InsaneJournal

"Voice of Thunder," DDS/FF8
Title: Voice of Thunder
Author: Laylah
Fandom: DDS/FF8
Pairing: Jenna/Seifer
Rating: not worksafe
Warning: DDS-verse = xeno and blood. lots of blood.
Prompt: food kink
A/N: I stole the section titles from T.S. Eliot, who stole them from the Upanishads. He translates them as "give," "sympathize," "control."


Voice of Thunder

I. Datta

Seifer holds still, as near to deathly as he can, willing his heartbeat to calm and measuring his breaths. Harihara towers over him, terrible in hir glory, hir hands tracing sutras in the air, hir fangs bared and hir tongue tasting the scent of blood that hangs rich between them. His cock is hard from the thrill of cheating death, of watching it -- watching hir -- sway closer and holding his ground. The shudder along his limbs is Hyperion, writhing in his nerves, raw brilliant data that seeks only to consume, like a ravening demon, like a sacred flame.

"The offer is there," he says. He won't change. He's stronger than the need, and he's seen how Harihara treats humans. Sie might menace him, might take all he's willing to give, but sie has honor, unlike some of the lesser ones. Sie will not devour him unless he changes. "Come take it. It's an offering."

Harihara's laughter is as beautiful and horrific as the rest of hir, and he can hear Jenna's voice buried in it. "You tempt fate," sie says. The roll of hir hips is like the crash of a tsunami against the shore, like the earth heaving underfoot.

Seifer licks his lips. "I come before you wearing the blood of conquest," he says. He can imagine the expression Jenna would be wearing now, were she in her own form -- the curve of her mouth, the brightness of her eyes. He can't read what she's become. "Is it pleasing to you?" He would add some form of address if there were an appropriate one, but Harihara is neither lord nor lady, or perhaps both together, and he knows better than to provoke hir with a word like demon.

Harihara makes a low, sibilant hiss, like a serpent as sacred as the fire Seifer bears. "You know the answer to that," sie says, pushing him to the floor.

Hir tongue laps at his skin, and Seifer shivers; it's rough as a cat's, rasping, rubbing his skin raw as sie feeds. These meals are not enough to satisfy, blood without flesh, but it's an indulgence they cannot give up. The Fire Cross aches on Seifer's shoulder and his cock aches as Harihara's mouth scours his nerves -- two of hir hands hold him still, merciless and inevitable as death, but a third offers respite and curls around his shaft, stroking him with hir claws held lightly away from his skin.

There are prayers for this, sivasya hridayam vishnur, but though they run through Seifer's head -- another strain of data, like Hyperion's looping need -- he doesn't give them voice. The days when the gods sustained mankind are over. He holds his tongue and bares his throat, and when Harihara's teeth brush but do not close against his windpipe he comes, spilling his strength for hir, and sie consumes that as well.

II. Dayadhvam

The grunts joke nervously about what it must be like to sleep with Jenna Angel, whether she's as cold and heartless in bed as she is in the office, whether it's true that she has a, you know. It is true, but Seifer doesn't tell them. They're not worthy.

Besides, it's not like it matters. She lives as a woman the rest of the time; why would that change here? When she takes him to bed she guides his mouth to her breasts, not lower, and her moans are sweet and soft.

"You're beautiful," Seifer tells her, because he's never met a woman who didn't want to hear it, and he's never slept with one who didn't deserve to.

Jenna laughs when he says it, though, low and wry, arching up under him -- the way she moves makes it feel less like he's taking her, more like she's choosing him, honoring him. "So few men have thought so," she says, her nails against the back of his neck, "and especially now."

"What do they know?" Seifer asks, and when he meets her eyes he can see that she knows it as well as he does: if they are monsters, it's because they are gods. He rises between her spread thighs, and she is both hard and wet for him. He takes her; she takes him in; the soft curls of her hair smell like blood, like antiseptic, like magic. She drags her nails down his arms, over the black brand of the Fire Cross, and he bends down to lick sweat from the arcs of Maelstrom beneath her throat. Power radiates from it as her climax prompts his, but they both have learned to feel their needs without indulging all of them at once.

"I'm surprised you haven't taken a lover," she says afterward. She's fond of difficult questions in moments of weakness.

"What would be the point?" Seifer answers. He watches her rise from the bed; she will shower first, while he listens to the water run. "I wouldn't have a future to share with her, or anything."

Jenna smiles, quiet, private, amused. "Well said," she says.

III. Damyata

The room reeks so strongly of blood that it's maddening. He hasn't eaten -- hasn't fed, hasn't satisfied Hyperion's raw burning need -- in too long.

"Director," Seifer says, refuge in formality and order, as he fights the pounding in his veins.

"Can I not trust you?" Jenna asks. Blood streaks her skin, obscene and holy, bright red against white.

Seifer bows his head. Everyone loses control eventually. The data all suggest that. Karma is no mere circle now but a crown of thorns, and turning far enough along it snags every soul along those barbs. But this will not be that day for him; he has the will left to prevent it.

He unleashes the change slowly, forcing himself to keep control of it as Hyperion's patterns rewrite his flesh: a taller frame, sleek gun-silver, the plates of armored hide so smoothly interlocking that their seams almost disappear. The heavy certainty of claws weighting down his hands. The angular muzzle that bares his fangs for the kill that he won't allow himself -- this time -- to indulge.

"Sacred is the flame," Jenna murmurs, "and blessed those who are offered to it." She purrs the words like pornography, not prayer.

Seifer lowers himself to his hands and knees -- still chest high to her, in this shape -- and leans close to breathe in her scent. The demon blood she wears, the traces of Harihara that never leave her be, and the earthy heat of musk. No fear -- never fear, which is madness but he cannot reproach her for it. He laps the blood from her skin; it is still fresh, still red and wet. She will have made her own kill. She is no cringing Society follower, clinging to life but afraid of its terms.

He makes this an act of devotion if not true worship, cleansing her flesh of blood if not the need for it. Her human nails slide against Hyperion's skin, so blunt and soft he barely feels them; he catches her hands between the sharp rows of his teeth and does not bite down, though her shudder of surrender makes him crave the crack of bone.

She lays herself out before him and Seifer growls, purrs at the richness of the taste as he licks her clean. Her flesh is soft and smooth, but he leaves it whole. One day his control will break, and he will attack her, or hers will, and Harihara will savage him. There is no other end to this cycle.

But they will hold out as long as they can.