Playlist Shuffle Challenge. First song describes your OC, second describes the canon character, third is the inspiration for the one-shot. Someone came up with it over on the YYH Fanfic facebook group! My songs were 1. Fur Elise (Epic Trailer Version) by Hidden Citizens 2. Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift 3. I Miss You by Adele
I chose Shinpi and Kurama for this one. This is sometime in the beginning of Survivor's Guilt I guess? I'm not sure haha
Calm. Collected. Cruel.
Another slash through the air, another spray of blood painting the trunks of the trees. The only way to track the dark liquid in the night was the way the moonlight reflected off the puddles. And the smell. Of course, always, the smell. That pungent sweet scent capable of driving some demons to madness.
It was hard to say which of them were worse in the situation. Shinpi with her precision, her graceful style as she swept around her enemies like a remorseless, deadly, dancer. Her sword held no prisoners, left none wounded.
Or was it him? With his ruthless vines, his whip that didn't offer the courtesy of cracking before flaying flesh from bone? He cut through his attackers as though they were wet clay, and he sent them to the forest floor in pieces. He'd followed her out here, laid waste to those who would raise a hand to her. His temper had gotten the best of him.
She had the habit of drawing that response out of his controlled hands.
Together they turned the trees, the underbrush, the world into a deeply shadowed abstract piece of macabre art. The shapes of the bodies undefined. The color of the crimson flow muted, dyed black by the night consuming them. And it definitely felt like they were being swallowed, a maw ancient and unyielding, far more powerful than either of them. It was the only thing they were defenseless against in those trees.
The night and her neverending reach as her claws pulled at the primal senses of two predators.
"You didn't need to come." Shinpi informed after the last of the demons had fallen at her feet, staining her sneakers and turning the earth to mud. She used a scrap of cloth to clean her blade before sliding it back into its sheath, displaying a rarely offered sense of reverie through the action.
"You were being followed." Kurama told her in response, allowing his rose to dissolve into nothing more harmful than a mere seed in his palm. "You were going to be outnumbered."
"Were you going to save me?" She tossed him a teasing grin then, and a soft chuckle he only barely caught. "That's awfully sweet of you."
Her eyes glimmered in the darkness, casting that sheen only a predator's eyes could. The twist of her lips rose further on the left side of her mouth and her canine, though human, looked mighty threatening to him. A beast baring her teeth in a challenge. It's just how she was. He'd seen the look before, he'd see it again. Somehow, someway, this time it struck him differently. Maybe it was the heady perfume of copper and decaying leaves that made him stride closer to her.
He wanted to be heard, but by her only.
"You're still under our care. If I allowed you to come to harm-"
"That's less charming, you know. I prefer it when I think you want to keep me around." She reached up and brushed her thumb over his cheek pulling back to reveal the stained pad of her finger. "Sloppy, sloppy. You must be a messy eater."
"That was your doing, actually." Kurama watched her draw the digit into her mouth thoughtlessly.
The Shinpi that shone in the dark was not the same as the one who laughed with the group in the light. She was sharper, yet more like a mirage than ever. What he wouldn't give to chase her through the trees himself, test her for all her worth. Would she be able to stand up to him? Could she hide her trail? Would she bother or would she meet him head on, teeth aimed for his throat?
How long would it take for him to catch her?
This was a version of Shinpi he enjoyed in the worst, most forbidden way. An agony for him to suffer through with satisfaction lingering in its wake right beside his annoyance at letting another opportunity go untended. He imagined she wasn't likely to go licking blood off her fingers in front of the others. It was too inhumane, too demonic for her purposes. She needed them to see her as something fairly tame in order for her to keep them where she wanted them.
Kurama knew this.
He'd have done the same.
He had done the same.
Standing in front of her he dipped his head down and catalogued her sudden gasp as a sound he might never earn again. His tongue slid against a scant cut on her cheek, brushing over the wound with care. He knew it was her blood on his tongue by the taste. Humming he pulled back and studied the now clean patch of skin with interest.
"It seems you were the sloppy one. You have a class tomorrow, you can't show up looking mangled." He offered her a flash of his teeth as though it were a smile.
She responded with a gaze that struck him as dangerous. The toes of her ruined shoes brushed against his as she stepped closer, leaving little room for air between their bodies.
"If you're going to look at me like that, Kurama, you should at least do me the courtesy of acting on it." She breathed, head craned back to look into his eyes. He felt the heat of her words on his chin. If she'd been any closer it would've been her lips brushing over his skin. "Are you done with your chivalrous nonsense? Are you finally going to fight me?"
"I just told you," he dipped his head down to her ear to speak in a purr that would have driven a lesser woman to her knees, "you can't go to class tomorrow mangled."
She laughed, stepping back from him. "Then I'm done with you for the night."
"Are you?" Kurama asked as she started to walk away from him.
"For the night." She repeated, tossing him a look over her shoulder that was all sly smile and glinting eyes. "One day I'm going to destroy you in a forest like this. You'll wish you had taken me up on this offer before I got too strong for you."
"Maybe I'm holding out for you to be too strong for me."
"I don't think you hold out for anything or anyone, Kurama. You shouldn't try to convince me otherwise." She waved at him. "I'll see you on campus. Next time you want to play hero, pick a real damsel."
He stood still to gather himself. He didn't need to bother concealing their victims, the birds and beasts would do the work for him soon enough. Just in case, he dropped a few seeds of plants that sprawled toward the cooling mounds of flesh. The night fell harder against his skin, a crushing weight, and he regretted yet again not taking her up on her offer to fight.
He just couldn't trust himself. There would be another chance. Another night.
Another moment in the dark with the woman who haunted his dreams.
