Red, red licks

born on the day of earthquakes

A/N:

Magician AU fem!Kuroko x Akashi

inspired by Irisviel x Kiritsugu from Fate/Zero (anime)

wrote this a while back, so yeah, happy reading

also posted in my account in AO3

She knew it from the start: because she didn't have the enough strength to compete in the war, her family has no other choice but to use her as an anchor for a strong magician to join the war as a representative of their family.

She was a member of Kuroko, one of the founding families of magic. There was a lot expected from her family in the upcoming war of magicians. But with a weak heir like her, even though she was trained strictly to join the competition, she still has little chances of taking the honor of being the winner to her family. And with the war occurring for only once in a hundred years, it'd be a hundred years of shame to her family if she doesn't win. The Kuroko family had always been the winner for the past four years — the only winner since the first centennial war of magicians.

So the Kuroko family decided to hire the infamous Akashi Seijuro and had him wedded to her to make him part of the Kuroko family.

Kuroko knew it in herself: Akashi was strong. Ever since she had met him, she knew that this man will let her family win.

The explosion was close — close enough for him to feel the tremors even if not a second of time had passed yet. But he felt something more. It was something that is, in reality, a very little feeling compared to the tremors brought by the explosion, but he rather felt so strongly.

The girl beside him was shaking.

Akashi turned to her. She had her hair cut short that she looked like a young boy rather than a refined female of one of the oldest family of magicians. Her complexion was white, perhaps whiter than him, and smooth. Her skin vaguely reminded him of milk, and he doesn't dislike milk. Her eyes were lighter in color than her hair and looked so unearthly that anyone who looked at her eyes will immediately be drawn in.

It took almost all Akashi's discipline to keep himself from staring. It was cold that night, so he took off his jacket and offered it to her.

Kuroko looked at the jacket before shifting her eyes to his.

"I don't need it."

Akashi didn't understand her cold tone towards him. She was cold to him even before they were wedded, perhaps starting that time when the Kuroko family head — her father — announced that she'd be married to him. Akashi hadn't even gotten a kiss from her except that one on their wedding day. He hadn't fully enjoyed her body, either — not that he was that interested.

"You're shivering," Akashi said shortly, watching her small form as they sat behind a low wall. Her chest was ample, but he found her behind much more interesting, accented by her slim waist. Akashi brought his eyes up before he could stare too long. "Take it."

"I said I don't need it."

Akashi shrugged, trying to ignore her hard tone. She sounded almost angry so Akashi just put the heavy jacket back on while slowly looking over the edges of the low wall. He spotted no shadows — it was a new moon that night — but with his sharp ears, he could hear at least four or five people lurking in the thicket nearby.

There were rustling of leather on metal and a clink of metal pulled from another metal.

Akashi turned towards Kuroko, who welcomed his gaze with a frown.

"What is it?" Kuroko asked, but Akashi just pushed her to the ground and pressed his body against her. Kuroko tried to struggle until she heard the loud explosion that blew the low wall beside them into thousand small bits. She closed her eyes against the bright light, feeling the heat of the explosion — and oddly, despite of the excitement around her — of the body that was on top her.

Kuroko could hear the male beside her muttering something on her ear. It was an unfamiliar spell, something that the Kuroko family never used. Kuroko thought several pieces of the cement wall grazed her skin, but each pain of being hit disappeared in a matter of seconds. Akashi abruptly stopped speaking, and it was quiet.

Both of them sat up. Kuroko was oddly unharmed, despite how close the explosion to them. It was a grenade, explaining the clink of metal that Akashi had heard. The two of them were out in the open, as both of them noticed, since the low wall where they hid was shattered.

Kuroko immediately spoke her spell. One of the magic that the Kuroko family was famous for is the one known as invisibility. It wasn't really an invisibility spell, but a manipulation of visible planes. The spell works as manipulating the plane on which an object can be visible or invisible, depending on which plane the observer is in. Kuroko took both of them to a plane where they would be invisible to their attackers, yet both of them could see each other and also observe the plane they were formerly in.

"What was that?" Kuroko said, looking at the shadows that were now visible as their attackers had their guards down after Akashi's and Kuroko's sudden disappearance. She turned to the boy — he'd always be a 'boy' to her — and continued saying. "Here I thought you were hiding us— W-What happened?"

Akashi inspected his arms, which were filled with deep gashes. Same goes for his pale face, but to a lesser degree. Despite the deep wounds, he still smiled with that humorless smile of his.

"It's my first time to use a spell like that," Akashi said. "You still felt a little pain, didn't you?"

"What are you talking about?" Kuroko asked. Akashi stared at her for a while.

"Never mind. So,..." He looked around. "Is this the famous invisibility spell of the Kuroko family?"

But Kuroko just stared at him. His blood was red; she was surprised to find out — She presumed he was nothing but a cold-blooded, purple-blooded creature in human skin. But she found she hated that hue, a color that his hair and eyes both carried.

Kuroko kept silent as she thought. Akashi just stared at her, wondering if there was something he had done wrong at the moment. Those blue eyes inspected his arm and face, eyes lingering probably the longest on his lips.

Kuroko's forehead creased slightly. "What was that spell?"

Akashi smiled. "You ask me? Isn't that the invisibility spell of the Kuroko family?"

"What?" Kuroko asked, raising her eyebrows. She slowly realized what he was talking about before shaking her head briskly. "No, not that one. I was asking about the spell you were muttering to my ear earlier."

Akashi shrugged. "It was a spell I learned from someone."

Kuroko ignored Akashi's reply as she thought. She blurted out calmly, as the words came to her as a memory of an old rumor, "A form of transference spell, where the pain of the one whom the spell is cast on will be transferred to the caster. A forbidden spell of an extinct family. How did you learn about that? Akashi family focuses mainly on attack and prediction spells..."

"Well, Akashi family is known for its tradition of intermarriage to keep our secrets to ourselves. But my father didn't keep to the family traditions," Akashi said. "My mother was a member of the extinct family that use the transference spell. And it was that same spell that killed her when I was young."

"Using it could have killed you too..." Kuroko said slowly, approaching the boy in front of her until she could feel his body heat again against her own skin. "Why did you that?"

Akashi smiled. But it wasn't humorless. Almost warm and caring, Kuroko found out as she studied Akashi's face. "You're my wife. Of course I'd do something like that. Like saving you."

Kuroko stared into his eyes. She almost laughed: red was really the color that she wanted. She thought she hated it, but she truly wanted to stare long and disappear into the depths of the eyes that carried that color. The same goes for that hair, so silky to look at. She wanted to touch him, and she allowed herself to do so.

She hated him. She thought she did. He took her place of bringing glory to her family. She expressed her jealousy with her cold attitude to him. She never touched him, never let him touch her easily, except for that time when they sealed their marriage with a kiss. In truth, she wanted the warmth of his lips against hers, that she almost regretted pulling away.

Now, her body was moving on its own, following her once misinterpreted desires. Her fingers trailed against his arm, avoiding the wounds but not the blood. She touched his hand, pulling it towards her lips.

"Kuroko family has honed its healing spells over the centuries," Kuroko said as she looked at Akashi watching her. "This is one way to heal someone. Allow me to demonstrate..."

Kuroko pushed her tongue through the gap between her lips and on the hand she held. She almost smiled as Akashi shivered, perhaps from the pain or the pleasure. She sucked on a finger, licking the blood from the small scratch at the tip. It was suppose to have been her wound, but Akashi took it for her...

"Can't this wait?" Akashi asked, looking around them. Their attackers were getting closer, as indicated by the closer rustlings and shadows.

Kuroko said something before leaning down and moving towards Akashi's arm. "They can't see us. They can't touch us. The so-called invisibility spell of Kuroko family is not invisibility."

"Visual and spatial plane manipulation, right?" Akashi said, before a groan escaped his lips as Kuroko's tongue dipped into one of his deeper wounds. Kuroko smiled as she heard the sound from Akashi, moving to his other wounds and trying to elicit the same sound from the proud man.

Between licks, Kuroko whispered the healing spell repeatedly. Akashi almost shivered as he felt the warm breath over his skin. He could feel Kuroko smile on his wound.

"Perhaps it was you who need your jacket," she said.

The red-haired male raised his eyebrows: so he indeed shivered, not almost.

Akashi noticed that his arm was almost as good as new. Not a single scratch was left. He was a little disappointed on how fast the healing session was, but he couldn't complain. Kuroko healed him despite being so cold to him in the past few days they've been together.

The blue-haired female sat up. Her lips were red with his blood, the blood-red liquid really visible against the whiteness of her skin.

"Well, that was one weird spell your family came up with," Akashi said, teasingly. "Was the licking really necessary?"

Kuroko just smiled. A thought of 'save the best for last' crossed her mind as she leaned towards Akashi one more time and letting their lips meet.

Akashi groaned in surprise; he didn't know that he was that sensitive until Kuroko started licking and kissing him suddenly. But when Kuroko sucked on his lower lip and he felt a sharp pain, he realized that she was still healing him. A cut was on his lip, and Kuroko sucked on it earnestly, sucking probably even longer than she did on his hands and arms.

Kuroko was still smiling when she pulled back.

"Of course..." she said slowly, kissing Akashi gently and smearing blood on her lips one more time, much to Akashi's pain. Pulling back again, she finally muttered her healing spell. "...not."

Akashi frowned before smiling in understanding. This time, it was he who initiated the kiss that would start their long night together.

Also, this time, the pain on his lip was gone.

reposted in hope of reviews~