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It’s an annoying day today. At least for Barou Shouei. It wouldn’t be so annoying if it weren’t for the presence of a certain cum-haired sloth, but much to Barou’s disdain, it is. It would be a wonderful day, full of shining sunbeams glinting like freshly sharpened knives, if Nagi Seishiro were elsewhere.
They’re at Isagi’s house, which Barou visited with the belief only Isagi would be home. Not a single bird on the walk to Isagi’s house had warned Barou of Nagi’s presence. Nature has betrayed him, and Barou is going to frown about it for the rest of the day, which isn’t anything new.
“You’ve been so quiet today, it’s unusual.” Isagi laughs, a sweet laugh that sounds like a mother cutting up citrus fruits for you to eat, the smell filling the air and your stomach. Barou has been mulling too much about food lately; about Isagi Yoichi—about connecting the dots that are swirls of icing around the edge of a cake.
Nagi opens his stupid mouth, “Right? It’s so boring. Boring King Barou.” He sulks as he throws his head back against Isagi’s plush dark chocolate couch and blows a raspberry.
Barou looks around for a stapler nearby to staple Nagi’s stupid lips together so he no longer has to hear him talk. Isagi laughs again, the sound causing the cake of conspiracies inside Barou’s skull, which is more of a microwave than a bone cage, to rotate.
Barou doesn’t say anything, because he’s trying to think, which doesn’t really work because Nagi is still being a nuisance and Isagi keeps laughing as if anything Nagi says is of any merit. The only thing worth laughing at about Nagi Seishiro is his very existence. Thinking also doesn’t really work because Barou Shouei is not a thinker.
“I’m thinking.” Barou grumbles, his arms crossed over his chest as he sits on the long end of the couch with his legs spread.
Isagi perks up at the statement, “Thinking? Did something happen?”
Nagi stares at Barou from where he sits diagonally with a fluffy pillow encased in his arms. He doesn’t say anything, but the look in his anthracite eyes is enough to piss Barou off even more.
“I’m thinking about how I’m going to kill that fuckhead.” Barou glares at Nagi, who is now pouting. Isagi laughs, because it’s Barou, and he has said the same thing more times than the amount of goals he has scored throughout his professional career.
“I didn’t even do anything.” Nagi says, clutching the pillow closer to his chest as if it would be enough to protect him from Barou’s rage. It’s a child’s blanket defence, one that Barou has overthrown with his little sisters many times.
Isagi suddenly rises from his seat, and Barou diverts his attention from the sulking Nagi to him.
“I forgot to call my mother to check in today.” Isagi says and hurries out of the lounge and into the hallway opposite the living room with his phone in his hand. “Don’t kill Nagi while I’m gone, Barou! Blood is a pain to remove from leather.” And then Isagi disappears around the corner.
“How does he know that?” Nagi questions, holding the pillow closer to his chest.
For the first time since Barou arrived, there is actual silence. He can’t even hear Nagi breathing from his place on the couch. It’s as if the house was moving slowly through time, as if it were in space, like the house in Zathura—a movie Barou has seen repeatedly thanks to his younger sister.
Nagi pulls out his phone to play a shooting game, the room filling up with the sound of crossfire, which disrupts Barou’s thinking. He considers murder until Isagi’s words repeat in his head.
It doesn’t take long for Nagi to get bored of the game, his attention now drawn to the snacks Isagi had laid out earlier, before Barou even arrived. While Barou listens to Nagi noisily eat, a question comes to his mind.
“Do you ever feel full around Isagi?”
“What?” Nagi tilts his head a single degree to the right, his personalized way of showing confusion, and stares at Barou with those voidless eyes of his, “Full? Hunger?”
Barou gives him a pointed look, his upper lip curling up into a tsk. “What the fuck else, you idiot.”
“I don’t think you realise how that sentence can be taken out of context.” Nagi leans over to grab a chocolate banana pocky stick from the guest platter.
Barou shifts his gaze to the side, his eyes focusing in on the hallway that Isagi had disappeared into. “Whatever.” He mutters, “Answer the question.”
“If I feel full around Isagi?” Barou makes a noise of confirmation in his throat. “Of course not, you weirdo. You’re not even making sense.”
“You don’t feel full when you watch him eat?” Barou straightens up on the couch and stares at Nagi with an expression you’d wear when asking your mother what the birds and the bees mean.
Nagi’s expression twists very slightly, like spoiled milk that you don’t know is spoiled until you try to pour it, “I knew you were weird, but this is next level.”
Barou rolls his eyes, then his head, and then his body as he gets up and saunters off to the kitchen situated behind the couch to help himself to a cold drink, because the one on the table Isagi poured for him an hour ago is too close to Nagi and has turned rotten.
He knew it would be useless to ask Nagi, because the word itself is everything Nagi is, but he’s still annoyed that he’s been left with more questions than answers. What the fuck does he feel around Isagi? Why the hell does he feel like he’s imbued with a Mario Kart Starman every time Isagi is around?
While Barou has his head stuck in the fridge, question marks and chirping birds circling around his head, Isagi emerges from the hallway and into the living room where Nagi is in the same slumped position and Barou is now in the kitchen.
They’re talking about their plans for the remainder of the off-season, but the words are merging into the sound of oil bubbling in a pan as Barou thinks of all the instances when he and Isagi ate together in Blue Lock, each time feeding Isagi half of his plate because Barou just couldn’t stomach it. There was always no room.
Barou thinks of the first time they ate together during the second selection after obtaining a four-man team. He thinks of Isagi smiling as wide as his little sisters when they had more missing teeth than grown ones. His appetite vanished when the overhead lights reflected off Isagi’s grown teeth, turning them to cutlery.
Hunger is a peasant’s daily, and the last Barou Shouei checked, he was a king. It’s only natural for him to pass the rest of his steak to Isagi Yoichi, a peasant. It is what good kings do.
Barou shakes his head as he grabs a water bottle, the plastic crumpling under his grip like a sack of lentils, his lips curled into a sneer. Good king? He is anything but.
The sound of the fridge closing pulls Barou out of his reverie, as if the cold of its organs had lulled him into a trance. The voices of Isagi and Nagi begin to register, becoming as discernible as the water droplets pooling in Barou’s palm.
Barou watches them over the neck of the bottle as he drinks. Nagi is patting down the pillow he’s been holding all day, placing it amongst the others. “I’m going to head out, Isagi. I’m late to meet the others.” He yawns with outstretched arms.
“Oh, okay.” Isagi smiles, Barou’s eyes honing in. “You can take the pocky if you want.”
“Really?”
Nagi’s hands are already moving before Isagi can confirm, stuffing half of the sticks into his mouth while clutching the rest in his hands.
“Thanks, Isagi.” Nagi says, his voice muffled by the pocky sticks.
Isagi laughs, “Yeah, don’t mention it.”
Then Nagi is gone. Finally. After hours that felt like an entire season of MasterChef, Nagi Seishiro is finally gone.
Isagi remains standing in the middle of the longue, his attention on Barou, who is standing in the middle of his kitchen.
“Barou, what if—"
“I’m going to start heading out as well.”
Okay. Hold on. This is not what Barou had been waiting for.
He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing right now, because he doesn’t have an answer under his belt, but he wasn’t supposed to say that. That’s as much as Barou knows. And yet, he said it.
Isagi looks at him, blinking confusedly. “Did something actually happen? You’ve been acting incredibly off today.”
“No.” Barou shakes his head and puts the bottle of water into the pocket of his shorts. “My sister usually goes to the gym around this time and I usually go with her.”
Technically not a lie, but Barou could just call it off and stay at Isagi’s house. With only him and Isagi. Barou does not understand why this detail is important.
“Oh!” Isagi perks up, a lemon slice smile spreading across his face. “I can come with you.”
“No.”
Barou doesn’t know why he is saying the opposite of what he wants, but he is. The chill of the water bottle against his thigh bothers him.
If Isagi had animal ears, Barou believes they would be flat against his head right now. The expression on his face is that of a puppy. Barou bites down on his tongue to keep himself from spouting more bullshit.
“You can come by afterwards, no?”
Isagi’s fingers are fiddling with the fluff of the pillow Nagi was holding, his eyes watching Barou expectantly, just like he does on the field. But this watching is different. Barou doesn’t know why or how it’s different, but it feels like his stomach is eating itself, the pressure of Isagi’s bilberry eyes stabbing.
Barou moves from the kitchen and towards the front door, the chill of the water bottle a contrast to the hot blood pumping beneath his skin. He can hear Isagi’s eyes and feet following.
“I’ll be too tired. I can come by later this week.” Barou says with his back to Isagi. He can’t see it, but Isagi’s face twists into an angry pout before it smoothens out.
“Barou, seriously, if something is wrong, you can tell me.” Isagi says, his arms crossed over his chest as he stands behind Barou, his eyes following the movement of Barou’s fingers as they tie his shoelaces.
In his mind, Barou imagines himself as a dummy, beating it mercilessly for fucking up, even though he doesn’t quite understand how he has.
“Everything is fine, Isagi. I’ll see you next time.”
When Barou opens the front door, the smell of sun and grass greets him, but when he turns to face Isagi, it suddenly smells as if it’s about to storm.
The same expression Isagi wore after beating Barou in the second selection is on his face, but there’s a hardness to it in contrast to the sheen of mercury that looked fluorescent against the ever-bright lights of the facility.
The revamped expression looks like a fusion of every internal organ metalized and bent in a way to form an aluminium face. It fills Barou with a sense of defeat, just like in the second selection, although that wasn’t really a defeat. It was a resurrection.
Barou’s stomach feels like it has taken on the shape of a rotisserie chicken, turning on a spit and growing hotter by the second. Ignoring the heat and its hissing that sounds like a warning, Barou walks down the front steps and turns his body three-sixty to nod his head in Isagi’s direction before his back is turned again.
Then, Isagi smiles, but Barou isn’t so sure it could be classified as one.
The smile looked as if it had been strung with dental floss, the edges of Isagi’s mouth appearing to be pulled behind him by some invisible force. It was a different horror than the ones on the field. Who could have known that Isagi had such an array of genre smiles?
There’s no usual last goodbye exchange between them as the door practically slams behind Barou, causing him to glance back over his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the retreating shadow of Isagi’s silhouette.
Barou doesn't stop thinking about Isagi's stringed smile on the way home. Now, the sun is frowning alongside him.
✻
Barou is in a dark room, and for a moment he thinks he’s back in the dream he first had as a child. It was a dream in which he was in a dark forest with tall black trees, only to find that when he reached the tree line, he was actually running along the scalp of his father—the tall black trees having been his hair. It’s a dream that visits him every now and again, but this is not that dream. This is something else.
In front of him is a lit-up area, with a table the size of a children’s birthday party in the middle, covered with a red plastic tablecloth. It reminds Barou of the one birthday he had with his father, before either of his sisters were born, and his birthdays were built of old folding tables, flimsy decorations and wiry smiles.
There are heart-shaped origamis where there should be plates and seats for the guests, but there are no seats. They range in colours from black, to dark brown, to a dark red. There’s the smell of something metallic in the air, and the sound of something beating, but Barou ignores it because there’s a cake in the centre of the table, which is how the room is lit to begin with; which is the reason why he’s here.
It's a cake decorated with swirls of dark chocolate around the perimeter, the base colour of the sponge a dark red, several shades darker than Barou's eyes. At the top of the cake is a cake topper stabbed crookedly with Isagi's full name written in bloody looking letters.
A Chinese cleaver is laid neatly beside the atrocious looking cake, much too large compared to the cake’s size. Normally, the ratio of it all would drive Barou into a rage, but in this room, he feels nothing but the need to cut into the cake.
Barou moves, the shadows colouring his body dissipating as he walks towards the illuminated area and grabs the knife.
It’s well cared for, perfectly sharpened and honed—a very well-loved knife—a stark contrast to the cake Barou is about to cut into. And when he does, the inside is coloured red in human meat and muscle, with a beating heart in the middle, and Barou realises that what he cut into was actually Isagi Yoichi.
There are no guests at this party, because it is not a party. It’s a self-immolation. A devouring. A realization.
Barou is reminded of a documentary he saw when he was younger, which he stumbled upon by chance while surfing the web. He doesn't remember much about it, except that it was about religion and the punishments of hell, one scene in particular sticking with him enough that he remembers it once annually.
The scene was a punishment whereby the sinners were cursed into a state of hunger, in a pit with other sinners, eating the skin off of their backs. The skin would grow back after each bite—a perpetual cycle of devouring.
Barou thinks that his and Isagi's relationship is similar. No matter how much they devour each other, they simply grow bigger and bigger, along with the appetite to eat, and eat, and eat; even after they’ve had far beyond their fair share.
It's a twisted and selfish relationship, but Barou wouldn’t work any other way, and fortunately for him, Isagi is a taker. He takes everything Barou throws his way, chews it up, and spits it right back at him.
It is now Barou realises no one else can tolerate him like Isagi can; no one understands him like Isagi does (except his mother, of course). Isagi is the only one who takes Barou’s reign as a running joke and gladly plays the jester.
In the middle of a birthday table, there is a cake that reminds Barou of a distant past, that’s not actually a cake at all, but instead the man who knows him like no one else. The man who is his prey, but also his light. The man who is his opposite, but also his equal. The man who he has been obsessed with for several years now. The man who makes him feel full whenever he’s around.
Barou is convinced that even if he were to eat Isagi whole, he would reappear in one piece like those sinners whose skin forever grew back. He’d reappear with his signature smirk, the one reserved for Barou, spread across his face and taunting for more. Technically, Barou has eaten Isagi whole more than once already, and he’s still in one piece—only right now, in front of Barou Shouei, he’s cut open, right to his beating heart.
If Barou squinted, he might be able to see his initials engraved somewhere along the arteries, but Barou is filled with a realization. A realization that this dream was all about to begin with, and before he could think to lean in to take a closer look at the heart of his obsession—and maybe take a little bite out of it, too—he wakes up in a cold sweat.
✻
There’s one thing about Barou on the pitch that’s clear to everyone, and that is the fact he’s not a thinker beyond the average requirements for the sport—nowhere near the level of Isagi’s own master thinking. In fact, Barou Shouei isn’t much of a thinker at all. That’s why he’s impulsively making his way to Isagi’s house in the dead of the night, as if he hadn’t seen him less than twenty-four hours ago, as if Isagi had killed his family and now he’s out for revenge.
Barou is walking so aggressively, his shod feet slamming into the ground like the end of a polearm after a duel, the bass shattering his bones, which he will surely feel tomorrow. His hands are tucked into the pouch of the black hoodie he threw on haphazardly before leaving, as if ready to pull out a weapon at any moment.
Barou didn’t fix his hair up whatsoever. There was no time for it. Well, there is plenty of time, actually; but there also isn’t. He needs to get to Isagi’s house right now. He needs to see Isagi right now. He needs to devour Isagi in the way he knows best. Right. Now.
Barou is not thinking at all. With every step, his feet dig into the earth so hard that they break through the mantle, his toes dipping into Hell, so close to the layer of devouring sinners. His shoulders move with his legs like the pedals of an elliptical machine, on his way to Isagi Yoichi’s house in the middle of the night because of a cake dream.
A fucking cake dream.
Not just any ordinary cake dream, no—because it wasn’t a cake dream at all. That wasn’t a cake. It was Isagi Yoichi. Barou cut into Isagi, who looked like a cake, and got a front row seat to his heart going: ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
Who cares if Barou isn’t thinking at all right now? Who cares if he’s digging his soles into hell, right into the pit of those sinners condemned to ever starve and feast? Who cares if he’s walking like a man on an illegal mission in the middle of the night? Who cares if he’s on his way to Isagi’s house late at night unannounced?
It’s not until Barou Shouei has waltzed through the front gate of Isagi’s home—well, more like smashed into it with his hip—that he realises he had walked far too aggressively, his form doubling over on the path leading to the five-panelled door of Isagi’s house, panting for breath.
Once Barou has composed himself, he considers whether to ring the doorbell or knock on the door, only to be interrupted by the sound of something moving inside.
Automatically, like a sergeant, Barou stands up straight in the middle of the path with his arms crossed over his chest. If you were to tease him about trying to be cool, he’d tell you to shut up and claim that he already is cool; dishevelled hair and all.
The five panel door swings open to reveal Isagi clad in nothing but a pair of boxers and an oversized shirt that Barou recognizes as his own, a shirt he had ‘lost’ a few months ago.
“Barou.” Isagi says, like it’s the first time he’s saying his name, his eyes wide as if he’d been expecting Barou and is surprised he actually came.
“Isagi.” Barou reiterates, because it’s been a day since he last spoke Isagi’s name, and he had forgotten how the weight of its syllables felt on his tongue.
“What are you do—”
Barou skips the short few steps leading to Isagi’s front door and pushes him back into the house, slamming the door behind them. He grabs the front of Isagi’s—of his—shirt, and pins him against the entry hall’s wall like a kitchen knife.
As fast as flour slams into your face after placing a pastry board too close to the edge, Barou’s lips are on Isagi’s like a knife’s edge cutting into a birthday cake—only it’s four in the morning and it isn’t anyone’s birthday, and Barou is kissing Isagi because he needs to know if he tastes like red velvet; if he tastes exactly like the cake of him in the dream.
There isn’t a single pause of hesitation between either of them, their movements conjoined as if it was scripted, as if this was something they had both been practicing for years.
Isagi’s hands are in Barou’s hair that he hadn’t bothered to style or tie beforehand, pulling and yanking at the loose strands as if they were Medusa’s snakes biting at his hands. Barou’s hands remain clenched around the fabric of his shirt before moving underneath, touching and poking Isagi’s skin to feel if he’s made of cake.
He doesn’t stop to tell Isagi something—to answer his interrupted question or to wait for a response—because Isagi is wearing his shirt and Barou has every right to strip him of it.
So, he does.
He strips Isagi of his shirt so that he’s wearing nothing but boxers with soccer balls on them, and Barou would laugh, pull the waistband back far enough it would hurt when it snapped back just to hear Isagi squeal and then scold him the next moment. But there’s not a single millisecond for Barou to let out a pep of a sound when Isagi is back on him: clawing, biting, squeezing.
If it were anyone else, Barou would be downright disgusted, but this is Isagi Yoichi—the boy made of cake, the boy whose name is written over Barou’s heart and along the walls of each of its chambers like ugly yellow wallpaper.
Barou isn’t keeping track of anything that is happening. Everything is as fast and aggressive as his walk over here, which is becoming a distant, blurred memory; even though it just happened. Barou doesn’t know when he ended up half-naked or when he took Isagi’s boxers off (or did Isagi take them off himself?).
He doesn’t remember when they ended up on Isagi’s bed or when he ended up on top of Isagi. He doesn’t remember how he got here in the first place. The only thing Barou is focused on is the clawing on his back, the closeness and the taste of it all. The only thing Barou is focused on is Isagi.
Barou also can’t remember when he started working Isagi open, but here he is. Isagi’s head is tilted back as if he were trying to find God. And Isagi is praying, loud and high: “Devour me, devour me, devour me.”
It’s when Isagi lets out the first high-pitched moan of the night that Barou realises Isagi isn’t trying to find God at all. He already has. And it’s the man between his legs, slowly entering him, who is actually not God, but the Devil.
It’s all the same though, isn’t it? When it comes to them and their relationship, which makes Barou feel simultaneously full and hungry, there is no difference between sinner and saint.
They are all the same. Isagi is the light that devours Barou’s shadow and Barou is the shadow that devours Isagi’s light.
You are what you eat, as they say, so yes—Barou and Isagi are all. They are one in the same.
What Barou likes most about Isagi is the fact he’s worse than him. Isagi is more demanding; more of a devourer; more of everything Barou already is. He just hides it, only lets it out when Barou is around; watching eyes or not.
It’s Barou’s favourite thing. He’s sure Isagi knows from the way he always has that glint in his eyes, together with his familiar, wide smirk—the one with ‘Barou Shouei’ written in crooked, red cursive in the lines between his teeth.
“Fuck!” Isagi screams out, and Barou is trying not to break him—he really fucking is, believe him. He’s too fast and aggressive; as he was during the walk here; as he was during their make out but a moment ago.
Barou tends to break the things he loves. But this is Isagi—and Isagi is everything Barou is and more. Isagi can be broken, again and again, only to come back in one piece with the biggest smile on his face.
Barou doesn’t slow down because Isagi didn’t tell him to. Because Isagi can be broken a million times over only to never really be broken. Because Isagi is a cake made from ingredients you can buy at the local grocery store and bake in two hours. Because Isagi was made for Barou. Made.
Barou looks down at Isagi’s twisted face, the most sinful and grotesque sounds escaping Isagi’s lips. This isn’t even intercourse, it’s a sacrifice—a real devouring. It’s a love language. Barou wants to hold Isagi close to him, so close they become one, so close they become a double-decker cake.
When Barou looks up, the room has darkened. The walls are a dark red, several shades darker than his eyes, and the frame of the bed and the windowsill to the side are the colour of dark chocolate—and Barou realises that they’re inside the cake from his dream.
No, that’s not it. They’re inside Barou Shouei’s heart, made of cake sponge with Isagi’s full name carved into it in bloody, bold letters.
Isagi claws at Barou’s back, his body arching even further, and Barou wants him closer. He wants to open up his chest like an animatronic and put Isagi inside for safekeeping. He wants Isagi inside his body, right in the space between his ribs, because it is where he should be. There is a reason why the ribs are formed in the shape of a lover’s embrace.
Isagi pulls Barou’s head by the hair on his scalp and moves his head so that their eyes meet, the arms of winged devils interlinked as they dance ring a ring o’ roses around Isagi’s pupils.
"Fucking eat me." Isagi says, the words sizzling like fire and charred wood, hot flames against Barou’s face.
The demand fills Barou with a deep feeling, a feeling he can only describe as molten pink, but it’s not lust. It’s something akin to hunger, something he has never felt around Isagi before. It’s a deep greed, an endless gluttony that grows and grows, encompassing his entire digestive system. It’s Greed and Gluttony and Lust tied altogether—and now, Barou begins to realise how much the two of them fit each of the deadly sins.
And damn it, Barou is a tyrannical monarch. He’s the villain who ruins the hero’s triumph and who devours them of their light. He doesn’t take orders from anyone, but with the deadly sins of Wrath, Envy and Pride staring back at him from below, he obeys.
He obeys because there’s a deep-rooted hunger in the pit of his stomach telling him to eat, eat, eat.
Barou drags his tongue over the column of Isagi’s throat like a dagger, the feeling of saliva making Isagi gasp as Barou continues to fuck into him like an animal.
After a momentary pause, Barou digs the karambits lining the inside of his mouth into the slot that connects Isagi’s shoulder to his neck. Isagi claws even harder into Barou’s shoulder blades, a sinful moan that borders on a scream crashing through the atmosphere of Isagi’s room that is not his room and instead Barou’s heart.
Barou’s canines puncture Isagi’s flesh until it tears, his mouth filling with the taste of red velvet cake.
Barou holds Isagi inhumanly close, his thrusts faltering due to the lack of space for him to move between them. Isagi wraps his arms tightly around Barou as he sings him a song right in his ear—composed of his moans and whimpers, with a chorus that hears: “Eat me, eat me, eat me.”
Blood fills Barou’s mouth and throat as he devours Isagi completely and the feeling of hunger in the pit of his stomach demands more.
“Fuck,” Isagi moans out, scratching Barou’s back with one hand and pulling at his loose hair with the other. “Don’t stop.”
Barou licks the wound and then bites into the surrounding intact skin of Isagi’s flesh, filling his mouth with the taste of red velvet cake; of Isagi Yoichi. Isagi arches even further into Barou and Barou is convinced they have become one because he can’t tell where Isagi ends and he begins.
Isagi tastes the same as the cake sponge that makes up Barou’s heart, and Barou believes there’s no way to tell them apart now that he has consumed Isagi whole. There’s no way to tell them apart anymore because Barou’s heart is made of the same cake sponge that Isagi Yoichi is made of.
Isagi’s blood fills Barou’s mouth like wine filled the holy chalice at the Last Supper. There are arils of pomegranates stuck between Barou’s teeth, the cake that is Isagi Yoichi made of pomegranate filling and red velvet fondant.
In the pit of Barou’s stomach lies the eternal flame, burning up his entire body. He can hear the seven deadly sins screaming in the flames; can hear those skin-devouring sinners laughing at the churning purgatory in his stomach and hips.
Barou thinks—he’s been thinking a lot, actually, which is funny considering he was struggling last afternoon—If he were punished to perdition, he would simply eat his way out and back into Isagi’s embrace where he belongs.
The hunger begins to dwindle and twist into something else. Barou lifts his head from the crook of Isagi’s neck to look down at him, his mouth stained red with him.
Isagi is sprawled out on the satin sheets, staring up at Barou with a crooked smirk on his face, raven hair a mess around his head; a contrast to the surrounding white sheets.
It’s the most beautiful makeshift halo Barou has ever seen.
“Fucking shit.” Barou mutters under his breath, his hands gripping Isagi’s thighs as he quickens his pace to rid his stomach of purgatory.
Barou’s hair is a complete mess, a contrast to the angelic mess of Isagi’s own straight hair around him. How the fuck does it look like that? Barou doesn’t get it.
Isagi lifts his hand and tucks the left strands of Barou’s hair behind his ear. Barou lets out a little grunt, the sinners in his stomach beginning to ascend to heaven.
“Shouei…” Isagi says around a light sound, the informal address causing Barou’s grip on his thighs to tighten.
“You can do better than that.”
Isagi’s face splits into a wide grin, his teeth made of the nails used to crucify Jesus, his eyes filled with mirth, the deep blue swimming with bioluminescence.
The sight makes the skin-devouring sinners laugh even louder, the screams of the seven deadly sins becoming more discernible, telling Barou to destroy. To eat. To devour.
Barou’s next movements are fast, faster than the lines of sinners that run across all of Hell, forming the picture of a beating heart. Isagi gasps when Barou’s hand wraps around his throat, a look of shock filtering across his face before the smirk comes back, sprinkles of light glowing in Isagi’s eyes—the very thing Barou is always after.
The smirk doesn’t last long, Isagi’s mouth falling open and sounding a chorus of angels as Barou moves faster than the very light travelling in Isagi’s eyes, the churning purgatory in Barou’s stomach and hips extending to his hands, his grip on Isagi tightening.
Barou Shouei doesn’t stop. Not because Isagi hasn’t told him to, but because he doesn’t want to. Barou speeds up his movements, the skin-devouring sinners in his stomach rising higher and higher until he can no longer hear their boisterous laughter.
It feels as if his venous system is Phlegethon itself. Barou curses under his breath, beads of sweat rolling down his face, further intertwining with strands of his hair. Barou tightens his grip around Isagi’s throat even more, the light in Isagi’s eyes glowing brighter.
“Fucking egoist.” Barou grits out.
Isagi grins and Barou thinks about killing him until suddenly, the laughter of the skin-devouring sinners is coming out of Isagi’s mouth and the bands of purgatory are snapping beneath the skin of Barou’s abdomen. He can’t feel anything but Isagi’s fingernails raking fields in his back and biceps and shoulders; anywhere he could reach.
The boiling of Phlegethon under his skin is too much for Barou, the feeling of every single sensation he has ever felt hitting him and overwhelming his senses. Barou maintains his grip on Isagi like he’s prey, leaning down and sinking his teeth into Isagi’s skin again to ground him against the waves of sensation washing over him.
Time stands still for a moment, Barou’s own fingernails digging into Isagi’s skin as his are digging into Barou’s, as if they were both skin-devouring sinners in the pit ready to eat the other in an endless loop.
But the skin-devouring sinners are gone. They’re no longer laughing. In fact, they are no longer in hell. They have ascended to heaven. Which means, in a way, that Barou Shouei has too.
Barou lifts his head from Isagi’s shoulder, his grip loosening as he looks down at Isagi who looks up at him with heaven in his eyes.
“Not bad, tyrant king.” Isagi hums, his fingernails gliding up and down the expanse of Barou’s thighs placed beside his own. “I’ve been waiting for you to properly devour me.” He laughs, and the sound makes Barou want to bite at Isagi’s vocal chords. Maybe it would taste like desiccated coconut.
“I’ve been devouring you.” Barou grumbles and moves from between Isagi’s legs to the vacant side of the bed, lying on his side with his body facing Isagi and his eyes closed.
Isagi follows suit with his body facing Barou. He props his elbow up against his pillow, his chin pressed against his clenched fist as he looks down at Barou.
“You know what I mean. It’s about time you fucked me.”
Barou opens his eyes to spare Isagi a glance at the obscenity, the expression on his face making the corners of Isagi’s lips curl.
“You look hungry.” Isagi chuckles, the devilish grin he has specially reserved for Barou spreading across his face as he stares into Barou’s eyes.
“Do I?” Barou asks rhetorically, his voice muffled by the pillow as he stares at the spot where Isagi’s heart should be beating.
“I’ve never felt so full.”