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“You reincarnated into such a dainty form. Really, Kanon. It’s like you wanted to be crushed by me.”
“I thought I was transparent about that…?”
Anos’s hands nearly circle Kanon’s entire waist, an infernal halo, Kanon’s own private circle of Hell. The place where he could finally be with his Hero, the Demon King of Tyranny. For two thousand years Kanon had wished for this closeness, prayed for it, dreamed of how Anos might choose to lay claim to his body as he had to his heart all those centuries ago. Kanon had imagined himself draped across Anos’s lap on the throne of Delsgade, bound and spreadeagled to ornate four-poster beds veiled away from the tumultuous world by diaphanous curtains. On his darker days he thought of Anos taking him on one of Delsgade’s balconies, letting all the humans see their Hero willingly consumed by the darkness they so feared, lost to pleasure in the arms of the only person who had sought to end Kanon’s life of bloody toil. The only person who saw Kanon’s suffering.
They’re not in any of those places right now, but it’s perfect. No place with Anos, alive and whole, could be imperfect. In Anos’s bedroom, the hand-sewn curtains keep in the warm lamp light, and the smell of mushroom gratin wafts in from the kitchen below. There’s still a mobile hanging from the ceiling. Anos lays back on his narrow bed holding Kanon astride his hips. He rubs a thumb along Kanon’s hip bone, contemplative, as though he might press past the flesh and brand his thumb print into Kanon’s very bones. Kanon hopes he does.
“Yes, you were honest, when you could be. But Kanon, I must forbid you from lying to me again, impressive as it was.”
Kanon lets out a fluttering laugh. “Are you angry…?”
“Not at all. You did a magnificent job, setting up such a mystery for me to unravel.” Anos reaches up and strokes Kanon’s cheek. Kanon leans into his palm. The hand that crushed Kanon’s fate, twice now, is gentle as moonlight. “But it was too hard on you.”
Tears rush, hot and heavy, to batter against the back of Kanon’s eyelids. He holds them back with a smile. He should have more self-control than this, but it’s just like Anos to bat away two thousand years of pretense as though it were a paper mask. “It wasn’t hard at all, to make sure you could live in peace.”
“Nonsense. You couldn’t lie at all two thousand years ago. Now look at you. Not to mention keeping your holy power with demonic blood.” Anos brushes his thumb along Kanon’s cheek, as if wiping away his unshed tears. That is enough to summon them forth, leaping to Anos’s touch. Searing in their relief, they drip down Kanon’s face. Kanon makes a noise he can’t contain, a stilted wail, and buries his face in his hands.
Anos rises and replaces Kanon’s hands with his own, so the fat drops of Kanon’s tears splash against his palms. Kanon can see nothing but his eyes, blood-red, the color of life, and his warm smile.
“Tell me the truth now, Kanon.”
“I…Anos…” Kanon’s voice trembles, still restrained, as if the truth is a flood that will overwhelm him once unleashed, crush him with the weight of it.
Anos leans in, whispers against his ear. “Do not hold back, my friend. Not with me.”
“I was lonely.” Kanon croaks. Anos has cleaved his double-tongue in half, leaving only the honest part, atrophied from misuse. His hands clutch at the front of Anos’s shirt, rumpling his uniform. “Anos… Anos!”
Kanon jolts as Anos’s hot tongue gathers his tears, lapping them off Kanon’s cheeks, off his own palm, deftly catching one on the tip of his tongue just before it can fall from Kanon’s eye. “You have been an unsurpassable friend to me for two thousand years,” Anos murmurs. “I will have to dote on you quite a lot to catch up.”
A sob bends Kanon in half, and Anos is there to keep the strength of it from breaking him, sturdy as a castle.
“Ah, Kanon…” Anos gathers him close, holding Kanon together in the circle of his arms. “I can taste how desperately you tried to protect me. Such dedication will sustain my source into eternity. Scream my name in ecstasy and adoration as much as you like; you shall never need to call for me again.”
Anos kisses Kanon’s lips, lips that have forged countless lies. And he forces them open with his tongue, ruins them for duplicity ever again. Kanon can taste the bright salt of his own tears, his honesty, succulent as a feast as Anos’s twines their tongues together. Kanon moans, the sound dredged up from the depths of himself, from a place of longing kept locked and buried so he could keep his hands, his heart, steady for the work ahead. Anos swallows the noise like it’s his mother’s mushroom gratin, savoring it.
Anos strips them naked with a thought. Kanon cries out, already stuffed to the brim of sensation his body could take, and now flung off the precipice of it, every point of contact as urgent as the wind whipping past him as he falls. He clings to Anos’s shoulders as Anos caresses him methodically, as he studies Kanon’s body, honed century by century into a vessel for Anos’s blood, his salvation. Under Anos’s hands, the sharp wings of his shoulders feel fragile and small; the column of his spine a sapling branch. One hand wraps around the nape of Kanon’s neck, a warm, blissful collar Kanon would gladly wear for all eternity, while the other one grabs a handful of his ass.
Anos tips Kanon back slightly to look him in the eyes, his expression fond and wicked. “Destroy you I shall, my Hero. With the most powerful force in the universe—love.”
In a blink, they’re in another world. An endless field of snow-white flowers, the moon hanging full and heavy above them. Kanon feels slender stalks and silken petals stroke his back as Anos lowers him down, looms over him like a mountain. The moonlight illuminates Anos as his shadow swallows Kanon, melding them in the same pool of steel-gray light.
“Anos,” Kanon gasps. He presses his palm to Anos’s chest, to feel the powerful throb of his source, alive and brimming with power. Anos catches his hands and kisses his fingers, his palms.
“Yes, my Kanon. I am here before you, and I won’t leave you again. You need not exert yourself for reassurance. I will burn that fact into your body and source so that you can never doubt it.”
Gentle green tendrils wrap around Kanon’s wrists and draw them down to rest against the verdant earth. Anos leans down and bites Kanon’s neck until blood breaks to the surface and flows eagerly into his mouth. Kanon arches convulsively, groaning as his cock lightly smacks against his stomach.
No battle has made Kanon’s heart beat like this, as though it wants to break from its wardrum rhythm into song. Only the Demon King of Tyranny’s soft smile.
Anos catches Kanon by the hips and pulls Kanon’s ass into his lap, against his slickened cock—of course he knows a spell for that. No matter how Kanon strains for more, Anos holds him perfectly still as presses Kanon open, dragging their joining out for an eternity until Anos’s cock is fully buried in him, pulsing like a second heart, hot and cleansing as holy fire. All the while, Kanon calls Anos’s name until his throat aches. He could fill this vast field with the sound of it until Anos’s name echoed off the moon and it would not be enough to sate Kanon’s thirst for it after two thousand years of silence.
Anos strokes back Kanon’s sweat-soaked silver hair. “Beautiful.”
Still smiling, Anos plunges his hand into his own chest. Ribbons of blood flow out, drip down Kanon’s ribs in slow, hot caresses. When Anos pulls his hand away, his blood-soaked fingers shimmer iridescent with his source. Before Kanon can jump to horror or wonder, Anos thrusts the same hand into Kanon’s chest and grips his source.
Kanon has had his sources broken so many times, it barely registers as pain, only dull calculation—six more to go, five, four… Now, Anos holds his source tenderly, cradling it, rolling it between his fingers as if to warm it. It does feel warmer, like gentle sunlight has pierced the slender cage of Kanon’s ribs and illuminated him.
Cool and light as windswept petals, Anos voice falls on him. “You know I admire your endurance, but you are too rough with these, Kanon. They belong to me now. Be more cautious with them.”
“M-my King,” Kanon pants. Only Anos could free him with an order, command him to preserve himself from pain.
“Good. Now…”
Supple stalks wind around Kanon’s trembling thighs and pull them wide to accommodate Anos’s broad waist. Kanon flushes, not at the inherent lewdness, but at how deeply it thrills him to have Anos ruin every part of his holy image. The flowers rock him softly on Anos’s cock, just enough to sweeten the edge of adrenaline rushing through him with glowing jolts of pleasure.
Within Kanon’s chest, a pain, subtle as a needle, pierces his source. Anos’s source fills the new hollow like ink. Again it comes, and again; each prick ripples through Kanon’s body in flashes of feverish heat. It takes Kanon an embarrassingly long time, all the way to the first ‘o’ to realize that Anos is spelling his name—signing Kanon’s source like a deed. Once Anos Voldigoad is fully written in a constellation of burning points, Anos rubs his thumb over the signature, soothing the sting, admiring his work.
Then he moves on to Kanon’s second source and does it again.
Second, third, fourth… Anos brands them all with his name. With his free hand, Anos pets Kanon’s dripping cock, another current in the maelstrom of sensation shaking Kanon apart. Being near Anos was always like this: pain and elation, fear and desire, shame and abandon all churning through Kanon at once. But now there is no-one depending on Kanon’s sanctity, no-one to judge him for his weakness. Kanon allows himself to be dragged under, confident Anos will catch him and hold him safely just over the brink of destruction time and time again, just close enough to let the fires of it warm him when stagnation makes him cold.
Each piercing feels as though Anos is bleeding the grief from Kanon and replacing it with joy. He imagines all the flowers turning black from the nourishment, fading through gray back to snow white as the seasons turn. He wants to howl at the moon and purge every scream he ever held back for the sake of being a symbol, but he can’t take his tear-blurred eyes off of Anos hovering above him. The Demon King of Tyranny watches his work with his brow slightly furrowed in concentration. It’s so rare to see Anos focused, trying—and for Kanon’s sake. Source magic isn’t Anos’s specialty, how did he even learn to do whatever he is doing to Kanon, let alone cut off a piece of his own source?
Once he is finished with all seven sources, Anos observes Kanon, still fondling his seventh source. The touch thrums through Kanon as if he were a hollowed-out instrument under virtuosic hands. Anos chuckles. “Did you think I cut off part of my source just because I moved some of it? I’m merely putting a bit of it somewhere else—in you. Inspired by that clever fusion trick you pulled with my Demon Lords.”
Putting some of his source somewhere else—how was that different than cutting it? But it’s Anos saying it, and Kanon can feel the truth of it, the faint tug of a link between them.
Then, Anos pulls out his own full, glowing source, holding it for Kanon’s inspection. There is a glint in his eyes that Kanon knows well—daring Kanon to strive for him, to match him.
“You’ll have to do it without using your hands.”
Of course Kanon can do it, since Anos showed him how seven times. Kanon parts his lips with a ragged whisper of Anos’s name, and the interest kindling in Anos’s eyes ignites.
He presses his source to Kanon’s lips, and it feels like trying to kiss the sun. Even so, it’s easy for Kanon to summon a sliver of his source to the tip of his tongue to carve his name. Anos sinks his source deeper, gagging Kanon, rubbing the tracery of his name against Kanon’s tongue while hot, nourishing sparks of his power drip down Kanon’s throat and burn like novas in his chest.
“There.” Anos looks down at Kanon, heavy-lidded with satisfaction. “Our sources are linked now. ‘You’ have been destroyed, my Kanon. There is only ‘us’. As long as one of our sources remains, we can never be extinguished.”
Desiccated by millenia of patience and calculation, Kanon cannot contain his relief and joy. It spills from his eyes again in rivers. It feels as though the strength of it will tear through his worn spirit like a cocoon and leave him behind a husk.
“A-Anos…!” There are no other words in Kanon’s mind, but he doesn’t need any others. He knows Anos can read the weight of millenia in his reedy voice, how many times Kanon has longed to call for him.
Cool magic soothes Kanon’s ragged throat. All the blood disappears, leaving them both soaked in quicksilver moonlight. Once more, Anos pulls Kanon into his arms, letting Kanon’s own weight drive Anos’s cock into him, as he had always let Kanon break himself against his indomitable power, a wave clawing at the shore, longing to pull himself out of the swell. Kanon flings his head back with another cry of Anos’s name. Anos cups the back of his neck, and with his other hand at Kanon’s hip, he moves Kanon as easily as a marionette.
Semen drips down Kanon’s stomach from previous orgasms he had not even noticed—and he can’t tell how many more times Anos makes him come, how many times he screams Anos’s name until he’s reduced again to hoarse whimpers of “Ah-ah-ah—!” Or how long until Anos shoves Kanon’s hips down close as he can and comes in him, molten. Kanon grabs Anos’s shoulder for leverage and rocks against him as well as his sweat-slicked thighs can manage, wanting the infernal heat of Anos to fill him completely and incinerate him from the inside out.
Anos lays back, pillowing Kanon’s head against his chest and wrapping an arm around his waist. He summons his jacket and tucks it around Kanon’s shaking shoulders, strokes Kanon’s hair. Kanon feels as though he has hit the ground after a long fall, hurtled through time and space by the new gravity between himself and Anos, and no more capable of moving again than a mountain.
Still, Kanon manages to tilt his head up. The moon has disappeared, and the sky has lightened with dawn. The sunlight is soporific as wine, but Kanon struggles to keep his eyes open, to watch Anos smiling warmly at him.
Anos gently thumbs Kanon’s eyelids down. “Rest, my Kanon. You have toiled long to make this world for me. It’s a good one. When you wake, we shall see it together, hand in hand under the sun.”