Chapter Text
It’s not that Hakuji had not noticed. Quite the opposite, really; Rengoku’s presence is a roaring wildfire to his well trained senses. He feels his gaze often, watching Hakuji work and patter about the Winter Estate. It’s hot and intense, a sort of weight on his shoulders that he has never felt before he met him.
And he knows. He knows Rengoku watches from the forests that surround the estate. But he cannot be rid of the demon, and the location of the Winter Estate remains a secret despite Rengoku’s presence, so he does not see the need to try.
And just as he knows Rengoku watches on, he knows that Rengoku does not like Douma. The pattern is obvious.
Everytime Douma steps near, comes a little too close, ruffles his hair or pulls him into a hug or lets his touch linger, that ever present gaze heats with a noticeable anger.
At first, it had startled Hakuji with its intensity, sparking a hesitance to interact with Douma so closely. But that faded quickly into irritation.
Hakuji does not care for Rengoku’s jealousy. If he wants to be near his friend, then he damn well will be. The demon has no ownership or power over him.
So when Douma drags Hakuji away from his work and all but shoves him towards the hot springs that adjoin their estate, he ignores the wild flare of demonic anger that stalks at the border of his senses. He doesn’t pay it any mind when Douma pulls his naked form outside and into the cold or when Douma washes his back and he does the same to Douma.
This is normal. Rengoku needs to accept that Hakuji has a close friend.
“You really need to take better care of yourself,” Douma tuts as he massages one of his many fragrant oils into Hakuji’s hair. “Your hair gets so dry when I’m not here to take care of it.”
“Yeah, so?” Hakuji frowns and resists the urge to lean into the touch. Pleasant tingles skitter down his spine and he can’t help the way his shoulders relax, “I don’t need to look pretty to kill demons.”
That elicits a sigh, “Killing demons and playing doctor isn’t everything, you know. You should pay more attention to your suitors.”
“Suitors?” Hakuji asks in disbelief, “As in, plural?”
“Yes, plural. Do you not see me as a suitor, Ha-kun?” He teases.
“No.”
“So cruel!” Fingers smooth out and brush through his short locks in a small petting motion, “You wound me, Ha-kun!”
Hakuji rolls his eyes, but he stays put and allows his friend to play with his hair for a little while longer.
“And don’t tell me you haven’t seen the way Michikatsu looks at you.”
“I really haven’t.” As far as Hakuji is concerned, he has one suitor and that one, alone, is more than enough of a thorn in his side.
“Or Muzan-sama?”
“Muzan is our boss, Douma.”
His friend laughs, “He practically pampers you, Ha-kun! Anyone with eyes can see you’re his favorite!”
“Because I don’t mess around on the job!” Hakuji sputters.
And that only makes Douma laugh even harder. He takes Hakuji’s head in his hands and plants a kiss to the crown of his head.
Hakuji had truly, briefly, forgotten about the watchful eyes of his stalker, because the sudden demonic rage that flares from deep within the forest sends a jolt of surprise through his veins. Even Douma must’ve felt it. But the murderous intent and his small jump goes uncommented on, and Douma merely hums.
“Come on,” He says into Hakuji’s hair, “Let’s get into the water.”
Hakuji pushes his friend away with a huff. He does his best to ignore the way goosebumps rise on his arms and prey instinct unspools in his mind, alarm and wariness making his motions stiff and awkward.
Rengoku won’t do anything, he’s just throwing a fit. He needs to learn that Hakuji isn’t his. Hakuji cannot live beholden to the whims of a possessive demon after all, he refuses to.
So he grits his teeth and steels his nerves and stands and walks to the water. Sliding in, he closes his eyes and lets himself relax under the gentle glide of hot water on skin. Muscles slowly unwind from a million little tensions he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying and his lungs take in swaths of steam, coating his insides in warmth.
Douma was right, he needed this.
Hakuji sighs. He wanders to a large outcropping of rock and sits, leaning his back against it. A small splash greets his ears and Douma’s cold presence meanders closer and closer, until his fellow pillar slides next to him. Their arms touch, and the silence only lasts a second before Douma is huffing and leaning his head on Hakuji’s shoulder.
“There are others, too,” Douma says in a low murmur, “You could have anyone, if you wanted.”
Hakuji doubts that. The tattoos on his arms and whipping scars on his back are too heavy a burden for most to carry. No rational human would want to be the partner of a convicted criminal.
He doesn’t say it, though; knows Douma would simply refute him. Instead he says, “I don’t want anyone.”
“You’re gonna break a lot of hearts with that talk, Ha-kun.”
Hakuji snorts, but he doesn’t respond. He leans his head back against the rock and basks in the night. For once, Douma allows the quiet. The two merely sit there, a small breeze occasionally teasing skin and long silver hairs tickling muscle.
It’s never said aloud, but Hakuji cherishes these times of closeness. This easy, human touch and comfort. He doesn’t get it often or easily nowadays, not since Koyuki, and a part of him clings like a needy child to these moments Douma offers.
A different part of him, some forgotten, traitorous thing from deep within, whispers of the other who offers these moments. Of the one who is warm as a hearth fire and hearty as a boar’s flesh and devoted as a soldier’s beloved wife.
The one who watches now, angered.
(The one who makes him feel like prey.)
Minutes or hours pass. With his eyes closed, Hakuji cannot study the moon’s journey across the sky to know for sure how long he and Douma stay like that, cradled in the heat of the hot springs. But suddenly it is broken by a muffled yelling.
From inside the estate, a familiar voice pierces the air.
“POPS!” The sound of Inosuke’s voice grows louder as he wanders closer, “POPS A CROW CAME! COME ‘ERE BEFORE I DRAG YOUR NAKED ASS BACK INSIDE MYSELF!”
Eyes peeling open, Hakuji groans, “You need to tell him to stop calling me that.”
Douma chuckles as he sits back up, “He’s your tsuguko.”
Hakuji purses his lips, “He’s your son.”
The smile Douma flashes him in response is melancholy, but he simply stretches and sighs, “I’ll take care of it, you rest up.”
And normally Hakuji would resist allowing someone else to take his duties, but he truly had been overworking himself, and dealing with Inosuke’s wild energy is the last thing he wants to do right now. Don’t get him wrong, he loves the kid, Inosuke can sometimes be a bit… much. And he’s not ready to give up the peaceful silence that surrounds the night just yet.
Besides, his friend isn’t above chaining him to a bed to get him to relax, and he doesn’t feel like poking that bear right now.
So he lets Douma bid him goodbye without arguing and watches the sway of wet silver hair cascade down a muscular back as the ice pillar leaves.
When the door to the estate slides shut and Douma’s calls for his son fade as he walks deeper into it, Hakuji slides his eyes closed once again and lets out a huff.
And counts down.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two–
“I thought he’d never leave!”
Yup. There it is.
Rengoku’s voice is filled to the brim with faux cheer and overflowing with a wicked fire. It comes from above and behind Hakuji.
He doesn’t deign to open his eyes. “I’m trying to have some peace and quiet,” Hakuji says with a frown and no small amount of irritation.
“Oh, Hakuji,” The demon sighs, “You should have thought about that before you let that human touch all over you.”
The wording makes him scowl, and Hakuji’s gaze finally peels open. He tilts his head back, looking up and back enough to see Rengoku’s summer sun eyes peering down at him. The demon is leaning over him, staring down from where he is crouched on the rock at Hakuji’s back.
Lips peel open in a grin, revealing sharp fangs. Red hair cascades over Rengoku’s shoulders, “You reek of that thing!”
His scowl deepens, “Douma’s not a ‘thing’. He’s my friend.”
And Rengoku’s smile twitches.
He stands to his full height, towering even more over Hakuji.
And begins to disrobe.
That makes Hakuji startle back. He stands and turns around to glare at the demon with his arms crossed and frown firmly affixed in place. It’s not surprising in the least that Rengoku intends to join him in the hot springs. But still, the sheer audacity makes the irritation flare into something close to anger.
Rengoku does not wear much. His torso is always bare and only hakama covers his lower half. He slips out of them easily, revealing strong, shapely thighs that no doubt benefit him well for his power based combat style.
The action of undressing brings a furious heat to Hakuji’s face and he looks away and tenses his shoulders. He refuses to think about why, refuses to entertain or interrogate anything he feels about the upper moon before him.
Before he knows it, a splash sounds and the raging heat of another body closes in on him. Hakuji’s gaze snaps back to the demon, unamused as Rengoku stops far too close to him, wet and naked.
The demon’s smile is gone, and in his eyes is a fevered hellfire that makes an animal wariness rise in Hakuji.
Makes a gut curling heat rise even further still.
“Courting a human is troublesome,” Rengoku says, “We demons have an understanding of who we belong to,” And his presence flares, all fire and brimstone, “And who belongs to us. But not humans! Humans don’t understand in the slightest.”
“I don’t belong to you,” Hakuji snaps.
“Yes you do,” Rengoku steps forward, crowding him, making him itch to move backwards. But Hakuji stands his ground, “Was it not I who saved you from death time and time again? Is it not I who spares you and your Winter Estate? Am I not the one who gives you reasons to live? What does that human do that I do not? How does that human hold a higher stake in your heart than I?”
“He doesn’t eat people,” Hakuji growls.
“I only eat those who are unworthy!”
That elicits an eyeroll. “You can’t decide that.”
“I can and I do.”
“That’s why I don’t like y–” Hakuji’s words are cut away as lips crash into him.
Rengoku kisses him like a drowning man gasping for air, like a vengeful spirit cleansing the unholy. He kisses Hakuji like he wants to devour him, body and soul.
He kisses like the demon he is.
Hakuji stiffens at the sudden intensity of it all. His mind blanks and heat blares through every inch of him. A tongue laps at the crease of his mouth and arms wrap tight around his waist, dragging him into Rengoku’s hot, bare flesh.
Skin meets skin, wet with steam and water, and the sensation is enough to drag a gasp from his lungs.
Rengoku takes advantage of the way his lips part, slipping his tongue into his mouth. The appendage is hot and smooth, plundering every inch of Hakuji with a ravenous desire. There is only hunger and fire in Rengoku’s being, surrounding Hakuji like smoke and ash, bleeding into his lungs and his pores and seeping into every bit of flesh and bone and organ that makes up Hakuji.
Hakuji doesn’t think, doesn’t do anything. His mind is empty and his body is still as Rengoku takes and takes and takes with the voracity of a God of the feast.
A large hand wanders down the span of his back, until it reaches his ass and dips between his legs and grazes his most sensitive parts.
Like a splash of cold water, the touch shocks Hakuji back to life.
Rengoku is kissing him.
Rengoku is kissing him in the middle of the hot springs in the Winter Estate.
With a surge of strength, Hakuji brings his arms up and shoves Rengoku away from him. Caught off guard, the demon stumbles backwards a few steps and their bodies disengage.
Wide, sun bright eyes meet his, the kanji on them is muddied and dark. Rengoku’s chest heaves as he stands there, shocked.
And Hakuji… Hakuji doesn’t fare much better. Suddenly out of breath, his own lungs rise and fall violently. His lips tingle and his skin shivers with the immediate cold that replaced Rengoku’s body.
He aches.
“Don’t touch me,” Hakuji snarls through his teeth, breath labored and face heated.
And Rengoku stares, eyes dark with an obvious want and talon sharp hands still partially outstretched. Silence stretches over the night, delicate as a butterfly’s wings.
For too many moments, they stand in a tightrope taut impasse. Hakuji’s heart thunders in his chest, pounding against his ribcage and screaming in his ears.
Then Rengoku straightens. His arms cross over his chest and his mouth thins into a frown, “Very well,” He says, “I won’t.”
He steps forwards again. Hakuji’s lips peel off a sharp incisor in warning, Rengoku’s eyes flash, but it does not deter him.
“But one day I will get my due,” He says, low and fevered, “I’ll show you who you belong to with more than my words.”
Hakuji’s heart trips on itself. It’s as clear of a declaration of intent as any. A promise, a warning.
“No you won’t,” Hakuji says, his fists curling even as his body sings with a want he refuses to acknowledge, “I won’t let you.”
“Oh, but you will!” And that frown slowly peels away into the same adoring, mad smile Hakuji knows so well, “I can smell it, your desire. You hold back now, but I will peel away what restrains you.” He moves forward again, one step, and then another, “And then I will fuck you good and raw.”
His teeth dig into his bottom lip and the drums in his chest sing louder. His breathing does not even out. But Hakuji does not back away, he will never back away from this demon.
“No.” It does not sound nearly as firm as he intended.
Rengoku continues, undeterred. He closes the last bit of steps between them until he is only breaths away from Hakuji, “Yes,” He murmurs, eyes lazing into half moons, dark and ravenous. And then he speaks in a voice sinful and quiet, a lover’s promise, “I’ll map out every inch of your body with my mouth and hands, fuck you with my tongue over and over until you’ve cum so many times that you can’t stand it.”
And Hakuji can imagine it, can picture and feel every one of Rengoku’s promises. Something beastly and gluttonous in him wants.
With a great effort, he clamps it down.
The temperature in the air and the water slowly rises around them. Steam rises about and coats Hakuji’s lungs in its thickness. If he touched Rengoku now, would he burn?
The demon leans down from his great height, until his mouth hovers next to Hakuji’s ear, not touching, never touching. “And when you’re crying from how good you feel, only then will I stop. Just so that I can sink my fingers into you and fuck you that way, until your hole is drooling for my cock.”
Hakuji sucks in a deep breath. His face is on fire, his body burning alive. He doesn’t dare look at the large body before him, instead focusing on the rocks that line the springs and the wall of the Estate.
“Oh Hakuji,” Rengoku purrs into his ear, adoration coating his voice, “You’re so beautiful, you’ll look like a god incarnate when you’re lost in pleasure. You smell so good, I want to taste every inch of you. I want to lick off every droplet on your skin right now.”
“I…” Hakuji’s mouth works around half formed words, but his mind lags and his tongue lays heavy and leaden against his teeth.
“I won’t touch you, not unless you tell me to, but I want to. I want to so bad. I would tear down the stars for you – gift you the moon and walk into the sun for you. Say the word and I will worship you.”
And that… That is so much. Hakuji does not know what to say. He has never been on the receiving end of such words. They muddle his mind and turn his brain into something cottony and warm. It makes his blood pulse hot under his skin and his body ache with need.
Drums beat inside of him and his breathing remains a stuttering, heaving thing. He feels hot, wild, thick as syrup and just as sickeningly sweet. He closes his eyes.
“Touch yourself,” Rengoku whispers. “You need it, don’t you? I can practically taste it.”
What is happening?
Hakuji is lost, wandering some vast unknown. He is on fire, he is more alive than he has ever been. And like a man possessed, for no reason he can fathom, his body obeys Rengoku.
Swimming in cotton and honey, his mind does not object. Instead, under the water, his hand traces down his abdomen and his fingers slide between his legs. They find his enlarged clit easily and begin to rub slow circles over it.
The sensation is immediate, hot and electric. It pulls a tremble from his legs and a noise, soft in his throat and quiet in the air, from his tongue.
Rengoku sucks in a shaky breath, “That’s it,” He croons, “That’s a good boy.”
The words shoot a thrill of heat through Hakuji, and he clenches on nothing. Warmth pools low in his gut like liquid gold.
Hakuji stumbles backwards, legs shaky, until his back hits a nearby outcropping of rock. Rengoku follows step for step, looming over him and so, so close. Never touching.
Distantly, he registers hands planting themselves on the rock on either side of his shoulders, caging him in. The act should alarm Hakuji, but it simply makes him burn all the more.
“I’ll fuck you so good, Hakuji,” Rengoku breathes, his head dipping into the crook of his neck, dipping in the air but never making contact. His breaths are hot and ragged and only spur Hakuji to pick up the pace of his rubbing, “Fill you up with my cock, slow at first, so that you squirm and beg for more. And then faster and harder. You’ll be able to take it, won’t you? You’re so strong, I know you’ll be able to take me without breaking.”
“Yeah,” Hakuji murmurs without thinking. He is strong, some distant and preening part of him thinks. He doesn’t like it when people treat him like he’s delicate, the way Douma and Michikatsu do, like he’s precious. He wasn’t made for that.
If anyone can take an upper moon’s cock, it’s Hakuji.
“Harder,” Rengoku says, “Touch yourself harder and faster, I want to hear you. You can take it, I know you can.”
And for some unknown reason, Hakuji obeys. Hot pleasure skitters down his legs and wracks his body with the sheer sensation. A broken shout escapes his lungs and his free hand clambers against the rock for support.
And even though not an inch of them touch, Hakuji can feel Rengoku all around him, in the steam and in the scent of ash and woodsmoke and copper. He can feel his demonic presence wrapped around him like a cocoon, tight and unrelenting. And it drives Hakuji higher and higher, madder and madder with whatever has consumed him.
It makes the electric bliss rise faster and hotter, spooling like magma within him and skittering across his skin like a thousand stars.
“So beautiful, so good, Hakuji,” Rengoku murmurs, as senseless and breathless as him, “You smell so good, I want to devour you whole.You’re mine.” A great cracking splits the air behind him, but Hakuji hardly notices – because Rengoku’s voice tilts into something growling and inhuman and thoroughly intoxicating. He lifts his head to Hakuji’s ear again, “Mine, all mine. My pretty little human to fuck and to breed.”
The words should be alarming, but they only serve as kindling to the strange fire that burns within Hakuji. He clenches on nothing and moans out long and low and writhes against the feel of everything. Of the harsh circles being rubbed into his clit and the sense of Rengoku in every crevice of his being, and the steam in his lungs and the heat of the water, and the breath on his ear.
Rengoku continues to growl possessive nothings, but the words don’t register. Hakuji is too far gone, the bliss too wild of a thing within him. The rock scrapes at his back and his eyes screw even further shut as his brows arch and his mouth hangs open.
He’s so empty, but so close. He needs and needs and needs. His hand speeds up, rubbing fast and hard and punishing. Rengoku’s voice carries him higher and higher, closer and closer.
“Are you close?” The voice comes back into focus.
Hakuji nods.
“Cum for me, my darling Hakuji, you can do it,” Rengoku murmurs, soft and crooning, “You’re such a good boy, I know you can do it.”
You’re such a good boy.
The words send him tumbling over the edge. Hakuji cums with a sharp keen. Electric euphoria arches over his body in pulsing waves. Stars flash across his vision and everything goes white. His back arcs and his head tosses back, thudding against the rock with a dull ache. It’s bliss. For a few seconds, all he knows is the pleasure coursing through him.
And then he comes crashing down.
The pleasure fades as quickly as it came and suddenly he is aware of himself. Aware of Rengoku’s presence surrounding him and the heat all about, the water they stand in and the rock at his back.
And a great and terrible aching between his legs. He feels so empty.
Slowly, Hakuji’s eyes peel open. At first, he sees the night sky, and then the walls of the estate. And then his gaze focuses on what’s in front of him.
Rengoku stares down at him, body caging him in. His eyes are fever bright and his smile is gone and the kanji in his eyes are consumed by pools of wide, black pupils. On his face is an expression of pure hunger.
He looks at Hakuji as though he is a feast to be devoured, as though he is a sacrificial offering on an altar, as though he is a god to be worshiped. He looks at Hakuji as though Hakuji is everything.
The ache grows.
Never has Hakuji wanted something, wanted someone in the dark and ravenous way he wants this monstrous being before him.
The thought scares him.
But the cotton and thickness remain and his mind is still not quite right. And all thoughts as to why this is a bad idea are gone.
And slowly, Rengoku’s mouth splits into a smile.
“Good boy,” He praises.
Hakuji shivers.
“I’ll be back for you, my darling Hakuji,” The demon lowers his arms and steps back, and Hakuji immediately misses it, “I’ll have you for myself soon enough.”
With that, the demon turns around and walks to the other rock that Hakuji had been leaning on before Rengoku came. He hoists himself out of the hot springs, collects his discarded items, and with one last glance back, upper moon three darts away.