[fic wip/abandoned] kny, akaren modern au, inktober 2019

[hexmix]

another akaren fic that spanned multiple inktober prompts: swing and wild. it's a modern au, but in the sense that literally everything is exactly the same it just takes place in modern day japan. some notes at the end for where i was going with it.

 

warning for: little bit of gore

The hit connects with a smack, forcing Kyojuro back a step, then two when the demon continues pressing him. Another bullet train roars by on the other tracks, blowing Kyojuro’s hair back. He’d moved in time to force the demon into an awkward stance, diverting some of the power he’d put behind that attack. It’s probably the only thing that’s saved him, despite the pain he now feels throbbing in his side.

 

He’s vaguely aware of Kamado-kun and the others working to get everyone off the train, feels a flicker of relief that they’d listened to him. It’s gone as quickly as it’d come, washed away when the demon shifts again, and Kyojuro is forced to react.

 

It doesn’t matter what he does, it’s like the demon can see him coming, like he’s telegraphing his every move. It must be the demon art, he thinks again, the bright-lit snowflake pattern that’d opened up under the demon’s bare feet.

 

“Rengoku Kyojuro,” the demon says again, wiping a seeping cut Kyojuro managed to score on his face. “It’s really a waste, you know. All this strength aimed at nothing.” He’s relaxed his stance, shifting into a chatty mood again. Kyojuro’s been having a hard time reading him. Like this, it’s like he doesn’t care at all about fighting.

 

Kyojuro doesn’t relax, moves back into a defensive stance, knowing by now that if he’s going to win this he’s going to have to go on the offensive. He just has to stall for time until he can make an opening.

 

“It’s hardly at nothing,” he says. “Look at how many lives I’ll have saved today, once I’ve killed you.”

 

The demon snorts, licks at the healing cut crossing the edge of his mouth. “Means fuckall with all that mortality. You’re not going to get any stronger like this, you know, as a human. You’ve peaked.”

 

Kyojuro lets that roll off him like water. “I’m strong enough to stop you,” he says. “To do my duty.”

 

The demon doesn’t stop grinning exactly, but he tilts his head, like he’s listening to something far off. His expression hasn’t changed, but it’s still gone crooked somehow. Kyojuro finds it hard to keep looking at him, forces himself to nonetheless.

 

Another bullet train goes by, kicking up a wind that rustles the demon’s loose clothing. “Maa,” he says after a while, quiet, more to himself than anything, and shakes his head. He looks up, meets Kyojuro’s eyes. “Rengoku Kyojuro,” he says, “I’ll remember your name.”

 

He’s faster than Kyojuro; this is something Kyojuro realized immediately. He’s faster and he knows how Kyojuro is going to move. In order to beat him, Kyojuro has to somehow move without realizing it, without intent.

 

He’s not sure this is something he can accomplish, not in time for it to really matter.

 

He manages to block the oncoming blow, grunts under the sudden weight of the demon’s power. He’s forced back again. The demon is going to try to get him with his back to the wall of the overpass. Off in the distance, Kyojuro can hear sirens. One of the passengers must have called the police, or maybe someone on one of the passing bullet trains. The wreck is hardly inconspicuous. 

 

He dodges, spinning away and bringing his sword up to block the following blow. The demon isn’t grinning anymore, Kyojuro notices. 

 

He brings his blade down too late. The arm severs at the elbow, and Kyojuro moves to grab it, yank it out of him lest the demon still have some control over it. The fingers had dug in down to the knuckles, and he feels the wounds like a scream through his abdomen. 

 

The demon regenerates his arm in an instant. “Such a fucking waste,” he spits.

 

Kyojuro presses down on the wound, aiming to slow the bleeding. He’s not sure what all the demon’s injured, and it’s not important now. Sword raised, he moves into an offensive stance. He inhales.

 

He doesn’t have time. He has to make his move now.

 

He feels the strength his breaths have bolstered, doing what he can to slow his bleeding. The demon hasn’t moved back into a fighting stance. He’s looking at Kyojuro with that crooked expression again. Kyojuro steps into a quick rush forward, bringing his other hand up to grip the hilt of his sword. He swings, the blade a sharp arc through the distance between them, sparking up like flames as it reflects the light cast by the wrecked train.

 

Everything happens quickly, far more quickly than Kyojuro can track. 

 

The sun rises, spilling over the horizon like a cracked egg.

+++++++

After, Akaza finds him in the most inconvenient places. On the subway, at Yoshinoya, in the gym locker room. Kyojuro realizes he’s essentially being stalked, but so far there’s been no harm in it, and better the demon be wasting time on him than hunting someone else.

The subway car clangs along, mostly empty this time of night. Akaza always catches him leaving Oyakata-sama’s. Kyojuro isn’t sure if the demon knows where he’s been leaving or not, but he’s not made a move so far, and furthermore, Kyojuro has faith in the deterrents Shinobu and Tamayo set up.

They pass the first few stations in silence. Kyojuro leans his head back, lets his eyes close. It’s only early fall, but it’s been unseasonably warm. He’s feeling slightly stuffy in his jacket, but it’ll just be a few more stops, really, and then the usual walk home. Might as well leave it on.

Two more stations go by and Akaza rises. Kyojuro watches him from the corner of his eye as he makes his way closer. Three people get on at this station, and Akaza weaves around them, stops briefly right in front of him.

He looks up at him, feeling as tired as he always does but forcing himself not to feel it. Akaza stands out wherever he goes; the tattoos and his coloring mark him clearly Other. A woman sitting across from them gets up and moves on down the car. Probably thinks they’re about to get in a fight. Kyojuro wonders.

The announcement mutters departure and the doors close. Akaza takes a seat next to him. Stretches his legs far out in front of him, leaning back into the seat. His head clunks back against the glass of the window. Kyojuro should tell him off for being rude, but there are no other passengers near them, and there are plenty of free seats, besides. He’s not hurting anyone. A novel enough concept, for a demon.

“I was ordered to kill you,” Akaza says after a while, his voice subdued.

“Oh?” Kyojuro turns to him. He’s still slouched, hoodie pulled down low over his face to hide his wild shock of hair, his undeniably inhuman eyes. His hands are shoved into his pockets, and he seems to be staring down at his feet. Kyojuro looks too. He’s wearing slides. His feet and toes are just as marked as the rest of him. All stripes.

“We all were. Told to kill pillars, I mean. And me specifically, I was ordered to kill you after my,” and here Kyojuro can hear in the acidity of his tone that Akaza is quoting someone, “‘spectacularly impressive failure’ the last time.”

“Well,” Kyojuro says, after taking all that in, “I don’t notice you killing me.” What he wants to say, but still doubts, must still keep doubting, is that Akaza could have easily killed him back then, and didn’t. He suspects, despite everything he’s come to know about demons, and especially about the Twelve Moons, that Akaza spared him.

Akaza grunts, mutters something about it being “troublesome,” and just continues staring down at his feet. His slides are badly scuffed up. Kyojuro wonders if he slipped into garden sandals and then just forgot, just kept wearing them. They have cartoon fish on them. His toes curl, uncurl, and Kyojuro realizes they’re approaching his stop. He rises before the announment can start, and it’s him staring down at Akaza this time. Akaza won’t look up at him.

“Won’t you get in trouble? Disobeying him?”

Akaza doesn’t just look at him then, he pulls the hood back. The number in his left eye has been cleanly sliced down the middle. “I ever decide I wanna, fuck, ‘restore myself to his graces’ I’ll let you know. Meantime, fuck him sideways.”

Kyojuro has to get off the car, he’s going to miss his stop. He needs to say something. He feels this is important. “My thanks, then,” he says, carries the rolled eyes Akaza answers him with all the way home.

+

The weather turns suddenly, sharply, and he’s glad of his coat, of the warmth and what it allows him to cover. He sits down gingerly, favoring his left leg, his side. 

Akaza always finds him on trains.

He sits down immediately this time, as he had done the past few times Kyojuro ran into him like this. He’s still just wearing his hoodie, despite the weather, and it’s as ratty as ever. 

“If you’d have gotten your ass killed by that fucker that replaced me I’d be real fucking pissed,” he says by way of greeting.

“Will Muzan replace you again?”

“You look any deader?”

“So yes, then.” Akaza is still wearing his cartoon fish slides. Kyojuro wonders if he’s cold, if demons can feel the cold like humans can.

“You ever gonna ask me, or what?”

Kyojuro looks up, and Akaza is staring at him. His brows are furrowed in a frown, and he’s tapping his fingers along the back of the seat. “Ask you what?”

“Why I didn’t, haven’t, killed you.”

Kyojuro is half-afraid of the answer, which is precisely why he says, “Why didn’t you kill me, Akaza?”

Akaza grins like he’s won something, and the tap tap tap of his fingers picks up. He watches Kyojuro for a while, until the grin slips from his lips, his expression blanks. “You made me remember something.”

Kyojuro doesn’t know what to do with this. “Remember what?”

“Bunch of useless shit.”

Kyojuro knows even less what to do with that. “Ah,” he says. Akaza is meeting his gaze at least, for all his face is inscrutable. 

“You wanna know why that fucker turned me into a demon?” he says after a while, studying Kyojuro’s face in turn. 

He’d actually rather know what the ‘bunch of useless shit’ was, but then maybe this is part of it. Kyojuro has been wondering, quite a lot, why Akaza hasn’t killed him, why he’s been stalking him, why he’s been able to stay alive after defying Muzan.

“Why?” he says.

Akaza leans forward, and Kyojuro twists to face him more fully, despite the twinge in his side. “I killed sixty-seven men, as a human. Beat them to a literal fucking pulp. He’d thought it was a demon that’d done it, figured I was better than nothing.”

“Why did you kill them?”

Akaza frowns, like that was the wrong response. “It doesn’t matter.”

“More ‘useless shit’?”

“Yeah, fucking wiseass, just more useless shit.” Akaza makes a move like he’s going to shove him, and Kyojuro braces himself for the hit. It never comes. Instead, Akaza sniffs, and it reminds Kyojuro so much of Tanjiro he can’t help but find it endearing. “The fuck?” Akaza says, looking him over again. “Just how badly are you injured?”

“I’m still mobile,” Kyojuro says. He’s still proud of it. Shinobu and Tamayo had ordered at least a week more of bedrest, but his body had always been resilient.

“Mobile,” Akaza repeats, like the word’s something offensive. 

Kyojuro rises for his stop. “I’ll see you later then, Akaza.”

“Fuck that,” Akaza mutters, and follows him off the subway.

He’s never done that before. Kyojuro stands dumbly on the platform, just staring at him. “I have to go home, Akaza.”

“Then go home,” Akaza says. “I ain’t stopping you.”

He wonders if it would even occur to Akaza that he might not appreciate a demon knowing where his family lives, but then he suspects Akaza already knows, and would find his objections moot. He sighs, and makes his slow way up the stairs out of the station. Akaza follows at his back at first, but once they’re out on the street he moves to stand at Kyojuro’s left side. Kyojuro wonders if he picked that side on purpose, and then realizes that yes, of course he did. He can likely smell the blood.

Kyojuro wonders what that’s like for demons, for Akaza. Does he smell like food?

He’s walking slower because of his leg, knows better than to push it, but resents being hindered like this. Akaza is matching his pace, hands in his pockets and hood down for once, turning this way and that as he openly takes in the city, in the few other people they pass.

After a few blocks they get caught at an intersection and have to wait for the light to change. Kyojuro turns to Akaza again. He’s staring up at the light on the opposite street, waiting for it to change. The lights of the passing cars wash him out to a truly horrible shade of yellow-gray, but his eyes look all the more blue, all the more red, when he turns to Kyojuro. He quirks a brow. “It changed,” he says, tilts his head back towards the road. It’s only then that he picks up the tinny Tooryanse signalling the changed light. They cross the street.

His family’s house looms up sooner than he’d like. He doesn’t know what Akaza plans, what he’s thinking. 

[akaza it turns out was just making sure he got home okay. Tells him to take care of his wounds.

They meet again later; akaza helps kyojuro kill a demon bc it attacks when he’s still wounded; hounds him about his wounds; akaza shows up next time real fucked up bc he tried to fight kokushibo or kokushibo attacked him whatever, maybe it was even another demon slayer who got him; anyway he ends up hiding out in kyojuro’s room, bleeding on things; intersperse with more about akaza’s past; how he can’t continue on as a demon with his memories of his humanity, but he’s also no longer human; etc; kyojuro continues to be weirdly obsessed with his feet]