The Right One

Title: The Right One
Author: tsutsuji
Rating: NC17
Warnings: blood (as per the prompt), violence, dub-con
Written for Springkink Round VIII, Slayers, Xelloss/Zelgadis: Blood (fetishization of wounds; blood-play; blood as lube; vampirism) - "Anger and agony are better than misery"
Word count: 1877
Summary: Pretty much as the prompt says. Set during Evo-R (so, some spoilers)
A/N: Seemed like the obvious thing to do with the prompt...

~~

Xelloss could have watched and gathered all he needed to know from the invisible shelter of astral space, but the chimera's scream of pure, beautiful agony brought him out of hiding before he even realized what he was doing. Still, hovering in the sky, shielded from their notice, Xelloss would have simply continued to observe and follow Lina and the others as the drama unfolded, until his questions about Rezo's Jar were finally answered.

But then the enchanted prince of Taforashia suddenly flew up and attacked Zelgadis with his replica Sword of Light - only a model of the real Sword, but still powerful enough to slice through stone skin, as it turned out. Zelgadis didn't even seem to notice, and Pokota was only interested in grabbing the Jar before it smashed into the sea. He left Zelgadis hanging there in the air, empty handed, staring after him. Even as the intoxicating wave of the chimera's pain and agony swept over Xelloss, he sensed the first crystallizing shards of numb horror starting to creep in.

With such a tantalizing feast ready to slip away before he could devour it, Xelloss simply couldn't resist any longer.

...

Zel watches Pokota fly off into the dark night sky, his mind still reeling, eyes blurry and throat raw. Still furious and confused and hurting, tasting blood, he finds it's become hard to concentrate on his flight spell, and he's uncertain of where the others are. The moon suddenly goes dark, or his vision does, he's not sure which. Next thing he knows he's falling like a stone, like a cannonball, and smashes into the ground, painfully.

"I should thank Rezo for making your pain so bright and perfect, if I finally get the chance to meet him," he hears Xelloss say.

He opens his eyes to see Xelloss standing over him. The sky above him is strange, the stars seem smaller and farther away, and they seem to moving of their own accord... either he's hallucinating, or Xelloss has pulled him into some warped dimension.

Before he can move, still aching from the impact, Xelloss drops down to straddle him, sitting on his hips with his knees nudged up under Zel's arms, and the end of his staff tucked into the angle between his neck and left shoulder.

He leans forward and touches the corner of Zel's lips, where a trickle of blood is drying, with bare fingers, then takes hold of his chin and bends down to lap at it.

Zelgadis shudders and tries to push him off, but he discovers he's hurt more than he realized. He must have been thrown here, hard, by Xelloss; simply falling wouldn't have hurt his body this much. When he winces, Xelloss sighs a happy little sigh.

"It's always been a challenge for me to resist you and your pain, Zel-san," Xelloss says. "After what just happened, I really can't hold myself back any longer! But I might be able to give you something in return...at the very least, a different kind of misery. As long as it's you, either one is just as exciting for me..."

Zel gadis tries to struggle up and get away from him. Xelloss' mention of what just happened reminds him that he still has get back to the jar and the others.

"Do you still want to destroy it? Vanquish Rezo's soul to oblivion?" Xelloss chides, holding him down with the weight of his body, and the end of his staff pressed painfully against his shoulder. "Do you really think that will soothe the pain of your shattered dream?"

"Shut up!" Zelgadis screams at him; his throat is raw, and he spits blood onto Xelloss' hand. Xelloss looks at it, his eyes closing in bliss.

"Your anger tastes wonderful - please, do give me more of it ! But I want it to be all for me, so let me make you forget your misery with a gift of pain, Zel-san..."

Zel stares up at him, hardly comprehending what he's saying and yet on some level, waiting for it. As if he's been waiting for this, all of this, to come crashing down on him, ever since he first met Xelloss - or even longer.

Xelloss twists the end of his staff into Zel's shoulder, and the pain there blazes white-hot. He reaches for it and is surprised to find it wet. For a moment, he thinks he's dreaming, or that Xelloss has somehow evoked the the injury that made him so determined to grow stronger, as if he drew it out of his memory and made it real again. Then he realizes that Pokota's sword must have cut him. He didn't even realize it until now.

He glares up at Xelloss, breathing hard, but so much more present now than he's been for the last few hours, his mind and vision crystal clear, lifted out of the haze of fury he's been in since he stole the Jar and confronted Rezo's spirit. Xelloss smiles as he sees Zelgadis realize this.

"I won't even make you say you want it," Xelloss says.

Then he lunges down onto him, grabs his uninjured arm by the wrist and pins it to the ground near his head. He pulls Zel's other arm, fingers digging like claws into his bicep even through his stone-armored skin, to twist his wounded shoulder. When Zel screams, Xelloss moans and nuzzles the wound, prodding and tugging at it with his teeth. And all the while, Zel pants and tries not to scream again, knowing he will... and at the same time, gradually he realizes that Xelloss is moving on top of him, stimulating him, starting to arouse his body in spite of himself, in spite of the pain, in spite of the fact that it's Xelloss.

He wiggles underneath Xelloss, tries to squirm and shift his legs to dislodge him. The pain, he accepts, but the arousal...he doesn't want that.

Xelloss raises his head, and laps Zel's blood from his lips in a slow, sensual motion. Zelgadis stares at him, his struggles frozen as he watches, but, strangely, not with horror. Then after a second, he remembers why he was struggling. He grunts angrily and shifts again. Xelloss lets go of his injured arm but grabs the back of his head instead and leans down over him. He lifts bloody fingers to Zel's lips, the gesture and the touch obviously erotic.

"Ah, you only want the pain? Trust me, Zel-san, you'll thank me for this later... and, believe it or not, making you enjoy what I'm giving you makes it better for me!"

And then he's kissing Zel, holding him by the chin, his tongue hot and strange with the taste of astral magic and of Zel's own blood. Whimpering, Zel can barely keep himself from kissing back, especially when Xelloss keeps rocking on top of him, even when Xelloss bites his lip and he tastes blood again....

And then he decides that it doesn't matter if his body reacts to this, because it's Xelloss, and it has nothing to do with the lie that is love.

So when Xelloss pulls his clothes off - wrenching his shoulder again to yank tunic and shirt off , and clawing at his back and thighs to pull off everything else - he doesn't fight it, and he doesn't hold back his screams and whimpers. When Xelloss rolls him over, twists his arm back and bites down hard on the wound and scrabbles at it, he lets himself scream into the dirt - and then when Xelloss pushes his fingers into Zel's mouth, tasting of his own fresh blood, he doesn't resist, and sucks on them until they're dripping.

Xelloss removes his hand and spreads Zel's legs, and shoves wet fingers inside of him, and it still burns, but he only groans into the pain, letting it in. By the time Xelloss enters him, sticky-wet and hard and fast, he can hardly breathe from the pain of it, but as Xelloss begins to move and reaches around to bring him hard again, he's not sure he can tell pain from arousal any longer.

Xelloss fucks him, groaning into his ear, for what seems like a long time - twisting his hips to stimulate him inside, clawing at his shoulder to make it burn again - and Zelgadis begins to feel like time has stopped, or never was at all. Rezo's betrayal is as distant as the darkness beyond the stars, and nothing exists for him but Xelloss and pain and the fire building up inside his body.

Xelloss makes him come, gasping - he no longer has the breath to scream by then - and then groans against the back of his neck in utter bliss, and finally goes still. They stay that way for a long moment, Zelgadis on elbows and knees on the ground, and Xelloss draped heavily over his back, neither of them moving except for Zelgadis panting.

Finally, Xelloss pulls out and pulls back. Zelgadis hangs on shaky arms and knees for a moment, uncertain whether to flee or merely collapse. Before he can decide, Xelloss pulls him over onto his back on the ground, and lies down along side him, raised up on one arm to look down at him.

Zelgadis just blinks up at him, speechless. He's not even confused or surprised anymore - but he is not numb and empty, either. He expected to feel hopeless, or dead inside, but he doesn't.

He realizes that there's normal moonlight and starlight above them now, ordinary night shadows around them. Wherever Xelloss had taken him to, they are back in normal space and time again now. He can smell water and grass. He turns his head and sees his clothes and his sword lying in a heap nearby.

Everything in his body hurts, and feels alive.

Xelloss looks down at him, a sated smile on his shadowy face. No hint of blood on his lips or hands now, or on the clothes that have suddenly reappeared to cover him. He turns away for a moment, as if listening for something.

"Lina-san and the others will be in Taforashia soon," he says. "Except for Gourry-san, of course; he'll need some help to catch up, but at least he's heading in the right direction for once!"

"What..." Zel starts to ask, then "Why...." But he doesn't even finish.

Xelloss looks down at him again, and leans a little closer.

"Remember, Zelgadis-san, even Red Priest Rezo may not know everything there is to know in this world. After all, he is... only human."

Zelgadis just stares up at him, unable to believe that Xelloss, of all people, is offering him hope - but if it isn't exactly hope he feels now, it is something more like it than what he felt before. Something less like blinding hate and agony, and more like life.

Xelloss watches him - expectantly, it seems, until Zelgadis starts to wonder if there is not some other message in his words, some other unfathomable reason that the mazoku brought him here and did this to him.

He stares up at him and doesn't ask, until finally Xelloss dissolves into a swirl of black and disappears.

...
the end
...