Work Text:
His back hurt. His thighs ached. There was a stifling, warm weight on his chest.
Shin was the most comfortable he’d ever been in his miserable years on this forsaken planet, and he did not want to wake up. Unfortunately, since he was who he was, his nose started itching.
Fuck, he thought, wearily. He hadn’t been this worn out…ever.
As he reached up to scratch his nose, his fingers skimmed against Noi, who was as bare-ass naked as the day she came kicking and screaming into the world (her first one as a baby, by the way, because Noi did spend a rather large amount of time kicking and screaming even now, well into her adult life).
He bolted upright, jostling her. She barely stirred.
“Unholy fuck.” Shin said.
Noi, for her part, snored, continuing to drool on him, looking to him very fresh and beautiful as always and not at all like she had engaged in about fifteen hours’ worth of vigorous fucking. Her arm was slung over his waist, and as Shin tried desperately to recall the cartoonishly wild sequence of events that must have led to this moment, her hand woke up before the rest of her and pulled down the covers.
Shin forgot what he was doing.
Let’s go on a tangent.
Ninety-five percent of reality made sense, in a twisted sort of way.
Hole. The Magic World. Their names sounded stupid, at first. They didn’t even exist as proper concepts, until some itchy, bored demon god fucker decided it would be funny to introduce a race of immoral, uneducated supermen to a hapless race who had no idea what the concept of magic even was. Their most complicated idea of violence was tying a sharp stone onto the end of a long stick.
The supermen ran free, and of course the cavemen could do nothing but die, die and of course, be subject to fates worse than death.
And thus, the bodies had piled high. A hill of stacked limbs. A pit of bodies. And hatred so deep it corrupted the fabric between worlds itself.
It made sense that Chidaruma had let these souls of generations rot and fester and stew in darkness so thick and cold that time itself stopped; that they couldn’t even rot into nothing. It had made sense to Chidaruma, only, of course, who was so bored and was doing the equivalent of smashing his action figures together as hard as he could.
But the names made sense you, see. Hole. A place where stagnant water gathered. Where the upstairs neighbours threw their shit into. Where hatred flowed and collected, gaining sentience. You know the rest.
And the Magic World, while not a very creative name, was titled quite aptly. It was the world of fantasy. But more importantly, it defined itself by what Hole lacked. It had Magic. It had Power. It had people who could turn you into a pie and EAT you. Cower in fear, denizens of Hole.
And thus, it would make sense that En, of all people, practically ruled the country. It was screwed up that he was actually a good ruler, or as good as anyone could probably hope to be. But it made sense. Might made right. It was only common sense. You try saying no with a mouth of broken teeth, or when your tongue has become a toadstool. Or when your innards have been strung along a laundry line.
It made sense that En was king. Why wouldn’t he be? Who would say no? Who else could instil the fear needed for order?
But the other five percent of reality did not fucking make any sense at all. Because they were all beautiful. Because they were all good.
A traveller braves all odds. She goes back, so many times. Things change, every time. And finally, she pulls her sister out of the river. It should not have worked. But it did. She does it again.
Another girl. She is on the brink of ultimate power, of immortality. The devil ears are already sprouting out of her skull, but she gives it all away for the mangled, half-body in her lap. He means infinitely more to her. She does as well, to him.
A human. Plain, powerless, a rube. Not a magic user. The rain is pouring, and she is alive. It is the Magic World that is drowning. She is perfectly fine. And yet, of course, she flies into the sky with nothing to gain, with nothing but thin air and a broomstick, and she shuts the door on a half-alive god. She saves the magic world.
And of course. A half-breed, and a cursed man. Victims of magic, and the strange dichotomy that has forced itself into existence. And yet they two are the ones that kill Hole, to put to rest centuries of stewed hatred and despair.
The point here is, of course, that the most beautiful and valuable things happened often had no precedent or logical basis in them whatsoever.
Which is of course why you will not be surprised when I tell you that the reason Shin and Noi finally started fucking is because of Risu’s pornstar magnum dong.
This is how it happened. Three days ago, Kaiman woke up, as he usually did, from a night of very restless sleep. He had long since accepted this. He supposed that when you were an amalgamation of multiple different people who were also all the same person (Ai, Aikawa, Kai, Kaiman), restful sleep was quite out of the question. He often had vivid and intense nightmares. Dreams of grinding dead men into slurry, dreams of falling forever into sludge. Dreams of malice and pain seeping through every pore in his skin. Dreams of dying in the gutter.
Those were all pretty normal, actually.
But this time, he’d also dreamed of a chivalrous knight, with armour that turned away and broke every attack. She had a smile so wide and radiant you could barely even make eye contact with her. He remembered wanting that armour so badly. He needed it. He needed it. He needed it.
And so, he had held her close. Ripped it out of her body, and left her to rot in a forgotten corner of that forsaken mansion. Or…had he turned her into a patch of fungus? He sincerely couldn’t remember. That was the worst part. Snuffed out. Because she was useful. Because he needed power, more than anything ever in the world, and he hadn’t known anything else. And then she had been forgotten, lost to swim in murk he threatened to drown the world in. Her head in a jar, still used by him after her death. Had it still been smiling? Or had that been rotting teeth?
He spent a few long minutes, gripping the edges of his sink, peering deep into the mirror. He sighed and ignored this mental anguish, because he was a man, and most men did this instead of actually ever tackling the source of their problems. In this, he actually approached normalcy. How hilarious. He took a deep breath, and then another.
By the time he reached the shop, he was his perfectly fine, normal cheerful self. He whistled a good morning to Nikaido, loaded up his plate with dumplings, sat down, and began brutally demolishing Nikaido’s finances.
Nikaido had her back to him, idly poking at the savoury, glistening artery-cloggers that she was so proficient at making. “Good morning, Kaiman.”
He made a sound that was a cross between a dolphin being choked and a whale being born. Her gyoza were to die for. It was to kill for. Hell, he had killed for it.
She glanced over her shoulder and frowned, turning off the flame under her wok. Kaiman would probably have noticed that it was odd that she was cleaning up so soon, but he had his snout deep in a bowl of rice. Nikaido sighed softly, drying her hands once she was done with the dishes, walking past him to flip the sign on the door to closed.
She sat across from him, just smiling, waiting.
Their conversations always came easy, but they had been friends long enough that the silence was companionable, comfortable, until Kaiman realised Nikaido was just quiet, pensive the way she sometimes got when it rained, or the way she daydreamed after Asu visited and had a meal with them.
“What’s wrong?” He burped.
She laughed. “Me?” She reached past his ear and pulled a whole-ass pillow off the back of its head. It was limp and pathetic now after its brutal crucifixion upon the back of Kaiman’s head.
“My pillow!” Kaiman said, snatching it from her grasp as if it was her fault. He hugged it and glared at her.
She laughed again. “Kaiman, you’re wearing a T-shirt. How the hells didn’t you notice?”
“Flexible T-shirt.” He placed the pillow on the table, lengthwise such that one end was on her side, heedless of the greasy tabletop. He sighed a little, resting his chin onto it, fluffing the pillow on her end. Nikaido shrugged, joining him.
They were close enough that she could probably start counting each individual scale, and she felt his breath stir her hair. She loved him more than words could say, and as such she held her silence.
“When I was…. Kai,” he hesitated. She kept her eyes on him, nodding. “I would have done anything. For more. For powers. For strength. And if I had seen your smoke…it would have been worse than En.”
She nodded. En was…En, but he operated under a code. He loved his family. He had cut her open and violated her, but she knew, objectively, at least, that it would have been better than what Kai or Hole would have done. Kai…had been further away from humanity than any devil. “I wanted…armour. Do you remember?”
“Yes. You needed to gestate.”
An artificial devil suit. She remembered how it had moved. As if it was carrying every shadow in the world. Joints wrongly oriented, bones twisting within and stabbing itself.
And then Kai, the…thing, had emerged from it. There wasn’t much more to say about that, apart from that she supposed even monsters like En had their uses.
“I did it, Nikaido. I took Natsuki’s head. Do you remember her?”
Nikaido held Aikawa’s hand.
Fast forward two days, and several phone calls.
(“Those two are the only ones we really have to worry about. They come here often, right?”
“Once in a while. Only after business, and I always pack their orders. They’re always covered in blood and it’s a pain to get that out of the seats.”
“Maybe we should ask them for help. Who knows, they could be nice now.”
Cue uncontrollable laughter.
“Yeah,” Nikaido gasped, wiping away a tear. “Let’s go with another plan.”)
The bait was set, the pieces fell into place.
“I want this man,” En said, tapping a finger onto a picture of a very naked, extremely buff, extremely handsome individual, while stroking his cat.
Shin, once again, mentally debated En’s sexuality.
Noi looked interested as she picked up the photo. Shin had never seen En express interest in anyone in that way, so Noi’s insistence that he had turned his junk into a toadstool and two smaller truffles seemed more and more likely every day.
“Who is this guy?” She asked, waving the photo at En. “Look at his muscles. Hells. Look at them, Senpai.”
Huh. He didn’t know Noi had a type. Though Shin could barely blame her, peering over his glasses. The man looked like a god, and not the unholy kind that festered stagnant malice rainwater in the heavens. This man was ripped. He looked like he could probably twitch each individual pectoral. There was something about his dick, though.
“He’s gotta be isolating each muscle group when he works out.” She babbled, almost happily, a schoolgirl lost in her own (bloody) world. “I’ll need you to cut along his tendons when we get him, Shin. I wanna see how he works.”
“No, no, Noi. I need him for my movies.” (“Aw,” Noi said.)
This had to be for a damn porn shoot. Was this his job now? There wasn’t much need for real cleaner work now that most of the country knew what the fucking alternative was when En wasn’t around. Though to be fair, he also thought En putting mushrooms in almost every aspect of the infrastructure was somewhat of dick move. Or a toadstool and two truffles move, if you would.
Was he too old for this job? He doubted it. But he did know he was too old for a career change. Unless he wanted to become a carpenter again. Though he really wouldn’t have minded that. A table for two, chairs. A house, maybe? The bed would have to be big, though. They wouldn’t fit, otherwise.
“You changed your face to fool us, huh. But you know,” Shin said. “I knew I recognised your dick.”
Risu flexed, his separated body parts rippling and roiling with the motion. Shin conceded that it honestly looked quite stunning. Risu had superb control over his separate body parts, moving them here and there even under the effects Shin’s smoke. Shin had never seen that before. Most normal people simply gaped helplessly and screamed at the sights of their own innards, strung out like cheap laundry. Or perhaps it was the agony.
But Risu wasn’t normal anymore, so. Shin wasn’t sure when they had become devils, but it had been a few years, after all. Their meat puppets (or were they the true forms? Shin didn’t really know, which sucked if they had to fight,) were of great fascination to Noi, who had lost interest in Risu after finding out his muscles weren’t natural.
Risu had been happy to oblige, leaving his shell. His other companion was less forthcoming, perched atop the massive wardrobe in the corner of the room, upon which he and Shin were now engaged in a very serious, unchildish staring contest.
Shin couldn’t blame him for being wary, though he thought it was kind of unnecessary. Devils were unstoppable.
Asu scoffed, his stare unbreaking. “I told you we should have shapeshifted that too, man.”
“You’re the one who said we should show him a thirst trap. I didn’t even want to do this.” Shin doubted Risu was telling the truth. This man’s dick was quite respectable, and he didn’t seem bashful about it. He was as full of bravado as the day they dug his head out of that lockbox and put him on that cyborg. He couldn’t believe that this man was shy, not the way he was tensing each muscle in his asscheeks.
Shin sighed, as Risu pieced himself back together with a grin. How had he even gotten a body in the end, anyway? Must have been someone helping him during Blue Night. Two devils, one not necessarily friendly (not that he could blame Asu), against him and Noi. And no porn star in sight. He was so tired.
Asu shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it? En’s a fucking moron, that’s why.”
Noi cackled. Shin shot her a glare and she shrugged. “C’mon Senpai. You know it’s true.”
“We’re the morons for working for him,” he said, though he didn’t disagree.
Noi nodded sagely. “Yeap, we’re pretty stupid.”
“That’s the problem,” Asu said, almost to himself. “Anyone who could do a better job would never want to.”
“It’s fun being a devil,” Risu said. He smiled, almost sheepish. He directed his attention towards Noi. “They still want you, you know.”
“I’m good.” Noi said, looking at Shin. Shin felt something in his chest uncoil, but he played it cool. “I like who I am. Thank you, though.”
“Welp, I tried,” Risu said, looking at Asu. “Now what?”
“Now we take care of them,” the other devil said, unfurling his wings, and as Shin opened his mouth to spew smoke, Noi sprinted into him and shoved them both out the window of their very high-up hotel room.
Asu waited until Shin’s very manly scream faded into the wind before laughing. Risu peered through the hole in what used to be a pristine floor-to ceiling window. “Aaaannd they’ve hit the ground. Ooh. Her smoke works instantly, dude. They’re booking it to their car.”
Asu smiled. He was an anomaly in many respects. He had teleportation, for one, an ability that had made him as much a target as Noi, once upon a time. He was the only person in the world to have become a demon twice.
Oh, and he held a mean fucking grudge. Like, the WORST. (You can recall this when he danced for five full minutes on the entrails of his slaughtered demonic companions, who, to be fair, had given Asu his sight and hands back to make him cook for them before taking them away again. It was actually quite funny, as long as you didn’t ask Asu.)
And despite Shin and Noi having relatively little to do with Nikaido’s very enjoyable kidnap, torture, torture, torture, more torture and consequent brainwashing session by En, he hated their guts by default.
Well, not really. Hate was a strong word, as we both know. Hate can cause dead gods to spawn and flood the Magic World.
But Asu did want to fuck with them.
As such, when Shin scrambled behind the wheel and Noi threw herself into the backseat, the car promptly vanished. Oh, not in the car bomb kind of way.
It just fell apart, as if someone had magically turned all the wheels, the windshield, the engine, the hood, the roof, the screws, the axle, the boot, and just about everything else into thin air. His car was like a convertible now, if a convertible was as mobile as a very heavy rock.
He was left holding the steering wheel, the door handle, and sitting on a leather seat that was now connected directly to his car frame. Noi faced very much the same issue, though for some reason she had lost her pants but had managed to keep the small hand fan that Fujita had left dangling from the ceiling.
“This ride sucks, Senpai. You’re getting one star for sure.”
“Shut up,” Shin snarled. He flinched as Asu landed where his hood used to be.
Well, fuck, he thought, and locked his one, singular, remaining car door. Take that, demon bastard.
Asu reached through the empty space where his precious windshield used to be with a long, long, long arm and grabbed Noi by the throat.
“Gurk,” she said, choking, and threw the fan in his face. Shin’s smoke then turned the appendage into flesh ribbons, and he sunk the claw of his hammer straight into Asu’s eye. Asu turned his attention to the man, and started beating the ever-loving shit out of him.
“So,” Noi said, massaging her throat.
“Sup.” Risu said. He had teleported into the backseat beside her, where both of them had front row tickets to the ass-kicking Shin was currently receiving.
“Mind giving me back my pants?”
“Nah,” Risu said. “You won’t need em in a while. Chill, Asu. Enough screwing around.” Asu had gotten Shin in a headlock and was giving him a noogie so vicious tufts of hair was coming out. Noi burst out laughing.
“Ease up on him,” Noi gasped, almost in tears. “He’s thirty-five and I haven’t figured out how to heal his weakening follicles.”
“I’m thirty-two,” Shin said, before Asu suplexed him onto the floor, cracking his skull. Risu whooped.
“What’s the deal, anyways?” Noi asked. “I’m not becoming a devil. And you guys basically have free reign now, dontcha?”
“Yeah, but we’ve agreed status quo in general is easier to maintain, at least for the Magic World. It’ll be funny to watch that little bastard grow up and suffer here eventually,” Asu said, in between punches. Shin was highly offended, less at the intense pain he was in and more how Asu was not even close to being winded. The haymakers were wildly powerful.
“What?”
“Never mind,” Risu said. “Asu, come on. Let’s bounce.”
“No, no, seriously,” Shin groaned. “What the fuck? This was all a set-up. You just wanted to show us your dick?” He bolted upright, realisation sinking in. “You’re aiming for En?”
“You guys really should blame yourselves,” Asu said, wings flapping as they began to take off. “You’re really the only two competent people in that mansion.”
Risu laughed. “Enjoy the room!”
“What,” Shin said, then both him and Noi tele-plummeted, in whirl of motion, into the closet Asu had spent 10 minutes carving sigils into.
The closet wasn’t small, but both him and Noi were pretty big, and they ended up curled into each other in a way that he’d thought about many times before. She was more or less in his lap, a leg curling around under his thighs, a calf wedged under his knees. The other leg was braced, foot planted above his shoulder. And it was warm and stuffy. Shin was forced to concede that he was, indeed, in an enjoyable position.
“Fuck.” Shin said.
“In a minute, Senpai,” she said, gently taking hold of his cheek and pushing him aside. “There’s something written here. Hmm.”
“What,” Shin muttered, agitated. “I’m feeling weird. They do something?”
“They scratched it into the back wall in here. Behind you. Move, lemme read it,” she said, hooking her fingers around the back of his neck. He leaned forward, and she rested her chin on his shoulder, sighing.
“Eh-hem. You have our word and honour as magic users that no harm will come to En while you are in this room. We simply needed to delay both of you. As a favour, this cupboard unlocks only after twenty minutes and the room will only unlock after we are satisfied. How is that a favour?” She laughed, the trill of her joy going straight into his ear and around his brain.
Shin grunted, squirming. “Anything else?”
“Something something something aphrodisiac something something begin. Your hair is in the way.”
“Aphro-WHAT?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” Noi said, and bit his earlobe, so hard it tore a little. Shin didn’t really have any problems after that.
There were no problems. They didn’t have to snap any necks, bribe anyone, or eat any mushrooms. Or get turned into them.
All that happened was that they climbed over the broken wall, through the shattered windows, and into the dark corridor where Kai had killed Natsuki.
“Behind the statue.” Kaiman remembered.
Nikaido found the button. The marble rumbled aside to show a crawlspace to another room.
“It’s empty.”
“They must have cleared it out,” Nikaido said, looking around. She knelt by a stain on the floor. “This was it?”
Kaiman nodded. He hesitated. Nikaido took his hand, and they sat, together.
He didn’t know how or who to pray to, so Nikaido did.
She prayed for everyone that had died, under Kai’s thumb, or swallowed by Hole. She prayed for the ones that had become Hole. She prayed for their deaths, proper and true, spirits free and dispersed, not rotting stagnant. There really wasn’t much more she could do.
They sat there for a long while.
Footsteps. Kaiman sniffed the air. “Nikaido,” he said.
“I got it,” she smiled. Her smoke leaked out, out into the corridor where En was walking.
And he walked. And he walked. And he walked again. He reached the end of the corridor, and kept walking into the wall, again and again like a child’s toy. He screamed through a mouth that wouldn’t fully open, and his movements grew frantic, but still he walked faster and faster into the same wall, with ever-increasing desperation. His fingers clenched again and again, but nothing poured out. He was stuck, in the same motion. Again, and again, into the wall.
She probably would never regain the time-rifle-machine, the one that let her change the past. But a simple time loop was-
(Kaiman laughed, and laughed, and laughed. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And then he did it again, and again.
“Help,” he squeaked, in between breaths.
“Fuck,” Nikaido giggled.)
-not out of her reach. She kept it a secret, apart from Kaiman, though. She had a feeling that if she’d pushed herself, the power would come back, and she really loved her life, now. One day at a time, making the best of it, and no changing that.
She took Kaiman’s hand (he was now constantly out of breath, at least till her power wore off), they laughed themselves silly at En’s broken nose, and they left. Kaiman walked freer, happier now, another cage gone from around his heart.
Asu met them at the edge of the compound, wiping away a tear.
“En’s gonna hang someone for that,” he laughed as he opened the door back to Hole. “I think he started crying.”
“Oh wow, Senpai. I always knew you were hung.” Said boner was pressing against her bare thigh, aching for attention. Both his zipper and his self-control were going to come apart very, very quickly if Noi kept on getting her way.
He wanted to touch her more, run his fingers along her jaw and lips, but they were still tangled in her hair, like someone had left spun silver in his hands, and he found himself unwilling to let go.
She hummed appreciatively into his ear as he dug his fingernails into her scalp, almost too hard, though it didn’t seem to slow her progress at all in her quest of fucking destroying the buttons of his button-down.
Despite everything, her hair was still unbelievably soft. He’d imagined at times, that it would be knotted and coppery, and the memories of her grinning at him, strands highlighted red after a battle, made his cock twitch. Noi was both tall and careless enough that every time she so much as spun or whirled, he would catch the tail end of her mane, and it felt good to tug on for once. (Shin had actually mentioned this to En, once. When En had politely, very reasonably, suggested that Shin simply not stand so close to Noi, Shin had looked at him as if he was a moron.)
Noi, having emerged triumphant in the battle against his shirt and consequently gaining access to his bare skin, wasted no time and raked her nails down his chest, hard enough that she drew beads of blood. He scowled and she giggled.
“C’mon, Senpai. Give me a smile or something.”
“Oh, stuff it,” he said crossly, though he couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of his throat. He felt almost drunk, a giddy sort of high. He hoped it wasn't the concussion Asu had probably given him. “I deserve better than this job.”
“Oh yeah. We really do.”
“Get En to get off his lazy ass once in a while.” Shin grumbled into her chest, having almost dove forward as she had leaned back. She smiled down at him, and he felt a very rapid hammering in his chest that had of course nothing to do with the fact that she was, and had always been, jaw-droppingly gorgeous.
Damn it, Noi. She was too great. Always was too wonderful, especially now, moaning and showing off the pale column of her throat as he sucked marks into her skin. Fuck’s sake.
This was really how it was going to happen, huh. The leg braced over his shoulder dropped, wrapping around his waist, them closer together. There wasn’t any room for anything else, to shift, to breathe. All he could see, could feel, was her.
“Noi,” he said, cherishing the way her name felt on his tongue, how the crook of her neck tasted. This wasn’t any damn aphrodisiac. He knew it, and she knew it.
She pressed a thumb hard enough into the swell of his hip, sneaking, digging under his waistband. The other arm braced against his chest, pressing him up and against the wall, her knee sneaking in between both his own. Up. Further.
“Noi,” he said, again. He was probably doing something ridiculous with his face, like smiling or something.
“Hmm.”
“I think,” his voice almost cracking. “I think the door is unlocked.”
“Huh,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him, falling backwards, and they both tumbled out of the cupboard, in such an ungainly mess that the roof of her head clacked against his jaw. Blood flooded his mouth. He’d almost bitten his tongue off.
“Fuck’s sake, Noi.” He said, spitting.
“Oh, in a minute, Senpai. Lemme kiss your booboo better.” She sneered, leaning over him.
He kicked her knee in, with a nice loud crack. She collapsed onto him.
“Ow! I guess we’re playing rough!”
He yanked her up to meet him, both of them sprawled on the floor. Silence fell, Noi finally quiet. Shin was afraid. She’d finally noticed that. She hadn’t seen that before, not ever.
“….hey.” She said, softly.
“Noi.” An answer. Enough for them, of course. They knew each other more inside than out, by now.
They kissed. At first only to share the smoke, of course, just as they’d done countless times before. It tasted like blood, sweat, rain, and then what followed quickly and rapidly was both so bloody and obscene and sexual and laden with emotion that suffice it to say that it lasted 15 hours before their first session ended.
En walked into that wall for a very long time.