Title: The Price (Sequel to Scold's Bridle)
Summary: Kanda's continued time with the Noah of Pleasure leads him to discover what fate awaits him.
Pairing: Yucky (TyKan)
Rating: NC-17 (Though not as bad as the last one)
Warnings: Non-con, bondage (not as much), Kanda abuse (not as much), what might qualify as fluff, YAOI, liberties on the lotus mark… there are more that I can't think of.

Disclaimer: All characters of D. Gray – man belong to the wonderful Hoshino-sensei, who is on hiatus until March. In the meantime…

Once again! Flames are good as long as they aren't pairing related. Also, keep in mind that Kanda is a little out of it for the beginning, indestructible does not mean impervious in my dictionary. :)

Enjoy!

-- --

The Price

The lights of the basement had dimmed as soon as Tyki left, almost as if they were only on in his presence, and Kanda was left in the dark, looking up at the mirror that reflected his own eerie expression back at him. In the semidarkness, with nothing but the cool air on his naked skin and the image of his own face to haunt him, the Japanese Exorcist could no more sleep than he could think of what happened to him, both as distant as badly remembered dreams. It wasn't that he wouldn't be able to deal with it, he wasn't that weak. But he couldn't allow himself to at the moment. His arms ached from being held above his head and his mouth hurt, his jaw felt as if it might shatter if it was left to the bridle much longer. His tongue wanted to spasm. Between those things, he couldn't recall what had happened between himself and Tyki without being distracted. By the time he thought of casting himself out of his body with meditation, he was shivering uncontrollably with chill, his metal ringed tongue nearly numb when he tried to force it against the roof of his mouth. His reflection, devoid of color, showed him dark circles and dull eyes, and pain behind his gaze warned him that something – despite the mark on the left of his chest – was wrong with him. Not long after that he grew tired and his face became too warm, his eyelids felt weighted as if by something that wasn't there, willing him into blackness. He fought it. He stabbed his tongue on the iron in his mouth and widened his eyes, but they were only delays to the inevitable. As much as he hated to admit to it, the coolness of the room and the state of his body had weakened his immune system to the point of becoming susceptible to some kind of sickness.

His chest hurt for some reason, vaguely. Minutes started to bleed into one another. His eyes closed. The pain in his head increased until he didn't want to look anymore and just squinted his eyes shut, tugging on his bonds in the hope that he could cover his eyes with the heels of his hands for a moment. He was thirsty. He was dizzy, also. But still he could not sleep, the pain in his muscles too much to ignore.

By the time the lights lifted again at Tyki's entrance, he could hardly understand what it meant when the Noah looked down at him and placed a cool, smooth palm on the skin of his forehead.

"Who would have expected this?" The Noah asked rhetorically, and sighed at the hardly conscious Exorcist, exasperated. Fingers curled around the flat snake of metal that went beneath Kanda jaw and moved it, pulling the back of the muzzle through the samurai's face without so much as touching him with it. At once Kanda's feverish eyes widened and his throat produced a long, painful sound, his rattling jaw nearly closing on his long abused tongue. Tyki let the cage clatter to the floor beside him and moved instead to the ropes that still held Kanda to the bed, not that he was fighting them at the moment.

When he tried, the Japanese boy found that his muscles didn't want to respond how he told them to, twitching and flinching and moving with stupid, clumsy motions. It didn't help that everything seemed to happen through a fog, but that wasn't what made his rather pathetic punch at Tyki pathetic: it was the fact that it fell sort, and the Noah didn't notice. By the time Kanda found himself being forced into an oversized dress coat, he realized that Tyki was talking to him, yammering on about fragile creatures and silence. Kanda didn't care. He only felt that the jacket, though smoke-scented, was warm. He rubbed his wrists with the fabric – soft – and tried not to pass out when Tyki left him sitting on the edge of the bed, his toes just barely touching the stone of the floor.

He felt tired still, and sick. With his right hand he reached up and touched his face for a moment, running his fingertips over his chapped lips and then between them, between his teeth, over his tongue. It hurt, but that didn't matter at the moment. It mattered that he could move and feel that part of himself, could, if he tried, speak to his captor. The bridle was gone. There was just his own numb face, his own crack lips, and bruised jaw bone.

He didn't think about the previous night. He didn't know what would happen if he did.

Tyki came back again, this time with a hot wash cloth and what looked to be aspirin and a glass of water, his brown eyes focused on Kanda's face. The Japanese man left his hand where it was, touching his mouth, and looked up at the Noah with slightly round, dazzled eyes, yet unable to understand what was meant.

"Come on, don't just stare at me," Tyki was almost chiding. "Neither of us will be happy if you die."

Die?

Kanda blinked very slowly and dragged his fingers from his lips only to press both of his hands to his chest, trying to see beyond the fog of his fever, feel beyond the ache in his head. Slowly, he forced himself to speak. "Why… are you… heru-ping me?" His mouth didn't want to work but he didn't care, saying something made him feel far more in the moment than he did exploring his mouth like a child. To his surprise the Noah smiled at him, and offered the two white pills almost like a plea for peace.

"I'm afraid that you're sick, Hime-chan," Tyki answered, and the pills bobbed in his hand. Kanda felt his fingers start to reach for them, not entirely sure if it was a good idea, but unable to think with his eyelids begging him to just fall over and sleep. Sleep. When had he last slept? How long had it been? His fingers found the little white circles but shook too badly to lift them. The Noah let them slide into his palm. "Good… how are you feeling?"

"Sss…ss…" His tongue didn't like that letter very much. "Not good," he said instead. Trembling, Kanda brought the medicine to his mouth and placed it inside – Tyki offered the water. Water. Without a thought of what he might be taking, the samurai took the glass in both hands and drained it, thirstier than he could remember being in all of his life. He would have licked the inside of the container if he could have fit his face in it. With that down the world was taking on a less dreamlike quality, he could focus his eyes better, but he wasn't anywhere near normal. After yesterday, if that had been yesterday, he wasn't sure normal would ever apply to him properly again.

The washcloth started on his forehead with a wet sound and he closed his eyes to it, too fucking tired to give a damn what or who was holding it. A hand touched the base of his skull and he just followed it, his throbbing head too heavy to hold up with something that undeniably gentle trying to support it. The back of his head found the pillow and the cloth moved to his chin and mouth, wiping away the night's combination of drool and blood, catching dried sweat from whatever he had done to exert himself. His eyes stayed closed. The cloth went down his throat. His head pounded.

"You're far more pleasant today than you were yesterday." The whisper almost made Kanda's eyes vibrate right out of his skull, but that his eyelids stopped them. He frowned softly, feeling the heat of the rag delving into the intimate place between his legs.

Kanda grunted. "Don't touch me."

"Oh, that was almost lucid."

He risked cracking an eye at the Noah and found him pulling away, the rag in his left hand, empty glass in his right, and a soft sort of smile playing on his face. Kanda felt a rush of anger in his stomach and quelled it – biding his time was his best bet right now, Tyki obviously wanted him alive at the moment, at least. "I haven't sss…lept yet, I don't know where the fuck I am, and if I'm right, I haven't eaten in four days douche bag, how can you expect… me to be lu…cid?" He shot back at once, and immediately regretted it. His voice cracked toward the end, either from over or underuse, and he swallowed thickly. More water would have done him good. And sleep.

Tyki made a less pleasant face then, but didn't keep it. He smiled almost sweetly. "If you'll just wait a moment, Hime-chan—"

"Stop calling me that!" Even as he protested, Kanda realized that the Noah was gone, having likely pulled that same disappearing act he had the first time, only now while he was blinking. The samurai growled. It didn't matter. No way out, no one knew where he was, no way in hell he was getting out after thirty-six hours of sleeplessness without Mugen. Mugen. He wanted the blade more than he wanted out of this room. His blade, his katana, his Mugen…

"Here we are!" The words made Kanda realize that he had shut his eyes again, softly, and he opened them again to find Tyki standing over him with a small white bundle in one hand, a larger one under his arm, and a second glass of water. The idiotic smile on his face almost made Kanda scowl to the point of making his eyebrows twitch. "Eat as much of this as you can," Tyki plopped the bundle on the side of the bed and Kanda prodded it less than enthusiastically until it began to unfold. "And wear the pants for warmth also. Then drink the water, I'll change the sheet, and you can recover from this… bug as quickly as humanly possible, hm?"

"What the hell is this?" The question made Tyki glance down and see the sideways lying Kanda frown at a quarter of fruit. "I knew Noah were evil, but brain?"

"It's pomegranate."

"Che. Whatever." Kanda picked up the half-loaf of bread and the small lump of cheese that had been included in the pile and began to eat them slowly, chewing every bite until he leaned closer, and gradually, as the silence grew between them, started to eat with more enthusiasm. By the time he caught sight of the strip of salt pork, Tyki began to wonder if he should have grabbed more than what he had. The Japanese man devoured the meat and then turned his attention – no longer foggy, though he winced at the lighting and shivered as if still feverish – to figuring what in a pomegranate was edible and the Noah took the moment to slip out quietly, figuring that his presence would not be missed.

Kanda noticed the empty space where Tyki had been and took the opportunity to shake the crumbs from the pants and pull them on, too big, but thick and warm and something. He gave up on the pomegranate and just sucked the juice out, then drained the second glass of water. When Tyki came back Kanda moved a fair distance from him, leaning heavily on the wall and studying the room with eyes that couldn't properly comprehend anything at the moment, shivering still. The Noah worked quickly. When the new sheet was in place, Tyki spread two thicker blankets over it and, acting as if it was something of an olive branch, patted the surface with his hand. Kanda didn't move and instead slowly, knowing he shouldn't, let his eyes wander to the ceiling and the mirror that hung from it.

Tyki followed his wary gaze.

Before Kanda knew what was happening, a warm, solid chest was pressed to his side and nausea so thick he could hardly see nearly knocked him off of his feet. His hands curled against the stone of the wall and his stomach clutched the food in his gut, squeezing it painfully. For all the good it did him to drive his elbow into the Noah behind him, his limbs could have suddenly been made of soba noodles.

He was breathing too quickly and his skin was too cold. But the pain in his head and chest were worse than the rest of it by a thousand times – he couldn't think because of them.

The sight of the mirror above him made him shut his eyes – he didn't want to see himself like this. He didn't want to know. But he did want to lie down. The mattress could have been heaven if not for the man who had dressed it with thick cotton sheets, a wool blanket, and a linen cover, perfectly warm and heavy against his sore, weak muscles. It didn't matter who it was that tilted his head back on a fresh pillow or why Tyki had to lift the covers by his left ankle and then put something on his right wrist, it only thing that mattered was the heat Kanda could feel gathering around him, pulling him toward sleep.

The Noah put a hand on the feverish Exorcist's head and tilted it upward, making him open his black-blue eyes at him.

"Do you want the mirror gone?" Tyki ran his fingers into the Japanese man's bangs, combing them away from his suddenly narrowed eyes.

"Che." At least he didn't curse.

"If you kiss me, I'll take it down."

"Fuck you." The response was automatic: Tyki could have asked Kanda if he wanted to be let go and gotten the same exact answer.

The Noah laughed softly under his breath before he leaned forward, holding Kanda's chin tenderly in his palm, smiling. He pressed their mouths together, just lips, before he reached out and touched gently with his tongue, dragging it along the younger man's lower lip. It took only the slightest press of fingertips on the boy's chest and that mouth soundlessly parted to Tyki – not an invitation, but a reluctant allowance of entrance.

He didn't go deep. He didn't try to. Instead he pulled gently away, nibbling softly on Kanda's lower lip as he did.

The samurai would never be able to deny the little catch in his breath when those teeth were halfway finished with their work.

When they parted, Kanda withheld any foul remark he might have had, but scowled weakly at the Noah. He didn't think about anything. He didn't attempt to. He just closed his eyes in an effort to block out the slow, creeping smile that spread across Tyki's lips.

"Was that so hard, Hime-chan?"

"Don't call me that," Kanda half whispered and half growled the words, angry and yet unable to grip that anger, hating the man who leaned over him and yet finding an odd sort of reassurance in the weight on his chest. He was alive, at least, and the man above him equally so. Every time Tyki breathed the thought settled a little more surely in his mind – the thought that he wasn't dreaming, and hadn't fallen into some twisted, painful sort of hell. Kanda let his eyes fall shut and fisted his hands, fighting down a shiver. He still did, his teeth would have clattered if his jaw hadn't been too sore and tight to allow it. The man above him rubbed for a moment at his chest, as if spreading the heat from his heart to his limbs, revitalizing him, before the Noah stopped, a little from tugging at the edges of his lips.

Tyki's fingers carded through the samurai's bangs once again, pulling them away from his heated skin. "What would you rather I call you, Hime-chan?"

Kanda opened his eyes again, just a crack, and studied the face in front of him. The Noah was serious. Tyki Mikk, with his hands on either side of Kanda's head and his voice very low, eyes deep brown and curious, seemed to actually care. For a moment, Kanda was tempted to wonder if this man and Lavi could be any different.

"Kanda," he said, and his eyes closed again. "Just Kanda."

The Noah withdrew, but his right hand wandered down the Japanese man's blanket covered chest, pausing, smoothing the lines from the covers, and then, reluctantly, he stepped away again, leaving Kanda looking at the fuzzy space in front of his eyelids. What Kanda could make of the room was exactly how he remembered it, so he decided not to look or think about it and just let his sore, tired, sick body rest while his mind did the suffering. Kissing a Noah – when he wrote his report, Komui would never believe him.

A little rush of air made him open his left eye and look above him – at the blank surface of the wooden ceiling. Blank. His eyes unfocused and he blinked at it, trying to clear his vision, if only for a moment.

"See?" He was losing the war with his eyes swiftly. His whole body felt hot, the face in front of him looked fuzzy. He couldn't move his arms to push away the Noah's hand when it touched him. "I told you it would only take a kiss, didn't I?" Kanda wanted to ignore that voice, but he couldn't block it out, couldn't hide from the warm air parting against his skin. Fingertips traced the line of his jaw and across his lips, parting them gently. He didn't want that. "Sleep, Kanda."

Yeah. I think I will.

--- ---

The Exorcist tossed and turned in his sleep, but the fever did not break by nightfall. Tyki supplied him with water every hour, but when midnight rolled around the younger man refused even to open his eyes to take it in anymore, his breathing short and forced, eyes set in dark hollows, pulse rapid and fluttering. For a time the Noah wondered if a doctor would have been good for him, maybe more medicine, but he decided such things wouldn't do for an Exorcist who didn't look capable of keeping them down. It wasn't until dawn – when Tyki found himself glad that he didn't need to sleep yet so much as it would have been nice to – that Kanda finally fell into truly deep, if delirious, sleep.

Tyki still stayed, unwilling to find an akuma to help him and set on avoiding breakfast with the Earl at all costs.

It was midmorning when the nightmare came. Tyki wasn't expecting it. To him it looked as if the Exorcist went into convolutions, fighting with the cuff on his wrist before he suddenly sat up, wide-eyed and silently screaming, digging at his chest with fingers he couldn't really touch it with. It only lasted a moment before he collapsed against the mattress, shaking and awake, gasping, fingers curled compulsively in the sheets. His eyes were slowly blinking and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. He didn't focus his eyes in front of him.

Tyki laid his fingers on the boy's face and felt that it was still warm, heated from his ongoing fever. When the samurai did not immediately speak out against him, the Noah pulled his hand back and laid a cool rag he had brought down against his skin again, covering his eyes. The Exorcist shut his eyelids to it, forcing his hands to relax against the sheets ever so slowly. It was a conscious effort. Tyki saw the tension in his shoulders, the tight muscles in his neck, and frowned as he pushed the boy's bangs away from the cloth. Would it hurt to relax for just a moment?

"Take some water," Tyki said, and lifted the Exorcist's head from the pillow in encouragement – almost at once the Japanese man was so stiff he might have had a rod through his spine, forcing him so. The Noah sighed softly at it and tried, despite his thoughts, to be soothing. "You should drink, you'll dehydrate yourself otherwise."

Kanda didn't answer, not for a long, quiet moment that almost made Tyki wonder if he had fallen asleep again. "Where am I?" The question lacked the malice it had once had.

"My basement. It can be a lovely place, if you're always this agreeable."

"Che." The samurai didn't quite frown. "What happened to me?"

Tyki had the feeling that they were playing a nonsense game of Twenty Questions. "As recompense for your arrogance I left you tied to the bed frame nude. It seems to have caused a rather serious illness to take root in you. If I had known that you hadn't slept or eaten… what with the lack of heat down here… I doubt I would have left you quite so long," he explained at length, and then tilted the young man's head back until his mouth fell gently open so water could be poured inside. The Noah gave him half of the glass before he pulled it away, watching him swallow.

Tyki had to suppress the urge to lean forward and slowly run his tongue against that little bump on the smaller man's throat. Press his teeth to it. The fire in the Exorcist before him might have been what made him alluring – a dark fire, mysterious in a way that the other's weren't – but his physical attributes were what made Tyki run his tongue over his teeth in appreciation. Fragile at the moment, pale, so weak, and yet Kanda had not lost even a spark of the flame, he was still angry, only now too tired to lash out stupidly. Logic had settled into his brain too, it seemed, sometime after the use of the scold's bridle. That was encouraging. Tyki wondered if he could taste that section of the younger man's neck without hearing a protest by the end of the week.

"Why are you keeping me here?"

"Oh, but you know that, Kanda."

"You… took what you wanted, didn't you? Why waste the effort with taking care of me when you can let me die?"

Tyki chuckled as he pulled the now slightly heated cloth from the samurai's eyes and dropped it to the bowl of water beside him. Those eyes were closed. Rather than demand that he be given the opportunity to see them, Tyki pushed himself onto the bed beside the Exorcist, enjoying how he flinched away before he caught himself and relaxed again, not fighting back no matter how much he seemed to want to. The Noah of Pleasure lowered his chest to the smaller man's, feeling every muscle tighten one by one for a moment until he simply rested there, unmoving. "Tell me," he whispered against the Japanese boy's cheek. "Do I feel less than human to you?"

Kanda didn't open his eyes and didn't answer.

"Do I?"

"No."

Tyki smiled. "Then why would I let you die?" The Noah's words brought Kanda's eyes open very slowly, still unfocused in the dim light. "Humans kill each other, animals let each other die. If I wanted you dead, I'd do something to make it so." He moved upward across the Japanese man's torso, perfectly aware that at any moment the boy would either scream at him to get off or simply fall asleep from indifference. "Fighting Skin might have given you a bad example of us Kanda, being a Noah doesn't mean having no morals. But we can discuss this later. Right now…" He pushed his hips downward, grinding them through both blankets until Kanda tried to stiffen against him.

"Don't—"

"I know you're too sick to fuck, I can see that," Tyki whispered to Kanda's jaw. "But I can make you sleep better, at least."

Kanda pushed his lips together for fear that he would say something as foul as he had the day before, his fingernails bit into his palms. "I will sleep fine if you get off of me." He breathed, and it took everything he could not to say a curse word in the sentence.

"You remember what I told you before, ne?" Tyki asked as his right hand slipped through the blankets and touched the flesh of Kanda's chest, feeling it tremble beneath that slow caress of his fingers. Kanda's free hand clamped on the blankets again, his jaw tightened. "And with a fever like yours, you might just pass out if I make you come hard enough."

The fist was so tight Kanda's knuckles turned white; Tyki moved his hand to the boy's thigh.

"Don't… I'll…" The Japanese man cast about for a threat he could use and, finding none, growled low in his throat, baring his teeth to the Noah on top of him. He seethed when the Portuguese man laughed, but didn't move, if he moved life would only become increasingly more difficult. The mirror was gone, the bridle gone, the last thing he needed was to get either of them put back again – not with how his mind was reeling even from the thought of it. He needed time to calm down, time to think without his head pounding and his eyes drooping, time to sort through what had happened and figure out who it was that had caused it. Tyki wasn't giving him that time.

"What will you do, little Exorcist Kanda? Grind your molars at me?"

"Don't…" Kanda didn't want to say please. He didn't want that word to seep past his lips and into the Noah's ears, but he knew it was most likely the only way to be heard. The fingers on his thigh pressed slowly inward, making his leg jump with their tenderness. "Tyki… I…"

The Noah cupped Kanda's manhood in his palm and raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

Not again. Not right now. Not right now. Not you…

"Don't…"

"Are you going to cry, Kanda? You look a bit like you might cry."

"You fucking asshole, I am not going to cry."

"Ah, there's the bark again." The little hint of amusement in the Noah's voice made Kanda grind his teeth again, harsher, his curled fingers hurting his palm despite the blankets. "I had thought for a moment you were going to beg me not to but I see now that I was wrong. Shame, isn't it? Having all that pride and nothing to do with it… though I suppose that by the time I get what I want from you, I'll be able to say the same for dignity." Tyki pushed himself up abruptly, his knee between Kanda's thighs, and began to stroke steadily, arousing the other man regardless of his will.

"I don't want—"

"Oh?" Tyki leaned forward just as Kanda closed his eyes. "Then tell me, what do you want? Shall I just toy with you like this? I won't let you go, but if you tell me what you want, I might—"

"To be left alone." Kanda whispered from behind clenched teeth. He felt the brush of lips on his cheek, then on his ear, talking in a very low voice.

"To be left alone…" It was obvious what the Noah wanted.

Kanda forced himself not to seethe around the word that formed on his lips. "Please."

Tyki shushed him and pulled his hand slowly, slowly away, a little smile tugging at his lips. Instead he pressed his fingers to the flesh of Kanda's stomach and then, in a rush, through it, stilling the Japanese man even before he could speak another protest. The Noah turned his hand palm up while he moved his it to the place he needed it to be, and then grinned with all of his teeth, watching Kanda stare at him in wide-eyed horror. "Are you sure you don't want me… Hi-me-cha-n?"

The movement of fingers – far too many for Kanda to understand anything but their pressure – made him scream from the back of his throat, a burst of white-hot undeniable pleasure bolting from the base of his spine to the root of his now more than half-hard erection. The hand he had kept still to this point tried to shove the Noah away only to be caught and pinned as those fingers curled against the surface of his prostate again. It was the same as before – he couldn't even think to stop screaming, couldn't think to read the lips that moved to speak to him. He already felt on the edge of orgasm, and he dropped his head back against the pillows, breathing harshly, ignoring the feel of a warm, slick tongue gliding over his Adam's apple.

"You're so warm inside, Hime-chan… I bet that not all of that is from your fever." The words vibrated up the side of the samurai's jaw, tickling the fine tassels of hair that hung down the sides of his face, making him shiver with more than just his illness. Tyki's mouth smiled against the turn of his throat. "Now… what were you saying about being left alone?"

Kanda didn't managed to outright protest so much as make a loud, undignified sound of need and fear, head thrown back in what had to be the most submissive position the Noah had seen him in yet. The hand slipped from within him and returned to his now hard length, stroking him in a way that was anything but teasing. The Japanese man would have moaned if he had had air to, but instead his throat closed in on itself and he choked, fisting his hands against the Noah's touch.

"You're either screaming or very quiet, Kanda. I'm curious if you know that."

"You fucking—"

"I'd avoid that word if I were you, I'm tempted enough as it is." Tyki warned softly, still moving his hand with fierce strokes. It was simple for him to pump his hand so strongly, squeezing almost painfully. Kanda's hips rolled to meet him, building on his pace, and a crooked smile spread once more across his cheeks. If it was this simple, he would get what he wanted by the end of the month. "Why don't you scream again, Hime-chan? You know you want to stop biting your lip so I can hear you whimper more clearly." For his efforts, Tyki was rewarded with the hand he was holding down leaping out to take a firm hold of his shirtsleeve, something he let happen for the sake of showing trust.

Kanda arched beneath him, his teeth turning the soft pink skin of his lip a sickly yellow. His breathing had become strained.

Tyki knew he wouldn't be able to do this again, not without endangering the young Exorcist's health. He rocked his weight with the motions of his hand, an illusion that would likely overload the dark haired man's senses and send him reeling with release.

The samurai couldn't strangle his sharp intake of air at the touch of a hot, open mouth on the side of his jaw, moving toward his lips. He didn't speak, didn't try to move his lip away from his teeth, he just laid there with his fingers in the Noah's shirt, wave after wave of feeling breaking over him, each one threatening to pull him under. It was too much – far too much – he was going to either come or pass out in the next few moments, not enough air in his lungs, not enough blood in his brain. He was breathing too deeply even for his arousal, but he wasn't sweating, his face must have been red with fever.

He swallowed and cracked an eye upward. Tyki looked down at him with that same warm dark gaze, the curls of his hair falling around his face in sweeps of near jet, contrasting with the gentle chocolate of his irises. The skin that touched Kanda, the hand that disappeared through the material of the blankets swathed around him, was likely the same gray-olive color at the Noah's face. Sweat beaded a line across the larger man's brow, curling his hair away from the etched scars there. He was concentrating. He was focused on his hand, focused on the labored rise and fall of Kanda's chest, and all Kanda could see was determination masking something bright. If the samurai had seen a fallen goddess in his own reflection then here, in Tyki's expression, he saw a sculpture of Eros come to life. The wicked grin was more mischievous than evil, the purpose of his touch the kind of pain brought by illogical amounts of pleasure, the terrifying hunger in his eyes nothing but unadulterated lust. Perhaps it was the sleep deprivation that cast the Noah in such a new, strange light to the Exorcist, or maybe the fever was rooted more deeply in him than either of them knew – in either case, his hand moved from shirtsleeve to elbow, and he did not roll to throw the older man aside.

He wanted to. Part of him screamed that it was the only truly right thing to do. But what would he gain from casting aside an enemy who seemed more confused about his intentions than he had any right to be?

It might have been his last coherent thought. Kanda made a sound that could have been a warning that Tyki pointedly ignored.

Under the Noah's hands the Exorcist gave a violent, back cracking arch and opened his mouth, filled with a silent scream. He took the initiative and kissed those perfect, inviting lips, tongue and mouth aimed only at pleasure, no longer at causing pain. Kanda's hips rolled into him, three times, each one wetting his hand a bit more, and at the end of it the samurai was looking blearily upward, shivering from anything but cold.

The boy was too weak to speak but he could still glare with the best of them.

Tyki pulled his hand from within the covers, taking the mess with it, and leaned back, smiling at the man beneath him. "Now get some rest, Kanda," he instructed with another, soft press of his mouth to Kanda's jaw. "Hating me is no reason to let yourself die, ne?"

Kanda wished vaguely that he had the strength to retort before the room faded away into darkness.

-- -- --

It was three days before Kanda was well enough to sit and drink the broth that Tyki had brought him, and in that time the Noah showed a level of self restraint he was almost proud of. Not once did he do more than brush the hair from Kanda's face with his fingertips unnecessarily, even when he helped him change his sweaty, disgusting clothes. The second day he even washed the samurai's hair, handfuls of silken tresses falling around his hands, just daring him to do something, anything that would bring him closer to the Japanese man, nearer to his goal. But he resisted. He did what he could to keep the boy clean and pushed his own desires into the very back of his mind, where the y grew darker and more substantial by the hour.

On the forth night, after not leaving the young man's side for nearly a week, Kanda touched him of his own will.

The Noah stood from the chair he had moved beside the bed, brushed the boy's bangs from his forehead, and turned to leave. A hand, weak and hardly able to fight that much against the restraint that held it close to the bed frame, barely touched the material of his shirt.

Tyki looked back, slightly surprised. Kanda pale fingers trembled on the fabric but held it firm, almost claw-like the shadows of the sputtering gaslights.

"Mugen…" The word wasn't one that the Noah recognized. He stepped back a bit, displacing Kanda's hand as he moved to hear better, and the samurai shifted his limb back to the mattress, resting lightly. "I want to see Mugen," Kanda repeated, dark foggy eyes half-hooded at the older man, tempting.

"Mugen?" Tyki echoed the name with a distinctly foreign lilt. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

The Japanese man might have been trying to be threatening when he reached out and gathered a handful of the Noah's shirt in his free hand, eyes narrowed dangerously. It was hard to tell, however, what with the lack of power behind the motion and the lack of fire behind his eyes. Tyki touched the side of his face, not near as hot as it had been, but close, and fought the urge to lean down and kiss him, softly, gently, opening him up like a flower from the inside out.

"My katana, you ass. My Innocence."

"Ah…" Tyki breathed, and touched the hand that was still tangled in his shirt. It let go but didn't yank away from his hold. "Yes, I still have it. Wait until tomorrow, I'll take you to it then. I'm afraid that moving you now will put you right back where you were before." No sooner had he whispered the words that Kanda narrowed his eyes a little, daring him to show concern. "You need to get better. I can't keep you or your sword here too long, the others will know."

"Others?" The hand on the side of Kanda's face was too cool and soothing; he couldn't push the Noah away with that pleasant sensation running down his cheek. He closed his eyes to it. What did it matter anyway? He was getting out of here as soon as he knew he had Mugen. He could indulge in one of the few moments of comfort allotted to him.

The Noah's breath was very close to his face. "I didn't exactly tell them that I knocked you through three buildings and embedded you in a mountainside, then brought you here. I told them you slipped through my clutches, badly wounded, but that you are likely to survive from that spell on your chest." Kanda felt his face react in slight shock, mouth fallen open, eyebrows wrinkling the skin of his forehead. Why would an enemy tell a lie like that? There wasn't anything to gain by it, not that Kanda could see.

Tyki saw his question before he could voice it. "I told you what I want, Kanda – my offer. If you sleep with me – with no ropes, no chains, no gags, no bridles – I will put you back exactly where I found you. Otherwise…" His face grew into a grin so wide it might have rivaled that of a jack-o-lantern. "I'm afraid I'll have to convince them that you're breakable, which will be a great deal more painful than anything I want to do to you." He leaned forward, his fingers dancing across the skin of Kanda's cheek, down to his neck, teasing a slow, feather-light line to the distinct hollow at the base of the samurai's throat. The Noah could make out every tendon in the long, pale column of flesh, just asking to be stroked, touched, or nibbled. When the Japanese man hardened his jaw the shadow that emphasized the curved of his windpipe made Tyki realize just how much weight the Exorcist had lost. It wasn't a lot, any prisoner of was could have lost more, but Tyki noticed.

Kanda couldn't hold the hardened expression long and let it fade into an expression of neutrality. "I hate you," he breathed, and Tyki's face fell into a much softer expression, almost tender.

"I know that. I never wanted you not to," Tyki admitted, "But you must think about what I told you before and what I'm offering. I will have you at some point, the way I want to. The question is how much of you will remain when that time comes. If, in a few days' time when you are well, you agree to let me touch you, you can be right on your way when we are finished. But, if it takes too long and the others discover you, I will hurt you and break you and take you regardless of your current will. And keep you," Tyki's voice had fallen to a whisper, his eyes narrowed to dangerous, bright gold slits, but his fingers stayed perfectly gentle against Kanda's face, playing softly through his hair. "I will make you call me master and kneel to me, force every ounce of pride you have to crumble in your feeble little hands. And you will sleep with me. You will cry out my name and slip an honorific onto the back of it without thought, gasping because mine is the only pleasure you know or understand anymore.

"But," his voice perked again as if with a smile, "You can always take the first deal. It's all the same to me."

Kanda scowled as hard as physically possible, curling his upper lip back from his teeth in annoyance. "You can't break me."

"I do beg to differ."

"Try it, cocksucker. You can't break me."

"That's almost ironic, given where I put my mouth on you," Tyki chuckled, but there was no mirth in the sound, his fingers slipped back against the ridge of Kanda's skull before fisting in his hair and drawing it backward, bending the samurai's neck to an uncomfortable angle. The Japanese man's eyes narrowed but he remained mute to the pain. Slowly the Noah leaned forward until there was no choice but to look at him, look and see the anger burning in his eyes. "But would you like a taste, Kanda? Would you like to know what I can do to you when I'm not sucking your cock?" Tyki plunged the fingers of his left hand into the samurai's throat and quickly located a nerve, brushing his fingertips across it. At once Kanda's jaw tightened, eyes narrowed. "I can pluck every nerve and tendon in your body with nothing but my fingers. I can give you unbearable pain this way, if you'd like to feel it…though I can bring you other feelings as well…" He chuckled, but he didn't do anything more with the boy's neck, not when the samurai hadn't retaliated. The fear in the air as so thick he could almost taste it.

Kanda didn't relax when Tyki pulled away, nor did he unclench his jaw, not for a very long moment. The hand that flattened across his covered chest was just as solid as any other human hand, but lacked the comfort it might have brought in that circumstance. It was the Grim Reaper's scythe pressing at his throat.

"You will not break me," the samurai whispered, and he laced the words with all of the hatred he could muster, feeling his right eyebrow twitch with old determination and anger.

Tyki smiled. "Well," he sighed, stepping away from the boy, "What would you do if something happened to this… Mugen of yours?" He watched what little color there was drain from the Exorcist's face. "Would you like that, Hime-chan?"

Kanda took the fear in his chest and turned it into anger and fire so that he could find the strength to snarl, fueled half by that stupid nickname the Noah had given him and half by his own inability to do anything but threaten him, "If you touch Mugen—"

"If I destroy your Innocence, you will be entirely useless." The Noah cut in, lacking his prior niceness. His golden eyes were narrowed to slits of metal, lids nearly lost in his hair so that the disks of his irises seemed to hover there, like a pair of eerie twin moons, shrouded in black clouds. "What are you willing to lose to defend something that you no longer have?" Tyki sank down again, softly, and Kanda watched him sigh, watched how he ran the same fingers that had touched so many hearts through his hair indifferently, shaking the curls away from his face.

Kanda was speechless for a long moment, his heart clamping erratically in his chest, and he shivered, but continued to hold his tongue between his teeth.

"I…" He swallowed, but it didn't quell his fear. "I…"

Tyki nodded, his face once again the human mask of concern and understanding, dark eyes only for Kanda's face. "Think about it, Kanda." His fingers were cool and tender on Kanda's face, the exact opposite of a moment before, "Just think about it."

-- --

So I think there's one more part to this. We'll see?