Word of Subjugation, chapter 7: Provocation

by Tsutsuji

Fandom: Slayers

Pairing: Xelloss x Zelgadis

Rating: Mature. yaoi, mind-control, non-con, some violence. not beta'd.

Date Written: 4/29ish/09

Disclaimer: In case I haven't mentioned it lately, tsutsuji does not own Slayers or any of these characters, and does not make any money from writing this.

Word count, chapter 7: around 2644

AN: Thanks so much for all the encouraging comments on the last chapter; I'm very, very glad that Zelas made such a good impression!

Summary: Xelloss tries a different approach to convince Zelgadis to remove the spell, but it seems like the more things change, the more they remain the same.

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Chapter 7: Provocation

The next morning, Zelgadis was approached by the local village council and offered the job of ridding a nearby forest of a nest of demonspawn that had plagued the local hunters and woodcutters for years. What should have been a simple enough task became entangled with an ancient, secret family curse and a veritable snake's den of local politics, and then further complicated by the fact that the people who hired him didn't expect him to survive long enough to collect the payment they promised. In the spirit of Lina Inverse, Zelgadis convinced the townspeople to honor their part of the bargain after all.

It was a perfect distraction from thinking about Xelloss, and by the time the task was finished more than a week later, Zelgadis was both richer and more worn out from spellcasting than he'd been since his travels with Lina. He found an inn at a village on the other side of the forest, one where the food was good and the rooms were clean, and where the color of a traveler's gold mattered more than his appearance. With the assistance of several bottles of fine wine, he was well fed and sound asleep as soon as it was dark.

He woke up suddenly with a heavy weight on his chest and a gloved hand clamped tight over his mouth. It was nearly enough to stop his breath, but not quite. He tensed, twitched, and instinctively tried to pull the hand away from his face, but he knew at once there was no point in struggling against that grip.

Deep purple eyes glittered in the dark, hovering above him; he could see little else of Xelloss' face in the moonlight that filtered in through the curtained window of his room, only the flash of the mazoku's smile as he leaned closer. The midnight silence of the inn was broken by a venomous whisper.

"Wake up, Zelgadis-san," Xelloss said in a taunting voice. "I want to watch your face while I take you..."

They were his own words from when he'd first cast the spell, hissed back at him while Xelloss clawed the blanket and pajamas off of him with one hand, keeping the other firmly clamped to his mouth. Zelgadis had no chance to speak, barely any chance to think, before Xelloss descended onto him with his body, his mouth and his one free hand.

It was too sudden. The Word of Subjugation screamed inside Zelgadis' mind, but the sharp moan that formed in his throat was hardly even recognizable as Xelloss' name. The sound that came out, muffled by Xelloss' hand, only made the mazoku chuckle briefly. He turned Zelgadis' head to the side, and leaned down to lick his ear and whisper.

"Not because I want you, you understand, Zelgadis-san," he said, his voice as soft as a shadow. "Only because I can."

Xelloss barely waited for those words to sink in before he bent down and took Zelgadis' hesitant erection in his mouth.

Zelgadis shuddered and tried not to respond, but it wasn't possible. The memory of his power over Xelloss, the heady feeling of having the mazoku under his control, all quickly melted away into desperate submission. He squirmed under Xelloss, clawed at the hand covering his mouth, pulled at Xelloss' shirt, his arm, his hair, but he could not push the mazoku away. The truth was, he didn't even want to.

Xelloss' free hand roamed over him, prodding and pinching at all the sensitive places on Zelgadis' stone-covered body, secret and sometimes surprising points of arousal that he'd discovered during the course of his seduction. Meanwhile, his mouth quickly worked Zelgadis to a painfully intense arousal - and then left him there while he flipped him over onto hands and knees, somehow keeping Zelgadis' mouth sealed under his hand in the process. With that same hand he pulled Zelgadis' head back, and circled his throat with the other hand in a mockery of a caress.

"You will see, Zelgadis-san," he said in a soft voice that seemed to crawl down Zelgadis' spine, "I will convince you to release me from this spell, one way or another!"

Then he simply yanked Zelgadis into position and entered him, swift and hard.

Zelgadis screamed, but as rough and sudden as it was, this time Xelloss hardly hurt him at all. He merely taunted with murmured words, seductive and mocking, and tortured Zelgadis with the burning pleasure of his touch, of fingers, lips and tongue, and the relentless stimulation deep inside. Through it all, he never lost his grip on Zelgadis' mouth.

Zelgadis was glad enough that he didn't, because long before Xelloss was done, he knew that if he'd been able to speak it would only have been to moan Xelloss' name and beg for more - and to beg for a release that Xelloss never allowed before he suddenly vanished like smoke.

After he was gone, Zelgadis lay in the twisted sheets, panting for breath in an agony of arousal. His lips burned from the pressure of Xelloss' hand and twitched as he tried, belatedly, to say the words of the spell out loud.

"Xelloss..." he hissed, pressing his face into the sheets. "Sss... su...bmuh..." he panted. "Xelloss..sss... damn you!" he sobbed at last, and reached down to finish what Xelloss had started, his face burning with shame and his mind filled with the mazoku's grin and violet, gleaming eyes.

He lay awake through the night afterward. His body still hummed with the memory of desire suddenly reawakened, like the power of a spell left uncast. Even though he couldn't sleep, he wasn't afraid anymore. He knew now that it hardly mattered what he did, whether he was awake or dreaming; he held the power of the spell over Xelloss, but he was just as weak to resist the mazoku's touch as ever.

As light slowly grew brighter outside the window and seeped into the room, he remembered his encounter with Xelloss' mistress; the adventure with the demon-infested forest had driven it from his mind. He wondered if Xelloss even knew that she'd spoken to him. Whether she had or not, if she really did know of a way to break the spell, it seemed to him that she had not told Xelloss about it, either.

He had to assume that Xelloss could decide to use some horrendous Mazoku curse on him as well, but whether it was beneath his dignity to do so, or whether he was afraid that the effects of such a curse would render Zelgadis incapable of removing the spell, evidently he had chosen this erotic torture instead as a way to try to convince Zelgadis to break the spell.

Zelgadis groaned when he thought of endless nights played out like this - assuming Xelloss didn't decide to vary his methods from time to time, by, say, ripping off a limb or doing something even more creative. He thought he knew what Xelloss was capable of, but he realized he still did not know what to expect from the trickster priest, even after all this time.

Maybe this was what Zelas meant when she said he would soon want to break the spell, he thought. But he couldn't; he didn't know how, and the truth was, even if he knew of a way to do it safely (for both of them), he still wasn't sure he would. He could no longer pretend that keeping Xelloss away was any part of his plan.

____

It was only a few nights before Xelloss came to him again. This time, somehow, Zelgadis slipped from his grasp as soon as he felt it, and screamed the Word out loud before he was even awake enough to be sure that he wasn't only dreaming.

Xelloss went stiff as he was, crouched above him on the bed, and then slowly fell onto him with his head bowed low. His hand fell away from Zelgadis' face to his chest, half clawing at him and half caress. Zelgadis placed his own hand on Xelloss' head, threaded his fingers through the fine silk of his hair, and felt the mazoku shudder at the gentle, possessive touch.

"This time..." Zelgadis whispered, and slowly smiled. "My turn."

"This... time... " Xelloss hissed, forcing the words out past the binding force of the spell.

Zelgadis shivered with a thrill of mingled horror and arousal. This time he had won, and held the upper hand, for now - if he could hold it until the end. The next time, it might go either way. For now, Xelloss was his.

He gave in, at last, to the seduction of power and to his insane desire for Xelloss. He would take his time, this time, and relish every moment of Xelloss' submission. While it lasted. Until the next time...

He laid Xelloss out beneath him on the bed, naked except for the enchanted strand of beads, and slowly, carefully, he brought that all-too-perfect body to a fine peak of arousal. With undeniable pleasure he watched as the glare of fury in Xelloss' eyes slowly gave way to angry pleading. Only his eyes showed his resistance, though; his body moved in perfect response to Zelgadis' touch, to his slightest command, almost, it seemed, to his thought.

Commanding Xelloss to wait for his permission for his own release, Zelgadis took him that way. He muffled Xelloss' moans with his own mouth, hissing Xelloss' name and the word of power as he came.

Then he sat back, caught his breath, and ordered Xelloss to come to him. Shuddering and biting back a groan of frustration, Xelloss climbed across the bed on hands and knees. Still breathing heavily as sated desire quickly turned back to anticipation, Zelgadis ran his thumb across Xelloss' lips, caressed his face and his hair - relishing every intimate touch that he had never been allowed before.

Then he pulled Xelloss' head into his lap with an order to make him hard again. That was a risky move, a gamble; he knew how quickly and thoroughly Xelloss could make him lose all thought and sense with his skillful mouth. Somehow, he held on, just enough to notice when Xelloss twitched and the rhythm of his movement changed as his power started to return.

"Xellossss..sssubmit," he breathed, and although he hardly recognized the sound of his own voice then, the spell took hold again.

A whimper of frustration escaped from Xelloss before he could quell it. Zelgadis swallowed hard, his breath catching in his throat.

A moment later he pushed Xelloss away, shuddering as the wonderful suction of the mazoku's mouth left him. He was painfully hard, and almost beyond thought - and thankful for that. He didn't need to think about this now. He was also almost beyond speech, and directed Xelloss mostly with touches and gestures to turn around and position himself on hands and knees in front of him, saving his breath to repeat the words of the spell when they were needed.

Zelgadis realized he'd never seen Xelloss this way. With his head down, eyes clenched shut, fists twisting the sheets beneath him, his smooth back arched and his legs spread - and his arousal evident for Zelgadis to see, because he'd insisted on it - Xelloss was an even more perfect vision of submission than he'd ever expected to see. Zelgadis stared at him for a moment, drinking in the sight. Xelloss shivered, as if he could feel the triumphant gaze on his naked skin.

Zelgadis could not hold back any longer. He was just as helpless to resist Xelloss as ever. He might have control over the mazoku for the moment, but he only had the illusion of control over himself.

"Remember, Xelloss," he said as he leaned forward over the mazoku's back and slowly entered him, "remember that you taught me all of this... "

Strangled sounds rose from Xelloss' throat, protesting even as the strands of the spell forced him to plead for more. Zelgadis wrapped his arms around the mazoku's body from behind, brushed his face against the strands of hair at the back of Xelloss' neck, and then spoke into his ear.

"Submit to me, Xelloss... but you can make all the noise you want."

That was almost a mistake. Xelloss' cries, desperate and pleading and, eventually, Zelgadis thought, sobbing with relief, were even more intensely arousing than the tight, twisting heat of his body. He barely held on to conscious thought long enough to command Xelloss to come when he felt himself at the very edge, and as he plunged over, he wasn't sure if he really heard Xelloss panting his name frantically or if it was only in his mind.

It was almost too much effort to stay alert afterward. He managed to do it, though, just so that he could pull Xelloss back with him as he rolled onto his side and whispered "Xelloss, submit" for what he intended to be the last time that night. A few minutes longer...

He felt Xelloss stiffen in a futile moment of resistance before settling into his arms. Zelgadis pressed his face against the fine, dark hair that spread across his shoulder, and caressed the smooth skin of the trickster's human form with his rough hands. All little gestures that he had longed to do, that Xelloss had never allowed him the opportunity to indulge in before. This time, he would take the chance. Next time....

His fingers roamed over Xelloss' chest and throat, and touched the beads of the rosary around his neck.

"Zelgadis... san," Xelloss said, his voice soft and strangely calm. "Release me. Please."

It was not quite either a plea or a command. Zelgadis leaned over to look down at Xelloss' face. His eyes were half opened, but he did not look up to meet Zelgadis' gaze.

"From the spell, no," Zelgadis said.

He barely saw Xelloss wince and his lips tighten in frustration - which would probably have been a grimace of rage if the spell was not still in force. That rage would certainly rebound upon him the next time he saw Xelloss - a risk he was, apparently, willing to face, for the chance to have Xelloss like this. This time.

He was not about to admit it, though, and he thought it best not to reveal that, even if he wanted to release Xelloss, he didn't know how.

"Considering what you would do to me as soon as you're free? I'm not such a fool as that," Zelgadis said.

He saw Xelloss' brow crease a little, and this time the corner of his lip twitched upward in a hint of a smile, acknowledging that yes, indeed, Zelgadis would be a fool to free him now and risk the consequences. He was subdued, but not damaged; the gleam was back in those inhuman eyes.

"But for tonight," Zelgadis continued, "you are free to leave." He moved back, leaving Xelloss lying alone on the tangled sheets. "Go."

Xelloss was gone almost before he'd got the word out of his mouth.

"Next time," Zelgadis murmured, as he let exertion of sex and of maintaining the spell drag his eyes closed. "Next time, Xelloss..."

(to be continued)

(long chapter is long; too much sex going on, maybe? heh. Comments reeeally appreciated. Two, maybe three more chapters to go, soon I hope!)