built in Naoki’s veins like acid. Like magic. Like battle.
The magatama stretched inside him, nudged his root chakra, and restraint vanished.
He reached out by instinct, one hand closing in the demon’s cloak and pulling. Cu Chulainn leaned into the kiss, eyes closing in something almost like surrender, were it not for the heat of his mouth, the sharp scrape of his teeth against Naoki’s tongue. His fingertips traced the ridge of the spine at the nape of Naoki’s neck, and Naoki shuddered, biting the demon’s lip.
Cu Chulainn bit back, gloved hands finding the lines of power on Naoki’s skin even sightless and dragging down them roughly. The feel of it hit like a bolt of lightning, leaving fire in its wake. Naoki found those hands, grabbed the demon’s wrists with a growl, clenched hard enough to feel bone creaking under his fingers. Cu Chulainn tried to twist away, but Naoki swallowed his sound of protest, holding him easily, pressing the advantage, taking the demon’s mouth on instinct, letting himself just feel and react rather than think. It was so much easier that way.
He could taste blood, his own or the demon’s or both, and the air smelled of raw musk from the watchers in the dark. This was changing everything, Naoki could tell — before this, he might have longed for his friends, and there had definitely been tension between him and Dante, but this was the first time that he’d come this close to one of his own for anything but a fight.
And this could still be a fight, at least partway — Cu Chulainn was struggling against him, lean hard muscle flexing against Naoki’s own, at the same time that he pressed harder into the kiss.
Naoki knew how to deal with a fight, though. He pulled the demon closer, hooked a foot behind Cu Chulainn’s ankle, pushed back, and the two of them hit the ground. Naoki was pretty sure his arm would have broken if he hadn’t been the demifiend, taking the impact straight-armed like that, but it was worth it, to have that lean strength pinned under him.
But Kagutsuchi’s light glittered in the demon’s eyes, and he smiled up at Naoki as though he had planned to wind up here all along. “You would ride, my lord?” His hands slid up Naoki’s thighs, pulling them apart so Naoki was spread across his lap. “I could be quite content to be your steed.”
It was a political maneuver, Naoki realized suddenly — Cu Chulainn giving him a way to accede to the demon’s demands without appearing to yield in front of the rest of his army. And…he looked down, into Cu Chulainn’s face, the fine features, the proud expression half dare and half desire. Cu Chulainn had been one of his most loyal followers, one of the ones who’d fought at his side longest, of any of his allies; if there were any among his army to whom he would grant this much favor, then Cu Chulainn — beautiful, fierce, loyal Cu Chulainn — should be one of them.
“Yes,” Naoki hissed, leaning forward, wrapping his hands around the demon’s pale throat. “I will ride,” and he raised his voice enough for the others to hear, “if you prove yourself worthy to be ridden.”
The noises the others made, purring and hissing in the dark beyond the firelight, sounded approving. So this wouldn’t have to seem like a weakness, if he stayed on guard — no, not with Skadi’s hungry laughter in that chorus. Not even Dante had been arrogant enough to think it made her weak when she spread her legs.
“Take these off for me, my lord,” Cu Chulainn murmured, tugging at Naoki’s shorts, his tone just deferent enough to make it sound more like a suggestion than a demand. He reached up and tugged off one of his gloves with his teeth, his eyes still locked with Naoki’s.
It felt like there should be more to say, more warnings, more terms to negotiate, but the demon was already unbuckling his armor, confident and casual. Naoki reached for the snaps of his shorts.
Traveling with the demons had left him little room for modesty, but what was still human in him felt strange about stripping, about baring himself completely. But he was listening to his demon instincts more and more often, and his demon half felt only pride in his strength, his markings. He slid his shorts down, off his hips, and cast them aside.
“Now,” Naoki demanded, as he eased back down, kneeling astride Cu Chulainn’s lean hips. “Give me what you’ve offered.”
Cu Chulainn smiled. “With pleasure, my lord.” His hands, gloved and ungloved both, slid up the backs of Naoki’s legs, skating over the sensitive lines of the fiend-markings and then the even more sensitive soft skin at the juncture of his thighs. Naoki shivered. They should be doing this somewhere else, somewhere that was less central to the camp. Somewhere that he might hope the rest of his army wouldn’t see every response he made.
Of course, some of them could see just fine in the dark.
If this was going to be a show, then, he would just have to make it a good one. Cu Chulainn’s bare hand left his skin for a moment, then came back slick, wet fingers trailing up the crack of his ass. Naoki drew a sharp breath, and almost asked what the fluid was, but then the demon pressed a fingertip inside him and he didn’t have to: the fresh burst of magical energy sparking along his nerves made it more than clear.
Naoki moaned, arching his back, as Cu Chulainn’s fingers spread him open. The chakra was making him giddy as more of its energy seeped into his flesh — he could feel it humming along the lines of his markings, pale green glowing brighter with fresh power. He met Cu Chulainn’s eyes, and the demon smiled.
“It pleases you, my lord?” he asked softly, pushing deeper.
Naoki shuddered, leaning down to kiss Cu Chulainn’s mouth, to bite those soft lips until he could taste the faintest trace of blood against his tongue. “Yes,” he growled into the kiss, “yes, it pleases me.”
“Are you ready, then?” Cu Chulainn asked. His voice was still calm, still mild, but his hips rocked upward needily, his cock brushing Naoki’s thigh.
No, Naoki thought, he wasn’t ready for this. But he hadn’t been ready for anything that had happened to him since the day of the Conception, and he’d still been managing all right. “Do it,” he said.
Cu Chulainn’s fingers slid free, and his gloved hand guided Naoki down. There was pressure, blunt and hot, and then the slow burn of the stretch as the demon’s cock slid into him. Naoki hissed out a slow breath, feeling the shudder run down his spine as he settled into Cu Chulainn’s lap.
The demon smiled, stroking his hip, rough leather against the arch of bone. “You honor me, my lord.” He rocked his hips, and the fastenings of his armor creaked with the movement.
Naoki licked his lips. “Then show me your gratitude,” he demanded, pitching his voice to carry. What he’d seen of his army in camp, half-hidden or not hidden at all, had been more of an education than Isamu’s contraband magazines could ever have been. “Touch my cock.”
“Gladly,” Cu Chulainn murmured, hand sliding forward. The seams of his glove brushed the shaft of Naoki’s cock, the grip maddeningly light, his strokes languid and smooth. “Like this?”
“Harder,” Naoki growled, thrusting into Cu Chulainn’s hand, feeling the demon’s cock shift in his ass as he moved. His magatama twined and slithered along his spine, drawing more harsh noises from his throat as he moved. Take, snarled the instincts in the back of his head. Use him.
He leaned forward, bracing his hands on Cu Chulainn’s shoulders, the lacquered armor slick under his fingers. From here he could move, could set the pace and make this go the way he wanted it to — could push back onto that spot again, fuck, as something shuddered and tightened inside him at the press of Cu Chulainn’s cock. The sounds he was making grew less and less human as they moved together, and there were answering snarls and growls from the dark, encouragement from the others.
Even Cu Chulainn couldn’t keep silent now, little hoarse moans escaping him as he moved to meet Naoki on each thrust. His eyes were half-lidded, his cheeks flushed in the cold light of Kagatsuchi, and his bare hand tightened on Naoki’s hip as his gloved one stroked Naoki’s cock. “More,” he breathed, his voice not quite steady, tight with need. “More, my lord, I –”
“Don’t you dare,” Naoki snarled, shifting his grip, wrapping one hand around Cu Chulainn’s throat. The demon tensed under him, eyes flying open, teeth bared. “You will wait,” Naoki said fiercely, “until I am done with you.”
Cu Chulainn nodded once, and the challenge faded from his expression — so despite the thrill of holding him pinned, Naoki made himself let go of the demon’s throat. The balance of power between them was too delicate to risk pushing like this, especially with the rest of his followers watching. And it felt good, the thrust and push, the tension rising around them with a crackle of power as he fucked himself on Cu Chulainn’s cock, as he thrust into the demon’s glove, as he –
As he arched his back and everything went brilliant purple-edged white behind his eyes like a Megidolaon, and a raw demon howl tore its way free of his throat as he came.
“Now,” Cu Chulainn said, his tone finally too rough, too needy to be deferential. “Now, my lord,” and he wrapped both hands tight around Naoki’s hips, thrusting up hard, his lips parted, his eyes glittering.
“Yes,” Naoki said, gritting his teeth, “now, finish now,” and he kept his eyes locked with Cu Chulainn’s until he saw the demon finally give up control, until he felt the last surge of Cu Chulainn driving up into him with an expression of pure, wild surrender.
The others, he realized a moment later, when the thrill had ebbed and his heart no longer pounded in his ears, were still waiting to see how this would end. Cu Chulainn’s expression, sated and lazy and not quite challenging, gave him no cues.
He lifted himself off Cu Chulainn’s cock, careful not to let himself tremble, not to show any weakness that the more ambitious might take for an opportunity. He was a mess, sticky with the demon’s fluids and reeking of sex — and Cu Chulainn had fared no better, his breastplate spattered and glistening wet.
You got what you wanted, then, Naoki almost said, and then stopped himself; in what was said aloud, at least, his desires were the important ones. “Next time,” he said instead, “I’ll come find you. Don’t bother me again.”
Cu Chulainn smiled faintly, nodding in a vague suggestion of the bow he might have offered in other circumstances. “Of course, my lord.”
Naoki turned away. They had camped near a fountain that still, even in the vortex world, ran with clean water, and he wanted to wash. He walked into the dark still naked, unashamed and unafraid, and the demons of his army drew back to let him pass.
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