The dragging footsteps had lingered in his wake for good ten minutes already. Too slow to pass as casual; the fair brows furrowed. Reaching into his pocket, to fish out a small packet, Akira stole a quick glance over his shoulder. No-one.
Snorting, dark amusement whisking over his features, he made a small show of lighting up his cigarette as he turned the corner. Not five seconds later, the steps were back, their intent becoming apparent as they rounded the same corner, continuing toward his direction.
He rolled his eyes, his shoulders rising and falling with the deep huff.
He really could have done without this.
But as it appeared, with the hastening of the steps ushering him to a dead end, no-one was asking for his opinion. As he came face to face with the brick wall, as the steps closed his exit, Akira let out another huff as he smothered his cigarette under his foot.
He might as well get this over with.
Akira closed his eyes, his fists clenching at the sides as he breathed deep. Behind him, slurred jeers joined the now unabashed stomps as his pursuers spread out. Letting the air go, Akira slowly turned around, to take in the obnoxious sneers of the men. Five...six men, eyes gleaming, the wide grins missing teeth. The veins in their faces stood out, swollen with regular line use.
The hippopotamus of a man closest to him was probably the leader, judging by the necklace of tags chinking against each other underneath his wiggling double-chin. Small, brown eyes laughed at him behind narrow slits. "Well wha's a pre'y boy like you doin' in a place like thas?" he slurred. The reek of alcohol wafting off the man made Akira cringe. "Ya lost, precious?"
He wasn't going to dignify them with an answer, but he did back off as the man took a step closer.
"There's no need to fear, darlin'. We just wan' those pretty little tags danglin' 'round ya pretty little neck there." The blob jiggled closer. "Hand 'em over, and there'll be no need to ruin tha' pre'y little face of yars."
Akira gulped, still backing up a couple of paces as the other men moved out to try to circle around him. He had seriously miscalculated. He had counted multiple steps, assumed three or four. But six was pushing it, especially if these guys had taken any line.
As his fingers brushed against something metallic, as his shin met the side of the dumpster, adrenaline exploded into his system. Engulfing like a fire, the urge to survive rushed through him. That instinct grabbed the dumpster lid with both hands, and with a wild roar, Akira slammed it into the blob's head with all his strength.
The man's face fell, eyes crossing for a moment before his legs gave out and he crumbled to the tarmac. A pool of blood began to spread from underneath the matted clot of hair. In the frozen moment, Akira huffed heavily over the body, his hands trembling as he still clutched the lid.
The moment's magic dissipated with an enraged snarl: "You...sonovabitch!" Akira's head swished, to the direction of the accomplices, everyone arming themselves: some had brass knuckles, some were fiddling knives.
"You're dead, punk!"
No time to prepare, Akira crouched a little to brace himself. As the first slash came -a bony fellow, eyes wide with rage and addiction, the marks of exhaustion written all over his face- he thrust the weapon aside with the lid, and stepping in to close the distance, elbowed the man in his face.
The crunch that resulted turned stomach. A cry of anguish, and the man was scrunching his face, a hand over his mouth. Grunting, Akira grabbed the man by the shoulders and heaved him toward himself as he drove a knee into his gut with a shattering force.
The man sank with a whine of pain, his legs shaking as he tried to curl in on himself. Seeing his chance, Akira crouched down to snatch the knife and turn-
Fire raked over his cheek; Akira's entire body was thrown to the side by the force of the punch. For a second, there was just darkness, and the strain on his jaw as his teeth ground together. Through the heat, a distinct wetness began to trickle down his skin, the pain turning to throbbing.
He was hefted up by a pressure around his neck; Akira had half a second to see them, to make out the caries-ridden snarl, before the man holding him slammed his head to the brick wall.
Letting out a strangled groan, he wasn't prepared when he was hit again, but through the screeching in his head, he could feel his body going slack, the knife slipping from his yielding grip.
Someone grabbed his hair, and his head was yanked back. A stifled yelp left him at a sharp sting, and Akira fought his eyes open. Another miscalculation, as the world carouselled to the left. The figures in front of him were hazy, but he didn't need his eyes to grasp the severity of his predicament.
A weight landed on the back of his knee, and he sank to a half-kneel, soon pushed down the rest of the way. Just as he began to struggle, a rough grip forced his arm behind his back and hauled his wrist up between his shoulder blades.
The glint of metal in his peripheral vision had him go dead-still. He flinched away what little he could as something sharp and pointed prickled against his cheek, just underneath his left eye.
"That was the boss you killed there, mate," the owner of the hand deadpanned, the voice void of compassion. "I suppose we should thank ya. That fuck-ton was hoardin' da tags. Would pro'lly leave us like dead fish if he were tah face Il Re." The metal slid down his cheek, forcing Akira's head to the side, to reveal his neck.
"Fat chance there, mate. I think we're just gon' take that tag 'here. And ya don' need tah worry abou' findin' it again."
Akira tried to struggle and jerk his head free as his face was forced forward, and the man with the knuckles placed himself in front of him. The world was sharpening back up in excruciating detail. He now made out the spikes embedded into the brass knuckles, and it briefly occurred to him that if this was the last he would see, he would rather have the haziness.
However.
The way he was held, head back and eyes darting up, Akira caught a glimpse of something. Up there, on the rooftop...
The men were too occupied with him, would never see it coming…
Between his teeth, Akira managed a last-ditch: "Run!"
"Huh?"
That sneer would be somebody's last. The shadow landed almost directly above him; there was a 'shing' of a blade traveling through air, then a dull 'tah' as it met something solid.
The blood splashed on the wall in a gruesome imitation of an arc. Only then did it begin to dawn that the tables had turned in an unforeseeable way, and that none of them would be leaving this alleyway alive.
The figure like a shadow, his movement dance macabre as the night was sliced again...the brass knuckles suddenly slid off his face, and Akira couldn't hold back his panicked cry at a blade suddenly protruding from his assailant's chest.
Behind the fading man's shoulder, red eyes narrowed with disdain. A voice, dark with bloodlust, was gravely:
"Cockroaches should know to keep out of sight."
The blade was pulled out swiftly; with nothing to support him anymore, the corpse of the man slugged to the ground before Akira's knees. Eyes wide, the steel gaze darted wildly from the recently deceased man to Death itself, standing a mere few feet from him in the form of a man.
"It...it's Shiki!"
Akira heard the men's death sentence in that squeal.
And he wasn't wrong.
Shiki was said to spare no-one. The land in Shiki's wake took a crimson hue, the piles of bodies left behind paving the road beneath his feet. And as Shiki raised his sword, as the men's grip on him loosened in the face of their impending doom, Akira struggled to get on his feet.
He didn't know why he bothered. The men who had been about to mug him hardly deserved his sympathy. Akira probably shouldn't have cared - but it was the right thing to do.
His best efforts to scream reason, to try to stop Shiki echoed to deaf ears as Shiki unleashed his wrath.
Bile threatened to rise to his mouth, his knees shook at the death rattles as one of the men clung to his gushing throat with both hands before consciousness left him. And in the midst of the carnage, Shiki stood like a statue, his expression betraying nothing as he impassively, meticulously slung the blood from his sword and returned it to its sheathe.
Akira's stomach pulled itself into a hangman's noose as the dark man turned his attention to him.
His voice caught in his throat as Shiki closed the distance in a few long strides. The crosses hanging from the man's neck chinked ominously, the devil never even blinking, and Akira only realized having backed up as he met the brick wall.
He hated the way a frightened gasp slipped out when Shiki, leaning in close, slammed a palm to the wall not a foot from Akira's head. Close enough that their bodies almost touched, Shiki effectively pinned him into place.
A coppery aroma hit his nostrils, but underneath was the deep scent of ebony, replacing the initial tang. 'Shiki…'
Akira's mouth quivered, but nothing came out. Nothing, as the red eyes scanned him, a hunger shining amongst the ruby as Shiki effectively ate him up with his eyes. Akira's heart hammered against his ribs almost painfully, and in a fleeting thought he feared the man would see the pulsating of his veins as the haunting gaze lingered on his neck.
Akira's breath caught a little, in mortification, at the heat beginning to rise to his face. Underlying his fear, mixing into an intoxicating cocktail of shame and degradation, there were the slivers of a forbidden excitement - despite his impending odium for the man that was currently eyeing him like prey.
Shiki's brows furrowed - and without a warning, he grabbed the collar of Akira's jacket and hauled him along. Akira let out a stifled grunt as the swordsman began to drag him down the alley, past the sea of bodies.
"O-oi!"
Shiki didn't even bat an eye.
"'The hell are you doin'?!" Akira jerked against the hold, but a tougher pull, strong enough to almost throw him off balance, forced him into an awkward half-bend that made struggling difficult. Shiki didn't stop, hadn't even slowed down and still didn't look at him as he dragged a slightly wriggling Akira out of the alley.
"Hey!" Stepping up closer, a little to the other man's side, Akira regained enough space to shove the hand away. "Get off me!"
His reprieve was short-lived, though.
Eyes darkening, Shiki closed the distance again. It caught Akira off guard, and in one fluid motion, he was shoved against the wall. Air escaped him, just enough to force a hasty intake, imbued with sandalwood and smoke.
Akira already made to move when the cold kiss of metal ghosting against his neck froze him up.
Gulping, his skin touching the edge, Akira raised his eyes - to meet the calamitous eyes.
Shiki leaned in closer. His expression betrayed nothing as he took in the stiffening of the other's shoulders, the way he craned his neck, to gain some distance between himself and the threatening blade. He had seen it before, that exposure of surrendering flesh, and the ruby eyes darkened with decadence.
"That look…" Shiki leaned in to murmur into the other's ear; the blade made a 'snict' as it inched closer, "It is my privilege to witness."
"I-I didn't need your help!" Akira hissed. Even so, the other's presence, the hot breath whisking against his lobe…an involuntary gulp ran down his throat at a warm sensation pooling around his nether regions.
"...Is that so?"
Akira didn't quite manage to hold back the small whimper as the blade nicked skin. The dark chuckle in his ear sent shivers up and down his spine, and his knees came close to buckling.
"You really are like a dog…begging to be punished…"
Shiki cupped his face with his free hand, Akira pressing into the touch almost instinctively. A thumb brushed over the already drying pebbles of blood, smudging it across his cheek.
"I-I'm not your plaything!"
He swore to god, that chuckle must have been pure poison! Salaciousness and supremacy, the pinned man's breaths were turning to light pants as Shiki shifted. The blade was lowered - only to be replaced with a hand roaming his body. At the junction of his hip and side, sliding downward and towards the front. "Aren't you?"
Akira's face scrunched a little, eyes squeezing shut under the tremors he was unable to hide when Shiki's hand rubbed over his vigorous erection. Dammit! When had that even happened?! Lingering on the pressure, massaging him through the fabric of his pants; his bashful, proud mind was effectively quaking under the attention his body received. "A-h…"
"Tell me…Akira..."
The way his name rolled off the man's forked tongue -that of a viper- had his intake hitching.
"Who is your master...?"
If he had an answer, it disappeared into the electrifying rush shooting up his loins, trailing up his spine in blazing waves as Shiki cupped him. Pressing harder while that treacherous tongue ran up his neck, Akira's breath caught.
"Qui-quit your bullshit…!"
A soft 'hee' slipped out as Shiki's hot breath brushed his cheek before his lips latched to suckle on a special spot behind his ear. Despite his bravado, Akira's shoulders relaxed as he leaned his head - to offer more of his neck as Shiki's lips explored his flesh.
In a distancing whisk, he supposed he should have been embarrassed of the way his cock jumped in its confines as Shiki bit down, hard. But the way he grinded his hips into the touch all the harder, shifting his body closer, were evidence of the exact opposite, and through the rising heat, Akira recognized his own hand clutching the one still fondling him-
Shiki's snorty chuckle came out more as a series of puffs than actual laughter, but somehow that managed to make it sound all the more delicious. "Do you seek to be punished…mutt?"
Why wasn't he denying this?
Why did his hips meet Shiki's so eagerly when the man crushed their bodies together?
"Are you enjoying pain...?"
Why wasn't he pushing him away?
Tongue tied, words having abandoned him, Akira could only pant, trying and failing to stifle the soft 'nngs' he made as his teeth ground together.
The sound that finally left him at a scraping burn just above his hip bone was a very different kind than he had expected. Light and elated, Akira's heavy sigh came out almost as a moan of rapture.
"Is that what I should give to you?"
Shiki's breathy chuckle in his ear was pure smug.
Through his haze, the steel gaze wandered downwards - to take in the red seeping into his shirt where the penblade broke the skin in his side.
A low groan of something quite different than disgust rose from Akira's throat. He didn't have time to question himself, though. Shiki was undoing his zipper, both hands poised at his belt loops... Akira's hips ground with more pressure.
"Shu-ut...up..!" Actions spoke louder than words, however, and the fighter's hand had found purchase in the soft leather of Shiki's jacket - drawing closer.
The dark man must have noticed this, too, but perhaps his pinned prize was to be shown mercy. Or Shiki simply preferred other methods of making a point as he slowly, savoringly, tugged the man's pants lower, just enough to allow him access.
Akira's best attempts to swallow the delighted groan as Shiki's hand closed around his shaft fell short. Coming out as stifled and yet like a salvation, the steel eyes slid closed, a weak attempt to shield himself from his own embarrassment as he faced away.
"Nngh!" It was mortifying how that sounded like a plea. The delighted hum in his ear left little doubt about Shiki's intention as he began to stroke him. Seemingly languid, but each knee-buckling jerk crowned with a sharp and precise twist around his tip, and Akira's head flew backwards.
"Your mind wishes to deny it, but your body remembers whom it belongs to…"
"Shu-shut up…!"
"Your body's responding so eagerly. Look at you...you're wet for my touch already."
It was true. Akira choked on an embarrassed moan as beads of precum leaked out already, and the man had barely touched him. And- wait! Since when had he wanted Shiki to touch him?! It, it was absurd, it...it...mattered little as his body apparently knew him better than his mind did. His hips bucked into the touch, reaping more of that treacherous arousal, wanting to fuck the hand providing the atrocious attention. Although, the literal option wasn't exactly out of agenda, either, and Akira's breath caught mid-pant. Sparing a glance at Shiki, he met only a whisk of dark hair as the man leaned over.
The hot puff of air danced on his skin, a tremor running through the dark angel before Shiki bit down.
"A-haah!" It did sting - but combined with the suckling and the lecherous tongue now sliding up his neck, all it managed was fueling the fire that was building up into an inferno in his loins. That contradiction of pleasure and pain raked through him like an infection, unstoppable and subjugating, and that was the whole point, wasn't it? This was about control. Neither of them bothered with an illusion of affection; what a useless concept that was. No. Whatever this was that Shiki and he had, it was about power. Having it, or having it taken away. And little as Akira liked to admit it, even to himself, what Shiki did to him, what the man's mere presence always did to him-
He was undeniably, incredibly turned on by it.
Each tremor coursed through him like a testament to his surrender. Shiki must have sensed it too, for he was pumping faster, each jerk firm and precise; single-minded and goal-driven as he, with the same meticulousness as he had poised when he had retracted his weapon, tore down every single one of Akira's carefully constructed walls. Brought them to the ground until all that was left was the gasping, writhing man, tugging him closer as his breaths turned to moans and as his cock began to pulse in the his hand.
The cool of Shiki's touch was gone all too sudden. Before Akira had time to process anything except for the loud groan of disapproval leaving his own mouth at the sudden absence of the friction on his demanding need, Shiki had both his hands pushed above his head. The brick scraped his skin a little as the dark man pinned them to place with his weight.
"Gh…!" An ugly snarl twisting his feature, Akira shot the man a murder glare as he wriggled his hips to regain a stimulus.
"Unh-uh."
"The hell?!" That shit-eating grin on Shiki's face...it would've set his blood boiling if it wasn't so damn sexy!
"A good dog should beg for its master's attention."
"Shut up!" Through sheer stubbornness did Akira find it in him to object. Although a part of him -the secondary brain down there and currently rather rowdy- would have tossed each ounce of denial out the window for a retake of what it had enjoyed just now- "I'm...not...your possession!"
"Really?"
Shiki scoffed. It took little effort to maneuver both Akira's wrists under a single hold, freeing his other hand to wreak havoc on the fighter's thoroughly teased body.
"Allow me to show you just how very wrong you are."
In retrospect, Akira's cheeks heated a few degrees more at the trembling moan leaving him as the friction slammed back against his senses like a freight truck. A wave of dread and exhilaration rushed through the trapped man as Shiki's hand renewed hold on his abandoned need. This time, it was slow - deliberately, torturously slow. Shiki fiddled with his tip, dragging a nail along his crevice, drawing out intermittent utterances of pleasure but it wasn't anywhere near fulfilling. If anything, it set each nerve in him ablaze with desire for more as Shiki rubbed his palm over and around his leaking head. Teasing, tormenting, but never quite giving him what he so desperately craved-
Nevertheless, even though slow, Shiki's administrations, to Akira's rising horror, were working. Better than he had dared to imagine, too. His arousal still prominent, although the initial flare had diminished, it took only moments for his body to jump right back to the game it never quite finished in the first place. The torturous pace, a poisonous promise of bliss weaved in it, had his manhood quickly aching with the need for release, the bite quickly dissipating from Akira's struggles to free himself from the iron grip keeping him firmly in place.
There was a light tugging sensation on his cheek where the now dried blood stuck to his skin a little as his face crumbled into a look of rapture. Jaw slacking and his forehead wrinkling a little, Akira let his head fall back against the brick as his fight -if it could be called that- drained from him like poison from a wound.
It was that goddamned chuckle that brought him back.
"Nn. Feels good...doesn't it...Akira?"
"Ngh!" If the sonovabitch thought he would acknowledge him-! Tugging at his wrists, Akira resolved to focus on biting his tongue as precarious mewls rumbled in his throat.
And it could have worked, too, had Shiki not been dead-set on destroying him. There was only so much Akira could do against a gatling gun series of rapid, firm strokes. Taking full advantage of the trapped man's near wail of pleasure, Akira choked on a hitching breath as Shiki crashed their mouths together in a searing kiss.
His senses clicking to overdrive, Akira's preposterous groan faded under the greedy tongue tasting him. Sniffing air through his nose, the fighter slid his eyes closed as he braced himself - and bit down, hard, on the offending organ in his mouth.
A miscalculation, as the resulting jerks of Shiki's entire body traveled down his arm and rounded back to lay waste of their original cause in ravishing pulses. Akira's legs trembled with the thunderous arousal and the fire scorching him from the inside. And all the while, coppery aroma lingered on his tongue, and in his ears, the pleased hum of the man that bore on his shoulders all the vengeance in the world.
'Shi-ki!'
It was maddening. Shiki was stroking him feverishly as if to punish him for his little act of defiance. And Akira's mind crumbled, flashes of white slowly replacing all rational thought as the pulsing spread from his crotch, to reach over to his heart, his soul as Shiki drove him closer and closer to completion. He was trembling, each heavy exhale carrying out his pleasure as heat coiled inside, tighter and tighter, ready to explode-
His head flew to the side with the downright feral shout of dissatisfaction. Tugging against the hold, his hips bucked forth as if in chase of his fleeting release. He was unimaginably hard; it was borderline painful. As Shiki's mass all but crushed him back against the wall again, the pressure twisted his wrists painfully but it barely even registered over the hot, throbbing need scorching him from inside out, that disorientating want being the sole constant Akira's mind still grasped.
"Gh-!"
Shiki's expression betrayed nothing as he eyed the writhing man almost impassively. "You want to cum." A statement, not a question, one so obvious that alone prompted another groan of frustration. And even so, it melted into a desperate gulp as Shiki's hand again claimed his manhood, dancing along his heated flesh deliciously but so very far from offering anything satisfying.
The ebony aroma suddenly all-consuming when Shiki again leaned in close, to murmur into his ear, "Maybe if you begged for it, I might let you have what you want."
Even through the haze, it was clear what the swordsman was doing. Akira's jaw tightened, his pride and his instincts engaged in a skirmish where his reason was on the losing side. It was degrading, it was downright preposterous that the man had the balls to demand this-!
But then again, a darker side of him, the side that had his shoulders relaxing, his jaw unclenching out of the way of shuddery intakes… That side had been in control since the man had shoved him against the wall, and the sooner Akira came to terms with that, the sooner he could be granted his gratification. Because that side of him wanted this. Yearned to submit to this. To find his release in the shame and surrender, to let himself go and let Shiki reap him of his reason as he came undone…
"Gh…"
Shiki's chuckle was carnal in his ear-
Tears squeezed out from his scrunching eyes as Akira's head flew back, a delirious moan of bliss rising from his throat as Shiki wrapped his fingers around his tip and began to pulsate rapidly. "A-aah...ah!"
"I'm not telling you a third time."
"Eah...a-ah..!" Akira could feel his eyes rolling to the back of his head behind closed lids. The ache, the agonizing need to cum about overwhelming, he was trembling uncontrollably as his arousal burned in the back of his mind.
As his reddened, glistening cock throbbed in the other's hand, Akira was left with no choice as the engulfing need delivered a finishing blow to his reason.
"Fi-finish it…"
"Hm?"
Oh, the absolute bastard!
"Qu-it yoursshit...lemme…'me already…"
The hot puff of air in his ear was laced with mirth. In a fleeting thought Akira recognized the warning. But it was light years too late and he far too gone to tell the cistern from the pit of vipers he had willingly leaped into-
Renewing his grip with a newly found vigor, Shiki slammed him against the wall with all his weight, the hand on his shaft finding a merciless rhythm. Akira's entire body convulsed - each jerk made meaningless by the completeness of his restraint. And Shiki drank in each quiver, each wanton sound the fighter could no longer hold back as he unraveled before him. Desperate and succumbing, his inhibitions flying out the window as otherworldly heat once again coiled in his loins-
"You're getting close…" Shiki's voice had lowered to lust-filled panting.
"Ah...ha…!"
"If you're cumming, you're doing it as you're told."
"Haah…haah..."
"I...am your master…"
"Ah...Ah...AH…!"
"Now...cum for me...Akira."
With the way his name was breathed into his ear -like a whisk of smoke on the still smoldering ruins- Akira's world burst in cinder and flame. Raking through him like a supernova explosion, his mind washed white with a delirious cry of bliss tearing from his throat, "AH-HAAGNH!"
Earth-shattering and all-consuming, Akira's entire body shook with the intensity of his release. As the heaviness began to spread, his limbs relaxing with the afterglow of his orgasm, it barely registered: a warmth pressing against his chest.
Shiki's dark hum had lost the laughter. But as the man's low purr cut through his haze like a hot blade, Akira wasn't sure if he'd rather had the chuckle.
Slick with self-satisfaction, Akira could hear the smug smile in it:
"You...truly are like a dog."
As his jumbled-up mind tried to reach out for an answer, as nothing but groans left him as retorts, Shiki's snort was like a morbid goodbye as the man detached himself.
Shiki spared him but one more smirk. A leaden hand coming to press weakly on the mild throbbing on his abdomen, Akira watched him leave. The same way he had the first time he had met Shiki: the man leaving him slumped and short of breath, precariously supporting himself against the wall as his heart rate slowly began to ease out.
'We'll meet again...Akira.'