To Sueona – a special thank-you for being my first reviewer.
This part is strictly for mature readers only.
Love and darkness
Part Six
Asato Tsuzuki: Reluctant reminiscences of a monster
Asato Tsuzuki stifles a yawn and stretches to ease tense muscles. He and Watari are still pursuing Oriya, trailing the man on a seemingly endless chase all over Tokyo. Their quarry is currently dining in an exclusive restaurant with several men, shady-looking characters, Tsuzuki decides, dressed in dark suits and accompanied by brawny men wearing dark glasses.
The Shinigami is restless, his tension mounting as the days pass with no sighting of Muraki. Secretly though, he is glad and relieved that the man has not appeared because he is totally unprepared as yet for an encounter with Dr Kazutaka Muraki.
The man always manages to get under my skin… It's bad enough having him appear in my dreams!
During their surveillance, passing the time while they wait for Oriya to be on the move again has proved to be nerve-wracking for Tsuzuki; the prospect of having his old foe appear before him at any moment has set his teeth on edge, his anxiety heightening with each new day. He casts a baleful glance at his partner, envious of his ability to remain perfectly still for long periods of time. The blond has taken to wearing dark shades clipped to his glasses during the day. Tsuzuki watches him, wondering if Watari is shielding his eyes from him, rather than from the glare of sunlight.
Once they began trailing Oriya, Tsuzuki had set himself a task: to discover the reason for Watari's sudden transformation from a chatty, effervescent individual into an unnervingly quiet one. It didn't take him long. Two nights after they spoke to Oriya at Kokakuro, they followed him to a manor situated in the outskirts of Kyoto, the home of a politician, where a party was taking place. It seemed promising to both Shinigami that Dr Muraki might make an appearance. But, as it turned out, he did not. It was during this event that Tsuzuki stumbled upon the answer he was looking for…
Invisible to everyone else but each other, Tsuzuki had gone in search of his partner after returning from the garden where he had made a quick call to Hisoka. He found him, noticing immediately that something was amiss as he spotted Watari, face sullen, standing close to a balcony door left ajar. As Tsuzuki approached him, he heard a low murmur of voices coming from the balcony beyond - Oriya's, tinged with displeasure, and another man's, pressing, imploring and breathy…
"Don't… please, Hideo!"
"But why? Oriya, I love you! I've wanted you for so long…"
(A passionate groan, followed by scuffling noises)
"Don't do that, I've already told you…"
"Please, let me kiss you, Oriya…"
(A snarl, more scuffling, and scraping of shoes on floor)
"Hideo! Please stop! You've had too much too drink…"
"Why are you doing this to me? You enjoy this, do you, torturing me like this?"
"I'm not torturing you! Can't you accept the fact that I just don't feel the same way about you?!"
The two Shinigami heard a high-pitched keening, followed by muffled sobs and quick footsteps. Oriya came bursting through the doorway, looking irritated. He halted, turned to look out through the doorway and listened to the broken weeping of the man out on the balcony with his jaw tensed. As he stood between the pair of invisible Shinigami, his face just inches away from and turned towards Watari, Tsuzuki saw the skin on his colleague's face reddening, his chest heaving with his rapid breathing.
And there, in Watari's eyes, lay his answer. When Oriya strode away, his hair somewhat disheveled from the scuffle, and groping of his ardent admirer, Watari's eyes met Tsuzuki's before they lowered their glance to the floor…
Having heard the whispered tales back in Meifu, he fervently hopes he is wrong in his assumption, since a love affair between an immortal and a mortal can be disastrous and heartbreaking, for several reasons: disastrous, because a hybrid child might be conceived, in the case of a heterosexual relationship; heartbreaking, because the immortal will have to watch his or her mortal lover age and, eventually pass away. Furthermore, the outcome of the judgment process does not guarantee that the soul of the departed lover will be reunited with his or her immortal paramour. One particular tragic story continues to circulate in the netherworld, told countless of times over, so much so Tsuzuki doubts the authenticity of the tale, certain that the endless repeating of it has added untruths and omitted truths. The Shinigami smirks, remembering Konoe's tongue-in-cheek remark about certain elders who employ the tearjerking, ancient and timeworn tale of Umeko and Yuu as a deterrent to spirit/mortal relationships and unions.
He sighs, yawns again, before shifting his position on the bench, studying his colleague discreetly as the golden-haired Shinigami reaches for something inside his jacket pocket. Tsuzuki recognizes his own dog-eared paperback, which his partner opens to a marked page and begins reading to occupy himself. While looking at the familiar profile he has grown so accustomed to and fond of, he feels twinges of apprehension and sympathy for him; again, he hopes that the man who has become more than just a colleague to him, someone he is happy to have as a friend, will not suffer any heartbreak over his feelings for Oriya.
You've got it really bad for him, old friend. Can't say I blame you though… he certainly is one hell of an eye-pleaser. On the one hand, I wish you well, and want so much to tell you to go for it, but on the other, I just don't want to see you get hurt… He just might not feel the same way about you… Something in his eyes that night, when we told him Muraki might be in danger – that's what you see in a lover's eyes, not a friend's…
A lover… HIS lover…
Unbidden, an image forms in Tsuzuki's mind: of Muraki, his mouth on Oriya's, his hands opening silk robes, pulling them off, caressing Oriya's white skin. Repulsed by it, he stands to his feet, brushing the erotic vision away. To distract himself, he pulls out some candy from his pocket and crams the sweets into his mouth, but the scenes of Muraki's sexual overtures with Oriya continue to flash in his inner vision. Mentally snorting, he wonders if that monster harbors any feelings at all for Oriya, or whether the latter is simply just another sex toy to him. Regardless of his rising anger, he is still conjuring images of Muraki and Oriya, both naked now, and stimulating each other orally, until Tsuzuki finally comes clean and faces the cause of his revulsion and anger: jealousy. Instinctively replacing Oriya with himself in his imaginings, the organ of his sex instantly hardens. His body's reaction infuses him with an old shame, an old self-loathing, as unwanted memories – memories of his encounters with Dr Kazutaka Muraki creep insidiously into his mind.
With so much time to kill during his assignment, Tsuzuki has been plagued by conflicting emotions with regards to Muraki. He remembers the dismay and anger he felt when the truth of what Muraki really was had been revealed when he had been assigned to the Maria Wong case. Guilt had assailed him then, because he had been intensely attracted to Muraki upon his very first meeting with him in that Nagasaki church.
His heart had turned at seeing the tears on that beautiful face, a face of an angel, stamped with deep sorrow. His initial attraction had been augmented by the striking doctor's warm hand on his, squeezing before withdrawing it, filling Tsuzuki with an ache, a desire to get to know him better.
What a cruel revelation it had been for him – to learn that such a seemingly fine man he had actually wanted to comfort, kiss, fall in love with, and make love to, had turned out to be a monster, a perverted predator.
And yet, Muraki's words to him on that cruise ship, taunting him about his self-righteous crusade against acts of killing, had cut him through to his core.
I was a killer, just like him. As a mortal, I murdered people… just like him… No!
I'm not like him! I… I felt and still feel remorse for what I had done, I turned away from my dark self… I strove to become good… I'm not like him… He was toying with me, trying to make me believe I am like him, condemned to hate and kill, unworthy of being forgiven. But even now, I still feel there will be no true redemption for me. No amount of remorse will ever erase my guilt… maybe I am like him, maybe that's why I'm so drawn to him.
After I lost that card game to him, when his mouth was on my skin, the tears welled in my eyes, not because I couldn't bear his touch, but because… I loved it! I cried because of the disgust I felt for myself, for wanting him. Oh, how I had wanted him!
And he knew it… how could he not have known, when my desire for him was revealed by my hardness against his thigh… Hisoka's intervention saved me from myself.
Tsuzuki shuts his eyes and swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth. An incongruous mixture of shame and desire warms his skin and sends tremors through his body as his mind is pulled back inexorably into the memory of the sexual interlude between him and Muraki in that vault of horror…
Flashback begins
In spite of having regressed into a numb state of acquiescence to whatever Muraki has planned for him, and longing for eternal death, his eyes roam slowly over the chilly interior of the chamber – a fitting place for his tomb, he decides. He is being carried in the arms of his captor, the demented surgeon in white, his ghostly garments concealing a body that houses a soul blackened with his dark desires.
Muraki lowers and lays him down carefully on an examination couch before striding over to a structure of steel and glass, the tubes surrounding it resembling giant leeches. His eyes watch Muraki, still before the tank, like a devotee before a shrine. The apathetic Shinigami squints at the suspended object behind the glass and wonders how Hisoka's head has come to be there.
A fleeting moment of panic grips him. Lucid thought returns to him. He stares at the broad, powerfully built back of the man before the glass capsule and tries to pull himself together, to devise a plan to overpower the maniac and bring him down. He surmises that if he invokes his protector deities, Muraki would simply draw the battle out with his own conjured demonic beasts. No, that wouldn't do. He reconsiders. Perhaps if he called upon his own rage lying dormant within him, he could gather it into strength to throttle the man and wring the life force out of him with his own bare hands…
Muraki spins on his heels briskly to fix him with a leering gaze, chuckling wickedly while approaching him. The doctor reaches for Tsuzuki's face, cupping his cheeks with his hands.
"Oh, you are delightful, Tsuzuki-san, your anger is exquisite! So, you would like to kill me with your bare hands? Would you like to try?"
Tsuzuki blinks in surprise. What? The fiend can read my thoughts?
A wet tongue flicks out to moisten the smiling lips above him. Tsuzuki observes it with fascination as the tongue retreats into Muraki's mouth, his lips stretching and parting to reveal glistening white teeth.
"Why are you silent, Tsuzuki-san?" Muraki's taunting drawl penetrates the Shinigami's hearing, his momentary flare of lucid thought dying away, becoming lost in the fog of regression.
"Come on, fight me, my beautiful Shinigami! You will arouse me to no end and your struggling will serve as foreplay."
Tsuzuki hears the all-too familiar throaty chuckle lilting as he gazes into a twinkling silver eye.
At Tsuzuki's silence, Muraki's chuckling swells to laughter. "No? Perhaps that is a wise choice. We'll only waste precious time and even more precious energy, energy that will be better expended in other pursuits," he drawls, before crushing Tsuzuki's lips with his mouth, forcing them apart with his spit-slicked tongue.
The kiss is Tsuzuki's undoing – the sheer strength driving it smashes through his torpor, awakening a raw, primal need in him and he yields his mouth to the hunger of Muraki's for some moments before commencing an assault of his own. His tongue pushes back the fevered one, plunging his own into the mouth of the monster as far as it will go, his fingers gripping, pulling locks of white and silver hair, moaning loudly.
Tsuzuki's aggression heightens, his hands sliding from hair to hard back to draw Muraki's upper body closer to him. Uncaring of his predicament and the possibility of his impending death at Muraki's hands, he concentrates on the pleasure coursing through him and the need of his body.
The doctor seems to grow wild at Tsuzuki's willingness and groans, takes control again, bruising the Shinigami's lips with the press of his teeth. The ravening mouth finally separates from his captive's. Tsuzuki finds a silver eye and that odd, glassy blue one, partially hidden by uneven silver bangs, looking deep into his eyes. Muraki is panting, his breath gusting on Tsuzuki's face. The natural eye gleams above him, the emotions conveyed in it fascinating the Shinigami once more, transforming as he stares into it – from amusement to wonderment, to awe, and finally, to predatory lust. Muraki's fingers caress the side of Tsuzuki's neck, the thumb stroking his Adam's apple.
He waits, expecting the doctor to begin taunting him. But he does not. Instead, he begins undressing him with steady hands, swiftly and methodically, nostrils flaring with sexual tension, a tic pulsing on his left jaw.
The nippy air of the underground vault plays over Tsuzuki's bared skin, making the tiny hairs on it rise. He shivers, not from the cold but from mounting excitement. With the same speed he employed in divesting Tsuzuki of his clothes, Muraki commences to strip.
The Shinigami, sprawled on the table, looks on as a very pale chest, free of hair, is revealed to him. He gazes at rosy nipples and then at fair curling hair below a navel. Snugly fitting white briefs are lowered quickly, displaying an erect penis. The heavy organ sways above a dusky pink scrotal sac as the doctor moves closer to him.
Curling a hand around Tsuzuki's engorged organ, Muraki lowers his head and clamps his mouth over the glans, swirling his tongue around it to lick away the clear drops that have leaked from it while his other hand cups and fondles his taut sac.
Tsuzuki cries out, writhing from the exquisite sensations, gasping when his whole length is drawn into Muraki's mouth; his hips begin to move rhythmically with the doctor's strokes, his cock sliding in and out of the wet warmth.
Just when he feels a sweet pressure beginning to build, Muraki releases him to select a bottle of clear liquid from a trolley next to the couch. The sight of the pale hand applying the lubricating jelly with quick strokes on the cock, of generous girth and length, fills the Shinigami with savage lust. A mental image of it penetrating his body leads him to a point of no return, a state where his body screams for one thing only, where neither rational thought nor a sense of morality exist in his psyche.
His calves are grabbed and yanked, positioning his buttocks near the edge of the padded table. Voluntarily lifting his legs to offer himself to Muraki, he closes his eyes as hands grip the backs of his knees. All at once, the slicked shaft is sliding into him and both men gasp at the same time. He forces himself to open his eyes to look at the doctor and sees his head thrown back, mouth open, absorbed by the pleasure of the first sensations of being enclosed in Tsuzuki's heat.
Muraki begins his movements, plunging and withdrawing, slowly at first, then faster, strangled grunts emitting from his throat, wild lust in the eye now pinned on the Shinigami's half-closed eyes.
No tender expressions of love are exchanged between them as they copulate to the humming of power generators and the wet, slurping sounds of sex. Turning his head, Tsuzuki's eyes come to rest on the only witness to their frenzied coupling – the disembodied head he believes to be Hisoka's, its brown locks of hair moving like the snakes on Medusa's head, the eyelids lifting and lowering hypnotically, in rhythm with the Shinigami's masturbating hand, the blue-green irises watching them impassively.
Strangely, the sight does not affect him; the waves of pleasure rippling from his groin, washing upwards through his belly and down into his legs, take precedence over everything else, the urges of his body taking on a life of its own – a lusting monster he has no control over.
Muraki's assault has located Tsuzuki's secret place of ultimate pleasure. It does not take long before the Shinigami howls, pearly beads spurting over his belly. Suffused in post-climax bliss, he watches Muraki straining to attain release, his eye unfocused, face flushed. Reaching the threshold of orgasm, the doctor vents a guttural groan, stops his thrusting and the Shinigami feels the pulsing of the cock inside him as it spews ejaculate.
After the softening organ slips out of him, Muraki leans forward, freeing the Shinigami's legs. Tsuzuki feels the tickle of hair on his belly, a tongue on him again, licking up his spattered semen, and then his flaccid penis being scooped up by a hand and licked as well.
Dimly aware of Muraki moving away from him, he seeks out the bodiless head again and whispers, "Do you despise me, Hisoka? You should, because I am a vile thing… I've been fucking the man who raped and killed you once before… and now he has killed you again and put your head in there like a trophy."
Eyelids close over amethyst jewels bright with tears, and as more sorrow tracks down his cheeks, Tsuzuki sobs. "I am so sorry, Hisoka… before I cease to exist, I swear I will avenge you…"
The hands tenderly washing him are as gentle as a lover's…
The soporific, whispering voice, like a lover's wooing, praising his beauty, lulling him…
His vow to Hisoka, filling him with newfound strength and determination…
Rising, and taking hold of the knife…
I'll put an end to the darkness now… end the lives of two monsters now…
Hearing the sickening sound of the knife plunging into Muraki's body…
Staring at the blood gushing from the monster's wound, darkening the monster's white garments…
Flashback ends
End of part six
To be continued
Author's notes:
As much as I wanted to plunge Tsuzuki and Muraki headlong into a romance, it is difficult to do this, considering the canon circumstances: Tsuzuki's animosity towards Muraki, and the latter's twisted personality. To have these two falling in love, before the Shinigami gains insight into what drives Muraki and what befell him, seems a bit unrealistic.
Medusa the Gorgon is a Greek mythological figure. Originally beautiful, she was wrongfully punished by Athena who turned her into a fearsome monster after being raped by Poseidon in her temple. The loveliest aspect of Medusa was said to be her hair, which was transformed into snakes.