Chapter Text
A short silence passed between them. The next moment, Yakumo’s eyes widened. He got up, uncertain, hands clenching and unclenching as if he didn’t know what to do next. A light shade of scarlet flushed the tips of his ears. He sucked in a soft breath.
Eiden stared at him. So, that was what Morvay was talking about. He approached Yakumo, unaware of Yakumo’s sudden lapse in breathing. “You don’t remember me at all?”
“Ah,” Yakumo replied, pupils dilating. His throat was dry. “I- I don’t recognise your appearance, but…”
Unbeknownst to Eiden, saliva began pooling within Yakumo’s mouth. A faint, heady scent perfused the air, and its source was no other than the man standing before Yakumo. Pheromones, mixed with his own, leaked from Eiden’s body, enticing and suggestive and reeking of sex. A deep, primordial instinct fired chills over his skin. His heart began to race in his chest.
Eiden was completely oblivious to the physiological changes he was inducing in Yakumo. Raising his brow, he eyed Yakumo to look for any external injuries. There was none.
“Amnesia?”
“So as I was told.” Yakumo swallowed thickly. He couldn’t understand how Eiden was acting so calmly. Every cell in his body was reacting to Eiden’s presence.
Eiden knitted his brows together in contemplation. “Do you still remember me?”
“I remember only up to living in a cave. I think that was a long time ago, though.” He was heating up. He couldn’t take it anymore. “You- you’re…”
Yakumo stepped forward. His eyes were fully blown. Swiftly, he took ahold of Eiden’s hand, his grip on Eiden’s wrist tightening as he bullied him towards the wall with a surprising amount of force. His canines— his fangs showed behind his lips, thin and curved and not quite fully human. Startled, Eiden tensed under him.
He swallowed, looking up and meeting Yakumo’s eyes. He could feel Yakumo’s warm breath on his cheek. “Yakumo?”
“You’re my…” Yakumo sniffed at his neck. “…husband?”
Eiden’s line of thought cut off. “What?”
He closed in on Eiden’s neck, fangs lightly pressing against Eiden’s arteries as he gave the nape of his neck a wet lick. Eiden shuddered, back pressed straight against the wall. Confused and wary, he pushed his free hand against Yakumo’s chest, elbow jutting uncomfortably the wall as he tried to shove Yakumo away.
“Master Eiden.” Yakumo easily removed Eiden’s arm between them and murmured lowly against Eiden’s jaw. “They told me… you were the master of the mansion…”
“What do you mean by— Yakumo-!“
He abruptly cut Eiden off by sealing his lips. Yakumo’s tongue dug into his mouth, long and wet and unexpectedly saccharine. His low humming sent vibrations thrumming against Eiden’s lips. Eiden made a small noise in his throat.
Eiden had never been kissed like this before. Yakumo’s eyes were half-lidded in concentration. He explored Eiden’s mouth curiously, spit mingling with Eiden’s saliva as he chased the taste of his lips. He felt his way over the ridge of Eiden’s teeth, curled his tongue around Eiden’s and suckled on it, sweetly and slowly. Eiden’s mind blanked. He forgot to breathe, found air through his nose, but was too stunned to take in any oxygen. Yakumo’s thumb pressed into his waist, forcing Eiden to keen into his embrace.
It was extremely unlike him to be so aggressive. Eiden melted into it. A silver thread of saliva clung between their lips when they parted. Yakumo ran his tongue over his bottom lip, relishing the taste of Eiden’s spit. Eiden panted heavily, gasping for oxygen, his mind numb from shock. His bottom lip swelled where Yakumo had chewed on it, drool glistening on the surface and leaving a shallow trail of spit from the corner of his mouth to his chin.
“You taste like me,” Yakumo concluded.
Eiden was too stunned to speak. Woozy from asphyxiation, his legs buckled and he instinctively grabbed Yakumo’s arm for support. He didn’t miss how Yakumo was unconsciously rubbing circles into his forearm to soothe him.
“You said. You thought we were,” the word felt foreign on Eiden’s tongue, “husbands.”
Yakumo blinked. “We mated, didn’t we?”
“Yes. No. I suppose you could call it that. But.” Eiden felt his cheeks grow hot. “That doesn’t mean we’re necessarily married. I’m not your husband.” He wanted to say something about him not having any obligation to lay with only one individual for the rest of his life, but decided against it at the last moment.
Confusion diffused across Yakumo’s expression. “I don’t think I understand.”
“We’re not married.” Eiden repeated. “Not husbands.”
Yakumo frowned. Thankfully, a series of hurried knocks saved Eiden the need to explain further. The door clicked and Aster came barrelling into the room, Morvay meekly tailing after him.
“Master! I’m so glad you’re alright.” He stopped in his tracks when he saw Eiden trapped between Yakumo and the wall. “Oh. Should I be leaving Master to his privacy, or?”
Eiden seized the distraction to untangle himself from Yakumo’s limbs. “No, no, it’s not what you think it is.”
“Okay, whatever Master says.”
“It really isn’t.” He selectively ignored Yakumo’s intent staring from behind him. “And maybe someone could explain what’s going on with Yakumo here?”
Aster made a face. “How mean. I save Master from a giant snake and the first thing Master says to me after he wakes up is whether the snake is fine. I brought Master home from the forest, you know?”
“I carried Master back,” Morvay corrected.
“Thanks, you two. You know I mean it. But I still need to know how and what happened back then.”
“Ah, about that. I might have hit Yakumo here a little too hard on the head. Getting smacked with a huge amount of essence can sometimes do things to people’s memories.” Aster cocked his eyebrow insidiously at Yakumo. “Might have had something to do with him spending all his essence the night before, too.“
“So it’s not curable?”
“Depends. His memories might come back tomorrow, or it might not come back for ten more years. All we know is that it was caused by an overload of essence. Though I don’t think Master needs to worry much, since it didn’t affect his physical health at all.
“I think the problem lies in the fact that we’re responsible for his memory loss rather than harming his health…”
“Anyway, we can discuss this later, because as much as I’d like to let Master frolic in bed with our local amnesiac here, I’ve been holding off envoys from the royal palace from meeting Master for too long and I’m afraid my bribes are losing their effectiveness by the minute. So, Master, if you would just spare a bit of your time first?”
Eiden wasn’t too sure. “Will Yakumo be alright on his own?”
“Master Eiden doesn’t need to worry about me.”
That reminded Eiden of Yakumo’s strange behaviour. An unnatural blush still coloured the tips of Yakumo’s ears. Before he could protest, Aster had already ushered Eiden out of Yakumo’s room and towards the main hall. Eiden was obviously not entirely convinced of Yakumo’s wellbeing, but had no choice but to deal with his responsibilities for now.
Aster slipped away from the negotiation hall, listening to Eiden converse with a group of irate diplomats with aplomb from outside.
Morvay quietly stood next to him. “Yakumo smelled it off Master.”
“I know.”
“This can’t be good. It’s a matter of time before Master finds out that Yakumo… that Yakumo’s…”
Aster scrunched his brows together in annoyance. “We’ve had this conversation before. You think I had a choice, huh? Stupid incubus. If only you hadn’t fallen asleep when Master ran off, none of this would have happened.”
“You say that as if you weren’t also fast asleep!”
“I was busy the entire day! You can’t expect me to just not sleep after brainwashing an entire village’s worth of people into thinking the abnormal number of livestock disappearances as normal. You, on the other hand, just went to suck off the last of the healthy young men in the village…”
“Ahh… But you erased Yakumo’s memories. Who’s going to break it to Master?”
“He’ll figure it out soon enough. With Master’s personality, he’ll definitely need the time to digest that information. Besides, I have my suspicions.“
“There’s more?”
“I’m not sure.” Aster replied. “The Great Serpent is one thing, his descendant is another. His power seems to have retained its quantity. In what form it shows itself is another matter.”
“I hope us not telling Master doesn’t fuck him over. In more ways than one.”
Aster laughed dryly. “I don’t know about that. Yakumo seemed rather enthusiastic about his mate today, didn’t he?”
“I’ll miss Master’s essence, that’s for sure.”
“Me too.” He lazily drummed his fingers along the carvings on the rich wooden door. “Let’s just hope Yakumo retains enough human in him to understand what it means to share.”
Eiden came out of the negotiation hall with a throbbing headache. Even in a fantasy world he couldn’t escape the droning nightmare that was meetings. He had always been impressed by how many ways the sentence ‘we want more money from you’ could be rephrased. God knew what Aster dealt with on a daily basis extorting money from nobles.
Massaging his scalp, he trudged his way to the library. It was where he most often stayed in the mansion, with him being utterly abysmal at reading the world’s written language and having to learn it from scratch. He summoned a servant to bring him a hot drink, found the volumes he was chewing through a few weeks ago and promptly plonked himself into a plush chair. His tea arrived minutes later, steaming and aromatic. He looked at the mess of notes and books on the table and sighed.
He couldn’t focus. He was still thinking about Yakumo from earlier.
Yakumo’s fangs gave away the fact that he hadn’t completely transitioned from serpent to human. That would explain the absurd observations Yakumo had— he remembered that snakes had an exceptional sense of smell to make up for their bad eyesight and hearing. It was a bit hair-raising to have him smell their… nightly activities off him, but it would make sense if it was somehow related to Yakumo’s original form.
As for their little misunderstanding about mating and marriage and whatnot, Eiden assigned that to Yakumo’s upbringing in the secluded village at the edge of the forest. Perhaps the people there still clung to conservative beliefs about sex and marriage and Yakumo had subconsciously absorbed their way of thinking.
Having spent several agonising minutes convincing himself that everything was fine with Yakumo, he sprawled himself across the chair and groaned. He had no idea how he was going to recover Yakumo’s memories. There were no doctors here as far as he knew, and presumably healing magic did nothing to Yakumo’s condition. Aster’s lack of a conscience meant that he felt no responsibility for Yakumo’s memory loss. So now the guilt was piled entirely on Eiden’s shoulders.
Eiden crossed his legs and stared blankly into the ceiling.
No use exhausting myself over things I can’t help, he thought. He would have to confront Aster later to think of solutions. Sighing, he swept the dust off the pile of parchment paper on the desk and rolled a quill between his fingers. Ink stained the base of his hand as he scrawled in his notes.
He didn’t notice when the sun set.
A small scraping sound came from afar. He looked up from his books. A crick in his neck made him wince. He couldn’t see anyone from his vantage, but he had an odd feeling that he was being watched. Swivelling his body, he draped off his chair and squinted between the bookcases.
“Who is it?”
He heard a faint shuffling of feet. From the corner of his eye he caught a familiar figure hiding and hummed to get his attention. Yakumo flinched as they made eye contact.
“I’m sorry.” Yakumo walked out from behind the bookcase. “I wasn’t sure if I should have bothered you while you were so concentrated.”
“You’re not interrupting anything important. I’d needed a distraction anyways— did you need something?”
“I was trying to familiarise myself with the mansion.” Yakumo shifted awkwardly. “I didn’t know Master Eiden would be here.”
Eiden placed his quill down and Yakumo took the invitation to shuffle closer. Eiden swept the books on the table aside. “Unfortunately for me I still have much to learn about this world. Although I think it’s the same for you now, isn’t it?”
Yakumo nodded. “Humans are a lot more complicated than I thought they would be.”
“Humans…” Eiden swirled that word around on his tongue. “You don’t remember the old couple that took you in?”
“What couple?”
Eiden sighed. “An old married couple supposedly adopted you after they found you in the Great Serpent’s altar. Well, if you don’t remember them, it’s certainly not surprising that you don’t remember me either.”
“It’s not like I don’t remember anything. It’s just,” Yakumo gestured haplessly, “my memories doesn’t come to me as easily, as if they’ve been repressed. I feel uneasy most of the time, like I wasn’t meant to be human… that I should be back in the cave, doing whatever serpents should be doing.”
Yakumo sounded guilty and unsure. He wrung his hands apologetically. “Master Eiden… you were the first person I found familiar after waking up, smelling like… I’m sorry if I scared you this morning.”
A surge of sympathy ignited in Eiden’s chest. “You don’t need to be sorry about everything. Besides, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy it.” He grinned. “I like it when you take the initiative sometimes.”
Yakumo’s paused. Something reared its ugly head inside him. “Master Eiden liked it?”
Eiden leaned towards Yakumo. “You could be surer of yourself more often. With a body like this,” he felt a vagrant hand up Yakumo’s firm chest, “I couldn’t resist you even if I tried.”
Yakumo’s heart was in his throat. Eiden’s fingers brushed across his abdomen. His touch ignited sparks along Yakumo’s stomach, running up his spine and pooling in his groin. Eiden traced the shape of Yakumo’s abdominal muscles, transfixed by the hot, shivering sensation that was travelling along his limbs. He had just meant to tease him. Yakumo should have shied away, and yet.
“Master Eiden?”
Eiden couldn’t think straight. What was it with him these days? He wasn’t a nymphomaniac. Or at least he didn’t think he was. He didn’t want to admit it, but this wasn’t normal. Having sex with a snake was bizarre enough. Now, with Yakumo’s soothing voice goading him on, he was getting excited from just touching Yakumo. He wanted to retract his hand, but he quickly found that he couldn’t— Yakumo had closed his fingers around his wrist. Dazed, he staggered out of the chair. Yakumo hoisted him to his feet and Eiden, possessed with desire, pinned him against the bookshelves.
“I swear,” Eiden heaved, “I’m not usually this horny.”
Yakumo groaned as Eiden grinded his erection against his crotch. Eiden shrugged off his coat, hand wandering down Yakumo’s groin and squeezing the shape of Yakumo’s erection between his fingers. It seemed bigger than he remembered. He rubbed the shaft with the base of his palm, twisting his fist around the tip in rhythmic pumps. Yakumo hissed between his teeth.
Yakumo cupped Eiden’s ass with his hands, fondling the soft flesh and leaving bruising prints onto his ass. Eiden thought he would have tore a hole in his pants if not for Eiden unzipping and extracting himself from them when Yakumo bit an annoyed hickey into his neck. Yakumo’s skin on Eiden’s ass felt euphoric. He moaned as Yakumo groped him, whimpering and suckling on Yakumo’s neck. He had no idea why it felt so good. He buried his canines into Yakumo’s shoulder, rutting into Yakumo’s embrace.
As he came up for air, Yakumo seized the opening to take Eiden’s mouth, fangs grazing Eiden’s lips as he aggressively sucked the oxygen from Eiden’s lungs. Their tongues entangled, wet and tasting of debauchery. Eiden finally tugged Yakumo’s pants free, allowing Yakumo to thrust his long, thick cock into his palm. The grip on his waist tightened. Gravity became lost on him for several seconds as Yakumo flipped him over, lifted him off the ground and laid him on the rich, oaken desk.
Clarity returned to Eiden momentarily as his shirt rucked up and his back pressed on the cool surface of the desk. Then Yakumo was kissing down his jaw, kissing down his clavicle, his stomach and navel— he tried to push Yakumo off, but Yakumo was beyond reason now— Yakumo pressed his lips against Eiden’s arousal, mouthing along the shaft and dragging his tongue up beneath the head of his cock to collect the precum that was soaking it. Eiden tensed, every muscle in his body contracting as Yakumo took his cock into his mouth. He threaded his fingers into Yakumo’s hair, the warning to watch your teeth cut off by a strangled gasp as Yakumo easily took him into his throat and swallowed around it.
Yakumo glanced up to look at Eiden. Eiden didn’t even need to praise him. He dug his fingers into Yakumo’s scalp, jerking to each bob of Yakumo’s head. Yakumo did things with his tongue that Eiden didn’t know was humanly possible. Vibrations thrummed through the tip of Eiden’s cock as Yakumo mumbled in response to Eiden clamping his thighs around his head. He swallowed Eiden’s cock in earnest, spitting it out and milking it of Eiden’s fluids. He ate it like it was the most delicious thing in the world.
Eiden moaned until his throat hurt. Then Yakumo popped off his cock, licking his lips that were stained with Eiden’s precum, and knelt down further to shove his tongue into Eiden’s ass.
Eiden groaned loudly. His legs hooked around Yakumo’s shoulders and he could feel Yakumo’s face buried in his ass, tongue prodding and depositing spit into his hole. Viscerally— quite literally— he could trace Yakumo’s serpent tongue up his rectum, taking no time to explore his insides but instead going straight for his prostate. He shrieked when Yakumo found it and scraped his elbows raw scrabbling for purchase as Yakumo fucked him with his tongue. The only break he had was when Yakumo left his ass to flip him on all fours, then he was drooling on the desk again, this time on his knees and his cock held firmly within Yakumo’s grasp as Yakumo pumped his cock as if he had any milk to give there.
He didn’t know he was orgasming until Yakumo withdrew his tongue from his ass. He welcomed a numb buzz that spread from his groin, and he knew from the warmth that enclosed around his cock that Yakumo was lapping up every last drop of cum that was oozing from the slit. If he looked now he would have seen that his cum was not in fact opaque but rather transparent and clear. It was his first time ejaculating only seminal fluid, though he had no idea of the fact. All he knew was that his body burned, his hole was excruciatingly sensitive, and that he needed something in him now. Vaguely he sensed that his hypersensitivity wasn’t normal, but he was too aroused to care. Legs spread apart, he presented himself to Yakumo, unaware that he was acting like an animal in heat.
Saliva collected in Yakumo’s mouth. Eiden was unconsciously scenting the air, and Yakumo was on the brink of snapping just by knowing that other people might be able to smell Eiden too. Forcing Eiden onto the desk, he bit into the nape of Eiden’s neck, sinking his fangs into the smooth, unblemished skin. An indescribable tanginess burst across his mouth as he instinctually applied his own scent onto Eiden’s skin. Eiden tensed beneath him, impatiently rolling his ass against Yakumo’s cock. Yakumo kissed him lightly on the shell of his ear before plunging in.
They both sighed at the same time. Eiden thought Yakumo had become longer and girthier. He clenched around him and felt Yakumo go up to beneath his navel. He could make out the shape of him, Yakumo’s cock filling him as satisfaction diffused through him from being stretched to his maximum.
“Yakumo,” he breathed each time Yakumo buried himself to the hilt, “I need it deeper. Ah—!”
Yakumo picked up the pace quickly. The sound of skin slapping on skin echoed obscenely in the library. Eiden moaned, whimpered and lifted his ass to cooperate with Yakumo’s feral thrusting. Then he was on his back again, now barely able to breathe as Yakumo kissed him senseless. His shirt was crumpled and drenched with sweat. Yakumo whispered against Eiden’s lips.
“Master Eiden.” He fervently sucked on Eiden’s lower lip. “I want to breed you.”
Eiden murmured into Yakumo’s ear. “Then do it.”
Yakumo drew in a sharp inhale. A deep, ancestral instinct instructed his body on what he had to do. He could make Eiden into what he needed. He was halfway there, with Eiden having copulated with him once already. Or maybe he didn’t even need to go any further. He only needed to wait until Eiden submitted to him, until he was…
He released his load with a low growl. Eiden sobbed through his own orgasm, his cum splattering between him and Yakumo. He could feel Yakumo slowly filling him up, drenching his insides with his sperm and plugging him up with his cock. He thought he could smell a pleasant aroma in the air.
Yakumo came in him in spurts. He felt every ejaculation pulse against his insides, the pressure and the scalding presence of Yakumo’s cock in his ass giving him the impression that his rectum had become a reproductive organ. He couldn’t process any thoughts through his lust-filled haze. Wrung out, he laid beneath Yakumo, consciousness draining away with his strength. Yakumo pulled out several minutes later, after he’d shot his last load into Eiden’s shivering body.
Eiden had fallen asleep. Yakumo began worshipping him with his mouth, cleaning the cum off his body and planting fresh bruises where previous ones had faded. As he neared Eiden’s neck, he gave it an affectionate lick, then sniffed it curiously when he managed to discern a particular undertone from the mess of arousal and possession that had resulted from sex. He wasn’t very sure what it was, but it sent a pleasant warmth roiling over his body.
He picked Eiden up, wrapped him in his clothes, and unabashedly kissed Eiden’s forehead.
Making a mental note to return later to clean up the mess they made, he silently slunk off towards Eiden’s room.