Author: Forest Glenny
Genre: Romance, slightly angsty. Mostly just weird.
Rating: R
Warnings: Raenef/Eclipse, angsty!Raenef and Eclipse, violent!Raenef, LEMON, on the verge of PWP, weird writing style.
Summary: Short (very!), unrelated vignettes featuring mainly Raenef and Eclipse, taking a slightly darker look at their relationship.
Disclaimer: Evidently, I don't own Demon Diary, because the story line really features them being more happy-go-lucky than this.
Author's Notes: This story is REALLY WEIRD. I'm not entirely sure where it came from, except Vampy-chan asked for smut, so I sat down to write the missing scene from "A Picture Worth a Thousand Words," and instead I got this. It is based on one of my favorite poems ever, called "Merengue" by poet Mary Ruefle. If you go check it out, the story might make more sense.
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When silver moonlight lapped like waves through his windows, Raenef knew that Eclipse would come. He would climb onto the high expanse of bed and join his master, and tell him how much he didn't love him as they evidenced their union to the flowered curtains and the silent marble floors. Afterwards, Raenef would lie there, empty and sated and warm, and Eclipse would sneak out once more, to his own room, where he would stay, sleepless until morning, feeling his little master's heart beat its tattoo into his skin. Sometimes he would cry but not very often. Raenef, in contrast, cried every time the warmth left his room.
---
"What are you looking for?" Eclipse asked, watching Raenef root through his piles of books and papers in vain search of some elusive prize.
"Nothing," Raenef lied.
---
Eclipse picked up the paper that lay under Raenef's essay. His master had been most unattentive during their lesson, his quill moving occasionally against the sheet he thought to be hidden. Garnet eyes narrowed slightly, for the pen marks had bloomed into a picture of him. Lines of black defined his nose, his eyes laughing, his hair like inky flowing water. He was bareheaded and barechested, his soul exposed to the eyes of his Lord Raenef. Eclipse tore the paper into bits of snow and let them flurry into the wastebasket.
---
The destruction around him quite amazed Chris. Buildings were so much rubble, bodies were twisted or scarred. The sky wept bitter tears, extinguishing the last of the edacious fire. Chris and his clerics sifted through debris to save something, anything, a treasured chair, an unburnt book. Chris found a baby, still crying for its mother, so he picked it up and kissed it.
---
Raenef kicked angrily at the tree. The tree just looked calmly back, its wise, ancient eyes pitying and understanding. Raenef wanted no such comfort, throwing himself at the grass and ripping it up visciously, making piles that he shredded between raging fingers. It all made no sense to him, why he wasted his time, why Eclipse was so oblivious, so perfectly perfect and everything he had ever wanted, everything he couldn't have. He picked up a rock round as the moon and threw it into the water, watching as the water rippled and bubbled until the rock fell to the bottom and the water moved no more.
---
Even demons had mothers once, Eclipse said to himself, because he could remember himself, a little boy, nagging his mother for a glass of milk which she gladly gave him just before their house was attacked by bandits and she was killed.
---
He counted the candles that pierced the cake's frosting, once more asking himself why he was doing this. The answer was perfectly obvious- Raenef asking why Chris and Erutis had birthdays but he didn't. Eclipse asked him when his birthday was and he said he didn't know. So they picked a day, and he baked a cake, and now he was carrying it into the dining room, its surface looking like the bonfires that consumed towns victimized by the great Eclipse. Demons don't see a point in celebrating birthdays. Eclipse felt as though he had been victimized by a cosmic joke.
---
"I want you Eclipse."
"Patience, my lo- oh! Lord Raenef!"
"One... two... three..."
"Wha- what are you doing?"
"Counting the buttons on your robe. Six..."
"There should b- be nine." Growling. "Please, stop this nonsense!"
"Who needs patience now?" Kiss, kiss. "I only counted eight. Once more from the beginning..."
---
"How do you open this and eat it?" Raenef said, holding out a pineapple. Its spiky skin was repulsive and painful to hold, but Raenef knew there was something inside. Eclipse sighed, took the fruit from his lord, and set it down before him. He cut the thing in half, revealing its yellow inside, moist and fragrant, and then in half again. He cut off the rind and set a quarter before his lord, only then realizing that his lord had been watching him, not the process, the whole time. His green eyes were wide and trusting as Eclipse set down his knife and stepped forward to touch Raenef's lips with his own.
---
"Bring the body forward," said Aureleid.
Eclipse moved, dutifully upholding his corner of the pallet and then helping to place Raenef the Fourth's body on the funeral pyre.
---
Eclipse noticed Raenef's head falling forward of its own accord, eyes drooping, his soul nearing sleep.
"We can finish in the morning, my lord," Eclipse said, and Raenef stubbornly blinked, pointing out that only a handful of pieces remained. Eclipse sighed and stood, lithe body bending gently and lifting Raenef into his arms. Raenef curled into the heat and cat-like reached up to place his warm lips against Eclipse's neck.
"All right. We'll finish in the morning." He was not talking about the puzzle.
---
"I'm sorry Eclipse, did you say something?"
"I'll repeat it, Lord Raenef. The uprising of the lesser demons, taking place at the end of the third Raenef's rule..."
---
Raenef met Erutis in a dingy bar where she was hiding from the demons that plauged her life, namely Krayon. She ordered two beers, thinking Raenef needed one, and for an hour they talked about their love problems. Raenef was happy to have someone to extract his venom. Erutis was glad to be drunk and safe from Krayon. They had another one, and the bartender pitied them, giving them one more for good measure. Raenef drank his and felt worse, Erutis drank hers and felt better, and afterwards they took the bottles outside and threw them at the wall, reveling in watching them smash into little shards.
"I hope you'll clean that up," said a passing townie. Raenef growled and threw another.
---
The silken strands of web had collected the dust of their surroundings. A solitary bug struggled in the center and a little spider advanced towards it. Eclipse reached up and wiped the web off the wall, tossing it into the courtyard.
---
Blond hair glowed in the moonlight and green eyes stared into the depths of the woodland pool. Raenef pulled his robe over his head and tossed it over a waiting branch, pulled off his pants and hung them similarly, took off his socks and underwear and let his hair fall in short golden tresses around his face and then stood naked in the little clearing, relishing the feel of the cool night air against his bare skin. Little breezes felt like Eclipse did when his always-a-little-nervous hands ghosted over Raenef's hips, pinning him gently against the bed, taking him hard. The water that lapped kitten-like against his toes felt like warm, wet, hungry, no-one-is-watching kisses, and he dove in. He wanted to touch so badly, and was pleasantly surprised when strong arms wound around him, pulled him backwards, rubbed against him. Eclipse smiled and touched and cried out, eventually, and they fell soundless into the privacy of the water.
---
Looking at his eyes, the midwife cried out in fear as Eclipse first emerged from his mother's womb. "Send him back!" the woman shouted. "He brings nothing but ill luck!" But Eclipse's mother held him close and nursed him all the same. Now, Eclipse is glad that Raenef loves his blood-colored eyes.
---
One moonlit night, Raenef followed Eclipse back to his bedroom after they bled their hearts to each other and found his tutor reading a book. Raenef straddled the long, pale legs that occupied the bed and removed the book carefully from trembling hands. He trailed reverent hands over Eclipse's chest, eliciting a moan and enjoying it, a conaisseur of the sounds the older demon made in his painful joy.
"You'll die reading," Raenef said with only a trace of melancholy at the thought.
Mouths were then otherwise employed, so hungry hands drew patterns that spoke of longing and need. Raenef created the shape of Eclipse's body in his mind, finding that sensitive locale that would drive Eclipse insane, and his fingers with their clean nails clenched and pulled and waited for the desperate sound that originated in his tutor's toes and welled up through his chest and meant more, for someone's sake give me more. Then the pace quickened and Raenef wanted to feel that pace inside him, reverberating through him and catching him in its embrace. The sucking noises abated suddenly, when twin cries ripped from wildly different throats, calling for all that is evil and violent and pure and holy and everything in the universe to please, just stop for a moment, give us a breather.
Cautiously, Eclipse wrapped his arms around Raenef, and Raenef snuggled back as Eclipse spoke.
"If I die reading, I hope it's a really wonderful book."
-fin-
1 July 04
A/N: Reviews are appreciated, constructive criticism always welcome. And, by the way, I know the writing style is odd, and you are welcome to comment on it or how I can make it better, but please don't just say "I don't like it." Thank you.