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"My soul, for his life."
It's a simple enough deal, for a creature like that. They'll find the ones that took his family away, and then his soul will be forfeit. Haruto will be returned.
(what's his soul, his life, for Haruto?)
(what does it mean to consign himself to hell, when a world without Haruto is hell enough already?)
The creature smiles – though it has no mouth that he can see, he knows regardless – and says only, "Yes, my Lord."
—
It – he, Kaito supposes, though he never quite manages to think of it that way – plays the part well. The humble butler, except that sometimes there's that particular flash of a smirk, or that little brush of fingers across his shoulders that says, you're mine.
(as if Kaito could ever forget)
But it behaves, at least. It's smug and superior but it plays the part, brings them ever and ever closer to finding out. To finding an answer.
(ever and ever closer to it swallowing him whole)
—
He's younger than most of its past conquests, it tells him, but still older than its preference.
(he's barely more than a child)
(disgusting)
It only smiles when he expresses his disgust, though. Says yes, my Lord, and then brushes gloved fingers over Kaito's skin until there's something thick and hot - and disgusted and guilty, but that only adds to the effect - building up in his stomach and his cheeks are flushed and burning.
(he is burning, he burns under its hands, and maybe once he lets that slip – fuck, fuck, I'm burning up – and it only laughs and asks, wondering, how he'll ever deal with hell if this undoes him so easily)
—
It goes on. Day after day, week after week, a calendar marked off in his mind of how many days it's been; how much of Haruto's time he's wasted away scrabbling in the dirt for answers.
And then it comes.
(it's over and they know and it's time and he—)
(he has never once feared this but now he does, he does, he's afraid but it's for Haruto and he'll do anything for Haruto)
(he's ready)
—
It draws things out, though. "You can put your affairs in order, of course," it tells him, lips smile-curved against his ear so that the teeth graze his skin. "Do you think me so cruel as to not allow you even that, my dear?"
(it's brazen now, shameless and smug)
(why does it need to rush, when it knows its meal is assured whenever it wants?)
Five days he has, in the end. Five days before it enters his room come sundown with eyes afire and lips curved up and he knows, knows this is his last night.
(there should be fear but after the waiting there is only relief)
It enters his room and it enters his bed and it tortures him in ways that nothing but a demon could ever quite manage; with pain that becomes pleasure and pleasure that becomes pain until he wonders whether it's already devoured him, whether this pleasure is what hell truly is because it feels as though it's stripping away his very essence.
The feelings go on, though, taking him from one peak into another until he doesn't know whether he's been there minutes or hours or days or years, doesn't know anything at all but the feeling of its mouth and its fingers and more beside. Can't tell anything about the passage of time until he sees the beginnings of dawn sunlight slanting through a gap in the curtains.
(it's wrong, he thinks, wrong that a light should be shed upon something like this at all)
Perhaps it agrees with him, or at least knows what he's thinking, because it looks down on him – misty-eyed and bruised and aching and broken in a way that feels like heaven even if it'll lead him to hell – and smiles, smug. The cat that got the cream. The demon that got the soul.
Smiles and holds its hand out to him, waiting for him to reach up weakly and grip on before it says, come, my Lord.