Owari no Seraph / Seraph of the End: The Taming of the Demon, Chapter 5: Hope

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Okay, people, here's another chapter in the adventures of the universe's oddest of couples. I had to change the rating of the story to "M"…I think you'll see why.

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The Taming of the Demon, Chapter 5: Hope

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"And what's this place called again?"

"A 'bar.'"

"Why?" The Black Demon looked around suspiciously. A highly reluctant Yu had deftly maneuvered them both into a table by the door, for swift and easy extraction at the first sign of a good or even halfway adequate opportunity. "There's no bars here."

"It's a convention of speaking," muttered Yu, trying to keep his voice down. This was the last place he wanted to be with a success-drunk demon, but Asuramaru had insisted when he saw the gaudy neon lights inside, and heard the laughter. They must be torturing something really awful in there, he'd thought, excitedly. He was visibly disappointed to learn that the dartboards were not alive.

"But why is everybody acting so strange?"

"Ah, it's because of their preferred poison."

He looked elated. "People poison themselves here?"

"No, no, no, I mean, it's because of what they're drinking."

"They're drinking poison?" Yu thought he hadn't seen the demon so happy in a—well, he'd never seen him so happy, at least since his coming over to the physical realm.

"No, they are not drinking poison. Those are euphemisms. I mean, they are drinking alcoholic drinks of…various types."

The demon visibly deflated. "But no poison?"

"No poison."

The clearly disappointed demon sat down in his chair, at the table across from Yu, chin in his hand. Yu had deliberately steered him over into a corner close by the door, with every intent of scooping him out of there as soon as he possibly could. After all, ((Asuramaru + people trying to get plastered) x alcohol) / (trying to remain undercover) was a formula that failed to put him at ease.

"What do they drink, then?"

"Er, well, various things." I am not giving a Black Demon alcohol. I am not giving a Black Demon alcohol. I am not giving a Black Demon alcohol. "Fruit punch, for example." Yeah, fruit punch.

"I want some. In fact…" Here he searched over the heads of the crowd and pointed. "I'll have whatever that man on the floor over there is having."

Yu looked. "Maru, he's conked out on the floor."

"But he looks so happy. I want some of that."

"Maru, trust me, you don't want any of that."

"I do, too!" He smiled slyly. "Are we gonna haveta argue this out right here in public?"

He'll make a scene if I don't, thought Yu. So he motioned to the waiter. "One Vampire's Bite. And, uh, water it down," he whispered behind his hand, to the surprised bartender. "Way down." The waiter raised his eyebrow. The guy didn't wanna get his date drunk? That was new. Then he shrugged. Not his to question why.

He came back and dropped off the glass in front of Asuramaru, who looked disappointed. "That's all there is to it? I was expecting something bigger."

"Believe me, that's big enough."

"What are you having?"

"Er, I'm good. I, uh, may be about to be on duty, in a manner of speaking, and it wouldn't do to report with alcohol on my breath." He tried to look as nonchalant as he could while he struggled within his soul to make that the truth: in a way, it was.

Asuramaru narrowed his eyes at the crazy human, trying to sense his emotions, see if he was telling the truth. He seemed to check out, though the demon couldn't figure out why. It was like it was a lie and not a lie at the same time. Asuramaru frowned slightly; nobody had ever been able to confuse his senses like that before. Well, anyway, to business.

He lifted the glass and threw a good percentage of its contents onto the back of his throat like he'd seen the other attendees do. His eyes grew wide and watery, and he choked, holding his throat, and started coughing. Yu reached over, just as he'd done in the commissary, and patted him on the back. "C'mon, Maru, stay with me here. It didn't go down the wrong way, did it? Okay, just breathe, then. C'mon, it's okay…"

"Kaff, koff! Mort-, I mean, hu-, I mean, Yu! You did that deliberately! You tried to kill me!"

"Me?! What'd I do? I told you not to drink that!"

"Not strongly enough! Your—kaff! Kaff!—powers of persuasion could definitely stand some work!"

"Yeah, well, now you see it's not for y-*"

"Not so—kaff!—fast! I want another!"

"Another? What for?"

"You people drink this horrible stuff! Whatever you can do, I can do at least seven times better! Remember, I am a vampire, too, you know!"

"Okay, okay, already! Keep it down! But don't forget, you asked for it!"

Two hours later, Yu was half carrying a weaving Asuramaru down the hallways of the base, back to the apartment. "Shure ish a long way back," slurred the Black Demon, his arm around Yu's shoulder. "An' I don' 'member thish hallway being so—hic!—so crook…ed…"

"I'll tell maintenance. They'll have it straightened out by morning."

"Good, good. Yer a good hu—hic!—human, Yu." He patted Yu with his free hand. "Nice an' well-behaved. Other humans could shure take a lesh—hic!—I mean, a less-son from you. An' your blood tastes—hic!—tastes—hic!—tastes delishus! Did I ever—hic!—did I ever tell you that?"

"It's come up a time or two."

"Really del—hic!—delishus blood."

"Yeah, uh, let's not get on the blood thing right now…"

"I want some."

"Not right now. Let's at least wait 'til we get to the room, sweetheart." He tried to act and sound convincing as passersby were beginning to stare. The men smiled; the women frowned.

"I wanna suck on you."

"Not in public! Er, darling!" A passing serviceman looked at him, startled, then gave Asuramaru a once-over and grinned, giving Yu a thumbs up.

To his surprise, Yu found he really didn't appreciate the man's assessment of Asuramaru.

"C'mon, Maru, it's just a little further…" The demon's ability to walk had deteriorated considerably. He must be metabolizing that alcohol at a fantastic rate, thought Yu. He's getting more drunk, not less.

Suddenly, Asuramaru threw both his arms around Yu's neck and sagged. "Carry me," he murmured. Yu caught him before he hit the ground.

He picked him up, bridal style, and proceeded down the hallway, doing his best to ignore the stares of the passersby. Asuramaru laid his head on Yu's shoulder contentedly. For some reason, the appreciative looks the men were giving Asuramaru made him a little angry. I'll thank you to keep your eyes to yourself, goddammit!

Suddenly, he was aware of Asuramaru's cheek pressed up against his own. He had brought his other hand up and pulled their heads closer together. "Mmm," he murmured, rubbing his cheek up against Yu's like a cat, "you feel so nice." He rubbed his face against Yu's, and, although he couldn't see it, Yu could hear the smile in the demon's voice. "So very niiiiice."

"Uh…" Brilliantly.

Asuramaru turned his face to him, sniffing him. "You smell so goooooood." Again, that clearly audible smile in the voice. Asuramaru kissed his cheek, ever so lightly, then touched the tip of his tongue to Yu's skin. "And you taste so wonderful…" murmured the drunk demon, pulling them both even closer together.

"Hold on, Maru, just a little longer. Don't rape me 'till we get to the room, okay?"

A sleepy murmur up against his cheek: "O-kay."

…..

The underground fortress of Krul Tepes: "We deploy the erazers here," Guren was saying, "and here. The railguns-*"

"Wait," she broke in. "Why there?"

He grimaced. "Power source." Most civilians didn't realize what it took to make a proper weapon's-grade laser work. Building the actual gun wasn't the problem; the problem was the power source.

In the old days, before the End, humans had used chemical reactions in various forms to supply the energy needed to make a coherent beam of electromagnetic energy strong enough to break through a target's defenses, whether those defenses were actual active defenses or simply its outer surface. That required a large supply of the reacting chemical, which, of course, couldn't be re-used, as well as a suitable storage and reaction chamber. All that took up a huge amount of resources: material, space, money, and time. It wasn't as simple as it looked.

But recent developments in power generation had enabled the Western State to produce actual, working electron radiation lasers—dubbed "erazers"—of realistic size and deployment. "We have to be able to power the things. Those miniature cascade reactors are still pretty heavy, due to that shielding. And they will need to be refueled sooner than a standard cascade power plant since they're using up so much more energy. Plus," he said, "That line's pretty close to the Empire's lines of operation. Wouldn't do to let one of the lasers, complete with reactor, fall into their hands."

"Of course, yes," said Krul, waving it away. She wasn't terribly concerned about the details; that was Guren's job. "So the new railguns go here? Why so far away?

"Theirs is a ballistic payload. They can be fired in an arc; the erazers have to be line-of-sight."

"What's the payload?"

"Two kinds: lithium hydride fusion cores and negative matter."

Her eyes widened. "Negative matter? I wasn't aware you'd been able to produce any of that." The exotic matter had long been thought to be only a mathematical concept to physicists.

"So-cal's managed to come up with some. Not much, you understand; only a few grams. But if anything gets through, it should be that." He didn't have to say the rest of the sentence: Nothing has before. This is our best shot.

It could easily be our last shot.

…..

The apartment: A very exasperated Yuichiro carried a very-passed out Asuramaru inside, over his shoulder, butt-first into the bedroom. Perhaps not exactly the most romantic scenario, he would have admitted to himself, had he thought about it, but right then, romance was the furthest thing from his mind. He plunked Asuramaru down onto his bed. Now. What to do?

Asuramaru was completely conked out, lying on Yu's bed, snoring ever so slightly, and Yu stood there a moment, just looking at him. Then he shook his head. Poor little guy, he sure was in for a harsh awakening, come morning. Yu guessed he probably still had a little blood left in his alcohol system. Well, okay, just pour him onto his own futon…now to tie up his hair. Where was the gold hairpin Yu had given him?

Yu looked and looked, but he couldn't find it. Then he thought: Asuramaru was paranoid about losing things. He probably had it on him somewhere. He turned back to the bed.

Asuramaru, still snoring softly, had reached up and grabbed Yu's long memory gel body pillow, Yu's pride and joy, and had wrapped his arms and legs around it, gripping it tightly. He looked to be perfectly at peace, a condition Yu knew would shatter upon his awakening. "C'mon, Maru. Gimme the pillow. You've got your own…" He pulled and pulled, actually succeeding in lifting the snoring demon completely up off the bed and plopping him back down on it. But Asuramaru only gripped the pillow all the tighter, without waking up. Yu sighed. Well, okay, he thought. Anything to keep peace.

But now he noticed Asuramaru wasn't just holding the pillow, he was moving his hips against it in a most suggestive way. "Yu? Honey?" he whispered, sleepily, his lips close to the pillow, all the while continuing his movements, "We're home...how 'bout that rape? 'Member, you promised..." He reached down up under his dress, hooked a thumb into his panties, drew his leg up, and pulled the panties down towards his knees.

"Aw, no! Maru, leave my pillow alone!" He renewed and redoubled his efforts to rescue his pillow. But the drunk demon paid no attention, lost in his own little alcohol-induced dream world. He began to move faster and more vigorously against the pillow, even while Yu struggled to get him off it. He had plans of his own for that preferably un-molested pillow tonight. Like as a pillow. But it was beginning to look like that…might not happen.

Yu refused to be defeated so easily, but the curse chains wouldn't help here, as Maru wasn't threatening him. He kept trying to pull the pillow away. It occurred to him that he didn't actually know Asuramaru's sex. He really hadn't gotten that good a look a moment ago, when Maru had removed his panties (not that he'd tried), and between Maru's passionate movements, the flaps of his dress, and his closeness to the pillow, he couldn't tell. But if Maru was male, his precious pillow could easily require some extra attention, come morning.

Asuramaru continued enthusiastically humping the pillow. "Oh, Yu, you're fantAstic, this is the BEST…" He thrust harder and faster, his skinny (but cute!-Yu noticed) little butt bobbing up and down, all the while smothering the portion of the pillow in front of his face with fervent kisses.

"No, no, I, I can't…" No way I can stand to watch this. Yu covered his eyes and fled the room, grabbing a blanket, heading for the living room.

Just how hard did a demon get?—he wondered. He hoped Maru didn't punch through the plastic cover. If he did, things could get really messy.

The small couch was nowhere near big enough to sleep on, but he did his best, wrapping the blanket around him. He'd slept in worse conditions, out in the field.

At least it wasn't the Deadlands.

As always, thinking of that queer place filled him with a nameless dread.

He was doing his best to settle down, when he heard Asuramaru gasp. "Ah! Ohhhhh….oh, Yu, oh, Yu!" He hurriedly stopped up his ears; evidently, he'd left at just the right time. He had no desire to be in the same room with Asuramaru doing...that.

For over three hours, he kept his fingers in his ears, until the enthusiastic demon eventually ran out of whatever enthusiastic demons used for such things. Then he got up and went in to see if he could salvage anything from the Wreckage. The Black Demon was now completely unconscious, spent, but still happily clutching the pillow, the bliss of complete and total satiation on his face, with the evidence of his recent endeavors to acquire that satiation down below his waist, on the bed, abundant on his dress and legs, and covering Yu's precious body pillow. It looked like an explosion in a sperm bank. Yu sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, looking at the scene. My poor pillow. It'll never be the same. It wasn't lost on him that it hadn't been the pillow the Black Demon had thought he was fucking; somehow, that made the whole thing both more and less perverted at the same time. Good thing these walls are reinforced, he thought to himself. I can just see the headlines in tomorrow's newsfeeds: "Local military base leveled by massive demonic ejaculation. Hundreds killed, thousands pregnant." He started to try to retrieve his pillow—maybe he could send it out tonight—but two things occurred to him: one, Maru was, after all, a vampire demon, with greater strength and endurance than a human. If he, still out of it, discovered that Yu was Yu, he just might be ready for another go-round, and pull him down into an ecstatic amorous embrace. Yu wasn't sure if the curse chains would help him there. Did being joyously raped by a shitfaced demon count as harm, as far as they were concerned? With humans, it surely would, but the curse chains weren't human and might not think like that. Besides, he had another reason for leaving things as they were.

He thought about tying Maru's hair up again, but then…see above. "Hell with it," he murmured at the snoring demon.

He went back into the living room, sank down in the cramped sofa as best as he could, and tried to get some sleep.

Sunlight through the open window awoke him, and for a moment, he just lay there, trying to get his bearings. Then he remembered all that had happened from the night before…

Oh, God.

"Ooooooo…." The low groan came from the other room. Wait for it, thought Yu. Then, "MORTAAAL!" He casually got up, straightened up his makeshift bed as best as he could, and went into the bedroom.

There he found a very confused and upset demon still lying on his bed, moaning, still clutching the pillow, holding his head. "Mortal, what'd you do to me, last night?" His facial expression bespoke of misery at both the top and the middle of his body. So absorbed was he in his morning-after misery, he hadn't yet noticed anything amiss south of the border.

"I believe," countered Yu, with a certain amount of heat, "that if you examine things even a little, you'll discover I didn't do anything to you."

"What are you yammering about n-* Oh, oh, gods!" He'd noticed where he was. "You BASTARD! You, you took advantage of m-*

"Oh, no, I didn't! Don't get started there! Look for yourself! What are you holding? And that ain't honey on it, down there!" The residue had mostly dried and seeped into the bed—Yu sighed; he wasn't sure that would ever come out—but it was still in evidence in the stains on Asuramaru's dress and on Yu's waterproof pillow. "Where's your panties?"

Now, Asuramaru began to really examine himself and his surroundings, took note of his hanging onto Yu's body pillow so tightly…and what was on both it and his dress. He automatically reached down to flip his gown's front flap down to better cover himself…and gasped again. "Noooo…" he moaned. He started to bring his hand up to his face, then, part way, noticed what was on it, and blanched. "W-what happened last night?" He still hadn't fully released Yu's body pillow. Yu wondered if he was planning to. Maybe it had become like a security blanket for him.

"You got drunk, just like I said you would. And when I brought you back here…" he gestured at the bed, the pillow…and Asuramaru's dress, "Well, you were out of it at the time.

"But…what did I do…?"

"Well, not to put too fine a point to it, you came back and made mad, passionate love to my pillow all night long. And I do mean, all night long." Another gesture. "And my bed. And your dress. And your panties. And pretty much anything else that got within reach. Actually, a list of things in this room you didn't splooge on would be much shorter." He chanced to look up. "Maru," and here his voice dropped to an awed whisper, "Just how far can you shoot it, anyway? I think I see some on the ceiling…"

"Oh, gods." Asuramaru turned partially away from Yu, burying his face in Yu's pillow. He was obviously embarrassed to the point where simple death would be a improvement. "Oh, gods. No, I don't believe it. This has to be some sort of sick mortal joke!" He looked up, fury on his features. "You planned this whole thing! You-*"

"Maru," said Yu calmly, "look down at yourself. Not what you're holding or wearing, but look down at yourself. The part your panties normally cover. Look at that. That came from you, er, no pun intended."

Asuramaru finally released the pillow, but only because his free hand was contaminated. He felt down with his right hand...then closed his eyes in utter misery. He buried his face in the pillow. "Oh, godddddds," he moaned, this time almost too low to be heard. He looked so miserable… "I...no, surely not," he said.

Something inside Yu melted a little. He'd been drunk a time or two, himself. Poor little guy, he couldn't have known. "Look, here, just hold on. I'll take care of it. Let me get some wipes." And Yu left to go into the bathroom.

"Some wipes!?"

"Some wipes, yes." He came back in with the canister of sanitary napkins. "Here. I'll let you, er, handle that. And here." He handed Asuramaru a small glass of water with two fizzing tablets in it. "This'll help with, uh, the head and stomach thing."

As best as he could while still trying to cover up, Asuramaru cleaned himself, and futilely tried to clean the pillow and bed. "What—what is this?" he asked, looking suspiciously at the fizzing liquid. "Some kind of mortal magic?"

"Eh, sort of."

Asuramaru abandoned his hopeless task of cleaning the stained bed and pillow and took the drink, getting outside of it in one gulp. He blinked as the fizzing water went down his throat. "I, I…" He was at a complete loss for words. Yu felt a little guilty for savoring the moment.

"Here, look. Come on. Here's your pajamas. Get in these, and I'll send your dress out. My pillow, too." He sighed. "Maybe they can clean it."

Without a word, the Black Demon walked, awkwardly, into the bathroom, trying his best to hold the affected area of his dress out from him. Yu looked around for the panties, finding them on the floor. He sighed again, and just dropped them into the trash. They were easy to replace.

A very subdued-looking Asuramaru came out, holding the dress with his fingertips. "Here." Yu could barely hear his voice.

He dropped the dress into the plastic cleaning bag. He didn't even ask if Yu was going to do anything perverted with it. Yu guessed he'd have to go to some lengths to do anything more perverted than Asuramaru himself had already done. "How's your head?"

"Better." The Black Demon just stood there, in his little pink pajamas, looking so totally miserable that Yu couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

"Look, come over here." And he led him to the bed. "Maru...look, I know you're embarrassed right now. Well, that's kinda normal. It's reality's way of telling us not to do that kind of thing anymore. Think you can handle that?"

Asuramaru didn't say anything, but just sat there on the edge of the bed, head down, not looking at Yu. He seemed awfully small, to Yu's concerned gaze. Was he over his hangover yet? "Maru?"

"Yeah. I...don't think I'll be...sampling any more of those awful mortal drinks."

Yu put his arm around him and pulled him into a quick, one-shoulder hug. "That's the spirit! And look. It's just us guys. It wasn't, like, out in public or anything. 'S a totally private matter."

"Not anymore. Now everybody's gonna know."

"Huh? Know what?"

Asuramaru fidgeted, twisting his fingers together. "About...about what I did last night. I mean…" and he gestured to the stained bedsheets in their plastic bags. "I...it's embarrassing."

"Oh, you mean the, uh? Oh, don't worry about that." Yu said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It won't be an issue."

Now Asuramaru looked up at him, puzzled. "But, but why not? I mean…"

Yu sighed, rolling his eyes. The things he did for his guest. Okay. May as well go for broke here. "They won't think it's you, Maru. It's on my bed, and my pillow. If they think anything about it at all, they'll think it's me."

Maru thought for a minute. Then a slow smile started to spread across his face. "They will, won't they? They certainly will." The smile grew into a grin. "Ha haaa!" He held his sides, laughing. Yu just endured it, his own face flaming red. The cleaners probably would think just exactly that. Well, let 'em. So what.

But right in the middle of his cackle, Asuramaru suddenly stopped, his face going gray. A sickly expression came over him, and his cheeks bulged like a squirrel's. "Whoops!" said Yu, scooping him up and heading for the bathroom. "Looks like it's time I introduced you to another use for the toilet…"

A few minutes later: A heaving Asuramaru was kneeling in front of the porcelain god, vomiting everything in his stomach and what looked like a few things that had just happened to be in his general vicinity. "It's alright, Maru, I've got your hair, just go on, let it all out."

Asuramaru did his best, heaving and heaving. "I am nev-blargh!-never touching that disgust-blargh!-disgusting mortal stuff ever again! Bllaaargh!"

After what seemed like an hour, Asuramaru finally began to stop heaving. "I...I think I...I'm okay, now." He still hadn't gotten up from his kneeling pose in front of the toilet.

Yu was standing behind him, keeping Maru's hair up out of the toilet. Part of him was kinda enjoying the sensation; Asuramaru did have wonderful hair. Then he wrenched his attention away from the sensual feel of Maru's hair in his fingers: his guest's needs came first. "Okay, well, come on. Do you need help standing?"

"I...believe I can do that." But just as he stood up, his knees buckled, and Yu caught him. "Evidently, I was…overly optimistic." He looked up at Yu anxiously. "I...I'm not injured or something, am I?"

"No, Maru. You're just exhausted. You just need some rest. I'm putting you to bed."

Yu deposited the Black Demon on his futon and began the work of pulling off and changing the sheets. All the time, Asuramaru watched him, from under the blanket on his futon, with an odd expression on his face. Why was he doing that? It wasn't his usual expression of semihostility… "You okay, over there, Maru?"

"Yeah. I'm...I'm okay." He looked away, almost as though embarrassed at having been seen watching Yu. But that didn't make any sense.

"Look, Maru, if you need something…"

"I'm okay, I tell you! I just...oh, gods!" His face suddenly turned three shades paler than normal.

Instantly, Yu was at his side. "What? What is it, Maru? What's wrong?"

"It...I...oh…!" Maru was turning even paler, and beginning to tremble.

"What is it?!"

But Asuramaru clutched at his head as though trying to keep it from exploding. He made a curious sound, one that made Yu's hair stand up on end: he whimpered.

Suddenly, he whipped around, looking Yu in the face. "Yu! Please! I, I gotta have some!"

"S-some what?" Yu was concerned, but on his guard at the same time.

"Some blood." A desperate expression came over the vampire demon's face. "I, I gotta have some!" His expression became pleading, and his complexion was turning more pale by the minute.

"Oh, no, you don't! In your condition, I wouldn't trust you to suck on a pineapple! We'd have undead pineapples sprouting little legs and running all over the base…"

"Please, Yu! I, I feel like I'm gonna die!" The demon put his hands to his face…

"Aw, no." Not that routine, thought Yu, even as the first tear trickled down Asuramaru's face. I know all about that routine. Sayuri used it on me twice….

Yeah, and it worked both times…

Now come on, Yu, be strong and resolute…

He grimaced, sliding down onto Asuramaru's futon with him. "Here," he said, baring his neck. "Just don't…drain me, okay?"

"Oh, thank you, Yu! I take back everything I said about you!" And Asuramaru threw himself upon Yu, flinging his arms around him. Then, just as his fangs touched Yu's throat, "Well, some of it, anyway."

…..

What do you do, thought Krul Tepes, when nothing works? That was the curse of leadership. Sometimes she thought it was a worse curse than any magical one.

She was sovereign of the newly-emerged Western State. She had millions of lives depending on her, looking to her for guidance, for leadership. And, for the first time since her ascension to the Rose Throne, she had none to give.

It really is lonely at the top.

The railguns, with their payload of negative matter, had proven to be no more effective than anything else. We may as well be hurling spitballs. "My general?" she addressed Ichinose, standing by her side. "I am…open to suggestions." Guren thought he'd never before heard such…helplessness in his Queen's voice.

"My Lady," he said, "in military matters, when one cannot press forward, when the enemy is too strong, one must fall back, find a more defensible base of operations, develop a new strategy."

"Fall back to where? There is no safe place." She leaned on the table in front of them, not from weariness, but from a sudden, crippling feeling of utter futility. She had little doubt but that the fortress itself, for all its magically reinforced might, would prove no more safe than any other place. No more than any other place on Earth.

And maybe even beyond.

He turned to her. "Your Majesty. Even in the direst emergency, it is imperative to never show uncertainty to those under you. I suggest you open the doors to the deepest caverns, allow all who can—women and children first, of course—entry into them. Even if we know it is of no use, the people will see it as a sign of hope, a sign of encouragement. And….

"Right now, we all need that. Including you and I."

…..

{{Are you still there? Are you still out there?

{{Where are you?

{{I have to find you.}}

Yu came to a groggy consciousness altogether too aware of the sharp pain in his neck. Isn't he finished yet? But a few more minutes of continued awareness showed him the demon was nowhere in evidence. It seemed like…he remembered something from before he awoke. But then he shrugged. A vampire's saliva not only contained an anticoagulant, but also a contact narcotic, which helped paralyze the prey, and actually served to make the vampire's predation more survivable. Food that thrashes around is, after all, likely to injure itself more so than the attack itself would. So it wasn't all that unusual to have strange dreams right before awakening.

Still…it had seemed like this was a very important dream…

He was lying in a pool of dried blood. A rather large pool, he noted. Okay, Maru, we are definitely gonna have to nail down some solid definitions of just what people mean when they say things like "go easy on that."

But he was beginning to get worried. No Maru "Maru? Where…" he heard the softest of sounds from the bathroom, "…"

He got up, noticing that he was now sporting a clumsy bandage on his neck, and crossed the room to the bathroom door. Of course, it followed that Asuramaru would want to shower off after his feast. And he would, most probably, need his pajamas specially cleaned, too.

At least, Yu rather hoped he would. The only way they wouldn't, would be if Asuramaru had removed his pajamas completely while lying on top of an unconscious Yu. Considering what he'd recently done with Yu's pillow, Yu really didn't like to think about that particular scenario. But he winced at the thought of the cleaner's bills. Still, bloody pajamas were better than the other. That was just uhm. Well, something. He'd figure all that out later, once his concerns about his supernatural houseguest were allayed. "Maru?" Again, a small unidentifiable sound from within. To Yu, it was more like someone inside shifting slightly at hearing the words, rather than making any actual sound. "Maru? Are you alright?" He couldn't hear the shower running.

"Yes," said a very small and very un-alright voice.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Yu sighed. "What did I do this time?"

"Nothing."

"Okay, now I know something's wrong. Come out of there."

"No!"

"Yes, you will!" The worry in his voice was unmistakable. "You're not still sick or anything, are you?"

"No, just…go away!"

"No, Maru. Come on out of there. Are you dressed?"

"No, I…look, just go away and leave me alone, will you?" His voice sounded muffled, as though his hands were over his face.

"No, I won't. Something's wrong, and I can't help you if I don't know what it is. Now put something on and come out. That's an order."

Shortly, the door opened and Asuramaru very reluctantly came out. He was wearing nothing but a large bath towel, pulled up underneath his arms. Somehow, he looked even smaller than before, to Yu's anxious gaze. "I, I…" He gestured back into the bathroom, where his bloodsoaked pajamas lay on the tiles.

"Don't worry about 'em. Now come over here." And he led Asuramaru over to the bedside. Sat him down and sat beside him. Asuramaru hitched away ever so slightly, a move that Yu noticed. He refused to meet Yu's gaze, instead clutching at the top of his towel. The demon looked so miserable; Yu couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Was he over his hangover yet? Yu rubbed his neck, wincing. "Thanks for the bandage, by the way."

"It was the least I could do."

Yu did a double-take. "Okay, who are you and what have you done with Asuramaru?"

Once again, the demon put his hands over his face. "I'm pathetic!"

"What?"

Asuramaru took his hands away from his face, and clasped them together in front of him, a pleading expression on his face. "'Oh, please, mister, I'm a vampire, can I please have some of your blood?' I mean, I'm supposed to be a Black Demon, for gods' sake, and here I am, reduced to actually begging for blood? How much more pathetic could I possibly get?!" Once again, he put his hands to his face. Yu got the impression he wasn't so much crying as hiding. "I'm beyond pathetic!"

Yu put his arm around him. "Look, you're not-*"

"And don't go trying to make me feel better! I deserve to feel horrible! I mean, look at me!"

Yu's arm didn't budge. "First, I am not gonna let you go on beating yourself up. I wouldn't let somebody else beat you up and I'm not about to let you do it either." He drew an unresisting Asuramaru onto his shoulder. The demon sniffled. "Remember? We were partners. You stood by me—yeah, for your own reasons, but still—and I'm gonna stand by you. Second, I…look, you're new to this whole 'physical body' thing. I mean, you've been a mental concept for eons. For eons, Maru! You've only been physical for a few days now. Of course you're a fish out of water!"

"A what?"

"Means you're not in your own element. Back in the spirit realm, you were the standing definition of power and badassery, but here, it, it…well, it just takes some time, that's all! Look, I don't know what happened, but it's like you left some of your powers over on the other side. But I'm sure it's only temporary! Like…like jet lag or something. I bet you'll get 'em back any day now, and then you'll destroy the entire world."

Asuramaru looked up at him out of the crook of his arm. Once again, there was that peculiar expression on his face, one other than anger. "You…you think so?"

"Of course I do." He turned Asuramaru's face up to his, so the demon could see his expression of sincerity. Asuramaru actually smiled up at him, an expression Yu found he'd like to see more of.

Their faces were so very close…

"Uh, here," Yu reached up to Asuramaru's towel. "Careful. Your, uh, towel's about to slip."

"Oh! Uh, right! We, we, uh, can't have that!" And he hitched the towel up higher over his chest.

"Right," agreed Yu, both their faces flaming red. He didn't really know why. "We, uh, we can't have that."

To be continued…