Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ A Disturbance of Shadows: The Demon and the Cherub ❯ A Disturbance of Shadows: The Demon and the Cherub ( Chapter 1 )

Archive: Here, fanfiction.net (half of the story, at any rate), my website (newly updated!). Anywhere else, just le me know.

Notes: I started this piece several years ago and has been sitting on my hard drive and random diskettes forever. It bubbled up again the other day and I took the initiative to finish it. Not sure how I feel about it. There may be a 'sequel' in the works sometime in the not too distant future. There is some blood play in this fic, I suppose it might squick some, but really, this one is not all that graphic.

Disclaimer: Not mine, not at all.

A Disturbance of Shadows

(The Demon and the Cherub)

~*~*~

I love little pussy,

His coat is so warm,

And if I don't hurt him,

He'll do me no harm.

So I'll not pull his tail,

Nor drive him away,

But pussy and I,

Very gently will play.

~*~*~

The Demon

Heaven is weeping tonight.

The tears have fallen on his sleeping face, but he does not wake.

Such a pretty kitten he is. Not the pick of the litter, no, but there is something about him. An innocence that hasn't been destroyed by death, veiled by blood; a killer he is, yes, but still as soft and golden as any cherubim. Yes. That's what he is, a cherub-it is much more fitting to him than those cat names that Kritiker has bestowed on their team.

He is soft to the touch, warm and pliable in my arms. I do like the way he feels curled on my lap, cradled against me, head on my shoulder. I can taste him on the air as I let the tip of my tongue test the night's heaviness: rain and mud, the faint grey choking flavor of smoke, and beneath it all the taste of ginger, sharp, raw.

Crawford's gaze has found me again; through the haze across the rear view mirror he watches with narrowed eyes. He is not fond of my playing with the catches. He says he'd much rather things be done with a modicum of traditionalism, but he didn't say anything when Schuldig voiced the idea, nor when I appeared amidst the rubble, slipping through the shadows and the rain holding the cherub in my arms. He said nothing, so he is consenting to let me play.

I look down at the sleeping face again. He had been caught in the blinding downpour, lost to his comrades, wounded, limping. Yet still, was so lovely to look at, with soot marring the pale curve of his cheek, and pain clotting behind his blue eyes.

God's forsaken cherub.

Does He weep to know you've fallen into my arms?

He will.

Together, we will make Him cry. Together, create such a vision of blood and flesh as to make the highest and coldest of Beings collapse into tears of pain, or pleasure, or envy. They are all harmful to Him in this way, you see. The pain of having His beautiful child at my mercy; the envy He feels at seeing you with me , reveling in my embrace, will cut so deep.

Tonight, He will hurt. Tonight, He will bleed.

* * *

He is waking now, slowly.

Do You see him?

Lying on my bed, a fitting sacrifice. Face sweet and innocent in the light of the burning candles. The manacles on his wrists stark and cold against his skin.

You let him go.

And he fell, with no one around to catch him. No one but me.

These are my arms he fell into.

Not Yours.

Mine .

His eyes open and I see him blinking into the dimness. Surely he was not expecting to wake where he has, swathed in candlelight and incense, lying on a red counterpane, cradled in feather pillows. The scent of apprehension clings to him, underplayed with fear. The emotions drip from his pores and their flavour on the air is so thick, so strong, and sharp as the blade.

He doesn't see me slip through the flickering shadows, doesn't see me until I stand beside the bed staring down at him, and then his eyes grow and the glassy sheen over them shatters, spills onto his skin. His mouth is open, showing insides that are soft and wet and darkly red; the breaths he takes are too fast, rushing out in short, uneven pants. I sit on the bed's edge and lean closer to him, trail my fingers down the paleness of his cheek, caress the dark soot ingrained in his flesh. His skin is smooth beneath my fingertips.

"Cherub, I've no wish to harm you."

My voice creaks like the hinge of that old church door from years ago, and he winces as I whisper to him, as I lean near him. I can see myself in the mirror of his eyes. A pale wraith, a cold killer, a madman, a scarred demon…no doubt these are the things he himself sees.

He trembles beneath my hand that has dropped to stroke his jaw, his neck, and then the soft flesh beneath his shirt. He curls in on himself, turns on his side as far as he can before being caught by the weight and limit of his bonds.

"Kitty doesn't like having his belly rubbed?" Strained silences from him, but my ears detect the slightest cry, trembling and faint in the back of his throat.

"No… Then, how about this?"

I stroke his back, watch him shiver as I raise the protective cloth of his shirt and trail one finger down the soft skin. I feel the ridges of his spine, the hard pearls beneath the golden-pale flesh, each pulled taught on their strand, ready to snap and scatter in one sudden spasm.

The Cherub

When Omi wakes, his first instinct is to call out to the others, but breath catches in his throat, stopping him short of names. A choking cough strikes him but he manages to pull in a much needed clean breath through a drug induced constriction of throat and airways.

He is lying on something warm and soft; it's silky beneath his legs. His arms…are bound above his head, he can feel the weight around his wrists, the soft clink of chain as he gently flexes his back and shoulder muscles and feels the familiar shift of a mattress beneath him.

This isn't his bed.

Nor his room.

He moves his legs, realizes his shoes are missing. Taken? It doesn't matter, they had been melting from heat, anyway.

He turns his head and the world swims out of focus before returning brighter and a little sharper than before, and he allows himself to sink into the softness of the bed as he tries to gather the moments just after he'd given the order to abort. The information is fragmented; it comes through in short spurts of static laced pictures.

He had heard walls cracking and crashing down, had felt the rain on his face, the heat of the falling embers, the sodden nail ridden boards, the pain in his right leg… He'd turned at some point, trying to track the others; radio contact had been disabled some time before, and his headset lay useless beneath the rubble. There…he'd seen…a shadow flitting through the firelight and rain, moving toward him. He'd caught the faintest scent-out of place in the smoking ruins of the building-there was a single drop of brightness, pain, voices calling him somewhere in the dark, and then…nothing. The static had overcome him.

Omi shakes his head to clear it of the dark and static. There was someone near when he woke, someone who still is moving just beyond the edges of his sight. The white pillars of candles keep most of the room in shifting shadow, and the haze of incense does nothing to help his night vision, but…it has to be…from the warehouse. He'd smelt this scent beneath the rain.

Shifting on the bed, he tries to reach for the darts kept close to his hear, never mind that they are no longer there, that he knows they aren't, and that he couldn't reach them even if they were. A pinching of metal against his soft wrist skin stops his hands short and he sends a look of reprimand to the manacles and their chains that are attached to the wall behind the bed.

There is a disturbance of shadows and his gaze falls from his bonds, focuses instead on the wan, pale figure moving into view. Amber light spills from the man's visible eye, the pupil is drowning in gold, elongated like a cat's, making Omi wonder if his vision isn't damaged somehow…but…the eye watches him too closely for that to be. His hair is a pale halo in the dark and his numerous scars lay smooth and stark against his skin.

The man-his name Omi barely recalls, cannot get his mental tongue around-settles on the bed and leans close to him. Omi knows his mouth is hanging half open like some captured fish. He gasps and gapes and still can't draw enough air through his tight throat. And then comes the touch; the man's hands, so strangely cool, are smooth despite the seemed ridges of skin decorating them. He brushes fingers across Omi's cheek and whispers.

His voice is strange, low and faint, as though he doesn't use it much. It touches Omi's skin and clings to his face as sticky as spider's silk. Omi winces, draws back as though trying to disappear into the pillows.

"Kitty doesn't like having his belly rubbed?" The voice is now an intimate whisper. Omi clenches his teeth against a sudden and unexpected whimper that is tickling the back of his throat, but a little sound comes out anyway.

Another question.

The touch again, as disarmingly gentle as it was before, trailing down the back of his neck. Omi feels his shirt lifted and squirms as a single finger traces the line of his backbone, following it carefully down the length of his torso, tracing each knob, until bone disappears along with his flesh into the waistband of his shorts.

This is not happening…

A strand breaks, pearls scatter.

Omi sucks in air between his teeth; he's got the name now-Demon-

Farfarello.

The Demon

The cherub gasps, shudders when he feels my hand beneath his clothes, slipping under his armor. He expected me to stop at that barrier of cloth no doubt. But, how could I when what I'm feeling is so sweet and pure and divinely beautiful? How can I stop when I know He is watching and realizing there is no escape for His fallen one from the demon He created with careless minds and faulted flesh?

This little one feels good in my hand, the curve of his ass smooth and warm against my skin. I lie on my side next to him, slide my other hand beneath the rough-hewn fabric of his shorts, cup my palms against him and knead the smooth flesh. He gives another cry, high and strained-cut short…

I know well the sounds of cries cut off by the clench of teeth on flesh.

I kiss the taught muscle at the base of his neck, and I am so very gentle, and then arch my body to look over his shoulder. His eyes are shut tight and I see the white tips of teeth buried in the flesh of his lower lip. There are swirls of red staining their ridges.

I take my hands off him then, grasp his shoulder and roll him onto his back. The muscles in his eyelids flinch, tremble, lock tighter, but he's removed his teeth from his lip and I take advantage of the moment to lave my tongue along the red mouth.

His breathing quickens as I tongue the silky lids of his eyes and lick across the soot marred cheek, cleaning the dirt and debris of the night from his skin. Black soot, salt, ginger. Such an interesting mélange of flavours, but the sweetest comes from inside.

There's a sheath on my arm and I pull the blade from it slowly, the sound of metal grazing the leather louder than a whisper in the quiet room.

The shirt he wears is in the way, nothing more than a nuisance. I start from the collar, slide the blade down, part the colored threads while leaving the skin beneath untouched. I split the seams on the arms and peel the cloth away, throw it to the floor.

I stop then, and wait.

Wait for his eyes to open.

I want to see the blue.

After a few moments they do and they are wide and innocent, fearful and wondering as he sees me holding the knife pressed to my lips. There is an unspoken question on his tongue; I know what it is without him voicing it.

You see, I am patient cherub. Your flesh is my altar and I will worship you.

I stroke the blade with my tongue, watch the candlelight glint off the edge of it before I lower it to his skin.

I slide the knife along his throat, over the pulse-gently, gently, tip barely caressing the skin. I could press in, here, now…but it would end too quickly. No… Once over his chest, over the beat of his heart I press down, watch the silver tip dip into him and the swell of red beads bubbling up in the seam. I've always prided myself on my work, the deftness of my touch, the glide of my knife. I've yet to disappoint. The cut is deep enough to bleed well, shallow enough to heal without a scar. I feel the smile on my lips as I lean forward to lap at the flow.

"No, no, no." It's chanted like a mantra under his breath. "This is not happening."

Such sweet noises he makes.

Don't worry little one, tonight I intend to take you to the edge of heaven, allow Him to see you wallowing in rapture, to see what no longer belongs to his dominion. I've made you mine, cherub, took you with that first cut, as I will take you again.

Lower now, the knife poised over the soft belly flesh, sliding with ease into him, bringing up the blood. He shudders as I take the blade away and replace the cool metal with the heat of my tongue. I lap at the indentation of his navel, snake my tongue over the fine gold hairs decorating his skin.

His shorts are in my way, halting my procession. I slip the knife between my lips, grasp it between tongue and teeth, while my fingers glide over the shuddering cherub, to the gold barriers that keep him locked away form my eyes, my touch.

"NO!"

Such force. He's found his voice again.

I pause momentarily.

I had not expected such venom from the little one. He has risen as far as his bonds will allow. His eyes are locked on me, still water, gold strands hanging into them. I meet the blue gaze with my own, watch as he flinches but doesn't dare look away.

How strange we must appear to anyone who might see us from another objective. I, kneeling between his legs, devotee-besotted worshipper-tongue flicking against the blade in my mouth, imagining it were his smooth flesh. And him, chains pulled taught, bonds rubbing raw his wrists, nearly prostrate, head raised just enough to watch me. Trying so hard to appear in control.

Sweet cherub.

I undo the first clasp and he falls to the bed again, twisting, turning, struggling to push me away with his feet, to curl in on himself, but I am quicker and soon he lies naked and golden beneath me, smooth skin glistening in the light of the candles.

I touch him then, reverently brush the gold fleece between his legs, watch as his cock twitches against the paleness of his thigh. I move up, lean over him, take the time to explore the intriguing swirls of his ear with my tongue while my hand is busy with the blade in lower regions. The metal caresses one thigh, then the other, and the cherub cries softly.

"…a jewel placed by God in the palm of the devil."

He starts violently when I speak and I move to the half parted mouth and slide my tongue into the wet darkness. His spit is bitter sweet; he tastes of panic and fear and…arousal. His lips are smooth against mine, tongue a living ribbon of hot velvet, fleeing from my intrusion, but I only delve deeper into his mouth, trace the soft wet cheeks and the firm roof. I stroke his tongue with my own, so gently, coaxing it forward like a small frightened animal until I can suck and bring him into my own mouth.

He jumps at his intrusion and pulls away. I let him, but not before catching his bottom lip between my teeth and sucking the clotted wound.

Stroking my hands down his body, I come to the junction of his thighs, the small cuts on his paleness still weep and stain my fingers faintly red, and in the center of the soft golden hair, he has grown hard.

Not so very innocent after all, are you cherub? Not so resistant.

Schuldig was right.

I wrap my fingers around his cock, glide the pads of over the silken skin, brush my thumb over the tip of him. The cherub hides a moan deep in his throat and I smile. Continuing the strokes I bring the metal of the blade against him, draw it quickly up along one side of his erection and then the other, massaging the tip of him all the while.

Such pure sounds are his cries, like cathedral bells ringing on a cold winter morning. There is wetness on his cheeks now. Clean, glistening tears.

"He is careless, the lying Lord," I say as I lean over him, blowing air along his cock, watching it twitch, "to let you slip between His fingers." I flick my tongue out, damped the tip of him even more, before meeting those blue eyes so shaken. "I am not careless. You are sweet to me, cherub," I say before wrapping my lips around him.

The Cherub

This can't be happening.

Kami-sama.

It shouldn't be like this-it shouldn't feel like this.

His only experience has been in the privacy of his bedroom, cultivating the smoothness of his own spit, the warmth of his own hand, the private imagery in his mind. But, he knows that it shouldn't feel like this-that he shouldn't be poised on this precipice-ready to fall.

Omi presses his face against his arm, biting into his own flesh to keep from crying out again. The skin there is salty with a sweat he hasn't realized he's broken. He tries to ignore the actions being performed on him-the way that tongue flicks over the tip of him before scouring the cuts along the sides-tries to ignore it, and fails. He can already feel that familiar pressure building at the base of his spine try as he might to ignore it, to set it aside. He's never been good at holding back.

He can't be doing this. He can't allow this. It shouldn't happen. Not with this man, not bound up like some animal-he feels the manacles cut into his wrists, sending a sizzle of half pleasuring pain through his arms, down his spine, to mingle in the very place where all that pressure resides.

And he recalls thoughts of rope or wire, razors or blades, but those were only dreams he'd had, fancies he'd entertained in a brief moment. They mean nothing in the waking world-nothing in his proper life. He can't.

He shouldn't.

But he does.

The pressure has crested and is spilling over the dam of his control before he can stop it. He jerks in the bonds, feels the mouth around him tighten, teeth scraping against his flesh gone raw and sensitive from the blade's caresses. He feels that sizzle shoot through his arms again, curl in serpentine whirls around his spine. He bites down hard on his lips, and then, despite the bonds, despite the pale, scarred creature kneeling between his legs, despite the fog still hovering low over his brain, he is coming.

And coming hard.

The Demon

He shudders deliciously as he comes, flooding my mouth, the taste of him, raw and thick, laced with nameless, bitter spices flowing over my tongue. I take in what I can, devour it, wanting to leave nothing to fall to the counterpane beneath us. When the aftershocks of his orgasm have stilled, I slowly take my mouth from him.

His chest rises and falls with his shallow breaths. His eyes are open, staring into the shadows hovering near the ceiling, the candlelight reflects off of them like glass. He's bitten his lip again, the red slips down his chin.

I draw myself up over his body, letting my own flow against him. I can feel the heat of his skin through the leather of my trousers, the cloth of my shirt.

He doesn't move.

I lick the jewel of blood from his skin, roll it about on my tongue.

He blinks, closes his eyes, and I move from his face up the pale length of his arm to where metal encircles his wrist. There I press my mouth against his skin just beneath and just above the manacle, let my tongue touch the delicacy, salted by sweat and thin trickles of blood from where he has pulled too hard in his struggles. I feel him move then, shifting against me; one of those delicate moaning cries lodges in his throat.

I move away, returning to kneel between his legs where I work at the buttons on my shirt, watching his eyes all the while. They are wide still, with shock perhaps, and fear, but no longer glassy; a shadow graces the blue irises making them much darker; it speaks of resignation.

Once my shirt is discarded I make quick work of the leather trousers and, tossing them aside, reach again for the blade, bring it to the cherub's chest, just between the impressions of his rib cage, and draw it over his skin leaving a long crimson trail. I then make a mirror wound on my own flesh, but deeper than his, so I can gather the blood in a pool in the palm of my hand.

I make sure he's watching as I lower my hand, slick the blood over my own cock, then move my fingers toward that secret space between his legs, trail the wet redness down the crevice, around the tight little fissure, just inside it.

His face hardens, his eyes close, his mouth thins.

I move against him, press close, push the tip of my cock into him and wait. Wait, though it's a hardship to feel him so warm and so tight and to not bury myself in him. Wait for his eyes to open.

Open your eyes, cherub.

"Open your eyes."

Perhaps it is something in my voice, or maybe he has fully resigned himself to me, to fate, but his eyes open and I move and am inside him in one quick thrust, his unused flesh clutching me so tightly it sends a white fire up my spine and straight into my brain.

That first scream is something to be savored, and I slant my mouth over his just as it falls, swallow it, feel it slide syrupy thick down my throat, pool in my stomach.

There is a tingling sensation against my ribs, where our twin wounds are rubbing against one another, sharing blood, sharing salt, sharing particles of skin.

Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh…

I am not so rough with him, not as much as I could be, as I would like to be. As much as he might want me to be…

Pushing his legs back to give a better angle, I thrust into him smoothly, surely, in just the right way as to sweep over that madly sensitive place that so many of my gender are purposefully unaware of.

He's crying again, clear crystal and ruby red where a little blood has dripped from his wrist to his face. They are not tears wholly of pain, though he might tell himself that. Pleasure is such a strange emotion for some, welcomed but reviled, sought but self denied…

I lower my head as I feel myself edging closer. Ah, it seems I spent a little too much time on the foreplay, but he has hardened again in these past moments, and I reach between our bodies to wrap my hand around him as I bury my face against his shoulder, in that soft hollow made by his collarbone, and bite down deeply on the flesh, relishing his moaning scream as I push as deeply into him as possible and let myself go.

Though content to remain in this position, suckling the reddened skin, feeling his chest rise and fall beneath me, the stickiness of his seed pressed between our bodies, I am roused from drowning my senses in him by a swift rapping on my door.

"Farfarello?"

I know he's smirking at the door as he speaks.

"Play time is over."

I raise myself on my arms, look down at the cherub beneath me. He seems to have fallen away, into a half-asleep daze. His eyes are heavy lidded, his breaths coming deep.

With a little regret I pull myself away from him, search the darkened room for my trousers, and pull them on before opening the door to find Schuldig standing there, the right corner of his mouth pulled up.

He tilts his head and looks over my shoulder into the room, eyes no doubt taking in the bonds he'd known would be used, the blood that glimmers faintly in the candlelight, before meeting my eyes. "Kiss your cherub farewell. The others will begin wondering if he doesn't show up soon."

:::We've got the information we need::: he says in my mind, voice whisping against my skull.

He glances once more into my room. "I'll be in the car. Make it quick."

Once he has gone I return to the cherub and unlock the manacles. His arms fall limply to the bed, wrists rubbed raw and red, seeping blood. I dress him slowly, pausing here and there to take sips of blood from the still open wounds. His is surely the sweetest I've tasted in some time.

Crawford is in his office and Nagi is nowhere to be seen as I carry the cherub through the house, out into the night where Schuldig is waiting in his car with the engine already running.

We make the drive in silence, no spoken or mental words passing between us, and find ourselves soon outside the flower shop we'd first passed many weeks ago. The store is dark, but upstairs in the apartments there are lights on. At least one of the kittens has returned from his personal safe space following the aborted mission.

I slip from the car and into the alley behind the shop where there is a door that holds a stairway leading straight to the housing above. I lean the cherub against the door jam and give a quick, brusque knock before returning to the car.

Schuldig takes a different way back to the safe house, a longer way, complete with a myriad of twists and turns designed to lose anyone who might be following.

He takes a hand from the wheel to light a cigarette on one of the more narrow curves. "I was surprised," he says, letting the smoke slip from his lips, "at the shields that kid had up. It would've have been a bitch to get the information we needed if I hadn't snapped up that little bit of day dream from him the other day."

I lean my head against the seat, close my eyes. "The bonds did distract him beautifully."

"The bonds," Schuldig snorts, flicks fire out the window, "right."

I smile then, a very small lengthening of lips. He told me once that pain or pleasure left a mind, even one with strong shields, unguarded, allowed him to slip through with less a chance of being noticed…but that a mind under the reign of both allowed him to slip in and out with a free and easy access.

It was a pleasant coincidence that the cherub seemed to have a subconscious occupation with such things. Not to mention a developing taste for those of his same gender, and even a blossoming crush on one of his teammates.

Schuldig had laughed for endless minutes after snatching that little bit of information.

I sit up straight at that thought and watch the darkness outside the car, thinking of the cherub, of his teammate. Schuldig, watching me from the side of his eye, doesn't speak again until we pull onto that familiar dead end street.

"Crawford was thinking you'd kill him and spoil our lead," he says.

I shrug. It has happened before, but… "Not this one," I say.

He glances at me. "Why not?"

"Because it would be doing Him a service," I say, slipping out of the car as it rolls to a stop. Because killing the cherub would take him from me, thereby being a surcease of pain for Him.

And because I'm not ready to give him up.

~*~*~*~*~

AN:

"…a jewel placed by God in the palm of the devil." - Farfarello has read Kahlil Gibran's Earth, and reforms a line for his own purposes.

The opening rhyme is from Mother Goose.