They come to him in his dreams.
Hakkai controls them with limiters and restraint, only allowing them to be free when he is in grave danger. Even though, he is in control.
But not in his dreams.
There are neither limiters nor self-discipline in his dreams. He floats, made buoyant by the weightlessness of his sins. He remembers wondering that it made no sense for aren’t sins suppose to weigh you down due to their heaviness?
But then he remembers that they take his sins away in his dreams for they belong to them.
He is dreaming now, floating in the blank, grey world of his own making. He floats, eyes closed, and waits. And they come.
The first thing he feels is the soft touches of talons on his left cheek and Hakkai opens his eyes. The youkai stares back, green eye unblinking and feral, the other eye a blank, empty socket that seems to suck all the light available around it. Hakkai shivers under the touch, mesmerised by the play of vines across the youkai’s nose and cheeks disappearing in the folds of fabric Hakkai never remembers wearing. It is beautiful, with the savage beauty of a confident predator. Hakkai wonders if he looks this beautiful when he takes off his limiters.
He doubts it.
The youkai grins at his stare, confident and unabashed, sharp canines flashing into view before Hakkai gasps, squeezing his eyes shut in pain as talons bite into his cheek. Eyes closed, he shudders, due to both the pain and the touch. Three lines of blood rolls down his cheeks as wounds that will disappear in the morning bleed freely. The youkai has marked his territory.
A second hand, soft and human, materialises suddenly, caressing his unbloodied cheek. Hakkai blinks open his eyes, wanting to see even though he knows exactly who the newcomer is.
Two startling green eyes smiles genially at him, and the hand strokes his right cheek again. Gonou is whole, uncrippled by a missing eye unlike the other two. His hands are soaked to the elbow in red, dripping blood that never coagulates, never dries. The metallic tang of it fills Hakkai’s nostrils, intoxicating him like the smell of strong alcohol intoxicates alcoholics. The red, he thinks faintly, as he has done many times before, really sets off Gonou’s green, green eyes.
Gonou’s hand leaves bloody streaks on his uninjured cheeks, four clean lines of blood that never bleeds into one another. Paired with the three lines of bleeding wounds on his left cheek, it looks almost as if Hakkai has been crying blood.
Hakkai wonders faintly if he will cry blood when he cries. He doesn’t know, for it has been far too long a time since he cried.
A soft rasp of a tongue on his cheek brings his attention back to the youkai. It stares at him expression almost like the pout of a child who had a broken, useless toy taken from it. Hakkai trembles his whole body shivering as the youkai licks at his right cheek cleaning the blood that Gonou had left.
A pair of thin, emaciated arms wraps around his waist, slowly undoing his belt. Hakkai can feel the never-drying blood of the thousand youkai and one sister-lover that Gonou had killed seeps through his clothes and sticks onto his skin.
The blood fits snugly around his skin like it has always belonged there.
The empty, grey world was silent, unnaturally so. The silence presses into him, half-suffocating him even as he gasps and half-screams. The soft, choked sounds are swallowed by the empty air even before they leaves his throat. It was, Hakkai thinks, some kind of relief.
The youkai is ripping of his clothes, impatient now, talons and claws and fangs ripping cloth away like flimsy paper. Hakkai shudders as it slowly, slowly licks a line down his torso, its tongue like a centipede moving inside his skin.
He feels his pants loosen then drop completely, leaving him in nothing but scraps of cloth and his underwear. He feels exposed, even though the air does not move and it is not cold. The youkai’s centipede-tongue leaves his skin, and Hakkai shivers.
Hakkai looks downwards, and see Gonou raising a bloody finger towards the youkai, and it takes it in his mouth. He can see its tongue working on the digit, slurping up the blood of those it was formed from.
He feels a shot of arousal-disgust run through his veins, and shudders. Both of them turn to him, and smile.
Hakkai doesn’t remember what happens next, not exactly. He remembers the shivers and the soundless groans he made. He remembers talons drawing blood on his chest then a too long, raspy tongue lapping at the wounds. He remembers wet, sticky human hands, crawling all over his body. He remembers thinking that if this is what it takes to keep them both under his control and away from his waking thoughts, he is fine with being used.
But most of all, he remembers
blood
silence
green
punishment
