They have these little talks.
"You're going to join us, eventually."
"Because of my jealousy for my brother? Because of my desire for power?"
"Because they're going to betray you."
"So will you."
"Ahhh, but how can it be betrayal if you already don't trust me?" Toudou's tone is teasing. He leans forward, taps Yukio's nose with a finger. They're outside, standing in a little street that's just a hair too wide to be considered an alley. Toudou smells like smoke, and Yukio smells like wet dog, compliments of a rampaging hellhound a few blocks down.
All around them people are out and about, talking, shopping, paying bills, doing all the people-y things that people like to do. To Yukio, they look slowed down, like a film strip moving at half time. He and Toudou are the only ones who are real.
"Then I guess no one will be betraying me, after all."
"...That's sad, Okumura-kun."
Pity from a demon. Just what he needs.
They meet, between missions, in coffee houses and side streets, bars and motel rooms.
"Is that really how you looked when you were thirty?"
Toudou raises an arm, as if inspecting his own skin. "Mmm," he says.
"You didn't have freckles, in your pictures." Yukio is sitting across the room, by the window next to the balcony, watching Toudou's reflection in the glass.
"The sun brings them out," the demon-eater explains, "and with Karura, it's like the sun is under my skin." He rolls over and the sheet slips down. "Looking at my files, were you?"
Of course Yukio had reviewed his exorcist files, it was practically the first thing he had done, after Toudou was revealed as a traitor, but there weren't many pictures of the man, just a few old license photos taken throughout the years. He had looked very much the same in all of them.
"Did it change you?"
"The order?"
"No, the demons. Kurara. Other than the sun."
"We~ll, I'm about 20 years younger, I can heat coffee without a microwave, oh, and I'm immortal now. So, I suppose so, yes."
"No," Yukio shakes his head, turning to glance back over his shoulder. Toudou is still lounging in the bed, sheet at his waist now, watching Yukio with those tired, shadowed eyes. "I mean, did it change you?"
"No." Toudou says, "It didn't change me." He rolls onto his back and tucks his hands behind his head. It's the most straightforward answer Yukio has ever gotten from him.
And they talk. Oh, they do other things, too- kiss, fight, fuck- but always they talk.
"It's not about good and evil. It's ideological." Toudou explains, as if Yukio doesn't already know.
"No, not good and evil. Self and interest." Yukio returns, cynical today. His hands are cold, even wrapped around his coffee cup. It's nearing midnight and the storm outside is still raging. It's not natural, but it's also not Yukio's problem. There's a whole team of exorcists out there right now, trying to placate the windy mountain spirit. The restaurant they're in is still serving up hot coffee, so it must not be going too badly.
"You're thinking like a human." Toudou rebukes gently, "most demons don't. They have a different nature. Take pacts, for instance. Your typical human- your typical exorcist even- sees a pact as a 'deal.' A bargain. Something to be used when it suits them. It's different for a demon. To them, a pact is far more sacred. It's a connection, almost like having a child with someone." Toudou's laugh is self-depreciating. He pushes his glasses up his nose, and for a moment he looks old again - like the man from the photographs. "It's difficult to explain. Humans don't really have an equivalent."
Words run through Yukio's head, possible comparisons, related concepts, questions he would like to ask, but won't. 'What about you?' he doesn't say, 'Where do you fall on this demon-human continuum?'
Instead he says, "You said 'most demons' don't think like humans. So which ones do?"
"The oldest ones. The strongest ones." Toudou says, "the ones we've made most like ourselves."
"Lucifer," Yukio clarifies, "Mephisto."
"Your brother."
Yukio sips at his coffee, "So maybe it is about good and evil, after all."
Toudou does it, Yukio is sure, because it is what demons do. They manipulate, planting seeds of doubt and uncertainty with clever words and paltry kindnesses.
"It's really not fair," Toudou says against his mouth, "to expect a demon to love."
"I don't," Yukio mumbles back, his hands at the monster's belt.
"What about your brother?"
"That's different."
"Why?"
"It just is."
Yukio's not sure why he does it.
"Marriage is like a pact." Yukio points out, sitting across a different table at a different time, carefully tearing apart a paper napkin. "There's quite a lot of history of demons marrying into human lines."
"Yes, it is, and I suppose that's true." Toudou agrees, but he sounds distracted, "you're not actually planning to use that, are you?"
Yukio looks down at the symbols he's carefully excised from the napkin, "why not?"
"Because it will kill you. That is a theoretical diagram. It's no good in practice."
Yukio turns the scrap of paper over, studying it backward, "the power requirements appear rather minimal, considering."
Toudou reaches across the table to trace a sigil, a pair of lines running parallel, like an equal sign. "Because it's not a traditional spell, it's a Bonnet's Knot. It works like a siphon. You only use your own power to prime the pump, so to speak. However, the amount of energy that would end up passing through you…" Toudou sat back, "well, you would disintegrate."
"Hm," is all Yukio says, and he tucks the napkin into his pocket.
Toudou always has something to say. About Rin or Shiro, the Order of the True Cross, about Yukio, or the nature of demons. He always has a kiss, a gentle touch, a joke, a compliment. Sometimes he picks up the cheque.
"I developed summoning circles for a while, did you know? I was curious as to the relationship between fatal verses and summoning. Fatal verses have always puzzled me; they don't really make sense, do they?"
"Does Kurara have a fatal verse?"
"As if I would tell you, if it did. But no, the phoenix does not have a fatal verse. Interesting, isn't it?"
"You were registered as a tamer, but I didn't see anything about spell development in your personnel file. Why did you stop?"
"Lightning. I could never match his...intuitive grasp. It seemed silly, to be discovering things after years of study, only to find that he had known the same since childhood."
"Lightning's 'intuitive grasp' doesn't do much for anyone but Lightning. If you could have explained it, taught it… you could have helped a lot of people."
"I don't want to help people, Yuki-chan."
Yukio isn't half as charming. He brings criticism and venom to the table, cutting words and teeth. He knows, whenever he meets with Toudou, that he is losing something, and so he always seeks to even the score, to take more than is taken from him, because Yukio never gives anything.
The ropes are tight, cutting off the circulation to his hands. But then, the people who tied them didn't particularly care for his comfort.
"Why are you doing this?" The summoning circle is written in viscous black goo. It looks nothing like blood, the only indication is the smell – raw meat and iron.
"You know why," Toudou says, smudging the putrid lines with his fingers. He hisses to himself as they bubble and burn. Funny, the gunk is all over Yukio, and it hasn't burned him yet. It just feels sticky and cold. "Self and interest. Get up."
And Yukio doesn't know why he does it.
"You want to talk about pacts, boy?" He hisses, and Yukio has never seen Toudou actually look angry before. "You don't have the first clue."
Yukio ignores him and picks up his penknife, inspecting the blade. There's dirt on it now, and he wipes it carefully on his pants.
"What will you give me, what do you have to offer?"
"Nothing," he says. Then, "my life."
"I don't want it." Toudou snarls, shoving Yukio back with a hand at his throat before wheeling around and walking away.
Toudou always leaves first, but it's the first time Yukio has ever noticed.
He doesn't know why he does it. He just knows that he can't seem to stop. But then, isn't that what demons do to you? Tangle you up with lies and promises and truths you never needed to know. They're temptation.
"You weren't proposing earlier, were you?" Toudou asks, stretched out next to him on what may, in fact,be the world's thinnest mattress, "and I somehow missed it?"
Yukio turns to face him, so the demon-eater can seem him roll his eyes. "No, I wasn't proposing. I was conjecturing."
"Conjecturing about marriage? Aren't you a little young to be considering…"
"I'm twenty-four. Lots of people my age are married. Rin is."
"Oh… you know, I hadn't noticed."
God, temptation.
"Strip," Toudou orders, and turns the shower on hot.
Yukio doesn't have much to take off. He's already missing his shirt and coat, and his pants are in tatters, but he does as he's told, leaning down to untie his shoelaces. The demon-eater manhandles him under the spray before he gets his underwear off, then waits for the worst of the goo to sluice off before grabbing a washcloth and scrubbing at the dark stains still on Yukio's skin.
"These might not come off," he mutters, half to himself, and reaches for the dish soap.
"So long as the smell does," Yukio murmurs back.
"You shouldn't have done that." Yukio says, sometime later, turning his face up into the spray. His eyes are closed.
"Come now, I was bound to turn on someone." Toudou says, his hands sliding gentle over the planes of Yukio's back. "It's my nature, isn't it?"
Yukio makes a noncommittal noise. He's tired. Beyond tired.
Toudou must be, too, because he sags and lets his forehead rest against Yukio's shoulder. "I don't want you to die." He admits, and the remains of the spell lines buzz angrily against his cheek.
"I can't help it." Yukio answers, licking his lips, "that's my nature."
They have these little talks.