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The blood is rare and sweet as Cherry Wine...
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“I can save you Shizu-chan.” That voice. That fucking voice. And that twice fucked nickname. They’re pretty much the last things on Earth I want to be hearing right now. So of course I’m hearing them. Of course I’m blinking heavy eyes open to see his fucking face. This shitty flea. Can’t he even let me die in peace?
“What the fuck are you talking about?” My own voice is in shambles right now. More of a rasp than anything. I blame that on the blood loss. Hell, I’ll just go ahead and blame all my current failings on the blood loss.
It’s weird that I’m not blaming the blood loss on Izaya right now. But for once, he wasn’t involved. It pisses me off. More than normal.
“You’re dying. Pretty quickly too.” Izaya states it like it’s a boring headline in the paper. Not even interesting enough to put an exclamation mark on it. I growl- or I try to. It comes out more like a groan. And the strangest look crosses the flea’s face at the noise. What the fuck is his face doing? What is he doing here?
Like he can read my mind, Izaya’s face shifts back to that blank mask he’s been wearing since I opened my eyes. It’s weird, seeing him without that shit-eating grin of his. It makes his repetition of, “I can save you.” more eerie than anything.
“Why would you do that?” I demand, though I’m not 100% sure what I’m asking of him. Mostly I’m wondering why he’d save me; but also, why would he be so cruel to offer me salvation when he must know I’m beyond saving at this point. I’ve been bleeding out for a while. There’s no way to recover from this. Even for someone like me.
But the smirk that spreads across the parasite’s face makes me wish for the miracle he’s apparently offering. If only so I can live and slap that grin off his face one last time. “I’m just not quite done with you yet. Call it sentiment, but I’m not ready for you to die.” He drawls, reaching down to flick my nose. I try to grab his wrist, but it’s like trying to swat an insect.
I’m too slow to catch him when I’m not on death’s door, let alone now.
“I guess that’s shitty enough of a reason for me to believe you.” I spit at him. Not the most eloquent, but I am dying. And his reasoning does make sense- in the kind of crazy way that Izaya sometimes makes sense. I don’t know, I try not to think about those moments. Like ever.
The flea tilts his head to the side, face back to that flat expression as he studies me. “So? Do you want me to save you or not?” He’s…asking my permission?
It’s hard for me to accept, especially because he’s actually asking me to accept. He’s not just forcing his help on me to rub in my face at a later date. He’s being patient and waiting for my answer. Which makes it almost impossible to spit out! And the steadily increasing patches of darkness in my vision aren’t helping anything.
I think I start to black out, because suddenly I’m gasping myself back to clarity as Izaya’s sharp little claw digs into one of my dozen gunshot wounds. It’s funny. I’ve survived gunshots before. But apparently even a monster like me can’t walk off a full clip to the torso.
“Fuck!” I snarl, and Izaya’s hand pulls back. But there’s that weird look on his face again. Except, it’s worse this time. Nearly taking over his whole expression.
“Don’t die.” He tells me, firmly. And then, weaker, “Unless you want to. If you don’t want my help, that’s fine.”
“Fuck.” I repeat, but mostly to psyche myself up. One of Izaya’s dark brow raises curiously. “Yes. My answer is yes. Fucking help me.” I let my head fall back out of pure exhaustion. But then the seconds tick past silently without any noise or movement from the flea and with a groan I look back up at him.
“There’s just…a few things you should know first.” He tells me, with honest to god awkwardness in his tone. What the actual fuck.
“It’s getting hard to breathe here.” I huff at him bitterly. I’m expecting him to giggle, or maybe taunt me. It would be the perfect moment for him to bring up how much of a monster I am, and that I can surely stand to lose a couple more pints before I die.
But Izaya is wearing his serious face again- the one that I kinda actually hate and I don’t want to look at it anymore. But I can’t seem to pull my gaze from his as he leans in over me to make eye contact.
“In a few minutes you’ll never breathe again. You’ll be immortal. Like I am.” he tells me, with a heaviness to his tone that says he’s telling the truth. But that’s ridiculous. Izaya doesn’t tell the truth. Not ever.
“Immortal.” I repeat. Because honestly that’s the easiest part to grasp out of everything I’m dealing with right now. After all, my best friend is Celty. And more than a few supernatural freaks have passed through my city. Immortality isn’t as weird as it once was to me.
“Don’t get too excited. It comes with consequences. Creepy, penny dreadful consequences.” There’s that awkwardness again. It doesn’t suit Izaya. I have to turn this around somehow.
“Are you a fucking vampire, cuz that would make a lot of fucking sense honestly.” I have been calling him a blood sucking flea for a long time. And then there’s the whole red eyes thing. That can’t come naturally.
Izaya cringes, darting his gaze to the side. “Guess you caught me.” He murmurs. And really I just…I don’t have enough blood in my body to process this.
“Seriously?”
“It’s this or dying.” He bites in a sudden spike of defensiveness. A growl rumbles in my chest, but the series of holes running through me stops it from going far.
He’s not lying. I am going to die, if I don’t accept his offer. And I’m going to die soon. I’m not ready for me to die either.
“Fine. I accept, or whatever. Just…do it.”
My head falls back again, heavy with fatigue and dizziness. Izaya’s fingers are like fucking ice when they ever so gently touch my jaw. I never imagined Izaya as gentle. The flea’s as much a fucking monster as I am. Actually, with this new information about him, I can say that he’s more of a monster. He’s a fucking vampire after all!
But I guess, I’m gonna be one too. Huh.
Izaya’s freezing hands turn my skull with a soothing, but insistent force until my neck is completely bared to him. It has to be my imagination, the way he sucks in a shaky breath as he leans in closer. And I definitely have to be imagining the way his hands start to shake when his lips touch the skin of my neck.
“Hey Izaya…” I whisper. He stills all at once, both his mouth and his hands. “Don’t fuck it up, okay? I don’t want to die.”
Those lips that so often twist into a smirk at the sight of me part to let sharp teeth meet my flesh. It’s only for a moment, before Izaya pulls away to murmur, “You won’t die. I won’t let you.”
Before my blood starved mind can even start to think of a response, he’s biting down.
The pain is the first, immediate thing. I’ve been bit before- by Kasuka when we were young, and by a kid who was stupid and didn’t understand I could actually throw him through a building. This isn’t like that.
This is like…fuck, it’s like dying and coming alive at the same time. It hurts, but it’s a good hurt. It’s the pain of knowing that I’m still breathing, even though my whole body feels fuzzy at the edges at this point.
When Izaya pulls away from the bite after only a few seconds, there’s some sick part of my brain that actually wants him to sink his teeth back in. It’s of course curb stomped into oblivion before it can so much as draw a whine from my throat. Because like hell am I gonna beg Izaya for anything- especially something as fucking weird as him biting me.
“Hey, drink. While you’re still conscious.” Something warm drips over my mouth, while his icy fingers push on my chin to coax my lips open. The second I allow myself to do as he wants, and that warm liquid touches my tongue, I feel like I’m set on fire from the inside out.
I try to blink clarity into my eyes- at least long enough to take stock of what’s happening. The only thing I can tell for sure is that Izaya’s still leaning over me, with one hand wrapped around my cheek and jaw and the other tickling the hair beneath my ear. His wrist is over my mouth- or rather, in my mouth. And I don’t know when or how, but he must’ve been hurt too, because it’s bleeding. It’s bleeding into my mouth.
That should be a disgusting thought to me. But his blood is…weird. It’s not disgusting, or metallic, or anything I know of my own blood. It’s almost like it doesn’t have a taste at all. But it’s addicting at the same time. And it’s warm, which honestly throws me since Izaya’s so fucking cold.
The more I swallow, the more I want. The more I want, the stronger I start to feel again. And when he goes to pull his wrist away, it’s easy for me to catch him. For the first time since I met him, I catch Izaya Orihara.
I mean, it’s not hard when the moron is crouched over me and I can just swing an arm up to pin him to my chest. My other hand catches his still bleeding wrist and I pull it back to my lips before it can even think about clotting.
Izaya makes the most delightful, scared noise when I bite down on his wound to help his blood flow more. And when he jerks back, but doesn’t go far, that fear spreads to his face and fuck! I’ve wanted to see that for so long. It’s almost as intoxicating as his blood.
“You’re taking too much…you don’t need more.” He tells me, though his voice sounds far away. It would be easy to ignore. But it’s Izaya and I’ve never been able to ignore this shitty flea.
I release his wrist with a long swipe of my tongue against jagged flesh, just to watch the way his face pinches on a grimace. “I guess you’re the expert.” I rasp.
He jerks away from me, this time managing to wriggle out of my hold. “I am.” Izaya mutters, holding his wrist to his chest protectively.
I want to break that arm, maybe rip it clean off. But I can’t move. All of my energy went into catching the damn flea, and now I’m left drained and feeling remarkably like a bag of wet cement.
“You need to sleep for a while.” Izaya tells me, warily inching closer to me to put his good hand on my forehead. He rubs his thumb up between my brows, applying pressure in key places that…actually do make me feel sleepy. “When you wake up a lot of things will be different. Just don’t panic when you go to breathe and your lungs don’t work.”
“Wha-”
“Shh…” Izaya immediately cuts me off, reaching out with both hands to sweep his thumbs down under my eyes in soothing circles. Between the fact that I almost bled to death in an alley, and the bizarrely calming motion of his hands on my face, it’s hard to resist the siren song of sleep. “Just sleep right now. Your body needs to adjust, and trust me, you don’t want to remember it. Just sleep.”
And fuck, when he talks like that, I actually want to do what he says.
I hope that’s not permanent. If it is, I may have been better off dead.
///
“So what now?” Izaya glances back at me from the row of windows he’s been standing broodily in front of. I’ve actually never been inside his apartment before. So waking up there was pretty disorienting.
Waking up a completely different species didn’t help either.
“Now nothing.” The flea replies, sounding bored. It’s how he’s sounded ever since I opened my eyes. The whole time he explained the basics, he had that bored tone and I wanted to strangle him more with every word. Not that the strangling urge is new. It’s just…heightened.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I demand, and he shrugs. Like he couldn’t care less. Fucking bastard!
“Nothing’s different.”
“You turned me into a fucking vampire!” I roar. It shakes the cup of water he left for me on his coffee table, but it doesn’t so much as make him flinch.
“I saved your life. Like I said I would.” He sighs heavily, like he’s starting to regret it. Then again, I’m sure I’m not the sweetest newborn ever.
“So that it? You’re just gonna throw me out on the streets without a fucking clue what to do with myself?!” His scoff is infuriating. Everything about him is fucking infuriating! I want to fucking kill him! I want to fuck hi- what.
“Calm down, Shizu-chan. I’m not going to use this situation for my benefit or anything like that. Even I’m not that shitty.” He finally drifts away from his window, moving with a catlike grace to drop onto the opposite end of the couch, far away from me. My skin still itches with his proximity.
“Yeah, right.” I huff. It lacks bravado though.
Even without bravado, it makes Izaya scowl and point that sharp little nose into the air. “Nothing changes. We’ll be exactly the same as we always were. Just, when you have questions about your new nature, call me. I’ll explain things. And I won’t lie to you, that I promise.”
He sighs, his face tipping down and away from me. “You’re my responsibility now, so I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you grow up well.”
Izaya sounds regretful as shit as he says it. Especially the ‘responsibility’ part. Which makes me pretty fucking ecstatic, to be honest. Maybe this isn’t so shitty. It makes Izaya uncomfortable, so that’s an automatic win in my book.
“Other than that, nothing has to change. I assume you’ll still be trying to kill me every time you see me. And don’t think that because I saved your life I won’t take it back someday. I will be the one to kill you, Shizu-chan.” He vows. I roll my eyes.
“Yeah right. You couldn’t even kill me when I was mortal.” I taunt. The mirth dies in my chest when he turns the most pitying gaze on me.
“It’s hardly a good cat-and-mouse game if the cat hacks up his last fur ball before the finish line is even in sight. I didn’t kill you when you were mortal because then I wouldn’t have had anything to play with. So, the same reason I saved you.” I hate how casual he sounds. I hate how powerful my urge to murder him right here and now is.
“You sick fuck.” I growl. It rumbles deeper in my chest now- my growl. I like it.
“Yeah. Tell me something I don’t know.” Izaya sighs, stretching idly like he has not a care in the world. Which is- of course- infuriating! I’m out of my seat and holding that scrawny neck in my hand instantly. But he just smirks at me.
“I hate you.”
“Sorry, I already knew that too. You’ll have to try harder next time.” My nails dig into his skin so hard blood starts to bead up.
And oh fuck me, I can smell it now. I can smell it so clearly it’s almost like I can taste it on my tongue! And I fucking want it! I want it! I want him! I- what.
“Carefully Shizu-chan. That monstrous blood lust of yours is only going to get worse from here on out. If you don’t learn to control it, you’ll start doing things you regret. Like, I dunno, killing the only man who can give you answers to this very twisted form of puberty you’re going through.” Every fucking word out of his mouth makes me hate him more!
I want him to shut up! I want to fuck his- what the fuck is going on?!
“Wow your pupils are doing some really weird things! Dilating and shrinking and dilating again! Were you shooting up in that alley before I got there or- oh…poor choice of words? You know, cuz of the shooting-”
“Shut up!” I shove him back hard against his couch- and he goes easily. When he’s so pliant under my hands, it almost makes me feel guilty for being so rough. But then I look at his fucking smirking face and my rage overpowers any and all guilt. “I hate you, I-za-ya-kun.”
“Don’t worry Shizu-chan, I hate you too! Now how about you take your monstrous urges out for a test drive! Or just, do something that means you going somewhere else. I’m tired and want you to leave.”
Forcing myself to let him go is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Every molecule in my body is telling me to maim and destroy him. And do other things to him too, but I am very fervently not thinking about those things. Very. Fervently.
Izaya blinks those blood red eyes innocently up at me, while his lips stay curled in a mockery of a smile. I very nearly slap it off his face.
“If I didn’t need you, you’d be dead.” I hiss at him. He laughs. Straight out laughs, with honest amusement. It’s a terrible sound.
“You’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard that.” He drawls, standing and slipping around me before I can blink. How can he still be so fast when I’m a vampire now too? “Remember the things I’ve told you. You’re gonna be angry. And even stronger than you already were. You’re a full fledged monster now, after all. Maybe you should take up yoga, so you don’t tear the city out at it’s roots.”
“Piece of shit…” I rumble. He smirks over his shoulder, back to standing in front of the windows. I wonder what he’s looking for.
“Oh, and Shizu-chan? You’re gonna wanna know the location of every blood bank in the prefecture. Unless you want to snap and kill one of your beloved friends, that is.”
“Fuck you!” I snarl, charging towards the door. His echoing laugh follows me out into the hallway. I hate the sound of it! I hate him!
Mostly I hate that the idea planted by my own words sounds really good right now. I do want to fuck him. What the fuck is happening to me?
Maybe I was better off dying. But, I guess it’s too late to take it back now.
I’m a vampire. And I have to rely on Izaya to figure out how to live like this. It sounds like a fate worse than death when I look at it without the haze of blood loss. But fuck, the second I get everything figured out, and I’m absolutely certain that I can survive in this state without him; I’m going to murder him.
And I’m going to enjoy it. Every single second.
He made me a monster, after all. I hope he’s ready for the consequences.