It's hot today. Almost unbearably so. Even Iustitia, who generally preferred warm climes, finds it irritating. He wants to peel off his skin and lie on the cool stone floor of his office, nothing but muscle and tendon and bone, but the effort of doing such a thing would probably make the office even hotter than it already is.
Iustitia sets his charcoal stick down on his desk with a clack and huffs, his face getting even hotter as he holds back embarrassed childish tears. He simply couldn't focus like this. This morning, he woke up soaked through with sweat and the bedsheets were dripping. A dip in the communal baths didn't help either. The water was tepid instead of cool, and Iustitia still felt hot.
The solution is obvious. There are plenty of God-Eaters around, and some of them might actually want to waste an afternoon fanning him, but increasing the number of bodies in his office would only increase the heat and he couldn't fucking stand that right now.
He's sure he asked Instrumenta ages ago to come up with a solution for this sort of thing, but Instrumenta had said something about material and the creative process or something. Iustitia supposes not all of his brothers were as busy (artificially or otherwise) as he is.
But this is still an embarrassing state of affairs. His other clothes were soaked, so he was forced to wear the clothes he usually reserved for date nights with Triticum—the cream cropped shirt and skirt separates with the gold trim. They're made of a thinner material, completely unsuitable for any sort of professional work at all. Thank Prifma he doesn't have any trials scheduled for today.
But it's not enough. Iustitia can still feel that heat, and, surprisingly, his clothes don't look like they're soaked through even though they should be. It’s not enough, nothing is enough right now. Even the hair on his head feels like it’s just stockpiling heat. In the moment, he wants to shave it all off, but the heat hasn’t taken away his ability to reason. He’s too protective of his hair to ever really do something like that, so he ties up his big ringlets with a strip of fabric he tears from one of the tapestries behind his desk.
It doesn't help. He can feel the sweat dripping down his big, gold disk earrings, splattering in big puddles on the floor. So he takes them out, but when he sets them on the desk, he can feel that they're dry to the touch. Even the back of his neck is dry, and so is the paperwork and so is his hair.
Iustitia scratches behind his ear, confused and annoyed and hot. He feels a drop of sweat roll down his thigh and swats at it. That comes away wet, but nothing else?
Iustitia has never encountered anything like it before unless…
Ah.
Is he…in heat?
It's been quite a while and his cycle is so irregular that it might be a possibility. He puts both hands on his desk to brace himself, then rises from the bench.
His hole makes an unbearable squelching sound as all the dildoes he gathered together and mounted on the bench dislodge themselves from his hole, except for one, which he pulls out with a low moan as he crosses the office and looks at his calendar, stepping over his discarded skirt in the process.
Yes, there is a big red circle over today's date, though he wasn't the one who made it. He wasn't sure how exactly Prifma had divined his heat while only knowing the date of one previous one but…
Iustitia turns away from the calendar. Prifma was just on edge. Admittedly, Iustitia's last heat did cause an orgy that lasted a week and blacked out two of Domum's biggest districts, but it would've been much worse in the Humilis Realms so Prifma had no reason to get as mad as he did.
Besides Prifma's prediction was off, and it would kill him to know it. Heats always took a few days to build up, and the symptoms certainly weren't as literal as this. Iustitia of all people would certainly know how to recognize his own heat.
Iustitia makes his way back to his desk, passing his bookshelves on the way. He pauses, then backtracks to one in particular, eyes scanning the shelves. Ah, there it is.
Prifma had written him a guide on 'proper heat procedures'. Who to contact, where to shelter himself, etc. It was very thoughtful, and Iustitia loved a good handbook, but he hardly needed this. He wasn't a child, and he was more than capable of suppressing his heats fully if he needed to. He is the demon overseeing the demesne of justice, he is nothing if not orderly and self-disciplined.
His prior heat was just a little mistake. An experiment even. Divitiae had experimented with becoming a dragon in the middle of the city and was rewarded with Prifma's attention, but one little heat and suddenly Iustitia was worse than the criminals he was called upon to judge, what a farce. Iustitia is tempted to chuck the little book into the Flumen, but he puts it back on the shelf with a smile instead.
It's just a little warm in the office. Why was he allowing himself to catastrophize like this?
He settles back down on his bundle of dildos with a gasp as they hit his sweet spot, then he gathers his composure, schools his face into something suitably judicial, and picks up his charcoal pen again.
He had a mountain of paperwork to get through, heat or no.
“Divitiae, I am in need of a new bench!”
Iustitia speaks loudly, so that his request can be heard over the din of all the God-Eaters crowding the shop. Iustitia didn’t pay much attention to his brothers’ affairs, so the news that Divitiae was opening a furniture emporium came as a shock to him, as did its subsequent overwhelming success. Usually the shop was full of customers, and Divitiae, Prifma, Artem, and Instrumenta would be in the back scrambling to put together custom pieces.
Today was markedly different. The emporium was mostly empty and Iustitia had just shouted for no reason, his voice still echoing up to the higher levels. Iustitia sighs and steps inside, a luxury given that there are normally too many people for him to do even that.
Divitiae is very much lacking when it comes to customer service, so Iustitia just has to see himself to the display area in the far corner, the one that doubled as a break room. There is a stone hearth—lit, which is insane given how fucking hot it is—a fuzzy rug, a table and a set of chairs where Artem and Prifma usually take tea, and a big fluffy couch where Divitiae is sitting, half-sunk into the seats with his legs outstretched in front of him, head craned up and eyes moving like he's tracking the lingering sound of Iustitia's voice up to ceiling.
Okay, fuck, he didn't need to yell that loud, he got it.
Iustitia circles around so that he can have Divitiae's full attention—he is still prone to bouts of listlessness as most dragons are, it seems—but not enough that he's too close to the hearth, and grimaces.
Deliciae is also...in attendance, lying stretched out on the couch with his head in Divitiae's lap. Divitiae is combing his fingers through his long hair, and, every so often, Deliciae presses his pink leather muzzle against Divitiae's thigh in turn.
How very...Iustitia doesn't even have the words to describe how he felt, to describe what this scene was. He guesses he'll go with 'annoyed' and 'grating'. He couldn't quite stand this whole dog business. Prifma said it was probably the best course of action, but Prifma said lots of things and most of them were the dubious ramblings of an old senile man. Iustitia couldn't wrap his head around it, so he usually just stayed out of Deliciae's way, but his brothers were “eating it up”, as it were.
He couldn't fathom why Divitiae would be treating a man—no, an apocalypse demon nearly thrice his size—like a literal dog, but he was in a relationship with Prifma of all people. He must be used to that sort of thing by now.
Iustitia glares at them for a little longer, waiting for Divitiae to notice him standing there and hating the way he can't see Deliciae's eyes through the curtain of his hair, then clears his throat.
Divitiae looks down slowly, his expression as dead as always, but his eyes move minutely, taking all of him in.
"...I like the new look."
Iustitia isn't sure if he's being sarcastic or not...but he does like the flattery. He didn't know how Divitiae could stand this heat in a black hoodie and an ankle-length, dark green, polyester kalasiris, or even how Deliciae could in fucking frilly pink bell bottoms, and he hated to think that they had more self control than he did.
Iustitia shuts his eyes and taps his gavel against his palm.
"I am in need of a new bench. My old one is in disrepair."
"Why?"
Iustitia's eyes fly open and it takes all his power to keep from snarling at the younger demon.
"What does it matter? I didn't know you to be so nosy."
Divitiae stares at him blankly, though there's a tinge of something resigned in his expression.
"Well," he says slowly, like Iustitia's a child. "I imagine you don't want to come in here and buy a new bench every 300 years or so. So if you tell me what happened to the old one. Then I can reinforce the new one. So that the same thing won't happen again."
Iustitia doesn't have a rebuttal for that. He crosses his arms over his chest, the fingers of his left hand digging into his right sleeve.
"It broke."
"It broke? In half?"
"Yes."
Iustitia smiles smugly. Divitiae stares at him, his hand in Deliciae's hair stilling.
"Would you….like to provide any more details?"
"No."
Divitiae closes his eyes and says nothing. Iustitia says nothing. Divitiae opens his eyes.
"Are you in heat?"
Divitiae asks the question so delicately, like he's not entirely sure even though he fucking knows. Iustitia schools himself.
"What makes you think that?"
"You're wearing the clothes you wear when Triticum fucks you, you smell like you've just had something shoved up your ass, and normally you're super spacey like I am but when you're in heat, you're more present and you're more mean."
Iustitia blinks. He supposes only a dragon would be so attentive.
"I can just check if you're not going to tell me."
"It's none of your business," Iustitia snaps, leveling his gavel at Divitiae. "Don't even think about breathing a word of this to Prifma."
"Believe me, I wouldn't need to." Divitiae sighs and shifts on the seat. "I suppose I'll get my sketchbook. C'mon, boy."
Deliciae reluctantly gets up so Divitiae can move, sitting upright so that he's staring (not that Iustitia can tell with all his hair in the way) in Iustitia's direction, his shoulders still slumped.
While Divitiae's back is turned, Iustitia openly glares at the mutt—the demon. Deliciae was nothing like a dog, no matter how much everyone wanted to pretend otherwise.
He glares, and he gets the feeling that Deliciae is glaring right back.
Maybe Iustitia would be more accepting of Deliciae's "needs" if he actually acted the part.
No, no, what is he saying? Iustitia has no intention of treating Deliciae like a dog, no matter how much he begs—no pun intended—but he is always astounded by how little Deliciae seems to care about the whole thing.
Like right now for instance.
Iustitia woke up at the crack of dawn because that's when the couch in his office broke, and that's when he realized that he ground most of his toys into dust from overuse. A pitiful state of affairs really. They were the last relics he owned from the last pantheon, and they weren't doing much to satisfy him even before they were completely obliterated.
Ahem.
He would have preferred the toys he had back in his office in Humilis, demon-make, nice, and strong, and ever so reliable when it came to handling heats as strong as his. But he can't afford a trip like that now, so he has to settle for the next best thing—stealing from Triticum.
Triticum doesn't bottom very often, but when he does he doesn't hold back. Iustitia usually found most of the toys in his collection terrifying, but right now? Even the biggest one isn't enough. So he has to settle for the next best thing—visiting Instrumenta's "toy store".
Instrumenta is a young demon, the youngest despite his "birth order", and a weak one at that. Nothing he makes could ever compare to the great masters in Humilis, but Iustitia is running out of options.
So, after he surveys the damage done to the only resting place in his office, he goes down to Death Street.
Most of the shops are closed and most of the God-Eaters are sleeping. The street is empty for once, and every one of Iustitia's footsteps echo, blending in with the dawn chorus.
The shops that are open are the shops that his brothers are currently fixated on. The furniture emporium that looms over the entire street, the "toy store" and the bath products store—Instrumenta runs back and forth between them, never able to focus for long—, and Artem's art supply store, the scene of Iustitia's latest irritation.
The lights of the store are on, but Artem is not inside tending to it. Instead, he’s sitting outside on the steps, trying to cajole a lazy Deliciae into playing with him with a fresh rawhide chew while several apocalypse songbirds watch from the roof.
Iustitia knows that staying to watch will give him a headache, but the street is so dull, for once he doesn't have to just grit his teeth and move through unbearable crowds.
Against his better judgment, he stops to watch.
After what seemed like ages of cooing and rawhide shaking, Deliciae finally gets to his feet, hulking over Artem in dramatically flared pants, a frilly little top, and platform shoes. Artem grins and gets a solitary head pat for his trouble, then turns and hurls the rawhide down the street.
It lands in the dirt unceremoniously.
Deliciae stares at for a bit, his mind working in overdrive like he can't process what he’s seeing. And then, he saunters past Artem towards it, walking steadily on two feet and very much unlike a dog. He bends over and picks up the rawhide with his hands, completely neglecting the chewing aspect of the whole proceedings, and walks back, gently depositing it in Artem's hand and patting his head again.
It’s the stupidest thing Iustitia’s ever seen. Artem looks overjoyed. He showers Deliciae in a mountain of undue praise, then hurls the rawhide again, because the first time wasn't entertaining enough.
It’s an absolute trainwreck, but Iustitia can't stop watching as Artem throws it again and again, and Deliciae goes to pick it up like a normal demon again and again.
It goes on so long that even Instrumenta, who was busy running two shops at once, stops to watch them. But, unlike Iustitia, who is annoyed by the foolishness of the whole endeavor, Instrumenta is annoyed by the fact that he isn't the one playing fetch.
"Here, let me try," he says, taking the rawhide from Artem.
Where he’s standing, Iustitia rubs his temples. Did three people need to get involved in this inane bullshit?
Instrumenta winds up the pitch, lifting his leg in a suitably dramatic fashion. With a grunt and a showy front flip, the rawhide soars up and over the imposing furniture emporium, turning into a speck against the brightening sky and disappearing soon after.
Iustitia's jaw hangs open. Artem's jaw hangs open. Instrumenta looks smug.
Deliciae stares into the sky for a bit, shielding his eyes from the sun's glare with his hand (not that it mattered with all his hair in his face), then, after an assessment that goes on far too long, deigns to break into a little trot this time, as if that ameliorates the fact that the rawhide is probably cooking in the sun at this point.
He returns with the irreparably charred rawhide about ten minutes later. Artem is so excited he could bounce off the walls, even at his advanced age. Instrumenta is fuming. Iustitia...has a wicked headache coming on.
He does not buy any new toys that day.
Iustitia can no longer tell if the oppressive heat is a natural part of the climate, a symptom of his oncoming heat, or just him burning up with rage.
He took another break from his copious piles of paperwork and went out to the courtyard of the Palatium, hoping to catch a cool breeze. If there’s one blowing, it certainly isn't helping him.
Deliciae is in the courtyard—as, admittedly, is his right given that he was a "pet" belonging to both Prifma and Iustitia—, lying on his back with his hair spread out on the pavement all around him. The scene makes Iustitia feel even hotter and stickier. He wants to shave off his own ringlets again and then all of Deliciae's hair just to sate his anger.
But he can't. Not at the moment at least. During certain hours of the day, the Palatium is open to the God-Eaters, and, in the summer months, they would happily take advantage. Right now, they’re gathered around Deliciae, brushing his hair and braiding it and dying it with colored mud while he just lies down in a sunny patch, blissfully unaware.
It’s frustrating, but not for any reason other than the fact that Iustitia finds Deliciae’s presence to be especially grating lately.
…Maybe Divitiae was right, maybe he is meaner during his heats.
"I'm not going to pretend that's a new cologne," Prifma says.
Iustitia nearly jumps out of his skin. Instead, he slowly stands up and feigns indifference, brushing some nonexistent dust off his skirt before he turns around.
"Divine Patriarch. Lovely morning we're having."
"I'm going to punch you," Prifma says. He’s holding a piece of cloth over his nose and mouth, but Iustitia knows it’s just dramatics. Wrinkled old piece of shit. "I imagine this is meant to be you holding back, given that everyone here is still...functional."
"I don't know what you're referring to."
Prifma takes a step forward. Iustitia takes a step back. Between the eye patch and the cloth, only one of his eyes was visible, but Prifma was still giving him one hell of a glower. Prifma loves him enough to never actually punch him, but he might still shove the handbook Iustitia had been ignoring up his ass.
Maybe being coy isn't worth it anymore.
"If I recall correctly," Prifma growls, "You were supposed to close court, notify me, and then find Triticum."
"And I've done...most of those things."
Prifma narrows his eye.
"I was about to come tell you," Iustitia says with a nervous laugh. "I was just going to see Triticum this evening."
"Is that so." Prifma gives him one last glance, then straightens up. "See to it that you do."
Prifma dismisses him with a flick of his hand, then stalks off back to his atelier.
Iustitia lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding, then quickly heads for the Palatium's nearest exit. He hasn't made any plans to see Triticum at all actually, but he’s seriously cutting it close now, isn’t he.
"Ah, Triticum, there you a…"
The words die on Iustitia's tongue as he slows from a frantic run to a jog to a slow, disbelieving walk. Triticum isn't out in the fields this morning, but instead roaming around the smaller ornamental gardens Prifma built to "beautify" Domum.
In his hand, he has his sickle. Nothing strange there. In his other hand, he has a leash, and attached to that leash is Deliciae. Unfortunately, there is nothing out of the ordinary there either.
As much as Iustitia hates to say it, Deliciae does indeed love his "walkies" and today is no exception.
What is strange—what is borderline traumatizing—is that Deliciae is peeing, much in the same way that a normal dog would on a walk, only Deliciae is a fully grown demon, so he is standing and pissing and violating public decency laws like a normal bipedal humanoid.
Iustitia starts to say something, because law enforcement is one of his self-imposed duties, but his eyes drop to Deliciae's crotch and he stares. The heat that’s been sliding under his skin all week builds into a fever pitch until Triticum tips Iustitia’s face back with a concerned expression.
"Are you alright?" he asks, tone soft in a way that it never would be with anyone else. "Your scent is off."
Iustitia nearly forgot the reason why he came here, he was so distracted by Deliciae's giant cock. Is it a plant demon thing? Iustitia is dying to find out, or he would be if he wasn’t already committed to his own plant demon. He’s sure the Deliciae has stopped peeing by now, and is now just holding his cock out to further muddle Iustitia’s heat addled brain.
Triticum leans forward to scent him better, drawing Iustitia out his thoughts.
"That's what I wanted to speak to you about actually," Iustitia says, covering his neck with one hand to discourage Triticum from coming closer. "Can we...I mean, maybe, do you want to go out tonight?"
Triticum lights up like the sun and takes both of Iustitia's hands in his. Iustitia relaxes a little. He and Triticum aren't as in sync as two demons could be—it was why he couldn't tell Iustitia’s in heat—but he always worked twice as hard to close the gap between them.
"Of course we can, but—"
Fuck. Triticum looks almost bashful as he rubs the back of his neck.
“We're planting rice today," he says, giddiness creeping into his voice.
Iustitia stifles a sigh, but his displeasure must be clear on his face, because Triticum immediately follows up with:
"We can still go out, I'll just be a little late. But if I get started now, maybe—Here." He shoves Deliciae's leash into Iustitia's hands. "You can walk him back to the Palatium, right?"
Deliciae steps away from the tree so he can silently loom over Iustitia.
"Sure," Iustitia says stiffly, his fingers white-knuckle tightening on the leash as his hole clenches around Triticum’s stolen plug. "I can do that."
"Great! See you tonight!"
Triticum bounds off, excited by the prospect of rice and date night, and leaves Iustitia and Deliciae alone.
Iustitia says nothing. He doesn't even give Deliciae the customary head pat. He takes a deep breath, makes his decision, and leads Deliciae away. Away from the Palatium. Away from Domum. Away from prying eyes.
He leads Deliciae to the Sanctarium. It’s a sacred place, a covenant, the tangible bond between the God-Eaters and the new pantheon. But giving up offerings and worshiping devoutly was pretty passé, so it stayed neglected until someone came out to clean it once in a while.
Iustitia lets go of the lead and shuts his eyes.
Something thumps on the ground, and he slowly looks down.
Deliciae's muzzle is lying in the grass, and he’s currently tying back his hair with the frivolous scrunchie Artem had made for him so many moons ago.
Iustitia feels like he’s rooted to the spot. Deliciae was handsome. More handsome than Instrumenta. More handsome than his cock already implied.
The demon glances up, catches Iustitia staring, and then his focused, neutral expression spreads into a look that was almost predatory. Wolfish even. Like the look Prifma gives Divitiae whenever he does…well, anything really.
Iustitia turns around again. The heat has reached its fever point and he wants nothing more than to turn back and pounce on Deliciae, but the part of him that thinks he's better than that holds him back. Being a demon of justice and a demon that was a breeder queen was going to tear him apart one of these days, but Deliciae slinks up close to him, pressing his hard cock into Iustitia's hip, and Iustitia's mind goes quiet.
He could feel the veins on his skin through the thin material of his skirt.
"We shouldn’t do this," Iustitia says, finally offering up a defense after what feels like a very long moment of breathing deeply and feeling Deliciae’s cock throbbing against him.
"Why ever not?" Deliciae says, voice gravelly from lack of use.
"Triticum?"
That sounds like too much of a question. Also, it wasn’t even a good excuse. Triticum might be miffed about Iustitia missing their date, but he had seen Iustitia at the peak of his heats back in Humilis and loved him anyway, even when he didn’t get to participate. This was a trifle by comparison.
"Try again," Deliciae says.
Iustitia sighs, his mouth quirking as he struggles to come up with a something that will give him in amount of plausible deniability.
"Aren't you...you know, a dog?"
Deliciae chuckles. "I know you don't believe that, and it wouldn't matter if you did."
Deliciae takes Iustitia's hand and wraps it around his cock. Iustitia, in spite of his many attempts to maintain his composure, lets out a relieved sigh at the feeling of the hot, heavy cock in his palm. It felt like a cool drink of water on a hot day, like sunshine after a rainstorm.
Deliciae is right—it doesn't really fucking matter.