[ As the crescent shape of Makoto's blunt nails rake over a small inch of spine, flicking over nerves huddled in bunches that alight under his grip upon fragile white plumes, J's bottom lip catches itself under the bite of curved teeth. Hardly his first experience under someone's hands, those that stray over the meager barrier of flimsy cloth encasing his back are unlike any other. None have been so kindred, in ways Hell-born demons or mortal men have never measured up. Makoto, a halfling of both worlds, who reflects slivers of both and a side of something J has tried to bury alive in the depths of a still-beating heart. A child full of so much yearning, and capable of indescribable harm. He reflects everything J has been, and all he could hope to lay him down into the arms of oblivion, as no other had dared before.
Both twining thoughts spur a thrum of exhilaration through his veins, and leave his gaze to sink into a half-shuttered state as J daydreams about what precisely his ward could do with not just his hands upon his skin, but the fangs bared in unmistakable warning. So full of promise to inflict more than a showy display, given the chance.
And then, without expecting the turn towards sentimental, Makoto draws the warmth of an arm above broad shoulders. His weight solid where his ward clings like an offshoot, as if their bodies have grown so close they intertwine together, in ways impossible to separate.
As his ward studies the shape J's lips that weave an opening to an interrogation long-awaited, the demon pinned beneath such intense scrutiny returns the favor in full. J traces the infinitesimal flux of every shift in his ward's expression, pullingeach thought that reads clear as day across Makoto's face into his possession. Even when met with pale irises of gleaming moonlight, cast to float within the morass of dark sclera, that frightful gaze fails to detract from the candidness in those eyes. A sense of vulnerability that eases oft-creased features to leave them open and soft, inexplicably earnest when worn on a creature that's been taught to cleave away his own human nature like bits of gristle scraped off good meat.
It shatters with the shift in a voice running through the mood like a hidden knife. Swift and accurate, Makoto's demands land like a killing blow. Only, their severity is met with a spike in adrenaline that has nothing to do with fear. The threat that builds like a violent, surging storm sets a gleam in J's eyes that echos Makoto's earlier desires. Impassioned as opposed to frightened, J's mouth splits wide with a pull of lips; mirroring his protégé's reveal with his own set of gleaming teeth. ] And where do you think you'll find this answer?
Will you search for it under my flesh, in the wet-hot viscera of my insides, or squeeze it from this beating heart of mine? [ Where knuckles have traced the planes of Makoto's face, fingers replace them to slide beyond his jawline and into the depths of dark hair. Gathering a handful within a closed fist that pulls with a sudden force that's meant to haul him back against the pillows amassed upon his bed. There's an abruptness in the way things take a sudden turn. The old, familiar slant J harbors towards violence rears its head as Makoto is rearranged to J's specifications. ]
Show me exactly what you can do- Mako, my dear. [ When J sinks further down into the bed atop his ward, he can feel the warmth radiating off more than the limbs still cast around him. The heat and every mouth-watering shiver that thrums into him, built up either from a tumultuous mood or Makoto's stint baking under the nest of covers comprising his sick bed, only amplifies when J presses in closer. They're not quite arranged hip to exquisitely inviting hip, but close as the difference in their statures will permit. ]
I want to see just how you plan to rip this secret out of me.
[ Fingers work a clenched jaw he pries open to fill in the next shaky, over-eager breath. Hot as the tight space it enters, his tongue pushes past lips and into an awaiting mouth claimed in full. Once inside, he lavishes attention in lapping over the ridges of a stolen tongue, the crease run through it's middle and across the canines which loom over in a constant threat. J tastes of mint and liquor, his cleansed palate spoiled by the flavor of a stiff drink that speaks of concerns he may never fully express. And then, in the span it takes to press one more delicious tremble of Makoto's frame into his own, absorbing those tremors like a beast with something shaken by death rattles or ecstasy in his grip, there comes a wash of rust. A tongue savaged by the teeth it greedily strokes over drips blood into the cocktail of flavors poured into Makoto's mouth. ]
( in another world and another life, makoto would spend a hundred years and more to come across a realization that might have changed everything should he have come to it far sooner: that as much as he blinds himself with his ferocious and ravening desire for revenge, the quickest and ugliest balm to the rankling indignation he feels at how J has mistreated him in the past, it was really recognition that he wanted from the man. bone-deep, to the very cracked core of his once-human soul, he wanted J to look at him with the wholeness of affirmation in his eyes. "I love you," are pretty words, and easily warped, easily misconstrued... but "I see you"? not just as the pathetic slip of a child he'd been or the half-feral, wild thing he'd become — as everything he'd been, he was, and what he held the potential to one day transform himself into under nothing but the force of his own will.
acknowledgement. it's been so long denied him from anyone he might have viewed with love or reverence that he's not even aware how deeply he craves it.
he might not realize this about his innermost desires, but they boil to the surface here and now, glazing over his words alongside youthful earnestness and faint desperation — words that are all-too-easily swept by the wayside as he hastily supplants them with the harsh promises of his contingency plan; the venomous threat of violence that he had sworn like an oath had only been meant if J decided to deny what he so plainly asks for, and so when his master immediately begins to reorient around it, attention encircling like the coils of some immense snake, something begins to curdle within his stomach. it feels like a denial. is it so easily dismissed, that he would ever amount to J's expectations — that he would never earn the right to the mere knowledge of his name by his own merit, without resorting to violence that had been the terms and conditions of his contract but not necessarily the ink with which they'd been written?
something fragile that he doesn't even entirely understand begins to fragment inside of him, made suddenly accessible and vulnerable by the honesty of his plea. because of this he's powerless, he's very nearly paralyzed as J's hands maneuver to tangle thickly in his hair, near the root, but even in this delicate and transitory moment he's in, he can't help a small, sharp sound of pain from dislodging from the back of his throat as he's forced back down onto the assembly of pillows on the bed, his chest rising and falling rapidly and bright, hot tears beginning to bite into the corners of his eyes.
he squeezes them shut against the pain. it isn't just his hair, or the dull ache of permanent trauma encircling his neck, or the winding coil of barely-healed lacerations beneath the bandaging layered thickly across his torso. as had been one of his first and most important lessons learned in hell: physical violence is a language of power second only to the rule of names, and physical pain is cheap in its fleeting nature. it's the injury he sustains to the soft, susceptible substance of his soul that pains him far greater, which torments him day and night without end. in nearly any other creature it would ferment into a fine vintage of despair — delicious in its own right, but ultimately dull. one-note. inert.
makoto is anything but inert.
he tries to resist, but there's a precious thin amount of resistance he can actually put up to the force of nature that is J; his mouth opens with a small gasp of breath which is summarily swallowed up as he kisses him, pouring a confusion of accelerant over the riot of emotion that saturates makoto in this moment — the sharp, jagged edges of confusion still resonating with something that still manages to feel like pain and betrayal (as if he hadn't learned by this point to stop opening himself up to such fresh torments), but which more and more begins to fill with the twin heat and pressure of white-hot fury. that might have been all there was if it weren't for the goading movement of J's tongue against his own, in frank acknowledgement of what he'd sewn into that very place himself, but as it is, it complicates further. pained, irascible, and miserable, his veins burn with the added liquid fire of desperate want, either completely untethered from all the other ways he feels in this moment or tied up into them in ways that his formerly-human brain can't even begin to comprehend as he is now. this, however, he doesn't resist. after a moment of stillness, makoto begins to kiss J back with characteristic rancor and fury, the engine in the pit of his stomach converting his bleak hopelessness into anger and drive. J did not need to chum the not-so-metaphorical waters by being far too liberal with the movement of his tongue across makoto's newly-sharpened teeth — with a low, short growl, he nips at the invasive flat of his tongue — he extricates his hands from wherever they are to reach up and wrap them around the bases of J's horns, where they arc upwards and forwards — and as he finally erupts into a flurry of movement and conviction, he gives a final bite to the round of J's bottom lip before he separates from him and bodily yanks his head to the side using his horns as leverage, physical strength bolstered supernaturally by physical pain and even deeper anguish.
he doesn't care how much it hurts his battered and bloodied body. it doesn't matter. with time, it would pull itself back together, whether he liked it or not. but in this moment he wrestles their positions into a sudden exchange, forcing J beneath him on the bed, his knees denting the mattress where they bracket his thin waist, the rest of his body lifted up to press all of that feeble weight and pressure onto the demon's horns, keeping him trapped below onto the increasingly-messy field of pillows.
where just moments before it had been shaking and rattling within his chest like the last leaf of fall, now his breath comes in short and violent bursts. intent lost somewhere between lust and violence burns on the pale surfaces of makoto's coin-like irises as he stares into his master's face — he manages to find his voice again, faintly hoarse with fire and venom, ) Don't you dare promise me what you can't give, J, ( and as he speaks there's a strange shift in the space behind him as his wings protrude from beneath bandages and clothing, draping over the bed on either side of him — but for the right, which moves forward just enough so that one talon could place its lethally-sharp point on the soft skin right beneath the notch of J's clavicle. as he continues, his tone evens out somewhat, but his words are still strident with barely-restrained mania, ) Tell me. If I carved you open right now — if I broke open your ribs with my bare hands and made an absolute mess of you, how long could you hold on, how long could you stand it before you finally gave out? ( and now that brief moment of control is gone; his voice shakes, his hands shake, his shoulders shake, the point of the talon begins to sink into J's skin and draw blood, ) Before you disappeared and retreated into your shard and left me all alone?!
("J's a swindler to his core. that's just the kind of guy he is."
sometimes, makoto is stupid enough to trust in him. to believe him. he wants to — he wants to so badly.
but the blood hasn't even dried on the wound J had just a moment ago cut into his ego; he's not going to allow himself to be misled again so soon and so easily. )
[ What is the true value of praise from one of Hell's most revered entities; flattery from a being seven centuries old, whose status none could rival? Priceless to the one holding a longstanding torch and a love soured by the bitterness of rejection. Worthless to the fledgling demon who burned himself to ash and bone at the idea of anything less than standing on level ground with his master, seeing eye to eye, and then toppling from his high perch the man he called both messiah and maker.
Makoto is a raging storm that doesn't cede with time or placation. A few kind words are a pittance when scattered into the gale of his all-consuming hatred; swallowed whole without quenching an instant of his fury or undoing years of mistreatment. The worst memories are easiest to recall. Hard lessons inscribed on more than the skin around a skull that J had shorn from his body three times in as many years. All so that these teachings would be the first thing to come to mind in J's presence. Evoking a pavlovian dread to ensure he would never be doomed to repeat the mistakes that led to them.
It's shame that the greatest tradeoff is that they vastly overshadowed smaller, more sincere moments. Submerged like a man pitched from his rig and drawn into the brackish depths to be lost to time. So too had been the fate of rare sincerity, where J beamed over Makoto's certain destiny or reassured that there lay no looming doubt of his ward's talent.
"I'm quite looking forward to it, you know. Seeing how you manage to claw your way up to me"
Perhaps it's impossible to see beyond the haze of white-hot fury that blinds Makoto so deeply. Time and again, it seems he mistakes ardent appreciation, J's forthright boasting of his page's achievements, as ways to dismiss and ridicule his efforts. Because J had, with all the sincerity in his heart, offered what Makoto craved most. In small microdoses, neatly folded and tucked like love letters between the waking horrors of the frequent suffering that consumed his short life. And that could be why these efforts often miss their mark when they're a drop in the ocean compared to the pain.
Each time approval colored his mood enough to commend his ward's achievements and a great many things that lay in store for him, Makoto's irascible and enigmatic master had cleared all else in those moments from the forefront of his mind. A monster bent over backward to exalt someone whose origins were no rarer than those of the most ordinary schoolboy. But to him, Makoto had exceeded every expectation and beaten impossible odds. In the simplest words, J spoke as if able to peel back the layer of his body to comb over the construction of his innermost soul and come back with only words of awe, dripping with satisfaction each time he took a peek.
"That's amazing. You let your hate fuel you, empower you. But you don't succumb to it so much that it consumes you. That's good. It makes me happy to see that."
There's a truth left just beyond the veil knit together by the culmination of a hundred misunderstandings and past cruelties that hung in the way. Things obscuring the fact that his greatest desire, the white whale he'd madly been in pursuit of beneath his lust for vengeance, had been littered throughout every stage of Makoto's journey.
"You really have outstanding talent. (...) The human world is too small for you, Mako-chan."
Upon his ward's first unwilling encounter with the demon he'd soon befriend, J regaled his tenacity under such duress. More so, his words painted a picture that saw beyond the fearlessness it took to endure that encounter, then rise above it enough to stand at equal stride with his own assaulter. J saw someone who had been confined by the stifling outlines of a world that didn't deserve him. Makoto had outgrown the place of his birth. A homeland that had constricted and smothered him. And without an inkling of a doubt, his master had sworn to him that his future was certain.
"You really are a formidable kid. (...) I guarantee that you will become a demon."
The very first of humankind to make the metamorphosis. With Datenshou's odd exception, Makoto is the lone survivor among a thousand souls and the only one to champion the impossible challenge a life in Hell presented. Whereas all others had slipped free of their sanity and dissipated in the unsettling dark; mad, forgotten, and alone.
"I'm proud of you for making it this far. You even met my brother. I didn't expect that!"
All these things now feel like they happened a lifetime ago. J wouldn't be surprised if they sank farther into the deep recesses of a mind already cluttered with knives aimed his way. The bones left to rot of what had been his master's way of raising him up and recognizing each step forward Makoto made in his journey.
Not that any of it came for free. One immutable stipulation in their relationship is that it remains a painfully contractual one. The laws of Hell are those bound by achievements filled and stipulations met. To shirk those for the very person who had benefited most from their schooling would go against everything he's practiced and preached so far. Simply putting into Makoto's hands one of the most important possessions anyone could have, in J's very name, wasn't in the cards.
While J operates on a strict give-and-take, the fact he concedes to unlock the mystery behind it and offer up all that his name held, should reveal once more how much J recognizes Makoto's potential. To J, he's more than the foundling child who only knew the ice-cold sense of dreaded rejection from his peers, loathing from his flesh and blood, and the offer of a grim future from a world that would never embrace who or what he was. And all he's been given in Hell, from position to title, prostitute to one of the initialed elite, fit what his master envisioned for him.
He doesn't perceive Makoto as the first of mankind's ilk to successfully slough off his mortality nor see him as simply a rising star, propelled at lightning speed through the ranks of Hell to rival dukes and marquise alike. Whole and unadulterated in his view, Makoto has been his successor from the start. The one soul to stand not on equal footing but to soar above him, and pull him down into oblivion.
And though it still demands the illusion of a quid pro quo, his agreement in exchange for just a taste of that future Makoto has sworn to him, to be devoured and destroyed, isn't too much to ask in exchange for the reward of his true name.
Then and now, the thought of burning through his last moments with Makoto at the helm, dictating the closing chapter of J's almost never-ending story, sends a pang singing through his veins. It feels like want and yearning, to crest near to that blissful end. And tonight all he asks for is a facsimile of what's to come. Even if his death will be a falsehood; temporary and untrue, the taste of that momentary reprieve from the waking world won't be any less sweet.
Wreathed in deep shadows, Makoto looms like the last flash of claws and wings seen when death swoops down from above. It's only a matter of time before one comes for him with a flash of movement and a noise wrenched free, full of muffled shock and delight. That solid claw sinks in past the first layer of skin, puncturing the barrier between J's innermost workings and the world outside that blood-soaked heat. But the wound isn't stoppered by its assailant's strike. Where a dark hooked fang of a talon nestles snug in the dip below his clavicle, evidence blooms in the streams of blood that trickle from the scene of the crime. Tiny beads in strikingly vibrant red tumble away with every certainty to stain the sheets below, and leave a smattering of Rorschach prints of this collision of two bodies spelled out in spilled blood and tears.
Once bitten, J's mouth isn't afforded the blessing of an encore. Not that either the shape of his tongue or the rounded bottom of his lip requires excess antagonism. They readily weep blood the moment wolfish canines rend into the flesh they've caught. He tries to usher away the gouts of free-flowing blood by swallowing each mouthful behind teeth tinged with red. But with all his attention devoted there, a punctured lip lies ignored. Only when a ticklish sensation catches his attention does a thumb draw near to swipe away the wet tendrils streaking down his chin. ]
I'm willing to lay it all out for you, and you're still not satisfied? [ A pale hand reaches between them, placing the freshly wet and glistening pad of his thumb upon the soft skin of Makoto's lower lip. It digs in slightly, pressing where his ward had sunk teeth into him moments ago. And with a stroke that moves with purposeful intent, J paints half his mouth in vibrant rouge. ] There has to be some limit to your appetite, Makoto.
And if that's what you have in mind, then you'll probably have only a few minutes of playtime. Now, should you avoid cracking me open to dig around my guts right off the bat... I'd wager I'm good for an hour, maybe more.
[ He senses what's to come like blood in the turbulent waters stirred up between them, thick as the heavy tang of copper that lingers long after J swallows down what weeps from his savaged tongue. In the throes of impassioned feeling, with violence withheld and barred back by a thread's width of restraint, Makoto doesn't look like a man drowning in his own sorrows to the demon who had tempered him with this fire before. To him, it's the struggle to break free from a chrysalis of his ward's own making. The self-made shackles of regrets and fears hold him prisoner and deny him what Makoto has always been destined to do. Sworn in ardent oaths, and spat at his master with all the vitriolic loathing that foams to the surface now. ]
Either way, you're going to watch me die, sooner or later. [ As if moving in a synchronized dance to match Makoto's, pristine and white wings unfurl in full. They sweep up to crest over the fortress of scales littering every joint and bone of the draconic threat above and dance whispers of contact across the thin membrane stretched between. But in their slow and careful arrangement, it's easy to miss how they configure themselves into the shape of a trap's open maw closing in. ]
It's about time you got used to the idea. What better way to do that than with a little practice?
[ All of this is a lesson. Painful and agonizing at that. But aren't growing pains always this way? A soul aches as it stretches beyond the confines of its former self, to abandon the childish notions that have been outgrown by every new understanding, the same as a body is left sore as it's stretched out and upward.
Progress hurts. In Hell, one must adapt or die. Demons bury their emotions alive to avoid the risk of being rattled by some mutinous uprising of feeling. But here there are greater risks than a heart left shaken and more weapons to fear than mere words. For Makoto, to stagnate over any loss and wallow as the world at large goes to war is to risk death over a man who never intended to live here long.
As before, J leads Makoto further down the path he's paved in words and actions. J breathes life into the newborn embers of tonight's wrath, all to see a spark kindled that will set off something he doubts needs more than a nudge. Quick to anger and quicker still to eerie calm, he won't hush away these worries and risk Makoto holding fast to this fear of abandonment when it's inevitable anyway. ]
But, I'll give it to you. Everything you want from me, right before the grand finale. The only question is— [ There's the presence of a hand upon Makoto's abdomen, sliding down to nest above the crossroads where an undergarment suddenly divides bare and covered skin. There, where the bandages crisscross a tale of agony written upon hidden skin, fingertips gradually begin to push with incremental pressure.
They both know the damage J could inflict with no greater weaponry than five long nails. But their touch doesn't bite or slice. Small crescents are all that form where fingers curl into claws that drag with a languid upward scratch. ] Can you keep from getting too hot n' bothered, and last long enough for it?
[ J now owns the lion's share of the blood held in the thickening air between them. Fortunately for the trajectory of the evening, J's flesh will heal at a quicker pace than normal— Inhumanly fast, though not nearly at the speed he'd been capable of prior to his life on Horos. But Makoto's wounds, secreted away and of a severity that had left him holed up in recuperation, risk suffering greater injury as a result of the violence promised here. The stress of a frenzy could do more than unravel all the good done by Vandy's careful ministrations and spoil the fun by eventually distracting him from the task at hand. ]
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Both twining thoughts spur a thrum of exhilaration through his veins, and leave his gaze to sink into a half-shuttered state as J daydreams about what precisely his ward could do with not just his hands upon his skin, but the fangs bared in unmistakable warning. So full of promise to inflict more than a showy display, given the chance.
And then, without expecting the turn towards sentimental, Makoto draws the warmth of an arm above broad shoulders. His weight solid where his ward clings like an offshoot, as if their bodies have grown so close they intertwine together, in ways impossible to separate.
As his ward studies the shape J's lips that weave an opening to an interrogation long-awaited, the demon pinned beneath such intense scrutiny returns the favor in full. J traces the infinitesimal flux of every shift in his ward's expression, pullingeach thought that reads clear as day across Makoto's face into his possession. Even when met with pale irises of gleaming moonlight, cast to float within the morass of dark sclera, that frightful gaze fails to detract from the candidness in those eyes. A sense of vulnerability that eases oft-creased features to leave them open and soft, inexplicably earnest when worn on a creature that's been taught to cleave away his own human nature like bits of gristle scraped off good meat.
It shatters with the shift in a voice running through the mood like a hidden knife. Swift and accurate, Makoto's demands land like a killing blow. Only, their severity is met with a spike in adrenaline that has nothing to do with fear. The threat that builds like a violent, surging storm sets a gleam in J's eyes that echos Makoto's earlier desires. Impassioned as opposed to frightened, J's mouth splits wide with a pull of lips; mirroring his protégé's reveal with his own set of gleaming teeth. ] And where do you think you'll find this answer?
Will you search for it under my flesh, in the wet-hot viscera of my insides, or squeeze it from this beating heart of mine? [ Where knuckles have traced the planes of Makoto's face, fingers replace them to slide beyond his jawline and into the depths of dark hair. Gathering a handful within a closed fist that pulls with a sudden force that's meant to haul him back against the pillows amassed upon his bed. There's an abruptness in the way things take a sudden turn. The old, familiar slant J harbors towards violence rears its head as Makoto is rearranged to J's specifications. ]
Show me exactly what you can do- Mako, my dear. [ When J sinks further down into the bed atop his ward, he can feel the warmth radiating off more than the limbs still cast around him. The heat and every mouth-watering shiver that thrums into him, built up either from a tumultuous mood or Makoto's stint baking under the nest of covers comprising his sick bed, only amplifies when J presses in closer. They're not quite arranged hip to exquisitely inviting hip, but close as the difference in their statures will permit. ]
I want to see just how you plan to rip this secret out of me.
[ Fingers work a clenched jaw he pries open to fill in the next shaky, over-eager breath. Hot as the tight space it enters, his tongue pushes past lips and into an awaiting mouth claimed in full. Once inside, he lavishes attention in lapping over the ridges of a stolen tongue, the crease run through it's middle and across the canines which loom over in a constant threat. J tastes of mint and liquor, his cleansed palate spoiled by the flavor of a stiff drink that speaks of concerns he may never fully express. And then, in the span it takes to press one more delicious tremble of Makoto's frame into his own, absorbing those tremors like a beast with something shaken by death rattles or ecstasy in his grip, there comes a wash of rust. A tongue savaged by the teeth it greedily strokes over drips blood into the cocktail of flavors poured into Makoto's mouth. ]
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acknowledgement. it's been so long denied him from anyone he might have viewed with love or reverence that he's not even aware how deeply he craves it.
he might not realize this about his innermost desires, but they boil to the surface here and now, glazing over his words alongside youthful earnestness and faint desperation — words that are all-too-easily swept by the wayside as he hastily supplants them with the harsh promises of his contingency plan; the venomous threat of violence that he had sworn like an oath had only been meant if J decided to deny what he so plainly asks for, and so when his master immediately begins to reorient around it, attention encircling like the coils of some immense snake, something begins to curdle within his stomach. it feels like a denial. is it so easily dismissed, that he would ever amount to J's expectations — that he would never earn the right to the mere knowledge of his name by his own merit, without resorting to violence that had been the terms and conditions of his contract but not necessarily the ink with which they'd been written?
something fragile that he doesn't even entirely understand begins to fragment inside of him, made suddenly accessible and vulnerable by the honesty of his plea. because of this he's powerless, he's very nearly paralyzed as J's hands maneuver to tangle thickly in his hair, near the root, but even in this delicate and transitory moment he's in, he can't help a small, sharp sound of pain from dislodging from the back of his throat as he's forced back down onto the assembly of pillows on the bed, his chest rising and falling rapidly and bright, hot tears beginning to bite into the corners of his eyes.
he squeezes them shut against the pain. it isn't just his hair, or the dull ache of permanent trauma encircling his neck, or the winding coil of barely-healed lacerations beneath the bandaging layered thickly across his torso. as had been one of his first and most important lessons learned in hell: physical violence is a language of power second only to the rule of names, and physical pain is cheap in its fleeting nature. it's the injury he sustains to the soft, susceptible substance of his soul that pains him far greater, which torments him day and night without end. in nearly any other creature it would ferment into a fine vintage of despair — delicious in its own right, but ultimately dull. one-note. inert.
makoto is anything but inert.
he tries to resist, but there's a precious thin amount of resistance he can actually put up to the force of nature that is J; his mouth opens with a small gasp of breath which is summarily swallowed up as he kisses him, pouring a confusion of accelerant over the riot of emotion that saturates makoto in this moment — the sharp, jagged edges of confusion still resonating with something that still manages to feel like pain and betrayal (as if he hadn't learned by this point to stop opening himself up to such fresh torments), but which more and more begins to fill with the twin heat and pressure of white-hot fury. that might have been all there was if it weren't for the goading movement of J's tongue against his own, in frank acknowledgement of what he'd sewn into that very place himself, but as it is, it complicates further. pained, irascible, and miserable, his veins burn with the added liquid fire of desperate want, either completely untethered from all the other ways he feels in this moment or tied up into them in ways that his formerly-human brain can't even begin to comprehend as he is now. this, however, he doesn't resist. after a moment of stillness, makoto begins to kiss J back with characteristic rancor and fury, the engine in the pit of his stomach converting his bleak hopelessness into anger and drive. J did not need to chum the not-so-metaphorical waters by being far too liberal with the movement of his tongue across makoto's newly-sharpened teeth — with a low, short growl, he nips at the invasive flat of his tongue — he extricates his hands from wherever they are to reach up and wrap them around the bases of J's horns, where they arc upwards and forwards — and as he finally erupts into a flurry of movement and conviction, he gives a final bite to the round of J's bottom lip before he separates from him and bodily yanks his head to the side using his horns as leverage, physical strength bolstered supernaturally by physical pain and even deeper anguish.
he doesn't care how much it hurts his battered and bloodied body. it doesn't matter. with time, it would pull itself back together, whether he liked it or not. but in this moment he wrestles their positions into a sudden exchange, forcing J beneath him on the bed, his knees denting the mattress where they bracket his thin waist, the rest of his body lifted up to press all of that feeble weight and pressure onto the demon's horns, keeping him trapped below onto the increasingly-messy field of pillows.
where just moments before it had been shaking and rattling within his chest like the last leaf of fall, now his breath comes in short and violent bursts. intent lost somewhere between lust and violence burns on the pale surfaces of makoto's coin-like irises as he stares into his master's face — he manages to find his voice again, faintly hoarse with fire and venom, ) Don't you dare promise me what you can't give, J, ( and as he speaks there's a strange shift in the space behind him as his wings protrude from beneath bandages and clothing, draping over the bed on either side of him — but for the right, which moves forward just enough so that one talon could place its lethally-sharp point on the soft skin right beneath the notch of J's clavicle. as he continues, his tone evens out somewhat, but his words are still strident with barely-restrained mania, ) Tell me. If I carved you open right now — if I broke open your ribs with my bare hands and made an absolute mess of you, how long could you hold on, how long could you stand it before you finally gave out? ( and now that brief moment of control is gone; his voice shakes, his hands shake, his shoulders shake, the point of the talon begins to sink into J's skin and draw blood, ) Before you disappeared and retreated into your shard and left me all alone?!
( "J's a swindler to his core. that's just the kind of guy he is."
sometimes, makoto is stupid enough to trust in him. to believe him. he wants to — he wants to so badly.
but the blood hasn't even dried on the wound J had just a moment ago cut into his ego; he's not going to allow himself to be misled again so soon and so easily. )
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Makoto is a raging storm that doesn't cede with time or placation. A few kind words are a pittance when scattered into the gale of his all-consuming hatred; swallowed whole without quenching an instant of his fury or undoing years of mistreatment. The worst memories are easiest to recall. Hard lessons inscribed on more than the skin around a skull that J had shorn from his body three times in as many years. All so that these teachings would be the first thing to come to mind in J's presence. Evoking a pavlovian dread to ensure he would never be doomed to repeat the mistakes that led to them.
It's shame that the greatest tradeoff is that they vastly overshadowed smaller, more sincere moments. Submerged like a man pitched from his rig and drawn into the brackish depths to be lost to time. So too had been the fate of rare sincerity, where J beamed over Makoto's certain destiny or reassured that there lay no looming doubt of his ward's talent.
"I'm quite looking forward to it, you know. Seeing how you manage to claw your way up to me"
Perhaps it's impossible to see beyond the haze of white-hot fury that blinds Makoto so deeply. Time and again, it seems he mistakes ardent appreciation, J's forthright boasting of his page's achievements, as ways to dismiss and ridicule his efforts. Because J had, with all the sincerity in his heart, offered what Makoto craved most. In small microdoses, neatly folded and tucked like love letters between the waking horrors of the frequent suffering that consumed his short life. And that could be why these efforts often miss their mark when they're a drop in the ocean compared to the pain.
Each time approval colored his mood enough to commend his ward's achievements and a great many things that lay in store for him, Makoto's irascible and enigmatic master had cleared all else in those moments from the forefront of his mind. A monster bent over backward to exalt someone whose origins were no rarer than those of the most ordinary schoolboy. But to him, Makoto had exceeded every expectation and beaten impossible odds. In the simplest words, J spoke as if able to peel back the layer of his body to comb over the construction of his innermost soul and come back with only words of awe, dripping with satisfaction each time he took a peek.
"That's amazing. You let your hate fuel you, empower you. But you don't succumb to it so much that it consumes you. That's good. It makes me happy to see that."
There's a truth left just beyond the veil knit together by the culmination of a hundred misunderstandings and past cruelties that hung in the way. Things obscuring the fact that his greatest desire, the white whale he'd madly been in pursuit of beneath his lust for vengeance, had been littered throughout every stage of Makoto's journey.
"You really have outstanding talent. (...) The human world is too small for you, Mako-chan."
Upon his ward's first unwilling encounter with the demon he'd soon befriend, J regaled his tenacity under such duress. More so, his words painted a picture that saw beyond the fearlessness it took to endure that encounter, then rise above it enough to stand at equal stride with his own assaulter. J saw someone who had been confined by the stifling outlines of a world that didn't deserve him. Makoto had outgrown the place of his birth. A homeland that had constricted and smothered him. And without an inkling of a doubt, his master had sworn to him that his future was certain.
"You really are a formidable kid. (...) I guarantee that you will become a demon."
The very first of humankind to make the metamorphosis. With Datenshou's odd exception, Makoto is the lone survivor among a thousand souls and the only one to champion the impossible challenge a life in Hell presented. Whereas all others had slipped free of their sanity and dissipated in the unsettling dark; mad, forgotten, and alone.
"I'm proud of you for making it this far. You even met my brother. I didn't expect that!"
All these things now feel like they happened a lifetime ago. J wouldn't be surprised if they sank farther into the deep recesses of a mind already cluttered with knives aimed his way. The bones left to rot of what had been his master's way of raising him up and recognizing each step forward Makoto made in his journey.
Not that any of it came for free. One immutable stipulation in their relationship is that it remains a painfully contractual one. The laws of Hell are those bound by achievements filled and stipulations met. To shirk those for the very person who had benefited most from their schooling would go against everything he's practiced and preached so far. Simply putting into Makoto's hands one of the most important possessions anyone could have, in J's very name, wasn't in the cards.
While J operates on a strict give-and-take, the fact he concedes to unlock the mystery behind it and offer up all that his name held, should reveal once more how much J recognizes Makoto's potential. To J, he's more than the foundling child who only knew the ice-cold sense of dreaded rejection from his peers, loathing from his flesh and blood, and the offer of a grim future from a world that would never embrace who or what he was. And all he's been given in Hell, from position to title, prostitute to one of the initialed elite, fit what his master envisioned for him.
He doesn't perceive Makoto as the first of mankind's ilk to successfully slough off his mortality nor see him as simply a rising star, propelled at lightning speed through the ranks of Hell to rival dukes and marquise alike. Whole and unadulterated in his view, Makoto has been his successor from the start. The one soul to stand not on equal footing but to soar above him, and pull him down into oblivion.
And though it still demands the illusion of a quid pro quo, his agreement in exchange for just a taste of that future Makoto has sworn to him, to be devoured and destroyed, isn't too much to ask in exchange for the reward of his true name.
Then and now, the thought of burning through his last moments with Makoto at the helm, dictating the closing chapter of J's almost never-ending story, sends a pang singing through his veins. It feels like want and yearning, to crest near to that blissful end. And tonight all he asks for is a facsimile of what's to come. Even if his death will be a falsehood; temporary and untrue, the taste of that momentary reprieve from the waking world won't be any less sweet.
Wreathed in deep shadows, Makoto looms like the last flash of claws and wings seen when death swoops down from above. It's only a matter of time before one comes for him with a flash of movement and a noise wrenched free, full of muffled shock and delight. That solid claw sinks in past the first layer of skin, puncturing the barrier between J's innermost workings and the world outside that blood-soaked heat. But the wound isn't stoppered by its assailant's strike. Where a dark hooked fang of a talon nestles snug in the dip below his clavicle, evidence blooms in the streams of blood that trickle from the scene of the crime. Tiny beads in strikingly vibrant red tumble away with every certainty to stain the sheets below, and leave a smattering of Rorschach prints of this collision of two bodies spelled out in spilled blood and tears.
Once bitten, J's mouth isn't afforded the blessing of an encore. Not that either the shape of his tongue or the rounded bottom of his lip requires excess antagonism. They readily weep blood the moment wolfish canines rend into the flesh they've caught. He tries to usher away the gouts of free-flowing blood by swallowing each mouthful behind teeth tinged with red. But with all his attention devoted there, a punctured lip lies ignored. Only when a ticklish sensation catches his attention does a thumb draw near to swipe away the wet tendrils streaking down his chin. ]
I'm willing to lay it all out for you, and you're still not satisfied? [ A pale hand reaches between them, placing the freshly wet and glistening pad of his thumb upon the soft skin of Makoto's lower lip. It digs in slightly, pressing where his ward had sunk teeth into him moments ago. And with a stroke that moves with purposeful intent, J paints half his mouth in vibrant rouge. ] There has to be some limit to your appetite, Makoto.
And if that's what you have in mind, then you'll probably have only a few minutes of playtime. Now, should you avoid cracking me open to dig around my guts right off the bat... I'd wager I'm good for an hour, maybe more.
[ He senses what's to come like blood in the turbulent waters stirred up between them, thick as the heavy tang of copper that lingers long after J swallows down what weeps from his savaged tongue. In the throes of impassioned feeling, with violence withheld and barred back by a thread's width of restraint, Makoto doesn't look like a man drowning in his own sorrows to the demon who had tempered him with this fire before. To him, it's the struggle to break free from a chrysalis of his ward's own making. The self-made shackles of regrets and fears hold him prisoner and deny him what Makoto has always been destined to do. Sworn in ardent oaths, and spat at his master with all the vitriolic loathing that foams to the surface now. ]
Either way, you're going to watch me die, sooner or later. [ As if moving in a synchronized dance to match Makoto's, pristine and white wings unfurl in full. They sweep up to crest over the fortress of scales littering every joint and bone of the draconic threat above and dance whispers of contact across the thin membrane stretched between. But in their slow and careful arrangement, it's easy to miss how they configure themselves into the shape of a trap's open maw closing in. ]
It's about time you got used to the idea. What better way to do that than with a little practice?
[ All of this is a lesson. Painful and agonizing at that. But aren't growing pains always this way? A soul aches as it stretches beyond the confines of its former self, to abandon the childish notions that have been outgrown by every new understanding, the same as a body is left sore as it's stretched out and upward.
Progress hurts. In Hell, one must adapt or die. Demons bury their emotions alive to avoid the risk of being rattled by some mutinous uprising of feeling. But here there are greater risks than a heart left shaken and more weapons to fear than mere words. For Makoto, to stagnate over any loss and wallow as the world at large goes to war is to risk death over a man who never intended to live here long.
As before, J leads Makoto further down the path he's paved in words and actions. J breathes life into the newborn embers of tonight's wrath, all to see a spark kindled that will set off something he doubts needs more than a nudge. Quick to anger and quicker still to eerie calm, he won't hush away these worries and risk Makoto holding fast to this fear of abandonment when it's inevitable anyway. ]
But, I'll give it to you. Everything you want from me, right before the grand finale. The only question is— [ There's the presence of a hand upon Makoto's abdomen, sliding down to nest above the crossroads where an undergarment suddenly divides bare and covered skin. There, where the bandages crisscross a tale of agony written upon hidden skin, fingertips gradually begin to push with incremental pressure.
They both know the damage J could inflict with no greater weaponry than five long nails. But their touch doesn't bite or slice. Small crescents are all that form where fingers curl into claws that drag with a languid upward scratch. ] Can you keep from getting too hot n' bothered, and last long enough for it?
[ J now owns the lion's share of the blood held in the thickening air between them. Fortunately for the trajectory of the evening, J's flesh will heal at a quicker pace than normal— Inhumanly fast, though not nearly at the speed he'd been capable of prior to his life on Horos. But Makoto's wounds, secreted away and of a severity that had left him holed up in recuperation, risk suffering greater injury as a result of the violence promised here. The stress of a frenzy could do more than unravel all the good done by Vandy's careful ministrations and spoil the fun by eventually distracting him from the task at hand. ]