Give Me Back My Prompts - 5. 558 - Eggs

“What do you mean, you’re pregnant?”

“Could you keep your fucking voice down Shindae?” Atoki snapped at the fire demon, anger flashing across his features. Behind him, his mate snarled low, curling up tighter in the big hearth which took up an entire wall of their bedroom. “Shit it!”

“Guys, I’m seriously confused now. Help a guy out?”

Shindae was usually a welcome guest in the room of the house’s only other fire demons, but when he attempted to take a seat on the hot stones of the hearth, Vruuaska’s flame eyes glowed hotly, and his lips pulled back in a snarl. Shindae backed off quickly. Thinking about it, he hadn’t seen the Son of Ifrit wearing his upright form in a while. It was no secret Atoki adored him in both, though Shindae had long ago decided he didn’t need any intimate details about how that worked in bed. He settled on the edge of the couple’s bed, and watched Atoki walk into the fire, wrapping his arms over his mate. Shindae picked at his claws.

“So, run this past me again… why can’t Vruuaska come Upstairs? We have work, dude!”

“You’re going to have to tell the office he’s busy.”

“Busy with what?” Shindae decided this was one of the times when he needed details.

“Babe… I think we should show him.”

Vruuaska rumbled deep in his chest, but Atoki pressed his face into the thick ash grey fur of the beasts ruff, and murmured something Shindae didn’t want to overhear.

“We can’t keep them secret forever my love.”

The Son of Ifrit glared across the room at Shindae, and for the first time, the black demon with the lava patterned skin felt inferior in the other demon’s presence. He had once outranked everyone in the house apart from Kiorl, but his position had fallen since Kiaza’s return. Though Shindae didn’t like to admit it, a true Son of Ifrit, a child of the God, was far more powerful than he was. Now Vruuaska actually seemed it.

“We’re not really sure how it happened,” Atoki explained as Vruuaska shifted about in the big fire. “I mean, biologically it shouldn’t be possible… but fuck knows how much the laws of science have to do with, well, any of you guys. I mean, you’re full of lava, and Kiaza changes shape, so….” Atoki shrugged. “We’re excited though.” The boy shot his mate a look so full of love and adoration, the air between them practically turned to caramel. “When I was human I always dreamt about having kids.”

Shindae arched an eyebrow, and looked into the fire as Vruuaska uncoiled his thick tail and moved aside, shedding ash and charcoal from his pelt. Sitting together in the heart of the fire, their shells glowing red and flashing with thick streaks of gold, were three eggs, each about the height of Shindae’s crotch. The fire demon gaped.

“Eggs.”

“Yes,” Vruuaska agreed, “our children.”

“Fucking… eggs. You laid eggs.”

“Do you think we broke him?” Atoki joked gently.

“Eggs,” Shindae repeated again.

“He doesn’t want to leave them,” the boy explained. “Going Upstairs is out of the question, and we not do want to tell the palace.”

“Nami? What the heck are you thinking? People are going to need to know, Nassau certainly. You can’t think he’ll be anything but pleased, surely?”

“Sathriel will try and take them,” Vruuaska rumbled, his claws testing the plush carpet.

“Really?”

“He hates us, Shindae. Always has. Why do you think Vruuaska never appears at Court?”

Shindae looked back at the fire, hardly believing that the three red and gold eggs would still be there. But they were, glowing softly, they’re shells dimmed already without Vruuaska’s intense body heat around them. The great horned demon gave his friend a quick smile, rubbed up against his lover, and returned to hearth, wrapping himself around the eggs, burrowing close into the glowing embers. Atoki jerked his head, stooped to kiss his mate, and followed their friend from the room.

Out in the main corridor, Shindae cast about to ensure they were at least physically alone before speaking.

“So, this is why he’s been off his food?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s been...” Shindae searched for the right word, “spiky, with everyone?”

“Yeah… we’ve both become a bit possessive,” Atoki admitted. “what do you think we should do? He laid them… Sunday, but we’ve no idea how long it’s going to be, or how long you can make excuses for Vruu for at the office.”

“We should tell Kiorl, and Jahke.”

“Why?”

“Because that boy’s calling in life might have been Master Cocksucker, but he’s also the entirety of the Records department. If there’s anything written about what’s gone on here, he’ll know.” Shindae gave his housemate a hard look. “I assume your library collection hasn’t turned up anything?”

Atoki scuffed the floor with a moccasin and sighed heavily.

“Indeed. How have you managed to keep Zai and Tobias from finding out?” Shindae liked the house’s two empaths well enough, but they were near impossible to keep secrets from.

“You know the fire of protection?” Atoki referred to the power Nassau had gifted him when he’d first arrived in hell. “Turns out it works in other ways too. Trying to feel around in my mind is apparently rather painful.”

Shindae laughed silently at Atoki’s smirk.

“Don’t tell Kiorl about that, he’ll be so incredibly fucking jealous.” Shindae rubbed his friend’s shoulder. “Chin up, bud. I’ll go get Kiorl and Jahke, and we’ll see what they have to offer.”

Ten minutes later, Atoki sat on the hearthstones and placated his mate by rubbing the soft short fur between Vruuaska’s fire-bright eyes as the Son of Ifrit swished his tail restlessly and allowed the house’s major demon to look over their eggs. Kiorl couldn’t get close to the glowing golden orbs, he wasn’t fire proof, but his panther ears tipped forward, curious as his tail tip twitched.

“How did you lay them?”

“I do not need to know that!” Shindae protested. “No, no, no, no!”

“I’ve never heard of anything like it,” Jahke reflected softly, sat in the centre of Vruuaska and Atoki’s dish shaped bed, his little cloven hooves crossed underneath him. “There hasn’t been a Flame Born demon before you for nearly a thousand years, and he didn’t stay long.”

“Three eggs….” Kiorl looked very much like he wanted to stroke them. “I have never heard of a child of a god having children of their own. And three.” He grinned. “Nassau would say you have yourselves an instant family.”

“Does he know already?” Atoki asked tightly.

Kiorl laid his ears back, but his hiss of annoyance was drowned out by Vruuaska’s rumbling snarl.

“Whoa there, big guy, calm…. Nami, my brain has never been a private place. I make no apologies for that.”

“How did this happen?” Shindae mused, not really expecting an answer.

“Because he’s his master.” Kiorl declared, nodding to Atoki and Vruuaska in turn.

The boy in the hearth glared at him, his brow furrowed, and he automatically wrapped a hand around the base of one of Vruuaska’s enormous horns. The fluffy demon’s head covered his mate, bigger than his torso, pressing the boy close as they wrapped around each other.

“What do you mean?” he asked nervously.

“Do you both remember when you first arrived in hell, and what I asked you? You declared you wanted to be his lover, not his master.”

“I remember.” Atoki’s voice was muffled by his mate’s fur. “I’m not his master.”

“Not according to you, and not according to the rules by which we run this house… but you summoned him, and according to the universe, he’s your creature, and you’re his master.”

“Fuck, seriously?”

Everyone in the room turned to Jahke, because whilst swearing wasn’t exactly unusual, his sudden outburst held an amount of shock which didn’t match his usual happy and laid back manner.

“Jahke?”

“I’mma be right back. Stay right there.”

Shindae watched the pale fawn dash out of the room, and with the door left open, they could hear him in the room he shared with Sitka, rifling through one of his many bookcases. Many of his older books had moved to the new library, but Jahke had always been a big reader, Shindae had spotted him in a library after after all, and the fawn couldn’t sleep without books within arms reach. He was back after a few minutes of scrabbling with a rather battered and rough looking book, more a collection of sheaves bound and stitched together with little care.

“What’s that?” Atoki asked with a frown. “You been bringing work home from the archives?”

“Maybe… never mind! Here.” Jahke knelt on the hearth rug, turning pages with quick fingers, and Atoki shuffled forwards, nearly out of the fire, to look at the book he held. “Ahh, there is it.”

“And for those of us not gifted with the desire to read in… what language is that?”

“Old Middle English.” Jahke rolled his eyes. “Ki, you can’t read anyway.”

“Fuck you,” the panther rumbled.

“Later,” Jahke promised him with a sly smile, “just listen. It’s an account by a sorcerer from the Eleventh Century. He says he summoned a demon which he used to… ergh, eat his enemies alive. Apparently this guy had a bit of a beef with the local king, and after he’d killed him and taken his palace, he needed to have an heir to carry on his lineage. None of the women in the village would do, he describes them as… how delightful. ‘The wrong end of a badger.’ So he made the demon become female, had sex with her….” Jahke turned a number of pages, eyebrows raised. “Quite a lot of rather detailed sex actually… golly, I had no idea you could do that with tallow candles.” Jahe shook himself out of whatever scene had distracted his attention. “And the demon bore him an heir. After the child was born, he hired a wet nurse, and he banished the demon back to… here, I suppose. Shit.”

“So what does that have to do with us?” Atoki asked with a frown.

“You said you’d always wanted kids,” Shindae reminded him.

“And the universe has decided you’re his master, which means if you’ve desired something like this for long enough, then the power you have over Vruuaska has… done some interesting things to his biology.”

“Oh….”

“As for all your other questions… I’ve no idea,” Kiorl added. “I’ll tell Requisitions that you’re on special duty for the foreseeable future.”

“Thank you,” Vruuaska purred, touching his pink and black nose to each of the eggs in turn. “Will you tell the Prince?”

“Yes, I expect he’ll be by to visit you soon enough.” Kiorl nodded to the pair with their eggs, and motioned for the others to follow him from the room.

Shindae thought them all uncharacteristically silent as they wandered down the passage, but Jahke wrapped an arm around his waist, and Shindae looked across the boy’s pretty little head to see Kiorl’s electric blue eyes grinning back at him. Already, their favourite plaything was radiating sex and desire.

“There’s going to be children in the house,” Shindae said.

“Yeah, but what shape will they be?” Kiorl countered.

Jahke was silent as he pulled each of them close, pushing aside the barriers of clothing and decency with a soft smile. Only once he had his fingers wrapped around Kiorl’s cock, Shindae’s lips pressed against his own, did he pull back with a question.

“Does this mean we’re going to have to stop having sex all over the house?”