Demon Worms

Rin slashed Yukio with his claws and only awoke afterward. The skin peeled and four pink lines formed from his nose to jaw. Yukio covered the marks and stared at him. He pressed his mouth into a line, but any emotion behind his gaze was masked.

"I'm sorry," Rin said and he strained for a better apology. "I was having a nightmare, but I don't remember what about. Did you try to wake me?" He cruised his hand through his hair. His fingers shook but he ignored that.

"You started talking in your sleep. Chanting actually." Yukio pushed his glasses along the bridge of his nose. Rin touched his hand to his forehead and tried to process that, when Yukio continued, "There were a few odd confessions as well. Or it could have been the demon possessing you talking. I'm not entirely sure."

Rin slouched against the couch until his neck was flat on the cushion. "Oh shit." He said at the gravity of the situation. "Wait. What confessions?" Rin wondered if he had any terrible secrets he didn't want Yukio to know about. There had to be one. Rin bolted upright and looked at his brother. "Was it embarrassing?" He asked. His voice came out flustered.

It was the wrong question to ask. Yukio slowly smiled in answer. It made Rin recoil into the arm rest. "Very." Yukio said with a mischievous glint in his gaze. "But irrelevant." He looked away. "My personal suffering is a risk of the job." The scratches on his cheek were a bright shade of pink.

Rin slumped backward. "I probably don't want to know." He decided.

Yukio smiled cheerfully. "I sure didn't."

Rin studied his claws. He never transformed while he slept. What happened? "How alarmed are we about this possession thing?" Rin asked. "Like, give me a number to work with, on a scale of one to ten." Yukio didn't seem hysterical about it so Rin took the casual approach as well.

"That's not how an exorcist gauges a threat. Sometimes I wonder how you've survived being so irresponsible." Yukio drifted past him to the window. His brother was passionate about protocol, but Rin questioned if now was really the time to mince words. "The demon is inhabiting your body. There's no available way to know where until it shows itself. How serious does that sound?"

Rin cringed and tensed like he could feel the demon flexing under his skin. "I hate my life." He said bleakly enough to get a look from Yukio. Rin closed his eyes and buried half his face into the sofa. "It's up to you to carry on our family line now. Name your first kid after me."

"Rin, Satan is our family line, remember? Your demonic blue flames are singeing the couch right now." Yukio said. He wasn't one for sympathy.

Rin sprung off the sofa and peered behind him to access the damage. If anything his flames had brightened in the last several seconds. The demon possessing him seemed to be asserting itself more. Rin concentrated harder to rein in his demonic side. After a moment his flames became flickers again. "I never thought about it like that." He looked at Yukio, picking up the vein of conversation. "We can't have children, man." As impractical as that sounded. "They would be like... "

"Literally devils." Yukio said with a strained smile. They didn't usually finish each other's sentences. It was such a twin cliche. Rin doubted Yukio realized he had. His impressive self-awareness had a blind spot when it concerned other people. Yukio went to his desk. He took apart and loaded a fresh clip into his pistols.

"Do you have any idea what we're dealing with?" Rin asked. He inwardly cringed. Those were Yukio's high-powered sedatives.

Yukio appeared to have gone suddenly deaf. He fine tuned his guns, inspecting them under the lamplight. Rin paced to and from him. For some reason Yukio was stalling. Rin was ready to ask again when Yukio said, "It's called a Sinner's Soul." He hesitated and then caught Rin gaze. Yukio's eyes, unlike his, were a little more green than blue. He dropped his gaze. "Guilt makes us vulnerable; humans, demons, and everything in between. It's a parasite type that capitalizes on self-doubt." Yukio glanced down at his pistols and then out of the window.

"Oh," Rin said. He stared at his forearms and wondered if it could hear their conversation. Damn. A demon that fed of neediness possessed him. What a girly way to go down. Rin still thought about his dad's death sometimes. But he didn't consider himself depressed. Or whatever Yukio was insinuating.

"That's a load of horse shit." Rin said after a second of processing the situation. But there was no one around to prove anything too except Yukio and he wasn't looking at him. "I'm not guilty for anything." He crossed his arms.

Yukio furrowed his eyebrows, but shrugged instead of whatever he was going to say. His next words were scholarly, "The worm is invisible to the eye. It moves without detection and can incubate in a host for decades, inciting them to hurt themselves and others."

"Did you say worm?" Rin asked. Yukio's explanation had some other heavy stuff, but Rin browsed over it selectively. "I have worms?" He said. People outside of their dorm probably heard a disembodied voice shouting about his parasite infestation. Rin hadn't noticed any worm body-snatching him. But, in hindsight, he did remember feeling sickish for the last couple of days.

Yukio sighed resignedly and went to close the windowsill. "Don't panic. I have medicine for this." He walked toward the cabinets Rin was under the impression they didn't use. From the flashes of white bottles Rin glimpsed over Yukio's shoulder, he stocked enough pills to start a pharmacy. "Take this and your body will reject the Sinner's Soul. That will give us the opportunity to kill it before it takes another host." Yukio tossed the bottle at him. Rin caught it and spent a second figuring out the childproof lid.

Rin shrugged and, as instructed in the fine print, took two tablets. They tasted chalky on his tongue. "Okay, Yukio, don't think I'm not grateful that you have a pharmacy in our cabinet, but are you a drug dealer? You can tell me if you are. I'll love you anyway man."

Yukio pressed his lips into a line. He tilted the rim of his glasses. "A professional is prepared for any situation. Not that you would know." He said.

"So, now we wait?" Rin asked after rolling his eyes. He turned over the medicine bottle in his hand. He felt a pressure in his chest within moments. How did the medicine rid the Sinner's Soul from his body anyway? He had a mild urge to throw up but that wasn't a new development. Yukio watched him steadily from a few feet away. He had his arms crossed.

"Did you mention something about me talking in my sleep?" Rin guessed he could handle the embarrassment of it if he could handle having a demon worm inside him.

Yukio grimaced but he eventually nodded. "Well, yes. That certainly happened." Yukio suddenly looked his age. He glanced away then to Rin and off again.

"Oh hell." Rin went red. "It was something sexual, wasn't it?" He wouldn't have minded the Sinner's Soul taking him over right then. The longer he considered it, the worse Rin felt. From Yukio's reaction, he must have muttered some creepy shit. "I had a freaky sex dream about Bon or somebody didn't I?" Rin asked. He wanted to take that comment back as soon as he said it.

Yukio kept a straight face but he gradually reddened as well. "No, not at all." He cleared his throat but his voice cracked anyway, "I actually wasn't aware that you and Suguro-kun—"

"Shut up." Rin raised his voice to a hysterical level. He jumped up and made broad nay hand motions. "That was a worse case scenario. I took a stab in the dark."

"Denial is part of what attracts the Sinner Soul to a host." Yukio said. His hoity-toity tone of voice made Rin wish someone else were around to exorcise the demon. Yukio regained his composure quickly or at least pretended to. "It's the things we can't accept about ourselves that end up getting us in the end."

Rin's eyebrow twitched and his nostrils flared. "I'm the son of Satan. I have a tail. I accept things fine." They kind of hovered in awkward silence for a moment. But Rin enjoyed the extra time with Yukio even if it meant facing a parasite worm and uncomfortable conversations. He put his hands under his eyes and dragged his fingers down.

"The medicine takes a few minutes to kick in. Just be patient." Yukio said. He grabbed the pill bottle from Rin and organized it back into his drug dealer cabinet.

"I was just thinking," Rin said. He laid his katana across his knees, one hand resting on top of the handle, the other on the blade. "I'm going to cut down the Sinner's Soul before it even thinks of going for you." A faint glow clung to his throat as he spoke. Rin's breath hitched. The medicine was working. He gritted his fangs. "Feed off my unresolved emotions all you want, you sick bastard. I'm slicing you in two as soon as Yukio's meds kick in." Rin shuttered and his elbow flexed of its own accord. Shit. Was the worm fighting back?

"Okay, let me in on what's giving you nightmares for life already." Rin breathed in and out slowly. The faint scent of sweat drifted from his skin. Rin looked at Yukio when he didn't answer. "Seriously, what did I say?" Rin felt the worm balling in his throat. He took deeper breaths. Something not physical strained against his skin.

"I'm officially curious now, so—" Rin's voice rose. It sounded higher and throatier. "I wanted to save dad. But I was weak. I'm still weak. I never figure anything out until it's too late." Rin touched his throat. It felt like there was something stuck in there. "Whoa, Yukio, is this normal? This doesn't feel normal." His tone changed again. "What if this is as strong as I'll ever be? What if I'm making everything worse by being here? I'm drawing nutcases to the school and it's hurting Shiemi. And you. Fuck." Rin clamped his hands over his mouth.

Yukio face flashed with focus. "The Sinner's Soul," He said with sternness. "Just hold on Rin. A few more seconds." He switched the safety off each of his pistols.

Rin's neck glowed orange. Something shaped more like a moth then a worm climbed from the pores of his skin. It lifted itself up like a butterfly about to take flight. "What if our friends were right not to trust me? I don't think even think trust me. For all anyone knows I'm going to turn out just like dad. Our actual biological dad." Rin frowned. It was using him as a mouthpiece. And delving into his subconscious crap.

"Stand perfectly still." Yukio aimed his gun at the Sinner's Soul on Rin's neck.

"Yeah, okay." Rin swatted it off before it spoke for him again. The worm landed on the carpet where Yukio preceded to fire three rounds. The silencer muffled the sound, which might have kept the students on campus from panicking, but did nothing for their flooring. "I was going to do that." Rin said, raising his katana for Yukio to see. He tilted his head to view the worm guts. That also probably wasn't coming out of the carpet.

Yukio regarded Rin from the corner of his eyes. It had been a while since Rin could look at Yukio and guess his thoughts. He squirmed where he stood and grimaced at the possibly of another 'let's talk about our feelings!' conversation. Yukio sucked at those maybe worse than he did. "Hey, do demon worms lay eggs? Is that something I should be worried about?" Rin held a hand up to his neck.

"Rin," Yukio said with as much, if not more, intensity he showed facing the demonic worm.

"Nah. It's fine. I'm okay. I don't really think any of that. Not really. The worm was grasping at straws." Rin turned toward the door. He slid his katana over his shoulder.

"The only thing relevant about the past is what we can learn from it." Yukio said. He stood next to his desk. Yukio was extracting his special sedative ammunition into a small box. "It's a hard lesson to pick up, and I still haven't completely, but I do trust you." After a moment Yukio turned and smiled. Rin smiled back. It was strained and weird but he felt things were cool between them.

"Hey—" Rin began, if they were being honest and getting everything out in the open.

"The dream again?" Yukio asked.

"You said you wanted to play connect the dots on my face." Yukio skewed his lips. "Why your first assumption was a torrid affair with another man, whom you claim to despise, is beyond me." He inched his glasses up the bridge of his nose as his lenses gleamed devilishly.

Rin scoffed. "What?" He balled his fist at his little brother. "Is that all? The way you were talking—man—Yukio, that's way more messed up than what just happened to me."

"It's not a competition." Yukio's smile twitched. Dealing with criticism from Rin had never been one of his talents.

"Whatever." Rin said. "Try and get the worm out of the carpet. I'm going to class."