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Douma knows as soon as the boar mask is in his hands that the head is fake. He’d been almost relishing the idea of tearing the head off of a creature even stranger than a demon, but alas. Just a regular human. Although ‘regular’ wasn’t exactly the best word choice.
Not when the human underneath is revealed to be jaw-droppingly gorgeous. “Hey! Give that back!” The voice attached to it is jarring, though, totally at odds with the face, and Douma holds up the mask almost in surprise.
“Ah, so you are human. You are one…odd creature.”
The person is angry, terribly so. “Get your damn hands off my fur!”
Douma tilts the boar head towards him, laughing. There is something familiar about his face, something nagging at him. “...I’ve met you before, haven’t I?”
“I think I’d remember meeting a maggot like you!” The human brandishes a sword at him. Oh, the gorgeous stranger was quite mad.
“No, no, I have met you before….ah. One moment.” It always took him a while to shake out the memories, especially ones that had made him so uncomfortable he’d had to bury them. Douma had done something mildly regrettable, after all. Sometimes it took a little bit of effort, a bit of…scratching at his brain.
Without fanfare, Douma’s index finger bores through the bone at his temple, crunching through the meat of his meninges and into his grey matter. He hits the ocular nerve, and red fills one eye. It was always tricky to find the right part of his brain that hid those pesky hidden memories. He hits a lot of stuff, actually, but after a moment he sees her, her image flitting across his vision like a pretty songbird. His pretty songbird, who had flown away from him. “I knew you…and your mother.”
The gorgeous person grits his teeth, and even that is somehow attractive. “I don’t have a mother! I was raised by boars!”
Douma laughs, tugging his finger out just a little. “A boar gave birth to you? No…” The red in his vision starts to clear, already healing from the catastrophic damage he’d caused it. “...no, your mother was a jewel of a human. And you…” He can’t even contain his giddiness, smiling widely at the human in front of him. “Who knew you would be just as lovely? It’s like my pretty songbird has come back to me!”
It seems to make the human startle, Douma’s exuberance and excitement. It was understandable, really, considering a demon’s joy was usually a humans’ downfall. But this could be different. “You probably don’t remember, do you? Ahh, but you were so small…your mother, Kotoha, came to me, broken and beaten, and I healed her, and gave her refuge. I saved her! And when your father followed- the brute who beat her, and his mother, the one who encouraged it- I killed them both!” The human in front of him looks shocked. He was probably stunned to silence by Douma’s charitability. The cult leader was such an upstanding person, after all, it was hard to compare him to anyone else. “I didn’t even eat them. I just left them in the woods behind the temple. I don’t know what became of them. Ahh, but your mother…to spare her the pain, I never told her. She was so simple, after all, it might have broken her again! And I couldn’t have that.” Kotoha’s son had started shaking in front of him, probably overcome by gratefulness. The boy could save his adulation for the end of this tale, though.
“My pretty songbird…she was always singing to you, you know. No two songs were ever the same, but the core of what she sang was always a pinky promise song. Pinky promise, pinky promise…Over and over, to your absolute delight.” The stunned look on the face in front of him is so divine, so gorgeous. It reminds Douma a little of the night he lost her. “Oh, but she found out I was eating my worshippers. The abuse she hurled at me! Nothing I said would change her mind to keep her from leaving, and she took you and ran. Oh, my poor, stupid Kotoha. If she had left well enough alone, I would have kept her at my side forever. She was that beautiful. And now…you’ve come back to me, my pretty songbird.” This was a true miracle, a divine act that might even make him believe in a god, bringing him back the beautiful face he’d missed so much he’d buried the memory of her altogether to spare himself the pain.
In a quiet, trembling voice, the human asks “What did you do to my mother?”
Douma cocks his head. “Hmm? Oh! No, don’t worry, my lovely, nothing bad! I ate her!”
The human flinches as if struck, his mouth open. What was his name again? Kotoha had sung it over and over…Douma hadn’t paid much attention, focused more on her lovely face, and the ease that it brought to his worshippers. They’d been so much easier to eat after she’d come to him.
“You…ate my mother.”
“Yes…and now she lives inside of me, forever, safe and sound. And you…” He scratches at the inside of his brain, digging for the name. Just what was his name?
It comes to him right after Douma hits something in his brain that makes his whole body twitch. “...Inosuke? That’s your name, right? You can come live by my side, safe and sound too.” Human teeth grit together in a wild grimace in front of him, ruining the beautiful expression he’d had before. If Douma kept this one, he would probably have to do something to its brain to get it to be…docile.
The sword brandished at him hadn’t trembled before this, but this time it does just a little as Inosuke growls out “Keep my name out of your filthy mouth, you disgusting creature. You ate my mother? How would I ever be safe with a fucking demon like you? You’re insane.”
The giddy feeling inside of Douma had withered almost to nothing. This was no pretty songbird, though he still had the potential to be. “Oh, but I would never hurt you! If you wanted to live by my side, you would always be under my protection! No one would ever be able to touch you, I’m quite strong after all!” He yanks his finger out of the inside of his brain, the spray of blood following it making the two humans in front of him flinch. He flexes one arm, showing off his muscle.
He’s not actually sure that sort of thing would work on a human who was already so muscular, and he’s right when Inosuke lets out a wild yell, charging at him. “Who gives a shit?! I’m stronger than you! Go to hell!”
Douma is starting to get annoyed, dodging the charge and moving to the other side of the atrium, fast enough that he’s able to rip the deer skin from Inosuke’s hips without him realizing right away.
When Inosuke notices and realizes his deer skin is gone, he startles, looking around for the demon and flinching at the sight of it dangling from bloody fingers. “Hey!” He turns around, looking even angrier.
Douma sighs, looking at the sad thing in his hand, feeling a little upset. Inosuke was just as stupid as his mother. “Don’t you know, lovely? There is no hell, it’s just a fairytale stupid humans tell themselves so they can feel better about the terrible things that happen to them.” He drops the deer skin in the same spot he’d dropped the boar head mask, curling his lip at the sad little things.
He’s not expecting a sword to be thrown in his direction, so fast he takes it in the shoulder. The roar from beautiful Inosuke is startling in its ferocity. “If there ain’t a hell, I’ll goddamn make one! I’ll kill you, motherfucker!”
Douma grabs for the sword in his shoulder by the wrapped hilt, feeling sad about how beat up the swords are. His lovely songbird had come back to him in such a brutish form, and so wild and untamed. But he could fix that. Inosuke comes screaming at him, one sword aimed right for his neck.
Douma tosses the sword aside and summons ice chains, hoping to catch him. The humans’ instinct is so sharp though, Inosuke manages to dodge each one, ice crunching through the wooden planks of the decking as the frozen links chase his movements, mere milliseconds slower than the humans’ harried leaps backwards. Douma reaches a point where he realizes the gesture is futile, and he withdraws from his attempt at capturing the beautiful man, chains ascending up into the ceiling. It does make the human back off though, staring at him angrily from across the atrium, panting through his teeth.
Douma sighs. He had hoped he could talk Inosuke into joining him, but the anger broiling in the humans’ veins seems to be too thick for words to reach him. Douma still wants to try though, the beauty of this man and his mother a once-in-a-lifetime experience that Douma wants to keep around as long as he can. Even if he had to do it by force. He switches tactics, to something tried and true that made most lost things from the woods falter in their convictions. “You actually did grow up in the woods, didn’t you? You poor thing. I bet it was lonely, hm? And I bet you were hungry…if you come live with me, you’ll never be hungry again! I can make it so you have the finest food, forever.”
“Inosuke, don’t listen to him!” the girl who had been so upset about him eating Shinobu yells, maybe hoping to dissuade the boy from listening to him.
Oh, Douma really wants to kill this little gnat. He had forgotten about her. “You aren’t part of this conversation, it’s about what Inosuke wants, right my lovely?”
In lieu of words, Inosuke just screams at him again, rushing towards him with a malice that is a little startling in its intensity. How rude.
He smiles at the boy raised by boars, summoning more thick ice chains. If Inosuke wouldn’t come to him willingly, there were ways to keep him around regardless. He had made a mistake with Kotoha by killing her and not simply keeping her chained to his side, but he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He could cut the achilles tendons of the man trying to kill him, and keep him around for as long as he was entertaining, at least. His brutishness was a lot less attractive than the docile grace of his mother, as it was. Douma will have to remember which part of the brain he could scratch to make a human quiet and obedient.
The boy is quick, annoyingly so, but Douma knows he can get him to falter if he just says the right things. And then it will all be over, and he can go back to his temple near Tokyo. He had a few loose ends to tie up there after all; the amount of followers he’d eaten tonight wasn’t a number that could easily be explained as them simply running away. Inosuke didn’t seem used to being called beautiful, anyways, so that’s the angle Douma explores. It was the one he was most eager to try, anyways. The human really was stunning, and if he could charm Inosuke into coming with him, this would all be a lot easier. “No one appreciates your beauty like I do. You and your mother are diamonds in a sea of garbage, losing her was the worst mistake I have ever made.”
“You killed her!” Another swipe at his neck, wild with emotion. “Stop yammering on about nonsense when you’re the reason she’s gone!”
Douma strikes with an ice chain, only for Inosuke to dodge. It was starting to piss him off. His chains follow the quick steps of the boy, aiming for his ankles. Only for the girl to use her sword to cut the chains closer to where she stood, a good twelve feet of length falling uselessly into the water. Douma hums, something close to anger blooming in his chest. If it was just Inosuke, he could already be halfway to his temple with the boy in tow, but with the girl, he’s going to have to expend a lot more effort.
He tries another tactic. “You really don’t want to live with me? I’ll always be able to feed you, and you’ll never want for anything. You’ll have soft clothes, a soft bed, delicious food every day. I bet you didn’t have those things when you were growing up. I can make sure you’re always taken care of.”
“I don’t need it! You ain’t got anything I want, anyways!”
…Humans were so…stupid.
Douma smiles widely. Or at least Kotoha and her son were, anyways. They were so alike it was almost painful. “You really don’t want the best of the best of everything? My my, beauty but no brains…I would feel sad if I weren’t so enamored with your visage, dear.” He had to have this man, a pretty songbird he could keep, though this one he would keep in a cage this time. No more flying away.
Fast as he can, Douma gets himself in front of Inosuke. The boy flinches, too slow on the draw. All Douma does is brush his hair behind one ear before darting away again, watching in amusement as a sword swipes through the air where he’d been standing a second ago. Just that brief touch is electrifying, the soft skin of Inosuke’s face and the silkiness of his hair rapturous. A stray strand had wrapped around one of his fingers, and he winds it through the rest of his digits, entranced at the blue-black sheen of it. Bringing it to his nose, he sniffs at it, his eyes meeting Inosuke’s. The boy looks uncomfortable, but Douma was just starting. “You have gorgeous hair…how do you keep it so soft?”
A cracking sound makes its way to his ears, and Douma realizes that Inosuke is grinding his teeth so hard that at least one had cracked. “Oh, lovely, stop that! I can heal you, but I won’t have to if you stop clenching your jaw!”
Inosuke turns to the girl, pointing at Douma angrily. “What’s this guy doing? Can demons do evil spells and stuff with your hair, or what?”
The girl looks uncomfortable too. “No…I don’t know. He isn’t…” She seems to be thinking hard, like she is trying to draw a new strategy using this information.
Meanwhile, Douma’s gaze had wandered. Inosuke, shirtless as he was, was definitely experiencing effects from the cold of his ice techniques. “Ah! Your nipples are sticking right out! Don’t worry lovely, I can make it warm in here again! As soon as I kill the girl, I’ll warm you up! I can warm you in my embrace!”
Inosuke doesn’t seem to understand flirting at all, because he looks down at his own chest like he’s seeing his own nipples for the first time. “It’s not cold in here at all!”
Douma is very confused. It was cold enough in here for a normal human to start having trouble breathing, and for a lungful of frozen mist to kill lung tissue. He can see Inosuke is struggling, trying not to shiver. This man really was thick, in more ways than one. “Darling you don’t have to play coy, if you just let me kill the girl, I can warm you in my arms, and we can go to my temple where I have a very nice, very efficient brazier to heat my room, where of course you’ll be staying.”
Inosuke’s sword comes back out, leveled at his face. “I ain’t lettin’ you do nothin’, you fuckin’ creep. Except for die on my sword, that you can do.”
“Oh, so cruel! And after all I’ve offered you.” He summons an ice child, wanting to wear the pair of humans down so he can just get this over already.
Only for the thing to crumple, and his vision to swim. What?
A throbbing feeling very similar to the sensations from his previous battle, when Shinobu had wracked his body with poison more times than he could count, overwhelms him. Only this time, he does not feel the spike of healing chase the heels of the damage. It is an all-over burning spice, wracking his body with more pain than anything, and he tries to suck in a breath only to find his lungs are simply not functioning. Well then.
His eyes find the girl, his vision swimming, and he’s mildly surprised to see a smirk on her face. Oh. Wait. Was this…?
The butterfly girl. It makes sense now, why she had done nothing but dodge his attacks, had stood there silently for quite a while between said attacks. She hadn’t taken any of the bait he’d laid out either, and he’d applauded her stalwart warrior calm when instead, all she’d been doing was buying them time. Stalling, for precisely this moment.
Fuck.
He knows, when he sees his form start to disintegrate, that this would probably be what took him out. Dammit. Just when he’d reunited with Inosuke and the gorgeous face he’d been missing for nearly 15 years. Douma can’t stop the melting of his body, as much as he tries, but if he managed to crawl to some hidden corner somewhere, maybe he could metabolize the poison and keep it from fully destroying him.
He tries to do just that, but the butterfly girl cuts off his escape. He can barely raise a hand to stop her sword, so instead he summons more ice chains.
Inosuke follows her lead, rushing forward and cutting through ice chain after ice chain, swords aimed directly for Douma’s neck. If that got cut, it really would be all over. Still, Douma can’t help but appreciate the way Inosuke’s hair flutters in the wind from his headlong rush, the incandescent anger on his features bright and beautiful as tungsten lights. Douma wants to cup his face, hold it gently and croon sweet nothings to him, and he is so distracted by the thrill of that face coming nearer to him that he misses Inosuke nearly cutting his head off.
A sword swings close to his face, though Douma can barely see it through the haze of poison making him dizzy. He feels as it cuts across his eyes though, impossibly close for such a short swing.
Douma manages to fall back, seeing the way Inosuke’s arm had telescoped out in a kinked, fleshy whip. Was he actually a human, or what? Either way, it was impressive, and Douma laughs, coughing up blood. “My, my! You are a fun little bundle of surprises, aren’t you! So flexible! Of course you would be extraordinary, you’re Kotoha’s son, after all!”
Inosuke’s rage seems to overtake him again, and he swings wildly. “Keep her name out of your mouth!”
Douma sees his chance. Feeling himself melting further still, he realizes he can’t escape this. He is going to die. But oh, what a wonderful death it could be. Lurching forward, he ducks under the swing to step into Inosuke’s open stance. It makes the human flinch in shock, but he needn’t worry about dying. Killing the human would do no good, after all, considering there was no afterlife. They wouldn’t spend an eternity together, Douma would just fade into nothing. So he uses his last moments to do something he wished he could experience every day for the rest of this human’s short life.
Wrapping his arms around the boy, he buries his face between those supple pecs, nuzzling firmly and taking joy in the soft flesh surrounding him. He can feel himself literally melting into the embrace, and boy it just felt right. Inosuke seems almost too shocked to react, especially when he chokes out “Let me hold you, my pretty songbird, just for a little while, just for this moment.”
It felt good to be held by his biggest regret. Even if arms do not wrap around him. Or maybe they do, but Douma is so wracked with shudders from the poison, his skin sloughing off, that he doesn’t notice. Either way, it is bliss for him to have sensation leave him in this moment, the last thing he feels being the warmth of Inosuke’s bare chest. He’s not sure if happiness is what he would call the feeling, but it is surely close enough. His joy was hard won, and victory is his when he feels himself start to turn to ash, undisturbed. Ah, a true miracle, that. Not only to be rejoined with a beauty he’d lost so tragically, but to die in his arms.
He goes to hell feeling happiness instead of betrayal, of joy instead of rage. What a wonderful jewel of a thing to carry with him.