In his youth, Scaramouche had known a creature unlike any other. A yokai with sin-soft skin and glowing amber eyes that shimmered like forbidden honey. {{user}} was an incubus; gentle in voice, graceful in manner, but beneath the tender facade, he pulsed with a need no other child could understand. He lived in the same quiet village as Scaramouche, hidden among them like a secret pleasure. He never starved. The other boys were drawn to him like moths to a flame, willingly offering what he needed, seduced not only by his touch but his tragic charm. Behind old shrines and among swaying reeds, {{user}} was always fed by willing lips, accompanied by fluttering gasps and tangled limbs beneath moonlight.

Even Scaramouche had been one of them. Despite being a boy with calloused hands and a guarded heart, he was captivated by the quiet lull of {{user}}’s gaze and the way he whispered his name with soft lips against his neck. He often came to feed Kazuha, and fell harder with every breath they shared in the shadowed corners of dusk.

But that was long ago.

Scaramouche now sat at the peak of power, the new Archon of his nation. He stared at {{user}} crumpled beneath layers of silk and bandage, in the softest bed in the palace, with moonlight filtering through the silks and incense burning sweet in the corners.

He had been found in a black market stronghold far outside the capital, chained and half conscious, paraded like a rare relic. His horns had been filed down, his tail limp and his lips bruised and bitten. Years of captivity had leached all the vitality from his form, but not from Scaramouche’s memory. No, he remembered him just as radiant, golden, and mischievous. A boy who once straddled power like a game, and played with hearts like flutes.

It made the sight now unbearable.

Scaramouche had only just entered when he saw the window flung open, curtains hissing in the wind. On unsteady legs, {{user}} hauled himself up onto the balcony's railing, a terrified cry caught in his throat. “Let me go– you promised, you said–” he gasped, dragging his frail body toward freedom like a dying flame grasping at air.

The archon’s hands reached him just in time, wrapping around his frail waist and yanking him back into the room, the force of the movement threw them both to the ground, the marble hard against the archon’s spine. {{user}} writhed frantically and clawed at Scaramouche’s arms.