A/N – This was written with both the anime and manga in mind, so if something seems inaccurate, I might be referring to one version of a particular scene that was altered in the other medium. Apologies for any OOC-ness either. All of my pairing fics for the last five years have been about one pairing, so this took a bit of work.
Summary – Hirokawa's curiosity over Gotou gets the best of him, causing the parasyte to make an unexpected offer. But the differences between them become unclear, and things do not go as planned. GoHiro. Guro/vore/cannibalism/sex (and possibly some light fluff).
For A, whose fanart got me into the pairing.
Drawn from a Piano
By PikaCheeka
ooo
"What do you look like?"
"You know what I look like. I dislike human clothing." He tilted his head as he spoke, eyes narrow but otherwise expressionless.
"Fortunately, you put up with them in the company of others." Not me though, he thought as he studied the creature before him. I'm the only one you wear nothing but underwear in front of. "Your true form. I have never seen it entirely."
The alien closed his eyes then. This man was strange even for a human. He thought there might be a word for it, for what he was, but he knew too little of humans to find it. He sometimes wanted to ask him what went wrong, why he was more like one of them than he was a human, but that wasn't quite what it was. "It isn't what a human might call…pleasant." Even as he spoke, he didn't know if he was referring to his own body or to the man's mind.
"That isn't a concern of mine."
What does concern you? But Gotou stood. He changed slowly, beginning with his feet, keeping his eyes fixed on Hirokawa's. He could see something in them, in the way his eyebrows turned up. Fear? Or something else? It didn't matter, he decided. He was harmless, helpless, really, in his drab suit and tie, hair carefully combed back as if to hide the emptiness in his head that was neither human nor parasyte. It felt strange, returning to his true form without the immediate intention of killing whoever saw it.
Hirokawa's eyes widened despite himself as the human form before him began to morph, its legs buckling backwards like an animal's, clawed reptilian toes lengthening as the skin dissolved, replaced by a sinewy red shell. This is Gotou, he reminded himself, a mantra in the back of his head as he watched the parasyte's legs lengthen and his torso widen. The alien who I keep closest to me. The tail came next, erupting from his backside with the sound of a whip, long and thin and bladed. The alien who willingly does everything I ask. The arms caused him to take a step back, if only to get out of the way as Gotou lowered his head dropped to all fours, all…six, Hirokawa realized. Two arms, spliced at the elbows to produce four hands, thick sinew ending in claws and blades and violence. The alien who is the most powerful being on this planet. Gotou was slow to raise his head, and the human immediately understood why. Grey skin with a splash of crimson surrounding the eyes. Four narrow eyes, inhuman but for the madness hidden in them. A mouth so wide it took up the lower half of his head, now strangely protruding like a muzzle, scores of jagged teeth. He smiled. There were more teeth behind them. This is the alien who plays the piano.
"Those jaws…" Hirokawa moved without thinking, reaching up to slowly run a finger down the alien's face. The worried expression had not left his eyes, but it was not fear anymore, and for the first time that evening, there was a trace of a smile. A sudden discomfort began to creep into Gotou, but he neither flinched nor bit him.
"I eat humans," was all he said, mildly.
Hirokawa dropped his hand then and sighed. He had thought, hoped, this would change things, but it didn't. It wasn't that his urges bothered him in themselves, but there was something uncomfortably human about them that he couldn't quite be rid of. Not even seeing the other's true form could fix that. It's not as if he could comprehend it, though.
The parasyte returned to his human form, his second pair of eyes the last sign of the grotesque before fading away, before speaking. "I want to eat you nearly as much as you want to copulate with me."
Hirokawa neither replied nor altered his expression, but Gotou could hear the slow sucking of breath change. It was a moment before he asked, "Where did you learn that word?"
I just made two observations that would startle most humans, Gotou narrowed his eyes faintly. He had told people he had wanted to kill them before. The reaction was always the same. Horror, screams, panic. The other half of the statement was more complicated, but he suspected it wasn't one that humans would react calmly to. "A book."
"I'd let you eat me if." He said then, abruptly. He didn't need to finish. He had said it without thinking but as the words spilled forth, he saw their truth. It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered.
"I don't need your permission." Then, "I did not know two humans with…these bodies could mate."
"Are you averse to the idea?"
"No."
He felt a lurch of fear then, one he hadn't felt even when the alien had expressed a desire to eat him. It wasn't a fear of death though. He had always known that his death drive was abnormal, that he didn't care for what happened to him. It was why he found himself working and living with aliens who preyed on humans fearlessly. No. Not fearlessly. Kururo Gotou made him fearful. He remembered the first time he had met his eyes and that strange longing that he had never known before had erupted inside of him. He was afraid of what this parasyte made him feel, and he had just blindly acquiesced to taking it the farthest it could go.
Gotou's speed frightened him still farther, because within seconds the alien had picked up his clothing and walked calmly towards the back of the apartment. When did I ever show him where I slept? It didn't matter. He was his bodyguard, after all. He followed him.
ooo
The undressing was hardly ceremonious, Gotou lying on the bed naked, slits beneath his eyes suggesting the second pair staring at him as he removed his clothing. This didn't bother Hirokawa, as he saw no reason for it to be, though he caught himself wondering if Gotou even knew it often meant something to humans. But as he sat on the edge of the bed, finally dropping his shirt to the floor, he noticed the eyes suddenly vanish. Unexpected disappointment washed over him.
"You don't have to stay human for this." It was the first thing either one of them had said since they'd entered the bedroom.
"My true form doesn't have what I need."
Hirokawa startled. He hadn't realized that, perhaps because of the crouching position Gotou had maintained. "You can change parts then."
Talons erupted from where his hands once were. "These?"
"Yes," he breathed. He felt something low in his stomach tighten at the sight of them as he lay down beside the other man. The alien, he reminded himself. "Use them."
The parasyte didn't need further encouragement, abruptly raking his claws across the man's chest. Not deep enough to kill him, but enough to make him scream. Once the pain began, it did not stop. Gotou played him carefully, slowly, divinely, and in a haze of euphoric agony Hirokawa realized he was moving over him the way he moved over the piano. Lovingly.
It wasn't that Hirokawa felt he deserved the pain. He wasn't disgusted with his humanity, no. He despised the human race, but it was no fault of his own that he was born one. But the parasytes – no, not all of them – Gotou, was divine. He was perfection. Five beings in one, five devourers of the human race residing in a single body with a single mind, judgment passed on the entire world and here, here on his body, in his body, his talons scratching the secrets of the universe on his skin, secrets as fluid and unknowable as the blood that seeped out of their traces.
No. He didn't deserve the pain, but he loved it, loved the power that brought the pain onto him, loved the power he had over the monster crouched over him. Here he was not the mayor. Here Gotou was not an assassin or a bodyguard for him to control. And yet, here Gotou still did as he asked, still thrust into him and dug into his flesh and lapped at the wounds and in drawing out howls and tired blood from him, gave him everything he'd ever wanted. At one point he managed to grab the parasyte's talons, dragged them to his mouth, and licked his own blood off of them. I am drinking my death, he though numbly as the claws gently closed over his face.
At first he could not comprehend how any living being would willingly ask for pain, ask to be torn open, ask to bleed and leak fear and torment, and for an uneasy moment, Gotou was uncomfortable with the man beneath him. He was bleeding heavily from dozens of shallow scratches and several deeper ones, his wrists and throat bruised. How could he do this? How could he want this? His incomprehensible nature was beyond that of any other human Gotou had ever seen. How did accepting, wanting, pain make him so powerful? And yet, this powerful creature chose him. Equals, the word tore through his mind before he could stop it. He had found the only human worth marveling at and, he realized as those delicate human hands reached up to touch his face, he had been found in return.
It was only when the parasyte first sunk his (human) teeth into his shoulder, tearing open a seeping wound still more before suddenly, startlingly, ripping a strip of skin off and devouring it, that Hirokawa was dragged down momentarily from his ecstasy. He was only a human and that was not good enough. He wanted more. He wanted to be one with Gotou, wanted to be him. He wanted what he was. Because Gotou just was. "More," he felt himself whispering, arching up towards those jaws, pushing down onto him as he did, feeling something jerk inside of him. Gotou did do more, but not more of what Hirokawa had asked.
Gotou felt his control slipping at one point, felt the bones in his skull elongate, shift, and suddenly his vision sharpened. It had never happened before, and for the barest of moments he felt something akin to rage towards Hirokawa. He had made this happen. He made me show weakness. I should kill him now. He opened his jaws and moved to bite him, but something stopped him. Another emotion beneath the rage, one he knew nothing of but one that made him uneasy nonetheless.
He closed all of his eyes and jaws then, moved his hips in silence again, willing that other feeling to leave, wondering if Hirokawa had noticed. He couldn't have. It had been less than a second, ages for him but imperceptible to a mere human. Human. Could he call Hirokawa that, knowing what he now knew about him?
"I want you to eat me nearly as much as you want to copulate with me," the man suddenly gasped out.
Gotou opened a single eye. So he had noticed. And he had unfortunately noticed more than the lapse of predatory judgment, which alone could have been explained. If his jaws could have allowed anything but a grimace, he'd have scowled.
ooo
"Use your teeth next time. Both sets," he was panting as he spoke, his hands gently touching caressing the other's jaws.
Fragile hands. Gotou pushed them down. "You should be more careful. You are reckless for a human." But are you even human? He had observed humans for some time. Humans were normally reckless because of stupid things he could not feel. Bravery. Love. Pride. This was something else. Or was it? He knew so little of what those things were.
"I gave you permission to eat me."
"Not yet."
Hirokawa didn't reply.
"I'd…" What was the word? A human word for this feeling. He didn't know it and it didn't matter, because he couldn't say it. "You listen to the music I make."
Again, there was silence for some time. Hirokawa remembered then, remembered the first time he'd heard Gotou play the piano, remembered how he had listened in the hallway, thinking he hadn't been seen, remembered how the next time he heard it, he had looked in to find a chair set up behind the piano, remembered how the alien had spoken softly, without turning around, "On the TV, humans listen to music when sitting." He remembered evening after evening, months stretching into a year, of sitting in that chair, listening to emotions spilling forth from the instrument played by a creature without any of his own. He remembered thinking, "If this piano can have such feelings drawn out of it, how are we any different?" We. He remembered then. He had used we. As if they were the same species.
Finally he spoke, "Gotou? The word is miss. The feeling is lo-"
"I don't know what you are talking about." Even as he said it, he felt the fingers between his blood-slicked claws. Hirokawa could not have caught him by surprise and moved his hand there. I did this?
Hirokawa's eyes closed as he smiled. "Neither do I."
