Chapter Text
Akaza jumped from roof to roof, not slowed by the burden slung over his left shoulder in the slightest, quickly making his way to the outskirts of a little farming village. He was looking forward to feasting. It had taken him over a week to find a man that fit the bill of violent criminal Kyojuro was comfortable with eating.
Well, he'd cheated a little bit. This one wasn't a murderer or rapist, but he was a wife-beater, and that was justification enough in the demon's mind.
He frowned as he recalled the sobbing woman, her neck ringed with bruises. She'd stood there, holding in her cries after Akaza had ripped her husband off of her and proceeded to beat him unconscious. She hadn't said or done anything, just watched with hollow eyes as the demon dragged her husband out of their house by his foot, likely afraid to draw attention to herself.
Looking back on the situation, he had probably prevented her murder. If not in that moment, then at a time in the future. Maybe near, maybe far. It didn't really matter. She would have been killed by that man eventually.
Akaza's face shifted to a more neutral expression as he dropped from the last building to the ground and followed a small dirt trail into the woods.
His actions were justified, he decided. Kyojuro would understand if he explained it to him properly… if the former demon slayer even asked. He hadn't inquired about the backgrounds of their meals in a while. The fact Kyojuro let him hunt alone, fully trusting him to abide by the rules he had set made Akaza dizzy with happiness… It also made him regret his own impulsiveness. He'd been in the right this time, but what about the next time his anger got the better of him?
He'd talk to Kyojuro, see how he felt about adding abusers to the list.
Akaza sped up as he neared the old shack he and his lover were sheltering in, sensing the fledgling demon's fighting spirit long before he saw him. When he rounded the last bend in the trail and pushed aside the pine branches blocking his path, he was greeted by a sight he'd waited ten long years to see.
Kyojuro's transition into demonhood had left him relatively unchanged; his hair was still its usual candle-colored self, and his skin, while paler than it had been during his life under the sun, was still well within human norms. Fangs peeked out from behind his trademark smile as he sat with his back against the wall of their shack, quietly humming to himself as he cleaned blood from his nichirin sword. His now clawed fingers, the nails of which were a brilliant red, worked a soft cloth over the metal dutifully.
When he noticed Akaza, his eyes left his work to greet the older demon with his best smile. Kyojuro's pupils were now very catlike in nature, shifting from round orbs to narrow slits with changes in lighting and emotion. The red of his right iris had deepened and completely overtaken the gold, and the sclera of the eye had turned black, granting the whole thing a rather evil look. His left eye, the one he'd had to grow back, ironically, remained as it had been when he was human, utterly unchanged save for the catlike pupil.
The most exciting and interesting change, in Akaza's opinion, was more recent, having taken place in only the last week; running along the length of Kyojuro's forearms, from his knuckles to his elbows, were demonic crests. Thin gold lines were etched upon his skin and flowed upwards in the shape of flames. Akaza was immensely proud of the progress he'd made in just four months. Crests were a sign of strength, and the former demon slayer already had his own blood art, using it to modify and improve his Flame Breathing.
Well, maybe "former demon slayer" wasn't the right way to think of him. He'd left the Corps to be with Akaza, but he'd never put down his duty.
"Find another bottom feeder?" Akaza asked as he dropped his burden, suppressing a grin at the unconscious man's groan of pain. Some people deserved their suffering in his opinion.
"Yep! Found it trying to break into a house on the outskirts of town." His smile fell when he examined the man on the ground. "His face! Was that really necessary?"
The man started to stir, so Akaza brought his heel down on his temple, killing him instantly. It was nearly impossible to get Kyojuro to eat if their prey got the chance to beg.
"Yes," he replied simply.
It was all so strange to Akaza, how the younger demon could feel any sort of pity or remorse for the scumbags they ate. Kyojuro had come to agree with him on a basic level that lowlifes like this didn't deserve pity, but he still called for them to be treated "humanely". Whatever the fuck that meant.
Kyojuro sighed and set his sword and cleaning supplies aside to reluctantly join Akaza by the corpse as the older demon started tearing the clothes off of it. Feeding was hard on his conscious, and likely always would be, his guilt only made stronger by his clear enjoyment of human flesh. A fact that was made blatantly apparent once the blood started flowing and the first chunk of meat was past his lips.
Kyojuro always tore into their prey with the same loud gusto he had when eating "real" food, frequently leaving Akaza scrambling to get his share between his lover's regular declarations of "delicious!" The eager ferocity with which the former slayer used to eat a body down to nothing but gnawed on bones and bits of intestines made for quite the spectacle, one that even a demon as old and bloodthirsty as Akaza found disturbing.
He never minded it, though. So long as his sunshine was happy and flourishing, he was content. It did, however, leave him wondering just how terrifying a demon Kyojuro would be if he ever cast his morals aside and fed freely. His potential was already so great.
He would only ever have to fear the sun, Akaza decided quickly.
Later, when the inedible parts of their meal were buried with basic respects, and they had moved to a stream to wash up, Kyojuro asked a troubling question.
"How come you never bring back women?"
Akaza paused in scrubbing the blood from Kyojuro's hair, unsure of how best to answer that.
"I'm not complaining!" he added when the silence stretched for a second too long. "I'm only curious. Women are as capable of murder as any man, but you've never brought one back."
"That's true," Akaza started, getting back to work on his lover's hair.
He'd caught more than one woman in the act of ending another human's life, but he always passed them up, no matter how vile their actions were. He blamed his human memories. Even before he'd recovered them, he'd never been able to commit violence towards women.
But now? Now he knew why.
Akaza saw Koyuki in every single one of them, no matter what they looked like, what their character was, or if they were a hashira actively trying to behead him, the memory of his long dead love stayed his hand every time.
That, however, was a lot more than he was comfortable explaining at the moment. The recovered pain was still too recent. So he threw on his best smirk, even though Kyojuro was facing away from him, and said, "I don't eat women in that way."
He could practically hear the former hashira frown.
"Is it because of Koyuki?" Kyojuro asked softly.
Motherfucker! He knew Akaza too well.
"It's because women are for eatin', not eating," the older demon reiterated, hoping to shock Kyojuro into dropping the topic. Akaza planned to open up to him about it eventually, just not tonight.
The blond turned to look at him, brows practically fusing with his hairline in his confusion. " What? "
Akaza laughed, thoroughly enjoying the taste of victory as he formed a "V" with his fingers and licked the empty air between them.
"The fuck?" Kyojuro said, backing away from him slightly.
Akaza kept on chuckling as he dropped his hand into the water. "What, have you never eaten pussy?"
There was a brief flash of realization on Kyojuro's face before his cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, which made Akaza laugh harder. They'd fucked in every position known to man, and probably invented a few of their own. How was he still this easy to fluster?
"Uhh, I have not," the former slayer said, sinking deeper into the water.
This made the older demon stop his giggling, genuinely surprised by his answer.
"Really? I always figured you were rolling in titties before I showed up."
They'd never really talked much about their love lives before they came together. There was no real reason for that, it just never came up. The two of them were always more focused on the happenings of the present and the anxiety of the future than things that had already come to pass.
"Ah… no. You were my first for a lot of things, you know that," Kyojuro said simply.
Akaza couldn't help but smile at that. He took a perverse kind of pleasure in knowing that he'd been the only one to touch Kyojuro, but…
"I had always just assumed I was your first man. Do you not like women?" he asked, curiosity burning a hole in his mind.
Kyojuro turned his attention to the stars, clearly thinking about his answer. "I… think I do, a little, but I never found the time for them, or men, in my youth. I was too busy training to take my father's place as the Flame Hashira."
"Your youth!" Akaza said, flabbergasted. "You're only thirty! That's young, even for humans!"
Kyojuro shrugged. "Not so much for demon slayers." He paused there, something sad crossing his features before he fixed a smile in place and moved on. "Anyways, then you… happened," he gestured at Akaza, "and even when I didn't quite know where we stood, I was certain you weren't the type to share."
"I'm not," he said firmly, nodding his agreement. Any man he'd caught trespassing on what was his, even back then, would have found themselves eating their own balls.
"Although…" Akaza said quietly, lips twitching up into a smile. He was beginning to get an... interesting idea.
"Oh god."
He gave the fire demon an incredulous look. "What?"
Kyojuro chuckled. "I know that voice. It's always trouble."
Akaza snorted and proposed his idea to the younger demon.
They made it to Tokyo in record time, and spent their first night patrolling, looking for lesser demons who might think to wreak havoc on the city's inhabitants. They managed to dredge through a third of the city before daybreak, using Akaza's compass needle to look for trouble. They came up empty handed, however.
It wasn't a very surprising outcome. Tokyo was the center of the current Flower Hashira's patrol route. Rengoku Kanao spent all of her downtime in the city to be with her husband, Senjuro.
Kyojuro's little brother had moved to the capital three years ago to study surgery, a skill he planned to bring back to the Butterfly Estate to better treat injured slayers.
The newlyweds were the only people who knew the truth behind the Flame Hashira's tragic disappearance, and it was their rented house that the demons made their way to as the night steadily crept towards the predawn hours.
Kyojuro had originally wanted to claim Tokyo as their territory, to keep his brother safe from the threat of demons, but Akaza's wanderlust was far too strong. Even in a city as large as the nation's capital, he quickly grew restless. They'd come to a compromise by agreeing to pay frequent visits to the city. Kanao's regular presence also helped to ease Kyojuro's anxiety greatly. And in the end, roaming across the far reaches of Japan worked well for the former hashira, too; it meant there were always demons for him to put down and people for him to save by doing so.
The couple were still asleep when Kyojuro pulled out his spare key and unlocked the back door. Their presence woke Kanao immediately, but she recovered quickly, giving them each a crushing hug as Senjuro slumbered on, blissfully unaware of the situation.
Rengokus slept like the dead, leaving Akaza to wonder how the family had managed to survive as long as it has, given their traditional occupation.
It was all noise when the younger Rengoku woke up a few hours later, the two brothers chattering endlessly and without a consistent pattern to their conversation. Akaza and Kanao did their best to participate and follow along, managing to keep track of the most important details. The eldest Rengoku, the men's father, was apparently celebrating his seventh year of sobriety, which made Kyojuro so happy he started balling. He had been worried that when his father heard his firstborn was declared MIA, it would hamper his self-improvement. But if anything, Shinjuro seemed even more determined to live in a way that would make both his sons proud.
When night came, the two demons excused themselves and went back out into the city to finish their patrol, something Kanao openly appreciated. She was well aware of just how proficient a demon hunting team the lovers made, being able to find and flush out their own kind in the most unlikely places. No demon was safe when Kyojuro and Akaza came knocking.
With a full night on their side, they were able to finish their circuit of Tokyo with time to spare, which they used to eat their fill. That was the nice thing about big cities, there was always violent crime.
They broke into a bath house to wash the blood from Kyojuro's hair (such a messy eater!) before returning to their hosts. They knew full well that the demons were eating human criminals to sustain themselves, and actively chose to turn a blind eye towards it, but the former slayer couldn't stand the thought of them actually seeing the evidence of his misdeeds.
With Senjuro in class, and Kanao still being relatively introverted, the demons slept through the whole day in the guest room.
When night began its approach, both men started getting ready for their trip into town.
Kyojuro was still new to shapeshifting, a demon ability Akaza had never been gifted with himself, and found he could not hide his crests. The older demon assured him it would be fine, they looked enough like tattoos that humans wouldn't find it overtly strange. The eyes and claws were the important part, which he'd already mastered making look as they had when he was human. The fangs, sadly, couldn't be helped. Akaza had heard of demons who could retract them, but it was a feat beyond both him and Kyojuro.
Akaza decided to switch things up with his human disguise. He kept his hair pink instead of changing it to the black it had been in his human life, but he made his eyes look as they had been back then; an icy blue. Not wanting to be left out of the Tattoo Club, he kept the blue bands around his neck. He then spent twenty minutes manipulating the pigments in the skin of his forearms, creating and erasing the three bands he'd been branded with in his life as Hakuji, unable to come to a conclusion that made him happy.
Hakuji, for all his faults and flaws, had been a good man. A better man than what Akaza had become. Kyojuro said that goodness was still in him, that the line between Akaza and Hakuji wasn't the hard cut off the older demon believed it to be, but rather something blurry, messy, and undefined. Hakuji had in his heart the same anger Akaza always displayed openly, and Akaza had the same compassion and love that had made Hakuji a kind and caring person. The demon simply buried his positive qualities better than the human had controlled his negative ones.
Kyojuro always told him that his human and demon self were the same person, just at different stages of growth, and that he believed, while he'd never be exactly the same, Akaza had the capacity to be Hakuji again, and had already taken the steps needed to start that change.
Kyojuro was immensely proud of the progress he had made, even though Akaza himself remained highly doubtful. He wasn't sure he'd ever be comfortable going by his old name again. He didn't think he deserved it.
Strong arms wrapped around his bare torso, breaking into his thoughts.
"You're thinking too hard again," Kyojuro said, placing a kiss to the back of his neck.
His lover pulled him into his chest and settled his head on Akaza's shoulder. "Leave them bare this time. You'll only upset yourself."
Akaza nodded and nuzzled into the soft hair tickling his cheek. Kyojuro was usually right about this kind of thing.
The feeling of his lover's hair against his skin made his hands restless, and the former Flame Hashira soon found himself sporting braided hair for the night.
They threw on their clothes a few minutes later; a bright orange haori and black hakama for Kyojuro, and a dark blue yukata with pink sakura blossoms and white obi for Akaza.
Then they were out the door and on their way to the red light district.