He burns for you because you are something unattainable to him. Beyond the scope of what a mortal mind and body should be exalted with.
[Yazoo might only be a facet of himself, made manifest, but he is still so much greater than the humans who tread the face of Gaia like an encroaching plague. Sephiroth might not ever look upon the Remnant the same way Reno does, but who does he ever grant that kind of favor to? Even Cloud is given a glimmer of wretched hate in his undying obsession for him.]
Do not pretend that he could satisfy you in ways that I could not. That’s an offense on its own.
I don't have to be unattainable. I could let him have me whenever I please, if I chose to.
( But he hasn't, and in truth? Yazoo hasn't decided whether he ever will—which is in no small part because he already suspects Sephiroth's claim to be true. Reno yearns for what he can't have. Giving it to him would be to break his hold on him, and Yazoo likes being able to press this small advantage. )
I will concede that you likely have the ability to satisfy me. It simply didn't occur to me that you might have the desire to.
[Yazoo cannot fool him. Sephiroth does not believe that he allows Reno to take him whenever he pleases — he knows that the thrill of power and control is not one easily forsaken for a few languorous moments of pleasure. Not unless it’s well and truly worth it.
( In this, Yazoo knows he can't lie. Something dark and heated stirs low in his belly as he considers the question, because if Sephiroth fucks like he fights? He could be everything Yazoo wants from a partner—everything and more. )
Yes. I would.
( But he has a question. )
Did I displease you in selecting him before coming to you?
Disappointed, maybe, that you’d not even consider me to start. But maybe the onus is mine to leave a lasting impression, so that it doesn’t happen again.
[But rarely is Sephiroth so conciliatory, and so—]
[One must work for it, after all. Sephiroth won’t disappoint those who do.]
Yes.
Tell me where you are.
[This is just a thinly-veiled contrivance of a request. He could find Yazoo anywhere on Gaia, manifest himself before him as a storm or a silent whisper. But even he can play at courtesy when it amuses him.]
[As before, and as ever when a conversation has run dry of its usefulness, there is no reply.
A warehouse nestled along the outskirts of a piecemeal city isn’t the most alluring prospect, but Sephiroth doesn’t care much for ugly glamour of the population’s attempts to right themselves in a post-Meteorfall world. The building is abandoned and decrepit, save for the scant telltale signs of half-lives making this their home and headquarters, and the connection to those shards of himself here is strong, secure. The air, stringent as it is tangible, grows thick and cloying; the atmosphere pressurizes, tightens as though becoming a cord pulled apart at both ends, and when reality feels as though it might snap in two—
Sephiroth appears where Yazoo has holed himself away, his footsteps cat-quiet, his roving gaze to match. Silver sways with each step, trailing danger behind him — so, too, is Masamune gripped in the smooth leathers of his left hand, the steel a gentle crescent shimmer in the pallid light. A promise, a threat, an instrument to prove that subduing and seduction can exist in the same breath, a violent part of himself that manifests wherever he appears; perhaps all of the above.
It shines like crystal as he approaches, and his grin is too softly sharp to be kind.]
I can already taste your anticipation.
[Down to his core, buzzing between the empty spaces of every atom in his frame — and Yazoo’s, too, that anticipatory ardor so prevalent that if Sephiroth reached out and ripped it from the Remnant’s spine, it would be shaped just like him.]
( The message goes unanswered, as Yazoo expected. It doesn't stop him from watching his phone for a few long moments as he tries to rationalise what has just happened—tries to understand why now, why Sephiroth would smartly remove Reno from the picture and place himself in his stead. Possessiveness, perhaps? He's gone to lengths to ensure that all three of his Remnants understand their place in this withered world: they may have developed their own personalities, yes, but they are little more than instruments of his will, and there's every chance he simply finds the idea of someone else interfering with his belongings somewhat distasteful.
There's also the possibility that Yazoo simply wounded his pride in choosing Reno. Is this simply a way for Sephiroth to prove that even in this he is superior? That his reach extends beyond the battlefield and the heavens to deep, shattering bursts of pleasure? Yazoo's pulse quickens at the thought, feeling a strange, previously untapped curl of dark want beginning to stir at the base of his spine—
But then the air begins to change. He feels it in a shiver of gooseflesh that pours itself over his shoulders, his hips, his thighs, pulling every atom of his being to attention as Sephiroth bends the planet around himself yet again. Stillness holds Yazoo in place when he manifests before him. For one icy second he thinks he might hate him almost as much as he aches to bring their cells together again—hates his beauty, his strength, his unshakeable place as Mother's favoured son—but that bitter feeling melts into something familiar with each whisper-step of his approach.
Maybe it isn't hate. Maybe it's love—a word that has a slightly different meaning to the Remnants than it might anyone else on Gaia. For Yazoo love can be distilled into three things: obsession, purpose, and the bone-deep need to please. Bright eyes slide along Masamune, skim over his chest, then lift to meet a matching malachite gaze, and Yazoo feels the barest hint of a smirk settling into the corner of his lips. )
Then I won't need to flatter you with words.
( He tilts his head. Whatever attraction he'd had to Sephiroth beforehand seems somehow amplified in his presence, thrumming and pulsing thick between them as he takes a playful step back. The Turk? Already forgotten. Yazoo can already feel his body reaching for Sephiroth's the way it couldn't for anyone else—not even Mother—and he exhales softly as he feels his body beginning to flush. )
Shall I tell you what I wanted him to do to me?
( There's velvet-soft suggestion in his voice, and the slits of his pupils swallow up more green with darkness. )
[When Sephiroth had been subsumed by the Lifestream a second time, swallowed whole by the Planet’s entangling life essence, so much was stripped away in order to preserve himself. All the useless shards of humanity, weak remembrances that made him too soft, until only the core of his hatred remained — just a crystallized, pulsing thing of baleful agency to keep him anchored and conscious in Gaia’s beating heart. And then came the Remnants from those same thrown-away fragments, forced solid, ensuring that his desires were made physical across the face of a world still struggling to recover from his summoned hellfire. Instruments of his will, as they both rightly know. Sephiroth exists in every strand of them; he could wind himself so tight around their cores that each breath would be a trial, then release them so suddenly that they would cry out for more. They are a part of him as much as they are him, such an obvious truth that it is understood without the need for articulation.
Yet he had crafted them as separate from one another, all the same — three brothers who represented incomplete pieces of himself, made deadly and beautiful. Time, distance, and conscious awareness had placed wants and desires into their grasping hands, and the need to exist in the world, rather than merely stand at ready to be deployed, was the only natural result. Sephiroth knows that his authority over them is absolute, that if he commands they shatter themselves into a thousand pieces, he will find them broken and at his feet in his next breath. But for all else in-between, they are not so easily cowed — like children with restless brambles in their veins, nipping at his bootheels when he deigns to be present, asking for more, give them something more.
They might seek it elsewhere. They might find satisfaction in the transient things and little people all around them, but in the end, they would be reminded that Sephiroth should be the only presence that crowds their minds when the day is at its close.
For there are pieces of the man that even the Lifestream could not dilute. His pride, his possessiveness, his predilection towards obsession. And when Yazoo speaks of the Turk and all he can offer, it makes him want to gut the redhead as much as it amuses him. A fragment of himself, desiring a loyal Shinra dog? It connects Sephiroth back to an old origin point from a life long discarded and mostly forgotten, and that is both an offense to be corrected as much as it is an irony that makes him grin wider.
Yazoo steps away, but the gesture is the same as pulling a rubber band back too far. Their anchored connection elasticizes tightly, decrying any distance, and Sephiroth simply steps forward in turn. The length of his blade sweeps away the security that space could have provided with anyone else, but this is nothing revelatory.]
Yes.
[—is his reply, plain and cool. His gaze crawls along the lithe curvatures of Yazoo’s form, but ultimately settles on his face.]
Tell me what you fantasized. How you hoped he would please you.
( Occasionally, Yazoo wonders whether some part of him pushes at Sephiroth for the sole purpose of getting to feel. He doesn't doubt that people consider him the most emotionally distant remnant but he would beg to disagree: Yazoo simply knows what is and isn't worth his time and energy. Where Kadaj has his volatile temper and Loz has an almost child-like sensitivity, Yazoo's waters are calm, deep, and difficult to stir. It takes a lot to pull any kind of emotion from him. Why? Because human affairs are rarely worth the trouble, which manifests in a kind of unaffected aloofness that sets him apart from his brothers.
What does matter is this. The mako-bright crackle of energy between them as Yazoo dances back, as Sephiroth presses forwards, catching his breath in his throat and setting his pulse fluttering in the hollow of his throat. It's a dangerous game to play with the most deadly creature to set foot on Gaia since their Mother—but in the same way that Sephiroth can reach into him, Yazoo can feel the prickle of his connection with Sephiroth. The edges of their game are sharp, but they wouldn't be here if they didn't sense the mutual opportunity in it. )
I wanted to fight him.
( Yazoo says easily, thick lashes dipping low over his eyes. )
He gives me everything when he's trying to kill me. I wanted to feel that while he was fucking me.
( His smirk widens just a fraction. Yazoo isn't confined by the idea of normal and abnormal desires: in truth he simply doesn't have enough experience of society to understand that what he wants might be considered strange to some, not least because "erotic preferences" weren't really part of what Sephiroth wrought into being within the Lifestream. Dark impulses are simply impulses. Strange arousal is simply arousal. Yazoo may be the quietest remnant, but nothing excites him more than the glint of real danger and a pair of heated eyes.
His gaze drifts to Masamune for a second time. )
He would have enjoyed trying to make me beg for it. I wanted him to hold me down—to push me into the wall and give me bruises to remember him by, if he could manage it.
( Yazoo finds Sephiroth's eyes. Reno may have been able to grapple him, but even he has to admit that it's unlikely he'd have been able to make him really feel it. That, at the very least, Sephiroth will undoubtedly excel in, and a shiver runs the length of his spine as he imagines the hand holding Masamune clutching at the back of his neck. )
I wanted to feel like I was falling apart on his cock.
[Yazoo relays to him fantasies of violence, of having control wrested away under the bruising touch of another, of having to desperately supplicate himself and beg for permission to fall to pieces. He knows that these fantasies are, at their core, indicative of a larger want to please, the same sort that run opposite yet parallel of Sephiroth’s own desires. In that way, they truly are cut from the same cloth; two entities of deep violence, enthralling and addictive, finding ways to twist brutality into arousal through either the use of a hungry blade, or the sting of it gliding across one’s skin. Sephiroth will always garner pleasure from oppressive control, every part of his darkly-clad frame meant to exude authority and inspire obedience, and if Yazoo lacks someone to oblige him that role, he will fill that void until every part of him is spilling over at its edges.
No one else could do it better, more perfectly, than him.
The thought is enough to make a writhing warmth twitch at the base of his belly, and Masamune smiles with the same sloping curvature as the one spread across Sephiroth’s features.]
Very appeasing of you, to offer yourself as an outlet for someone else’s wild pleasures. But he would never be able to satisfy you in that way.
[Sephiroth’s teeth are a perfect row of white, revealed for a fleeting moment as he gently bites and pulls at the leather fingertips of his right glove, slipping it off and dropping it to the ground like the skin of a dead animal. Masamune exchanges hands, and he grants the same treatment to his left, revealing slender fingers that belie his ability to break so much and so many in his palm.
He crosses the electric space between them, those same fingers reaching out to cup just beneath the bone of Yazoo’s jawline, the jolt of their connection heady. He can sense the tempo of his pulse tapping beneath warm skin.]
Yet I can. Would you struggle against me, Yazoo? [Masamune seems to shine all-too-bright.] I can make any conflict between us sing in ways you’ve never experienced before.
( It doesn't occur to him that Sephiroth's intention might be to mock him until after he's said his piece. Yazoo can see that he's smiling—a gentle, dangerous thing that offers little insight into what he's thinking—but other than that? He simply listens, until the dark thread of his fantasies are completely unspooled between them. It's another way in, Yazoo realises. Another weakness he's offered up in his eagerness, his need to be dismantled now something that Sephiroth could use against him if he so chose to. It would be so easy for him to tuck that information away with a chilled comment, for him to dismiss himself from Yazoo's presence with a curling smirk—
But he doesn't. A sliver of light gleams along Masamune's length and Sephiroth speaks, shows his teeth, then slowly removes the wrap of his gloves to leave his hands strangely, almost intimately bare.
Not mocking, then. Yazoo feels himself shiver with bright anticipation when he closes the distance between them, the charged weight in the air pressing heavier, heavier, until his palm touches the curve of his cheek. The throb of his pulse quickens in every cell of his body to the point where it's very nearly a distraction, but then he supposes there's nothing in creation that could actually draw his attention away from Sephiroth in this moment. )
Yes. Until the pleasure of submission overtook the pleasure of the struggle.
( He turns his head just enough to press his cheek against Sephiroth's palm—the gesture perverse in its tenderness considering the nature of his desires. With skin touching skin Yazoo feels their connection taken on a dimension he hasn't experienced before: he can feel Sephiroth, can feel the parts upon which he himself was modelled as well as the pieces that could make him whole. It's a stark reminder that he was designed to be incomplete, and that letting Sephiroth sink himself inside him might be as close to to complete as he ever gets.
Yazoo blinks slowly, and a hand reaches up to gently curl over the other man's wrist. )
I need it.
(I need you, he doesn't say, if only because both of them already know. )
[The cresting anticipation is palatable, vinous-smooth and yet impossibly full, like it might balloon between them at any moment and burst. As Yazoo dips his cheek gently into the curve of Sephiroth’s naked palm, it feels as though time has frozen itself, and a thousand little knives have materialized above their heads, waiting for the precise moment to—]
Then I will grant you what you want.
[—drop.]
What you need.
[He is not kind enough to offer a more generous preamble, and the effort would be wasted on him, anyhow — for Yazoo yearns for danger and the trigger-fire impulses of violence, and Sephiroth will keep his promise by granting it to him wholly.
His touch twists into a vice-grip, his long fingers lowering just enough to clench hard around the other’s throat, and Sephiroth presses his advantage to twist on his heel in a half-turn, propelling Yazoo forward and along as if he were made of rags, or air, or something so delicate that every impulse would dictate that he break it.
Sephiroth slams his back into the adjacent wall, and the entire warehouse groans in protest, low and mourning. What follows is the telltale sound of Masamune being brandished — that crystal reverb, melodious — and a glint of silver steel as the upper portion embeds itself in the plaster, while the rest is balanced askew and whisper-close to Yazoo’s form. From diagonal across the neck, close enough to kiss the clavicle, running past the chest, all the way down to where Sephiroth grips its hilt near the hip.
His eyes are the embers of a fire, lit brightly; his slit pupils lend to the imagery of a predator about to consume its prey whole. And Sephiroth, he only grins.]
Fight me. Struggle against me. I want to see you vying for control under my touch.
[Blessedly, his grip around Yazoo's neck relaxes, but only to thumb across his jaw again, then roughly against his bottom lip. The tip of Sephiroth’s boot knocks the spread of Yazoo’s feet evenly apart, skewing his balance into a tightrope walk of either remaining pressed against the wall or falling onto his blade.]
( The force with which Yazoo is crushed into the wall is enough to separate plaster from brickwork. It drifts to the floor in thin streams as he fights to regain the breath punched out of him: Sephiroth is stronger than all three of his remnants, but it would take more than that to properly incapacitate any of them. Still, it's enough to stun him into inaction as Masamune glides between them and sinks into the wall, the bright call of the blade more serene than it has any right to be. Yazoo lifts his chin instinctively, as much a small act of defiance as it is an attempt to keep the tender skin of his throat away from the blade.
Pulling in a breath of air comes a little easier when Sephiroth loosens his grip on his throat. Committed to this lesson he looks feral—a dangerous, wild thing bred for despair—and when he shows his teeth Yazoo feels the very stuff that makes him sing out for him. The thumb to his bottom lip colours the moment with a suggestive hue, and Yazoo waits for the pad to rub over the fullest part before catching it in a sharp bite.
It's more a mischievous nudge than intent to cause harm, but no less viper-quick for it. )
Without a weapon?
( Slender fingers move to flex and curl as he readies himself to fight. He shifts his weight back to the wall when Sephiroth kicks his legs open, immediately forcing him onto the back foot, and feels the coil of tension between them twist that bit tighter as they hold each other's gaze. Fine. Yazoo can do this unarmed. He has no intention of letting those goading words—don't disappoint me, brother—actually come to pass.
That it will be more a heated struggle than a fight is obvious. Yazoo is effectively pinned in place but he still has the use of his hands, which immediately come up to fist in the front of Sephiroth's long duster and pull him in even closer. Masamune gleams pale between them, and in pulling him close Yazoo hopes to rob him of the ability to manoeuvre it further. It's risky: Sephiroth could simply cut through the plaster and set the blade into his skin, but with any luck it'll give him the half heartbeat he needs to squirm from the other man's grasp.
Yazoo attempts to slip free quickly, but whether he's fast enough remains to be seen. With any luck he won't end up having to explain to their brothers why Sephiroth put him through a wall and compromised the building. )
[Very much so without a weapon. None of the three brothers could ever overtake him in ability — strength, speed, endurance, everything — so this disadvantage is certainly nothing new under the sun. But Yazoo is yet further declawed without his firearm, and Sephiroth will not be so merciful to soften his assault to accommodate; he will assail him, give him the wearisome struggle he wants, allow him to fight tooth and claw if he so chooses, so that the inevitable will be all the more satisfying for both.
And tooth and claw, it is — the sting of a bite across the knuckle of his thumb, the flash of defiance as green irises meet green. Sephiroth thinks he should pry his brother's jaw open and find a far better use for the soft insides of his mouth, but that's a notion better suited for when obedience is torn from his spine. For now, the other's fingers fist into the leathers of his coat, pushing him forward to lessen any lingering degree of breathing room.
The steel of his own sword is but a knife's edge away from his own body, sparking further amusement in Sephiroth's crescent grin. It's simple enough to brace his knee against the wall to keep balance, and push Masamune deeper into the plaster, causing it to cut in a perfect line that runs the length of the weapon. It chases Yazoo's body beneath it, perilously, but he escapes its bite by a hair's breadth.
Yazoo had always been so quick on his feet, like moonlight slipping away. Sephiroth turns his head to look at him with satisfaction, while the rest of his frame wrenches Masamune free from the wall.]
Good.
[He moves towards him, then, each step the feeling of a portent rising like a storm.]
But how long can you keep slipping away? Why don't you bite back a second time?
[He can indulge him the offensive. It's like inviting him straight into the open maw of a monster, but what better sacrifice is there to make?]
( The wall cracks again when Sephiroth pulls his blade free. This is what he asked for, isn't it? A delicious thrill of heat runs the length of Yazoo's spine to puddle low at the very base: his brother is perfect destruction, capable of bringing ruin to all he touches with both a feather-soft brush or the full force of his swing. Dark heat curls into his belly at the thought of it: it's parasitic, almost, the way Yazoo wants to soak up his greatness, but then he supposes it's only natural for him to be drawn towards everything he could have been.
Sephiroth was right. Reno wouldn't have been able to give him even a fraction of what he craves. )
Your mistake is assuming slipping away is all I plan to do.
( Yazoo doesn't offer more. He cuts the through the air like the flit of a dagger, slim and sharp and silver-bright, one hand immediately going for Sephiroth's throat in a mirror-image of how he'd slammed him against the wall. While he knows he wouldn't be able to execute such an attack on his brother there's the chance it'll stall him for a moment, which gives him a split second to pull back a fist which he aims at the elegant slope of his jaw.
Fighting like this doesn't come naturally to Yazoo. Sephiroth wants his teeth and claws, so teeth and claws it is, but hard-hitting punches and close-range viciousness are his brothers' domain. He excels in ranged attacks, acrobatics, and dipping in and out to strike, but he supposes there's something to be said for holding his quarry in place while beating the shape of his fist into its face.
Something to try on someone else, another time. They both know how this will end, and anticipation is already crackling heavy across Yazoo's skin as he crowds Sephiroth's space. )
[Yazoo’s like a bird flying into an open hand clawing itself into a fist. Quick and furious and a silver flurry of defiance, but made of hollow bones so effortlessly broken. It’s easy to see how Sephiroth is not so much assaulted as he allows himself to be; how he doesn’t even feign to dodge the Remnant’s grasping hand as it coils tightly around his neck. For all his brother’s effort, he might as well be gripping iron.
Sephiroth allows the first grappling reach to make a hard purchase, but refuses the fist following it up, countering with a lift of his free forearm to knock it aside. This close, their bodies are already so alight with buzzing heat, and perhaps it isn’t so surprising that Yazoo had attacked in a way that mimicked his own, as though he should always seek to merge into him through emulation, an offered flattery made of violence.
It’s titillating in a darkly satisfying way, the thought of receiving him whole coiling pleasurably around his nerves, drifting down his spine, warm and welcome. Sephiroth tilts his chin up to better offer the tract of soft flesh that is his neck; just a tease of that bobbing Adam's apple, because he intends to tear it away in the next second, humming an amused sound that Yazoo can likely feel beneath his fingertips.
His free hand lashes out to grab him so hard by the shoulder that his brother’s bones might groan in protest, and the subsequent attempt to push him down is paired with Sephiroth's knee jutting upwards. The intent is to slam the angle straight into his middle, to better encourage him to double over and be brought to heel on the ground.]
( That he's allowed to hold onto Sephiroth's neck for as long as he is comes as a surprise to Yazoo, but having his fist knocked back is expected. There's no doubt that his brother is toying with him: Sephiroth has always enjoyed giving him an inch just to watch him try to take a mile, only to snatch it away with little more than an afterthought of effort. To call it infuriating would be an understatement. White-hot irritation lances through Yazoo at the ease with which Sephiroth is able to control their fight—a burst of real spite muddling itself in with his urge to have obedience pushed into him by force. When he offers his throat Yazoo knows he's being mocked, tries to tighten his grip just for some kind of reaction—
But then Sephiroth's hand comes down on his shoulder, and Yazoo feels his bones shift and grind under his touch. Pain flits across him in a short gust of breath, a slightly narrowing of his eyes even as black pupils draw in to tight slits, but there's no time for him to twist into a response. Sephiroth pushes him down onto the jut of his knee and pulls the air from his lungs a second time, leaving Yazoo winded and hunched with his face little more than a hair's breadth from his brother's crotch.
If he were Loz or Kadaj he might think to headbutt him. Instead, Yazoo drags in a rough breath before tilting his face up to Sephiroth's, green eyes burning with a heady combination of anger, admiration, and arousal. He shivers a little where he's knelt: one knee digs into the ground beneath them but he refuses to lower the other, and this time when he smirks he offers fangs of his own. )
... Not entirely.
( Yazoo rolls his shoulder, struggling against his brother's grip to test the strength of his hold. His bones complain again but this time he bites back any show of pain, his fists curling into Sephiroth's leathers as he tries to haul himself up. A bolt of want strikes low in his gut as he realises he could be backhanded, brutally thrown, perhaps even hauled up by his hair, and that sultry heat licks higher with every second that drags between them. )
[He has him half-prostrated before him, with so much more than the mere force of his clenching fingers keeping Yazoo prone. Sephiroth is all pressurized presence, reality itself always bending to his will and acting in his stead. To stand so near is to willingly feel small; like existing next to a god (an ill omen), an aura that demands so much reverence (fear) that lesser beings should fall apart via proximity alone.
Yazoo is one such lesser being. A shard broken off from the whole. But Sephiroth meets his eyes again, rebellion and arousal and frustration ignited behind that eerie emerald hue, clenching his hands into Sephiroth’s leathers, and what a glorious visage it is to see. He should own that, too, he thinks. Steal that expression from his fine features, stow it away in his heated core, think about how poorly it served his brother while he fucks him until he’s all used up.
It makes him release Yazoo’s shoulder so that he might rise a few inches, only to fulfill one of the other’s errant fantasies: he vice-grips into his hair, locks of silver spilling between his fingers like liquid, and pulls him up so hard that he would have no choice but to stand to his full height. It’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?
Sephiroth leans in just enough to ensure his lips brush against Yazoo’s skin, his timbre whisper smooth and coiling fondly around his ear.]
That look on your face belongs to me, too.
[And just as he gives, he takes away. His brother is allowed to rise, only if he has forced to fall again — an inevitability, driven home by both his will and the keen, sudden edge of Masamune.
His sword, which had been blessedly idle as he was grappled against, now slides into use. Sephiroth lowers it at just the perfect angle to try to run its sting across Yazoo’s leg as he balances him up by his hair, easy as you please.]
( Yazoo's lips part on a silent yelp when Sephiroth hauls him up by his hair, a twist of pain flitting across his features for half a heartbeat as he rises onto the balls of his feet. That he's exhilarated is evident in the way his lips curve up throughout, although when soft lips touch his skin in a whisper of words it shivers to something slack. Yazoo knows, he knows that the only thing worse than Sephiroth's showmanship is when he reels it back, when he becomes quiet, because that is the part of himself that he gifted to Yazoo. It's the part that makes it hard for people to meet his eyes, and leaves their skin rippling with a gooseflesh of fear.
Used against him, it's almost torturously erotic.
Sephiroth reminds them they're not alone a moment later. Masamune carries a weighty presence on its own: Yazoo's eyes widen at the sting as he finds that this time he has to obey—that it feels more like a compulsion than a choice—his knees weak and his flush of colour nothing to do with exertion.
Yazoo crumples. This time when he hits the ground dust rises around both of his knees, one hand thrown out to steady himself in an attempt to save what little face he can. In many ways this isn't all that different to when they spar: those fights usually last longer, it's true, possibly because they've never been coloured dark with want before, and without his weapon there's only so much he can do against such an unstoppable force.
Silence stretches between them for a moment. Yazoo wets his lips with a sliver of pink and glances up again, hungry this time. )
It wouldn’t have changed anything. The inevitable still comes.
[—is his cool reply, fingers loosening almost affectionately in Yazoo’s hair as he falls before him. The edge of Masamune is slick and glossy where it had slid across his brother’s leg, a red, striking contrast against the dark colors that frame them both so well. Sephiroth tilts his head to allow the notion to settle, strands of silver slipping over his pauldrons, hanging like spider’s silk, and for a moment his danger is interlaced with a predator’s playfulness, eyes alight with boundless potential.
He is upon him in the next second, more presence than person. Limitless in the way his form sweeps over Yazoo’s, too much all at once, just the sensation of a forceful hand pushing him hard onto his back, a knee pressed into his brother’s fresh wound — to ensure pain coupling with mounting want — and green eyes boring down at him, knifing through him. Silver hair spooling at the curve of his shoulders.
And the awful sound of Masamune’s tip piercing the floor scant centimeters from Yazoo’s neck, grinding its way into the ground with unreal ease. The steel is hypnotic as it glides in so deeply that Sephiroth’s weight is balanced between his grip on its hilt and the contact forced against his brother’s body.]
It would be so easy for my blade to claim your neck like this. Just the slightest of effort.
[His intonation has dipped low, belligerent, self-indulgent, darkly hungry. His hand glides upwards, gripping the zipper at Yazoo’s collar between forefinger and thumb.]
( Sephiroth overcomes him like the tide—just as elemental, just as unstoppable—and Yazoo finds himself flat on his back before he can so much as draw breath to speak again. It's only then that the sting in his leg blossoms into a tangible kind of pain: Masamune is surgically sharp, dealing death-blows in quick flits that seem like mere scratches before yawning dark and red, and he pulls in a short breath when that purposefully placed knee grinds the wound down into he ground. That would have been enough, Yazoo thinks, to subdue him into good behaviour, but when has "enough" ever been something that his brother would pursue?
He gives him more. That cold sliver of steel sinks into the floor and Yazoo feels his body fall perfectly still, because Sephiroth is right. One twist of the blade is all it would take. A slight shift in the balance of his weight would be Yazoo's end, his throat open and his lifeblood draining at another of Sephiroth's idle whims. It disarms him more than expected: slowly, he releases the breath he hadn't realised sat stuck in his throat, his pupils dark and wide as Sephiroth begins to ease the zip of his leathers open. )
... Do you think you could?
( Yazoo isn't sure he wants to know for certain. Cool air slips under his leathers and peaks his nipples into raspberry-pink little nubs, which stand out starkly against the pale curves of his torso revealed by the zip-tag's process. )
Would it hurt you to get rid of us?
( He suspects it wouldn't. He suspects Sephiroth could just as easily dispatch them as he could anyone else in his way; that if it weren't for Mother, he might have done it when his Remnants first started to bite at the hand that feeds them. Masamune quivers by his throat. Yazoo tilts his chin up to bare further it as he holds his brother's gaze, heat stirring between his legs to push against the snug stretch of his trousers. )
[What a notion, so strange that it almost feels foreign on his tongue. What can hurt him any longer, so detached from the mortal chassis he was once chained to? Perhaps he can be beaten back, or banished into the veins of the Planet, or dispersed in a coil of black feathers, wheeling into Gaia’s heart — but to hurt something is to find its weak spot and impale a knife through the vulnerability, and Sephiroth is too nebulous and omnipresent for anyone to locate that crux, that core.
Perhaps he no longer has one, just a dark thing that winds through the Lifestream, a god choking back life for the sake of Mother, and every fragment of weakness has long been shucked off. Perhaps Yazoo is just one of them, and to push his neck against Masamune would make him stronger for the loss.
Maybe.
But in this moment, trailing the curve of his exposed neck, watching his leathers loosen around his flesh like an unfurling flower as the zipper clacks lower, he cannot say that Yazoo is anything lesser than precious to him. His cells sing to his own, imploring closeness, to be subsumed, and while that doesn’t save him from the danger of neighboring steel, it ensures that Sephiroth’s focus remains fixed squarely on his brother. His promise will be fulfilled, even if obedience has to be bought with a pint of blood.]
You’re free to test the limits of my mercy, if you wish to know.
[Of course he’ll not unspool the risk by offering confirmation or denial. He shouldn’t have to, and Masamune seems to shine brighter as if to remind him.
Yazoo’s coat is undone down the middle, exposing the canvas of his unmarred skin. Sephiroth’s palm splays against his abdomen, sending electric warmth spinning in his stomach; soon, his wandering touch meanders further downwards, and deft fingers unfasten the workings of his trousers, allowing him leeway to slip in.
The flat of his palm runs smoothly against Yazoo’s cock, his fingers half-coiling around the length of it. Just a maliciously teasing touch, the promise of more, and his half-lidded look never leaves his face.]
You can come only when I tell you that I allow it, and not a moment before. My will overrides your own. Do you understand, Yazoo?
[Of course he does. But he wants to hear the puling reply.]
no subject
[Yazoo might only be a facet of himself, made manifest, but he is still so much greater than the humans who tread the face of Gaia like an encroaching plague. Sephiroth might not ever look upon the Remnant the same way Reno does, but who does he ever grant that kind of favor to? Even Cloud is given a glimmer of wretched hate in his undying obsession for him.]
Do not pretend that he could satisfy you in ways that I could not. That’s an offense on its own.
no subject
( But he hasn't, and in truth? Yazoo hasn't decided whether he ever will—which is in no small part because he already suspects Sephiroth's claim to be true. Reno yearns for what he can't have. Giving it to him would be to break his hold on him, and Yazoo likes being able to press this small advantage. )
I will concede that you likely have the ability to satisfy me. It simply didn't occur to me that you might have the desire to.
no subject
He knows this because he, too, feels similarly.]
And what of you? Would you desire that?
no subject
( In this, Yazoo knows he can't lie. Something dark and heated stirs low in his belly as he considers the question, because if Sephiroth fucks like he fights? He could be everything Yazoo wants from a partner—everything and more. )
Yes. I would.
( But he has a question. )
Did I displease you in selecting him before coming to you?
no subject
[But rarely is Sephiroth so conciliatory, and so—]
I said you need only ask. So ask me.
no subject
Fine.
Will you please fuck me?
well this Went Places, I’m sorry lmao
Yes.
Tell me where you are.
[This is just a thinly-veiled contrivance of a request. He could find Yazoo anywhere on Gaia, manifest himself before him as a storm or a silent whisper. But even he can play at courtesy when it amuses him.]
L m a o I love that we're this way
smh at us.... i'm just gonna wing it
A warehouse nestled along the outskirts of a piecemeal city isn’t the most alluring prospect, but Sephiroth doesn’t care much for ugly glamour of the population’s attempts to right themselves in a post-Meteorfall world. The building is abandoned and decrepit, save for the scant telltale signs of half-lives making this their home and headquarters, and the connection to those shards of himself here is strong, secure. The air, stringent as it is tangible, grows thick and cloying; the atmosphere pressurizes, tightens as though becoming a cord pulled apart at both ends, and when reality feels as though it might snap in two—
Sephiroth appears where Yazoo has holed himself away, his footsteps cat-quiet, his roving gaze to match. Silver sways with each step, trailing danger behind him — so, too, is Masamune gripped in the smooth leathers of his left hand, the steel a gentle crescent shimmer in the pallid light. A promise, a threat, an instrument to prove that subduing and seduction can exist in the same breath, a violent part of himself that manifests wherever he appears; perhaps all of the above.
It shines like crystal as he approaches, and his grin is too softly sharp to be kind.]
I can already taste your anticipation.
[Down to his core, buzzing between the empty spaces of every atom in his frame — and Yazoo’s, too, that anticipatory ardor so prevalent that if Sephiroth reached out and ripped it from the Remnant’s spine, it would be shaped just like him.]
Hollow laughter, stares at hands
( The message goes unanswered, as Yazoo expected. It doesn't stop him from watching his phone for a few long moments as he tries to rationalise what has just happened—tries to understand why now, why Sephiroth would smartly remove Reno from the picture and place himself in his stead. Possessiveness, perhaps? He's gone to lengths to ensure that all three of his Remnants understand their place in this withered world: they may have developed their own personalities, yes, but they are little more than instruments of his will, and there's every chance he simply finds the idea of someone else interfering with his belongings somewhat distasteful.
There's also the possibility that Yazoo simply wounded his pride in choosing Reno. Is this simply a way for Sephiroth to prove that even in this he is superior? That his reach extends beyond the battlefield and the heavens to deep, shattering bursts of pleasure? Yazoo's pulse quickens at the thought, feeling a strange, previously untapped curl of dark want beginning to stir at the base of his spine—
But then the air begins to change. He feels it in a shiver of gooseflesh that pours itself over his shoulders, his hips, his thighs, pulling every atom of his being to attention as Sephiroth bends the planet around himself yet again. Stillness holds Yazoo in place when he manifests before him. For one icy second he thinks he might hate him almost as much as he aches to bring their cells together again—hates his beauty, his strength, his unshakeable place as Mother's favoured son—but that bitter feeling melts into something familiar with each whisper-step of his approach.
Maybe it isn't hate. Maybe it's love—a word that has a slightly different meaning to the Remnants than it might anyone else on Gaia. For Yazoo love can be distilled into three things: obsession, purpose, and the bone-deep need to please. Bright eyes slide along Masamune, skim over his chest, then lift to meet a matching malachite gaze, and Yazoo feels the barest hint of a smirk settling into the corner of his lips. )
Then I won't need to flatter you with words.
( He tilts his head. Whatever attraction he'd had to Sephiroth beforehand seems somehow amplified in his presence, thrumming and pulsing thick between them as he takes a playful step back. The Turk? Already forgotten. Yazoo can already feel his body reaching for Sephiroth's the way it couldn't for anyone else—not even Mother—and he exhales softly as he feels his body beginning to flush. )
Shall I tell you what I wanted him to do to me?
( There's velvet-soft suggestion in his voice, and the slits of his pupils swallow up more green with darkness. )
How I wanted him to touch me?
no subject
Yet he had crafted them as separate from one another, all the same — three brothers who represented incomplete pieces of himself, made deadly and beautiful. Time, distance, and conscious awareness had placed wants and desires into their grasping hands, and the need to exist in the world, rather than merely stand at ready to be deployed, was the only natural result. Sephiroth knows that his authority over them is absolute, that if he commands they shatter themselves into a thousand pieces, he will find them broken and at his feet in his next breath. But for all else in-between, they are not so easily cowed — like children with restless brambles in their veins, nipping at his bootheels when he deigns to be present, asking for more, give them something more.
They might seek it elsewhere. They might find satisfaction in the transient things and little people all around them, but in the end, they would be reminded that Sephiroth should be the only presence that crowds their minds when the day is at its close.
For there are pieces of the man that even the Lifestream could not dilute. His pride, his possessiveness, his predilection towards obsession. And when Yazoo speaks of the Turk and all he can offer, it makes him want to gut the redhead as much as it amuses him. A fragment of himself, desiring a loyal Shinra dog? It connects Sephiroth back to an old origin point from a life long discarded and mostly forgotten, and that is both an offense to be corrected as much as it is an irony that makes him grin wider.
Yazoo steps away, but the gesture is the same as pulling a rubber band back too far. Their anchored connection elasticizes tightly, decrying any distance, and Sephiroth simply steps forward in turn. The length of his blade sweeps away the security that space could have provided with anyone else, but this is nothing revelatory.]
Yes.
[—is his reply, plain and cool. His gaze crawls along the lithe curvatures of Yazoo’s form, but ultimately settles on his face.]
Tell me what you fantasized. How you hoped he would please you.
[Let him turn it all inside-out.]
no subject
( Occasionally, Yazoo wonders whether some part of him pushes at Sephiroth for the sole purpose of getting to feel. He doesn't doubt that people consider him the most emotionally distant remnant but he would beg to disagree: Yazoo simply knows what is and isn't worth his time and energy. Where Kadaj has his volatile temper and Loz has an almost child-like sensitivity, Yazoo's waters are calm, deep, and difficult to stir. It takes a lot to pull any kind of emotion from him. Why? Because human affairs are rarely worth the trouble, which manifests in a kind of unaffected aloofness that sets him apart from his brothers.
What does matter is this. The mako-bright crackle of energy between them as Yazoo dances back, as Sephiroth presses forwards, catching his breath in his throat and setting his pulse fluttering in the hollow of his throat. It's a dangerous game to play with the most deadly creature to set foot on Gaia since their Mother—but in the same way that Sephiroth can reach into him, Yazoo can feel the prickle of his connection with Sephiroth. The edges of their game are sharp, but they wouldn't be here if they didn't sense the mutual opportunity in it. )
I wanted to fight him.
( Yazoo says easily, thick lashes dipping low over his eyes. )
He gives me everything when he's trying to kill me. I wanted to feel that while he was fucking me.
( His smirk widens just a fraction. Yazoo isn't confined by the idea of normal and abnormal desires: in truth he simply doesn't have enough experience of society to understand that what he wants might be considered strange to some, not least because "erotic preferences" weren't really part of what Sephiroth wrought into being within the Lifestream. Dark impulses are simply impulses. Strange arousal is simply arousal. Yazoo may be the quietest remnant, but nothing excites him more than the glint of real danger and a pair of heated eyes.
His gaze drifts to Masamune for a second time. )
He would have enjoyed trying to make me beg for it. I wanted him to hold me down—to push me into the wall and give me bruises to remember him by, if he could manage it.
( Yazoo finds Sephiroth's eyes. Reno may have been able to grapple him, but even he has to admit that it's unlikely he'd have been able to make him really feel it. That, at the very least, Sephiroth will undoubtedly excel in, and a shiver runs the length of his spine as he imagines the hand holding Masamune clutching at the back of his neck. )
I wanted to feel like I was falling apart on his cock.
no subject
No one else could do it better, more perfectly, than him.
The thought is enough to make a writhing warmth twitch at the base of his belly, and Masamune smiles with the same sloping curvature as the one spread across Sephiroth’s features.]
Very appeasing of you, to offer yourself as an outlet for someone else’s wild pleasures. But he would never be able to satisfy you in that way.
[Sephiroth’s teeth are a perfect row of white, revealed for a fleeting moment as he gently bites and pulls at the leather fingertips of his right glove, slipping it off and dropping it to the ground like the skin of a dead animal. Masamune exchanges hands, and he grants the same treatment to his left, revealing slender fingers that belie his ability to break so much and so many in his palm.
He crosses the electric space between them, those same fingers reaching out to cup just beneath the bone of Yazoo’s jawline, the jolt of their connection heady. He can sense the tempo of his pulse tapping beneath warm skin.]
Yet I can. Would you struggle against me, Yazoo? [Masamune seems to shine all-too-bright.] I can make any conflict between us sing in ways you’ve never experienced before.
no subject
( It doesn't occur to him that Sephiroth's intention might be to mock him until after he's said his piece. Yazoo can see that he's smiling—a gentle, dangerous thing that offers little insight into what he's thinking—but other than that? He simply listens, until the dark thread of his fantasies are completely unspooled between them. It's another way in, Yazoo realises. Another weakness he's offered up in his eagerness, his need to be dismantled now something that Sephiroth could use against him if he so chose to. It would be so easy for him to tuck that information away with a chilled comment, for him to dismiss himself from Yazoo's presence with a curling smirk—
But he doesn't. A sliver of light gleams along Masamune's length and Sephiroth speaks, shows his teeth, then slowly removes the wrap of his gloves to leave his hands strangely, almost intimately bare.
Not mocking, then. Yazoo feels himself shiver with bright anticipation when he closes the distance between them, the charged weight in the air pressing heavier, heavier, until his palm touches the curve of his cheek. The throb of his pulse quickens in every cell of his body to the point where it's very nearly a distraction, but then he supposes there's nothing in creation that could actually draw his attention away from Sephiroth in this moment. )
Yes. Until the pleasure of submission overtook the pleasure of the struggle.
( He turns his head just enough to press his cheek against Sephiroth's palm—the gesture perverse in its tenderness considering the nature of his desires. With skin touching skin Yazoo feels their connection taken on a dimension he hasn't experienced before: he can feel Sephiroth, can feel the parts upon which he himself was modelled as well as the pieces that could make him whole. It's a stark reminder that he was designed to be incomplete, and that letting Sephiroth sink himself inside him might be as close to to complete as he ever gets.
Yazoo blinks slowly, and a hand reaches up to gently curl over the other man's wrist. )
I need it.
( I need you, he doesn't say, if only because both of them already know. )
no subject
Then I will grant you what you want.
[—drop.]
What you need.
[He is not kind enough to offer a more generous preamble, and the effort would be wasted on him, anyhow — for Yazoo yearns for danger and the trigger-fire impulses of violence, and Sephiroth will keep his promise by granting it to him wholly.
His touch twists into a vice-grip, his long fingers lowering just enough to clench hard around the other’s throat, and Sephiroth presses his advantage to twist on his heel in a half-turn, propelling Yazoo forward and along as if he were made of rags, or air, or something so delicate that every impulse would dictate that he break it.
Sephiroth slams his back into the adjacent wall, and the entire warehouse groans in protest, low and mourning. What follows is the telltale sound of Masamune being brandished — that crystal reverb, melodious — and a glint of silver steel as the upper portion embeds itself in the plaster, while the rest is balanced askew and whisper-close to Yazoo’s form. From diagonal across the neck, close enough to kiss the clavicle, running past the chest, all the way down to where Sephiroth grips its hilt near the hip.
His eyes are the embers of a fire, lit brightly; his slit pupils lend to the imagery of a predator about to consume its prey whole. And Sephiroth, he only grins.]
Fight me. Struggle against me. I want to see you vying for control under my touch.
[Blessedly, his grip around Yazoo's neck relaxes, but only to thumb across his jaw again, then roughly against his bottom lip. The tip of Sephiroth’s boot knocks the spread of Yazoo’s feet evenly apart, skewing his balance into a tightrope walk of either remaining pressed against the wall or falling onto his blade.]
Don’t disappoint me, brother.
no subject
( The force with which Yazoo is crushed into the wall is enough to separate plaster from brickwork. It drifts to the floor in thin streams as he fights to regain the breath punched out of him: Sephiroth is stronger than all three of his remnants, but it would take more than that to properly incapacitate any of them. Still, it's enough to stun him into inaction as Masamune glides between them and sinks into the wall, the bright call of the blade more serene than it has any right to be. Yazoo lifts his chin instinctively, as much a small act of defiance as it is an attempt to keep the tender skin of his throat away from the blade.
Pulling in a breath of air comes a little easier when Sephiroth loosens his grip on his throat. Committed to this lesson he looks feral—a dangerous, wild thing bred for despair—and when he shows his teeth Yazoo feels the very stuff that makes him sing out for him. The thumb to his bottom lip colours the moment with a suggestive hue, and Yazoo waits for the pad to rub over the fullest part before catching it in a sharp bite.
It's more a mischievous nudge than intent to cause harm, but no less viper-quick for it. )
Without a weapon?
( Slender fingers move to flex and curl as he readies himself to fight. He shifts his weight back to the wall when Sephiroth kicks his legs open, immediately forcing him onto the back foot, and feels the coil of tension between them twist that bit tighter as they hold each other's gaze. Fine. Yazoo can do this unarmed. He has no intention of letting those goading words—don't disappoint me, brother—actually come to pass.
That it will be more a heated struggle than a fight is obvious. Yazoo is effectively pinned in place but he still has the use of his hands, which immediately come up to fist in the front of Sephiroth's long duster and pull him in even closer. Masamune gleams pale between them, and in pulling him close Yazoo hopes to rob him of the ability to manoeuvre it further. It's risky: Sephiroth could simply cut through the plaster and set the blade into his skin, but with any luck it'll give him the half heartbeat he needs to squirm from the other man's grasp.
Yazoo attempts to slip free quickly, but whether he's fast enough remains to be seen. With any luck he won't end up having to explain to their brothers why Sephiroth put him through a wall and compromised the building. )
no subject
And tooth and claw, it is — the sting of a bite across the knuckle of his thumb, the flash of defiance as green irises meet green. Sephiroth thinks he should pry his brother's jaw open and find a far better use for the soft insides of his mouth, but that's a notion better suited for when obedience is torn from his spine. For now, the other's fingers fist into the leathers of his coat, pushing him forward to lessen any lingering degree of breathing room.
The steel of his own sword is but a knife's edge away from his own body, sparking further amusement in Sephiroth's crescent grin. It's simple enough to brace his knee against the wall to keep balance, and push Masamune deeper into the plaster, causing it to cut in a perfect line that runs the length of the weapon. It chases Yazoo's body beneath it, perilously, but he escapes its bite by a hair's breadth.
Yazoo had always been so quick on his feet, like moonlight slipping away. Sephiroth turns his head to look at him with satisfaction, while the rest of his frame wrenches Masamune free from the wall.]
Good.
[He moves towards him, then, each step the feeling of a portent rising like a storm.]
But how long can you keep slipping away? Why don't you bite back a second time?
[He can indulge him the offensive. It's like inviting him straight into the open maw of a monster, but what better sacrifice is there to make?]
no subject
( The wall cracks again when Sephiroth pulls his blade free. This is what he asked for, isn't it? A delicious thrill of heat runs the length of Yazoo's spine to puddle low at the very base: his brother is perfect destruction, capable of bringing ruin to all he touches with both a feather-soft brush or the full force of his swing. Dark heat curls into his belly at the thought of it: it's parasitic, almost, the way Yazoo wants to soak up his greatness, but then he supposes it's only natural for him to be drawn towards everything he could have been.
Sephiroth was right. Reno wouldn't have been able to give him even a fraction of what he craves. )
Your mistake is assuming slipping away is all I plan to do.
( Yazoo doesn't offer more. He cuts the through the air like the flit of a dagger, slim and sharp and silver-bright, one hand immediately going for Sephiroth's throat in a mirror-image of how he'd slammed him against the wall. While he knows he wouldn't be able to execute such an attack on his brother there's the chance it'll stall him for a moment, which gives him a split second to pull back a fist which he aims at the elegant slope of his jaw.
Fighting like this doesn't come naturally to Yazoo. Sephiroth wants his teeth and claws, so teeth and claws it is, but hard-hitting punches and close-range viciousness are his brothers' domain. He excels in ranged attacks, acrobatics, and dipping in and out to strike, but he supposes there's something to be said for holding his quarry in place while beating the shape of his fist into its face.
Something to try on someone else, another time. They both know how this will end, and anticipation is already crackling heavy across Yazoo's skin as he crowds Sephiroth's space. )
no subject
Sephiroth allows the first grappling reach to make a hard purchase, but refuses the fist following it up, countering with a lift of his free forearm to knock it aside. This close, their bodies are already so alight with buzzing heat, and perhaps it isn’t so surprising that Yazoo had attacked in a way that mimicked his own, as though he should always seek to merge into him through emulation, an offered flattery made of violence.
It’s titillating in a darkly satisfying way, the thought of receiving him whole coiling pleasurably around his nerves, drifting down his spine, warm and welcome. Sephiroth tilts his chin up to better offer the tract of soft flesh that is his neck; just a tease of that bobbing Adam's apple, because he intends to tear it away in the next second, humming an amused sound that Yazoo can likely feel beneath his fingertips.
His free hand lashes out to grab him so hard by the shoulder that his brother’s bones might groan in protest, and the subsequent attempt to push him down is paired with Sephiroth's knee jutting upwards. The intent is to slam the angle straight into his middle, to better encourage him to double over and be brought to heel on the ground.]
Do you also plan to kneel?
no subject
( That he's allowed to hold onto Sephiroth's neck for as long as he is comes as a surprise to Yazoo, but having his fist knocked back is expected. There's no doubt that his brother is toying with him: Sephiroth has always enjoyed giving him an inch just to watch him try to take a mile, only to snatch it away with little more than an afterthought of effort. To call it infuriating would be an understatement. White-hot irritation lances through Yazoo at the ease with which Sephiroth is able to control their fight—a burst of real spite muddling itself in with his urge to have obedience pushed into him by force. When he offers his throat Yazoo knows he's being mocked, tries to tighten his grip just for some kind of reaction—
But then Sephiroth's hand comes down on his shoulder, and Yazoo feels his bones shift and grind under his touch. Pain flits across him in a short gust of breath, a slightly narrowing of his eyes even as black pupils draw in to tight slits, but there's no time for him to twist into a response. Sephiroth pushes him down onto the jut of his knee and pulls the air from his lungs a second time, leaving Yazoo winded and hunched with his face little more than a hair's breadth from his brother's crotch.
If he were Loz or Kadaj he might think to headbutt him. Instead, Yazoo drags in a rough breath before tilting his face up to Sephiroth's, green eyes burning with a heady combination of anger, admiration, and arousal. He shivers a little where he's knelt: one knee digs into the ground beneath them but he refuses to lower the other, and this time when he smirks he offers fangs of his own. )
... Not entirely.
( Yazoo rolls his shoulder, struggling against his brother's grip to test the strength of his hold. His bones complain again but this time he bites back any show of pain, his fists curling into Sephiroth's leathers as he tries to haul himself up. A bolt of want strikes low in his gut as he realises he could be backhanded, brutally thrown, perhaps even hauled up by his hair, and that sultry heat licks higher with every second that drags between them. )
no subject
Yazoo is one such lesser being. A shard broken off from the whole. But Sephiroth meets his eyes again, rebellion and arousal and frustration ignited behind that eerie emerald hue, clenching his hands into Sephiroth’s leathers, and what a glorious visage it is to see. He should own that, too, he thinks. Steal that expression from his fine features, stow it away in his heated core, think about how poorly it served his brother while he fucks him until he’s all used up.
It makes him release Yazoo’s shoulder so that he might rise a few inches, only to fulfill one of the other’s errant fantasies: he vice-grips into his hair, locks of silver spilling between his fingers like liquid, and pulls him up so hard that he would have no choice but to stand to his full height. It’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?
Sephiroth leans in just enough to ensure his lips brush against Yazoo’s skin, his timbre whisper smooth and coiling fondly around his ear.]
That look on your face belongs to me, too.
[And just as he gives, he takes away. His brother is allowed to rise, only if he has forced to fall again — an inevitability, driven home by both his will and the keen, sudden edge of Masamune.
His sword, which had been blessedly idle as he was grappled against, now slides into use. Sephiroth lowers it at just the perfect angle to try to run its sting across Yazoo’s leg as he balances him up by his hair, easy as you please.]
On the ground. Crumple for me.
no subject
( Yazoo's lips part on a silent yelp when Sephiroth hauls him up by his hair, a twist of pain flitting across his features for half a heartbeat as he rises onto the balls of his feet. That he's exhilarated is evident in the way his lips curve up throughout, although when soft lips touch his skin in a whisper of words it shivers to something slack. Yazoo knows, he knows that the only thing worse than Sephiroth's showmanship is when he reels it back, when he becomes quiet, because that is the part of himself that he gifted to Yazoo. It's the part that makes it hard for people to meet his eyes, and leaves their skin rippling with a gooseflesh of fear.
Used against him, it's almost torturously erotic.
Sephiroth reminds them they're not alone a moment later. Masamune carries a weighty presence on its own: Yazoo's eyes widen at the sting as he finds that this time he has to obey—that it feels more like a compulsion than a choice—his knees weak and his flush of colour nothing to do with exertion.
Yazoo crumples. This time when he hits the ground dust rises around both of his knees, one hand thrown out to steady himself in an attempt to save what little face he can. In many ways this isn't all that different to when they spar: those fights usually last longer, it's true, possibly because they've never been coloured dark with want before, and without his weapon there's only so much he can do against such an unstoppable force.
Silence stretches between them for a moment. Yazoo wets his lips with a sliver of pink and glances up again, hungry this time. )
... You should have let me have my gun.
no subject
[—is his cool reply, fingers loosening almost affectionately in Yazoo’s hair as he falls before him. The edge of Masamune is slick and glossy where it had slid across his brother’s leg, a red, striking contrast against the dark colors that frame them both so well. Sephiroth tilts his head to allow the notion to settle, strands of silver slipping over his pauldrons, hanging like spider’s silk, and for a moment his danger is interlaced with a predator’s playfulness, eyes alight with boundless potential.
He is upon him in the next second, more presence than person. Limitless in the way his form sweeps over Yazoo’s, too much all at once, just the sensation of a forceful hand pushing him hard onto his back, a knee pressed into his brother’s fresh wound — to ensure pain coupling with mounting want — and green eyes boring down at him, knifing through him. Silver hair spooling at the curve of his shoulders.
And the awful sound of Masamune’s tip piercing the floor scant centimeters from Yazoo’s neck, grinding its way into the ground with unreal ease. The steel is hypnotic as it glides in so deeply that Sephiroth’s weight is balanced between his grip on its hilt and the contact forced against his brother’s body.]
It would be so easy for my blade to claim your neck like this. Just the slightest of effort.
[His intonation has dipped low, belligerent, self-indulgent, darkly hungry. His hand glides upwards, gripping the zipper at Yazoo’s collar between forefinger and thumb.]
You would obey me to avoid such a fate.
[A slow tug downwards.]
no subject
( Sephiroth overcomes him like the tide—just as elemental, just as unstoppable—and Yazoo finds himself flat on his back before he can so much as draw breath to speak again. It's only then that the sting in his leg blossoms into a tangible kind of pain: Masamune is surgically sharp, dealing death-blows in quick flits that seem like mere scratches before yawning dark and red, and he pulls in a short breath when that purposefully placed knee grinds the wound down into he ground. That would have been enough, Yazoo thinks, to subdue him into good behaviour, but when has "enough" ever been something that his brother would pursue?
He gives him more. That cold sliver of steel sinks into the floor and Yazoo feels his body fall perfectly still, because Sephiroth is right. One twist of the blade is all it would take. A slight shift in the balance of his weight would be Yazoo's end, his throat open and his lifeblood draining at another of Sephiroth's idle whims. It disarms him more than expected: slowly, he releases the breath he hadn't realised sat stuck in his throat, his pupils dark and wide as Sephiroth begins to ease the zip of his leathers open. )
... Do you think you could?
( Yazoo isn't sure he wants to know for certain. Cool air slips under his leathers and peaks his nipples into raspberry-pink little nubs, which stand out starkly against the pale curves of his torso revealed by the zip-tag's process. )
Would it hurt you to get rid of us?
( He suspects it wouldn't. He suspects Sephiroth could just as easily dispatch them as he could anyone else in his way; that if it weren't for Mother, he might have done it when his Remnants first started to bite at the hand that feeds them. Masamune quivers by his throat. Yazoo tilts his chin up to bare further it as he holds his brother's gaze, heat stirring between his legs to push against the snug stretch of his trousers. )
no subject
[What a notion, so strange that it almost feels foreign on his tongue. What can hurt him any longer, so detached from the mortal chassis he was once chained to? Perhaps he can be beaten back, or banished into the veins of the Planet, or dispersed in a coil of black feathers, wheeling into Gaia’s heart — but to hurt something is to find its weak spot and impale a knife through the vulnerability, and Sephiroth is too nebulous and omnipresent for anyone to locate that crux, that core.
Perhaps he no longer has one, just a dark thing that winds through the Lifestream, a god choking back life for the sake of Mother, and every fragment of weakness has long been shucked off. Perhaps Yazoo is just one of them, and to push his neck against Masamune would make him stronger for the loss.
Maybe.
But in this moment, trailing the curve of his exposed neck, watching his leathers loosen around his flesh like an unfurling flower as the zipper clacks lower, he cannot say that Yazoo is anything lesser than precious to him. His cells sing to his own, imploring closeness, to be subsumed, and while that doesn’t save him from the danger of neighboring steel, it ensures that Sephiroth’s focus remains fixed squarely on his brother. His promise will be fulfilled, even if obedience has to be bought with a pint of blood.]
You’re free to test the limits of my mercy, if you wish to know.
[Of course he’ll not unspool the risk by offering confirmation or denial. He shouldn’t have to, and Masamune seems to shine brighter as if to remind him.
Yazoo’s coat is undone down the middle, exposing the canvas of his unmarred skin. Sephiroth’s palm splays against his abdomen, sending electric warmth spinning in his stomach; soon, his wandering touch meanders further downwards, and deft fingers unfasten the workings of his trousers, allowing him leeway to slip in.
The flat of his palm runs smoothly against Yazoo’s cock, his fingers half-coiling around the length of it. Just a maliciously teasing touch, the promise of more, and his half-lidded look never leaves his face.]
You can come only when I tell you that I allow it, and not a moment before. My will overrides your own. Do you understand, Yazoo?
[Of course he does. But he wants to hear the puling reply.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)