GC | Chapter 1.7

He put his mouth to the pussy that had finally burst open with fluid, smacked his lips, and drank the juice. The sweet liquid slid down his throat. He also kissed the swollen clit and slipped his tongue into the now gaping back passage, licking thoroughly inside.

He alternated sucking at the lax flesh of the wings as well. With his lips completely covering the hole that had pissed itself and the slit, he murmured with his mouth full, and Shey, despite being unconscious, let out pained cries that somehow still sounded pleased.

Ruslan licked from the top of his fainted lover’s head to his toes, then quenched his throat with the pooled fluid in the fat, swollen pussy. It was a skill of its own, how the rest of him lost weight while these places stayed plump and tempting.

Only after licking the whole body of the lover collapsed in sleep did he finally feel satisfied and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips were shining.

Holding the weakened lover who was crawling and lying listlessly, Ruslan lazily lowered his head. His lips touched the cheek with the flesh grown soft.”

Shey, unconscious as if dead, gave no reaction at all, and it felt as though Ruslan were clutching a corpse. Ruslan straddled Shey’s limp face and shook his cock, which had already spilled its cum.

He slid it back and forth, rubbing it carelessly all over the dead-looking face beneath him. Even with the stench of semen stabbing at his nose, Shey did not react.

After huffing and puffing alone on top of his lover for a long while, Ruslan finally blasted a fresh load over Shey’s face. The thick fluid gushed out in spurts, still so much of it that the white face was thoroughly ruined in cum.

Ruslan immediately cupped Shey’s cheeks with both hands and licked his face in a frenzy. He did not care whether semen got into his mouth or not.

He sucked and kissed those smooth cheeks, then smeared spit over the shut eyelids and eyelashes. He slipped his tongue beneath the lids to lick the eyeballs, shoved Shey’s lips whole into his mouth, and worried them between his teeth. He did not forget the sharply defined nose either, licking it and then pushing his tongue into the nostrils. Even so, his lover did not wake.

Even if he was dead, it was still fine. That was why he dared to be certain.

He really, truly, truly, truly, truly loved Shey.

If he wanted, he could burn this body and bring it to him.

He could even carve off its limbs with his own hands and feed them to his starving belly.

When he stood before Shey, everything that made up Ruslan lost its light and faded.

To Ruslan, who had never believed in gods, Shey had become his one and only god.

If this was not love, then what in the world was love supposed to be?

✿ • ✿ • ✿

Under Ruslan’s touch, Shey finally came to. He opened his half-lidded eyes and glared ahead. At first he did not know what he was looking at, but once his focus settled, he understood. It was Ruslan’s hard chest.

He grumbled at being held through the whole time he had been unconscious, and Ruslan burst out laughing, though he did not loosen his arms.

“If you’re awake, don’t go back to sleep. Play with me and then sleep.”

“Move, will you…”

He was sleepy enough to drop dead, but being prodded at like a cat batting around a mouse only made him irritable. He did not understand why Ruslan insisted on sticking so closely to him in this wide bed, making him lie across his body like some doll.

But Ruslan seemed to know nothing of Shey’s tired mood, and only kissed the dark crown of his head while murmuring, “Do you know? My name was chosen personally by my father and the emperor. They borrowed it from the god of dawn, hope, and war. Around the time I was born, the two of them were almost assassinated.”

Ruslan chuckled.

“Your name came from the god of gold and abundance. It’s not common, is it? Here or in your homeland, black hair and amber eyes are always precious.”

“…”

“Not interested?”

Ruslan grumbled that he had not expected Shey to listen anyway. Just as he had often said, even though they had been born in different countries with different climates and different languages, they had the same hair and eye color. To anyone who did not know them, they looked so alike they could have been brothers.

At one time, Shey had even thought that Ruslan might be obsessed with him because of that rare commonality. Fearing that Ruslan would abandon him if that shared feature disappeared, he had once tried bleaching his hair and even gouging out his own eyes with a knife. The faint traces of that failed attempt still remained around Shey’s eyes as pale scars.

“I love you, Shey.”

As Shey drifted blankly in his past, love scattered at his ear as always. For a confession whispered by that vicious grand duke, it had an almost fairy-tale purity to it. Yet Shey wore an expression that held nothing at all and only lay sprawled across Ruslan’s chest, looking out the window.

It was familiar by now, so Ruslan, as usual, pressed a kiss to the smooth curve of his forehead and chuckled to himself. He was not resentful that Shey still did not understand his heart. He was only frustrated that Shey continued to deny a fate that had been obvious to him at first sight.

People like Shey had always found it strange that there could be any reason beyond appearance to fall in love at first sight with someone from another country whose language they could not even understand, but Ruslan had always been able to say with certainty that it was never something so trivial.

The other half of himself, whom he had not even known existed in the world, had been living in some distant foreign land, and had been born before him at that. Thinking that Shey, too, had likely never known his own other half existed, and had been waiting for Ruslan all this time, made it impossible to say anything lightly, and his throat burned hot with it.

As if to prove his feelings with his own actions, Ruslan learned Shey’s mother tongue and tried to speak with him. No matter how much he coaxed, or threatened, or used violence, Shey, who had been dragged to a foreign country, had no intention of learning the language. Because of that, even the useless servants of the ducal house had been forced to learn the language of the conquered nation.

For Ruslan, who had never cared about anything except cutting people down and crushing them, it was an unusual course of action. Yet most people simply thought it was a passing amusement. But even that prediction was wrong, and Ruslan’s affection for Shey only deepened year after year.

Still, that affection looked less like favoritism than a twisted stubbornness, or perhaps a fixation.

Ruslan did not care how others looked at him as he pulled Shey into his arms again. Though Shey was not exactly small, his body felt light.

“Sleep well, Shey.”

As always, he received no answer, and Ruslan did not even mind as he blew out the candle by the bed with a soft huff.

✿ • ✿ • ✿

A few hours later, Ruslan, half-asleep, caught the faint sound of cloth brushing against cloth. His hearing, sharpened by years in the military, snapped awake, and when he opened his eyes, a back receding through the doorway came into view.

He had thought maybe Shey would sleep quietly tonight, but of course that had not happened. With a small sigh, Ruslan followed after him without a word.

Creak. Creak.

Each time Shey, barefoot, stepped down the stairs, the eerie sound spread faintly through the mansion. Shey, swaying as he made his way downstairs, seemed to have no idea anyone was behind him. Slowly circling down the spiral staircase, he came to a stop near the mansion’s entrance, where the commotion had happened during the day, and looked around restlessly.

“Where is it…”

The low mutter held a note of impatience. He bent down to search for something, and then dropped to his knees, feeling over the floor in every direction.

“Where is it. Where is it…!”

Shey shouted like a madman, then suddenly froze. A grin slowly spread across his face in the darkness. At last finding something on the floor, he picked it up carefully as though it were some precious thing.

Caught in the moonlight, it was hardly even something that could be called an object. It was a fragment of the jewel that had been completely shattered during the day. It was also the sacred relic he had slandered as a fake with his lies.

Shey placed the fragment on his palm, closed his eyes tightly, and brought it to his ear. He looked as though he were focusing all his attention on hearing something.

But no matter how hard he listened, no voice came through. The songs of the spirits that had once guided and blessed him, and the voice of god, had long since vanished.

Shey, who had once treasured the divine message and stored it in the most fitting jewel, was not here anymore. He had been born to hear and relay the scriptures, and now that he could no longer hear them, it was not an exaggeration to say he had become deaf.

When Shey realized that once more, he shouted and slammed his fist into the floor. It was rough enough to damage the bone, but Ruslan only watched.

Soon, a cry broke out that could not hide its grief. The sound of him howling and crying was so pitiful it would have made even a stranger’s chest ache.

That was the reason the absurd rumor that ghosts were appearing in the grand duke’s mansion had started to spread. Servants on night duty would wander through the mansion at dawn only to turn back the way they came more than once when they heard that sobbing.

Ruslan stood with his arms crossed, silently watching the small, hunched figure. Even when his hand was scratched by the sharp fragment and started bleeding, he did not stop. By morning, it would probably be swollen and already turning dark with bruises.

He watched for a long while. Just as Shey was about to collapse from exhaustion, Ruslan stepped forward and gathered the thin body into his arms. Shey had not lost consciousness, but his unfocused eyes wandered through the air. He looked as though he did not care who handled him or how.

“Next time I’ll buy you something you’ll like better.”

You’ll only break it again and come back down here again anyway, but I love even that foolishness in you.

Ruslan silently erased the rest of the thought and lifted Shey, who was still sniffling, back upstairs. It seemed he would have to make him sleep in his own room tonight.