Anew

The walls were gritty and gray, full of grime–or were they green and full of slime? Devon wasn’t certain, but there was a definite smell in the air. Urine, or algae, or maybe both. And somehow, beyond that, was the stench of abrasive cleaner with an aggressive pine scent.

“The fuck?” he asked the air, and his voice rasped and broke.

Light streaked sideways through thick square panes of glass arranged like tile high on the wall, but the panes were yellowed and browned, some caked so thick that the light was reduced to a dim glow along their margins. The room was small as a cell, and the mattress under him had a surface that seemed to move with a life of its own. Up he sat, itchy and uncomfortable.

“Shit,” he breathed, when gravity made his head swim and his limbs felt too heavy to properly move. “This is real.” His fingers raked through his hair, nails digging along his scalp, eyes stinging. Not a dream. Not a dream, and that could only mean one thing.

But the seconds stretched to minutes, and the putrid air was stagnant along his skin. It was unnaturally quiet. There were no taunts. There was no laughter.

Devon found his way to his feet. He was still wearing the worn sneakers he’d remembered putting on before leaving the house. The same faded black jeans hugged his hips. The black tee he’d turned inside out for work still hung loosely from his shoulders.

“Nasr?” Devon called as he edged uneasily for the discolored door. There was no knob, and it hung slightly ajar. He edged the thing open with his toe. “You here, fuckface?”

Quiet greeted him. Quiet, and a broad open space with remnants of the building that once was– pipes and sinks dotted the walls. A couple of curtains hung dingy gray and partially ripped free of the tracks on the ceiling. The floor, once a laminate of speckled white, was peeling and cracked. There were a couple of thin mattresses tucked against one wall. More windows, these proper glass, let the scant light in–scant for how they were half boarded.

The air was still, and Devon.. surprisingly intact. “The fuck is happening,” he breathed to himself. What what what.. Indeed what. But he remembered getting up, and getting dressed. He remembered Miguel kissing him on the way out the door. He remembered setting out for the bus to get to work, and then.. Nothing. Not even a return of the cackling that had left him a mess for the past week.

“Fucking hell,” he grit to himself, and cut hurriedly across the room for the wide bay doors on the other side of the vast space. “Shit fer brains just fucking around with me, god fucking dammit,” he snarled, leaning into his anger rather than the fear that writhed beneath it.

“Nawnawnaw, Dev! Devvy Dev Devoooooon,” came a loud, taunting drawl from behind him. “I’m not just fucking around! I got me a *contract*, remember?”

Devon whipped around so fast he nearly toppled over. His ankle rolled, his black hair long enough to fall half into his eyes as he fixed the expected sight with a wide, wild stare. Nasr. And, it *was* Nasr. There in dark flesh and massive curling horns despite the damned gift of years before. There with a smirk, topless under the loose hang of a leather coat, one thumb hooked into his own faded jeans. There with a fucking *pair* of mother fucking tails ticking and sliding against and around one another in taunting promise.

“Fuck you, Nasreddin,” Devon gusted, though his voice shook in his ears. “I’m out. I’m free. I got a *life* now, assface.”

Nasr seemed to be closer without even having moved. Or maybe it was just that the room was growing darker at the edges. Devon couldn’t be certain. His heart was wild in his chest, and he felt he might vomit.

“You’ve had a life, Devvy,” Nasr sing-songed at him. “You still got one, too. And it’s *mine*.”

“You were fucking gone, asshole,” Devon insisted, his voice quiet and thin.

Nasr did move, then. His stride was a lazy thing, slouching and sliding, slithering over to stand before Devon, who could only watch in terrified fascination and thickening horror.

“And now I’m not,” he purred. Nasr bent his head close, his eyes gleaming bright as hellfire.

“... fuck,” Devon breathed softly as Nasr’s wide, white smirk seemed to absorb the whole of his attention with its terrifying sharpness.

“If you insist!” Nasr cheeked in reply.

Pressure constricted Devon’s ankle, the world jerked, and then pain blossomed through his hip. He yowled for the impact as pins and needles raced down his leg, his lowerback flaring briefly with heat.

“Ah!” Devon shouted, and kicked his leg as he braced into one hand. The floor was gritty with dirt beneath his fingers. “Get that fucking shit off of me! You know I hate that shit! God fucking dammit fuck all the way the fuck off, Nasr! I moved the fuck on with my life! Find some other fucking playtoy!”

“Moved on?” Nasr’s words were an amused rumble filling Devon’s ears past the ragged rasping of his own breathing. “You got fucking wet dreams more exciting than that fucking deadass you shacked up with, shithead. You ain’t tell him what you *really* want, what you done, what you *neeeed*, Devvy. But I *know*. I *know* how goddamn bad you want to get under his fucking skin, slide your fingers in there and wiggle them around and break up all the fat, peel it right the fuck off,” Nasr continued as Devon struggled. “Smell his fucking blood in the fucking air,” he taunted in a breathy purr.

And couldn’t Devon just picture it? Miguel’s smiling face, lashy eyes lidded, his full and mobile mouth in a wide smile as Devon hooked his fingers into the dark skin covering one side of his chest and swept them aside, curled and pulled, peeling him like a ripe orange. It made his stomach lurch. It made his cock throb. A groan escaped him. Or was it a moan? Why did Nasr make everything so fucking confusing??

“Get this fucking tail shit offa me!” Devon roared, seizing upon something more definite.

That was not confusing. He did not like the tails. He especially did not like how there was one at either ankle now, hauling and pulling his legs wide, dragging him toward Nasr so abruptly that he found himself on his back.

“Nice tent,” Nasr snarked down at him. “I think he likes camping, ladies and gents!”

And then Nasr was down on his knees, leaning forward over Devon, nose near to nose. Devon shivered despite the heat the man above him was putting off. His dark eyes widened, going from feeling too wet to feeling too dry in the span of a heartbeat. Oh no, oh no.

“Fuck off,” he tried again, the words a whisper that lacked the conviction of a frightened rabbit.

“Missed y’too,” Nasr growled.

The bite was not wholly unanticipated. Teeth caught Devon’s lips, piercing and slicing, sending ribbons of heat and pain along synapses that somehow twisted and turned them into a buzzing pleasure past the taste of blood. Devon grabbed at Nasr’s shoulders and shoved, but the demon remained unmoved as he bit and worked his mouth into the bloody mess smearing between them. Devon near choked on Nasr’s tongue, and the sensation distracted him from the haul of his jeans down his hips, the hitch of them over the curve of his ass. Then he did choke, and strangled a cry as his waistband pinched his hard cock to an uncomfortable angle.

“Get the fuck off,” Devon rasped when the–could he call it a kiss?--broke.

He tried pushing again, shoving, his legs pulling against the twisted tails enough that his hips rocked and shook.

“I’m gonna,” Nasr retorted, and snort-laughed at his own humor.

What came next was as expected as the bite had been. The old familiar pressure at his ass, the burning sting as he was made to stretch without the lube that Miguel used so generously between them. Impossible swelling, thicker and thicker– but even expected, he couldn’t help crying out. The sound of it bounced back at him, rang in his ears. The blood helped. It always helped. Things went in a little easier that way, out much the same. The damned tails slithered and wound their way past his ankles, over his jeans to wind about knees, the ends of his thighs.

Screaming. Was it him? It was him. Screaming again. Crying and cussing and smacking at Nasr. He was aware of it in strange flashes of white hot agony, of frustration and fury–and yet somehow also detached from it. This wasn’t him. It was a dream. Just another dream. Just another dream.

His blood was molten. His blood was want. He was want. Nasr was in him and deep and wide, and he could feel his cock moving–moving most unnaturally!--moving within him. In and out, but twisting, jerking and jumping, slithering like a snake. The moaning was him. Screaming to moaning, shoving to clinging. He bit at Nasr’s jaw and lips, near snarled as his cock bounced and seeped between them.

The filth of the floor was gritty into his scalp as he was shoved and pulled and pulled and shoved. Devon writhed with life and desire, caught at shoulder and horn, and remembered finally, finally, what it was to be alive. This was life. Life again. Life anew. He hadn’t found his life, he’d lost it! But here, filled with a sudden searing flood, the low groan of Nasr’s voice vibrating through his ears, he’d found it. Remembered. Again, anew. Finally– and he came with a shudder and cry, his body jolting, cock spilling hot into the ragged, rumpled mess of his clothes as Devon’s awareness exploded into sweet, exquisite pleasure, and a gentle torrent of sobs.