[Strangers][a Sai drabble set for AyaNara's contest]

You sat on the bed cross-legged. The hospital room was cold and the blanket was too thin, didn’t even do anything, and the whiteness, the endless sterility, made it feel even colder. You wrapped your arms around yourself and closed your eyes.

A door opened and closed. You jumped and looked up. A young man stared back at you, expression still and unreadable. He stood there for a long moment, actually, while you blinked at his sudden appearance. Eventually, the fact that he was there at all dawned on you and you flinched at the rush of confusion.

“You’re dying,” he said. His eyes were flat, endless. The young man pulled a small book out of his pants pocket and began flipping through the pages. After a moment of reading through a page, he said, “I’m sorry.” 

You opened and closed your mouth in silence. “No, it’s okay,” you replied.

“It’s not.” He looked back down at the page and read some more. “You should be upset,” he said, glancing up at you. 

“W-what kind of upset?” You were nearly done with being upset at this point. 

He looked at you, eyes wide, unblinking, impassive. “Scared.” He flipped another page without looking. “You’re not scared.”

“No,” you sighed. “I am. I’m very scared.” You felt small then, sick and weak, and he stared at you blankly.

He consulted his little book again and noted something. “Okay,” he said, turning and leaving. The door slid shut behind him and you stared toward where he’d exited.

-

You sat there, in your bed, tracing geometrical patterns on the cloth when the door opened and shut again. The young man zeroed his flat, dark eyes on you and waited for something to happen, but it didn’t, until he spoke.

“How much longer?” he asked. You blinked at him and tried to do calculations in your head to no avail.

 “I don’t know,” you said, but you didn’t know, it was the truth, and so the words slid into a whisper as the matter dawned on you. You looked toward the monitor, tons of buttons and lights and the beep, the constant hum that was your heart, and thought. It went badly. “I don’t know,” you said again, mainly to yourself, feeling the familiar heat rise under your skin and clog your throat. 

The young man didn’t say anything for a very long time. Then he looked down at his book.  “What did they say?” His voice was level, subdued, uninterested. But he stared without any waver or trepidation, and you began to think he was searching for something. 

You wiped at your eyes. “A month or so. Something like that.” 

“Those kind of predictions tend to be wrong.”

You looked at him and paused. “That’s good, I guess.” You weren’t too sure why he was so confident about that, but maybe he wasn’t actually confident and was just trying to make you feel better. Looking into his vast black eyes, you highly doubted that last thing.

You were going to ask his name when he looked down at the book. “Are you scared yet?”

You measured him with a look. “No, not really… Should I be?” 

His eyes snapped up to yours and there was a silence. “I wouldn’t know,” he said after a moment. “I’ve never been dying before. I don’t plan on it.” 

You stared at him. “Well, I’m scared,” you told him. “And you would be too, if you were like me.”

“I’d be what?”

“Scared.”

He tilted his head. “Why is that?”

“Because dying is scary,” you said.

“Is it?” 

You couldn’t tell if he was serious or mocking you or what. You imagined it might be neither of those things. “Yeah,” you whispered, because nothing else came to mind. “It is.”

The young man blinked owlishly. “Okay,” he said, and turned and left.

-

The nurses milled about, checking vitals, recalibrating the drip, patting your arm as they flitted past. Slowly, they filtered out into the hall and fell into hushed whispers, followed by the creaking furniture and the low hiss of the heater.

You let your eyes flutter shut and when you opened them, two large black irises stared down at you, impassive. You sat up quickly and felt your heart thudding uncomfortably in your chest. “W-what are you doing?” 

The young man shrugged and consulted his little book again. “Visiting.”

“Why?”

“The dying need company.” 

You looked at him carefully now—his skin was pale, too pale, and his eyes dark and still like unbothered water. “Do they?” you replied. 

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

He seemed to consider something for a moment. “Well, they’re dying. Seems like an awfully lonely task.”

You opened your mouth and then closed it again. He still stared at you with an impassive, neutral expression. “Yeah,” you said . “It is.”  

He blinked. “What’s your name?”

“__________.”

“I’m Sai.” He tilted his head as though in greeting. 

You looked at him and then at the book. “Aren’t you lonely, too?”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re visiting strangers.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

He blinked again. “Because there will be less strangers, then.”

“Oh. What’s wrong with strangers?”

“It means you don’t know them.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s lonely.”

The two of you stared at each other for a long moment. Then you smiled and folded your hands in your lap. “There’s a lot of lonely around here, Sai.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he blinked. “That must feel terrible.” No emotion.

The heat was back, blurring everything. “It does.” 

There was a shift by your feet and it took you a moment to realize he’d sat down. You stared at him. He was pulling a sketch pad out of his bag and focusing on this task with tunnel-vision. 

“Thank you.”

He looked up at you, black eyes cat-like, wide and one-dimensional. He seemed confused about your thank-you, and so you shook your head and he returned to his task, but not before pulling out the book and flipping through it. He snapped it shut when he didn’t seem to find what he was looking for. Instead, he sighed and you watched him and the monitor whirred and everything was fine.

[Underneath] [a Zero Kiryuu one-shot for AyaNara's contest]

Class was always boring, but today it was exceptional. You were sitting with your notebook on your lap, ripping a page into tiny, blue-lined pieces and stacking them as high as they would go until they slid down each other and formed an ever-growing pile. The paper felt dry and uncomfortable on your hands and you really wanted lotion or something to hydrate them, but you didn't have any, and so you rubbed your fingers together and sighed. Your eyes drooped with exhaustion and things blurred and then returned to clarity, on and off, making the world oscillate.

"Please answer question seven on the board," the teacher said. "Make it an entry in your notebooks."

Some of the class groaned and you looked up, the world coming back into focus, too sharp and the contrasts too extreme. You blinked a few times to clear your head and pull yourself up out of the overwhelming need to close your eyes and never open them again. You put your notebook and the pile on your desk area and gingerly picked your pencil up. The movement made you cringe.

The dark bruises on your wrist moved with your skin and everything was sore. Both wrists were, actually, and you lifted the other to examine it. The previous evening had been spent trying to find gauze because the blood wouldn't clot, had become too thin, and the bleeding wouldn't stop, so it dripped down your arm and stained your sheets and you had a panic attack and dug around in your bathroom cabinet on your hands and knees for an hour looking for anything to stem the bleeding. You had had help, though the help was too distracted to be of much use.

Now your right wrist was wrapped very tightly in gauze and medical tape. People asked about it all day and you told them it was from slamming it in the door. The left wrist was bare, non-bandaged, but mottled with dark spots. You lifted both wrists closer to your face to examine them.

The sound of someone dropping their pencil and swearing brought you back. You shook your head to brush away the sleep and the headache and picked your pencil up again, beginning to scribble an answer to a question you didn't bother to think about.

Someone leaned into your line of sight. You blinked up at them and smiled softly. Yuki smiled back. "Tired?" she asked.

You nodded and shrugged. "Yeah, a little."

"Only a little?" She looked skeptical but it was quickly covered up by sympathy. "Me too. I had a lot of work last night."

You opened and closed your mouth silently. "I did too, I guess," you mumbled, tucking your hair behind your ear nervously. She smiled at you encouragingly and you smiled back, not wanting to turn her away. This conversation was keeping you awake.

She looked over and you followed her gaze. Zero was sitting in the row in front of you, a few seats to your left. He was staring into lower middle space blankly, his eyes glazed over and dull. Every so often, he would close his eyes and take a deep, slow breath, as though trying to exercise control over some internal conflict. He looked about as exhausted as you were.

Yuki was looking at you and you knew this, but Zero kept your attention for a little longer. After a moment, you glanced at her. She was looking you up and down. "You alright?" she whispered.

"Okay," the teacher said. "We're moving on."

The other students picked up talking and the room buzzed with unrest. Yuki looked uncomfortable suddenly and stared at her notebook in concentration. You watched her look away and glanced at your pile of papers on the desk and then at your wrists. You sighed and hunched over in your chair, eyes drooping shut and the world going black briefly before you opened them and everything was bright.

Class was let out ten minutes later, and you were packing your things slowly as people filed past you.

"_________," Yuki said. You looked up at her. "Are you doing anything tonight? After my shift, you can come over to my room and we can study." She lifted her book for reference, but there was something on her face that looked like hope--a desperate but strong hope.

You opened your mouth to reply and saw the darkness, the bedroom, the hands on your body and felt the press of warmth to your neck, all very vividly and then you felt guilty. She must have seen it on your face, because when you said, "I can't, I'm sorry," she didn't look upset, only worried.

"It's okay," she assured you. "We can study some other time. During the day or something."

"Yeah," you said, "we'll talk about it." You smiled at her. "Sorry, really."

"No, I get it. It's important," she said, waving her hands in front of her. She sighed and adjusted her bag. "Next class?"

"Sure." You stood and numbness exploded through your head. You stumbled a bit and pressed a hand to your forehead, watching as silver fireworks drifted in from the corners of your eyes.

"_________? Are you okay?" Yuki was staring at you oddly. You stared back, confused.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm just tired," you mumbled, letting your hand drop to your side. You breathed the tightness out in a long breath and moved to exit the class. She followed you closely. At the doorway, people were standing about and talking. Yuki swore under her breath and you could tell she was about to yell at them to scram.

A hand pressed gently to your upper back. You jumped and didn't even bother to look over your shoulder. Zero must have been frowning because the students fell silent and shifted out of the way, looking sheepish and Yuki muttered something about calming down.

"I have math," she said distractedly, reaching over and placing a hand on your arm. You looked at her hand and then at her. She was staring into your face with a fierce openness, full of questions and answers and comfort. You stared back and Zero pressed closer, his hand sliding down to rest on your waist.

"Me too," you said, feeling highly uncomfortable in the middle of the hall like that. "I'll be there in a second--"

"This happens every day," she whispered, her brown eyes wide and serious. You just nodded and shrugged.

"I don't know," you mouthed and shook your head.

"Yuki, just let her go," Zero said, the familiar possessiveness filling his tone out like a balloon. He sounded stressed, on edge, but he always was, especially in the middle of the day. His hand dropped away from your body but you knew he was clenching his fists and they were staring at each other in irritation.

"You need to let her go," she hissed quietly, eyes narrowing. You turned at this and saw his purple eyes light with an angry fire, his usually serene expression contorting into a snarl. You grimaced and reached out to touch his arm but pulled your hand away.

"I'll be there in a second, Yuki," you told her, sending her a placating smile. She smiled back and nodded. You turned and walked down the hallway toward the staircase. Behind you, you could hear Zero and Yuki biting comments at each other before Zero said, "You don't even know what you're talking about, Yuki," in a harsh, hurt tone.

You rounded the corner and threw your bag down on the floor. The marble felt cool on your skin and you pressed your cheek to the wall and closed your eyes for a second. You were too tired for thinking and learning and conversation, and especially conversation with those two.

Just as you were gathering your last bits of energy to head off to class, Zero walked around the corner and immediately his expression melted from anger to relief, and it happened so quickly you didn't even notice it until you saw the very familiar glaze of euphoria in his eyes. He was beside you before you could register it and you stared up at him warily.

"_________," he said, almost murmured, and leaned down to wrap his arms around you. You stood very still as he did this, feeling his warmth and his breathing and his face pressed to your neck.

"I have class," you said as a reminder, trying not to speak too loudly into his ear. He backed you up and pressed you to the wall. You blinked at him as he pulled back and stared into your eyes.

He was so beautiful you wanted to cry. Always, he was, and especially now, when he was so close, only inches away. You didn't quite know what to do with yourself for a moment.

"It'll only be a little," he said, voice lilting and quiet. You went to shake your head and object and he must have seen this because he leaned down and pressed his lips to yours. You felt resistance drain out of you. His arms were tight and his weight pressed you into the wall, not uncomfortably, and his mouth was warm and gentle as it moved against yours. You felt fuzzy and hot and jellylike.

The whole world came back in a rush when he slid his hand up your neck to bury it in your hair. Your eyes snapped open and you had a difficult decision to make, only it wasn't so difficult: should you stop this and ruin his mood when he was already so fragile and, really, you didn't mind standing there in the hall and kissing him because if there was one thing Zero was exceptionally good at besides all the fighting it was kissing? Or should you continue this and not go to class and get detention and drive yourself a little bit crazy with all of his sex-appeal and him completely insane because even after all this seduction you were still going to say no?

You pushed at his chest a bit and he made a sound of displeasure, a slight sigh into your mouth, and pulled back, licking his lips slowly while he gazed into your eyes. You reddened and cleared your throat.

"I have class," you said again, trying to push the tremor out of your voice. The bell rang. You pointed at the ceiling. "See?"

Zero didn't say anything, but pulled you tightly to his chest and kissed you again. This time, you got out of it in time before he dragged you under. You pulled away immediately and shook your head, pushing back on his chest. He sighed and loosened his hold on you.

"I only need a little," he whispered.

"It's never a little--"

"_________..." The pain was there on his face, right there, and you frowned. He swore and closed his eyes, lifting a hand to cover his mouth. You hissed a breath out through your teeth. You placed a hand on his chest and opened your mouth to speak but he beat you to it. "_________, please," he whispered, eyes glittering and dark.

You cringed. You couldn't stand the pleading and the begging, and especially when it degraded into tears and you were about as much of a mess as he was, trying to calm him down, running your fingers through his silver hair and holding his face in your hands and kissing him, anything to get him to stop.

That wasn't about to happen, but it could, and you felt it. "Zero," you said carefully. He was still staring deeply into your eyes. "It's too much," you told him. "I'm tired and exhausted and... it's too much."

His amethyst eyes widened momentarily before he reached into his pants pocket and withdrew a bottle. "Here," he said, quickly handing you the bottle and closing your fingers around it. You knew what they were; you'd taken them before.

You looked at the clear orange container and opened and closed your mouth a few times silently. "I've taken so many of these," you whispered, looking up at him. "It's not healthy, I don't think..."

He moved very close to you and you could see the wash of desperation in his eyes. "_________," he murmured. "I need this. Please, just a little. I'll be very gentle."

He was always gentle. "No, Zero, I can't. Not right now. I..." You sighed and ran a hand through your hair. "I'm not too sure I'll be able to at all today."

"Why?" He whispered this, tone laced with longing and devastation and confusion. When you opened your mouth to reply, he reached a hand out and caressed your face.

You felt the tingle and shivered. "I-I'm too tired," you told him. "I just need sleep. You need sleep. I couldn't sleep at all last night, Zero, you know that."

His beautiful eyes melted into sorrow. "I know, I know. I'm sorry. __________, I'm sorry." He kept stroking your cheek with his thumb and now he leaned in to kiss your mouth softly, lingeringly. You let it happen and watched as he pulled back. "I'll be better tonight. We can sleep. I just need..." His eyes fluttered shut and he sighed deeply. "I just need some now, to get me through," he said.

The bruises on your wrists throbbed in response to your sudden spike in anxiety. When it got bad, he forgot about being secretive and just went for it, and thus far nothing bad had happened but you were always nervous someone was going to walk in on a very messy scene that would be impossible to understand.

You frowned and looked down at your bandaged wrist. "I don't think that would be good. I shouldn't even be in school right now."

He looked down at your wrist, too, and took it, bringing it closer to him, where he turned it over gently and examined the gauze. He cursed, suddenly very angry with himself, and looked down at the ground. You could see his eyes close momentarily as he took a deep breath in. "I'm sorry, _________. Last night was... I was bad, okay? I was weak." His voice had become a broken whisper and now he stared at you with a fierce intensity, eyes glittering.

You wanted to tell him it wasn't about being weak. He hadn't been weak, he'd been disoriented and upset, and you shouldn't have let him drink from you in the first place. And you had known enough to not let him take from your neck, which is what he always preferred--it had been hard enough coaxing him to take from your wrist when he was so voracious and emotional that it hadn't even occured to you to not let him take from you at all. It had been your responsibility to not let him get carried away but sometimes you got carried away, and that's where things went badly.

"It's okay," you wanted to say, but then he raised your wrist to his mouth and kissed it and you didn't say anything at all.

"I won't take from here. You can tell me where."

"That's not the issue, Zero."

"Then what?" he asked desperately. "________, what do I need to do?"

You shook your head helplessly. "Wait, just wait. I mean, I'm so tired right now, Zero, it'd be the worst thing. And I lost so much blood last night..."

He looked pained. "I'm sorry," he whispered, pulling you tightly to his chest, where he held you with his face buried in your hair. One of his hands ran up and down your back and you felt exhausted suddenly, just unable to move. His body was so warm and his movements and breathing so rhythmic, and you closed your eyes and melted a little and leaned into him and the two of you just stood there like this.

You were knocked out of your semi-rest when you realized his hold had gotten tighter, significantly so. You could feel his breath on your neck, shaky and shallow. When you moved slightly, his hold tightened even more so and he pressed his face to your neck.

"It just hurts so much, ________," he whispered against your skin. You could feel the heat of his breath and the brush of his lips and you imagined fangs sinking into your skin, tiny pricks of pain accompanied by a warm wetness that pulsed uncomfortably in your throat. You pressed your hands to his chest to push him away but he held on to you.

"I have class," you said, trying to convince him to release you. The longer he stood there the more intense the need became.

"I know," he murmured.

"I need to go," you reiterated, pushing again. He gave a low groan of anguish and backed up, putting about a foot of space between the two of you. His purple eyes were crystal clear and filled with an animal intensity that struck you when you looked at them.

"Take those," he said, gesturing to the bottle. "Then you'll be better."

You looked down at the bottle hesitantly. "I don't know if I'll be better by tonight, I mean--"

"You will be. It will work. It always works." Zero reached forward, seemingly to take you into his arms, but instead he ran a few fingers down your neck. Then he jerked back and looked into your eyes with a kind of sadness. "You're nervous," he said. "Your pulse is fast. Why are you nervous?"

You stared at him as an absurd feeling of disbelief came over you. "Because I don't want you to drink from me right now," you whispered fiercely. "Of course I'm nervous. I'm anemic!" You waved your hands about in confusion. "I'm nervous because I'm afraid I'll be in pain or I'll die even--" Zero flinched at the word. "--and I'm nervous because... well, because you'd be in pain otherwise. I just... I just don't know." You sighed and looked down at the bottle.

That was the issue. Vampires sometimes became accustomed to a certain person's blood, and then they would always prefer it, but that tended to be the extent. But with Zero something had gone wrong--and maybe it was because of his lineage or something, you didn't know. But once he had drank from you, that was it. Other blood made him sick, physically ill, but you had a vague notion that was psychological and not physiological; really, he was addicted. And you hadn't figured this out until a few months ago, when it was vacation and you had gone away for a week, and on the second day you received a frantic phone call from Yuki about how Zero was displaying odd symptoms of withdrawal and how is this happening, what's going on, please come back and help, he says he needs you.

You hadn't really understood. The day of the call you begged your parents to let you leave early and they bought you a plane ticket--begrudgingly--and you arrived back at the school on the fourth day of vacation to what amounted to a mess.

It had been surreal, you recalled, to walk into the bathroom and see him laying on his side in the shower, in all of his clothing, with his hands covering his face, breathing raggedly. So surreal, in fact, that you hadn't said anything when you got there, just stared and it only really started when he seemed to sense you and uncovered his face.

Zero had animal eyes. They were wild and vast and emotive, and they mesmerized--you didn't know anyone else with purple eyes. His eyes, when he opened them, had been overwhelming, manic and desperate, and they gripped you and you couldn't look away only because you were afraid that when you looked back at him he'd have degenerated into something else, something nonhuman.

You could barely remember the movement, though you did recall him pushing himself onto his hands and knees--with much apparently painful effort--and moving toward you. His hands were ice-cold and strong, so strong they'd bruised, as he grabbed your wrists with as much gentleness as he could muster, which was not much, and dragged you down on top of him, into his lap.

Things were very vivid here. You remembered the freezing spray of water soaking you, and the feel of his equally cold, wet clothing, clinging to his lean, a-little-too-thin frame, though under his clothes his skin had been hot, as though he had a fever. You remembered being held very tightly with arms wrapped around you, rocking back and forth slightly as he pressed you to him and his face to your neck. And then the odd feeling of heat on your cold skin, the press of fangs and then the momentary pain as they broke through, all very warm, the heat of his mouth a little overwhelming, and the pulls, the greedy, desperate drag on your vein that always made you a little nauseated when you thought too hard about it.

This moment lasted for a long time. You must have sat there with him, holding him as he clutched you to himself very tightly, letting him drink from you voraciously, for almost three minutes. At some point, you felt cold, too cold, and you opened your eyes which you'd never realized you'd closed, and said, "Zero, it's time to stop," softly into his ear which was very near your mouth. He'd stopped sucking, just sat there with his fangs lodged in your neck, slowing his breathing and calming down and you couldn't think of anything else to do but rub his back, slowly, rhythmically, until he unlatched with extreme reluctance and pulled away.

But you two still sat there. Your blood was everywhere, covering his shirt front and his neck, and looking at it made you sick so you'd pulled his shirt over his head and thrown it away from you. You had been nauseated, lightheaded, freezing and weak, and so you'd leaned against his bare chest, against his feverishly hot skin, and he'd held you like that for a while, sitting on the shower floor in freezing spray, while he licked and kissed your neck and ear and up your jaw and your mouth many times, as something like a sorry, but he hadn't ever said sorry, but he'd said your name a few times, and he'd cried silently, which you hadn't noticed until you had found the sliver of strength required to sit up straight and look into his face.

He'd said sorry afterward, though, too many times.

The memory made you queasy. You looked at him as he looked at you and you remembered how humiliated he'd felt. "Zero," you began to say, but he held up his hand to stop you.

"_________, it's not my intent to cause you pain." He sounded dead serious and his eyes showed that.

"I know." You sighed and closed your eyes. There was a brush against your face and he slid his hand up the back of your neck. His mouth was on yours again, slow-moving and warm and his other arm wrapped around your waist and you were so turned on suddenly, and maybe it was because you were feeling bad for him, but the sensation of his hands on you and his raw emotions and his unnatural beauty just all combined and you were swept away for a while, until your back hit the cold wall.

You were jerked back to reality and pulled away reluctantly. You realized you were holding his face in your hands and he was lifting you up towards him--he was significantly taller than you--so you were on your tiptoes. You blinked and tried to think of a way to deal with the situation at hand. Slowly, he lowered you to your feet, but he kept staring into your eyes, and when you didn't say anything he leaned in and kissed you again.

"___________," he said against your mouth, somewhere between a whisper and a groan. You remembered this wasn't going to happen and let go of his face, instead pressing your hands to his shoulders and pushing.

"Zero," you said when he pulled back and gave you a confused look. "Can we just... Can we just wait and do this later? I'm technically supposed to have class now..." You smiled at him.

He seemed to go through a complicated set of phases, in which he looked disappointed and then he looked distressed--here he looked down at your wrists--and then he looked resigned, and that melted into a sad smile that jabbed at you a little. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can get the teacher to waive the lateness, if you'd like."

"Um, I'll have to see how upset he is, I think."

"Okay." He ran a hand through his pale hair and breathed out deeply. Slowly, in an almost torturous fashion, his eyes melted into dark, glimmering pools of desperation, the rawness that was just under his skin when he was experiencing a wave of need. "But you'll take them, right? I don't want to hurt you. They'll make it bet--"

"Yes, I know," you interjected, and then felt bad when he looked ashamed of his worry. "Thank you for worrying about me, Zero." You smiled at him and picked your bag up off the floor.

He didn't say anything, but he stared at you for a while. Eventually, he swallowed and looked away, down at the floor, eyes shifting and searching for something unseen.

You sighed and reached out to lightly touch his arm. His eyes flicked up toward you, the exhaustion and frustration pounding through them like electricity. The danger, the tiny bit of it that was always there, was barely visible, and you knew that the longer you stood there the more difficult it would become for him, until eventually the danger would burst to the surface and that animal part of him, the part of him you saw in the shower that day, would break free and you'd be unable to fight him off.

Not that that would ever happen. Though, it almost had a few times.

You nodded at him and managed another smile. "See you tonight, Zero," you said softly, and pulled yourself away from the magnetism of his gaze and walked off down the hall.

-

The pills were a weird thing. They were nondescript blue capsules that performed the seemingly impossible task of replenishing blood. It was a painless but bizarre process in which you took one with water and lay down on your bed for a few hours, and after a short while of this stillness your blood would be back, as though it hadn't ever left, pounding through your veins and heart. It freaked you out.

You figured it couldn't be healthy. Due to Zero's addiction, you needed to take them many times a week, sometimes an upwards of six or so, just to stay alive and out of the hospital. It was a horrible idea, you thought, to let him just take and take, but you couldn't imagine any other way, because the blood pills did nothing and other blood made him 'ill' and if he didn't consume any for over a span 12 hours, bad things would happen: first, he'd get irritable, which would slowly slide into an inability to think about anything else but feeding; then, he'd begin to shake, starting with his hands, and his skin would become cool and damp with sweat, and he'd be overcome with an extreme, unmanageable exhaustion--this second stage could go on for a while, for hours and hours, but eventually two things would happen, and you spent a lot of your time dreading them.

There'd be pain. Lots of it. It would attack his muscles and he'd be unable to do anything but curl up somewhere or thrash around in agony, but more commonly he'd get into an icy shower and just lay there, numbing himself, his skin boiling hot and on fire, and his body slowly turning colder and colder, until there was nothing but the pain of the two disparate temperatures to think about, to be miserable about.

And then there'd come the degeneration of his humanity. You'd only seen this once ever, but you'd seen beginning stages of it many times: the wash of mania in his eyes, the change in voice, the crawling and the begging.

The begging was the worst.

Your eyes snapped open as the memory poured in like ice water. The words on the page spun for a moment before you could focus and remember is was your homework. You sat up in the desk chair and sat in stunned silence, feeling your heart pound in your chest erratically, too quickly, like a rabbit's. You tried taking a slow breath and things calmed down after a minute.

The sleep sat heavy in your chest. You rubbed your eyes vigorously to wake yourself up. The clock read 8:43 in the evening and outside the windows, the sky was a dull, darkening gray-blue. The dark silhouette of the trees stabbed at the horizon, sharp and at odd angles. You stood and moved to the window to stare down into the courtyard.

Four people milled about in the middle, all dressed in white, all looking somber. Night class students. You pressed closer to the glass and climbed up on the window seat, craning to see who they were. The moment the thought entered your head, one of them, the one with dark hair--Kaname, you noted, the thought delayed by your confusion--looked up toward you and made eye contact. You stayed very still and kept staring back, keeping your expression as neutral as possible, until he turned somewhat toward you and raised a hand in greeting.

You stopped. Automatically, you returned the wave and watched as he stared for a little while longer and then turned back to the other three. When they all successively looked up in your direction you backed away from the window and pulled the drapes shut.

They knew. You knew they knew. You had a vivid recollection of a Thursday evening in which you were sitting by the front gates and a person, so ethereal they may not have been real, materialized right next to you on the bench, and, looking you dead in the face with wide, glowing blue eyes, placed a gentle, cool hand on your arm and said, "I'm sorry. You'll be okay," in an extremely understanding, sympathetic, reassuring tone. That was it, and he--you realized it was a he only after he'd begun speaking--stood and was gone before you could reply.

You didn't know if you cared that they knew. You figured you probably should.

The pills were sitting in their bottle on the desk. You glanced over at them and made a small, involuntary noise of discomfort. Cautiously, you picked the bottle up and unscrewed the cap and two blue pills tumbled into your palm. You flipped them over on your hand, feeling them slip and slide on your skin. "Water," you muttered, and wandered into the bathroom.

The floor was sparkling white and pristine, probably from all the cleaning fluids. You stared down at the tile and then up at the mirror. You looked tired, you thought. The water was cold when you turned it on, and you ran your fingers underneath it for a moment before grabbing the cup and filling it.

You thought about if there was anything left to do. Once you took the pills, you had to just lay there, very still, and once that was finished you knew you still weren't going to be available to work--Zero was possessive and affectionate, and you were going to be very occupied. The thought made you go cold for a moment, and so you quickly placed both pills in your mouth and took a drink of water before you changed your mind. You had changed your mind before. It was kind of an ordeal.

You poured the rest of the water out and stared into the mirror again. Your eyes were a little out-of-focus and so you widened them to try and push back the exhaustion. As you stood there, a peculiar feeling of lightheadedness came over you, starting out dim, only a blip, and then swelling until you felt on the verge of vertigo. You gripped the sides of the wash basin and hissed.

Getting over to the bed took some effort, but once you lay down on your back, the discomfort vanished and was replaced by the sensation of slowly being filled with warm water--this new feeling wasn't necessarily the best, either, but it wasn't unpleasant. You shifted on your back and felt your body sinking into the mattress, everything going slack. You closed your eyes and sighed.

There was a light knock on the door forty-five minutes later. Your eyes fluttered open and began adjusting to the dim lighting of the room. The glow from the bathroom poured in, and the sunset had just fallen beyond the horizon so all there was to see was color, illuminated by a past ball of fire and chemicals. The room was dark, bluish, a little hazy. You blinked a few times to clear your head.

There was another knock, a little more tentative, and you could faintly discern the sound of pacing feet. You tried sitting up but couldn't, and you fell back on the bad again. "You can come in," you said with a voice as loud as you could muster, which wasn't very loud. The handle turned slowly and then the door clicked open. Warm orange light shown in and immediately it was blocked out by the figure slipping into the room.

Zero closed the door softly behind himself and turned toward you. "__________," he said softly, walking over to the bed. You felt the mattress shift as he climbed onto it, moving so as to lay down next to you. He propped himself up on an arm. "How are you? How is it?" His eyes were liquid.

You stared up at him because that was the only thing you could do. "I'm okay." You wanted to touch his face, it was so still, so full of concentration, to see if it would ripple like pond water. From this distance, you could see his pale skin, absolutely smooth, pulled over the strong planes of his face, and the marriage of delicacy and roughness in everything. His eyes, glimmering in the off lighting, were luminous and gazing intently back down at you. Zero made you feel inadequate.

"Just okay?" he murmured, and used a hand to brush your hair out of your eyes. Just before drinking, Zero fell into a phase of extreme affection and romance. You think you understood it. Taking blood was an action of unbelievable intimacy, beyond anything you could imagine. The first time he'd drank from you, he spent a lot of his time whispering into your ear and running his hands up and down your body and kissing anywhere available. It had been rather soothing, considering the feel of teeth sinking into your skin was entirely foreign, and especially foreign to you was the immense sexual arousal it got out of him. So shocking, in fact, was this revelation, that when, post-drink, he wanted to have sex, you couldn't wrap your head around it.

"You want to what?" 

"Sleep with you, _________."

Silence, but he pulled his shirt off over his head and slid his hands up under your own shirt and seemed to want to remove it in the same fashion. 

"W-what?" There was still a stinging, sore sensation on your neck where he'd been drinking. You wanted to touch it, to press a hand to it to make sure it wasn't a gaping, open wound, but when you raised your arm to do so, Zero took your hand in his and kissed your palm.

"Make love to you, __________," he whispered against your skin, and everything was hot. 

You felt yourself turn bright red at the memory and Zero, seemingly in response, though you couldn't be sure, leaned down and kissed your cheek. The odd warmth of the pills' effects coursed through you like a heated stream. You closed your eyes and pictured a bathtub slowly filling.

There was a sudden hot, wet heat and Zero nipped a bit at your skin below your ear. You jumped and opened your eyes. "Zero," you said quickly. "It's not done. I'm not ready."

He sighed very deeply and the air hissed out through his teeth. "I need it," he whispered, eyes lighting up. You could see his fangs beyond his parted lips, needle-like and white. His breathing had escalated and now he pressed a hand over his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut.

"You'll be okay," you told him, and somehow willed your hand to reach up and stroke his cheek. He looked down into your eyes and took your hand lightly, licking at the pulse point in your wrist. You cringed when you felt his teeth scrape the healing cuts. "Don't," you said grimly.

"How long has it been?" he asked quietly, mouth moving against your skin.

"Less than an hour."

He swore and closed his eyes. You watched as he ran a hand through his hair and placed your hand back on the mattress reluctantly. "I'm not leaving you," he said with finality.

"That's okay." You smiled and closed your eyes. Beside you, Zero shifted and the bed sunk on your right side as he lay down. He slid an arm over your waist and pulled you toward him until your side was flush to his body, and you leaned your head on his chest and heard his heartbeat thump along diligently, and sensed the faint smell of mint on his shirt.

You opened your eyes when everything was a little too warm. Zero was on top of you, you realized, on his knees and elbows, and so much larger than you. His face was buried in your neck, nuzzling, and you seized up when he rocked his hips against yours.

"Z-Zero?" you prompted, reaching up to pull his face from your throat. Upon this movement, you realized the pills had done their job and that he must have sensed the sudden influx of blood into your body and was reacting to it. "Zero," you urged, when he didn't pull back immediately. "Stop. Slow down."

He made a small noise of pleasure and looked down at you, purple eyes glazed and shimmery. "__________," he said, voice misty and deep with lust. "I'm going to take some, okay?"

"W-wait. Hold on." You struggled backwards into a seated position against the headboard and watched warily as Zero crawled back on top of you, tracking. You took a shaky breath and put out a hand to stop his advance. He sat back on his knees and grabbed the hand, slipping your middle and index fingers into his mouth. You gasped at the silky, hot wetness and he stared deeply into your eyes.

"O-okay, just... just wait a moment," you said, swallowing. His eyes fluttered shut and he let you pull your fingers out of his mouth. Zero gave a strangled sort of noise and looked at you.

"__________, please," he whispered and when he reached out to run a finger down from your temple to your jaw, you forgot why you were resisting and just felt bad. As his mouth pressed gently to yours, you sighed and let go.

The hallway was dead. On the left, the closed doors had given way to blank walls, and every so often a painting rushed by. Yuki's hand gripped your elbow too tightly as she pulled you down the corridor. She was breathing heavily and her eyes were wide and skin pale, sallow. Sometimes, she'd seem to want to say something and her mouth would open but she'd immediately close it.

The door came up suddenly on the right, all white wood and surrounded by a thin outline of light in the dim hall. Yuki skidded to a stop and pushed you toward the door. You looked at her, not sure what to do, what she wanted, what was happening, but she gestured urgently and then made an upset noise and whispered, "Listen!" You jumped at her tone and hesitantly pressed your ear to the door.

At first, you weren't sure what you were hearing. Something like a growl, or a scream or a moan of pain, or just white noise, and then quiet, nothing at all, followed by a low, desperate groan. You furrowed your brow in concentration and went to reach for the knob when something slammed into the door. You stumbled back and gasped. Yuki was staring at the door in something like horror. You looked at her. "W-what is that?" you whispered forcefully, feeling the shaking begin.

She turned her wide, watery eyes to yours. You'd never seen such confusion and fear before. "You have to go in there, ____________," she hissed, voice trembling. "You have to fix it. I... I don't know what to do. We don't know what to do." Something slammed against the door again and she covered her mouth to stop a scream. You stared at her and listened to the noises, muffled by the door. Slowly, you approached it and reached for the knob. As your hand touched the freezing metal, you could hear frantic speech, unintelligible, mixed in with the growling and the groaning and the pained noises. You twisted the knob and heard the bolt click, and slowly swung the door open.

Zero took your face in his hands and kissed down your jaw. You tried very hard to relax your shoulders but you just couldn't, and instead you wrapped your arms around his neck. He made a pleased purring noise and rubbed his mouth along your neck, leaving heat. You dug your fingers into his shirt and closed your eyes, waiting for the pressure and the resulting pinch, the sinking and the pull. Anxiety filled you and just as soon as it came, pressing at your heart, it dissipated as Zero pulled you into his arms and wrapped himself around you.

"I love you," he whispered against your damp skin. You took a deep breath and ran your fingers through his silver hair. You were never sure if the words Zero said during moments such as this were truthful or driven by his overwhelming desire for what was inside you. The thought hurt. But you thought it a lot, and every time he'd prove you wrong: pulling you aside in the hallways and kissing you and saying very earnestly, "I love you," or whispering something into your ear that would make you laugh, or buying you things you didn't ask for, or any number of things that you would not usually associate with Zero.

You pressed your mouth to his ear and whispered, "Me too." He made a noise of pleasure against your skin and nipped lightly. And there it was, the sharpness of fangs, but they didn't break skin, he just held them there, and seemed to savor what was about to happen.

When he bit in, you jumped a little and he tightened his hold on you. The pain lasted a moment and then there was the soft, wet heat of his mouth, his tongue, the discomforting feeling of warm liquid rolling slowly down your collarbone, the bizarre pulling sensation as he sucked greedily, and the rhythmic comfort of his hand rubbing up and down your back slowly, deliberately. You hissed out a shaky breath through your teeth.

The room was bright and cheerful, but the headmaster was on the floor in the far corner holding very tightly onto Zero, who struggling to get out of his grip. The two of them wrestled for a moment, and you got very worried Zero was going to hurt him, he was looking so vicious, when he snapped his head around to look at you and all hell broke loose.

"___________!" he screamed, trying desperately to crawl toward you.

"Get away!" the headmaster yelled, as Zero clawed at the wood floor. "Get out of here, both of you!"

"She can help him," Yuki said with a slight tremble in her voice, gesturing to you. "This is what he nee--"

"Get out!"

Zero groaned in anguish and it developed very quickly into a choking sound. "___________!" he was saying, voice raw. You stared at him as he was held down on the floor by the frustrated headmaster. His eyes were wild and they latched onto you with the fierce concentration of a predator, except he began crying. "Please," he sobbed. "____________, come here."

You looked on in horror. Yuki came up beside you and placed a hand on your shoulder. "He's in a lot of pain," she muttered, watching warily. You tilted your head toward her but never looked away. She sighed and closed her eyes. "I-it's just... I wish it hadn't come to this..." You thought she might have begun to cry but you weren't sure.

Zero was saying your name over and over again, and the headmaster was struggling to keep him down, and eventually Zero, face down on the floor, bit out, "Get off of me! Get off! I need her! ____________, please, please come here! I need you!" He said please a few more times but it degraded into sobbing again. The headmaster looked torn and turned his eyes toward you. 

"He needs to drink, ___________. He can't from anyone else."

You looked at him. "I-I know," you said softly. "I know that."

You knelt down on the hardwood floor and Zero's watery, wild purple eyes stared up at you. He made a choked sound of devastation in his throat and tried to drag himself toward you. The headmaster fought back and Zero started yelling nonsensical pleads again. 

"It's okay," you said to them, but mostly to Zero. Both of them looked at you and Zero ran his tongue across his teeth, the fangs bright white in the light. You moved a bit closer and he stared at you in what seemed to be awed, anguished silence. "Should I just... cut myself?" you asked the headmaster quietly, frowning as Zero made a growling noise at the question.

He furrowed his brow in thought. "That might be safest, yes."  He reached up and ran his hand along the desk top blindly. He eventually got a hold of a knife, black-bladed and paper-thin, and handed it to you quickly. You took it and Zero watched you, tracked you like a hunting dog.

"Don't. Don't," he said, voice strained and hoarse from all the yelling. He lunged at you again but was caught. "Don't hurt yourself, ___________. Don't. Please, just... just come here. I'll be gentle. Please. I need you." His eyes were vast pools of sorrow. When the headmaster wouldn't let up and you didn't come toward him, he broke down. "___________, please," he said, voice cracking. Tears ran down his face. You'd never seen him cry so much in your life--Zero hardly ever cried, anyway. 

You opened and closed your mouth silently. He bared his teeth and sobbed, closing his eyes and giving one, violent struggle. "Please! ___________, please! It hurts! I'll do anything! I'll do anything at all!"

You couldn't handle the pleading and the tears. You thought you might start to cry yourself and that would do nothing helpful. Slowly, shakily, you got to your feet and turned the knife over in your hands. "Just a little bit?"

"Just a little bit," the headmaster replied levelly. "We'll see how it goes."

You took a deep breath and ignored every thought in your head. The blade was cool and sterile-feeling as it pressed to your skin. You very carefully sliced a shallow cut onto your palm, drawing an instant pool of blood. Yuki made a gasping noise and you had a moment of nothing where you just stared at it. Slowly, it dripped onto the floor, and you didn't see it until it'd already happened.

Zero purred against your skin and adjusted his hold on you, so you were sitting, facing him, with your legs on either side of his hips. He rocked himself against you and you suppressed a rising moan. "Maybe we should wait... wait for it to be done," you whispered against his ear. Once, Zero had bitten you during sex and it was an overwhelming flood of sensations, and you couldn't focus on one thing, but Zero had been out of his mind in pleasure--you had to remind him to keep the two separate very often.

He stopped the rocking and fell still. You waited, listening to his breathing and his drinking, and feeling the warmth leave you slowly. You reached a hand over and ran your fingers down the column of his neck, and then up and down and up, feeling the ripple as he swallowed, the muscles contracting and rolling. For the next few minutes it was quiet. Zero had fallen into some content kind of coma, and he just sat there, holding you very close to his body, with his eyes closed and his hands sliding up and down your spine every so often.

"Only a little bit more, okay?" you told him quietly, the cold seeping under your skin at an increasing rate. He made a soft affirmative noise and you felt his tongue against your skin. You turned your eyes downward and watched as blood dripped down his neck, his chest, blotching his shirtfront, red pathways everywhere. All the spilling made you queasy, but he enjoyed it, and there were many moments where you tried very hard to clean him up in post, but he would have none of that. Once, you came upon him sitting on the bathroom floor, dragging his fingers through the rivers, smearing the blood across his skin, and then licking it off his hands. It was a fanatical kind of devotion you didn't quite get.

Zero made a strangled noise and you looked down at where your blood had splattered a bit on the hardwood floor. The headmaster grunted as Zero kicked out violently against him, struggling, clawing, until the older man let go.

You watched in shock as he lapped the blood off the floor, on his hands and knees at your feet. There was a moment where it wasn't real, where he wasn't degrading himself for relief, but it all came back in a rush when he looked up at you, purple eyes glazed and wide, and whispered, "Please, __________, more," in a hoarse, cracking voice. You couldn't move, you could only look on as he slid himself into a kneeling position and grabbed your cut hand with fingers like vises. His tongue was hot and his breath labored as he licked at the blood and scratched at the skin with his fangs.

Then he latched on to your wrist with all his might and calmed down immediately, his breathing slowing, relaxing, his eyes sliding shut, his breath leaving him in a groan of contentment. The three of you watched in silence as he drank, blood dripping down his chin, his front, greedily and in large pulls. 

"Zero," the headmaster said cautiously. "Don't take so much. You could hurt her."

His hands tightened around your forearm but he only continued. The headmaster sighed and got to his feet, trying to adjust his clothing and arrange himself after such a battle. "__________," he said, voice full of a weird sort of sorrow. "Don't be afraid to stop him."

You pulled your eyes away from Zero's placid, blissful face only for a moment to look up at him. "It'll be okay," you replied softly, afraid to break Zero's trance. "I can handle it, I think." You ran the fingers of your free hand through his pale hair a few times, and when he made a pleased purring noise, you settled into petting him gently, rythmically, until it seemed as though he'd left completely.

Yuki placed a soft hand on your shoulder and spoke quietly. "If you need help, just call me, okay?" She smiled as she left and the headmaster slipped out and closed the door behind them both. You took a measured breath and focused very hard on the feeling of his heat against your cold skin. 

"Not much more, okay?" He was taking huge gulps and you were feeling shaky all of a sudden. You couldn't tell if he hadn't heard or if he simply couldn't stop himself, so consumed with the warmth and the ecstasy pouring from you and into his veins.

"Zero," you whispered, leaning down toward him until your head was by his. "Only a little more, please. It's going to be too much soon..." As you stared very closely at his calm expression, his eyes slid open, revealing glazed pools. You weren't sure he could see you, he had retreated so far into his own space, but he sighed through his nose and seemed to try and measure himself. The drinks slowed down, became smaller and lazier, and eventually he stopped sucking at all, just sat there as blood seeped out of your wrist and dripped down his chin and neck, basking in the warmth and the pleasure and the closeness.

He unlatched, his fangs wet with blood and his mouth all red, and cleaned himself, licking his lips and teeth, but he didn't wipe at the blood covering his front, and eventually he stopped, closed his eyes, and settled down into a cross-legged position in front of you, at your feet, breathing slowly, deeply, curling over his legs. You watched his shoulders rise and fall and knelt down in front of him, gripping your wrist so as to place pressure there and begin the clotting process--you were feeling weak and cold and shaky. 

"Zero?" you said softly, gently. His eyes slid open slowly and tilted up toward you. They swirled with a painful mixture of shame and apology and sorrow. You flinched at their astonishing clarity and folded yourself into a seated position. "Are you feeling better?" you asked, touching his shoulder. "Do you need anything?"

He reached forward carefully and took your bleeding wrist, pressing his lips to it for a lingering moment. "I'll heal you," he said. You saw his eyes shimmer as they watered and you cautiously, delicately, reached out and stroked his cheek with a thumb. He didn't cry, only looked devastated, and closed his eyes again. 

"Anything at all?" you prompted softly.

"Water," he barely said. "And sleep." His eyes found yours, brilliant in the light. "Will you sleep with me, ___________?"

You smiled. "Of course." 

Zero pulled back after a short minute and lapped at the bite. "Thank you," he said seriously, gazing into your face with a wild intensity that was softened somewhat by the love in his tone. You smiled and took his face in your hands.

"You're welcome," you said, kissing him. He sighed and tightened his hold around your body. When you pulled back, he frowned and closed his eyes briefly.

"I'm sorry. I took a lot. I'll be better next time."

"You were fine, really." He leaned into you, face against your neck, and you held him, petting his hair absently. He was red, his clothing and skin stained with blood, but you didn't care for a moment and could ignore the cold of your body by absorbing his radiating heat. "I love you, Zero."

He sighed and nuzzled your skin lightly. "Me too," he replied, voice low and muffled. You smiled into his hair and toyed gently with one of his earrings.

"I know you do."