Communion

Muraki carried an armful of dark red roses into his spare bedroom. The walls were white. A large wooden box sat atop a pentagram in the center of the room. He knelt before it and set the flowers aside. He drew a silver knife from his pocket and carved a poem around the sides in flowing demonic script. He slashed one palm.

"I offer up my blood to protect the one I love." He smeared blood onto the box. "I offer ashes from a patriarch." He drew a pouch from one pocket and opened it. He scooped out his grandfather's ashes with his cut hand and spread them across the poem. He wept bitterly. He had stolen grandfather's body earlier in the week and cremated it in the hospital‘s incinerator. Muraki Yukitaka had been a monster to many, but was always kind to his grandson. Muraki leaned over the box and let his tears splash onto the cover. "I offer you my pain to take his away." He rubbed handfuls of roses over the box, letting the thorns cut into his flesh. Soon the vessel was mottled and stained red. He bent his head to the box and licked a pentagram onto the cover. He leaned back with a satisfied smile as both pentagram and poem glowed gold. "Now to deliver my present."

He placed both hands on the box and chanted. Flames licked at his body, but left him unhurt. He and the box disappeared. He looked around at his new surroundings. He was kneeling in front of the box as before, but now he was in a field at dusk. He stood and cocked his head. His bangs fell away from his demonic eye. He could feel his lover coming to him. He smiled.

A dark haired boy came into view, running towards him. He was fifteen and coltish. He wore a purple shirt and cuffed denim shorts barely covered his slim thighs. Tears fell from his large violet eyes. Tsuzuki. He reached Muraki.

"Don't cry, Asato-kun." He wiped away the boy's tears with a careful thumb. "I won't hurt you."

"Are you taking me to Hell, shinigami-san?" Tsuzuki asked.

"Never, and I'm not a shinigami. I'm like you."

The boy shook his head. "I'm not human. I'm a monster, a demon. The other boys hurt me and I killed everybody. I couldn't stop."

He started crying again. Muraki held him gently and pressed a kiss to the boy's hair. He preferred the Tsuzuki he fought with and fucked, but this version was so pleasant.

"Shh, you didn't mean to." He soothed. "You lost control of your powers, because no one taught you how to use them. Some humans think demons are bad, because they don't understand us."

"You're a demon?" Tsuzuki mumbled against his chest.

Muraki nodded. "Yes. You remind me of someone I know. He's a demon and has good friends who love him."

"Really?" Tsuzuki stepped back and looked up at Muraki.

"I cross my heart." Muraki solemnly drew an "x" on his chest. He put his arms back around the boy. "Let's go."

He transported them (and the box) to a happier dream, a garden where dark red roses grew around archways and over trellises. Blue and purple hydrangeas bloomed on large bushes. Free of his nightmarish past, Tsuzuki was restored to his modern self, wrinkled suit and all. He remembered his life and the man holding him. Somehow, he knew that this was the real Muraki and not a dream.

“I prefer your other outfit.” Muraki said.

“I was fifteen.” Tsuzuki glared.

“What’s your point?”

Tsuzuki opened his mouth, but before he could respond, Muraki kissed him. His lover’s mouth was warm and wet. He withdrew.

"I never meant for our truce to continue." Tsuzuki said and sat on the grass. "This is crazy."

Muraki buried his face in a vivid purple hydrangea and inhaled its sweetness. He turned to his lover with a smile.

"Did you honestly think I'd want you less after I'd had you?" He asked. "Besides, I brought you presents."

"This isn't real."

"Then it doesn't matter if I do this." He began unbuttoning his own shirt. "It's freeing to be naked outdoors, ne?"

"I'm not joining you." Tsuzuki said. "I just want answers."

"To what questions?" Muraki tugged his shirt from his slacks and set it aside.

"Why are you in my dream?"

Muraki opened his slacks and pushed them down, revealing his half-hard cock. He stepped out of the pooled fabric.

"Perhaps it's my dream." He sat on the ground behind Tsuzuki and rubbed his face against the clothed bite. "You could just be a figment of my sleeping mind."

"I suspect if this were your dream, we'd be fucking by now."

Muraki kissed Tsuzuki's neck and deftly unbuttoned his shirt from behind. He eased the fabric away from his lover's sun warmed flesh. He admired the scar.

"The box on the ground there is my gift to you. As long as you have it, you'll be safe from psychic attacks, nightmares, and various mystical annoyances."

"Is it strong enough to keep you away?" Tsuzuki laid his head on Muraki's shoulder and looked up at him.

"I'm not going anywhere." Muraki kissed Tsuzuki. "Can you read demonic script?"

The shinigami shook his head. "Very little."

"Learn; I wrote you a poem."

"You could just tell me."

"It's lovelier in the original." Muraki said. He murmured the poem into his lover's ear. What little Tsuzuki understood made him blush. "I would fuck you now, but we're both pressed for time."

"What are you up to now?" The shinigami demanded.

"I have to get ready for work soon, Asato. My apartment doesn't pay for itself."

Tsuzuki hmphed, but allowed Muraki to pull him into his lap.

"I have another gift for you."

"Yeah, I can feel it." Tsuzuki said wryly. "I thought we didn't have time."

"How crude you're becoming." Muraki chuckled. "My present is entirely practical." He grabbed his trousers and withdrew a small package. He set it in Tsuzuki's lap.

"I let you curse me and put a satanic box in my head, but I think I'd be pressing my luck if I accepted anything else from you."

Muraki opened the package himself, and showed the gift to Tsuzuki. It was a designer Seiko with a fabric band and a yellow face. He fastened it around his lover's right wrist.

"You needed a new watch." He said. "It's waterproof to depths of two hundred meters. "It'll be there when you wake up, which I fear will be all too soon."

"Thank you."

“You're welcome. I have a piece of information for you, and I do hope that you’ll be suitably grateful.”

“Try me.” Tsuzuki gritted out.

“I couldn’t leave evidence behind of my dealings, so you’ll probably want to inform the Ministry that the Queen Camellia is about to sink.”

“What?” Tsuzuki wrenched himself from Muraki‘s grasp, but his lover caught him easily and forced him to the ground on his back beneath him. “How can you murder innocents for your own gain?”

Muraki licked his lover's chest.

“I would never kill again if it would make you stay with me.” He murmured. “You taste delicious, Asato.”

“Let me go; I have to warn them.”

“Then wake up.”

AN: Please take a moment to review and/or rate chapter one of "Communion."

AN2: If you would like to see the watch that Tsuzuki's is based on, you can see it here: http://www.seikousa.com/Product.aspx?productId=116