[We are the night.] (1/1)
Title: We are the night.
Characters Featured: Minamoto no Masaya.Â
Class: Preservationist, Delusian. (Negative path.)Â
Timeline: Â Canon, backstory.Â
Warnings: Â Drug use, hardcore sex, murder. Â NSFW.
The stench of rotting eggs was dense enough to choke on.  It invaded Masaya’s nostrils as he jerked back to life and began the slow, gradual process of taking stock of his bleary surroundings.  Men’s toilets - oh, right, right.  And he had the junky sweats too, all clammy and grey, pores weeping the sickly stuff.  The drug was still in his inhuman system; he could feel it coursing through his body, snaking a delirious path up to his skull.  He'd snorted more snow in a single sitting than any human could ever hope to survive, but thankfully, the fear of never waking up from an overdose wasn't an issue for someone of his making. The sharp, overhanging lights burned the edges of his vision like so much frying bacon, sizzling loudly in his head - all grease and oil and salty fumes.  Squinting through the hanging curtain of his own stringy hair, Masaya scanned the cesspool of toilet door graffiti until it became little more than a mass of squiggles and shouted demands.
-- GO FUCK YOURSELF -- SIT ON IT. -- PRAY FOR ALL THE WET SHITS IN THE WORLD. He brought his palms together and giggled.  Praise the Lord.  Abruptly, something dripped out from beneath him.  He blinked, startled, and looked down.  Slumped on a fucking toilet seat with his black jeans puddled around his ankles, too.  That’s right.  Getting gangfucked unconscious in some shit-smeared toilet on Earth not just once, but twice on Collection Day had to be some sort of record for his kind.  Smirking, he rolled his shoulders and touched the bruise pulsing at his temple, several other delicate points on his body protesting from overuse. Flashes of being slapped around rose up behind his eyes just then.  His own long, pianist’s fingers scrabbling for some kind of handhold while four jerk-offs bent him over, the wet, routine thunk of heavy balls meeting flesh over and over. That gorilla of an asshole had knocked him out after they thought they’d used him all up.  He’d bled, even.  A well of irritation bubbled up in Masaya when he clenched a little and felt another drip-drip, this time dryer than before, like a scab shifting loose. He’d have to wait a little longer here for his ruined body to catch up.  He raked a hand through his tangled hair and smacked his lips.  Moisture would’ve helped, but he was too tired to move. “Hey,” Masaya croaked, hoping to catch the ear of anyone willing to listen.  He was having a hard time keeping his head up, so he let it hang low and heavy between his shoulders, staring at his bruised thighs while he waited. “Time is it?” he finally tried again when he got no answer.  If another minute or two couldn’t heal his body completely, he’d just have to take his chances.  Clock was ticking. “Aw, fuck if I know,” came a low, hasty growl from the toilet stall on his right.  It was followed by a whimpering yelp and a sloppy sound that had Masaya laughing, hoarse and hysterical.  He was still laughing when another voice bubbled up beneath the rougher one, quiet and plaintive and blissfully needy, and it was only when he heard, 'Yeah, you want this cock?' that his laughter faded into something a little more wicked.  “Hey,” he called out again, wearing a grin as cold and sharp as a blade’s edge.  There was a bang, like a punch to the shared wall next to him, and then the shushing sound of rustling clothing.  “Piss off.” Not so friendly anymore, huh.  Masaya shrugged and braced his hand against the wall, straining as he pulled himself to his feet.  It wasn’t a fun affair, having to tug his jeans back up, but soon enough he was drinking from one of the rusted sinks and feeling whole again.  Straightening up, he paused to look at himself in the cracked mirror and smile.  He looked like a used up whore.  He smeared the back of his hand across his nostrils and struck a little pose. Then he left the men’s toilets to the sound of incoherent moaning - the sort that suggested he hadn’t been the only one dancing on thin ice tonight.  He’d put big money on an overdose, and soon. Idly, Masaya wondered which of them it would be as he sauntered out into the club crowd.  He’d definitely felt at least one of their lives rearing up to slip away in the next hour or so, and he would’ve liked to stick around and watch.  Sadly, duty called. The music swept him up, carrying him forward into a sea of gyrating, rolling bodies.  Acid, ecstasy, the occasional shroom or two -- he felt the drugs in their systems just as keenly as he felt the head-splitting dubstep beat.  Since the club was too dark to trust his eyes anymore he closed them and sank away into the deep, wiry arms rising high over his head with all the elegance of a ballerina. And when a stray hand caught and reeled him in, Masaya obediently leaned back into the cradle of an impressive set of breasts, shamelessly rolling against her persistent hips without a care in the world.   When he felt her wet lips close over a tendon in his neck, he instantly tilted his head to accommodate her seeking tongue, content to let her suck the glistening salt from his throat until he sensed his mark in the crowd. Then Masaya felt him, his very reason for being here, like a well-placed kick to the back of his head, urgent and boiling on acid.  His mark wasn’t far, maybe ten people away, but he was charging like a freight train and mere minutes away from going off the tracks.  He had to hurry. Masaya wasn’t like the others, no; he was special.  He had a keen, destructive sense of when his mark - his Vessel - would expire, and after centuries in the business, he’d never been wrong.  So he liked to play a while before he got the job done - sometimes with his mark, sometimes with total strangers.  And sure, maybe sometimes he played a little too hard and someone died who wasn’t meant to, but he liked to think that the Twins looked the other way because he was just that fucking good.  The Grace he brought them was always top quality.  So it was only fair that someone pay a high enough price for it, right? Grinding feverishly, Masaya turned his head and nuzzled the woman’s lank blond hair with his nose. Instantly, she lifted her mouth for a kiss, which he gave her without hesitation.  Masaya nibbled and sucked, his tongue snaking past her lips for a quick taste of chemicals before he pulled away.  “Woman,” he smiled darkly, “You just got lucky.” Then he planted a kiss on her nose and shoved away from her grasp, floating through the crowd like an angel. Masaya found his mark with his head in his hands, speaking fast in what sounded like tongues, but what was, more than likely, simple jibberish.  Still, Masaya laughed as he reached up and pulled his Vessel’s hands away from his meaty red face.  The whites around the man’s eyes were blazing with bursting blood vessels, but the irises were a clean and crystal blue.  “Fucking skinny Jap,” the guy blurted, staring up at him in shock.  “We bombed your ass, Hiroshima motherfucker -... oh God, oh God, what’s happening to me --?” Masaya hushed him and hugged his large, hulking body oh-so-close.  “Aw, Paulie boy.  Aw, my baby.  What did you do?”  Cooing and stroking Paulie’s bald, sweaty head, he shushed him some more.  “You freebased, didn’t you?  I thought I told you not to do that.” Paulie mumbled something and began to cry then, big fat tears squeezing out between his eyelashes. “Come on, Big Man,” Masaya sighed.  He helped him up.  “Let’s get you home.” A moment later saw him kicking the side door of the club open and shoving Paulie out into the crisp chill of the night.  “You smell like... like...” Paulie sniffled, fisting Masaya’s black top.  Disgusted, Masaya wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes as he guided him down the grimy back alley.  “I’m here to save you,” he sang, not bothering to disguise his irritation as he grew more and more annoyed with each step.  This was it, then.  There wouldn’t be any blood tonight, and it was all just such a goddamn disappointment. He’d been working this guy for weeks, and now this is how it would end?  In some shitty back alley, out in the cold when they could’ve had the warmth and last comfort of a bed? Â
Masaya’d had plans, damn it.  Beautiful, selfish plans, and they simply couldn’t happen now.  And all because his stupid bitch of a mark had gotten himself some bad powder from some faceless club dealer.  The careless sack of shit. As he dragged him down the alley, Masaya felt Paulie’s life bubbling away like water kept in a kettle too long.  His life force was practically steaming from his ears like one of those old cartoon villains, only Masaya found none of it funny.  He laughed bitterly anyway. So much for a last ride back in Paulie’s shithole apartment.  So much for making it nice and pleasant for the guy before Masaya gutted him open from groin to sternum, and took his Grace.  It wasn’t like Paulie had much going for him in this thing called life, but at least he’d had a dick Masaya was happy to ride into the early hours of their drug-laced mornings.  And now they couldn’t even have that much on their final night together. But he supposed there were good things about this absolute failure of a Collection Day.  Always a bright side, always a silver lining to be found around the storm clouds pissing all over his once good time. At least he wouldn’t have to clean up much of a mess.  It would be tricky to find a bit of privacy around here and Masaya was too blazed himself to think a concrete plan through, but he was certain he’d be able to Collect without drawing attention.  As a Delusian, he specialized in that heady mixture between pleasure and pain, between physical stimulation and mental fatigue, between the body’s limits and the heights a human could reach when pushed far beyond their own potential.  It was all very poetic, really.  If he’d been a better man he could have worked with the retired Olympians, the ex-athletes just looking for a little more glory.  Even formerly muscled bodies turned soft with fat were extreme works of art.  There were other Delusians who preferred catalysing the death of an athlete to the darker forms of corporeal deterioration. But Masaya wasn’t a better man; he reveled in fear and blood, pain and mania, and found the spice of unspoiled virtue to be thoroughly incompatible with his particular style of Preservation.  There was nothing more disappointing that witnessing true and genuine reform on a dying addict’s departing breath.  At least Paulie P. wouldn’t give him any of that shit when he left this world. As soon as he rounded the corner, Masaya pivoted and put a little more strength into his grip.  He slammed Paulie, a man twice his weight in girth and muscle, up against a decaying brick wall as if he were nothing more than a rag doll.  Then Masaya fixed him with a look that meant it was time for Paulie to wake up to reality, his deep brown irises fading under the swelling black of his pupils.  “Embrace yourself, Paulie Pendleton, and love yourself until the very end.”  It was standard fair, this little speech Masaya liked to give during a Collection.  It wasn’t special -- he only tailored his words for people he’d been working for at least a few months.  “All of this pleasure, all of this disgrace.  These are the gifts your body craves.  Let yourself have them and you'll never be more absolute.” “... it... what? I what? I-I- the brick was bad, I-I need help, I -- ” “Now is the hour of your death,” Masaya sternly explained.  He hoisted Paulie’s chin up with a strong grip and forced the man to look him straight in the eyes.  “Look at me as I take your life.  Do it now.” The change was immediate.  Paulie stiffened and began to convulse, and soon his body was wracked with spasms.  Masaya held him up with a single hand as he began to absorb all of that delicious, perfectly tainted stuff of myth and legend.  The essence of this man’s Grace flooded into Masaya in the form of muddy, whisping smoke and particles that no one else could see, and soon Masaya felt sick with Paulie’s life energy, his blood all but brimming with sin and fever and soiled intention.  Paulie had not been a good man.  Many addicts were, annoyingly enough, but not good ol’ Paulie.  No no. And as Masaya took from him, he absorbed the echo of his life’s memories as well.  And he found that he loved every dirty little secret.  In that moment, he loved Paulie more anyone else ever could.  Masaya moaned, his cock hardening as more and more of the man filtered into him, seeping inside of his cells, blinding his vision.  Paulie filled him until he could see nothing else in his mind’s eye but flashes of Paulie’s disgusting habits, his evil desires, his lust for the most unspeakable horrors.  And as the last remnants of what made Paulie human filtered across his own soul’s barrier, Masaya came so hard in the tight confines of his jeans that his knees nearly buckled under all that wicked pressure. “Fuck me,” Masaya marveled as he stumbled back, overwhelmingly, and unexpectedly satisfied. Instantly, Paulie toppled over onto the ground, dead to any and all resuscitative efforts of this world.  With a blissful sigh, Masaya ran his hands all over himself with such loving care, reveling in the foreign consciousness swimming inside of him.  He adjusted the front of his jeans, tongue snaking out to taste the air, and laughed at the cerebral sensation of Paulie’s fractured sentience butting up against his own. “You were a bad, bad man,” he smirked, nudging Paulie’s corpse with the steel-toed tip of his boot.  He rolled his head to one side and groaned when a loud crick signaled the easing of the muscles there. Later, much later, Paulie’s body would be found with no trace of foul play in sight, his soul still trapped within, but lacking a critical element.  An investigation would still be conducted, however, because a headstrong young detective out to cleanse this city’s nightlife would never fully let this case close. But Masaya wasn’t, and would never be interested in those noble types.  He was more than happy to let the Uthenians have their golden men and women of the world.  He only needed the night to feel valid.
