Chapter Text
Well past sunrise, after the deepest shadows have been chased from the city's alleyways and back corners, Suguru gathers his things and leaves for the gym for the first time since Halloween. As he opens the door, he is greeted with yet another gift left waiting outside his apartment.
Flowers. Forget-me-nots. The bouquet tips across the threshold as the door swings open, its blooms falling right at the toes of his boots.
After staring for a long, silent moment, Suguru sighs. He picks them up, takes his shoes off, and relocates the forget-me-nots into a cup with water. He sets them right beside the red lilies and roses from yesterday, and the single black rose left the day before that. At this point, should he invest in an actual vase or two? Maybe…
He wastes another minute thumbing at various petals, imagining the pale hands that placed each small bouquet for him. The last time anyone other than Manami or Larue thought to gift him flowers, he was still in university. Now, Suguru has gotten them three days in a row.
As he goes about his commute, Satoru lingers in the back of his mind like a distant, fast-fading dream. But whenever Suguru glimpses himself in windows or mirrors or still water—with twin scars peeking above his collar like a brand, a beacon, a promise—he feels a chill as if the vampire were hovering right behind him.
What he’d once done without a second thought—dawdling in bookshops after work, picking up late shifts to help out his coworkers, making impulsive ten p.m. runs to the convenience store for snacks—Suguru resolves to avoid entirely. Conversely, he now devotes an inordinate percentage of his attention to sunrise, sunset, and the hours in between. If he hopes to avoid an even messier encounter with Satoru in the near future, he needs a plan.
Given that Haibara once spent a month crashing on his couch and borrows cash from him on a biweekly basis, it doesn’t take much convincing to recruit him to the cause.
‘The cause’ being switching Suguru’s entire public life to a strictly diurnal schedule.
“Ohhh. Because you’re sad, right?” Haibara asks, far too chipper for the shower clean-up they’re currently working on. “Seasonal depression or whatever it’s called? The days sure are getting shorter, huh? Anyway, I'm one hundred percent down to help you maximize your daylight exposure!”
“Ah, great. And yeah, it's... something like that.”
The flimsy justification keeps Haibara from prying into his real reasons for shuffling his schedule around, so Suguru rolls with it. He has no desire to string anyone else along into Satoru’s ominous orbit. And maybe the extra daylight will be of some help for his mood.
Getting the twins he privately tutors to agree to online-only study sessions—just temporarily, fingers crossed—is trickier.
Being grilled by two wealthy teenage girls over a video call isn’t for the weak. After the better part of an hour, their incessant demands of but why? studying is so much better at the crepe shop! and don’t you care about our futures? and you’d better not be quitting on us! we’ll totally flunk out if you do! finally get to him. With his face buried in his hands, Suguru gives them only the sparsest details and the most general gist: a guy he met on Halloween is being very persistent about going out again and he’d like to lay low for a while.
And just like that, Nanako and Mimiko are all sympathetic pouts and emphatic, supportive nods. They’re also worryingly quick to offer to ‘handle’ the ‘stalker creep’ he is avoiding. Who knew a pair of fifteen-year-olds could look so scary? Or that they’d be so protective of a one-hundred-and-eighty-six centimeter man a decade their senior?
With his work schedule now vampire-proofed, Suguru breathes a little easier. A little. Because there’s still his commute both ways to worry about, and getting his errands done before sundown, and the general frustration of these newfound limitations on his comings and goings. It’s a pain, putting himself through so many hoops to avoid winding up at Satoru’s questionable mercy again.
The looming spectre of premature death—even one that wears a handsome face and excites Suguru in all the wrong ways—makes for a powerful incentive, though.
On the train ride home, Suguru nervously checks his watch time and again, as if the sun might suddenly plummet to the horizon an hour early and leave him ripe for the plucking. Once back in his neighborhood, he weaves through slow-walkers on the sidewalk with brisk purpose. Thanks to good time management, he’s able to stop and pick up a bagful of groceries on his way home, too.
The click of the door’s lock behind him spells instant relief, a whole knot of worry deep in his stomach dissolving on the spot. Suguru lets out a happy sigh as he steps out of his boots, drops his groceries in the small kitchen, and changes into something more comfortable before cooking.
He is still sauteeing onions and cutting carrots when the sky outside goes dusk-dim and then night-dark. Not long after, there comes a light rap on his fifth story balcony’s sliding glass door.
Though he knows by now to expect it, the abrupt sound causes him to fumble his knife mid-chop. A chunk of carrot goes rolling off the cutting board and onto the floor, instantly forgotten. With his heartbeat hammering in his ears, Suguru’s attention narrows to the black silhouette standing on the other side of the glass, towering and terribly still. If not for the faint shine of two inhuman eyes peering in, the vampire could be mistaken for just another patch of darkness that the mind tries to rationalize into a familiar, human-shaped pattern.
With a sigh, Suguru shakes off the anxious gut reaction. Satoru is out there and he is in here. Safe. Out of reach. In control. So long as that remains the case, he has little to worry about. And it’s not as if pretending Satoru isn't there will make him go away, will it?
He wipes his hands on the front of his hoodie, flicks on the living room light as he crosses through, and waits by the locked door, fingers hovering lightly on the handle.
The glow from within the apartment washes over Satoru, turning him from an ominous, shadowy presence to a disarmingly charming—if very out of place—visitor. His outfit is casually stylish. His smile is cute and dimpled. His lips are a rosy, freshly-fed pink.
Suguru licks his own, nervous, as he opens the door. A gust of dry, chill wind whips inside, pulling at the gauzy drapes and rattling the loose papers left on his coffee table. Even in his hoodie, sweats, and slippers combo, he gives a shiver.
“Suguruuu,” Satoru is already crooning, hands in his pockets as he saunters forward. He pretends to shiver, too. “Brrr. It’s so cold out here.”
The physical barrier between them may be gone, but the other one—the unseen threshold boundary that prevents Satoru from sweeping inside to devour him in one sense or another—stands strong. All of Suguru’s confidence hinges on that.
“Back again?” he sighs, arms crossed as he leans by the open door. “You’re not getting invited in tonight either, you know.”
“Wow. Ouch.” Clad in black slacks, a turtleneck, and a dark shearling jacket—with a pair of nice shades perched atop his head, too—Satoru looks as if he ought to be at some photoshoot rather than lurking on a mid-priced apartment’s balcony after dark. “You couldn’t wait for me to ask first? You haven’t even heard my latest pitch.”
“Figured I’d save us both some time.”
It’s been the constant in all of Satoru’s nightly visits thus far, wheedling to be let inside and have his way. As if Suguru would ever do anything as laughably reckless as give up his sole guarantee of safety. Satoru is cute, among other things, but he isn’t that cute.
And yet… Suguru is here, isn’t he? With his door wide open, entertaining the very vampire who’d like to gobble him up? Chatting with Satoru like this only encourages him to linger, to come back, to try again.
Not that Suguru has any meaningful means to deter him. Pulling a blanket up over his head may have worked to banish imagined monsters when he was a child, but ignoring Satoru—a threat in the flesh, too real—won’t get him anywhere. The last time he’d tried, the ensuing whining and incessant window-tapping nearly rage-baited him into lunging halfway out to grab his nightly stalker by the collar.
Not smart. Not something he’d like to chance repeating. And if Suguru were to really, truly, unequivocally rebuff Satoru…
Well, it would probably make no difference whatsoever. At worst, he might invite Satoru’s resentment and fury at being flatly rejected. At best, Satoru might actually heed him and disappear into the ether entirely, never to be seen again, and… Suguru does like seeing him. Unfortunately. Inadvisably. To his own detriment, most certainly. All the good sense in the world can’t bring the butterflies in his belly to heel or keep him from blushing when Satoru pays him compliments.
Perhaps it’s just been too long since he’s been with anyone even a quarter as attentive—a mild word for it, really—as Satoru. Or maybe it’s an unforeseen, longterm consequence of his sexual awakening heavily overlapping with his teenaged self’s vampire-obsession. Could he be enthralled? Self-deluded from a little fluffing of his ego? Tragically fated to doom himself? Is he simply so shallow that even a remorseless murderer can entice him with heartthrob good looks and an adorable, fang-laced smile?
Whatever's to blame for why he is the way he is about Satoru, it's not going away anytime soon.
“What’s in the bag?” he wonders, glancing down at the sleek, black department store bag looped on Satoru’s wrist.
“Oh, this?” Satoru grins, the sight of his lengthy canines giving Suguru another faint shiver. “Just a little treat I brought for you.”
Suguru can’t help but smile, flattered despite the fact that Satoru is the unliving embodiment of a red flag. “Like the ones you’ve been leaving at my door?”
The gifts found on his balcony and front doorstep each morning have thus far included flowers, a couple of vending machine gacha trinkets, kitschy costume earrings, and a stack of old, clearly-used DVDs picked from some decrepit bargain bin. None of the vampire books he’d read as a kid prepared him for this crowlike habit of leaving random bits and bobbles around, but he finds the odd assortment somewhat endearing. Maybe it’s just Satoru doing a Satoru thing.
“Something like that, sure.” Satoru shrugs as he dangles the paper bag, its thin handles hooked over his thumb, and offers it to Suguru. “But I didn’t want to leave this one sitting where one of your nosy, annoying neighbors can snatch it.”
Suguru eyes the logo printed on the bag, vaguely recognizing it as one of the flagship stores in Ginza. Gingerly, with great wariness of where his safety ends and Satoru’s dominance begins, he slips the bag off Satoru’s thumb and onto his fingers, their tips just barely brushing.
Those strange blue eyes track his every movement during the exchange, as if ready to leap on the slightest overextension. Satoru’s stare has a weight to it, substantial enough to make Suguru’s arms goosepimple and his neck hairs stand up straight.
“Should I open it?” His thin brows lift as he looks Satoru in the eye, hunting for some telltale spark of devious intent. “Or is there some cursed object waiting for me in here? Hm, Satoru? Is it some gross magic doodad that’ll bewitch me into throwing myself at you?”
“Oh, you wound me,” Satoru cries in response, both hands laid over his cold, unbeating heart. “I would never dream of cursing you, Suguru,” he then purrs, leaning up against the outer frame of the doorway. The tip of his nose grazes the barrier barring his entrance. “When I have you again, it’ll either be because I hunted you down fair and square or you came to me of your own volition. Not with some bullshit magic trick.”
Suguru scoffs and skirts Satoru’s stare, heart pounding in his ears again. Satoru’s certainty leaves his spine tingling. Such a casual mention of hunting him down calls Halloween night to mind—and how that chase ended with him pinned up against a cold alley wall, bitten and bruised and made needy with fear-flavored lust. As for the latter sentiment… there is something frightening and exhilarating in knowing that he could, at any moment, do the unthinkable and step outside, delivering himself to Satoru on a platter. Free will, and all.
Not that he would. Or ever will. Suguru isn't crazy. He is, however, exactly irresponsible enough to continue entertaining Satoru.
With an audience comprised of one very rapt viewer, Suguru slowly peeks inside the bag. Neatly folded up within is a plump bundle of black fabric. Nothing ominous about it.
Suguru pokes a finger into it, testing, and finds the material is wonderfully soft to the touch. Once unfolded and held out to better see, he realizes it’s a sweaterlike jacket. It has a good weight and shape to it, sleekly simple in design with a little extra volume in the sleeves. It sports a thick stand-up collar, too, with two sturdy buttons to fasten it closed. It's roomily sized, too, making it just the kind of thing he might’ve picked out for himself if he saw it on a rack somewhere.
He glances briefly at Satoru, who lurks just beyond the door, watching on with sharp intent and smug satisfaction. With a sudden suspicion that there’s something more to this gift, Suguru fiddles with the jacket to and checks its pockets.
And he discovers that the tags are still attached.
“It’s getting chilly out, isn’t it? Especially at night. I thought you might like something to help keep warm,” Satoru says, managing to keep his tone light and passably sincere in concern—at least until he breaks into a smile there at the end. “For the next time you’re in the mood for a midnight stroll.”
Suguru is only half listening, thoroughly distracted by the designer name and 100% cashmere. He flips the tag over and promptly feels faint at the listed price.
The jacket gets gently stuffed back into the bag.
“This is too much, Satoru,” he says over Satoru’s affronted run-on objections, shaking his head and actively avoiding eye contact. “The old DVDs, the candy, the keychains, that’s all fine. I’m—I really like the flowers, actually. But this? This is like... I mean, how on earth could I accept something like this?”
But when he tries to hand off the bag through the open door, Satoru takes a deliberate step backward.
With his back resting against the rail and his arms casually stretched on either side of him, the vampire impassively watches as Suguru shakes the unaccepted gift and hisses at him to take it back.
“Tell you what,” he says, tongue poking around inside his cheek as he studies Suguru, “I’ll take it back if you come out here and give it to me.”
“Not happening.” Suguru instead sets the bag down and scooches it out the door with his foot. “Here. Keep it for yourself.”
“I don't need it.” With a petulant frown and visible irritation, Satoru stretches out one long leg and nudges the bag back inside. “Plus, I picked it out special for you!”
Suguru gives the rejected gift a soft kick back out onto the balcony, immediately wincing as he remembers what’s inside. In a heated, frantic whisper, he sputters out, “Well, you shouldn’t have! And keep it down out there! You’re going to get me evicted!”
“Are you f—okay. Okay, if you don’t want it…” Satoru purses his lips and looks around, his short hair handsomely tousled by the wind cutting past the apartment building. His sharp grin returns as he picks up the bag with the plush cashmere jacket and says, “If you won’t accept it, then I’ll just toss it. There. Problem solved.”
“You’d what?” Suguru massages his right temple, squinting. It’s an obvious ploy. “Yeah, right. As if.”
Who throws out a perfectly good article of clothing worth more than a hundred thousand yen?
Satoru shrugs, all nonchalance again. “If you’re not into it, then it was a waste of a purchase. Might as well get rid of it,” he says, an elbow propped on the rail as he dangles the bag over the side of the balcony, its thin handles looped around a single finger.
“You’re not serious,” Suguru laughs, more out of disbelief than anything else. “You wouldn’t actually… no. You wouldn’t. That’d be ridiculous.”
“You can watch me. See that gutter drain down there?” Satoru says, jerking a thumb to the left.
With his arms crossed, Suguru nervously rises on his tiptoes and cranes his neck. If Satoru’s pointing in the direction of the dumpsters in the alley below, there definitely is an open gutter drain under the curb…
Satoru folds over the top of the bag and takes up a free-throw stance. “Look, I’ll make the shot from here. Woosh, right into the sewer. Maybe some rat king down there will appreciate my thoughtful, expertly chosen gift as nesting material—”
“Wait! Wait, wait, wait. Wait.” Suguru sighs and hangs his head, worried Satoru is more than willing to see this wasteful nonsense through. With no small amount of defeat, he murmurs, “If… I mean, if you’re really just going to throw it away…”
The smug satisfaction that Satoru exudes very nearly reignites Suguru’s stubborn streak. Having won their standoff, he shoves the gift bag squarely into Suguru’s chest.
“Good, good, good. You should, uh, go ahead and try it on.” The thin swipe of pink across Satoru's lips is more noticeable after he licks them. “Right now. See how it fits.”
It’d be too embarrassing, Suguru thinks, to make a bigger deal of this jacket than it already is—to flaunt it after making such a pathetic attempt to refuse it. He gently sets the crinkled department store bag next to his small couch, face burning out of awkwardness at being given such an unreasonably expensive gift. Cheap lingerie would’ve been easier to take in stride.
“Later, maybe. It’ll have to wait until after I’m done ma—ah!”
The curry!
“No! No, no, no!” It’s Satoru’s fault, menacing distraction that he is, for causing Suguru to completely forget about the pan he’d left on the stove. He scurries back to the kitchen and finds the onions he’d left sauteing are now a dark, bitter brown and burned-stuck to the bottom. “No!”
While he scrapes them off with a spatula, cursing all the while, Satoru calls to him from across the tiny living room.
“Sooo, what’s for dinner?”
“Curry. Minus the onions, I guess.” Suguru glumly dumps them into the trash and wipes the pan clean. With a quick glance back to the balcony door, he says, “If you’re just going to stand out there all night again, should I put on something to watch?”
“I’d rather you let me in.” Satoru pouts and the sight is so pitiful that Suguru could almost forget there are lethal fangs behind those lips. When the look doesn’t achieve the desired result, Satoru drops it for one of dry annoyance. “But since you insist on being paranoid, I’ll settle for a movie. Give me something to sit on this time, would you? You should probably clear out this plant graveyard, too…”
Suguru rolls his eyes while licking the side of his thumb clean. For a guest in his home—or just outside it, rather—Satoru makes an awful lot of demands. After dumping cubed chicken into the preheated pan, he fetches a small beanbag chair from his university years and unceremoniously pushes it out the balcony door.
Satoru plops onto the beanbag, which is a tad small for his height and extra long legs. After some side-to-side wiggling to get comfortably situated among the beans, he gives Suguru an approving double thumbs up. “Alright! Now you just need to put on Human Earth—”
“No.” Suguru flips to some variety show and leaves it there for background noise. “And don’t leave that garbage on my doorstep again. Being mortal, I only have so many hours of life to live, Satoru. I’m not wasting three of them on yet another cash-grab Human Earthworm sequel.”
“Fine.” Satoru yawns, suddenly disinterested. He flicks a bit of lint off of his new beanbag chair. “Pick something deserving of your finite existence, then. I’m not picky.”
Put like that—and with Satoru here to judge his tastes in turn—Suguru has a hard time choosing. As he considers his streaming options and sifts through his own collection of DVDs with a more critical eye, he is struck with the realization that he has piddled away whole days’ worth of his life on so-so thrillers, forgettable dramas, just-average action flicks. If he’s going to soapbox to Satoru about it, he should probably commit to having more discerning tastes.
Then again, how can you know before giving something an honest chance? Some of his favorites—and guilty pleasures—were total surprises.
In the end, he picks a horror film from the stack of DVDs that Satoru left yesterday. Suguru’s never seen it but he’s heard enough to vaguely know the premise: gory murders, a dead lover haunting the protagonist, a case of possession, and an unusually heavy emphasis on romance. From the kitchen, he watches along while cutting up vegetables and bringing his small pot of curry to a simmer. Though the scorched onions are fresh in mind, Suguru finds himself forgetting his dinner-in-progress time and again, too entranced by the building tension happening on screen.
Maybe Satoru has decent taste, Human Earthworm aside.
Once the rice is done, he makes his bowl, grabs a beer, and sits on the floor to eat—on the side of the kotatsu that’s closest to the balcony door, and therefore closest to Satoru. It’s just so they can talk about the movie without raising their voices loud enough for the neighbors to hear. That’s all.
Warm food, warm clothes, and the warm cover of the kotatsu blanket have Suguru cozy and content even with the balcony door wide open and the evening breeze wafting in. He’s two bites into his curry, eyes fixed on the TV screen, when a flurry of audible sniffing ruins his immersion.
“What?” He stares at Satoru while he chews, brow creasing. The sniffing continues—fainter now, paired with repeated sidelong looks from Satoru—and Suguru can’t tell if he’s acting snotty about the smell of human food. “Stop that. Why are you being extra obnoxious right now?”
“No reason.” Satoru’s bottom lip juts forward as he sinks lower into the beanbag chair, his arms crossed over his chest, and focuses on the movie again.
Suguru mulls on it as he goes back to eating—Satoru’s sulking, his uncharacteristic quietness, the way he keeps glancing over and then turning more dejected. If Satoru found the savory smell of his dinner offensive he’d most definitely be loud about it, so…
“Do you want a bite?” Suguru tentatively guesses. Though it should go without saying, he adds, “Of the curry, not me.”
Though Satoru can technically consume human food, Suguru figured his interest was reserved for sweets. It’s not as if meat and vegetables will actually nourish the vampire’s body in any physical way, but…
“I thought you’d never offer,” Satoru complains, shamelessly dragging himself and the beanbag closer to the open door. He presses up against the invisible boundary of the threshold, his mouth open and his pale, almost lavender-pink tongue out.
Suguru rolls his eyes even as he works on scooping up a perfect bite with a little of everything. Under his breath, he grumbles, “I didn’t mean that I’d feed you.”
But he does himself no favors and goes along with it anyway. With his hand cupped under the spoon to catch any drips, he leans over and guides it directly into Satoru’s fanged, waiting mouth… and stares a hair too long at those lips as they close around the metal, perfectly smooth and prettily shaped as they are. Suguru catches himself, cheeks warming under a blush, and glances up.
Looking into Satoru’s eyes is an even bigger mistake. The moment their stares meet, Satoru moans. Loudly. Suguru promptly jerks his spoon back, huffing as Satoru chortles away.
The metal’s been slurped spotless, not a spot of curry or a grain of rice left behind. Suguru makes a face, debating whether to trudge all the way to the kitchen—five whole meters—for a clean one. In the end, it seems like a pointless effort. Considering what happened between them just a few days ago, sharing a utensil is basically nothing.
“Hm. Tastes like it’s missing… onions.” Satoru runs a finger along the corner of his mouth, grin widening as Suguru gives him a dry glare in response. With some actual seriousness, he then asks, “Is this your favorite food, Suguru? Curry?”
Suguru shakes his head, hides his full mouth behind a hand, and answers while chewing: “Zaru soba.”
Satoru leans toward him, forehead resting against the unseen border that runs between them. Softly, with the points of his fangs peeking out on every word, he says, “You should let me take you out for zaru soba, then. My treat.”
The movie is still playing on in the background, tragically unwatched. The volume is dialed low enough for its horrified screams to be tuned out. Even if it weren’t, Suguru would take no notice.
Cold, sharp blue peers into him in between slow blinks of feathery soft lashes. Satoru’s broad shoulders lift and his chest fills with breath, taking in air just to slowly sigh it back out. One dangerously cute dimple appears alongside his slight smile.
Suguru stares, half-entranced and fully aware of it. If he hadn’t already been on the receiving end of those fangs and that appetite, he’d be done in by the look Satoru is laying on him right now.
“Should I?” Suguru warily, teasingly wonders, smiling right back at him.
“Why not? We could go to a pastry shop after, too. I know all the best places that are open late. Or early, if you’re into that.”
Now that Suguru knows to look for it, it’s awfully easy to recognize the hunger in the way Satoru watches him. Even smiling and sweet-spoken, it’s there in the fixated tracking of his pupils and the slight clench of his jaw.
Suguru licks the back of his spoon while holding Satoru’s stare. “So you can get my blood sugar up before you eat me?”
Satoru’s smile tightens up before it relaxes again. “Suguru, Suguru, Suguru. I’d never eat you-eat you. Sustainable sips only, I promise,” he says, not quite convincing. “So stop being such a chicken and come out here. I’m bored.”
“Hah. This is like a tiger trying to talk me into its cage,” Suguru mutters as he polishes off the last of his supper. He shakes his head, in disbelief that Satoru thinks that’ll be enough to get his way. “Has this bit of yours worked on other humans before? Just curious.”
“What other humans? You think I go around doing this?” The vampire spreads his hands, gesturing to the cramped, dead plant-lined balcony around him and the ratty old beanbag he’s currently reclined on. “Please. If I had nefarious intentions, I could’ve easily swept you up and taken you home with me on Halloween. For keeps.”
The fine hairs down the back of Suguru’s neck rise. While it’s true that Satoru need not have whisked him home, escorted him upstairs, and allowed him to slip out of grasp…
“You’re really making me regret letting you go, you know,” Satoru mopes, frowning as he buries both hands in the front pockets of his jacket.
Does it even count as letting him go when Satoru shows up after sundown and lingers after Suguru goes to bed, sniffing around like a hungry wolf? Satoru may not have free access to him, body or blood, but Suguru is squarely under his thumb nonetheless.
“So, you’re telling me that if I were to step out there with you right now,” Suguru says, noting the way Satoru brightens at the mere mention, “you’d be a perfect gentleman?”
“Well, now, I didn’t say that.” His head tilts as he follows with, “Is that how you want me to be with you, Suguru? A gentleman? Should I keep my hands and my mouth to myself?”
Suguru licks his lips, face warming under Satoru’s unblinking, smirking consideration. A gentleman wouldn’t have beckoned him into an alley and made out with him within ten minutes of first meeting, much less done what they did after, so…
“I mean, you don’t have to be a saint.” Suguru himself certainly isn’t, given he’s entertaining someone who regularly kills to eat—and probably for lesser reasons, too. “Surely there’s a middle ground between being a total ascetic and turning me into a desiccated little raisin.”
“There is! And I’m already there!” With a groan, Satoru lolls his head back and slowly works it in a circle. Rather than once more trying to coax Suguru out, he instead suggests, “Let me in and I’ll prove it. Again. Easy.”
Suguru laughs to himself, close-mouthed, as he lies back on the living room floor, his bottom half still warm under the kotatsu. Despite the vulnerability of his belly-up, throat-bared position, Suguru’s stare casually drifts to the movie on the screen before returning to the frustrated vampire lurking at his open door.
The how is still something of a mystery but the innate, natural warding that his home offers is an unmatched blessing. Without it, Suguru wouldn’t stand a chance of resisting or outlasting a creature as strong as Satoru. He certainly couldn’t be this calm or conversational around him, either. But alongside the comfort and safety his current situation affords him, the slow, impending crush of reality’s cold jaws never quite lets up. Even here, warm and well-guarded, Suguru can’t ignore the feeling that he’s not much different from a rabbit in a hutch—safely penned in yet entirely unable to escape the watchful, waiting eyes of the apex predator camped outside.
Looking up at Satoru from the floor, he sighs out, “I’m sure you can understand my hesitance.”
“Not at all. I think you’re being very silly about this, Suguru. We could be making out on your couch right now, or cozied up in bed, or out on the town. Instead, we’re… look, I’m not saying I don’t enjoy your company as is, but this,” Satoru complains, pointedly tapping the toe of his leather shoe against the unseen barrier that’s keeping him out, “is a real pain.”
For Satoru, certainly. For Suguru, who now sleepily stretches his arms overhead and arches his back, luxuriating in the unmatched feeling of guaranteed security, it’s pretty sweet.
“What, being outfoxed by a human?” he snorts before rolling over onto his side, facing Satoru. He props up his head on a bent arm, cheek pillowed in his palm. “Being so powerful but still stuck watching me from afar?”
Afar being like a meter away, but whatever. The distance may be miniscule but the effect on Satoru is evidently dire.
“Yeah, well. It’s not like you can spend every minute of nighttime in your apartment forever,” Satoru says with a white flash of a grin, smug and predatory and… correct. He mimics Suguru, casually stretching his arms overhead and popping his back. “I only need to get lucky once, after all.”
Suguru can only shrug, equally aware he has no long-term solution here, and nibble his thumb nail. As winter draws closer, the nights will grow inescapably long and the days woefully short. He can’t arrange his work schedule around daylight indefinitely.
And Satoru has nothing but time to wait him out.
Three weeks on, Satoru’s interest in him shows no sign of waning.
He appears the moment the evening shadows grow long and deep enough to shelter him. He lingers until Suguru retires for bed. Even there he follows, in a sense. Suguru sees Satoru in his dreams: looming over him in that dark alleyway; chasing him through nighttime streets and woods and cemeteries; inexplicably in his room, in his bed, and in him, fangs and otherwise.
But if Suguru can ignore the fact that every day is now a surreal race against sunset, it’s kind of nice having someone around at home. He leaves the balcony door open while he cooks and paints his nails and reviews the Hasaba twins’ practice exams, chatting all the while. Just as it had on Halloween, conversation comes naturally with Satoru, despite… well, everything.
On bad days, Suguru freely complains about clients at work—whom Satoru promptly offers to eat for him, which Suguru promptly rejects—and the new crick in his back and how his favorite brand of tea is basically discontinued. On good days, he finds himself spilling far too much about his middle school vampire-slash-visual-kei phase and dragging out old trophies from his martial arts tournaments, blushing and fussing with his hair while showing them off to a vocally impressed Satoru.
In turn, he listens attentively as Satoru gives impromptu reviews of new cafes he’s tried, explains nineties anime and manga he’s still catching up on, and moans about how he might wither and die if Suguru doesn’t let him in right now pretty pretty pretty please.
The usual.
Over the course of several nights spent hanging out together, Suguru works up the nerve to pry more deeply into Satoru’s history. It’s unwise, probably, to possess any more intimate knowledge than he already has—especially if he ever hopes to one day disentangle himself from the vampire stalking his balcony. Avid curiosity simply gets the better of him.
Suguru half expects Satoru to play coy and remain semi-mysterious; instead, Satoru seems thrilled by the interest and readily answers at length.
His human life? Quite comfortable, for the times. The Gojo clan ruled a swath of land near present day Kyoto and Satoru was next in line to head the family. As a gifted natural warrior, he was often sent to slaughter brigands and quash unrest and hunt monsters—animal, demon, or otherwise—that were preying on the peasants who worked their land.
How did he turn? While riding through the woods to slay one such beast, Satoru’s hunting party was ambushed. After the vampire tore the throats of his retainers, it turned upon him. Even with his masterful swordwork—Satoru makes sure to emphasize that bit several times over—he could not save himself. Every blow he landed on the vampire was repaid with a deeper, more savage wound. Disarmed and desperate and fully aware that the end was near, Satoru lunged forward and bit into the vampire’s forearm until his jaw began to grind in his ears. He was shaken off, flung down a ravine, and left to succumb to his severed spine and internal hemorrhaging.
However, the vampiric blood coating the inside of his mouth was enough to turn him as he lay dying in the dark. When he woke from his delirium hours later, he was ravenous. After dragging himself up the cliffside, he fed on what little blood was left in his slain horse and retainers, let his bones finish fusing whole, and then began his journey home: different now, but no less useful to his clan. Provided they could keep him fed, of course.
Where does he live when he isn’t lurking around Suguru’s apartment? At his clan’s lavish estate outside of Kyoto, officially. It’s where he slumbers for decades or centuries at a time, safely sealed in a stone vault until he is roused by some living relation in need of his aid. For the past decade or so, he’s also kept his own personal residence on the outskirts of Tokyo.
Which Suguru is welcome to come visit, apparently. Any time.
With his legs toasty under the living room kotatsu and his nose red-tipped from the chilly air breezing in, they watch movies together—including vampire ones. Suguru finds Satoru-watching more entertaining than the films themselves, amused by his pained groans and his complaints of ‘It doesn’t work like that!’ and ‘Ugh, this is making me hungry.’ More than once, Suguru falls asleep on the floor or the couch before the credits roll. He wakes in the morning to find the balcony door closed, Satoru gone, and some little trinket or treat left by the door in his place.
The treats vary. Satoru is as likely to leave him a cheap plush animal as he is a delicate antique comb with exceptional craftsmanship. Steadily, Suguru accrues a whole shelf of offerings, large and small. But the cashmere jacket lives exclusively in his closet, where no harm can come to it. Such an exorbitant gift is simply too nice to wear to the gym and leave stuffed in his locker all day. It’ll also send the wrong message if Satoru catches him wearing it, emboldening the vampire to take it a step further. The last thing Suguru needs is to wake up to a full designer wardrobe left by his door.
Of the many things that Suguru comes to know and expect of Satoru, there is one particular constant: every night, he asks to be let in. Seductively, sometimes. Pathetically, others. Obliquely, directly, with smiles and pouts and dead-faced seriousness—he shamelessly tries it all.
And following a couple of drinks and several hours of Satoru’s company, Suguru almost wants to acquiesce. It’s dizzying to think that so few words—a simple come in—could upend or end his life in an instant. A single invitation and Satoru could tear inside and pin him to the floor and do anything he wanted. It’s a terrifying possibility. Thrilling, too. But more the former than the latter.
Late in the night, when lack of sleep has Suguru’s resolve mushy around the edges, Satoru’s unyielding charm further weakens it. The playful, boyish mask worn atop his predatory nature is devastatingly effective. He is terribly quick to make Suguru laugh, whether through dark humor or sheer silliness. He flirts so well that Suguru’s blood rushes places that aren’t conducive to clear thinking.
Stepping out onto the balcony and letting Satoru ravish him starts to take on a delusional, lust-fueled appeal. Then again, Suguru mostly enjoys being alive, and with some say in the matter of what happens to him, so…
Whatever he rightfully dares not allow in his waking hours, he can instead indulge in embarrassingly revealing nightmares-turned-dreams, which Satoru thoroughly haunts. Handsome, horrifying images of him are seared into Suguru’s mind’s eye with vivid clarity; Satoru’s voice is engraved somewhere in his grey matter, drawn upon to whisper shiver-worthy promises and sweet threats into his own ears. In the safety of his subconscious, the terror of being stalked, chased, and captured in the vampire’s grasp effortlessly bleeds into sweaty, sticky pleasure. There’s no price to pay for surrendering to it.
If only real life held the same guarantee.
“Hah, this is what they’re teaching kids these days? Seriously? Kinda light on some relevant details…”
Suguru sighs from the couch, having his own issues with what the text chooses to gloss over. “That is the certified history textbook that most of the schools around here use, yes.”
The private ones, anyway. But Satoru doesn’t need to know anything remotely specific about the once-wayward twins that Suguru now tutors.
Satoru hums where he sits cross-legged on the balcony with Suguru’s copy of the Hasabas’ textbook in his lap. Hunched over with his cheek resting on his fist, he skims through the middle chapters while making comments like, “Wrong. Also wrong. Mmm… debatable. Oh! Here we go! Shijonawate! I was there for that battle, you know. Suguru. Suguru. Suguru, I was there.”
“In a fighting capacity or a free-for-all buffet capacity?” Suguru idly wonders, ninety percent of his attention still devoted to writing up notes on Nanako and Mimiko’s latest practice exams.
“Mostly the latter, if I’m being honest. It was always easy work, thumbing the scales just enough that whatever warring side posed the greatest threat to my clan lost horribly. A few disappeared commanders here and there. A splashy kill or two to spook the soldiers. Some ominous lurking. Maybe a little arson.”
“Hm, how devious.” And frightening, depending on who the Gojo clan wielded Satoru against over the centuries and their reasons for doing so. On the couch, Suguru props his chin in hand and studies Satoru, who is already back to flipping pages. “But I do have to respect your devotion to looking after your family. It’s very… caring of you? Acting like their personal guardian deity, I mean.”
Satoru smiles brightly, the book in his lap instantly shut and forgotten.
“I do care, thank you. My clan would’ve been annihilated ten times over if not for some heavy interference on my part,” he sighs, borderline grumbling about it. “On the bright side, because our domain was never overrun, the estate is in pristine condition. For its age, anyway. If you ever want to come visit…” He gives Suguru a pointed look. “My door is always open. If you’re into art and historical knicknacks, we’ve got loads of both.”
Suguru hums, finding it harder and harder to focus on the grading and planning he needs to finish before tomorrow. He admits, “I’ve always liked the idea of a museum date.”
But the guys he’s been with before were basically allergic to being seen together in public, so it’s never happened. Satoru is no more promising a prospect, albeit for vastly different reasons. Most museums are not known to keep vampire-friendly hours, for one. For another, Suguru would likely end up exsanguinated and discarded in an alleyway long before he set foot in the Tokyo Metropolitan.
And letting Satoru whisk him off to the Gojo clan’s private estate somewhere in the vicinity of Kyoto? Never to be seen or heard from again? Out of the question.
“Oh, this’d be way better! If you trace the provenance back far enough, half of the pieces in the country’s best museums were held by my family at one point or another. Thanks to me, of course, and the spoils I brought home over the centuries,” Satoru half brags, half purrs. “I could give you a private tour. Up close and personal. Proper museums have all kinds of fussy rules and glass in the way… as my guest, you’d have free rein to explore. You could try on whatever pieces that strike your fancy. Go ham with flash photography. Get hands-on with all the dusty old relics you like.”
“Mm.” Suguru bites back a smile and keeps his voice level as he teases, “I’m guessing that last bit applies to you as well?”
With a huff of affronted disbelief, Satoru flops onto his side and stretches out on the spare comforter Suguru has taken to leaving on the balcony for him. Mouth still hanging open, he huffs again. “Pretty bold when you’re in there and I’m out here, aren’t you? I’m barely over eight hundred, Suguru. Don’t be so mean.”
Suguru snorts, glancing up from his work just long enough to raise a brow in Satoru’s direction. Barely over eight hundred, is he?
“I’m loving the interest, though,” Satoru goes on, no longer fazed, “so I’ll ignore you callously lumping me in with the antique chamber pots and sutra scrolls and take that question as a compliment. So yes,” he says, waggling his brows as he makes a sweeping gesture down the length of his body, “you’re allowed to touch all you like, obviously. Me and all the other valuables.”
Suguru has to press his fist to his lips to keep them in a straight line, and to keep a little titter in. Satoru should be the furthest thing from funny, given what he is and what he does, but his resilient optimism and surprisingly lax, casual allowances have a certain charm. With a soft clearing of his throat, Suguru pointedly starts scrolling and scratching away on his tablet. If he looks too long at Satoru right now—too invitingly laid out on that plush comforter, the hem of his shirt rucked up to show a sliver of white belly—he might actually do something regrettable.
“I don’t know,” he pretends to muse, his stifled smile now showing through, “that’s an awful lot of responsibility, Satoru. What if I were to break some priceless vase or sculpture? Does your clan have a secret dungeon for butterfingered guests?”
He’s half joking, half genuinely wondering aloud. Obviously, keeping a vampire on the premises to sic against their enemies is not the practice of an upstanding family.
“Mm? No, no, no. Things break, it happens. You would, of course, be expected to compensate me for the loss,” Satoru says with mock—or so Suguru assumes—seriousness.
“On my two part-time salaries?” He glances up and grimaces, clicking his tongue after. “Let’s hope your family treasures are well insured.”
“Money isn’t really what I’m after.” Slowly, a smirk grows on Satoru’s lips. “Not from you, anyway.”
Suguru scoffs under his breath. Of course. He should know better.
“Blood isn’t exactly a viable payment option, either. You know I only have like six liters total, right? And losing more than two at a time would probably kill me.”
“I know better than you do,” Satoru says before licking his lips, eyes rolling to fix on Suguru, “exactly how much blood you have pumping through you at any given moment. And I’d never be careless with it.”
It’s meant to be reassuring. Suguru thinks so, anyway. The dark longing that creeps into Satoru’s voice and stare, though, is more unsettling than anything else.
“That’s… good. I guess.” If he takes Satoru at his word. If Satoru is even capable of keeping it. There is some amount of blood—Suguru has given it some pondering on his commutes and during dinner prep—that he could safely lose on a regular schedule. Not that he’s worked out the specifics. Not that he needs to. “But you know, if you actually do care about not killing me—”
“If? What do you mean, if? I care! Haven’t I made that obvious from night one?”
“—feeding on me to the tune of, say, twenty or thirty million yen would take years to do sustainably.”
And maybe they’re getting a bit in the weeds with this hypothetical that will never, ever come to pass regardless, but Suguru needs to know that Satoru has a realistic grasp of the limitations of the human body.
“Oh, no. Years, you say? Whole years of regularly nibbling on that neck and lapping up the world’s most delectable blood? Terrible. Nightmarish. How could I ever endure…”
Suguru’s skin flushes warm, half at the vivid imagining of Satoru’s lips and teeth on his throat and half at the insinuation that he’d stick around that long. Years. And for a pittance of blood every six weeks or so.
Accepting that he’s now thoroughly distracted and embroiled in whatever this conversation is, Suguru sets his tablet aside and slithers from the couch to the floor.
“You’re more patient than I thought,” he says as he lies down parallel to Satoru, mirroring his position on the other side of the open door. He twirls a length of loose hair round and round his finger, eyeing the vampire glowingly smiling back at him. “Here I was, thinking you’d suggest some other, more immediate means of repayment instead.”
A healthy beat of silence stretches. It could be the darkness outside, but Suguru thinks Satoru’s ears darken with color even as his pearly teeth show in a grin.
“Haha. Well. Break something expensive enough and we could mix and match. I’ll happily accept any form of Suguru-based compensation.”
“Good to know. Not that I’ll ever see the inside of your clan’s estate. Or the outside, for that matter.” He tries not to laugh as Satoru sluggishly rolls facedown and lets out a protracted groan, mourning his dashed, dead-in-the-water hopes. “It’s nothing personal, Satoru.”
“Of course it’s personal,” Satoru muffles out. “You think the absolute worst of me. You think I’m a monster.”
Eating people—and rather remorselessly, Suguru would add—does slot Satoru squarely into the monster definition. His own moral compass must have a faulty needle, though, given that a supernaturally powerful, consequence-immune, admitted killer can still make Suguru insides gooey with sympathy and a desire to comfort.
“Satoruuu, if I thought the worst of you, I wouldn’t be…” Suguru licks his lips, his gaze shamefully sinking down to a spot on the floor in front of him. When he looks up again, one faintly reflective, pale blue eye is trained on him. “If I thought that poorly of you, I wouldn’t sit here and talk all night or watch movies with you or turn my balcony into a… a mini vampire nest.”
He’d cleared out the shelves of dead, potted plants, given it a fresh cleaning, and slowly added more comforts for Satoru’s nightly visits: cushions to sit on, the blanket to stretch out on for movies, and a few manga and books to entertain him while Suguru is busy cleaning or folding laundry. At the time, Suguru had half-excused it as a modest effort to keep Satoru semi-content and therefore less likely to kill him.
But the truth is, he can’t see himself treating Satoru much differently either way. Such small kindnesses and allowances may not make a difference in the grand scheme of Satoru’s designs on him, but Suguru doesn’t have it in him to be cold and inhospitable to someone whose company he genuinely appreciates.
“Satoru... I like you. Okay?” It’s as undeniable as it is unhealthy. Suguru’s recognition of the danger he is flirting with doesn’t negate his desire. “Just not enough to let myself be taken to a second location.”
Whatever scrawny little tendril of hope Satoru had been clinging to while listening on evaporates. With a scoff, he rolls over onto his back, staring up at the night sky rather than in at Suguru. “Not enough to get within half a meter of me.”
It’s a little dramatic. Though Suguru is unwilling to throw himself into Satoru’s waiting arms and jaws, he’s hardly distant. They kissed and held hands through the window on Halloween, didn’t they? They’ve played card games over the balcony threshold, their legs crisscrossed and their knees no more than ten centimeters from brushing. And Suguru gets awfully close while spoon-feeding him tasting bites of homemade miso soup and pudding.
Granted, it has been weeks since they last actually touched…
Which is also how long it’s been since Suguru’s been touched by anyone whatsoever. Not that he’s particularly hankering for it—not from the places he used to get it, always short-lived and strictly physical and something of a letdown. He also maybe doesn’t have a choice in the matter? Suguru’s pretty sure that bringing any other guy home for a one night stand would be tantamount to marking them for death.
After worrying his bottom lip for a few long seconds, he sits up. On his knees, he shuffles himself over to the open door.
“Satoru,” he says, head tilted down at a quietly sulking Satoru, who looks awfully harmless at times like these. “Satoru, come here.”
Satoru’s cold, carving stare cuts sideways and lingers. After gauging Suguru for a few long moments—and apparently arriving at the conclusion that he is not being teased or pushed lower while he’s already down—the vampire then scrambles to do as told, the comforter under him rumpling as he snaps upright and mirrors Suguru’s kneeling position.
There’s an eeriness to how quickly he can move, Suguru can’t help but observe. The stillness that Satoru immediately assumes is equally unnatural.
There is no shifting in discomfort. No breath softly wheezes past his smiling lips or fills his chest. His throat does not flex with a nervous swallow. His fingers don’t make idle twitches. Out of anticipation, maybe, he hardly blinks.
But what makes Satoru so uncanny—what makes Suguru’s nape prickle with goosebumps and his veins shiver hot-cold with a cocktail of fearful hormones—isn’t the calm and quiet that belongs to the dead. It’s the keen hunger and calculation housed behind it. Barely masked beneath that cold inanimation thrums a static intensity, an inhuman amount of kinetic potential tightly coiled and restrained. Even like this, brightly and eagerly playing along as asked, a mindless sort of bloodlust lies not far under the surface.
Suguru keeps that in mind. He’d caught more than one glimpse of it on Halloween, after all.
With a beckoning finger, Suguru says, “Lean in closer, please.”
If he weren’t so unnaturally resilient, Satoru might’ve broken his nose in his eagerness to comply. As it is, its soft tip bumps and bends against the warding barrier. His smiling lips flatten slightly too, as if pressed to glass.
Suguru’s legs flex under him as he awkwardly shifts in place. After some internal debate—he’s almost literally sticking his neck out here, after all—he licks his lips and says, “Promise me you won’t bite.”
Satoru lets out a snicker before quickly sobering, suddenly-doleful eyes turned on Suguru. “Suguru, c’mon. I’m not going to nibble your lips off.”
“Promise.”
“Alright! No biting, I promise.” Satoru then tacks on, “Without your approval. You can trust me on that.”
Suguru doesn’t believe him. Or he’d be a fool to do so, at least.
He bridges the narrow distance between them anyway, his hands nervously curling into the baggy fabric at his knees.
The same invisible divide that holds Satoru out doesn’t hinder Suguru in the slightest. He tries—tries, even as close proximity to Satoru starts making him stupid with want—to keep the narrow white sliver of doorframe in view as a reference point. If he leans out too far…
His nose bumps Satoru’s. Their lips meet just after.
Kissing him dredges up fleeting, flickering details of Halloween night that have lain smothered under stale confusion and fear and wariness. The good parts. The sweet and sensuous bits that he hadn’t minded at all.
He’d half-forgotten just how silky soft Satoru’s lips are, how full they feel, how perfectly they press against his own. The tension between Suguru’s shoulderblades melts. He ventures out further, crushing his mouth against Satoru’s with too much effort—only to be forced back as Satoru kisses with twice his greed and intensity. The faint brush of long canines across his lips makes Suguru gasp softly each time, a little thrill coursing down and up his spine.
Though Satoru refrains from biting, his splayed hands press against the warding wall like he means to test its give. The tips of his claws make a strange sound against what otherwise appears to be bare air, fingers crooking as he scratches inward. Were the barrier to suddenly give, he’d be poised to pounce and trap Suguru in his clutches.
Even with his wits screaming at him to pull back, Suguru lingers where he is. If he could have his way, he’d slip his arms around Satoru’s shoulders and lean into him, chest-to-chest. He wants those hands braced upon the ward put on him instead, cool on his lower back or firm in his hair. He’d rather kiss without the unseen barrier that keeps forcefully separating their mouths; there’s a pinkish spot on Satoru’s forehead from thunking against it when he gets a bit too eager.
With a word or two, or a single step over the threshold, Suguru could make that happen. One moment of weakness—or trust, as Satoru would name it—could undo it all.
For now, he has the good sense not to.